I am in the middle of rewatching the Vampire Lovers and felt the need to do a quick post on the queen of sexy lesbo vamps, Ingrid Pitt. There are some mythic elements to the life of Ingrid Pitt that is sometimes conflicting, depending on what source you are reading. There is the fantastic story of how she was born Ingoushka Petrov in 1937, of Polish parents, while her mother was being transported to a concentration camp in Germany during the war. Another source keeps the concentration camp story but gives the date of 1943 for her birth, while yet another source claims Pitt herself lists her birth date as November of 1945, when the war was well over for Germany as well as Japan and the camps were abolished.
She grew up separated until the age of ten from her parents and was reunited with them later in Berlin by the Red Cross. In 1962 she escaped East Germany by swimming across the Spree River and worked as a waitress supporting herself and her daughter while pursuing a career in acting. Whatever is true, false or exaggerated only adds to her dynamic charm and charisma.
She has had a few small roles in main stream films such as David Lean’s epic Doctor Zhivago and Where Eagles Dare with Clint Eastwood, but it was her work for James Carreras and Hammer films that has helped her achieve and maintain her status as a genuine cult film icon for decades now. Her ample cleavage, east European beauty and perfectly upturned nose made her a perfect Hammer scream queen.
A couple of her greatest roles were as the lesbian vampire Carmilla in The Vampire Lovers (with Peter Cushing in yet another great vampire hunter role) and Countess Dracula, where she plays Elizabeth Bathory, the most prolific murderess in history and inspiration for countless b-movies and goth bands..
She has authored a couple books about her life in films and is a black belt in karate. I hope the images I found and edited do her the justice she deserves. She was one of the early pioneers of the whole Euro-Lesbian vampire movie craze that flourished in the 70’s. She was a real gem and she will no doubt reappear from time to time in the Café.
While I was still thinking about the X the Unknown I decided to put together this little clip and then uploaded it to my youtube Video Cavalcade. It is the scene where a studly lab technician uses little persuasion to entice a coquettish little nurse into the radiology room, where in no time she ’s squirming and screaming… but not in ecstasy, rather she is wailing in pure terror as lover boy gets his face burned off by the pile of radioactive mud that has come looking for some radiation to consume. The scream is just fantastic and the death scene is pretty freaky and gory for the time, 1956. Hope you enjoy it and go out to get this early Hammer sci-fi classic.
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.
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
2005/Director: Brian Yuzna/ Writers: Miguel Tejada-Flores, Alberto Vázquez Figueroa
Cast: William Miller, Irene Montalà, Paulina Gálvez, Cornell John, Lluís Homar, Paul Naschy
Brian Yuzna began producing and making films under his own production company in Spain, where he permanently resides, called The Fantastic Factory in about 2000 and since then the work of this usually entertaining horror/gore director has been getting weaker and weaker. Yuzna began as producer for some of friend and associate Stuart Gordon’s best work, including Re-Animator, From Beyond and Dolls (which I have yet to see). He entered the directing arena with 1989’s Society and did some pretty good films after that including Bride of Re-Animator and Return of the Living Dead III. They were all well edited, shot and acted and contained some humor and wit to them. His newer works lack the humor and craft that made his American made films so watchable overall and he seems to trying to create Euro-sleaze now.
Rottweiler is not a well done movie but is still watchable over all in the sense that enough happens to keep you amused, and some parts enter the classic bad movie realm, such as shocked chickens being killed by the film’s antagonist, a cyborg Rottweiler. Of course a true bad film is one that has lasted a decade or two and retains some sort of lasting allegiance by a fan base. I do not know if this film is old enough or campy enough to really be a “good” bad movie, but none the less I recommend it over lets say watching Pretty Woman again or committing suicide.
The plot is pretty simple and sometimes vanishes altogether. Dante (William Miller) is an American in a Spanish prison. He is being held for playing a game called infiltration with his girlfriend Ula and both are subjected to abuse by evil prison warden Kufard, played by European horror institution Paul Naschy. A distraction is created in the camp when a prisoner is stung by a scorpion and in classic chain gang fashion Dante and a “negro man” high tail it. The film almost seems like it could become a sci-fi version of 1958’s The Defiant Ones with Tony Curtis and Sydney Poitier chained together in Jim Crow deep south, but that is not to be as the black man is chewed to bits by the Rottweiler and allows Dante to escape. After that the movie really gets hard to understand in some ways, because nothing much ever happens. After Dante is recaptured by a guard he kills the guard and escapes again and the dog chases him and proceeds to and everything everything else but Dante. There seems to be little reason why the dog cannot kill him and yet over and over Dante eludes becoming Alpo. In one instance he even has to run naked from the dog, who drops Dante’s weapon the water, leaving him without pants or gun. But the dog never catches up with him and he is caught later by a lonely Catholic woman who forces Dante to have sex with her. She, however, is killed by the dog (along with one of her chickens in a totally weird scene) and Dante (with clothes finally) flees with her young daughter. There is the eventual final confrontation between Dante and Kufard and the dog who crawls out of a fire and looks like he could have been Arnold’s pet in The Terminator. The film is loaded with flashbacks and they do not resolve anything at the end.
Make no mistake, this is not a good movie by a film maker who could do better, but it is not without moments and if you like to watch something just to laugh or be pissed off by how ludicrous it is then this is for you. It never gets so totally absurd or boring that it cannot be watched, and there is enough well shot gore and nudity to keep your eye lids from drooping permanently.
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.
One of the more enduring Hammer Queen legends Veronica Carlson was a talented art student who gained some popularity as a model after a few small film roles. She appeared here and there in the British tabloids with a few lines of gossip under a pin up style picture that usually focused on her legs. Hammer head James Carreras saw one such picture of Veronica and decided to cast in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave with Christopher Lee, to be directed by Freddie Frances, more renowned for his cinematography, especially his b/w work. This has become one of my all time favorite Hammer Films, if not my favorite. She also did Frankenstein Must be Destroyed with a thoroughly menacing Peter Cushing as a Dr Frankenstein who will let nothing or no one stand in the way of his goals, including hapless little Veronica. She and director Terrence Fisher were upset over a rape scene included in the film at the behest of the American distributor. I must say that the scene of Peter Cushing assaulting her is one of my lest favorite and unnecessary scenes in the Hammer catalog. It is totally incongruous with the way Frankenstein is portrayed in other Hammer films and not consistent with Pushing usual on screen personas.
She came into the Hammer scene towards the end of its glory days and when the American distributors were seizing more control over the British studio resulting in the more exploitive period of the studio before its demise. This is the period where Hammer’s output tended to resemble the Euro-Sleaze work going on across the channel. She made one last substantial last film with her by now good friend Freddie Francis called the Ghoul before going into film retirement and moving to Florida to paint fulltime. While she seems to remembered as a long legged pin up model, I simply adore her innocent face and thick blonde hair. A short film career but she is still remembered fondly.
I recievied an invitation from both Chick Young at Trash Aesthetics and Gilligan over at Retrospace to participate in something called a "meme", but I am so out of touch I have no clue what that is (but that has never stopped me from getting involved before). Seems it originated from Piper and Brian over at Lazy Eye Theatre blog (a couple of the more active LAMBers) and there have been good fantasy film festivals so far by Chick, Gilligan and Barbarella apologist Becca at No Smoking in the Skull Cave. I do not know if Tal at Taliesen Meets the Vampires has contributed as of this moment, but I will plug his excellent site anyway, free of charge. The rules (as laid down by the crew at the Lazy Eye site) are:
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1) Choose 12 Films to be featured. They could be random selections or part of a greater theme. Whatever you want.
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2) Explain why you chose the films.
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3) Link back to Lazy Eye Theatre so I can have hundreds of links and I can take those links and spread them all out on the bed and then roll around in them.
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4) The people selected then have to turn around and select 5 more people.
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So, there you have it, now lets get on with the Uranium Cafe Film Festival . I think it was supposed to be some 12 day marathon, but we here at the Cafe know a lot of you have to work and maybe forking out a movie ticket each night for twelve days can be tough in these days of fiscal woe. So we are having a double feature each night for six days (with Chili Cook Off and Pentacostal Healing Revival over the weekend). Here are the films I decided to play and it was not easy to select 12 from the many I would want to see on the big screen ( I assume we are fantasizing that this is on some big screen venue and not over at my place on the sofa):
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Day 01 Japanese Cult Cinema/Matango-Branded to Kill
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Day 02 Exploitation Classics by Jack Hill/Switchblade Sisters-Spider Baby
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Day 03 Drifters and Desperados/Hombre-The Wild Bunch
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Day 04 Psychotic Women Haters/The Boston Strangler-Frenzy
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Day 05 Cops on the Edge/Bullitt-Dirty Harry
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Day 06 Monsters from Space/The Thing-Alien 3
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Branded to Kill-
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I have only been able to see this 1967 film by Seijin Suzuki in Japanese without subtitles so I really do not know what is going on all the time, but the film has a reputation for being “absurdist” and surrealistic anyway, so I am not sure if subs would help, and the experience of watching this visually mesmerizing movie is rewarding enough. The truth is Nikkatsu studios actually fired Suzuki for this film and the conflict following got him blacklisted by Japanese studios. It is the story of a hit man who himself becomes the target of another ruthless hired killer and of course a super sexy and dangerous girl. I don’t know what else you need to know, check it out. A longer essay of this odd movie is in the oven.
