Venusian women at your disposal

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS (1953)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Between the bumbling Lou Costello who always broke the fourth wall and his sidekick, the straight man Bud Abbott who frequently slapped and shouted at Lou, there were few genuinely iconic comedic duos that tickled the funny bone almost every time they were on screen. I say almost because "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" is one of their weakest comedic outings with far too many lulls and not enough gags. Even a lot of Lou Costello can go a long way in this one.

This time, Lou runs from the cops after smashing a store window with a remote-controlled rocket spaceship. Lou is apparently an orphan at the Hideaway Orphans Home but that is besides the point. During his getaway, he hides in a delivery truck headed for a top secret base where an actual spaceship is about to be launched to Mars. Of course Lou, who is initially mistaken for a scientist in a rather flat comic bit, ends up in the spaceship with Abbott and off they go to Mars after an accidental launch. Naturally, they get nowhere near there as they land back on Earth in New Orleans yet they both think they are in Mars. You see, it is Mardi Gras and everyone is partying in costumes with gigantic walking heads! Eventually, there is another launch with two bank robbers along for the ride. Oh, yes, and they all end up in Venus!

The movie spends an inordinate amount of time in New Orleans, so much so that the film should've been retitled "Abbott and Costello Go to Venus via New Orleans." Not much of that footage made me laugh and the two thieves (Jack Kruschen and Horace McMahon) are about as one-note as the gags. However, once the team arrives in Venus, the film perks up a little and has a little bounce to it with some terrifically eye-popping sets. Venus is populated by women and Lou is having a tough time impressing the Queen of Venus (Mari Blanchard) when all these other women are cavorting with him. Even Abbott enjoys some of the female action. Still, only the last twenty minutes has more laughs than the rest of the film (though some may scoff at the deliberately sexist humor). I can't really dislike a film too much when the spaceship nearly strikes the Statue of Liberty and the Female Icon of Freedom merely kneels to avoid getting hit. "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" needed more ballsy humor like that. 

Temporary Fountain of Youth Horror Noir Movie

THE LEECH WOMAN (1960)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Watching "The Leech Woman" reminded me of the various B-movies I used to watch on TV on a given weekday afternoon, usually after school. Some titles come to mind like "Legend of Hell House," "Mr. Sardonicus," or "The Creature from the Black Lake." "The Leech Woman" is full of surprises with a twist of tongue-in-cheek added for good measure. It is not terribly well-acted or filmed or fluidly edited, but it isn't meant to be. It is a movie-movie type entertainment with no frills and aimed to throw everything at the audience without regards to whether it will stick or not. The movie is the equivalent of bad wallpaper - it looks good at first but it starts to peel away rather quickly. Naturally, the movie is more than entertaining than watching wallpaper peel from the wall.

An endocrinologist Dr. Paul Talbot (Phillip Terry) is none too surprised that his alcoholic wife, June (Coleen Gray, "The Killing"), wants a divorce. He won't allow it, especially after a 140-year-old African woman named Malla (Estelle Hemsley) tells him that there is a specific orchid pollen from the Nando Tribe that will make any woman young again! The catch is that the doctor and his wife have to travel to Africa to witness this fountain of youth. Dr. Talbot is ready to love his wife all over again when he discovers that she could be the young and lovely woman he married, and could get rid of those wrinkles and single gray hairs (the character is not any older than her mid-30's though maybe any woman's hair might turn white after dealing with that turd of a husband). Though the youthfulness is temporary, there is another catch. The orchid pollen is not enough to complete the transformation; a male has to be sacrificed by having his pineal gland secretions extracted from the back of the neck! A special ring is needed to pierce the neck thus causing imminent death. Of course, June, oblivious at first that she is a test subject, becomes young and lovely (I will not dare say who the male sacrifice is). In fact, she gets a complete makeover (funny how the African woman, Malla, never mentioned that a makeover without the help of QVC would occur. By the way, Malla becomes young again too).

Despite lapses into silliness and moronic stock footage of elephants and hippos underwater coupled with Dr. Talbot and June walking in the jungle to their destination, "The Leech Woman" has an unusual structure that could conceivably be divided into three movies. One is a domestic marriage squabble that evolves into some odd jungle adventure with African tribal dances and the lot (much of it reminded me of "King Kong" or any standard Tarzan adventure) that finally evolves into a noir crime story with June seeking to stay young and luring and trapping men in the path of that glorious piercing ring. The plot doesn't always make sense (can the powder-ring combo make men younger too? And why is this a temporary fountain of youth?) and the jungle footage seems to go on for an eternity. Still, a movie like this is not meant to make much sense or be considered anything other than schlocky art - it is a shambles but so much damn fun to watch that it doesn't matter if the acting and writing are just a bit better than subpar. The movie has a little bit of everything, including dynamite explosions, stirring African tribal dances, mambo music clubs, shriveled-looking women, lots of imbibing of alcohol, a few murders and some abrupt romantic groping and kissing. It is a fervently misanthropic picture that evolves into some sort of twisted feminist statement. Of course, like most of these pictures in the 40's, 50's and 60's, the women suffer the most. 

Beware of Fog Hollow

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Resembling a diabolical Gothic melodrama more than a survival picture, 1932's
The Most Dangerous Game" is still a stunning, magnetically potent tale of man's inhumanity to man. The inhumanity comes in the form of Russian Count Zaroff who has ideas for his beleaguered guests stranded on his island, and hospitality is not high on that list.

As the film opens, a shipwreck occurs where one survivor, a big game hunter named Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), manages to make it safely on a remote Portuguese island. Lo and behold, an isolated Gothic-like mansion owned by Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks) is seen on the horizon, resting on a hill. The menacing guards are not very welcoming yet Zaroff is nothing if not charming yet charmingly devious. He is the type of Count that welcomes one with good food and good wine yet has something up his sleeve - (HINT:  Zaroff  loves to hunt but is growing bored of hunting animals). Other shipwrecked guests are staying with Zaroff (apparently this happens a lot on this island), including a hard-drinking Robert Armstrong and the one and only Fay Wray, playing Armstrong's sister. There is something askew about this place, and it is not just Zaroff's facial scar. There are hungry hunting dogs right outside the entrance. A peculiar trophy room does not contain the heads of animals. I think you can see where this is going.

Zaroff traps his shipwrecked guests, wines and dines them, and then sets them up as his latest sport for hunting and killing. He gives his guests a head start through the thick of the jungle, always with the intention of using their hides to decorate his trophy room. Just beware of Fog Hollow, and steep mountainous crevices.

At a fast-paced 63 minutes from directors Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack, "The Most Dangerous Game" is unrelenting and thick with tension. What is most remarkable is how much suspense is accomplished in such an extremely tight running time. And the cardinal rule in this type of survival-of-the-fittest-tale is having not only protagonists you care about (though Fay Wray's character has less to do than in 1933's "King Kong," which was shot simultaneously) but also a deliciously quick-witted, eerily charming, suave villain like Banks' Zaroff (he also played the role on stage, though notes on the Broadway production are vague on which role he played). When Zaroff and Rainsford finally square off against each other, your pulse will quicken and your heart will beat at a buffalo stampeding rate. "The Most Dangerous Game" is a thriller in more ways than one.

Tearing down the walls of this Technicolor farce

HONG KONG (1952)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Hong Kong" should have been a fun, exciting, spirited adventure tale with a rugged hero searching for a golden Buddha statue. Along the way he encounters a Chinese orphan boy and a flaming red-headed teacher and, of course, the statue which he hopes to sell in the Chinese marketplace. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Uninspired and frequently anemic, "Hong Kong" is a bit of a chore to sit through and Ronald Reagan doesn't make it any easier.

The People's Republic of China has formed and many farmers in the mainland are shot to death. A young Chinese orphan named Wei Lin (Danny Chang - all monotonous smiles in this movie) is taken in inadvertently by an ex-G.I. (Ronald Reagan), Jeff Williams. It is on a canoe that Jeff finds the golden statue encrusted with diamonds and various jewels, something that would not sell for less than 100 dollars on the Jewel TV channel. While escaping with kid and statue in tow and a Red Cross Mission teacher, Victoria Evans (Rhonda Fleming), I began to settle in for an old-fashioned adventure yarn. Instead the movie crawls like a snail who drank too much decaf tea. The movie should feel urgent and captivating and it merely slows down and contains episodes that left me cringing and wondering who the expected audience was - people that love "Secret of the Incas" or those that love the antics of "Bedtime for Bonzo"? The orphan follows Jeff in a Hong Kong that looks so artificial and studio-based that I was surprised the cardboard walls did not topple over. The kid follows and follows Jeff, and Jeff tries to leave the kid and can't since the little tyke keeps clinging to him. The kid has a bowl of noodles and Jeff splits. Jeff suddenly has a change of heart, comes back to the restaurant and finds the kid has eaten 3 bowls of noodles! Then there is the forced romance between Jeff and the teacher that is wanting at best. Fleming's Victoria is apparently the kind of woman who can look past a man's indiscretions and lust for gold because the soldier of fortune came back for a Chinese orphan whom they decide to leave in an orphanage at the end anyway. Give me a break.

There is one inspired element in the film, more inspired in hindsight than to the 1952 audiences. When Jeff thinks of splitting with the money he hopes to collect from the antique statue, he reserves passage in the American President Lines ship. How prophetic. 

Your Mother is Lightning!

THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

So when the eerie, foreboding and leisurely-paced "Son of Frankenstein" ended, Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) left the village and the eponymous castle after the Monster (Karloff, last time he played the role) was left for dead in a molten sulfur pit. The deformed blacksmith, Ygor (Bela Lugosi) was also left for dead, or was he? Of course not because both Monster and Ygor are back in the chilling, disturbing and quietly absorbing "The Ghost of Frankenstein." It is not a great sequel, not like "Son of Frankenstein" or the greatest of all Universal Horror sequels, "The Bride of Frankenstein," but it has a lot up its sleeve in a running time that just barely passes the one-hour mark.

The villagers are certain that Ygor survived the shots fired by Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill) and want the Frankenstein castle destroyed. The villagers manage to do so, with Ygor and the Monster (instantly revitalized) surviving while walking that distant landscape to another village (they of course walk across a fog-filled cemetery as their getaway - how many acres are those cemeteries anyway?) Apparently, another son of Frankenstein, Ludwig Frankenstein (Sir Cedric Hardwicke, extremely effective), a noted brain surgeon and mental health expert, can help Ygor to strengthen the Monster by "harnessing electricity" to its body. Ludwig has no interest in making the Monster more powerful - he wants to take it apart and destroy it. When another doctor is killed on the premises, Ludwig suggests using the slain doctor's brain to replace the criminal one in the Monster. It is a stunning medical procedure the good doctor has perfected except Ygor wants his brain inside the Monster so he can walk without a broken neck and possibly rule the world and men's minds! Never mind the fact that the Monster has green skin and a bolted neck and the fact that nobody would take such a being seriously, especially if he read from "Mein Kampf." Dr. Frankenstein has no interest in helping the deformed Ygor but it doesn't mean Ygor can't persuade Dr. Bohmer (played by Lionel Atwill, just to confuse the rest of you), a jealous assistant who was once Ludwig's teacher.

"Ghost of Frankenstein" establishes that Dr. Henry Frankenstein, the creator of the Monster, sired not one but two sons. In fact, Sir Cedric Hardwicke plays the father as a ghostly apparition that tries to convince Ludwig not to switch the Monster's brains. The timeline is not clear either but it never has been clear in the entire Frankenstein series. Is it the turn of the century meaning early 1900's or later? Everyone rides in a carriage or on horseback. There are no phones here so one may presume Bell technology has not found its way into the fictional Eastern European village of Vasaria.

Lon Chaney, Jr. is underwhelming at best as the Monster but it is hardly the worst performance one will find - there is some measure of emotional heft from Chaney that Glenn Strange in later sequels never quite mustered but both are no match for Boris Karloff. Bela Lugosi is a scary, witless creature once again and when we hear the climactic moment of the Monster speaking with Lugosi's accent, it chills the bone. Also worth mentioning is Evelyn Ankers, as Ludwig Frankenstein's curious daughter, and Ralph Bellamy as a town prosecutor and both also played a couple a year earlier in "The Wolf Man" (which also featured Chaney). The stunning last shot of two of them observing the Frankenstein mansion in a fiery explosion as they walk away to an uncertain future is more poetic than any other Frankenstein sequel.

At 1 hour and 7 minutes, "Ghost of Frankenstein" packs in the crude thrills, carriage chases, the brief touches of humanity, and haunting moments with the classic spooky black-and-white cinematography of foggy landscapes to add luster to it all. It is not quite on par with the first three "Frankenstein" pictures but who cares? For a Saturday evening of pure Universal Horror bliss, it is solid entertainment. 

Magic Carpet Ride with a Genie

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I remember seeing "The Thief of Bagdad" when I was a kid and I marveled at the sights of a magic carpet, a giant 70-foot genie, the eyes of Jaffar, the flying mechanical horse, and essentially the colorful world of an Arabian Nights fantasy brought to life. Seeing it so many years later (and mistakenly thinking that the genie was a blue-skinned one), "The Thief of Bagdad" is a marvelous feast for the eyes and the ears yet and one that must be savored, yet some casting and minor editing in the first quarter mark might have enriched the overall experience.

King Ahmad (John Justin) has become a blind man with a dog who is seen peddling in the streets. Prince Jaffar (Conrad Veidt) has blinded Ahmad yet Jaffar needs his help in awakening the princess Jaffar hopes to marry, known simply as the Princess (June Duprez). King Ahmad obliges and tells Jaffar's enslaved women of how he became blind and how the dog was once Abu (Sabu), the prince of thieves belonging to a family of thieves. Their adventures involved everything one loves seeing in a fantasy, including tidal waves; magic carpet rides; the giant flying genie (Rex Ingram) who can only grant three wishes; last-minute rescue attempts including saving someone from a beheading; a goddess with six arms; a Tibetan temple that contains the All-Seeing-Eye in ruby form and a series of booby traps; the shadow cast on the wall of Jaffar acting independently as Jaffar works his evil magic, and much more.

My major quibble is the opening exposition which drags the action a little. I confess that I wanted to see the sense of magic and wonder I recall seeing in my youth, and my anxiety kept wanting the tale to get moving. I do not mind seeing Jaffar and those penetrating eyes, but when he confesses his love for the princess, I got a little bored. It could be that June Duprez is too anemic on screen (Vivien Leigh was originally cast but had to drop out due to a little film called "Gone With the Wind." Imagine how much more striking those scenes would've been with Leigh). The introduction to King Ahmad as played by Justin also strikes me as off-kilter - Justin has little charisma and is about as animated as a cold bowl of soup. Duprez and Justin bring the movie to a slight halt whenever they appear.

"The Thief of Badgad" was originally made in 1924 in a delightful film with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. with Fairbanks playing the thief and a prince as a composite (and the one version I saw had the aptly used "Scheherazade" music by Rimsky-Korsakov). This version was produced by Hungarian producer Alexander Korda and had almost six directors involved, including Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, William Cameron Menzies and even Korda himself took the reins. Normally this would spell a production in trouble but the results are far better than expected.

But when we get to finally see Sabu on screen as Abu (he is changed into a dog by Jaffar as we see in the opening), the screen becomes electric and tantalizing. I just marvel at Abu's escape from street vendors as he steals cooked fish and jumps up and down rooftops with the greatest of ease, or the way he tricks the genie to get back in his bottle. Sabu brings a sense of joy and enthusiasm to the role - you just know he is ready to burst into action. So with Sabu and the penetrating, angry eyes of Jaffar and the witty Rex Ingram as the laughing genie whose laugh is so powerful that inside a canyon it can break down rock formations, I was hooked and swept away by the grandly entertaining and sheer awesome spectacle of "The Thief of Bagdad."

What hath God wrought?

SPIDER BABY (1968)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Lon Chaney Jr. might have wondered where his career went when he appeared in occasional disposable junky fare in his latter years. "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" is one disposable stinker that might have stirred up the Biblical line: "What hath God wrought?" Perhaps he thought the same of this Jack Hill-directed horror film (more comical than terrifying overall), "Spider Baby: Or the Maddest Story Ever Told." I do not consider "Spider Baby" a stinker - it is actually a fairly solid little chiller with black humor tones imbued throughout and then some. I don't know what Chaney thought of it but he probably never saw the finished product.

The Merrye Family lives in some decrepit, decaying mansion in the middle of the woods. It is the kind of mansion that one stays away from, not approach and ask if anybody's home. One such victim, a delivery man, falls for the oldest trick in the horror film book - sticking your head into an open window with torn curtains. He is killed instantly, and loses a ear.

The Merrye Family consists of three siblings, two of whom are young women wearing tattered dresses. One is a brunette "spider baby" (Jill Banner) who violently attacks outsiders in a spider-like manner and armed with two handy knives. The other is a blonde nutcase named Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), who merely stands around and flaunts her sexuality like a feral cat. Then there is Ralph (Sid Haig) who sneers and never says much - he is like a bald raggedy doll craving sexual attention. Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is the chauffeur and guardian of this bizarre family, which also includes a cannibalistic pair of aunts and uncles living in the cellar. Think of the film "Spider Baby" as an early precursor to 1974's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead," not to mention a possible inspiration behind Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses." The rest of "Spider Baby" has family members from out-of-town and their lawyer seeking to take possession of the house. A dinner scene where the meal consists of a cat's carcass (unbeknownst to the guests), insects, mushrooms and a weed salad is enough to make you laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Somehow Lon Chaney, Jr. brings gravity to his role as the guardian - he makes us care about him since all he wants to do is protect the family at any cost from the outside world. It is a spark of humanity added to a cheeky horror flick whose main purpose is to titillate; spiders and much hysteria involving a dumb waiter and fresh meat for consumption add to the titillation. "Spider Baby" is absurdly funny with a haunting finish. For an el cheapo production shot in 12 days with the film producer going bankrupt before finally releasing it four years later, it is much better than expected.