Showing posts with label monsters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monsters. Show all posts
Theseus (Bob Mathias) saves the life of a banished princess, Ariadne (Rosanna Schiaffino), whose own wicked sister, Princess Fedra (also Schiaffino), wants to kill her, seeing her as a rival and a threat to her power. Fedra is aided in her evil by the nasty Chirone (Alberto Lupo), who tries to manipulate her father, King Minosse (Carlo Tamberlani). Theseus has Demetrios (Rick Battaglia) on his side, as well as others who are secretly working against bitchy Fedra. When Ariadne is sacrificed along with a batch of virgins to the monstrous minotaur in its cavern, Theseus makes his way into the rocky maze to deal once and for all with the horrible creature. While deliberately-paced, The Minotaur is not a bad Italian fantasy film, and the shaggy, fanged minotaur itself is not too shabby. If you're expecting something along the lines of a Ray Harryhausen fantasy film, however, look elsewhere. California-born Mathias won medals in the Olympics, was a former marine, and after his brief acting career wound up became director of Selective Service and a congressman. His performance is okay, and Schiaffino is similarly vivid.
Verdict: Entertaining muscle man-monster movie. ***.
Perseus (Richard Harrison), an "honorary" son of Hercules, becomes embroiled in a war between two kingdoms, Seriglos and Argos. The ranks of the soldiers from the former kingdom, where Princess Andromeda (Anna Ranalli) holds court, have been depleted by a man-eating dragon that emerges from a lake, and many more have fallen victim to a Medusa in a valley whose gaze turns men into stone statues. Perseus must first manage to conquer the dragon, then decides to free all of the soldiers turned to stone by taking on the nearly impossible task of killing the hideous gorgon. Apparently there were a number of Italian mythological flicks made that, at least in their American versions, featured assorted "Sons of Hercules" and this is one of them. Carlo Rambaldi worked on the monsters: a mechanical dragon with limited movement which nevertheless doesn't look too terrible; and the Medusa, who resembles a tree with one yellow glowing eye and many hair-like stalks. Richard Harrison was an American muscle man hired to star in many Italian epics of this nature; he is still working in films at seventy-nine. The settings and music are effective and the film is modestly entertaining, although not in the league of the original Clash of the Titans, which also features Perseus and Medusa. De Martino also directed Kirk Douglas in The Chosen.
Verdict: Fun Italian spectacle. **1/2.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
In honor of All Hallow's Eve Great Old Movies presents reviews of a crop of international horror films from different periods. We have the 1940's minor classic, House of Horrors with Rondo Hatton; the modern zombie thriller World War Z; the fifties British creature feature The Crawling Eye; the rare Italian psycho-thriller Spasmo; the Spanish shocker The House That Screamed; and the American horror-comedies An American Werewolf in London and Fade to Black. WARNING: Some of these movies are more horrible than horrifying. Have fun!
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| Peekaboo! |
THE CRAWLING EYE (aka The Trollenberg Terror/1958). Director: Quentin Lawrence. Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster.
In 1956 British TV presented a six-part sci-fi thriller entitled The Trollenberg Terror, directed by Quentin Lawrence but with a different cast [apparently this TV production is lost]. Two years later a feature-length film of the same title was released, renamed the juicier Crawling Eye for American distribution. Two young ladies who do a mind-reading act, Sarah (Jennifer Jayne) and Anne (Janet Munro) Pilgrim, are heading for Geneva by train, but get off at the small village of Trollenberg due to Anne's compulsion to do so. Another passenger named Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker) also disembarks and they all go to the hotel, where they learn that there have been a series of terrible mountain-climbing tragedies. High on the Trollenberg mountain there is an observatory that is researching cosmic rays, and has observed a radioactive cloud that moves about as if it were being directed ... Alan remembers similar incidents in the Andes, and that certain people with psychic abilities, like Anne, could be manipulated by whatever beings there are in the cloud. Speaking of which, said cloud starts moving down towards the hotel, blocking off escape, and the creatures inside reveal themselves ... The Crawling Eye is a suspenseful, creepy movie with some interesting notions (such as corpses being reanimated and going after victims with cleavers), headless bodies, and surprisingly convincing monsters that figure in the climax. The actors are all good, with Laurence Payne particularly effective as the reporter Prescott, and Tucker managing to summon up some energy in his portrayal of the hero; Jayne and especially Munro are also convincing, although Warren Mitchell is perhaps a little too weird as Professor Crevett. The movie has its share of illogical and silly moments, but it's still a superior "creature feature."
Verdict: If it blinks, watch out! ***.
Martin (Eric Stoltz), the son of Seth Brundle from the remake of The Fly, fully grown at five [!], is raised in an isolated section of a laboratory, whose head, Bartok (Lee Richardson) -- although he pretends to be a father to the boy -- is only hoping to use the creature he'll turn into as a kind of weapon. Martin wants love, and nearly gets it in the form of employee Beth (Daphne Zuniga), but even she is horrified when Martin begins ... changing ... due to his mutated genes. Then the Martin-creature takes off after all of his tormentors with predictable if messy results. The Fly II starts off well -- has some good scenes such as when Martin discovers his beloved dog didn't die but was used in a ghastly experiment -- but quickly becomes schlocky, and not even very good performances from Stoltz, Richardson and others can salvage it, although it is fairly entertaining throughout and moves fast. At least it's better than Return of the Fly, the sequel to the original. Some of the characters in this, such as Dr. Jainway (Ann Marie Lee), are so odious that they seem like variations of Snidely Whiplash!
Verdict: Stick with the first and best. **1/2.
From the outset and in full disclosure I must say that with one or two exceptions, I'm not a big fan of Japanese monster movies/science fiction. I also wouldn't compare Japanese FX man Eiji Tsuburaya to the great stop-motion specialist Ray Harryhausen, especially when it comes to monsters. Harryhausen brought his creatures to life with painstaking stop-motion animation, while Tsuburaya used "suit-mation" -- a guy in, say, a Godzilla costume -- and some models. I have seen most of the films discussed in this book and have to say there is absolutely nothing to compare to the fight with the skeletons at the end of Jason and the Argonauts. To be fair, Tsuburaya did more than just work on monsters, and the book details his contributions to Japanese cinema while also examining some aspects of his private life. Master of Monsters is well-researched, and packed with loads of behind-the-scenes black and white and color photographs. An over-sized trade paperback, it is printed on thick paper stock. If you're interested in Japanese sci fi and how the films were made, this is definitely the book to get.
Verdict: For fans of Japanese monster movies -- all others beware. ***.
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| The Seaview crew must battle a giant lizard in "Night of Terror" |
Irwin Allen's series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had an excellent first season, a good second season -- and then deteriorated badly. The producer clearly thought of it strictly as a Kiddie show, and figured the children wanted more and sillier monsters over good storylines. Reportedly this was extremely embarrassing to star Richard Basehart, who hated the scripts. There were far too many episodes in which Admiral Nelson (Basehart) or Captain Crane (David Hedison) are mesmerized or brainwashed into trying to destroy the Seaview or each other. The nadir of monsters were the idiotic lobster-like creatures (not to be confused with the Lobster Men of the fourth season) of "Doomsday Island." There were very few memorable episodes: "Day of Evil" combines nuclear reactor problems with an alien impersonating Nelson who wants to create a holocaust. "The Thing from Inner Space" features Hugh Marlowe as a TV host urging Nelson to search for a monster that killed his crew. "The Brand of the Beast" has Nelson turning into a werewolf and has some suspense. "The Day the World Ended" is another suspenseful episode in which all life on earth seems to have disappeared. "Deadly Waters" is a serious episode -- and the best of the season -- in which the Seaview is trapped on the ocean's bottom below crush depth. Seaman Riley was replaced by Patterson (Paul Trinka), and the unnamed Ship's Doctor (Richard Bull) made many appearances, along with Kowalksi (Del Monroe) and Sharkey (Terry Becker). The acting was generally quite good, with Basehart, Hedison and the others playing more or less with conviction regardless of how absurd the plots and creatures were, although Admiral Nelson seemed increasingly dyspeptic (along with Sharkey), possibly because of Basehart's feelings about the series. A big lizard from Allen's The Lost World showed up yet again in "Night of Terror."
Verdict: Way too much silliness and stupid scripts. **.
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| Joe goes into his dance while Jill plays piano |
MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949). Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack.
Hoping to incorporate a wild new theme into his new nightclub, entrepreneur Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong) travels to Africa wherein he encounters a huge gorilla who goes by the name of Joe Young. From infancy Joe has been the pet of Jill Young (Terry Moore), the only person who can control the very big ape [not quite of King Kong-proportions, but much large than the normal gorilla]. Smitten with a cowboy named Gregg (Ben Johnson), who works for O'Hara, and starry-eyed at all the thoughts O'Hara puts into her head, Jill agrees to take Joe and fly off to Hollywood. The two do an act that involves a rising piano, and in a great scene Joe plays tug of war with a dozen famous strongmen [leading to a brief and funny fight between him and Primo Carnera], but when patrons start throwing coins -- and then bottles -- at him, Joe gets a little upset. Jill isn't too thrilled by the fact that he can't roam free as he did on her ranch but has to be kept in a cell every night. Before long you know there has to be a disaster and Joe eventually runs riot in the nightclub in a rousing sequence ... Mighty Joe Young taps into the King Kong mystique but never achieves its mythic stature [and probably wasn't meant to] but on its own terms it's a wonderful picture with superb special effects and a certain amount of sentiment. Brought to life via stop-motion by Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, and others, Joe is a memorable creation, equally frightening and pitiable, with priceless sensitive facial expressions. The harrowing conclusion, which features a fire in an orphanage and is in color, is notable. Along with Joe, the three human leads all give good performances, and child actress Lora Lee Michel is a charming stand-out playing Jill as a little girl [she was also in The Snake Pit]. Schoedsack co-directed King Kong. Nice score by Rob Webb. Regis Toomey plays Jill's father in the opening sequence, and Nestor Paiva is a drunk in the nightclub who plays a role in the riot that occurs.
Verdict: King Kong "lite" perhaps but very entertaining and well-done. ***1/2.
Another shameless plug for my latest book, which covers about forty-five years of horror stories told in comic books. Many of these were influenced by films and radio, and sometimes the stories in horror comic books were turned into movies -- without crediting the comic book. Fans of the controversial and vivid EC horror comics will enjoy reading about the stories that were adapted for such series as Tales from the Crypt as well as for the theatrical films Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. Then there were long-running comics based on The Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff's Thriller. Giant bugs, bloodsucking vampires, flesh-eating fiends, giant voracious man-eating crabs, psychotic wives with axes, deals with the devil, adulterous husbands with murder on their minds, flesh-tearing werewolves, giant spiders with human heads and fangs, dinosaurs out-of-time and on the rampage, Frankenstein and Dracula -- The Horror Comics has it all. You'll read about such stories as "Airboy vs the Rats;" gory classics like "Foul Play;" weird ones like Simon and Kirby's "Head of the Family;" chilling heart-breakers like "Mr. Reilly, the Derelict" and "The Kid's Night Out;" adaptations of Poe, Lovecraft, Stevenson and Ray Bradbury -- and much more, such as the classic terror tale from Dell's Ghost Stories: "The Horror of Dread End," which gave many a kid nightmares back in the day. You can order direct from the publisher's website or from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.