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.
(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.
(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.
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