Reviews

There are only two reasons for people to rate this film higher than a five. They are either Bela Lugosi fanatics who are blinded by his star power, or they're pulling your leg.

In it's favor, this film has the following curiosities:

Bela Lugosi in a rare non-horror leading role.

Hattie McDaniel in an early screen appearance (although running around yelling "Lordy, Lordy" doesn't showcase her future greatness very well).

A curious 1935 vision of television that doesn't seem to need cameras at the point of origin and can act as a "death ray" carrier wave. I guess that makes this a science fiction story, of sorts.

And occasionally interesting story-telling by reshowing the same scene using different vantage points to add information withheld earlier in the film.

Working against this film is:

The poor print quality (both picture and sound)of existing copies. Insulting racial stereotyping. (As implied above.)

Ridiculously inaccurate scientific predictions about television. (As implied above.)

Undeveloped characters, giving the audience a "who cares" feeling when someone gets murdered.

And a general weakness of the writing, acting, and directing.

Being a Lugosi fan myself, it pains me to write negative reviews of some of his films. But the truth is, it pains me to watch some of his performances as well.

I'm giving this film three stars, based on the curiosities mentioned above. If I were to rate it any higher, I'd be pulling your leg.

Spies are after the plans for the B-17 flying fortress and it's revolutionary bomb-sight. One of the engineers working on the project (Richard Cromwell) is unjustly accused by a federal agent (Robert Armstrong) of delivering the plans to a spy ring led by Dr. Jeffrey Arnold (Philip Dorn). How he turns the tables on the spy ring is the story this film tells.

Sounds like an interesting WWII anti-Nazi propaganda flick, doesn't it? The kind Hollywood churned out night and day during the war? But the interesting thing here is that this film was released over a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hollywood was already taking sides and had fingered the Nazis as the bad guys. Although it's true that the nation behind the spy ring isn't specifically named,... by accent, dress, and demeanor these spies are clearly meant to appear German.

Unfortunately, this film has a few things working against it. There's the love interest that isn't all that interesting. A strange scene calling for the hero to strike a woman (clearly awkward for all involved). Plus a few plot twists that really defy logic. But the main flaw in my eyes was casting Richard Cromwell as the lead. Although Cromwell was roughly 30 years old at the time this film was made, his youthful appearance makes him look way too young to be an aircraft engineer. He looks like he should be selling newspapers on the corner instead of designing top-secret military aircraft.

Working in this film's favor are some familiar faces that turn up as the plot progresses. Robert Armstrong (King Kong) is the G-man. Abner Biberman (His Girl Friday, Gunga Din) plays one of the spy ring's henchmen. And Jack Carson (A Star is Born, Arsenic and Old Lace) pops up late in the film as a drunken party-goer.

Never released on video or DVD, one has to try hard to find a copy of this film. And I'm not sure why you'd want to.

This documentary holds a mirror up to liberal academia in the US and dares them to look at the reflection it casts.

It reminded me of my college days, where I felt that I needed to conceal my conservative views from my professors to preserve my good grades.

It also reminded me of something from "Someplace To Be Flying" by Charles de Lint:

"Then how do you change the world?" "By being strong and true." ..."The best change you can make is to hold up a mirror so that people can look into it and change themselves. That's the only way a person can be changed." ..."And you know," Maida added. "That mirror can be a story you hear, or just somebody else's eyes. Anything that reflects back so that you see yourself in it."

In this little film, Coyne Maloney has skillfully crafted his mirror, but that was the easy part. The real challenge is getting his subjects to gaze into it. In order to even see this film, I had to buy it from the film maker's web page. I'm sure that "Indoctrinate U" won't be winning any awards at the "Aspen Filmfest" or the "Woodstock Film Festival".

Not for lack of merit, but for lack of an audience.

...this film is downright silly.

Being such a fan of Hugh Herbert, I went to great lengths to acquire a DVD of this film and I really wanted to like it, but outside of a few comical moments, I was let down by this film.

Hugh Herbert would eventually star in a series of Columbia 2-reel comedy shorts and this film plays much more like one of those Columbia 2-reelers than a feature put out by Warner Bros./First National.

It is odd that in such a slipshod production, the special effects are surprisingly well done. Like when they used the remarkable on-screen transition effect mentioned by other reviewers to expose the true identity of the "Octopus". This was only the 4th time I've seen this effect being used in a feature film. (The other three were: The 1935 film "Werewolf of London" where the effect is used on Henry Hull in the very initial portion of his first on-screen transformation into the werewolf, the 1931 version of "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" where Fredric March becomes Hyde for the first time, and the 1925 version of "Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ" where the transition effect is used to show a woman being miraculously healed of her leprosy.) Although, a quick review of the career of William McGann, who directed this film, shows that his one nomination for an Academy Award came, not for directing, but for Special Effects (Visual), for the 1946 film "A Stolen Life" starring Bette Davis. So maybe the use of that transition effect in this clunky little film isn't so strange after all. Judging from this film, McGann appears to have been much better at special effects than at directing.

Fans of Hugh Herbert or Allen Jenkins will probably find this film worthwhile. I suspect all others are in for a loooong 54 minutes.

How can you fix a film that has... -too much opera for horror fans, -too creepy ending for opera fans, -too little action for Karloff fans, -too much Karloff for melodrama fans, -and a director who seems content with showcasing his lavish sets and the relatively new Technicolor process?

After giving the question quite a bit of thought, I don't think you can fix a project like "The Climax". It was ill-conceived from the start and the film they made was probably as good as could be made with the story they had to work with. But ultimately, the film is unsatisfying for all of the reasons listed above.

Watch it if you must,... but you've been warned.

As a lifelong fan of Chaney Sr., this film was on a very short list of existing Chaney films I had yet to see. I watched it last night for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. Although I admit this is far from Chaney's best work, I suspect many of the negative reviews, both then and now, come from unmet expectations. "Mockery" does not have grotesque make-up like "Hunchback of Notre Dame". It lacks bizarre story elements like "The Unknown". Chaney only plays one character instead of two, as he did in "A Blind Bargain". And if you wanted to see sets and scenery on a grand scale, as in "Phantom of the Opera", forget about it.

So what does this film have? Well, this melodrama, set in Russia around the time of the revolution, revolves around the theme you see in most of Chaney's films: unrequited love. Chaney's character is a peasant named Sergei, who reminded me of "Lenny", the character portrayed by Lon Chaney Jr. in "Of Mice and Men". Sergei is a good hearted simpleton, unable to understand matters of love. Sergei's love for the Countess, like Quasimodo's longing for Esmarelda, is destined for failure, but he's the only one who cannot see this.

As the story unfolds, we get glimpses into the good and bad (or Jekyll and Hyde, if you will) found in all of us. Sergei's pure love turns to lust. Tatiana's indifference evolves into compassion.

If you're expecting a 1927 era melodrama, you'll get a good one. If you're expecting something bizarre, like "Novokursk After Midnight", you'll have trouble keeping awake.

This episode is infamous for a Lon Chaney Jr. gaff on live TV.

Near the end of his career, Chaney had developed quite a drinking problem. As a result, many of his later roles were for characters which had little or no dialog (e.g. "The Indestructible Man"). Although this episode of "Tales of Tomorrow" would be broadcast live, since the role of the Frankenstein monster had no lines, it was assumed that Chaney could still do the job. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

By broadcast time, Chaney was smashed. Although he is able to appear and hit his marks, careful viewing of his performance reveals that when the monster should be going on a rampage and destroying all of the furniture and props on the set, the monster/Chaney gingerly picks up each piece of furniture and gently sets it back in place, while mumbling "Save it for the show.",... just as he had done earlier in the day at rehearsal!!!

Fans of Chaney will want to seek this out just to see Chaney made up as the Frankenstein monster one last time, even though it's an embarrassing performance. There are no other redeeming qualities here. I'm giving this a 2, and that's being generous.

This is one of the better entries in the "Lum & Abner" film series. Unfortunately, you really need to have lived through that era or else you need to be somewhat of a WWII era historian to appreciate much of the humor found here.

If you don't fall into either of those two categories, imagine Lum & Abner are the "Dumb & Dumber" of the 1940's. To help in the war effort, the government had put out a call to any and all inventors to submit their ideas to aid in the war effort. Through the daily "Lum & Abner" radio program, audiences knew that neither Lum nor Abner could come up with good idea if their lives depended on it. Could it possibly be that Abner has stumbled across a formula for synthetic rubber (which was a critical need during WWII)? Not only do Lum & Abner claim to know this vital secret, but before the film is over, all of Washington DC regards these two dimwits as home-spun geniuses.

For millions of Americans, the Lum & Abner radio program had made these two fictional characters seem like part of the family,... or at least part of your circle of close friends. They would take turns getting themselves into and out of trouble in such a way that you couldn't help but like these two well-meaning old geezers.

If you're old enough to have heard of BVD brand underwear, I'm betting that you'll get a real kick out of this film.

I had never even heard of this movie, but I bought the DVD because my father-in-law was a WWII aerial gunner on B-17s in Europe and I'd just recently begun getting him to tell his stories onto audiotape for posterity. I thought that this might add to my knowledge of what he had experienced.

Based on my father-in-law's first hand accounts, I can tell you that the aerial gunnery school sequences in this film are relatively close to what the training was like. (For example, they really did make them assemble a 50 caliber machine gun while blind-folded.) However, the combat/action sequences at the climax of this film miss the mark by a mile.

I'd recommend this film to you if you are a fan of Robert Mitchum and want to see one of his early (uncredited), bit-part roles.

I'd also recommend this film to any fans of Jimmy Lydon, who starred as "Henry Aldrich" in the many "Henry Aldrich" films of the 1940's. Unlike Mitchum, Lydon has a large dramatic role in this picture and since this was filmed during the same era as the Aldrich movies, you could have given this film the alternate title "Henry Aldrich Goes to War".

Unfortunately, sub-par writing, acting, directing, and budget all contribute to the anemic quality of this film. If you're looking for a WWII story with real entertainment value, stick to the period pieces starring John Wayne. I'm giving this film 4 stars based on it's curiosity value alone.