Reviews

Even those with a high tolerance for 1940s rubbish films will have a hard time getting through "Crazy Knights" (aka "Ghost Crazy"). It was poverty-row studio Monogram's attempt to create a viable comedy team in the wake of the success of Abbott and Costello, and the continuing popularity of The Three Stooges. The idea was to team the ubiquitous Billy Gilbert with Shemp Howard (who at the time was between his stints with the Stooges) and Lennie-like boxer Maxie Rosenbloom. The three don't act as a trio; Gilbert (who is costumed exactly like Oliver Hardy) and Shemp work as a team, and Rosenbloom joins in about half-way through. The rest of the cast in this haunted house "comedy" is largely unknown, save for John "Perry White" Hamilton, who at this point in his career was bouncing back and forth between major and minor studios. Oh, and since this is a 1940s scare farce, there's also a gorilla. Gilbert--who acts as both slap-happy straight man and overacting, spluttering comic--Howard--who plays it with a tough guy edge--and Rosenbloom pull out every stop to try and get a laugh, but the script (the fault of Tim Ryan, who also plays the detective), the premise, and the utter cheapness of the film defeats them all. Seen today, the picture is a time capsule of the kind of no-budget, no-talent movie-making that existed during the Golden Age, but it's awfully hard to imagine audiences so starved for entertainment that they'd actually pay to see this.

The creatives behind "Murder, She Wrote" often tried to shake up the formula and present something different, and a lot of times it worked. For "Truck Stop," it doesn't. In fact, this episode represents one of the series' biggest belly-flops. Mike Connors guest stars as a screenwriter who is supposed to be adapting Jessica's book into a movie, but instead he practically kidnaps her and takes her into a small town somewhere in between Vegas and L.A. where connected to a seedy diner start turning up dead. The diner is run by Connors' old flame Vera (played by Elizabeth Ashley, and named after the femme fatale of "Detour," in case you didn't get it), who is married to a boorish drunken slob named Pete (played by Ron Karabatsos, and named after the doomed husband in "The Postman Always Rings Twice," in case you didn't get it). Pete turns up dead and there's a shootout between a would-be blackmailer and Connors, in which both end up dead. But before he dies, Connors tape records a confession to both killings, which are dramatized in neo-noir black-and-white as his voice narrates. This isn't a spoiler, because Jessica instinctively senses that things just aren't adding up, tape or no tape, though even she can't figure out who the mysterious, hobo-ish Desmond is (Kristoffer Tabori, doing an excellent Roddy McDowall impression, for whatever reason), what his purpose is in the story, what he knows about the sheriff (Ken Swofford), or why the sheriff doesn't recognize him. It's a mostly great cast, with Ashley making silk out of her sow's ear role as a put-upon waitress, and the usually blustery Swofford standing out in a low-key, rather menacing performance. On the down side is Karabatsos, channeling Lon Chaney, Jr., who demonstrates that the specialty of the house at this particular diner is ham, and Connors attempt at being Bogart, which is a disservice to them both. The real problem, though, is the script. The noir dialogue is downright laughable, with Connors' hard-boiled narration sounding like it was written for Leslie Nielsen for a "Naked Gun" movie. Just when it almost seems like things are coming together Peter Haskell shows up, quite late in the show, as an insurance agent, and plays his role as though he doesn't know whether he'll turn out to be the killer or not. In fact the solution to the mystery and how it fits with everything that has come before is so wobbly that it seems like NO ONE knew who the killer was until they drew straws on the set. Maybe "Truck Stop" was supposed to be a two-parter that got cut down to one hour, and that's why nothing makes sense. But as it is, nothing makes sense.

If one can ignore the racism of the scenes set in Africa, or at least accept that this was a staple of Hollywood at the time, and can't be changed, then there's a lot to enjoy in "Africa Screams." It's not Abbott and Costello's best film, but it is one of their better later ones, with Lou contributing a very energetic performance, which can't always be said of post-"A&C Meet Frankenstein" films from the team. There isn't really a story here, just a premise, in which Abbott and Costello are drawn into a shady African expedition because the person in charge, played by Hillary Brooke, thinks Costello has memorized a map from a book that will lead her to a diamond mine. The transition from New York to Africa and back again is done in the finest "Well, here we are on the moon!" style employed in radio comedy shows, and of course, the jungle sets are patently phony, but it hardly matters. This is really a burlesque show without the strippers, careening from one barely-related, but often very funny, routine to another. The Baer brothers, Max and Buddy, are the heavies (Lon Chaney, Jr., must have been busy that month) and Stooges Shemp Howard and Joe Besser act as something of a secondary team, with Shemp playing a visually-impaired thug while Joe, doing his usual sissy routine, is forced to act as his guide-dog. Animal trainers Clyde Beatty and Frank Buck are there, too, because...well because they could be. There is one funny scene of Beatty doing his lion taming act while Costello, who is also trapped in the cage, desperately crawls around underneath a wicker stand trying to escape. There are also people in gorilla suits, rubber crocodiles, and those unfortunate bone-in-the-nose cannibals, one of whom oddly sports a skipper's hat. A&C's best director, Charles Barton, keeps everything moving to an absurd end, but the point is not to take any of this seriously.

There have been so many remakes and ripoffs of "The Phantom of the Opera" that they all tend to blend together, though the made-for-TV "The Phantom of Hollywood" carries the distinction of showing us the end of an era taking place as we watch. It follows the original story fairly closely, but translates it to a Hollywood movie studio that is on the verge of selling off its backlot property to developers, since nobody uses the ramshackle sets anymore. The studio in question is called "Worldwide," but it is really MGM. It was filmed at MGM, it utilizes old film clips from MGM classic movies, its music score is peppered with classic songs from MGM films, and there's even a reference to Andy Hardy's house on the backlot, "Andy Hardy" being a long-running MGM series. Why they didn't call it MGM and be done with it is anyone's guess. As for the plot, a mysterious hooded figure living under the backlot desperately fights against its destruction, because it is his home. Who he is, and why he is hiding, is all part of the mystery. "The Phantom of Hollywood" is not a spoof, though it has its humorous and ironic moments, and a few standard clichés found in all films set in a movie studio, such as the ubiquitous shot of exotically dressed extras wandering around in between the soundstages, and the fact that none of the film executives ever seem to do any actual work. There is also an in-joke in making leading lady Skye Aubrey the daughter of the studio head, since Aubrey herself was the daughter of James Aubrey, the head of CBS, which aired the picture. It features a good cast of veterans, including Peter Lawford, Jackie Coogan, Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Corinne Calvet, Regis Toomey, Kent Taylor, and even former Dead End Kid Billy Hallop in a bit. Peter Haskell is the nominal hero and Jack Cassidy, in heavy makeup, plays the mysterious studio historian...could he be the masked killer? Well, not really; the mystery goes a little deeper than that. While it has its creepy moments, the film isn't all that scary. The real horror is watching the old, very recognizable MGM backlot sets being bulldozed to the ground on camera. By this point in time nothing could have saved them, but for film buffs, it's a bit like watching a snuff film. But that is the whole point of "The Phantom of Hollywood"...that era of movie-making was by that point as obsolete as a silent film.

Conventional wisdom has it that while The Three Stooges were tops in short subjects, they couldn't carry a feature film. "Rockin' in the Rockies" should not be entered into evidence one way or the other, because the truth is Atlas couldn't have carried this thing. It's an oleo of popular Western music acts, some comedic (occasionally intentionally) and Stooge burlesque routines, all linked together with cornball situations, designed to try and make people forget there was a war going on for an hour or so. Except for one scene in which they pretend to be termite exterminators, the Stooges don't even act as a trio here. Moe (with normal haircut) plays a character named Shorty, and serves as comic relief for the Western scenes, while Larry and Curly act as a team. Oddly, though, the don't act like the Larry and Curly we know from the shorts. Larry takes on Moe's traditional role while Curly is subdued (and clearly ailing), and almost plays it British! One can only assume that the script was not written with them in mind. (Their gag appearance in 1942's "My Sister Eileen" had been a last minute addition, so maybe the same thing happened here.) If only Columbia had allowed the people from their short subject unit to write and maybe even direct ("Rockin'"s director Vernon Keays can't even make his shots match) there might have been some energy to it. As it is, the film is pretty much a long hour and seven minutes of bad acting, so-so music, and unfunny comedy.

"The Front" is not quite a drama, because there are some comedic scenes, but certainly not a comedy, because there are many dramatic scenes. It's a tragedy; a true-life tragedy about a time in this country when fear was elected president and governed accordingly. Made by real-life blacklistees, "The Front" tells the story of a schlemiel who "fronts" for established writers tainted by the McCarthy witchhunt blacklists, and who over the course of time, finally grows a social conscience. Woody Allen as the schlemiel gives a good performance, with lots of room to be Woody Allen, but also lots of room to genuinely, affectingly act. His climactic scene testifying to the HUAC committee is expertly done by anyone's standards. But the real killer here is Zero Mostel. Drawing upon his own personal experiences as a blacklisted performer, he plays a Borscht-Belt comic turned actor on early television and runs the gamut from broad shtick to heartbreaking tragedy. The fact that he was not rewarded with an Oscar nomination is a public shame. "The Front" changes tone a bit too many times to be one-hundred percent successful, but what's there is powerful and provocative. It is probably one of Woody's finest hours, and definitely one of Zero's.

After all the brouhaha and critical raves for "Skyfall," I finally got around to seeing it. Now I'd really like to know what the critics were smoking. I actually fell asleep in the middle of this loooooong, boring epic, that has practically nothing to do with any previous Bond film, except for an action-packed pre-credits sequence (action-packed, but ridiculous, as Bond is shown to be as indestructible as Superman). Here's the plot: somebody connected with MI6 has stolen a list of agent identities and starts outing them, causing not only their deaths, but great embarrassment to M (Judi Dench), so she reactivates a somewhat dissipated, believed dead, James Bond goes to find the guilty party. A cat and mouse game ensues until he's found. That's it. For two-and-a-half hours. It seems like six. Judi Dench as M acts like someone doing a Judi Dench impression, while Daniel Craig is starting to resemble a "Spitting Image" caricature of himself. The tough-as-nails approach to Bond is great, but only if it's not retrofitted into a super-hero storyline more reminiscent of the Roger Moore era. Javier Bardem plays, well, he plays The Joker, really, but that's not his character name. I was ready to write this off as the worst Bond movie ever until an Aston Martin DB5 shows up, making the most welcome cameo in recent film history. (Other cameos are not as good, including a completely unrecognizable Albert Finney as an old, old family retainer). So because of the Aston Martin, "Skyfall" moves up the list, but it's still in the bottom three of worst Bond films.

Jack Klugman, who had any number of run-ins with producers and writers during the run of "Quincy, M.E.," reportedly refused to appear in this episode because he hated the script. And seeing this cobbled-together mish-mash, who can blame him? His part in the show is instead covered by Dr. Hiro, a take-off on real life L.A. Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi. As played by Yuki Shimoda, though, he is Charlie Chan. He speaks in the same halting English as Sidney Toler, he dispenses aphorisms to one and all, and he even has a jivey, jokey black chauffeur! (It's just too bad Mantan Moreland was already dead by then; he at least would have injected some energy into it.) Dr. Hiro spends half the episode correcting people on the pronunciation of his name, and the other half mispronouncing it along with them. At times the show breaks into broad comedy for no reason (a medical examiner races through the crowded halls of the coroner's office yahooing like a cowboy when a "corpse" is discovered to be alive), and at other times it falls into unintentional comedy, mostly due to a totally inept performance by guest star Bob Crane. Crane plays a doctor who is trying to discover why a toddler is dying in front of him, but he does so with all the concern and urgency of a blade of grass. And that's just one subplot. There's also a body coming in from overseas containing hidden smuggled diamonds, which is to be delivered to a group of thugs who look like they came from a Three Stooge comedy; there's an actress who attempts suicide because she has no friends, even though a dozen or so show up at the hospital; and there's a surprise birthday party for Dr. Hiro, in which his staff and friends (well, actually Quincy's staff and friends) give him a Chinese dragon, even though he's Japanese. Oh, and could the constant lingering shots of the dying baby's parents lighting up cigarettes and leaving the butts everywhere, and a half-dozen closeups of "No Smoking" signs, possibly be clues to the kid's affliction? As over-the-top as Klugman could be in this show, and frequently was, this episode makes it painfully apparent that he was indeed the glue that held the whole thing together, and without him, you have a mess.

The difference between a British sleaze film of the 1970s and an American sleaze film of the 1970s is that the British film is well acted and features interesting locations. "Virgin Witch," quite possibly the quintessential sleaze film of the 1970s, manages both. It's not that the film is not exploitative and rather insulting to women, it's just that one would have to take it seriously to take offense. The film stars real-life sisters Ann and Vicki Michelle as an ambitious career woman (Ann) and a repressed virgin (Vicki) who leave their strict parents and come to London. On the way they meet Johnny (Keith Buckley), in one of those 1970s movie coincidences, and he develops a bone for Vicki. Meanwhile, Ann answers an advert for a model and is "auditioned" by lesbian agent Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines), who invites her up for the weekend at a manor house owned by Gerald Amberly (Neil Hallet), a sort of proper Hugh Hefner, who is (of course) also the leader of a coven of witches. Ann (character name "Christine") is all for it, even the attentions of Sybil, if that's what it takes to get ahead, but Vicki (Betty) is still repressed. Sex rites ensue. In fact, the coven really isn't much into black magic at all, just sex games. Suffice it to say that the film did not have much of a costume budget. It would be a lot easier to dismiss this film as so much trash if it were not decently acted, particularly by Haines and Hallet. Ann Michelle--a kind of road company Martine Beswick--also does well under the direction...at least under the camera pointing...of stuntman-turned-director Ray Austin. There's nothing scary about this "horror" film, and truth be told, even with the vast amount of nudity, there's nothing very erotic about it either. It's a time capsule of a particular era of very strange British thriller films, but a rather disarming one.

"Strictly For Laughs" (which can be found on the Net if one looks hard enough) was an unsold TV pilot in which a lot of aging comedians and/or comic actors sit around and tell each other jokes. It looks as though the idea was to create a kind of cross between Hefner's "Playboy's Penthouse" and Mike Stokey's "Stump the Stars." The result, however, is very, very strange. Not unentertaining, just...strange. The assembled comics are a disparate bunch, with the best known probably Rose Marie and Mel Blanc. Least known is likely Jack Durant, who in the 1930s had been part of the acrobatic comedy team Mitchell and Durant, widely regarded as the worst comedy team ever. The reason to watch it today is to see Moe Howard, of the Three Stooges, in stand-up mode, and he acquits himself quite well. Blanc is also funny, telling a joke in Porky Pig-ese. But while the comics--four at a time--are seated around a table, there are plants in the background who try to laugh uproariously at everything that is said, and the laughter begins to sound forced. What makes the show truly strange, though, is that the assembly of comedians, from host Dave Barry (not the humorist) on down, look more like gangsters than gagsters. This is one sober, stern, dour-looking bunch of joke-tellers, who exhibit very little looseness or chemistry between one another. Instead the effect is more like a meeting of crime families with punchlines. Barry in particular is charmless and rather intimidating. Maybe the idea would have worked better with up-and-coming comics.

"The Wicker Tree" is the long awaited follow-up to the brilliant 1973 film "The Wicker Man," one of the best and most unusual thrillers ever made. Truth be told, we could have waited a little longer for this to appear...like forever. Writer/Director Robin Hardy has basically remade his original story with different characters, updating his Macguffin--crop failure in a remote Scottish village--in an interesting way. But that's largely where the similarity, and the interest, ends. Two young born-again Christians from Texas (Henry Garrett and Brittania Nicol) come to the Scottish village to perform--she's a pop singer--and try and save the souls of the poor Celts, but the inhabitants of the village have an ulterior motive. Garrett is bland as a goofy/slick, horny, cowboy yahoo, but Nicol is downright painful to watch and listen to. This could be the worst presentation of a supposedly talented singer on-screen since Patty Duke in "Valley of the Dolls." And while "The Wicker Man" (at least the uncut version) slowly and carefully builds its suspense and teases the audience just enough to keep them riveted, "The Wicker Tree" is so disjointed and confusing that one wonders if the scenes were edited together in the wrong order. What's more, some sequences are played for broad, almost "Carry On" style comedy, while others are apparently supposed to be sincere. Graham McTavish is good as the head of the community, the role Christopher Lee played in the original, and Lee himself shows up for about one minute in the most pointless cameo imaginable, there for no reason but to include him in the proceedings. Honeysuckle Weeks is also good in the "Willow" part as the town nympho, and knows how to not wear a costume. But undercutting everything, even the occasional well-staged and well-directed sequence, is the music. "The Wicker Man" was a semi-musical, using old and new folk song in an unusual, but enchanting way, utilizing clever musical scoring. John Scott's bombastic orchestral score for this one, however, is egregiously and annoyingly inappropriate at all times. Sometimes it sounds like an old 1970s Amicus movie score, and other times it sounds like bad imitation Bernard Herrmann. Never does it sound right. The ending of "The Wicker Tree," which echoes the ending of the original, has some rough power to it, but it's just not enough. While the basic idea behind this film is sound, the execution is sorely lacking.

"The Girl Who Dared" sounds more like a Western adventure instead of a B old-dark-house mystery, but the latter is what it is. This fast (under an hour), breezy film is something of a variation of "And Then There Were None," and actually beat the film version of the Agatha Christie novel to the screens by a year! It leaves no convention unexplored and no cliché unplumbed, and the identity of the killer is more random than motive-inspired. But it is competently done, with some interesting camera work for such a cheapie, and a couple decent plot twists. The trapping of the killer is unique, too. The cast performs competently, and some of the actors play against their usual types, particularly Roy Barcroft, normally a Western and Serial heavy who here plays the hotheaded, jealous ex-husband of one of the key characters, and Kirk "Superman" Alyn, as the equally hot-headed brother of the "Girl" of the title. John "Perry White" Hamilton also enjoys a larger and different kind of role than he was normally given. If only the filmmakers had been so generous with Willie Best, who once again shuffles around as a pop-eyed, comic relief servant who is afraid of his own shadow. All in all, it's worth an hour of a movie buff's time.

For all it's impact on the industry, the heyday of Hammer Films encompassed a relatively short time, roughly 1958 to 1969. "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" is one of the last really good films the studio made (1971's "Blood From the Mummy's Tomb" was probably the last). Peter Cushing is back as Baron Frankenstein, and more ruthless than ever, particularly in the infamous rape scene that was imposed upon the cast, director and screenwriter by Hammer's head Sir James Careras. Nobody on the set liked the idea...but one did as one was told. In truth, it doesn't make a lot of sense within the context of the story, and the film doesn't need it. Cushing is, as always, thoroughly professional, even when the script dictates that he do silly things, and Veronica Carlson is excellent as the woman trapped by the evil of the Baron. The real acting honors, however, go to Freddie Jones, as the more-or-less monster, and Maxine Audley, as his widow, for the scene in which they reunite. Probably no sequence in any Hammer film has been played as beautifully and movingly as this one. It alone is worth seeing the film for. But there are many other memorable scenes as well. Old pro Terrence Fisher directs very capably, and the conflagration finale is well staged and spectacular.

In the best of circumstances, meaning complete and uncut, "A Tragedy at Midnight" still could not be called a good movie. The writing is awful, the direction slipshod--shots rarely match, and in some scenes the actors don't seem to realize they're on camera; they stare down until their cue comes, at which time they suddenly leap into character--and the acting in many cases is pure burlesque. Most Abbott and Costello movies are more realistic. The goal was obviously to do a screwball mystery, ala "The Thin Man," with a little "Ghost Breakers" thrown in, but the characters here act like imbeciles. Having said that, the version of this film that is readily available on Netflix makes matters even worse by having had about one-quarter of its original running time chopped out, so as to fit into an hour time slot for television. This 53 minute version makes no sense--none--since the eliminated footage was apparently all exposition. What's left of the film involves a radio sleuth who makes the cops look like idiots (no big task here), and wakes up one hungover morning next to the corpse of a woman, not his wife. Can he solve the mystery, clear himself, elude the police, appease his wife, and still make his Wednesday broadcast? John Howard and Margaret Lindsay have very little chemistry, and Keye Luke's servant role makes the work of Mantan Moreland look dignified. There is also a huge cast of solid solid character actors, mostly wasted in virtual extra roles. Republic should have stuck to serials.

Before the era of home video formats, people simply had to rely on written reviews of "Son of Dracula," almost all of which were negative. In particular, Lon Chaney, Jr., has endured years of abuse for his performance as Dracula (or his son, depending on your opinion). But now the film is readily available and the truth is easy to see: it's pretty good. Not brilliant, but pretty good. Chaney's performance is actually one of his best for Universal; certainly his most atypical. Chaney excelled at characters who were out of control and childlike, but his Dracula is supremely in control, and seething with menace. It is his iciest, most restrained performance. Those who still berate Chaney for his "lack of range" should be forced to admit that he played Dracula far more effectively than Bela Lugosi could have played Lennie. Interestingly, the rest of the cast is equally "miscast:" doomed hero Robert Paige was normally a musical leading man, while femme fatale Louise Albritton was usually a blonde comedienne. Both are quite effective in the horror genre. Frank Craven does well as the folksy doctor who is forced to take on the Van Helsing role (though J. Edward Bromberg is the official Van Helsing surrogate). This is one of the most unusual Universal horror films, in that it is more horror noir than melodrama--fitting, given that it was directed by noir master Robert Siodmak. It also represents the only time Dracula, or any relation thereof, is seen outside of Europe. "Son of Dracula" contains one of the creepiest scenes in any Universal horror film, the one involving "Queen Zimba" (played by the delightfully ancient Adeline de Walt Reynolds), and the most downbeat ending. All in all, "Son of Dracula" is one of the most interesting Universal efforts from its second horror cycle, and the fact that it has endured such a bad rap over the decades is totally unfair.

Is this the worst Three Stooges comedy ever made? No, not really. It's not as painful to watch as some of the last shorts to feature a very ill Curly Howard. But it is the most peculiar one they ever did. Larry is essentially imitating Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalsi, right down to the torn t-shirt (and Brando looks a LOT better shirtless). He at least he seems to be enjoying proving that he can do more than get slapped. Shemp does what he can with the ridiculous role of a drunkard whose DTs are restricted to a gigantic canary--somebody in a really dreadful bird costume--while Moe plays the antagonist of the piece, the sort of part that was usually filled by Vernon Dent. So what gives? One can only speculate that this script was not written for the Stooges. The Columbia Short Subject department often re-filmed the same scripts, virtually unchanged, with different comics or teams. So the most charitable explanation for this short is that it has been prepared for another studio team, but for whatever reason given to the Stooges. Maybe it seemed like a good idea that the time.

"Bud and Lou" was made at a time when Hollywood was turning out quite a few biopics of Golden Age personalities, both for theatrical release and television, but this one has to rank as one of the worst. It offers a not-terribly accurate overview of the lives of the comics and their partnership, but renders the characters in blacks and whites. In short, Bud Abbott (played with no distinction by Harvey Korman) is depicted as a meek, go-along guy, and Lou Costello (very poorly played by Buddy Hackett) comes off as a mentally-impaired bully. Meanwhile their business manager, Eddie Sherman (played fairly well by Arte Johnson)is depicted as the sympathetic anchor in their lives. While this is a revisionist take on things, it is not unexpected, since Sherman was a major source for the book upon which the movie is based, Bob Thomas's eponymous "Bud and Lou" (and neither the book nor the movie explains why, if Sherman was looking out for their affairs so well, they both got into such trouble with the IRS). The film covers a good twenty years, yet no one ages or changes in any way; whereas the real Bud Abbott aged and changed greatly from their first film to their last, here he looks exactly the same in every scene. What really sinks it, though, even more so than the character and event inaccuracies, are the painfully unfunny recreations of A&C routines by K&H. Whereas the real guys could do bits like "Who's on First" in their sleep, with unerring timing and delivery, Korman and Hackett sound like they're cold reading the bits for the first time, with no sense of timing, meaning, energy, or performing chemistry. In particular, Hackett's vacant, gaping stare and unbelieving line delivery during these classic routines looks more like Lennie asking George about the rabbits than Costello asking Abbott about the first baseman. Some Hollywood figures were so distinctive that anyone attempting to portray them is automatically at a disadvantage. "Bud and Lou" proves that in spades.

"The Hungry Glass" is a good example of just how creepy and intense the "Thriller" program from the early 1960s could be. It is a fairly standard haunted house story, but is presented with suspense and even a little wit. Of particular interest to old TV buffs is the fact that the episode features three 1960s television icons in one episode: William Shatner, Russell Johnson and Donna Douglas. Shatner's role as a young married photographer who moves into a "dream house" is practically a dry run for his turn a few years later in the classic "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" episode of "The Twilight Zone," in that his character has had mental breakdown issues in the past, so he does not know if he is really seeing the apparitions or imagining them. Johnson's character, meanwhile, is the rational anchor to the goings-on...again, not unlike his function as the Professor on "Gilligan's Island." As for Douglas, she's just there for eye-candy. She should, however, had played the role of Shatner's wife, since the single biggest problem with this episode is the performance of the actress who did, Joanna Heyes. Heyes is incredibly shrill, clumsy, and amateurish, and the frequent references to her beauty is...well...kind. How, then, did she get the lead? Could the fact that this actress only appeared in TV episodes directed by one Douglas Heyes have something to do with it? If you can get past her, this is an outstanding episode.

From the opening shot of the Tower of London labeled "Newgate Prison" to the Scotland Yard inspector who feels obligated to reintroduce himself every time he walks into a scene, it is very hard to watch "The Black Sleep" with a straight face. Its main claims to fame are its large cast of horror veterans--Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Tor Johnson, and, some say, Akim Tamiroff (who was really replacing Peter Lorre)--and the fact that this was Lugosi's last real film, shot after his release from self-imposed drug rehab. Lugosi dodders quite a bit, and looks unwell, but he does what he can with his non-role as a mute major-domo. Chaney, meanwhile, reprises his inarticulate, murderous brute routine that he had perfected through such other films as "The Black Castle" and "The Indestructible Man," while Carradine goes completely into the stratosphere as an insane religious fanatic who looks like he just escaped from the Bastille. Johnson is, well, Johnson, complete with the blind contact lenses he later wore in Ed Wood's epics. Rathbone, as the mad doctor who turns humans into monsters for love, is adequate, only really snapping into life in his scenes opposite Tamiroff, but the real lead of the film, in just about every scene, is the miscast Herbert Rudley as Rathbone's assistant, and the film's hero. In addition to being too old for the role of a medical student, Rudley was a very unsubtle actor who telegraphed every thought to the balcony...all right for comedy, but not so good here. He, Rathbone, and Carradine would all fare much better that same year in "The Court Jester." An even bigger villain than Rathbone's character, though, is the script by John C. Higgins, which must have been 300 pages long to include all the talk, talk, talk, talk. Every second on screen is talked-to-death and every plot point over-explained, which serves to make the film seem much longer than it is. Reginald LeBorg's "direction" accomplishes nothing but to record the endless dialogue, though he does manage to get in one trademark dream/montage sequence, reminiscent of some of his 1940s work at Universal. Despite the low budget the castle sets are quite impressive, but all that means is that seeing this cast against those sets makes watching a set of still photos of "The Black Sleep" as satisfying, if not more so, as sitting through the movie.

Walt Disney's sojourn in South America on behalf of the Roosevelt Administration's "Good Neighbor Policy" would make for an interesting film, but this isn't it. The film is not so much a documentary as a dry recitation of the itineraries of the people involved, often read by surviving family members, with little or no perspective into what the trip meant (save for allowing legendary design artist Mary Blair to blossom professionally) and what it ultimately accomplished. Some of the footage is interesting, but rarely does any of it contain the energy of the poster image of Walt swinging a lasso. While Disney's appearance in S.A. was no question big news down there, the film implies that it was also unique. Other Hollywood figures--notably Orson Welles--were also sent down south by FDR (and in Welles' case the almost-result was the unfinished "It's All True"), while other South American performers were invited up to Hollywood. Perhaps most telling is the subtext that runs throughout the film, blaming the 1941 strike at the Disney studio, which forced it to unionize, as the factor that killed both the studio's spirit and its brief Golden Age of innovation, a dubious (but Disney-sanctioned) interpretation of the facts. This isn't a terrible film, just not a particularly interesting or informative one.

Criticizing "Hillbillys in a Haunted House" (yes, that's really the way "Hillbillys" is spelled) might seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but even by 1960s grind-house standards, this picture is dreadful. In fact, I think Ed Wood can breathe a little easier wherever he is, knowing that THIS is really the worst movie ever made. Only one scene involving Lon Chaney, Jr., and a murder has any kind of impact, but it doesn't really belong in the picture, since that it is played straight, and the rest of this mess is farcical. Much has been made about the star trio of fading horror stars, but actually seeing them here is truly sad. Chaney tries to inject some life, but it's pretty hopeless (this same year Chaney was featured in a good big-budget Western, "Welcome to Hard Times," and was a semi-regular on TV's "Pistols and Petticoats," so did he REALLY need the money that bad?). John Carradine phones it in, apparently not having bothered to read the script beforehand (in once scene he calls Basil Rathbone "George" when the character's name is really "Gregor"). It is poor Rathbone, however, who elicits the highest cringe rating. Clearly ailing, his speech is slightly slurred as he struggles to get the maimed dialogue out. The Country Western leads are inept, with someone named Don Bowman, ostensibly the comic relief, taking the Unfunniest Man Alive award away from Fidel Castro, and Ferlin Husky grimacing so mightily as he goes for the high notes that it looks like a tribute to Chaney transforming into a werewolf. Joi Lansing is awful, but an eyeful, and Linda Ho is so amateurish that she should have had her SAG card revoked. The plot involves spies, a "haunted" house, a gorilla in the basement, really dumb comedy, even dumber characters, and far too many musical numbers, which means it could have been made in the mid 1940s (with largely the same cast!), and they might have gotten away with it. But coming a year before "Rosemary's Baby," it's just pathetic. If you want to see the nadir, knowing that you'll probably never see anything worse, then watch it.

Despite its star trio of 1970s horror masters--Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry--"Madhouse" is not so much a horror film as a murder mystery with horror trappings. Very loosely based on Angus Hall's rather trashy novel "Devilday" (in which the central character of horror movie actor "Paul Harvard Toombs" is much more sinister), it features Price in a role that was at the time not too far removed from his real life situation: a film actor who would really like to move past horror films, but who for a variety of reasons was duty bound to keep making them. Price's character suffered a breakdown after his fiancé was horribly murdered. Several years later, after he is contracted to return to his signature role of "Dr. Death" for a television series, a new rash of murders occur and even Toombs himself does not know whether he is responsible or not. Cushing appears as the writer of the "Dr. Death" show and Quarry, in an uncharacteristically amusing performance, plays the producer, a parody of Amicus Films' Milton Subotsky (Amicus and Subotsky co-produced). Adrienne Corri has a bizarre role as a crazed, burn-scarred former actress, who has taken to living in Cushing's basement and raising spiders, which doesn't really fit in with the rest of the film. Still, as a quasi-horror film, "Madhouse" is fine; it contains some great, atmospheric scenes of "Dr. Death" stalking his victims, and despite its flying in from left field, the whole Corri subplot is undeniably unnerving. As a mystery...well, it's not really very hard to figure out who is responsible for the killings. But what "Madhouse" was obviously intended to do, and what it pretty much fails at, is to provide Price with the kind of career summation picture that Peter Bogdanovich gave Boris Karloff through 1968's "Targets." Old film clips from "House of Usher," "Pit and the Pendulum," "Tales of Terror," "The Haunted Palace" and "The Raven" are interspliced to give us a look at the actor's background, but they are not presented in a way that offers any kind of resonance to Toombs/Price's career. I had the opportunity to talk briefly with Vincent Price about this film a couple years after it was made, and he was not very happy with the way it turned out. But purely on the surface level, "Madhouse" is an entertaining, grisly whodunnit that offers good roles to its three stars.