50's Ishirō Honda Horror Part Two

RODAN

(1956)

Overall: MEH

 

After briefly stepping away from the kaiju genre on Toho's first Godzilla sequel the previous year, director Ishirō Honda returned with Rodan, (Sora no Daikaijū Radon, Giant Monster of the Sky Rodan, Rodan! The Flying Monster!), which essentially beats the same dead horse that would continue to get beaten for decades still to come.  Another atom bomb/elementary cautionary tale in the guise of an awoken, ancient monster that is big enough to level untold amounts of Japanese housing properties, the differentiating gimmicks here are that not one but two giant behemoths emerge, both of them can fly, and the whole thing was shot in color, (making this the first ever kaiju film to do so).  Otherwise, it still has military guys doing military things like shooting missiles at the winged dinosaurs over and over and goddamn over again to no avail, sitting in conference rooms trying to formulate a plan, and two characters whose names are hardly important that are in love.  Significant portions of the running time are a slog with such derivative nonsense, but the more lively moments of rubber monsters on strings destroying miniature sets in a fury of firepower and hurricane level winds are amusing enough to appease the intended demographic.

 

THE MYSTERIANS

(1957)

Overall: MEH

 

Though a personal favorite of director Ishirō Honda, The Mysterians, (Chikyū Bōeigun, Earth Defense Force), plays out interchangeably from he and Toho's usual giant monster spectacles.  A story treatment was originally commissioned for Jojiro Okami, after which two other screenwriters, (including Godzilla author Shigaru Kayama), elaborated on the material by throwing in an Earth-conquering, alien threat as well as a towering robot to stand-in for the Atom-bomb-juiced, prehistoric reptiles usually utilized in such movies.  While there is a more deliberate, humanitarian angle here with Japan's military complex cooperating with that of other nations, (all in an attempt to put Cold War era squabbles in a more insignificant context when faced against an extraterrestrial threat), the production still cannot think of anything else to do except mercilessly throw explosions at the bad guys for eighty-nine minutes.  All of the characters are cardboard cut-outs with absolutely no personality and it is truly amazing how these films endlessly recycled the same routine of miniature destruction by way of missile bombardment that does absolutely no good until thirty seconds before "The End" flashes on the screen.  Throw in a more sinister element of the aliens wanting to mate with Earth women while wearing utterly ridiculous costumes and it is maybe a couple of notches more interesting than just another monster smash-em-up, but that is about all that it deserves.

THE H-MAN

(1958)

Overall: MEH

 

Despite its elaborate, crime mystery structure fused with a hydrogen radiation monster, Toho's The H-Man, (Bijo to Ekitai-ningen, Beauty and the Liquid People), still manages to be a sluggish affair.  As was all too often the case with contemporary-set, Japanese genre cinema of the day, it suffers from an abundance of uninteresting characters and pedestrian drama.  Considering that sequences showcasing the actual title character in his neon-green, glowing, blob-like glory are few and far between, this leaves the movie to meander with its weakest narrative attributes.  The story was initially conceived of by actor Hideo Unagami who wrote a treatment called "The Liquid Man Appears" while starring in The Mysterians.  After Unagami's untimely death, the project was handed over to Takeshi Kimura, a frequent collaborator of both director Ishirō Honda and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka.  The results are heavily padded with gangster shenanigans, police procedural investigations, and musical nightclub numbers featuring scantily clad ladies.  Things really only pick up when the Liquid Man indeed appears, oozing around while people, (of course), shoot useless bullets at him, followed by him dissolving his victims by grisly yet non-gory means.

50's Ishirō Honda Horror Part One

GODZILLA

(1954)

Overall: GOOD

Toho's initial kaiju template setter Godzilla, (Gojira), begat the longest running cinema franchise of all time and is a quirky combination of sincere, post-war contemplation and goofy special effects.  Green-lit after a failed Japanese/Indonesian production fell through, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, special effects man Eiji Tsuburaya, science fiction writer Shigeru Kayama, screenwriter Takeo Murata, and director Ishirō Honda all contributed narrative ideas into the final project which on Honda's insistence, was treated seriously as a cautionary metaphor for nuclear bomb fallout.  The towering, prehistoric title monster is an iconic creation by Teizō Toshimitsu and Akira Watanabe and represents the emotionless, unrelenting release of mankind's catastrophic tampering with mother nature.  While Godzilla and his several hundred-deep film series would quickly evolve into less potent and more silly popcorn fodder for suitmation enthusiasts, his presence here is strictly melancholic as Honda maintains a tone that is oddly clashing from how ridiculous and poorly dated the technical aspects come off.  The pacing is also regularly unforgiving, though as opposed to virtually all later installments, (as well as pretty much every giant monster movie in general), the actual human characters here are given conflicting depth that benefit the film's themes, as opposed to just being time-wasting pieces of flesh to deliver boring dialog in between the fun destruction moments.

 

HALF HUMAN

(1955)

Overall: MEH

Japan's version of an abominable snowman movie was the lackluster Half Human, (Jūjin Yuki Otoko), a slow, plodding example of too little action and too much padding.  While American and British films from the era that were based on the same Mount Everest footprints photographed by Eric Shipton in 1951 do not fare much better, Ishirō Honda's crack at the yeti legend features three different gangs of uninteresting characters in the Japanese Alps; an anthropological expedition, animal trappers, and a local commune who worship the snow beast and his comparatively more adorable son.  The ninety-five minute running time feels twice as long as we endlessly bounce between everybody standing in huts, cabins, or tents discussing and/or arguing about what is going on, all while the audience is just waiting for more goofy shots of a guy in a guerilla suite to roar and smash things.  When the monster finally obliges, it serves the bare minimum of breaking up the monotony, but the film is neither atmospheric or suspenseful as there is no real mystery, plus too many thinly developed characters are on screen to even keep track of.  Cliches abound with superstitious tribal people, brutish, manically cackling animal hunters, and the calm and collected expedition team.  An even less appreciated American version was also released with bad dubbing of course as well as John Carradine in the lead because that guy always needed a paycheck.

VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE

(1958)

Overall: MEH

A rushed, lackluster kaiju film wrought with production issues, Varan the Unbelievable, (Daikaijū Baran, Giant Monster Varan), is a paint-by-numbers, Godzilla-with-horns movie in all but name.  Toho was initially commissioned by the American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters company to produce a three-part, ninety-minute monster movie for television and after being granted an insufficient budget with shooting having already begun, AB-PT went belly up financially which left Toho with no other choice but to rework the project into a standard feature.  As one could imagine, the results are episodic and dull since director Ishirō Honda and crew scrambled with stock footage and recycled shots from the first two Godzilla films serving as the glue to keep a story together that offers up absolutely nothing unique to the already redundant formula.  The first thirty-odd minutes feature three different groups of scientists visiting an isolated village, each of which take turns being surprised at the giant title creature living there.  The rest of the running time is one failed military attempt at blowing Varan up with bombs after the other, first in water, then on land, and then back in water again.  Throw in some ill-fitting and jaunty, "In the Army Now" music and bathroom break moments like everybody discussing their predicament and proclaiming that this new explosive that they have yet to try will definitely do the trick and, (as George Harrison on The Simpsons would say), "Eh, it's been done".

50's Asian Horror Part Two

GHOST MAN

(1954)

Dir - Motoyoshi Oda

Overall: MEH

 

Sort of Japan's answer to West Germany's series of Edgar Wallace Krimi films, Ghost Man, (Yurei otoko), is a lackluster crime thriller from the Toho production company.  The plot involves two mysterious troublemakers; the title character who dons an Invisible Man costume and a blood-sucking painter who has escaped from a mental institute.  Things play out in a highly convoluted manner, to the point where keeping track of who is who, who is investigating who, who is protecting who, and who murdered who becomes an aggravating guessing game, one that may leave many scratching their heads in befuddlement even when questions are answered.  It does not help that Motoyoshi Oda's direction is stagnant and even though he utilizes minimal to no incidental music in most instances, a poor sense of tension is conveyed throughout.  To the movie's credit, the kill scenes do have an elaborate, proto-slasher vibe to them as the killer taunts the public and law enforcement by staging his naked model/stripper victims in elaborate "art" pieces for discovery.  Still, this is not enough to engage one's interest, let alone enough to make the plot any easier to follow.

WARNING FROM SPACE

(1956)

Dir - Koji Shima

Overall: GOOD

 

Notable as the first Japanese science fiction film to be made in color, Warning from Space, (Uchūjin Tōkyō ni arawaru, Spacemen Appear in Tokyo, The Mysterious Satellite, Asalto a la Tierra, Le Satellite Mystérieux), is a grand, inventive production from Daiei Films.  There are, (very), silly looking alien monsters with human mimicry technology, scientists in lab coats looking through telescopes and trying to convince the powers that be in various nations to take an impending planetary collision seriously, and even a random, laughing bad guy who wants to buy and sell a nuclear destructive formula.  It is a whole lot packed into an agreeable eighty-seven minutes, with some effective, miniature doomsday effects thrown in to juxtapose the laughably bad, one-eyed starfish extraterrestrials that speak proper English for our convenience, (well, in the dubbed version at least).  Prolific director Koji Shima was never known for working within the tokusatsu genre and perhaps it is for this reason that the source material based off of a novel by Gentaro Nakajima was of refreshing appeal to him as it is not merely a series of explosive set pieces against an alien/giant monster threat.  In fact the aliens here are benevolent and cooperative, with all parties involved utilizing nuclear warfare as a positive, Earth-saving device for a change.

 

THE INVISIBLE MAN VS. THE HUMAN FLY

(1957)

Dir - Mitsuo Murayama

Overall: MEH

 

Though not a conventional sequel in the narrative sense, The Invisible Man Vs. The Human Fly, (Tōmei Ningen to Hae Otoko, The Invisible Man and the Fly Man), still serves as the second movie from Daiei Film to utilize H.G. Wells' title character without being a proper adaptation in any way shape or form.  Thus being coherently unattached to the production company's The Invisible Man Appears from eight years prior, this one instead plays out more like a ridiculous comic book movie, with a maniacal bad guy out for revenge and both he and the scientists/cops pursuing him using nonsensical gadgetry that only screenwriters collecting a quick paycheck would come up with.  All of this plus a liberal amount of convoluted plot holes are certainly part of the fun though since as the title would suggest, it makes good on the promise of American International Picture's "big thing shrinks down to a small thing" drive-in movies from the time period mixed with the old invisible shenanigans movies that hearken all the way back to Universals' Golden Era.  As the second film from director Mitsuo Murayama, he does not quite have the chops to keep the pacing up to par and aside from a tense final showdown on top of a roof, most of the set pieces are too mundane to deliver.  Still, it has adequate special effects from Tōru Matoba, some interesting silliness, and a little sex appeal to boot.

50's Asian Horror Part One

THE GHOST CAT OF OUMA CROSSING

(1954)

Dir - Bin Katô

Overall: MEH

The 1950's were a certifiable heyday for horror films of the "ghost cat" variety in Japan; movies that had a period setting and were either directly based on kaidan stories and legends or merely heavily infused with such motifs.  Though the feline element is thrown in more as an afterthought, The Ghost Cat of Ouma Crossing, (Kaibyô ômagatsuji), is still a textbook example of low-budget, supernatural genre cinema from the country's post war era which were in sharp contrast to Toho's radiation-infused, giant monster spectacles that were significantly popular at the time.  Director Bin Katô had about a decade and a half long career and churned out a couple of such films, this one being the earliest that is easily attainable for viewing.  The structure is unfortunately sluggish though as the running time is heavily padded with manipulative plotting amongst a mostly female kabuki troupe, with nothing evoking any spooky atmosphere arriving until the last twenty-odd minutes.  Once it does, it is the usual payoff of the innocent spectre back for revenge, appearing everywhere that her evildoers turn their heads which in turn forces them to immediately spasm wildly out of control in a farcical manner.

 

GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN

(1955)

Dir - Motoyoshi Oda

Overall: MEH

 

Rushed into production mere weeks after the success of 1954's Godzilla, Godzilla Raids Again, (Gojira no Gyakushū, Godzilla's Counterattack), is an exceptionally unexceptional sequel.  Initial director Ishirō Honda was busy filming the romantic drama Lovetide which forced producer Tomoyuki Tanaka to bring in B-movie expert Motoyoshi Oda to be behind the lens, striking while the iron was hot on the previous film's momentum.  As is often the case with breakout genre movies, all personnel involved had no plans to turn this property into an ongoing series so their first attempt at establishing a franchise has very little to offer under the circumstances.  While it deserves some points for not being a complete carbon copy of the first film by introducing another prehistoric monster for Godzilla to throw-down with in the first half, it still revolves around characters that you have zero interest in filling up screen time with banal small talk and in conference room meetings with military people.  The effects work is as charmingly dated as ever, but the use of puppets in the Anguirus vs Godzilla fist-fight is particularly appalling; a sequence that is difficult to imagine causing anything besides unintended hysterics from even the less jaded audience of the time period.

 

THE WOMAN FROM THE SEA

(1959)

Dir - Koreyoshi Kurahara

Overall: MEH

Forgettable if harmlessly done, The Woman from the Sea, (Kaitei kara kita onna), is a lesser known genre film by director Koreyoshi Kurahara and Japan's oldest production studio Nikkatsu; a genre film that is played out as a romantic fable of the tragic variety.  In sharp contrast to the country's mammoth amount of kaiju and/or ghost cat thrillers, this one only slightly alludes to otherworldly elements as a beautiful, scantily clad lady emerges from the ocean, falls in love with a vacationing young man, and has several harpoon-wielding locals convinced that she is some sort of immortal shark creature that has lured many a person to their watery grave.  On screen, the alluring Hisako Tsukuba's only crime seems to be not liking it when horny men eye-hump her, which casts doubt as to whether or not her fate was deserved or merely due to the superstitious ravings of everyone else who does not catch her fancy.  Unfortunately, the film is dull from front to back with hardly any exciting set pieces and just as minimal an amount of character development between the two love-struck leads.  It can scarcely be called a horror movie even by the flimsiest of psychological means and what it teases at is not nearly enough to captivate.

50's American Horror Part Nineteen

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
(1951)
Dir - Robert Wise
Overall: GOOD
 
An influential and top-class work in science fiction, The Day the Earth Stood Still remains one of the genre's seminal films from the Cold War era.  Screenwriter Edmund H. North and director Robert Wise prove well-adept at bringing Harry Bates' short story "Farewell to the Master" to life, as do a solid cast who all take the material seriously and forego various tropes that had and would continue to stagnate alien invasion movies.  Of course this is not an alien invasion movie in any tradition sense, but instead a cautionary tale where Michael Rennie's slightly exotic Klaatu and his hulking, mechanical, zero-nonsense enforcer Gort have come to both warn and plead with earthlings to forgo their international squabbles and atomic weaponry lest it lead to certain disaster.  The fact that Klaatu can be seen as a Christ figure adds further layers to an already sophisticated be it simple tale that is easily digestible and made engaging due to its humanist agenda that focuses on relatable characters instead of just scientists and military people prattling on in boardroom meetings.  It may lack the suspense or flashy special effects of the best allegorical sci-fi that the 1950s produced, but it delivers as a direct and intellectual counterpart.

THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE

(1957)
Dir - László Kardos
Overall: MEH

Released on a double bill with Zombies of Mora Tau, (also produced by Sam Katzman), The Man Who Turned to Stone, (The Petrified Man), is a forgettable B-movie cheapie for Columbia Pictures that mixes women in prison and mad scientist motifs.   A group of insensitive doctors run a Detention Home for Girls where they stage their inmate's suicides in order to utilize their victim's life essences in prolonging their own immortality.  Cockamamie, pseudo-science nonsense that is no more or less ridiculous than the kind that is utilized in any other hackney genre movie from its era, it is presented in a talky fashion with only a couple of deaths and close-calls scattered in to liven things up.  The villainous grand scheme is reveled early on so that there is no mystery to uncover, but the handful of character actors do their best with the bare-bones and campy material that they are given, (authored by blacklisted screenwriter Bernard Gordon), with six foot seven, Austrian thespian Friedrich von Ledebur making an imposing enough, sunken-eyed title monster for what its worth.   Predominantly though, the movie wears its minuscule budget on its sleeve and looks like the low-grade affair that it is.

THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL

(1959)

Dir - Ranald MacDougall

Overall: GOOD

 

Though its racial themes may be simultaneously heavy-handed and anti-climactic for some tastes, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil is still a slick doomsday production.  Writer/director Ranald MacDougall based his script off of two sources; The Purple Cloud novel by M.P. Shiel and the "End of the World" story by Ferdinand Reyher, adding an interracial love-triangle into the mix which made it relevant for the era.  Released five years into the American Civil Rights Movement, its depiction of a post-nuclear fall-out world where a black man, white woman, and white man are ultimately the only three survivors shown on screen was one that the cast and crew were adamant in exploring.  In the lead, Harry Belafonte is shown to be the most noble yet also, (and understandably), the most sensitive to his skin color, with Inger Stevens feeling like a trophy prize between he and Mel Ferrer who is more concerned with the whole being romantic with a lady angle than anything related to nationality.  All three characters are dealt with complexly which is a plus, yet the outcome of their predicament is presumably resolved in an over-simplified manner that does not seem worthy of the build up.  That said, the film works much better as an examination of societal conditioning and how difficult it is to such things shake off in even extreme circumstances where logically, it should hold no further merit.

50's American Horror Part Eighteen

FIVE

(1951)

Dir - Arch Oboler

Overall: MEH

Made independently on a meager $75,000 by Chicago-born filmmaker Arch Oboler, Five is a bare-bones post-apocalyptic film with, unfortunately, very little to say.  As the title would properly suggest, it focuses on five character, (all played by lesser known actors of the time), who cross paths at an isolated hillside house and try to set about conducting themselves respectfully in the now extinct world that they live in.  Well, all but one of the characters try and do such a thing; a foreign mountain climber who washes up on the beach and proceeds to just be an asshole for no reason.  On only a surface level, the film deals with some of the same racial tension explored more prominently in Ranald MacDougall's The World, the Flesh, and the Devil eight years later, as the aforementioned, douchebag cast away reveals himself to be a racist as well.  Yet this and all of the other events s in Oboler's story do not present any compelling social or psychological dilemmas.  None of the characters have anything interesting to say or do, plus coupled with the threadbare budget, it does not afford any exciting set pieces save for brief detour to a devastated city with fake skeletons sitting in cars and a siren perpetually blaring.

 

THE VAMPIRE
(1957)
Dir - Paul Landres
Overall: MEH
 
Though competently made in spite of its undetected production values, Paul Landres first of two low-budget, contemporary undead films The Vampire, (Mark of the Vampire), deserves points for its singular approach to its subject matter at least, but unfortunately that very approach wields lackluster results.  For one, this is a "vampire" movie in name only as it concerns a local doctor who simply turns into a Mr. Hyde brute with amnesia due to some experimental bat blood pills that he is taking.  Also, we do not even see actor John Beal in his beastly form until about ten minutes are left in the running time, which may be for the best since the crude, dirty putty make-up job is nothing to write home about.  Shot in only six days and featuring a handful of hardly notable thespians, it is more agreeable than most drive-in cheappies from a technical level since the performances are all solid and one would have to stretch to nitpick any unintended schlock.  Still, the sincere approach is hardly enough to forgive its lack of ominous atmosphere and uninteresting mythos-tweaking ideas, presenting us with virtually no action and a B-movie monster that hardly does anything on screen until he is easily and unceremoniously shot to death by regular bullets.

 

THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE

(1959)

Dir - Roy Del Ruth

Overall: MEH

 

A potboiler monster film made as a double feature with 20th Century Fox' own Return of the Fly, The Alligator People also serves as the penultimate directorial effort from Roy Del Ruth.  Lon Chaney Jr. appears as the type of character that he was all too often stuck with playing during the second half of his alcohol-fueled career, (namely a dim-witted brute), and he does an effortless though efficient job with a hook arm and southern accent to boot.  The makeup effects by veterans Dick Smith and Ben Nye are not half bad at least when Richard Crane's human features are still detectable.  Once he starts running around in an alligator mask, rubber torso, and jeans though, it all becomes laughable as does his gargly, reptilian voice.  Such unintended humor is forgivable due to the B-movie budget in play which gives it a campy charm despite the sincere performances.  Del Ruth thankfully keeps up an agreeable pace even if the script is predictable and ends with a whimper; a script which had a number of hands working on it both officially and unofficially, which could be part of the problem.  All things considered, it is certainly better than hoards of other even cheaper creature productions from the period, (looking at you Roger Corman), and at a mere seventy-four minutes with Chaney in fine, sweaty form, it deserves a passing grade.

50's American Horror Part Seventeen

SUDDEN FEAR

(1952)
Dir - David Miller
Overall: GOOD

An above average noir thriller with a particularly taut final act, RKO's adaptation of Edna Sherry's 1948 novel Sudden Fear is notable for featuring one of the first lead performances from Jack Palance, plus typically exceptional ones from femme fatal Gloria Grahame and Joan Crawford in the much more sympathetic role.  As is the case with most films that fall into the sub-genre, it is richly photographed so the cinematography of Charles Lang deserves its share of the praise.  While the nearly two-hour running time may seem intimidating on paper, the extra minutes spent during the first half leads to an inevitable and captivating rug-pull where Crawford's wealthy playwright has the happiness of her newfound, pitch-perfect marriage ripped out from under her.  Once the diabolical cards are laid bare, Crawford and the audience share their lack of dramatic irony which kicks up the tension tenfold as we then experience her desperate and out of her depth attempt at righting the betrayal committed against her.  Director David Miller stages some nail biting moments and in typical Hitchcockian fashion, he places tremendous importance on minuscule details to bring everything to a boiling point.

 

THE BLACK SCORPION

(1957)

Dir - Edward Ludwig

Overall: MEH

 

Giant, stop-motion scorpions terrorizing the Mexican country side?  What could go wrong?   Well, for anybody familiar with B-budgeted, drive-in movies that were specifically designed to feature as minimal an amount of monster mayhem as possible in order to give teenagers ample opportunity to head to the refreshment stand and make-out with their dates, it should come as no surprise that Warner Bros.' Mexican/American co-production The Black Scorpion has aged about as poorly as any other movie where an oversized something goes on a seemingly unstoppable rampage.  All of the formulaic beats are hit here; the quick-witted, Caucasian hero, the love interest, the thirty-plus minute wait until we actually see the title creature on screen, cheesy closeups of said creature, and, (most important of all), oodles of time dedicated to military people discussing how to end the imposing monster threat with endless rounds of firepower that do absolutely nothing.  While King Kong's own Willis O'Brien and Mighty Joe Young's Pete Peterson do a nifty job with the stop-motion animation considering the insufficient funds that they were working with, the story unfortunately takes center stage and amounts to nothing more than a one-way ticket to Dullsvile.

 

THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK
(1958)
Dir - Eugène Lourié
Overall: MEH

One of the more conceptually strange sci-fi/horror hybrids from the 1950s, Paramount's adequately budgeted The Colossus of New York puts a world famous, humanitarian scientist's brain inside of a hulking cyborg and lets him come to term's with his unwanted and newfound disembodied existence.  The contemporary-set, Frankenstein-esque premise has plenty going for it and the production design crafted a memorable and mechanical monstrosity with a glowing metal head, crackling electricity distorting his voice, deadly rays shooting out of its eyes, ridiculously broad shoulders, and thick robes draped around them.  The colossus of the title is played by frequent monster man Ed Wolf and is a gentle giant of sorts, at least when he tries to reconnect with a son that presumes, (as does the rest of the world), that he has died and is buried in the backyard.  Sadly, Eugène Lourié's direction is flat and the movie has a tone that bounces between kid-friendly and contemplative in its dour examination of what would happen to a man's well-meaning psyche if it was resurrected from beyond the grave in an artificial and super-powerful form.  Things go tragic, people talk a lot, and it all ends on a whimper instead of a bang.

50's American Horror Part Sixteen

SCARED STIFF

(1953)

Dir - George Marshall

Overall: MEH

 

Right smack in the middle of their sixteen film starring run of films together, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis took on the remake of 1940's The Ghost Breakers, itself the third cinematic adaptation of the play by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard.  Here titled Scared Stiff and once again featuring George Marshall behind the lens, (who likewise helmed the Bob Hope stared movie from thirteen years prior), it is unfortunately a bloated watch with several musical numbers and monotonous gags stretching things out to a less than agreeable hour and forty-seven minutes.  As usual, Lewis' "Mah-hoyvan!" shtick is an acquired taste and only works due to how purposely obnoxious it is.  Martin is likewise in usual be it more agreeable form, tight with his zinger charm and crooner cool with most of the other players merely serving as straight men and women.  Only the last twenty minutes in this version feature any Scooby-Doo worthy spook gags, but for those who agree with the French that Lewis was the bees knees of falling down and making goofy faces, this should suffice just fine.

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA

(1955)

Dir - Robert Gordon

Overall: WOOF

Despite a heftier budget than other Z-grade copy cats plus the renowned Ray Harryhausen on board to work his stop-motion magic, Columbia Pictures' It Came from Beneath the Sea still ends up as one of the most insultingly boring giant monster movies ever made.  The colossal sea creature is mildly teased once or twice for the first hour and when it finally emerges from the ocean to take down San Fransisco landmarks, it goes off screen just as quickly as it arrives to make way for more boring white actors to continue delivering dialog that does not matter.  Directly inspired by 1953's It Came from Outer Space and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, (the latter of which also featured Harryhausen's contributions), the script by Hal Smith and George Worthington Yates offers up absolutely no distinguishing characteristics.  It is the same ole "mutated animal that has grown to overwhelming size due to hydrogen bombing" premise, but the length at which the entire production goes in keeping said mutated animal off screen is unforgivable.  Harryhausen was of course underfunded, which resulted in him only having time to animated six out of the usual eight octopuses arms, thus jokingly referring to the creature as the "sixtopus".  It looks fine for the brief moments that the camera is allowed to linger on it, at least when it is above ground terrorizing the Golden Gate Bridge and not so much during the underwater finale when it grasps onto a toy submarine.

 

KRONOS

(1957)

Dir - Kurt Neumann

Overall: MEH

 

Deservedly buried amongst the herd of message-heavy, alien threat science fiction films from the 1950s, Kronos, (Kronos, Destroyer of the Universe, Kronos, Ravager of Planets), by 20th Century-Fox subsidiary Regal Films is a typical lab coat drama with a comparatively nil amount of action compared to wooden, generic actors delivering dialog in military offices and scientific establishments.  The title creature/spaceship/alien contraption is a gigantic series of black blocks and pipes that turns into an adorable, laughably unconvincing cartoon when it decides to stomp around the US landscape to smash everything in its wake.  Naturally, all of the human personnel take such a threat deadly serious to the point where there is barely any humor or even light banter between anyone besides a single scene of the two most attractive players gallivanting around on a beach before things get real.  Director Kurt Neumann had a prolific handful of decades before the latter part of his career found him delivering more and more campy drive-in fare such as this, but he is limited by both the budget and cinematic confines of the era which do not hold up with such a derivative story and inadequate special effects to boot.  Forgettable, yet harmlessly so at least.

50's American Horror Part Fifteen

DONOVAN'S BRAIN

(1953)

Dir - Felix E. Feist

Overall: MEH

 

Though it is slightly of note for staring All Quiet on the Western Front's Lew Ayres and future first lady Nancy Davis, (Reagan), as a scientist couple, the second of three film adaptations of Curt Siodmak's novel Donovan's Brain is one of the many science fiction horror movies from the 1950s whose pacing is egregiously dated.  Almost exclusively made up of characters standing in rooms while exchanging a zippy quip or two, the complete lack of action makes the sinister threat inherent in the actual story difficult to even decipher.  By the time that Ayres starts exhibiting a personality shift due to his brain preserving experiments, (long, far fetched story), the only things that he seems to be doing is moving money around in banks and being short tempered with people.  It is difficult to tell if the stakes are in fact so low or if the narrative is just too boringly and mildly conveyed to make anything that is happening come off as remotely exciting.  As far as non-demonic possession movies go, this one probably works the best as a sleeping pill equivalent.

THE MONOLITH MONSTERS

(1957)

Dir - John Sherwood

Overall: MEH

While Universal's The Monolith Monsters introduces a unique threat from the typical array of flying saucers, clandestine alien takeovers, and gigantic, mutated things with a pulse, it still follows the sci-fi B-movie formula of the era to a tee.  The last of only five directorial efforts from John Sherwood and based on a story treatment by Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco, it has the usual set-up of a small, California desert town that ends up besieged by a dangerous, over-sized force.  Yet the fact that said force is meteor fragments that grow to the size of skyscrapers and multiply after soaking up moisture presents a scenario where the earth itself is out to get the earth itself.  This is probably giving the script more intellectual credit than it deserves since it is way too potboiler to emphasize any profound themes as well as being incredibly talky to the point of putting any viewer straight to sleep who is revisiting it without a sense of boomer nostalgia.  The special effects work by Clifford Stine is effectively used, at least in the very rare moments that the movie stops being a yawn-inducing series of white, cookie-cutter characters standing in rooms and discussing their dilemma that of course results in everyone living happily ever after. 

BEAST FROM THE HAUNTED CAVE

(1959)

Dir - Monte Hellman

Overall: MEH

 

A little engine that could debut from Monte Hellman and one of the many inadequately funded and filmed rush-jobs for producer Roger Corman, Beast from the Haunted Cave is more interesting as a feeble "triumph" of minimal means movie making than as an actual film.  Corman and co-producer brother Gene initially tasked Charles B. Griffith with turning their previous collaboration Naked Paradise into a monster movie and once the South Dakota setting was chosen, both this and Ski Troop Attack were filmed at the same time and with the same crew and crop of Corman regular performers.  Allegedly, the production was detrimentally cold and equipment would regularly freeze up, which was not helped by scenes done in a disused, Deadwood mine having pieces of the cave start to break off due to guns being fired.  Of course, what early Corman affair would be complete without an hilariously stupid looking monster and the plywood/aluminum/Christmas tree tinsel/paper mache atrocity here certainly qualifies.  Though Hellman keeps the title beast largely off screen as to not produce too many uncontrollable chuckles from the audience, this is actually unfortunate as the brisk, just over an hour running time is atrociously padded with almost nothing happening and could have honestly used more unintentional goofiness to spruce things up.

50's Bert I. Gordon Horror Part Two

THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN

(1957)
Overall: MEH

 

As a counter-point to Universal's The Incredible Shrinking Man which saw significant box office returns six months earlier, American International Pictures reversed the gimmick for The Amazing Colossal Man.  The concept of a giant whatever stomping around and causing havoc was all the rage in 1950s drive-in movie theaters and this time it is a plutonium bomb explosion that makes Lt. Colonel Glenn Manning's body cells grow to the point where he gains eight feet in height per day.  The story is elementary enough that a small child could follow it, (or write it), and even some war footage meant to flesh out the title character's background does not give it much significant cultural weight for the time.  Godzilla by comparison hit much deeper with the creature's origins spawning from the atom bombs that were dropped on Japan during World War II, per example.  Intellectual depth is hardly on the menu here though as it is mostly just boring characters standing around talking about what to do with the big guy who gets more aggravated with his condition as the running time plows on.  A little bit of life is finally shot into the proceedings within the last fifteen or so minutes when the Colossal Man wanders around Las Vegas and smashes some billboards.

ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE

(1958)

Overall: GOOD

 

Once again, B-movie studio American International Pictures takes a cue from Universal whose The Incredible Shrinking Man proved to be a hit the previous year, one-upping the doll-sized human gimmick with Attack of the Puppet People, (Six Inches Tall).  The film has the unique narrative concept of its villain being a seemingly benevolent, soft-spoken and polite old toy maker who shrinks his victims out of pure loneliness.  In his mind, he is taking loving care of his "dolls", sparing them from the stressful day-to-day inconveniences of normal everyday life.  This makes his horrific actions as sad as they are odd, plus Bert I. Gordon's straight-faced direction keeps the material much more tense and chilling that it reads on paper.  The visual effects are impressive for the day, with a handful of inventive scenes involving oversized sets and props.  Sadly, the title people are not terrorized by a house cat as the poster promises, though they do quickly run away from one and also save themselves from a barking dog by hiding inside of a box.  It is overall a refreshing example of a small budgeted, drive-in movie that seemed to have enough care put into it to elevate it above its quasi-knock-off intentions.

 

WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST
(1958)
Overall: MEH

For the inevitable sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man, American International Pictures managed to pump out an even more boring, D-budgeted talking fest with War of the Colossal Beast, (Revenge of the Colossal Man, The Colossal Beast).  Producer/director Bert I. Gordon runs the show once more with returning screenwriter George Worthing Yates, yet the entire cast is different which includes the now seventy-foot tall title character.  To disguise the fact that Colonel Glenn Manning is a different actor, half of his face is disfigured and his "dialog" is limited elusively to animalistic grunts and moans.  To be fair though, Duncan Parkin makes a fine stand-in for Glenn Langan as most filmgoers would hardly notice or care about the switcheroo.  The story brings in Manning's sister who was never mentioned before and revolves around the military trying to find the giant, communicate with him, and then find him again.  Even by the typical, rushed drive-in movie standards of the era, this one is particularly monotonous and vacant on suspense.  Besides the Colossal Man lifting up a buss full of children, absolutely nothing worthy of anything besides a yawn occurs.  The short running time is the only saving grace, along with the fact that no further snore-fests were produced in this particular series.

 

EARTH VS. THE SPIDER

(1958)

Overall: MEH

The last film that director Bert I. Gordon made for American International Pictures until 1976's The Food of the Gods, Earth vs. the Spider, (The Spider), continued his several movie string of low-budget, "giant or tiny something" genre spectacles.  Done on a typically small scale and set in a single town with only a handful of characters and sets, it is paced surprisingly brisk for something of its kind.  László Görög and George Worthing Yates's script wisely omits any explanation as to why an over-sized arachnid lives in a cave off of the highway, as too many meandering talking points between scientists, teenagers, and law enforcement officials would have derailed the proceedings.  Such "characters in rooms discussing things so that the teenagers in the audience can stop paying attention and make-out with their dates" moments are still present, but they are kept to a minimum as the plot actually has enough momentum to get to the monster stuff.  The projection special effects work by Gordon and Paul Blaisdell is dated of course, but the cost-efficient fact that they used footage from a real live tarantula instead of a puppet or stop-motion is a plus in some respects as at least the monster looks real enough during closeups because, well, it is real.  Also the cave sequences which combine stills from New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns and interiors shot in Los Angeles' Bronson Caves in Griffith Park look atmospherically imposing, as intended.

50's Bert I. Gordon Horror Part One

KING DINOSAUR

(1955)
Overall: WOOF
 

B-movie peddler Bert I. Gordon started off his directorial career with King Dinosaur; a movie bad enough to make one seriously ponder how he ever was allowed behind the lens again.  Not that the abysmal results of the film are entirely Gordon's fault as it was shot in seven days and he is working with a completely inadequate budget even for the standards of drive-in schlock from the era.  The dopey story involves a new planet that just strolls on into Earth's atmosphere shortly into the future, which gives the excuse for four no-name Caucasian actors to travel there to see if it is inhabitable.  Said characters spend about forty minutes doing so with no sense of urgency before the not-so-special effects showcases start involving split screen shots of iguanas and armadillos that stand-in for prehistoric monsters.  This tactic goes all the way back to the silent era and was still used decades later for anything that could not afford a stop-motion crew for more stylized results, but it of course comes off as ridiculous when we are supposed to be afraid of a "Tyrannosaurus Rex" that is clearly just a common house lizard.  The movie's underwhelming visuals are hardly the biggest faux pas though as the movie is atrociously boring despite all of the stock footage of atomic bombs and woolly mammoths meant to distract you.

 

BEGINNING OF THE END

(1957)
Overall: MEH

One of the many cheaply made, giant insect cash-grabs that was churned out in the 1950s, Beginning of the End is no better or worse than the most forgettable of them.  Speaking of Them!, the film was tailor-made to rehash the same basic concept and threat, this time being over-sized locusts instead of ants that start terrorizing the Illinois countryside.  They eventually make their way to Chicago where no military weapons can stop them, (well, besides the few times that they do), and Peter "Ever seen a grown man naked?" Graves concocts a plan to lure all of the pesky bugs into Lake Michigan by way of an artificial mating call.  The movie opens with an eerie concept of an entire town being destroyed and all of its inhabitants having vanished into thin air, but things quickly become formulaic after that with characters making fully-fledged conclusions in the blink of an eye and reverting to the usual desperation attempt to just drop a bomb on the problem, which is in keeping with every other science fiction and/or disaster movie from the period that played stereotypically into Cold War fear tactics.  Director Bert I. Gordon supplied his own special effects which utilize the same split screen and rear projection that produced equally awful results in his previous King Dinosaur crud rock, but at least there is plenty of such grasshopper mayhem on display to laugh at.

 

THE CYCLOPS

(1957)
Overall: MEH

Though writer/director/producer Bert I. Gordon's third feature The Cyclops includes a good amount of screen time for an, (allegedly), aggressively drunk Lon Chaney Jr., it also includes the worst special effects yet in any of the filmmaker's movies thus far.   For bottom-barrel budgetary reasons, Gordon is still forced to use rear projection and primitive matte work in order to put the regular sized characters on the same screen with the title monster, as well as overgrown insects and reptiles.  The results are embarrassing to say the least, but they do provide the movie with some much needed, accidental hoots along with Chaney's particularly sweaty and jacked-up performance.  Gordon's script is bare-bones and still has moments of monotony, particularly during the first half when the four lone characters keep having the same argument as to when they should leave the desolate, Mexican desert after finding it rich with uranium.  That said, there are a good amount of the aforementioned, unintentionally funny giant animal sequences regularly thrown in before Duncan Parkin becomes the main attraction playing essentially the same bald, scantily-clad, mindless brute that he would likewise portray in Gordon's War of the Colossal Beast the following year.  At only sixty-six minutes long, it does not overstay its welcome as it easily still could have, but its dopey, D-rent production values undermine it all the same.

50's British Horror Part Four

THE GAMMA PEOPLE

(1956)

Dir - John Gilling

Overall: MEH

A mad scientist romp by director/co-writer John Gilling, The Gamma People has some interesting aspects despite being a typically over-talky, low-budget genre film.  Shot on location in Austria and in development for a number of years with different actors attached at various points, it concerns a Ruritania-esque, isolated village/country overrun by a dictator in a castle who conducts experiments on the townsfolk which either mutates them into mindless underlings or enhances their brain capacity to genius levels.  There is a post-war, Nazi undercurrent of artificially formulating the "ideal" dictator who will be driven by perfection and rule without sentimentality, a diabolical overview that is ultimately won over by an American journalist and his British photographer who arrive unexpectedly by chance to ultimately knock the whole house of cards operation down.  Things never get that intense as it has more of a jovial tone than anything else and the action is kept to a detrimental minimum where the locals are either haplessly oblivious as to what is going on, in cahoots with what is going on, or afraid to talk about what is going on.  All of this gives it a repetitive feel that makes the inevitable conclusion, (which, granted, is more excitable than the rest of the movie), still not as gripping as it should be.

 

CAT GIRL

(1957)

Dir - Alfred Shaughnessy

Overall: MEH

A thematic cousin to RKO's Cat People, Cat Girl takes the bog-standard psychological route in its execution.  This was at the insistence of director Alfred Shaughnessy who only directed four films in a brief period of time and had a much more prolific career as a screenwriter.  Schaughnessy reworked the initial script "Wolf Girl" by Lou Rusoff into one where Barbara Shelley's protagonist does the usual hysterical woman in horror movies thing by having a psychiatrist tell her that her cat transformations are "all in her mind".  Things play out predictably from there, with a family curse thrown into the mix as an extra cliche, plus an ending that adds further confusion into the whole "overactive imagination" concept.  American International Pictures insisted on inserting some very brief, hastily filmed shots of an out of focus cat mask and paws to give the movie some visual spectacle besides competent, shadow-heavy cinematography or Shelley simply looking gorgeous.  The results are fine for what they are and the mere sixty-nine minute running time is an easy one, but this mostly serves as a minor curiosity in Shelley's future scream queen career as opposed to a properly gripping bit of feline-centered creepiness.

 

ESCAPEMENT

(1958)

Dir - Montgomery Tully/David Paltenghi

Overall: MEH

 

Ex-Nazis up to no good as always in Escapement, (The Electric Monster), a talky yet moderately enjoyable thriller with a pseudo-science angle.  Some of the components are quirky such as the surreal dream sequences, (which were choreographed by ballet dancer David Paltenghi); dream sequences that are filmed by a psychiatric clinic in order to beam into patient's brains for either soothing, therapeutic purposes or diabolical mind control ones, depending on which character is calling the shots.  Little of it makes logical or scientific sense of course and the film's villain is too needlessly one-note and the hero too square-jawed and boring to make for much engagement.  There also is not much of a mystery from science fiction author Charles Eric Maine's script as we get an explanation as to what is going on pretty early and then it just becomes a sluggish waiting game for the bad guy to get his comeuppance while the good guy gets the beautiful girl who is more than twenty years younger than him.  On the plus side, the electronic soundtrack by John Simmons is unique for its time and creates an appropriate, eerie mood even if the actual narrative fails to muster the right sinister intrigue.

50's British Horror Part Three

DEATH IS A NUMBER

(1951)

Dir - Robert Henryson

Overall: MEH

 

An obscure, fifty-minute feature helmed by a director who only did four other shorts and made by an equally obscure British company that only produced thirty films, Death Is a Number is a curious entry that is rarely discussed in the annals of black and white horror.  This is rightfully so, even though the movie is far from terrible yet also just as far from memorable.  A major issue is the unorthodox structure as it merely revolves around a dandy gentleman recalling a quasi-strange tale about an acquaintance of his whereby supernatural things involving swirling vapors, uneasy feelings, astrology, and the number nine for whatever reason are described as far more sinister than they appear on screen.  In fact the film is so cheaply made that it seems cobbled together as an afterthought, with stock footage and narration explaining things that seem to be artificially thrown into unrelated footage.  Whether this is the case or not, it is about as compelling of a watch as sitting on the floor and looking up at someone telling a barely interesting ghost story, leading one to believe that all parties involved here largely forgot the whole "motion picture" part of, well, motion pictures.

 

THE TROLLENBERG TERROR

(1958)

Dir - Quentin Lawrence

Overall: MEH

The feature-length version of the ITV "Saturday Serial" installment of the same name, The Trollenberg Terror, (The Crawling Eye), is a standard, low-budget B-movie that has garnished a more pathetic reputation than many due to some of the most appalling special effects of any era.  Serving as the non-television debut from director Quentin Lawrence, (who was also behind the lens for the aforementioned ITV original), he wisely spares the viewer from the atrocious visuals for as long as possible, but even early moments feature hilariously dated rear projection that Alfred Hitchcock would have even balked at.  As far as the story goes, (which was initially penned by three different people under the pseudonym Peter Key and here done by Hammer mainstay Jimmy Sangster), it sacrifices most of the action for all of the characters walking into different rooms to discuss the script.  There are a couple of beheadings, (shown off screen of course), and one or two moments where certain people get inexplicably possessed by an alien lifeform that lives in a hovering cloud, (ala Jordan Peele's Nope from nearly sixty-five years later), but it is paced too leisurely to make any of these segments as exciting as they should be.  When they finally have no other choice but to showoff the tentacled, one-eyed extraterrestrial behemoth, it is an unintentional laugh fest that makes the entire affair impossible to take seriously.

THE HEADLESS GHOST

(1959)

Dir - Peter Graham Scott

Overall: MEH

 

Written in two weeks and filmed in three in order to squeeze another drive-in feature for double-billing with Horrors of the Black Museum, The Headless Ghost sure comes off like the haphazard, disposable rush job that it is.  Running at under an hour, it feels twelve times as long with the production crew utilizing preexisting sets from the aforementioned Horrors of the Black Museum which was still being edited as shooting began here.  The story was cobbled together by Aden Kandel and producer Herman Cohen and is not altogether bad.  Ideally suited for such lighthearted, comedic fare, it concerns three college students hiding out in a haunted castle after a tour in order to satisfy their curiosity as to the existence of supernatural forces.  A couple of ancestral paintings come to life and deliver the characters a cockamamie quest to retrieve the title spectre's missing head, all before things wrap up in a jolly ole fashion.  The problem of course is that the film is enormously padded, with the camera lingering on scenes far after they have already ended and every character spending endless amounts of time reiterating the same information to each other.  On the other hand, the viewer probably cannot keep their eyes open anyway and could honestly use such reminders as to what is going on.