Monthly Archives: October 2015

Donovan’s Brain
Directed by Felix Feist
Written by Feist and Hugh Brooke from the novel by Curt Siodmak
1953/USA
Dowling Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Dr. Patrick J. Cory: Perhaps I’ll cure Frank and every other alcoholic if I can solve the mystery of Donovan’s Brain. I think it’s a matter of chemistry how the brain thinks. The problem is to find out what chemical combinations are responsible for success… failure… happiness… misery.[/box]

Dr. Patrick Cory has been experimenting in his basement lab with keeping monkey brains alive with the assistance of his devoted wife Janice (Nancy Davis Reagan) and alcoholic friend surgeon Dr. Frank Schratt (Gene Nelson).  On the day his experiment succeeds, he is called to assist at an airplane crash in the area.  There is only one severely injured survivor and Dr. Corey takes him back home for treatment.  He cannot be saved so Dr. Corey decides this is the ideal time to start experimenting on human brains.

The victim turns out to be eccentric billionaire Warren Donovan.  Dr. Corey discovers a way to communicate with the living brain through mental telepathy.  Soon, the billionaire has taken over the doctor and looks to be set on the road to world domination.

This is a solid and enjoyable film with some mild horror.  It’s odd to see Ayres as a tough guy, and that’s even before Donovan takes over.  Isn’t he Dr. Kildare?  Siodmak’s novel has been filmed several times.  First came The Lady and the Monster (1944).  Erich von Stroheim plays the scientist far madder in that one.

Trailer

Glen or Glenda
Directed by Edward D. Wood Jr.
Written by Edward D. Wood Jr.
1953/USA
Screen Classics
First viewing/You Tube

[box] Scientist: Beware. Beware. Beware of the big, green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys, puppy dog tails and big, fat snails. Beware. Take care. Beware.[/box]

This movie may be one of the strangest ever made.  Also one of the worst.

For some reason, probably because he could get Lugosi cheap, Ed Wood’s story of the agonies of a cross-dresser is framed like a horror movie.  Lugosi sits in a chair in a skeleton-filled laboratory and spouts ponderous non-sequitors, breaking in throughout the film.  Whenever he is around thunder and lightening follow.

Then we get to the second framing devise.  A transvestite has committed suicide and the policeman assigned to the case interviews a psychiatrist about how to avert further such tragedies.  He informs the cop that treatment depends on the “type” of the sufferer. Hermaphrodites and psuedo-hermaphrodites can be helped with sex change surgery.  Then he turns to the case of Glen/Glenda.

[box] [voice-over during stock footage of cars on a freeway] Narrator: The world is a strange place to live in. All those cars. All going someplace. All carrying humans, which are carrying out their lives.[/box]

Glen (played by Wood under an alias) is engaged to Barbara.  He spends most of his leisure time when she is not around dressed in the silks and angora he craves and wrestles with how to break the news.  His dilemma causes him to have a nightmare that I can’t begin to describe adequately.  Suffice it say it involves a devil, a number of sinister beckoning women, and some girl-on-girl light sado-masochistic action.

Throughout the film I just had to puzzle over a mind so foreign that it could put something like this together.  The dialogue is absolutely surreal.  The film is not just “different” though. It is also incredibly lazy and irritating.  Wood is constantly killing time and saving money by inserting stock footage that has only the most tangential relationship to the action.  At only 70 minutes, I was checking my watch during each one of these interludes.

Glen or Glenda is one of the movies focused on in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood and may be interesting to fans of that film.  You will never see anything quite like it.  Multiple versions are available on YouTube.

Trailer

I vitelloni
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli
1953/Italy/France
Cité Films/Peg-Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sergio Natali: He who cares not for art, cares not for life.[/box]

This early Fellini film about a group of slackers in small town Italy seems to presage the reminisces of Amarcord.

The story is an episodic look at incidents from the daily life of a group of life-long buddies.  Most of them are around thirty, live with their parents, and avoid work or responsibility as much as possible.  We see the action through the eyes of Moraldo who is some years younger yet more mature than the others.

The thread that holds the plot together is the exploits of Fausto, a ladies’ man.  He gets Moraldo’s sister Sandra pregnant and is eventually forced to marry her.  This does not curb his wandering eye in the least.  The couple lives with her parents and he finally gets a job with his father-in-law’s friend.  One of his first moves is to try to seduce his boss’s wife.

We also follow the efforts of an aspiring playwright (Leopoldo Trieste) in the group and the story of hard partier Alberto (Alberto Sordi), whose sister’s affair with a married man is a severe trial to himself and his mother.

Fellini is becoming Fellini in this movie.  If you share his sense of humor (or mine), this is a funny and enjoyable watch.  It is also quite interesting visually.  Only downside was I kept wishing something terrible would happen to Fausto and was disappointed.

I Vitelloni was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen.

Trailer

Little Fugitive
Directed by Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin
Written by Ashley, Engel and Orkin
1953/USA
Little Fugitive Production Company
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

This early no-budget indie film turned out remarkably well.

Mother, a widow, is raising her two boys alone.  They are Lennie, who is maybe twelve years old, and Joey, who is six.  Lennie is long accustomed to baby sitting duty and is as gracious about it as most pre-teens, which is to say not very.  He has been given some money for his birthday and the plan is to go to Coney Island with some buddies and have fun.  But Grandma gets sick and Mother must go away for the day so Lennie is stuck again caring for Joey.

One of Joey’s friends decides it would be hilarious to pull a  trick on Joey.  They tell the kid that they have a real gun and let him shoot it, telling him to be very careful.  He fires and Lennie falls down “dead” and smeared with ketchup.  The gullible Joey is convinced that he must flee from the cops.

Joey takes some money Mother left for Lennie and gets on the subway.  He ends up in Coney Island where he has a fine time.  We see him at batting practice, on the beach, and playing various games.  He is nuts about horses and soon figures out that he can get the money to take some pony rides by collecting bottles for the refund.  He remains unfazed until his anxious brother can retrieve him.

The filmmakers found a real talent in little Richie Andrusco and it is his utter naturalness that makes the film.  The other actors, presumably amateurs, are a bit more forced but not too bad.  This is more a cinema verite documentary of New York childhood than an actual story.  I like it a lot.  It is amazing to think of a time where a six-year-old child could feel perfectly safe wandering around through throngs of New Yorkers.

Trailer

It Came from Outer Space
Directed by Jack Arnold
Written by Harry Essex from a story by Ray Bradbury
1953/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] [first lines] John Putnam: [off-screen] This is Sand Rock, Arizona, of a late evening in early spring. It’s a nice town, knowing its past and sure of its future, as it makes ready for the night, and the predictable morning. The desert blankets the earth, cooling, resting for the fight with tomorrow’s sun. And in my house near the town, we’re also sure of the future. So very sure.[/box]

Fifties sci-fi seems to be preoccupied with the alien in human disguise.

Amateur astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) is whispering sweet nothings to his sweetie Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) when they see a large object fall from the sky with a tremendous crash.  They assume it is a meteor and go out to the site to investigate.  John goes down into the crater and sees what seems to be a vehicle and what he thinks may be life inside. Immediately there is a landslide which buries the evidence and from which John barely escapes with his life.  He alerts some telephone repairmen who scoff at his report.  He leaves to fetch help and when he returns the repairmen are acting mighty strange.

John spends the rest of the film at odds with the town’s sheriff whose primary concern is protecting Ellen from John’s weird ideas.  When the evidence becomes undeniable, the sheriff further complicates matters by rushing to the other extreme in cowboy mode.

This is quite an OK example of the early 50’s sci-fi genre.  I’m sorry they found it necessary to show the alien.  The previous reaction shots and glimpses were way creepier.  I’d love to see this in 3-D.  The 2-D trailer shows the possibilities.

Trailer

Robot Monster
Directed by Phil Tucker
Written by Wyott Ordung
1953/USA
Three Dimension Pictures
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

Great One: Earth Ro-Man, you violate the laws of plans. To think for yourself is to be like the hu-man.
Ro-Man: Yes! To be like the hu-man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?
Great One: You are an extension of the Ro-Man, and a Ro-Man you will remain. Now, I set you into motion. One: destroy the girl. Two: destroy the family. Fail, and I will destroy you!

This is my second viewing of this bad-movie classic after a gap of two years and seeing several more of its most notorious bretheren .  It stood up as still the most hilarious example of its genre I have ever seen.

A family decides to picnic in what looks to be an abandoned rock quarry on the day Robot Monster, who refers to himself as Ro-Man, is sent to destroy all the Hu-mans (as he and the Great Guidance refer to our species) on earth. Ro-Man is played by a large man in a gorilla suit wearing a diving helmet and moves very, very slowly.

The survivors have all been innoculated with a serum which prevents every known disease and also happens to defeat Ro-Man’s death ray. There are thus 8 survivors left on earth, most of them conveniently located with yards of the Ro-Man’s cave headquarters.  Ro-Man offers them a painless death if they surrender but they decline preferring “peace with honor”.

Ro-Man: I cannot – yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do “must” and “cannot” meet? Yet I must – but I cannot!

The rest of the “plot” is perhaps unnecessary save to say that Ro-Man’s downfall is his unseemly feelings for the family’s hot eldest daughter. In between, we get random stock footage of dinosaurs fighting, a very bizaare wedding, and some of the most hilarious dialog ever captured on film. With the “automatic billion bubble machine”, which receives a special credit.

How I loved this movie! I had a silly grin on my face except during the many times I was laughing out loud.  Much of the fun comes from the many unexpected, because ludicrous, happenings so I will not spoil these for anyone brave enough to try this.  I suggest getting together with a like-minded friend and possibly a few drinks for maximum enjoyment.  It is only about an hour long.

Multiple complete versions of this gem are available on YouTube, including the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, which I have never seen.  This is funny enough without an added riff track.

Trailer

Joe Dante on Robot Monster – Trailers from Hell