50's American Horror Part Twenty-One - (Fred F. Sears Edition)

EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS

(1956)

Overall: MEH

 

Scientist and Military Personnel Standing in Conference Rooms and Laboratories While Talking - The Movie a.k.a. Columbia Pictures' Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, (Invasion of the Flying Saucers, Flying Saucers from Outer Space), is a fittingly generic sci-fi yarn.  To be fair, it is notable for containing Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation for alien vessels instead of prehistoric dinosaurs or mythical monsters.  Even though such scenes are punctuated with clumsy stock footage, they are not any less engaging than several other extraterrestrial takeover movie from the period.  The script is based off of Donald Keyhoe's novel Flying Saucers from Outer Space and offers up no moral parables or intellectually challenging ideas though, at least outside of the bare-bones, "humans shoot first and ask questions later" variety.  It is broken up into sixty percent square-jawed white men and one pretty white lady doing a whole lot of talking, forty percent extraterrestrial spacecrafts trying to communicate in funny voices before blowing things up, and all of it is stagnantly paced.  With zero compelling characters and an equally boring series of scenes that have people trying to thwart such an earth-ending dilemma, it is forgettable at best and forgoes the more interesting tropes of the genre while sticking stubbornly to the most dull ones.

 

THE WEREWOLF
(1956)
Overall: MEH

Notable as one of the few American werewolf movies that was produced in the decade dominated by science fiction-tinged horror films, the appropriately titled The Werewolf unfortunately has little to offer fans of the lycanthropian genre.  Steven Ritch's title-character fits the stereotypical tragic mold of an everyman who is doomed due to their newly found predicament, roaming the countryside while begging those who are hapless enough to cross his path to leave him alone lest his bestial fury get unleashed.  That said, there are some wacky details inherent in James B. Gordon and Robert E. Kent's screenplay, with Ritch suffering a car accident and then getting transformed by an experimental wolf serum, administered by doomsday-prepping doctors of course.  Ridiculous stuff, but the absence of gypsies, full moons, silver bullets, and actual wolf bites are unique, with Ritch switching to monster-mode whenever he gets threatened and often times in broad daylight without even disrupting the fabric of his clothing.  The makeup is patchy and mediocre at best, more closely in line with Matt Willis' from 1943's Return of the Vampire than Jack Pierce's legendary work on Lon Chaney Jr. in Universal's The Wolfman.  We only get a couple of minutes of screen time with Ritch wolfed-out anyway, making for a rudimentary, talky, and bland affair.
 

THE GIANT CLAW
(1957)
Overall: MEH

 

A typically chatty and ergo boring B-movie, The Giant Claw has the added detriment of arguably the worst rendered monster in cinema history, at least from a major production company.  Columbia Pictures allegedly had planned to have Ray Harryhausen provide his reliable stop-motion effects, but instead and regrettably, the bonehead move was made to employ an insufficient Mexican company with the job, a company that turned in a clunky and hilariously stupid puppet.  The schlock director/producer team of Fred F. Sears and Sam Katzman further blundered the proceedings by shooting the antimatter extraterrestrial bird monstrosity exclusively in broad daylight, just to emphasis every nook and cranny of how embarrassing and not-at-all-threatening it looks.  Though such a creature provides endless unintended hysterics, its screen time takes a backseat to the usual crop of scientist and military dead weights having endless debates as to how the monster can be stopped, with both Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday making as bland of a quick-bantered, attractive Caucasian couple as can be.  Flatly directed and formulaic to a fault, (on top of its moronic-looking, giant feathered-fiend), its infamy is well-deserved.

 

THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED

(1957)

Overall: WOOF

A humdrum disaster cheapie, The Night the World Exploded was one of the last films from director Fred F. Sears to be released before his untimely death at the age of only forty-four.  As one could surmise from the involvement of schlock producer Sam Katzman who seemed to churn out a low-end drive-in double feature every couple of hours during this era, the movie is bare-bones in its efforts.  Delivered on time and on budget, Sears exclusively sticks to the "point the camera at the actors, make sure that they are all in frame, let them deliver their dialog, cut - next scene" method, with the only momentum stemming from how quickly the scientific jibber-jabber can fly out of everyone's mouths.  The two attractive, love-torn white leads have a non-threatening heterosexual chemistry together, the narration makes sure that even a clinically braindead viewer stays on track, there are a couple of throwaway lines about the earth striking back due to mankind draining it of its resources, the stock footage count is through the roof, and everyone talks while standing in rooms for at least sixty-three and a half of the sixty-four minute running time.  Even by such unimaginative standards, this one has nada to offer.