The Dippy Dentist (1920)

A bright and breezy little comedy short. Fifi (Marie Mosquini) is pursued by various men but a new dentist (Snub Pollard) really makes a move for her, pushing aside his rival dentist Gaylord Lloyd (Harold's brother) with ease. Snub is also not averse to using laughing gas to subdue Fifi and have his way with her! 

Questionable morals aside, this is a decent enough farce which gets most of it's laughs from Pollard's interesting method of patient care and his roughhouse style in general. Not a great comedy short but perfectly passable.

Carnival Magic (1983)

Time for our 900th review!

Life at a low-rent seedy carnival with all it's questionable glamour; all mediocre acts, threadbare costumes and bored exploited animals. Stoney (Mark Weston) is the carnival owner and things aren't going very well; sales are down, his two main acts are fighting and he refuses to accept his daughter Ellen (Jennifer Houlton) is really a girl and calls her Bud instead. Tiger tamer Kirk (Joe Cirillo) doesn't like the magician Markov (Don Stewart) hanging around his big cats. He demands Stoney fires Markov...

But Markov has a secret, he is sharing his caravan with a talking chimp called Alex (Trudi the chimp) - well when we say talking it is mostly grunting with bad dubbing. With Alex the chimp now revealed, Markov is forced to include him in his act and the carnival's sales suddenly rise. Kirk is no longer top of the bill and sells Alex to an evil vivisectionist Dr Poole (Charles Reynolds)...

The film doesn't explain how Alex can talk and how Markov can read minds for real. That is the least of the film's problems though, It really isn't very good, though the sheer nonsense can be entertaining. There is a degree of farce, such as Alex stealing a car, and some drama - some of it quite dark. One high point is the fact Don Stewart - who admittedly was pretty buff in this - in most scenes is wearing less clothes than his chimp.

The Skull Murder Mystery (1932)

A rather baffling murder mystery. A skull is found in an alleyway between two houses, a man thought to have been killed some time before. Inspector Carr (John Hamilton) and Doctor Crabtree (Donald Meek) first interrogate the eccentric inhabitants of the one house, the Beck family (Harry Mestayer, Paul Guilfoye and Joanna Roos) who seem to be performing various strange scientific experiments and acting very strangely. In the other house is Chinese merchant Wang Run (Lee Tong Foo) who conveniently was away when it is thought the murder took place, he also has a number of rather sharp Oriental weapons...

Crabtree comes up with an ingenious way to try and scare a confession out of either suspect (the fact it could have been someone else entirely is somewhat overlooked). However, things come to a head when the Beck family try and do a runner and a groaning man is found in their attic...

A short feature which proceeds at a breakneck pace, unfortunately a little too quickly as much remains unexplained, for example what exactly were the Becks up to?! A fairly interesting if not especially that good crime film.

The Time Travelers (1964)

This 1960s science fiction movie contains a lot of interesting ideas but it also has rather too much goofy humour. 

A group of scientists (which we know are serious scientists as they have white coats on) are trying to build a window into time. However, they discover their window is actually a portal into the future. Danny (Steve Franken) - who is in overalls and so not a scientist of course - steps into the portal. He is followed by Scientists Steve (Philip Carey) and Dr von Steiner (Preston Foster). Carol (Merry Anders) meanwhile is tasked to keep an eye on the portal, but as she is a 1960s ditzy female (despite being a scientist) she of course also steps through the portal and ends up marooned in a desolate future along with the rest of them.

On the run from a gang of mutants, the scientists and Danny are saved by the last survivors of human civilisation. Dr Varno (John Hoyt) explains that the Earth was turned into a wasteland by nuclear war, now final preparations are being made to launch a space ship to take them to Alpha Centauri...

Not the worst 1960s science fiction movie, the story has a little bit more sophistication than usual. The film lacks much in the way of action and can be a little dull at times. The goofy humour was probably included to counter that, though does not really work very well. The budget was low but they made the most of it.

Death Line (1972)

A superbly dark horror. An important civil servant (James Cossins) goes missing, he was last seen incapacitated at Russell Square tube station by students Alex (David Ladd) and Patricia (Sharon Gurney). Although Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasance) is fobbed off by MI5 (Christopher Lee) he still thinks there is a crime to investigate, especially when some workers are found killed at the same tube station. Forensics indicates there was another person present at the attack, one extremely ill.

There are legends, Calhoun learns, of trapped Victorian workers who formed a cannibalistic soceity underground. Of course this is nonsense, or is it? Alex and Patricia soon find out for themselves...

A terrifically cruel and strange film, much of which takes place in dark forgotten tunnels. The film has a strange mixture of flawed humanity (in the very realistic characters) and tragic inhumanity of the man (Hugh Armstrong). Indeed, the "beast" is in many ways a sad victim too, which adds so many layers to this film. Really quite brilliant.