Foster on Film » Page 97

The Comedy of Terrors (1963)

Feb 211963

Unpleasant, alcoholic Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price) runs the funeral business he’s taken over from his wife’s father (Boris Karloff). To dig up business, he and his employee, Felix Gillie (Peter Lorre), murder elderly members of the town. When their landlord (Basil Rathbone) comes for a year’s back rent, Trumbull decides he is next.

The major actors—along with writer Richard Matheson—of The Raven reunite for this dark farce. The major change is in director; Jacque Tourneur—best known for Curse of the Demon and his collaborations with Val Lewton, Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man—was a genius with B&W on the cheep, and here shows he was even better with color, creating a vibrant picture. With this team, The Comedy of Terror was sure to be great…

Well, maybe good…

I guess I can settle for fair.

Price, Lorre, and Rathbone are all fine in scenery-chewing mode, but they’ve all done it better before. Karloff was too ill to do much of anything. The jokes are passable. but it goes on far too long. This is the stuff of a twenty minute short. Make this a third of an anthology feature and then the material would be put to good use. But as is, it is stretched. Every gag is repeated six or seven times. Each scene is twice as long as it needs to be. Since the outcome is clear early on, dragging it out is tiresome. The bits, taken on their own, may be good, but this is way too much of a good thing.

Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Bluebeard’s Castle {Herzog Blaubarts Burg} (1963)

Feb 181963

Judith (Ana Raquel Satre) has abandoned her family and fiancé to run off with the powerful and disreputable Bluebeard (Norman Foster) to his imposing castle. Rumors abound of his foul deeds, and he gruffly tries to warn her off, but she insists that she wants him and will stay. As he softens a bit, she discovers seven locked doors and asks to be allowed to enter them. He refuses, but she continues to press, until he relents, door by door. Behind each is a magical secret, some best left unknown.

I’ve always said I’m not an opera guy. I respect opera, but don’t enjoy it. Well, watching Bluebeard’s Castle a week after The Tales of Hoffmann, I may have to change that. The film entranced me. The music is powerful and emotional. But then maybe I just like opera in the hands of director Michael Powell; I pulled up another film version of Bluebeard’s Castle from the ’80s, and while the singing was still impressive, my attention wandered.

By 1962, Powell and longtime producing partner Emeric Pressburger had gone their separate ways, and Powell’s solo effort, Peeping Tom, had so enraged critics and audiences that his career was dead in the water. Then he got a call from frequent collaborator Hein Heckroth, who’d been the production/artistic designer or costumer on A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, The Small Back Room, Gone to Earth, The Fighting Pimpernel, The Tales of Hoffmann, Oh…Rosalinda!!, and The Battle of the River Plate. Opera singer Norman Foster wanted to produce a pair of films for West German TV based on the works of Béla Bartók, and he needed a director. The first would be the operatic Bluebeard’s Castle while the second would be a ballet (and was never made). Money would be tight, but they had Technicolor film and Heckroth was doing the design, so Powell signed on.

Bartók was prime material for Powell. His opera involved questions of the importance of art and the guilt of the voyeur. It dealt with the quest for eternal beauty (and if that was a foolish quest) and the suffering of the artist. Everything is direct and also everything is symbolic. Are the events happening in a castle or inside a man’s mind? This is the kind of thing Powell loved and knew how to play with.

What he made is a small marvel (Powell generally made one kind of marvel or another), though I’m not sure if I shouldn’t give the greater credit to Heckroth. Working with only the barest of resources and two assistants, Heckroth designed and then built an incredible, surreal world. It’s less like watching a film and more like twirling in an art museum until it all merges and you fall over. Everything is beautiful and nonsensical. Powell remarked how pleased he was that everyone got back to basics, just using their artistry.

I’m focusing on the artists behind the camera, as if the two in front of it don’t matter, but they do. Both have the kinds of voices that you only get from deals with devils. Every line is a joy. Foster was the bigger star and he saw this as a vehicle for himself, and he had the chops, but he was wrong. Satre eclipses him. She’s like a mad nymph. Or maybe Powell just knew how to capture her sensuality, and then spread it over Hechroth’s backgrounds.

This is a very strange film: confined but expansive, simple yet layered, operatic and also conversational. It may not be for everyone, but is rewarding for anyone willing to give themselves to it.

Fantasy, Horror Tagged with: Four Reels

Atragon (1963)

Jan 131963

After several strange kidnappings and attacks, the undersea empire of Mu makes its demands known: Destroy the super-sub Atragon, and then become colonies of Mu. The first of these is tricky as Japan doesn’t know anything about the Atragon. It was a project under the command of Captain Jinguji who supposedly died at the end of World War II. Really he rebelled, refusing to accept Japan’s loss, but he hasn’t been heard of since. His old commanding office, now long retired, sets out to find Jinguji and the Atragon in order to stop Mu. Accompanying him are Jinguji’s daughter, who the admiral has raised since she was a child, a heroic photographer and love-interest of the daughter, his sidekick, a police detective, and a very suspicious reporter.

Directed by Ishirô Honda, scored by Akira Ifukube, and with a cast (as well as much of the rest of the crew) in and out of Godzilla pictures, plus the giant dragon Manda (who shows up in Destroy All Monsters and Final Wars), Atragon easily earns its place as part of the Godzilla franchise. But it isn’t a typical Toho monster flick. It’s science fiction, with very little monster action, and not all that much science fiction action either. This is reminiscent of Honda’s best work, Gojira, where theme and character matter.

The theme here is patriotism, jingoism, and the ability to learn and grow. The admiral condescends to the youths, saying they don’t understand patriotism the way his generation did, but he has learned to see the mistakes of the past and is in tune with the new generation. Jinguji is not. He’s never surrendered and still talks of the glories of Japan, with future glories being produced over the dead of other nations. Mu is presented as a mirror to Jinguji, where they think only of their own empire and the inferiority of everyone else. This, of course, makes Mu the equivalent of Imperial Japan. This is pretty heavy stuff, and even more so less than 20 years after Japan’s loss. And that’s where the super-subs and heat beams and cold cannons and giant monster come in. Like Mary Poppins said, “A spoon for a sugar helps the medicine go down.” The strong theme doesn’t get too grim when you’ve got undersea aliens around. Still, the best bits aren’t the action, but rather the several emotional confrontations with Jinguji.

There is a bit of oddness to the structure of the film. The first act is played as a mystery, with unknown attackers and secret stalkers. It’s great stuff, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Instead of the characters solving the mysteries, we get an info dump about Mu and their plans, and the film switches gears to a lost worlds adventure sci-fi flick. While I enjoy it as it is, for the story, it would have made more sense to cut most of that and move the info dump near the beginning, eliminating the detective, and changing the photographer into an aid to the admiral. Would that have made a better film? I can’t say, but it would have followed story construction better. My guess is the opening is the result of an earlier draft, and the tight production schedule didn’t allow for a rewrite of that section when the film went it a different direction.

Atragon tends to be thought of as either one of Honda’s best films, or one of his worst, depending on what the viewer is looking for. Those looking for meaningless monster mayhem (a majority of American daikaiju fans) are disappointed that Manda plays a small role and that it isn’t all action and city stomping. Those who like their science fiction with a bit more meat are fans. I place it high on his filmography. The theme works, and the characters are well developed. And unlike many Toho films, the overacting is kept to a minimum, except by an evil priest calling to the Mu god, and priests often overact in the real world. All the lost world stuff is great, with the Mu inhabitants dancing and singing to Ifukube’s fantastic score. And when we do get to the action, it’s quite good.

I’ve only seen the Japanese language version. There are two dubs, one done by AIP/Titra in the US and the other made by Toho in Hong Kong. The first is much harder to find now, and is generally taken as superior, though that may be simply because it’s rare. I suspect (and have been told) that in both cases, Atragon loses its points for good acting.

The submarine Atragon would return in Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) where it was used to fight monsters.

Foreign Language, Giant Monsters, Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: Three Reels

Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)

Oct 091962

Near-sighted Mister Magoo (Jim Backus) arrives late at the theater, but they’ve held the show for him since he is the star. It’s a musical production of A Christmas Carol, and Magoo is Scrooge. Once Dickens’s story begins, it’s the old tale we know so well, told relatively straight. 53 min.

Mister Magoo’s shtick, of bumping into things and confusing lamps with people, was pretty entertaining when I was five. For anyone past that age, it works once or twice, and then gets very old. For good or ill, that isn’t a problem for Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, a faithful, though abridged retelling (with the addition of Broadway-style tunes), of the classic story. Except for a brief framing device, and some minor confusion at the end, Magoo is neither blind nor in denial. He’s Scrooge, plain and simple. Nothing is altered to make the story more fitting for the Magoo character.

One of many, many, many (did I mention “many”?) animated versions of A Christmas Carol, Mister Magoo’s version stands out as emotionally effective, and actually summons the tone of Dickens’s written work. Not something you can say of The Flintstones Christmas Carol. It also benefits from the voice talents of Jim Backus (Gilligan’s Island), backed by Morey Amsterdam (The Dick Van Dyke Show), Jack Cassidy (best known for his work on Broadway), and Paul Frees (who could be heard in almost every animated film for thirty years).

Show tunes have rarely been a boon to A Christmas Carol, with 2004’s A Christmas Carol: The Musical being a prime example of why Ebenezer Scrooge should swear off singing and dancing. But this time songwriters were hired who had worthwhile credentials. Jule Styne had a string of hits, including Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, Just In Time, The Party’s Over, and Let Me Entertain You. In 1964, Styne’s and lyricist Bob Merrill’s songs for Funny Girl won awards and gave Barbra Streisand one of her standards, People. The two should have been able to cook up something interesting for a TV special. But they didn’t. The songs aren’t bad, just forgettable. They are time-fillers. I don’t remember them now after just watching this special, any more than I could hum them thirty plus years ago after seeing Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol for the first time.

Of the many short versions of A Christmas Carol, Mister Magoo’s is better than average. If you aren’t picky, it will do.

Other short takes on Dickens’s story reviewed on Foster on Film: Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Beavis and Butt-Head: Huh-Huh-Humbug!, and Bah Humduck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas.

Christmas Shorts, Christmas Shorts, Reviews Tagged with: Two & 1/2 Reels

The Manster (1962)

Oct 081962

American journalist Larry Stanford (Peter Dyneley), on assignment in Tokyo, is given an experimental injection by obsessed, amoral scientist Dr. Robert Suzuki (Tetsu Nakamura). The drug brings out Standford’s baser instincts, and he abandons his wife (Jane Hylton) and takes to excessive drinking and sleeping with local prostitutes that Suzuki supplies. Suzuki sends his mistress (Terri Zimmern) to Stanford as a new plaything, in order to keep tabs on him and control him. Eventually, Standford starts to change physically, growing a second head.

I first saw The Manster (with the title of The Two-Headed Monster) around 30 years ago and found it a strange, edgy, enjoyable film. Now, with my childhood a distant memory, I’ve had a chance to see it again, and find it a strange, edgy, enjoyable film.

It’s an American-Japanese co-production that has a lot of Caucasians hanging out in Tokyo. If I used this as a guide to the Far East, I’d have to assume that the population is split equally between English-speaking white guys, and Asians, most of whom speak English most of the time. But it is best not to read any grand social or political messages into The Manster as it will only cause confusion. Critics have claimed it is racist because the good guys are Caucasian, as are most of those in power, while the Japanese are either subservient or an evil scientist. That reading requires the viewer to like the Americans, which is beyond me. Stanford is unpleasant before he starts to change into a monster, and his wife gives new meaning to the term “doormat.” She also has the proper mix of shrill and empty ’50s house frau to drive any man to drink. The only sympathetic character is Tara, Suzuki’s mistress/assistant. Her life has been horrible and she stays with Suzuki only to keep out of some kind of brothel slavery. If there is a racial message here, it’s “avoid annoying occidentals and run away with a hot, pleasant, oriental girl before it’s too late.”

Japan is used less as an actual place, and more as a faraway land of mystery, much as Pacific islands were used in ’40s adventure films. It is filled with beautiful landscapes (there’s a volcano within sight of Toyko), lovely women in exotic costumes, and strange men with unknowable motivations.

The Manster starts with a scene no twelve-year-old boy will ever forget: beautiful Japanese girls moving slowly in a misty never-never land of communal baths. The only skin shown is on backs and arms, but it’s still quite sexy. Unfortunately, they all get slaughtered by an ape-like monster, but this is a monster movie, so what did you expect? Dr. Suzuki quickly kills off that failed experiment, and as a man who never learns from his mistakes, injects newspaperman Larry Stanford to see what will happen. I was betting it would turn him into an ape-like monster; I have no idea what Suzuki was expecting. Stanford, who should have given his body to science years ago as his brain is of little use, is a wretched reporter. He visits the mad scientist because he’s looking for a story, but he has no idea what kind of story. I suspect he’d already gone door-to-door asking people if they happen to have a story he could borrow before he found the not-so-good doctor.

Once that first monster exits the mortal coil, it takes a while for this monster movie to get back to a monster, but what we get instead is as interesting. Standford starts off having a wild time and quickly ends up as Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (the comparison is hard to ignore as Milland was one half of a two-headed creature ten years later in The Thing with Two Heads).

There are a lot of questions that a viewer shouldn’t ask while watching The Manster. Most involve character motivation, but others include: If your body were to split apart, why would your clothing stay in one piece? Why does a second head look like a coconut? What kind of training does the Tokyo police have and does it involve learning to run around on the sides of mountains with no plan or thought?

While the makeup artists aren’t up to the task of making a convincing two headed monster, the obvious fake nature of the creature is less of a problem then the horrible acting from some of the supporting players, particularly Jane Hylton, who appears to be reading her lines from cue cards.

The Manster is a dark, erotic film with some memorable moments. It is jam-packed with despair and corruption. With a few extra dollars, a bit of recasting, and a changed ending, it could be a great monster movie. Luckily, this is a film where the good stays with you and the mistakes are easily forgotten.

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Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Hand of Death (1962)

Oct 081962

Alex Marsh (John Agar), a scientist working on a nerve/hypno gas combination, accidentally exposes himself to his experiments and finds that anyone he touches dies. As he desperately works on an antidote, he begins to mutate, making it harder and harder for him to communicate, which makes things even worse for him when the police come looking.

When will these scientists learn not to make dangerous chemicals out in the middle of nowhere without any kind of decent containment? And when will our government learn not to have its secret, powerful, and deadly military weapons devised by one guy and his minimum wage assistant far away from government scrutiny? Hey, wait a second. I think the government already knows that last one. Well, not in this movie.

A film remarkable only in how much like other films it is, Hand of Death is run-of-the-mill mad scientist fare. It is a perfect film to use as an example of lesser, horror, drive-in flicks of the time.

For a low-low-budget, early 1960s film, nothing is terribly wrong. The sets are few and claustrophobic and the camera tends to stick to a single side in each room (almost as if they were using cheap, three-walled sets and…), but there are plenty of similar films from the time that look worse, with even smaller sets and a more static camera. The sound is muffled and crackles, but that is likely a problem with the print I saw, not the original picture. However, I don’t think a better print exists, at least for public display.

The actors go through their paces with clichéd expressions and movements to match the clichéd lines (Paula Raymond is particularly at fault as the expression she uses to telegraph “fear” is the same used by a hundred other actresses in a hundred other films.) However, I’ve recently watched a string of modern, direct-to-video, horror releases, and Agar, Raymond, and supporting player Roy Gordon are significant improvements over their modern counterparts. While they do nothing original, and come off as cardboard cutouts, they never make me feel embarrassed for the filmmaking profession.

The reason to skip Hand of Death isn’t that it is particularly bad, but that it has nothing to offer. There’s nothing special, nothing interesting, nothing engaging, and nothing entertaining. The biggest compliment I can give it is: I’ve seen worse. Well, I suggest you only see better.

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Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Samson vs. the Vampire Women (1962)

Oct 061962

The vampire women rise after their two century nap to claim the daughter (María Duval) of a local scientist (Augusto Benedico) as their next queen. It is up to Samson (Santo), the masked wrestler and part-time crime fighter, to defeat the evil females and their three bulky henchmen.

To truly understand the wonders of Samson vs. the Vampire Women, you need to be able to buy into the Mexican masked wrestler movement. Can you? Well, I sure as hell can’t. What was wrong with the entire country of Mexico? This had to be one of the dumbest entertainment forms in human history, and this is from someone whose society has embraced both Jerry Lewis and American Idol. For forty years, people cheered as pudgy men in stylized masks faked fights in rings, and then defeated monsters in movies. It’s like American pro-wrestling, only dumber, and here, it is just mentally deficient NASCAR fans who follow WWE. In Mexico, everyone loved it, until the ’70s when the government realized it made the country look stupid and stopped funding it. And that pretty much wrapped it up for Santo (The Saint), who was the king of the “sport” and made over fifty films.

In Samson vs. the Vampire Women, Santo has become Samson for the English dubbed version because… Because… Who knows? Perhaps the distributor wanted to trick people into thinking this was an Italian sword and sandal epic. But his name doesn’t matter. He’s his normal shirtless, mask and cape-wearing self. He stays in that outfit at all times, when in the office, at a party, and speaking to the local vampire expert and scientist over a two-way television. His main wrestling opponents are over-sized, vampire males who all wear sleeveless black shirts and Halloween capes. One of them turns into a werewolf for a match, a previously unstated ability which is ignored after the man with a furry mask transforms into a rubber bat on a string. Is it beginning to sound silly? It only gets sillier, and yet, it isn’t a bad time.

The wrestling fights are as pathetic as you might imagine, but the sight of Santo (I mean Samson), striding into the scientist’s study or driving around town in his spandex and glitter, will make even depressed viewers chuckle. We’re deep into that fabled so-bad-it’s-good land here, and I was laughing more than I do with a majority of comedies. The over-the-top dubbing adds to the goofiness and is the way to hear the film; this is a case where the original dialog will decrease the fun.

There is more here than just things to snicker at. Roughly half the movie takes place in the vampires’ castle and feels like a different director was at the helm. Someone did their homework on 1930s horror and has the atmosphere perfect for an homage to those early films. It’s all cobwebs and coffins and slowly moving stone blocks. The vampires are ugly enough by any standard, and then they drink blood and…wow. Revitalized, these are some hot undead babes. Tandra (Ofelia Montesco), priestess of the vamps, is a stunningly good looking woman who understands the purpose of cleavage. Her queen, Zorina (Lorena Velázquez), is equally gorgeous, but prefers to take poses that exhibit her legs. The segments that involve the two of them and their beguiling sisters could have been used in a real horror film, and a sexy one at that.

The story is too ludicrous to dwell on, as is the inability of the vampires to notice when the sun is rising (or to buy curtains). Trying to follow what’s going on will only make your head hurt. This is a film to laugh at, drool over, and drink a lot of beers with.

Samson vs. the Vampire Women was chosen as the sixth season finale for MST3K. It is a funny episode, but not due to the chatting. The film itself is more humorous than any comments Mike and the robots make about it.

Foreign Language, Reviews, Vampires, Werewolves Tagged with: Two Reels

The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

Oct 041962

A new opera, composed by insufferable Lord Ambrose d’Arcy (Michael Gough), is disrupted by a masked “Phantom” (Herbert Lom) and his psychotic, mute dwarf (Ian Wilson). Opera company producer Harry Hunter (Edward de Souza) is less interested in the disruptions than in the star, Christine Charles (Heather Sears), but she has also caught the eye of The Phantom who has his own plans for her.

Any film of Gaston Leroux’s novel about a madman haunting an opera house is limited by the source material. It is a mixture of melodrama, romance, and monster story, and those elements don’t meld well. Lon Chaney’s silent version, which took the monster movie approach (a sympathetic monster to be sure, but then the best monsters are) has not been beaten, and it doesn’t overwhelm when Chaney is off screen.

This colorful Hammer Horror rendition, transplanted to London, is almost straight drama, with the romance played down and the monster angle abandoned entirely. The Phantom is a sympathetic and wronged man who folds when confronted, and Harry Hunter and Christine Charles are pleasant people tossed into a slightly difficult, but far from terrifying situation. There’s little that’s horrific, exploitative, or all that interesting. With a mercifully swift pace, there’s little time for the relationships to be anything but superficial. The Phantom hardly seems to care about Christine; he just wants the opera to sound good. This is the story stripped of all it’s grand, mythic qualities, which saves it from being pompous, but leaves the production a slight affair.

For a Hammer film (the company that made the Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing Frankenstein, Dracula, and Mummy movies), it is shockingly mainstream. The acting is good across the board, although no one stands out. The sets are twice as opulent as those in their other productions, and there are sufficient extras to make it look like a show is being performed by a complete company and people are coming to see it (many Hammer films have under populated villages). In place of the normal heaving bosoms there is opera—quite a lot of opera. Like the rest of the flick, the singing isn’t bad, but it isn’t particularly good either.

Supposedly written for Cary Grant (although there is disagreement on whether he was meant to play The Phantom or Hunter), an evil dwarf character was scripted to carry out the requisite murders, possibly to allow Grant to keep his audience-friendly persona. Of course that only makes sense if Grant was to be The Phantom. Whatever the case, the dwarf is a poor addition. He is never explained and has almost no personality. As the dwarf (he really isn’t all that short) does all the “evil” deeds, The Phantom is left as a passive light-weight.

The cameos supply the most energy to the piece, although that isn’t necessarily a good thing. Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor Who, appears as a rat catcher for a violent scene that doesn’t fit with the rest of the film. And a cab driver is played by Miles Malleson, an important actor in the Post-War British Comedy movement, who appeared in seventeen of its movies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Naked Truth, Carlton-Browne of the F.O., and Heavens Above! He also wrote and starred in The Thief of Bagdad.

I didn’t dislike this rendition, but I found little reason to see it again. Hammer Horror completists may want to pick it up as it is included in the Hammer Horror Series DVD along with Brides of Dracula, Curse of the Werewolf, Paranoiac, Kiss of the Vampire, Nightmare, Night Creatures, and Evil of Frankenstein.

Other film versions include: Lon Chaney’s silent version The Phantom of the Opera (1925), which was re-release in a cut version in 1929, Claude Rains’s The Phantom of the Opera (1943), the short, Spanish language El Fantasma de la ópera, the Maximilian Schell/Jane Seymour made for TV The Phantom of the Opera (1983), the Robert Englund’s Slasher The Phantom of the Opera (1989), the stage-bound musical The Phantom of the Opera (1990), the TV mini-series The Phantom of the Opera (1990), and director Dario Argento’s Il Fantasma dell’opera (1998), and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version.

Artists, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Postman’s Knock (1962)

Oct 021962

A friendly and innocent country postman (Spike Milligan) is called to London where he easily surpasses his big city colleagues. Mistaken for a member of a powerful criminal organization by both the police and a lesser mob, he finds himself in the middle of a postal robbery while he romances a failed modern artist (Barbara Shelley).

There’s no question Postman’s Knock will put a smile on your face. Really. You’ll enjoy it. Trust me.

But it won’t be a big smile, and you won’t enjoy it all that much. And after it’s over, you won’t care that you saw it, or that you’re unlikely to see it again. Every plot point is obvious to even the most infrequent film goer, and every gag is recycled. A man gets hit on the head repeatedly. A chase goes round and round, passing the same people five or six times. An alarm clock malfunctions, as does an elevator. You’ve seen it before. Not that it isn’t pleasant. This is a gentle comedy that delivers on the very little it promises.

Spike Milligan gained fame as one of the members of The Goon Show, which he wrote and starred in with Peter Sellers. Postman’s Knock is simply a vehicle for Milligan with no other reason for existing. The focus cuts away from him on rare occasions for minute bits of plot or a slapstick joke, but Milligan dominates the film. Since he has a touch of charm and passable comic timing, it’s no hardship to be stuck with him for eighty-eight minutes.

The Post-War British Comedy movement was fading away by the beginning of the 1960s, and little of it is visible in Postman’s Knock. It is a very British picture (no one would confuse it for a Hollywood film), and it has the theme of the superiority of rural—one could say backwards—life over urban modernism that was prevalent in English films of the ’50s. But outside of those superficial similarities, only the presence of movement stalwart Miles Malleson, in a minor role, suggests a reason to set this next to The Green Man or Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Postman’s Knock is good, wholesome, forgettable fun for the family, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Barbara Shelley is best known for her roles in horror films, including Blood of the Vampire (1958), Village of the Damned (1960), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), and Quatermass and the Pit (1967), as well as the unhorrific Pride and Prejudice (1980).

Post-War British Comedy, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)

Oct 021962

A nuclear sub crashes into an iceberg, freeing Godzilla, who heads to Tokyo. Meanwhile, a buffoonish pharmaceutical executive sends two agents to a tropical island where they discover King Kong. When Kong drugs himself on narcotic berry juice, the nitwits decide to bring him back to Japan (just assuming that the drug will keep him unconscious) so that he can be used in advertising. Instead, the ape escapes, finds the big lizard, and it’s pro-wrestling time.

Note: This review is for the Japanese version with English subtitles.

I try to ignore poor effects and makeup and judge each film for what it has to offer. I really do try. But sometimes, it isn’t possible. I could, under other circumstances, ignore how horrible the Godzilla suit is, looking like a gray Pillsbury Doughboy with a Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Serpent head stuck on top. Showing it under bright lights isn’t a clever idea, but it is passable from the side. I might have been able to forgive that the Black natives were all Japanese in black face wearing afro wigs. Some of the girls were quite cute in their native skirts after all.

But the guy in the plastic, inflexible monkey mask, with a fuzzy sweater and over-long arm extensions that leave the mitten-like hands immobile… No, that’s too much. There’s no way to ignore the ape costume.

The idea for this flick originally came from Willis O’Brien, a stop-motion artist on 1933’s King Kong, who wanted to bring Kong back in an impressive way. We can only sigh in relief that he died before this atrocity was unleashed.

Not that looking beyond the monkey mask helps much. The story, such as it is, never bothers with anything like motivation or coherence. People do things, normally stupid thing, just because. Miraculous inventions (like super thread) come out of nowhere. The editing makes it all that extra bit worse. High school AV club members splice together ’50s VD instructional reels with more skill.

King Kong vs. Godzilla is a significant film in the history of the atomic lizard. It was the first time he appeared in color (first time for the big ape as well). More significantly, it was his first action/comedy film. The dark themes were gone (well, all themes were pretty much missing). Instead, it was just Godzilla stomping on some fake tanks and exchanging punches with another giant while the humans filled in time and acted as comic relief. It would be the pattern for the next fifteen years.

Purists complain that the dubbing and reediting for the U.S. release ruin the film. Nah. It’s been years since I’ve seen that altered cut, with its additions of U.N. news reports, so the details are a bit foggy. I do recall that even as a ten-year-old, I found it embarrassing, but the Japanese version doesn’t change that. The cuts remove much of the antics of the pharmaceutical employees, which improves things slightly. Those characters spend a substantial amount of time doing silly things, but never anything funny. Zero. They fall down, faint, and make faces. Your toddler cousin has a better routine. If you are going to have any fun with King Kong vs. Godzilla, it will be by laughing at it, not with it. Chopping out much of the failed, intended comedy, and adding in pathetic dubbing can only give you more to snicker at.

Foreign Language, Godzilla, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

The Day of the Triffids (1962)

Sep 271962

A meteor shower brings twin disasters: light that causes blindness in anyone who sees it, and carnivorous walking plants called triffids. Seaman Bill Masen (Howard Keel), hospitalized due to eye surgery, awakens to find civilization has fallen. Mason, along with Susan (Janina Faye), a sighted child he finds in a train crash, travel, searching for a way to rebuild society while avoiding triffids. Meanwhile, alcoholic scientist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) and his wife Karen (Janette Scott), both still able to see, are trapped in a lighthouse surrounded by triffids.

And I really got hot when I saw Janette Scott
Fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills

If you don’t recognize that lyric, you’re likely to have missed two pivotal genre films, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Day of the Triffids. The latter affected the development of both science fiction and horror. Stuck in the middle of the first end-of-the-world cycle, it influenced post-apocalyptic tales until The Road Warrior. But its with horror that it’s really made its mark. The Day of the Triffids is the first modern zombie film. That may seem odd, since there are no zombies in it, but the triffids are pretty good stand-ins. They move slowly, making them easy to avoid, but if a victim is caught, he is devoured. They can be chopped apart, but that doesn’t kill them. OK, they are plants rather than dead humans, but that distinction is less important than you might think. And if you really need the sight of a man, groaning, walking in random directions and reaching out to grab prey, The Day of the Triffids supplies that too with its second zombie parallel, the blind. The mob, grabbing for the sighted girl, could have been taken from a scene in Dawn of the Dead.

The similarities to Romero’s Dead movies are striking: Something, never explained, happens in the sky and the next day the world is filled with altered people and civilization crumbles. A few, normal folks try to escape, and eventually end up caught in a building with the monsters (zombies/triffids) waiting all around them. But it it isn’t Night of the Living Dead that is closest, but 28 Days Later, where the word plagiarism comes into play. I’ve seen many named remakes that have less resemblance to their sources than 28 Days Later does to The Day of the Triffids. The beginning, with the hero surviving because he’s in the hospital, and then his walk through the quiet streets of London, is a direct steal.

I’ve been focusing on the importance of The Day of the Triffids and how it is often copied. Luckily it is also good. It does force the viewer to endure a brief prologue where a narrator explains what a carnivorous plant is, and a painful epilogue where he returns, after thankfully being absent for ninety minutes, to let us know that humans once again “have a reason to give thanks,” but those moments can’t pull down the rest of the movie. The first third is particularly powerful, dominated by the effects of a world gone blind. Obviously things don’t go well, particularly when flying planes and running trains are involved.

Musical star Howard Keel (Kiss Me Kate) seems like an unlikely sci-fi/horror hero, but his large size, good looks, and deep, distinctive voice makes him more memorable than the normal genre actors. He plays Bill Masen just the right amount larger than life. There’s a feeling that the entire production is just slightly removed from the English stage. Unfortunately, the triffids aren’t much more realistic than you might expect from such a stage play, but the camera rarely lingers on them.

Keel carries the film’s plot, but Kieron Moore and Janette Scott (School for Scoundrels or How to Win Without Actually Cheating!) carry the emotion. Their characters only interact with each other, and for them, the triffids are a relief, since they bring only external pain. Scott, who is one of cinema’s great screamers, is particularly effective as a devoted and defeated wife, who can do nothing but endure her erratic husband.

What I find most surprising is the cruelty in The Day of the Triffids. There is little attempt to aid the blind. Masen walks by lost, frightened people in the street, and does nothing. He voices a philosophical position that they should be abandoned, and only one character objects, and she later apologizes for it. I can’t tell if the filmmakers wanted us to sympathize with this, or be frightened of it. Either way, it’s interesting.

The ending is often attacked by purists for departing from the book’s more uncertain conclusion. While the novel’s open ending would work well in a film (and did, popping up in multiple zombie flicks), the movie’s ironic take on what can stop unstoppable opponents is more entertaining.

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Beauty and the Beast (1962)

Sep 271962

Lady Althea (Joyce Taylor) travels to greet her fiancée, Duke Eduardo (Mark Damon) only to find he has been cursed to turn into a beast at night. The Duke, with the help of Baron Orsini, Althea, and her father, must find a cure for his condition before Prince Bruno (Michael Pate) reveals the secret and takes the thrown.

This fantasy production’s greatest flaw is its title, as it prepares the viewer for the classic fairytale, to which this has only the slightest connection. This Beauty and the Beast is a werewolf story (minus the nasty killing part), placed in the middle ages, and constructed for family viewing. Eduardo is not an angry monster; he’s unchanged by day, and only takes on the physical attributes of a classic cinema werewolf (hair, fangs, claws, but still humanoid) at night. He is always in complete control and never does anything that isn’t noble. Except for an emphasis on love, and some torch-wielding townspeople, you won’t find much you recognize from any of the myriad versions of the folk story.

You will get a brightly colored, rather slow movie which couldn’t offend anyone. The acting is middle of the road, and the dialog is nothing your will remember after the credits. The sets—castles and fairytale streets—look fake, but are colorful and attractive. There’s a nice moral at the end for children, which may even touch adults who are in a non-cynical state of mind.

Producer Robert E. Kent, whose output was uneven at best, worked on this the same year as the more famous Jack the Giant Killer and it is easy to see the connection. The two could be considered companion pictures, having the same look, and aiming for the same audience.

While I may be pushing the G-rated nature of the movie, it isn’t all pabulum for kids. The assumption that the the duke may have sold his soul to Satan and now spends his nights practicing black masses introduces a welcome sinister edge. There’s also an attempted murder and a story of a man walled-up as a penalty for not bowing to the crown. There’s enough here to take this out of the children-only category. This isn’t Beauty and the Beast, but it is passable family entertainment.

Horror fans should note that the beast makeup was created by the legendary Jack P. Pierce. Decades earlier he had invented the look for the Universal monsters Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and The Wolf Man. The beast resembles The Wolf Man, though with a more questionable wig. Pierce is the most important makeup artist in the history of film, but his later years were not golden, and he ended his career working on B-movies and TV shows.

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