SON OF SINBAD (1955)

The story goes that whenever a pretty young thing took the eye of Howard Hughes one of the gifts he bestowed on them was a contract to make a movie at R.K.O. Of course, Hughes' eye soon wandered on to the next shapely young hopeful, but, as time went on Hughes found he had to fulfill all the contracts and his solution was to concoct SON OF SINBAD and put all the girls in it as once. So as well as The Son of Sinbad we get not only the Caliph's harem but a whole bunch of dancing girls plus the daughters of the 40 Thieves! There is an awful lot of female flesh on show and although its pretty tame by today's standards the film ran into quite a bit of trouble with the censors. Dale Robertson is just right as a non-to-serious womanizing Sinbad but the film is stolen by Vincent Price as the wise cracking, verse quoting poet Omar Khayam. On display (in various ways) are Mari Blanchard, Lili St.St.Cyr and if you look quickly Kim Novak uncredited as a very unlikely Tartar woman. Not to be taken seriously at all it is a wonderful slice of Hollywood camp that ony the presence of Bettie Paige and Tempest Storm could have improved. Directed by Ted Tetzlaff. Rating ***

GROTESQUERIES (2008)

With Halloween looming this is the ideal compilation DVD to celebrate with. I was alerted to it by a long review on The Land of Cerpts and Honey and thanks to Cepts himself I finally got to sample its delights. A fun compilation of creepy goodies from the early days of the cinema which has Georges Melies jostling with Jason Watson's THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER and Felix the cat, Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry vying for position with a condensed version of Chaney's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (with a recorded live musical accompaniment) and silent films based on THE NIGHT ON BARE MOUNTAIN and THE WIZARD'S APPENTICE. Lots, Lots more. Rating ****

I VAMPIRI/The Devil's Commandment/Lust of the Vampire (1956)

I think it is worth saying a bit about Italian popular cinema. The Italians have never really been that good at creating genres - with the exception of the peplum movies which started with the silent Maciste films and continued with the films featuring Hercules and countless other muscle bound heroes during the late Fifties and early Sixties - but they sure are good at imitation and they weren't slow to jump aboard the Fifties horror revival, the post-Bond spy craze and the Westerns. The directors of this films are for the most part forgettable but certain stars did arise and autuerist critics and fans were right to champion the works of directors like Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda, Antonio Margheriti, Sergio Leone, Vittorio Cottafavi, Sergio Corbucci and later Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. I think the case has pretty well been made for Bava, Argento and, above all Sergio Leone. The others remain, for me, interesting. Most have made some really good films (I am particularly fond of some of Corbucci's westerns) but more often than not they are praised for having managed to make crap look palatable. A cult seems to form around any director who specialises in horror films, especially if they are gory. Fulci is one such director. Despite the adoration he received from his fans he blatantly lacked the ability to tell a coherent story. I also find Riccardo Freda problematic. His reputation seems to have started with THE TERROR OF DR.HICHCOK, which starred Barbara Steele, has always seemed wildly over-rated to me. I think that the film's admirers are really getting their rocks off on Miss Steele and the necrophiliac plot rather that the quality of the film. I don't think that the film even looks that good - certainly not as good as its semi-sequel THE SPECTRE which is usually regarded as inferior. Which brings us to I VAMPIRI which is credited to Freda although it was completed by Mario Bava. It is a historically important film as it was the first Italian horror film of the sound era and one that encompassed elements of Italian giallo and gothic cinema. It is an interesting film but for the most part not really a very good one. The plot concerns the murder of young girls to provide blood for a noble woman (played by Gianna Maria Canale) who lives in a huge gothic castle on the outskirts of Paris (???) and, my goodness, is it wordy. Talk, talk, talk, with endless scenes where guys in raincoats stand around talking. Only in the last real does the film really come alive as the gendarmes led by the reporter hero (why is this man in such a bad temper all the time?) search the castle. The final unmasking of the vampire is similar to the climax of Hammer's later COUNTESS DRACULA. What makes these scenes come to life is a combination of the impressive sets (obviously a left-over from some historical epic) and Bava's excellent camerawork which fully exploits the gothic atmosphere. Rating **

PAUL NEWMAN 1925 - 2008

He was Fast Eddie, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy, he was Paul Newman . He was a fine actor, a great actor even and a guarantee of quality. He had intelligence and compassion and a physical beauty that both men and women could respond to in different ways. I have a very small personal memory of Paul Newman: many years ago my girlfriend and I were taking an evening stroll in South Audley Street not far from the American Church in London. One of the first Dayvilles Ice Cream parlours had recently opened there and as we walked by we looked in the window and saw that there was just one customer sitting at the counter eating a bowl of ice cream. It was Paul Newman. Neither of us spoke until a few minutes later when I said "That was Paul Newman, wasn't it? My girlfriend just answered "Hmmm" and we continued our walk. Do I regret not going in ? Not really, even Paul Newman deserved a bowl of uninterupted ice cream. It was just enough to have seen him. May he rest in peace while his films live on. Our thoughts are with Joanna and his family.

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My favourite Paul Newman films :

Somebody Up There Like Me (1956)

The Left Handed Gun (1958)

The Hustler (1961)

Paris Blues (1961)

Harper (1966)

Torn Curtain (1966)

Hombre (1967)

Cool Hand Luke (67)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

Absence of Malice (1981)

The Verdict (1982)

Mr and Mrs Bridge (1990)

The Road to Perdition (2002)

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Serena writes: There'll be the smell of burning rubber tonight in heaven, as the two friends and speed freaks get together. I can imagine Steve McQueen greeting Paul Newman with an invite for a 'burn up', and they won't even have to wear helmets as there'll be no fear of crashing. I can almost hear the revs from here...

Time for some beers and laughs

EL MUNDO DE LOS VAMPIROS/The World of the Vampires (1961)

Guillermo Murray plays the Dracula like vampire in this Mexican horror movie. He's out for revenge against the family of the man who made him one of the undead. Unfortunately for him he is saddled with what is probably the worst set of fangs I've ever seen. They don't just look like they came out of a cornflake box, the look like they were cut from the cardboard of a cornflake box. It's all very unconvincing and strangely undramatic (the vampires can be killed by a musical note!) and doesn't have the saving grace of being very funny. Directed by Alonso Corona Blake Rating *

VOODOO MAN (1944)

One approaches each low-budget horror film of the 30's and 40's with expectations not much higher than Shirley Temple's socks but we keep going back for more because, just sometimes, you find a winner. Isn't serendipity often defined as "Many a gem found in a dustbin". Well, I won't go as far as calling VOODOO MAN a gem but it is a pleasant surprise and is easily the best of the nine films that Bela Lugosi (may he rest in peace) made at Monogram. William Beaudine was never a very inspired director but, then, he wasn't paid to be. His job was to film what he was given and most of what he was given was junk. Here he has an above average script (above average for Monogram, that is) by Robert Charles and some actors who know how to deliver a line convincingly (and with a straight face when needed). The wacky plot has Bela (in good form) as Dr. Marlowe who has spent over twenty years trying to revive his beautiful dead wife with the aid of the local garage owner and voodoo priest (do these jobs usually go together?) played by our old friend George Zucco (nice tank top, George) and a deviant idiot played by John Carradine (to think I drank coffee with this guy!) and a bevy of pretty zombies, the result of Bela's failed experiments. The voodoo ceremonies are an absolute hoot with Bela intoning ominously and George frantically uttering gibberish incantations to his voodoo god while good ole' John Carradine beats out dat rhythm on a drum (needs a little work on the rhythm, John). The film moves at a fast pace and ends when the Hollywood scriptwriter hero delivers a script called VOODOO MAN to the head of his studio and suggests that they get Bela Lugosi to play the lead. "It's right up his street!" Indeed it is, indeed it is. Rating ***

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Tariq writes : I must read more slowly, for an awful moment there I thought you said "Shirley Temple sucks".

THE THREE WEIRD SISTERS (1948)

Until now I'd only met one person who had actually seen this film. I remember an old girlfriend mentioning it but that was the extent of my knowledge. It is very much a forgotten film in England despite Dylan Thomas contributing to the screenplay. Daniel Birt is a director whose name seems to have vanished from memory along with his films (he ended his days directing Richard Greene ROBIN HOOD episodes) and his handling of this film shows why. It lacks pace and any directorial subtleties. But despite that THE THREE WEIRD SISTERS is an extremely interesting film. Three elderly infirm sisters living in a huge Gothic pile in a Welsh mining village connive to kill their younger half-brother, a successful business man, to gain the family fortune. What immediately strikes an odd note is that the motive of the sisters seems to be entirely altruistic in that they feel responsible for the collapse of a row of cottages (they owned the mines under the cottages that caused the disaster) and want to rebuild them. Their brother seems to be a boorish capitalist. But, as the story progresses our sympathies slowly switch. The scene where the brother played by Raymond Lovell confesses to his insecurities and inability to stand up to his sisters is really quite moving. The film is obviously socially concerned - the old ladies symbolise the old order while their brother is the new money that they need but look down on (he has been made to feel inferior as his mother was the cook). The family house is as cracked and rotting as the sisters and finally falls apart a la the House of Usher. Mary Price is in turn sympathetic, sinister and finally murderous as the elder, blind, sister and Mary Clare and Mary Merrall complete the trio. Nova Pilbeam (whose last released film this was had previously appeared in two early Hitchcock's and had been Selznick's first choice to play REBECCA) is excellent as Lovell's loyal and feisty secretary. Anthony Hulme plays the local doctor who slowly realises the truth about the sisters (Hulme's character is called David Davies while the local policeman is played by Welsh actor David Davies) and the ever excellent Hugh Griffiths plays the local socialist worker who acts as a sort of Welsh chorus and the scene where he lectures a group of bemused Welsh Terriers in socialist philosophy seems likely to have part of Dylan Thomas's contribution to the script as does his earlier scene when Lovell first arrives in the village. It is an odd film for sure - part horror film, part social commentary. It doesn't quite work but you have to give it credit for trying. Rating ***