Postcards From Shadowland No.7
Category: Classic Sci Fi
We at the Last Drive In wish you a very safe and happy ‘Stuff Yourself til You’re Sick of All the Food and Your Family Day!”
Here’s a little something to go with that side of string bean, shaved almonds and pearly onion casserole that no one ever seems to like…
Bela Lugosi in White Zombie (1932)
Be safe and have a happy what ever it is you celebrate! – MonsterGirl
Sunday Nite Surreal: The Last Man on Earth (1964): “Another day to live through. Better get started”
They want my blood. Their lives are mine. I still get squeamish.
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964)
Directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow The Last Man on Earth 1964 is based on the best-selling sci-fi/horror novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, who, unhappy with the script, used the pseudonym Logan Swanson for the screenplay. The film remains pretty close to the book, and keep in mind that The Last Man on Earth predates Night of the Living Dead (1968) by 4 years.
Piero Mecacci ( Suspiria 1977, Hatchet For A Honeymoon 1970, The Young, The Evil and The Savage 1968, was responsible for the film’s make-up.
Matheson’s story is perhaps the first involving vampire-like beings whose origin is not rooted in the supernatural but stems from a scientific, biological catastrophe. This pandemic wipes out an entire civilization. It is also the first of three adaptations of Matheson’s book, and stands alone as the most striking, although I will always have a special kind of 70s love for director Boris Sagal’s version of The Omega Man 1971.
Starring Vincent Price as Dr. Robert Morgan, Franca Bettoia as Ruth Collins, Emma Danieli as Virginia Morgan, Umberto Raho as Dr. Mercer, and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart as Ben Cortman. In 1971, it is the wonderful Anthony Zerbe as Matthias who reprises the role of the vengeful cult leader of ‘the family’ who craves Heston’s (Neville) lifeblood.
“Alive among the lifeless… alone among the crawling creatures of evil that make the night hideous with their inhuman craving!”
Synopsis:
“December 1965. Is that all it has been since I inherited the world? Only three years. Seems like 100 million.”
The year is 1968, Vincent Price in a somber fashion plays Dr. Robert Morgan who like Sisyphus is condemned to repeat his daily tasks of replenishing his stock of garlic and mirrors (the undead hate both), adding gasoline to his generators, collecting the dead bodies that lay strewn around his dismal and cluttered house, and throwing them into the enormous pit where he burns the remains while wearing a gas mask, which is effectively creepy on its own.
“I need more mirrors, and this garlic has lost its pungency.”
For much of the film’s beginning, Morgan narrates his story as an inner dialogue: “An empty, dead, silent world.”
“There was a time when eating was pleasurable now it bores me. just a fuel for survival, I’ll settle for coffee and orange juice this morning. But first, there’s my life to consider, I better replace that garlic I’ll need more lots more, better stop off and get ’em”
Morgan is the seemingly sole survivor in a global outbreak of an unknown bacterium. By day, he collects his needed supplies, tries to make contact by radio with any other survivors, makes repairs to his house, from the onslaught of undead who attack by night, and basically tries to maintain his sanity in the bleak environment of apocalyptic ruin.
Each day, he wakes up, checks off the date on his primitively scrawled calendars, sharpens his wooden stakes, the weapons he uses to defend himself against a surviving race of vampire-like undead that roams the night air, calling out his name, “Morgan, come out!” pounding at his door. “Morgan! We’re going to kill you!” they taunt him endlessly, led by his old colleague Ben Cortman.
Living Ben Cortman: There are stories being told, Bob.
Robert Morgan: By people who are out of their minds with fear.
Living Ben Cortman: Maybe. But there are too many to be just coincidental. Stories about people who have died and have come back.
Robert Morgan: They’re stories, Ben, stories.Robert Morgan: “I can’t afford the luxury of anger, anger can make me vulnerable. it can destroy my reason and reason is the only advantage I have over them. I’ve gotta find where they hide during the day. Uncover every one of them.”
“And how many more of these will I have to make before they’re all destroyed?”
“More of them for the pit. tonight there’ll be more of them, they live off the weak ones., leave them for the pit.”
Less like a Gothic Hammer vampiric epic or prior decades features from Universal and Bela Lugosi featuring swarthy eastern Europeans, The Last Man on Earth is set in a modern urban landscape and acts like a hybrid horror/science fiction morality play, as Morgan drudges on to persevere against the army of soulless humans that haunt his existence.
They have become inhuman things to hunt, and he has been transformed into a veritable Adam living in a post-nuclear anti-paradise with no companionship. It’s merely the primal need to survive that drives him. In this way, he has been reduced to a scavenging animal, living on instinct, with an inescapable mission to hunt and kill people who were once human like himself.
“I can’t live a heartbeat away from hell.”
Morgan inhabits a world, where everyone else has been infected by the plague, they cannot tolerate sunlight, hate to see their own image in mirrors, and more likened to the ancient folklore of Vampires are repelled by garlic.
At night, these undead civilians try to get into Morgan’s house; they have a desire to kill him as much as he has to destroy every one of them.
Each day, he gets in his large automobile in search of more lifeless bodies scattered around the city and seeks out those in hiding to use his wooden stakes to impale and then throw them in the mass grave, fumes rising from the gasoline-soaked funeral pyre.
He finds a dead girl outside his house and picks her up as she flops like a rag doll. He finds another one in his driveway. He loads them into the trunk of his car. He realizes that he’s out of gas. Dead bodies line the road.
“I can get rid of them later, right now I’m out of gas.”
As he drives over scattered bodies like human road kill, he thinks to himself.
“They can wait too, I’ve got my life to worry about, those mirrors will have to be replaced before dark.”
The cinematography by Franck Delli Colli is stunning as it is stark. He paints an apocalyptic wasteland, with the addition of the mass graves and gas masks, which to me, evoke the specter of war-torn Europe after WWII.
In a flashback, we see Morgan as a happily married man with a beautiful wife and daughter. As the memory unfolds, we see that the plague has affected his wife and daughter. While his daughter is taken away to the public burning pit after she succumbs, Morgan secretly buries his wife, not knowing that the dead are coming back to life.
Once he returns home and is attacked by his dead wife, he realizes that he must dispose of all the plague victims before they reanimate themselves into zombies who can spread the plague. Morgan has a theory that his immunity to the bacteria is due to an infected bite he received from a vampire bat while stationed in Panama. This prior exposure to the plague allowed his blood and immune system to build up a tolerance over time.
One day, he finds a wandering dog and takes it home, joyous for the company the little guy will be. Unfortunately, he, too, has fallen ill from the plague, and sadly, Morgan has to kill him, too. Just to let you dog lovers know what to expect…
During one of his daylight excursions, he notices a woman moving around in the distance. It is Ruth Collins, who is terrified of Morgan when she first sees him, but he convinces her to come home with him. When Ruth becomes sickened by a string of garlic waved in her face, she claims she is just weak, but Morgan becomes suspicious of her.
Morgan catches Ruth trying to inject herself with the vaccine that he’s been working on, which seems to stave off the effects of the disease. At first, she attempts to point a gun at Morgan but eventually admits that she was sent to spy on him and that she is part of a secret group of people like her, who are infected by the plague but are using a treatment that restores their health while still in the bloodstream but wears off after a time only to be reinfected again.
Ruth tells Morgan that her group is trying to rebuild their wiped-out civilization, while destroying the remaining infected walking dead, also telling Morgan that many of the people he has killed were technically still alive.
Morgan- “Your new society sounds charming.”
Ruth Collins: You can’t join us. You’re a monster to them. Why do you think I ran when I saw you, even though I was assigned to spy on you? Because I was so terrified, what I’d heard about you. You’re a legend in the city. Moving by day, instead of night, leaving as evidence of your existence bloodless corpses. Many of the people you destroyed were still alive! Many of them were loved ones of the people in my group.
Morgan: I didn’t know.
Morgan transfuses his own blood into Ruth’s while she is asleep, and she is immediately cured.
This encourages Morgan as he sees hope that he can now cure the remainder of Ruth’s people, the surviving yet suffering group of humans between the living dead and Morgan, the last completely healthy survivor of the human race.
In the climatic ending, the hand of irony strikes Morgan’s triumph down, as Ruth’s people begin to attack, forcing Morgan to flee. The band of Ruth’s survivors then kills off the rest of the undead, who are aimlessly threatening, menacing, and, of course, stalking Morgan’s house.
Ruth’s people see Morgan and begin chasing him, as he picks up tear gas and grenades from a police station arsenal, they exchange gunfire, and Morgan is wounded.
He finds his way into a church, with Ruth begging her people to let Morgan live.
They finally impale him on the altar with a spear. Of course, a very Christ-like image, the symbolism is not lost here, he has been sufficiently sacrificed, the only man who could truly save them.
Morgan’s last dying words are “You’re freaks, all of you! All of you, freaks, mutations!” and declares that he is “the last true man on earth.”
This is truly not the end, my friends… -MonsterGirl
Their Leotards are so Mod-ern! The Outer and Inner Space Femme
MonsterGirl from Planet Earth , present day!
Happy Halloween: Trailers to Scream About!
THE TINGLER (1959)
THE BLOB (1958)
13 GHOSTS (1960)
DEMENTIA 13 (1963)
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON 1954
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953)
THE DEVIL BAT (1940)
HORROR HOTEL (1960) aka City of The Dead
CURSE OF THE DEMON (1957)
THE BIRDS (1963)
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961)
Trick or Treat! It’s….MonsterGirl !!!!!!!!!
MonsterGirl's 13 Days of Halloween: Obscure Films Better Than Candy Corn! is back!
Double Exposure 1983
A photographer for a men’s magazine is disturbed by a recurring dream he has that he is killing his models by various gruesome means…Directed by William Byron Hillman and stars Michael Callan and Joanna Pettet.
Death Scream Made for Tv (1975)
A young woman is stabbed to death in an alley. The crime is heard and seen by some of the residents of a nearby apartment building, but not one of them tried to help and now they refuse to get involved with the police during the investigation.
Based on actual events. Directed by Richard T.Heffron with a stellar cast, including Raul Julia, John P Ryan, Edward Asner, Luci Arnez, Art Carney, Diahann Carroll, Kate Jackson, Cloris Leachman, Tina Louise, and Nancy Walker.
Neither The Sea Nor The Sand (1972) aka The Exorcism of Hugh
A troubled wife is having a midlife crisis. She meets a lighthouse keeper and they become lovers. They run off to Scotland. While making love on a beach, the lighthouse keeper dies, and that’s where the true story begins. True love never dies, Hugh comes back from the dead, to Anna’s wanting arms, but he’s not quite the same, and he’s decomposing! Directed by Fred Burnley, and starring Susan Hampshire, Frank Finlay, and Michael Petrovitch.
Anatomy of a Psycho (1961)
The crazed brother of a condemned killer sent to the gas chamber swears vengeance on those he holds responsible for his brother’s execution. Directed by Boris Petroff, and starring Ronnie Burns, Pamela Lincoln, and Darrell Howe.
36 Hours aka Terror Street (1953)
An American pilot AWOL from the States is framed for his wife’s murder and has just 36 hours to prove his innocence. Directed by Montgomery Tully, and starring Dan Duryea, Elsie Albin, and Gudrun Ure.
Trauma 1962
Emmaline, who, as a teenager, discovered the drowned body of her aunt (Lynn Bari), returns to the family mansion as a married woman. Eventually, she falls for the caretaker’s nephew and remembers who the real killer was. Directed by Robert M.Young, and starring Lynn Bari, John Conte, and Lorrie Richards.
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave. Everything starts to devolve as their pretenses fall away, and they start acting like desperate animals.
Directed by Luis Bunuel and starring Sylvia Pinal, Jacqueline Andere, Enrique Rambal, Claudio Brook,
Mirrors (1978)
A newlywed couple checks into an old hotel, and soon the wife finds herself having hallucinations and wandering the halls aimlessly. A voodoo priest has put a curse on Marianne and now wants to take her soul.
Directed by Noel Black and starring Kitty Winn and Peter Donat.
Madame Death 1969
Mad scientist teams with an evil, disfigured woman to kidnap and operate on young women to make them look beautiful again. Directed by Jaime Salvador starring John Carradine, Regine Torne, and Elsa Cardenas. Great Mexican horror thriller!
Master of Horror 1965
A trilogy of the Edgar Allen Poe stories, “The Case Of Mr. Valdemar,” “The Cask Of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” It starts with the housemaid sitting down to read some stories on a stormy night. Directed by Enrique Carreras, with a screenplay by the great Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (The House That Screamed 1069).
Starring Narciso Ibanez Menta, Osvoldo Pacheco and Ines Moreno.
THE BLOODSUCKER LEADS THE DANCE 1975
Directed by Alfredo Rizzo and starring the gorgeous Femi Benussi and Krista Nell, with Giacomo Rossi-Stuart
An obscure Gothic horror about a man who invites a theatrical troupe to his mansion, and of course the women start turning up dead.
QUINTET 1979
It is the future ice age, humanity is dying off. So the survivors play a game called “Quintet” For one small group, this obsession is not enough; they play the game with living pieces … and only the winner survives. Robert Altman directed this sci-fi thriller, starring Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey, Brigitte Fossey, and Bibi Anderson.
Scream Baby Scream 1965
A psycho-artist kidnaps models and slices up their faces to create his own grotesque form of art.
Directed by Joseph Adler, and starring Ross Harris, Eugenie Wingate, Chris Martell, Suzanne Stuart, and Larry Swanson. Written by Larry Cohen!
The Third Secret 1964
A prominent London Psychologist seems to have taken his own life, causing stunned disbelief amongst his colleagues and patients. Directed by Charles Crichton and starring Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Richard Attenborough, and Pamela Franklin.
The Strange One 1957
Ben Gazzara plays Jocko De Paris, a sociopathic cadet lead in a Southern military academy. He manipulates several of the people into various stages of duress, in particular a cadet that Jocko terrorizes into dating a girl from the town named Rosebud…hhm? Directed by Jack Garfein and also starring Pat Hingle, Peter Mark Richman, Paul Richards, and Julie Wilson as ‘Rosebud’
The Witch aka L Strega in Amore 1966
A historian goes to a castle library to translate some ancient erotic literature. While there he discovers what he believes to be supernatural forces at work. Directed by Damiano Damiani and starring Richard Johnson, Rosanna Schiaffino, and Gian Maria Volonte.
The Snorkel 1958
Although the police have termed her mother’s death a suicide, a teenage girl believes her step-father murdered her. Directed by Guy Green and a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster. Starring Peter Van Eyck and Betta St. John.
vij 1967
This is a Russian horror/fantasy film about a young priest who is ordered to watch over the wake of a witch in a small old wooden church in a remote village. He must spend three nights alone with the corpse with only his faith to protect him. Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol.
Bluebeard 1972
This is a 70s version of the infamous tale of Bluebeard. A World War I pilot Kurt Von Sepper (Richard Burton) whom everybody envies as a “ladykiller” actually is one – after he beds the women he’s after, he murders them. Directed by Edward Dmytryk, and starring Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, Verna Lisi, Natalie Delon, Agostina Belli, Sybil Danning, and Joey Heatherton.
Criminally Insane 1975
An obese woman recently released from an insane asylum kills anyone who attempts to get her to stop eating. Director Nick Millard casts Priscilla Alden as Ethel Janowski who lives with her Grandmother, and doesn’t want anyone taking away her food!
HEX 1973 aka The Shrieking
The film takes place in rural Nebraska after WW1, six veterans head out together on their motorcycles and ride into the little town of Bingo. When one of them beats a local kid in a drag race, they are driven out of town.
They hide out at a farmhouse run by two sisters. One of them tries to rape one of the girls, who is part Native American, and now her sister wants revenge by casting a hex on them!
Directed by Leo Garen and starring Christina Raines, Hilary Thompson, Keith Carradine, Mike Combs, Scott Glenn, Gary Busey, and Robert Walker Jr.
Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things 1971
Stanley and Paul are hiding out from the law, so they rent a house in the suburbs and decide that Paul should dress in drag, pretending to be Stanley’s Aunt Martha. Stanley brings a girl home one night, and since Paul is crazy and violent, he murders her. Now, Aunt Martha is a dangerous woman to approach! Directed by Thomas Casey and starring Abe Zwick as Paul and Wayne Crawford as Stanley.
Necromancy 1972
Orson Welles plays Mr. Cato, the head of a witches coven in the town of Lilith, where he needs the powers of Pamela Franklin to raise his son from the dead. Directed by the fun Bert I. Gordon. Also starring Lee Purcell and Michael Ontkean
Old Dracula 1973
A faulty blood transfusion turns Dracula’s wife black. Directed by Clive Donner and starring David Niven, Teresa Graves, Peter Bayliss, and Veronica Carlson.
Poor Pretty Eddie 1975
A wrong turn on a jazz singer’s road trip results in her car breaking down near an isolated lodge run by a faded starlet and a young, homicidal Elvis impersonator. Directed by Richard Robinson and David Worth, the film stars Leslie Uggams, Shelley Winters, Michael Christian, Ted Cassidy, Dub Taylor, and Slim Pickens.
The Mafu Cage 1978
Two strange sisters played by Lee Grant and Carol Kane, live in a decaying mansion where they keep their father’s pet ape locked in a cage. One of the sisters is descending into violent madness.
Directed by Karen Arthur also stars Will Geer.
Scalpel aka False Face 1977
A psychopathic plastic surgeon transforms a young accident victim into the spitting image of his missing daughter. Directed by John Grissmer and starring Robert Lansing and Judith Chapman. An interesting thriller in the ‘surgical horror’ genre.
The Flower in His Mouth 1975
A female school teacher is implicated in a murder in a Sicilian town only hours after her arrival. The dead man insulted her on the bus on the way into town. Directed by Luigi Zampa and starring the beautiful Jennifer O’Neill, sexy Franco Nero, and James Mason.
“”””
The Terminal Man 1974
Hoping to cure his violent seizures, a man agrees to a series of experimental microcomputers inserted into his brain but inadvertently discovers that violence now triggers a pleasurable response in his brain. Directed by Mike Hodges and starring George Segal, Joan Hackett, and Richard Dysart.
The Woman Who Came Back 1940
After a bus accident, a woman comes to believe that she’s actually a 300-year-old witch. Stars John Loder, Nancy Kelly, and Otto Kruger.
A Taste for Women 1964 Aimez-vous les femmes
Directed by Jean Leon, this French black comedy thriller Roman Polanski has written another dark kinky story about cannibalism. It stars Sophie Daumier and comes across as a piece of Film Noir.
Lorna -a film by Russ Meyer (1964)
Starring Lorna Maitland, who’s married to Jim (James Rucker)but isn’t satisfied sexually. While Jim’s at work in the salt mine, she is raped by an escaped convict. (Mark Bradley) Strangely she finds him fascinating, as he has brought out her lustful side. One of Meyer’s best films! The cinematography is so starkly beautiful.
Home Before Dark 1958
Director Mervyn LeRoy’s darkly psychological drama starring the incredible Jean Simmons as Charlotte a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown. Once she leaves the safe hospital environment, she must return home to face the same demons that were haunting her there from the beginning. Also stars Dan O’Herlihy, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.and Marjorie Bennett.
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
A suave but cynical man supports his family by marrying and murdering rich women for their money, but the job has some occupational hazards. Directed and starring Charlie Chaplin, Mady Correll, Allison Roddan, Robert Lewis, Audrey Betz, Martha Raye, Ada May, and Marjorie Bennett.
The Unseen aka Fear 1945
Directed by Lewis Allen and starring Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall, and Norman Lloyd. A mysterious figure is viciously killing people in a shadowy alley. Russell plays a Governess haunted by mysterious goings-on. Scripted by Raymond Chandler and Hagar Wilde. Gail Russell also played Stella in the wonderful ghost story directed by Allen, The Uninvited…
The Cat Creeps 1946
A black cat is suspected of being possessed by the spirit of a dead girl. Directed by Erie C. Kenton, starring Noah Beery Jr., Lois Collier, Fred Brady, Paul Kelly, Douglass Dumbrille, and Rose Hobart…
-MonsterGirl
A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! The Man From Planet X (1951)
THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951)
Keep watching the skies!” Science Fiction cinema of the 1950s- The year is 1951- Part 2
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat 1934, Detour, 1945) and starring Raymond Bondas, Professor Elliot, who is 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!
“The WEIRDEST Visitor the Earth has ever seen!”
Keep watching the skies!-MonsterGirl
A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! I Married A Monster From Outer Space
I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958)
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!
 “Shuddery things from beyond the stars, here to breed with human women!”
Make sure you know who you’re kissing tonight – MonsterGirl
The She Creature (1956) Bridey Murphy’s Reincarnation meets Beulah the Busty Crusty ‘She Creature’ from Paul Blaisdell’s imagination.
“Hypnotized! Reincarnated as a monster from hell!”
THE SHE CREATURE 1956
In 1952 the world celebrated the famous Bridey Murphy regression 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.
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’s On 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.
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 Inescort as 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.
“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!
Postcards From Shadowland No.2
