Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat 1934, Detour 1945) and starring Raymond Bond as Professor Elliot who accompanied by his daughter Enid (Margaret Field) sets up an Observatory on a remote Scottish island, to study a rogue planet that is heading toward Earth.
Robert Clarke plays John Lawrence a reporter who shows up, right after the spaceship from Planet X lands near the observatory. Also starring William Schallert as Dr. Mears Professor Elliot’s assistant who tries to communicate with the man from Planet X.
Is this adorable, rubbery astronaut in a silver-tubed space suit, good-natured or an enemy to the people of Earth? Your heart will pound, your pulse will throb…!
Prof. Elliot-“A face…a human face?”
Enid Elliot-“A ghastly caricature like something distorted by pressure… a horrible grotesque imitation looking right in my eyes!”
I actually had the rubber action figure of The Man From Planet X. In the 70s they had put out a series of replicas from various sci-fi movies. I also had the winged angel from Barbarella. Either Octaman or one of the Green Slime, I can’t quite recall the detail work, (sad to say, I’m getting to be an older MonsterGirl) Plus I had the Red Devil alien from Angry Red Planet!
Do any of you remember these action figures as well? I’d love to hear from you!
Directed by Gene Fowler Jr. and starring Tom Tryon (he just happened to write 2 of the BEST psychological/supernatural stories The Other, and The Dark Secrets of Harvest Home) who plays Bill Farrell a regular guy newly married to Marge Bradley Farrell (Gloria Talbott) who’s body is taken over by an Alien from Outer Space. Bills’ body is left as a dead shell in the woods.
The Aliens are invading with the purpose of mating with earth women! Gee I thought most earth men had the same idea!
Anyway, the Aliens begin switching places with the real humans. But Marge is no dope. She starts to realize that something’s very wrong with Bill, Alien Bill wants to have children with Marge anyway. Has he fallen for this earth girl?
Much like Invasion of The Body Snatchers 1956, this wonderful sci-fi thriller from the 50s evokes the period’s sense of paranoia, as the townspeople are slowly being taken over by an alien force!
She sees the alien’s face reflected in the pane glass window! And that creepy doll, no wonder she loses it!
 “Shuddery things from beyond the stars, here to breed with human women!”
Make sure you know who you’re kissing tonight – MonsterGirl
In 1952 the world celebrated the famous Bridey Murphyregression case. It began when one Morey Bernstein hypnotized a Colorado housewife named Ruth Simmons. Under a trance, emerged the personality of Bridey Murphy an 18th Century Irish woman.
from the film The Search For Bridey Murphy
In 1956 Bernstein published his book The Search For Bridey Murphy. Eventually the story made it onto the screen by Paramount Pictures, starring Teresa Wright and Louis Hayward, a film which is on my short list of things to watch.
And if you have a guilty pleasure for musicals as I do, you’ll see the story retold in Vincente Minneli’sOn A Clear Day You Can See Forever 1971 starring musical diva Barbara Streisand, Yves Montand and Jack Nicholson. With some of the BEST music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.
Barbara Streisand as Daisy Gamble in Vincente Minneli’s1970 On A Clear Day You Can See Forever.
Now in 1956 when A.I.P was churning out goodies like It Conquered The World 1956Â for Roger Corman, the idea of past life regression became of some interest to producer Alex Gordon.
The She Creature incorporated the concept of a lovely girl harboring a past soul or souls, but due to the fact that A.I.P. wanted monsters in their pictures, they used the best of both worlds and mixed an unconventional idea that was all the rage at that time, and threw in an ancient busty crusty beastie that rose from the sea, whenever the girl was in a trance.
So you have it, a girl from the 20th century inhabited by a female creature from the primordial edges of time’s beginning. Schlocky fun from Samuel Z. Arkoff,Alex Gordon and one of my favorite directors who can take a b-movie sci-fi/horror picture and bring a bit of grimy noir sensibility to it the great Edward L. Cahn.
Jerry Zigmond’s contribution was coming up with the title THE SHE CREATURE and the screenplay was written by Lou Rusoff. The film stars Chester Morris as Dr Carlo Lombardi, Marla English as his subject Andrea, good ole Tom Conway as Timothy Chappel, Cathy Downes as Dorothy Chappel, Ron Randell as Lt. Ed James, Lance Fuller as Dr. Ted Erickson Frieda Inescortas Mrs Chappel and of course Paul Blaisdell as Beulah!
Chester Morris (Alibi 1929, The Big House 1930, Five Came Back 1939) plays the smarmy Dr. Carlo Lombardi, carnival hypnotist and prognosticator extraordinaire. Morris brings smarmy to a whole new level here, that it even makes Jack Cassidy‘s villains’ seem Christ like. Lombardi travels around rich circles impressing the affluent patrons, with his ability to regress his female hostage, oops I mean patient back in time, probing old memories of their past lives, thereby proving that reincarnation is real.
Another nifty trick is the claim that he can summon forth the incorporeal spirit or soul from the past and manifest it into a physical form.
It starts out on the desolate beach at night where the mustachioed mad hypnotist Lombardi is standing in silhouette , then walking along the shore, dressed in black like a villain from a silent movie, about to tie a maiden to the train tracks. He’s staring out at the sea, a distant shape is forming in and out of the breaking tides.
Dr. Carlos Lombardi communing with the ancient she creature that is waiting out in the misty turbulent ocean.
“Now on This very night I have called into the unknown depths of time itself. She is here. And with her coming, the world will never be as it was. Neither man nor animal will be the same. This, I, Dr. Carlo Lombardi have brought into being!”
Suddenly the camera focuses on a monstrous invisible foot print in the sand. The moment is broken when King the loyal dog of Dorothy Chappel, starts barking and breaks Lombardi’s concentration. Dorothy’s father Timothy Chappel a promoter, is hosting a party this particular weekend at their fancy beach house. Invited to the party is Dorothy’s boyfriend Dr. Ted Erickson who is a notable expert on the subject of psychic research. He’s not comfortable mingling with the idle rich, he’s basically just a ‘farm boy’ and just doesn’t fit in with Dorothy’s father’s crowd.
Mrs.Chappel believes in the powers of the supernatural She tries to convince her husband that Lomardi’s prediction that something terrible is going to happen along this part of the coast tonight, they’ll be ‘a visitation from the occult world’ and tells him seriously that he must meet him. Tim Chappel laughs at his wife, and remarks, that “Some women keeps pets, or grow roses for kicks, my wife supports quack occultists.”
Mrs.Chappel tells her husband that he puts this girl in a deep trance and sends her back over 300 years. When she was a girl in England. ” I tell you it’s uncanny!” Mrs.Chappel is vehement!
A Cry in The Night 1956 directed by Frank Tuttle, starring Edmund O’Brien, Brian Donlevy and Natalie Wood.Among The Living (1941) directed by Stuart Heisler and starring Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward and Frances FarmerBRUTE FORCE (1947) directed by Jules Dassin and starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn and Charles BickfordRoman Polanski’sCHINATOWN (1974) starring Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicholson and John Huston.COMPULSION (1959) directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman and Orson Welles.He Walked By Night (1948) starring Richard Basehart, Scott Brady and Roy Roberts.I Bury The Living (1958) directed by Albert Band and Starring Richard Boone and Theodore BikelIN COLD BLOOD (1967) directed by Richard Brooks and starring Robert Blake, Scott Wilson and John Forsythe.NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947) Directed by Edmund Goulding, starring Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray and Helen Walker.Director Joseph Sarno’s exploitation film from (1964) Sin In The Suburbs stars Judy Young, W.B.Parker and Audrey CampbellThe Prowler (1951) directed by Joseph Losey and Starring Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes and John Maxwell.THE KILLERS (1946) directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner and Edmund O’BrienThe Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) directed by Peter Godfrey and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart and Alexis SmithThe Uninvited (1944) directed by Lewis Allen starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey and Gail RussellThe Unsuspected (1947) directed by Michael Curtiz and Starring Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield and Audrey Totter.Once again Claude Rains in the suspenseful The Unsuspected (1947)Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night (1949)starring Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell and Howard Da SilvaCharles Laughton’s masterpiece Night of The Hunter (1955) Starring Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish and Shelley Winters.
“Down This Street Raced Dead-End Violence… Down This One Stretched Excitement Taut As Silk!”
Kenneth Tobey doesn’t last too long in 3 Dark Streets!!
Directed by Arnold Laven, this noir is part police procedural. It stars gruff he-man Broderick Crawford ( the pre-Tony Soprano alpha male, bull in the china shop cop) as FBI Agent John ‘Rip’ Ripley. Likable and mild-mannered Kenneth Tobey plays his partner agent Zack Stewart, who is gunned down from the shadows while juggling three cases that might be interrelated. John Ripley continues to hunt down the relationship between all these cases and find his partner’s murderer!
Never say You Never Saw Nothin’!
One connection involves gangster Joe Walpo as Ripley finds his hideout through Joe’s glitz and glamorous girl friend Connie Anderson played by Martha Hyer. Joe gets gunned down, and cleared of Stewart’s killing. Connie won’t be receiving anymore shiny things in the mail anymore!
The Second link involves a car theft ring. Ripley uses Vince Angelino’s (Gene Reynolds) wife to turn on his fellow thugs when Vince finds out that they have roughed up his gentle and blind wife, Julie, played by the beautiful Marisa Pavan.
2 bit hustler and thug Matty Pavelich (Claude Akins) smacks around a nice blind girl, what a crumb!
The last and most disturbing case involves Kate Martell, the victim of an extortionist who says he’ll kidnap her little girl if she doesn’t fork over some cash. He calls using a creepy, threatening voice and sends her on wild goose chases, trying to break her down so she’ll pay the $10,0000 ransom.
Kate is played by the brassy Ruth Roman.There are a lot of dubious suspects surrounding her. The menacing uncle Max, played by Jay Adler, and the smarmy, drooling suiter Dave Milson, played by Max Showalter. How will this thriller play out in 3 dark streets!?
Starring again another likable actor Kent Smithwho plays Dr.Peter Graham a psychiatrist who works for the police department, living in a dark city anywhere U.S.A.
“We need good cops, even if you are a psychiatrist now.”
James Franciscus is a handsome young cab driver who works hard to support his expectant wife…
There’s a mysterious masher stalking women, ritualistically slicing their left cheek and stealing their purses as a trophy. Pretty gruesome for 1958 filmgoers. The mugger escapes undetected until his last victim is actually murdered! The film stars Nan Martin, a cop who goes undercover as a dime-a-dance girl, James Franciscus, and Stefan Schnabel. With bit parts by Beah Richards as a ‘maid’ (god forgive Hollywood and their ever present stereotyping) a young George Maharis as Nicholas Grecco, a possible slime ball. And the first time appearance of Renee Taylor as a cheap hussy who is physically abusive to her wormy husband.
The film uncovers a lot of unsavory characters in the dark underbelly of a city that is diseased in a way that might breed a handbag, cheek-slashing maniac! As Dr.Graham tries to draw conclusions about the sort of man who would attack these women, we meet a handful of offbeat characters along the way as the likable police psychiatrist and his woman cop girlfriend are on the track of ‘the mugger’ terrorizing the city.
Very gritty and realistic slice of psycho=sexual aggression run amok in the city and hidden secrets within a small struggling American family!
“They all had one thing in common… The terrifying night they met!”
Written for the screen by Collier Young ( Former husband to Ida Lupino and Joan Fontaine and written by Ida Lupino and directed by Don Siegel, starring Howard Duff, who plays detective Jack Farnham, an honest cop with a beautiful wife, Francey (Dorothy Malone), who loves him. His partner Cal Bruner,(Steve Cochran) is a little more dark and brooding and rough around the edges. He’s hungry for something better than suburban living with ‘pay on time’ furniture and a small backyard with a grill and a white fence.
Both detectives stumble onto the hot cash while staking out a robbery in which $300,000 was stolen. Of course, Farnham wants to turn it into Captain Michaels, played by the meditative Dean Jagger.
But Bruner has fallen hard for nightclub singer Lili Marlowe, played by the one and only Ida Lupino. She’s great as the unattainable woman who’s been burned once before and is now wearing asbestos lipstick. Cal is just too swarthy and smitten with Lili and soon, they go up in smoke!. Lily has very high expectations for herself and loves nice, shiny things. Cal wants to give her anything she wants but refuses to live like Farnham on a cop’s salary, playing a nice little suburban couple struggling to get by.
Farnum and Bruner’s relationship grows more strained as they each reflect their own personal idealism.
Number 36 refers to the locker where the money is hidden, while Farnham roils and ruminates over his dilemma.
Does he become a rat and turn in his partner, or should he do what’s expected and go to Captain Michaels with the missing money and the truth?
“These are the Night Faces…living on the edge of evil and violence…making their own.”
A man down on his luck falls in with a criminal. After a senseless murder, the two are lynched.
Directed by Cy Enfield and written for the screen by Joe Pagano, based on his novel The Condemned.
It stars Frank Lovejoyas Howard Tyler and Kathleen Ryan as Judy Tyler. Two ordinary people in this allegory about how a decent human being can be directed to do a desperate or violent act in order to survive and protect their own family. Taken over by a fanatical young con man, petty thief, and psychopath named Jerry Slocum, played by Lloyd Bridges. Slocum preys on the Tyler’s need for money, Slocum convinces Tyler to be involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes horribly wrong and ends in murder.
The narrative unfolds more deeply as a condemnation of sensationalist journalism that can incite a mob mentality which feeds off the lurid details, culminating in a destructive force, almost worse than the original crimes committed.
Richard Carlson plays Gil Stanton a newspaper man who eventually has a pang of conscience, although much too late!
The ending is quite potent, powerful and remains a stunning commentary. The imagery holds a very powerful message in the final moments of the film…
PS: it seems that both The Sound of Fury 1950 and Fury 1936 Fritz Lang’s film starring Spencer Tracy are based on the same true events -from TRIVIA IMDb:
Based upon the 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, son of the owner of Hart’s Department Store in San Jose, California. Two suspects were arrested and jailed, but a lynch mob broke into the jail, dragged out the suspects, and took them across the street to a city park, where they hanged them from a tree
I hope you get to see at least one of these lesser-known Noir/Thriller goodies!- Til next time!- Your EverLovin’ Joey
A Cry In The Night 1956 starring Brian Donlevy,Edmund O’Brien and Natalie Wood.Among The Living 1941 starring Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward and Francis Farmer.Cape Fear 1962 starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen-Directed by J.Lee ThompsonCrime Without Passion 1934 starring Claude Rains, Margo, and Whitney BourneI Walked With A Zombie 1943 starring Frances Dee, Tom Conway and James Ellison. Directed by Jacques Tourneur and scripted by Curt SiodmakStanley Kubrick’sKiller’s Kiss 1955 starring Frank Silvera, Irene Cane and Jamie SmithAnn Margaret in Kitten With A Whip 1964 directed by Douglas HeyesMambo 1954 starring Silvana Mangano, Michael Rennie, Vittorio Gassman and Shelley Winters.The Naked Kiss 1964 directed by Sam Fuller and starring Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley and Michael Dante.Fritz Lang’sThe Secret Beyond The Door (1947) starring Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave and Anne Revere.No Orchids for Miss Blandish 1958, starring Jack La Rue, Hugh McDermott, and Linden TraversNight and The City (1950) starring Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney. Googie Withers and Hugh Marlowe. Directed by Jules Dassin
Directed by Andrew L. Stone, this noir thriller stars, Doris Daywho plays Julie Benton, whose unstable musician husband Lyle Benton played by Louis Jourdan confesses that he killed Julie’s first husband. Lyle is incredibly possessive and wouldn’t rather see her dead than be in the arms of another man. Julie seeks out the help of friend Cliff Henderson (Barry Sullivan) This is a woman in peril thriller, that has the police closing in on Lyle, but not before the climatic ending, where Julie boards a plane, returning to her work as a stewardess, not realizing that Lyle is also on board!
The film also co-stars veteran noir actor Frank Lovejoy as Det. Lt. Pringle.
Julie is being stalked by Lyle!
There are thousands of films in my collection, this is just one of them!-See it for yourself-MonsterGirl
If you’ve been following my blog for a while you might have picked up on the fact that I adore Claude Rains, and any film his wonderful presence has graced. Masterpiece or B-grade picture, he brings an inimitable style to any movie! Here: Claude Rainsplays a mild-mannered clerk named Kees Popinga who discovers that his boss Julius de Koster, Jr. (Herbert Lom) has wiped out the company funds, while under the influence of a beautiful Parisian girl, Michele Rozier played by Marta Toren.
Popinga takes the money and goes on the lam after killing de Koster, while the police are in hot pursuit.
Also starring the lovely Anouk Aimee as Jeanne the prostitute.
The immortal Joan Crawford is Lynn Markham, a widow who longs to be left alone at her beach house, where the previous tenant, Eloise Crandall (Judith Evelyn) had fallen to her death. Lynn’s neighbor turns out to be the gorgeous male specimen in the form of Jeff Chandler, playing Drummond Hall (Drummy), who might have had something to do with Eloise’s fatal fall off the porch. Of course, Drummy starts to move in on Lynn. Along for the ride are the marvelous duo of Natalie Schafer and Cecil Kellaway who play Drummy’s crafty aunt and uncle, Osbert and Queenie Sorenson. And then there are the frequent visitations by realtor Amy Rawlinson played by the always effervescent Jan Sterling who is of course gaga over Drummy, the slick and sleazy gigolo with a rough past. Directed by Joseph Pevney (prolific in great television series’ spanning the 1960s-80s, not to mention THE STRANGE DOOR 1951, and PLAYGIRL 1956 starring Shelley Winters.
The film is filled with the right amount of 50s kitsch and camp and delicious vulgarity under the sensationalized surface. An obscure Crawford goodie that enthusiasts of the actress and genre should add to their ‘must see’ list!
Lynn: ” I have a nasty imagination, and I’d like to be left alone with it!”
Lynn: "You must go with the house "” like plumbing."
“I don’t hate women, I just hate the way they are.”Amy Rawlinson played by the always effervescent Jan Sterling.
There are thousands of films in my collection. this is just one of them!-See it for yourself!-MonsterGirl Â
