THE NEANDERTHAL MAN

1953/Director: Ewald André Dupont/Writers: Aubrey Wisberg,
Jack Pollexfen

Cast: Robert Shayne, Joyce Terry, Richard Crane, Doris Merrick, Beverly Garland, Robert Long, Tandra Quinn (as Jeanette Quinn)

I had heard about The Neanderthal Man for awhile and refrained from seeing it even after I had gotten it and burned it to disk a couple months back. I just figured it would be Z-movie fodder for a commentary here and nothing more. Well it is not only that but it was a pretty enjoyable slice of cheese. The acting is pretty bad but with some decent moments (Beverly Garland plays the waitress Nola), the monster makeup by Harry Thomas (Missile to the Moon, Frankenstein’s Daughter, The Mole Men, Killers from Space and some Ed Wood Jr. classic like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls and loads of TV shows including The Munsters) is some of the worst of the man’s career and yet is perfectly campy and likable, and the scientific explanations are golden. I have long been planning an ‘audio excerpt’ style posit here and have done a few experiments and I am sure that the lecture given by Professor Groves to his incredulous colleagues will wind up there eventually. The film was produced and written by the team of Aubrey Wiseberg and Jack Pollexfen who either separately or between them churned out, as writers and producers, some of the greatest horror/sci-fi B-movie classics of the 50′s and 60′s. True classics  like The Man from Planet X, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, Captive Women, and The Atomic Brain (Monstrosity) and many more.

MORE NEANDERTHAL MAN HERE >>

MESA OF LOST WOMEN

1953/Directors: Ron Ormond and Herbert Tevos/Writer: Herbert Tevos

Cast: Jackie Coogan, Allan Nixon, Richard Travis, Lyle Talbot, Paula Hill, Robert Knapp, Tandra Quinn, Dolores Fuller, Angelo Rossitto

I will agree somewhat with what one reviewer said about Mesa of Lost Women in that it seems to be more fun to read about it and the myths and legends surrounding it than it is to actually watch. Even seasoned cheese lovers seem to have a hard time with this film. I as well have a hard time with it though I have seen it a few times. The film is pretty short, only about 70 minutes, so considering you watch it in two parts it is not that much time out of your life really. The part of this movie, for me, that really makes the experience difficult is the infamously bad film score, but more on that in a moment. The film is often said to look like something Ed Wood Jr. would have created but I am not sure. I have long felt Wood was cast as the worst film director f all time and when a bad film (and Mesa of Lost Women is a bad film) comes along it sometimes is said to look like something Ed Wood Jr. would have done. I have long felt that Wood was a better film maker than the film world in general gives him credit for. But that may be a topic for a special post some other day. Mesa of Lost W omen however does have some connections to Ed Wood Jr. in an indirect way and those tenuous connections have led to speculation that Wood was involved with the project in some way or that he and Ron Ormond worked together. Maybe we can have a quick look at some of those before moving on.

MORE MESA OF LOST WOMEN HERE >

THE MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER

1968/Director: Ron Ormond/Writer: Ron Ormond

Cast: Ron Ormond, Tim Ormond, Peggy Anne Price, Sleepy LaBeef, Georgette Dante, Ronald Drake,  Jack Horton,  Pauletta Leeman, Harris Martin

AKA: THE EXOTIC ONES

As hard as it may be for the uninitiated neophyte to conceive there is a class of “cult”* film makers whose technical skill and dubious vision are on a lower rung of the film making ladder than even Ed Wood, Jr.. In fact the title “worst filmmaker of all time” has never really been suitable for Ed Wood, Jr. since there are moments in his films that show some degree of craftsmanship. Of course I am talking apples and oranges here, okay. Tim Burton made an embellished biopic of Wood’s life and career of the technical nature Wood himself could never imagine and I could not imagine myself trying to argue that Woods is a better film maker than Burton. But better does not mean more fun in a kooky sense of course.  Burton could make a film that is an homage to bad film making but could never make a film as genuinely bad as Jailbait . Why you ask? Okay, maybe you didn’t ask but pretend you did. Because when Ed Wood, Jr. made Jail Bait or Plan 9 from Outer Space he was trying to make a good film and fell short of the mark. It is the failing to reach the lofty goals of a mediocre film maker that makes Plan 9 so wonderful. I still find most of Wood’s catalog pretty deserving of being watched over when there is nothing else to do with life. I can dust the house or watch Bride of the Monster again. Not a tough decision for me folks.

But in an even more remote and frozen orbit from the world of conventional film making are a band of true outsiders that churned out what are often called Z-Films. If B-Movies refer to films made outside the normal system of film production, distribution and politics of Hollywood on super low budgets with less known actors then Z-Films represent a world even outside the rules and codes of B-Movies and their arcane creators and unknown casts constitute a veritable sub-culture of film making. I doubt anyone sets out to make a “Grade Z Classic” the way Ted V. Mikels did with The Astro -Zombies or Al Adamson did with Dracula vs. Frankenstein but somewhere events beyond reasonable human control (such as the collective lack of any film making talent on the part of the entire cast and crew) come into play. And yet there is something genuinely entertaining about the films of folks like Ray Dennis Steckler, aka Cash Flagg, and even Herschell Gordon Lewis that can provide a certain portion of the population a sound evening of pseudo-surreal film watching. One could argue that this same said portion of the population is in desperate need of shock therapy or even lobotomies but that brings the subject matter a little too close to home to make me feel comfortable. So lets move on and discuss a truly odd film I had the masochistic pleasure of watching recently called The Monster and the Stripper, aka The Exotic Ones by the eccentric Ron Ormond.

* I do not like the term cult movie much lately as it is overused these days but is still most applicable at times. It has become a way to sell unsalable DVDs is all and the term has lost some of the categorical usefulness it once possessed. I long ago removed it as a category description here at the Cafe.

MORE OF RON ORMOND’S THE MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER HERE >>

PSYCHO A GO-GO

1965/Director: Al Adamson/Writers: Mark Eden, Chris Martino

Cast: Roy Morton, Tacey Robbins, Nadine Arlyn, John Armond, Joey Benson, Johnnie Decker, Kirk Duncan

Al Adamson is one of those filmmakers who divide the masses. In this case he divides not the masses of main stream movie goers from the purveyors of b-movies and fringe indie-films, but divides the very schlock movie crowd itself. Even lovers of “bad cinema” find Adamson’s work to be intolerable. Now before I continue I should make clear, as I have done before with films like The Creeping Terror, that while I put this film into my bad movies to avoid category I can still recommend it to the elect few. When I say avoid this film I am speaking here of course to the bulk of mankind who did not grow up in the shadow of a leaky nuclear power plant. There are of course those of the cognoscenti who spend a lot of time searching for these oddities in the back of small video/DVD stores or online in eclectic BT sites. I have to admit that I fall into this category of masochistic film viewers who wants to not avoid the works of people like Al Adamson but wants to see as many as I can. That being said, if you do not fall into this category you are well advised to steer clear of Psycho A Go-Go, and most certainly clear of this Double Feature’s second feature, Manos: The Hands of Fate.
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• Jeff Trent: Modern women. They’ve been like that all down through the ages. Especially in a spot like this.
• Eros: You do not need guns.
  Jeff Trent: Maybe we think we do.
• Paula Trent: …A flying saucer? You mean the kind from up there?
  Jeff Trent: Yeah, either that or its counterpart.
• Paula Trent: Now, don’t you worry. The saucers are up there. The graveyard is out there. But I’ll be locked up safely in there.
• Air Force Captain: Visits? That would indicate visitors.

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