(1951)
Dir - Edgar G. Ulmer
Overall: MEH
As one of the many alien invasion movies that took over drive-ins with reckless abandon during the 1950s, Edgar G. Ulmer's The Man from Planet X is no more or less inconsequential than the lot of them. Shot in six days on existing sets that were allegedly left over from Victor Fleming's 1948 historical biopic Joan of Arc, it concerns a humanoid extraterrestrial that arrives on our planet with a goofy helmet on and an inexpressive, likely papier-mâché mask for a face. Interchangeable white actors catch it, try and talk to it, fail, try and kill it, and then have to come face to face with it once the military is brought in to blow the alien fellow off the face of our planet before a fleet of other aliens shows up to make this their new home. Plenty of familiar motifs are on display that would continue to get well-utilized by both bigger and smaller movie studios throughout the next two decades, plus it does not help that everyone on screen is so forgettable that it provides no one to care about when any supposed danger arises. Ulmer covers up the minuscule budget with a plethora of fog for what stands in as the Scottish moors, but this is the only effective atmosphere in the entire film. Otherwise, it gets in and out in seventy minutes without making a memorable dent in its genre.
(1953)
Dir - Eugène Lourié
Overall: MEH
One of the godfathers of the giant monster movie and specifically the very first whose title creature was brought on by atomic bomb radiation, (Godzilla would come out over a year later), The Best from 20,000 Fathoms has all the stereotypical tropes of the sub-genre, both good and bad. Ray Harryhausen makes his debut in overseeing all of the special effects here and the Rhedosaurus he created is as excellent as any of the work he would ever do. As the monster's on-screen moments are far too few, the only enjoyment found in the entire movie is watching him destroy large chunks of Manhattan and then a roller coaster at the very end. Elsewhere, good grief is the film catastrophically boring. All of the human characters are forgettable at best and suffocatingly dull at worst and until the last twenty minutes, nothing happens except everybody flying around the world and debating whether or not a big giant dinosaur has come back to life or not. At the end, our uninteresting "hero" realizes out of thin air that all that they have to do is shoot the creature with a radioactive bullet or some nonsense, but even that seems like it takes an eternity to finally happen. For historical purposes, this is technically worth taking notice of, but its pacing issues and stock characters are unforgivable.
(1958)
Dir - Albert Band
Overall: MEH
Low level, B-movie director Albert Band's I Bury the Living is a strange affair for numerous reasons. Mostly it is the expectations of such a film that contribute to the bizarre experience. For something with such a title made for such a small budget at a time when many such movies were being rapidly produced for drive-in teenager consumption, one would not necessarily presume that it would go into near avant-garde terrain. The premise is easily one of the wackiest of its era and up until about the last two minutes, it comes close to pulling off such an odd, supernatural idea before finally and bluntly tying everything together. The fact that it waits so long to do this is a plus in some respects, but it still comes off as silly no matter how straight everyone is playing it. Another fault is that the cemetery caretaker, (Theodore Bikel), speaks in a nearly incomprehensible Irish accent and taking into account that he and what he says is rather important when all's said and done, this was annoying to say the least. Whether or not the ending is a cheap cop-out or a desperate gasp of logical fresh air is up the viewer, but it does inevitably cheapen an already odd production.
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