The Aztec Mummy (1957)

Feb 101957
 
two reels

Dr. Eduardo Almada (Ramón Gay) did not take the criticism of his theory of past life regression well. So with the help of his mentor (Jorge Mondragón) and his cowardly comic relief (Crox Alvarado), he hypnotizes his fiancée—who also happens to be his mentor’s daughter—Flor (Rosita Arenas). Luck would have it she used to be an Aztec virgin destined to be sacrificed to their god. Popoca, a brave warrior, was none to keen on this and wanted to snuggle with the hot virgin, but they got caught, so he was buried alive, forever to watch over a breastplate and armband that holds the secret to where the Aztecs hid their treasure. As for Past-Life-Flor, she got sacrificed, which is what was going to happen anyway, so no foul. Realizing all those uptight members of the Euro Psychiatric Congress weren’t going to take his word for it that his theory is true, he ignores Flor’s ranting about an ancient curse and heads out with his entourage to the in-town Aztec pyramid to find the breastplate. Unbeknownst to him, he’s been observed by the masked master criminal, The Bat (Luis Aceves Castañeda), who wants to get his hands on that breastplate.

Well, that’s some plot. And I have to say, Doc Eduardo is kind of an ass. After going on about how dangerous his experiment is and how the trauma of a past life could permanently damage the subject, the first thing he does to his girlfriend when he’s got her recalling her Aztec days is to zip her up to her sacrifice. Isn’t her death the kind of thing that might be traumatic? Couldn’t he have had her recall that nice day when she was gathering flowers? Oh well.

It’s all as silly as it sounds. It’s also cheap looking, generally. But having an actual Aztec ruin to use for the exterior shots goes a long way in making up for other shoddy sets. A real pyramid beats any CGI one, although director Rafael Portillo realized that and took it a bit too far. He had his camera set up on those ruins and damn if he wasn’t going to get a shot of each and every person slowly walking up and down the side.

I was amused by the things the film doesn’t explain but just presents as the characters’ normal lives. Eduardo has a young daughter. Where’s the mother? Who knows? He also lives with his under-aged brother. Why? Who knows? Neither of these kids affect the story. Since the brother keeps sneaking around to peep in at the experiment and stowaway on their temple visit I assumed he’d get into some kind of mummy problem, but nope. The Bat doesn’t do much of anything either, but he gets his chance in the sequels.

The titular character has only a few minutes of screen time. He’s not scary, but then anything this silly was never going to be frightening. I’ve seen worse looking cinematic mummies.

There’s a lot going on that’s just wacky. How much you enjoy The Aztec Mummy is directly related to your feelings about long, foggy, temple song and dance routines. Oh, and those ancient Aztecs liked opera. Really.

 Foreign Language, Mad Scientists, Mummies, Reviews Tagged with:

The Black Scorpion (1957)

Jan 301957
 
2.5 reels

After a volcanic eruption, people living near an isolated Mexican village begin to disappear. A pair of geologists, one American (Richard Denning) and one Mexican (Carlos Rivas), on their way to study the volcano, find a damaged police car, dead officer, and abandoned baby. They soon find themselves in the middle of the mystery given away by the title. On the less monstrous side, they meet the local ranch owner and hot woman, Teresa Alvarez (Mara Corday), so of course we have a romance blooming.

The ‘50s and ‘60s giant bug craze did not produce many original films and The Black Scorpion isn’t one. It is two-thirds a note-for-note rehash of Them! and one-third The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Hey, if you are going to copy, copy from the best.

Our isolated desert location has moved south to Mexico, where once again a home is found damaged and a child found alive—this time a baby instead of a catatonic little girl. I know all these films follow a formula, but that’s getting pretty close to plagiarism. Our hero soon teams up with an elderly scientist and strikes up a romance with the only female to get more than three lines—played once again by Tarantula’s Mara Corday. Once it is clear they are dealing with giant bugs, it is only a matter of time before they lower themselves into the monsters’ lair, and beat by beat, we follow the story of Them! The scorpions even make the same sound as the ants did. The one deviation from Them! is that the all-knowing, elderly, short scientist has a smaller part, and just pops up when needed. So we get a second young scientist to complete the triad, though for some reason, he never has a chance with the girl.

There is a child I quickly learned to hate who repeatedly runs recklessly into danger. The kid is stuck in to raise the stakes—putting a child in jeopardy is a standard, old-school monster movie bit—but it doesn’t work because the child is too stupid.

While most of the giant monster movies used puppets or men in suits, The Black Scorpion was one of the few to use stop motion, executed by Willis O’Brien, the man who brought King Kong to life twenty years earlier. In the final years of his career, he no longer had access to the resources he needed. Still, O’Brien’s work gives the film a magical quality most similar films lacked. He even uses some models left over from Kong. With passable acting, a reasonable pace, amiable characters, and O’Brien’s scorpions, The Black Scorpion is one of the better giant bug pictures.

 Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with:

The Aztec Mummy Trilogy

Jan 101957
 
two reels
aztecmummy

The three Mexican Aztec Mummy films were made back-to-back in 1957 and it is best to think of them as an old, ‘40s-style serial rather than three movies. The pacing works better that way, as does some of the cheapness and fanciful elements. Just consider the endings of the first two films as cliff hangers.

Besides borrowing from the Universal mummy films, the Aztec Mummy sticks in a popular Mexican pop culture item from the time: a lucha libre (a masked professional wrestler). And no, there is no good reason for that addition. A string of later films with a strained connection to the trilogy move male and female wrestlers into the staring roles.

The Aztec Mummy Trilogy can’t be described as good. It is exceptionally silly, but if you are in the right mood, it is fun.

The films have not been well preserved, with the first in particularly bad shape—it was thought lost for a time. But worse things can happen to a film. In the mid ‘60s, an American distributer dubbed it and chopped it up to make Attack of the Mayan Mummy as well as taking the sliced off bits and grafting them on to pieces ripped from other films to create Face of the Screaming Werewolf.

 

The Aztec Mummy (1957)

Dr. Eduardo Almada (Ramón Gay) did not take the criticism of his theory of past life regression well. So with the help of his mentor (Jorge Mondragón) and his cowardly comic relief (Crox Alvarado), he hypnotizes his fiancée—who also happens to be his mentor’s daughter—Flor (Rosita Arenas). Luck would have it she used to be an Aztec virgin destined to be sacrificed to their god. Popoca, a brave warrior, was none too keen on this and wanted to snuggle with the hot virgin, but they got caught, so he was buried alive, forever to watch over a breastplate and armband that holds the secret to where the Aztecs hid their treasure. As for Past-Life-Flor, she got sacrificed, which is what was going to happen anyway, so no foul. Realizing all those uptight members of the Euro Psychiatric Congress weren’t going to take his word for it that his theory is true, he ignores Flor’s ranting about an ancient curse and heads out with his entourage to the in-town Aztec pyramid to find the breastplate. Unbeknownst to him, he’s been observed by the masked master criminal, The Bat (Luis Aceves Castañeda), who wants to get his hands on that breastplate.

Well, that’s some plot. And I have to say, Doc Eduardo is kind of an ass. After going on about how dangerous his experiment is and how the trauma of a past life could permanently damage the subject, the first thing he does to his girlfriend when he’s got her recalling her Aztec days is to zip her up to her sacrifice. Isn’t her death the kind of thing that might be traumatic? Couldn’t he have had her recall that nice day when she was gathering flowers? Oh well.

It’s all as silly as it sounds. It’s also cheap looking, generally. But having an actual Aztec ruin to use for the exterior shots goes a long way in making up for other shoddy sets. A real pyramid beats any CGI one, although director Rafael Portillo realized that and took it a bit too far. He had his camera set up on those ruins and damn if he wasn’t going to get a shot of each and every person slowly walking up and down the side.

I was amused by the things the film doesn’t explain but just presents as the characters’ normal lives. Eduardo has a young daughter. Where’s the mother? Who knows? He also lives with his under-aged brother. Why? Who knows? Neither of these kids affect the story. Since the brother keeps sneaking around to peep in at the experiment and stowaway on their temple visit I assumed he’d get into some kind of mummy problem, but nope. The Bat doesn’t do much of anything either, but he gets his chance in the sequels.

The titular character has only a few minutes of screen time. He’s not scary, but then anything this silly was never going to be frightening. I’ve seen worse looking cinematic mummies.

There’s a lot going on that’s just wacky. How much you enjoy The Aztec Mummy is directly related to your feelings about long, foggy, temple song and dance routines. Oh, and those ancient Aztecs liked opera. Really.

 

The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)

The Bat is back with a new plan to get that Aztec treasure so that he can continue his cruel animal experiments. Well, maybe it is the same old plan. He kidnaps Flor, and drugging her, uses hypnosis to learn the location of the breastplate and armband. Luckily our heroes have the aid of a mysterious lucha libre.

Why does The Bat have to hypnotize Flor? Everyone knows the room where the breastplate and armband were last seen within the temple. The Bat followed our “heroes” on their first excursion into the pyrimid. She can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know. Well, it does give a chance for a recap of the beginning of the previous film, so that’s good I suppose.

If you’ve seen the first (and you really should before watching this), you know what you are in for. It’s a little less tense and a little sillier, but it is basically the same low budget strangeness. While the filmmakers had a juvenile audience in mind all along, that is clearer in The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, with the masked wrestler acting as a kind of superhero, and the “young brother” getting a bit more action. We even have a scene with the wrestler dangling over a snake pit.

Yes, it is a pretty stupid film, but it is easy to laugh at.

 

The Robot vs The Aztec Mummy (1958)

Five years have passed (even though the film was released seven months later). After an exceptionally long synopsis of the events so far, we find out that The Bat is still at large, and still has hypnotic power over Flor. His plan is…well, the same as always. He wants the breastplate and armband again. And there’s a robot, because why wouldn’t there be a robot?

I hope you like recaps. Hey, who doesn’t. If you like being told what you’ve already seen you will be in paradise. The film is only 65 minutes long, and 25 minutes of it is Eduardo presenting a run down of the previous movies.

But after that overlong synopsis (just fast forward though it), things get really bizarre. The Bat goes full out mad scientist, laughing wildly to the skies and announcing his plan to take over the world. Edward and his sidekick go to investigate on their own for no good reason. And we’ve got a mummy fighting a robot. In the funniest scene of the trilogy, The Bat and his sidekick have Flor lead them to the sleeping mummy and all they do is stand there and insult him. They really hate that mummy.

For a five year gap, Flor looks as good as ever, but that’s not a huge surprise. Five years aren’t that many for a woman in her twenties. And Eduardo looked old in the first film. It is odd, however, that the two children haven’t aged.

The Robot vs The Aztec Mummy is the best of the three, provided you skip over most of the first half. MST3K did an episode with it but their jokes are unnecessary. It is gloriously ridiculous all on its own.

 Mummies

While the City Sleeps (1956)

Oct 211956
 
two reels

A serial killer is targeting young women and Walter Kyne (Vincent Price), the immature son of a just-deceased media mogul, decides whichever of his underlings can find the killer can become the new man in charge. The three candidates are Jon Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), the newpaper editor, Mark Loving (George Sanders), head of the wire service, and Harry Kritzer (James Craig), who doesn’t seem to do much of anything other than sleep with Kyne’s wife (Rhonda Fleming). Edward Mobley (Dana Andrew), the ex-star reporter and TV host, has taken himself out of the running as he doesn’t seem much interested in the reporting game any more—for no reason ever explained. Griffith asks for his help and Mobley agrees, digging in with his old police buddy, Lt. Kaufmann (Howard Duff). The two of them come up with a plan, using Nancy Liggett (Sally Forrest), Mobley’s fiancée who is also Loving’s secretary, as bait. Loving has a bit of help himself in the form of sexy women’s interest columnist, Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino).

Yes, Fritz Lang (M, Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window) is the director and there are murders and a majority of the people aren’t pure as the driven snow, but if While the City Sleeps is Film Noir, it is the lightest of the type. There’s no feeling of evil in the air and for all the talk of the reporters being willing to do anything, it’s more that they are willing to be a little rude. Mildred does a bit of seducing, but it is pretty PG. The rest just hold back stories from each other for a few minutes. This isn’t gazing into the dark souls of humanity. It’s noticing that people can be sorta petty.

Mobley is supposed to be the hero. Except for his carelessness with his fiancée, he isn’t strongly likable or dis-likable and I couldn’t whip up much enthusiasm for his detective work. Beyond his personality, it isn’t surprising as the viewer knows who the killer is. The film wants me to be sympathetic to Mobley, support Griffith, and oppose Loving, but I can’t figure why. No reason is ever given on why Loving wouldn’t make a good boss, or as good a one as Griffith. Either way, I didn’t care. I’m also supposed to care if Mobley can patch things up with Nancy, but I didn’t care about that either.

That’s not saying the film is bad. This just isn’t tense Noir material. The newspaper politics is fluffy drama and could have been presented as comedy with about ten minutes of re-writes and a few broader performances (although not much broader—they aren’t subtle now). I suspect it would have worked better as a His Girl Friday-type comedy.

The material with the serial killer isn’t Noir either, but it is much heavier and doesn’t fit well with the rest of the film. It is approaching horror, and comparisons with Psycho have been made. John Drew Barrymore—son of John Berrymore and father of Drew Barrymore—is believable as the crazed and maladjusted killer. Like the newspaper plot, this storyline isn’t bad; it just belongs in a different movie.

There’s some light fun to be had from the actors and dialog. Lang doesn’t add much (you’d never know he directed Metropolis) and you wouldn’t be faulted for thinking that some journeyman was at the helm, but there is nothing particularly wrong with his direction. And that’s the review in a nutshell. There’s nothing particularly wrong with While the City Sleeps.

 Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with:

Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956)

Oct 101956
 
two reels

Space scientist Dr. Russell A. Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his new wife Carol (Joan Taylor) see a flying saucer on their way to a rocket test facility.  They say nothing, lacking proof, but soon another saucer appears, destroying the compound.  Unable to convince the military of the danger, Marvin contacts the aliens, and finds he has two “moon cycles” to invent a way to destroy the extraterrestrials, or the Earth is doomed.

As a fan of science fiction, and an avid read of the masters of the genre in my long lost youth, I’ve spent many evenings debating that it is an intelligent and artistic way of expressing philosophical concepts.  Then Earth vs the Flying Saucers appears and quashes all my arguments.  This is the kind of film that makes it easy for the mainstream to ridicule science fiction.

Much acclaimed for its “groundbreaking special effects,” by stop motion wizard Ray Harryhausen, Earth vs the Flying Saucers spends most of its time with Marvin, his wife, and random military or police officials standing in close groups chatting.  Most of what they have to say is scientific gibberish (oh yes, the “science” is painful to anyone who’s studied beyond grammar school), but sometimes it’s military gibberish and occasionally vague speculation…well, gibberish again.  The camera rarely moves during these dialogs, giving the scenes the excitement of a magazine ad.

Considering the nonsense they have to utter, the actors acquit themselves well.  Marlowe has the toughest job, as Dr. Marvin must suffer from a form of multiple personality disorder; his actions and statements often have no connection to previous scenes.  Taylor has the best gig as she’s the only one in the film given good lines, filled with innuendo which must have been pretty racy at the time.

The plot is exactly what you’d expect, provided you weren’t expecting anything intelligent:  aliens arrive, giving the Earth a set amount of time before they take over; a brilliant scientist comes up with a new ultimate weapon in a few days, and the world is saved.  I’d love to see a sequel where the U.S. uses this new weapon to enslave the Earth.  Hey, it’s not like we’re going to toss it once the extraterrestrials are gone.

The studio put few resources into the film (and that shows, particularly in the repeated use of stock footage).  The plan was for Harryhausen’s effects to save the day, and to a limited extent, they do.  The flying saucers were hardly overwhelming in their day and are laughable now, but scenes of spaceships crashing into the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome are always a kick.  Harryhausen ranks this as the worst film he worked on, and he’s probably right.  Still, if you don’t want to sit through the whole movie, you should catch the last fifteen minutes for the climatic battle and its destruction of Washington D.C. structures.

1996 saw two unofficial remakes: Independence Day, which updates it with state-of-the-art effects, and Mars Attackcs!, which parodies it.

 Aliens, Reviews Tagged with:

Rodan (1956)

Oct 081956
 
three reels

A mine disaster releases enormous ancient insects that go on a killing spree.  As the safety officer, police, and eventually the military hunt the bugs, an earthquake releases a greater foe in the form of a supersonic flying reptile.

With the same director, producer, composer, and FX artist as Gojira/Godzilla, King of the Monsters, it isn’t a stretch to say that Rodan was Toho studio’s attempt to capitalize on the success of the big lizard.  No harm in that; they made another boatload of cash, and giant monster fans got a pretty good movie.

The structure is better than that of most Toho films, with the first half playing out as a real horror film.  There’s a lot of tension while men explore the mine where an unknown force is killing the employees.  I can’t recall another “daikaju” film that built suspense half as well.

Of course the title, posters, trailers, and DVD box declare what’s coming: the second half is good old fashioned city crunching by some fast flying monsters.  For a change, there’s a reason why bullets aren’t taking out the big beasties (the soldier’s keep missing).  It all leads to an unusually emotional climax that might leave young kids and the sensitive a bit teary-eyed.

Rodan doesn’t look too bad, for a chicken puppet, primarily because we don’t see a great deal of him.  On the few occasions that the camera lingers, the flaws are visible and a serious movie begins to feel silly.  The big caterpillars are pretty cheap, but this is 1956, when few monsters actually appeared realistic.  The miniatures and other FX are more than passable, enough so the shots were reused over and over in later monster films (whole segments were plopped into Godzilla’s Revenge).

I can’t think of a single Toho film that doesn’t have a painful plot element or massive jump in logic.  Rodan gives us a guy going into shock and having amnesia until the plot needs him to recover, simply from seeing a big egg hatch.  This isn’t a Lovecraftian sight that mortal mind’s cannot handle.  It’s a big egg.  The scientists and military come to some pretty interesting conclusions that just happen to be right, but in a movie where a multi-ton reptile can fly faster than the speed of sound, perhaps I shouldn’t sweat the details.

The American version has an opening narration about the dangerous of nuclear bombs over a montage of old A-bomb tests.  Since Rodan has nothing to do with radiation (he’s just a dinosaur that’s lasted a long time in his egg), this is an unnecessary addition.  The dubbing leaves a lot to be desired, but at least the voices are more interesting than normal, and some even sound Japanese.  George Takei (of Star Trek fame) wrote in his autobiography that four people dubbed all of the characters: himself, Keye Luke, Paul Frees, and an unnamed woman.  I wouldn’t doubt this.  I recognized Paul Frees’ distinctive voice coming from three different characters.

Rodan would return many times, fighting against, or alongside of, Godzilla.  He’s at his best here.

 Foreign Language, Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with:

The She-Creature (1956)

Oct 081956
 
two reels

Dr Lombardi (Chester Morris) uses hypnosis to regress Andrea (Marla English) to her ancient form as a sea creature, which materializes and does Lombardi’s bidding, including commit a series of murders.  Ted Erickson (Lance Fuller), a psychic researcher, believes that Lombardi is responsible for the killings, but doubts Lombardi’s powers.  Police Lieutenant James (Ron Randell) agrees, trying to tie Lombardi to the crimes, which continue to occur.

Ah, the 1950s, when “psychic research” could be considered science and a big breasted lobster costume could be considered the height of fashion.  In a decade of horrible monster movies, many distributed by American International Pictures, The She-Creature isn’t all that bad.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s bad, but there is fun to be had, and it could have been so much worse.

On the “bad” side, there is the acting talents of Lance “I’ve got two expressions” Fuller.  Fuller puts both of his expressions to good use.  Since the expressions are “indifference” and “indifference with googlie eyes,” even good use doesn’t produce much effect.  The script doesn’t help him.  Erickson is not a person I’d want to meet.  He’s not evil or nasty, just dull, self-righteous, and sullen.  He spends much of the film at parties, whining that he doesn’t fit in at parties; maybe he would if he was less peevish. But Ted is a man-of-the-people, not a society type.  And he’s a scientist.  We know this because he shows up in one scene in a lab coat and holds up a beaker.  His area of science is “psychic research,” a field I don’t recall when I attended college.  I am curious what psychic experiment he was conducting that required a beaker.  Apparently, his specialty in psychic research is harassing psychics.  He believes in psychic powers, but when he hears that Lombardi has them, he becomes antagonistic.  Kind of like a chemist who dislikes chemicals.

In most films, an incompetent policeman who is portrayed as brilliant would be a problem, but not here.  Lieutenant James, who never lets facts get in the way, is one of the charms of The She-Creature.  He contaminates crime scenes, arrests people for no reason, and, upon finding that shooting the monster is having no effect, he tosses his gun at it.  Hint to all policemen: if a bullet projected at high velocity does not damage a monster, then neither will your gun hurled at low velocity.  This needs to be taught at the police academy as many ’50s officers appear to lack this important information when fighting monsters.  James decides early on that Lombardi is the killer, based upon no evidence.  Then, when he does get evidence to the contrary, he ignores it.  After two teens, necking in a car, are killed (some things never change; fool around in a car, get killed by a monster), James exclaims, “I was walking with Lombardi when I heard the scream, but I knew he did it.”  Now that’s objective police work!

The story wanders about, spending time on the drunk ex-fiancé of an irrelevant character and other time fillers, giving us not nearly enough of the lobster-girl from ancient times.  If you’re watching a movie entitled The She-Creature, it’s the sea critter you want, and she’s quite a girl.  Looking exactly like what she is (i.e. a rubber suit), she has huge claws, linebacker shoulders, random scales, and strings of hair plastered down to the top of her head.  And, she’s apparently a mammalian reptile lobster woman.  I’m not exactly sure how you can have a mammalian reptile, much less one that’s part lobster, but to go with her sea-monster parts, this monster has enormous breasts.  The mind boggles.

Andrea, the beautiful assistant whose hypnotic regression proves humans evolved from lobster-people, spends most of her time lying on tables in diaphanous gowns.  The few times she’s vertical, she’s wearing a two-sizes-too-small top which makes it clear why her regressed monster-self is so buxom.  Marla English, an actress/model who spent only a few years in film before retiring, probably due to getting parts like this, is the best part of the picture.  She doesn’t even have to do anything to be entertaining (which is convenient).  It is English’s appearance that inspires Fuller to activate his second expression, the one with the googlie eyes.  OK, it’s not really her, but her cleavage.  Fuller just stands there, staring.  I say Fuller instead of Erickson as I have no reason to believe that was in the script.  I think Fuller was stunned by Ms English’s endowments and forgot his lines.

This is a film where a guy, whose authority comes from being a psychic researcher, can order the police to shoot at an invisible monster on the beach.  If that sounds like fun, you may be able to sit through The She-Creature.

Back to Mad Scientists

 Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Oct 031956
 

Directed by: Don Siegel
Written by: Daniel Mainwaring (from the Jack Finney novel)
Produced by: Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger Productions Inc./Allied Artists, 1956
Runtime: 80 min
Cast: Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), Jack Belicec (King Donovan), Theodora Belicec (Carolyn Jones), Dr. Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates)

A Few Thoughts

In 1956, the alien invasion film was in its full “glory.” The Thing From Another World, War of the Worlds, and many others had displayed an external threat. THEY are out there and are coming to get us! The UFO craze put flying saucers everywhere. Invasion of the Body Snatchers made the threat internal. It was no longer “The Others” that were to be feared, but our own friends, family, and neighbors. This is a much more frightening concept, and it created a smarter and more tension-filled picture than its relatively simplistic contemporaries. Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn’t the first film where alien possession/replacement was the means of attack, but it was the best, and the one that has been remembered.

Doctor Miles Bennell returns from a medical conference to his idyllic, Californian small town. He’s thrilled to find his high school sweetheart, Becky Driscoll, is back in town, free, and interested. He’s also got a mystery as the large number of people who made appointments while he was gone all cancel, and the few people he does see all have a strange disorder where they “feel” that a family member has been changed. Accepting it as some kind of mass delusion, he carries on normally. But he is summoned to the home of Jack Belicec, a writer and friend, who has found a dead body—one with no wounds, no finger prints, and few features. It soon becomes obvious that people really are changing, or being replaced, and it is impossible to know who to trust. Now that’s the stuff of paranoid nightmares.

Based on Jack Finney’s novel, The Body Snatchers, screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring weaves a tight tale, with likeable, multi-dimensional characters, and snappy dialog. There’s no wasted moments. Director Don Siegel adds a Film Noir look to crank up the hopelessness. Darkness hides the malevolence until it is too late, and then it is “good” that has to take refuge in shadows.

The acting is excellent, a rarity in 1950s genre films. Much of the movie rests on the shoulders of Kevin McCarthy, who creates a very human Dr. Bennell. Dana Wynter is equally good in a less taxing role, though she gets the films most chilling moment, laying on the ground, looking up with nothing behind her eyes (see the pic above); I’ve seen viewers shudder at the sight. The two of them, charming on their own, have chemistry together. That makes the story not just a paranoid dream, but a tragedy.

Taken as a horror film, without examining its context or theme, it is amazingly effective, even fifty years later. It ignores cheap jump-scares in favor of slowly building anxiety that leads to real fright. But as a straight story, it does have a few flaws. How can people tell when their loved-ones have been replaced? I’ve seen people go through massive psychological changes, and never felt that they had been taken over. Anyone on the proper drugs will appear to have all of their emotions sapped away. The answer for the film, though never stated, is that people are seeing the lack of a “soul” (taken in its broadest sense). As a symbol, this works well, but for straight ahead storytelling, it is problematic. Also, Bennell’s proposal to leave the odd corpse on the table for the night and watch it is out of character, not to mention stupid. And I’ve always wondered what medicine he’s giving the hysterical child early in the film. The biggest plot hole comes late in the film, when pod-Becky opens her eyes. It’s a great scene, but how was Becky replaced? Yes, she fell asleep for a minute, but was there a pod in the cave with her? The replacement always took time before, and involved a new body, but this time it plays like a sudden demonic possession. But these turn into minor problems because it is nearly impossible to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers and see only its surface. The implausible events and situations bow under the weight of symbolic meanings.

Theme vs. Theme vs. Politics

I can’t imagine anyone watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers without being overwhelmed by levels of meaning, and that’s why it works so well. It isn’t frightening because you’re afraid that pods from outer space are going to take over (well, unless you actually are afraid of pods from outer space, in which case…), but rather because it suggests that everything you believe in, everything you hold to be of value, could be stripped from you, not taken by outside forces, by attack from foreign countries, monsters, or aliens, but taken by those close to you, who willingly give up their individuality. Even worse, you might do it to yourself. The danger that Siegel preaches against is conformity (in some interviews, he’s claimed it was just an invasion film with no theme, but in others he contradicted that, stating it was about conformity and going on at great length about it). The pod-people are those who have given up thinking for themselves, who have accepted the party line (where the “party” is not limited to political groups).

The trick with that message is that no one saying it ever means it entirely. Don’t conform, but who aren’t you supposed to conform with? It’s hard to find anyone who would suggest that you shouldn’t conform to non-murdering (in your society). Think for yourself, as long as you don’t come up with certain answers (like chopping up the neighbors is OK). Some kind of conformity is required. So, what is Invasion of the Body Snatchers warning you against? Well, it was 1950s America. It doesn’t take much work to find the dangerous ideologies of the day: Communism and McCarthyism. And the film is filled with hints that we’re on the right track. What does it give us:

  • The pod-people are emotionless, specifically lacking love.
  • They are efficient, all working together.
  • They are fanatical about their system.
  • They meet together at night in cells
  • They are not trying to keep things stagnant, but alter them to their “utopia.”
  • The town of Santa Mira is a pretty nice, all American place to live.

This pushes things pretty firmly into the anti-communist camp. Those first five are all part of the typical view of communism at the time. If McCarthyism had been the target, I’d expect the pod-people to be uniformly emotional, shouting about how they must keep things pure. It’s not that you can’t make an anti-McCarthy message fit the film, it’s just that you have to do a lot more stretching of the metaphors while the anti-communist one slides in easily.

In 1962, the U.S. Department of Defense teamed with Warner Bros. to produce the propaganda movie, Red Nightmare, a thinly veiled take off on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Narrated by Jack Webb, it showed a peaceful small town that could have been Santa Mira. In it, Jerry Donovan (Jack Kelly, TV’s Bret Maverick) goes to sleep (remember, they get you when you sleep) and wakes to find his town taken over by communists. Everyone has changed, with his wife now a good party member, his children ready to go off to state run institutions, and the church converted to the People’s Museum, where everything is claimed to have been invented in Russia. This is a deadly serious work, and my personal favorite propaganda film. While Red Nightmare smashes you over the head with its anti-communist stance, Invasion of the Body Snatchers does the same thing with a touch more subtlety.

It’s not uncommon to hear people proclaim that the message is more general, or that it covers other changes that society was having problems with, such as the role of women. But such interpretations are unlikely. First, because in the mid-50s, these other issues were rolled into the communist hysteria: women wanting to work was an attack on American values and an aid to the communists. Second, and more importantly, communism and McCarthyism were too omnipresent; any artist would have to address these if touching on a close topic or know that they would be misinterpreted. If you were going to discuss conformity via mindless takeover, you’d have to state that you weren’t talking about communism or McCarthyism. It would be similar to someone making a film after 9/11 about planes crashing into two towers. Without any mitigating statements, this would be about al Qaeda. Actually, even if the filmmaker claimed, and truly intended it not to be about al Qaeda, but about violence in general, it would still be about al Qaeda to everyone who viewed it. You can’t escape context.

But does this weaken the present impact of the film, particularly to those who found the right-wing, anti-communist rants to be dangerous? No. Because times have changed. We’ve got a new set of fears and new bogeymen in the form of terrorists. The specific political arguments of the ’50s aren’t important now, but the philosophical message is. So, after ’50 years, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has become the general anti-conformity statement that it couldn’t be when it came out.

Availability and Versions

Studio execs and supposedly test audiences found the film too depressing. I guess everyone was looking for a happy movie about having everyone losing their humanity. So the studio demanded bookend scenes that Siegel refused to shoot. These additions have the film begin with Bennell being hauled in for psychiatric treatment. He then tells the original version of the film as a flashback. At the end, the doctors hear about a truck crashing that has strange pods, put that together with Bennell’s story, and call the FBI. This was supposed to be a happier ending, because now normal society was safe from the communist…I mean alien…threat due to the powers of our American government. That’s never what it said to me. I always took it to mean it was too late, the pods were now out in the rest of the country, and the government was impotent, but I lack the wisdom of a studio executive.

The original ending would have stopped the film with Bennell running down the road, yelling. I’ll take it as a given that is a better ending, but the tacked on scenes don’t harm the film too much. A few years ago, the original version found its way to tape and a few screenings, but the DVD has the extra footage. I wouldn’t have thought it would have been that tricky to make it available either way on disk, but I guess I lack the wisdom of a DVD manufacturer as well.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers was remade twice (though both remakes could be considered sequels as they take place in different locations with different characters), and copied many times, but never matched.

 Important, Important SF

The Green Man (1956)

Sep 291956
 
five reels
thegreenman

Assassin Harry Hawkins (Alastair Sim), who specialized in eliminating insufferable blowhards, comes out of retirement to bump off egotistical Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley). Unfortunately for Hawkins, a minor mistake has put incompetent vacuum-cleaner salesman, William Blake (George Cole), and sexy bride-to-be, Ann Vincent (Jill Adams), on his tail. They all head to The Green Man inn, where Sir Gregory was planning a bit of fun with one of the young girls from the typing pool, but things don’t work out as anyone planned.

Let’s get the most important part out of the way at the beginning: The Green Man is a brilliant, witty farce that never gets old. Go see it. If you can’t find it on TV or at a revival theater, buy an all-region DVD player and order the disk from England. It will be well worth it.

I originally put The Green Man on my list of the ten most important Post-War British Comedies.  It is so iconic and so perfectly constructed that I’ve always thought of it as a centerpiece of the movement. But, I must admit that it didn’t change cinema history in any substantial way. It is an excellent representation of the type, but not an influence. The best films aren’t always the most important. That’s OK; I’m happier watching one of the best.

Those “best elements” start with the writing-directing-producing team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat (The Happiest Days of Your Life, The Belles of St. Trinian’s, Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s, The Pure Hell of St. Trinian’s, The Smallest Show on Earth). Here they stick to producing and writing, crafting the script from their own stage play. The major change was enlarging the part of Hawkins, making the film more of a vehicle for Alastair Sim (always a good idea if you have Sim around). The story is a rollicking tale of mistaken identities, miscommunication, infidelity, and murder. It earns its “black comedy” label with a few quick assassinations, and then the misadventures of a women who just won’t die (though her body keeps getting found).  In a voice-over, Hawkins makes it all perfectly reasonable to kill puffed-up, self-important fools, and as his newest target, Sir Gregory Upshott, fits the bill, it’s impossible not to cheer him on. But Hawkins is only half the film.  An equal amount of screen time (if not a touch more) goes to young, innocent William and Ann, who are so nice, yet so bumbling, that I was on their side as well. By the end, I was for everyone, except Sir Gregory, of course.

The laughs don’t come only from the farcical elements.  The Green Man is also a biting satire of British society, politics, and culture.  The overly-moral English veneer is shown to be a lie as practically everyone is sleeping around.  The politicians are all less than useless, and the arts are made out to be a joke.  One of the best moments comes when Ann Vincent’s fiancée (named Reginald Willoughby-Cruft, which should be enough to see where he fits in the story) reads his poetry.  As William wisely points out upon hearing that Reginald has forgotten the text for his modern poem, “that’s OK, he can make it up as he goes along.”

But it isn’t the story, or the satire, that makes this one of the funniest movies you’re likely to find. It’s the cast.  George Cole, famous for his spiv roles (for us American folks, a “spiv” is a small time British crook who supplied black market goods; he’s generally an affable character on screen though less so in reality) shows that he could be a leading man. He has a talent for physical comedy but is even better with subtle, and not-so-subtle expressions and vocal tones.  His teaming will Jill Adams is perfect. She is charming and as funny as Cole. It is unfortunate that she had few other memorable roles.

Then there is Alastair Sim, the finest comedian of his age (or any age that I’m aware of). Known primarily on this side of the Atlantic for his portrayal of Scrooge in the 1951 A Christmas Carol/Scrooge, his genius shone in comedy.  With a deep mellifluous voice that could boom orders or softly seduce, a shining bald head, large expressive eyes, and a smile that could be contagious or frightening, Sim was a master and he was never better than in The Green Man. Sim’s Hawkins using pantomime to coax the three middle-aged members of a string quartet out for a quick drink is one of the great routines of cinema.

All of the supporting players are first rate. In particular, Terry-Thomas, given third billing over Jill Adams for a relatively minor role, plays the nice-but-lecherous cad, Charles Boughtflower, as only he can. Raymond Huntley is the personification of pompous, and puts in another fine performance.

The Green Man has no slow moments, no weak cast members, and allows no reason for you not to rush to see it except availability.

 Post-War British Comedy, Reviews Tagged with:

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

Sep 281956
 
one reel

For the third time, a group of scientists capture a gill man, but burn him in the process.  While treating him, they activate his dormant lungs, and allow his skin and eyes to become more human. The scientists then show the creature what humanity is all about and it’s not all good.

Quick Review: So is this The Gill Man or a gill man?  It looks like the same creature in all three films, which really plays havoc with him dying at the end of the other two.  It’s a good question to dwell on, because if you’re dwelling on it, you’re not thinking about the plot of The Creature Walks Among Us, one of the dumbest movies you’re likely to see.  There is a lot of science and philosophy, and none of it makes any sense.  The scenes of The Gill Man swimming are recycled from the previous films (except for one short one).  If you are a huge fan of Creature From the Black Lagoon and found some minor pleasure in Revenge of the Creature then you might be interested in this as a curiosity.

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 Classic Horror, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with:

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Sep 281956
 
three reels

Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen) and his crew travel to Altair-IV aboard their flying saucer to investigate the disappearance of the ship, Bellerophon, years earlier. They find that only Dr Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his innocent daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis), have survived.  Morbius is studying the advanced machinery of a dead race, the Krell, and has constructed a powerful robot, Robby, to be his servant. As the new arrivals vie for Altaira’s affections, a crewman is killed, indicating that the force that wiped out most of the Bellerophon’s crew may be active again.

While Forbidden Planet didn’t make my Top 10 Important Science Fiction Films list, it was a near miss, coming in somewhere around twelfth or thirteenth. It was one of the first pictures that had humans roaming outside of our solar system; it suggested wonders out in space, and it created the iconic Robby the Robot. It strongly influenced both Star Wars and Star Trek (the three officers could be Kirk, Spock, and McCoy with few changes, and their mission to check out what happened to some “colonists” was used repeatedly on the various Star Trek series; plus the alien landscape looks a bit too much like the Styrofoam rock worlds the Enterprise crew kept finding).

Praised with near religious intensity by many, Forbidden Planet demonstrates that the importance of a film does not correspond to its quality. The basic plot is a step above almost all ’50s Sci-Fi flicks, and the background of the Krell and their great and tragic advance is top notch, but everything in the film isn’t so impressive. The acting varies from acceptable (Walter Pidgeon in a non taxing role) to atrocious (a pre-comedic Leslie Nielsen with his macho man rating turned to 11). The special effects are sad, particularly the flying saucer (yes, in the future, we travel in saucers) which looks like a photo of a cheap model kit, or maybe a painted Frisbee—and this was five years after War of the Worlds showed how it could be done. Then there is the space clothing that is a mixture of pajamas and baseball uniforms, and the squirt-gun ray-guns. The exterior scenes are obviously shot on a set, one that anyone with some polystyrene and a paint gun could make. The map-paintings hold up much better, with the great Krell generators looking pretty impressive.

I can’t forget the painfully intrusive, computer tonal music; it won’t let you forget while watching. After it first pops up over the credits (and under them and on every side—Ah! Turn it off!), the spacemen make their hyperspace jump. This jump must be hard on mental and emotional stability, as it’s the only way to explain the following scene, where Adams becomes worried about something on the display screen and that the ship is warm. As nothing happens, I assume there was no problem, but then I wonder why we had to watch Adam’s mistaken concern.

What really pulls the film down is the embarrassing ’50s attitudes that are plopped on the screen without comment. There’s no imagination used in seeing the future. Instead, we’re presented with an all male, manly-men crew, which just stop short of howling when they see a girl. Apparently, women are incapable of operating the big complex machines used in space travel. The sexist and prudish comments come fast and furious, implying that two hundred years from now, all women will be housewives (Robby is a “housewife’s dream”). While Altaira is playing hard-to-get (all women do, you know), Commander Adams berates her for being too alluring, stating if she gets molested by the crew, it’s her fault for not being demure enough. But it’s all said in nice, censor-approved ’50s film-speak.

Good news for the Arian Nation. It looks like either the “white race” has formed its own government, or the pale folks have killed off all those lesser people as there isn’t dark skin to be seen. No blacks. No Asians. Not even a southern European gets to board the lily-white ships of the future.

There’s also some pretty silly combat. A man, armed with a pulse weapon, runs up to the monster (because the weapon works better 20 ft closer?) and is flung aside to his death. Naturally, another follows and dies. This, of course, persuades a third to run at the monster. Not exactly the brightest of men. I guess all that inbreeding to keep the race pure hasn’t done good things for mental development.

Much is made of Forbidden Planet’s connection to The Tempest. Yes, there is a loose similarity in the story and characters. Morbius is the magus Prospero, Altaira is Miranda, and Adams is both the love interest, Ferdinand, and King Alonso as he has official power. Robby is the sprite Ariel, and with the ship’ s cook, he is also one half of the clown team of drunken Stephano and Trinculo. The rest of the spaceship’s crew are the other shipwreck survivors. Critics often equate the id monster with Caliban, but outside of both of them being “bad,” there is no connection.  However, lining up these characters means little. Shakespeare wasn’t the greatest writer of the English language because of his plots or his characters. It was his words, and none of those are used in Forbidden Planet.

The movie is at its best when Adams and his crew shut up. Then the story of the ancient Krell and their machines can unfold.  What Morbius has done, both known and unknown, is interesting. Robby isn’t bad for comic relief, and as long as Altaira isn’t involved with the contrived romance with Adams, she is also engaging.

I have a low opinion of the concept of remakes, but here is an exception. Forbidden Planet has a lot going for it. If produced with good actors across the board, some non-distracting special effects, and the absence of sexism and racism, it could be a great movie. For now, watch it for its historical interest.

 Aliens, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews, Shakespeare Tagged with:

The Killing (1956)

Aug 041956
 
three reels

Johnny (Sterling Hayden) is the mastermind of a horse track heist. The others in the gang—all men who are desperate for cash—know only part of the plan. They include the track bartender (Joe Sawyer), a financer (Jay C. Flippen), a policeman (Ted DeCorsia), and a track clerk (Elisha Cook). The clerk’s wife (Marie Windsor) gets wind of the robbery and let’s her lover know, who plans to rob the robbers. When the wife implies she was raped by the Johnny in order to get more info, things are destined to go wrong.

The Killing was Stanley Kubrick’s breakout film. Shot on the cheap, Kubrick does amazing things with his sub-feature budget. It looks low budget, but two or three times what it actually cost, with some nice shots and a general feeling of an artistic Noir. It wasn’t a big success, but the right people saw it and his career was set.

This is Noir by way of pulp. There’s the normal Noir feel that the world is corrupt, but with less of the nightmare-reflection that defines other Noirs, and more of a feeling of sleaze. The dialog is blatant and broad, just keeping this side of humor. It makes the flick fun, if trivial. Once we get to the crime, things get more pulpy and the film’s universe becomes one controlled by irony.

This was never going to be a great film, but it could have been a better one. The aforementioned budget was the first hurdle, but it became a bigger problem when to get even that required signing Sterling Hayden for the lead. This was during the period when he hated acting (and apparently hated himself). He certainly didn’t seem to have much interest in his character or his lines. His delivery is flat, being both unnatural and boring.

But the mannequin in the lead doesn’t do as much harm as the studio mandated voice-over narration—the stuff of parody. It is exactly what you’d expect from an Abrahams/Zucker film (like Airplane!), all the more so as Kubrick’s distaste for the requirement caused him to make it nonsensical. The stiff narrator reads out precise times that are irrelevant or incorrect and gives character descriptions that only partially apply.

If Kubrick had turned up the pulp-sleaze factor a touch, and dove into the already deep irony, he’d have had a first class comedy. Instead, I’ll call it a second rate Noir.

 Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with:
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