For a while now I have been posting short notices/reiews of films. In order to preserve these reviews, I am posting them on this blog. Here are the first three:

Another Man's Poison (1951), directed by Irving Rapper (he of Now, Voyager). Talk about chewing up the scenery. Bette Davis lets out all the stops in this crime melodrama. It plays something like Sleuth in that it has the staged play claustrophobia, and the jockeying for position between the principle characters. In short, we have a British country house, somewhere in the country of the mind, where a horse-loving crime writer lives. She has an untimely visitor, her husband's partner in crime. He arrives to find his partner, the woman's husband, dead, dead by nefarious means. The woman and the man find themselves unwanted partners in concealing their crimes, especially from a nosey veterinarian who keeps popping by. The sets are about as believable as they are in a Merry Melodies cartoon. The acting, especially Davis's, is over the top. The story is, well, okay. The ending gives us a bit of mild Grand Guignol, if Grand Guignol can be mild. Truth to tell, I dozed off during the middle of the film.

 

The Tingler (1959), directed by William Castle. This is the film that gave us Percepto, a buzzing/tingling device attached to the underside of some theatre seats in order to encourage the audience to scream at an appropriate time. Vincent Price gives a splendid performance as the kindly scientist who has discovered a parasite that lives in humans, along the spine, and that creates a tingling sensation when a person experiences fear. Unless the person releases the tension created by fear, he or she could, and in some cases will, die. The only defence against the tingler is a loud screaming noise. Near the end of the film the screen goes black and Price's voice instructs the audience to scream. The film is not without its charms, one of which is a colour sequence in which a woman who can neither speak nor hear sees a bathtub filled with blood, a bloody hand and arm emerging from it. The film boasts the first LSD trip on screen - oh the walls, the walls! Dear Vincent has to deal with a wife who is adulterous. Some of the action takes place in a movie theatre that specializes in old silent films. The tingler itself is a magnificent large rubber centipede thing that moves along drawn by a string. This is film making at its most audacious. The movie begins with an introduction delivered by Mr. Castle, something akin to the introduction to Universal's Frankenstein, not quite 30 years earlier. Here is what he says:

"I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say 'certain members' because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don't be alarmed—you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don't be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you've got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember—a scream at the right time may save your life."

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Colonel Blimp is the creation of David Low, first appearing in 1934. Blimp, as his name might suggest, is a rotund, blustering old fellow with a walrus moustache. Powell and Pressburger turn him into something of a folk hero, following his time in the British army from 1902 when he receives the Victoria Cross for valour during the Boer War, until the early 1940s when, as an old man, he joins the Home Guard. His name in the film is Clive Candy and he rises from Corporal to General. Martin Scorsese has noted that the film is a major influence on Scorsese's Raging Bull, both for its depiction of a slim young man turning into an older blimp and for its manner of storytelling. He especially notes the duel scene in the first third of the film, and also the way Powell handles the marriages of Clive Candy's German friend and of Candy himself. Powell presents these events by, in effect, not presenting them. Also noteworthy is the look of the film, its cinematography and contrasting colours. The opening sequence, as well as the moments throughout the film, have, perhaps strangely and surprisingly, something of a Bunuel cast to them. As for the story, Roger Ebert nicely encapsulates things:

"The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" has four story threads. It mourns the passing of a time when professional soldiers observed a code of honor. It argues to the young that the old were young once, too, and contain within them all that the young know, and more. It marks the General's lonely romantic passage through life, in which he seeks the double of the first woman he loved. And it records a friendship between a British officer and a German officer, which spans the crucial years from 1902 to 1942."