Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942)

Young Dr. Larry Forbes (John Shepperd) is traveling to his his fiancée’s home in France.  He is delayed by bad weather and stops in an inn before he reaches the villa.  He switches rooms with another drunken guest and later the guest is found murdered.

Rather than a science fiction story, this is more of a mystery.  The suspects include a slow-witted assistant Noel (J. Carol Nash), an unctuous butler, and a truculent gardener Rogell (Mike Mazurki).  And not least, her reticent father Dr. Renault (George Zucco).

Noel behaves in suspicious and odd ways.  When the murdered guest is said to have been strangled by “fingers of steel,” Noel quickly hides his hands.  (This was funny enough that we began referring to the movie as “Fingers of Steel.”) Noel is acutely sensitive to the presence of dogs but drifts off readily and has difficulty with simple conversations.

Larry would rather ignore the sinister events and focus on being reunited with fiancée Madelon (Lynne Roberts).  His fiancée is a piece of work.

She states that she is kind to Noel but nothing she says or does proves this. She insists that he drive back to town  to pick up something trivial that he forgot.  She’s unfailingly condescending to him in her speech and body language.  She even is furious with him for trying to protect himself when a stray dog savages his arm.  The dog was not the bitch in the movie.

It’s pretty obvious what the titular secret is but it takes some time for anyone to figure it out.  In the meantime, there are corpses piling up.

The sets were of high quality and gave me hope that the story would be a little more sophisticated that it ultimately proved to be.  The finale is so abrupt that my viewing partner and I started laughing.  On the other hand, it didn’t outstay its welcome.  I don’t recommend it.

highlight for spoiler–Nash works hard at his characterization of the ape man, how he moves and holds his body.  He is sympathetic and intriguing as a sinned against beast.–end

The featurette, with critics and film historians such as Kim Newman, was twice as entertaining as the movie.

DVD Talk review

Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy review

Pop Matters review

PWI Pop review

Fantastic Movie Musings & Ramblings review

Mike Mazurki

…

Rogell

Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog (2008)

Image by watchwithkristin via Flickr

My original review for the internet version.

Got it on DVD and still like it.  The Easter egg with Joss standing in for Captain Hammer is priceless. The making-of was charming.  The for real commentary was very good – I was especially glad they pointed out Sarah Michelle Gellar in the background.  Commentary! The Musical! was an interesting experiment but I thought it got too heavy handed at times.

I don’t necessarily want to see more but it was a good piece of entertainment.

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Land of the Giants (1968-1970)

Image by PetitPlat by sk_ via Flickr

My mother remembered watching a show about small people lost in a world full of giants. Her memory was imperfect but we narrowed it down to the TV series Land of the Giants.  I reluctantly agreed to watch it with her. The pilot didn’t cheer me up as it was unbelievable both in story and logic.  The first episode proper was no better.

That was all I could take.  She loaned the first disc to me since she worked the next day and I was off.  I decided to put it on while I was folding laundry.  Figured that I could keep up with it while doing chores.  The 2nd episode  was interesting enough that I kept pausing it each time I left the room.  Finally, I just sat on the sofa and watched the final episode straight through.

My trepidation was justified in that the plots are pretty simplistic.  Some of the acting makes me cringe.  But the special effects are lots of fun, and I was entertained in spite of myself.

The Setup:

In 1983, passengers on a “suborbital” shuttle flight go through some kind of wormhole and find themselves on a planet full of giants.  Their ship, the Spindrift, is damaged upon landing, which makes it impossible to return to Earth.  They spend some effort on repairs but the bulk of their time is spent on wacky missions. I would have preferred to have seen them struggle to survive on the inhospitable planet but adventures work too.

The characters:

The captain of the ship is Captain Steve Burton (Gary Conway), very square-jawed and stalwart.  His co-pilot is Dan Erickson (Don Marshall), more on him in a bit.  There is a stewardess Betty Hamilton (Heather Young) who has yet to do anything of note.  The passengers include an obnoxious young orphan Barry (Stefan Arngrim) and his dog, a conman Fitzhugh (Kurt Kasnar) , a wealthy young woman Valerie Scott (Deanna Lund) and Mark Wilson (Don Matheson) an engineer.

The Special Effects:

As we watched it, my mother commented that it must have been an expensive show to produce at the time.  IMDB asserts that it was. You can see a bit of the blue screen work at places, particularly in Framed.  The giant hands are obviously puppets which I don’t mind.  I do wish they had done a better job on the painting.

My mother wondered whether the safety pin and rope ensemble that the engineer carries is a nod to Pod from The Borrowers series by Mary Norton.  It would be delightful if that were true.

The huge props are enormous fun, and I enjoyed watching the characters laboriously climb up steps. It’s still a treat to watch people mimic dolls.  I would have thought doll people it would seem silly (what with Sims and CGI and all) but somehow the concreteness of the over-sized props amuses me no end.

Don Marshall:

I once wrote a paper on how Hollywood portrays computer scientists and other technologists.  Weird Al Yankovic’s “White and Nerdy” song easily sums up the stereotype. I started working on a list of how many people, not of European descent, had techie roles in science fiction films over the years. There weren’t many and few were positive. So, I was interested in seeing how Marshall’s character Dan was portrayed.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was a decent role. Dan proves to be sensible and extremely brave.

I looked up Marshall.  From Wikipedia and the Irwin Allen Network, I learned he was studying to be an engineer before he began studying acting at the Bob Gist Dramatic Workshop and Los Angeles City College.

He starred opposite Nichelle Nichols on a show named, Great Gettin’ Up Mornin’. He was a reoccurring character on Julia and Little House on the Prairie. He played Lieutenant Boma on the original series of Star Trek.

The Women:

They fair pretty badly in the first disk.  Maybe things get better later.  In the credits, Valerie is shown with her eyes closed.  The flight attendant waves her hands helplessly.  Valerie is spoiled and annoying.  When she has the opportunity to share the adventure, she’s constantly a blink away from full hysterics. Disappointing.

Pilot: The Crash – They encounter giant humans and animals and slowly realize that they aren’t in Kansas any more.  Dan neatly resolves a crisis when he points out that only he can pilot the ship.  The characterizations were banal and the boy and Fitzhugh made me cringe each time they had a scene.  The scene in which they are nearly run down by a car is nicely done.

Ghost Town – They encounter a town made in their size.  Some of the viewer of this episode commented snidely that it was amazing that the set designers could find such small props for them.

This episode was so dumb.

1. The electric force field was selective in whom it hurt and how much.
2. They took far too long to realize that they weren’t back on Earth.
3. The last bit of stupidity had Dan jumping through fire to save his captain from harm.  This seems heroic until the camera pulls back and it’s clear Dan could have just walked around the flame in perfect safety. What’s worse is that the actor dislocated his shoulder in the dumb stunt.

Framed – A lecherous photography frames a homeless man for murder.  The tinies set out to prove his innocence. I liked this episode a lot better.  They solve their problems step by step and there are a lot of big props in this episode.  Even though getting involved seems dumb (even to some of the characters), they do it for the noblest of reasons.

Underground: The tinies infiltrate a government vault to retrieve a letter that would condemn 20 people.  They didn’t solve the problems quite as I expected but they work them out reasonably well.  The giant Gorak they encounter is a morally gray, at best, but the tinies are pure of heart and ignore it.

TV.com has some excellent plot summaries and trivia for the show.

Buck Rogers (1936)

Cover of Buck Rogers

Part of my science fiction movie watching project.

I confess, first of all, that I didn’t watch the whole four hours of this serial of Buck Rogers.

Twice I attempted it and twice I dozed off.  On the third attempt, I watched half of the episodes.  One of my co-viewers started reading a book and the other fell asleep.

Dave Sindelar from Fantastic Movie Musings & Ramblings suggests watching them over time rather than all at once.  This is good advice, and if I watch another serial, I think I’ll follow it.

Buster Crabbe who plays Buck also starred in several Flash Gordon serials.  It was too much to have two serials starring the same actor back to back, so I dropped Flash Gordon from the list.  In fact, I shortened my list a lot.  The titles I removed were the ones I had watched before or had little interest in watching now.

The Story (as much as I watched of it)

Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) goes into suspended animation until the 26th century.  He basically hits the ground running and gets involved in a rebellion against Killer Kane (Anthony Warde) which involves flying a lot of space ships hither and yon.  I stopped it about the time Buck and Prince Tallen of Saturn (Philson Ahn) were hiding from Killer Kane’s search parties.

Star Wars influence

As we started watching, one of my co-viewers said, “Hey, that’s like Star Wars.”  I nodded as we sat watching the recap scrolling up the screen.  There were other similarities too.  The good-guy rebels on Earth were fighting the dark cloaked Kane who was setting out to create an interplanetary government.  Buck is an excellent pilot like Han Solo.  The Zuggs reminded me a lot of  the Jawas.

There were probably many more similarities but that’s all I gleaned from the beginning of the series.

Other Things

They move between floor levels in futuristic elevators which work a lot like the Star Trek transmitter.

The Zuggs are an alien race oppressed and controlled by the humans. They move slowly and react slowly which I think was an effect of their controlling devices but I’m not sure. The only part of the serial I wish I had watched was the Zuggs revolting in chapter eight.

Wilma Deering (Constance Moore) is portrayed as a competent pilot, which was nice.  Buck is still better, despite sleeping through centuries of technological advancement.

Watch it or not?

It was fun to see the kind of movie that inspired Lucas.

On the other hand, it’s a show that requires patience and certain acceptance of the genre.  Sindelair sums it up best:

Whole episodes will sometimes pass without any plot development or new discoveries, but will contain nothing more than a series of “thrilling” action sequences.

Links

Buck-Rogers.com

Weird SciFi

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Invisible Man (1933)

Cover of The Invisible Man

Part of my science fiction movie watching project.

One winter’s day, a strange man, heavily bandaged, arrives at an isolated inn.  There he asks for a room and complete privacy.  He gets the room but the innkeeper (Una O’Connor) can’t bear to leave him alone.  She soon wishes she had stayed away from the bad-tempered Invisible Man (Claude Rains)

James Whale directed Frankenstein (1931) which I didn’t care much for and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) which I adore.

In the main, this movie was more of a Universal Studios monster movie than science fiction.  There were a few instances in which they touched on a rational explanation behind the invisibility.  The movie did include the bit about digesting food being visible until digested I believe was in the original novel by H. G. Wells.  It has been a long time since I read the book.

Note: I’m going to refer to the Invisible Man AKA Jack Griffin as Invisi because I can.

The Special Effects

Really the effects are the best part of the movie.  There are funny scenes such as the shirt chasing the cops around the room. There are many sinister scenes, for instance, the one in which Invisi reveals himself to his former colleague, Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan).  Of course, there is the usual fun stuff such as things moving on their own and doors closing.

My favorite scene had Invisi undressing in front of a mirror.  The extras show how complicated this was to achieve.

My co-viewer noted that the screen blurred when Invisi was walking in front of someone.  We weren’t sure if this was intentional but, if so, it’s good touch.

The Humor

There was a lot of humor interspersed with the thriller stuff.  The humor, particularly just before the invisible man’s entrance, was too goofy for me.  For example, the piano player is exposed as a fraud: he’s using a player piano.

The innkeeper, in particular, whose officiousness gets her targeted by the irritable Invisi was even less amusing.  I thought the film got mean-spirited when we were expected to laugh at her for crying over her badly injured husband.

It was much more entertaining seeing a pair of dancing pants and a ghostly rendition of  “gathering nuts in May.”

The Horror

It was tightly paced: just enough conversation to build the tension and the action flowed from the plot.  Wish more movies were like this.

It also had the Universal horror theme of “there were some things men were not meant to know.”  It turns out that Invisi has taken a chemical compound that makes him invisible.  He had not discovered a German account of an experiment that left its subject aggressive and crazy.  (My co-viewer commented that the real moral of the movie is to learn German before making wacky experiments.)

All in all not sci-fi but a lot of fun.

Reviews

Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings – review

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review

DVD Verdict review

Classic-Horror.com review – information on special effects

Film Fanatic review

SPOILER

Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)

Image via Wikipedia

Here is the full science fiction movie list.

The first of my science fiction watching project is a silent USSR film featuring life on Mars.  My friends and I enjoyed our ribald and goofy comments a lot more than the movie itself.

There were three distinct sections of the movie: Mars, Earth and the bag of sugar.

MARS

The scenes on Mars were the best by far. The geometric sets were striking.  Even Gor, the guardian of energy, had a triangle-shaped key ring.  I liked the diagonally sliding door as well.

Aelita’s headdresses were my favorite bit of costuming.  The headdress you see in most of the stills resembles a spiny sea creature, it’s even stranger when she moves.  One of her gowns encouraged me to think she had three breasts.  This would have been very alien of her, if it had been true.  Alas, it’s just an unnerving costume choice.

I learned that Martians know nothing of kisses because Aelita learns a lot when she spies on Earthling Los & his wife Natasha.  The alien woman learning about sex from humans is cliched but she’s intense about it which makes it funny.

It seems the queen’s maid Ihoshka knows more about these matters.  Ihoshka flirts with the soldiers in robotic uniforms at length during one scene and she quickly takes to an Earth man when the space ship arrives on Mars.

Stealthiness must mean something different on Mars.  Ihoshka skulks about the castle in the most obvious way.  She has a wretched outfit for sneaking, I admit.  Her gown is surrounded by caging wires. Nevertheless, no one can see her even when she’s standing in their direct line of sight.  Perhaps Martians have vision problems.

One scene was too funny to take serious.  The bold Martian soldiers attack members of a rebellion with flashlights. I think they were meant to be lasers (?).  I was taken aback when a third of the Martian’s working population was “refrigerated” but I think it was about cryogenics.

EARTH

The protagonist and definite anti-hero of the film is an depressed engineer named Los.  He finds life fairly worthless, judging by his expression and body language.  One thing perks him up, a mysterious message of three words transmitted over the airwaves.  Los becomes convinced that it is a message from Mars. and begins his long quest to build a rocket ship to Mars.  He begins designing a rocket ship.  Things look pretty exciting until the main plot takes over.

THE BAG OF SUGAR

The main storyline is that of a misappropriated bag of sugar.

As this film portrays it, the USSR in the 1920s was a bad place to live.  The trains were disease carrying and overcrowded; and housing and food staples were limited. At one point, a character was bribing another with baked goods.  Their clothes were ugly and their shoes were rags.  Everything was dirty and everyone was cold.

The bag of sugar is stolen and the movie takes a generous portion of the running time to trace the hiding of the sugar, the eventual investigation, the subterfuge and various twists in the sugar plot.

I found that there were too many characters and got a little mixed up about which badly dressed character had what goal.  The good thing about Mars is that everyone was quite distinctive in appearance.

EARTH AGAIN

Despite his obsession with Mars, Los takes time out to deal with his domestic life. Los goes a lot bonkers with jealousy over his wife Natasha’s friendiless.  Los’ wife is entirely innocent but Los is channeling Othello and alternates between neglect and pettish anger with her.  The sugar, Mars and Earth plots collide in a supremely disturbing and wrong ending.

N. B.  Natasha wears the ugliest dress in cinematic history, just so you know.

SPOILERS

Science Fiction Movie Project

Image via Wikipedia

Just finished Aelita: Queen of Mars - the 1924 silent USSR movie. It was not quite what I was expecting. It’s entertaining but I don’t recommend it either. I’ll add the full review later.

Full list here.

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Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse “Needs”

Tantalizing bits of the Actives’ backstories are revealed in this episode.

The Actives’ glitches finally come to the fore, when several of them make a break for freedom.

Hmmm.  I guess the teaser confirms that Agent Wrong-Page apparently views Caroline and Mellie in purely sexual terms.  He also sees himself as their knight in shining armor.  He is slowly catching up; who knows, he might almost save the day.

I was interested to see a full staff meeting, and see the status of the main characters in this setting.  I was surprised at the relative gravitas that Dr.  Saunders opinions had.  Toffler and Laurence seemed to view her as a subordinate and even Boyd interacts with her as a peer.  I was also pleased to see that she cared in her own way about the poor Dolls.

I do not like like Laurence.  I suppose he’s only speaking the truth but the contempt behind his statements makes me angry.

I liked DeWitt’s outfit.

I have to say that I find November annoying.  I don’t know if it’s the actress who displeases me or the way her character has been directed or written.  I’ll have to ponder my reaction to her.  I was amused and surprised by her exhibitionist tendencies.  I also felt very little pity for the revelation of her past.  It just seemed too easy.

I was delighted, as I think I was meant to, in Sierra warning Victor to behave like a gentleman in the shower.  I like their instinctive attraction to each other, it’s very sweet which means they’re never going to survive.

Since I like Sierra a lot, I was hurting bad for her in this episode.  The wretchedness of her life past and present is unbearable.  It’s obvious that DeWitt lies about everything she does in the Dollhouse.  But it seems the distance between truth and falsehood is more of chasm in the Dollhouse than I had guessed.

The various theories the Dolls about the House are pretty amusing, especially Victor’s assessment: “we’re all gonna die.”

Here’s a crazy idea, is Echo/Caroline a relative of DeWitt’s?  DeWitt said some strange things about Echo’s behavior.

I want to see Alpha pretty soon. It was OK that the Reavers were not seen but I think Alpha should come out and play.

This was a good episode, with all the character interplay and painful revelations that I like in a Whedon show.

episode 1 GHOSTS

episode 2 THE TARGET

episode 3 STAGE FRIGHT

episode 4 GRAY HOUR

episode 5 TRUE BELIEVER

episode 6 MAN ON THE STREET

episode 7 ECHOES

episode 8 NEEDS

episode 9 A SPY IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE

episode 10 HAUNTED

episode 11 BRIAR ROSE

episode 12 OMEGA

Science Fiction Movies Watched Chronologically

Cover of Westworld

So, I’m starting a new theme for my movie watching, like my horror movies, and the mysteries, and the biographies. I’m still not done with the biopics – ugh.

This time, it’s science fiction films in chronological order.

This was a tricky list to compile. For years, I had shunned horror movies and so had some catching up to do, and mysteries are just not my favorite genre. But I like science fiction so I was forced to throw a few B movies and a few obscure movies on the list. I have a list of alternates in case some of these become unavailable or my fellow viewers and I change our minds.

At any rate, I’ve had Aelita on my movie wish list for ages and now it’s at the top of the list. I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve also started but not finished THX 1138, so that’s going to be good.

The movies I have seen before: Westworld; Alien Nation; Thirteenth Floor; and Interstella 5555. We all like Westworld (up with killer robots!). My companions hadn’t seen the others which I liked and want to see again.

The movies I had not heard of before: The Man in the White Suit; Dr. Renault’s Secret; Fortress; Koi…Gil Maya.

It was suggested watching movie pairs such as, The Time Machine (1960 & 2002) , The Planet of the Apes (1968 & 2001, and War of the Worlds (1953 & 2005). But they were mostly vetoed. I think nobody could bear to sit through the remakes.  ….I have seen the 2002 Time Machine.

This theme is going to be fun and feels just right for summer.

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse “Echoes”

Image via Wikipedia

This is the Dollhouse’s Band Candy episode in which everyone loses their inhibitions temporarily.

College students on Freemont Campus are having psychotic episodes due the release of a experimental psychotropic drug. The Dollhouse sends out teams to help the affected.

The opening sequence with the college student and the flies was highly disturbing.  There is an unnerving amount of physical pain on this show.

What is it with Echo and motorcycles?

I was surprised that Agent Ballard and Mellie weren’t on the run.  Apparently Agent Wrong-Page is convinced that he’s not in danger from the Dollhouse.  Silly, silly man.

Poor Mellie.  She deserves a better personality implant than the one they gave her and she deserves better than Agent Wrong-Page and his Laura-like fixation on Echo.

Echo – well, we get a lot of Echo’s history to chew on in this episode.  I feel churlish for saying this but Caroline was annoying and Echo is definitely a personality upgrade.   I didn’t feel much sympathy for her friends either.

I did like the guy she befriends this time, Sam (Mehcad Brooks).  He seemed capable and smart.

Boyd only gets a little screen time but he makes the most of it.  Don’t die, Boyd!

Victor gets to be a character that has some authority and slickness as the NSA agent.  I was very pleased because he plays too many characters who barely have it together.

As with Echo, we get a sneak peek at Victor’s past, and I’d like to learn more.  Poor Sierra had to relive the episode Man on the Street.

Topher was even more twitchy and hyper-articulate than ever; I did like his “drawer of inappropriate starches.”

De Witt was not particularly revealing of herself when the band candy drug affected her.  Dominic, however, was hilarious.  I suddenly have a modicum of sympathy for the wretched character.

Not a bad episode.  I didn’t feel much emotional connection with the characters but it was entertaining.

episode 1 GHOSTS

episode 2 THE TARGET

episode 3 STAGE FRIGHT

episode 4 GRAY HOUR

episode 5 TRUE BELIEVER

episode 6 MAN ON THE STREET

episode 7 ECHOES

episode 8 NEEDS

episode 9 A SPY IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE

episode 10 HAUNTED

episode 11 BRIAR ROSE

episode 12 OMEGA

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