While the bulk of Paul McCartney’s fine song catalog is made of “silly love” songs he has been known to step off into some deep waters once in a while. The persona of Paul as the likable and cute faced Beatle  often contradicts another side to the man. He is a tough business man and leader. It is more or less considered he was running the affairs of the Beatles towards and the end and was the first to officially call it quits and proceed with legal actions to dissolve the Beatles as an entity. He is an outspoken vegetarian and animal rights activist and is known to voice his political opinions on other matters as well, such as when he wrote Give Ireland Back To The Irish in response to events of Bloody Sunday on January 30, 1972. The song was released less than a month later and was the first single released by Paul and Linda’s new band Wings, with Irishman Hugh McCullough on guitar. It was banned by the BBC but Paul persisted in trying to get airtime for the song and it would eventually reach a position of 16 on the U.K. charts with limited airplay. While the song has a definite political message it is also a rousing rock tune and sounds much better than the other material released on Wings first overly stripped down solo album Wildlife. The song was not released on the album but does appear on newer CD versions as a bonus track.

Also banned by the BBC in 1972 was the bouncing party number Hi Hi Hi, which was also a single release only. The song was reported to have the lyrics “get you ready for my body gun”  (though Paul says the lyrics are misunderstood) and while the lyrics are not spelled High High High it is generally assumed and never outright denied by McCartney (as far as I, a former super McCartney fan, know) that the chorus infers getting a good buzz on. While the songs are early on in the solo McCartney catalog and possess a roughness that along with the albums McCartney and Ram,  would vanish after Band on the Run, I think they are pretty good rock songs and while very tame by today’s standards were banned nonetheless.

Another song I do not have a copy of to make an MP3 is from 1993’s Off the Ground called Big Boys Bickering. Again the song is not on the album but does appear on the Japanese release. Wings had long disbanded and Paul’s sound now is more typical of his professional and polished style. Even when he sings “fucking it up” about six times it sounds sort of  nice and inoffensive. But not inoffensive enough to not get the song banned from airways. Paul said he had considered using the lyrics “mucking it up” but the subject matter, environmental destruction of the planet, was something he really felt passionate about and nothing less than “fuck” would express his rage. I did find a video version of the song, uncensored of course.

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

TRACKS: GIVE IRELAND BACK TO THE IRISH-HI HI HI

PAUL PERFORMING BANNED SONG BIG BOYS BICKERING

Even his deceased wife Linda has had a song banned by the BBC from her posthumously complied and released solo album (from 1973 material) Wide Prairie called The Light Comes From Within. Paul has campaigned for the song, a response to Linda’s often bitterly hateful critics in Britain and America,  to receive airplay, but look, it has the lines:

You say I’m simple
You say I’m a hick
You’re  fuckin’ no one
You stupid dick

I dunno, maybe the BBC has something in this case.

I was lucky to see Paul and Linda perform in San Antonio Texas in the Alamo Dome in the early 90’s and it was a great show. And all those people who ragged on Linda all the time were in fact dicks. I thought they were a great rock-n-roll couple and I really liked the early solo material and Wings albums.

SCHOOL OF ROCK

2003/ Director: Richard Linklater/ Writer: Mike White

Cast: Jack Black,  Joan Cusack, Mike White, Adam Pascal, Lucas Papaelias, Chris Stack, Sarah Silverman,  Chris Stack, Lucas Babin, Joey Gaydos Jr., Miranda Cosgrove, Frank Whaley

A few things make this movie a special entry into the now growing list of  Uranium Café  movie commentaries. It is the first entry into my new comedy category. I love a good comedy film and this one is a great one, which I shall expound on further soon enough. I can be really picky abut comedies and find most modern comedies really lacking. Along with being a genuinely funny film it is also more of a popular and financially successful film than most of the selections I pander to here, which typically tend to be rather obscure films for one reason or another. For example, perhaps they are great films, like The Servant or The Collector, but cater to a more selective audience. Or maybe they are just bad films and cater to hardly anyone but people like me who have a streak of masochism in them. I would bet that most readers of the Café have heard of School of Rock (or The School of Rock as it is sometimes listed) whether they have seen it or not. Another thing that sits this film apart is that it falls into a unique category (maybe I should create one with this title) of films I have seen more than ten times.

There is a special reason for this I should explain. Because I was an evil man in my past life and I must work out my bad karma in this one while I still have time I am now teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) in China. When there is a day when I just cannot bear to listen to my lazy ass students I (like any other poor soul trapped in a similar situation) I fall back on the mutli-media learning center or, room with the DVD player and projector as it should be called. One has to be selective about what they show of course and two movies I love to show the most is Eight Legged Freaks and School of Rock, with The Incredibles coming in third. Those films will wind up on the Café in due time. For now we take a look at one of my very favorites films of all friggin’ time… School of Rock.

The film is directed by Texas native Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, A Scanner Darkly) and written by Mike White, who also stars in the film. It was conceived written with Jack Black in mind as the lead character, Dewey Finn. Dewey is basically a loser with minimal talent but high in the sky rock-n-roll aspirations. He comes from the old school of rock music when the scene was dominated by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, The Who and all the other truly great bands. His taste is impeccable, but it is his marginal talent and ego-centric attitude that gets him booted from his band No Vacancy. This puts Dewey in a pickle since he was counting on winning this year’s battle of bands and using the cash to sort out his life. Among life’s pressures is the fact he is behind in rent to his roommate and former rocker (from the Goth band Maggot Death) and now substitute teacher Ned Sneebly, played by Mike White. Then to top it all off  there is  Ned’s overbearing girlfriend Patty, who would like nothing better than for Dewey to hit the road, whether he catches up his back rent or not. With his back against the wall Dewey takes on a substitute teaching job meant for the now responsible Ned at the number one private elementary prep school in the state, Horace Green Elementary. He is greeted by the high strung Ms. Mullins-played deftly by Joan Cusack- and is introduced to his class, a collection of serious students all with eyes on ivy league colleges and gold stars on the performance chart. The chart is ripped to shreds by Dewey who exclaims “What kind of school is this!” and he proceeds to assign recess to the class while he watches the clock tick away.

Things change when Dewey discovers a lot of the class are talented musicians and his sites are set once again on the battle of the bands and the $20,000 prize. He gets his gear from his beat up old van and Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love plays as he runs down the hall and prepares to introduce the students to new class project… a live rock and roll show that all schools will competing in and will land the winners a recommendation to a top ranking college on their permanent records. The kids are all perfect comedic foils for Jack Black to play off of. Summer Hathaway is the class “factotor” who is as serious a student as there is and has no intention of being a groupie for Dewey’s project and is promoted to band manager. Zach is the talented but melancholy lead guitarist who is has some home problems with his over controlling father. Lawrence (Larry) is a shy, insecure Asian kid who plays hot keyboards and is assured by Dewey that he is way cool and will be the “bee’s knees” onstage. Katie, called Posh Spice in a great scene, is the steady playing bassist who Dewey teaches to show a pouty face. On drums is class rebel Freddy Jones (“Spazzy Magee”) who struggles with his instrument but is soon studying Keith Moon, Buddy Rich and Ed Shaughnessy. Other classmates include the swishy “Mr Fancy Pants” Billy who designs some snazzy glam rock outfits for the band that sends Dewey into a fit, Tomika, an insecure over weight girl who belts out Aretha Franklin tunes, and a collection of back up singers and security personnel that collectively have a perfect and rare film chemistry.

Needless to say there are hurdles galore with trying to set up the gig with Ms Mullins and the show organizer (Frank Whaley) but in the end they get the chance to play. In a classic scene they celebrate their enthusiasm while Led Zeppelin’s The Immigrant Song blares over Dewey’s van speaker. Jack Black actually begged the surviving band members to use the song. It was a difficult task  given the band’s  reputation for not allowing their songs or logos to be used to benefit someone else’s commercial undertakings. A video of Black begging in posted below.

It is uncovered of course that Dewey is not a teacher and has been pretending to be Ned all along after Patty rats him out and even calls the cops on him. But in a scene “…that is so punk” the kids get the school bus to take them to the “Mozart concert field trip” and pick up a despondent and beaten down Dewey who gets out of his bed and goes out to do the only thing he can do… rock. He admits that Zach is the better player and song writer and they play Zach’s song School of Rock (If You Wanna Be A Teacher’s Pet), rather than Dewey’s epic opus,  Legend of the Rent. They lose out to his old band of posers No Vacancy and again Dewey is shattered, but the kids remind him that rock is not about winning or losing but about putting on one great show, which they did. The movie wraps up the dissatisfied audience chanting “School of Rock…” and they return for an encore of AC/CD’s It’s a Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock-n-Roll. The humor continues as the credits roll and when it is all over it is a movie I could easily sit and watch again in a day or two if I had a hankering.

I really am not sure why I do not tire of this film. On one level it is really just a formula film and the type I normally avoid. The characters are stereotyped and the storyline is predictable even before you watch the movie. Losers or outcasts find themselves by the end of the movie by being true to their dreams and doing the best that they can. If only real life were so simple. Everyone’s self esteem is bolstered after performing the song they worked so hard at and against the wishes of everyone else in the film who only wanted to hold them all down. There is not a bad word in the film nor any overtly sexual situations or violence. It is good clean fun and whenever I play it for my students here it is received with enthusiasm. They laugh at all the funny parts (remember that English is not their native language) and get the moral of the story, whatever that may ultimately be. I avoided this movie for a couple years because I just did not think I would like it. The picture of Jack Black with a Gibson SG surrounded by little kids just reeked of corny formula. And on one level it is just that, but it is so well done and so enjoyable I can only say if you have not seen it yet please run out and get it. It is one worth owning. And in a potentially controversial statement I feel much better than Black’s other rock-n-roll movie Tenacious D.

JACK BLACK BEGS LED ZEPPELIN TO USE THE IMMIGRANT SONG FOR

CRUCIAL SCENE IN SCHOOL OF ROCK

MURDER SET PIECES

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2004/Director: Nick Palumbo/Screenplay: Nick Palumbo

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Cast: Sven Garrett, Tony Todd, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jade Risser

I was duped into this one by the so called rave reviews plastered on the DVD jacket, one comparing some of Palumbo’s shots “of visual brilliance” to “the best works of Dario Argento.” Well, that’s a load of crap. While I am not a big fan of Argento’s narrative style I do respect his technical ability with camera shots and movement. To say that even one frame of this movie comes anywhere near Argento’s best work is a blatant lie. I perused a few reviews before doing mine to maybe gain some sort of relevant insight in to the movie that I may be lacking and decided I was wasting my time. I am fully qualified to dismiss this movie as a load of garbage. Not because of the murders and gore and so called sickenly repulsive violence (which I did not find it to have but rather found the violence comic bookish in the way a Herschell Gordon Lewis film is) but because it is simply a poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed movie.

The basic story is about some Nazi guy who takes porno pictures of women around Las Vegas but has a tendency to practice zero self-control and murders most of them as well as most other people he encounters. He seems to get away all this with utter impunity. He drives around and picks up hookers and kills them, kills his porno models, his girl friend and some woman who may be his German ex-wife or current wife, we never know, a little girl who is a schoolmate friend of his girlfriend’s sister, a fortune teller who won’t tell him what the cards say and a disgruntled porno book store clerk played by Candyman Tony Todd and it goes on and on into sheer absurdity. He is never questioned by the police or rouses any suspicion except in his girlfriend’s little sister played by Jade Risser but no one will believe her because SHE’S A KID!

The whole move feels like it was shot in the 70’s. Some great movies came out of the 70’s, but some shlocky ones did too. This one patterned itself on those substandard 70’s movies that are sort of fun now in a bad movie way. But this movie is not trying to be a bad movie and we do not need the 70’s done over except in parody. The music score is weird too, with some really poor heavy metal stuff that was probably done by friends of the director. The rest of the movie score sounds like typical incidental music from a 70’s exploitation film, which is what this feels like. I like exploitation films from the 70’s, they are campy and fun. This film is not either. Look, the murders here are not that shocking or brutal or original. There is one scene where the guy lunges out at Jade from a hole in the closet and is suppose to scare you, I guess, but it was so ridiculous I replayed the scene like six times for a laugh. I am tired of DVDs that advertise themselves as the “sickest movie of all-time” and then deliver Z-Movie entertainment at best. Sure, there is a ton of off color blood everywhere, again the type that looks like the too red goop used by Herschell Gordon Lewis, but so what. I like blood and gore and that is basically what I buy a DVD like this for, but to just pour blood all over the walls and on top of some moonlighting porn star because the film maker cannot do anything to get the story across simply gets boring after a few scenes and that is what this movie was, boring.

I cannot believe the reviews that seem to see something more to this movie than poor film making. The victims never seem scared and all look like porn actresses, which is what I read Palumbo hired for this film. Original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen has a small role as a Nazi gun dealer. Sven Garrett, who plays the photographer killer, is not really too bad in some ways as a serial killing, misogynist Nazi, but it is simply too unbelievable and poorly made to get anything but a weak nod from me. And it only gets that because Tony Todd was great as the burned out porno clerk and Gunner Hansen made an okay suburban Nazi.

THE BRAIN EATERS

1958/Director: Bruno VeSota/ Writer: Gordon Urquhart

Cast: Ed Nelson (also producer), Leonard Nimoy, Alan Frost, Joanna Lee, Jody Fair, David Hughes, Robert Ball, Greigh Phillips, Orville Sherman

This not a film to write home about in any sense of the word-however it is film to do a post on The Uranium Cafe about obviously- but at a mere sixty minutes and featuring an early performance by Leonard Nimoy (billed as Leonard Nemoy) it is not a total waste of time. It was produced by and starring B-movie and TV staple Ed Nelson and directed by character actor Bruno VeSota (the sexually frustrated fat guy in Attack of the Giant Leeches) and so based on The Puppet Master by Robert A. Heinlein that AIP was sued for outright plagiarism. Roger Corman arranged to have the matter settled out of court for $5000 and the promise that Heinlein receive no credit for “inspiring” Gordon Urqhart’s lifeless screenplay. But as I said, the film is not really that bad that it cannot be seen and enjoyed if there is nothing else on.

The story moves along at a tolerable pace and is aided by an often campy and unnecessary narration. For example in one scene we are told that the heroes are visiting the local telegraph station, but there is not need to inform us of this since we can see with own two eyes that they are doing this. But it adds for some laughs, though I assume the are unintended.

The basic story is that the residents of peaceful Riverdale Illinois have not only recently been plagued by violent murders and now must contend with the sudden appearance a huge alien craft that has either come from space or the bowels of the Earth. I am not clear on this. The mystery is compounded when a scientist believed long lost reappears from the craft after some fifty years. Some of the town’s folk have fallen prey to small parasitic organisms that look like little “tribbles” (as in the classic Star Trek episode) with pipe cleaners for antennae that attach to the base of their necks and control their thoughts and actions. Scientist Paul Kettering (Ed Nelsen) is hot on the mystery and even journeys into the alien craft seeking answers, which are not forthcoming. A lot of the action winds up being fist fights or gun battles between the infected and uninfected, or verbal sparring between everyone and the cantankerous Senator Powers (Cornelius Keefe, billed as Jack Hill and so it is not director Jack Hill in an early acting role as is often thought). On a return trip inside the ship Kettering finds another long lost scientist, Professor Cole under total control of the alien creatures and who is played by Leonard Nimoy, but you would not know if not for the voice. The story ends with high voltage wires frying the little brain eaters to death and the hero dying to save the girl.

The movie has potential with the material but does not do too much with it. What have been better is if the people under the control of the creatures were not so apparent. Some act like zombies practically. It would have had more tension had the cast and audience not known who was and was not infected, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing. I would also say a little more violence would have helped, as well as more frightening creatures. To the film’s credit it does not go over board with scientific explanations and long dialogs as is typical of a lot of films of the period. The movie takes itself too seriously and the laughs are unintentional, which can always make for a good time.

The movie poster is one of my favorite, but here is no scene in the entire film like it. There is no woman with vampire fangs and exposed brain, or hordes of people fleeing some terrible monster. In fact the monsters are little fuzz balls that a horde of fleeing people would squash. Can I recommend the film? Sure. It is required cult film viewing in fact, and as I said it is only about an hour in length, about the same time you would spend at the dentist’s getting a cleaning. Our next film seems to operate on a lower budget but in my opinion delivers more of the goods in the action and camp departments. So now that our brains have been eaten, let us see what it is like to have our flesh consumed in The Flesh Eaters.

THE FLESH EATERS

1964/Director: Jack Curtis/ Writer: Arnold Drake

Cast: Martin Kosleck, Byron Sanders, Barbara Wilkin, Rita Morley, Ray Tudor

All the action in The Flesh Eaters takes place on a small island off the Atlantic coast where five people must face a ravenous, microscopic organism that consumes human flesh in a matter of seconds. The budget for the film by director Jack Curtis is obviously very low and according to one story was subsidized by winnings his wife made on a TV game show. The characters are all comic bookishly two dimensional (and not surprisingly since the screen writer was comic book writer Arnold Drake): a mad Nazi Scientist, a drunken former screen queen, a down on his luck pilot, a zany beatnik and a good hearted gal with huge hooters she is not adverse to showing now and then.

The evil Nazi Peter Bartell, played by Martin Kosleck-who made a career of playing evil Nazis-is the man experimenting with refining the flesh eater experiment that was begun during the war. His experiments are interrupted when the plane being flown by studly looking Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders, most famous for his role as Talbot Huddleston in the soap opera The Days of our Lives) has to land off the coast because of a violent storm. With him are his passengers, jaded former movie idol Laura Winters (Rita Morely) and her assistant Jane Letterman (Barbara Wilken). A rule in low budget sci-fi flicks is “lots of dialog over expensive effects” and this movie follows the rule from beginning to end, but the chat is actually not too bad. The acting is campy and hammy often enough but I get the sense the actors and crew knew this and had a little fun with what they were working with, and so The Flesh Eaters becomes a more watchable and enjoyable ride than The Brain Eaters.

The group is joined later by the most obnoxious character in the film, a beatnik named Omar who rants and raves about “love as the weapon” so often that we feel relieved when he has his entrails eaten from the inside out later with a microbe laced martini made by Professor Bartell. In one memorable scene hero Grant Murdoch must rescue lush Laura Winters who has walked out onto a jetty looking for her booze. He gets some of the flesh eaters (usually holes poked in the film) on his leg and they are removed by Bartell’s pocket knife. They need something to stop the bleeding and in no time sexy Jane Letterman removes her blouse and spends the rest of the scene in her white bra. I think my buddy Ghidorah over at How to Maintain your Chainsaw would appreciate this fine scene.

There are some actually gory death scenes in this film which were ahead of their time for 1964. I have mentioned the demise of Omar the beatnik, and a couple characters have similar explicit death scenes later. One thing that threw me for a loop was that at the end the surviving castaways must deal with a huge rubber monster after an attempt to electrify the microbes only cause them to grow and unify. In a very odd twist the thing that kills the beast (remember in old sci-fi flicks there is usually one special thing that does the beast in, never bullets of course, and it must be found and developed in the last twenty minutes of the film) is human blood delivered directly into the creature’s eye. Strange that a thing that consumes human flesh is killed by human blood.

The photography (by Curtis under the pseudonym Carson Davidson) is actually pretty good, and while the effects are pretty low budget they very effective for the time. The two women are pretty sexy and plump and the tension between super jock stud Grant Murdoch and evil genius Peter Bartell is stereotypical and amusing. This is a good bad movie and of the two reviewed here I recommend this one more highly. Not to missed by enthusiasts of midnight cinema.

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.

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