IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 32 Dali minutes, rated 3.3 by 1,998 suckers.
Genre: Junk.
Verdict: Ditto.
Ah, our old friend the mad scientist, Dr Professor Emeritus John Carradine, is at it again with his mute and deformed Igor. After being dismissed from The AeroSpace program for ‘going too far’ (huh? Isn’t going far the point of the space program?) and after reading Dr Frankenstein’s case notes, JC has set about creating a superhuman for space flight by piecing together a creature from corpses gathered by Deformed Igor. Warning! This is not someone to sit next to on the bus as it goes through a tunnel.
The creature Doc enlivens with a tweet is badder and madder than is even producer-director Ted V. Mikels and sets about killing scantily-clad young women to 1960s A-Go-Go music. A single Ford Mustang figures in several of the scenes. (Is this the Director’s own wheels being used as a tax write-off?)
What’s for lunch, Doc?
Those who originally funded Frankenstein’s nationally competitive grant want to claim the intellectual property to show community impact of the research and in no time at all the FBI, the ARC, the CIA, the NH&MRC, the SPCA, and — whoa! — Santana are in pursuit. The fraternity brothers were gripped by the latter’s frontal assembly.
It gets worse, but it goes on. There are so many gaps and gaffs it is impossible to summarise and it takes itself so seriously that it is as digestible as stone soup. Yet it had long-delayed progeny in Mark of the Astro-Zombies (2004), Astro-Zombies: M3 – Cloned (2010), and Astro-Zombies M4: Invaders from Cyberspace (2012). Yes these titles are listed on the IMDb. ‘But what about M2,’ asked the fraternity brothers?
JC once claimed that he had appeared in more movies than any other single actor. On some days he did his part in three films like this Z-grade effort. The IMDb credits him with 351 appearances and that is surely a type-two error. In comparison, Wendall Corey, who also graces this egregious effort, has a mere 79 credits, including Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966), discussed elsewhere on this blog. For the cognoscenti Corey co-starred with the imperishable Montgomery Clift in a remarkable film called The Search (1948).
By the way, the script is credited to Princeton graduate and one-time US Navy salt Trapper John. He hung up his typewriter after this disaster and dedicated himself to living it down. More Purgatorio for you, Trapper.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour of runtime, rated 5.6 by 2299 cinematizens.
Genre: Horror(ible).
Verdict: Ditto.
A pipeline project in the backwaters of Louisiana digs up Kharis (again) and off he goes; his lust undiminished by several millennia, dismemberment, and internments. This is one hard Mummy.
An archaeologist arrives at the construction site accompanied by a tarboosh-wearing assistant to confirm the investors’ worst fear. This movie is a turkey.
It is noteworthy for a film from this time that it is set in Louisiana. Most Hollywood films were located either in a big city like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, or generic middle America. Even more unusual for the time, it features a variety of extras who are black, Asian, and Cajun. The human variety was seldom seen in Hollywood films of the day, except as comic relief. Here they are stereotypes to be sure but basically working men on the job.
Ananka on the way to the beauty parlor
There is also one very striking scene when the long dead Ananka rises steadily from the mud of the swamp. It is slow and nicely done. Regrettably, the unnerving effect of that scene is almost immediately spoiled when she appears thirty seconds later with a perfect coiffure, penciled eyebrows, false eye lashes, and lipstick (cosmetics which no dead Egyptienne would be seen without).
All this is supposed to occur twenty-five years after the Mummy’s Ghost (1944) but everything is the same; nothing has changed. Well, maybe that is true in Louisiana.
It just so happens that in the trackless swamp which a manager at head office thought would be a good place to lay a pipeline there is an abandoned monastery on a hill to provide a setting for Egyptian rites in the bayou: yes, a hill in a swamp. With it so far? Good. Hang on, there’s more.
When one character escapes no one knows where, but later another casually says he went to the monastery. Sure. There are several such continuity gaffs.
Then there is the incredibly clumsy staging as when the lurching Kharis stands two feet away from a character reaching out his hand, but no one notices, having checked their peripheral vision at the door. This happens a couple of times.
While Chaney-Kharis has his bad arm taped to his chest, but when he scoops up the maiden it is suddenly free, only later to be seen strapped up again. (Sssh. Be quick. Hope no one notices. [Psst, every noticed.])
The male lead is so far down the list I have forgotten his name as he delivered his lines in a monotone. But even worse was the evil Gypo priest under the tarboosh who was his assistant, sure, whose eyes flicked to the cue card to get his lines. But why bother. This evil priest was a Boy Scout. Where is real villainy when it was needed? Where was George Zucco? Or John Carradine? These guys could do menace. And they could remember their lines! Whereas this priest looks like he is dressing up to earn Eagle Scout points.
Martin Kosleck as the evil priest’s apprentice is far superior and should have had the major role. At least Virginia Christine can bug her eyes on demand. Addison Richards, Holmes Herbert, and William Farnum are reliable character actors in support and far more engaging, entertaining, and credible than the cardboard leads.
The pipeline crew.
The shambling advertisement for gauze, Lon Chaney, Jr. returned in this vapid tale for the third and last time. As always he is completely concealed in the wrap and for all viewers know someone (or, even, something else) else might have been in there. Indeed, that raises the question of why such a name actor was cast and agreed to a part in which he never appears. He may have had little choice with his studio contract, but even so why use his talents in this way. Just to get his name in the advertising is the mundane but likely correct answer. And speaking of his name, on the opening credits he is ‘Lon Chaney’ and not ‘Lon Chaney, Jr.’ Huh? He was definitely a junior to his famous father.
This Chaney was born while his theatrical parents were on tour and made his first stage appearance when six months old and never left it thereafter. But he grew up in the shadow of the ‘Man with a Thousand Faces’ who had sired him. Chaney tried for years to create his own identity by using aliases, but he could never escape paternal legacy and gave up trying. In Wolf Man (1941) Chaney was gripping as the anguished and confused protagonist who could not believe but could not deny what was happening to him. It must be something like that when a mortal becomes a dean. But his greatest performance was the simpleton Lennie in the John Steinbeck tragedy Of Mice and Men (1939). See it.
This foul turkey was released on 22 December 1944 when the Nazi attack at the Battle of Bulge sent the Allied Armies reeling. More than 9000 GIs had been captured in short order and some of these POWs were then murdered at Malmedy. On this very day the soft-spoken, short-statured, and mild-mannered General Anthony McAuliffe entered history with one word reply to a Nazi demand that he surrender the beleaguered 101st Airborne at Bastogne: ’N U T S.’ This is the same unit — the Bastards of Bastogne — that later President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, sent to Little Rock to enforce compliance with a Republican-dominated Supreme Court ruling to integrate schools.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 1 minute of Dali time, rated 4.5 by 131 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: Pea souper.
It opens with Major Student Talent sitting in an upstairs apartment while Quasimodo climbs into a window of another room. When she realises this ogre is about, MST runs to get a coat, a matching handbag, the iPhone, a magazine, Opal card, puts on lipstick, and barely escapes from Quasi. She nips out the front door past the doorman and hails a cab driver smoking nearby. He obliges but as he opens the door for her, he falls down dead. As scriptwriting would have it, just then a sedan appears with two dauntless journalists aboard who stop for her, and the MST is saved! Whew! What a start to the treacle.
That’s quick! Everything slows down from there.
Were they journalists or coppers, I was never sure. Maybe they weren’t either.
It seems the ogre Fiend, Quasi to his buddies, is murdering theatrical people. Some critic! He knows who he doesn’t like!
Turns out MST is a journalist who alleged in print that she knew the identity of Quasi, though in fact she didn’t. Her aim was to draw Quasi out, which she did, but she had no plan when he came out. She is a journalism graduate for sure. Blunder ahead. Blame others. Repeat.
While the several (I lost count) victims are d-e-a-d there are no marks on them. Huh? The coroner decides to go back to Med School. There he finds the victims have been instantaneously poisoned. But ‘How?’ everyone asks. ‘Who cares,’ replied the fraternity brothers.
Here is the one idea in this celluloid: Quasi has a cap-gun that shoots frozen bullets containing condensed Tweets that poison instantly and seal up the entry wound with chewing gum. Get this, and get it straight, he carried these bullets around in a cigarette case in the breast pocket of the suit he wore under the cape. By the miracle of stupidity the frozen bullets do not thaw, but remain frozen. One cold-hearted dude is he.
By some strange coincidence all the victims come from one Broadway production. Plod did not fathom this. A rival producer/writer appears to offer solace and assistance and hangs around. Get it? Get it!
There is some incomprehensible dialogue about another hunchback who is too shy to appear. The comic irritation stumbles around amusing the likes of the President in Thief.
There is never any explanation of why the villain affected the hunchback, except to invoke German expressionist films. For that it works.
Geez, who’d thunk it, but the other producer/writer is mowing down the cast of his rivals to bankrupt them as revenge for not paying overdue fines at the library, or something. He has custom-made hunchback cape in the latest Paris fashion.
The soundtrack is terrible, attuned to a silent movie schlock film. Well, this is schlock but not silent.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 9 minutes of runtime which is rated 5.4 by 310 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: Oh hum.
During the Great Depression audiences found the filthy rich playing games. Upstairs there were card games, and downstairs a playlet was enacted. In the play a husband finds his wife in the arms of another man as the hall clock strikes midnight, and hubby pulls from his pyjama pocket the gun he always has with him in bed, and shoots paramour. (Cue NRA applause.) It is all very stagey with the players just barely remembering their lines until…. Bang! That was a nice touch. Then the lights come up and we see the audience sitting around the vast parlour in easy chairs who applaud, with snide asides about the truth in play.
Somehow the playlet is also a word game, and along with everyone else, I didn’t get it. That may be why the playlet is referred to as charades in the IMDb summary and all those that cut-and-paste from it by way of review. But surely no game of charades has dialogue and props that go bang.
The players take a bow, and drinks are served. No one, but argus-eyed viewers like this modest scribe, seems to notice that the ostensible paramour is still lying on the floor for the longest time. In the rush to booze at least one extra stepped over him. The fraternity brothers admired that commitment to Lord Alcohol.
But, yes, Jim, he is dead. Lawyer Monty is present and calls Plod who orders people around, much to the indignation of the filthy rich who cannot see why a murder should interrupt their drinking. More applause from the fraternity brothers at this point.
So far, so bland.
But there are twists for it turns out that the homicide Plod was called before — repeat, before — the playlet was staged and that early phone call said there were two murders, not one. Egads! (This is all confused because the clock was set to midnight to suit the playlet and in the confusion afterward not re-set, until Plod started plodding.)
At that revelation much confusion consumes screen time until another shot is heard. Gadzooks! Plod declares with satisfaction, ‘That’ll be the second body.’ (Nifty.) The plot thickens when a will goes missing. Much lugubrious talking follows. The fraternity brothers snoozed on.
When a supporting player finds a clue and says so, clonk follows as the body count increases. Plod assigns a fraternity brother as a guard and he throws peanut shells on the floor. The butler vacuums up the shells and in so doing finds and hides the will. See if you can guess where. Brandon Hurst plays the butler to a T, as he often did. Later the peanut eating is used to loosen the tongue of a reluctant witness who is a neatnik, and he tells all rather than endure the sight of a fraternity brother throwing peanut shells around. These are a couple of amusing wrinkles.
It’s an early talkie and it shows. It is slow and much the dialogue is delivered to the microphone more than addressing any of the characters.
We never do find out why the neatnik son was so mopey with his millions. ‘Maybe his underwear were too tight,’ ventured the fraternity bothers, voicing one of their recurrent problems.
Ever since the murder of Roger Ackroyd it is always the least suspicious character who is the villain and that applies here. (Though I know of at least one film version of Roger Ackroyd that changed that convention. Alas, nothing is scared.) The means of murdering the last couple of stiffs is ingenious and might have an application for the iPhone. No spoiler on that. It would take too long to explain to the technologically deprived.
Aileen Pringle is top billed in this poverty row production. It was unusual at the time for a woman to be at the top of the bill, but then this is an undistinguished lot, most of whom are best known for this unknown film. Don’t let it go to your head, Aileen.
The Aztec Monster against the Humanoid Robot (1958).
(La momia azteca contra el robot humano)
IMDb meta-data is runtime treacle of 1 hour and 5 minutes, rated 2.5 by 2310 cinematizens.
Genre: Mexican.
Verdict: Seeing is not believing.
The bug-eyed mad German scientist Professor Thermomix whips up a half-man, half-machine robot that looked strangely like Chani, including the arthritic walk, from The Devil Girl from Mars (1954), discussed elsewhere on this blog. No Asimov Laws will limit this concoction, that is for sure. Why go to all that trouble? Because Thermomix programs this Chani-Clone to enter a cursed Aztec Tomb and steal the Jade Taco.
The undead Aztec mummy and Chani exchange fist bumps before grappling (with the script).
Not only is the tomb cursed but also it is guarded by a Lucha Libre champion dead-but-living Mummy.* Got it so far?
Turns out that Female Lead is the reincarnation of the undead but unalive Lucha Libre wrestler’s squeeze from a millennia ago, and she and Suave, her paramour, get mixed up in the doings. I know I was mixed up by the doings.
It just shows to go that Z-movies can be made everywhere and not just in Dallas. Move over Larry Buchanan. This exercise had spawn south of the Rio Grande in The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1959), Wrestling Women vs the Aztec Mummy (1964), Wrestling Women vs. the Murderous Robot (1969), and Mil Mascara vs the Aztec Mummy (2007). These titles are hard to find, but be assured that I am looking far and wide.
A good Mummy franchise will never die. But again the fraternity brothers ask, ‘Where are the Daddys?’
*Have you ever wondered where Lucha Libre champions do in retirement? No, me neither, though I have suspicions of the physiotherapist who works me over.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 1 minutes of runtime, rated 5.8 (!) by 2329 cinematizens.
Genre: Incredulity.
Verdict: Boredom.
George Zucco is brought out the Old Villains Home to assign John Carradine the thankless task of this movie. Carradine travels to middle America where he turns Lon Chaney (you’d never know it to look at him) loose on the descendants of those who desecrated his Mummy’s tomb. ‘Desecration’ is the right word for this film.
The action takes place on the college campus replete with thirty-year old undergraduates, including Kansas City’s own Robert Lowery from Missouri. It just so happens — ah huh — that the librarian whom he pursues is Egyptian, but she freezes when that subject of Egypt arises. She keeps a pet terrier in the library in which she shows no interest whatever, but which saves the day later, sort of.
Across the quad Prof is steaming tana leaves for lunch. Bad! Steamed tana leaves are not a good idea, Prof! They are worse than kale. (Nothing is worse than Tuscan cabbage.)
Notice the white streak in her hair, which increases in the film as the end draws near – slowly.
Once Mummy Chaney gets the scent of lunch there is no stopping him. The aim is to reincarnate his long dead love into the Gypo bookworm noted above. There is a nice touch when after her first brush with Mummy a white streak appears in her hair. Bob is too discreet to mention it but she does not seem to notice it either. Is she the only woman who does not look at a mirror? As Lon draws nearer her hair gets progressively whiter with neither comment from others nor reaction from her. The point being…..?
It has a surprisingly downbeat ending when without a GPS Mummy Chaney, struggling under the load as he carried her off, wanders into a swamp and the two sink to the bottom as quickly as did this film. She may not have been that heavy but since he had only one arm and one leg was always dragging for reasons now forgotten. Bob shrugs it off and with the terrier walks away. Neither sadder nor wiser, as the rest of his career shows.
Barton (General Martin Peterson) MacLane for once is allowed to act, rather than just bellow, and he is quite effective as the Plod up against the unbelievable long before he was drafted in I Dream of Jeannie (1965-9). Director Reginald Le Borg had a fifty-year career cranking out ninety-two pictures like this one. He must have offended the karma gods big time to have to do that. Carradine is, as always, Carradine.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 1 minute, rated 5.8 by 2560.
Genre: Horror.
Verdict: Horrible, all right.
This waste of time is a sequel of The Mummy’s Hand (1940) with about fifteen minutes of footage from the earlier film inserted, and at the end further footage from — believe it or not — Frankenstein. All expenses spared. Junior Chaney gets the first of three outings in a wraparound linen suit. Universal made two more Mummies but not a single Daddy. How fair is that?
It open with a flashback to the earlier film and then we discover that the Mummy is still looking for that lost contact lens, shuffling around, stooped, and lost.
In a lifeless production Turhan Bey brings a little spark to the role of the mad priest. While George Zucco reprises his role in the inserted footage, but he is offed before he can do much for this title. Both are good players but they have nothing to play here.
Checking the outsized, excess baggage.
Loved the idea that Bey checked the Mummy as excess baggage when he took it Stateside to exact revenge on the violators of the Mummy’s Tomb. No doubt he had to claim it at the outsize booth where golf clubs, skis, and the roll-down screens of sales reps accumulate. The rent-a-mob from Frankenstein settled things at the end.
It was released on 23 October 1942 during the Guadalcanal Campaign where Jack went into the water while secret meetings and arrangements were afoot for Operation Torch in North Africa. On the Eastern Front, Hitler ordered that the Hotel Astoria in Leningrad be spared to host a victory dinner after the Nazis occupied that city. There is a plaque in the lobby explaining this which we saw in 2016.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 12 minutes of runtime, rated 5.0 by 283 cinematizens.
Genre: Horror.
Verdict: Straight.
The marble fisherman.
In a cliff side mansion on the sea with his wife and faithful associate attended by a black Stereotype and mumbling Housekeeper, Dr John Carradine strives to reanimate the dead! Originality is not in the air. Their lab is the usual high school science room with cathodes, knobs, capacitors, switches, and such. These two should order some real gear from the Innovations catalogue.
They proceed slowly until one day the sea washes up a dead fisherman, whom they carry up to the lab, slap on the table, wire him up, and zap! It works! He rises and takes one step, and collapses into a heap of….. Carrara marble. Gobbledegook explanation follows.
Having felt the power of giving life, Carradine wants to try again. But where to get a stiff? He looks around. No, not wife to whom he seems devoted despite the fact that she spends her little screen time sitting on the lap of faithful Associate even while he is standing up. Carradine does not seem to notice this fact. Near sighted I guess. Meanwhile, scowling Housekeeper incants voodoo nonsense which seems to be aimed at procuring Associate for Wife. Nor does Carradine consider the Housekeeper or Stereotype for stiffness.
The plot thickens when Associate’s own Misses appears. Both Wife and Housekeeper go all voodoo in response. Carradine does not seem to notice any of the chanting. Deaf as well as near sighted it would seem.
Then Doctor Professor Carradine decides to stiffen the faithful Great Dane, Brutus, for his next experiment. The SPCA has his number; I know because I ratted him out. Before the SPCA can get to him, Carradine reanimates Brutus who is barking mad at missing dinners from now on, but as he is on a ghost diet he can walk through walls. This is the money shot of the film and it is accordingly repeated three or four times. It is certainly nicely done.
Meanwhile, Wife finds out that Carradine murdered her pet dog, and she is pretty mad, too. The ghost dog howls off camera and Carradine and Associate pretend not to hear it. Both are now deaf.
For a ghost Brutus is mad as hell!
Off and on, local Plod comes around wondering how a marble fisherman washed up.
A ruckus follows and somehow (I forget how) Wife dies. ‘No problem,’ says Carradine, slaps her on the table, wires her up, and zap. By this time Associate wishes he was in another movie and tries to leave but he is too deep with SPCA to pull out now.
Spoiler!
If you have followed the story so far, well,….sympathies.
Reanimated Wife is manipulated by Housekeeper on behalf of the SPCA to kill Carradine. She does. Since she is now spectral there are no fingerprints. Plod fastens onto Associate. Somehow or other it ends. One has to admire the straight-faces of the actors as they regurgitate the lines of this gibberish. It reminds me of those McKinsey management briefings.
Carradine was a slave to the Pasadena stage company he founded and worked himself relentlessly into his dotage to pour money into it. He played many a good scientist and many a bad one. In the post-World War II world he came to embody the good and bad of science. Here he is not mad or bad but dedicated, hard-working, diligent, and, worst of all, humourless.
Most Unexpected Twist award goes to…. [drum roll, Maestro].
Robin Bailes for The Vengeance of the Invisible Man (2019)
I didn’t see the coming but I should have.
Robin Bailes
Razor Tongue of My Dark Corner of This Sick World (on You Tube) has written three novels in homage to the Universal horror film series. This one is the latest and features a corker of an ending, which I will not spoil. I have discussed it elsewhere on the blog with equal restraint for those seeking more intel.
IMDb meta-data is 59 minutes runtime, rated 6.0 by 160 cinematizens.
Genre: Horror.
Verdict: Olé!
Spider Woman is blind and decrepit and needs a companion to supplement her faithful servant Rondo Hatton who is a deaf mute. In a small town in cattle country she employs a series of young lady companions who read to her and then are required to drink milk before bedtime. Ah huh, but what about that milk, asked the fraternity brothers for whom it is a strange drink? The latest Companion finds Spider Woman at once both charming and formidable. Indeed. She is as welcoming as a crevice in a glacier, smooth, slippery, and deep. Once upon a time the Family Spiders owned the land to the horizon but time and tide has seen most of it sold.
Now cattle are dying and ranchers are selling and moving. Doc Adams comes to investigate and sits on the patio to do so.
Companion is edgy and soon enough…. Spoiler! She realises Spider Woman is not what she seems. Or rather is exactly what she seems: cold, ruthless, demented, Republican, blood thirsty, and crazy. But who would believe newcomer Companion when Spider Woman has spent years charming the simple locals. Companion frets. Beau comes to the rescue, despite the fact that Companion had rebuffed Beau’s interest earlier.
It seems Spider Woman, neither blind nor decrepit, dopes the milk, and then takes a blood donation from the sleeping Companion(s), until they are drained. (Pedants note that there is nary a word about where the corpses go.) She does this not just because she is mean, though she is, but she is also using the blood to create a mad-cow virus to drive off the local ranchers while through a shelf-company she buys their land for a pittance to recover the lost Spider Family Web Estate. She is starting to sound like some cabinet ministers I read about for whom public office is a private asset. Spider-Man is a boy scout compared to Spider Woman!
Sly, manipulative, dangerous, cunning, and sinister are the words that best describe the roles of Gale Sondergaard. She played Spider Woman in three disconnected film. It does not really matter. She dominates any movie with poise, enunciation, and steel. She had a career on the Broadway stage and only reluctantly gave that up to move to California when her husband got a job there. Once there her stage work prompted offers for films and off she went. In my book she is one of the all-time greats of the silver screen.
Rondo Hatton and Gale Sondergaard at it!
Rondo Hatton was a victim of poison gas in World War I trenches that led to the deformities that ruined and shortened his life. His brooding silence is pitch perfect. His life and career are described in more detail elsewhere on this blog. Search and ye may find.
Director Arthur Lublin kept things moving with few memorable scenes as when the ostensibly blind Spider Woman feeds her plants.
