60's Vincent Price Part Five

MASTER OF THE WORLD

(1961)

Dir - William Witney

Overall: GOOD

 

American International Picture's Master of the World was their ambitious attempt at an epic adventure film to stand toe-to-toe with any others that were based on the works of Jules Verne.  Written by Richard Matheson and taking elements from both Verne's novel of the same name and Robur the Conqueror, it is mostly admirable, if still unavoidably limited by its B-movie attributes.  There is an over abundance of obvious recycled footage from other movies thrown in to try and up the production value, plus the special effects are barely passable even for the standards of the time.  William Witney's direction is predominantly flat, but the set design is colorful and impressive, still making a striking visual impression at least.  Surprising to no one, Vincent Price is excellent as the Albatross captain Robur, remaining a sympathetic "villain" in the gray sense as his actions are far more diabolical than his commendable intentions.  In his first heroic lead, Charles Bronson is likewise a standout, turning in an unemotional and sound tough guy performance typical of many that he would give throughout his career.

CITY UNDER THE SEA

(1965)

Dir - Jacques Tourneur

Overall: MEH

 

Though it stars Vincent Price, was made by American International Pictures, kind of takes its title from an Edgar Allan Poe story and bookends the film with quotes from it, City Under the Sea, (War-Gods of the Deep), is more of a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea knock-off than another proper Poe entry from the production company.  The final directorial effort from Jacques Tourneur, it makes use out of some fetching sets, but there is really nowhere to go with the monotonous story.  Basically, a few characters are captured by Price and spend a predominant amount of the running time standing in one room while talking to him, then sent to another room to talk about how to escape.  This repeats until we get a long, dialog-less underwater scene that shows off the cheap yet humorously harmless gill men monsters.  The biggest issue with the script though is how none of the characters are fleshed out, including Price's who is lazily smitten with a girl that looks like his dead wife, yet nothing is elaborated on and the two barely even have any scenes together.  It is rather forgettable all around and pretty much every other AIP film with similar components is at least far more interesting.

 

DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS

(1966)

Dir - Mario Bava

Overall: WOOF

Doubling as the worst movie that both Mario Bava and Vincent Price ever made, (and sadly the only one that the two men were involved in together), Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, (Le spie vengono dal semifreddo), is a certifiable waste of celluloid.  Put into production after the baffling success of the previous year's Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, the sequel was a joint production between American International Pictures and Italian International Film with Bava serving as director only because he was under contract to do so.  Two versions of the movie were shot and released for each country's markets and Bava was even less involved in the American edit, meaning not at all.  Amazingly, it is a worse abomination than the first Dr. Goldfoot debacle, largely due to the involvement of the Italian "comedy" team of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia who are about as funny as a plague of testicular cancer.  Price can do absolutely nothing with the wretched material, though he at least looks like he is making the best of a paycheck.  When that is the only remotely positive thing one can say about a movie, you know you have a problem.

60's Vincent Price Part Four

HOUSE OF USHER

(1960)

Dir - Roger Corman

Overall: GOOD

The first of American International Picture's Roger Corman/Vincent Price/Edgar Alan Poe adaptations was House of Usher, (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Mysterious House of Usher).  AIP took a gamble on it after primarily spitting out cheap, black and white drive-in movies, upping the budget, shooting in Technicolor, and getting a bankable screen presence such as Price on board.  The results were not only profitable but considering that there would be seven more such entries in the series and that various other filmmakers both abroad as well as localized in America would follow the blueprint laid down here, this would prove to be a significantly influential work.  Corman's infamous reputation as a cost-cutter first and an auteur second is given some leeway here as her proves to have a keen eye for overwhelmingly Gothic imagery, helped largely by Floyd Crosby's cinematography.  The director also manages to wrack up the tension in Richard Matheson's somewhat monotonous script, with Les Baker's over the top, ghostly choir soundtrack feverishly building at regular intervals.  Price played many eccentric characters in his long career to say the least and as Roderick Usher, he provides an adequate level of camp for a hopelessly self-loathing nihilist with overtly delicate senses.  This remains one of the most macabre and atmospheric of all horror films.

CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER

(1962)

Dir - Albert Zugsmith

Overall: MEH

If not the strangest entry in Vincent Price's hundred-movie deep filmography, Confessions of an Opium Eater, (Souls for Sale, Evil of Chinatown), is certainly in the upper running.  Thomas De Quincey's novel Confessions of an English Opium-Eater serves as a basis in only the loosest sense and the plot structure is baffling in more ways that one.  Price is cast a bit against type as the only Caucasian on screen, trying to uncover a human trafficking ring where young Chinese girls are auctioned off to wealthy men.  Along the way, he trips balls in an opium den in the movie's single best scene where nightmarish visuals randomly spring up on the screen and men silently chase him in slow motion.  Also, women are kept in hanging cages, a never-ending stream of secret passages link an underground labyrinth of shady dealings, every character including Price talks in stereotypically arbitrary, Asian aphorisms, and there is a sing-song midget.  Director Albert Zugsmith does not really keep all of the nonsensical parts working together and despite its rather fascinatingly singular "story", it drags heavily and becomes more odd than properly entertaining.

DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE

(1965)

Dir - Normal Taurog

Overall: WOOF

Easily one of the most atrociously unfunny comedies ever made, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is American International Picture's horrendous attempt at making a beach party spy film with Vincent Price sending up his macabre image.  It sounds like a concept conceived of under the influence of drugs already, but the finished result is wacky in all the wrong ways.  On the mild plus side, Price is impossible not to love even in an abysmal offering like this and he does seem to revel in playing straight comedy for a change.  One scene involving him reenacting the ending of The Pit and the Pendulum at least seems amusing on paper.  The theme song by The Supremes of all groups is kitschy and fun, plus producer James H. Nicholson's wife Susan Hart gives the material a solid go at least.  Of course the material in question is unbearably stupid and the "jokes" are so pedestrian and cornball that even a toddler would roll their eyes at them.  Most unfortunate of all is that the movie actually turned out to be a hit and an even worse sequel followed the next year.  For Price fans, these are easily the last two entries that should ever be looked into.

50's American Horror Part Fourteen

INVADERS FROM MARS

(1953)

Dir - William Cameron Menzies

Overall: MEH

 

Historically significant as the first color film with spaceships and aliens, (beating out War of the Worlds by four months), Invaders from Mars is a mixed bag of both dopey and effective attributes.  It is quite ridiculous for high ranking Army officers to be hanging around with a young kid who gets to sit in on and participate in their highly dangerous and, (one would think), heavily restricted military efforts against hostile alien forces, but apparently no one told the screenwriters this.  Silly plotting issues aside, the set design is stylishly surreal with police precincts and medical buildings having long, barren hallways that juxtapose the otherwise "gee golly wiz" performances.  The Martians look idiotic yet interestingly odd at the same time and their threat is actually quite creepy, mind controlling people who sink through the sand and into their underground ship which makes said victims hot-tempered and intimidating.  Highly dated from a production standpoint, unintentionally laughable, flatly acted, noticeably low on budget, and the kid is borderline insufferable, but it has enough quirks in fits and starts to make it marginally memorable at least.

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US

(1956)

Dir - John Sherwood

Overall: MEH

The final film in Universal's classic monster series was The Creature Walks Among Us, the third to feature the Gill Man in as many years.  Jack Arnold graduated to A pictures with frequent assistant director John Sherwood stepping in.  The most prominent change though is the Gill Man's physical make-over which kicks off the movie's second act.  This is given a narrative explanation at least as this time another team of scientists enters the Everglades and in capturing the creature, they severely burn him, perform an experiment to keep him alive, and all of that turns his gills into proper humanoid lungs or something.  As the title would suggest, he does in fact "walk among" everyone for the rest of the movie and even gets a set of loose-fitting clothes as well.  It is an interesting spin in some respects and the creature does get to show off his considerable strength more here than in the other entries in the series, but the story is bogged down a bit with a combination of stiff and unlikable characters.  Leigh Snowden breaks up the exclusively male cast and provides the eye candy that was as much a staple with this trilogy as the monster, but she also does not get anything to do besides stand around in a bathing suite and have guys hit on her.

THE BRAIN EATERS

(1958)

Dir - Bruno VeSota

Overall: MEH

Three years after co-directing the avant-garde noir thriller Dementia, Bruno VeSota followed it up with the Roger Corman and Ed Nelson produced The Brain Eaters which was an unofficial/accidental adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters.  Shot for a measly $26,000 in six days and running only an hour long, it gets in and gets out with a generic story concerning a mysteriously crashed spacecraft from another world, plus mind-altering parasites.  The aliens give the usual song and dance of being peaceful and only wanting to take over the human race in order to make them more docile and free of pesky emotions, which is solved by all of the square-jawed white men by realizing that they can thwart their invaders by throwing electricity at them.  None of the set pieces are engaging let alone fun and even with its commendably short running time, the whole thing feels like a slog due to the chatty script and stock science fiction ideas on display.  The film is of note though for containing an early performance from Leonard Nimoy, (whose last name is misspelled in the credits as "Nemoy"), playing an aged, bearded expedition member that is fully corrupted by the alien's soft-spoken mojo and shrouded in fog.  Thankfully, you cannot mistake that iconic voice so you will still recognize him even without seeing him.

50's American Horror Part Thirteen

INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN
(1956)
Dir - Jack Pollexfen
Overall: MEH

Lon Chaney Jr.'s career was in pretty rough shape by 1956 when he got the leading though almost entirely mute role in the D-rent Indestructible Man.  The once enduring actor looks practically pickled in alcohol here and it does not help that he spends most of the movie walking around with his hands in his pockets while the editor routinely interjects the same unintentionally silly close-up of his angry looking eyes.  What really sinks the ship though is the comically dated, no nonsense, and stereotypical performance of Max Showalter as a lieutenant who also has the misfortune of narrating the film.  We even get an elongated scene of him and a showgirl sitting in a car, sharing their life stories with each other, a scene that seems to go on for days and grinds the already unforgivably boring story down to an even more pronounced halt.  There is also a stock, dramatic musical score that literally never lets up and plays through scenes with no rhyme or reason as to its would-be mood setting significance.  Seeing Chaney lift up cars and throw lowlife criminals off of buildings might sound fun on paper, but this no budget, lame-brained realization of such a thing is a colossal waste of time.

HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER
(1958)
Dir - Herbert L. Stock

Overall: MEH

 

The final entry in American International Pictures' teenage monster movie block goes meta with How to Make a Monster.  It is still the same old plot of someone who is either a master of science or hypnotism using a teenage, good looking person for some kind of moronic experiment or in this case, a moronic revenge scheme.  While the premise sounds fun of a bitter, veteran make-up artist using young actors disguised as the title monsters from I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein to murder the cold studio heads who are putting him out of work, the film is as overtly talky and bland as the ones that it references.  Returning director Herbert L. Stock breathes absolutely no life into anything happening on screen as it is just one flat, stock dialog exchange after the other.  The very few murders happen far enough apart from one another that they probably failed to stop the drive-in audience members of the day from making out with their dates or getting more popcorn.  Robert H. Harris makes an unsympathetic lead as well and once again, the movie kicks into color for the last few minutes for no decipherable reason.  Each previous film in this particular series is a dud and this one is no different.

 

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES

(1959)

Dir - Bernard L. Kowalski

Overall:  WOOF

 

Part nature horror, part "man in a rubber suite" creature feature, part hillbilly bumpkin marital drama, and all garbage, Attack of the Giant Leeches is one of the many no dollar budgeted drive-in duds produced in the 1950s.  While all of the lackluster components from such films are present, (stiff acting, uninspired direction lacking any and all atmosphere, very little screen time given to the monsters, stagnant pacing, an overtly talky script, etc), it makes plenty of other blunders to limit the amount of unintentional laughter possible for the audience to indulge in.  The giant leeches of the title look positively ridiculous, but their very rare appearances are thrown into a script with moronic police officials ignoring oodles of evidence pointing to something strange going on, a doctor who tries to blow up all of the creatures underwater with merely a couple of sticks of dynamite, and two idiots with a single harpoon who go scuba diving looking for them.  Of course it is the enormous lack of action though that drowns the movie in its own ultra-cheep, hare-brained lameness.  Yet another example of "two minutes of monster screen time and over an hour of people standing in rooms talking", it is possibly even more forgettable than usual for such nonsense.

50's American Horror Part Twelve

THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES

(1955)

Dir - David Kramarsky/Lou Place/Donald Myers/Roger Corman

Overall: MEH

 

Notable as the first credited work for special effects man Paul Blaisdell, one of several rushed/no money shooting jobs from Roger Corman, and for having a completely misleading movie poster, The Beast with a Million Eyes, (The Unseen), has some interesting ideas yet understandably fails to realize them under its inadequate production means.  AIP founders James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff were responsible for giving the initial script "The Unseen" its new, flashier title and also for insisting upon a visible spaceship and alien to make an appearance as both were previously meant to be invisible as to save on the already razor-thin budget.  The resulting movie features footage completed by four different directors and there were issues with non-union crew members along the way.  Furthermore, Blaisdell was tasked with making the monster for a hilariously measly $200, a monster who shows up for three seconds and whose scenes were allegedly shot in ten minutes.  The finished results are surprisingly coherent under the circumstances, but it is almost entirely a talky affair just with a couple of attacks from animals, a mute brute, and a piercing siren noise that is probably more annoying for the viewer than for the characters on screen.

FORBIDDEN PLANET

(1956)

Dir - Fred M. Wilcox

Overall: GOOD

 

One of the most influential science fiction films ever made, Forbidden Planet helped break much ground, some of which did not even see its fulfillment until decades later.  Intellectual concepts such as the subconscious' id, blossoming sexual innocence, and the advancement of superior intellect ultimately undoing an entire species all intermingle with each other.  This was also one of the first genre films to take place entirely outside of Earth, feature a completely electronic musical score, and have a robot with an actual personality.  Visually, the costume design and visual effects are helplessly dated, but they still look wonderful in an otherworldly manner that is appropriate and fun for the material.  The same goes for the spectacular, elaborate set design which looks impressive when exploring the miles of subterranean, alien power systems.  The story is a tweak on William Shakespeare's The Tempest, which in and of itself is a much bolder concept for 1950s science fiction than merely providing another parallel for Cold War paranoia.  Also long before his exclusive switch to zany comedy, a thirty year-old Leslie Nielsen has one of his most memorable dramatic roles as Commander John J. Adams.

THE COSMIC MAN
(1959)
Dir - Herbert S. Greene
Overall: MEH

The only film made by the Futura Productions company and one of only two directorial efforts from Herbert S. Greene, The Cosmic Man is a typically dull bit of low-budget sci-fi from an era that was ripe with many of them.  Filmed in a rushed and uninspired manner with only a scant few special effects shots, it falls into the inevitable cliche of being almost entirely made up of boring Caucasian actors standing and/or sitting in rooms while trading inconsequential dialog with each other.  Bruce Bennett plays the square-jawed hero with no charisma, Angela Greene's only job is to look pretty, there is a stupid "Aw shucks golly gee-wiz" kid, and actors in military costumes discuss what should be done about their newfound extraterrestrial threat.  John Carradine as the title being from another world may be enticing to genre fans, but he is given a detrimentally small amount of screen time and is invisible for half of his scenes anyway, though his famous, bellowing voice still gets to spout off various The Day the Earth Stood Still-adjacent warnings to mankind.  As a forgettable and dated cheapie that was merely meant to fulfill seventy-odd minutes on a drive-in double-bill, it could be worse, but make no mistake; forgettable it surely is.

50's American Horror Part Eleven

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

(1953)

Dir - Byron Haskin

Overall: GOOD

 

One of the most memorable and influential sci-fi films of the 1950s, The War of the Worlds was Paramount's big budget adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel.  An apocalyptic epic for its day, the studio went all out with the special effects and design work, breaking from the stereotypical flying saucer and "little green men" Martian look and instead going with stingray spaceships and insect-like aliens.  Extensive use of matte paintings enhance the level of destruction that the invaders lay out over the planet as well, which naturally reaches a peak in the last act once every human attempt at weaponry against them proves futile.  Numerous changes were made to Wells' source material, particularly the setting which was switched from Victorian-era England to modern day southern California.  Also, the religious angle is intensified with a sympathetic clergyman and a final proclamation that the Martians were ultimately defeated by God's creation of atmospheric bacteria, i.e a "miracle".  Though things take some time to get going, director Byron Haskin stages a wonderfully tense alien confrontation in a farm house and generally revs up the hopelessness the entire way through.  Given such an A-picture presentation, the film is a shining example of how good such material can be when handled with serious care.

 

BLOOD OF DRACULA

(1957)

Dir - Herbert L. Stock

Overall: MEH

 

Another entry in American International Pictures teenage horror streak, Blood of Dracula, (Blood Is My Heritage), at least has the distinction of the most misleading title out of the bunch.  There is no Dracula; just another grown-up utilizing a poor adolescent to monster-out and murder people for no reason.  She does not do this on camera until about fifty minutes into the hour and nine minute running time, so this is yet one more example of a terribly boring drive-in movie that poorly delivers on its genre promises.  Herbert L. Stock is behind the director's chair again, but he only manages to shoot some life into the proceedings during those very rare moments where Sandra Harrison's Nancy Perkins goes for the jugular in some ridiculous yet freaky vampire makeup.  The performances are fine, particularly Harrison who carries the movie as the head-strong victim, but the whole presentation is far too stiff.  To make matters worse, it turns into a musical for a few minutes as one of the stock male heartthrob characters sings a horrendously terrible song at a party while everyone dances and snaps their fingers.  Sadly, they would repeat that particularly lame gimmick in the following How to Make a Monster as well.

THE GIANT GILA MONSTER
(1959)
Dir - Ray Kellogg
Overall: WOOF

A wretched companion piece to the comparitvely superior The Killer Shrews, (which was shot cheaply in Dallas, Texas at the same time by producers Ken Curits and Gordon McLendon plus first time director Ray Kellogg), The Giant Gila Monster makes the unforgivable mistake of forgetting that it is supposed to have an actual monster in it.  The first on-screen attack by the large title reptile occurs over a full goddamn hour in, though we do get a couple of brief shots of the Mexican beaded lizard slowly crawling around in the meantime; a lizard that stands in for the titular Gila monster.  Instead of ANY creature feature mayhem, we follow around a handful of teenagers and grownups in a small, rural town who talk about cars, music, cars again, whether or not some missing kids have eloped, more cars, and various other incredibly exciting things to keep the viewer on the edge of their seats.  The already numbingly boring proceedings stop at several instances for Don Sullivan to serenade us in his shaky vibrato, but he could be Frank Sinatra for all the good that it does the movie, which has as close to nothing as humanly possible to offer genre enthusiasts, let alone simply anybody attending a drive-in double feature.