Category: Film Review

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour 19 minutes, rated 3.80 by 1062 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy FY.

Verdict: Time stood still.

Mars Needs women again (see below).  Rather than place ads on Facebook to recruit airheads, they send a cute little Tardis space ship, three times as big inside as outside.  Head of Mission is a snide queen of the Nile abetted by a bald garden gnome with triple ears that you want to tweak.  

At the same time NASA, which is presented as a military operation, has found the perfect astronaut: handsome for photo ops, silent so as not to give anything away, and stupid enough accept this role.  He is great grandpa Data, an android.  This fact is super secret least the American public fail to support spending money on droids.

The two missions cross paths when Droid aborts, ejects, and bails over Puerto Rico!  Why? Good question. Would the answer be tax credits to film there?  There is a little travelogue of beaches and seaside.  

Nile’s minions in white overalls and fishbowl helmets round up party girls who seem to take it is all as part of the fun.  Meanwhile, Droid’s keepers have come looking for him. The trauma of the abort injured him and now, as a public service, he goes around strangling people listening to pop music.

Of the 79 minutes, perhaps 35 of them are stock footage of beaches and waves and USAF planes taking off, landing, parking, sitting, more sitting.  This footage insures there is no momentum or pace.  Splicing this free footage then shows the minders boarding one kind of jet in Miami, flying on another, and landing in San Juan in a third.  Mid-air refuelling we have all heard of, but mid-air passenger transfer was a new one.

Nile keeps a retreaded monster ITT for devouring bystanders as an accessory on the spaceship and Droid and ITT duke it out.  The fraternity brothers claimed the monster was a well-known Delt whose name they have forgotten, like their own some mornings.  

Noteworthy moments in this parson’s egg include:

1.When Droid froze at the press conference, and the assembled blood suckers did not seem to notice.

2.The following scene when Droid’s coif is peeled to reveal the heartless brain of McKinsey manager.

3.The several sidelong, sneering glances exchanged between Nile and her Gnome reminded me of the reaction of some one-time colleagues to any sensible suggestion.

4.The many bikini-clad Anglas who party-on.

5.The complete absence of Hispanics in Puerto Rico.

6.The many off-duty GIs who stand around at parade rest, earning a few dollars as film extras. Plus see point (4) above.

The end, these were such welcome words as I watched this film on Isle de Saint Vincent.

Mars seems to lurch from one shortage to another.  For proof see the following:

The Devil Girl from Mars (1954) – who come for men!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) – who went with toys

The Night Caller (1965) – who has come for women

Mars needs Women (1967) – guess

Lobster Man from Mars (1989) – air

Mars needs Mums (2011) – guess

Now Mars needs Dogs, now that would be epic.

IMDb meta-data is 49 episodes of 50 minutes each, rated 7.3 by 6734 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy FY

Verdict: Zzzzzzz.

The moon has solved Earth’s only problem, namely, where to bury the spent uranium to keep Kim Ill Jung’s hands off it.

The leads are a catatonic Martin Landau and confused Barbara Bain, the latter’s entire script consists of screenwriterese for medical gobbledegook.  To create tension between playing with toys, see below, she objects to his actions on cue with the nonsense. No wonder she split.  

So underwritten I watched only one episode in 1975 and painfully another in 2020.

In one part, it was an effort to cash-in on the market revealed by syndication of Star Trek, and also to continue where UFO (1970), another Anderson production, had left off.  The Andersons, say no more. See below for more!

The leads were Americans with a following from their tenure on Mission: Impossible (1968+) but the production was Brit and Empire (including one Strine).  

All of that is reduced to Lego toys by those very British producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (yes, Thunderbirds Are Go) from swinging London. Toys. Check. The second hallmark of an Anderson production is the absence of script. Check. The third is the absence of any humour, wit, or insight in favour of boring mechanical movement so we can see the toy models.  Check. In spite of the Anderson kiss of death, it lasted two seasons, but took a hit below the waterline when the Andersons divorced and their lawyers fought over the IP, before the concept existed.  

A few differences from ST are quick to see.  The cast is only human. No Spock. But the biggest difference is the approach to problem-solving.  When the usual problems are thrown-up (yes, that is exactly the right word), the response is for all eyes to turn to Landau. Leaden direction. Check. Another Anderson hallmark. He then goes into a catatonic close up.  The fraternity brothers went the fridge for beer, and stayed there at this point.  Then ignoring evidence or suggestions of others, he embarks on derring do.  Still on the Anderson check list: stupid.  Check.

Whoa! Martin Landau as an action hero?  Hardly. 

In ST for all of his action-hero posturing, Kirk always put the team to work, had conferences with them in private to canvass options, asked for evidence, delegated research for precedents. Two of his common lines in staff meetings were: ‘We need options’ and ‘Find answers.’  Off the specialists then went to seek and find….  along way Kirk would fight bare chested a few aliens and turn his bedside manner on for woman, human or not.  The point is his staff didn’t stare at him waiting for oracular utterances, but instead worked at enlightenment pseudo science.

Then there are the nylon double-knit body suits with flared pant legs in beige.  The less said about the fashions, the better. That is Barry Morse crouching in the lower left, trying to hide from the camera. At least he had enough sense to do that.

Mr Moto (1938-1939)

In setting up PLEX at home to use with the DVD collection, I started with the eight Mr Moto films to renew acquaintance with an old friend who can keep me company as I do the NYT crossword puzzles in the evenings, after Eggheads and Antiques Road Show (UK). Moto was sired by J. P. Marquand of Massachusetts. More on PLEX below.  

Marquand went on to chronicle Boston’s Beacon Hill snobs in such satirical novels as The Late George Apley (1938), a best seller in its day and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Those that followed include Wickford Point (1939), H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), and Point of No Return (1949).  While searching for themes and voices in haute literature which was his abiding ambition, Marquand wrote spy novels to make a living.  The first was Mr Moto Takes a Hand (1935) with five more to come. The ever so prim entry in Wikipedia brackets the Moto novels apart from Marquand’s ‘Literary novels’ in the way the semi-literate do. The Moto novels are completely omitted in the section on Marquand’s life and work but relegated to a seperate ghetto, lest the children be upset.   

Taken as a whole there are two interesting things about the Moto novels.  The first is that they were written by society author with no interest or knowledge of the worlds therein portrayed.  Second, the central character is a secret agent who is cold, calculating, and deadly — licensed to kill long before the NRA came along and granted every drooler that right — in the service of the expanding Japanese Empire.  Marquand no doubt wanted his spy to be different in a crowded market of fictional spies, and he succeeded.

The popularity of Charlie Chan movies inspired the transfer of Moto from page to film in 1937, and a transformation from a reptilian assassin into a genial cicerone for naive American innocents abroad in the big wide world.  Into those new shoes stepped Peter Lorre, who was desperate for work.  He became the Good Jap(anese) in these films directed by Norman Foster whose pace seldom slackened, though for no sane reason Foster was replaced on the last two films.  Hungarian László Löwenstein became a yellow face, as it was called at the time, Japanese.  And, though Lorre was a sickly weakling, by this transformation he became a cat burglar, judo expert, marksman, and endurance athlete.  His perennial bad health and heavy smoking were no matter on film.  

There is a third oddity with Moto that fades as the series continued.  He murders villains.  He does not arrest or sequester them, he just kills them.  No European, still less a white-hatted Western, hero of the day would do that, taking the law into his own hands.  The censor would not permit it, but they did permit it for an oriental.  So in some of the early films he does what he did frequently in the book, saves time by murdering the villains. Only later does he go soft and start arresting them.  

To balance that dark side, he is transmogrified into an American-educated, genial friend and protector of Americans abroad, while working for the International Police. He also got a first name: Kentaro. In the books, one of which I have read, he had only in initials, to wit, I.  M. Moto.  Say it out loud to get the point. It worked.  The films were popular, but Japan was not and they came to an end. There is an uninformative entry on Moto in Wikipedia.

The films and their settings are these: 

Think Fast, Mr Moto (1937) – Shanghai

Thank you, Mr Moto (1937) – Gobi Desert and Peking

Mr Moto’s Gamble (1938) – San Francisco 

Mr Moto Takes a Chance (1938) – Siam jungle

Mr Moto’s Last Warning (1939) – Port Said, Egypt

Mr Moto in Danger Island (1939) – Puerto Rico

Mr Moto Takes a Vacation (1939) – San Francisco in  archeological museum

Moto, Chan, Holmes were all broadcast after school and before dinner or practice.  That is when and where I first became acquainted with them.  Then some years later a series of Great Detectives aired on the CBC after the late news, and I watched most of them again.  

The PLEX media player promises a custom-made private service akin to Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime.  After loading the movies on a computer acting as a server, it translates and transmits them via the home wi-fi network to the television.  In our case the computer is upstairs with the telly downstairs.  Selecting a film is done with the Apple TV remoter. Sounds easy.

Kate, Queen of the Buttons to Push, had the devil of time setting it up, stopping and restarting at least once when nearly defeated by the comPLEXity of PLEX.  Once that mission was accomplished, my part has been to load the database with movies and I, too, have found that perPLEXing.  There is a mountain of information on the web, including You Tube, which I find of no use.  It is like looking for a unicorn in a constellation to find answers to my simple questions among the geekerati.  Most of the sites are in Geekese, while those that are not as technical are dedicated to showing how to change the background colours, but none about how to get it work in the first place.  

Leaving those grumbles aside, when it works, it is a welcome luxury.  No longer is there a hunt to find a DVD (shelved upstairs where there is some order, in the garage where there is none, or is it in the office), cleaning it, inserting it in the DVD player which can be shy at times, cleaning it again and reinserting it, (finding it is damaged [by canine teeth marks!] and will not play), finding the dedicated DVD remoter (with its usual dead batteries), and then watching the DVD skip over damaged sections though it has never been played before.        

For further reading see ‘Plex (software)’ on Wikipedia.  

The Brasher Doubloon (1947)

IMDB meta-data is 1 hour and 12 minutes, rated 6.5 by 845 cinematizens

Genre: krimi

Verdict: Chandler Lite.

Montana’s own Philip Marlowe encountered a duplicitous son, an unscrupulous mother, a deranged secretary, a sty-eyed Peter Lorre wanna-be, incompetent but not venal cops, a crooked coin dealer, the mandatory blackmailer, and assorted thugs led by Michael Anthony, all in a day’s work.  He got beaten up a couple of times without taking any aspirin.  He outsmarted Plod and got the girl.   

It has superb cinematography by Lloyd Ahern who makes the viewer feel that Santa Ana Red Wind from the Mojave desert, and prepares each scene with a shot worthy of the best noir film.  This was his first credit and it is superb.  It was followed by the Miracle on 34th Street. He spend most of the 1960s and 1970s in television.  Leaden direction was by John Brahm (a Nazi refugee who surely moved faster in real life than in this still life).   

The screen play derived from Raymond Chandler’s novel The High Window (1942) which had been the basis of the Mike Shayne film Time to Kill (1942), which film has more wit and energy than the title under consideration, but lacks the cinematographic artistry of Ahern.    

By the way, the coin really was minted in New York in 1787 and one sold in 2011 for $US 7.4  million Iron Men!    

This was George Montgomery’s first major lead, and a casting mistake  This clean-cut, well-dressed and pressed, callow, neatly combed. and innocent country boy with a western slur is not the clipped, chipped, shopworn, exhausted, cynical, and jaded city-slicker Marlowe of Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, or even the elegant Robert Montgomery, who each played the part once.*  On the other hand, Nancy Guild is perfect as the edgy naif secretary, though her career only offered a mere 11 credits.  Let’s hope that she quit while she was ahead.  

But while acting kudos are on offer, the best has to go to Florence Bates as the murderous and thieving mother who put Ma Barker to shame.  Bates had majored in mathematics at the University of Texas, and then completed a law degree and practiced for sometime in San Antonio.  All this would have been unusual for the time and place for a woman. The Great Depression uprooted her and drove her into acting to make a living.

*Later incarnations of Philip Marlowe include Robert Mitchum and Powers Booth, both of whom certainly qualified as shopworn, and two another egregious mistakes: a twitchy Eliot Gould and a geriatric James Caan.  

By the Canino Test I speculate that Bogey, Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum would survive, but not Gorgeous George, Robert, and certainly not Jim or Eliot.  Powers Booth?  A borderline maybe.  

Astro-Zombies (1968)  aka Astro-Vampires

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?)  

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.  

The Mummy’s Curse (1944)

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.  

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 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.  

A Face in the Fog (1936)  

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.   

The end.  Very welcome words they were, too. 

Murder at Midnight (1931)

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. 

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.  

The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)

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.)

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.