EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (1958)

Truck driver Jack Flynn is heading home one night with a bracelet he bought as a birthday gift for his teenage daughter Carol when, just outside the small town of River Falls, he hits a thick sticky rope stretched across the road and something attacks his truck: the last we see of him is blood spurting from his slashed face. The next day, a worried Carol gets her boyfriend Mike to search the roads. They find the sticky rope and the wrecked truck with her gift inside but no dad. Entering some nearby caves to see if Dad wandered into one, they find some skeletons and fall into a huge sticky web spun by a giant tarantula. They escape and contact the police who investigate, with the encouragement of Kingman, the science teacher, and manage to kill the spider with insecticide. Kingman has the spider taken back and stored in the high school gym so he can study it, but it turns out it’s not quite dead, and when a rock band enters the gym to rehearse for a dance, and a bunch of students follow them, the stage is set for giant spider mayhem, though it’s less Earth vs. the spider than River Falls vs. the spider. This was made during the heyday of horror and sci-fi movies which focused on teenage characters. Gene Persson (Mike) and June Kenney (Carol) were both in their mid-twenties and could more or less pass for students, though Troy Patterson, as Mike's buddy Joe, was 35 and looked it. Their acting sort of passes muster, but it's the special effects that people watch these movies for, and the giant spider is handled pretty well. Mostly we see real spiders photographed up close with a fake background or, most effectively in the gym scene, a split screen effect (pictured at left). Too much time is spent on Carol insisting on putting everyone in danger to get her bracelet back, which she lost in the spider cave. Produced and directed by B-movie royalty Bert I. Gordon; there are references here to two of his other films, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE and THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN. Also released as THE SPIDER. A fine Chiller Theater watch. [DVD]

BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT (1971)

Southeast Asia, 1946. U.S. Army deserter Joseph Langdon, on the run in the jungle while leaving behind a trail of dead bodies, is confronted by a serpent who calls him evil. The serpent transforms into a chubby, loinclothed Satan who makes a deal with him. If Langdon will give up his soul, Satan will give him eternal life, reincarnating Langdon at the point of death, remaining evil in each new identity and "awakening the latent evil" in the people he comes into contact with. Some 25 years later, Philip Rogers, horribly mangled in an industrial accident, has died, or so the doctor thinks. But Satan has Langdon inhabit his body and when his bandages come off, he looks like Langdon. Philip's wife Julia, assuming his new face is from plastic surgery, takes him home where he resumes Philip's life, trying to free himself of Satan's influence. But Satan throws in a new twist: at certain moments, Langdon turns into a werewolf-type creature and literally feeds on human beings. It's unclear what triggers the transformations—Satan seems to cause them, but at one point, Satan says that Langdon brings them on himself. They mostly happen at moments of high emotion, including when initiating sex. During a bestial rampage, Langdon bonds with a blind man who tries to help the obviously disturbed Langdon. Though he keeps turning into a monster, Langdon begins to think that he may be on a path to salvation and with the blind man's help might be able to finally die for good and escape his cursed existence. 

This is another low-budget Filipino horror film written and directed by Eddie Romero and starring John Ashley (who was also a producer), pictured. Like the others (THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE, for example) it looks and feels cheap and shoddy though it has its moments. The script is ambitious, with a fair amount of philosophical chatter about life and death and good and evil bandied about, but these themes don't take root, and such talk winds up detracting a bit from the horrific elements. It would have been nice to have spent maybe ten minutes or so on the life Langdon leads between 1946 and the present—Satan notes in the jungle that Langdon's physical body is about to die from eating poisoned seeds, so he had to be somewhere for those 25 years. But undoubtedly I'm thinking too hard about this. As usual, Ashley is fine in the lead role and his frequent co-star Vic Diaz is, if not really good, at least entertaining as a slightly goofy Satan. Mary Wilcox (Julia) seems to have been given little direction and she's a bit wooden. Slightly better is Eddie Garcia as a sympathetic cop. Some critics make fun of the beast makeup, but it's really not bad. I like that he turns into a beast, not a wolf, though the "yellow night" reference in the title is never explained, and there are a couple of decently gory moments. If the phrase “Filipino horror” or the name John Ashley mean something to you, you'll want to see this. [DVD]

THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (1960)

In the pre-dawn hours in a European village, a young servant named Brigitte is attacked by a caped figure, but is saved by farm workers and taken to a nearby home. This is the third attack by an assailant who strikes during the full moon and leaves bite marks on the neck of his victim. Meanwhile, a group of scantily clad women are staying in the home; they are a ballet troupe, with the only males being the blondish Luca, the ballet master, and the beefy mustachioed Giorgio, the music director, and they are rehearsing at the home of Luca's uncle, a professor. There is, of course, talk of the vampire myth, the assumption being that the attacked women become anemic and beholden to the will of the vampire. Brigitte dies and later at her funeral, we see her face, looking alive and horrified, visible through a glass panel in the coffin. Two of the dancers, Francesca and Luisa, go for a walk in the woods and when a storm comes up, Luca goes looking for them. They wind up taking refuge in what looks like an abandoned castle, but they are greeted by the Countess Alda and her old and creepy servant Herman. When Luisa goes exploring, she is bitten by Herman, and we soon figure out the vampire setup: Herman goes trolling for women, he drinks their blood and turns young, then goes back to Alda who drinks his blood and he turns old again while Alda keeps her youthful (and buxom) looks. It's hinted that, despite Herman acting like a servant, he is actually the ruler of her in a sadomasochistic relationship. Luisa, who doesn't recall the attack, survives and back at the professor’s place, all the loose talk inspires Giorgio to create a vampire dance. But Alda, smitten with Luca, seems to want to replace Herman with him. The plot eventually goes a bit haywire; things seem to happen based on the conventions of the vampire movie, not because of plot considerations. The climax, on the roof of the castle at dawn, is nicely done.

I liked a later movie by the director, Renato Polselli, the similarly themed THE MONSTER OF THE OPERA, so I backtracked to find this one. Vampires and dancers are central to both, and like OPERA, this one has a few sexy dance sequences, the best being the improvised vampire dance done to Giorgio's music. The women playing the female leads are rather interchangeable and only adequate in acting talent. In fact, the only good acting comes from Maria Luisa Rolando as the countess. She's attractive and sensual and, though the part was apparently written for the great Barbara Steele, Rolando is fine. The male leads, Isarco Ravaioli as Luca and John Turner as Giorgio, are less interchangeable and moderately attractive but also a bit weak in the acting department. Some sapphic touches are presented here and there but not dwelled on. The music is interesting, and at one point, a crazy big band tune breaks out from nowhere. The make-up for the old Herman makes him look less like an old vampire and more like a sci-fi mutant freak. But the make-up for the final scene of the vampires in the sun is nicely gooey, inspired perhaps by Christopher Lee's demise in HORROR OF DRACULA (which I must get around to reviewing one of these days). My favorite line is Luca addressing Alda, "Lady, demon, countess or whatever you are!" I liked OPERA better but this has its moments of fun. Pictured at top left is Maria Luisa Rolando; at right are the two heroes, Isarco Ravaioli and John Turner (aka Gino Turini). [YouTube]

HOUSE OF THE DAMNED (1963)

Architect Scott Campbell, in need of work, is called by his friend Joe to do an architectural survey of an old mansion called the Rochester Castle. The owner, a former actress who is now institutionalized, had leased it to a carnival owner named Arbuckle for nine years but he has recently vanished and the real estate agent is looking to make changes to make it more appealing for the housing market. Scott and his wife Nancy head to the house to stay a few days to examine the property. Odd things happen from the start. First, their way to the house, up a winding road into hills overlooking the ocean, is blocked by dead end signs. Then a creeping shadow is seen on a wall. That night, we see what appears to be a legless man come into their room and take some keys off of a keyring containing thirteen keys, leaving only eleven, and they soon discover that one door in the house can't be unlocked. The next day, Joe's wife Loy shows up seeming a bit disgruntled, then Joe shows up and the two are at odds over his possible infidelities. Just as we're wondering if Joe and Loy know something that Scott doesn't, we see Loy scream in the night and the next morning, her decapitated body is seated in a chair. A visit to Mrs. Rochester shows that she is freaked out by the house. Will our trio discover the secret to the house of the damned?

This short B-film scores high in visual creepiness (an old dark house full of shadows and half-glimpsed figures) but fairly low on actual horror, the headless body notwithstanding. It sets up some potentially interesting narrative paths but they all pretty much lead nowhere. In the early scenes, Scott and Nancy have an odd vibe together which is promising but again, nothing is really done with that. There is an explanation that is satisfying but not especially thrilling. Many online reviews give the ending away but I won't because if you know from the beginning what's going on, there’s not much impetus to stick with it. The actors range from bland to adequate: Merry Anders, probably the most recognizable actor here, having racked up nearly 100 credits in her career, mostly on TV, is Nancy; Ron Foster is Scott; Erika Peters is Loy. Best is Richard Crane (pictured), star of the 50s sci-fi TV series Rocky Jones, as Joe; though his is technically a supporting role, he's the only person we miss when he's not on screen. Richard Keil (Jaws from the James Bond movies) has a small role. The movie is an hour long; there's not quite an hour's worth of story here, but I wasn't ever exactly bored. Shot in widescreen black and white, the film at least looks good—I'm assuming the YouTube print I saw was taken from a DVD. [YouTube]

THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER (1973 TV-movie)

Alice Shaw is clearly in emotional distress at church though she rebuffs her priest when he tries to help. In her apartment, she is confronted by a crippled man walking on two canes (whose face we don't see) who has come to claim her 21-year-old daughter. Alice tries to shoot the crippled man, who claims to be the girl's father, but the bullets have no effect and she drops dead. At Alice's funeral, her daughter Diane is comforted by Lilith, an old friend of her mother's. Lilith is friendly but a bit aggressive and insists that Diane stay with her to let Diane sort out her life. Lilith introduces Diane to some eccentric neighbors and gives her a ring with a distinctive insignia, like a cross overlaid with an X, that she says belonged to Diane's mother. Diane notices a sinister looking painting in Lilith's living room of a creepy looking man in a cloak against a blood red background, and the ring insignia is present in the corner of the painting. We soon discover that Alice and Lilith were both in a cult of devil worshippers; apparently, the Devil himself (or perhaps a lesser demon), as pictured in the painting, fathered Diane, and Alice promised to give the girl up to the group when she turned 21. Now Lilith and the cult are trying to snare Diane into becoming their Princess of Darkness who will mate with the Demon of Endor. Diane's attempts to escape the influence of Lilith are ineffectual until she starts dating Steve, a handsome neighbor. Between Steve and the kindly judge who was the executor of Alice's will, Diane thinks she has escaped the clutches of the cult—but has she?

Between the title, the visuals, and the overdetermined narrative, it's obvious right from the get-go that this is basically a TV-movie version of Rosemary's Baby—the opening credits roll over an image stolen from the famous Rosemary's Baby poster. Almost every plot beat is predictable and, it being a 70s TV-movie, we also know that it's likely to have a downbeat ending (upbeat for the Satanists). Still, this was fun largely due to a good cast. Shelley Winters is fabulous as Lilith; she resists her scenery-chewing ways except for one scene in which she goes ballistic when Diane announces she's moving out, and it's a good scene. Belinda J. Montgomery (later Doogie Houser's mom) alternates between frightened and strong as Diane. Joseph Cotten has a glorified cameo as the judge. Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows) plays Lilith's mute butler; it's a small role but he plays the one cult member who actually is on Diane's side. Abe Vigoda, the year after The Godfather and the year before Barney Miller, looking a bit like Boris Karloff, is a cult elder. Robert Foxworth is handsome and serene as Steve. Martha Scott plays his mother and Diane Ladd is Diane's mother. Admittedly there are moments that verge on laughable, such as the chanting of "Diane, Princess of Darkness." But the ending, though predictable with the Demon of Endor showing up with glowing eyes (above right), is effective. Somehow I missed this one in my childhood but I'm glad to have caught up with it. Pictured at left are Winters and Frid. [Ok.ru]

TERROR-CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE (1965)

A nervous man runs through the streets of a town at night. He arrives at a stable and saddles up a horse, but is kicked to death by it. Next, we see lawyer Albert Kovac arrive at the Villa Hauff to consult with Jeronimus Hauf about his will. But Hauf's wife Cleo and her stepdaughter Corinne are surprised because Jeronimus died a year ago. In fact, his body is about to be transferred from a grave to the family vault. Hauf dabbled in the occult and bought the mansion because it was built on the ruins of a 15th century plague hospital. Some patients were thought to have spread the plague on purpose, and their mummified severed hands are on display in the villa. There is a belief in the village that Hauf had made contact with some dead plague victims, and Hauf's death, after a fall from a narrow stone staircase, was a bit mysterious, with the five people who were present in the house at the time having signed the death certificate. Oddly, two of those people have died in the past year (one being the man from the first scene), and that day, another of the five, the town's mayor, is found dead with acid splashed on his face. That leaves a wheelchair-bound man named Stinnel and a fifth person whose signature is too smudged to read. There is another belief that sounds of ghostly carts that collected the plague dead can be heard around the villa, and sure enough, Stinnel hears it just before he kills himself in a particularly gory way. The final element in the plot is an old folk song from the plague days that says, "Pure water will save you" from the death carts. Everything is now in place for the playing out of the return of the dead plague spreaders as revenge against those responsible for Jeronimus’ death.

This has a terrible title that conjures up a trashy grade-Z horror movie, but actually it's is a well-produced and photographed Gothic thriller with supernatural elements—somewhat oddly, we don't actually see the grave creatures, even though they are real. The literal translation of the Italian title, 5 TOMBS FOR A MEDIUM, is much better if still a bit misleading—there is no traditional medium present. The big draw here for horror fans is the presence of Barbara Steele looking and acting every inch the way she always looks and acts, as Cleo. She is top-billed though Mirealla Maravidi, as Corinne, has a larger role. Walter Brandi (Albert) is the hero, though he doesn't get to act especially heroically and he's not quite as young and handsome as he should be opposite the two attractive female leads. The spooky Gothic atmosphere is kept up well, and the severed arms are a nice touch with a creepy payoff near the end. It never becomes clear why the opening scene is present; it's almost as if it was footage from a different movie that got spliced on to add five minutes to the running time. The director is assumed by fans to be Massimo Pupillo, but the onscreen credit goes to Ralph Zucker, also a co-producer. The story is that Pupillo directed it but didn't like the outcome so gave credit to Zucker. However, at least one cast member has said that Zucker did indeed direct at least some of it. Credit is given to Edgar Allan Poe for inspiration, but that's a weak claim; the plague background is a faint echo of Masque of the Red Death, and the character of the lawyer might remind one of the narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher. The proceedings bog down a bit in the middle, but for atmosphere, this makes great October viewing. Pictured are Steele, Maravidi, and Brandi. [Blu-ray]

A BELL FROM HELL (1973)

Young John is sitting in a room in an asylum making a plaster cast of his own face. Next, John is being released from the asylum (it seems more like a college dorm) on a kind of probation during which he has to report to his doctor every eight days. He lives in his late mother’s old house and frequently visits his Aunt Marta and her three young daughters. We don’t know why John was institutionalized or for how long (he looks to be in his early to mid 20s). In fact, we learn very little else about John's situation except seeing home movies which show that John and his cousins were close in their childhood. His reunion with his family is fraught with tension; it is vaguely implied that his aunt may have had him put away in an attempt to take his inheritance, and it's even more vaguely implied that incestuous feelings may have (and may still) run rampant among the four cousins. John briefly takes a job in a slaughterhouse but leaves after one day, saying he's learned enough—the slaughterhouse footage here is real and explicit. We soon learn that John enjoys pulling pranks. Some are fairly harmless, like the one he pulls on a visitor to the aunt's house that is taken from the famous Saki story “The Open Window.” Some are more harmful, such as when he pretends to rip his eyes out in front of a neighbor's wife; she faints and he puts her body on her couch and leaves a note implying that he raped her. On the other hand, he acts as a rescuer to a young girl who is threatened with gang rape by four hunters. The next day, he pulls a vulgar prank on one of the men involving pissing in a urinal. John is hard to figure out, and when he begins to plan revenge against Marta and his cousins, his actions are even more bizarre. He assaults one of the cousins, though it seems to turn into consensual sex at some point. He sprays Aunt Marta's unconscious face with honey then sets a colony of bees on her. He outfits his basement like a slaughterhouse then ties his three cousins up as if planning to slaughter them. The bees don't kill Marta and he can't go through with the slaughter (or perhaps he never intended to, though that is not made clear) but Marta gets her revenge, with some help from old pal Don Pedro, when John is tied to a new church bell (the title bell, I assume, which we see off and on through the film), bricked in, and left to be hung when the bell is rung for the first time the next morning. But there’s a nifty little final scene which shows Don Pedro paying for his crime.

This Spanish film was directed by Claudio Guerin who fell to his death from the bell tower set on the last day of shooting—despite rumors, it's unlikely to have been a suicide. Though Spanish, the film partakes of some elements of the Italian giallo genre, with interesting use of color, atmospheric cinematography, some potentially gory moments (though oddly, there is only one death shown in the movie and it's bloodless), some near-nudity, and a somewhat incoherent script. One online critic says it took him three viewings to figure everything out. I have no desire to sit through this again (unless I can find a cleaned-up DVD print; the YouTube prints are all smudgy and murky) and I think my plot summary is mostly accurate. French actor Renaud Verley (pictured) is handsome and effective as John. I'm not sure that Verley knew what was going on with his character any more than I did, but he strikes a nicely ambiguous persona and we are sometimes in uncomfortable sympathy with John. The busy and respected Vivica Lindfors gives the wheelchair-bound Marta some gravitas even as we're pretty sure she's a villain. We never really know how conniving and controlling she is; the only truly deplorable thing we see her do is to withhold John's passport so he can't leave the country and start a new life. (In one fairly big plothole, we are told that John never shows up to his probation visits, but he suffers no consequences for this.) The plot is confusing and disjointed, and the tone unpleasant, but if I got the chance to see a clear print, I might watch this again—though three times is out of the question. [YouTube]

TARGET EARTH (1954)

A woman in her scanties wakes up in bed, the noon light coming in through the window, surrounded by scattered sleeping pills. The groggy Nora, who has apparently tried to kill herself, discovers that her apartment building has no power or water, and when she heads outside, finds the streets are oddly empty. She sees a dead body, then runs into a man named Frank who spent the night unconscious after being mugged. The two assume the city was evacuated during the night and they both slept through it. Passing a bar, they find a man and woman doing some piano playing and daydrinking. Jim and Vicki got dead drunk last night, also missing the apparent evacuation. On the streets, they discover that all the cars have their distributor caps missing, a move that would indicate an attempt to stop an invading army (remember the nuns and the distributor caps at the end of The Sound of Music?). The group picks up another straggler, Otis, who finds a newspaper with headlines about an invasion by a mystery army. In the streets, Otis looks up and sees the shadow of what looks like a giant robot. From the rooftops, the robot shoots Otis with a fatal blast of energy, and the others retreat to an empty hotel. At about thirty minutes into this real-time drama, we cut to backstory scenes of the Army preparing to fight off an army of hundreds of aliens from Venus. The military manage to put a robot out of commission and a scientist examines it hoping to discover vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, a trigger-happy thug named Davis shows up at the hotel and the movie cuts between their tense situation and that of the military as they plan to attack the aliens in the city. What will happen when our small group gets caught between the Army and the aliens?

The low-budget science fiction film benefits from the eeriness of the empty city streets; the city is never identified by name but it was shot on Los Angeles locations. It becomes an interesting mix of a severely limited cast caught in melodramatic situations and larger scale scenes of the military. The robots themselves are effective enough considering the budget and the era. We never see an army of them because only one was actually constructed and used over and over, but that limitation is never too obvious. After the first ten minutes or so, the tension dissipates a bit but we remain invested in the characters, thanks partly to OK performances from the cast, primarily Kathleen Crowley (Nora), Richard Denning (Frank), Robert Roark (Davis) and Whit Bissell (the army scientist). I've never been a big fan of Denning, as I find his hero persona lacking, but he's serviceable here. Not bad for an early version of the genre of film in which a small group of strangers try to survive apocalyptic conditions—later came FIVE and THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED and PANIC IN YEAR ZERO among others. [YouTube]

ISLAND OF TERROR (1966)

On Petrie's Island, a small Irish island with no telephones and limited transportation to the mainland, Dr. Philips is doing secret work in a chemical lab to find a cure for cancer by creating living tissue that can fight and kill cancer cells, but as an experiment reaches a climax, there is an explosion. Farmer Ian Bellows hears odd noises coming from a cave and goes to investigate but doesn't return. His body is found by Constable Harris, but it's all soft tissue, with the bones completely sucked out—Harris tells Dr. Landers that Ian's face is "a horrible mush with the eyes just sitting on it" (though when we actually see the body, it's not quite as horrible looking as that description would have it). Landers goes to London and gets pathologist Brian Stanley and brilliant young scientist David West to come to the island to investigate. They assume a disease is to blame, but when they visit Philips' lab, they find Philips and his associate dead and similarly boneless. A farmer's cow is found dead in the same condition, and West deduces that the failed experiment created a new creatures which they call silicates that feed off of calcium phosphate, which is found in bones. After a couple of almost-reveals, we see these creatures: they are large turtle-like beings with a snake-like tentacle that grabs people and starts the process of deboning. They can also split in two, which they do at a rapid rate, possibly able to cover the island in just a few hours. The constable is killed by one, as is Dr. Landers when he tries to dispatch one with an axe (which is unable to penetrate its body). Campbell, the town's leader (maybe the mayor but that’s never made clear), and his assistant Argyle, put themselves at the disposal of West and Stanley, and soon it's figured out that radioactivity is the only thing that can kill the silicates. West and Stanley go back to Philips' lab to get some Strontium 90 (in an unnecessarily long scene showing the two suiting up in protective gear); the men have Campbell gather the islanders at the town hall while a bunch of cattle are injected with the radioactive element, the hope being that the silicates will eat the cattle and then die off. Unfortunately, if this doesn't work, it means the islanders are all potential food for the monsters.

Hammer director Terence Fisher made this film for Planet Film Productions, a short-lived outfit specializing in sci-fi horror. The movie starts off well; the feel of the island is authentic and most of the performances are appropriately low-key. Peter Cushing is his usual reliable self as Stanley and Edward Judd is quirkily handsome and commanding as West. His girlfriend Toni (Carole Gray) tags along though the narrative implies that Toni may have just been a one-night stand; it’s not really important but still a weird plotpoint. The supporting actors are surprisingly good at being innocent folks caught up in the quickly growing and potentially apocalyptic situation. They include Sam Kydd (the constable), Eddie Byrne (Landers), Niall MacGinnis (Campbell) and James Caffrey (Argyle). The creatures are a bit silly looking in the beginning, especially when they are indoors and move about like big Roombas. Outdoors they are fairly effective, and even more so when they drop out of trees or smash through windows, and the climatic scene at the town hall has a nice CRAWLING EYE feel. Overall, though, the whole thing has a bland look and a predictable by-the-numbers approach to narrative. The movie ends with the menacing creatures all wiped out. The usual "Don’t tamper in God’s domain" message is undercut a bit when West notes that "science has its risks but the risks aren't enough to hinder progress," but a last shot of a Japanese lab subverts that by providing a Gotcha! moment. BTW, a later Planet movie, NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT, is very similar to this in setting and plotpoints, with the same director and with Cushing as a star. In fact, when I started watching this, I thought it was BIG HEAT which I'd already seen so I almost stopped watching. Pictured are Judd, Gray, and Cushing. [Blu-ray]

GORGO (1961)

Joe (Bill Travers) and Sam (William Sylvester), partners in a sea salvage business, are bringing up a lost treasure off the coast of Ireland when the sea starts bubbling. An undersea volcano erupts, damaging the ship and sending them to the shore of Nara Island for repairs. They get a frosty welcome from McCartin, the harbormaster, who has been illegally hoarding treasure and artifacts found nearby, but they hit it off with Sean, the orphan boy who helps McCartin. When a local diver is found dead, it's assumed that a shark got him, but as men hunt the shark, a 65-foot tall bellowing reptilian creature comes out of the sea and attacks. Joe and Sam lead the men in capturing the beast, which Sean calls Ogra after a sea creature artifact of McCartin's. The University of Dublin wants the beast so they can study it, but Joe makes a deal with the Dorkin Circus in London and they transport it there to be put on public display, naming it Gorgo, for Gorgon, the mythic entity that turned men to stone. What could go wrong? Well, the Dublin scientists somehow figure out that Gorgo is just an infant, and soon a mom twice as big as him follows his scent and comes looking for her baby. Watch out, Piccadilly Circus! Look out, Big Ben! What Godzilla did to Tokyo, mom does to London.

People tend to either love this B-monster movie or think of it as a big joke. My own history with this film: it was the first monster movie I saw in a theater, probably in 1963 when I was 7 and already a big Chiller Theater fan, and I was quite impressed with it. The folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed it on their show, and the print they used was panned and scanned and in bad shape so it seemed to deserve its mocking. But seen in widescreen and in clear and bright color, it's a different experience. Rather than use stop motion animation, the producers went the full Godzilla route and had a man dressed up in a rubber suit in the middle of a bunch of miniature sets, and for the era, it comes off pretty well. Motion speed is adjusted to make the monster's movements seem appropriately scaled. (The title monster, BTW, does not go on a rampage, it's the mom, but she is never given a name.) Matte and blue screen work is fairly good, if awfully obvious at times. The writing is rather weak—it rushes through some things, like the capture of Gorgo, and drags out other things, like the unnecessary amount of military stock footage in the last half which causes the narrative to lose some momentum. But generally, the movie does fairly well what "kiddie" monster movies were expected to do back then. I assume the character of Sean was present so kids would have someone to identify with, and to ultimately make Gorgo sorta cute.

Bill Travers and William Sylvester handle their lead roles seriously, with Sylvester coming off as the nice guy and Travers a bit of a hard ass—though in the end, it's Travers who saves Sean from possible trampling. There isn't even a hint of romance here; as far as I remember, there are no females in speaking parts. So of course, I want to read Travers and Sylvester as a couple, despite the absence of sexual tension, and a few shots near the end of the two with Sean does make them look like a gay-dad family. Certainly they have become his de facto caretakers, and the next step is adoption. Vincent Winter as Sean is good—not too cutesy and not too wooden. The way Sean acts when he first sees Gorgo seems to imply that Sean has seen or at least been aware of the beast's existence, though this does not become a plot thread. I suspect that Sean's relationship with Gorgo inspired Toho to put forth a similar plot point in the later Gamera movies. Busy character actor Martin Benson has a couple of nice moments as the slightly slimy Dorkin, though ultimately I don't think he deserves to be labeled as a bad guy. If your only experience with this movie is through MST3K, you owe it to yourself to see this on home video or streaming. Pictured at top right is Gorgo destroying Big Ben; at left are Winter, Travers, and Sylvester. [Blu-ray]

CAT GIRL (1957)

Leonora has been summoned by her uncle Edmund, whom she has always disliked, to his country estate to discuss her inheritance. She was asked to come alone but brings her husband Richard and two friends, Allan and Cathy. Leonora also reunites with Brian, a psychiatrist whom Leonora knew in the past. Edmond and his housekeeper Anna are not happy to see the others, and more tensions develop: Allan is a drunkard and Richard is fooling around with Cathy. Edmund tells Leonora that she is "inheriting" a family curse: upon her uncle’s death, she will become possessed by a leopard which wanders about the grounds. The specifics of the curse are unclear; there is a leopard which Edmund keeps caged up, and she apparently doesn't so much become a leopard as much as control it, or maybe even inhabit it now and again. The distraught Leonora runs off into the woods as Edmund releases the leopard so it can kill him so Leonora can become the "cat girl" of the title. If you’ve seen the Val Lewton 1942 classic, CAT PEOPLE, you have some idea of the (fairly mild) mayhem that will be unleashed. As in the earlier film, suspense is built up by keeping the matter of the curse ambiguous: is she really a cat girl or is it all in her head? Brian, the psychiatrist, winds up playing an important role, but the writing is weak and things remain mostly muddled by the end, though the conclusion is superficially satisfying, I guess. Barbara Shelley (pictured) is fine in the lead; she became something of a British scream queen in the 60s, not to be confused with the sexier Barbara Steele. The rest of the cast is low energy with no real standouts. The atmosphere is nicely bleak, and there are a couple of visual callbacks to the earlier Lewton movie. Like that film, the studio stepped in here to hype the supernatural explanation a bit over the strictly psychological. Ultimately, fairly ho-hum but watchable. [YouTube]

THE MONSTER OF THE OPERA (1964)

It's October; the first movie in my Chiller Theater month begins with a woman in a nightgown being chased up and down stone stairs through an old theater by a vampire who attacks her with a pitchfork. Then she wakes up from this nightmare. She is Giulia, a member of a dance troupe. The director, Sandro, has moved the troupe into their new home, an abandoned theater, dilapidated and cobwebby. Sandro is warned by Achille, the cantankerous caretaker, that the theater is cursed by the presence of an ancient vampire who was behind the disappearance of actresses in the theater over the years. Suddenly, a group of glow-in-the-dark skeletons pop up out in the audience, but surprise, they're actually the male members of the troupe dressed up to spook Sandro and the girls. No one is terribly concerned with the caretaker's warnings and soon they're rehearsing Sandro's dance version of Cyrano de Bergerac and cleaning up the theater at the same time. Though the building is locked up, a mysterious man shows up, claiming to be a devotee of the theater, but we soon learn that he is actually Stefano, the vampire, and that Achille is his servant. He is attracted to Giulia because she looks like, or perhaps actually is, the reincarnation of the Countess Laura with whom Stefano was carrying on an affair many years ago. Eventually she ordered her servant to bury Stefano alive; he prayed to Satan and somehow cane out of this situation as a vampire. The servant, of course, was Achille who has also become immortal and must serve his master even against his will. As the plot unfolds, not only is Giulia threatened but the entire troupe is. No one can leave the theater because of invisible force fields, and we discover there is a door to another dimension which contains several of Stefano's skimpily clad past vampire brides, chained to a wall. Achille warns the troupe that in order to fend off possible attacks from Stefano, they must keep moving or dancing, which they proceed to do like dervishes. But Giulia, like a character from Dark Shadows, winds up trapped in the torture chamber dimension and may never escape.

Most critics who write about this Italian film directed by Renato Polselli reference his earlier movie The Vampire and the Ballerina which I tracked down after I saw this and which I'll review soon. This film has one setting, the theater, and plays out more or less in real time. Its Gothic feel and theatrical setting do conjure up The Phantom of the Opera, though the occasional humor, the occasional queer touches (a lesbian and at least one fey gay boy), and the modern dancing bring Phantom up to date. The choreography is actually good and quite sexy. Marco Mariani (above left) is very good as Sandro, an enthusiastic Bob Fosse type who leaps around like a dancer even when he's not rehearsing, and he gets as much if not more screen time as Barbara Hawards, playing Giulia. There is a big cast of supporting players, most not developed as characters, and all are good at being enthusiastic and light-hearted for much of the running time. A moment that looks like it will turn into a lesbian love scene becomes a giggly three way kiss. The scene with the men in skeleton leotards is great fun. The plot doesn't need to be attended to too closely, as the primary attractions here are the atmosphere, the vigorous camera work, and the goofy troupe of actors. Stefano's fangs are excellent. A nice discovery, and available in a very good print. A skeleton boy and troupe girl are pictured at right. [Blu-ray]

SURRENDER—HELL! (1959)

Lieutenant Donald Blackburn is stationed in the Philippines at the outbreak of World War II. American forces on Bataan are ordered to surrender, leading to the infamous Bataan Death March during which thousands of American and Filipino prisoners of war died. But Blackburn refuses to surrender, joining several natives as they take to the jungles. A native woman named Delia is especially helpful, tending to Blackburn as he recovers from malaria. He soon falls in with a group of guerillas in high mountain country led by a woman named Pilar, and he more or less adopts an orphan boy named Bruno. After Corregidor in Manila Bay falls to the Japanese, Blackburn conscripts his guerilla fighters into the United States Army, paying them with IOUs that will be honored by the Army after the war. Not all natives are willing to defy the Japanese occupiers by joining up, and eventually Blackburn resorts to signing up a couple of headhunting tribes to fight. Despite some casualties and resistance against them by some locals, the group, which he dubs the 11th Infantry, is successful in fighting the occupiers, most notably by destroying a strategically important bridge. Blackburn and Pilar fall in love, though as they bring to a close their freeing of Northern Luzon, Pilar is captured and eventually dies in Blackburn's arms. In the end, Blackburn's troops are honored by the Army and Blackburn turns over his command to a local officer. This is based on a true story, and Blackburn himself is credited as a technical advisor, but the B-movie budget and behind-the-camera talent are both lacking, and a narrative that has potential ends up rather boring. The handsome Keith Andes (pictured) is fine as Blackburn and he's on screen for almost the entire movie, but there is more telling than showing here; I assume the low budget led to the use of ever-present narration by Andes. There are a couple of action scenes, but mostly narration and conversation carry the movie forward. Susan Cabot (THE WASP WOMAN) as Delia is second billed behind Andes, but vanishes from the film fairly quickly, replaced by Filipino actress Paralumen as Pilar who is fine. It was apparently filmed on location but it mostly looks like sound stages and California locations. Stock footage is used fairly well. Generally, a bland war movie for fans of Keith Andes only. [YouTube]

NEXT TIME I MARRY (1938)

A well-off woman (Lucille Ball) drives slowly past a roadside crew of ditch diggers asking each one if he is married. The first one who says he isn't, though he is very attached to his Great Dane dog Mike, is James Ellison. Ball offers him $500 to marry her immediately, and when he says that's not enough money, she offers a thousand. He says all he needs is $793, so they strike a deal. A justice of the peace marries them; he kisses her, then she slaps him, pays him, and leaves. We find out she’s a heiress about to come into some big money with the stipulation that she's married to a "plain American" man. The problem is that her fiancé (Lee Bowman) is French, so her plan was to marry some poor schmoe to qualify for the money, then head to Reno for a divorce and marry Bowman who, though handsome and charming, is probably a fortune hunter. When the press finds out what's going on, they dub Ellison a Cinderella man which he resents. Ball wants to get to Reno first to file for the divorce, but Ellison traps her in his ride-behind trailer so they will wind up in the city together. At a gas station stop, she ducks out and hitchhikes, but when two men try to assault her, she is saved by Ellison and his dog. Ball and Ellison warm to each other until the press claims he has a wife in Chicago, and Ball discovers a ledger page with the name Caroline, to whom the $793 she paid him will go. Eventually, Bowman catches up with them and Ball travels with him. It turns out that Caroline is the name of a boat that Ellison is making final payments on, and the Chicago wife is not his wife after all. What will happen in Reno? 

This little-known B-movie is one of Lucille Ball's first starring roles after a string of comedic supporting parts at RKO. It's a charming semi-screwball comedy which sort of falls apart in the last fifteen minutes. The screenwriters didn't seem sure what to do once they got to Reno and they threw some creaky plot mechanics in. But enough of the movie works to be a pleasant watch. Ball is very good; it's almost like she's road testing her Lucy Ricardo persona. Ellison, a favorite B-lead of mine, is almost as good as the plain American who falls for Ball but also resents her tricks. Bowman rounds out the main cast quite nicely. With a little tweak of his performance, he could have taken Ellison's role, though the reverse might not work—I'm not sure Ellison could come off as deviously as Bowman does. Director Garson Kanin, better known as a writer (the play Born Yesterday, and some Tracy/Hepburn movies co-written with his wife Ruth Gordon), keeps the pace snappy until the end. In small roles are familiar faces like Mantan Moreland, Dick Elliott, and Cy Kendall. Generally, a nice surprise find. Pictured are Ball and Ellison. [TCM]

MESSALINA VENUS EMPRESS (1960)

Yesterday I reviewed one Italian version of the life of Roman empress Messalina; this version, made nine years later in color and widescreen, is much closer to the peplum genre. The tone is frivolous at times, more liberties are taken with the historical record, and there is more sex and violence. Yet it is the lesser movie of the two. This begins with Valeria Messalina, as a candidate to be a vestal virgin, and Praetorian guard soldier Lucius Maximus meeting cute (or sexy-cute) in the gardens of Vesta. They sex it up in the woods and he leaves for a two year assignment in Armenia. Meanwhile after the murder of Caligula, Caio Silio approaches Messalina to become the wife of the new emperor Claudius as a way to appease the aristocrats who oppose him. A nobleman instrumental to the plot tries to have sex with Messalina on her wedding night, but she kills him. Later, young Marcello is dispatched by her enemies to kill her, but she seduces him, kills him, and has his head sent to the plotters. Years later, Lucius returns and when he sees her, not knowing that she is the empress, she immediately strips for him and they have sex (again). He's a bit disoriented later when he is introduced to her as Messalina. Her reputation among the people is high, but he finds out that she is behind a plot to evacuate a group of poor people (and, it develops, mostly Christians) and is torn between his conscience and his lustful urges. Believe it or not, his conscience eventually wins. This certainly has its moments, including a free-for-all bar fight (marred by some phony looking fisticuffs), some sexy dancing, and a finale capped by an impressive shot of a slaughter scene. I'm assuming that most of the characters are fictional; aside from Messalina and Claudius, the only other character from the earlier film is the gay Narcissus. Here, our hero gets a happy ending, riding off into the sunset with his Christian teenage groupie Sylvia. British actress Belinda Lee is good as Messalina—sadly, she was killed in a car accident just a year later. Spiros Focas (Lucius) is fine. Ida Galli makes for a perky Sylvia (she'd be at home in a 60s beach movie) and Giuliano Gemma (pictured) is a handsome twinkish Marcello. The print I saw was in fine shape visually but had poor subtitles, no better than those you'd find on YouTube. It didn't get a theatrical release in the States but was shown on television in the 1960s as Messalina. I may have had my fill of Messalina movies, though there are others, including one that pits her against a son of Hercules which I may have to dig up. [Amazon Prime]

THE AFFAIRS OF MESSALINA (1951)

Rome, 44 A.D. The emperor Claudius is upset at the spendthrift ways of his wife, the empress Messalina. In theory, she is in charge of overseeing public morals, but Claudius doesn't know that, in addition to taking lovers behind his back—her current primary lover is Caius Silvius—she disguises herself at night as a prostitute named Licisca, collects gossip and takes more lovers. Rebel leader Valerius, who knows about her subterfuge, berates her, calling her "the dishonor of Rome." Eventually Claudius feels he has no choice but to sentence Valerius to death, allowing him to commit suicide. Caius struggles between the attractions of Messalina and the pull of the revolutionaries, as Valerius names Caius his successor, and when Messalina tries to bed him while the funeral pyre of Valerius burns, he rebuffs her. Other characters abound, and a scorecard would be helpful to keep track of their loyalties. Mnester, a court advisor; Lucius, Mnester's handsome adopted son who can imitate a finch—I assumed he was Mnester's catamite though we later see him using his finch call as a signal to have sex with Messalina; Narcissus, a rather fey member of the court; Cinzia, a dancing girl who is in danger of being put to death when she fumbles some dance moves during a court dinner (during which it looks like an orgy will break out any minute); Timius, the brave young protector of Cinzia.

At a party/orgy, the oracular witch Ismene, in league with the rebels, foretells the death of Claudius, or as she words it, the husband of Messalina. Claudius is talked into divorcing Messalina and letting her marry Caius so he will be the doomed man, but this is the plan of those who seek Messalina's downfall. Unfortunately, Octavius, one of the senior rebels, thinks that Caius will go through with the marriage and become emperor, betraying the late Valerius. Things head toward a climax during a day of gladiator games when Cinzia (apparently a secret Christian) is magically able to save Timus from being eaten by lions. Later, Timius is spared from being killed by lead gladiator Taurus (apparently a secret rebel). With Claudius having left Rome to oversee a huge delivery of needed wheat at Ostia, Messalina is at the mercy of various men who wish to see her powerless or dead.

At the time it was made, this was the most expensive Italian film ever, and though it's in black & white and is not widescreen, the production is impressive with elaborate sets, great costumes, and good performances. It's sometimes referred to as an early example of the peplum film, but it doesn't feel or look like one. There are swords and sandals but virtually no sweaty bare-chested muscle men, and the script is strong with several plot details threaded together in a literate way. Most of the character names are drawn from history; I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the events but they do follow broadly the same arc presented on Messalina’s Wikipedia page. The two leads, Mexican actress Maria Felix (Messalina) and French actor George Marchal (Caius) are very good; equally impressive are Jean Chevrier (Valerius), Erno Crisa (Timius), Delia Scala (Cinzia), and Memo Benassi (Claudius). Several crowd scenes, especially at the games, are pulled off well. The print I saw had AI generated English subtitles and they certainly seemed complete and accurate. A good example of, if not a peplum, an early historical epic. Pictured at top right are Scala and Crisa; above left, Chevrier. [YouTube]

HIGHWAY 13 (1948)

The Norris Trucking Company has been experiencing a series of accidents which are making headlines, and the latest involves the death of Henrietta Denton, the Norris heiress, when her car plunges off of Highway 13. We meet a number of characters tied to the company. Frank, Henrietta's widower, gets the company to hire George, an old buddy of his, to investigate the accidents. Hank, a Denton driver, is dating Doris, a waitress who works at a truck stop diner called the Clover Cafe, run by her kindly old uncle Pops. George shadows Hank to get to know the drivers and the routes, and soon George suspects that whatever is going on is tied to the Clover Cafe. We know that George thinks that Pops, who does a number of check-ups on the trucks and has a criminal past, is a suspect, but George is sure that Hank is in the clear. A tragic accident (or possibly a planned murder) occurs which puts Hank in the spotlight, and he and Doris have to do some investigating to clear his name. This is a thoroughly average B-crime melodrama with some OK acting and enough characters to muddy the waters as we try to figure out who the villain is. I like Robert Lowery, a beefy character actor perhaps best known for playing Batman in the 1949 serial BATMAN AND ROBIN, and he's fine if a bit dim as Hank. Steve Pendleton gives good sidekick support as George, and Pamela Blake is perky as Doris. There is some folderol about Doris pressuring Hank to get a raise so they can get married, but it's just a plot device to allow him to make contact with Mary, a secretary and potential femme fatale (played by Maris Wrixon). Clem Bevans, who played old men for most of his long career, is Pops, who can be both cranky and amusing; Dan Seymour is a (perhaps shady) insurance investigator; Mary Gordon is Pops' kindly wife; Lyle Talbot has a small role as a detective. The plot twists keep you on your toes, and I must admit that the solution surprised me. Apparently the exteriors were shot alongside an actual California highway (14 rather than 13). Pictured are Lowery and Pendleton. [DVD]

OSS 117 IS UNLEASHED (1963)

Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, a secret agent who goes by OSS 117 and who seems closely modeled on James Bond, was featured in several French movies, mostly made in the 1960s. I reviewed two of them some years ago (PANIC IN BANGKOK and MISSION TO TOKYO), liked them, and promised to watch more soon. Five years later, here I am with another one under my belt. It has been determined by Western world leaders that a new kind of atomic submarine which cannot be detected by usual methods is the best chance at world peace, apparently considered a good deterrent since no country could know how close they might be. But someone is experimenting with a MacGuffin device that can detect the subs and a spy named Roos is on the villain's trail in the coastal town of Bonifacio in Corsica. We see him exploring an underwater grotto when he is speared and killed. The people with Roos at the time, a diving instructor named Renotte and his girlfriend Brigitta (who might have also been having an affair with Roos), claim he died in an accident. OSS 117 is sent to investigate. He latches onto Renotte, who escapes to Nice, and Brigitta, who may or may not be a full-scale baddie; sometimes she's a hindrance to OSS 117, sometimes a help. Mayan, the head villain, is testing the MacGuffin in Corsican grottoes, and soon enough, Renotte is killed, people drink poisoned whisky, and various ruses are pulled off to throw people off the track of who's following whom. There are fisticuffs and a well-staged underwater knife fight leading to a climax involving plenty of gunplay. This is the first of the 1960s films, the only one in black & white, and the first of two which stars American actor Kerwin Mathews. (The character is of French descent but grew up in America.) It's well made and fun without getting too jokey—the more obvious Eurospy satires and parodies would come a little later. Mathews is fine, not quite as charming or butch as Sean Connery was as Bond, but light on his feet, able to defend himself, and flirtatious enough with the ladies. In one scene, he kisses a car rental girl who tells him, "You have a gift for the French tongue." The movie looks good, and the underwater photography is particularly well done. Nadia Sanders (Brigitta) and Henri-Jacques Huet (Renotte) are fine, though the main bad guys are fairly colorless. There is a title song about OSS 117 (sadly, not translated in the subtitles) and a solid jazzy score by Michel Magne. Quite low-key enjoyable. I’m sorry it took me so long to get around to this, but I’ll make a point of getting to the last two in the series soon. Pictured above are Huet and Sanders. [DVD]

THE GREAT HOTEL MURDER (1935)

In San Francisco, there's a medical convention going on at the Hotel Mardena. House detective Andy McCabe has a friendly rivalry with mystery writer Roger Blackwood; Blackwood considers himself an expert at solving mysteries but McCabe insists that "anyone can solve a mystery when they write their own answers." The two get a chance to compete when a Dr. Temple is found dead in his room, though it turns out that the dead man is not Temple but Chambers; the two had swapped rooms the night before because Temple's room was where Chambers had spent his honeymoon years ago. Because Chambers' death was from a drug overdose, he is assumed to have committed suicide, but physical evidence suggests that he may not have been alone and that he might have been using binoculars to spy on a hotel room across the street which was occupied by a Mrs. Blake. Then more evidence pops up to show that the dead man wasn't Chambers but a Mr. Blake. Confused yet? I got a little confused trying to write this summary from my movie-watching notes, but while watching, it wasn't too difficult to keep up. As a 70-minute B-mystery, some weakness in the writing is to be expected, and it is a bit talky, but there are some action setpieces involving people getting knocked out and locked in closets, fisticuffs, a car chase, a New Year's Eve party plunged into darkness, and some gunplay before the end, which is a bit abrupt. The acting is solid. Edmund Lowe plays Blackwood as relatively suave and Victor McLaglen plays McCabe as rough-edged, and though the two do have a certain respect for each other, they're not above some dirty tricks to stay ahead in the investigation. Familiar faces in support include C. Henry Gordon, Mary Carlisle, Henry O’Neill and John Wray. It drags a bit and is pretty thoroughly average for a second feature B-movie of the era. Pictured are McLaglen and Lowe. [YouTube]

A TRIP TO MARS (1918)

In Denmark, Avanti Planetaros returns home after a stint in the navy looking for a new direction for his life. Professor Planetaros, his scientist father, has just the thing: believing that space is the ultimate frontier, he asks his son to lead a private expedition to Mars in the Excelsior, a spaceship he's building with his friend Prof. Krafft. Another scientist, Prof. Dubius, expresses mocking disbelief in the project, especially when Avanti starts talking about building "bridges between planets," but two years later, the ship, looking like a cross between a dirigible and a biplane, is ready. Avanti leads a crew of volunteers into outer space. During the six months of the trip, unrest sets in, with the heavy drinking David Dane about ready to mutiny. Meanwhile on Mars, the Martians, seeing the ship approaching, pull it in with a tractor beam. The Martians seem, to our eyes, like proto-hippies: human looking folks who dress in white robes, eat only fruit, communicate through a "language of the heart" (which the Earthlings hear as their own language) and are non-violent—we see a flashback to their violent past which they have overcome. A misunderstanding leads to a grenade being set off, wounding some Martians, but the Earthlings repent, are dressed in the Robes of Innocence, take part in the Dance of Chastity, and sleep in the Forest of Love. (Like I said, hippies, except for the chastity thing.) Avanti falls for the Martian woman Marya; she tells him to sleep under the Tree of Longing and if he dreams of her, then they are meant to be together. He does and they are. Soon, Prof. Krafft wants to return to Earth to be with his love, Corona, Avanti's sister, and Marya agrees to go to Earth with Avanti. The Martian elder, Marya's father, is ready for something that seems like assisted suicide and goes off to the Cave of Death. The Martians send the Earthlings home with platitudes like, "Space is the mother of life," and "Love is the force you call God." Happy endings for all except Dubius who, when he learns that the Excelsior is returning successfully, tries to be reconciled with Prof. Planetaros but is instead struck by lightning and killed just as the spaceship lands.

This Danish silent movie is strange, unique and quite wonderful. It's been called the first space opera movie but a modern audience would not really recognize it as such. With a distinct lack of explicit science, it's more an adventure fantasy along the lines of the John Carter novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs or the stories of A. Merritt or H. Rider Haggard. The movie was thought lost until 2006 and it has been beautifully restored, showing off imaginative visuals and special effects that, for the era, are quite good. One part of the very Earthlike Martian landscape looks like Shangri-La did in the 1937 LOST HORIZON. The acting may put off today's viewers, as it's very much of the overwrought silent type, but for silent movie fans it's just par for the course. No one really stands out as good or bad; Gunnar Tolnas is heroic enough as Avanti (great name) and Fredrick Jacobsen is a bit over the top as the villain Dubius. The pacifist utopia of Mars, presented just a year after the end of WWI as a necessary move from the "curse of [spilled] blood," might have been quite welcome by audiences; indeed, the film was apparently a big hit. The film’s original Danish title, Himmelskibet, translates as Heaven Ship. I liked this movie quite a bit and recommend it, particularly to silent films buffs. [YouTube]

VIOLENT MIDNIGHT (1963)

We open with a flashback to an incident in which a man is shot in the face in a hunting accident that his son blames himself for. Years later, Elliot, the son, is a famous painter who is still haunted by his father's death, and by his experiences as a particularly brutal soldier in the Korean War. We meet his lawyer Adrian, the lawyer's mute chauffeur Max (basically a creepy red herring spook figure), and Elliot's current model Dolores who poses in the nude. She and Elliot had a brief fling some time ago, though now she keeps company with the short tempered leather hood Charlie. One night at a bar, Elliot and Charlie get in a fight and even though Charlie pulls a knife, Elliot kicks his ass. Dolores tries to trap the wealthy Elliot into marriage by claiming she's pregnant by him, but since their affair took place over six months ago, he knows that's not true. Later, Dolores is brutally killed by a knife-wielding figure and Elliot becomes a suspect. The next day, Elliot's sister Lynn arrives in town to attend a girls boarding school where she makes friends with the slutty Alice and the wholesome Carol. Alice flirts with Elliot and later makes out hot and heavy with Charlie—who wastes little time mourning Dolores as he also seems to be sexing it up with Sylvia, a rode hard and put away wet townie but a good gal anyway. Meanwhile, Carol and Elliot get interested in each other. One night at the bar, Charlie gets his revenge and beats Elliot up so badly, he thinks Elliot might be dead, but that doesn't stop him from taking Elliot's car on a joyride with Alice to a skinny dipping spot. Later, Alice winds up dead and when Sylvia suspects Charlie, she calls the cops which leads him to smack her around. Adrian, the lawyer, who acts a bit like a suspect himself, tries to forcibly commit Elliot to an institution in Boston. One other suspect pops in and out of the movie: a nebbishy school employee who is a bit of a peeping tom. The effective climax occurs at night during a storm with possibly two stalker figures in action.

This film was obviously inspired by Hitchcock's PSYCHO (the first killing, presented in silhouette, has some Psycho-shower style shots) and may have been an inspiration to the later Italian giallo films (killers in trench coats and gloves). Produced and unofficially co-directed by cult figure Del Tenney (THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH), this low-budget horror-mystery is actually pretty good on its own terms. The script could have used another draft—I don't think it was ever made fully clear what went on during the opening hunting accident—but the nighttime cinematography and solid acting kept me with it. Handsome Lee Philips (from the original Peyton Place movie) is nicely low-key as Elliot; he is sympathetic while he remains realistically suspicious. James Farentino (Charlie), in his first film role, is convincingly sexy and dangerous; Sylvia Miles is fun as the most mannish looking straight woman  you've ever seen—and if this had been made a few years later, it probably would have been a full-on genderfuck role. Jean Hale (Carol), Kaye Elhardt (Dolores) and Lorraine Rogers (Alice) are all good, as is second-billed Shepperd Strudwick as the lawyer. There’s a tiny bit of nudity but this is definitely a notch or two above the typical drive-in/grindhouse films of the era. Also released as PSYCHOMANIA. Pictured at top are Miles and Farentino; at right is Philips. [DVD]

RED DESERT (1964)

Giuliana (Monica Vitti, at left), married to Ugo (Carlo Chionetti), an upper-level manager at a chemical plant, has recently spent some weeks recovering, both physically and mentally, from an auto accident. As Ugo puts it, her gears aren't quite meshing yet. We discover later in the story that she also tried to kill herself. We first meet her as she takes her son to visit Ugo at his plant, in a landscape that is gray and muddy and littered with junk. In some ways, she seems like an upper-class pampered wife: a nanny takes care of her young son, she has a nice wardrobe, and she is working on opening a shop. However, the shop is in an oddly rundown neighborhood and she can't decide what to sell there, or even what color to paint its walls, and she spends her days walking randomly through a grimy industrial landscape. A visiting executive, Corrado (Richard Harris, pictured with Vitti below right), is looking to hire men to work at a plant in Argentina, and he becomes smitten with Giuliana, visiting her frequently. She seems attracted by his interest, but her demeanor is mostly that of a bored or depressed person sleepwalking through life. For his part, Corrado also feels a little off, a little low-key, letting Giuliana set the (slow) pace of their growing relationship. Eventually they do have sex but it doesn't really change things for either one. Giuliana finally admits, "There's something terrible about reality and I don't know what it is." The movie ends like it began, with Giuliana and her son at Ugo's plant. She sees yellow smoke coming out of the smokestacks and tells her son that it's poisonous. He asks if it will kill the birds, and she says that the birds have learned to stay away from it.

Michelangelo Antonioni became internationally famous for three black & white movies in the early 1960s (L’AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE, and L’ECLISSE) starring Monica Vitti. They become known as the Alienation Trilogy because they seemed to deal with our estrangement from our surroundings and from other people, but they could also be called the Lethargy Trilogy (people tend to be wandering through life without purpose) or the Ambiguity Trilogy (nothing much happens in terms of plot and little is resolved by the end). But like the Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones movies, a trilogy wasn't enough. Antonioni made one more alienation movie with Monica Vitti but shot it in color. Critics note that the color palette seemed more important to Antonioni than the drama; despite being filmed in drab industrial locations, there are a lot of bright colors—reds, yellows, blues—and he even had grass and vegetation dyed to make it stand out, or in at least one case, where a peddler's fruits are painted gray, not stand out. Like the other three films, there is the promise of a traditional plot though things again end in mystery and uncertainty. Despite all the colors, I find the movie to have an ugly look. For example, the stripes of bright red that run through shots of huge industrial equipment just serve to emphasize the grunginess of the setting. Critics claimed he was exposing our modern world as ugly, but Antonioni went on record as saying that he wanted to show the beauty of industry (and maybe decay) and the necessity of adapting to circumstances. I say, trust the tale not the teller. It may be that we're supposed to see Vitti as slowly accepting her place in her industrial milieu—maybe like a bird, she will learn to avoid the poison—but for me, I don't really see her as much different in the end than she was at the beginning.

Vitti, as always, is beautiful and totally commits herself to her role. Richard Harris tamps down his usual vigor and is quite good (and quietly attractive) as Corrado who seems genuinely concerned with Giuliana but has no idea how to help. At times, you can practically see him biting his lips to avoid expressing too much emotion. The other actors rarely make much of an impression. A lengthy sequence in the middle of the movie has Ugo take Giuliana and Corrado to an odd little party in a rundown shack on an industrial shoreline (which set me thinking of the B-52s "Love Shack"). A mini-orgy seems about to break out in a tiny room, but they're all too enervated to do anything about it. The scene ends with a ship carrying a critically ill person pulling up near the shore and Giuliana freaking out as her companions disappear into fog. At one point, Giuliana's boy loses the ability to walk or stand up, and she fears he has polio, but it turns out he was faking it—why, we don't know; will he be punished, we don't know. As usual with this director, the backgrounds are interesting, sometimes more so than what’s happening in front of them. At two hours, this movie frequently drags. If you only want to sample the alienation movies, go for L'AVVENTURA or LA NOTTE. If you love Monica Vittii, see it. [Criterion Channel]

JENNIFER (1953)

Agnes Langley is hired by Lorna Gale to be the live-in caretaker at the currently unoccupied Gale estate, to replace Jennifer, a cousin and previous caretaker who has vanished. When Agnes stops at a gas station to ask for directions, the attendant warns her away from the mysterious mansion but for no solid reason. Agnes moves in and local store owner Jim Hollis agrees to check on her from time to time. Agnes finds Jennifer's diary which records her unease in the house, and Agnes begins to feel that unease, like she may not be alone in the house. (The tension in these early scenes relies a bit too much on some overdone spooky music used as the background score.) Orin, a college student who works as Jim's delivery boy and handyman at the Gale house, comes off as harmless and innocent, but his prattling on about the mystery of Jennifer adds to Agnes's worries. A bankbook belonging to Jennifer is found and Agnes sees several large deposits in the weeks before she disappeared, and discovers that she may have been involved in a scandal in Los Angeles in which a businessman she worked for committed suicide. This makes Agnes think that Jennifer was blackmailing someone, and that perhaps Jennifer has been killed and her body is somewhere in the house. Slowly, almost despite herself, Agnes begins to fall for Jim, but she's also suspicious that he knows more about Jennifer's disappearance than he lets on, especially when Orin plants seeds of doubt about Jim in her mind. Encouraged by Jim to fully explore the mansion, she finds a wooden crate full of water in the basement, and when she looks in, she sees Jennifer. Or does she?

This is a decent psychological thriller; though engaging for much of its length, the solution to the mystery is surprisingly bland; everything could have been cleared up in the first twenty minutes, but then this would be an Alfred Hitchcock Presents half-hour show instead of a 73-minute B-movie. It does have a low-budget feel (the house in particular looks cheap and plain), but the polished cinematography by James Wong Howe gives it a nicely atmospheric look. The acting is a bit too low-key at times, but ratcheting things up too much might have led to a campy tone. Ida Lupino (above left) carries the movie well as Agnes, who is in almost every scene. She's a little highly strung (the reasons for which aren't explored) but mostly stays grounded. Howard Duff, Lupino's real-life husband (pictured with Lupino at right), is casually masculine and understanding as Jim, though leaving open the possibility that he may indeed be dangerous. In some ways, Robert Nichols gives the best performance as Orin whom it is difficult to get a handle on. Is he just a slightly goofy kid or is there more under the surface? Is he actively threatening to Agnes or just accidentally stirring her paranoid fears? His only problem: he's supposed to be 19 but was almost 30 at the time; he doesn’t look like a teenager but he does mostly act like one. The classic jazz standard "Angel Eyes," sung here in a piano bar by its composer, Matt Dennis, went on to become a standard, perhaps best done by the fabulous Ella Fitzgerald. In the movie, it sounds a bit bland, but Ella makes it mysterious and heartbreaking. This movie has flown beneath my classic movie radar but it's worth a look. BTW, there is a strange final shot that seems to indicate something mysterious, but it's not clear what. Ignore it. [Blu-ray]