MURDER BY ROPE (1936)

John Herford is on trial in London for sending letters threatening to kill a man with a rope, then following through. The press gives him the nickname The Laughing Murderer because of, well, his constant laughter when asked questions. One woman on the jury holds out for a verdict of insanity, but eventually she joins the other jurors in finding him guilty and he's executed by hanging. Months later, a barber named Smith, who was the killer's hangman, gets a letter threatening death, with a piece of rope enclosed. He doesn't give it much thought, but he is attacked and nearly killed with a rope. Crime writer Alastair Dane (Wilfrid Hyde-White), who wrote a book about the Laughing Murderer, goes to see Inspector Walker who says the handwritten notes (a warning was also received by Scotland Yard) seem to be in the same handwriting as the dead killer and he calls in a handwriting expert named Hanson to study the letters. A few nights later, Dane attends a weekend party at the country house of Mrs. Mulcaire. Also attending is Sir Henry Paxton, the judge in the Herford case, who has recently received a threatening letter with a chunk of rope, though he also seems unconcerned. Others at the house party include Sir Henry's nephew Peter, his girlfriend Daphne, and actress Lucille Davine. Peter is seeking money from his uncle to stop a scandal of some sort from coming out. There is also a suspicious butler named Simpson whom Flora the maid seems secretly close to. Hanson shows up to examine the latest letter that Sir Henry got. Dane talks everyone into participating in a parlor game of sorts in which he will stage the murder scene from a play he's working on, and hopes to get Lucille to act in. Suddenly, the lights go out, Mrs. Mulcaire's necklace is stolen, and Sir Henry is discovered dead, strangled with a rope. The phone lines have been cut and the cars all tampered with, and since no contact with the police is possible, Dane and Hanson are left to investigate. 

At heart, this is a fairly traditional single-setting mystery but with some unusual touches. If you're the kind of viewer who thinks mysteries should be "fair" and that we should be able to figure things out based on clues presented, you won't like this. The solution is satisfying but can't really be deduced from the information we have. Much of the information that we do get is incomplete or confusing or turns out to be a red herring—for example, the theft of the necklace and the relationship of Simpson and Flora, which both feel extraneous to the narrative. The first five minutes in the jury room has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story except to briefly give the movie another setting aside from the country house. The house itself is a low-budget version of a country house, and the cast, for the most part, seem to have been hired for their looks as actresses or sniveling nephews or gigolos (Sylvester, a character who has almost nothing to do but look like a gigolo). Future supporting actor star Wilfrid Hyde-White is fine as Dane but his performance seems a little underdone. Standouts in the cast, though their careers went nowhere, are Sunday Wilshin (Lucille, top right), Guy Belmore (Simpson), and Donald Read (Peter, at left). An exchange that felt forced but still made me chuckle: Sir Henry is told that Lucille has "thousands of fans" and he replies, "Does she feel the heat so terribly?" At an hour, it still feels a little bit long but I found the ending worth hanging around for. [YouTube]

WHITE SUN OF THE DESERT (1969)

Asia, the early 1920s. The Russian Civil War is ending and a soldier named Sukhov is slowly making his way across a desert near the Caspian Sea (in what is now Turkmenistan), daydreaming of his wife back home. He almost literally stumbles across Sayid, a man buried up to his neck in the sand (pictured below) and left to die by the bandit Dzhavdet. Somewhat reluctantly, Sukhov digs him up and Sayid, who wants revenge against Dzhavdet, decides, out of gratitude, to follow Sukhov as a helpmate even as he occasionally leaves to try and find the bandit. When they meet up with a Soviet patrol, Sukhov is put in charge of taking the abandoned harem of the warlord Abdullah to a village on the coast, away from Abdullah who has already killed a couple of the wives and wants to kill the rest. In the village, the only Russian left is Pavel, a former customs agent who is more or less barricaded in a building with his wife and a lot of weaponry. Pavel is cranky and often drunk, but he takes to the young Russian soldier Petrukha because he reminds Pavel of his late son. Sukhov tries to free the women of the harem, putting up a sign outside of the museum building where they are staying that says Dormitory of Liberated Women of the East, but instead they declare themselves all to be wives of Sukhov (though Petrukha has fallen in love with one of them). When Sukhov realizes that Abdullah will be heading for the village because there is an abandoned boat near the shore that he and his men could use to leave, he plants explosives rigged to blow the boat up 42 seconds after it is started up. Abdullah shows up and his wives get trapped in a huge empty oil tank, but we know it’s just a matter of time before gunplay erupts and someone starts that ship for an explosive climax.

In Russia, this is a famous film (cosmonauts watch it the day before a takeoff) but it's barely known in the West. It belongs to the Ostern genre, essentially, an Eastern western, and with its deserts and ghost towns and horses (and camels), it does feel like a 60s-era western. I found it delightful, an odd word to use perhaps for a movie which has violence and bloodshed, and in which not all the good guys survive to the end. But the visuals are gorgeous, the characters eccentric, the lead handsome and heroic, and the story easy to follow and not always predictable. Sukhov (Anitoliy Kuznetsov) is not immediately likable, and neither is Sayid (Spartak Mishulin) or Pavel (Pavel Luspekayev), but we warm up to them after a time, though Sayid remains fairly mysterious (and, technically a spoiler, he never finds his bandit, so he still has a goal at the end). The proceedings have a surprisingly light feel, and humorous bits are sprinkled throughout. At not quite ninety minutes, the movie rarely lags, even as it doesn't feel like it's moving at a breakneck speed. The relatively spare sets are appropriate for a place that at times has a slightly dreamy and surreal atmosphere. This is one to search out. Pictured at top right are Kuznetsov and Nikolai Godovikov (as Petrukha). [Streaming]

THE RETURN OF DR. MABUSE (1961)

In Berlin, an Interpol agent on a train is killed by a man with a prosthetic leg. The agent was carrying important papers concerning a Chicago crime syndicate which was reaching out to a Berlin crime ring for some nefarious purpose. Inspector Lohmann, who was about to leave on a family vacation, is called in to spearhead the investigation, and Washington sends FBI agent Joe Como to help. They are joined by journalist Maria Sabrehm, and they discover a clue on the body of a dead gang member. The book. by a local priest named Briefenstein has a chapter about the myth of Dr. Mabuse, a master criminal who died insane several years ago. When our investigators visit the priest, a voice claiming to be Mabuse's comes from the church speakers warning them to lay off. Plot points and incidents come fast and furious from here on out. The apparently resurrected Mabuse is behind a plot to use a hypnotic drug to turn a wing of inmates at a nearby prison into mindless zombies who will respond only to Mabuse's orders, and those orders are to blow up some nuclear reactors on a coming Friday the 13th in order to get the world's attention. The drug was invented by Maria's father, an inmate, and we find out that Joe might actually be a Chicago mobster named Nick. There are car crashes, explosions, more murders, the threat of death by drowning, and more false identities in play before Mabuse is unmasked and dies (again) in a train collision—or does he?

This movie is a follow-up to THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE; I hesitate to call it a sequel though some might label it such. Mabuse was present in the previous film as a different character, but as per the title he returns here, unmasked only in the last few minutes, and he's played by the same actor (Wolfgang Preiss) who played the Mabuse figure in THOUSAND EYES. How he's still alive is not explained. Gert Frobe, who played the inspector in the previous film, is the inspector here; he has a different name, Lohmann, the name of Mabuse's nemesis in the 1933 TESTAMENT, but he's basically the same character with the same personality, perhaps a little less bumbling. That makes this film a more or less direct sequel to the 1933 film, I guess. Confused yet? It’s easy to ignore all the previous Mabuse films and just go with the wild and crazy flow here. The transfer of the Mabuse series to the German krimi genre, started with THOUSAND EYES, is mostly complete here; most mystical elements from the earlier films are gone—we find out that Mabuse's commands are sent to his zombies via earpieces they all wear. Lex Barker is Joe or Nick (who also uses the name Bob to infiltrate the prison wing) and he makes a good hero, though not as flashy at fisticuffs as he might be, and Daliah Lavi is a fine female lead, never quite becoming a romantic interest, though a makeout session does occur which is interrupted by the police. Joachim Mock is Voss, the handsome assistant to Lohmann; Werner Peters is Bohmler, one of Mabuse's chief associates; Fausto Tozzi is the suspicious prison warden; the beefy Ady Berber, who was a pro wrestler (think Tor Johnson), makes an impression in the small role of a zombie who meets a spectacular end. Speaking of which, there is a fairly graphic death scene with a person getting smashed against a brick wall by a truck, a fairly graphic death by flamethrower, and Joe and Maria get stuck in a locked room which begins filling up with water. There’s also a knockout gas attack and an ending ambiguous enough to allow us to expect a sequel. Pretty fun. Pictured at top right, Wolfgang Preiss; at left, Lex Barker. [Blu-ray]

THE HOUSE OF FEAR (1939)

A radio host is about to go on his show to drop a bombshell story when a couple interrupts and begs him not to continue. Suddenly the host drops dead and we discover we're watching a play called Dangerous Currents. But the host, played by actor John Woodford (for whom the theater is named), is really dead. The show is stopped, the body moved to a dressing room and the police called. But when the coroner arrives, the body is missing, which halts the investigation in its tracks. Joseph Morton, the theater owner, closes the theater, though his brother Robert, who always needs money, isn’t happy about the plan. A year later, a producer named McHugh leases the theater intending to restage the play with most of the original cast, despite rumors that the theater is haunted by Woodford's ghost. In the theater as everyone gathers, McHugh gets a phone call warning him not to stage the show; it's then discovered that the phone hasn't been hooked up yet, so the call had to have come from inside the theater. Two new actors have to be hired: a gold-digging dimbulb actress named Gloria who latches onto the perhaps equally dim Robert, and a new leading man named Carleton who starts to get written threats signed by Woodford—even though a decomposed body assumed to be Woodford's is found on the premises. We also find out that McHugh isn't really a producer but a policeman eager to solve the Woodford murder. He does but not before another murder and a nifty climax on the reopened show’s opening night. This is a remake of the silent film THE LAST WARNING and it's very faithful, even using some of the same character names. The original is more atmospheric whereas this one has the drabber feel of a B-movie, which it is. But it's still fairly fun. The leading man, William Gargan (McHugh), is one of my B-lead favorites. The director, Joe May, made many hits in Germany before the Nazi takeover, but in Hollywood was only able to find B-movie work. His direction here feels uninspired but adequate. Good support is given by Alan Dinehart and Robert Coote as the Morton brothers, Harvey Stephens as Dick Pierce, the actor who eventually takes Woodford's place, and Dorothy Arnold as Gloria. El Brendel and Tom Dugan provide mild comic relief as two stagehands. Though the plots are nearly identical, both movies are worth watching. Pictured above is Gargan. [YouTube]

WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT FEELING GOOD? (1968)

According to the opening montage, Manhattan in the mid-1960s was a place festering with anger and ceaseless movement and filth. In the East Village a bunch of "educated artists," or more precisely, college dropouts, are living together in a dilapidated loft apartment. For the record, they're supposed to be hippies but they seem much more like old school beatniks, especially Liz (Mary Tyler Moore), whom we first see dressed in black, playing a guitar and singing a dirge about how miserable life is. She and her scuzzy bearded boyfriend Pete (George Peppard), who used to be an advertising man, lie listlessly around with their friends hating the world. Meanwhile, a Greek merchant ship pulls into dock and all the sailors are joyful and dancing, the opposite of how they usually are. It's determined that a colorful toucan on the ship is spreading a happiness virus, and before it can be caught, it flies off into the city where it lands in the hippie apartment window. Pete catches it first; he shaves his beard, gets his old job back, and deliberately tries to pass the virus on to Liz. Soon all the hippies have it; they get cleaned up and they clean up the apartment. As it begins spreading across the city, the mayor (John McMartin) is worried that the feelings of euphoria will lead people to stop drinking and smoking (cutting back on sales taxes) and even voting, so he leads an effort to stop the virus spreading by giving the public masks (very Covid-lockdown-era looking) and by trying to catch the bird. Government advisor Monroe (Dom DeLuise), who comes to town wearing a space helmet as protection, is sure it's a Commie plot. When the bird is caught, an antidote is formulated and pumped into the already polluted sky. Pete and Liz, knowing the bird will be killed for study, plot to help it escape, leading to a slapstick sequence in which she hides the bird under the wedding gown she's wearing, getting mistaken for a pregnant bride.

This is a cute fantasy comedy satire, though its satirical bite is practically non-existent. If it's trying to target hippies, these folks, as I noted, are not hippies, and despite what the filmmakers might have thought, beatniks were not the same as hippies. Still, their portrayal in the opening scenes is fun, and their number includes the unrecognizable Nathaniel Frey, Don Stroud and Susan St. James. The pokes at government bureaucrats are funnier; McMartin is nicely befuddled as the mayor, and the funniest performance comes from DeLuise who provides plenty of laughs in every scene he's in, sometimes abetted by George Furth as his kowtowing underling. Individually, I liked Peppard and Moore, but they have little chemistry. I didn't care a bit about their relationship story, and if there is blame to be placed, it's probably with Peppard who is working at half power, though his sex appeal makes up a bit for the flaccid performance—I found him quite appealing with and without the fuzzy scuzzy style. Moore is at least trying, and it's a shame her big screen comedy career never got very far. The ad men are mocked lightly in a scene in which they are working a campaign for a pill called Ultra that they want to claim can do practically everything but in reality, does nothing. Thelma Ritter, in her last screen role, has a cameo; it's not much, but Ritter is always welcome. The mask situation and its similarity to the Covid-era maskings is downright spooky. Despite its many problems, it's hard to dislike this movie; it'd be like disliking a puppy, or perhaps, the toucan. Pictured at top left are Moore and Peppard; at right is Peppard, scuzzy-style. [DVD]

SAPPHIRE (1959)

In London, two children find a dead body in the woods, a young woman with the letter "S" sewn on her clothes. The police identify her as Sapphire Robbins, an outgoing and well-liked music student. An autopsy shows she was pregnant. Her boyfriend David, who was out of town at the time of her murder on Saturday night, claims she had told him about her pregnancy, and that he was happy with the news and proposed marriage. But the investigating police officers, the older Hazard and the younger Learoyd, discover hidden family conflicts when they learn that Sapphire's older brother, a doctor, is Black. Both children of mixed race, Sapphire could pass for white and did. Even so, when people discovered her racial background, old prejudices came into play, especially from landlords who would find out about her secret when her brother visited. Sapphire was also leading a secret life, socializing at a Black jazz club and seeing Black men, though she made no secret of having "a yen to marry light." David's mother, father, and adult sister express racist sentiments but insist that they ultimately were OK with David's decision to marry her. In addition to the race issue, however, a wedding would likely have scotched David's plans to study abroad on a music scholarship. Then David's alibi for being out of town on Saturday night falls apart. Inspector Learoyd has to fight his own prejudices to work on the case; his discovery that Sapphire was part Black causes him to assume she was promiscuous. But Hazard brings Dr. Robbins to visit David's family and slowly the family members' racism is found to be more ingrained than they would admit.

I appear to be on a Michael Craig kick lately. I reviewed SEA OF SAND a few months ago and movies featuring Craig, a respected character actor in England, are cropping up in my YouTube algorithm, so more reviews will be following. Though third billed behind Nigel Patrick (Hazard) and Yvonne Mitchell (Mildred, David's sister), Craig (as Learoyd) is really the focus of the film as he deals with his racial assumptions while trying to solve the case. He's good looking and charismatic which makes us assume that he will eventually overcome his beliefs, and, to some degree, he does. The killer is caught (a particularly nasty piece of work whose hidden hatred explodes violently at the climax) so the ending is satisfying on the crime film level, but the race prejudices don't disappear at the end. Even a Black club owner says this about Sapphire, passing for white and dancing at the club: "No matter how fair the skin, they can’t hide that swing!" The film was critiqued by some at the time for failing to take on racism more directly, but it was popular and won the BAFTA award for Best British Film. Craig and the low-key Patrick have a realistic chemistry. There is strong support from Yvonne Buckingham, who plays Sapphire in flashbacks, Paul Massie as David, Bernard Miles as David's father, and Harry Baird as a would-be boyfriend of Sapphire's from the jazz club. Earl Cameron, who was still acting in the 2000s, is especially good in the relatively small role of Sapphire's brother. At the end, Hazard tells Learoyd that, though they've brought the killer to justice, they haven't really solved anything, a verdict on society that remains viable today. Pictured are Patrick and Craig. [TCM]

THE BAMBOO SAUCER (1968)

During the test flight of a new plane, pilot Fred Norwood believes he's being chased by a blue light which he assumes is a UFO and goes through some dangerous maneuvers to escape, though because radar on the ground picks up nothing, his bosses think he cracked up and take him off the tests. Fred theorizes that the UFO is able to block radar and his brother-in-law Joe has a similar encounter but winds up dead in a crash. Hank Peters of the National Intelligence Agency hears about his claims and gets in touch with him about an odd incident in which a UFO seems to have crashed in a mountainous area of China (or Red China as everyone insisted on calling it during the Cold War days) and dead humanoid aliens were retrieved. Hank and Fred lead a small team which parachutes into China to investigate, and Sam, an anti-Communist local, takes them to the downed craft, kept inside a ruined church. Trying to avoid Communist troops in the area, they run into a rival group of researchers from Soviet Russia, led by Zagorsky and Anna. After some tension, the groups decided to cooperate. Anna and Fred grow close, though the jealous Zagorsky insists on a non-fraternization policy. They figure out how to enter the craft (an electric razor just happens to generate just the right frequency to do it) and one of the Russians sneaks into it later to attempt a flight but dies in the ship. Just as tensions between the groups begin to escalate, the Red Chinese Army attacks. There are many casualties, but Fred, Anna, and the American Jack Garson get the craft off the ground. When they try to steer it, they realize it's on a preplanned course toward Saturn. Will our survivors manage to change the flight plan to head back to Earth?

This will not be everyone's cup of tea, partly due to its odd mix of genres. It is presented as science fiction but for much of its running time, it's more like a spy film. Political reconciliation propaganda is also present. There is a spaceship but the dead aliens were cremated so we never see them. There are some special effects and sci-fi sets, but they are dirt cheap. Most critics mock them, but once I got used to them, I didn't mind. The physical production has been derided as being just one step up from Plan 9 from Outer Space, but it's better than that. The acting is also pretty good. Handsome John Ericson (top right) is not especially expressive as Fred, but if you read him as stoic, he's fine. Lois Nettleton is good as Anna. Dan Duryea, as Hank, is a bit low energy, but this was his last film; he died of cancer in June of 1968 around the time of the film's release—it seems to have had a scattering of bookings early in 1968 and a larger release later. I was pleased to see Vincent Beck as Zagorsky—he's infamous as the comically villainous Voldar in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. James Hong, who in his 90s is still with us and making movies (Everything Everywhere All at Once), is Sam. You'll also see a couple of familiar TV faces: Bob Hastings from McHale's Navy and Bernard Fox who was Dr. Bombay on Bewitched. The story echoes some plot points from the 1950 film THE FLYING SAUCER. With B-movie expectations and a somewhat quirky plot, I enjoyed this, and the vanilla good looks of Ericson don't hurt. At left are Ericson and Nettleton. [Blu-ray]

THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE (1960)

aka THE 1000 EYES OF DR. MABUSE

The powerful German crime lord Mabuse is supposed to have died years ago, but when police chief Kras gets a phone call from a mysterious blind psychic named Cornelius about crimes that fit Mabuse's methods, Kras wonders if Mabuse, or his otherworldly influence, is still around. Cornelius' vision of a man shot on the streets in broad daylight comes true when a journalist is killed with a steel needle shot from a gun into his head. The reporter was staying at the Hotel Luxor, as is American industrialist Henry Travers who is in Berlin to finalize a deal involving the construction of new atomic rockets. Several of the Mabuse-like crimes have involved the hotel, so the police stake the place out. Travers saves Marion Menil from a suicidal jump; she has an abusive club-footed husband and she and Travers (who, unknown to Marion, can see into her room via a secret two-way mirror) hit it off. We also meet Marion's psychiatrist, Dr. Jordan, and a jolly insurance agent, Hieronymous B. Mistelzweig. As these characters interact, we find that almost no one is what they present themselves to be. And though Mabuse is indeed dead, one of these characters has been carrying on in the evil doctor's place. He has rigged all the rooms in the hotel with surveillance cameras and is plotting to get ahold of Travers' rockets in order to lead a new world order. Spying, disguises, murder, and a possibly unsavory romance lead to an exciting climactic sequence which may or may not put an end to Mabuse’s crimes.

Dr. Mabuse was a character from two earlier Fritz Lang films (DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER  & THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE) and he came to be seen in pop culture as a mystical quasi-Hitler figure warning about Germany’s Nazi future. In this sequel (or reboot), several years after the war, vague Nazi ties remain—the hotel was built by the Nazis in 1944, and Mabuse's maniacal desire for power remains alive. Another link to the earlier films is the theme of watching and being watched (be suspicious of the man who claims to be blind). This is the last film that Fritz Lang made, and approaching this as a Mabuse film, I was a little disappointed. Its style is much closer to the krimi movies of the era (German crime movies that are often seen as kin to film noir) than to Lang's own expressionist style, and seen as a krimi, the movie works much better—though tribute is paid to the supernatural elements of the earlier films in a brief seance scene. The romance between Travers (Peter van Eyck) and Marion (Dawn Addams) never really takes off, and the two actors are overshadowed by the supporting cast. Gert Frobe, best known as the Bond villain Goldfinger a few years later, is appealing as the verging-on-bumbling police chief. Wolfgang Preiss is quite effective as the creepy psychic, Howard Vernon is a cold-blooded killer in service to the Mabuse figure, and Werner Peters is fun as Mistelzweig (what a great character name!). The movie drags a bit, sometimes feeling like a condensed serial (a Lang trait) but the last fifteen minutes pick up nicely. There were sequels to this in which Lang didn't participate, which I’ll be reviewing soon. If you want to avoid spoilers, don't look at the cast list on IMDb. I wasn't crazy about the English dub so see a subtitled German print if you can. Pictured top right is Preiss; at left, Frobe and Preiss. [Blu-ray]

ANGEL IN EXILE (1948)

Charlie Dakin is released from prison after serving five years for a gold dust heist he was part of. His buddy Ernie, who has hidden the gold, picks him up, and the two are followed by Giorgio and Spitz, two other heist men who want to claim their part of the treasure. In the Arizona mountains, near the village of San Gabriel, Charlie files a land claim for an abandoned gold mine where the stash is hidden. The plan is to pretend to find the gold dust and sell it to the government, but the land clerk, Higgins, figures out their plan, wants to be cut in, and advises them to slowly "mine" the gold over several months to make the mining seem legitimate, and offers to handle their claims so no one gets suspicious. Eventually, Giorgio and Spitz muscle in as well. Meanwhile, Charlie establishes relationships with the villagers, some of whom he hires as workers. The village is in bad shape and needs a new health clinic and a new water source. There are rumors of a 300-year-old ghostly angel named the Blue Lady who can work miracles, and when Charlie's mine starts producing gold, the villagers think it's the work of the angel. Charlie grows especially close to Dr. Chavez and his daughter Raquel, who begins to fall for Charlie. When a typhus outbreak threatens the village, Charlie accompanies the doctor on calls and tells stories of the Blue Lady performing miracles; these stories offer the patients hope and help them get better faster, leading to Charlie being seen as something of an angel himself. Soon Charlie wants to give the ill-gotten gold dust money to the village, but, of course, his cohorts don't agree.

In addition to the word "angel" in the title, we are told at the beginning that this is "the story of a miracle," so we're prepped for a supernatural agency that never materializes. Still, this B-movie does work up a nice gentle folktale feel despite its gunplay climax. Some viewers make a claim for this as a film noir, and I guess in the sense that the hero is actually something of an anti-hero—he's not evil but he is a criminal and at the end, he still, thanks to the Production Code, has to pay for his actions. Otherwise, the tone and look of the movie aren't particularly noirish. I've noticed that John Carroll (Charlie, pictured) is not an admired actor among many classic movie fans (at least the ones who write blogs), maybe because he was pushed early in his career as a Clark Gable type, maybe because he doesn't have a wide range, but he's one of my favorite B-leads and he's fine here, though he was aging out of the hearty young buck image he had earlier in the decade. Thomas Gomez (the doctor), Baton MacLane (Giorgio), and Adele Mara (Raquel) are all fine. Howland Chamberlain, a new name to me, does a nice job as the passive but slimy nerd Higgins. The finale, with good use of guns and fists, is satisfying. A must for John Carroll fans, if there are any others out there. [YouTube]

THE ALPHA INCIDENT (1978)

A strange substance has been brought to Earth from a Mars probe. Doctors Farrell and Rogers study it, noting in conversation that scientists already know a bit about its potentially dangerous properties and that it's akin to a virus. We see them inject hamsters and rats with the substance. The next day, the animals are found dead, their brains having exploded, leaving the scientists to assume that sleep is what triggers the virus to become active. Meanwhile, the rest of the substance is being shipped by train to an underground storage facility in Colorado, accompanied by government man Sorenson. On the train, Sorenson is pestered by Hank, a nosy bearded redneck employee who can't stop yakking and wants desperately to know what's so secret and important about the vials they're carrying. When Sorenson falls asleep, Hank steals his keys, unlocks the container and accidentally breaks one of the vials, cutting his hand on the glass and, as we know but he doesn't, probably getting infected. In the morning, the train stops at a small station in Moose Point, and when Sorenson realizes what's happened, and that Hank has possibly infected everyone in the station office, they are put under official quarantine, unable to leave until they get more information from the scientists. We spend the rest of the movie with the quarantined folks: Sorenson, secretive while trying to be the patriarchal voice of reason; Hank, who remains a gabby pain in the ass; Charlie, the slow-talking older boss of the station; Jenny, the chirpy young secretary; and Jack, a train mechanic who hates authority figures. The rest of the movie takes place in the office as tensions rise and fall. Jenny claims to have a date with a guy named Ted, but the slimy Jack senses she's lying and soon seduces her. Jack also tries to escape but Sorenson shoots him in the arm to stop him. Some National Guardsmen are called out with orders to shoot to kill if anyone gets away, and Hank, the only one of the group known to actually be infected, runs off into the woods, is wounded by Sorenson, and will presumably die from the infection or be shot down—we never find out his fate. Amphetamines are dropped off to help them stay awake, but eventually, poor shambling Charlie falls asleep; sure enough, his brain explodes and one of his eyes pops out (a good effect for a low-budget production). In the morning, antidote pills are dropped off, but … I’ll save spoilers for the next paragraph.

This low-budget local Wisconsin production from cult director Bill Rebane has a reputation as being an Ed Wood-level movie, but though the production values are threadbare (there are basically two sets: the train station office and the scientists' lab) and the middle of the film is slow and too talky, I found some pleasures here. I like Ralph Meeker (Charlie), the only star name present, but he's stuck playing a passive old guy with no personality and is given almost nothing to do, until his brain explodes, by which time Charlie is not Meeker but a special effects dummy. George 'Buck' Flower, something of a minor cult figure, is scuzzily effective as the obnoxious Hank. I appreciate the actors who play the scientists (Paul Bentzen and John Alderman, pictured top left) for trying their best to sound puzzled and concerned. My discovery here is Stafford Morgan (at right), a handsome character actor whose face will be familiar from dozens of TV and movie roles. He almost succeeds at creating a character out of Sorenson. Morgan is very good at being the authority figure who may or may be trustworthy. He never loses his temper despite the asshole behavior of Hank and Jack. If I had been stuck in that office, I would have totally trusted him, and maybe even flirted a bit. [Spoiler:] The film is sometimes criticized for its downbeat ending, stolen from Night of the Living Dead, but it was the paranoid 70s and, though the movie doesn't prepare us well for the finale, it's effective, partly due to Morgan's acting. This is almost by accident a decent Z-grade sci-fi thriller. It would be even better if cut down by fifteen minutes or so. [YouTube]