IT CONQUERED THE WORLD

1956/Director: Roger Corman/Writer: Lou Rusoff

Cast: Peter Graves, Beverly Garland, Lee Van Cleef, Sally Fraser, Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze, Taggart Casey

I had originally planned to do this as a guest post Nate Yapp’s awesome Classic Horror site. I asked Nate for a film he needed reviewed and he suggested this one but as I am a master of procrastination way too much time has now gone by and if Nate reads this I apologize. Also my own sites suffer from neglect and regular posting and need to have something added to them once in a while as well. So thanks Nate for the offer and sorry for my scattered brained approach to horror-cult film blogging. I do not think I have the focus to be a dependable guest blogger. If you do not know about his site please go check it out. Like The Uranium Café it focuses on classic-cult-cheese classics and its focus stays primarily on films and offers guest posters a chance to to add a review to the archives. My restless nature has my site venture off into music and comic books sometimes as well and soon I am beginning a new series on movers and shakers behind the scenes of ‘great’ films, music and artwork. Some people in my bulging draft folder now include Sam Katzman, Paul Blaisdell (who did the makeup effects for this posts film), Edward L. Kahn and others. I went through a period of ‘blogging depression’ and apathy.  I think I am over that for now and Uranium Willy is back in the saddle for the time being but no doubt will slip off again.

Today’s post features a film that is surely among the classics of great American cheese. It Conquered the World may be one of the best example’s Roger Corman’s amazing ability to squeeze everything possible from a low budget and tight production schedule. Like many low budget horror/sci-fi films from the period there is a lot of dialog, rather than nail biting action and suspense, to carry the film. Now you either love all this dialog or you hate it. Many people find it all unbearably boring while others, like your humble  reviewer here, find the corny dialog, crazy scientific explanations and pompous messages more enjoyable than the action scenes. Just look at this sample from the film’s ending where  hero Paul Nelson (played by the late Peter Graves) muses over the actions of his misguided friend Tom Anderson (Lee Van Cleef):

He learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature… and because of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too late for himself that men have to find their own way, to make their own mistakes. There can’t be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves. And when men seek such perfection… they find only death… fire… loss… disillusionment… the end of everything that’s gone forward. Men have always sought an end to the toil and misery, but it can’t be given, it has to be achieved. There is hope, but it has to come from inside, from Man himself.

I think he could have added “Goodnight sweet Prince” at the end there and it would have become as timeless as anything the Immortal Bard himself would have penned.

SEE HOW IT CONQUERED THE WORLD HERE >>

QUEEN OF BLOOD

1966/Director: Curtis Harrington/Writer: Curtis Harrington

Cast: John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Judi Meredith, Dennis Hopper, Florence Marly, Forrest J Ackerman

ALSO KNOWN AS:
Flight to a Far Planet
Planet of Blood
Planet of Terror
Planet of Vampires
Space Vampires
The Green Woman

At first I was a little disappointed when I read that some of the stylistic and stunning space scenes from Curtis Harrington’s 1966 Queen of Blood were taken from a couple Russian sci-fi films made a couple years earlier, one being Meshte Nastreshu (1963) and the other Nebo Zovyot (1960). I have never seen either film and understand they are pretty hard to locate in stores or online, though Nebo Zovyot was released in some sort of edited fashion by producer Roger Corman and then fledgling director Francis Ford Coppola. But I cannot find that version of the film either. Harrington as well was working for Corman as an upcoming director and writer when Queen of Blood was released and the copy/paste type technique of filmmaking, “borrowing” scenes from obscure, foreign films, was a common practice for films produced by Corman at AIP at the time. Other filmmakers, some mentioned here at the Café like Al Adamson, also used this technique in patching together film projects. Adamson often pieced together fragments and sections of his own films made over a period of years but sometimes, as with Horror of the Blood Monsters, did something similar as was done by Harrington and Corman with Queen Blood, and used footage from an unknown Filipino film. The difference is that Horror of the Blood Monsters looks like crap basically and Queen of Blood appears almost seamless in the way the films merge together. I admit that while watching it, before reading any reviews which is how I usually watch films and avoid sites like my own brimming over with spoilers, I noticed a few odd moments but never thought I was seeing more than one film. I think the film looks marvelous really and the sets have that stylized science fiction look and feel of the sci-fi pulp paperback covers of the period.

MORE QUEEN OF BLOOD WITH THUMBNAIL GALLERY >>

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.
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BIG BAD MAMMA

1974/Director: Steve Carver/Writers: William W. Norton and Frances Doel

Cast: Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, Dick Miller, Robbie Lee, Susan Sennett, Noble Willingham

I will assume (because so far I have not seen it stated explicitly) that this white trash exploitation gem from producer Roger Corman is supposed to be roughly based on the real life exploits of mid-west gangster Ma Barker and her daughters in the Barker/Karpis Gang. While Corman had already touched on this theme in his 1970 film with Shelley Winters called Bloody Mamma he let director Steve Carver handle this less violent, funnier and sexier retelling of the legend with Angie Dickinson as Wilma McClatchie, an east Texas mother who is driven to crime to try and save her daugther’s Polly and Billie Jean from a life of saw dust and pork an’ beans.

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