Are you there Puma? It's me, Rygor. . . Puma? Puma!

And we're back! Took a bit of an unofficial break for summer . . . and the beginning of fall . . . but to start things off again, here are a couple films we saw way back in May, but have put off reviewing until now. Neither of these is too obscure, so if you're reading this, you probably already know what there is to know. Puma!

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Ring of Terror

Objective grade: F
Camp value bonus: C+

What's scarier than trying to get a ring off a dead guy's finger?

• Med school frat "boys" who looked like they should have been out golfing in funny pants, or having mid-life crises; seriously, none of these guys could have been younger than 30. Leading man George Mather, who plays pledge Lewis B. Moffitt--23 years old, according to his gravestone--was actually somewhere close to 40(!) at the time of filming. Not a particularly young 40, either.
  
• That band member who forgot to fake it along with the music. Nothing like playing a smokin' sax solo with your horn still resting on your knee.
  
• Fat people! Nobody was worried about being too politically correct in those days. I do like that fat dude defended his fat girlfriend when she entered that swimsuit contest, and for good reason -- she didn't look all that bad!
  
• Terrible "skips" in the film that make poor Rygor jump two feet to the left in the middle of his monologue. This, oddly, was our biggest laugh-out-loud moment of the entire film -- couldn't really tell you why, though.
  

These are just some of the many horrors that await you in Ring of Terror! Actually, this is really about all to expect from the unintentionally(?)(ok probably not "?") campy/kinda funny/slapped-together turd of a film . . . but there are just enough horrors to put this one on our "watch it at your next party" list.

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Mistress of Atlantis

Grade: C
Artistic value bonus: C+

The first thing that needs to be said about this film is that the print is fantastic. So fantastic that for a good long while we wondered whether modern-day footage had been spliced in to replace damaged sections of the original. It wasn't. However, it does appear that some of the opening credits may have been compromised, and were redone in an appropriately old-timey script by a different company (Festival Films, from which Mill Creek must have borrowed -- or "borrowed" -- this print). But anyway, blah blah blah, enough with that -- onto the film!

This one is certainly artier than the various serials and things we've seen from this era -- more in a league with Maciste in Hell than with, say, The Phantom Empire (which is still great, just more straight-up). Atlantis -- not buried under the sea, but in the North African deserts -- is home to the smoldering Queen Antinea, who is prone to luring men into her lair and driving them completely bonkers. Dialogue is limited, so the film suffered a bit from being completely confusing half most of the time. I must say, though -- the sudden cutaway to the can-can hall was completely disorienting and amazingly brilliant. Still confusing, but artfully so.

Fun fact -- this film was shot in different languages (English, French, and German) all at the same time, so there are three distinct versions out there, with a unique mix of actors in each. I almost wish more films were shot like that these days, rather than slapping subtitles over everything or (shudder) overdubbing. Imagine the debates one could have regarding the relative merits of each version! But I digress. Bottom line -- you like old, you like artsy, you like being a little baffled: go for this one!