THE BLOB

1958/ Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr./ Writers: Kay Linaker (writer, as Kate Philips), Theodore Simonson, Irvine Millgate (story)

Cast: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland, Alden ‘Stephen’ Chase, John Benson, Lee Paton, Vincent Barbi

The Blob is a successful combining of the horror and teenage delinquent film genres. While the teens in the film are not really ‘delinquents” in my opinion they are still teenagers and therefore what they say and do is always suspect to the local adults. The film was a success for the time at the box office, which must have really irked new leading man “Steven” McQueen who opted for a one lump payment of $2,500 to $3,000 (depending where you read) rather than 10% of the profits, which went over $4 million. Also it seems the young McQueen appeared promising enough to be offered a three film contract from the film’s producers, but he was so difficult to work with he was released from the contract. He would of course go on to become a film legend in Hollywood. The movie was made outside Hollywood (shot around Valley Forge Pennsylvania) by an independent film company, Valley Forge Films (formally Good News Productions, a company that made Christian films with director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr ), and it is nicely shot film in deep colors and pretty well acted for a late 50’s horror film.

First I want to say that this film, along with the next feature, X-The Unknown, were two movies that terrorized me as a boy of about 12 or 13. Both movies are about an amorphous substance that is slimy and oozy and can slither, creep and crawl under things or get though ventilator grills easily. This posed a real problem for me at night trying to sleep and I remember covering the heating vents on my floor with encyclopedias to prevent entry, but knowing in my heart that if the Blob (or X) wanted in there was no way I was going to stop them.

The movie opens up with young Steven Andrews (McQueen) putting the moves on the classic “I’m not that kind of girl”  tease Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut, who was Andy Griffith’s gal on The Andy Griffith Show) up on the local lover’s lane. While Steven assures her his intentions are honorable and she in not just another girl a meteorite (The movie’s working title were, among others,  The Meteorite Monster and The Molten Meteorite) crashes to earth over the nearby hills. An old man played by veteran actor Olin Howland , in his last role, finds the smoldering space rocks and stars poking at it with a stick and soon has his arm covered with a flesh consuming “blob”. Steven and Jane rush him into to town, to Doc Hallen, who in turn, along with his nurse, are consumed and soon the havoc is on. Of course Steven and his teenage friends must contend with the local, skeptical adults and police who all think kids are up to no good and can’t be trusted to be honest (especially when the said high school student, like McQueen, is actually 28 years old!).

People begin disappearing though we really see about four people get eaten. This is my one real complaint about the film. At one point Lt. Dave (Earl Rowe) estimates maybe forty people have died during the night. The movie would have been more exhilarating if we had seen some of these deaths. Luckily the acting, dialog, nicely photographed scenes and cool looking monster help things move along without the visible death scenes.

After lots of futile attempts at convincing parents and cops the truth is revealed when the patrons of the local theater, who were there to see a horror movie of course, come screaming out onto the streets with the ever growing blob on their tails. Steven and Jane seek shelter in a diner after grabbing Jane’s doofy little brother who in one of the best scenes in the movies hurls his “empty” cap pistol at the creature. The blob surrounds the diner and seeks out the five people inside the diner while the rest of the town stands about fifty feet away and watches in horror. I never understood as a kid  why the blob did not just turn on the crowd and absorb all of them. Well, the weakness (all old movie monsters had one special weakness that the hero had to discover by the last ten or fifteen minutes of the movie) is soon discovered… C02 fire extinguishers. The blob is frozen and sent to the North Pole, never to be heard from again until Larry Hagman revived it in his more comical version Beware the Blob in 1972, with stoned hippies like Robert Walker, rather than hot rodding 28 year old teenagers, on the menu.

The movie is very well made and while it is a B-movie it is not what I would call a bad movie, either in a good sense or bad. The catchy title song (coming in downloadable format along with The Green Slime theme in a post or two) was co-written by Burt Bacharach and was a hit song on the radio at the time. A link to a Blob site is given below and this is a true cult classic. A remake was made in with Kevin Dillon in 1988 where the Blob is the product of yet another secret government/military agency with nothing but security and profit on its always evil agenda. Well, I like the space Blob myself and all the mystery it brought with it. The film just looks rich and nice and one can see that McQueen is a real talent in his first film role. Not to be missed. The next film on our Uranium Café Double Feature presentation is about another amorphous, oozing creature who comes not from outer space, but from the center of the Earth in an early Hammer sci-fi film called X-The Unknown.

http://theblobsite.filmbuffonline.com/

X-THE UNKNOWN

1957/Director: Leslie Norman/ Writers: Jimmy Sangster (story), Jimmy Sangster (screenplay)

Cast: Dean Jagger, Edward Chapman, Leo McKern, Anthony Newley,     Jameson Clark, William Lucas

I was really excited to finally find a copy of this film online. Along with the Blob it is a movie that left me afraid to step out of my bed at night for fear something may be lurking and oozing under it, waiting for me to get up and go to the bathroom. Originally slated to be a sequel to Hammer’s Quatermass Experiment (released as The Creeping Unknown in the States) film but when Quatermass creator/writer Nigel Kneale refused permission for use of his Bernard Quatermass character another film was put together that very much resembles the earlier Quatermass film and TV productions. American actor and Oscar winner (twelve O’clock High) Dean Jagger heads the cast with his unique voice and was apparently an attempt to draw in an American audience. The film was the first writing product for production manager Jimmy Sangster, who would later go on to write some of Hammer’s more memorable films as well as direct a handful. Direction on X was begun by American director Jospesh Losey (see my post on The Servant) who was essentially in exile in England after having been blacklisted as a communist sympathizer. Some of his scenes are supposed to be in the film even, but after a few days he was removed from the position for what was reported to be health reasons. Actually Dean Jagger refused to work for an alleged commie lover and so Leslie Norman took over the job.

The film opens in the bleak bogs of Scotland where a group of soldiers are conducting tests looking for hidden radioactive isotopes. The testing is soon interrupted when a fissure opens up and two soldiers suffer sever radiation burns. The matter is brought to Dr. Royston who has been working in his little hideaway on experiments involving radioactivity. When he inspects the fissure he concludes it very well could be bottomless and the area is sealed off. Later two boys are out on a dare and while creeping into the decrepit lodgings of a local hermit one of them encounters something and suffers lethal radiation burns. A canister of Royston’s radioactive experiment is found there, much to his consternation. There is a lot of talking and scientific explanations between the films genuinely creepy moments. Later a medical Lothario sneaks a very willing young nurse into what appears to be the x-ray room and one of the film’s best moments occurs when the flesh melts off his face after he encounters the thing. The nurse goes into one of the best horror film screams on record, so good the scene earned a place on my site’s banner. There is a lot more talking and explaining of theories but the films moves along well enough. The creature is not revealed until the last part of the film and it is not bad really. This is a couple years before the blob and the movie was obviously pinched in the budget department. But when your monster is a pile of radioactive mud you are not worried too much. The thing oozes around and over things in believable fashion and I suppose I wish we had seen more of the mass. The beast is done in of course by a quick scientific method that makes little sense but in all these old movies science is both the monster and savior.

One of the film’s more eerie moments come when a team member is lowered slowly down into the crevasse to look for signs of the creature. There he finds the remains of one of two soldiers who the creature killed earlier. The scene is dark and atmospheric and as a kid it freaked me out even though the soldier made it out alive.

The film is bleak overall and done in a pretty serious tone. Even the obligatory comic relief provided by two soldiers (one played by Cockneyesque singer/comedian-and husband of sexy shrew Joan Collins- Anthony Newley) is eliminated  when they are consumed by the pile of slithering radioactive mud. It is a movie typical of the times in most ways and the evil was something in part man made and in part unknowable. The thing is basically unstoppable, but like the Blob there was a way to destroy it if you only thought hard enough and could hang on until the last fifteen minutes of the film.

Hammer of course will always be remembered primarily for their lushly staged and designed horror films, but they did some other things as well and I think X the Unknown is one of their truly hidden gems. Hidden in a pile of radioactive sludge. A really good movie in my humble opinion and I think most regular readers of the Café will not be disappointed.

AN IMMORTAL SCREAM BY A SUPER CUTE LITTLE BRITISH NURSE

TRAILER FOR X-THE UNKNOWN

TRAILER FOR THE BLOB

FRANKENTSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD

1966/Director: Ishirô Honda/ Writers: Reuben Bercovitch (story),Takeshi Kimura

Cast: Tadao Takashima, Nick Adams, Kumi Mizuno, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Koji Furuhata

I have been acquiring quite a few movies lately and have been watching a couple a day sometimes and have gotten behind on posting, so I am going to try and catch up with this new category, The Uranium Cafe Double (and sometimes Triple) Feature. I will try to connect two films thematically in some way, and the first entry into the category is simple: the theme is Frankenstein. But these two films are a couple of the oddest in the Frankenstein archives and really are both pretty enjoyable B-movies. The first one is out of Toho Studios and is directed by the great Ishiro Honda. It also starts American actor Nick Adams (the Johnny Yuma TV show) in one of his three films with Toho. He plays scientist James Bowen who is hot on the trail of the Frankenstein Monster (though it is referred to throughout the film as Frankentstein) with the help of his lovely assistant Sueko Togami  (Toho queen Kumi Mizuno) and fellow scientist Dr. Kenichiro Kawaji (who is determined to obtain one of Frankenstein’s members or organs for future research) and is played by fellow Toho regular Tadao Takashima (the link is to a story of Tadao’s battle with severe depression). Check back soon for a review and photos of pretty Kumi Mizuno’s in Ishiro Honda’s Matango (Attack of the Mushroom People).

The action originates in Nazi Germany towards the end of WWII when a mad scientist’s laboratory is raided by Nazi guards and the heart of Frankenstein (the monster) is taken away and then transported to Imperial Japan by submarine. Exactly why the Nazi’s would give away this potential asset to their conquests, even to fellow axis power Japan, is never explained, but the heart winds up in the safest of places in Japan to carry out secret scientific research, the city of Hiroshima. Fifteen years after Hiroshima is baked to a crisp a strange kid begins to appear around the city and eats some of the local small animals like dogs and rabbits, leaving the remains of a little bunny in the local primary school classroom. The freakish boy is captured and for some odd reason is said to possess Caucasian features, no doubt to tie the beast in with the European creator and monster, but actor Koji Furahata does not look in any way Caucasian. Soon the lad has grown to gigantic proportions and escapes his holding cell leaving one of his severed but animated hands behind. In no time he is being blamed for the destruction of local villages and inns, but that is actually the handy work of subterranean monster Baragon (the alternate title is Frankenstein vs Baragon). Needless to say a duel is inevitable between the titans and as usual it is full of giant monsters doing judo flips and spewing fire.

The photography and miniatures are excellent as they usually are in Honda’s films, though the super-imposed scenes are lacking in quality even for the time and genre. Nick Adams seems a little too dim witted to be a geneticist but it makes the movie even more fun. Scenes that the American co-producer Henry G. Saperstein wanted included showing Frankenstein fighting another duel with a giant octopus were deleted from the final version, but reappeared later as an alternate ending. The  Frankenstein monster is one of the oddest on film (and there have been plenty of odd Frankenstein based monsters) and in many ways the creature stays in line with the legend laid down by earlier films: flat head, mistaken crimes, good heart and intentions that are misread and a doomed fascination with a beautiful woman. Baragon later reappeared in Destroy All Monsters and Frankenstein reappears in the sequel to this film War of the Gargantuas. Maybe not for non-Toho fans, but a must for big monster and detailed miniature lovers.

THE DELETED FRANKENSTEIN FIGHTING THE GIANT OCTOPUS SCENE

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER

1965/ Director: Robert Gaffney/ Writers: R.H.W. Dillard, George Garrett

Cast: Marilyn Hanold, James Karen, Lou Cutell, Nancy Marshall, David Kerman, Robert Reilly, Bruce Glover

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster takes place on sunny Puerto Rico instead of Japan and is a fine example of a great bad movie that is worth watching more than once. It is really not a terribly made film in some respects. The film editing is not bad and there is a good music score (one song by the Distant Cousins may have been the inspiration for the riff from one of my favorite Thrill Kill Kult songs, Babylon Drifter) and the space ship interiors are far from the worst on record.

The story is about secret, cyborg astronaut Frank Saunders (Robert Riley) whose rocket is shot out of the sky by space aliens (Martians) who think it is an attacking missile. When the aliens discover that Frank has survived the attack they go down to Earth themselves to finish off the potential witness that may jeopardize their important mission; acquiring a breeding stock of nubile young earth girls, most of them in bikinis. Frank (as in Frankenstein) is also searched for by human scientists Adam Steele (played by James Karen, most famous for his roles in Return of the Living Dead, and even recently as the CEO in The Pursuit of Happyness) and cry baby Karen Grant (Nancy Marshall). Of course during the crash of his spaceship poor Frank has half his face burnt off and his circuitry all screwed up, so sometimes he over reacts and kills people with his bare hands or machetes. Eventually Frank winds up trying to rescue the earth girls from the aliens with Dr Steele and there meets the “space monster” Mull and they have a less than epic battle that destroys the space ship and nasty aliens.

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The performances of Marylin Hanold and Lou Cutell as the alien princess and her henchman offer up some of the best moments in the film. Lou Cutell’s nodding and sleazy grins are nearly as classic as his poorly done bald wig make up. Actor Bruce Glover (Crispin Glover’s father and one of the gay hitmen in Diamonds are Forever who kept try to bump off 007) appears briefly as an alien.

The movie was voted as one of the 100 worst of all time (what more of a recommendation do you need) though, as I said, is hardly a total flop in all technical departments. You may have a fun time watching all the stock military footage and checking out the swinging gogo pool parties, until they are crashed by ray gun totting aliens who wear space suits that look very much like NASA training gear. It is really a good example of how a chessy camp classic can garner a persistent cult following, and for good reason. It is my definition of a “feel good” movie. It was fun to watch the unintended laughs and guffaws and is one of those films that can be enjoyed alone for “research” or a movie party flick. More upbeat than Frankenstein Conquers the World and loaded with lots more half nekked bikini girls.

TRAILER FOR FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER

TRAILER FOR FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD

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JEEPERS CREEPERS

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2001/Director: Victor Salva/ Screenplay: Victor Salva/

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Cast: Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck, Patricia Belcher, Eileen Brennan

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Most everything I have read about these movies really pans them without mercy but I do not think these Jeepers Creepers movies are that bad. They are not fantastic either but I really do not know what people expect from this sort of genre. The acting is not bad, the editing and cinematography are pretty good and while there are no surprises you get basically what you expect to get. The first time I watched it was with a couple good friends in Seattle and one guy just wold not let up on the movie. Every ten seconds he was ragging it. Hey, the guy - good friend and lay authority on Japanese cinema- watched every episode of Pokemon okay, so his opinion was suspect in this case.

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The plot is about some sort of creature billed as “The Creeper“ who returns to our world every twenty three years for twenty days to feed on human body parts. He is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people over the decades. He keeps the bodies stored under an old church where he has developed a past time of turning the corpses into preserved works of art. They are stuck to the ceiling and wall like some sort of Satanic Sistine Chapel. He is selective about who he gets his parts from and is able to detect by smell the right type of fear. He traumatizes two teenagers (Gina Philips and Justin Long) in his serial killer truck until selecting one of them for a helping of eye balls. The creature wrecks havoc in a rural and desolate community and is all but unstoppable.

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There are some problems of course and some parts are a little more than corny. The show down on the country road with Gina Philips running him over after he does flips over the car cold have been done better. And then he assaults the police station where the cops are hapless before him. It just is not scary to have a creature lose in a police station. It is more like an action movie (Terminator) here than a horror movie. And the two genres can mix of course, but I did not like the brew this time, but enjoyed the rest of the movie. The Creeper (Jonathan Breck) is interesting and enough about him is left unexplained to keep some mystery. The movie ends begging for a sequel and one is delivered. Maybe my taste is really bad, but I enjoyed it and recommend it completely. BEATINU baby.

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JEEPERS CREEPERS II

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2003/Director: Victor Salva/ Screenplay: Victor Salva/

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Cast: Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Eric Nenninger, Nicki Aycox, Marieh Delfino, Thom Gossom Jr.

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I liked the sequel here more than the original in this case. Usually I do not like horror movie sequels much, with a few exceptions of course. It takes up right where the last one left off and the Creeper is running out of time to collect and digest body parts as the action takes place on day twenty three of his most recent hunting spree. Most of the story takes place in and around a school bus packed with high school students returning from a homecoming football game. The mood is tenser than in the first movie where the kids soon realize the Creeper is selecting who he will kill and eat and who he will not. All the adults on the bus are killed right off and disorganization and pandemonium ensues as it always does when teenagers are being stalked by a supernatural serial killer.

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There is also a subplot of a father seeking revenge on the Creeper for abducting his son in a corn field. He creates a sort of harpoon gun out of a hydraulic fence post puncher and he takes on the Creeper over and over and the movie ends with the makings of a sequel dangling before us but I have not heard anything about it yet.

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The killings and action again take place in some vast and desolate rural area of what looks like Kansas or Nebraska. I read that IT is Michigan but I could not be sure by checking the license plates in the scenes. The acting is good and there is tension between the characters as they try to help each other and yet stay alive themselves as the relentless Creeper stalks them one by one. But the kids and the vindictive father all fight back and give the creature a worthy fight in this fine sequel.

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NOTE: I just found out that Jeepers Creepers III has been made but as of yet I have not seen it on the shelves here in Kunming China. DVDs here have been known to appear before the movie has even been released back in the States if they can get a hold of a screening copy. I do not think it has been released in the theaters yet back in the States and from I have read I might go straight to DVD. I will research it more after another can of Coke.

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VACANCY

2007/Director:Nimród Antal/Screenplay:Mark L. Smith

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson, Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry, Scott G. Anderson, Mark Casella, David Doty

The story here is a Psycho type thriller that really was not as bad as the reviews made me think it was going to be. There are a few references to Psycho, for example in the assorted stuffed birds that decorate the office, the quirky manager played very well by the dependable Frank Whaley and the invasive voyeurism that takes place in the honeymoon suite. The voyeurism though lacks the psycho-sexual peeping Tom aspect that characterized Norman Bates though, and here it instead is done in the form of video taping snuff films and supplying them in quantity to the booming snuff film trade I guess (though I belong to the school of thought that puts snuff films into the category of urban-myth… but what a suitable myth to base a slasher style movie on).

The film is not a gratuitous gore film and the edgy drama is built up perfectly before the actual mayhem breaks loose. While there are no real surprises for the most part it is a watchable film. The story centers on an unhappy couple played by Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson who have some serious problems in their marriage that are about to break them apart when suddenly in the middle of their ongoing tirade of insults to one another their car fan breaks after Wilson swerves to miss a raccoon on a dark and sparsely populated stretch of highway in the middle of backwater USA. They trek back to a gas station and hotel and reluctantly stay the night to wait for the garage to open. Frank Whaley plays the genuinely unnerving hotel manager who from the very beginning makes you uncomfortable. The simple scene where he is counting out dimes is sheer personality disorder incarnate. He is a Norman Bates type psycho in that he does not belong to the class of modern film “super” pyscho slashers and he dispalys uncertainty and anxiety later in the film as he loses control of the situation little by little. His unimposing physique seem to make his character more believable and common and therefore more frightening. I am so happy there was no “sexy master mind” killer here. God, that is such a bore anymore.

After Beckinsale and Wilson get in to their room and continue their litany of complaints and criticism the tension begins in the form of banging doors and phone calls. It is done very well and soon they find copies of video tapes showing the former occupants of the very same room being murdered and taped. The film develops into a cat and mouse game soon as our couple go on the offensive but the predators are well seasoned and have all the upper hands. Beckinsale is a commanding presence of a woman (Underworld and Van Helsing) and this movie would be much different had Mia Farrow been in the lead role, but she is vulnerable and shaken up and out of control here and does some good acting. Wilson is fine in the role of the more sentimental of the wayward couple who wants to salvage some of the relationship and confront some losses (the death of a child?) that Beckinsale wants only to forget. He is not a strong man really but soon takes control and shows Beckinsale he has some testosterone after all, until he is knifed in the gut in front of her. In movies it always works out that as you show the woman what a real man you are you immediately get knifed or shot saving her and she can suddenly realize that she had over looked all these qualities in you and feel a little guilty. I wish real life were so simple.

The ending is no surprise as Beckinsale kicks all the bad guy’s asses in no time flat. The movie is predictable in the way a good movie like this will be (the only alternative ending is what, where the bad guys win and kill all the good people and you are left feeling depressed and nihilistic… I guess you could have an ending where the good guys and bad guys all decide to change and team up and become friends, but that would really suck too). But it is how the formula unfolds that makes the difference I suppose, the way two roller coaster rides can be different and yet you expect the same ending from both. The film is well made and well acted and not over the top in the violence department which can be a relief really. There is blood and violent death, do not worry about that okay. But it is controlled effectively by director Nimrod Antal who does not use the film as an excuse to simply show intestines and livers dangling from people, which brings us to our second film, the dismal and forgettable, exploitation mess Maintenance.

MAINTENANCE

2007/Directors: Paulo Diaz and Jil Guenther/Screenplay: Paulo Diaz and Jil Guenther

Cast: Mark Masten, Melissa DeBaca,Rondi Temple, Justin Frumkes, Doc Pingree

This movie has the feel of the type of films made by the Film Threat Video company. Really low quality, almost with a shot on video look, and usually with an emphasis on gore and graphic violence and no concern towards the acting or technical aspects. I will admit that there were a couple scenes in the beginning where the dialog and basic acting looked promising, but all those hopes disappeared quickly. The story is so simple as to defy belief. Of course the story line in Vacancy is simple too and it has been done in one form or another a million times. The problem with a movie like Maintenance is that it takes a simple form and makes no effort to do anything with it other than exploit it for gore purposes. If you think about it the concept for Rocky is simple and unoriginal, but Stallone made a great script out of it. Okay, not every movie will be Rocky, I know. I did not buy this DVD thinking it would be an Oscar winner (as if that were an indicator of a good movie anymore).

This is the so-called plot. After a short introduction that tries to give the film social credibility (why, it is only a movie trying to make us more aware of the dangers around us and the shortcomings of the American justice system) shows some percentages about the release of dangerous prisoners back into society and their reoffense rate the movie goes right into the story. A guy played by Mark Masten gets a job in a high rise apartment complex with only four female tenets living in it at the time because of ongoing renovations and then immediately begins killing them off one by one. Well, that’s about it.

The murders are brutal and are followed up by dismemberment scenes. He stores his “trophies” in his refrigerator and a clueless detective never seems to consider searching his apartment since he is a violent ex-con and he began work the same day the disappearances begin. Why make a connection there? It ends on a fatalistic note with the heroine being killed by the landlord himself. I hate these kinds of endings as they are not a twist in any way. They are a cop out and an attempt to make the film have some sort of impact on the viewer that the film maker could not acheive in some more subtle or sophisticated fashion.

Another thing that drove me up the wall was the camera work. It seems like 80% of the film is shot from a really low angle, like the camera is mounted on a hand dolly and is pushed around everywhere. Even in scenes where two people are simply having a conversation the camera is aimed up from knee level and it gets old real fast. Furthermore, the film is all washed out in some green tone or something. I do not know if this is on purpose or what. The look of the scenes I have posted here is exatcly how the movie looks!

It is hard to get into the suspense because the acting is bad and the story is implausible and the camera work is inane. Like I said before, these two films are like two different roller coaster rides. They do the same thing, but take the one with some vacancy because this one needs a lot of maintenance.

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