Tag: Vincent Price

The Big Circus (1959) – A Movie Review

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I’m doing this review on a whim.  I just saw this movie for the first time since I saw it on Million Dollar Movie probably about fifty years ago and what I could remember of it even as a kid was that it seemed slightly hammy.  In retrospect it’s a lot hammy.  Instead of the Ringling Brothers’ Barnum and Bailey Circus; “The Greatest Show Earth,” we’re watching the Whirling and Borman Brothers Circus; “The Biggest Show on Earth.”  Remarkable creativity there.

But Hank Whirling (played by Victor Mature) has split up with the Borman brothers and taken his own circus on the road.  But he needs money so he goes to the local bank and gets a loan but in exchange for the money he has to take along two bank employees; Randy Sherman (played by Red Buttons) and Helen Harrison (played by Rhonda Fleming).  Helen is a publicist who is supposed to help make the circus’s tour successful (and end up as the love interest for Hank).  Red Buttons is there to be Red Buttons and annoy everyone.  Vincent Price is the circus master Hans Hagenfeld.  Gilbert Roland is the high wire star Zach Colino.  Peter Lorre is an obese decrepit version of himself as an alcoholic clown named Skeeter.  David Nelson is Tommy Gordon, the aerialist and saboteur.  And Howard McNear is Mr. Lomax, the bank employee sent to foreclose on the circus when Red Buttons refuses.

Forget the plot.  It has to do with the Borman Brothers sabotaging the circus.  But it’s too dumb to care about.  What you have here is a collection of B-movie actors strung together to make a cinemascope spectacle involving elephants and lions.  And you know this from the get-go.  Anything with Red Buttons in it will be nothing else.  And Victor Mature and Vincent Price are exhibits B and C.  Look, they didn’t even get Ricky Nelson, the popular Nelson son.  Instead, they got his brother David, the one who couldn’t sing.  And the only thing Howard McNear is remembered for is playing the oddly disturbing Floyd the Barber character from the Andy Griffith Show.

So, I’m watching this clunker.  Everything about it is hackneyed and telegraphed.  But there’s a lion act in it and it’s really fun to watch.  And there’s a clown sequence and it’s mildly amusing.  And there are some scenes with the elephants and suddenly I’m remembering how I used to like seeing the elephants at the circus.  And there are some girls dancing around in harem outfits and that’s not so bad.  And even Victor Mature and Vincent Price hamming it up isn’t so bad.

And before you know it, I find myself enjoying this awful movie.  By the end when they introduce Steve Allen as himself providing network tv as a lifeline to save the circus during a NYC subway strike, I find myself completely forgiving all the schmaltz.  I even forgive the scene where the tightrope walker manages to cross over Niagara Falls to restore his lost courage and honor.

And of course, by the end of the movie there are at least two incipient marriages.  Victor Mature will marry Rhonda Fleming and Red Buttons will marry the sister of Mature’s character (whoever the hell she was).  All they left out was bloated Peter Lorre marrying one of the elephants.

So, I can’t recommend this movie on its merits.  It has none.  But if you’re nostalgic for the circus, watch this and pretend the Ringling Bros. circus still exists.  The lion scene is really fun.

The Fly (1958) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Andre and François Delambre are two brothers who own a technology company.  Andre is a genius and he is working on a teleportation machine.  He shows it to his wife Helene but she notes that the machine still has some problems.  When Andre thinks the machine is perfected, he tries to teleport his cat but it disappears.  Finally, after much work, he shows his wife that it can teleport a guinea pig successfully.  Next, he plans to teleport himself.

The next day Andre’s little son catches a fly with a white head in the garden with his butterfly net.  Helene makes him release it.  When Andre does not appear for dinner Helene goes down to his laboratory.  But the door is locked and Helene finds a typewritten letter from Andre saying his experiment has gone awry.  A fly entered into the chamber and during the teleportation the fly got a human arm and head and Andre got the head and leg of a fly.  He could still think like a human but he was finding his mind slipping away.  He tells Helene to catch the fly so that he can go through the teleporter with it and hopefully return to normal.  They catch the fly but it escapes again.  Andre despairs and tells Helene (through writing on a blackboard) that he will destroy his dangerous machine and his notes.  And he wants to die so he tells Helene to assist him by crushing his head and arm in the hydraulic press in his lab to destroy the evidence of his horrible accident.  She agrees.  After helping her husband to suicide she calls her brother-in-law François (played by Vincent Price) who calls police inspector Charas.  When they arrive, Helene tells them how she killed her husband.  Later on, after much coaxing she tells them the story of the fly.  But they assume she has gone mad.  Inspector Charas gets a warrant for her arrest for murder.  But just before she is taken away Andre’s son tells François that he has found the fly in a spider’s web.  François calls Charas to the web and they see the fly with its human head and hand and hear it cry for help as the spider comes to devour it.  Charas crushes the spider and its victim with a rock and is horrified by the reality of Helene’s story.  Charas and François figure a story involving Andre’s suicide to protect Helene.  The movie ends with François assuming the guardianship over Andre’s wife and son.

I saw this movie as a child on tv.  And then, as now, the big scene in this movie is the spider web scene.  The pathetic little voice coming out of the haggard face of the fly is horrifying as we see the enormously magnified head of the spider come closer and closer to the poor trapped fly.  The other notable scene is where Helene pulls off the hood hiding Andre’s head and we see his repulsive fly face.  It’s kind of hard to see it.  It seemed out of focus but it was reasonably hideous and Helene screams to very good effect.  The only decent acting was done by the police inspector.  The rest of the cast acted their lines but no Academy Awards were earned.  Vincent Price gave his usual over the top delivery.  One surprise for me was that the actor who played Andre was David Hedison and I recognized him as the captain on the 1960’s television series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” about a US Navy submarine that was always bumping into giant squid and other under sea monsters.  This movie is for connoisseurs of campy giant insect sci-fi films.  It’s not as good as “Them!” but it’s still fun for fans of this type of movie.

House on Haunted Hill (1959) – A Horror Movie Review

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Halloween has come and gone but I would like to add a few more movies to the list and maybe finish off with some kind of summation.

The date (1959) is inserted in the post title to differentiate this film from the 1999 remake.  I actually paid money to see the remake in a theater and still consider it one of the worst judgement calls of my rather checkered movie viewing career.  It’s right up there with Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.  Ah well.

The 1959 original is a masterpiece of cheesy 1950s horror film goodness.  The plot, such as it is, revolves around a millionaire, Vincent Price, and his wife who invite three men and two women who are only casually familiar with the hosts, to stay overnight locked in a haunted mansion.  That total of four men and three women matches the number of men and women murdered in the haunted house and therefore the number of ghosts haunting it.  Got it? Good.  If they stay, they each win $10,000.  If they die, they get $50,000 or at least their beneficiaries do.  The building is locked completely and until the next morning no one can leave.

Although Vincent Price stars in this gem and brings to bear all of his formidable overacting ability I would say that the star of the film is the screams produced by the two main female characters in the movie.  The piercing quality and protracted duration of the various screaming jags is remarkable.  Especially considering the low body count of the action.  These gals will start singing at the drop of a hat or at least at the drop of a severed head.

In second place in terms of importance to the atmosphere of the film is Watson Pritchard, the character played by actor Elisha Cook Jr.  You may know Cook from his notable roles in such high-profile films as the Maltese Falcon and the Big Sleep where he interacted with the likes of Humphrey Bogart.  But this is not the Maltese Falcon.  This not even the Maltese Bippy.  In House on Haunted Hill he is interacting with actors of the caliber of Vincent Price, at best.  Pritchard is a morose alcoholic survivor of a previous ghost attack whose brother is one of the ghosts haunting the house.  His main function is to drink booze and tell the participants in a droning, despondent voice, that they are all doomed and soon to be themselves ghosts in the house forever.  In this role he is truly annoying and it is sort of beyond the suspension of disbelief to think that none of the other characters would beat him into silence.  In the most egregious occurrence of Pritchard’s pessimistic prognosticating, the male romantic lead, airline pilot Lance Schroeder, runs into a room holding a mummified woman’s severed head by its long dark hair and yells to Pritchard, “where’s Nora!”  Pritchard immediately proclaims, based on no evidence we’ve been given, that not only have the ghosts already killed Nora but that she’s already actively working as one of them to kill the rest of the living occupants of the house.  Then Nora walks into the room and Pritchard doesn’t even bat an eye but goes back to his drinking.  Apparently ghost listening is far from an exact science and his radar was slightly thrown off by the straight bourbon he was pouring down his throat at the time.

And Lance is the only other character played by an actor anyone has ever heard of.  He’s played with astonishing mediocrity by Richard Long whom you may or may not remember played “the Professor” in the forgettable 1970s tv series “Nanny and the Professor” with Haley Mills’ less talented but more attractive sister Juliet playing the role of “the Nanny.”  The rest of the actors on House on Haunted Hill probably ended up as extras on Gunsmoke, Bonanza and the Twilight Zone.  Some may even have lasted long enough to do a stint on “Love American Style.”  But I digress.

As host, Vincent Price distributes party favors (semi-automatic .45 caliber pistols) and a private bed room to each of his guests.  The guests form various alliances and attempt to protect themselves from harm but despite this, Vincent Price’s wife is quickly found hanged from the ceiling of the stairway.  It’s a really nice-looking braided rope.  This of course triggers an avalanche of shrieks from Nora.  Richard Long comforts her, which cements their romantic attraction and allows her to rest her tonsils for the next bout of screeching.  And that can only be a few minutes away.  Just to summarize, there are secret passageways, ceilings dripping with blood, vats below the floor filled with really, really, fast-acting acid, a blind hag that seems to slide along the floor as if being pulled along on roller skates, a ghostly apparition outside the window, a walking, talking skeleton and a self-propelled rope that can wind around women’s legs without any hand moving it.  There are another couple of characters that I haven’t described but honestly, they don’t have much to do.  There is a plot line that involves Vincent Price and his wife which actually explains a lot of the plot elements but knowing it doesn’t really add or detract much from entertainment value of the movie.  It’s a ridiculous horror movie and I enjoy it immensely on its own terms.  If you like bad 1950s horror movies then I recommend House on Haunted Hill as the pinnacle of the genre.  If you don’t like bad 1950s horror movies then I can’t help you and you’re probably a monster.