Chapter 13
Pretty-Boy Psycho Stalks the West
In 1966, Robert Evans became boss of Paramount Pictures. Back in 1958, as one of Hollywood’s up-and-coming retinue of young actors with a reputation for being difficult on set, he was offered the role of Felix Griffin in The Fiend Who Walked the West, an unusual rehash of Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death (1947), taking over the part first played to such chilling effect by Richard Widmark. Widmark made his name as gangster Tommy Udo, a giggling psychopath who in one scene (cut by the British censor on first release) hurls an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. Evans was told that this was the part that would make him hit the big time and, let’s give the actor his due, he turned in a career best performance in a movie that was misunderstood at the time but has grown in stature over the years, if you have been lucky enough to catch it. The movie has only been screened once on British television, in 1972. And its issue on DVD has been sporadic.
Originally roughed out under the working labels of Rope Law, The Hell-Bent Kid and Quick Draw, the film’s title (and, as a consequence, its marketing strategy in the eyes of the distributors) was changed when Fox decided to jump onto the popular (and moneymaking) 1950s horror bandwagon by altering their promotional publicity to give it an individualistic horror/Western slant. This obviously did the trick — when I first saw it in May 1963 (double billed with She Devil), I was under the impression that what I was about to experience was some sort of monster movie set in the Old West. In thinking this I was wrong, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying what was essentially a dialogue-driven psycho-Western molded in film noir-style, with Evans’ standout turn holding the interest throughout. He was totally unlike any other Western villain I had ever come across. Being in CinemaScope was another big bonus. It may well have been talky, but The Fiend Who Walked the West was a popular enough draw on the U.K. horror circuit during the 1960s, more often than not teamed up with Toho’s Rodan or Regal’s Kronos.
Hugh Wyatt Earp O’Brian, receiving a stiff 10-year sentence in a federal prison for his part in the Aureate City Bank robbery, finds himself sharing a cell with Evans, a young cowpoke-cum-sadist nursing a boat-load of psychological hang-ups. Befriending Evans, he lets slip with details of the robbery, a big mistake. When Evans is released after a few weeks, he immediately sets off to get his hands on the loot, and woe to anyone who gets in his way. He fires an arrow into an old lady in a wheelchair, blasts her son with a shotgun and even O’Brian’s pregnant wife (Linda Cristal) receives an unwelcome visit, suffering a miscarriage as a result of Evans’ sexual depredations. When sheriff’s deputy Ron Ely is gunned down after getting on the wrong side of Evans, the authorities have had all they can take; they decide to fake O’Brian’s prison escape in the hope that, as the only person to get remotely close to the madman, he can prevent any further murders and bring Evans to justice. After more killings and twists and turns, there’s a final confrontation in a saloon where O’Brian empties his revolver into the psychopath and is reunited with his wife.
X-rated in Britain, Gordon Douglas’ Western-with-a-difference was banned in Sweden and other parts of Europe because of its violent content (Evans continually beats up girlfriend Dolores Michaels and ends up strangling her) and intimidating script. The film is underlined by a spare but edgy soundtrack from Leon Klatzkin; his symphonic title score is a treat, with elements of Bernard Herrmann’s music for The Day the Earth Stood Still added to give a fantasy effect to the proceedings (the composer specialized in scoring TV Westerns: Have Gun, Will Travel and Rawhide among them). Harry Brown and Philip Yordan’s incisive script, based on Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer’s celebrated screenplay for Kiss of Death, fizzes with menace, as befits the material. The Fiend Who Walked the West takes as its central theme the tense, mistrustful Evans/O’Brian relationship, the pair circling each other like a couple of rattlesnakes, knowing full well that one wrong move will end in a killing. In three pivotal sequences, artfully choreographed by Douglas (he directed Them!), Evans’ sneering, cunning delivery, creating a series of half-truths, blind alleys, threats and self-deluded flights of fancy, is the perfect foil to O’Brian’s taciturn, patient demeanor, a man biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike, as in the following exchange:
Evans: “I suppose they told you I’d kill ya if I caught on to what you were doin’.”
O’Brian: “They didn’t have to tell me that.”
Evans: “I guess they didn’t know that I’d kill ya anyway, though, for chokin’ me the way you did.”
O’Brian: “They mentioned that too.”
Evans: “Ha, ha, they know me better than my own pa did. That’s very funny, Sad Man.”
Despite a bravura piece of acting from Evans, he wasn’t taken seriously by the critics because his boyish looks were considered at odds with the role of a lunatic. Nonsense. His dark, matinee-idol features work for, rather than against, the character he is creating. Why have an ugly psycho when, against type, you can have a good-looking one! Besides, young James Dean-type “cool” actors with curling upper lips were making inroads into Westerns anyway. Nobody could ever accuse cowboy star Audie Murphy of being anything but cute (and even he played a couple of mean critters in his time!); James Best portrayed a giggling killer to perfection in Budd Boetticher’s Ride Lonesome; while every teenage girl’s fantasy, Ricky Nelson, was a revelation in Howard Hawks’Rio Bravo. Evans plays the part to the hilt, and never did anything better — like O’Brian in the picture, audiences can’t take their eyes off him for a second, a sure sign of a winning performance in any cinemagoer’s book. Photographed in crisp black-and-white, The Fiend Who Walked the West is an underrated psychological thriller that takes place in a distinctive milieu that sets it apart from others; the movie deserves a full-blown DVD release to show fans just what they have been missing all these years.
“Violent and dull.”
Radioactive Goo Threatens Tokyo
Released in 1958, Toho’s The H-Man (Bijo to Ekitai Ningen) represented a change in direction for Inoshiro Honda and his team. Temporarily casting aside their rubber-suited monsters, this Atomic Age-themed tale told of a cargo boat that passed too close to an H-bomb explosion for comfort, the ship’s company changing into radioactive blobs that feed off human flesh. When the crew of a passing ship board the deserted vessel, all but two are liquefied; the survivors bring the contamination back to Tokyo, where the gelatinous ooze begins to prey on humans by dripping onto them. The residue is washed into the sewers by rainwater, where it proliferates, emerging through the drain covers to claim more victims. Intermingled with the horror hokum is Japanese film noir, concerning cops trying to bust a narcotics gang and giving protection to nightclub singer Yumi Shirakawa. Scientist Kenji Sahara reckons he knows who, or what, is responsible for bodies vanishing into thin air, leaving only their clothes, but the police have their doubts and it’s up to Sahara to convince the authorities of the danger Tokyo finds itself in. And, of course, he fancies the vulnerable Shirakawa like mad.
Shot in over-bright color and TohoScope, The H-Man was originally issued in a 97-minute length, cut by 10 minutes shortly after. The dubbed American version comes in at 79 minutes, a few minor edits implemented to quicken the pace. All told, this counts as Toho’s most adult-orientated piece of ’50s horror hokum. The contemporary gangster milieu/monster marriage works, based on an intelligent script and a lack of the usual histrionics that can blight quite a number of Japanese horror movies. Two scenes stand out. First, the sequence on the empty vessel when the boarding crew face their worst nightmares in the dingy passageways and, second, the fiery finale in the sewers, the military, armed with flamethrowers, pouring blazing gasoline into the tunnels to exterminate the creatures and almost setting the city ablaze in the process. Throw in a risqué (for 1958!) nightclub dance, bodies melting into bubbly gunge and the blobs appearing in glowing green human form, like fluorescent phantoms, and you have an excellent X-rated Toho picture that tends to get bypassed in favor of all those reptilian giants stomping across Japanese cities during the 1950s. Masaru Sato’s marching-type score lessens the mood when it comes into play, which isn’t often (most scenes are devoid of music), but that’s the only downside to The H-Man, one of Toho’s more persuasive pictures from this productive period in their highly acclaimed history.
“Garishly photographed nonsense.”
Chaney’s Finest ’50s Horror Hour
After Lon Chaney, Jr. left Universal-International in 1952 to freelance, he lent his burly presence, and bankable name, to any number of movies and television shows throughout the 1950s, including telling cameos in Big House, U.S.A. and High Noon. From 1951 to 1959, the actor actually appeared in only seven horror films, of which Indestructible Man, released by Allied Artists in 1956, remains the best of the bunch, beating by a whisker his role in The Alligator People. There he played a hook-handed bayou loner who hated alligators and had the hots for Beverly Garland. But that was a supporting part — Indestructible Man gave Chaney, Jr. star billing and he made the most of it, carrying the production from start to finish, even though his dialogue was limited to the opening three minutes, a head-to-head argument with crooked lawyer Ross Elliott behind prison bars.
Chaney is “Butcher” Benton, a bruising thug, part of a four-man team who have stolen $600,000 in a violent robbery and left it for Chaney to stash away in the Los Angeles sewers. He’s the only member of the gang to be apprehended and has been given the death penalty. Trouble is, Elliott, his double-crossing lawyer, doesn’t know where the loot is hidden and Chaney, hours away from the gas chamber in San Quentin prison, is not letting on. His last words, spat out between gritted teeth to smarmy Elliott, are, “Remember what I said. I’m gonna kill ya. All three of you,” words that will come to haunt Elliott in the days to come. Executed the next morning, Chaney’s body is retrieved from the state penitentiary morgue and revived by two scientists who pump the corpse full of electricity as part of an experiment to find a cure for cancer. The killer comes alive, mute and impervious to bullets, determined to hunt down and eliminate the associates who put him behind bars. Eight slayings later (the two scientists, three cops, two ex-buddies and a car-owner), Chaney heads for the sewers and the cash, followed by cop Casey Adams and a posse of police. Getting his hands on the dollars, the “Butcher” receives a bazooka rocket in the chest and is fried by flamethrowers; his features horribly flayed and agonized with pain, he scrambles out of the drains onto a power station gantry and perishes trying to connect electrical cables in an attempt to give himself more strength, thus leaving Adams to continue his not-quite-off-the-blocks affair with peroxide blonde Marian Carr.
Writer/producer Jack Pollexfen only directed three pictures in his career, which comes as something of a surprise, as the brash Indestructible Man, a blend of police and horror thriller, moves at a cracking pace, shot in the semi-documentary tabloid style honed to perfection in the popular television series Dragnet (1951-1959). It’s a fact that Indestructible Man strays into cinema vérité territory at times, so stripped to the bone is Pollexfen’s style of shooting. Photographed in grainy black-and-white, the movie successfully portrays a feeling of doggedness and a steely edge lacking in other films of this nature, and the murders committed by Chaney are quite brutal. The only trifling irritant is the number of times the director insists on inserting into the framework a close-up of the actor’s squinting eyes. Ably bolstering Pollexfen’s horror/crime outing is Albert Glasser’s bombastic soundtrack, not letting up for a second but never an intrusion. Glasser is one of a select band of film composers who specialized in bringing B movies to life during this frenetic period; his integral work behind Indestructible Man symbolizes a form of artistry regrettably lost within the horror cinema sphere of today. And what about Chaney himself? Let’s be honest, he wasn’t the world’s most expressive actor, content to let his 6’ 2”, 220 lb. bulky frame and gruff persona do all the talking. But his name alone would guarantee many a fan seeing “Lon Chaney” on the billboards and think, “Hmmm. Maybe it’s worth a look.” He was without doubt a horror box-office draw, even now in the 1950s (based on his classic output from the previous decade), and here he played to all his heavyweight strengths, acquitting himself with honors. X-rated in Britain, Indestructible Man (a rehash of Chaney’s own Man Made Monster: Even Adams states at one point that the “Butcher” is a “monster-made man!”) was a firm favorite on the Sunday one-day circuit in the early 1960s, usually showing with Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Black Scorpion. It somehow epitomized the gutsy approach given to mid-’50s horror movies and begs the question: Was this actually Chaney’s finest hour in a 1950s horror movie (or, to be more precise, finest 70 minutes)? Without doubt, on reflection and compared to other performances in other films, it most definitely was!
“Lacks style…star in poor form.”
Victorian Explorers Plumb the Depths of the Earth
20th Century Fox’s lavish Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) remains the finest cinematic adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel. The movie features a seasoned director at the helm (Henry Levin); an expensive budget; Oscar-winning screenwriter Charles Brackett (Sunset Boulevard) teamed up with Walter Reisch (the two had collaborated on Marilyn Monroe’s Niagara, 1953); beautiful DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope photography; James Mason’s box-office muscle and Pat Boone’s family appeal and a fabulous musical score by Bernard Herrmann.
So why is it that so many film compendiums and certain critics persist in giving this handsomely constructed fantasy the thumbs down?
Maybe it’s that final scene: Arlene Dahl, resplendent in mauve attire and carrying a parasol, gives Professor Mason the come-on, ending in a clinch in front of thousands of students. “Sickly sweet” as one writer has described? Not at all, it’s in keeping with the film’s lighthearted nature, the culmination of a long-running verbal spat between the two in the manner of an old Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn vehicle. Perhaps it’s Pat Boone serenading Diane Baker in the opening few minutes with “My Love is like a Red, Red Rose,” but Boone was a popular singer at the time and his crooning slot only lasted a couple of minutes anyway. “A lack of wonder” is how one critic puts it; this great-looking production has “wonder” by the bucket-load! The art direction is superlative (principal shooting took place in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico), conjuring up a subterranean world of crystalline grottos, dark forbidding tunnels, cathedral-sized caverns, a forest of giant mushrooms, a salt labyrinth, the ruined city of Atlantis, an underground ocean and flesh-eating dinosaurs. Punctuating it all is Herrmann’s atmospheric soundtrack.
The revered composer was a master at creating the right mood and his contemplative score, performed predominantly on woodwind and brass, perfectly evokes the spirit of the underworld. Acting-wise, Mason is in top form as the tetchy Professor Lindenbrook (a part originally earmarked for Clifton Webb), Boone shines as Mason’s star student and Dahl makes a formidable, flame-haired beauty. The attention to all things Victoriana is also beyond reproach, as is the sense of time and place. But the one thing above all others that truly lifts this picture into a different dimension is Brackett and Reisch’s scintillating script, almost unique in the annals of fantasy filmmaking and worthy of closer scrutiny.
Mason, in response to Diane Baker’s question as to how long it will take to melt the block of larva (inside of which is a plumb bob), brusquely replies, “Atypically female question.” The dialogue, at regular intervals, stresses the Professor’s innate distrust of women and the fact that, in his eyes, he has to be resigned to being lumbered with Dahl on the expedition. It’s in the edgy Mason/Dahl relationship that the script drips with waspish asides. “You can’t come along. You’re a woman!” he barks, followed by, “To burden myself with a woman is sheer stupidity!” Perched on the edge of a bottomless gulf, Dahl turns to Mason: “Poor Sir Oliver. Stuck with a woman. If only you could see your face.” Mason testily responds: “That’s my consolation, Madam. I don’t have to look at it. You do!” As the exploration begins, Mason advises his colleagues to “use our canteens freely at the moment. There’ll be plenty of mineral springs on the way.” “As my husband’s chart indicated,” states Dahl. Mason, irritated, snaps back: “Is Professor Goteborg to be with us on our entire journey, Madam?” “Sorry!” is the curt riposte. On retiring for the day, Dahl wakes up: “Someone is walking up there. I heard footsteps. Human footsteps.”
Mason: “Madam, since the beginning of time, women have heard footsteps — up there.”
Dahl: “My hearing is extremely acute!”
Mason (bluntly): “The hearing of all women is extremely acute.”
Like a couple of sparring partners, this witty banter between the two carries on right up to the final scene in which Mason asks Dahl to stay at his house to help in writing his memoirs. She fakes shock/horror at such a suggestion, although secretly pleased that he made it.
Mason: “Well, er, what do you propose?”
Dahl (smiling): “Oh, that’s not a word I bandy about, Professor.”
Mason: “What did I say? Which word?”
Dahl: “I thought it would catch in your throat!”
Naturally, the couple embraces, but not before Dahl informs Mason, “I warn you. I’m wearing stays again.”
Yes, a cracking screenplay; this film is as much a joy to listen to as well as to watch. The producers took a few liberties with Verne’s novel and made some significant revisions. The scribe most definitely did not mention Gertrude the Duck! The picture also clocked in at a lengthy 132 minutes; it’s 45 involving minutes before the explorers line up on the edge of Sneffels Yokull at the start of their journey, but that didn’t bother audiences of the time. Journey to the Center of the Earth is a solidly crafted, majestically paced fantasy, a contender for the ’50s finest and as enjoyable now as it was 53 years ago. Juvenile it isn’t — exciting and wondrous it is! (Note: Eagle-eyed movie detectives with a penchant for unusual cine-facts and trivia should check out Universal’s Cave of Outlaws. Filmed partly in Carlsbad Caverns, this lively Western contains many underground scenes that feature in Fox’s fantasy, most markedly in the sequences in which Boone becomes separated from his companions in the labyrinth of salt tunnels. For Boone, substitute cowboy MacDonald Carey in the selfsame setting, an odd juxtaposition if ever there was one!)
“Juvenile…lacks wonder.”
Helicopter Crashlands in Mesozoic Valley
Years before Jurassic Park and CGI dinosaur effects, fans of the Lost World–type of monster-filled actioners gathered in droves on a wet Sunday afternoon, or at midnight in their local Odeon, to catch Universal’s rip-roaring The Land Unknown (1957). A popular draw on England’s horror circuit (usually paired with The Deadly Mantis), the movie had two big things going for it to guarantee catching a young fan’s attention. It was shot in CinemaScope, an added extra for cinemagoers of that period used to seeing their fantasy fare on a normal screen size and it was X-rated, giving it far more bite than others of its ilk. Originally slated as an expensive A-production to be filmed in color and ’Scope, with Jack Arnold directing, a series of internal wrangles ended with the picture relegated to B status, stripped of its color (but retaining the widescreen) and acted by a team of relative unknowns. Arnold bowed out of the project and Virgil Vogel, who had directed The Mole People, took over. Universal were none too happy with the results, especially the monsters, but viewed decades later, The Land Unknown can be treasured for what it is, a sprightly paced prehistoric opus which fills its 78-minute running time with all kinds of incidents and excitement.
Noteworthy in ’50s design, the movie’s limitless backdrops inside the hidden crater are stunningly realized, especially when viewed on the big panoramic screen in a cinema, a diorama of distant mist-shrouded cliffs, waterfalls, lofty, exotic trees and dense tropical jungle, imbuing the production with that crucial sense of awe. Okay, those monsters that Universal so disliked — the lumbering T-Rex is a man in a rubber suit, there are magnified lizards, a model Pterodactyl, a carnivorous plant and a fearsome Elasmosaurus (a large-scale replica was built). No stop-motion animation and no computerized effects, but somehow this rag-bag collection of primeval monstrosities (courtesy of Clifford Stine) fits in with the film’s overall gritty look, and they were certainly savage enough in the British censor’s eyes to warrant that “X” classification. Moreover, the paying public didn’t criticize these creatures — they loved what they were being subjected to! So The Land Unknown has that necessary Lost World ambience in abundance to enthrall the fans and keep them pinned to their seats.
What about the cast? Hunk Jock Mahoney took the lead, soon to star in a run of Tarzan movies. Mahoney was sturdy rather than expressive, but in a picture such as this, overacting wasn’t called for and he filled the role of a naval commander-cum-geophysicist perfectly. Ex-beauty pageant queen Shawn Smith, “Miss California 1940,” starred as the token feisty female; Smith sported a blonde rinse (in stark contrast to her severe brunette countenance in It! The Terror from Beyond Space) and was a real head-turner, both on-screen and, apparently, off. “I always love to meet men, Captain,” she coos at one point, gaining the admiration (and frank ardor) of Mahoney a little too quickly. The acting honors went to Henry Brandon, playing a half-crazed survivor of a previous expedition who had managed to survive in the lost valley for 10 years with only dinosaurs for company. Brandon turned in a menacing performance and added gravitas, capturing the inner turmoil of a man who is unable to figure out where he belongs in the scheme of things — in this prehistoric prison, alone or back among his own kind.
Mahoney, Smith, William Reynolds and Phil Harvey, investigating a warm water area in Antarctica, clip a Pterodactyl in their chopper and plummet into a primordial crater 3,000 feet below sea level. Once there they encounter a variety of prehistoric beasties plus the demented Brandon, who takes one look at the gorgeous Smith and decides that he wants her all to himself; the others can leave whenever they like, if they can repair their damaged helicopter. They manage it in the end, cannibalizing parts from Brandon’s wrecked helicopter and rescuing the hermit from the jaws of the Elasmosaurus. Back on board ship, Mahoney gets a well-deserved clinch from Smith after she has hinted that she would like a baby, a heaven-sent proposition if ever there was one! Vogel directed this stylish caper with bags of vigor, showing far more zeal than he did in the rather sedate The Mole People, and the noisy action doesn’t let up for a second, ensuring no clock-watching or fidgeting. Produced during Universal’s golden age of monsterdom, The Land Unknown is a worthy reminder of how brilliantly produced this company’s creature-features were in the 1950s and why they are still regarded with such high esteem by fantasy aficionados. And this is one black-and-white feature from the ’50s that should be singled out for colorization forthwith, regardless of whether or not we think the colorization process is a gimmick best avoided. The Land Unknown in CinemaScope and color? Wow!
“Lacks the panache of King Kong.”
You’re Looking a little Gray-Faced Today
Columbia’s The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957) is packed to the rafters with ’50s B actors: William Hudson, Charlotte Austin, Tina Carver, Ann Doran, Frederick Ledebur, Paul Cavanagh, Barbara Wilson, Victor Varconi, George Lynn and Jean Willes. In addition, King of the Quickies Sam Katzman produced while the relatively unknown Hungarian Leslie (Laszlo) Kardos directed. Victor Jory, whose saturnine physiognomy didn’t exactly radiate good will to all men, took top billing. Was this a blueprint for disaster? Not exactly. Although it could never be classed as a Columbia five-star horror production, The Man Who Turned to Stone is still a respectable X-rated mad scientist feature that rattles through its 71 minutes with the odd flourish here and there.
A group of scientists, led by Jory, were all born in the 1730s and met in Paris in 1780, determined to discover the secret of immortality and how to prolong life. By the use of bio-electrical energy transference, they found a method of siphoning the life force from healthy young women and have now attained the age of 220. However, if this force is denied to any of the group for a short interval, petrification and death is the sure-fire result. Jory has set up a laboratory in the grounds of the La Salle Detention Home for Young Women; over the space of two years, 11 mysterious deaths have occurred whereby apparently robust inmates have died from heart attacks. Jory’s antiquated method of sustaining eternal life is to send out lanky Ledebur, who grabs the screaming girls in Frankenstein Monster-mode. Taken to the lab, the unwilling donors are submerged in a bathtub of copper sulphate solution and connected to electrical apparatus (all very 1930s in concept). Their bodily essence is then transferred to gaunt-looking Ledebur; he has a tiresome habit of turning to stone a lot faster than his colleagues and needs regular topping up with female life force to rejuvenate his more-or-less youthful complexion. Good-guy Hudson, suspicious to a fault, is soon looking into missing death certificates, performing autopsies and needling Jory and his cronies at the risk of his own life and Austin’s, whom he’s fallen for big time.
Finesse is at a short premium here. Kardos, in his one and only horror outing, is content to allow the cast to react in front of a stationary camera in most scenes. Somehow, though, this brisk little movie overcomes these shortfalls. The effects showing skin tissue gradually changing to stone are basic but weird (dark shades circling the eyes, cheeks and brow wrinkled); Doran is particularly loathsome as the head of the reformatory, perceiving her argumentative, bitchy charges as nothing more than objects fit only to keep her and her gang of zombies going for another 100 years or so. There’s an abundance of female flesh on parade, more in keeping with an exploitation flick; the script does its best to avoid the usual horror clichés; George Duning’s stock score is used sparingly but constructively and Jory just about manages to chew the scenery. The picture climaxes in the customary inferno — a fire in a basement sets the mansion ablaze, Jory and Doran (finally exposed, their secret out) choosing to perish in the flames, Cavanagh and Ledebur having succumbed to the petrifying process. And yes, Hudson saves heroine Austin in the nick of time.
Cold-shouldered by critics, The Man Who Turned to Stone may not be on the same level as other Columbia ’50s horror outings, but it’s still an enjoyably put-together picture that holds its own, having a distinct ’40s feel to it. Never broadcast on British television and appearing back in 1964 on the lower half of a double bill with Creature with the Atom Brain, Kardos’mad doctor effort embodied all the ingredients necessary for a 70-minute horror second feature. It’s a lot better than many people give it credit for.
“Charmless…lacks intelligence… silly.”
Biblical Rejects Control Warty Quasi-Humans
Universal’s The Mole People (1956) is a fantasy adventure masquerading as a monster movie, more suited to a younger audience than the company’s run of X-rated horrors during this time. Why is it a monster movie? It horrifies mainly because of the mole men themselves — with their knobbly skin, bulbous eyes, big claws and sackcloth clothing. These were less fearsome creations than, say, the gill-man, but rather endearing all the same. Anthropologists John Agar, Nestor Paiva and Hugh Beaumont meet up with them when they descend a shaft on the site of a ruined city in Asia. In galleries deep below ground, the 5,000-year-old Sumerian civilization is alive and kicking (“Gentlemen, we are in 3,000 BC,” states Agar with a deadpan expression as they are escorted to the Sumerian city), its pasty-faced albino inhabitants masters of a quasi-human slave-race known simply as the beasts. Agar and company are, at first, regarded as spiritual beings (mainly because of their flashlight, the “cylinder of fire” or the “burning light”) but then with suspicion; after all, what god would go to the aid of three of the beasts being fettered and beaten and then free them. Certainly not their god, Ishtar. Agar falls in love with Cynthia Patrick (the actor was blessed with a lot of attractive female co-stars in his Universal career), Paiva dies of a combination of madness and sheer exhaustion and the mole beasts revolt against their tormentors, slaying them to a man. Patrick makes it to the surface with Agar and Beaumont, only to perish under a falling pillar during an earth tremor.
“Quirky” is an apt description of some aspects of The Mole People. The opening five-minute pre-credits sequence has Dr. Frank C. Baxter presenting in glazed-over delivery a dissertation on the legendary wonders that might be found within the Earth’s interior. Then there are the Sumerians themselves: With their farcical costumes, talcum powder make-up and Old Testament speech, we would have thought that this lot had wandered in from an adjoining Cecil B. DeMille set as extras on one of his biblical epics. And what about that odd four-minute dance, with pipe and drum backing, performed for the benefit of the three sacrificial virgins! The cast surely must have cracked up during this scene! The script is droll in places (Agar, lighting a pipe: “Did you ever hear of anyone smoking dried mushrooms?”) and mild horror (the three sacrifices burnt to a blackened mess; the mole beasts whipped into servitude) sits more or less comfortably with the production’s overt campiness. Once again, un-credited composer Hans J. Salter provided an atmospheric soundtrack, remarkable in itself considering the hokey material to work on, while Virgil Vogel directed at an undemanding pace, perfectly suited to this kind of storyline. With its imaginative subterranean backdrops, warty, rubbery villains and the unflappable Agar in the lead, The Mole People may well be classed in some quarters as one of Universal’s lesser creature-features, but it entertains nevertheless and is quite fun to watch as a guilty pleasure.
“Thoroughly boring nonsense.”
Killer Wasps from Outer Space
Among the more bizarre monstrosities to descend on Earth from the dark regions of space were the huge mutated wasps in Gross/Krasne’s Monster from Green Hell (1957), a creature-feature distributed by DCAthat often shared the bill with Rodan and Plan 9 from Outer Space in the early ’60s. Araft of technicians were behind the film’s special effects: Jack Rabin, Louis DeWitt, Irving Block and Jack Cosgrove created the scenic backdrops and models; Wah Chang and Gene Warren worked on the stop-motion (the pair collaborated on Universal’s Dinosaurus! in 1960). Scientists Jim Davis and Robert E. Griffin are sending various animals (monkeys, crabs, lizards, guinea pigs) into space to test the effects of cosmic radiation on skin tissue. When one of their experimental rockets crashes in the West African jungle, a nest of wasps it was carrying is unleashed on the population in the form of gigantic flightless killer insects that begin to feed on human flesh. Davis and Griffin are dispatched to Libreville near the coast and prepare to embark on a 700-mile trek across the African plains to the village of Mongwa, situated in an area called Green Hell dominated by a smoking volcano. This is where the monsters, and dozens of corpses pumped full of poison, have been sighted.
Airily brushed aside as lukewarm fodder in some compendiums, Kenneth G. Crane’s contribution to ’50s monsterdom is, in fact, a wellconstructed giant insect thriller that seems to go on a lot longer than its 71 minutes would lead you to believe. The reason for this is twofold: Crane’s whirlwind pacing and the manner in which the plot development has been divided into manageable subsections designed to keep the punters happy — rocket base scene; first appearance of a monster (after 9 minutes); panic in African villages; a monster killing two porters (17 minutes); Davis and Griffin’s 14-minute Jungle Jim-type safari, complete with wildlife footage; a prolonged native attack (lifted wholesale from 20th Century Fox’s 1939 production of Stanley and Livingstone; you can spot Spencer Tracy at one point!); arrival at the village of Mongwa; a night assault by the wasps on Davis’ camp, including a wasp versus giant snake battle (52 minutes) and the showdown with the queen wasp and her drones on the slopes of the volcano (filmed in California’s Bronson Canyon), including a spell where the team become trapped in a cavern.
When Davis and Griffin reach the hospital in Mongwa, Doctor Vladimir Sokoloff has perished while on a hunt for the big buzzing menaces, a poisoned stinger lodged in his neck. Daughter Barbara Turner, after hearing the news, appears to forget all about her deceased father pretty pronto, burying her elfin features in Davis’ strapping chest every few minutes and deciding to join the party that hopes, with the aid of gelignite grenades, to destroy the nest near the active volcano. In some prints, the final eruption that buries the monsters under molten lava was shown in “Lava Vision,” or color to be more exact. As for those monsters, in an early scene, when the wasp appears over the brow of a hill, it appears to be 10 times bigger than those enlarged, artfully designed heads that slowly emerge from the bushes in search of prey. The stop-motion work is unsophisticated compared to what Ray Harryhausen was coming up with, but, combined with models and composite shots, we are presented with an outlandishly different type of creature that typified the mid-’50s B monster movie. The script is stuffed with clichés (“Look! Footmarks of a monster!” “Monsters in Green Hell? Superstitious nonsense!”) so credit must go to the cast for injecting a modicum of believability into it all. Complementing the action, Albert Glasser’s racket of a stock score sounds like a locomotive about to come off the rails, becoming one more splendid example of this composer giving the audience its money’s worth. Okay, this production may not have been in the Deadly Mantis or Black Scorpion class (it resembles both at some points), but if ever the word “cute” can be applied to a ’50s monster flick, then Monster from Green Hell is cute!
“Silly offering…routine direction.”
Don’t Lose Your Head!
Vanwick’s The Monster of Piedras Blancas (completed in 1958, but released in 1959) was, in a roundabout fashion, partly financed by Universal-International. Jack Kevan, who had contributed toward the creature design work in Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth and The Mole People, set up Vanwick with Universal voice coach Irvin Berwick in 1958. Universal loaned Vanwick members of their own production staff to help out on the company’s first picture (this was Berwick’s directorial debut) while Kevan was given the go-ahead to pattern a new monster based on a few of Universal’s tried and trusted creations. What Kevan came up with was a composite creature with the claws from The Mole People, the feet from the mutant in This Island Earth and the gill-man’s torso, looking like a hybrid cross of the gill-man (from which it took its inspiration) and the Martian in It! The Terror from Beyond Space; Kevan himself wore the monster suit, along with stuntman Pete Dunn. Set around California’s Point Concepcion area and the seaside community of Cayucos, this grisly outing told of a ferocious amphibian-cum-reptilian being inhabiting a cave system below a lighthouse. Crusty lighthouse keeper John Harmon, who has known all about the legendary monster for years, keeps the thing in check by feeding it daily on scraps; when its source of nourishment isn’t forthcoming, the monster, attracted by raw meat, ventures into the town, tearing off the heads of those unfortunate enough to cross its path.
“Never saw anything like it in my life. Head ripped clean off.” This line of speech from the opening scene of two decapitated fishermen discovered on a beach sets the grim tone, and the cast of zany characters fits the bill nicely: Les Tremayne, the town’s seen-it-all-before medic; worn-around-the-edges cop Forrest Lewis; loud-mouthed storekeeper Frank Arvidson; Jeanne Carmen, Harmon’s daughter; and biologist Don Sullivan, Carmen’s all-American boyfriend. Like most minor-league horror films, we have to sit patiently through the teasers and wait for the blood-and-thunder final curtain: Aclaw reaching blindly for a tin of food (before the credits role), an arm fondling Carmen’s clothes when she goes for a night swim, a crab crawling over a severed head and a monstrous silhouette on a wall. At 45 minutes, the monster’s torso strides into shot, a bloodied head clutched in one claw; 17 more minutes pass before the action heats up, the slavering creature terrorizing Harmon, Carmen and Sullivan in the claustrophobic confines of the lighthouse. Sandwiched between the monster mayhem, the pace tends to lag in places as the surviving cast members debate at length on the beast’s origins (“A Diplovertabron” expounds Sullivan). What holds the attention during the lulls is an appreciation by the cameraman of the rugged coastal scenery, some believable acting and snatches of priceless dialogue. Sullivan: “If he can think, we’re in real trouble.” Small boy interrupting a funeral: “He was in his office, dead. And Mum, he didn’t have any head.” Lewis to Tremayne: “Doc. You don’t think we’ve got a monster on our hands, do you?” Sullivan: “He’s inhuman, nearly seven feet tall!” Carmen to Sullivan: “Hurry. The monster’s in the lighthouse with Dad.” And Berwick even chucks in a “kissing in the surf” sequence straight out of From Here to Eternity! The creature meets its end when Sullivan clubs it over the head with a rifle butt after the lighthouse beam has blinded it; senseless, the beast falls from the top of the building into the raging sea.
The Monster of Piedras Blancas wasn’t released in the United Kingdom until 1963, on a double “X” bill with Mardi Gras’ The Dead One. It was Vanwick’s one and only horror film, a fascinating pooling of talents that produced a genuinely irresistible B creature-feature before fading from the limelight. Like a more violent cousin of Universal’s own amphibian man, this particular rubber-suited monster is up there with the ’50s best. Acommercial DVD release would be very much appreciated.
“Crude horror film…little to recommend to the fans.”
We’re No More Intelligent Than Our One Million-Year-Old Ancestors
Global/United Artists’ The Neanderthal Man (completed 1952, released 1953) has an impressive pedigree: Director Ewald André Dupont was one of the founding fathers of early German cinema, directing his first film in 1918; co-writer Jack Pollexfen was to end up with a string of horror screenplays under his belt; a young Beverly Garland was allowed to display her charms; composer Albert Glasser’s tumultuous score threatened, at times, to swamp the action and veteran make-up artist Harry Thomas’ list of credentials included Frankenstein’s Daughter, Night of the Ghouls, Killers from Space and Missile to the Moon. But is the sum of all these parts equal to the whole? Predating Jack Arnold’s similar Monster on the Campus by five years, The Neanderthal Man can lay claim to being the first ’50s X-rated man-into-ape man movie. Filthy-tempered, misunderstood Robert Shayne, a professor in anthropology, is obsessed with the Stone Age, claiming that ancient man had the same intelligence levels as modern-day man. Scorned by his fellow scientists whom he dismisses as “stupid hypocrites,” he injects himself with a serum that taps into his dormant, primitive cells, turning him into a murderous Neanderthal. After embarking on a couple of rampages in the woods (not displaying much intelligence at all!), he’s mauled to death by his own creation, a saber-toothed tiger.
A rough-cut template for what was to follow in this area of horror cinema, Dupont’s outing has its ups and downs. The transformation scene (at 38 minutes) is short, carried out to the sound of a screeching cat: Shayne sweats, sprouts facial fuzz, his hands twist into claws; he then dons Thomas’ Neanderthal Man mask, destroying all credibility. It’s not the greatest example of workmanship to have originated from the decade, an inflexible facsimile unable to meld with the actor’s own features to form expressions. Glasser’s bulldozing soundtrack works wonders here, making this sequence more horrifyingly intense than it actually is. Thomas’ make-up also incorporated the elephantine tusks on the tigers and deaf-mute housemaid Jeanette Quinn’s ape woman get-up, shown in a series of photos (the actress was listed as Tandra Quinn in Mesa of Lost Women.) Shayne’s treatment of his character doesn’t elicit the compassion it should, which becomes a major flaw. As though stuck in a 1940s melodrama, he hollers, bullies (fiancée Doris Merrick is ordered to pack her bags) and throws tantrums, a one-dimensional mad scientist deserving of everything coming to him. Elsewhere, good-guy Richard Crane paces through the motions, Joyce Terry (Shayne’s daughter) is pretty but vacant and it is left to Beverly Garland to at least look as though she’s enjoying herself in her role as a flirty waitress. Robert Long, the game warden, also acquits himself with a modicum of acting know-how. The script contains one or two jewels (“It was inhuman! More animal than man! He looked like a gorilla!” and “A cat? With tusks?”), while Dupont directs in short bursts, fading out scene after scene as was the norm in those days.
So, no, The Neanderthal Man doesn’t add up to a fully accomplished package, hindered by Shayne’s barmy performance and that fancy dress horror mask. Realistically, it should be looked upon as a low-budgeter that paved the way for the popular “X” certified man-into-monster genre; ratty around the edges, striving to reach a target of sorts but failing at the final hurdle. Like the Neanderthal itself, it’s primitive but hokey fun.
“Wooden…clichéd…”