50's Boris Karloff Part Two

THE BLACK CASTLE
(1952)
Dir - Nathan H. Juran
Overall: MEH

Another forgettable, later installment in Universal's horror camp, The Black Castle brings Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. together, both in minor rolls.  Out of the two, Chaney is more sidetracked in just a small handful of scenes, once again playing a mute brute who finds a grisly end.  Karloff does respectable work as a benevolent doctor, cleverly coming off as perhaps another sinister presence earlier on.  Elsewhere, it is only a moderately interesting story involving a cruel, sadistic Count with a deformity and a dashingly handsome British Baron, both of whom want revenge on each other.  Naturally, two characters fall in love almost immediately as well since what period-piece melodrama would be complete without such a detail?  There is a pit of hungry crocodiles or alligators and premature burial is hinted at, so the macabre elements are present to be sure.  As nice as it is to see Karloff and Chaney in the genre that made both men famous, The Black Castle is not very engrossing though and by this time Universal was phasing out its Gothic horror outings altogether which had peaked at least a decade before, giving this somewhat of a "scraping the barrel" feel.

VOODOO ISLAND
(1957)
Dir - Reginald Le Borg
Overall: MEH

Bel-Air Productions' three movie deal with Boris Karloff got off to a limbering, lackluster start with Voodoo Island.  Austrian-born director Reginald Le Borg, (The Mummy's Ghost, The Black Sleep, Diary of a Madman), concocts virtually zero suspense, even with a scene of a woman taking a swim for no reason and then getting hugged to death by giant, plastic foliage which also barely gets an excitable response from the rest of the cast.  In his defense though, the script that he is working with is so steadily uninteresting that all of the fake killer plants in the world could not save it from being a snore.  For his part, Karloff actually is not playing a doctor this time, but instead a professional skeptic with a television show.  Though his involvement with the plot is as sketchy as any other detail.  The rest of the characters are barely worth paying attention to, though similar to Karloff's comparatively against type role, character actor Elisha Cook Jr. is pleasantly NOT playing a drunk bum that is terrified of everything.  The most noteworthy aspect is that this was the first film appearance of Adam West, but he got shafted anyway by remaining uncredited.

THE HAUNTED STRANGLER
(1958)
Dir - Robert Day
Overall: GOOD

Boris Karloff was rarely as aggressive on screen as he was in Amalgamated Productions' The Haunted Strangler, (aka Grip of the Strangler), one of if not his very last physically demanding performances.  As an obsessed novelist turned violently manic murderer, Karloff is his usual calm, charming self initially, but spends the better part of the later half practically more wild and unhinged than he ever was before.  Contorting his face to near-comical proportions, ranting and raving as he is locked up and put in a straight-jacket, and frantically murdering both randoms and those close to him, it is a riveting portrayal from the then seventy-one year old horror icon.  Directed by Robert Day, (who worked with Karloff again for the studio in the same year's Corridors of Blood), there is really not much else of note in the production, with the script teetering on being a bit too sloppy to really work and none of the other characters come remotely close to being anything except forgettable.  Thankfully though, it is a case where Karloff's work alone is more than enough to recommend the film as a whole.

50's Boris Karloff Part One

THE STRANGE DOOR
(1951)
Dir - Joseph Pevney
Overall: MEH

One of the lesser appreciated Universal horror entries, (and for justifiable reason), that was released long after the studio's landmark heyday, The Strange Door was based off Robert Lewis Stevenson's The Sire de Maletroit's Door short story.  Though it features two heavyweights in Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff, there is barely anything else going for it.  A mediocre melodrama at best, it is Gothic in look and feel only, with Karloff barely getting any screen time and his name being attached is really the only thing giving it any sort of credibility amongst horror cinephiles.  Thankfully Laughton makes for a delightfully odorous villain though, chewing his scenery as much as he does his hog chops.  The ending is also effectively macabre and heart-racing, yet another plus being that it is played to no dramatic music as is the case with most of the film.  Overall though, it is not all that exciting as it becomes all too easy to tune-out of two young, attractive people being forced to marry who of course end up falling in love with each other anyway while their goblin-bodied Uncle delights in being a douche-nozzle.

CORRIDORS OF BLOOD
(1958)
Dir - Robert Day
Overall: MEH

Once again distributed by MGM with much of the same crew, (including director Robert Day), Corridors of Blood was Amalgamated Productions' Boris Karloff-stared follow-up to The Haunted Strangler.  Sadly, the film was not released in the US until three years later and failed to do much business.  By that point, Karloff had taken as many years off and Hammer had already immortalized Christopher Lee, (who has a very minor role here), as Count Dracula.  Corridors fits into the horror genre due to its tone, with menacing music, shadowy cinematography, and Karloff and to a lesser extent Lee's presence, but it is actually a thriller about drug addiction.  The medical community's insistence on laughing off Karloff's Dr. Thomas Bolton's commendable intentions on creating an anesthetic for surgery is laughably ridiculous, but it does set the whole tragic stream of events in motion so it is a necessary, overtly silly plot device at worst.  Though the movie delivers very lightly on chills, Karloff is predictably fantastic as the doomed, once noble doctor turned addict so it is certainly worth seeing for that.

FRANKENSTEIN 1970
(1958)
Dir - Howard W. Koch
Overall: MEH

Another return of sorts to the literary character that made him a household name, Frankenstein 1970 sees Boris Karloff playing the Baron, (or a direct descendant), as opposed to the Baron's monstrous creation.  This would not be the last time the actor was attached to a project loosely based or inspired by Mary Shelley's source material or the landmark, initial Universal film from 1931, but it is probably the one that grant's Karloff the most screen time.  He is in rare form here, actually hamming it up for a change with some melodramatic monologues, either having more fun than usual or not taking the ordeal all that seriously, depending.  The filmmakers still could not resist the urge to apply some make-up on him even though he is not playing the monster this round and Karloff limps his body around, ultimately looking the full seventy-one years of age that he was.  Despite its allure for genre fans, the film is both poorly paced and poorly scripted.  Karloff's doctor is not even given any real motivation besides just unspoken cliches attributed to the character.  The backdrop of a film production taking place in his castle is lazily abandoned so members of the crew can just get picked off by a monster that remains in bandages the whole movie, (even depriving us of some flattop, bolts in the neck action).

50's American Horror Part Seven

THE BAD SEED
(1956)
Dir - Mervyn LeRoy
Overall: MEH

Full of bizarre, often obnoxious performances and long, stagy, monotonous scenes, Mervyn LeRoy's first film adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's play The Bad Seed is a chore for these reasons and more.  Over two hours in length, it certainly feels it due the actor's unorthodox behavior.  This mostly falls on the shoulders of Nancy Kelly as an increasingly unraveling mother and to a lesser yet still noticeable extent, Henry Jones as a dim-witted, hillbilly caretaker, both of whom push their portrayals into either unintended comedy and/or "please just shut the hell up" terrain at times.  Comparatively, eleven year old Patty McCormack is difficult to watch as the smug, awful brat Rhoda Penmark in a more appropriate way, though she is more reprehensible than ominous.  Any time your subject matter deals with a doted-over, spoiled kid, the battle is already uphill to make it tolerable to stomach.  Though that is rather the entire point to rev up the tension with such an emotionally disturbing backdrop, the combination of baffling acting over set pieces that go on and on still makes for an over the top, arduous experience anyway you look at it.

BACK FROM THE DEAD
(1957)
Dir - Charles Marquis Warren
Overall: MEH

Author Catherine Turney adapted her own novel The Other One for the screen, (the title here changed to Back from the Dead for whatever reason), and it is an easily forgettable film with either an ambitious or sloppy story line depending on how you look at it.  There is a secret, occult society at play which sounds promising on paper, but after very briefly being introduced in the opening scene, they are only awkwardly brought back later and we hardly ever learn anything about their unholy shenanigans.  It has something to do with a woman possessed by a resurrected wife and some rocky cliffs, but the details are a mixed bag of lazy, half-baked cliches.  While the score from Raoul Krashaar is effectively atmospheric at first and even plays a narrative role in one scene, it becomes increasingly grating as it frequently blares on the soundtrack even over characters trying to deliver dialog.  Director Charles Marquis Warren took a brief break from exclusively making westerns with Back from the Dead, (and was also behind the lens on The Unknown Terror from the same year), but the material is just too vanilla here to really give him that much to work with.

THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE
(1958)
Dir - Will Cowan
Overall: MEH

Primarily working in the western genre, (producing and directing hundreds of shorts between 1940 and 1958), Scottish-born Will Cowan's final film and only second full-length one was the Universal horror outing The Thing That Couldn't Die.  The premise of a four-hundred year old, condemned sorcerer possessing people with his unearthed, severed head is airtight for a horror film, but the presentation is kind of lame-brained.  Two different women get under his evil spell and basically just act like assholes to everyone and this is after a slow handyman does absolutely nothing except get shot by the cops after likewise getting mojoed.  This also might have the least successful finale out of any movie by anybody.  Within seconds of being reattached to his dug-up body and proclaiming how wonderful Satan is and how much vengeance he is going to unleash, another guy shows him a shiny bit of jewellery, previously-headless sorcerer guy cowers back into his coffin, turns into a skeleton, the end.  It actually goes by faster than it took to read all of that.  It is somewhat fitting that the film was released as a co-bill with Horror of Dracula, thus rather sufficiently passing on the torch from Universal's horror output which clearly was waning to Hammer's era that was just beginning to ignite.

50's American Horror Part Six

THE SON OF DR. JEKYLL
(1951)
Dir - Seymour Friedman
Overall: MEH

Columbia Pictures finally gets around to taking a stab at adapting The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with The Son of Dr. Jekyll.  Well, as the title would dictate, it is in fact not a direct reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson's frequently filmed source material but a sequel existing in the same universe while not being a direct follow-up to a previous cinematic version.  The new story by Mortimer Braus and Jack Pollexfen focuses on the public paranoia brought on by Henry Jekyll's initial experiments, a paranoia and distrust that runs down to his offspring who spends most of the entire film being manipulated and misunderstood by nearly everyone around him.  It is an interesting angle to be sure, but also one that leaves literally no room for even a single transformation scene, (outside of a lone shot of a hand going all hairy), let alone any of Hyde Jr. running around terrorizing people.  While that would have been the more predictable if mundane route to go down, it also would have given the movie some much needed excitement.  Instead, it ends up being just a simple conspiracy melodrama that only uses the Jekyll name for genre recognition, a genre the movie ultimately does not belong in.

THE MOLE PEOPLE
(1956)
Dir - Virgil Vogel
Overall: MEH

Another late entry in the Universal horror cycle was The Mole People.  Promising on paper with an underground ancient civilization that worships a Mesopotamian god and the title monsters that are successfully teased by grabbing their victims spontaneously through the ground, the presentation and look of the film is a mixed bag of acceptable to laughably goofy.  The Sumerian albinos implausibly speak perfect English and are adorned in high school play/pajama level Peter Pan/Trojan warriors outfits and why wouldn't they also have slaves at their disposal who look like Hollywood-primed glamour queens?  The actual mole people masks and costumes are about as convincing as the least convincing Doctor Who monsters, certainly a far cry from The Creature from the Black Lagoon per example which the studio produced a mere two years prior.  While the set design clearly utilizes matte paintings to convey the vast, underground kingdom, they are used adequately well enough considering the B-movie template.  The first act is a detrimental crawl though, ending with a near silent spelunking sequence that seems like it lasts six hours.  Being both too ridiculous and too slow, it is quite low on the essential list.

THE BLOB
(1958)
Dir - Irvin Yeaworth
Overall: MEH

One of the most successful independent B-movies of the drive-in era and one that has endured in pop culture ever still, The Blob is a largely detrimental offering.  One would have to struggle to find any intended subtext in a story about cranberry jelly that grows larger as it eats people, try as some film scholars might to consider it yet another sci-fi metaphor for communism.  In reality, it is directly targeted at the teenage audiences of the day what with the movie's catchy title, no nonsense premise, famous movie theater scene, and a then twenty-eight year old Steve McQueen and his twenty-five year old ladyfriend Aneta Corsaut both playing high schoolers.  The problem is a common one though where long, long scenes trudge along with characters talking about what happened to other characters that the viewer already knows have been absorbed by the title creature.  In other words, too much talky and too little blobby.  Said characters are remarkably unremarkable and the acting is routinely stiff.  Since there is really no point or joy in waiting around for eons for everybody in the movie to both catch on to what the audience already knows and start believing the characters trying to convince everyone else, it cannot help but to become a snorefest throughout most of its running time.  Once things finally pick up, it is a bit fun to watch the blob destroy property and murder people though.

50's American Horror Part Five

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD
(1951)
Dir - Christian Nyby
Overall: GREAT

The 1950's where a decade ripe with "alien lifeforms threaten the earth" sci-fi movies and the first but not last of them that was wholly excellent on its own merits while garnishing an even more superior remake, (see the first two Invasion of the Body Snatchers), The Thing from Another World has remained one of the most respected films of its kind.  On the one hand, it is the best movie Howard Hawks never "officially" made.  He was the producer and uncredited co-screenwriter, plus the style is so similar that Hollywood lore for decades has revolved around how much if any of the film he directed himself over his protege Christian Nyby.  Though this has all the surface level components of any other rubber suite, men from Mars b-movie of its day, it is all in the execution.  Nyby, Hawks, or whoever you prefer to credit keep the proceedings cruising at a breakneck pace, balancing a hefty cast regularly talking over and interrupting each other in a far more naturalistic manner than was usual at the time, (a Hawks staple), and they wisely limit their title creatures' screen appearances to a scant few.  Even more effective, when the thing from another world does in fact show up, it is abrupt, deliberately under-lit, and in effect, all genuinely startling.  Cold War paranoia allegories are of course logical to make considering the era, yet the film succeeds above and beyond that as a unique, benchmark work for its chosen genre.

THE MAZE
(1953)
Dir - William Cameron Menzies
Overall: MEH

The last movie by production designer, art director, and filmmaker William Cameron Menzies, (who re-shot Salvador Dali's dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound and filmed the burning of Atlanta segment in Gone with the Wind), was the problematic The Maze.  While the initial mystery revolving around a Scottish castle and a once cheerful playboy's dour and aged transformation upon inheriting it is properly intriguing, the pacing is extremely sluggish and the enigma at the heart of the story overstays its welcome.  To add insult to injury, once it is revealed what deep, dark shenanigans are at play, (the movie has about ten minutes left in it till we finally enter "the maze"), good luck not laughing out loud at both how ridiculous it looks and is.  Shot in 3-D, perhaps it was more visually engaging in its initial, theatrical setting, but while the cinematography and set design are both certainly competent, it once again comes down to the droll trot of it all serving as the film's undoing.

CULT OF THE COBRA
(1955)
Dir - Francis D. Lyon
Overall: MEH

Thirteen years after the fact, Universal took a stab at their own kind of version of RKO's Cat People with Cult of the Cobra.  Similarly, an exotic and beautiful foreign woman arrives in the big city, a dude falls in love with her immediately, and people start dying while all the signs continue to point to her being some kind of shape-shifting monster.  Which of course is 100% accurate.  There is absolutely no mystery at hand as the first act sets everything in crystal clear motion by introducing us to our reptilian seductress.  There is also very little tension throughout the rest of the movie since it is logical to assume that all of the minor characters are not going to make it while the main ones will survive.  These are not necessarily detrimental components exclusive to this movie, but still, the story just kind of goes through the motions because of them.  It also does not help that both the deadly cobra of the title and any kind of transformation scenes remain completely off camera until the very last moments.  The take away is that there is not enough meat on the script to make Cult of the Cobra anything more than a modestly acceptable though still second rate monster flick.

The Outsider

THE OUTSIDER
(2020)
OVERALL: GOOD

Seventy-two years young at this writing and Stephen King is still regularly cranking out the literary works.  The 2018 novel The Outsider is his fifty-ninth overall and only two years later, HBO debuted the ten part miniseries based off of it.  Developed and primarily written by fellow novelist and screenwriter Richard Price, it is for the most part pretty good.  So that is about it.  Ok byyyyeeeeee!

Well I guess we should elaborate.  It is a fair proclamation that at the very least, Stephen King can concoct some excellent premises.  While sometimes it is silly stuff like cars/laundry machines coming to life or giant rats living in subway tunnels, for the most part he thrives with haunted hotels, haunted hotel rooms, small towns slowly getting overrun with vampires, psychotic fans, demon clowns, and lots of creepy ass kids.  All solid, horror story footing to be sure.  The Outsider utilizes a somewhat lesser used supernatural entity of a doppelganger under the always reliable, steady guise of the "boogeyman", (which King has also directly written about once or twice before), but of course that is not what The Outsider is actually about.  It is about coming to terms with unexplainable, unimaginable trauma and the aforementioned "boogeyman" antagonist quite explicitly feeds off of just such trauma.  So once again, a rather perfect premise.  Job well done.

It is actually called "El Coco" which sounds more like a cereal mascot than a boogeyman, but I digress.

As far as how the show presents such material, it is a standard combination of contemporary horror tropes and prolonging a few plot points longer than is necessary, but it is also superb acting and has a very tense build up as well as a primary emphasis on the characters emotional footing which makes for almost immediate viewer immersement.  The wrap-up is not exactly perfect just as the journey along the way is not without a few flaws, but the things that work in The Outsider carry quite a lot of weight.  From the very opening, the world is meticulously revealed to us as are the horrific things that have just recently transpired in it.  There is blood, something has gone very wrong, there is going to be suffering, and we want to know much more.

For anyone unfamiliar and depending on who the author is, a doppleganger takes the exact form, (down to DNA and memories), of another person yet they are not biologically related.  So what if your doppleganger is, lets just say, not that swell of a guy/gal?  The Outsider presents contradictory evidence and lots of it, confused and incredibly distraught people forced in the middle of it, a confused and distraught community either making it their business or likewise being effected by it, all the while very seldom shots are shown of a hooded figure that is never in focus.  Yet the camera is showing us this figure all the same.  As our cinematically inclined brains are well programed to recognize, there obviously is a reason for this.  Just as there is a reason that as much as we are bombarded with the "obvious" conclusion that this particular person/persons must be the culprit, all cannot truly be what it seems.

"Nothing to see here.  Please move on." - Jason Bateman

The show sets everything into motion in a somewhat challenging way, bouncing around chronologically which it will continue to do throughout its ten episode run.  Sometimes we are shown things that we have already seen.  Sometimes they are callbacks from a different visual angle.  Sometimes it is surveillance footage that the increasingly frustrated people trying to get to the bottom of things compulsively cannot stop going over to try and make some kind, ANY kind of sense out of.  At the true heart of The Outsider, that is what is really going on.  How would something so incredible that so quickly has ruined the lives of so many people just relentlessly make them struggle with their own conscious and emotional stability?

There are a lot of great performances in The Outsider, (all of them really), that contribute greatly to how effective the program is on a visceral level.  Ben Mendelsohn as detective Ralph Anderson manages to mumble through his lines without becoming too grating to endure, but he is consistently conveying a man that is intensely guarding his true feelings if not helplessly blocking them.  Cynthia Erivo, (who has garnished the most attention for her performance here, fittingly so), as King's returning character Holly Gibney is an eccentric and savant, but comes off teetering on the edge in a more obvious manner, as if she is almost always terrified of the unexplained scenario that she is presenting to people/caught up in.  While the other characters and the actors portraying them are likewise excellent in their respective roles, (routinely breaking into an uninterrupted anecdote when they are asked a yes or no question), it is really Holly and Ralph that say the most about what is unbelievably happening with their every mannerism and bit of dialog.  The world is proving itself to be very crazy and these two very different people are equally invested in trying to come out alive and intact with how truly crazy it is.

Crazy not like how this Mr. Personality loveboat got divorced, but how he ever managed to get married in the first place.

On that note, some of what Holly does actually provides the series with its thankfully small yet still problematic shortcomings.  Waking up from a nightmare and yelling in slow motion and worse yet, walking into a ring of gunfire with half of her crew dead, (including her recently acquired, probably boyfriend), and yelling "Damn you to hell!" at the person shooting everyone is the kind of hokey, dramatic nonsense that regrettably breaks the spell of what is otherwise a thoroughly engaging experience.  There are a couple of other moments like a very random dinner scene where we get another example of how much social damage is done to the wife of the accused, (with many of the main characters also dining at the same restaurant, at the same time for whatever reason), that probably do not need to be there.  Yet as far as gripes about the proceedings, these are minor both in annoyance and frequency.

The finale of The Outsider makes enough sense to be sufficient, but it is also a bit underwhelming considering the last nine plus hours invested in gradually learning and being in fearful anticipation of the monster causing so much anguish.  Of course, the prospect of future seasons is just too damn tempting for networks and showrunners, so we are indeed given a legit, mid-credits scene, (not in King's novel btw), that could lead to more mischief for a round two.  Such a thing might work out just fine, but also is not required by any means.  As it stands, The Outsider is a well-written, well performed, tightly structured true crime horror outing that does its job of exploring grief, anguish, and especially in a time in history such as this, the real confusion of the world we live in and what true evil could be lurking in anyone's barn or strip club.

Meaning the true evil of polo shirts.  Naturally.

50's Ed Wood

BRIDE OF THE MONSTER
(1955)
Overall: MEH

The first in Ed Wood's unofficial Kelton Trilogy was Bride of the Monster.  Never again would Wood have such a modest, (yet still relatively small), budget at his disposal and never again would he come close to making a borderline competent, "real movie".  The dialog is silly yet not altogether embarrassing, the acting occasionally stiff yet mostly acceptable, the pacing slow yet not detrimentally so, and the script which was revised by Wood after screenwriter Alex Gordon had initially worked on one by the title "The Atomic Monster" is as half-baked as any other schlocky, Poverty Row film of its era.  Make no mistake, there is still plenty of, well, mistakes such as a laughably ineffective, giant squid monster, poorly used stock footage, (what Wood film would be complete without that?), and a lack of continuity editing.  Still, all of these ingredients were much more integral with other works in his filmography.  Bela Lugosi in his last speaking role is understandably uneven given such goofy material, bouncing between being surprisingly moving to accidentally ridiculous often in a single scene.  Speaking of unexpected, Wood actually gets some actual intended laughs here or there, though the unintentional ones naturally reign supreme.

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
(1959)
Overall: MEH

The most famously bad movie ever made and the one that Ed Wood's legacy is most unavoidably synonymous with, Plan 9 from Outer Space is the benchmark of unintentional hilariousness and filmmaking 101 ineptitude.  So much has been written and said about Wood's ultimate anti-masterpiece that it has become the stuff of Hollywood legend and in that regard, the insurmountable hype surrounding its terribleness is both fully warranted and worthy of some dispute.  Some of the most obvious technical mistakes such as visible microphones and accidental, visible props are actually due to the aspect ratio being changed when Wood had initially framed his shots accurately for theatrical, widescreen purposes.  As half of the actors are competent ones, (meaning those who are not part of Wood's inner circle of weirdos who had never acted before), their performances are fine and there is certainly something admirable to be said of Wood's far-reaching, genre mash-up intentions.  The execution of his ideas combined with his complete inability to disguise the microscopic budget though are what make it such a laughably enduring trainwreck.  The dialog, pacing, costumes, sets, "special effects", editing, and mish-mash of random stock and Bela Lugosi footage, (let us forget his ridiculous fake Shemp stand-in), are what truly make it the laughing stock that it is.

NIGHT OF THE GHOULS
(1959)
Overall: MEH

The last horror movie Ed Wood was ever allowed to make and to date the last one released, (it did not see the light of day until 1984 when the film lab that owned the print was finally paid off), Night of the Ghouls acts as a somewhat official sequel to Bride of the Monster and to a lesser extent Plan 9 from Outer Space.  It features many of the same actors, some of whom are playing the same characters or variations of them, and tone-wise it is as technically inept and bizarrely scripted and presented as the rest of Wood's outrageous material from the era.  He is still using stock footage and cobbling together scenes from other projects of his, (the unused TV pilot The Final Curtain in this case), he still has no idea how to maintain even a moderately acceptable pacing, still feels the need to have almost incessant narration that further emphasizes his specific knack for comically asinine dialog, and a fair number of scenes look as if another take or two where necessary to iron the kinks out.  With Ed Wood movies, the most memorable moments are always such because of unintended reasons and Night of the Ghouls could have the most hilariously on drugs seance scenes ever filmed with toy skeletons sitting at the table, someone in a white bed sheet making spooky noises and swaying side to side, a trumpet on a string, and a random black guy making googly faces while an actor in a coffin fools his loved ones into thinking he actually is their loved one.  It is still way too slow to really recommend, but otherwise it is Wood firing on all cylinders.

50's Roger Corman Part Three

NOT OF THIS EARTH
(1957)
Overall: GOOD

Roger Corman made nine films in 1957 alone and the third of them and first, (but not last), sci-fi one of the bunch was Not of This Earth.  Typical of the period and certainly for such rushed, B-movie fare, the plot is inconsistently structured.  Paul Birch's "Mr. Johnson", (we are never given his true alien name if his species even bothers with such things), has the ability to hypnotize anyone he wants at the drop of a hat and for permanent periods, yet he neglects to use this incredibly useful ability on key people he surrounds himself with.  Plus his home planet's scheme seems needlessly complicated as they require gallons of human blood to analyze, also require live humans to operate on, and have a transporting beam to send people through, yet when time is of the essence, they insist on doing these experiments in separate stages while Johnson disposes of the blood victims in his furnace instead.  If one can ignore all the faux pas in the script or more practically just giggle at them, the film is well-paced and frequently eerie in its cold depiction of the aliens with their emotionless speech patterns and dark-rimmed sunglasses.  Corman was never one for originality in his cheap, drive-in projects and this is no different, but its redeeming factors kind of balance the lazy ones.

WAR OF THE SATELLITES
(1958)
Overall: MEH

A line like, "If you can give me $80,000, I will have a picture about satellites ready to go into the theaters in ninety days.", followed by "What's the story?", followed again by, "I have no idea" allegedly spoken by Roger Corman to Allied Artists producer Steve Broidy is the perfect example of Corman-lore that could not be more believable once viewing the final results.  Never one to miss an opportunity to jump on any public interest bandwagon he could squeeze a drive-in cheapie with, War of the Satellites was dropped less than a year after the Russian Sputnik satellite was launched.  A day shooting and eight total week production schedule be damned, Corman indeed delivered a movie about satellites.  Is it any good?  Well anyone familiar with the hilariously prolific filmmaker's work would have the appropriate expectations going in and on that measure, it is both impressive in spite of its limitations and humorous due to its camp value.  The sets and model work are laugh-out-loud embarrassing and the plot barely if at all important, but the performances from a crop of Corman regulars play everything effectively serious, with Richard Devon in particular making for both a creepy space captain and his increasingly emotional doppleganger.

THE WASP WOMAN
(1959)
Overall: MEH

The last movie Roger Corman made in his most prolific directing decade as well as actress Susan Cabot's final screen appearance, (who later suffered severe mental ailments and was ultimately and tragically bludgeoned to death by her own son), The Wasp Woman most likely was said filmmaker's attempt at riding the coattails of 20th Century Foxes The Fly.  In that regard, it pails in comparison in every practical way.  For one, the pacing is utterly dreadful with a completely useless, seven minute honey farm prologue, (added for television syndication by fellow B-movie director Jack Hill), getting things off to a arduous start.  Corman has the good sense to show his title monster under the darkest possible lighting for most scenes, considering that it is nothing more than Cabot wearing black and a cheap bug mask.  Still, he makes the mistake of waiting until the movie only has about twenty minutes left in it to do so.  This technically makes The Wasp Woman a lousy advertising firm drama first and foremost.  Scenes of characters in laboratories or on the phone go on for enough seconds too long that it feels like a lifetime, further plodding the whole ordeal along.  Thankfully, (unless you are a steadfast schlock fan), Corman would find better uses of his talents with Vincent Price in tow the following year with the beginning of the Edgar Allan Poe cycle, thus beginning the process of winding down his irresistible urge to make any movie as quickly and cheaply as possible.

50's Roger Corman Part Two

DAY THE WORLD ENDED
(1955)
Overall: MEH

The first horror/sci-fi movie to have Roger Corman both producing and directing was Day the World Ended.  Producer James H. Nicholson from American Releasing Corporation, (soon to be changed to the catchier American International Pictures), commissioned and came up with the title and it is the typical low-budget, cheap sets, minimal cast, rubber monster B-movie that Corman would spend the entire decade earning his bread and butter making.  There are a couple of moments of eerie tension in the first act, some decent radiation make-up effects, an ambitious opening, and Adele Jergens' showgirl Ruby at least seems to have some depth as a character.  Elsewhere though, the film is poorly structured and suffers the standard mishaps from its budget.  Stunt men are clearly noticeable, the sets literally wobble during a fight scene, the monster is shown in broad daylight and looks anything but scary, the ending is lackluster and predictable, and the plotting gives way to lazy, convenient details and monotony.  It is basically a handful of stereotypical characters being bored in a house and us being bored watching them.

THE UNDEAD
(1957)
Overall: MEH

An overly ambitious script from Charles B. Griffith ends up muddling The Undead, Roger Corman's attempt at a time-traveling, part-period piece meant to cash-in on The Search for Bridey Murphy, a film based on the then popular book of the same name about past lives and reincarnation.  In typical Corman fashion, his reach exceeds his grasp and it ends up being a rather schlockly hodgepodge of genres and themes, with a noticeably small budget at its disposal.  Some of the ideas are odd enough to provoke some humor, particularly Richard Devon's hammy portrayal of Satan which is right out of a cliche book, plus the ridiculous logic behind the "science" of a modern hypnotist's grand scheme of sharing brain links or whatever with his patients.  The rubber bats, cackling crones, seductive witches, a completely random dance sequence, fog, and theatrical dialog are all fun, but once again the plot is annoyingly meandering.  Almost the entire film plays as characters talking in one location, going to another one and talking some more, then going back to the last location to look for another character who just went to the last location they were at, and on and on.  Pretty dopey stuff.

THE SAGA OF THE VIKING WOMEN AND THEIR VOYAGE TO THE WATERS OF THE GREAT SEA SERPENT
(1958)
Overall: MEH

One of the more ridiculous titles from the drive-in, B-movie age or any other, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent was Roger Corman's attempt at the scantily clad, warrior women genre.  The sea serpent of the movie's title is shown very briefly and embarrassingly within two assuredly unconvincing rear projection sequences of viking ships under siege in violent waters where they did not even have the means to splash any real water around.  The dialog and performances are pure, unrelenting camp with modern haircuts and accents further enhancing the lack of any believably for a period piece.  Script wise, there is not much to expect as it simply pits two primitive tribes on two different land masses against each other who conveniently speak the same language, only after the lonely women folk decide to throw spears at a tree, see a viking ship omen in the clouds, and go after their big strong men that they cannot imagine living without.  Corman does an adequate job with what he has got in some respects though, considering that the movie is steadily goofy enough to at least not get boring.  Mystery Science Theater 3000 did take a deserving stab at it though so go in with such expectations.

50's Roger Corman Part One

IT CONQUERED THE WORLD
(1956)
Overall: MEH

This early directorial effort from Roger Corman during his prolific, 1950's period is typical of his productions.  Which is to say low on budget, low on plot, and high on unintended laughability.  Though he is joined by a recognizable cast for this round, (Lee Van Cleef and Peter "Ever seen a grown man naked?" Graves in the leads), their dialog is so dumb that it is borderline insulting, as is the script by Lou Rusoff and Charles B. Griffith, both frequent Corman collaborators.  Cleef in particular comes off as an absolute moron who stubbornly continues to help an alien lifeform that is trying to take over the world, only changing his mind once his buddy says something at the very end that makes him pull a "Well I never thought of it like that" turn.  This is after most of the movie is spent with people going back to his house over and over again to reason with him, including his wife who does nothing else for the entire movie.  Visual effects wise, they could not be less special with rubber alien bats being thrown around and the title monster looking as bad if not worse than the most embarrassing Doctor Who creations.  Pure schlock to be sure.

ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS
(1957)
Overall: MEH

More goofy nonsense from the tightly-budgeted Allied Artists that once again brings together producer/director Roger Corman and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith, (the latter who also requested directing a small handful of underwater scenes), Attack of the Crab Monsters delivers on its title the same way any other mega-cheap, drive-in B-movie would.  It is barely over an hour long, the characters are unremarkable enough to forget their names the whole way through, the monsters are hilariously rinky-dink, and it is all a mildly amusing waste of time.  The sound design of the crab monsters themselves is somewhat effective, coming off like a slightly distorted extreme metal scream, but the creatures are also able to consume their victim's brains and then talk as them across long distances and through random objects.  They do this for reasons that are of no importance so why they also need to sound like scary monstrosities in the first place is anybody's guess.  As is to be expected, the script is half-baked enough so the pacing ultimately suffers as there is very little to show the audience besides a couple of scientists talking in a lab, walking into caves and getting killed, swimming a bit, arguing with the crab things, and then repeating the cycle until "The End" flashes on the screen.

A BUCKET OF BLOOD
(1959)
Overall: GOOD

After being given a measly budget of $50,000 from American International Pictures to make a horror movie, Roger Corman and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith technically delivered one with A Bucket of Blood.  Shot in five days, the film equally serves as a send-up of beatnik culture while at the same time fulfilling a gruesome murder quota.  The results certainly are not scary, but they are as funny as intended and Griffith's simple script cleverly lampoons its subject matter.  Likewise, Corman shoots the handful of macabre elements in a straightforward manner that along with the performances which take the material seriously, makes for an effectively dark and comedic result that surprisingly steers clear of pure camp.  The lack of funds available are noticeable, but also forgiving since the story does not require any truly elaborate set pieces and it all cruises by without feeling remotely rushed.  As he was wont to do, Corman would utilize these sets for an even cheaper and even faster-made follow-up with The Little Shop of Horrors, which even more impressively would improve upon the already working, black comedy formula set up here.