Films Catch Up 16

More films I watched last year.

1. The Cat Girl (1957)

Leonora Johnson arrives at her uncle’s house; she’s been told to come alone but instead brings her husband Richard and another couple, their friends. Her uncle informs her she’s the heir to the house (good) but also a family curse (bad), which he doesn’t lay out clearly. He’s then killed by his pet leopard.

Her husband has married her for the money; being extremely reckless he invited the other couple because he’s having an affair with Cathy. Leonora sees the two of them in the woods. Cathy looks up and sees the leopard which kills Richard. Leonora explains to the police that she’s a were-cat and so killed him, but they don’t believe her.

Leonora’s former boyfriend is a doctor and after some time in a mental institution he helps her come back into society, having her take outings with his wife Dorothy. She senses the leopard while at the same time feeling jealous about Dorothy. The family curse overwhelms her.

The exact nature of the curse, of being a were-cat, is said obliquely in the words but conveyed directly by the action. There’s a couple of extremely odd bits; the film loves to look at Leonora (Barbara Shelley’s) bare back. For some reason she’s alone and naked in bed in her uncle’s house when he sends his housekeeper for her; we see her sit up from behind then the camera looks away and watches her shadow as she puts on her ankle length nightie and then dressing gown on top. Is this supposed to say something or is it (implied) nudity for nudity’s sake?

Watch This: Creepy were-cat horror
Don’t Watch This: Clearly the curse is real and the leopard is real from the start, the whole "is she imagining things" is drawn out and clumsily handled

2. Hands Of A Stranger (1962)

Vernon Paris is an amazing pianist. After a successful concert he gets in a taxi, where the driver tells him that he has a son who plays piano. Then there’s an accident.

Taken to hospital it seems he’s going to lose his hands. But the doctor recognises him and so steals two hands from the body of a murder victim, transplanting them. Vernon can’t accept the new hands, though the doctor declares it a success, keeping the source of the hands a secret.

He complains about the hands to his girlfriend. She doesn’t care – she liked him as a famous pianist, and recoiling from looking at the scars manages to back into an open flame and burns to death. Vernon looks on, frozen.

Vernon goes to visit the taxi driver, finding him out but his son in. Unable to play the piano he kills the son. The cop who brought in the murder victim tries to get information out of the doctor but the two hide information from each other, allowing Vernon to go on a killing spree.

The transplant causes you to go crazy is not precisely new even at this time (1962; although unofficial this is the fourth film adaption of a novel on this topic) the fact that they were from a victim is an interesting twist. It’s not the hands themselves making Vernon evil. It’s his loss of ability that turns him into a monster. Creepy stuff.

Watch This: A spooky, inevitable change into a monster
Don’t Watch This: Every stage is laid out in clear, excruciating detail

3. Of Human Bondage

Philip is studying art in Paris; told he has no true genius for it returns to London and goes to medical school. He’s poor – getting money from an uncle, and also has a club foot, which comes to light when they’re studying a patient with a club foot and the bluff, oblivious lecturer has Philip show his own.

He falls for Mildred, a waitress, taking her out several times. She leaves him for a rich, older man. Relieved to be free of her he concentrates on his studies, also pursues a relationship with a writer friend; but just as Mildred did not return his affections, it becomes clear he doesn’t love her. Then Mildred returns; it seems that her beau was already married, and now she’s pregnant.

Philip is going to marry her and adopt the child, then his handsome, exciting friend Harry steals her away. He goes back to concentrating on his studies, but one of his patients invites him to Sunday dinner, where Philip strikes up a friendship with his daughter Sally. He comes across Mildred homeless, and offers her and the baby a place to stay. Having learned a lesson, he keeps the relationship on non-romantic terms. This makes Mildred furious and she destroys the flat, his pictures and Philip’s money, which stops him completing his studies, and leaves.

Phillip falls ill and is admitted to the hospital, where a contrite Harry doctors him back to health, and Sally comes to visit him. Then Mildred is brought in, has a final conversation and dies, her symptoms suggesting TB while everyone dances around the fact she’s a sex worker. The bluff oblivious doctor operates on Phillip’s foot, Phillip’s uncle dies leaving him enough money to complete his studies and he and Sally get back together.

A loose adaption of the Somerset Maughan novel of the same name, Philip is caught up in his unrequited and inappropriate love for Mildred. When he’s released from it then he can have an appropriate requited love, get a decent job and also have his foot fixed. Although this is an obvious message and the film is very mannered and old-fashioned it manages to do a little bit more, Mildred’s ambitions constrained by class, which can only be trumped by money, Philip’s constrained by money and emotions. This is one of three film adaptions of the novel.

Watch This: Restrained 1940s film about the chains of desire
Don’t Watch This: Slow, uncomfortable, everyone is incapable of doing anything sensible

4. God Is A Bullet

Bob Hightower is a police detective; one night while he’s out detecting a gang invade his house, murder his wife and kidnap his daughter. It turns out they’re a satanic cult, part of a subculture of crime and tattooed weirdos living on the fringes of society.

Case Hardin has escaped the cult, though she still lives on the fringes of society. When Hightower asks for her help to get his daughter back, maybe go on a roaring rampage of revenge, she tells him he’ll have to go fully undercover, otherwise the cult will vanish, they know when someone’s not part of the subculture.

Hightower leaves with Hardin, gets tattooed, even one on his face because otherwise they won’t believe in him. The Ferryman, who has one foot in all the weird worlds, offers suggestions where to go. They get involved in drug trade, killing someone the cult leader is involved with in order to get close to him. There’s several violent sequences, which range from dark and incoherent to interesting.

The cult is never explained or interrogated, which is a pity, though it does note the way that both the leader and society insist on making them other, making anything outside the cult harsh and unwelcoming. This is somewhat undercut by the connections with others of similar beliefs and the surrounding criminal subculture. There’s a mystery around why Hardin is helping Hightower but it didn’t really catch my attention and is not especially interesting or plausible when explained.

Watch This: Cool action, grim revenge
Don’t Watch This: The most interesting questions are ignored

5. Lifeforce

The British/American space shuttle Churchill is investigating Halley’s Comet when they find a spaceship lurking behind it. They’re cut off from communications as they investigate. A bat-like creature attacks them; then they find three bodies frozen in capsules.

Later the shuttle crashes, the escape craft missing, the three bodies on board. They take them to a space research laboratory in London. When they try to autopsy the female body she come alive, steals lifeforce from a guard and escapes into the city, draining more and more lifeforce. Two hours later the dead guard comes back to life, also able to steal lifeforce.

They’re space vampires, and worse still, they’re spreading exponentially!

Now they find the escape pod, with Carlsen, the shuttle commander on board. He explains what happened up in space, how he was compelled to open the capsule and mix his lifeforce with the female vampire. They hypnotise him and realise he has a psychic link with her. They use this to track her to a psychiatric hospital, also learning she can shapeshift.

The two male vampires shapeshift to look like guards and escape, sucking the lifeforce out of people. London is swiftly overrun by vampires, martial law, apocalyptic scenes etc. The spacecraft comes back and all the lifeforce is channelled to one vampire.

Space vampires is a slightly difficult concept to take seriously, but the film insists and it’s commitment pays off when things go fully off the rails in a chaotic London. The genuinely terrible precautions in the laboratory are sort of handwaved away by the psychic powers of the vampires, but still, I’m unimpressed.

Watch This: A head-swimming combination of trippy space vampires and grim 80s apocalyptica
Don’t Watch This: Despite many good actors it’s a very silly plot

6. Game Of Death 2

Following the events of Game Of Death Billy Lo (Bruce Lee et al) suspects that someone wants his friend Chin Ku dead. He visits his brother Bobby, gives him a book. Then Chin is killed. Billy goes to visit Chin’s daughter who gives him a film Chin left with her. They’re attacked; Billy fights them off.

At the funeral Billy is turned away from viewing the body, later a helicopter interrupts the burial and steals the coffin. Billy tries to stop them, grabbing the helicopter, he falls and dies.

Bobby gets hold of the film which shows Chin Ku at The Palace Of Death. This is a martial arts school (?) run by a guy called Lewis. He has various deadly challenges, and also he has lions who he feeds people to when he he defeats them. Bobby goes there, doesn’t challenge Lewis, impresses him with his kung fu. Bobby is attacked by a masked man, then a woman arrives in Bobby’s room. She tries (succeeds?) to seduce him, then tries to kill him. Telling Lewis about this a lion attacks, then the masked man kills Lewis.

Bobby suspects Lewis’s one-armed manservant (?) follows him to the underground Tower of Death (?) where he battles people and dodges unlikely traps and devices to uncover the secret. Game Of Death used footage of Bruce Lee spread thinly across a film made after his death. This film uses archive footage of Bruce Lee even more sparsely before giving up and killing his character half way through. For this and other reasons it wildly shifts tone and kung fu subgenre several times, eventually settling on a James Bond style underground base and villain. Incoherent, insultingly stupid, several good stunts.

Watch This: A little archive footage of Bruce Lee and some solid kung fu fights
Don’t Watch This: Ridiculous, disgraceful attempt to promote the film on Bruce Lee’s death and legacy

7. The Monster Club

Erasmus (Vincent Price), a vampire, bites a man. This turns out to be R Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) Chetwynd-Hayes is a horror writer, both in real life (his stories inspiring some of the film) and in the world of the film. Learning who he is, as thanks, Erasmus takes him to The titular Monster Club. There various events take place that inspire Erasmus to tell stories, which appear as films within the film. It's a horror portmanteau!

In the first film a Shadmock (a hybrid of hybrids of vampires, zombies and ghouls – there’s a chart) hires a young woman to help him with his library and collection of artefacts. He falls in love with her; she lets her boyfriend in to rob the place. The Shadmock whistles, one of the most terrible things that monsters can do.

A movie producer (“He’s a vampire?” “Aren’t all producers?”) shows some of his new film, based on his own childhood but set in the present (Erasmus says this is to cut down on cost of sets and costumes). The child is bullied at school, his father often absent at work. Then a squad of vampire hunters attack and there are twists and turns.

In the final film a film director goes looking for a location, finds a spooky village. It’s spooky and untouched because it’s full of monsters. He escapes, only to discover that there is no escape.

In between there are musical numbers, including a stripper who is lit as a silhouette, and then removes her flesh to be a skeleton. These are almost all competent but forgettable, Vincent Price clearly making an effort to be the life and soul of the party. As a portmanteau film it almost works, though it’s far too interested in horror films as films with two film-themed films out of three, and the framing story being about a horror writer. For some reason one of the production companies is called Sword And Sorcery Productions.

Watch This: Silly and fun monster club made scarier thanks to the component films
Don’t Watch This: Three very slight horror shorts spoiled by forgettable music danced to by people in ridiculous masks

8. 65

Mills (Adam Driver), a space truck driver, takes a two year contract to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment, because although this is a space-going civilisation apparently it has an American healthcare system, or at least the American healthcare system that fiction uses to motivate people. Sometime later he’s driving his space truck and they’re hit by an asteroid, and they crash on a planet. Actually maybe he’s a space BUS driver as there are passengers. Only one survives, Koa, a young girl (Ariana Greenblatt). The translator is broken so its hard to communicate.

There’s an escape pod, but it’s up a mountain from where they crashed. The asteroid field is a problem, as a big one is coming for the planet. He lies to Koa about her family, indicating through word, mime and symbol that they’re up the mountain, and then takes her with him.

The planet is Earth 65,000,000 years ago so there are dinosaurs who try to attack them. The asteroid on course is the one that will kill all the dinosaurs.

This then is the film, the two find themselves in threatening situations as they try to cross the territory between them and their destination. Between the scenes of peril a little of their story and character is introduced, and Mills discovers a little about the land, the creatures and the route.

Watch This: Pacy dinosaur adventure
Don’t Watch This: Space bus driver with tragic backstory bonds with girl with tragic present

9. The Revenge Of Frankenstein

Baron von Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is sentenced to death by guillotine due to his crimes (see The Curse Of Frankenstein). Escaping with the help of the hunchback Karl, he disguises himself as “Dr Stein” and sets up practice in the city of Carlsbrück. He’s popular with the wealthy (especially women) and also with the  poor, operating a charity hospital.

The medical council are unhappy that he has not joined them; they operate a closed medical shop in the city. As an aside they also seek to ensure that he is actually qualified as a doctor. They send a delegation to speak with him. Hans Kleve, one of the doctors, recognises Dr Stein as Baron von Frankenstein; he’s an admirer and so keeps his secret and joins him in his experiments.

What experiments? Brain transplants. Stein has successfully transplanted the brain of an orangutan into a chimpanzee. Later the ape ate it’s mate, but that is probably unrelated. Karl has volunteered, hoping to be rid of his disabled body. He becomes nervous when Kleve tells him he will be a famous medical specimen.

Karl escapes the hospital, breaks into the laboratory where he burns his old body. The landlord, drunk, goes to investigate. Karl kills him. Margaret, who assists the poor in the hospital, finds him. Karl has developed problems with his arm and leg, like when he was hunchbacked. He disappears before Margaret can bring Kleve, thinking that he was the patient they transplanted him into.

Karl runs amok, killing a woman, then gatecrashing a party that Stein is at. He begs him for help as he has the same deformities as before, then dies, but he uses the name Frankenstein. His paper thin false identity won’t stand up, but there’s a final twist to the tale.

A horror film that strips a lot from the Frankenstein story, though a few interesting elements remain. The true horror is a real one, suggesting that no matter what you do, you can’t leave your infirmities behind.

Watch This: Period body swap medical horror
Don’t Watch This: The re-making of Frankenstein into a middle-aged, cold medical experimenter rather than the young and overly sensitive almost-alchemist of the book is very uninteresting

10. Arrest Bulldog Drummond

Bulldog Drummond, his pal Algy and Drummond’s manservant Tenny are in London making preparations for Drummond’s wedding to Phyllis Clavering, which includes a honeymoon on a round the world cruise. They are invited to the house of a scientist who has made a death ray – it requires lots of electricity which causes problems with the neighbours. They arrive to find the scientist dying, declaring that they should “beware the Stinger.”

Drummond becomes a suspect, starts to investigate. The Stinger sends a letter telling him to give up. He discovers a stingray has been stolen from the botanical gardens, puts together the electrical failures with the death ray. All this causes him to miss the wedding, but he spots both Phyllis and a suspect on the cruise ship as it sails; she has, as threatened, gone on honeymoon without him (with an elderly aunt).

Spotting Phyllis, The Stinger fakes a message from Drummond which makes her suspicious. At the first stop (a Caribbean Island) she gets off and goes to the police, to discover that Drummond has flown there to intercept the ship. They then spend the rest of the film trying to capture The Stinger and recover the death ray, for once in bright warm sunshine rather than the darkness and fog that characterised other films in this series.

Watch This: Bulldog Drummond goes full Bond-mode with a secret weapon and a murderer with a signature, animal-themed weapon
Don’t Watch This: It’s even more ridiculous than usual, with Drummond first accused, then put in charge of the investigation