(1956)
Dir - Jerry Warren
Overall: WOOF
When Fred Olen Ray allegedly goes on record in stating that your film is "incredibly boring", you know that you got something that is the antithesis of special on your hands. Man Beast is the debut from director Jerry Warren that was made with no money and much footage from other films thrown in for padding and it fails as an engaging viewing experience in every possible way. Though it is only sixty-seven minutes long, fifty of them is spent with characters talking to each other about missing brothers and treacherous mountains, while another sixteen and a half minutes is made up of expedition scenes from Allied Artists and Monogram movies, plus some that was allegedly taken from an unreleased Mexican one. If you are doing the math, that leaves thirty seconds for having any yeti on screen whatsoever and considering that the entire affair is marketed as an abdominal snowman movie, that is a big fat swing and a miss. To be fair, the reworked ape costume from the 1945 film White Pongo looks fine during the "blink and you'll miss them" moments that it shows up and the plot twist of a native guide who is actually a silver-haired/eyebrowed decedent of the yeti whose master-plan is to kidnap women in order to mate with them is sufficiently exploitative. Too bad they just forgot to do anything else correctly.
(1959)
Overall: WOOF
Shot in 1957 yet not released until two years later on a double bill with Teenage Zombies, Jerry Warren's The Incredible Petrified World is anything but "incredible". Well, unless you consider it incredible that it is so lackluster. While technically an under sea romp where ocean explorers get trapped in a volcanic cave after their diving bell breaks, the two women/two man crew of bland Caucasians sit around talking, exploring, arguing, and eventually coming in contact with a bearded man who has been inexplicably living down there for over a decade. Meanwhile, John Carradine tries to rescue his crew and eventually does so in one of the most anti-climaxes that you are likely to find, even in D-grade crap like this. There are no monsters, no dangerous sea critters, of course some stock footage, and the only alarming thing that happens besides everyone spending the movie slowly losing hope of being saved is when the aforementioned bearded guy grabs one of the women before some rocks fall on him. Warren occasionally has his cinematographer move the camera around this time and the sets are more impressive than just a mid-sized room getting redecorated, but it is still a waste of time from front to back.
(1959)
Overall: WOOF
Shot with his usual "bah, who cares?" level of production values, Teenage Zombies is Jerry Warren doing what he does "best". Infamous and rightfully so, Warren threw this lazy drive-in effort together in what looks like about two days and for twenty cents, putting a bunch of poor no-name actors in front of the screen who never get a break from saying embarrassing dribble. The performances are uniformly bad since how could they not be, with Jacques Lecoutier's script serving as a series of lazy "mad scientists dominating the world" tropes and jolly-wiz youngsters who have to make the most out of the fact that Warren seems allergic to yelling the word "cut" until the scene is over. This is to say that his direction deserves the brunt of the scorn since the man has the pacing sense of a sloth reading War and Peace. The music never stops playing and was likely taken from whatever library cues were the easiest to obtain, plus besides some repetitive transition scenes on a speeder boat, it may as well have been filmed in a single room since the camera never cuts away from an unending stream of wide-shots, with just enough decor to signify what is supposed to be a laboratory or a diner. One guy stumbles around doing a Frankenstein monster impression as a zombie and another guy wears an appropriately cheap gorilla costume since what no-budget horror movie is complete without one of those? The point is, stay away; stay far away.
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