j-mcelhatton Reviews

The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

Thumb-Up Review With Spoiler Warning

[5/10 · 10 July 2004]

I must say I enjoyed this flick a good deal. The titular villain is less charismatic than yer regular B-movie beast - being a regular sized gila monster prowling around model scenery woodenly. The gila monster gives a very disinterested performance and the 'effects' shots are unconvincingly edited into the footage of the actors, who are mostly pretty dire, but likeable. The interplay between the extremely liberal sherrif & thoughtless, reckless, but kind-hearted tearaway Chase Winstead (he's saving up to buy his crippled little sister a pair of leg braces, so he ain't all bad despite his fondness for speeding around like a maniac in souped-up old cars and his rather distasteful habit of nicking bits from the gila victims' cars)is fun to watch; this town is so tolerant of tearaway kids they'd probably welcome the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (from The Wild One) with open arms. Don Sullivan ain't Elvis, but he sings a couple of pleasant ditties during the film and gets to impress all his mates at the barn-hop by having his record spun by top DJ 'Steamroller' Smith & by driving a car full of nitro into the scarpering lizard. I dug this flick & so would you if you'd like to see a lizard killing a train set. Recommended! I give it 6 out of 10 and I don't care who knows it.

One Body Too Many (1944)

A Poor Man's Cat & The Canary - Yet Still Hilarious

[22 June 2004]

The other reviewers here weren't too impressed by this, but I must admit to laughing practically all the way through. This film is very much a second-rate retread of the classic Cat & The Canary, with Jack Haley doing the Bob Hope schtick, yet it is far more entertaining than it has any right to be. Haley is a very entertaining & likable 'hero' and is well served by the witty script, which is brimming with snappy one-liners. Lugosi, whose performance will undoubtedly be the biggest draw for modern audiences, proves surprisingly adept at comedy; as the suspicious butler, he has a lot of fun sending up his image. I particularly liked the running joke involving the coffee that may or may not be laced with rat poison; by the end of the film, Lugosi's catchphrase line 'Anybody Want A Cup Of Coffee?' has become hilarious through repetition, especially since the dubious-looking coffee is always refused by everyone. I particularly enjoyed the following exchange (my wording) :

LUGOSI: "Would you like a cup of coffee?" HALEY: "Depends. There are two types of coffee, percolated or drip. What type have you got?" LUGOSI: "It is the percolated kind." HALEY: "No thanks, I'm a drip."

OK, maybe you had to be there.

Although the mystery & the comedy elements are not up to the standard of the 1939 Cat & The Canary, this is still a superior spooky-house thriller. The ne'er do well relatives waiting for their piece of the estate are a splendidly hateful bunch; the sequence in which Lyle Talbot's lawyer reads out the late millionaires' comments about each of his relatives sets up their characters beautifully. Talbot, of course, stops short of reading out the old man's comments about him ("I would trust him as far as I could throw...an elephant").

In short, I would recommend this to fans of old-fashioned spooky house thrillers & fans of Lugosi who'd like to see him trying his hand at playing for (intentional) laughs. It's streets ahead of most of his poverty row 1940s output, which is for the most part utterly dire, and I was surprised at how often I laughed out loud. I'm going to be very generous with this, as it made me laugh more than any other film I've seen recently, including a lot of modern comedies.

8/10

Black Dragons (1942)

Dreadful WW2 Propaganda ***SPOILERS***

[22 June 2004]

This dreadful Monogram cheapie is only worth watching for Bela Lugosi's typically menacing yet charming performance as a Nazi plastic surgeon (!) and for it's amusingly obvious use of stock footage. The plot basically involves a group of 'industrialists' (who are really Japanese spies) are murdered by the surgeon who transformed them into 'Americans', but was shoddily treated for his pains (he was shoved into a cell with a soon to be released petty criminal who, luckily, looked exactly like him, save for a silly stick-on goatee). The victims are always found on the steps of the (closed) Japanese embassy, clutching a ceremonial dagger for reasons unexplained. It's pointless going any further into the silly plot than that. The only other point of interest is the performance of Clayton Moore, who would go on to play the Lone Ranger. Unfortunately, his performance here is dire. I would only recommend this film to Lugosi fans or those who have an hour to kill & don't care how they waste it. I'd rather have the hour back. (*)

Invisible Ghost (1941)

Dire, Incomprehensible Cheapie

[22 June 2004]

This Monogram shocker is shoddily-plotted to say the least. Lugosi plays Charles Kessler, an outwardly kindly man who has never fully recovered after his young wife left him & was 'killed' in a car crash with her new lover. We first meet him as he has an anniversary dinner with his absent wife, instructing his butler to serve the non-existent Mrs Kessler first. This does not seem too unusual to anybody, and nobody seems to suspect Kessler of the murders that keep occurring in his house (before the film has started, there have already been an unspecified number of killings in the house, but the police don't seem concerned enough to search the grounds properly), even though the man is obviously screaming nuts. Although the title refers to an invisible ghost, Lugosi is actually inspired to commit the murders by the mere sight of his visible, living wife, staring wordlessly through the window at him. How & why she inspires him to kill is left a complete mystery. How she survived the car accident & ended up living in the garden shed without the family knowing is a bit of a mystery as well. The film literally makes no sense. Lugosi gives an effective performance despite the material, but, as a number of reviewers here have noted, the stand-out performance is by Clarence Muse as the sly butler. I particularly liked how he unknowingly escapes Kessler on a murderous rampage, leaving Lugosi so confused he doesn't even bother trying to kill him again. He gives a very likable performance here, and is by far the best thing about this very shoddy, incomprehensible chiller.

*1/2 out of *****.

Agitator (2001)

Slow-moving But Engrossing Yakuza Saga

[20 June 2004]

Those of you who are familiar with Takashi Miike's typical fare will be surprised by how restrained this yakuza saga is, in comparison to the frenetic, ultra-violent & surreal Dead Or Alive trilogy, Ichi The Killer or the recent Gozu. This one takes a fair bit of time to get going and could have benefited with a bit of pruning, but it's to Miike's credit that it never becomes tedious. Although the pace is slow by Miike's standards, it at least gives us time to get properly acquainted with the characters. It can be confusing at first as we try to figure out which characters are affiliated with which gangs, but the director leaves us enough breathing space to make sense of what's going on before the sh*t really hits the fan in the final hour of the film. Agitator was Miike's fourth film of 2001, filmed in between Ichi The Killer & Happiness Of The Katakuris. It doesn't compare to the demented genius of either film, of course, and is not recommended to anyone seeking the usual insanity this director's name promises. In fact, the closest this movie comes to Miike's usual sick black humour is a scene where some gangsters terrorise a nightclub: the ringleader humiliates one of the clubgirls by repeatedly ramming a microphone up her bottom (shades of Visitor Q). Unsurprisingly, this character is played by Miike himself. In conclusion, this is a slow-burning, but engrossing gangster flick if you're in the mood. It's a good example of Miike's diversity & range (amazing that a film as carefully constructed and intricately plotted as this can be knocked out so quickly), but is probably best left to dedicated fans of this unique director.