Chapter 3
At the beginning of the 1950s, the chiefs of Hollywood’s seven major players — Universal-International, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM, United Artists and Columbia — had to decide whether or not to take a financial risk and jump with both feet onto the snowballing fantasy bandwagon following the unexpected successes of Destination Moon, The Day the Earth Stood Still, When Worlds Collide and The Thing from Another World. Universal’s fortunes were in the doldrums following a spectacular run of classic horror pictures in the ’30s and ’40s; Fox tended to concentrate on big-budget productions with A-list stars, as did glamour studio MGM; Warner Bros. (along with Universal) put most of their efforts into that reliable old crowd-puller, the Western; United Artists showed a preference for drama; Columbia was the serial specialist and Paramount dealt with all genres, right across the board, including expensive epics. As the new wave of horror, fantasy and science fiction took hold of audiences’ imaginations and gained impetus, how did the big seven react to this fresh, atomic-themed genre? What did they come up with to appease cinema crowds, and what is their lasting legacy to fans of the fantastic?
To any underage English horror film buff sneaking into cinemas during the late ’50s/early ’60s, fervently hoping to catch the latest A-rated or X-rated presentation, Universal appeared to hold a monopoly on horror films. It certainly gave a damn good impression of doing so. Everywhere you looked in those days, a Universal double bill was showing on a Sunday: The Creature Walks Among Us c/w (coupled with) Tarantula; Monster on the Campus c/w The Land Unknown; The Mole People c/w Curucu, Beast of the Amazon; The Thing that Couldn’t Die c/w Curse of the Undead; The Monolith Monsters c/w The Incredible Shrinking Man. That large black-and-white spinning globe was as familiar to us as Paramount’s mountain, Fox’s searchlights, Warner Bros.’ shield, Columbia’s statue and MGM’s roaring lion. Also fast becoming familiar were Universal’s roster of players: John Agar, Nestor Paiva, Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, Ross Elliott, Gregg Palmer, Grant Williams and Richard Carlson, plus all those sassy female leading ladies. From a very early age, I quickly latched onto the fact that a certain Jack Arnold was the genius behind a lot of these stylish monster-feature films. Arnold, like Edward L. Cahn, Roger Corman and many other fantasy directors, originated from the Budd Boetticher school of filmmaking. Boetticher’s spare Westerns are classics of their kind; stripped to the bone, not an ounce of fat, almost minimalist in conception and brief. They are masterpieces in filmic simplicity, lean and mean. That’s how Arnold’s exciting movies came across to us youngsters in the dark confines of an auditorium; no flab, no flapping around, nothing superfluous to requirements, just fast-paced storytelling embodying tremendous, horrifying shocks that jolted us out of our seats.
Yes, a cursory glance at the “What’s on next week” section in the local papers of that time showed that Universal appeared to rule the roost in the 1950s, but on closer inspection, this isn’t quite the case. From the perspective of the movies that constitute the theme of this book (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, noir, thriller, serials), Universal’s total amounts to 27, including productions given a Universal worldwide distribution (Blood of the Vampire, The Man in the White Suit).
Columbia, on the other hand, triumphs over the others with 41; United Artists is next with 35 (they also distributed quite a few minor features); Fox with 13; Warner Bros. 13; Paramount 10; and super-rich MGM,not overly interested in adding horror pictures to their glossy stable, a lowly six. From Japan, Toho scored eight. In the wings were secondary outfits Allied Artists with 23 and American International Pictures not far behind with 22. Britain’s Hammer clocked up 22. That’s a grand total of 220. But if you take into account the considerable output from the minor studios on both sides of the Atlantic, plus foreign features, the true figure of every fantasy genre motion picture released between 1950 and 1959 may never be accurately known. A conservative figure would be in the region of 400. On average, that’s 40 a year, the peak years being 1956-1958. Today, most horror/fantasy films are made by independent, straight-to-DVD companies and screened only at frightfests. Mainstream fare is few and far between, perhaps a couple per month, if we’re lucky. And very few possess the staying power that is the hallmark of the fantasy movie from that glorious postwar decade.
Did one American film company’s work differ greatly from another’s? Were Universal’s highly professional pictures more elaborate than those made by United Artists? How about Columbia’s extensive repertoire, or Allied Artists’ and American International’s imaginative, low-budget offerings. The answer has to be “no, not all that much,” although there are subtle variations in plot and execution. Universal had their gill-man, tarantula, shrinking man, one-eyed alien, monolithic crystals and mole people, all in black-and-white. But United Artists’ output was just as prolific: The Monster That Challenged the World, The Black Sleep, The Vampire, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, I Bury the Living and It! The Terror from Beyond Space are the equal to anything that Universal conjured up. So are Columbia’s The Werewolf, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Mad Magician and Night of the Demon. And lesser mortals Allied Artists’ contribution in this decade was a staggering mix of the incredible and the improbable: The Cyclops, The Maze, Indestructible Man, The Disembodied, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, World Without End, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wasp Woman, Not of this Earth, Frankenstein 1970, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, House on Haunted Hill, From Hell It Came — what a wonderful list to sink your teeth into!
American International’s films were similar in style to Allied Artists’ and just as popular with punters, producing low-budget flicks that packed a punch: Teenage Frankenstein, Blood is My Heritage, It Conquered the World, Day the World Ended, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, Attack of the Puppet People, The Amazing Colossal Man. AIP, led by James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, was responsible for kick-starting the ’50s craze in drive-in teen horror pictures, producing films focusing on hot-rodders and rock ’n’ roll; I Was a Teenage Werewolf is the definitive example of the ’50s teenage horror film, and it’s a memorable one at that.
It was really left to the major studios to come up with, on the odd occasion, a costly blockbuster in color. Paramount scored a big critical and commercial hit with The War of the Worlds, as did Warner Bros. with House of Wax and Disney with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Fox achieved huge box-office takings with The Fly and Journey to the Center of the Earth, both in color and CinemaScope. Even mighty MGM managed to produce a ’50s undisputed masterwork, the influential Forbidden Planet. But to most ’50s fantasy diehards, going to the movies was associated with black-and-white gritty images caught in countless stuffy flea-pits, squeezed into cramped, scuffed seats and watched through a blue haze of tobacco smoke, happily a cinematic experience long since gone.
You could rely on the independents to inflict pain and suffering on an audience, making these quick-buck producers wish they had never parted with their hard-earned cash:Astor (Robot Monster); Planet Filmways (Killers from Space); Howco International (Teenage Monster); Topor (The Gargon Terror); Topaz/Eros (Fire Maidens from Outer Space); GBM/Governor (Teenage Zombies); Hollywood International (The Astounding She-Monster); and, of course, Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s tawdry handiworks. These artistically bankrupt undertakings, conceived by hack moviemakers, the infamous “Kings of the Awful,” were a poor substitute for the real article, the cinematic equivalent of bootlegs, but every decade has its fair share of clunkers, so why not the 1950s? No one grade Z director was any better/worse than the other; there’s very little to choose from between Jerry Warren, Ed Wood, Phil Tucker, Tom Graeff and Ronnie Ashcroft. Richard Cunha was marginally more proficient than most, directing four camp classics for Astor in 1958: Frankenstein’s Daughter, Giant from the Unknown, Missile to the Moon and She Demons. Each cost around $65,000, each took a week to film and all have left their dubious mark. After completing his glorious schlock quartet, Cunha seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Hammer Films reigned supreme in the United Kingdom following the unprecedented successes of The Quatermass Experiment and The Curse of Frankenstein. No other British film company could hope to compete with their financial acumen, brought about by making a series of smash-hit horror pictures which rank with the finest coming from America and the best the ’50s had to offer. Hammer offered deep, rich Technicolor; artistic direction; a meticulous attention to period set design; an exceptional ensemble of classically trained stage actors; intelligent, finely written scripts; and an air of Englishness unique to the company’s painstaking production values — that was the Hammer way. Pushing the boundaries as far as violence and blood and guts went, Hammer engaged in a long-running battle with the censor’s office; Hammer, much to the fans’ delight, epitomized the British “X” certificate picture to a tee. How many motion pictures could make front-page headlines nowadays? Hammer, who flew the flag for Britain’s film industry during the ’50s, accomplished it twice with The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. That’s how high their profile was in the British public. Apart from Lee, Cushing, Price, Lugosi (he was still around — just), Chaney and Karloff, a roll-call of actors/actresses found inhabiting one horror feature after another, year in, year out, would read like this: Marshall Thompson, John Agar, Dabbs Greer, Richard Denning, William Hopper, Kenneth Tobey, Richard Carlson, Rex Reason, Jeff Morrow, Hugh Marlowe, John Carradine, Morris Ankrum, Gregg Palmer, Nestor Paiva, Robert Shayne, Whit Bissell, Paul Birch, Ross Elliott, Robert Clarke, William Hudson, Michael Gough, Grant Williams, Harry Lauter, Peter Graves, André Morell, Francis Lederer, Tor Johnson, Gregory Gay, Ray “Crash” Corrigan, Don Megowan, Brett Halsey, Arthur Franz, Lyle Talbot, Forrest Tucker,Allison Hayes, Barbara Wilson, Charlotte Austin, Joan Taylor, Sally Todd, Susan Cabot, Mara Corday, Mala Powers, Yvette Vickers, Beverly Garland, Hazel Court, Barbara Shelley, Lori Nelson, Gloria Talbott, Peggie Castle, Sally Fraser and Faith Domergue.
From the “playing a role” point of view, each and every one of the above turned in believable performances, whatever task was ordained for them. Agar stands out as the all-American regular guy, a likeable actor with whom audiences felt comfortable. Good-looker Denning could be waspish at times, Thompson authoritative, Tobey bullish, Morrow also bullish and Carradine, slumming it somewhat all the way out of the 1940s, slightly arrogant. The women were all bright and attractive, resulting in some memorable pairings: Agar and Corday in Tarantula; Agar and Nelson in Revenge of the Creature; Hopper and Taylor in 20 Million Miles to Earth; Tobey and Margaret Sheridan in The Thing from Another World; Denning and Corday in The Black Scorpion; Tobey and Domergue in It Came from Beneath the Sea; Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter in Invasion of the Body Snatchers; James Mason and Arlene Dahl in Journey to the Center of the Earth; Thompson and Shawn Smith in It! The Terror from Beyond Space; Jock Mahoney and Smith (again) in The Land Unknown; Cushing and Yvonne Furneaux in The Mummy; Gene Barry and Ann Robinson in The War of the Worlds; Carlson and Julia Adams in Creature from the Black Lagoon; Tim Holt and Audrey Dalton in The Monster that Challenged the World and Reason and Leigh Snowden in The Creature Walks Among Us. All made up the romantic element of the film they were starring in and none outstayed his or her welcome. Besides, teenage girls could ogle the males while their boyfriends fantasized about the females, all gorgeous to a fault.
Chief among fantasy/horror directors (with the number of their ’50s fantasy titles listed after the dates, excluding serials) were Roger Corman (1926-present; 11), Terence Fisher (1904-1980; 10), Edward L. Cahn (1899-1963; 9), Jack Arnold (1916-1992; 7), Bert I. Gordon (1922-present; 7), Nathan Juran (1907-2002; 6), Val Guest (1911-2006; 5), Lee Sholem (1913-2000; 4), W. Lee Wilder (1904-1982; 4), Edward Bernds (1905- 2000; 4) and Herbert L. Strock (1918-2005; 4). Other names saluted by aficionados include Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972), Fred F. Sears (1913-1957), Spencer G. Bennet (1893-1987), Edward Ludwig (1899-1982), Byron Haskin (1899-1984), Robert Day (1922-present), Howard W. Koch (1916-2001), Eugene Lourie (1903-1991), William Castle (1914-1977), Jerry Warren (1925-1988), Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1924-1978), and from Japan, Inoshiro Honda (1911-1993; 7 titles).
Many of the above names made numerous Westerns, serials and TVprograms in addition to horror: Lee “Roll ’em” Sholem (known for bringing all his films in on time and budget), in particular, directed scores of television Westerns (Cheyenne, Bronco and Sugarfoot) as well as Whirlybirds, nearly 1,300 in total. Spencer G. Bennet was in the chair for four of Columbia’s Jungle Jim series of potboilers (Sholem directed a couple himself) and the Sam Katzman-produced cliffhangers Atom Man vs. Superman (1950), Mysterious Island (1951) and The Lost Planet (1953). Jack Arnold’s interest in the genre waned rapidly: After switching from Universal to Paramount for The Space Children in 1958, he returned to Universal, directing the riveting Audie Murphy Western No Name on the Bullet (1959) before quitting the horror scene altogether. Many other directors followed suit, entering the world of the TV series, having left their indelible print on ’50s fantasy. Claimants for the decade’s most consistently creative director are Arnold, Cahn, Fisher and Honda. Jack Arnold used unfamiliar locations for his projects, allowing space for his characters to react accordingly. Arnold utilized these disquieting settings to great effect, a requisite backdrop in six of his seven horror/sci-fi pictures, as crucial to the overall ambience as the protagonists themselves: Richard Carlson menaced by aliens in the desert (It Came from Outer Space); children befriending an alien blob among the desolate seascapes in The Space Children; Carlson and Denning in the Black Lagoon, up against the gill-man; John Agar battling Tarantula, again in the director’s favorite locale, the desert; and tiny Grant Williams fighting for survival in the inhospitable habitat of the family cellar. Even the Miami environment in Revenge of the Creature took on an air of foreboding, but not to John Agar and company — this time ’round, the director turned the tables by creating an urban locality hostile to the gill-man. Arnold produced five classic horror yarns for Universal, all virtually templates for the likes of Spielberg who, as a youngster, no doubt sat through Creature from the Black Lagoon and Tarantula and thought “One day…”
The prolific Edward L. Cahn roamed far and wide in his career, freelancing from one studio to another. From Italy came Curse of the Faceless Man; teenage horror received the Cahn treatment in Invasion of the Hell Creatures; the supernatural cropped up in The She-Creature; atomic science produced the Creature with the Atom Brain; The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake dealt with zombies and voodoo and the director took off for Mars in It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Cahn and Arnold were alike in that they lulled an audience into a false sense of security before hitting them over the head with a thunderbolt or two. They also expertly utilized strident musical arrangements to give their pictures maximum impact to genre fans. The body of work left by these two horror maestros is priceless. From shaky beginnings (Spaceways, Four Sided Triangle), Terence Fisher grew into one of the ’50s most revered directors. With a deliberate attention to detail almost unheard of, he breathed new life into the dusty old classics of yore; his careful, almost relaxed, camerawork took in the Gothic splendors of The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula before closing in for the kill on Christopher Lee’s frightful visage in both films, provoking the wrath of the censor’s office and causing an avalanche of faintings in British cinemas. With these two productions plus The Revenge of Frankenstein and The Mummy, Fisher came up with possibly four of the greatest horror features of the 1950s.
Inoshiro (Ishiro) Honda’s monster movies aren’t exactly refined; he was quite content to let his titanic rubber-suited creatures do the talking. But he was a revolutionary filmmaker, treading virgin territory by constructing intricate model cities and then allowing the likes of Godzilla and Rodan to trample them underfoot. The original edit of Half Human shows an atypical personal approach in his work, more character-based than usual, while the full-length version of Varan the Unbelievable is a Japanese masterpiece waiting to be discovered. People don’t really matter in Honda’s films; in a way, they’re victims, food for the monster. He does, though, manage to concentrate on human emotions in small doses; favorite leading man Kenji Sahara was allowed a few moments of screen smooching Japanese-style (all very polite) in Rodan, for instance, before Honda probably yelled, “Katto!” and went back to organizing the destruction caused by his gigantic flying reptiles. Massively influential, Honda and his team’s ’50s monster productions, especially Godzilla, still resonate through fantasy cinema to this day.
However, even these luminaries had their off days: Arnold’s Monster on the Campus lacks the joie de vivre of his previous five pictures, a competent but bog-standard man-into-monster outing; Cahn’s dull Voodoo Woman isn’t in the same league as his magnificent It! The Terror from Beyond Space; Fisher’s Spaceways is, for want of a better word, boring and The Mysterians, although colorful, doesn’t match up to Honda’s powerful, X-rated Godzilla and Rodan.
What about Roger Corman, I hear you ask? Corman, admittedly, is there with the best of the rest with 11 titles under his belt, but in this writer’s opinion, he falls a smidgen short of greatness. Not of this Earth, The Wasp Woman and Day the World Ended represent the best of Corman’s work from this period, tightly knit and resourceful; Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Undead and A Bucket of Blood are okay in patches. The less said about the director’s two major blips, Viking Women and the Sea Serpent and She Gods of Shark Reef, the better! Corman found his milieu in the 1960s with his splendid Poe adaptations. His ’50s output is ever so slightly erratic in content, ranging from the good (It Conquered the World) to the corny (Teenage Caveman). However, it’s a grave error to underestimate Corman’s pictures because “corny” was the name of the game in ’50s fantasy!
The rest of the pack produced agile, workmanlike efforts containing flashes of brilliance, the pictures sometimes static, other times fluid; their combined ventures were tremendously entertaining, guaranteeing, by the lurid name of the film alone, a near-to-full house in the days when celluloid was the main source of entertainment for millions of families throughout the land. A fantastic tableau formed by film companies, from giants to small fry; directors varying from the innovative to the amateurish; and actors either professional or wooden. These are the names and faces that were behind those scores of fantasy flicks that enthralled us so much half-a-century ago. One of the main purposes of this book is to ensure that these names never fade from memory; cinema as a whole owes so much to their hard-won endeavors.