Tag Archives: bad movies

Giving Up On Godzilla

Posted on April 26, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

That sounds a little harsh, doesn’t it? If Godzilla’s feelings are hurt, please tell the big guy I’m not really giving up on him. However, the first Godzilla movie I actually watched kind of left me cold, and you know how I love to put alliteration in my titles.

Spoiler Alert! I am going to give away almost the entire plot of Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954). That is, the stuff that is in addition to Godzilla stomping Tokyo, which you probably already knew about. Come to think about it, most people only watch these flicks for the Tokyo stomping or other mayhem, so I guess I’m in the clear.

When I saw a Godzilla movie was on TCM, I thought surely my search for cheese had found a prize. Not just a big monster — THE big monster! The king of monsters, according to the title.

Actually, I think that’s a little false advertising right there. It turns out Godzilla is the only monster in the picture. I was kind of hoping for a battle of the beasts, so Godzilla would be, you know, king of somebody. But, no, it was pretty much a straight Godzilla-stomping-Tokyo-what-are-we-going-to-do that one expects when one see Godzilla in the title.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Any number of delightfully entertaining cheesy movies have been made around just that plot-line: people meet monster, monster terrorizes people, people destroy monster. It’s not the tale, it’s the telling.

The telling of this tale is dull. It starts out promisingly enough: we open on a devastated Tokyo and a ponderous voice-over lamenting the destruction. We find it’s Raymond Burr, in the handsome leading man role, which was kind of refreshing. I’m used to seeing him as the heavy or as Ironside.

Soon we are flashing back to our story thus far (viewers such as my husband Steven will be happy to hear that the whole movie isn’t a flashback) (he hates that framing device). Burr is a newspaperman. I think. Oh, all right, I didn’t pay any attention to the story except for one plot point, which I am about to spoil for you.

It seems there is this scientist who has a beautiful daughter who does NOT turn out to be Burr’s love interest (he doesn’t get a love interest. I bet Burr was pretty miffed about that: finally gets to be the leading man, doesn’t get a love interest! What’s that all about?). She is engaged to some big shot scientist — some arranged marriage bullshit — but has fallen in love with another guy. Burr intones (I mentioned it was a ponderous voice-over, didn’t I?) that a love triangle is nothing unusual, but this one will have Implications in our story.

I was all agog to find out what the implications would be. Would the spurned fiance sic Godzilla on the usurper? Would he be bitter enough to CREATE Godzilla?

Once again, I should have had a job writing 1950s monster movies. My wild ideas of what might happen next are much more exciting that what the actual writers came up with. Or perhaps I flatter myself.

I did not see that there were any implications at all. The girl goes to break if off with the fiance — whom she has liked and respected all her life — but before she can, he shows her… something horrible. So she’s too upset to break up. Later on, when a gazillion volts of electricity (I didn’t make a note of the number) fail to kill Godzilla, she breaks her vow of secrecy to reveal that the horrible thing was a weapon the guy discovered quite by accident that will destroy EVERYTHING in the water within a certain radius.

So the girl and the third point of the triangle go to convince the scientist to unleash his powerful weapon. I forgot to mention that the reason he is keeping it a secret is so it will not fall into the wrong hands, because he didn’t invent anything to counteract or fight against it. The fact that the girl cheated on him and wants to break up with him does not even enter the conversation. My personal suspicion is that he was never all that into her to begin with.

I may be selling the movie short. It was obviously dubbed from the original Japanese, so perhaps things were lost in the translation.

What remains, though, is deadly serious, and I think that was why the movie ultimately lost me. I don’t mind a movie that takes itself seriously; that often adds to the cheese factor. In this case, however, the seriousness leads to a dirge-like pace and one thing a monster movie needs is a good, brisk pace. In fact, the pace of this movie is so slow, I watched it in two parts. You know a movie is slow when you don’t mind pausing it to go to bed early. That’s what gave me the idea for today’s title, by the way.

To end on a positive note, the effects are very good, especially for the time. They used miniatures and pretty much kept people and Godzilla in different frames, so nothing looked obviously superimposed. It was good miniatures too: I never felt like I was watching a toy stomp dollhouses. Of course, that would have made the movie more cheesy, and you know how I love my cheese.

I discovered after I wrote this post that Godzilla, King of the Monsters was the original Godzilla movie. As such, perhaps some of you feel I should have treated it with more respect. Oh well, too late now.

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Attack of the 50 ft. Cheesy Movie

Posted on April 11, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

Spoiler Alert! Although I must say, I don’t know how much you can really spoil about a movie titled Attack of the 50 ft. Woman. I mean, doesn’t that kind of tell you everything that happens?

I know they did a re-make of Attack of the 50 ft. Woman (1958), so I thought that meant it must have been a “good” movie. I put good in quotes because I’m not sure what it means in this context either. At least I was afraid it would not be cheesy enough for my purposes. I need not have worried.

The movie opens on a newscast about UFO sightings. The newscaster thinks the whole thing is a joke or else that all the sighters are crazy. He tracks the sightings on a globe (handily if inexplicably located right behind him), then declares with a smile that the spaceship should be right overhead soon.

This struck me as a big “Waaait a minute!” The alien ship is apparently sailing around the world. The newscaster shows with his finger that it was here, then here — a quarter of the globe away. Then it stops and STAYS in California? Oh well, perhaps it’s not such a plot hole at that. Maybe California is a mecca for aliens and the ship was headed there all along (cue California jokes) (I hope any California readers have a sense of humor).

The movie continues not cheesily but sleazily, with a guy and girl making out in one of those movie “bar and grills” that really look more like a diner. It transpires that the guy’s wife has stormed out because the guy and girl made eyes at each other. It looked to me like the wife has a legitimate beef, but the guy — Handsome Harry is his name — feels all ill-used.

It seems he started dating the chippy (I’d call her the Blonde, but the Wife later refers to her as a redhead; you know these black and white movies) when he was separated from his wife. He let himself be talked into reconciling and regrets it. He went back because community property “only works for women.” We later find out it’s all her money anyways. What a slime bucket gold digger! I couldn’t wait for the wife to grow to 50 feet and kick his ass!

But wait is what I had to do. First Wife has to encounter the spaceship, which she calls a satellite but looked to me more like an orb. She’s driving down the highway at breakneck speed and slams on the brakes to keep from hitting it. When the giant comes after her (all we see is the hand), the car won’t start again and she runs away.

So right away I liked her better than your usual movie female, because she doesn’t just stand there and scream. She runs! Oh boy does she run! A little later when the unbelieving sheriff drives back with her to check it out, we get an idea of just how far she ran. In pumps, too! What a woman!

Naturally the satellite/orb and giant are gone, and a lot of time is wasted with Handsome Harry trying to prove Wife is crazy and Wife trying to get somebody to believe her. There are a couple of marginally interesting plot twists before she finally gets to be a giant husband-killing monster.

The effects are about what you would expect from a 1958 movie. The ending, too, is about what you expect to happen. I was sorry chippy didn’t meet a more dramatic fate, but one can’t have everything. In general I would label this a fun movie to make fun of.

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Come On, Description Writers!

Posted on April 4, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I first tried to watch The Hypnotic Eye (1960) on Friday, the day I wasn’t feeling well. I blamed my inability to watch it on my lightheadedness. When I managed to sit through the whole thing on Saturday, I realized it wasn’t me. It’s a dull, stupid movie.

As far as a Spoiler Alert is concerned, I feel I don’t need to give one to anybody who read the little description of the movie in the Guide on Digital Cable. It gives away everything, including the big reveal at the end! For all others, Alert: I’m going to spoil everything.

One doesn’t realize what a spoiler it is when one reads the description: a hypnotist causes beautiful women to deform themselves at the behest of his ugly assistant. As a starting point, that sounds promising. One could get some suspense out of a plot like that.

But, no, the movie is a mystery. We’re not supposed to know why these women are deforming themselves. Of course the hypnotist is under suspicion right away — why wouldn’t he be with the title being The HYPNOTIC Eye? But the assistant part is a little less obvious. And she’s not even very ugly till the very end.

Come on, description writers! We could have spent the whole movie wondering WHY he’s doing this. We would have felt clever for noticing the subtle signals the assistant sends him as he selects his next victim. Instead we sit there thinking, “She’s not that ugly.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The movie starts out cheesy enough for most palates. A beautiful young lady in a slip glides into a kitchen, pausing silhouetted in the doorway so we can admire her shape (if we like). She rubs some stuff from a bottle in her hair, then bends over the gas stove, burner on. And catches her head on fire! There’s wonderful shot where they show the fire superimposed over her hair. These days they would have used CGI to show her blistering skin, which some people would have liked better (um, I’m not one of them).

I thought it was a beauty treatment gone horribly wrong; the heat from the stove was supposed to activate something. But, no, the woman mistook the stove for the sink. That’s some good hypnosis!

Of course the cop on the case doesn’t know it’s hypnosis. There’s a whole bit with him and his colleague (not sure if that guy is another cop or a doctor or what) (you know how I never pay attention to these details) about how hypnosis is a valuable tool in medicine and psychology, but these entertainment hypnotists are nothing but charlatans.

And from there it moves slowly.

There is some suspense along the way. The cop’s girlfriend, in true movie female fashion, puts herself in harm’s way to try to catch the criminal. The big reveal — The assistant is really ugly! That’s why she hates beautiful women! — comes as no surprise, probably not even to people who didn’t read the little description. Why the hypnotist feels compelled to do the assistant’s bidding is never revealed.

In summary, this is a movie that could definitely have used robot heads, especially if you are unfortunate enough to watch it on a day when you feel too lightheaded to make up your own jokes.

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So That’s a Cyclops?

Posted on March 15, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I DVR’d Cyclops (1957) from TCM with high hopes and it did not disappoint. Oh, it was not a good movie by any stretch. But I had a good time making fun of it.

Oh yeah, Spoiler Alert! I’m probably going to spoil practically everything.

In the first scene, a girl is meeting with a Spanish-accented official who is denying her permission to fly… somewhere, looking for her fiance whose plane crashed there some three years ago.

So let’s start with that. Three years ago? If your fiance disappears in a plane crash, how do you wait three years before going to look for him? Or am I asking too much of a movie female? I suppose the expedition was a little complicated to arrange. For one thing, the girl couldn’t finance it all on her own (I can go on calling her “the girl,” because she’s the only one in the picture). She has joined forces with a guy who has invented something that detects uranium. Gee, do you suppose he is in this only to make a buck and is likely to cause trouble later?

The official plans to send someone with them to make sure they fly straight home and nowhere else. It’s not really spoiling anything to tell you that they circumvent the official and head for the restricted place, is it? I was hoping they would do something at least marginally clever and fool the guy, but no, Lon Chaney, Jr. sucker punches him and they take off. Nobody follows them.

In retrospect it occurs to me that they could have used that fact as foreshadowing: the place is so dangerous the officials will leave them to their fate. I think the script writers got lazy (if they ever invent a time machine, I may try to get myself a job as a movie writer in the ’50s). Well, that’s OK, we want to see the mysterious, dangerous place with the Cyclops; we don’t want to spend the whole picture getting there.

Regarding Lon Chaney I kind of got my hopes up when I saw his name in the credits. Well, I guess actors have bills to pay, too. Actually, Chaney does a good job as the uranium-seeking trouble-maker. It’s just that I had kind of wanted to see him get turned into a Cyclops.

And may I just insert a word about movie slugs? In movies and on television, one sock to the jaw is all it takes. The slugee is down for the count. Men especially like to do this to women “for their own good.” So the man can go off and have all the adventure while the girl stays “safe” (I use the terms “man” and “girl” intentionally). No women get slugged in this picture, so it’s got that going for it.

Lon Chaney is apparently a very good slugger. His next is administered to the pilot of the plane. Even in the close confines of the cockpit, he knocks the guy out so he can grab the controls. Chaney wants to land while his whatevermeter is clicking high. He almost gets his wish in a big way as the plane plummets toward the earth. You see, the other guy has grabbed him from behind and pulled him away from the controls.

Excuse me, what? The pilot is out cold. Why are you pulling the one left awake away from the controls? Luckily the girl shakes the pilot awake in time to avert disaster. I’ll pass over my wonderment that you can shake somebody awake in that situation. Likewise I’ll pass over their extreme luck in finding, inches before impact, a strip of ground sufficient to land on in a huge mountain range. I know, I have to suspend some disbelief. I didn’t even blink when the girl’s map shows they are very close to where the fiance’s plane went down.

So she and the other guy go off hiking into the jungle (yes, a jungle in the mountains, get over it), leaving Lon Chaney to try to talk the pilot into flying him home so he can “stake his claim” to the supposedly uranium-rich area. OK, so they weren’t even allowed to fly there legally, but this guy can just claim it for his very own, like in the Old West? The knock-out slugs and safe landing were easier to swallow than that one!

Never mind, it’s a movie. Let’s get to the monsters. Through the miracle of perspective, we get giant lizards, a giant mouse and a giant hawk. The first time a character sees a giant lizard, he stands there watching it and smoking his pipe in a contemplative fashion. When the lizard retreats behind a rock before anyone else can see it, the guy says it must have been his imagination.

You see where this is going, right? Fiance isn’t dead, he’s a giant. And his face has been hideously deformed by reasons which are never made clear (after all, the animals are all intact) so that he only has one eye and can only talk in grunts. We don’t know if he can understand anything, but the girls tries to talk to him.

Bringing movie female stupidity to new heights, she does not realize that this scary creature is her fiance. She just wonders why looking at him makes her sad. Come on! Even I know who he is, and I never met the guy! Oh well, I suppose three years and radioactive deformities can change a person.

The movie is full of “Why would they…?” moments. For example, why does the Cyclops block the people into a cave with a big old rock which he is then unable to reach them over, as he tries to do? Then he leaves (why?) and they do NOT (a) look for an alternative escape route, (b) see if he’s still there, or (c) try to come up with SOME plan. Instead they opt for (d) go to sleep. I thought it was still morning!

At least this gives Lon Chaney a chance to steal the rifle, which eventually leads to his coming to a not very exciting end at the hand of the monster (who can only get one hand into the cave far enough). Oh, but first he goes back to sleep, and when they all wake up, nobody says, “Hey! Gimme that rifle back!”

The movie can’t seem to make up its mind if the Cyclops is scary or sad. They kind of go back and forth, ending up on scary in one of those “Oh, now the movie is over” endings. I see I’m over 1000 words and I haven’t even started on how that’s not what I thought a Cyclops was. I guess I’ll just end with, if you like a stupid movie you can make fun of, Cyclops is a good choice.

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More Vegetarian Zombies

Posted on February 20, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

Spoiler Alert! I don’t know why I bother with these Spoiler Alerts. Real movie reviewers never do. Then again, I think it’s clear I’m not a real reviewer. You probably didn’t need a Spoiler Alert to tell you that.

I was thinking of Monster Movie Monday when I watched King of the Zombies (1941) on Steven’s collection of 50 Horror Classics (so I missed it by a day). Speaking of spoiler alerts, the blurb in the booklet that comes with the collection tells you almost everything. I should have known better than to read it. Really, the word “zombies” in the title tells me everything I needed to know.

The movie opens on three guys on a plane about to make an emergency landing on — what else? — a mysterious, uncharted island. They seem to be getting some radio transmission from the island but they can’t understand it. This makes them hopeful (radio transmission) rather than suspicious (can’t understand it). Of course, the characters don’t know they’re in a monster movie. That kind of ironic pose did not happen in movies till much later (although I do seem to remember Heckle and Jeckle knowing they are cartoon characters. Does that count?) (But I digress).

The three guys are the pilot, a jaunty Irishman; the purported hero; and his valet, a black man. I guess they referred to African Americans as “colored” at this time.

It is no secret that movies of this era reflect the racism rampant in the country at that time. When black people got parts in movies they were usually servants or natives. They sometimes got to sing songs. They sometimes got to act really scared. They were often the comic relief. In this movie, the valet gets to act scared, provides comic relief and is easily the most interesting character in the picture.

The proprietor of the island assures the three that he has no radio, although he is happy to welcome them as his guests. He has a catatonic wife, a beautiful niece and an extremely creepy butler. The Valet is not best pleased when the bad guy (oh you knew he was the bad guy as soon as I mentioned him; I’m not going to keep calling him the proprietor for the rest of the post) sends him off with the creepy butler to the servants’ quarters.

Things look up for Valet when he meets a pretty maid in the kitchen. They take a turn for the worse when she warns him of zombies — dead people who walk. Oh, there’s also an old witch-doctor-looking woman brewing something in a pot.

A lot of time is wasted with Valet seeing zombies and his boss and the pilot not believing him. Not a whole lot is done with the catatonic wife and beautiful niece (it’s the wife’s niece; she’s only related to the Bad Guy by marriage, in case anybody was worried).

That was actually OK with me, because Valet and Pretty Maid were my favorite characters anyways. The Irish Pilot was pretty cool, too, but he didn’t really have enough to do, except die and get made into a zombie. Oops. Well, that’s why I put in the Spoiler Alert.

The zombies in this picture, once again, are not flesh-eating monsters. In fact, Pretty Maid serves them up some stew-looking stuff that is apparently pretty bland. She realizes Valet has not in fact become a zombie when he asks for salt. Apparently zombies can’t eat salt (high blood pressure in the undead? News to me, but, whatever). She puts too much on just to be sure, so I don’t think the poor guy gets any dinner.

I kind of stopped paying attention by the end. I seem to think the zombies revolted; in fact, I remember reading that on the blurb. As in Revolt of the Zombies, it’s not such a much.

I feel I should mention that I watched this movie almost two weeks ago and have been having trouble with the write-up. In these not-as-post-racial-as-one-would-hope times, I hesitated over my description of the black characters. Then I thought maybe I could write a whole blog post thrashing out my dilemma. Before I wrote that post, I re-read my draft of this one and thought, “Hmmm, it’s not so bad. Maybe I’ll publish it after all.”

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And I’m Still Mad About the Dog

Posted on February 19, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

Spoiler Alert: I am pretty much going to recount most of the plot of today’s movie. I feel no qualms of conscience in doing so, because the only reason to watch this movie is Lionel Barrymore’s performance and you can enjoy that in any case.

Calling Dr. Gillespie also stars Donna Reed as a young and beautiful girl about to graduate from some girls boarding school somewhere. At the beginning of the movie she is meeting her young man. Donna’s father has at last consented to their engagement (cue romantic sigh from Donna’s young, impressionable roommate).

The fiance wants to elope right away, but Donna’s father has stipulated that she must finish school first (Yay, Dad, insisting on education! I’m a little sorry we never meet that character).

“I always get my way,” says Fiance with that demure, psycho look you often see in these movies.

“Not this time,” Donna tells him gently. He immediately kills a perfectly nice dog with a rock.

What the hell! I saw the dog and had fears for its well-being, but I hoped the poor thing would make it to the second reel at least. Donna is also upset, but not as upset as me, because she does not immediately terminate the engagement. She asks advice of the understanding headmistress, who recommends a psychiatric evaluation. She calls Dr. Gillespie (Barrymore), in hopes that it can be done so discreetly that even the fiance doesn’t know about it.

Dr. Gillespie calls in a brilliant young surgeon on staff at the same hospital. This young man wants to branch out into psychiatry but has so far been denied by the head of the hospital. The two of them go to the girls school. While Dr. Gillespie holds court with a number of fascinated young girls, Brilliant Surgeon takes Donna and the Fiance for a walk and asks some questions so subtle even I didn’t know what he was getting at.

Dr. Gillespie, Donna and Brilliant Surgeon meet with Fiance’s parents and family doctor. Fiance might be a mental case, our heroes say. Nonsense, says Family Doctor. Who do you think the parents believe?

Luckily, another demonstration of Fiance’s mental imbalance soon follows. No animals are harmed, but he smashes the window of a toy store and wrecks a plane, muttering threats against Dr. Gillespie.

So Family Doctor prescribes a long rest and a trip somewhere. Fiance smiles charmingly from the bed and says he feels fine. He doesn’t remember anything about the dog or the toy plane. As soon as he’s left alone he smashes Donna Reed’s picture and escapes out the window.

In talking with Donna, Brilliant Surgeons realizes that what triggers Fiance’s episodes of madness is the sound of a train whistle. You know, I don’t think the Hollywood screenwriters involved ever took a psychiatry course in their lives. For one thing, I never herd another train whistle for the rest of the picture, but Fiance kills two random guys to get a hot car to impress a dime-a-dance girl he’s trying to make time with.

Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t that a little inconsistent? Smashing a poor dog or a shop window because you’re frustrated and hear a train whistle strikes me as a slightly different psychosis from killing people to obtain a material object. Of course, his little murder for gain in a clumsy, short-sighted act, and the police are soon after him.

Donna Reed looks out her window and screams, because the first place he heads in the school garden. Headmistress, immediately consulting via telephone with Dr. Gillespie, sends Donna to the hospital with the school chauffeur, where she will supposedly be safe. Guess where Fiance is headed.

It is a big hospital. Fiance is able to kill a doctor and steal his glasses and his identity fairly easily (we don’t find out till later the poor other doctor is dead) (and we never meet him either, which saved the producers paying another actor). My first reaction was, “Oh, great disguise. They’ll NEVER recognize you with those glasses one!” But he only runs into people who don’t know him or the dead doctor as he continues to stalk Dr. Gillespie, intent on revenge.

Donna Reed, meantime, is hiding out in Brilliant Surgeon’s office suite, which includes sleeping accommodations (she does not avail herself of the invitation to put on a hospital gown, so don’t get your hopes up) (you know who you are). How fiance figures out she’s there so he can call her is never explained, but she ends up on hand for the final confrontation.

The thing that really annoyed me was Donna’s wailing at the end, “But it wasn’t really his fault!” Three men and a dog are dead! Why are you feeling more sorry for the killer? I’m thinking she doesn’t know about the dime-a-dance girl, for one thing.

On the whole, I thought it was a pretty dumb movie. It was saved for me by Lionel Barrymore and a few of the minor characters. There are a couple of nurses he spars with, as fictional doctors and nurses tend to do. A large, kind of doofy orderly is recruited to act as his bodyguard, unbeknownst to the prickly Dr. Gillespie. I also got a few chuckles from Donna’s roommate, a budding photographer and paramour.

In closing credits they advertised another Dr. Gillespie movie. I’ll have to watch for it. I do love that Lionel Barrymore.

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Sorry About the Bunnies

Posted on February 13, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I DVR’d What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971) from TCM because it starred Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds, and the description included the word “murder.” I thought no further of it till last Sunday. Steven and I had watched a distinctly non-cheesy movie (which I may yet write about), and Steven suggested that Helen might contain some amount of cheese.

In pre-show commentary, Ben Mankiewicz tells us the movie was one of a few horror movies featuring middle-aged female protagonists which followed the success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Jane was based on a novel by Henry Farrell. Farrell wrote the screenplay to Helen as well as the one to Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (which, incidentally, was originally titled Whatever Happened to Cousin Charlotte? I sense a pattern here).

Shelley Winters plays Helen, the one with some something wrong with her. Debbie Reynolds plays Adele, the proprietress of a young ladies’ dance academy. It is a testament to the ladies’ acting ability that as I watched the movie and as I write about it, I see the characters as Helen and Adele, not Shelley and Debbie, nor yet Crazy One and Tap Dance Lady (as you know two less talented, unknown actresses would have ended up). For the purposes of this post, though, I will refer to them as Shelley and Debbie, to aid my readers’ mental imagery.

Shelley and Debbie play two women who are drawn together because their sons have committed a murder. The movie, which takes place in the 1930s, opens with a Hearst newsreel showing the two of them fighting a crowd to get to a taxi after sentencing. Life in prison, not the death penalty, which has caused some outrage. Shelley gets cut by someone in the crowd and receives a death threat over the phone from “somebody with athsma” (Debbie’s description).

I have to hand it to a movie that gets right into things and doesn’t waste a lot of time on boring flashbacks. Still, I could have used a little more backstory. Then too, after the promising start the movie bogs down a little. Debbie decides they will change their names and move to Hollywood, where hopeful mothers will pay good money to Adele in hopes she will turn their little darlings into the next Shirley Temple. Helen, it transpires, is the accompanist.

The most ominous foreshadowing to me was the collection of big white rabbits Shelley keeps in the back yard. She picks one up, caresses her, calls her beautiful, and I said, “Oh NOOO!” I spent the next hour or so saying, “Nothing bad better happen to those bunnies!” but not really holding out much hope that the poor things would make it to “The End” with skins intact.

The movie does create suspense, offering us several characters who may or may not be up to no good. Has the Texas millionaire who romances Debbie honorable or evil intentions? Why is the mysterious Englishman who enters without knocking so intent on teaching diction in this rinky dink school? And how about that stranger across the street, smoking a cigarette and watching Texas and Debbie “smooch” (Shelley’s word)? What is he up to? For that matter, are Shelley and Debbie what they seem, two innocent women caught up in bad circumstances?

I must sadly report that the ending did not justify all the suspense. Oh, I suppose it is shocking and creepy. To tell you more might ruin it for you and I am loathe to do that, because it is a pretty fun watch. I realize I did not include my usual Spoiler Alert, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of not spoiling anything. Except perhaps for the bunnies, and I consider that more in the nature of a warning, if such a thing is needed. I think anyone who’s watched a horror movie knows: don’t get too attached to small, cute animals.

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Zombies: A Love Story?

Posted on February 5, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I wanted to have Monster Movie Monday, so I tried to find one I hadn’t seen yet in Steven’s collection of 50 Horror Classics. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with Revolt of the Zombies (1936). Then again, I’ve been fooled before.

Oh yeah, Spoiler Alert! I really don’t know how to write about a movie with spoiling something. In this case, I’m probably going to be giving something of a plot summary, so I may spoil everything.

The movie takes place during World War I. The first scene finds the main guy, a soldier, trying to warn his superiors about the danger of zombies, tireless, indestructible robot creatures doing the bidding of their master. Or he may be pitching them as a way to win the war. I was counting stitches on my knitting at the time, and I was really just waiting for the monsters to show up anyways. Predictably, the superior scorns the entire notion.

In the outer office, Main Guy has a conversation with his friend, a likable egotist, who advises him to be ruthless and run roughshod over people to get what he wants. I thought, “Ah! Here is the theme of the picture: ruthless vs not. OK, now bring on the monsters.”

During this scene, a guru-looking guy is standing by, straight and utterly motionless. I thought at first he was a zombie wandered in from another scene, but no, he’s a guy that has the secret of making zombies. He’s going to show people what zombies can do. I think. It got hard to follow at this point, although things cleared up a little when they get to Angkor Wat. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Switch to a battle scene where some Asian-looking soldiers (remember, movies of this era are not known for their diversity and sensitivity) have glazed, robotic expressions on their faces. They march slowly toward the European-looking soldiers (by the mustaches, I thought they were French). The robot-like ones are impervious to bullets and annihilate the others.

Excuse me, what? I mean, did that, in fact, just happen? And did Guru Guy make it happen, just to prove a point? If they ever explained exactly who Guru Guy is, I missed it. In my defense, I was still suffering from a cold and was a little fuzzy in the head (insert smart remark of your choice).

The next thing we know, Guru Guy is murdered as he prays in front of some statue. Might have been Buddha. Might have been some Chinese god. This movie really mixes it up with the ethnicities, as far as I could tell. The murderer wants the zombie-making secret. He doesn’t get it but at least he gets away with the murder, largely because the soldiers seem more exercised about loss of the zombie secret than the dead body.

Soon they are all in Angkor Wat, where they might find the secret. The expedition is led by an archaeologist with a beautiful daughter. I’m sure some of you were just waiting for a beautiful daughter to show up (you know who you are).

I was not very impressed with the set for Angkor Wat. It was very obviously a painted backdrop. You can get away with this on stage or sometimes in a movie when it’s seen through a window. Not a very big window. Didn’t they have some stock footage of some similar looking place they could have flashed, then put the outdoor scenes next to a wall or near a tent or something? Of course, one suspends one’s disbelief when watching a movie, but my disbelief was already hanging by a thin thread.

Main Guy tells Beautiful Daughter a story about some guy who gave up everything for the woman he loved. She likes that, but it seems she doesn’t like Main Guy as much as she likes his friend the Likable Egotist. She uses Main Guy to get him and does so — you guessed it — ruthlessly.

Now I like a love triangle as well as the next movie buff, but where are the zombies? Finally, Main Guy discovers the secret. In this movie, you can turn anybody into a zombie using some kind of mental telepathy. For the first zombie, Main Guy is burning some stuff in a petri dish and wafts the fumes toward his subject, but he doesn’t do that more than once. One guy he even zombie-izes from another room.

These zombies, by the way, are not the messed-up, flesh-eating monsters you may have been hoping for. They are merely robotic. Soon Main Guy has like a bazillion of them, including his former friends and bosses.

The only one he doesn’t zombie-ize is the Beautiful Daughter, because he still wants to marry her. She agrees to marry him in order to save her true love’s life.

So what wins out in the end? Ruthlessness or sacrifice for love? Well, I don’t want to give away the ending (despite having given away practically everything else), and, quite frankly, I’m not sure of the answer even having seen the ending. I will say that the Zombie revolt, when it finally happens, is not what I would call a revolt, and I don’t think if even lasts long enough to rate being the title of the movie.

On the whole, I found it an interesting movie, largely because I kept trying to figure out what sort of a picture it was. Supernatural adventure? Philosophical love story? I’m still not sure. Perhaps I’ll get some other movie buffs to watch it with me and we’ll have a discussion. Might rate another blog post. Or would that be too ruthless of me?

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Cheesy Christmas

Posted on January 1, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I wrote in a post earlier this month how I like to write about cheesy movies and was afraid people would hate on me if I wrote that way about Christmas movies. I tried to solve the problem with a cheesy Christmas movie: Mystery Science Theatre 3000: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

I first heard of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians many long years ago in high school. I was writing a piece for Speech Club making fun of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (I hated that poem), and my speech coach suggested I have one character ask another who claimed to be a great Actor (pronounced Ac-tore) if he wasn’t in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

In answer to the question I feel sure at least one of you just asked, yes, in fact, I could have been more of a geek. If I had studied more I would have been a great deal more geeky. I will, however, admit to a certain misfit quality, that I retain to this day.

But I digress.

I finally got to watch the silly movie when TCM showed it in, I believe, 2001. We videotaped it on our VCR, just to put it in historical context. We were charmed.

Is it cheesy, you ask. It’s like a Velveeta factory exploded onscreen! The martians’ make-up is in unevenly applied. Their killer robot looks like a homemade Halloween costume. The North Pole looks like a set from Lost In Space. When a polar bear chases the two earthling kids, you can see where the head piece is separate from the rest of the guy’s costume!

In short, this movie was begging for the robot head treatment.

It was actually just a few years ago that Steven discovered the MST3K version of the flick. We used to watch MST3K every Saturday on the SciFi Channel. However, these were in the later seasons, when Mike Nelson had replaced Joel on the space ship. They never showed the Santa Claus movie, and Steven always lamented that there was no Christmas episode of MST3K.

Imagine our delight to discover that there was so a Christmas episode and it featured a movie we already loved.

Well, now I’m getting all mushy and misty-eyed, thinking of my beloved MST3K, a truly delightful cheesy movie and, of course, Christmas. I warned you this might happen. Perhaps I should return to my DVR, where I have a fairly rancid movie involving Bela Lugosi and a baboon. I assure you, if I write about that one, no mush or mist will be involved. I hope you are all enjoying the latter part of your Christmas holidays.

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Cheesy Nightmare

Posted on November 30, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Spoiler Alert! This is another one of those movie postings where I’m pretty much going to tell you the whole plot. Well, I might leave a few things out. We’ll see.

I’m hoping my readers can bear another horror movie review. When I checked my TV Journal yesterday for the title of the shrew movie, I was reminded that I had also watched Nightmare Castle.

I thought I had seen Nightmare Castle before, but I did not remember much about it. The box said something about a guy killing his wife and her coming back to haunt him. Sounded like a good premise to me.

It seems the guy is something of a mad scientist (better and better!), although the nature of his experiments is not immediately clear. His wife, a voluptuous brunette with a taste for brandy, is taunting him (big mistake!).

After she has laughed at him in a cruel fashion, she tells him she’s only jealous because she wants to spend more time with him. Then she accuses his assistant, an older, not very attractive woman, of watching them make out. Assistant denies this, but she obviously hates the wife and is probably in love with the husband. These assistants usually are. I’m sure that’s one way for a mad scientist to get cheap help.

Off husband goes to whatever conference his wife was scorning/being jealous of, and Wife gets on with her clandestine affair with the gardener. At least, I don’t know if he’s the gardener, but he’s young and muscular and they make love in the greenhouse.

Guess who comes home and catches them? I’m not sure how he overpowers them when it’s two against one and the lover is obviously in pretty good shape. Just another “Waaait a minute” situation. Or maybe they explained it and I was changing yarn colors on my crochet (it’s a green and red afghan I may donate to Ilion Little Theatre to raffle during their Christmas musical).

At any rate, Husband has them chained to the wall in his laboratory (pronounced lah-BOR-a-tory) when he finds out Wife is going to have the last laugh. She has made out a new will leaving all to her crazy little sister. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

So he tortures and kills them. I must say, I hope they don’t do a remake of this. I am made queasy by trailers for the so-called torture porn movies being made these days. I greatly prefer the older, more circumspect movies. It’s still a pretty creepy scene.

What’s an evil husband to do? He married the lady for the castle, so he’d have a place for his evil experiments. Now she’s left it all to her kid sister in the loony bin. I don’t know why he doesn’t just pretend she’s still alive, especially since, as we later learn, her crypt is empty. Maybe they didn’t have joint checking.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen one of these movies that he marries the sister, an innocent blonde who looks remarkably like the dead woman (yes, it’s the same actress in a blonde wig). Soon the Gaslight stuff starts, only this guy is by no means a Charles Boyer (if you don’t get the reference, stop reading now and go see Gaslight, unless you only like bad movies).

Still with me? It’s about this point where the movie gets a little more convoluted and a lot more interesting. Not Very Attractive Assistant has miraculously turned young and beautiful, but, alas, not as young and beautiful as Kid Sister. Ah, but maybe it’s not so miraculous. Perhaps it is the result of Evil Husband’s experiments (yuh think?).

I could not blame Assistant for being ticked off at this point. I’m sure she thought the plan was to off Evil Wife, get the castle, and make Assistant beautiful so she could be the Evil Husband’s new girlfriend. Then he comes home with this blonde chippy!

Now that I’ve gotten to the interesting part, I think I’ll stop, because you might actually want to see this movie. It gets suspenseful and a little scary at the end. I enjoyed it. And if Steven ever starts doing mysterious experiments in the basement with a not very attractive older assistant, I will not laugh at him. I may have an affair with the gardener, though, because that would be Steven. He’s a busy guy.

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