BONUS BLOG -- 1960: EYES WITHOUT A FACE

What’s it about?

A young woman’s body is fished out of a river in Paris, an apparent victim of drowning. Notably, the woman’s entire face except for her eyes is “an open wound” -- a disfigurement that matches that of a girl recently reported missing. The girl’s father, a famous doctor in Paris, identifies the body as that of his daughter and she is buried at the family crypt. However, the doctor knows full well that the body is not his daughter’s -- she is safely sequestered in his sprawling clinic in the suburbs while he attempts to cure her disfigurement with plastic surgery.

The dead girl, in fact, was the unwilling subject of one of the doctor’s attempts to graft a new face onto his daughter’s skull. Despite the failure of the experiment, the doctor presses on -- enlisting his female assistant to gain the trust of another girl and lure her to the clinic with the promise of a room for rent. But as the experiments continue -- no more successful than before -- the police notice similarities among missing girls in Paris and begin to close in on the doctor. Meanwhile, even his daughter starts to lose hope and resist his cruel experiments.




Is it any good?

There was a time in my life when I spent a great deal of time thinking about what exactly the definition of “science fiction” might be. But it was eventually stories like EYES WITHOUT A FACE that convinced me that the exercise was more or less hopeless. Face transplants were certainly science fiction in 1960 (and were so even until just a few years ago), but every experiment in the movie is ultimately unsuccessful -- some of them disastrously so. The movie also feels more like a tragic and macabre character study than a typical sci-fi flick, but this is no doubt in part a result of different cultural and artistic fascinations in France as compared to the U.S., the U.K., or the Soviet Union. In fact, one of the interesting things about considering EYES WITHOUT A FACE through the lens of sci-fi is that the scientific experiments are all presented very clinically and soberly, while any fantastic elements arguably arise from the shockingly cruel behavior of characters driven by guilt, despair, or blind obedience.




If EYES WITHOUT A FACE is classified in a genre at all, it usually seems to be thought of more as a horror picture, but I’m not sure how well it fits that label either. It was originally marketed as a horror flick in the U.S. -- it first showed in an edited and dubbed version under the title THE HORROR CHAMBER OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS on a double-bill with 1959's THE MANSTER (a movie which I am pretty fond of, but which is really far more of a standard thriller-chiller). And there are certainly horrific elements in the movie: the disfigured girl who almost always appears in a creepy mask, the misguided and murderous doctor, the pack of continuously barking dogs caged in the clinic’s basement, the visits to the family's crypt, and even the imposing old estate that serves as the clinic itself. But the most horrific and most memorable sequence in the movie is also the most scientific. It’s a long, understated, and utterly clinical sequence that depicts one of the face transplant experiments with in a straightforward and un-melodramatic way. The mad scientist here doesn’t jump around shouting, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Instead, he hold s his forceps carefully steady while his assistant daubs sweat off his brow.

It’s that sequence, I think, that makes me think that EYES WITHOUT A FACE belongs in some capacity in the science-fiction genre (though not to the exclusion of other genres, of course). It draws much of its tension and horror from the cold, detached way that the doctor and his assistant go about the procedure and from the little medical details that make it seem more realistic. Even though there’s nothing particularly fantastic or futuristic about a failed experiment, it’s almost impossible not to take it as an invitation to consider the limits of science, the hubris of man, and the devastating consequences of the combination of the two -- in other words, an invitation to consider some of the favorite themes of science fiction.

1960: THE SILENT STAR

What’s it about?

A newly discovered alien artifact linked to the Tunguska meteorite explosion of 1908 appears to be a recording in an unknown language from an exploded spaceship. Although enough of the recording is deciphered to determine that the spaceship originated in Venus, most of the message remains a mystery -- and Venus itself stays strangely silent despite repeated attempts at contacting the inhabitants by radio. A multinational expedition is quickly mounted, incorporating crew members from all the great countries of the Earth: the Soviet Union, East Germany, the United States, Japan, China, India, Poland, and of course the nation of Africa.

While en route to Venus, the scientists continue trying to decipher the remainder of the alien message while dodging the usual perils of space travel (i.e., incredibly boring meteor storms). It’s only once the rocket has moved beyond radio range with Earth that they realize the message was not intended for humans at all -- instead, it’s a report on the feasibility of an invasion of Earth. Several decades have passed since the recording was made, so the crew decides to press on with their mission and make peace with Venus if a threat still exists. Attempts to contact the planet still yield no results and even in orbit the thick cloud cover makes it impossible to see the surface, so the crew decides to land and contact the inhabitants of Venus in person.




Is it any good?

THE SILENT STAR is very much like a socialist version of DESTINATION MOON (1950) or FLIGHT TO MARS (1951) -- much of the movie is taken up by the mounting of the interplanetary expedition and the resulting trip through space. The intervening ten years have made a bit of a difference, however. Although the rocket is still an impractically cavernous movie rocket, the details of the space voyage ring a little truer. The astronauts wear uniforms and spacesuits not too different from those that real cosmonauts wore, they eat liquified food, they rely largely on computers for navigation and control, and so on. On the other hand, those extra ten years also serve to emphasize just how creaky some of the plot contrivances of the space flight are. There is the usual meteor storm and the usual space walk to repair the damage, but THE SILENT STAR really seems to just be going through the paces as none of it is especially exciting or suspenseful or even important to the plot.

The sets, costumes, props, and sci-fi designs are all very nifty. Venus especially has a compellingly weird look, like a landscape illustration out of a Dr Seuss book. And the interior of the rocket itself probably has more in common with later spaceships like STAR TREK’s Enterprise than with the clunky submarine-inspired rockets of earlier sci-fi flicks. The music used over the opening credits was also very promising and raised my hopes for some weird sound design. It reminded me a little bit of the otherworldly score for PLANET OF THE APES, but unfortunately I can’t really say I noticed any music at all after the movie started. The action sequences also leave a lot to be desired. As soon as something ostensibly exciting starts happening, the special effects sputter out -- this is most obvious during the meteor storm when the cosmonauts are thrown about in high speed, so the sequence feels just a few bars of “Yakety Sax” away from a Benny Hill chase scene.




Another downfall of THE SILENT STAR is the dialogue. The movie starts with a long section of expository narration -- and, in fact, the exposition and explanation continues via news reports and character monologues for almost the first half hour. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima by the U.S. is also referenced repeatedly and figures in the back stories of two characters. (One is an American scientist who regrets he helped build the bomb. The other is a Japanese woman whose mother was killed in the attack on Hiroshima.) It does seem a little unsporting for the movie to pay lip service to multinational cooperation, but then also to continuously remind viewers that the U.S. is full of decadent war mongers. But then it’s a Soviet bloc production, so I’d probably be more disappointed if it didn’t have at least some party-approved propaganda. As far as the whole movie goes, I guess my final judgment is that there are a lot of “things to look at” in THE SILENT STAR (e.g., a super-computer, a chess-playing robot, some neat Venutian technology, a cool rocket), but not a whole lot else that is too interesting. The characters, the themes, the dialogue, and the action are all pretty simplistic. I’m not sorry I saw it, but it’s really more historically and culturally curious than enjoyable.

There is also an English-dubbed version of this movie which was released internationally in the sixties that goes by the name THE FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS. I watched about half an hour of that version as well, and though it’s essentially the same story, a lot of footage was cut from the beginning of the film. (Some characters also got new western-friendly nationalities -- for instance, the Polish robotics expert is French instead.) This not only removes most of the criticism of America, but also tightens up the pacing in that section. In the German-language version, much of the first half hour is facile politicking, and it’s really no loss to see it excised. But the English-language version also cuts much of the cosmonaut back stories as well. While most of that is no great loss either, there are some neat scenes that get lost (like one where two of the crew members take time to sit down in a field and appreciate the solidity of the Earth before blast off), as well as some really great mountain scenery that any cough drop commercial would kill for.




What else happened this year?

-- Roger Corman produced and directed the comedy/horror/sci-fi movie THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (emphasis on comedy) about a man-eating, talking potted plant named Audrey Jr. Though filmed in only two days on a minuscule budget, it eventually inspired a stage musical which had its own movie adaptation starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin in 1986.
-- Taking place in an alternate timeline where Britain somehow leads the space race, THE MAN IN THE MOON follows the adventures of a normal guy who becomes the number one candidate for a trip to the moon thanks to his amazing ability to shrug off stress. Hijinks ensue, many of them involving astronaut training equipment of dubious utility.
-- The French sort-of-horror, sort-of-sci-fi flick EYES WITHOUT A FACE follows a monomaniacal doctor as he attempts to graft a new face on his disfigured daughter’s skull with the usual disastrous consequences.
-- Apparently alien telepathic children coexist uneasily with the rest of the inhabitants of a small English town in VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. The movie is adapted from a John Wyndham novel called THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS.
-- Fritz Lang returned to one of his most diabolical characters in THE 1,000 EYES OF DR MABUSE. The ensuing Mabuse revival ran through the early sixties and made the telepathic hypnotist a villain on par with classic monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein. (But only in parts of Europe.)

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1960...

This is a tough one. I’d say that every movie in the list above (including THE SILENT STAR) is pretty good in its own way, but I don’t think that any of them are necessarily great. My advice would be to watch whichever one sounds most interesting to you, but if you just want an enjoyable sci-fi movie then I’d say go with either VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED or THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.

BONUS BLOG -- 1959: THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL

What’s it about?

Coal miner Harry Belafonte is trapped when the shaft he’s inspecting caves in, and five days later help still hasn’t arrived. He manages to dig himself out, but upon emerging on the surface he finds an apparently empty world. Driving to New York City, he sees the same emptiness everywhere -- abandoned cars jam the Brooklyn Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel, but otherwise there is no sign of any people or what happened to them. Eventually he learns that a poisonous radioactive dust was released into the Earth’s atmosphere during a quick-brewing nuclear war. It engulfed the planet and killed everything within days (including most animals and plants) but then decayed into harmlessness in the five days before he surfaced.

The lone survivor sets up base in an apartment building in New York -- hooking up a generator, collecting food, searching for other survivors via shortwave radio, and rescuing books and pieces of art from the crumbling city. Unlike most last men on Earth, this one doesn’t have any zombies or mutants or even feral animals to deal with. He is literally alone (except for a couple of mannequins) until two other survivors also arrive. First a woman and then another man show up in New York, and they form an uneasy community where racial and sexual conflicts whirl just below the surface until they erupt into a final confrontation.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Unfortunately, I watched this in probably the worst possible venue to see any movie. It was playing near the end of a 24-hour science fiction marathon, and even though I showed on purpose to see this particular movie, most of the rest of the audience were exhausted after an all night/all day vigil and could have cared less about some forgotten movie from the fifties about the end of the world. It’s a bit difficult to assess the quality of a movie that was continuously interrupted by snide comments and snores, but overall I thought it was pretty well done. It’s much more of a B-picture than ON THE BEACH, but this one is also more interested in the speculative aspects of the end of the world.

Regarding the apocalypse itself, a lot of seemingly important details are glossed over or ignored entirely. For instance, Harry Belafonte never encounters a single corpse and it’s never explained where they are all supposed to have gone. (Presumably the MPAA censors picked them all up -- yet 1960's THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is another end-of-the-world picture from just one year later that is rife with dead bodies.) It’s also not clear exactly how much of the Earth’s wildlife has been killed. Characters are ecstatic that a couple of tree branches still have enough life to blossom, but a very obvious flock of birds passes without any comment in another scene. But if you’re able to ignore all the hanging whys and hows concerning the nuclear attack itself, the movie does become a pretty gripping tale of lone survivors in a dead world. Harry Belafonte spends a lot of time by himself in the Big Apple, dealing with loneliness. (There are some neat shots of an abandoned Times Square here, just barely preempting I AM LEGEND by a mere fifty years.) Likewise, the relationship between the man and the woman is developed slowly -- and they just seem to be getting comfortable with each other when the third survivor shows up and introduces an entirely new dynamic.

Much of the first two-thirds of the movie does feel a bit familiar since it’s territory that’s been gone over so many times since 1959 -- but that’s no fault of THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL. But one interesting wrinkle (and part of the point of the movie) is the racial element. Harry Belafonte is black and the other two survivors are both white. Even when Harry Belafonte and the woman are seemingly completely alone in the world, they still share an uneasy understanding that they won’t be repopulating the world together any time soon, even though they are attracted to each other. This is frustrating to a modern viewer, but the characters seem unsure what the rules of the new world will be when other survivors eventually show up. And frustrating or not, it does point out how deeply some conventions can be ingrained in people. It is in fact the arrival of the white man that forces them to honestly face their feelings. The rapid descent of the two men into competitiveness and then violence is fairly predictable, but it’s never totally clear how things will resolve themselves until the final shot of the movie.

1959: ON THE BEACH

What’s it about?

American submarine commander Gregory Peck brings his boat to harbor in Melbourne after the northern hemisphere is wiped out by nuclear war. But the Australian refuge is only temporary, as winds are expected to sweep lethal radioactive dust across every part of the globe within five months. While ashore, Gregory Peck strikes up a friendship with lonely party girl Ava Gardner -- but memories of his wife and family cause him to reject her romantic advances.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the military command send the submarine on a last-ditch mission to investigate wireless signals broadcasting from the vicinity of San Diego. Young Aussie lieutenant Anthony Perkins and scientist Fred Astaire accompany the submarine’s crew on the mission -- but all the while time slips by and hope dwindles, and the crew feels the pangs of being separated by duty from the rest of humanity during their last months.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

No movie that stars both Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire can be all bad. And Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins (looking his gangliest and most baby-faced) are no slouches in the acting department either. The story and dialogue sometimes drift into maudlin and formulaic territory, and the movie is quite a bit longer than your average sci-fi flick. But the actors are mostly terrific, the characters are interesting, and the premise is so grim that I only occasionally got restless. The movie is not exactly your average sci-fi movie and not exactly your average Hollywood romance -- and even though it won’t win any prizes in either category, the mixture is unique enough to be interesting.

ON THE BEACH is also one of those restrained and dignified science fiction movies where characters barely seem to want to mention the fantastic elements. Fred Astaire talks a little about the nuclear war that brought the world to the brink of destruction, but always in vague terms. In fact, nobody in Australia is even really sure who started the war or why, and it’s never explained exactly what kind of weapon poisoned the air. The movie is also only intermittently interested in how an entire nation would react to its own impending destruction. There’s some occasional speculative flashes -- most notably, the government plans to hand out suicide pills so people can spare themselves the horrors of radiation sickness. But otherwise, the movie seems to think that people would just go on doing the same things they’ve always done, only more grimly and sardonically.




The effects of radiation sickness are also never really shown. The symptoms are described, but there aren’t any scenes of hospital wards full of the afflicted. Nor do we ever see any dead bodies -- though, to be fair, there’s no reason for there to be any corpses in Australia yet, and a crew member who goes ashore in San Francisco does describe what he sees. But primarily the movie is concerned with only a handful of personal reactions to the coming catastrophe: Gregory Peck is duty-bound, Ava Gardner is heartbroken, Fred Astaire is fatalistic, Anthony Perkins is soulful. It’s all more or less what you’d expect, but it’s a good enough movie (and, in places, a dark enough one) to be worth watching. It’s also unusual in the sense that there aren’t too many movies from the 1950s that had both all-star casts and sci-fi themes.

Finally, I’d say something about the Australian location, but I can’t really comment on its authenticity. I can report that there aren’t any Crocodile Dundee caricatures -- the Aussies all seem fairly normal and civilized. In fact, they greet the coming eradication of life on their continent with admirable reserve, stoicism, and a lack of looting.




What else happened this year?

-- 4D MAN is a pretty great little sci-fi potboiler about two brothers who develop a process that allows people to walk through walls. As in Universal's version of THE INVISIBLE MAN, amazing powers inevitably bring out insanity and cruelty in those who acquire them.
-- William Castle’s THE TINGLER is worth seeing for a handful of memorable scenes -- among them one in which Vincent Price becomes the first person in a movie to drop acid, and another in which the titular monster famously breaks the fourth wall and goes after the audience.
-- This was also a banner year for horrible movies. The most well-known is no doubt Ed Wood’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, but many others almost equally incompetent were also released the same year.
-- Although many of the B-movies of 1959 would drive anybody to despair, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE will please people who appreciate such things.
-- THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL puts Harry Belafonte in Will Smith’s I AM LEGEND shoes in one of the earliest movies about lone survivors in an empty world. There are no zombies or vampires, but there are unconventional racial and sexual politics (for 1959 at least, and possibly even for today as well).

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1959...

Though it's not the best movie ever made, I think the one from this year that I'd most like to see again is THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL.

BONUS BLOG -- 1958: I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE

What’s it about?

After leaving his bachelor party, a man has an encounter with a horrific alien on the road home. The alien imprisons him, assumes the man’s form, and is subsequently married to the man’s fiancee the next day. The new wife almost immediately notices the difference in her husband, but isn’t sure at first what to make of it. A year later, the situation comes to a crisis when the woman starts to worry both about her inability to get pregnant and her husband’s apparent penchant for killing animals. Following him one night, she discovers that he is reporting to an alien spaceship hidden on the outskirts of town.

The woman tries to convince others that her husband has been taken over by an alien being. At first afraid that others will think she’s crazy, she soon begins to realize the real danger is that others in town may also be aliens themselves -- including the police. Desperate to escape, she finds that all communication has been cut off with the outside world. After begging her doctor to investigate the site where the spaceship is hidden, she returns home and -- at her wits’ end -- confronts her husband with her suspicions.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Somebody could probably take this premise and make a truly fantastic movie about the ways that people discover strange new truths about the people they marry. This is not that movie -- but it’s nevertheless a very interesting thriller with some neat sci-fi excitement and spookiness. But what really makes the movie interesting is how much of it is underplayed. There’s a generous helping of aliens and spaceships and ray guns, but there are also plenty of scenes where the husband merely appears to be irritable and secretive, and the wife uncertain and confused. Except for a brief moment when the husband vents his frustration with inhuman strength, it would be easy to believe that this was simply an ordinary young couple who were starting to feel the strain of married life.




Much like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956), the alien invaders here have a sympathetic story to tell -- their women were all killed in a planetary cataclysm, and they need to find a way of mating with another planet’s women or else their race will die out. But also like that other movie, these alien bodysnatchers display moments of intense and off-handed cruelty -- as when the husband strangles the family dog, or when a cop casually executes a human who has learnt too much about his alien nature. The contrast makes for a great tension, especially since the actor who plays the husband is a pretty physically terrifying guy. He often looks on the verge of snapping, and it’s easy to understand why his wife is so afraid. The aliens also react differently to finding themselves in human bodies -- some are disgusted, others simply resigned, and others actually enjoy the experience. It probably wouldn’t take much to find some subtext about human reactions to marriage in all of that.

The final confrontation between alien and wife also reveals that the aliens are slowly becoming more human the longer they stay in their bodies. Unable to love or feel happiness at first, they begin to experience emotions by the end of the movie. So even as the humans begin to close in on the hidden spaceship, there are more and more reasons to be sympathetic towards the invaders. After all, the alien version of the husband is the one that we’ve known for almost the entire length of the movie. If the “real” husband is brought back, then he would be more of a stranger than the alien (at least to the audience). All in all, this is a pretty terrific movie and one that I would definitely recommend. The plot is obviously pretty similar to that of many other bodysnatcher movies, but the movie is just so compelling and intense that the familiar situation doesn’t seem trite or worn at all.

1958: FIEND WITHOUT A FACE

What’s it about?

A U.S. air force outpost in Manitoba conducts experiments with atomic powered long-range radar, but can’t seem to generate enough power to keep their equipment working consistently. Meanwhile, mysterious deaths near the air base cause the locals (already suspicious of the Americans) to question whether they want the GIs there at all. Things only get weirder when autopsies of the victims reveal that their brains and spinal cords have been removed through tiny holes in the back of their necks.

Military investigators -- convinced that the atomic reactor can’t be the cause of the deaths -- begin to zero in on a local scientist who is researching telekinesis and other mental phenomena. After some hemming and hawing, the scientist breaks down and confesses that he siphoned power from the atomic reactor to aid him in experiments that he hoped would create physical manifestations from thought alone. It seems that one of these invisible manifestations is responsible for the spate of deaths, sucking out its victims’ brains and spinal cords in an attempt to reproduce itself. As the monsters grow more and more numerous, they take control of the power plant and jolt themselves with enough juice that they take a fully physical form and finally become visible. Meanwhile, a handful of desperate humans barricade themselves in a farmhouse surrounded by the brain monsters -- and then things get crazy.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Let me put it this way: I cannot imagine anybody watching the last fifteen minutes of this movie and being disappointed. The first hour is a decent sci-fi procedural that alternates between invisible monster attacks, the official military investigation, and vigilante action by the angry Canadians. It’s pretty standard stuff, with its fair share of both neat moments and silly ones. But nothing in that part of the movie can prepare a person for the exuberant insanity of the last fifteen minutes. It starts with frightened people looking out the windows as disembodied brains and spinal cords menacingly climb the trees outside, and only gets crazier from there.

Why the monsters look like brains and spinal cords is never really satisfactorily explained. That’s what the scientist who was doing the thought-materialization experiment envisioned, and that’s what appeared. But as to why he decided to envision that -- well, who cares? The important thing is that everything about them is totally creepy. They are, after all, essentially motile internal organs with little eyestalks waving around on top. The way they inch along the ground is creepy. The way they sound as they approach is creepy. The way they fly through windows -- well, that’s hilarious actually.




I’m not even really sure what else to say about the movie because after you see the ending the rest of it just doesn’t matter anymore. The fiends are rendered in a combination of stop-motion and rubber prop effects, both of which are done fairly well. Although they are very squicky and creepy, they are not particularly scary and there were definitely moments during the climactic fight at the end where I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. So this is neither the tense claustrophobic horror of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), nor is it the cruddy campiness of an Ed Wood movie. But it has its own brand of unabashed audaciousness that makes it both utterly indelible and completely unique. And even though this is far from the best movie of the decade, it is still absolutely something that every fan of 1950s sci-fi or horror should see for themselves.




What else happened this year?

-- Vincent Price gave his budding career as a horror icon a big boost by starring in THE FLY, one of my favorite movies of all time.
-- Meanwhile, Steve McQueen was fostering his own career by starring opposite a blob of purple silicon jelly in, well, THE BLOB.
-- ATTACK OF THE 50 FT WOMAN is one of the cheapest and worst sci-fi movies I have ever seen, but somehow it is still considered a camp classic.
-- I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE puts its own spin (and social commentary) on the bodysnatcher premise by swapping a bridegroom for an alien invader on the eve of his wedding.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1958...

It ought to be either THE BLOB or THE FLY.

BONUS BLOG -- 1957: THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

What’s it about?

Botanist Peter Cushing disregards the objections of his wife and mysterious warnings from a local wise man to join an expedition scaling the Himalayas in search of the fabled Yeti. Tempers soon flare on the five-man expedition when it becomes clear that not everyone is there for the same reason. Nerves fray even further when one man is injured by the carelessness of another, and vital equipment is destroyed in an angry scuffle. By the time a Yeti appears (only to be promptly shot at by a trigger-happy trapper), the men in the party are already practically at each other’s throats.

Meanwhile, Peter Cushing’s wife becomes concerned when the expedition’s native guide returns to the base camp in a panic. Though the locals try to hide the truth, she insists on mounting her own rescue party to seek out her husband. But things go from bad to worse on the mountain as foul weather moves in and the Yeti begin literally playing mind games with the survivors of the first party.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Peter Cushing would eventually go on to play Victor Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, the vampire hunter Van Helsing, and many other roles in Hammer movies, but this is one of his first for the studio. I haven’t seen many of Peter Cushing’s other movies, but he is certainly one of the very best things about THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN. And in a movie where the focus is heavily on interpersonal interactions rather than scary monsters, appealing actors are pretty darn important.

It took me a while to identify the pattern, but there’s a coyness about Hammer’s sci-fi flicks that sits in stark contrast to most American movies of the period. Whereas American movies usually start developing right away whatever fantastic mystery or conflict they have for their centerpiece, Hammer flicks instead reserve the sci-fi elements until almost the last possible moment and spend most of their early running time on character interactions. (This is not necessarily true of every single Hammer movie -- but it’s true of many of them, and none more so than THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN.) Consequently, the Hammer movies often seem more naturalistic since we see many of the characters dealing with perfectly ordinary conflicts at home or in their jobs. “More naturalistic” doesn’t necessarily mean “better”, of course, since it’s perfectly possible to make a very boring movie about domestic discord and work stress. But it certainly gives the pictures a different mood than most of those from other studios, and often they come off feeling as though the scripts were written for a more adult audience. The fact that it’s a different approach makes it feel a bit like a breath of fresh air for that reason alone. But anybody who approaches this movie with the quite reasonable expectation that they will see a lot of exaciting abominable snowman action is going to be sorely disappointed.




In fact, I will admit that I find Hammer’s skewed focus frustrating at times -- breath of fresh air or not. The abominable snowmen do eventually show up, but they are kept entirely off-screen (except for a single hairy arm) until the final minutes of the movie. I’m not sure if that was done for budgetary reasons or if it’s the manifestation of some perverse British desire to deny the audience, but the refusal to show a clear shot of the title creature pretty quickly became both annoying and absurd. Fortunately, much of the picture would work just as well if there weren’t any Yeti at all, and the story is really quite good. Peter Cushing is a scientific man who comes to realize that the expedition he’s joined has commercial objectives that he strongly disagrees with. But by the time he learns the truth, the party is already high up among the peaks of the Himalayas, and there’s nothing he can do about it without endangering himself and the others. There are also some interesting theories put forth about who the Yeti are -- rather than evolutionary throwbacks, it’s suggested that they could be the inheritors of the Earth who are simply waiting for man to annihilate himself. So despite the disappointing dearth of actual live Yeti action, there are still quite a few things to recommend THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN -- but primarily to those already disposed to like Peter Cushing or Hammer movies.

1957: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN

What’s it about?

While cruising the ocean in his brother’s yacht, a man is exposed to a strange shimmering mist. The event doesn’t seem to have any ill effects at first, but six months later the man suspects he is getting smaller when his clothes no longer seem to fit. After several trips to the doctor, a set of X-ray photographs prove that he’s not just losing weight but is in fact gradually shrinking. Eventually the man reaches a height of about three feet -- at which point his doctors discover a method of arresting the shrinking, but still no way to reverse it.

Treated like a freak and hounded by the media, the man and his wife stay confined in their home where their nerves soon fray. The man finds brief solace in the friendship of another little person, but soon discovers that he is shrinking again despite his treatments. Ultimately reduced to a height of just a couple inches, disaster strikes one day when the family cat chases and traps him in the basement. His wife believes he’s been killed, and the man soon finds himself faced with several seemingly insurmountable challenges -- supply himself with the necessities of life, evade a monstrous spider, and contact the others in the house to let them know he still lives. And all the while, he continues to grow smaller and smaller.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

I knew that this would be my kind of movie as soon as the jazzy, hip opening credits started to roll. (Pro tip: Jazzy, hip opening credits are always a good sign.) And when I realized just minutes later that the main character isn’t any kind of scientist -- well, that was just the icing on the cake. Until I started watching a lot of 1950s sci-fi flicks all in a row, it had never registered just how many of them have scientists for main characters. Movies with scientist protagonists tend to be largely about the heroic leads trying desperately to solve whatever fantastic problem they’re facing with the vigorous application of (more or less ridiculous) science. But since the hero here, played by Grant Williams, isn’t a scientific person at all, it shifts the focus of the movie from problem-solving to simply coping with a strange condition and then eventually to surviving in an weird and hostile world. It’s a much easier kind of story for me to relate to, and the fact that it was different from most of the other movies I’ve been watching is a bonus as well.




The first half of the movie follows the shrinking man as he incredibly diminishes in size. This is taken in a few stages, and there’s a long interlude where he’s about three feet tall (the height at which his shrinking is temporarily arrested) that’s full of terrific over-sized props. Everything looks very realistic, and the movie never tries to play the difference in scale for laughs. Don’t get me wrong -- it’s always funny when a tiny man talks into a giant telephone, but the movie does its best to show the horror and humiliation of the situation rather than just the absurdity. This is also the section where Grant Williams is the least likeable -- he’s self-pitying, jealous, paranoid, angry, petulant, and frightened. Afraid to leave his house, he pouts and seethes and is pretty believably unpleasant.

It’s not until he’s left entirely to his own resources to survive in the basement that the shrinking man really starts to show his heroic side. Reduced to only a couple inches in height, ordinary tasks (like climbing the stairs back up to the first floor) become impossible. But he quickly finds a hitherto untapped resourcefulness that lets him claw his way -- ever so briefly -- to the top of the basement food chain. The only real weakness of this part of the movie is the melodramatic first-person narration that crops up from time to time. The screenplay was written by Richard Matheson (based on an earlier novel of his own), and the blame for the purple prose no doubt falls on his shoulders. I’d almost say that the narration ought to have been cut entirely, but it does help to reinforce the ultimate desolation of Grant Williams’s situation -- even as he surmounts the challenges of the basement, he continues to shrink all the time and even problems he’s already solved grow continually more difficult. And, of course, even being reunited with his wife won’t be more than a temporary happy ending since he’s quickly approaching a size at which he’ll be too small even to communicate with other humans. Consequently, the ultimate ending is surprisingly uncertain -- not the only ambiguous ending in the annals of 1950s sci-fi, but one of the few.




What else happened this year?

-- 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH is probably the best movie of the decade to feature Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion effects. This one follows an alien from Venus that starts out tiny and cute, but quickly grows to a frightening size, goes on a rampage and then climbs a famous urban landmark.
-- THE MONOLITH MONSTERS is another Grant Williams picture that casts him in the more typical role of a geologist trying to solve an extraordinary problem. But, uncommon for the 1950s, the challenges he faces are not actually monsters at all but simply forces of nature that are running out of control.
-- Hammer Studios officially took over Universal’s monster franchises with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Starring Peter Cushing as the Baron Frankenstein, it helped set the course Hammer would follow for the next several decades.
-- Peter Cushing also stars in Hammer’s THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN, about a Himalayan expedition dangerously beset both by personality conflicts and by psychic Yeti.
-- Willis O’Brien, the other great stop-motion animator of the time, lends his talents to THE BLACK SCORPION, a decidedly low budget entry in the giant monster sub-genre.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1957...

Make it THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN.

BONUS BLOG -- 1956: EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS

What’s it about?

A husband and wife working on a rocket project encounter a flying saucer while driving on a desert highway. Though they first assume it was merely an isolated fluke incident, they soon begin to realize that something is shooting down each of the satellites as quickly as they are put in orbit. Then, during their latest rocket launch, another flying saucer appears. Deciding to shoot first and ask questions later, security personnel at the launch site precipitate a conflict that leaves the facility in ruins with the husband and wife apparently the only survivors of the catastrophe.

In the aftermath of the destruction, an unlikely coincidence allows the survivors to decode a message from the outer space visitors demanding a meeting to discuss terms of peace. Although the government seems inclined to take the idea of flying saucers seriously, the bureaucracy moves too slowly to suit the two survivors. They contact the invaders on their own and are taken up in one of the flying saucers where they witness a display of destructive power. The visitors then issue an ultimatum -- the Earth must surrender within 56 days or else. (The “else” is not clearly explicated, but it seems to involve beams of energy that make things explode.) When the flying saucers return at the end of the period, they expect the Earth to give up without a fight. But the scientists have used the 56 day reprieve to build a new weapon which will level the playing field between man and invader.




Is it any good?

This is the second sci-fi collaboration between producer Charles Schneer and stop-motion special effects master Ray Harryhausen. The first was 1955's IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, which is a pretty ho-hum giant monster movie about a radioactive octopus that gets a craving for the citizens of San Francisco. EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS is a big step up in terms of originality and excitement -- though it still doesn’t compare with the good times of the best Schneer/Harryhausen collaborations from the sixties.

One of the most admirable things about this movie is that it doesn’t avoid showing the spectacle of an all-out alien invasion -- something that’s more rare in sci-fi flicks than I would have suspected at the start of this project. With the obvious exception of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, most 1950s alien invasions involve aliens that either look almost exactly like humans or who assume human form to infiltrate and conquer from the inside. But here we get plenty of flying saucers, disintegrator rays, inhuman aliens, and a climactic full-scale attack on Washington, D.C. The best parts of the movie take place on the flying saucers, where the aliens and their human guests have a long conversation about the reasons for the invasion and the fate of the Earth. At times, the aliens are almost sympathetic -- but then they demonstrate a casual brutality that proves it’s really us or them.




The flying saucers are also some of the best looking ones I’ve ever seen. Ray Harryhausen’s living monsters have so much personality that I wasn’t really sure what he’d be able to do with a mechanical object that doesn’t have facial expressions or body language. But the effects of the saucers in flight are pretty great, even if the crumbling buildings look like they’re falling apart in slow motion. It’s disappointing that the aliens are people in suits (rather than Harryhausen effects), but they at least look fairly respectable. But as with so many sci-fi flicks from the time, the script is once again the weak point. It’s certainly not terrible and it stays pretty exciting almost entirely throughout, but there are some parts of it (such as the inexplicable 56-day window the invaders give Earth to prepare their defenses) that make no sense at all. The climactic battle is also a bit of a let-down, save for a few nice shots of flying saucers destroying famous Washington landmarks. To be honest, there is plenty you could laugh at here if that’s your kind of thing, but this one definitely delivers enough of the good stuff (like nifty special effects, weirdo alien technology, and overall excitement) to be better than your average 1950s B-movie.

1956: THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US

What’s it about?

In the third and final installment of Universal’s Gill-man franchise, a party of scientists again go looking for the creature after he escaped from a Florida marine park at the end of REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955). During a test dive to calibrate their sophisticated sonar equipment, the scientists spot the creature but are unable to get near enough to capture him. The creature then leads them upriver into the dark waters of the Everglades, until the scientists are forced to follow in a small open boat. Having evened the odds a bit, the creature forces a confrontation which ends with his capture -- and with him being badly burned in the process.

The scientists take the creature back to the waiting vessel where they’d hoped to study him, and find that the creature’s gills have been almost entirely burned away. However, they discover that he also possesses an unused set of lungs, so they perform emergency surgery to make them operational. Once the creature begins breathing through his lungs, he undergoes strange physical changes -- shedding many of his fish-like qualities and becoming increasingly human in appearance. Unsure as to whether the “humanizing” of the creature will extend to his behavior as well, the scientists bring him ashore for observation. But rivalries and jealousies among the scientists soon lead to a catastrophe.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Universal’s famed horror unit produced a handful of movies after this one, but THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US is the last installment of their last major franchise. It also happens to be one of the best monster movies Universal ever produced, and is well worth watching both on its own merits and also as the conclusion of a film making epoch. In the first two Gill-man movies, the creature is presented as a missing link between man and his distant marine ancestors. (Don’t think too hard about that one.) Though he has some human characteristics, he never does much more than kill intruders in his lagoon, kidnap pretty women, and flee from superior force. But in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, the creature becomes more cunning, more human, and possessed of a great deal more personality.

The first part of the movie -- the hunt and capture of the creature -- is much longer and considerably more exciting than a similar sequence in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE. The Everglades locations (or their studio equivalents) are plenty creepy, and the underwater photography is crystal clear. The creature seems to know he’s being hunted, and leads the scientists on a long chase that draws them into less safe territory. And although the scientists are aware that the creature is leveling the playing field, they have no choice but to follow and attempt the capture anyway. It’s all very tense and suspenseful, and really my only complaint about it is that the three male leads are all so square-jawed and hunky that it takes a little while to learn to tell them apart. But as the movie progresses, it becomes clearer that they each have different personalities and agendas -- something that you can’t always take for granted in these kinds of flicks.




But the real payoff is what happens after the creature is captured. The pseudo-scientific explanation of the physical changes doesn’t make any sense -- supposedly the mere act of breathing through lungs instead of gills causes spontaneous mutations that tip the balance of evolution away from fish and towards human. But the changes make the creature far more sympathetic, as does his sudden lack of interest in kidnapping and killing. (There’s a pretty funny bit where he comes across a woman and looks at her for a moment -- apparently ready to snatch her up -- but then moves along without a second glance.) Rather than a killer, the creature here is a pathetic figure who is hunted, persecuted, and stranded by physical mutations in a world he doesn’t understand.

Although I am an unabashed fan of the original CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), I think I’d nevertheless have to say that this is an even better picture than that one. It’s a shame that Universal didn’t make many more monster movies after THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, since they finally seemed to figure out how to fuse their usual sensational sensibility with a more psychological and ambiguous style of horror. But starting in 1957, Universal turned over the rights of its horror franchises to England’s Hammer Studios -- which would go on to produce many, many monster movies (almost all of them featuring either Baron Frankenstein or Dracula) in the fifties, sixties, and seventies.




What else happened this year?

-- Don Siegel directed the first (and, as far as I’m concerned, still the best) iteration of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and managed to turn a pretty silly story into a creepy and tense thriller.
-- The other big sci-fi spectacular from 1956 is FORBIDDEN PLANET, an outer space updating of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST that introduced the world to Robbie the Robot (among many other things).
-- Stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer turned their collective attention to the problem of mechanical marauders in EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.
-- The 1954 Japanese monster flick GOJIRA was re-edited and released in America with 100% more Raymond Burr as GODZILLA, KING OF ALL MONSTERS.
-- Hammer released X THE UNKNOWN, a sci-fi/horror flick about a blobby menace haunting the Scottish marshes that was originally intended to be a Quatermass sequel.
-- Universal’s THE MOLE PEOPLE is a surprisingly interesting story about archaeologists stumbling upon a superstitious underground society descended from ancient Sumerians. Actual mole people are also both promised and delivered.

If you watch only one sci-fi movie from 1956...

As terrific as THE CREATURES WALKS AMONG US is, I’d say go for INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS if you can only do one.