MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror # 129 Something Wicked This Way Comes 1983 & The Howling 1981

SPOILER ALERT!

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES 1983

Whispers and Wonders at the Carnival’s Edge: A Dark Lullaby of Innocence, Temptation, and Shadows in Bradbury’s Vision:

There are films that flicker dimly in the subconscious, the way half-remembered childhood nightmares do, and then there is the 1983 Disney film Something Wicked This Way Comes —an intoxicating midnight fable that weaves together horror, fantasy, psychological trauma, and melancholy nostalgia until you scarcely know if you’ve woken from the dream. It’s a requiem and a lament, phantasmal and philosophically meditative, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury, one of America’s sorcerers of story. The film is itself a lush, haunted bedtime tale, spun from the fibers of longing, fear, and the secret wish for second chances.

Disney’s move toward darker films began in 1980 with The Watcher in the Woods starring Bette Davis, which opened the door to a new era of supernatural and suspenseful stories aimed at more mature audiences. This shift toward darker themes started under studio head Ron Miller, who wanted to attract older audiences and experiment with more adult-oriented stories. The launch of The Watcher in the Woods symbolized this new direction by blending eerie suspense with supernatural horror, setting the stage for other “dark” Disney films of the 1980s, like Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Black Cauldron.

Bradbury’s original story, part autumn elegy, part meditation on innocence and regret, infuses everything here, from the elfin danger of the wind to the ripe terror of the carousel’s spin. Directed by Jack Clayton, a magician behind the camera with a touch for both the visceral and the spectral (his masterwork The Innocents lingers in every shadow), the film conjures the small town of Green Town, Illinois, just as fall pools in its corners. Leaves shiver in the October air, and something, a circus, a storm, a black-draped promise, arrives on the midnight train bringing with it a liminal foreboding of dark wraiths, midnight lingerers, unique folk, and enchantresses.

Jack Clayton has long been a favorite director of mine for his meticulous, psychologically rich storytelling and his signature blend of haunting atmosphere, literary depth, and that unique, quietly intense exploration of repression, loneliness, and the shadows lurking beneath everyday life. After all, he directed films like Room at the Top (1959), starring Simone Signoret. it was his critically acclaimed feature debut, a social drama based on John Braine’s novel, which gained several Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Clayton. of course there’s, The Innocents (1961): A classic, highly praised horror film adapted from Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, noted for its eerie atmosphere and strong performances. The Pumpkin Eater (1964): starring Ann Bancroft, giving a stellar performance in his psycho-sexual drama featuring a screenplay by Harold Pinter, exploring a troubled marriage.Our Mother’s House (1967): starring Pamela Franklin, A psychological drama about children hiding their mother’s death, and The Great Gatsby (1974): A lavish adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Included in the impressive list is The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987): A drama starring the great and recently departed Maggie Smith, exploring themes of loneliness and regret.

Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum bathes the world in golden gloom and chilly blue, letting the town’s empty streets and rain-glossed windows sigh with the possibility of both evil and wonder. There’s a fairy-tale tinge to every frame: candy-apple reds, the warm brown of cigar boxes and library shelves, the unreal black of night deeper than pitch. Michael Praetorius’s score, commanded to spectral new heights by iconic composer James Horner, lulls and jangles, equal parts lullaby and funeral dirge, rippling with glockenspiel and ominous brass, a nocturne for lost souls.

But it’s the cast who give the film its beating heart. Jason Robards, with his timeworn face and steadfast sadness, is Charles Halloway, the town librarian whose regrets are as thick as the dust between his book spines. Jonathan Pryce (the acclaimed English actor, most celebrated for his mesmerizing turn as the dream-haunted bureaucrat in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil), with eyes like bottomless wells, arrives as Mr. Dark, ringmaster of the Pandemonium Carnival—a devil in a stovepipe hat, soft-spoken and lethal, offering to trade your soul for your unspoken desires. The boys, Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson) and Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson), are the film’s shivering compass, teetering on the cusp of adolescence, wild with curiosity and dread. Pam Grier glows with deadly mystique as the Dust Witch, her every move casting invisible nets. Her presence at death’s threshold is pure, mesmerizing stillness as she stands with the grace of a midnight apparition, a dark romantic terror, her voice barely a whisper, but her aura as commanding as a velvet shroud, chilling and enchanting all who dare to meet her gaze. She drifts through the shadows like a silent oracle, each gesture commanding fate and fear, her eyes promising both doom and deliverance in a single, spectral glance.

The Dust Witch, with her psychic attacks, brings a kind of eerie, supernatural dread. While Bradbury’s novel portrays the Dust Witch as a blind soothsayer who uses a hot air balloon to mark houses, the film adaptation takes liberties with this detail. The movie restores her sight and amplifies her alluring presence, making her charm a form of magic in itself, eliminating the need to hover over the town in an ominous balloon.

The story unfolds in a swirl of magic and menace: Will and Jim, best friends, sense the town’s ordinary rhythms drum off-beat as lightning splits the sky and a carnival of impossible wonders glides into town.

The Pandemonium Carnival sets up its tents overnight, all green smoke and fever-dream colors. The boys sneak into the shadows, spying on freakish attractions and Mr. Dark’s hands, each branded with moving tattoos of the name of a soul he’s claimed. Soon, the townsfolk are lured by promises: the teacher yearns to relive youth, the barber aches to see exotic places. The carnival offers these gifts with its haunted mirror maze and enchanted carousel, but each comes with a terrifying price.

The carousel’s secret is the most poisonous: it can spin you forwards or backwards through time, remaking you a child or an ancient in a single, shrieking revolution. Jim Nightshade, drawn by heartbreak and the promise of escape from grief, yearns to ride and reunite with his vanished father. Will, by contrast, tries desperately to save his friend Jim, even as the town’s grown-ups fall, one by one, under the spell of Mr. Dark.

The lightning rods in Something Wicked This Way Comes symbolize both a literal and a metaphorical attempt to ward off danger. On the surface, they are meant to protect against the natural threat of storms and lightning, but in the story, they also come to represent humanity’s vain hope of protecting itself from supernatural evil forces that cannot be kept at bay by metal or science alone. They act as a modern-day talisman, highlighting the limits of human understanding and the divide between natural and otherworldly threats.

The boys, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, receive a lightning rod early in the story from Tom Fury, a mysterious traveling lightning-rod salesman. Tom Fury (Royal Dano), who just appears, approaches the boys, predicts that a storm is coming, and warns them that one of their houses is in particular danger. The rods, which are physical objects meant to keep storms at bay, are almost like symbols or lucky charms against all the weirdness and danger that rolls into town. Upon discovering the boys have no money, he gives Jim a lightning rod free of charge, instructing him to install it on his roof immediately or risk death by lightning.

Initially, Jim is fascinated by the danger and uninterested in actually using the rod, seemingly enticed by the thrill of tempting fate, but Will, more cautious and thoughtful, convinces him to put it up, even bringing a ladder and focusing Jim on the need to protect his mother. It’s imperative that Jim keep his mom safe because he is growing up in a single-parent household, and his mother is his only family; she represents his connection to home, comfort, and the security he so deeply fears losing. The story highlights Jim’s vulnerability and the depth of his bond with his mother (Diane Ladd), especially since he longs for his absent father. Protecting her means preserving the one source of stability and love in his life. Diane Ladd brings warmth and quiet strength to Mrs. Nightshade’s character, underscoring why she is vital to Jim and why her safety is so emotionally significant in the story.

Early in the narrative, when the mysterious Tom Fury warns of a coming storm, there’s a real sense of urgency for Jim and Will to install the lightning rod. Together, the boys climb onto the roof of Jim’s house and install this conventional-looking talisman, which is etched with mysterious symbols. It is said to ward off any storm, regardless of its origin. We end up climbing onto the roof together, hammering it in, reading those strange symbols, almost like we’re performing a ritual to keep the darkness out.

Looking back, it’s clear to me that the lightning rod is more than just a tool; it’s our small, naïve way of trying to stand up to forces way bigger and stranger than a simple thunderstorm. It sets the whole story in motion and says a lot about the kind of bravery, and maybe a little fear, that lives in all of us when the unknown comes knocking. That is at the core of Something Wicked This Way Comes: that something dark has come knocking.

Will’s father, Charles Halloway, is deeply haunted by his own age, regrets, and sense of inadequacy as a parent. Standing in the shadow of lost youth and fearing that he’s too old, weak, or cowardly to protect or relate to his son, Charles is tempted by Mr. Dark’s carnival promise: the carousel’s magic can make him young again. Charles Halloway, racked by age and regrets, is tempted by the hope of a second chance to be young, to be the braver father he never was.

Ed, the bartender, played by James Stacy in Something Wicked This Way Comes, is a former local football hero who lost both his arm and leg (in real life, the actor became a double amputee after a motorcycle accident), and he works as the bartender at the corner saloon. Ed deeply longs to relive his glory days as a football star and to have his lost limbs restored—essentially, he wishes for his physical wholeness and youthful strength, and a return to his status as a local hero. The barber’s (Richard Davalos) wish is to escape his mundane life and perhaps experience adventure or exotic places, reflecting a longing for excitement beyond his routine existence. He is ultimately consumed by the carnival and disappears mysteriously, vanishing without a trace from the normal world. He is taken into the carnival’s supernatural realm or transformed into something otherworldly, losing his human identity and existence.

Miss Foley (Mary Grace Canfield), the wistful teacher, weeps as she’s transformed into a terrified child; Miss Foley’s transformation into a terrified child is both literal and symbolic. She longs, like many characters, for youth or a return to a simpler time, but when the carnival’s dark magic takes hold, this wish is twisted. Instead of happily regaining her youth, she is forcibly regressed, turned back into a child, but trapped in fear and vulnerability. This strips her of agency and the dignity of adulthood, leaving her terrified and helpless.

Throughout this fevered progression, carnival parades, dust-shrouded mazes, and surreal confrontations, the film tightens its grip, escalating from eerie spectacle to stark confrontations between hope and despair. Mr. Dark, sensing the boys’ resistance, unleashes Pam Grier’s Dust Witch to hunt them, and there’s a stunning sequence as the boys hide in Charles’s library, hunted by malevolent wind and smoke. Mr. Dark, ever the charming devil, tempts Charles with the youth he so longed for, carving detailed pain on his hand and threatening the boys before vanishing.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is full of unsettling, nightmarish scenes that tap into primal childhood fears, not just the creeping darkness, the sinister carnival, and the uncanny power of temptation. Among the scariest moments is the infamous spider attack scene, which is often cited as one of the film’s most harrowing sequences. In this scene, Jim Nightshade is alone in his bedroom when monstrous spiders overtake him. The sequence unfolds in the dead of night: hundreds of real tarantulas suddenly swarm Jim’s room, pouring down from walls, the ceiling, and even his bed, covering him as he sleeps. Jim awakens to this living nightmare, covered in spiders, clinging to his body, webbing swathing the room, their movement amplified by close-up shots and moody lighting. The sequence is suffocating, drenched in fear and panic, as Jim struggles to free himself.

The spiders represent not just physical danger, but the psychological grip of the carnival’s evil, sent by the Dust Witch on Mr. Dark’s orders, specifically to torment the boys after they witness too much.

The only thing that saves Jim is the lightning rod he and Will installed earlier, serving as a kind of talisman against supernatural attack. The attack underscores the difference between the boys: Jim, reckless and drawn to darkness, faces the horror alone, while Will, cautious and protective, is usually motivated by concern for others.

Other memorably scary scenes include The Hall of Mirrors, which is a surreal, distorted maze that traps and taunts, showing characters their deepest regrets or desires. Mr. Dark’s Confrontations: Mr. Dark’s chilling parade through town, his menacing encounters with Will’s father, and his magical power to physically mark those he hunts. The Carousel’s Curse: The haunting carousel, which can age or revert people in moments, spinning adults into children or the old into youth, always with an evil price.

The finale evokes Grimm at his darkest: a stricken Charles Halloway confronts his nightmares and, in an act of hard-won courage, defeats the carnival’s evil with a weapon unimagined, laughter, love, and the acceptance of age and imperfection. He turns the carousel’s corrupting magic back on Mr. Dark, breaking the spell and freeing the town. The tents collapse, swept away like leaves, and dawn finally splinters the carnival’s darkness.

In the closing moments, Will and Jim teeter on the fence between boyhood and something older. haunted, wiser, grateful for the sunlight breaking the spell, unsure whether this was a ghostly lesson or a very real midnight adventure. The camera lingers on the fallen leaves, the ordinary world reborn, and the promise that even nightmares can be banished by the simplest magic: hope, love, and the bravery to face the dark together.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a dark lullaby for adults who remember childhood chills, a storybook warning sung in visual poetry and whispered on the autumn wind—a rare gem spun from Bradbury’s brilliant, bittersweet imagination, where fairytales are frightening, and horror always hides just behind the carnival lights.

Roger Ebert praised Something Wicked This Way Comes for capturing not only the mood and tone of Ray Bradbury’s novel but also its style, writing that “Bradbury’s prose is a strange hybrid of craftsmanship and lyricism,” and called it “a horror movie with elegance” that balances heartfelt conversations and an unabashed romanticism amid its evil carnival.

The New York Times highlighted the film’s transformation from an initially “overworked Norman Rockwell note” into “a lively, entertaining tale combining boyishness and grown-up horror in equal measure,” praising director Jack Clayton for bringing tension that transcends the novel’s prose.

THE HOWLING 1981

Digging into every hairy detail of The Howling at The Last Drive-In would be so much fun. And let’s be honest, the only thing crazier than me not sharpening my claws on a good scratching post, ha! would be trying to tame a werewolf.

There’s something oddly exhilarating about how Joe Dante’s The Howling (1981) slinks through the fog of cinematic memory, at once a savage riff on the legacy of Universal’s monster pantheon and a wry send-up of modern anxieties, all under the thrill of the full moon. Set in a world where werewolves stalk the fringes of society and television screens hum with the static of trauma and violence, the film opens with a neon-lit Los Angeles and Dee Wallace’s brilliantly vulnerable Karen White facing down a serial killer in a sleazy porno booth, the air crackling with dread and the sly promise of the “old horror” about to resurface on modern ground.

Dante, ever the film buff, weaves his reverence for the classics directly into the atmosphere. There’s even a scene of Universal’s The Wolf Man flickering on a TV, a nod that runs deeper than homage. The dialogue dances from wit to grit: when John Carradine, the leathery patriarch of The Colony’s monstrous inhabitants, glowers, his presence is both funny and chilling, perfectly pinning the film’s tone between camp and catastrophic nihilism.

John Carradine practically howls his way into The Howling as Erle Kenton, the Colony’s resident silver-haired curmudgeon and proof that sometimes your creepiest neighbor is exactly as weird as he looks.

Erle C. Kenton is Dante’s cheeky way of giving a nod to the good old days of classic horror, and basically tipping his hat to a horror film heavyweight back in the day. Kenton directed classics like Island of Lost Souls 1932,  The Ghost of Frankenstein 1942, House of Frankenstein 1944 and House of Dracula 1945. Carradine’s grumpy old werewolf character Erle C. Kenton was a delightful way of sneaking a little inside joke for horror buffs who know their monster movie history.

Carradine, gaunt as midnight and with a voice like gravel at the bottom of the world, brings Erle to life as a howling relic of a bygone beastly era—part Gothic grandpa, part werewolf doomsayer, with a showmanship that expertly straddles earnest heartbreak and campy bravado.

In the collection of misfits and outsiders that is the Colony, Carradine’s Erle isn’t just another growling face in the crowd; he’s the bleeding heart of old-school lycanthropy, the wolf who can’t get with the times. When most residents are trying to “channel their energies” and avoid attention, Erle yearns for the carnivorous, predatory glory days. He is deeply frustrated with raising cattle for their feed, I mean, where’s the life in that? He’s tired of the boring domestication of werewolves, and he loudly longs for wilder times.

“The humans are our prey. We should feed on them like we’ve always done. Screw all this ‘channel your energies’ crap.”

Erle’s role is both plot catalyst and spectral warning. He isn’t quietly lurking, he’s prowling the group like a lost prophet, lashing out at the meager comforts of “modern” lycanthropy with a melodramatic gusto. His existential dread is as loud as his voice, whether he’s railing against the taming of wild things or threatening to end it all beneath an indifferent moon.

There’s a certain comic pathos to it, too: the old wolf whose best days are behind him but who refuses to go quietly, and refusing to accept tamed modernity, making every group therapy session crackle with the threat of old teeth. Carradine delivers lines with the relish of a man who’s seen one too many full moons and never quite learned subtlety: “You can’t tame what’s meant to be wild, doc. It just ain’t natural.”

With a single glare, a wild-eyed monologue, or the tragic melodrama of a failed suicide attempt, played with a kind of dramatic, somewhat hammy flair fitting his cantankerous, theatrical persona. He almost throws himself into the fire in a bleak but exaggerated gesture, underscoring his deep despair mixed with a grotesque flair for the dramatic. It’s not a subtle or quiet moment, but it’s Carradine all the way. Carradine cements Erle Kenton as the cranky conscience of the pack, at once pitiful, frightening, and somehow grandly ridiculous. He’s not just a monster; he’s the echo of every monster movie you’ve ever loved, delivered with the gravelly, overripe gravitas only John Carradine could muster. The Howling wouldn’t be the same without him skulking at the edges, baying for a life, and a horror tradition that’s slipping into the shadows.

John Carradine “I am a ham!” Part 2

You’ll also see the likes of Slim Pickens’ grizzled sheriff, and blink-and-you-miss-it cameos from legends like Kevin McCarthy, and Roger Corman veteran, Dick Miller as Bookstore owner Walter Paisley.

Bookstore owner (Walter Paisley): “We get ’em all: sun-worshippers, moon-worshippers, Satanists. The Manson family used to hang around and shoplift. Bunch of deadbeats!”

There’s also the presence of British actor (who immortalized the television series –The Avengers as John Steed), Patrick Macnee, as Dr. George Waggner, who pursues a more civilised way for the beasts to dwell among mortals. Dr. Waggner’s psychology is a wild blend of New Age optimism and lycanthropic denial. Waggner believes you can soothe primal urges and monstrous instincts with a weekend at The Colony, group therapy, and a touch of self-actualization. His mission seems to be proving that even werewolves just need to embrace their feelings, but deep down, you get the sense he’d prescribe a motivational poster that reads: Hang in there…and try not to eat anyone!

Dr. George Waggner: “Repression is the father of neurosis, of self-hatred. Now stress results when we fight against our impulses. We’ve all heard people talk about animal magnetism, the natural man, the noble savage, as if we’d lost something valuable in our long evolution into civilized human beings.”

Marsha Quist: “Shut up, Doc! You wouldn’t listen to me, none of you. ‘We can fit in,’ you said. ‘We can live with them.’ You make me sick.”

Yet, as much as The Howling is a boys’ club of B-movie icons, what’s most delightful to me is that the film is unusually generous to its fierce women. Dee Wallace carves out a heroine who is fraught but never hapless, her breaking voice and wide-eyed clarity grounding the wild supernatural proceedings. And Belinda Balaski’s Terry is the kind of best friend you’d beg the screen to rescue: plucky, resourceful, always one ax-blow ahead of the menace, Nancy Drew with blood under her nails!

Terry goes to The Colony after her own sleuthing leads her there, and she risks everything—ultimately losing her life—while trying to protect Karen and expose the terrifying secret at the Colony’s heart. Her arc is widely seen as both heroic and tragic, and Balaski’s energetic, clever portrayal ensures her kick-ass Terry remains a fan favorite among genre enthusiasts like me.

Dee Wallace and Belinda Balaski are bona fide icons of horror whose careers have won them legions of devoted fans, thanks to their charisma, versatility, and uncanny knack for making even the wildest genre premises feel grounded and unforgettable.

I’ve been taken with Belinda Balaski right from the get-go. As the queen of plucky supporting roles, she has been a regular collaborator with director Joe Dante, showing up memorably in Piranha (1978) and later reuniting with Dante in not just The Howling but Gremlins, Matinee, and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. In Piranha, her bold presence helped anchor Dante’s blend of horror and sly humor, and she’s also lit up the screen in cult favorites like The Food of the Gods, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, and Till Death. Till Death 1978 marked the film debut of the ever-bewitching Belaski, who effortlessly steals scenes even swathed in a ghostly white shroud.

The film is a shadowy production, directed by Walter Stocker, better known for his infamy starring in They Saved Hitler’s Brain. The story follows Paul, whose bride Anne (Balaski) dies in a crash, but he reunites with her mysteriously in her crypt, leading to a Gothic, supernatural twist. Despite her captivating presence and a memorable theme song, the low-budget film slipped into obscurity, resurfacing only on Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater in the early 1980s. It’s no wonder she’s so beloved by fans; the sheer range of her horror filmography is a tribute in itself.

Dee Wallace, meanwhile, has more than earned her status as a “scream queen,” headlining an astonishing number of horror milestones. From her gritty breakthrough in The Hills Have Eyes (1977) to this genre-defining werewolf terror to fighting off rabid dogs in Cujo (1983) and starring in the creature feature Critters (1986), she’s etched her name across the spines of countless VHS tapes and now streams. Wallace continued to thrill audiences with chilling performances in The Frighteners, Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007), The Lords of Salem (2012), and yes, her memorable appearance in Ti West’s retro shocker House of the Devil (2009). Her staying power and the affection of horror fans come not just from the number of films but from the passion she brings to every role, whether she’s the beleaguered hero or something more sinister. Just to put it plainly: these women aren’t just scream queens, they’re cornerstone talents whose work keeps the midnight movie crowd screaming for more.

Their dynamic, at once intimate and unpretentious, lends an emotional sincerity that allows The Howling’s more outrageous moments to bite deeper—and I do mean bites, rips, and tears.

Behind the camera, prolific writer John Sayles’ script saturates every frame with cheeky genre in-jokes and sly meta-humor, never letting the suspense veer too far from Dante’s signature wink. Seedy LA streets give way to the moonlit forests and sterile cabins of The Colony, all filmed with a strangely inviting disquiet, thanks to John Hora’s restless cinematography.

Hora’s distinctive style shaped several cult and mainstream favorites of the 1980s and 1990s. He was the director of photography for Dante’s Gremlins (1984), Explorers (1985), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), and Matinee (1993). His work also includes Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992), the segment “It’s a Good Life” from Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). Every shadow seems surreal, colorfully cartoon-like yet alive, every branch ready to crack. The color palette shudders between urban neon and rustic, fairy-tale gloom, keeping you as unsettled as Karen herself.

TV news reporter Karen White (Wallace) narrowly escapes a terrifying encounter with a ruthless serial killer in a seedy adult bookstore. During this tense scene, Eddie Quist forces Karen to watch a disturbing film of a woman being assaulted while keeping his face hidden from her.

In the booth’s shadow-drenched haze, neon flickers bleed through smoky blackness, pooling on Karen’s face, a chiaroscuro of fear and revelation, where every glimmer slices the darkness like a secret begging not to be seen, it’s just too horrible to imagine. The light is cold and fractured, painting Karen in silhouette in uneasy pulses while the world beyond that claustrophobic space dissolves into pulsing obscurity, trapping her in a trembling prism of electric midnight. When she finally turns around, she sees Eddie’s horrifying transformation into a werewolf. The police then burst in and shoot Eddie, Karen having helped the police to capture Eddie, who is believed to have been killed during the sting. But Karen is traumatized by the experience and suffers from amnesia afterward.

Shaken and seeking a fresh start, Karen and her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) retreat to a remote mountain retreat called The Colony—a rehabilitation institute for those struggling with psychological issues, run by Dr. George Waggner.

Terry Fisher (Belaski), a reporter and Karen White’s close friend and colleague, works at the same TV station as Karen in Los Angeles, and she teams up with another colleague, Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan), during the early investigations into the serial killer Eddie Quist.

Terry makes her grander entrance in the film after Karen’s traumatic confrontation with Eddie. While Karen heads to The Colony for recovery, Terry remains behind in LA with Chris. Together, Terry and Chris begin researching Eddie Quist, especially after discovering strange sketches of his and the strange fact that Eddie’s body has mysteriously vanished from the morgue. The tenacious and wisecracking Terry’s investigative instincts and resourcefulness lead her on his trail, determined to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Eddie and the strange events threatening Karen.

Her research soon uncovers links between Eddie and The Colony. Realizing Karen is in danger, Terry travels to The Colony herself, arriving before Chris does. Once there, she continues to dig for answers, combing through records and even finding files about Eddie in Doc Waggner’s office.

Terry’s persistence leads her to some of the most suspenseful moments in the film: she survives an attack by a werewolf in a cabin (fighting back with an axe and managing to sever her assailant’s hand), but when she calls Chris with her discoveries, she is ambushed and killed by Eddie, who reveals himself to her in all is transformative glory.

While at The Colony, Karen meets a cast of peculiar patients and staff, including the gravel-voiced, haunting patriarch, played by Carradine. The retreat promises therapy and renewal, but as Karen begins to unravel its mysteries, she grows suspicious of the eerie rituals, arcane warnings, and the unnerving absence of any real cures.

Tensions rise as Karen witnesses unsettling transformations and nightmarish behavior among the residents. The plot thickens as Karen finally uncovers the Colony’s true nature—a haven for lycanthropes. Beneath the placid mountain setting lurks a primal horror, hinted at first by strange howling heard on the wind and the uncanny agility of some patients. Karen’s fear deepens when Eddie Quist reveals his monstrous secret: he is a werewolf, part of a pack that uses the retreat to hide among humans.

Karen discovers Terry’s body and then encounters Eddie in his monstrous werewolf form. During this chilling scene, Eddie’s transformation is shown in detail as Karen watches fearfully. He speaks to her with a calm, confident smile, while he offers to give her ‘a piece of his mind,’ literally. Then Eddie snarls and completes his full transformation into a wolf right in front of her.

Karen proves she’s got guts and not someone who should be underestimated, with her quick instincts, she doesn’t hesitate, acting fast when it counts, lashes out, turning fear into survival, and hurls corrosive acid at him, and manages to flee.

One by one, the pack of werewolves reveals their terrifying forms in gruesome, pioneering transformation scenes designed by Rob Bottin. Karen’s world spins into chaos as the line between friend and foe collapses. Meanwhile, Bill Neill, who had arrived at The Colony alongside his wife, Karen, battles his own inner demons—his skepticism, the strain of his failing marriage, and the emotional toll of confronting the uncanny horrors lurking at the retreat. Bill is drawn into the terrifying world of the werewolf pack not just as Karen’s husband but as someone who becomes personally entangled in the supernatural menace. He becomes romantically involved with Marsha Quist, one of the more sensual wolf femme-fatales who happens to be Eddie Quist’s sister. Marsha, portrayed by Elisabeth Brooks, is a complex character who embodies a smoldering menace.

Bill is more of a reluctant participant than an action hero like Karen or Terry, plagued by skepticism and personal doubts. He’s caught between loyalty and survival as the nightmare around him unfolds. By the end of The Howling, Bill’s fate is somber yet nuanced. Unlike Karen’s harrowing frontline confrontation, Bill’s story closes on a quieter, more tragic note. After surviving the chaos unleashed by the pack and ensuing violence, Bill is left to grapple with loss and the lingering threat of the werewolf curse that forever shadows his life, though his new mate, Marsha, proves to be a most enticing romantic mistress.

The climax crescendos with an epic battle of wills and survival under a blood-red full moon. Drawing on inner strength, Karen fights to resist the primal curse threatening to consume her. As the climax of The Howling barrels toward its harrowing finish, Karen White finds herself scrambling for survival amid utter chaos at The Colony. With the pack of werewolves revealed in all their monstrous frenzy, Karen’s world narrows to a single, desperate goal: escape.

With most of the Colony trapped inside the barn, the moonlit cabins erupt in madness. Karen fights her way out of the Colony, courage and sheer instinct pushing her onward. Partnered now with Chris Halloran, who arrives in the nick of time wielding silver bullets, Karen races through the flames and snarling chaos that engulf the retreat. Howls, gunshots, and the crackle of burning wood hang in the air as the surviving duo squeezes into a battered car, werewolves clawing at the windows and doors, including her husband Bill.

Glass shatters and bestial faces lunge, but Chris fends off the attackers with his silver ammunition as Karen floors the accelerator. Their frantic drive through the forest takes on a fever-dream quality, brief flashes of fangs and fur illuminated in the headlights as the pair barely escapes the Colony’s grasp.

As Karen and Chris make their harrowing escape from the burning Colony, the film lingers on a haunting, almost surreal shot of the remaining werewolves silhouetted against the flames and night sky, throwing their heads back in unison to howl up at the moon.

The moment has a stylized, almost animated look, achieved with a touch of stop-motion and optical effects, making their anguished howls seem spectral and slightly unreal. It stands out visually from the rest of the film’s practical effects precisely because of its surreal, nearly striking animated quality. This tableau of anguished, howling werewolves is a creative use of models and optical effects by the special effects team, meant to convey the pack as fearsome, yet despairing and strangely pitiable, their wild lament echoing through the night and the flickering shadow as they mourn over Karen’s escape.

The wildness behind them, they plunge into the dark, battered but alive. Karen’s breath comes in ragged, haunted gasps, the mark of her ordeal (and perhaps something more) lingering as they leave the ravaged Colony behind.
This escape is no neat victory: it’s raw, chaotic.

At the climax of The Howling, Karen, having been bitten by her werewolf husband Bill during their escape, bravely returns to the TV studio. In a shocking twist ending, she transforms into a werewolf live on air, allowing the unsuspecting nationwide audience to witness her true nature before she’s mercifully shot by her friend Chris. The film closes on a tense resolution, and Karen has literally been changed by her ordeal.

Throughout The Howling, Joe Dante blends atmospheric horror, cheeky humor, and groundbreaking special effects to deliver a story that’s as much about human fears and desires as it is about werewolves and monster lore. It’s a cult classic that howls with both terror and wit, pulling us into a chillingly familiar yet twisted world.

Rob Bottin’s special make-up effects are where The Howling makes its lasting mark. The transformation—Eddie Quist’s slow, agonizing snout pushing through latex skin, the bubbling swell of muscle under air bladders, was nothing short of revolutionary in 1981. The puppetry and animatronics don’t just turn men into monsters; they make the change excruciating, almost sexual, pointing up the satire in the film’s cultish obsession with primal desire and taboo. Bottin’s vision, reportedly achieved over ten-hour make-up marathons with a willing Robert Picardo, still throbs with grotesque artistry decades later.

Pino Donaggio’s score pulses between lush and lurid, lending the film’s psychosexual undercurrents both grandeur and menace; eerie strings, sudden brass, and the anxious yapping of synths create an atmosphere at once seductive and sinister. Donaggio’s debut as a film composer was his evocative, haunting music, which became a defining element of Nicolas Roeg’s psychological thriller, Don’t Look Now 1973. Pino Donaggio’s score for Don’t Look Now pierces the soul with a haunting beauty that stirs a delicate ache in me, like an exquisite pain that whispers in my ear.

Dante’s wicked humor in The Howling keeps things buoyant: There’s always a sly smile lurking beneath the snarl.

Eddie Quist (pulling a piece of brain from the bullet hole): “You said on the phone that you wanted to get to know me. Well, here I am, Karen. Look at me. I want to give you a piece of my mind. I trusted you, Karen. You can trust me now.”

 

Karen White: “There was howling just a minute ago.”
R. William ‘Bill’ Neill: “It was probably somebody’s stray dog.”
Karen White: “It didn’t sound like any dog I’ve ever heard before.”

 

Dr. George Waggner: “Repression is the father of neurosis, of self-hatred. Now stress results when we fight against our impulses. We’ve all heard people talk about animal magnetism, the natural man, the noble savage, as if we’d lost something valuable in our long evolution into civilized human beings.”

Marsha Quist: “Shut up, Doc! You wouldn’t listen to me, none of you. ‘We can fit in,’ you said. ‘We can live with them.’ You make me sick.”

Upon release, critics recognized the film’s gleeful mash-up of terror and satire. Roger Ebert admired its “gleeful embrace of horror cliches,” others declared it a “knowing tribute to old werewolf movies full of genre references and in-jokes,” with praise for the special effects that defined a new era in grisly transformation.

Even in the face of some narrative wildness, that cocktail of horror, gallows wit, and genre self-awareness left audiences and future filmmakers howling for more.

The Howling endures because it understands the fun and fear at the heart of monster stories: it stares unflinchingly at the beast within, then cracks a knowing joke while the transformation takes hold. In the end, this cult classic leaves you laughing and squirming in the dark, right where all the best werewolf tales begin.

#129 down, 21 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! What can’t be explained, must be explored: Watcher in the Woods (1980) & Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

WATCHER IN THE WOODS 1980

It was just an innocent game… until a young girl vanished for thirty years

Once upon a time in the 70s, Disney took guardianship of some pretty dark films. The Watcher in the Woods is one such film. Directed by John Hough (Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry 1974, Escape to Witch Mountain 1975, Return from Witch Mountain 1978, The Incubus 1982).

The film works as a teenage adventure/fantasy meets Modern Gothic story based on the novel by Florence Engell Randall with contributions to the screenplay by Brian Clemens.

An American couple Helen and Paul Curtis, played by two distinctly charismatic actors David McCallum and Carroll Baker, and their two daughters Lynn Holly Johnson and Kyle Richards as Jan and Ellie Curtis, travel to an isolated house in rural England. Bette Davis commands the screen with less blaze and more secretive self-control as Mrs. Aylwood, a strange widow who befriends the girls and whose daughter went missing 30 years ago. The two young women investigate the mysterious happenings at the manor house and stumble onto the truth behind Karen Aylwood’s disappearance. I will not spoil the reveal of this film, in fact, the DVD has alternative endings due to extensive cuts as well as additions of scenes added under the un-credited supervision of Vincent McEveety. — I can say that prefer John Kenneth Muir’s interpretation of one considered outcome as Karen leaving and returning as a “kind of Orphean Underworld story.” For those of you who might not like just one explanation, I’ll leave it as an enticement to watch Watcher through to the end/ends!

While some critics found Watcher in the Woods abysmal there are enough fans who remain devoted to the film as a cult classic. Setting some whiny moments, and a few meandering plot potholes, Watcher in the Woods maintains a certain atmospheric bubble that surrounds the story, and adds nice touches of Gothic motifs, like the abandoned church, as John Kenneth Muir says in Horror Films of the 1980s the crumbling church “representing decay.” 

I see it also as how the old waits quietly for youth to return.

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES 1983

After he fulfills your deepest, lifelong dream…he’ll tell you the price you have to pay… Never whisper your dreams, for someone might be listening…

Both the novel and screenplay for Something Wicked This Way Comes were penned by the prolific fantasist/dreamer Ray Bradbury.

Directed by one of the most interesting directors Jack Clayton, a man who summons uncomfortable images and mind frames around dysfunction in the so-called conventional family structure, and even more diffuse in his work he personifies the children, those innocent little souls with a will that can not only be menacing but truly threatening and evil. Clayton has painted landscapes of chilling psychological horror and Something Wicked This Way Comes embraces his haunting perceptions in perfect sync with Bradbury’s malevolent story equal parts fantasy equal parts horror. Bradbury retained the nightmarish poeticism that his novel possessed in the screenplay and then adapted it to the screen.

Bradbury’s fantastic tale began as a short story entitles “Black Ferris” which was originally published in Weird Tales Magazine in 1948. Then he adapted it to his screenplay for use by Gene Kelly who unfortunately was not able to get the funding for the project. The success found Bradbury’s story when he released it as a novel in 1962 which found its way yet back once again into a screenplay in the 1970s when an interesting collection of directors were approached– from Sam Peckinpah, Mark Rydell, and even Steven Spielberg. By the time 1982 came around it was Jack Clayton (The Queen of Spades 1949, The Story of Esther Costello 1957, Room at the Top 1959, The Innocents 1961, The Pumpkin Eater 1964, Our Mother’s House 1967), who was tapped to direct the film, perhaps Spielberg might have added a great commercial veneer to the picture, but the dark dreams that Jack Clayton is capable of envisioning, I think, is the right kind of poison (And I mean that in a good way). The atmosphere of the sleepy little Green Town, Illinois, circa 1920 needed to wash off that mainstream Rockwell Painting style veneer and lay bare the secretive and dreadful things that suppurate in a small old-fashioned and quite often repressed Americana town.

For into this quaint and picturesque Midwestern town comes a dark & arcane carnival led by the mysterious Mr. Dark played exquisitely by Jonathan Pryce. And unlike the lyrical circus of The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao starring the wonderful Tony Randall, this carnival is pure evil.

The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao starring Tony Randall.

As enigmatic as Pryce is in this role, equally mesmerizing is Pam Grier who inhabits the sensuous yet deadly Dust Witch! The otherworldly train that is veiled in fog and spirit lights brings “the Autumn People”  who march through the town slowly like a funeral dirge preparing their secret ceremonies that will summon the darkness to coax and bedevil the unsuspecting yet desperate people of Green Town who are hungry for magic to change their lives.

The carnival seems to tap into the desires of many of the townspeople providing them with wish-fulfillment, to make their every dream come true. Many of the town folk like Mr. Crosetti played by Richard Davalos out of their loneliness seek companionship or Ed the Bartender played by James Stacy who lost a leg and an arm in the war would love to be that football hero again.

What ultimately happens after these unsuspecting but naive town folk should have realized that they have sold their souls and are damned for an eternity to suffer the irony of their wishes. And in the end, it is a lesson in what we desire weighed against what we regret.

As one of the vehicles for Mr. Dark’s malevolent magical conduits, he employs a menacing merry-go-round which can make the rider can grow either younger or older depending on which direction it turns.

Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are boyhood buddies–Will sees his father struggle with feeling like an old man, while Jim waits hopelessly in vain for his father to return.

Jim buys a lighting rod from Tom Fury (Royal Dano) who warns of the storm that is coming. That night the boys sneak out into the woods and watch as the train pulls in with no one aboard. They do however learn that it is bringing Mr. Dark’s Pandemonium Carnival to their boring little town.

At the centerpiece of the story comes Jason Robards an aging father and local librarian Charles Halloway who feels he’s failed his son Vidal Peterson as Will Halloway. In the end, it is up to the two to fight off Mr. Dark who would like nothing better than take most of the town along board the malefic train to the next destination, collecting souls along the way.

With music by James Horner, and co-starring Royal Dano who sells much-needed lightning rods, Diane Ladd plays Jim Nightshades’ mother, Mary Grace Canfield plays Miss Foley who has lost her youth and beauty and is narrated by Arthur Hill as an older Will. The special effects of the 80s create a moody, fantastical little carnival nightmare that moves like a beautiful & maudlin ballet.

YOUR EVER LOVIN’ MONSTERGIRL SAYIN’ ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IF YOU BELIEVE IT SO!

Keep Watching the Skies! Science Fiction Cinema of the 1950s: The Year is 1953

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BUD & LOU, CAT-WOMEN, JEKYLL & HYDE, HOSTILE BRAINS, and HOSTILE MARTIANS… IT CAME FROM… AND MUCH MUCH MORE!

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They’re too wild for one world!

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Source-courtesy of Getty Images

Directed by Charles Lamont. Starring those 2 brilliant comedians Budd Abbott and Lou Costello, as Lester and Orville. With Mari Blanchard as Allura, Robert Paige as Dr. Wilson, Horace McMahon as Mugsy, Martha Hyer as Janie Howe, Jack Kruschen as Harry, and Jean Willes as Capt. Olivia and Anita Ekberg as a Venusian guard.

From Keep Watching the Skies by Bill Warren –“To children in the 1940s and on until the mid-50s, a new Abbott and Costello movie was better than a trip to the circus.”

We all noticed that Bud Abbott was the straight man and Lou Costello was the mechanism to draw out the comic gags. At times Bud even came across as Warren says, “cruel” to Lou and I know for me it made me a bit uncomfortable even back then. Lou was lovable and wasn’t considered an idiot, but rather like a little boy trapped in a man’s body. Again I cite Bill Warren who sums it up beautifully-“His curiosity and haplessness got him into trouble and assured that he would stay there, but the film’s essential unreality always made us feel that Lou and Bud would be out of problems by the end…[…] There was always a sadness to Lou Costello, as there is with almost every clown.”

Go to Mars

Directed by Charles Lamont who did all of Bud and Lou’s films here, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) Bud plays Lester, a handyman who works for a rocket research institute, and Lou plays Orville, a handyman who works at an orphanage. Of course, the story’s title indicates that they take a trip to Mars when the pair accidentally launch one of the rockets with them on board! They take a short trip, a very short trip as unbeknownst to Lester and Orville they haven’t landed on Mars, but in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. So when the outlandish and bizarre costumes parade around the duo, they have no reason to think they’ve landed on another planet…

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The film co-stars two wonderful character actors Horace McMahon who plays Mugsy  (Naked City tv series 1960s) and Jack Kruschen who plays Harry– both are bank robbers on the lam, who have used spacesuits they stole from the ship as disguise when pulling the heist. The two criminals hide away on the spaceship equipped with paralyzer guns and lots of science fiction gadgets. And it gets launched yet again with our two characters Lester and Orville. This time they are heading for Venus. To go with this silly gendered plot line you’ll have to take it that Venus is run by a Matriarch name Queen Allura (Mari Blanchard)

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Allura banished all the men from the planet 400 years earlier because the King had been unfaithful to her. She also falls in love with Orville. Lou has eyes for Anita Ekberg (who wouldn’t…) she plays a Venusian guard. Queen Allura finds out that Lou is also unfaithful ‘like all men’ and goes crazy with anger. The passengers of the renegade ship manage to get away and crash land back on Earth.  There’s a funny scene as they zip around Manhattan in the ship they make the Statue of Liberty duck then they zoom through the Holland Tunnel giving New York a piece of science fiction slapstick. The film also co-stars Robert Paige as Dr. Wilson, Martha Hyer as Janie Howe, and Jean Willes as Captain Olivia.

In Jim Mulholland’s The Abbott and Costello Book he talks about the film, “The futuristic sets on Venus look expensive , but the film is so silly and is so obviously geared to kiddie matinee audiences that it is almost impossible to endure.”

Well if the adult child in you still adores seeing the antics of Bud & Lou then it should be included in their list of films you want to see.

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Mary Blanchard as Queen Allura.

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Anita Ekberg as a Venusian Guard.

Venusian #1: “What is it?”

Allura: “I could be wrong, but I think it’s a man.”

Venusian #2: “That’s a man?”

Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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The Laughs Are Twice as MONSTER-OUS as Ever Before!

Again directed by Charles Lamont. Lee Loeb and John Grant wrote the screenplay working from a story by Sid Fields, based on the character from Robert Louis Stevenson’s immortal science-fiction fantasy novel. With camera work by cinematographer George Robinson (Son of Frankenstein 1939, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman 1943, Tarantula 1955)

With make up both Mr. Hyde and the mouse mask by Bud Westmore!

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Our two heroes Slim and Tubby meet Boris Karloff as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.

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Bud and Lou had already met Frankenstein, Dracula, the Invisible Man, and The Wolf Man, it was just a matter of time until they met the conflicted dual personality of Dr. Jekyll and his darker alter ego Mr. Hyde. It was the first time the boys came up against a monster since 1951.

Bud and Lou are American detectives who tag along with Scotland Yard and come to find out that the menacing Mr. Hyde has been terrorizing London for years. Meanwhile, the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll is one and the same man… Boris Karloff. Of course, Lou tries so hard to get Bud to believe that the kindly Dr. Jekyll is actually Hyde. The other players in the film include Craig Stevens as Bruce Adams a newspaper reporter who is in love with Vicky Edwards (Helen Wescott) which poses a problem as Dr. Jekyll himself is in love with Vicky as well.

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Bill Warren writes- “This romantic triangle is extremely artificial-Karloff at all time seems avuncular, not predatory-and was apparently added for the obligatory romantic elements, to enlarge the plot beyond Bud & Lou fleeing from Hyde.”

The film shows Warren pointing out a “series of set pieces” as they chase Hyde around a wax museum, filled with homages to other films like wax likenesses of Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula.

Sadly, the film was not well received, people had started to tire of the ‘meet’ films of Bud and Lou and the popularity was waning. Universal had actually been planning a Abbott and Costello Meet the Creature from the Black Lagoon but it never got off the ground.

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Craig Stevens co-stars as Bruce Adams, Helen Wescott as Vicky Edwards, and Reginald Denny as the Inspector with John Dierkes as Batley.

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Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Hyde

Slim: Now look! You can’t make two persons out of one. If there’s a monster, there’s a monster. If there’s a Dr. Jekyll, there’s a Dr. Jekyll. But one can’t be the other.

Tubby: Now listen Slim. All I know is that I locked up the monster and when I came back, Dr. Jekyll was there. You know I’m no magician.

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The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

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FANTASTIC SEA-GIANT CRUSHES CITY!

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Eugène Lourié who was an art director working with Jean Renoir. Directed The Colossus of new York 1958, The Giant Behemoth 1959, and Gorgo 1961. He started out designing ballets in Paris and was the art director for Strange Confession 1944, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry 1945, Limelight 1952, Shock Corridor 1963, The Naked Kiss 1964, and The Strangler 1964. Eugène Lourié designed one of Renoir’s most influential films, Rules of the Game (1939), he also designed work on The Southerner (1945) Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The River (1951) To say the least he has had a wide range of eclectic films.

Eugène Lourié worked with the master Ray Harryhausen on the special effects and the creature which are spectacular!

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Screenplay by Bronx-born Fred Freiberger ( Garden of Evil 1954, Beginning of the End 1957)

The film stars Paul Hubschmid as Professor Tom Nesbitt, Paula Raymond as Lee Hunter, Cecil Kellaway as Prof. Thurgood Elson foremost paleontologist, veteran science fiction hero Kenneth Tobey (The Thing 1951, It Came from Beneath the Sea 1955) as Col. Jack Evans, Lee Van Cleef as Corporal Stone, Steve Brodie as Sgt. Loomis, Ross Elliot as George Ritchie, Frank Ferguson as Dr. Morton, and King Donovan as Dr. Ingersoll.

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A ferocious dinosaur awakened by an Arctic atomic test terrorizes the North Atlantic and, ultimately, New York City. The film begins when they are testing a nuclear device inside the Arctic Circle, which winds up freeing a prehistoric ‘Rhedosaurus’ which is a carnivorous giant beast that walks on four legs and lives under water and can walk on land too! Tom Nesbitt played by Paul ‘Hubsschmid’ Christian is the only survivor to tell about the prehistoric creature, but no one believes his story.

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Eventually the Beast emerges again and sinks a small ship with that survivor telling the same story, identifying the ‘Rhedosaurus’. Cecil Kellaway plays a well known paleontologist that Nesbitt seeks out for help. Now the Beast starts moving toward New York City believed to be the ancestral origin and breeding ground for the Rhedosaurus. It comes ashore on Manhattan, right near the Fulton Fish Market. Elson is lowered in a type of diving bell called a bathysphere so the paleontologist can study the creature up close. Unfortunately he becomes a tasty morsel, a hard candy with a soft center… Yikes!

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It then proceeds to smash and stomp everything in it’s path, until it returns to the river. What complicates things is that while it becomes wounded, they discover that it’s blood is highly infectious and deadly, so they need to find a way to destroy it even more than ever.

The wounded Rhedosaurus takes refuge in an old fair ground on Coney Island near a roller coaster which it takes out it’s aggression on by snapping it like twigs in it’s massive jaws and claws.

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Prof. Thurgood Elson: [in the diving bell, to view the monster] “This is such a strange feeling, I feel as though I’m leaving a world of untold tomorrows for a world of countless yesterdays….[…] It’s unbelievable he’s tremendous!”

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Professor Tom Nesbitt: “The world’s been here for millions of years. Man’s been walking upright for a comparatively short time. Mentally we’re still crawling.”

George Ritchie: [referring to the A-bomb test] “You know every time one of those things goes off, I feel as if I was helping to write the first chapter of a new Genesis.”

Professor Tom Nesbitt: “Let’s hope we don’t find ourselves writing the last chapter of the old one.”

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Cat-Women of the Moon

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SEE THE DEADLY CAVE OF MOON-GOLD!

SEE THE BLOOD-THIRSTY BATTLE OF MOON MONSTERS!

SEE THE LOST CITY OF LOVE-STARVED CAT WOMEN!

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Directed by editor Arthur Hilton, who worked on noir classics  The Killers 1946, and Scarlett Street 1945. The film stars Sonny Tufts as Laird Granger, Victor Jory as Kip Reissner, Marie Windsor as Helen Salinger, William Phipps as Doug Smith, Douglas Fowley as Walt Walters, Carol Brewster as Alpha, Susan Morrow as Lambda, Suzanne Alexander as Beta, Cat-Woman are Bette Arlen, Roxann Delman, Ellye Marshall, and Judy Walsh. originally in 3D– it’s Schlock at it’s very best!

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An American space crew is led by the uptight straitlaced Laird Granger (Sonny Tufts) who does everything by the book, but as Kip (Victor Jory) says “some things aren’t in the book” And that’s for sure when you wind up on a planet with Cover Girls in black leotards. From the moment they leave the base on route to the moon, the crew find themselves in trouble when a meteor creates trouble for the ship, a fire in the bottom of the craft started by acid forces them to land, as suggested by Lt. Helen Salinger who is the ship’s navigator and Laird’s girlfriend. She picks the area in between the dark and light sides of the moon. This makes Kip very suspicious though he’s pretty skeptical about most things that’s why he carries a gun with him at all times.

Don’t be too impressed with Windsor’s character playing a Lt, after they crash land she still has to grab for her compact and fix her face, and powder her nose. Marie Windsor (whom I adore) is sultry and perfectly suited for film noir (Force of Evil 1948, The Sniper 1952, City that Never Sleeps 1953, The Killing 1956, The Narrow Margin 1952 ), and is a joy to see in this film even if it’s a true stinker! She’s much better suited for the science fiction obscure gem that has its shocking moments, The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1963).

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Helen leads the crew when they go out to investigate their surroundings and find a nearby cave, they realize that the atmosphere is exactly the same as it is on earth. There’s water and oxygen and so it is safe to take their space suits off. The gang is attacked suddenly by some cheesy hairy horned spiders which they manage to kill. In the meantime, someone has stolen their spacesuits and helmets. They go deeper into the cave until they stumble onto an ancient Greekesque city inside the moon where they are greeted by women who look like a dance troupe for Martha Graham and Twyla Tharp in their black leotards. Helen slips away to meet Alpha (Brewster) the leader of the Cat-Women who is telepathic.

They are called Cat-Women for no reason I can glean, or that emerges from the entirely silly narrative. Alpha tells Helen- “Our generation predates yours by centuries.”

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The Cat-Women led by Alpha (Carol Brewster) has been in telepathic communication with and controlling Lt.Helen Salinger for years, unbeknownst to the men in the crew. There are no men on the moon but Zeta (Alexander) explains, “We have no use for men.”

Alpha tells Helen-“You are one of us now.”

Alpha has been controlling Helen by imprinting an image of the moon, a white spot on her hand. Once this spot is covered it breaks the control over her.

It’s not that the Cat-Women haven’t been enjoying their lives cavorting around with each other dancing and creeping around in their oh so Mod-erne leotards, it’s that their planet’s atmosphere is breaking up, and in order to survive they must seek out a new planet. So the plan is to steal the crew’s rocket and go to Earth, control the mind of the Earth women, and eventually take over the planet! First, they must truly gain Helen’s male compatriot’s confidence in order to find out how to run the ship.

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Of course, the cynical Kip doesn’t want any part of these gorgeous moon gals…

Kip secretly in love with Helen gets her alone, and puts his arms around her, which breaks Alpha’s spell, and Helen tells him what’s going on.

Once Kip (Jory) figures this out he covers Helen’s hand and quickly asks her three questions, two that inquire whether she’s truly in love with Laird or him, and the other is to find out how to get away.

But Alpha has already gotten information out of Laird and Walt has taken Zeta back to the ship to show her how it operates.

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It was Alpha who helped Helen get her assignment to the space crew. Of course, the men become enamored of Cat-Women in leotards, except for Kip (Victor Jory) who is suspicious of this beguiling tribe of moon temptresses. Walt Willis (Douglas Fowley) wanders off with one of the women to explore the cave that is filled with gold, she stabs him but not before he teaches her how to fly their spaceship. Another of the Cat-Women has fallen for one of the crew members, Lambda (Susan Morrow), falls hard for Doug Smith (Bill Phipps) the radio operator. All she wants is to go back to earth with Doug and romp around on a sandy beach drinking a Coca-Cola.

In this soap space opera, the staid and steady Laird has fallen for Helen, and under a sort of mind control has given all the information the Cat-Women need to take over. They make plans to return to earth with Alpha and Beta (Suzanne Alexander). Lambda tries to intervene but gets brutally conked on the head with a large rock and killed. Kip shoots the evil Zeta and Alpha off-screen, and the remaining earth crew kills the rest of the Cat-Women, escaping with Helen and heading back to earth.

Cat-Women of the Moon is one of those so bad it’s good movies that’s just fun to watch! It’s more space soap opera than science fiction but those girls are so outré Mod-erne in their black leotards BUT no physical attributes that make one think of any similarity to cats, their features or feats of skill… The best part of the film is the dance scene by the Hollywood Cover Girls in their unlike cat costumes. The film was remade in 1959 called Missile to the Moon.

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As Bill Warren illustrates how badly filmed this is and in particular how ‘excruciatingly stupid’ the script and visuals are… (i.e.) the chairs the crew sit in are standard swivel desk chairs that roll around the floor on castors.– “Take the spaceship cabin. Ignoring the fact that it looks like someone’s front room and that down is always in the direction of the floor, even when the ship spins end-for-end in an effort to make the meteor fall off (which it does), there is still enough in the room to make a good technical director faint.”

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Laird Grainger: “The eternal wonders of space and time. The far away dreams and mysteries of other worlds. Other life. The stars. The planets. Man has been face to face with them for centuries, yet is barely able to penetrate their unknown secrets. Sometime, someday, the barrier will be pierced. Why must we wait? Why not now?”

Alpha: “Four of us will be enough. We will get their women under our power, and soon we will rule the whole world!”

 

Donovan’s Brain

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Directed by Felix E. Feist (The Devil Thumbs a Ride 1947, The Man Who Cheated Himself 1950)

Based on a story written by Curt Siodmak who wrote the script for The Wolf Man 1941, with the script co-written with director Feist. This above average Science Fiction suspense stars Lew Ayres as Dr. Patrick J. Cory, Gene Evans as Dr. Frank Schratt, Nancy Reagan as Janice Cory, Steve Brodie as Herbie Yokum, Tom Powers as Donovan’s Washington Advisor, Lisa Howard as Chloe Donovan.

Donovan’s Brain is perhaps the caviar of Brain in a Tank films to all the other Velveeta films of that sort. Although it is a remake of the quite engaging Lady and The Monster (1944) and Vengeance (1962) both based on the novel Donovan’s Brain by Curt Siodmak.

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Siodmak’s story has been retold several times, first with director George Sherman’s  The Lady and The Monster (1944) starring Erich von Stroheim, Richard Arlen, and Vera Ralston. Then in 1962, it was re-visioned as a British Sci-fi chiller directed by Freddie Francis called The Brain starring Anne Heyward. Because of Siodmak’s talent for storytelling, the film is an intelligent and compelling film

And there was at least one radio adaptation I believe through the Suspense series, which is a wonderful version, I own cast with Hans Conried, Jerry Hausner, John McIntire, and Jeannette Nolan.

And Boris Leven’s set design lays out the eerie ‘science gone awry’ landscape, with tanks filled with brains, it doesn’t hearken back to Strickfaden’s elaborate mad scientist milieu but it works for this particular science fiction/horror narrative.

Bill Warren-“One of the few sets apparently actually constructed for Donovan’s Brain is the laboratory, which looks satisfactorily jury-rigged and inexpensive. Unlike most ‘mad scientists’, Pat Cory hasn’t bothered to build elaborate consoles with labeled switches. The tank for the brain is literally a large tropical fish tank, again adding to the air of improvised science.”

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Essentially Dr. Patrick Cory (Lew Ayres) and his associate Dr. Frank Schratt (Gene Evans) are doing brain research, they’ve been trying to remove a monkey’s brain and keep it alive outside of the body, though the foundation for doing these experiments aren’t truly spelled out. We just hear that it’s “for the good of humanity.” In these fascinating Science Fiction tales where science hubris and it’s idolization by often well-meaning doctors –often see their experiments go awry.

Assisting them is Pat’s wife, Jan played by Nancy Davis, who had just become Mrs. Ronald Reagan. Now, the experiment with the monkey was encouraging –“A brain without a body, alive!” I suppose in 1953, these three hadn’t met Jan in the Pan (The Brain that Wouldn’t Die 1962), or they wouldn’t have been that excited over the prospect of live brains in tanks looking like a benefit to humanity.

As fate would have it, the same day they have success with the monkey brain, a small plane crashes very close to the lab, being doctors Cory and Schratt are called upon to help the victims. There is but one survivor, a multi-millionaire named Warren H. Donovan. Donovan is close to death so the two operate on him, but it’s no use and the millionaire dies. But, it is Dr. Pat Cory who has the idea –“Science can use Donovan’s brain,” though his wife Jan and partner Frank fervently object at first. “What an idea, stealing a man’s brain”-they go along with Pat’s operating to remove the dead man’s brain and keep it alive in the tank…

In many ways, looking past the sci-fi elements of the story, it is a stark crime thriller about the evils of power. This is also one of those science fiction morality plays that informs us that is it ‘science’ itself that is the villain and is ‘evil and dangerous’, especially in the hands of a scientist, even if he is altruistic at heart. Dr. Pat Cory is a good man, who happened to trigger a very bad series of events. It is a story about “tampering with things man (and women) was not meant to know.” In the end, he tells us, “I did many foolish things.”

The 1953 film is the closest to the novel. Dr. Patrick Cory, the scientist, attempts to save the life of millionaire Donovan “Donovan carried to an extreme the independence of the self-made man”, Dr. Pat Cory, who is working with the research of the powers of the brain, is seduced by the potential of unlocking the secrets of the brain, seizes the opportunity to explore his theories. The danger ensues once he removes Donovan’s brain from the severely damaged body and under very clandestine experimentation, not unlike our old Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Pat Cory manages to keep the brain alive in a tank in his laboratory.

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W.H. Donovan had been a very famous yet shady character in his business dealings, so his death draws a lot of media attention. So Pat and Frank have to keep their experiment a dark secret. The two scientists also run into a free-lance journalist Herbie Yocum played by Steve Brodie, who wants to take some sensational photos like the operating table where Donovan died. This, Pat Cory, agrees to because he doesn’t want to create any suspicion around his death, especially near his laboratory. But Yokum takes a photo of the brain in the tank.

The experiment is a success and Donovan’s brain is taking in all the nourishment it needs to become stronger, it actually begins to increase in size. The equipment in the lab also indicates that there are thought waves occurring in the brain. Donovan’s brain is actually sending out thoughts telepathically. “Donovan’s brain is giving out thoughts. All I have to do is use my brain to receive them.” Pat Cory tells Frank. So he sits in front of the tank and concentrates leaving his mind open, and it works, he goes into a trance and starts to write notes in W.H. Donovan’s handwriting. This terrifies Jan and Frank, who worry about Pat’s state of mind. The next day, Donovan’s brain takes hold of Pat once again, this time actually causing him to limp the same way Donovan used to when he was alive. At this point, Donovan is in complete control of Dr. Pat Cory.

But Donovan alive was a very powerful and ruthless businessman, one of the wealthiest men in the world who is still asserting his influence from his remote tank. He forces his will over the poor scientist and actually possesses Dr. Pat Cory like an evil demon.  Lew Ayres is a wonderful actor who does a great job of playing Dr. Pat Cory. So good at playing sensitive civilized men, here he is at the mercy of a very strong-willed cutthroat, who wants to see his missions carried out as planned right before his plane crashed. Pat charters a plane where he takes Donovan’s favorite suite in a hotel he was famous for hanging out in, and he closes out his bank account for $27,000 that Donovan kept under a false name. He purchases new equipment so the poor doctor can now boost his brain power even more. He even orders suits like the ones Donovan used to wear and takes up his dirty business dealings.

Pat runs into Yocum, who has figured out the truth behind the secretive veil surrounding Donovan’s death/life. He knows that Donovan is still alive and starts to blackmail Pat Cory.

Steve Brodie who plays the smarmy reporter Yocum pays the price of finding out about Dr. Cory’s stealing Donovan’s brain and his plan to blackmail the doctor backfires. It isn’t long before, the ruthless mind of W.H. Donovan takes over Cory’s body again hypnotizing Yocum and sending him off into the desert so he can drive his car off a cliff into a fiery mess…

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Gene Evans is very subtle as the inebriated colleague Dr. Frank Schratt. Donovan forces Dr. Pat Cory to continue his tax evasion scheme. He also cuts Donovan’s children out of his will and plans to have his brain placed in permanent residency at a special installation to house and protect his criminal brain.

Frank tries to shoot the brain in its tank-“It’s unnatural, unholy”-but it forces him to shoot himself instead.

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From Bill Warren- “When the brain takes over, Ayre’s transformation from Good Dr. Cory to Bad W.H. Donovan is subtle and powerful.”

During a moment when Donovan is not in control, Pat Cory takes the opportunity to send a message to his wife, with instructions on how to destroy the monstrous brain, but we do not hear what he instructs her to do. Later Donovan thinks that Frank (Gene Evans) and Janice (Nancy Reagan) are in the way and plans on having them taken care of the same way he did with Yokum. That’s when Frank tries to shoot the brain as it forces him to turn the gun on himself. Once Donovan has taken over Pat Cory’s body fully, the doctor no longer exists. He tries to strangle Janice Cory, during a thunderstorm when a bolt of lightning strikes the lab’s lightning rod, which we now learn was part of Dr. Pat Cory’s instructions. He has hooked up a special conduit so when the bolt of lightning hits, the juice charges the tank and Donovan’s brain becomes fried dumplings.

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Of course, Dr. Pat Cory must pay for his profane crime of tampering with science and using an unauthorized brain in his experiments, but his faithful wife Janice promises to wait for him.

Gene Evans (The Giant Behemoth 1959, Shock Corridor 1963) plays the good friend who drinks too much, but he’s dependable and likable. And have no fear, though he shoots himself he does not die by the film’s end.

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: [after Cory wakes Dr. Schratt up from a drunken stupor] “My dear Dr. Schratt, you sober up with more””[pauses and shrugs] grace than anyone I ever saw. You’re terrific. C’mon, let’s go.”

Dr. Frank Schratt: “Are you kidding?””[He hold out his shaking hand]””Look! Nope.”

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: “Frank, don’t let me down.”

Dr. Frank Schratt: “What’s more useless than a surgeon with a hangover? I’m a drunken zero.! I pass!”

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: “No, you don’t. I’d rather have you do a corneal transplant for me drunk than anyone else sober””[Pulls him by the arm] Let’s go boy.”

Dr. Frank Schratt: “You’re brilliant but not normal.”

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: [Laughs] “So are you, but are you and who is?”

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Dr. Patrick J. Cory: [after Cory wakes Dr. Schratt up from a drunken stupor] “My dear Dr. Schratt, you sober up with more.” [pauses and shrugs]
… Grace than anyone I ever saw. You’re terrific… C’mon, let’s go.”

Dr. Frank Schratt: “Are you kidding?” [He holds out his shaking hand]
… Look! Nope.”

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: “Frank, don’t let me down.”

Dr. Frank Schratt: “What’s more useless than a surgeon with a hangover? I’m a drunken zero.! I pass!”

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: “No, you don’t. I’d rather have you do a corneal transplant for me drunk than anyone else sober.” [Pulls him by the arm]
… Let’s go boy.”

Dr. Frank Schratt: “You’re brilliant but not normal.”

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: [Laughs] “So are you, but are you and who is?”

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Dr. Patrick J. Cory: -“Perhaps I’ll cure Frank and every other alcoholic if I can solve the mystery of Donovan’s Brain. I think it’s a matter of chemistry how the brain thinks. The problem is to find out what chemical combinations are responsible for success… failure… happiness… misery.”

Janice Cory: “Sounds impossible.”

Dr. Patrick J. Cory: “But it is not. It can’t be. There has to be a way.”

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Four Sided Triangle

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Directed by Terence Fisher this is a rare and obscure little film! Stars Barbara Payton as Lena/Helen, James Hayter as Dr. Harvey, Stephen Murray as Bill, John van Eyssen as Robin, and Percy Marmont as Sir Walter.

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Photo courtesy of Alamy

The 1950s had some memorable science fiction films within the genre that entertained us in the decade that saw the heyday of the illusory American dream””where the books and films forged out of fantasy were a great release from the anxiety of WWII and the advent of McCarthy Era paranoia. It was a rarity to find American science fiction films of the early 50s that were based on novels of the same name. This was even more of an oddity for British films. Then there was the very provocative Four-Side Triangle, adapted from the novel by William F. Temple and scripted by the prolific Terence Fisher who also directed, and co-scripted by Hungarian-born Paul Tabori who went on to write several science fiction novels himself, the most well-known being The Green Rain. The novel was published in 1939. The first fantasy feature by Hammer with director Fisher that predates his stint with the Hammer brand horror/sci-fi The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958)

Four-Sided Triangle wasn’t received very well, and it’s still considered quite dreary and so it remains pretty obscure today.

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And I find it sort of possesses an air of deviance and a serious curiosity piece concerning a love triangle that becomes a twisted kind of quadrangle. The film stars Barbara Peyton who plays a dual role “”the object of both men’s desires.

Lena who returns to her English home town to see her old child hood friends, Robin (John Van EYSSEN) and Bill (Stephen Murray) have invented a machine that can duplicate objects by reconstructing matter into energy. Not unlike the transportation device in The Fly (1958) that messed with atomic particulars that re-assembled matter and then sends it to another location re-assembling it, sans any contamination in the field like let’s say a house fly”¦ “Eeeeeee…Help me, Help me!”

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They try out their experimental machine first using a totally innocuous object “” a watch, which they manage to duplicate. Meanwhile, Lena and Robin get engaged and leave to get hitched, leaving Bill to mess around with their new discovery. He uses a living subject instead of just an inanimate object. He’s also madly, tragically in love with his brother’s girl, Lena. This is where the story becomes if not risqué it bares the element a of twisted Sci-Fi melodrama. His brother Robin returns from the honeymoon and heads out to London on business. Poor lovesick Bill asks Lena to please submit to his very profane request… to allow him to duplicate her, using the machine, so that he may fulfill his desire for her in some way.

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Lena actually agrees to this, and her doppelgänger Helen is born. But as they say careful what you wish for, and while the machine is effective in duplicating the subject, it does exactly that! And what happens”¦ Helen falls in love with her brother Robin as well. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. It’s a theme about life’s song of irony and the lesson that we shouldn’t meddle with nature. The constant trope that runs through most to all Science Fiction stories. Not to play god, not to tamper with the nature of things, nor to be as bold to force our will upon other people or the natural world, at least not without paying the consequences for these sacrilegious actions.

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Of course, Bill is devastated by the outcome, and instead of learning his lesson, he delves deeper into the dark recesses of his lower self and tries to wipe out Helen’s memory, in hopes of being able to seduce a blank slate. Bill does wash her mind clean, by electronically eradicating Helen’s memory but there is a fire in the laboratory and one of the women is killed.

I’m sorry, but you get what you deserve when you’re willing to create a woman in a machine that mimics the object of your desire. It is pathetic and outré creepy, and it says that any woman will do as long as she’s from the same atomic particle ‘mold’ rather than accepting fate. It doesn’t create much sympathy, even if it is born out of a broken heart. Get over it, or get a puppy!

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Lena: An empty mind… and a new beginning!

Invaders from Mars

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Murderous Martian creatures from out of space! From out of space… came hordes of green monsters! Mankind’s oldest fear…The Alien’s last conquest!

Invaders from Mars is innovative designer William Cameron Menzies‘ (Things to Come 1936) landscape of the altered mind, it’s a surreal & beautiful science fiction dreamscape with a screenplay by Richard Blake. Starring Helena Carter as Dr. Pat Blake, Arthur Franz as narrator/Dr. Stuart Kelston, Jimmy Hunt as David MacLean, Leif Erickson as George MacLean, Hillary Brooke as Mrs. Mary MacLean, Morris Ankrum as Col. Fielding, Max Wagner as Sgt. Rinaldi William Phipps as Sgt. Baker, Milburn Stone as Capt. Stone.

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Cinematography by John F. Seitz (The Lost Weekend 1945, Double Indemnity 1944, Sunset Boulevard 1950) and music composed by Raoul Kraushaar (Cabaret 1972)

Invaders From Mars is perhaps one of the most recognizable science fiction gems of the 1950s partially due to William Cameron Menzies’s eye and experience for artistic design, he creates a dreamlike colorful yet terrifying landscape, with the feel of a comic book horror/sci-fi/fantasy. It’s a vision of alienation, alien occupation, and paranoia that we can all relate to at some point in our lives. I know it effected me as a kid, while not growing up in the 1950s I certainly was fed a substantial dose of the product of horror/sci-fi/fantasy that came from the contribution of literature and film that preceded my childhood growing up in the following decade of the turbulent 60s.

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The story uses as its protagonist a little boy who experiences a nightmare journey that recycles itself in the end, creating the dreaded sense of entrapment. The young protagonist finds his “Own reality is being twisted into the kind of horror”¦[“¦] the story is literally a nightmare.”

The story is told from the point of view of David MacLean played by Jimmy Hunt. Bill Warren in his terrific overview of Keep Watching the Skies published by McFarland. “Children operate with a different kind of logic than adults: events proceed from cause to effect, but the causes adults and children see don’t produce the same effects, and vice versa. Adults and children are not frightened of all of the same things, nor do they find the same things interesting. It takes a special imagination to achieve this kind of viewpoint.”

David is a young star gazer who is awakened one night by a flash of bright light when he looks out his bedroom window and sees a flying saucer land out over the hill. He wakes his parents, George and Mary (Leif Erikson and Hillary Brooke) to inform them of what he’s seen. The artistic direction and color palette reminds me of Finnish painter Hugo Simberg. The set pieces have a surreal, simplistic yet fantastical color scheme and composition.

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Menzies art directions were “like a daisy chain” of dream sequences.

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In the morning, Father George goes out to investigate near the place David saw the craft go down, the fence seems to disappear into the sand dune. A mysterious hole in the sand swallows up George, who doesn’t return home, his wife phones the police until George suddenly comes back but with a completely different temperament. He seems like a changed man. He has no emotions at all, yet he bares a strange ill-tempered streak, verging on violent when unprovoked he strikes David hard with the back of his hand when David questions him about a strange mark on the back of his neck.

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“Say Dad when you were out there did you see anything?”
“let’s not start that flying saucer nonsense again.’

he notices the implant in the back of his father’s neck “Hey Dad” “Yeah what do you want!” “What happened to your neck, it looks like there’s a “¦.?”

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Imagine the nightmare of a twist of fate where the people who love you now hate you and the ones who are supposed to keep you safe, become the most dangerous!

The next to disappear in the sand pit are the two policemen Douglas Kennedy and Charles Kane -who called out to find David’s father. Once they return they appear to have the same eerie ill mood as George, zapped of any human emotion. Now, when a little girl also disappears, seemingly swallowed up by the sand and disappears in front of David, he tells his mother, but she too returns just as a fire starts in the basement of the little girl’s house. David panics and goes to the police station. Seeking out the symbol of authority and protection right”¦ wrong”¦!

The little guy talks to the chief. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“What makes you think the chief will?”

One of the cops who has been taken over by the invaders asks, “What’s the trouble, Mac?”
it’s a very creepy tone, that seems menacing in its coldness…

David sees that the guy has the same wound on the back of his neck. Pulling his collar over it to conceal it.

When the little guy runs into the police station asking to see the chief, it goes to that place where we feel most vulnerable and the panic sets in when we realize there is no one you can trust, no one to believe you. There is no safe place. And those you love are gone. The threat goes to the issue of trust and a sense of safety and not just about creepy aliens lurking around. A film of paranoia and insecurity.

Spielberg says that Menzies gave himself the license to work on the film doing homages using BERTOLD BRECHTIAN sets because it was a dream. Also, the fear that it kept recurring is the notion that there isn’t any escape you can wake up from the nightmare, but it only begins all over again. “It’s a trap. It’s absurd. it’s deadly frightening.”

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There the chief of police Bert Freed has also been taken over by the Martians who have submerged themselves in the land behind his house. David is locked up until a psychologist Dr. Pat Blake played by Helen Carter comes to see him and realizes how genuinely frightened he is. He is petrified when his parents come to pick him up, his mother now showing the same frozen demeanor as his father. So Dr. Blake keeps David in her care and takes him to see a colleague Dr. Stuart Kelston played by Arthur Franz. Dr. Kelston is also an amateur astronomer who not only believes that David saw a spacecraft land in the backfield, but that the earth could very well be under siege by Martians, and an immanent invasion could be near. That they might be trying to interfere with local rocket experiments being launched in the area. And of course, that’s where David’s father works.

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Invaders from Mars

Kelston has a telescope and he, David, and Dr. Pat Blake see David’s father lure General Mayberry (William Forrest) to the sand dune that swallows him up. Soldiers are sent to surround the sand pit, overseen by veteran science fiction supportive actor Morris Ankrum who plays Colonel Fielding alongside Sergeant Rinaldi (Max Wagner). Meanwhile, the Martians are systematically sending out their possessed humans to sabotage the works. The Martians act like puppet masters who can also control their subjects by exploding the devices implanted in their brains –the marks on their necks are where they’ve been drilled. Lovely thought”¦

David is told that his parents are getting their control devices taken out through surgery, just as the sand trap opens up right under his and Pat’s feet, they fall beneath the sand into the underground lair that the Martians have been operating from. We get to see two green Martians who walk like they shuffle (excuse me for saying, back in the day my older brother used to say that they walked as they had shit in their pants) actually these Martians do sort of qualify as “˜pants monsters’.

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Anyway, the two Martians bring David and Pat to the grand Martian leader, a very kitschy Martian –a goldish green head including shoulders with nasty tentacles encased in something like a glass orb. The main Martian telepathically uses its eyes to communicate its creepy menacing power not with squinting veracity but more with a comical sort of soullessness.
The nefarious Martian Intelligence is portrayed by Luce Potter.

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Thank God the military saves the day as Fielding, (poor General Mayberry gets killed), enters the Martian’s underground chambers and rescues David and Pat, she was just about to get her brain drilled into it, they blow up the spacecraft. After this climatic scene as David is on the surface running away, he awakens from this nightmare, (the rolling flashback in his head is a terrific touch) as it was truly a nightmare”¦ runs into his parent’s bedroom, thank god the nightmare is over, he goes back to his room falls asleep until he is again awakened by a space craft landing out in the field behind his house, the entire cycle of events to repeat all over again. It’s quite a stunning conclusion”¦ that doesn’t give us any release.

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In honoring Menzies incredible eye for design, and how the film was envisioned as if we are experiencing the nightmare through a child’s eyes, I defer to the way Bill Warren sums up some of the visual highlights of the film- “The jail set is especially impressive. The only things on the set are those that would impress themselves on a boy; (I’ll ignore that presumptive gender bias) there is a police chief, one sergeant at a towering desk, and on the wall behind him a clock with hands that don’t move, one cell and one key to the cell. The walls are white and almost not there at all; the hall from the front door to the desk is long and tall, it is a set out of a dream, as if it is only partially real”¦[“¦] The interior of the Martian flying saucer is equally imaginative and equally minimal. It’s composed almost entirely of greenish plexiglass. There are no instruments visible at all, there are a couple of tubes which reach up out of sight and a large inexplicable hole in the floor. The sphere with the Martian Intelligence inside rests on a pillar, and is brought to it brought to its perch by the giant green mutants.”

Not to mention the surreal space behind David’s house, the sand pit and the fence that disappears out of site, and the winding trees that melt into space. It’s all very much a dreamscape. A reduction of images in which the minimalist elements actually add to the eerie atmosphere the opposite of Grand Guignol and Gothic old dark house set pieces. How can something so simplistic be so menacing? I guess that’s why Menzie’s film is still so gorgeous to experience today.

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Actor Mark Hamill-“The Invaders From Mars were no angels. They were here to bend our minds. They were the thieves of love and trust. The film was directed by the great art director William Cameron Menzies who gave it a memorably surreal design on a tiny budget.”

Director Steven Spielberg talks about how Invaders From Mars turned his world around “it got to a primal place which basically says the first people not to trust is your father and mother.”

Director James Cameron “What is the deep-seated psychological fear that’s happening here? Maybe it’s simple and elemental as you’re in a relationship with somebody whether it’s a child/parent husband/wife but you never really know what that other person’s thinking. And they might be evil.”

Steven Spielberg “It certainly touched a nerve among all the young kids like myself who saw that movie at a very young age. That you would come home and that you would not recognize your mom and dad they would have changed into people who hate you.”

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When the father hits his son so violently that it knocks him down, as Spielberg says “It’s a shattering primal attack on us.”

I had the same reaction, I came home one night and felt like my parents had been exchanged somehow. they were not cruel like David’s parents in Invaders from Mars, yet I felt that they were somehow duplicates. I walked around the block for an hour afraid to go inside the house. These movies certainly made impressions in that deep-rooted primal way. The subtleties of films like Invaders from Mars will still leave their mark on your psyche.

The giant green Martian Mutants must have zippers up the back of their velour costumes”¦

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The idea of not being believed works as a trope and it possesses a powerful persuasive tone that seeps inside and effects you as a kid watching Invaders From Mars.

All of a sudden, parents turn into aliens, monsters, and cruel. It could be a metaphor for any number of difficult issues children might confront, like alcoholism, abuse, etc. It is the changes that the child experiences in private which they cannot convey to people outside the home, that tell the story of alienation and estrangement. It is a terrifying journey they must navigate on their own, while they try to negotiate what is happening to them.

The ship has crashed into the land, over the hill. The sand sinks down like quicksand that drags down anyone who walks over it. The mutants who walk like my brother used to say to me like they’ve got shit in their pants, worship and serve this giant tentacled head in a glass orb. The whole vision of the ground “˜literally’ collapsing where you stand. it gives the idea that you can’t even feel safe where you stand. It will suck you down into the bowels of the earth where evil creatures will turn you into a mindless image of yourself.

Spielberg says “What really unseats you as a child seeing that movie? it’s all a dream. He wakes up and his mom’s normal and his dad is normal and they don’t believe him, but what happens in the last scene.”

“It starts all over again”¦Â  It’s the groundhog day of science fiction “”lol I thought the same thing Spielberg. that’s pretty much what it is”¦. he’ll just go through the whole loop and then wake up over and over again. There’s a twilight zone episode like that where Dennis Weaver keeps getting sentenced to death by a jury and goes through the execution only to wake up and do it all over again”¦ Spielberg puts it like this “It’ll be a never-ending mirror tunnel of nightmares.”

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Narrator: The heavens. Once an object of superstition, awe, and fear. Now a vast region for growing knowledge. The distance of Venus, the atmosphere of Mars, the size of Jupiter, and the speed of Mercury. All this and more we know. But their greatest mystery the heavens have kept a secret. What sort of life, if any, inhabits these other planets? Human life, like ours? Or life extremely lower in the scale? Or dangerously higher? Seeking the answer to this timeless question, forever seeking, is the constant preoccupation of scientists everywhere. Scientists famous and unknown. Scientists in great universities and in modest homes. Scientists of all ages.

It Came from Outer Space

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XENOMORPHS INVADE OUR WORLD! They can look like humans or change to objects of awesome terror!–From Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction story!–Amazing Sights Leap at You in 3-DIMENSION

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From a story by the master of fantasy and science fiction Ray Bradbury

The science fiction film that brought us the amorphous bubbly one-eyed Xenomorph.

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Jack Arnold’s amazing foray into an alien crash landing that involves stolen identity, invasion fear, and the possibility that life on other planets might be benevolent but still really really creepy.

The film stars Richard Carlson as displaced reporter John Putnam, the wonderful Barbara Rush as Ellen Fields, Charles Drake as jealous Sheriff Matt Warren, Joey Sawyer as Frank Daylon, Russell Johnson as George, and Kathleen Hughes as June.

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Art direction by Robert F. Boyle (North by Northwest 1959, In Cold Blood 1967, Cape Fear 1962, The Thomas Crown Affair 1968) and Cinematography by Clifford Stine (This Island Earth 1955, The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957, Touch of Evil 1958, Imitation of Life 1959, Operation Petticoat 1959, Spartacus 1960, Patton 1970) Read Stine’s credits on IMBd they are far too many to list! The mesmerizing musical score is by an un-credited Henry Mancini, Irving Gertz, and Herman Stein. The memorable visual effects are by David S. Horsley-(The Killers 1947, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein 1948, This Island Earth 1955) It Came From Outer Space was also filmed in the sensationally hyped 3D!

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The music is wonderfully inspiring to the mood, especially with the desert’s sense of estrangement and when the presence of the Xenomorphs is near. I think they use it as some of the stock music for Night of the Living Dead“¦ I need to check that out… From what I see about their contributors I cannot link to any of the three music contributors to It Came from Outer Space… but I always get a thrill when the ‘coming near’ motif music happens in both!

In reading Bill Warren’sKeep Watching the Skies his overview of It Came from Outer Space, gets into the discrepancies about Ray Bradbury’s full participation in writing the screenplay, being totally replaced by Harry Essex who is credited for the screenplay, if it was his memory that was failing in recollecting what happened or if he had been misunderstood and his work co-opted by Essex because Universal didn’t like Bradbury’s treatment of the script. Warren is totally supportive of Bradbury being an un-credited contributor to the script. While he delves into the weeds a bit more about the mystery and contradictions of the facts behind – the- scenes, I think I’ll just stick with Jack Arnold’s beautifully executed science fiction masterwork here. But the entire section on the film is fascinating if you want a good read and 1950s science fiction is of particular interest, pick up a copy of Keep Watching the Skies by Bill Warren, it’s a sensational compilation of a decade of gems and stinkers, informative, funny engaging even including old published reviews of the films during the time of their theatrical release. I highly recommend it.

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First of all, this is one of those science fiction films that’s actually a really good film, with so many elements that work fabulously to transcend genre. This is one of the first major studios Universal – International to release a film in 3D, and one of the first to be shown in what was called wide screen and in stereophonic sound.

It was also the first science fiction film to be directed by Jack Arnold. (YAY!!!) The first using the southwestern desert as a location”” the Mojave desert to be exact and not the Arizona desert as plotted out in the story””Donovan’s Brain was set there but made little use of the area as a central focal point. The desert already has an eerie, isolated vibe to it”¦

The film stars Richard Carlson as John Putnam and Barbara Rush as Ellen Fields.
Ray Bradbury wrote the original story on which the film is based, He was at the height of his writing with The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451 which brought his genius to light.

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The story opens as a meteor cuts through the evening sky like a glowing fireball high above the alienating desert landscape. For the locals, this brings about many different reactions, including that of John Putnam, an amateur astronomer who’s having dinner with his fiancee Ellen Fields. This gets John so excited that he immediately wants to drive out to the sight to investigate. He and Ellen hop on a helicopter and go and see where the meteor left a large crater.

Meanwhile, from the view of whatever the alien life force is, it moves from the crashed spacecraft, revealing that it wasn’t a meteor at all. “”“Bradbury describes quick shots of animals fleeing in fright from the alien visitor. The jackrabbit, for instance. At this point, he does not mention the use of a subjective camera technique, which has so often been commented on in relation to the film.” -Bill Warren.

Putnam arrives at the crater and approaches the object that has crash landed in a gaping hole, nearly burned to molten rock. Suddenly a landslide occurs and covers up the opening and the spaceship.

Bill Warren–In a sequence (not in the finished film) almost certainly suffused by Billy Wilders’ Ace in the Hole /The Big Carnival 1951, which also took place in the Southwestern desert, earth moving machinery arrives in an effort to uncover the buried pilot. No one believes Putnam’s story. Eventually everyone give up and goes home, including Ellen and Putnam. A strange shape crosses the highway in front of them, they stop to look for whatever it was and a Joshua tree in the dark frightens Ellen, but they do not see the strange shape again. The alien, with the first-person camera emphasized (the camera’s point of view is the Alien’s) watches them leave.

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The next day Putnam is interviewed by hostile reporters. A few days later, the excitement of the meteor has died down. They drive into the desert alone. stopping to look around. “It’s alive,” says Putnam “It looks so dead out there. And yet, it’s all alive and waiting around us and ready to kill you if you go too far from the road. The sun will get you, or the cold at night, or the snakes and the spiders or a sudden rain that floods the washes will get you. Ohm there are a thousand ways you can die in the desert.”

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Here’s Essex’s version of the same scene, which is in the film, “It’s Alive.” says Putnam. Ellen nodding adds, “And yet it looks so dead out there.” Putnam goes on. “But it’s all alive and waiting for you”¦ And ready to kill you if you go too far. The sun will get you or the cold at night”¦ a thousand ways the desert can kill.” There isn’t much difference though some of the dialogue is shared by Ellen which is a nice touch.

Putnam and Ellen drive on and meet the phone linemen. Putnam climbs up the ladder to listen to the strange sounds on the wire that the linemen have been noticing since the crash. The elder lineman says “”

 

–“In all my years nothing like that sound. Like Someone’s on the line. Down that way maybe, tapping the wire. Or up the other way, tapping the wire. listening to unlike we’re listening to him”¦ After you been working out in this desert for fifteen years like I have you get funny ideas. There’s that sun in the sky and the heat, and look at the roads, full of mirages. And the sand out there, full of rivers and lakes that are fifty, a hundred miles away”¦. And sometimes you get to thinking maybe some nights, or some noons like this noon, the sun burns on the wires and gets in the wires and listens and hums and talks like this talk and that’s what you hear now. And sometimes you wonder if some of the snakes and the coyotes and the tumbleweeds don’t climb the poles at noon, far off where you can’t see them, and listen in on us human beings.”

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“Once again, Essex condenses and duplicates this speech without understanding the poetic paranoia behind the words. Fortunately, director Jack Arnold and actor Joe Sawyer did, and the scene is one of the most famous and best like in the finished film.”-Bill Warren.

Putnam and Ellen decide to help the linemen find out what’s happening to the wires and head off in the opposite direction from the one the linemen take. The linemen meet the alien, the scene cuts to Putnam and Ellen. who turn around and go back. They meet the alien masquerading as the younger lineman (Russell Johnson) When he quietly walks up and taps Putnam (Ellen in the film)  on the shoulder, Putnam spots a body behind a mesquite bush, assumes the linemen are dead, and that is what he is talking to isn’t human.

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The scene that follows, one of the only two in the film in which Putnam is not the central figure, was added to the screenplay by Essex. In it, the alien George (Russell) tells the real Frank (Sawyer) that they have landed by accident and that they have the power to make themselves look like us.

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Bill Warren passionately tries to defend and clarify this. “I could continue through the entire storyline in this fashion, it would be profitless. Despite all claims by everyone else to the contrary, the story and the best elements of It Came From Outer Space were written by Ray Bradbury, not by Harry Essex. Because of the many influences of this film, Ray Bradbury’s therefore far more responsible for the look, the feel, and the approach of 1950s science fiction movies than he has ever been acknowledged or even suspected before.”

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In the finished film the aliens apparently literally take on the form of other people, they are actual shape shifters their bodies are malleable enough that they can actually restructure themselves to resemble anyone. In Bradbury’s script, the effect is the same but the power seems to come from hypnosis “”the aliens resemble lizards in Bradbury’s treatment.

I learned something really interesting from reading Warren’s analysis of the film. I myself have often confused Richard Carlson with Hugh Marlowe at times. Here is partly the answer to that

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“In the draft actually called It Came from Outer Space, almost all of the film that was to be was created by Ray Bradbury. In this draft (begun October 1, 1952) Bradbury emphasized scenic and character descriptions much more strongly than the had in his earlier drafts. probably on studio orders. In so doing he created the standard science fiction her of the 1950. who was to be played by Richard Carlson or the nearest equivalent through most of the rest of the decade. Hugh Marlowe, John Agar, Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason. The characters they played were almost always variations on John Putnam the dedicated slightly strange and earnest young researcher. The actors often physically resembled Carlson.”

When it all comes down to it, what Bill Warren is asserting is that he found evidence that Essex’s script was a duplication of Ray Bradbury’s treatment, meaning the result –he isn’t getting the credit for his contribution and Essex is getting credit for Bradbury’s work. And he feels that what Essex did manage to change slightly, didn’t work at all, including inventing some of the poorly envisioned scenes.

What does happen by the end of Bradbury’s final draft is how his incredibly fluid and convoluted description of these aliens came to life as close to the poetic description Bradbury put forth. The few times the aliens show themselves they are hard to assess, in form, with the emphasis on their milky jelly-like eye in a gigantic impression of a head, surrounded by a foggy mist, with sparkles and glistens like a jello mold “¦ but in the end, the film shows them as close to their poetic description that Bradbury had envisioned. Different than some man in a lizard-type pants monster suit with bug eyes, or layers of monster make-up, the floating amorphous alien really does seem to exist on the extra-terrestrial plane.

“One of his main contributions to It Came from Outer Space seems to have been the shimmering bullseye effect used whenever the camera “˜is’ one of the aliens. The subjective camera “playing’ the aliens at time is Bradbury’s idea. but the refinements seem to have been Jack Arnold’s–Bill Warren

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Another aspect of these aliens is that they are not quite hostile, though they are not benign either. it’s sort of a unique view of them. They are panicked and desperate to get off the Earth, and get back to their original destination “Our mission was to another world, only an error dragged us to Earth” Some of the aliens, such as the one in the guise of Ellen that tries to kill Putnam, are indeed hostile to people. Others are just nervous, such as the Putnam duplicate. or openly friendly, like the one that copied George the lineman. In short, just like real people, they don’t have a common attitude they are not of one mind. They reveal an individual spirit. It’s quite a break away from them from other aliens who are a collective group on a mission, unified.

This being director Jack Arnold’s first science fiction film leads with a focus on how the alien relates to this world he has invaded. The result is that his films seem less fanciful and more realistic than most others of this period, such as The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957.

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Ellen Fields: If we’ve been seeing things, it’s because we DID see them.

Sheriff Matt Warren: [three-shot, characters gazing toward sky into which meteor-spaceship has rocketed] Well, they’ve gone.

Ellen Fields: For good, John?

John Putnam: No. Just for now. It wasn’t the right time for us to meet. But there’ll be other nights, other stars for us to watch. They’ll be back.

 

Continue reading “Keep Watching the Skies! Science Fiction Cinema of the 1950s: The Year is 1953”