(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.
(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.
(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.
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