By now with Parts 1 and 2 under my belt, it’s pretty clear that one theme has emerged. It is my love for three shamefully underrated noir actors that really carry the genre, John Garfield, Victure Mature, and Richard Conte! Victor Mature is a swarthy jewel in his darker noirs, The Long Haul, I Wake Up Screaming, and Kiss of Death. Even in the western noir masterpiece My Darling Clementine 1946 where he plays the brooding Doc Holliday. Conte possesses a sublime brutality, with the lure of a Minotaur charging. Think of him In The Big Combo, Thieves’ Highway, and Brothers Rico. Garfield is deeply vulnerable and edgy, giving off an existential sensuality as in He Ran All the Way, Force of Evil, Body and Soul, and They Made Me a Criminal. I think I’ve fallen in love with all three!
Editorial use only.No book cover usage. Mandatory Credit: Photo by 20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock (5876973e) Robert Siodmak, Victor Mature Cry Of The City 1948 Director: Robert Siodmak 20th Century Fox USA On/Off Set La Proie.
The moody black and white photography is by cinematographer Lloyd Ahern Sr. and the music is by Alfred Newman. Eddie Muller refers to Cry of the City as “Siodmak’s most operatic noir.” It is Siodmak’s most focused work, and the first film noir he shot extensively on location. The film reunited Siodmak with producer Sol Siegel who worked on three Paramount B pictures together after the director settled in Hollywood during the early 1940s. The song ‘Street Scene’, a recurring motif heard in several noirs and written by composer Alfred Newman, plays at the opening of the film. The song can be remembered in I Wake Up Screaming, also starring Mature. It is an urban melody that evokes dreamy nightscapes of the city. Siodmak loves a rain-soaked street in his noir films, with its themes of fatalism and obsession, and the shocking story of the clash between law and lawlessness. The story borrows from a familiar plot device which sets up an opposition between two characters who come from the same background as children, but wind up clashing in their adult life.
Cry of the City is the most ‘operatic’ (Muller) film noir not just stylistically, but the theme its essential that you not hate Marty Rome’s character. The whole idea is that these are two boyhood friends who come from the same neighborhood and it’s just through circumstance one becomes a criminal and one a lawman, but they’re basically the same guy. That’s the whole point of the film. It’s essential that he play someone with that swagger (Conte) and that criminal intent, but he also has a vulnerability you can see in both of them. You can see the boy in the man. It ends so tragically that it feels operatic…You could see that Siodmak is using the street like this huge stage.”
Cry of the City stars Victor Mature as Lt. Vittorio Candella, and Richard Conte as the ruthless Marty Rome. Fred Clark plays Cadnella’s partner Lt. Jim Collins whose tongue is fast on the trigger. Shelley Winters is Marty’s old flame Brenda Martingale. Brenda is Martin’s loyal ex-gal who spirits the wounded Conte around the city, while an unlicensed doctor works on his bullet wounds in the back seat of her car.
Betty Garde is Nurse Frances Pruett, and Berry Kroeger is the unsavory, amoral lawyer W. A. Niles. Debra Paget plays angelic Teena Riconti. Tommy Cook plays Conte’s cop-hating kid brother who worships him, and it’s clear is heading down the same doomed path, as his older brother Marty.
Garde and Emerson worked together in John Cromwell’s Caged 1950. Garde is Conte’s sympathetic nurse And Hope Emerson is the darkly imposing Rose Given. Emerson, a masseuse and a sadist, is the nefarious Amazon who desperately wants the jewels that Conte has lifted from sleazy lawyer Kroeger. One of the best supporting roles in Cry of the City is Hope Emerson as the ‘monolithic’ (Dinman) Rose Givens who dominates the scenes with Conte.
In Robert Siodmak’s sublime noirCry of the City 1948Emerson plays Madame Rose Given who runs a massage parlor, loves to cook, is a pancake eatin’ -looming ‘heavy’… who loves jewels and just wants a little place in the country where she can cook, eat pancakes and fresh eggs… ‘yeah that’s livin’. From her brawny swagger to her grumbling yet leisurely voice, Emerson’s deliciously diabolical performance is the highlight of the film!
This Halloween season I’m covering those fierce women who graced the 1950s Science Fiction & Fantasy/Horror screen with their beauty, brawn and bravado! Like years past–I pay tribute to the Scream Queens of the 1930s & 1940s.
We’ve arrived at the 1950s decade’s deliriously dynamic dames… Who had to deal with mad scientists, gigantism, alien invasions and much more menace & mayhem!
Of course I plan on doing the 1960s and 1970s in the next year–and you’ll notice that I am listing some of our Queen B’s future films & television appearances of a supernatural or science fiction nature, and even a few scattered exploitation films that fit the bill. Added are a few photos to fill out the framework of their contribution to the genre. I’ve included honorable mentions to those who starred in at least one film and perhaps a few science fiction & horror anthology shows on television.
And I guess I should be super clear about this, so no one gets their hackles standing on end, not one actress who wound up only getting an honorable mention, (be it one of your favorites and believe me their are a few of mine on that smaller list), by any means does it imply that I think they have a less substantial participation in the decade’s genre.
All these actresses have performed in other types of films-other genres and dramatic roles and enjoyed a full career that transcends the science fiction & horror films they appeared in.
Allied together they created the fabric of the 1950s decade, colored by their unique and valuable presence to ensure that science fiction & horror/fantasy will live on to entertain and enamor a whole new generation of fans and aficionados.
Collectively and Individually these women are fantastic , and I feel very passionate about having put this wonderful collection together as a tribute!
I can’t begin to describe the admiration I’ve developed over the past several years, by delving into Beverly Garland’s long impressive career as a popular cult actress. All I can think of saying– seems crude– but it’s what truly comes to mind… Beverly Garland kicks some serious ass!!!
From historian/writer Tom Weaver-“For most fans of 50s horror there are just no two ways about it. Beverly Garland is the exploitation film heroine of the period. A principal member of Roger Corman’s early stock company, she was the attractive, feisty leading lady in such Corman quickies as It Conquered the World, Gunslinger, Naked Paradise, and Not of this Earth. In between Corman assignments she braved the perils of the Amazon River on writer-director Curt Siodmak’s Curucu, Beast of the Amazon, and a less harrowing Hollywood backlot swamp in Fox’s the Alligator People. Her 1960s film work included Pretty Poison, The Mad Room and the multi-storied Twice Told Tales with Vincent Price. Overall, this list of titles is unmatched by any other ’50s genre actress.”
The diverse, dynamic and uniquely sexy Beverly Garland was born in Santa Cruz, California. She studied with dramatics teacher Anita Arliss, sister to Hollywood actor George Arliss. Garland also worked in radio actually appeared semi-clothed in various racy shorts, until she made her first feature debut supporting role in the taut noir thriller D.O.A (1949) starring Edmund O’Brien. Beverly started out doing small parts in science fiction/horror films such as The Neanderthal Man 1955and The Rocket Man 1954. But her cult/exploitation status was forged when she signed onto to work with legendary filmmaker Roger Corman, the first film takes place in Louisiana called Swamp Women. In 1983 Beverly Garland received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She worked right up until 2004 and sadly passed away in 2008.
There are so many credits Beverly Garland has under her belt, I can only list the few that are memorable for me, but here she is linked to her massive IMDb list of credits for you to peruse. One of the roles that stands out for me is her groundbreaking role in the late 1950s as Casey Jones a policewoman for NYC in the series called Decoy (1957) Garland finds herself in diverging & dangerous situations where she not only uses her sexy good looks but her smarts and her instincts to trap criminals from all walks of life. It’s a fabulous show and it shows not only how diverse Beverly Garland is but the show was a historical first for a woman starring in a dramatic television series.
Beverly Garland has performed in drama’s including a musical with Frank Sinatra directed by Charles Vidor The Joker is Wild (1957) Film Noir (The Miami Story 1954, New Orleans Uncensored 1955, Sudden Danger 1955, The Steel Jungle 1956, Chicago Confidential 1957, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Adventure, Exploitation, Westerns and Crime dramas & Thrillers like Pretty Poison 1968. For the purposes of The Last Drive In tribute to this magnetic actress, here are those performances in the genre I’m featuring both film & television series!
“The Memories of working with Roger Corman are pleasant because I got along with him very well. He was fun to be around and work with. We always did these films on a cheap budget, and people were always mad at Roger because he’d hardly feed us! And no matter what happened to you, your worked regardless… You could be dead and Roger would prop you up in a chair!”-Beverly Garland
From Beverly Garland’s Interview in “Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers: Writers, Producers, Directors, Actors, Moguls and Makeup” by Tom Weaver (McFarland 1988).
In The Mad Room (1969) her character was pregnant–so was she at the time, with her son James.
[referring to her 1950s Roger Corman cult films] “It’s funny today because it’s so ridiculous. But at the time, it was very serious! We were just actors doing our best, I think. None of us overacted. I’m not saying we weren’t good. We didn’t do it tongue-in-cheek. We really meant it. We gave our all. We were serious, good actors and we played it seriously.”-Beverly Garland
“Maybe I do come on strong, and people sense in me a strength and a positiveness . . . It’s really the way I look and act, not the way I am . . . Once you cut through the protective coating, I’m strictly molasses.”-Beverly Garland
Audrey Dalton– “I noticed you wrote a bit about Beverly Garland. She was such a dear friend of mine. She was in Pretty Poison with Noel Black who just passed away last year. Bev died years ago and even though she remained active in the Scarecrow and Mrs King for so long, she loved acting in “B” films the most.”
Waitress Nola Mason in The Neanderthal Man 1954, Ludine in The Rocket Man 1954, Vera in Swamp Women 1956, Claire Anderson in It Conquered the World 1956, Dr. Andrea Romar in Curucu the Beast of the Amazon, Nadine Storey in Not of this Earth 1957, Joyce Webster in The Alligator People 1959, Ellen Winslow in Stark Fear 1962, as Alice Pyncheon in Twice-Told Tales (1963) Mrs. Stepanek in Pretty Poison 1968, Mrs. Racine in The Mad Room 1969, Science Fiction Theatre (TV Series) Katherine Kerston / Sally Torens– The Other Side of the Moon (1956) … Katherine Kerston– The Negative Man (1955) … Sally Torens, The Twilight Zone (TV Series) Maggie- The Four of Us Are Dying (1960), Thriller (TV Series) Ruth Kenton– Knock Three-One-Two (1960)
Tom Weaver – “In your Corman movies you yourself generally played plucky, strong willed, sometimes two-fisted types.”
Beverly Garland- “I think that was really what the scripts called for. In most all the movies I did for Roger my character was kind of a tough person. Allison Hayes always played the beautiful, sophisticated “heavy” and I played the gutsy girl who wanted to manage it all, take things into her own hands. I never considered myself much of a passive kind of actress-I never was very comfortable in love scenes, never comfortable playing a sweet, lovable lady. Maybe if the script wasn’t written that way, then probably a lot of it I brought to the role myself. I felt I did that better than playing a passive part.”
Swamp Women (1956) An undercover policewoman helps three female convicts escape from prison so that they can lead her to a stash of stolen diamonds hidden in a swamp. Co-stars Marie Windsor, Carole Mathews, Mike Connors, Susan Cummings and Ed Nelson!
Also in Swamp Women 1956, Garland was expected to do her own stunts, even dropping out of a 20 foot tree. Roger Corman told her “When you’re killed you have to drop” Roger planted three guys underneath the tree to catch Beverly when she let’s go. “And when they killed me I just fell-dead weight on these three poor guys!” Roger told her “You’re really one of the best stuntwomen I have ever worked with.”
Even after breaking her ankle in Gunslinger 1956, Beverly was a trooper, she did all her fight scenes and worked to finish the film for Roger Corman, even though she couldn’t walk for weeks after that!
As Ellen Winslow, Garland takes a courageous role as a non-victim of abuse and assault, she pushes back head on against the grain instead of wilting from the trauma she prevails. The film showcases the gutsy quality Garland herself tried to portray in all her performances. in the darkly psychological Stark Fear (1962)A sadistic husband mentally tortures his wife, while eventually planning to murder her. Although no one believes her, she gets help from an unexpected source.
Beverly Garland recalls making Swamp Women co-starring Marie Windsor with Tom Weaver-“Swamp Women! Ooh that was a terrible thing! Roger put us up in this old abandoned hotel while we were on location in Louisiana- I mean it was really abandoned! Roger certainly had a way of doing things back in those days-I’m surprised the hotel had running water! I remember that we each had a room with an iron bed. Our first night there, I went to bed and I heard this tremendous crash! I went screaming into Marie Windsor’s room, and there she was with the bed on top of her-the whole bed had collapsed! Well, we started laughing because everything was so awful in this hotel. just incredibly terrible, and we became good friends.”
Carole Mathews, Marie Windsor and Beverly Garland in Swamp Women
Beverly Garland not only exuded a gutsy streak in every role she took, but she also shared the notable distinction of starring in one of Boris Karloff’s THRILLER episodes called Knock-Three-One-Two co-starring with the wonderful character actor Joe Maross who has a gambling problem and will be beaten to a pulp if he doesn’t pay his bookie. So he enlists the help of a psychopathic lady killer to murder his wife Beverly for her tightly held purse and large savings account!
Tom Weaver asks Beverly Garland if she enjoyed working on Twice-Told Tales (1963) — “Oh, I love it because I loved Vincent Price. He is the most wonderful sweet, adorable man! I don’t remember much about the movie, I just remember working with Vinnie and how wonderful he was.”
Tom Drake, Bill Elliott, and Beverly Garland in Sudden Danger (1955).
On working with Roger Corman on Gunslinger (1956) after Allison Hayes another seasoned actress and a bloomin’ trooper who broke her arm during filming. The working conditions were dismal but Beverly Garland isn’t a woman you can keep down. “I always wondered if Allison broke her arm just to get off the picture and out of the rain. It poured constantly. But what I adored about Roger was he never said, ‘This can’t be done.’ Pouring rain, trudging through the mud and heat, getting ptomaine poisoning, sick as a dog–didn’t matter. Never say die. Never say can’t Never say quit. I learned to be a trooper with Roger. I could kid him sarcastically about these conditions and laugh. That’s why we got along so well. On Gunslinger, I was supposed to run down the saloon stairs, jump on my horse and ride out of town. Now we never had stunt people in low-budget films. Riding, stunts, fights–we all did it ourselves and we all expected it, and we all just said it was marvelously grand. I told myself just to think tall. So my first take I thought tall and sailed right over the saddle and landed on the other side of the horse. The second take I twisted my ankle running down the stairs– a bad twist.”
Beverly Garland and Allison Hayes in Roger Corman’s Western Gunslinger (1956)Directed by Noel Black Beverly plays Mrs Stepanek the mother of sociopathic Sue Ann Stepanek played by Tuesday Weld. Anthony Perkins is Dennis Pitt a mentally disturbed young man with delusions, released from an institution only to stumble into Folie à deux with someone who is more violent and disturbed than he is!
Beverly Garland plays feisty nurse Nadine Storey in Roger Corman’s creepy alien invasion film Not of this Earth 1957 co-starring the white-eyed vampiric villain Paul Birch as Paul Johnson-why not Smith?
About working with Roy del Ruth on The Alligator People–“He was sweetheart of a guy and a good director. The Alligator People was a fast picture, but he really tried to do something good with it. And I think that shows in the film. It’s not something that was just slapped together. It as such a ridiculous. story…).. I felt when I read the script and when I saw the film, which was a long time ago, that it ended very abruptly. It all happened too fast; it was kind of a cop out. But there really was no way to end it. What were they going to do-were they going to have us live happily ever after and raise baby alligators?”
Beverly Garland having fun on the set of The Alligator People.Beverly Garland with Lon Chaney Jr. in Roy del Ruth’s The Alligator People.Directed by Roy Del Ruth-Beverly stars as Joyce Webster a woman who while under hypnosis recalls a horrific story She went in search of her husband who has gone missing. He is part of a secret experimentation with men and alligators. Co-stars Bruce Bennett.
Directed by Curt Siodmak Curucu Beast of the Amazon 1956 stars Beverly Garland as Dr. Andrea Romar and John Bromfield as Rock Dean who venture up the Amazon River to find the reason why the plantation workers are fleeing from a mysterious monster!
On first seeing the cucumber creature that Paul Blaisdell designed for It Conquered the World–“I remember the first time I saw the It Conquered the World Monster. I went out to the caves where we’d be shooting and got my first look at the thing. I said to Roger, ‘That isn’t the monster…! That little thing over there is not the monster, is it?’ He smiled back at me , “Yeah, Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?’ I said, ‘Roger! I could bop that monster over the head with my handbag!’ This thing is no monster, it was a terrible ornament!’ He said, ‘Well don’t worry about it because we’re gonna show you, and then we’ll show the monster, back and forth.’ ‘Well, don’t ever show us together, because if you do everybody’ll know that I could step on this little creature! Eventually I think they did do some extra work on the monster: I think they resprayed it so it would look a little scarier, and made it a good bit taller. When we actually filmed, they shot it in shadow and never showed the two of us together.”
Beverly Garland as Clair talking on the radio to IT– “I hate your living guts for what you‘ve done to my husband and my world, and I’m going to kill you! Do you hear that? I’m going to kill you!”…) “So that’s what you look like, you’re ugly…) You think you’re gonna make a slave of the world… I’ll see you in hell first!“
It Conquered the Wold (1956) is yet another Roger Corman campy gem that features my favorite cucumber monster created by Paul Blaisdell. Beverly stars as Claire Anderson married to Dr. Tom Anderson played by Lee Van Cleef who communicates with an alien life from who claims he comes in peace. Co-stars Peter Graves and Sally Fraser
Tom Weaver asks —“Do you ever look back on your B movies and feel that maybe you were too closely associated with them? That they might have kept you from bigger and better things?
Beverly Garland —“No, I really don’t think so. I think that it was my getting into television; Decoy represented a big turn in my life. Everybody did B movies, but at least they were movies, so it was okay. In the early days, we who did TV weren’t considered actors; we were just horrible people that were doing this ‘television’ which was so sickening, so awful, and which was certainly going to disappear off the face of the earth. Now, without TV, nobody would be working. No-bod-y. But I think that was where my black eye came from; I don’t think it came from the B movies at all.”
Tom Weaver-“Which of your many horror and science fiction roles did you consider your most challenging?”
Beverly Garland–“Pretty Poison. It was a small part, but it had so much to say that you understood why Tuesday Weld killed her mother. I worked hard to make that understood not a surface one, but tried to give you the lady above and beyond what you would see in a short time.”
Beverly Garland as policewoman Casey Jones in the stirring television series Decoy broadcast from October 14, 1957, to July 7, 1958.
The bewitchingly beautiful Audrey Dalton was born in Dublin, Ireland, and maintains the most delicately embroidered lilt of Gaelic tones became an American actress in film in the heyday of Hollywood and the Golden Age of television. Knowing from early on that she wanted to be an actress while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts was discovered by a Paramount Studio executive in London, thus beginning her notable career starring in classic drama, comedy, film noir, science fiction, campy cult classic horror and dramatic television hits!
Since then I’ve had the incredible honor of chatting with this very special lady whom I consider not only one of THE most ethereal beauties of the silver screen, Audrey Dalton is a versatile actress and an extremely gracious and kind person.
Audrey Dalton made a monumental contribution to one of the biggest beloved 1950s ‘B’ Sci-Fi treasures and she deserves to be honored for her legacy as the heroine in distress, pursued by a giant bunny killing Mollusk “That monster was enormous!” –Audrey commented in her interview with USA Today.
Gail MacKenzie in The Monster that Challenged the World 1957, Baroness Maude Sardonicus in William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus 1961 Boris Karloff’s Thriller (1960-1962)- Norine Burton in The Prediction, Meg O’Danagh Wheeler in The Hollow Watcher and Nesta Roberts in Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook.
Audrey Dalton plays Meg O’Danagh who is haunted by local prejudice and the rural boogeyman that is The Hollow Watcher.
Audrey Dalton in Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook is shown here with Doris Lloyd as Mother Evans. There’s witchcraft afoot in the Welsh moors.William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus 1961 stars Audrey Dalton as Baroness Maude Sardonicus who is a prisoner to her husband’s madness driven to fury because his face has been stuck in a horrifying grimace when he found his father was buried alive. Co-stars Guy Rolfe as Sardonicus and Ronald Lewis
Barbara Rush and Marlon Brando in The Young Lions 1958-Twentieth Century FoxBarbara Rush and Harry Townes in Strategy of Terror (1969)Frank Sinatra and Barbara Rush in Come Blow Your Horn (1963)Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Richard Bakalyan, Victor Buono, and Barbara Rush in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
Barbara Rush appeared in director Martin Ritt’s turbulent suburban drama No Down Payment 1957 with ex-husband Jeffrey Hunter though they weren’t married to each other in the film.
Jeffrey Hunter, Pat Hingle, Patricia Owens, and Barbara Rush in Martin Ritt’s No Down Payment (1957) co-stars Joanne Woodward, Sheree North, and Tony Randall.
Barbara Rush, Possesses a transcendent gracefulness. She moves with a poise like a dancer, a beautiful gazelle stirring in the gentle quiet spaces like silent woods. When I see Barbara Rush, I see beauty personified by elegance and decency. Barbara Rush will always remain in my eyes, one of the most gentle of souls on the screen, no matter what role she is inhabiting. She brings a certain kind of class that is not learned, it’s inherent.
She was born in Denver, Colorado in 1927 and began at the University of California. Then she joined the University Players, taking acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. Paramount scooped Barbara up and signed her to a contract in 1950. She debuted with The Goldbergs (1950) as Debby Sherman acting with Gertrude Berg as Molly Goldberg -a popular television program that follows the warm, human story of the famous Jewish Bronx radio & TV family the Goldbergs, and their everyday problems. Co-starring David Opatoshu and Eduard Franz.
Before joining the Goldbergs she met the strikingly handsome actor Jeffrey Hunter who eventually became a hot commodity at 20th Century Fox. Barbara Rush and Jeffrey Hunter fell in love and were married in December 1950. They became Hollywood’s most gorgeous couple, and the camera seemed to adore them. Their son Christopher was born in 1952.
During her time at Paramount, Barbara Rush appeared in the science fiction catastrophic end of the world thriller directed by Rudolph Maté —When World’s Collide 1951 co-starring Richard Derr, Peter Hansen, and John Hoyt.
As time went on Barbara Rush co-starred with some of the most desirable actors in Hollywood, James Mason, Monty Clift, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Richard Burton, and Kirk Douglas. Her roles ran the gamut from disenchanted wives, scheming other women or pretty socialites
Though Barbara Rush is capable of a range of acting, the one great role of a lifetime never seemed to surface for her, though whatever she appeared in was elevated to a higher level because of her presence.
Television became a wonderful avenue for Barbara Rush’s talent, she appeared in guest parts in many popular tv series of the 1960s and 1970s. She also co-starred in tv movies. One enjoyable character she played was a guest villain on the 1966 television series Batman as femme fatale ‘Nora Clavicle” Barbara Rush also played Marsha Russell on the popular television drama Peyton Place 1968-69
Barbara Rush also turned to work on the stage. She garnered the Sarah Siddons Award for her starring role in Forty Carats. Making her Broadway debut in the one-woman showcase, “A Woman of Independent Means” which also subsequently earned her the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award during its tour. Other showcases included “Private Lives”, “Same Time, Next Year”, “The Night of the Iguana” and “Steel Magnolias”.
Barbara Rush still possesses that transcendent beauty, poise, and grace. She will always be someone special someone memorable.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
Joey Q: Did you ever imagine Jack Arnold’s “It Came from Outer Space” (1953) with you (in that black dress by Rosemary Odell) aiming that laser beam would become so iconic, and leave such a lasting impression on fans and film historians after all these years?
Barbara Rush: A: I’d never think that anybody who saw it needed to see it again, but if it left an impression, that’s fine. I loved the chiffon dress. It was too weird that these people that came from other space were too frightening to look at, so they took the form of regular humans. What I thought was interesting that these creatures didn’t actually want to be there and weren’t vicious at all. They were just trying to fix their ship and get it together. I remember thinking that with a lot of science fiction films; we were so afraid these creatures, but they were just trying to get away and weren’t threatening at all.
Joey Q: Is there a role you would have liked to play — let’s say in a Gothic thriller? Or was there ever a script for one that you turned down that you regret now? Were there any other high quality A-picture science fiction film scripts sent to you after “When Worlds Collide” (1951) and “It Came from Outer Space” (1953)?
Barbara Rush A: I don’t remember anything that was given to me to do other than those two pictures. That was all just orders from the studio. The science fiction film I admired the most was the picture E. T. – I just love that film and it is my favourite, but I never thought it was something I wanted to be in myself.
Joey Q: “The Outer Limits” is one of the most extraordinary anthology television shows of the 1960s. It was clearly ahead of its time, beautifully crafted and though-provoking. You star as the tortured Leonora in the episode “The Forms of Things Unknown” which is perhaps one of THE finest of the series written by Joseph Stefano, all due to the cinematography, lighting, and particularly the ensemble acting. Do you have any lasting impressions or thoughts about that role and/or working with Vera Miles, Cedric Hardwicke, David McCallum, and Scott Marlowe?
Barbara Rush A: I loved doing that show and loved Vera Miles. She was just the most wonderful person to work with. She was so funny. There was a scene where she had to run after me in the forest in the rain. After that miserable experience she told me:”Barbara, I promise you I’ll never chase after you in the rain, in the forest, ever again.” I thought the episode was very interesting, though.
Joey Q: In that same high calibre of dramatic television series, were you ever approached by William Frye, Doug Benton, or Maxwell Shane from Boris Karloff’s “Thriller” series or by Alfred Hitchcock for his anthology series? You would have been extraordinary in either television program! These shows were remarkably well-written and directed and I’m certain there would have been a perfect role for your wonderful acting style. Did you ever receive a script or were you ever interested in appearing on either of those shows?
Barbara Rush A: Unfortunately they didn’t really seem to want me. They never got in touch with me about anything. I would have loved to work for Hitchcock – I liked his films.
Joey Q: It seems that the early 70’s found you a niche in the macabre. Perhaps this is because you are such a consummate actress and the contrast of your gentility works well with the darker subject matter. In 1971 you co-starred with Henry Darrow in a short piece on Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery” – “Cool Air.” It was a Gothic romantic tale based on H.P. Lovecraft’s story about a woman who falls in love with a man who must remain in a refrigerated apartment dare something dreadful occur. Then, in 1972 you appeared in “The Eyes of Charles Sands” as Katherine Winslow co-starring Peter Haskell and Joan Bennett, a film about ESP and solving a murder. Then came “Moon of the Wolf” where you co-starred with David Janssen and Bradford Dillman, two very handsome leading men. Did you enjoy venturing into these uncanny story lines?
Barbara Rush A: I particularly enjoyed working with Bradford Dillman, who was a dear friend of mine. We more or less grew up together, in Santa Barbara. In one of these he played a werewolf and he’d have these hairy mittens as part of his costume and he’d come trampling in all the time – as a werewolf! I have a tendency to get very hysterical about how funny people can be, and he’d just make me crack up. We were shooting – I think in New Orleans or Mississippi, somewhere in the south – on location, so it was very hot. Poor Brad who had to walk around in those mittens.
Attended and graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1948). She graduated from the Pasadena Playhouse School for Performing Arts in Pasadena, California.
Is mentioned in the movie Shampoo (1975), when hairdresser Warren Beatty says “I do Barbara Rush’s hair”.
Was separated from second husband Warren Cowan in 1969 at the time she learned of first husband Jeffrey Hunter’s sudden death following brain surgery after falling down a flight of stairs.
Appears in No Down Payment (1957) with ex-husband Jeffrey Hunter, they both portraying married characters, but not married to each other.
She is one of five actors to have played “Special Guest Villains” on Batman (1966) who are still alive, the others being Julie Newmar, John Astin, Joan Collins and Glynis Johns.
“I can safely say that every movie role I was ever offered that had any real quality went to someone else.”-Barbara Rush
As Joyce Hendron in When Worlds Collide 1951, Ellen Fields in It Came from Outer Space 1953 Night Gallery episode as Agatha Howard in ‘Cool Air’ released on December 8, 1971, based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft and in The Outer Limits as Leonora Edmond in the episode The Form of Things Unknown written by Joseph Stefano released on May 4, 1964, as Karen Lownes in Kraft Suspense Theatre tv series ‘In Darkness, Waiting (1965), as Nora Clavicle and The Ladies’ Crime Club Batman Series 1966, Moon of the Wolf (TV Movie) 1972 as Louise Rodanthe, as Katherine Winslow in The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972), The Bionic Woman (TV Series) – Jaime’s Mother (1976) … Ann Sommers / Chris Stuart, 1979 Death Car on the Freeway (TV Movie) as Rosemary
Jack Arnold, Richard Carlson, Charles Drake, Russell Johnson, and Barbara Rush in It Came from Outer Space (1953).
Everybody wants to know about Barbara Rush’s fabulous clothes in It Came From Outer Space, in particular this lovely black gown.. so here it is–designed by Rosemary Odell…
COOL AIR. First aired on December 8, 1971, Paintings for the opening of each episode were done by artist Tom Wright
The classy fashionable villainess Barbara Rush as Nora Clavicle and The Ladies’ Crime Club Batman Series 1966.Vera Miles as Kasha and Barbara Rush as Leonora pushed to the limit of all they can bare poison Scott Marlowe a sadistic blackmailer and leave him in the trunk of their car. As they flee the scene they stumble upon an Old Dark House where the servant Ralph Richardson takes care of Tone Hobart played by David McCallum a solitary sad young man, an introvert who tinkers with clocks, an inventor who is able to tip the balance of time and bring back the past and ultimately the dead. Barbara Rush conveys a depth of sadness and vulnerability that is tragic and beautifully pieced together for this macabre story written by Joseph Stefano. The lighting traps each player in the shadows of their own machinations. It is a brilliant little morality play.
Barbara Rush and Vera Miles on the set of The Outer Limits television series episode The Form of Things Unknown.
The cinematography by Conrad L. Hall is extraordinarily moody and dark in this psychological supernatural story by Joseph Stefano.
A visual masterpiece directed byRichard Fleischer (Soylent Green 1971) and a screenplay by Earl Felton, who chose to weed out the extremely detailed and descriptive novel by Jules Verne and create a fast-paced visual fantasy that became this fabulous adventure. The film is scored by Paul J. Smith (The Parent Trap 1961) whose splendid music creates a world of majesty surrounding the sets with wonderfully colorful and inventive art direction byJohn Meehan, (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers 1946, The Heiress 1949, Sunset Blvd 1950, Studio 57 1955-58, M Squad 1957 -58 Boris Karloff’s THRILLER-ep.A Wig for Miss Devore 1962), production design & un-credited art direction by Harper Goff(Fantastic Voyage 1966, Willy Wonker & The Chocolate Factory 1971 also un-credited set design on A Midsummer’s Night Dream 1935,The Life of Emile Zola 1937, Sergeant York 1941, Casablanca 1942) and set direction by Emile Kuri (It’s a Wonderful Life 1946, The Paradine Case 1947, Rope 1948, The Heiress 1949, Dark City 1950, A Place in the Sun 1951, Detective Story 1951, War of the Worlds 1953, The Actress 1953, Shane 1953) brought the enigmatic ship to life as almost creature-like, flaunting interiors that are lavish with gadgets that flirt with scientific-industrious designs of the future!
The film stars Kirk Douglas as Ned Land and James Mason as Captain Nemo. Co-stars Paul Lukas as Prof. Pierre Aronnax, Peter Lorre as Conseil, Robert J. Wilke as first Mate of the Nautilus, Ted de Corsia as Capt. Farragut, Carlton Young as John Howard, J.M Kerrigan as Old Billy, and Percy Helton as the coach driver. 20,000 Leagues helped Peter Lorre step out of his sinister-mystery roles and add great comedic versatility as a character actor to his full career.
“20000 Leagues Under the Sea” Kirk Douglas 1954 Walt Disney Productions
Walt Disney began to depart from the expensive endeavor of producing animated features and started to experiment with live-action films. Disney became aware of George Pal’s desire to persuade Paramount to allow him to produce Verne’s beloved novel initially utilizing a screenplay by Kurt Neumann. Disney got George Pal to relinquish the rights and took over the project, hiringRichard Fleischer (Follow Me Quietly 1949, The Narrow Margin 1952, Compulsion 1959, Fantastic Voyage 1966, The Boston Strangler 1968, Tora! Tora! Tora! 1970, 10 Rillington Place 1971, See No Evil 1971, The New Centurions 1972, Soylent Green 1973), to direct, and Neumann’s script was out. It’s no wonder Fleischer was tapped to do more fantasy science fiction films, though his psychological thrillers/documentary-style crime films are outstanding contributions.
Adapted from Jules Verne’s fabulous adventure the action takes place in the 19th century – where sailors told tall tales of giant sea creatures that wrecked and devoured sailing ships and the oceans held deep unknowing secrets as unfathomable as the heavens above. The legend of a strange horned sea monster has been wreaking havoc with sailing vessels in the South Pacific. Professor Pierre Arronax (Paul Lukas) and his sidekick Conseil (Peter Lorre) join an American expedition that includes crooning whale hunter Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) in search of this calamitous sea creature. The trio is confronted by the beast and is swept overboard then taken prisoner by the mysterious Captain Nemo (James Mason) whose drill-ornamented submarine ‘the Nautilus’ turns out to be the sea monster of legend.
Nemo turns out to be a fanatic who’s dark mission is total destruction of all the warships responsible for the evils of mankind. There’s a memorable underwater hand-to-tentacle fight with a giant squid!
Capt. Nemo: Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here I am free! Imagine what would happen if they controlled machines such as this submarine boat. Far better that they think there’s a monster and hunt me with harpoons.
Captain Nemo: “The natives over there are cannibals. They eat liars with the same enthusiasm as they eat honest men.”
Ned Land: There’s one thing you ought to know, Professor: Nemo’s cracked. I’ve yet to see the day you can make a deal with a mad dog. So while you’re feeding him sugar, I’ll be figuring a plan to muzzle him.
IMDb Trivia:Actors portraying the cannibals chasing Ned Land painted humorous messages on their foreheads (not legible on-screen). In particular, one actor wrote “Eat at Joe’s” while another actor behind him wrote “I ate Joe”.
The climactic squid battle on the Nautilus was originally shot with a serene sunset and a calm sea. Director Richard Fleischer was troubled by the look of it because the cams and gears that operated the squid could easily be seen, making it look obviously fake. Walt Disney visited the set one day and Fleischer told him about the problem. Disney came up with the idea of having the squid battle take place during a fierce storm (another story is that it was actually screenwriter Earl Felton who came up with the idea). The scene was reshot that way and is considered by many to be the highlight of the film.
One of the models of the Nautilus created by Harper Goff was a “squeezed” version which could be filmed with a standard lens and still look normal when projected in Cinemascope.
Clawing Monster From A Lost Age strikes from the Amazon’s forbidden depths!–Creature from a million years ago!… every man his mortal enemy… and a woman’s beauty his prey!–From the Amazon’s forbidden depths came the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Creature From the Black Lagoonshowcases Universal’s iconic Gill Man directed by science fiction & noir icon Jack Arnold. (The Glass Web 1953, It Came from Outer Space 1953, Tarantula 1955, The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957, Man in the Shadow 1957, The Tattered Dress 1957) Stars Richard Carlson as Dr. David Reed, Julie Adams as Kay Lawrence, Richard Denning as Mark Williams, Antonio Moreno as Carl Maia, Nestor Paiva as Lucas, and Whit Bissell as Dr. Edwin Thompson.
The Creature or Gill Man is one of the most famous monsters that has endured, and perhaps one of the most emblematic figures of 1950s science fiction. His suit was designed by Bud Westmore and a team of uncredited designers. As Tom Weaver points out the creature suit “is so logical in design that designers of other underwater monsters have to be very careful not too obviously to imitate the monster they are imitating” Visionary Master Guillermo del Toro’s team of designers and special effects artists did an outrageous job of paying homage to the Gil Man while still maintaining an original, and arresting modern edge to the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water (2017) The Gill Man still remains the most iconic monster of the 1950s
Creature From The Black Lagoon was also adapted to be shown in 3D! It was after Universal had a hit with Jack Arnold’sIt Came From Outer Space in 1953 that they saw the potential for box office success with a science fiction film especially one they could easily adapt to 3D format.
Producer William Alland –(according to writer/historian Tom Weaver)– had heard of a legendary half -man half-fish creature who lived in the upper regions of the Amazon. The Creature suit was extremely form-fitting, too tight to be worn over aquatic breathing equipment. The swimmer would have to hold his breath for extended periods of time. Ben Chapman played the part out of the water wearing ‘the land suit’ modeled with paint (a dark silvery green and red highlights) by Millicent Patrick– Chapman not being a good enough swimmer. Ricou Browning wore the underwater suit which was lighter is color in order to make it stand out in the darker underwater scenes. Because he was able to hold his breath for five minutes, Browning was responsible for the stunning underwater scenes.
“Jack Arnold, started adding fins and gills to a sketch of the Motion Picture Academy’s Oscar statuette, and arrived at the basic look of the new monster. Arnold and Alland did play their originating the design , but actress and artist Millicent Patrick was chiefly responsible for the look of the Gill-Man. At the make up shop, Chris Mueller developed a bust of the Creature using one of Ann Sheridan as the basis. Also contributing to the design were Jack Kevan and Westmore himself, head of the make up division.”
Both Browning and Chapman had full body molds made, so that suit would fit their bodies perfectly. “The result is a remarkably convincing monster, which looks like a suit almost solely because it has to be a suit (…) a tendency fir the suits to look a little rubbery around the joints, The Gill Man is life-like, enough so as to engender a happy suspension of disbelief by most viewers, as the film proved enormously popular.”
Lucas:-“There are many strange legends in the Amazon. Even I, Lucas, have heard the legend of a man-fish.”
We can sympathize with monsters, like Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s undead creation, & The Gill Man from Creature From the Black Lagoon. We can find our involvement (at least I can), as one viewed with empathy toward the monster’s predicament. Embedded in the narrative is a simultaneous pathos, that permits these monsters to express human desires, and then make sure that those desires are thwarted, frustrated, and ultimately destroyed.
Richard Carlson Julie Adams Richard Denning and Whit Bissell and Dr. Edward Thompson study the fossil of an amphibian man found near the Amazon. The crew catches something in their net… and whatever it was… has ripped a giant Gill Man size hole in it leaving behind a claw!
Mr. ‘It’s mine all mine” and Kay and Mr. “But think of the contribution to science!” looking at the poor trapped Gill Man-a lonely prisoner of scientific hubris and egocentric men.The creature trapped in a bamboo cage… floats, quietly thinking deep thoughts–while the three look on pondering what to do with him.
‘The Outsider Narrative” of 1950s science fiction can be seen so clearly in Jack Arnold’s horror/sci-fi hybrid Creature From The Black Lagoon. Film monsters like The Gill Man form vivid memories for us, as they become icons laying the groundwork for the classic experience of good horror, sci-fi, and fantasy with memorable storytelling and anti-heroes that we ‘outliers’ grew to identify with and feel a fondness for.
As David Skal points out in The Monster Show, he poses that films like Creature From the Black Lagoon …are the “most vivid formative memories of a large section of the {American} population…{…} and that for so many of these narratives they seem to function as “mass cultural rituals.”
Directed by Norman Dawn the film stars James Arness as Kirk Hamilton, Kasey Rogers as Elaine Jeffries, Bill Kennedy as Martin Shannon, Pierre Watkin as Elaine’s father, Magistrate Jeffries, Gloria Petroff as Janice Jeffries, Tom Hubbard as John Hartley, Jane Harlan as Nancy Holden, Tom Monroe as Captain Tallman, Michael Rye as Captain Hackett, and Fred Kohler Jr.as sailor Nat Mercer.
In 1830, on the American clipper ship named ‘The Queen’ first Mate Kirk Hamilton is assailed by bloody pirates led by Captain Hackett. Kirk is brought ashore to treat his wounds, where he meets Elaine Jeffries and the two fall in love. But Elaine is engaged to rancher Martin Shannon and of course a the male rivalry begins. Once again the ruthless Captain Hackett raids and plunder the colony and kidnap Elaine and her little friend Nancy Holden. Which leads Kirk and Martin Shannon to rescue them from the pirates and various dinosaurs that inhabit the volcanic island!
Directed by Charles Lamont a satirical look at H.G. Wells’ story with our two funny men Bud Abbott and Lou Costello at the center! The film also stars Arthur Franz as boxer Tommy Nelson, Nancy Guild as Helen Gray, Adele Jergens as Boots Marsden, William Frawley as Detective Roberts and Sheldon Leonard as Boots Morgan…
Comedy didn’t escape the horror genre so it certainly didn’t lose time letting Abbott & Costello have a crack at The Invisible Man! By the 1950s they needed gimmicks to seduce their fans into adoring them again. The pair play Bud Alexander and Lou Francis amateur private eyes, hired by boxer Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz) who’s been accused of killing his manager, to clear his name of the murder. Tommy takes scientist Helen Gray’s serum that produces invisibility. In a hilarious scene Lou poses as a boxer while the invisible Tommy is really doing all the slugging. Of course the duo find the real killer!
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN, Bud Abbott, Arthur Franz, Lou Costello, 1951ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Arthur Franz, 1951
Det. Roberts: [Tommy Nelson is gone] How did he get out?
Lou Francis:Installments.
Det. Roberts:Installments?
Lou Francis:Yeah, he did a Gypsy Rose Lee, come here!
[they find Tommy’s clothes lying about]
Lou Francis: That, that’s all that’s left of him.
Det. Roberts:Evidently Nelson changed clothes… what was he wearing when you last saw him?
Lou Francis:Air… nothing but air… and then he asked me how he looked.
Det. Roberts:Wearing air? What are you talking about?
Lou Francis:I went to shake his hand, his hand was gone, I looked up to speak to him, his head was gone. Then he took off his shirt, his body was gone, he took off his pants, his legs were gone! Then he spoke to me, I was gone.
Director Curt Siodmak, (director The Magnetic Monster 1953 & Curucu The Beast of the Amazon 1956, Black Friday, The Ape and The Invisible Woman 1940-story/screenplay, The Wolf Man 1941-screenplay, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman 1943, Son of Dracula 1943-screenplay, I Walked with a Zombie 1943-screenplay )
Bride of the Gorilla stars the gorgeous Barbara Peyton as Mrs. Dina Van Gelding, Lon Chaney Jr. as Police Commissioner Taro, Raymond Burr plays it cool as Barney Chavez , Tom Conway as Dr. Viet, Paul Cavanagh as Klaas Van Gelder , Giselle Werbisek as Al-Long, Carol Varga as Larina, Woody Strode as Nedo the Policeman. and Steve Calvert as the Gorilla.
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked!–Klaas Van Gelder
Raymond Burr plays Barney Chavez who manages a plantation in the jungles of South America. He desires his boss plantation owner Klaas Van Gelder’s wife and in order to get his wife Dina he murders him in cold blood. But he is vexed by the old witch Al-Long who has seen his crime, he believes that he has been cursed to become a nocturnal gorilla run amok
Deep in the South American jungle plantation manager Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) kills his elderly employer in order to get to his beautiful wife (Barbara Payton). However, an old native witch witnesses the crime and puts a curse on Barney. Does he really transform into a killer ape by night or is the curse just a matter of suggestion, and psychological head games pressing on his guilt. He is driven mad believing that he is the ‘jungle demon-the succarat’.
Police Commissioner Taro: [narration] This is Jungle – lush, green, alive with incredible growth – as young as day, as old as time. I, Taro, Police Commissioner of Itman County, which borders the Amazonas River, know it as well as any man will ever know it. Isn’t it beautiful? But I have also learned that beauty can be venomous, deadly, something terrifying, something of prehistoric ages when monstrous superstitions ruled the minds of men, something that has haunted the world for millions of years rose out of that verdant labyrinth. Let me tell you how the jungle itself took the law into its own hands. This was Van Gelder Manor, built to stand against the searing sun, built to shelter generations of Van Gelders, it also has become prey to the powers of the jungle, that terrifying strength that arose to punish a man for his crimes.
Directed by the master who started out as an editor working with Val Lewton, Robert Wise, created this iconic film which gave the science fiction genre a level of artistic authenticity. It’s memorable and sensational for so many of us because of Wises’ directing, Leo Tover’s photography, acting by a stellar cast led byMichael Rennie and Patricia Nealand the art direction, set design and spectacular visual effects.
Michael Rennie plays Klaatu a visitor from another world, millions of miles away from Earth who brings a very dire yet hopeful message to us earthlings. “We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill.” Klaatu appears essentially as a heavenly angel on a mission of mercy.
Klaatu has been sent as a representative by an organization of planets who have found a way to curb their tendencies toward war by installing other powerful robots like Gort to police them, “In matters of aggression we have given them absolute power over us!” Well, that’s a very provocative statement to make coming from Hollywood in the midst of The Cold War, but hey it’s one method, albeit a dangerous one, as Klaatu explains that “This power cannot be revoked. At first signs of violence they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible too risk.” The violation implies that their planet will be destroyed, which is what Klaatu warns the Earth about. Yes, Klaatu you haven’t achieved perfection with this system but you say it works. So does every dictatorship and totalitarian state.
Of course Michael Rennie is also not at all difficult to listen to as he isnt’ a 10 foot one eyed amorphic blob or a grotesque pants monster. Writer/Film historian Bill Warren mentions this inaccuracy in his book and cites Erich von Däniken. He was an ancient alien theoristclaimed that if aliens had visited before they could come again. Perhaps they left a few travelers behind who shacked up with earthlings and voilà thousands of years later you have a very sophisticated and silky talking Brit who looks smashing in a custom tailored suit.
Patricia Neal is beautiful in that retiring style of hers as widow Helen Benson, Hugh Marlowe plays insurance man Tom Stevens, the wonderfully sage Sam Jaffeplays Professor Jacob Barnhardt, Billy Gray plays Bobbie Benson, Frances Bavierruns the rooming house (another Aunt Bea) as Mrs. Barley, and Lock Martin is lurking inside that great robot silver pants-suit called Gort!
There are tiny bitty part for Stewart Whitman plays a sentry, Olan Soule has a bit part as Mr.Krull, Dorothy Neumann as operator Margaret and Richard Carlson as Thomas Stevens Jr. and few more familiar character actors we all love!
Part of the charm of this film for me on a side note is seeing three of The Andy Griffith Show players like Dorothy Neumannwho plays Otis Campbell’s wife, Olan Soule who plays hotel clerk / prissy choir leader Mr. Masters, and of course Francis Bavier the lovable Aunt Bea.
Dorothy Neumann as Rita Campbell isn’t always just barking at Otis or pouring his hootch down the drain. She’s been a hard working character actress in so many television shows and films you probably love! (The Snake Pit 1948, Sorry, Wrong Number 1948, she was Helen Lawson’s maid in Valley of the Dolls 1967
Leo Tover is at the helm of the camera, and captures the feeling of a world in befuddlement as well as framing many scenes with a noir sensibility as he had shot so skillfully before with The Snake Pit 1948, The Secret of Convict Lake 1951, and A Blueprint for Murder 1953. Art direction byAddison Hehrand Lyle R. Wheeler (Gone with the Wind 1939, Rebecca 1940, All About Eve 1950, Compulsion 1959) The post-modern expressionist Art Deco interior ship design is out of this world by Set direction by Thomas Little (The Grapes of Wrath 1940, All About Eve 1950)
The flying saucer or space-craft which allegedly cost $100,000 was modeled after actual sightings that were very popular and becoming rampant during that time in the 1950s And of course there’s always Bernard Herrmann’s use of the theremin that just quivers my strings.
Thanks to the direction of Robert Wise (one of my personal favorite directors), The Day the Earth Stood Stillis considered one of THE best and most beloved American Science Fiction films of the fifties. One of the interesting themes that runs through the movie is how Christ-like or archetypal Savior figure Michael Rennie’s character Klaatu is– as he comes to save the Earth from their violent ways, and from themselves–in the end only to sacrifice his own life for the cause, then to be resurrected –moving on leaving his grave warning in our laps.
Gort, the menacing “interstellar policeman” from the science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) was a very tall man in the robot suit, and its smooth design posed several practical problems for shooting. Because it was made of flexible neoprene overall, similar to a skin diver’s wetsuit, the props team had to fabricate two suits that laced up in order to keep the fastenings out of sight while filming Gort moving:
One suit laced up at the back (for frontal shots), and the second, which laced up from the front, was used for the shots in which Gort was seen from behind. The neoprene suit creased at the hips, back knees, and front elbows when the actor inside moved, giving the impression of being made from a flexible alien metal. The filmmakers diminished the effect somewhat by keeping Gort’s movements to a minimum or by only shooting his upper body when he walked. – From Wikipedia
The film does work as a allegory during the Cold War era which warns us against our transgressions and wicked tendencies toward violent aggression. Klaatu arrives in his spacecraft with his robot companion a gleaming and imposing silver giant named Gort. Klaatu has been sent by an inter-planetary federation that fears Earth will use the atomic-bomb to destroy the universe in the not too distant future, and warns that if they do not stop their aggressive behavior, they will be blown to bits. Met by the military Klaatu extends an olive branch in the form of a gadget that they interpret as a weapon even though he tells the people of Earth “We have come to visit you in peace and in good will”. But they begin firing upon him wounding him and imprisoning him in a hospital where he escapes and assumes the identity of a gentlemanly earthling. Bernard Herrmann’s signature melodic motif of tumult underscores a wonderful scene as authority figures search frantically for Klaaut, and Wise shows the public in various rapt by their radios and television set, reading newspaper headlines about the missing space man!
After Mr. Hardy who comes to interview Klaatu asks where he comes from Klaatu tells him that he’s traveled millions of miles to this planet Klaatu –“lets just say we’re neighbors” Mr Hardy-“It’s hard to think of another planet as neighbors.”
In the meantime Klaatu takes a small Washington boarding house as a mild mannered Maj. Carpenter where he meets Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and develops a poignant relationship with she and her son Bobby (Billy Gray). Helen is being wooed by insurance agent Tom (Hugh Marlowe) who turns out to be as aggressive and dangerous as the majority of antagonists in the film.
Taking the name from the tag on a borrowed jacket he’s wearing, Klaatu takes the identity of Major Carpenter. When he arrives at the rooming house everyone is stunned at first, as he stands in the shadows.
Mr. Krull “It’s enough to give you the shakes. He’s got that robot standing there, 8 feet tall just waiting to just waiting for orders to destroy us!”
Helen- “This space man or what ever he is, we automatically assume he’s a menace. Maybe he isn’t at all… {…after all he was shot the minute he landed here } I was just wonder what I would do?” Maj. Carpenter-Well perhaps deciding on a course of action he would want to know more about the people here. To orient yourself in a strange environment.”
Mrs. Barley-“If you want my opinion he comes from right here on Earth!”
Olan Soule , John Brown as George Barley and Francis Bavier, Patricia Neal and Michael Rennie as Maj. Carpenter are having a meal at the rooming house.
Klaatu wants to walk among the people of earth to try and understand their, ”strange, unreasoning attitudes.” As Phil Hardy says Robert Wise’s film works so well because of his masterful balance of the ‘ominous allegory with the sub-plot of Rennie’s attempt to discover what humans are really like.’
In an amazing scene, where he shows his benevolent nature, Bobby catches his new friend at the blackboard in the Professors lab and solving a complex equation that he had been struggling with, in a few seconds. Bobby asks if the Professor had done it wrong, Klaatu tells him “It just needs a little help.”
Klaatu also is befriend by the kindly, wise and brilliant scientist Professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) who recognizes that Klaatu is not a threat nor a false prophet and reflects the better nature of humankind.
You have faith, Professor Barnhardt?- Klaatu
“Our problems are very complex Klaatu, you mustn’t judge too harshly”–Professor Barnhardt
“I can judge only by what I see.” –Klaatu
“ Your impatience is quite understandable’ –Professor Barnhardt
“I’m impatient with stupidity” –Klaatu
Professor Barnhardt:It isn’t faith that makes good science, Mr. Klaatu, it’s curiosity. Sit down, please. There are several thousand questions I’d like to ask you.
Robert Wise and cinematographer Leo Tover know how to paint a film noir canvas within the realm of science fiction The Day the Earth Stood Still bares a striking resemblance to many great noir pictures and their familiar tropes… not the least the misunderstood man on the run forced into the shadows, aided by a good women who has faith in him!
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” Michael Rennie, Hugh Marlowe, & Patricia Neal 1951 20th **I.V.
Bobby follows his friend Maj. Carpenter/Klaatu and discovers his secret! In a panic he runs and informs his mother all about it. She tells him he’s been dreaming again, but she also happens to be with Tom (Hugh Marlowe) who is just waiting to get Maj. Carpenter out of the picture and sets the end in motion.
The set design and use of lighting lends to the magnificent & moody atmosphere of the film.
As the title of the film suggests… it’s striking when the moment emerges and everything stops, or stands still.
Klaatu sets the wheels in motion to stop the motion all over the earth! And so everything grinds to halt not only all means of transportation in this modern world, trains, ships, automobiles and buses, tools of industry cease like– farming machines that milk the cows, power stations and factories. Even the creature comforts people take for granted, like washing machines which are left with puddles of sopping clothes, milkshakes that don’t get shook and those poor people at the top of the roller coaster at the amusement park … A nation wide man hunt for the space man begins!
Reporter: I suppose you are just as scared as the rest of us.
Klaatu: In a different way, perhaps. I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.
He tells Helen “If anything should happen to me, you should go to Gort… You must say these words, Klaatu Barada Nikto. You must remember these words.”
Gort resurrects the Christ-like Klaatu
In the end, he is gunned down which summons the ire & wrath of Gort who opens up his metallic visor and lets loose a laser beam killing the soldiers. Consistent with the theme of deliverance and resurrection Gort brings Klaatu back to life and ascends like an other-worldly angel from the Earth to return to his delegation leaving behind the message that they either learn to live in peace or be destroyed that we do not have the temperament to be in control of atomic weaponry.
“I will not speak with any one nation or group of nations I don’t intend to add my contribution to your childish jealousies and suspicions. —Klaatu
“It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence this earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder… your choice is simple… join us and live in peace or pursue your present course and face obliteration!… We shall be waiting for your answer… the decision rests with you.”–Klaatu
Klaatu and Gort take off in the ship, he ascends back into the heavens our future rests with us!
An ‘ominous allegory’ — a reflection of our fears and mistrust– a message that it’s not too late to be overseen by giant soulless robots that might malfunction and reduce you to a cinder if you have an angry outburst about your $6 coffee tasting like mud!.
Directed by Arch Oboler (Strange Holiday 1945 starring Claude Rains, Bewitched 1945 starring Phyllis Thaxter, Bwana Devil 1952 in 3D, The Twonky 1953 and another 3D filmThe Bubble 1966)
Arch Oboler had been regarded very highly for his work in old time Radio primarily on “Lights Out” another show about fantasy/horror & science fiction themes.
Stars William Phipps, Susan Douglas Rubes, James Anderson, Earl Lee and Charles Lampkin.
This independent film has all the trappings of a low-budget art-house film with science fiction over-tones that’s rather dreary and nihilistic in tone. It’s deals with the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust that wipes out the entire civilization except for five survivors. The story has been dealt with either viewed through a campy lens as with Roger Corman’samusing vision of radioactive fall-out Day the World Ended (1955) with it’s cast of diverse survivors stuck in a canyon who are at risk of mutations out in the eerie fog, some turning on each other as their limited resources.
As with Corman’s beloved cult foray, Five’s characters are also victims of radioactive dust clouds, that kills off the animal life on the planet and essentially vaporizes people down to their skeletons.
William Phipps (Crossfire 1947, War of the Worlds 1953, The Brothers Rico 1957 & a slew of television appearances) plays Michael, a man who survived the nuclear disaster because he was stuck in an elevator at the top of the Empire State Building high enough to shield him from the atomic clouds (perhaps I should re-think my fear of elevators and my fear of heights -hhm) He encounters the only other survivors up in the mountains, Rosanne (Susan Douglas) who is going to have a baby, another recognizable actor from the 50s is the handsomely intenseJames Anderson, who plays an aggressive neo-Nazi named Eric, a black doorman named Charles (Charles Lampkin, another familiar face and busy television & film actor) and Mr. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), a bank clerk who is complete denial about what has happened, of course he succumbs to radiation poisoning.
With the mixture of personalities left to band together it isn’t any wonder that tensions build especially because there is only one woman left to go around. Eric cannot help but antagonize Charles and try to make an object out of Rosanne. Roxanne is still waiting for her husband to return, safely to her. The film has a filthy strain of meanness in it, as Oboler wants us to feel the desperation and detestable situation for ourselves. Eric kills Charles and grabs Rosanne with her newborn baby telling her that they are going to search for her missing husband in the city. It’s gruesome and dismal as they stumble upon skeletons in mid pose, in doorways, in their cars trying to escape. When she finds out that husband has perished she wants to go back up to the mountains. The two struggle and Rosanne tears his shirt exposing the fact that Eric has radiation burns all over his chest. In yet another very bleak turn of events, Rosanne’s baby dies while she’s making her way back to the mountains. All that are left now are Michael and the distraught Rosanne to be the archetypal Adam & Eve in a not so paradisiacal Eden drenched in atomic fallout.
The New York Times review said of Oboler’s Five- “Mr. Oboler spends so much time scanning the landscape, the sky, the sea and clouds that he can’t seem to bring himself to tangle with the problems fo his meek and baffled crew. And when he does he contents himself with fashioning a little drama of left-over racial hate in a world virtually empty of people, rather than seek the terror in a human void.”
STAY TUNED FOR PART II OF KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES -THE YEAR IS 1951
“I bring you a warning. Every one of you listening to my voice. Tell the world… Tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the Skies! Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!–
It’s that time of year once again when Movies Silently, Silver Screenings & One Upon a Screen host a momentous event…. The Classic Movie History Project Blogathon 2016 which will begin August 5th -10th, 2016.
This event always promises to be an epic endeavor as there are so many interesting themes and subjects to cover. I am excited to be participating once again with these fabulous hosts who make it possible for all of us to contribute to a wealth of classic film history goodies to devour. Now listen folks, don’t get frightened off! You cast of exciting unknown readers… This has become a real project for me, a work in progress that will unfold over the next several weeks. For the purpose of The Classic Movie History Project Blogathon 2016, I offer an overview that will be a lead in for the entire decade of 1950s science fiction cinema conquering it year by year in separate articles. As I started delving into this project, it began to grow larger and larger as if Jack Arnold and Bert I. Gordon themselves compelled me to GO BIG!
In order to review an entire genre of such an influential decade and do the treatment it so rightly deserves, I realized that I needed to spread it out as a series. Re-visiting these beloved movies that inspired my childhood with wonder and sometimes tapped into my own authentic fears, I fell in love all over again. And though I tend to gravitate towards the classical Gothic horrors that are steeped in mythology, the supernatural and the uncanny, I can’t help but feel my mind expanding by the iconic themes that emerged from 1950s science fiction! So I’ll be publishing each year as individual posts or chapters from 1952 on… over the next several weeks or so instead of all at once. Talking about all the films I mentioned here and so many more films & things to come!
It’s a collection–a decade of the sci-fi genre, sub-genres and it’s hybrids– some eternally satisfying because of their remarkable ability to continuously shine a light on fascinating & mesmerizing fantasy stories. Well-written and adapted as visual narratives and surreal stories by beloved visionaries who set out to reach inward and outward through all of us dreamers and thinkers.
There are also those lovable Sci-fi films that are charming and wonderfully kitsch. And some… are just downright so, so, soooo awful their… awesome!
That’s what makes so many of these diverging films cut through the cross-sections to become cinematic jewels & memorable cult favorites!
There are many films that I’ll cover more in-depth, some are the more highly polished masterpieces that have lingered for decades with us as adult children who grew up watching them on a rainy afternoon on televisions with knobs that only had 9 channels, and if you were lucky you didn’t snap the knob off every 6 months! Growing up in New York I had Chiller Theater, on local channel 11 or Creature Featureson Channel 5, and Fright Nighton Channel 9. That’s how I fell in love, and got my fill of the treasures of films & television anthology series that were lurking out there destined to leave long-lasting impressions on so many of us!
Chiller Theater
Fright Night WOR
Or back in the day, you went to the Drive-In theater to explore in the back seat of your pop’s Chevy Impala double feature, and it was an invigorating and entertaining experience and you didn’t even have to get out of your pajamas.
You could spend all day in a musty theater festooned with captivating promotional lobby cards and colorful posters. Too bad, I wasn’t of the age to witness William Castle’s ballyhoo he strategically placed at certain theaters for that interactive live experience, EMERGO, PERCEPTO! You could take in a bunch of the latest scary films, sometimes double & triple features while sitting on sticky red velvet seats that smelled like hot buttered popcorn and week old spilled Pepsi. A box of Milk Duds in hand and the faint whiff of air conditioner freon at your back. You’d enter the movie theater in the bright light of a sunny Saturday afternoon only to exit into the dark of night, tired and filled with wonder, awe, and okay maybe looking over your shoulder a few times. Some films were big-budget productions, that contained serious acting by studio contract players, terrific writing that blended deep thoughts and simple escapism pulled from some of the best science fiction, fantasy & horror literature, and adapted screenplays, scares, and witty dialogue and cinematography that still captivates us to this day.
Well… sure some were B movies that have now sustained that Cult film charm and cheesiness, and some… are just downright pitiful, laughable guilty pleasures… and a bunch even came with really neat 3D glasses!
SOME ICONIC GEMS FOR THE AGES THAT I’LL BE COVERING!
THEM! (1954)*INVADERS FROM MARS (1953) *DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)*FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) *THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)*EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956) *THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) *INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) *WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) * CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON(1954) * IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953)* IT, THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958) *EARTH VS THE SPIDER (1958) *THE CRAWLING EYE (1958) *THE GIANT BEHEMOTH (1959) *IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955) *TARANTULA (1955) *FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958) *THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (1957)*THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957) * THE ANGRY RED PLANET (1959)*KRONOS (1957)* THE CREEPING UNKNOWN (1956)*X-THE UNKNOWN (1956
I’LL ALSO BE TALKING ABOUT SOME GUILTY PLEASURES!
Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957).
Paul Birch is the alien vampire Paul Johnson in Roger Corman’s Not of This Earth 1957.
It’s also important to mention some of the ubiquitous actors who graced both the great & guilty pleasure flicks, you’ll be seeing a lot of in the following chapters likeJohn Carradine * Ed Nelson *Allison Hayes *Paul Birch *John Agar *Hugh Marlowe*Peter Graves *Richard Denning *Richard Carlson *Faith Domergue *Mara Corday *Les Tremayne *Marie Windsor *Morris Ankrum * Arthur Franz *Kenneth Tobey* John Hoyt * Whit Bissell and of course Beverly (kicks-ass!) Garland!
One thing is for certain, each film is relevant and all have a place in the 50s decade of Sci-fi / Horror & Fantasy!
So come back and read a little at a time and get some thrills even while you’re sitting under the hair dryer… Do people still do that today? I need to get out more…
This 1955 hair dryer is just begging to be a space-age helmet!
As early as 1920 there was the German expressionist film dealing with the arrival of a menacing alien visitor from the planet Algol giving actor Emil Jannings a machine that awards him unlimited powers. ALGOL aka POWER 1920 directed by Hans Werckmeister —
“That which you believe becomes your world.” –Richard Matheson from ‘What Dreams May Come’
Science Fiction emerged out of the “Age of Reason” literature and reflected a merging of myth and historical fact. Stories filled with an imagination that had no boundaries. While Science Fiction is a literary movement that can be a separate study all its own, storytellers who grasped the concepts of science fiction who questioned the endless possibilities, and the far-reaching machinations of brilliant minds, this project is focused on the history of 1950s science fiction cinematic and all it reveals. Science Fiction cinema flirted blatantly with ideas and images of a world that reached beyond the known and contemplated aloud, fantastic stories as early as the silent era. Consider Robert Louis Stevenson’sStrange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, re-envisioned time and time again.
John Barrymorelifts the dark conflicting tale of the inward monsters off the pages of Stevenson’s book. Barrymore so fluently moved through the silent stage, revealing that we all just might be harboring in our subconscious hidden dark and primal desires. Unleashed by a concoction, a seduction of science creates a fiend! Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1920)
There were a few early visions of fantasy, magic & Science Fiction films from all around the world- At 3:25 akaThe Crazy Ray (1924) Directed by Rene Clair-a scientist invents a ray that makes people fall asleep where they stand! In the German film Master of the World (1934) (Der Herr der Welt) where a German scientist wants to create an army of Robots to do the dangerous work of laborers so when he is told it’s too risky he goes mad and it’s too late the machine has a mind of its own. It features really cool electronic chambers and more!
And Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)Scientists construct a tunnel under the ocean stars Richard Dix, Leslie Banks, and C. Aubrey Smith.
Metropolis 1927 the dystopian masterpiece by director Fritz Lang was the beginning of the fascination with exploring the fantastic and our unbounded imaginations on film, it’s remarkable set design, imagery, and narrative sparked the Science Fiction genre in a big way— spanning a decade upon decade, in particular, revived in the 1950s!
The first influential science fiction film by Fritz Lang created a dystopian society in Metropolis in 1927. Its influence has maintained its powerful thrust for decades. An inspiration for Ridley Scott’s neo-noir sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner (1982)
“Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him”-H.G.Wells
Charles Laughtonis superb as H.G. Wells‘ Dr. Moreau a sociopathic sadist/scientist with a god complex whose profane experiments on animals and humans tortures them in the ‘house of pain’ trying to create a hybrid race he can hold sway over on his private island hell! Science has never been more evil! Island of Lost Souls (1932)
Then there was the 1936 adaptation of H.G. Wells’Things To Come (1936)directed by William Cameron Menziesand starring Raymond Massey as Oswald Cabal, Ralph Richardson as The Boss, Margaretta Scott as Roxanna/Rowena and Cedric Hardwicke as Theotocopulos.
“What is this progress? Progress is not living. It should only be the preparation for living.”
Flash Gordonand similar serials provided superheroes for generations of young people in the 30s & 40s, planting the seeds for the future that would give us the Star Wars legacy.
Audiences between the World Wars preferred horrors of a Gothic nature– James Whale’s Frankenstein 1931 & Bride of Frankenstein 1935, as they helped exercise demons conjured up from the 19th & early 20th centuries.
The electrical secrets of heaven, the lighting, the elaborate sets designed by genius Kenneth Strickfaden with his lights throbbing gizmos flashing and zapping, the creepy atmosphere of murky tones. The consummate Universal monster movie with iconic scenes introducing a new face, Boris Karloff who would become the great father of terror stories …
What’s on that slab? “It’s Alive, It’s Alive!…”those monumental words that remain ingrained in our consciousness. Colin Clivebecomes hysterical as he has creates life from death, but that life would become a whole new ethical, moral, and imposing dilemma for Dr.Frankenstein. A horror film with strong science fiction/fantasy tropes. And the laboratory as gorgeous set pieces would become a staple of the science fiction realm.
The 1950s Science Fiction genre took root with its profound contribution to our collective consciousness AS a genre its vision & breadth possessed quintessential & ever-lasting sociological and psychological metaphors, iconic tropes, and striking imagery.
The splitting of the atom, ushering in the atomic age, and the collective anxiety most definitely was the catalyst for many of the movie fantasy stories known as the 1950s Sci-Fi film.
“But no matter what else it might be, what makes a science fiction film science fiction is the fact that it is, in some sense, about science—and not only science but futuristic science. By that I mean that science fiction movies deal with scientific possibilities and technologies that do not exist yet but that might exist someday. Science fiction is the realm of the not-yet.”— “Cult Science Fiction Films” by Welch Everman
Ridley Scott – (Alien 1979, Blade Runner 1982) “When you come to the second World War You’ve got a very specific enemy. You know what that enemy is, It’s there for all the wrong reasons and it should be prevented…. Then you got the next phase which is The Cold War again which is to do with paranoia . But I think real, it’s real. Movies started to dip into that.”
“The Splitting of the atom…. forces that can only be explained to us by these guys in white coats… All of a sudden the guys in white coats became these simultaneously kind of rock stars and the most evil thing you could imagine.”
In a scene from The Atomic City 1952– The mother’s child sitting at the kitchen table with his breakfast “If I grow up do you know what I’m gonna do?” The mother turns to him, leaving her scrambled eggs on the stove, and corrects him nervously, “It’s when you grow up, not if…”
The Atomic City 1952 trailer
Duck & Cover 1951 classic propaganda film
From the short instructional film Duck and Cover “But no matter where they go or what they do they always try to remember what to do if the atom bomb explodes right then!” (the kids suddenly fall into the brick wall. The narrator says ) It’s a bomb DUCK & COVER!
James Cameron – “All of our fate as human beings, our destiny seems bound up in our technology and our technology is frightening. It’s Terrifying!”
Steven Spielberg- “So there was a great deal of anxiety in the air. It was not just fear of being beaten up by the local bully. But the fear was being NUKED!… But we almost pushed a button on each other during The Cuban Missile Crisis…… I was absolutely prepared for Armageddon and these movies from the 1950s and early 60s played on those fears. And these movies were all metaphors for those fears. ”
George Lucas- “I would say that there was a certain amount of anxiety about that I mean I grew up right in the very heat of that. DUCK & COVER drills all the time… We were always hearing about the fall out shelter. About the end of the world, issues that were always going on about how many bombs were being built. The Cold War was always in the media.”
1950s Sci-Fi films represented a conservatism or ‘reactionary wing’ that seems consumed by a motive to emphasize the values of 1950s America post-WWII, in the midst of a McCarthy era witch hunt that prevailed fueling our fears that seeped into many of the Sci-Fi narratives on screen and in literature. Reflecting the growing internal struggles within American society and the developing mistrust about Soviet aggression and anyone and anything perceived as subversive.
“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?”
Some films that reflected the paranoia of the period were well regaled by a Hollywood studio system that was itself at the center of the controversial House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) targeting screenwriters and actors as ‘communist sympathizers’ and no one could be trusted. -Just like Invaders from Mars 1953, Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956,X the Unknown 1956, The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957, and I Married a Monster From Outer Space 1958.
In 1947, in Roswell New Mexico the military reported that they have a UFO in their possession. The phenomena of sightings of UFOs would continue throughout the 1950s, though agencies were fully prepared to explain away the reports. Yet the public had a hunger for and fascination with the possibility of extra-terrestrials.
As Phil Hardy’s insightful take on the genre, all this manifested in a way that the Science Fiction films of the 1950s ‘supplanted horror as the genre that dealt with fear and paranoia.” The films expressed a very realistic look at science within the atomic age, and shed the shadows and expressionism of the earlier Gothic horrors and while not all scientific fact, tried to embrace a world of possibility.
The Flying Saucer 1950 begins the momentum for the decade of Science Fiction cinema’s love affair with unidentified objects and begins to round the edges of space crafts from other worlds that aren’t our American sharp and phallus-shaped rockets!
DESTINATION MOON 1950 was featured in COLOR BY TECHNICOLOR. Being hailed the 2001, Space Odysseyof its time, it attempts to portray a realistic trip to the moon. Phil Hardy calls Destination Moon 1950 ‘a sober celebration of man’s imminent conquest of space that dominated the decade.’
Destination Moon did attempt to accurately portray a trip to the moon given the technology and knowledge that was stuck in 1950.
Then we shot past the moon in the cinema and went straight to the red planet with Flight to Mars 1951!
Themes and metaphors that emerged from anxiety about the atom bomb, radiation fallout, the advent of modernity, the space race and the wanderlust to conquer outer space, interplanetary warfare, military vs. science hubris, science meddling with nature, fear of science and technology,invasion anxiety, continued fear of otherness, deviant (in terms of counter-culture not exclusively moral judgment) subversion and xenophobic nightmares.
Sometimes we were even married to a monster from outer space and didn’t even notice much of a difference except for the lack of small talk! Here’s Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott in I Married a Monster from Outer Space 1958.
Director Howard Hawk and screenplay by Charles Lederer, created a striking science fiction masterpiece of film noir ambiance with its chilling back lit set pieces-The Thing From Another World 1951, adapted from John W. Campbell’s story ‘Who Goes There?’, other films that followed the path of paranoia — Invaders from Mars 1953, War of the Worlds 1953, It Came from Outer Space 1953, It Conquered the World 1956 & Invasion of the body snatchers 1956.
There were also science fiction films that rang the warning bell about cosmic calamity and catastrophic world coming to an end, annihilation fantasies like When Worlds Collide 1951.
War of the Worlds 1953 and When Worlds Collide 1951 had as Phil Hardy states, ‘religious dimensions’ that accused us of bringing about catastrophic punishment because of our misdeeds and transgressions.
H.G. Well’s view of Martianinvaders created for the public consciousness the idea of destructive beings from another world. It was a great reflexive move for those science fiction films to portray aliens that were sympathetic, yet non-humanoid in appearance. Most Sci-Fi films show aliens as menacing, not only destructive but dangerous because they also wanted to keep us as captives, zap our resources and colonize our planet, sometimes even take our women, oh god no unhand Faith Domergueyou pants-wearing Mutant!
“Is that a fireball or something?”
Hollywood saw a trend later on in the 50s with Destination Moon 1950 when they came upon a story written by Harry Bates called The Return of the Master this became Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951which has remained one of the best regarded science fiction films of all time. This is one of the rare occasions when the alien Klaatu played beautifully like an intricate clock by the chiseled face, tranquil speaking Michael Rennie is benevolent, bringing with him a sincere and dire warning about earth people’s course and the future of their citizenship if they don’t relent about the proliferation of atomic weapons. There were several well-intended alien visitors who were met with hostilities as with, Klaatu (Michael Rennie ) in Day the Earth Stood Still 1951, and The Man From Planet X 1951.
Many films, even the low-budget excursions dealt with our primal fears of alienation, estrangement & loss of identity i.e.,(communism at its core, the ramifications of otherness) nothing hits home more than Invaders from Mars 1953, and the quintessential loss of self and individualism in Don Siegels’Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
“They would change into people who hate you!”
Steven Spielberg talks about the impact of Invaders from Mars 1953, “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!”
I can attest to the persuasion these films could have over the burgeoning imagination of a child, especially one like me who felt very much like an outsider as a kid. One night, as sure as my name is MonsterGirl, I went home, looked at my parents, decided they had been switched by aliens, and ran out of the house, walking around the block for at least an hour before I convinced myself that I was being ridiculous. Or was I? These themes did have a not-so-subtle impact on a young impressionable mind who could easily question the world around them. Who could you trust? Would believe you me anyway?
There is the outsider narrative, diminishing human forms as in Bert I. Gordon’s Attack of the Puppet People 1958 where obsessed and lonely puppet maker John Hoyt loses his marbles. Although mad-bad science has shrunk down people before the 1950s in The Devil Doll 1936and in the hands of crazed Albert Dekker in Dr. Cyclops 1940.
There is the quintessential existential crisis, the beautifully thought-provoking film by director Jack Arnold starring the eternally transcending man Grant Williams in, The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957.
And of course, there is the matter of GIGANTISM!
Giant insects, sea creatures, and people who ran around half-crazed and scantily dressed were a by-product of the atomic age!
George Lucas —“Out of that fear came I think a lot of the monsters which you mess around with stuff and you’re gonna unleash this unknown monster!… it’s making tangible the unknown… A lot of that has to do with the mystery of this silent death that comes along with it that nobody knows exactly what it is or where it came from or can’t see it, can’t touch it. Well, let’s make it easier to deal with by making it a giant monster.”
Some films show the ascension from violence & hyper-masculinity, Women as professionals & bold heroines who didn’t shrink as hysterical victims. Female-dominated civilizations (Cat- Women of the Moon 1953, Queen of Outer Space 1958, Missile to the Moon 1958, Fire Maidens from Outer Space 1956, that threatened to maniacally seduce & subsume male voyagers, dressed by 5th Avenue are outré chic. Wanton warriors & nubile space maidens who often never saw the male species before or wanted to destroy them altogether!
A tagline reads “SEE-Astounding she-beasts of Venus!”
In Queen of Outer Space 1958, the masked disfigured Queen Yilana (Zsa Zsa Gabor) imprisons the men who crash land on her planet, intending to annihilate the earth with her beta disintegrator, though her beautiful subjects revolt in the name of love.
Mark Hamill –“We sometimes imagined other planets as paradises…. with girls!!! they looked more like Hollywood starlets than space aliens, anyway, they were eager to please. They danced their music their leotards were so Moderne! like Greenwich Village in outer space.” referring to Cat-Women of the Moon 1953.
“May we serve you, earth men?”
“You’re the first man I’ve ever seen!” Carol Brewster as Alpha is mesmerized.
There’s nothing worse than a space Queen–The Lido (K.T. Stevens ) and one of her maidens in distress…
Mark Hamill narrates the wonderful documentary written and directed by Richard Schickel Watch the Skies! Sci-Fi, the 1950s and Us presented by Turner Classic Movies also remind us that “50s science fiction may have shot at the stars but the dialogue often remained earth bound tied up with the battle of the sexes.” Many prevailing sub-texts were also love stories, and soap operas involving relationships between men and women. They would create love stories in space!
Project Moonbase 1953 Donna Martell as Colonel Briteis (bright eyes?).
Cameron Mitchell plays Steve Abbott in Flight to Mars 1953, who tells Marguerite Chapman as Alita a fellow scientist/astronaut, “I think you’re a prize package and very feminine.”
There is always time for romance in outer space!
There were menaces from without, menaces from within. The ordinary world transformed into the monstrous. There were warnings from benevolent aliens and aggressive attacks by aliens who wanted to colonize our planet.
Indie filmmakers introduce teenagers as both heroes & monsters. Many films were horror/sci-fi hybridizations. And by the end of the decade, we have left a legacy of impressive productions that remain timeless masterpieces, the cult grade- B Sci-Fi picture with their indelible charm and kitsch emblems, and the true stinkers that are so bad there too good not to appreciate. Sublime, thrilling, provocative & yes campy!
There were collections of stylized works by Jack Arnold, Bert I. Gordon, Edward L. Cahn, and one indie auteur who showed us how to make a memorable movie on a shoestring budget and also launched many a career, the inimitable and grand Roger Corman. And of course those guys at American International Pictures (AIP)
Within the 50s decade shedding the Gothic themes of the 30s & 40s, the poetic shadow plays of Val Lewton, and 1950s Sci-Fi films had a pre-occupation with the modern world and mostly all the central menaces were transformed into non-human threats that we not only couldn’t empathize with but were revolted against as dangerous, vicious, insidious and potentially nihilistic in vision, they were seen as only a threat to our humanity and ultimately would lead to our destruction.
Within Sci-Fi, there are so many films that are complex hybridizations of horror/science fiction /fantasy and have become too insurmountable to dissect or decipher all the nuances between the various free-floating genres. Writer critic historian Robin Wood in his Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan.—wagers that “the horror film’s radical potential lies in the fact that ‘the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses’ Jancovich states that the monster “must therefore be seen as a profoundly ambiguous figure which challenges social norms and so reveals society’s repressive monstrosity.”
This theme is attached to McCarthyism that showed up as coded narratives in the more highly produced Sci-Fi films- “the myth of Communism as total dehumanization—accounts for the prevalence of this kind of monster in that period” -Mark Jancovich -Rational Fears- American Horror in the 1950s.
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) Ray Harryhausen’s Ymir from Venus.
It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) Ray Harryhausen’s The Kraken
Cinematographers who brought these visual narratives & landscapes to life- just to name a few!
Clifford Stine (It Came from Outer Space 1953, This Island Earth 1955, Imitation of Life 1959, Spartacus 1960) Sidney Hickox(Them! 1954, The Big Sleep 1946, Dark Passage 1947, White Heat 1949), John F. Seitz(Invaders from Mars 1953, Sullivan’s Travel’s 1941m Double Indemnity 1944, Sunset Boulevard 1950), Russell Harlan ( The Thing from Another World 1951, Red River 1948, Witness for the Prosecution 1959 To Kill a Mockingbird 1962) George Barnes(War of the Worlds 1953, Rebecca 1940, Spellbound 1945) Leo Tover(The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951, Hold Back the Dawn 1941, The Snake Pit 1948, The Woman on the Beach 1947, The Heiress 1949, Journey to the Center of the Earth 1959) Ellsworth Fredericks(Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956, Hold Back the Night 1956, The Stripper 1963, Mister Buddwing 1966).
And just as key to the atmosphere and attitude of the films were the musical contributions which defined that certain feel of chills and excitement, screwball antics and off-beat percussion that filled up your head with pulsing visions of laser beams and other-worldly noises that ran up your spine like a finely coiled wire resonating the confluent sounds of the cosmos! Geesh that was a mouthful!
There were composers who masterfully underscored some of the BEST films and even the worst!, Dimitri Tiomkin * Bronislau Kaper * Bernard Herrmann *Hans J. Salter and Henry Mancini to name a few.
Instrumentalist Clara Rockmore mastered the Theremin which had a cosmic, universal vibe that was, well out of this world!
The Theremin is an electronic musical instrument created by Russian inventor, Léon Theremin controlled by the performing thereminist who makes the dulcet eerie tones by manipulating the two metal antennas that respond to the hand movements which influence the oscillations or frequency with one hand and effecting the volume with the other hand.
Popular were the films that dealt with the hubris of science that ultimately manifested monsters. There were even pants monsters, yes! pants monsters…! The burning sun turned him into a hideous fiend, but he still had time to put on those Haggars casual men’s trousers!
THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON, Robert Clarke (in doorway), Patricia Manning (second from right), 1959
There was a running sentiment —the notion of us against them, and even at times when not working together to fight a common enemy- you’d see the military vs science… And sometimes, though almost always male hero driven, there emerged some anti-damsels, all-powerful women who broke the cliched mold of the helpless hysterical female and arose as smart, intellectual (a socially constructed gendered male quality), mindful, and fearlessly driven woman with guts and composure even if it was to hold off from laughing at Paul Blaisdell inside that cucumber monster from Venus.
Roger Corman’s It Conquered the World (1956) The Venusian Cucumber.
Just look at Julie Adams as Kay Lawrence in Creature from the Black Lagoon 1954, and Joan Weldon as Dr. Patricia Medford in Them! 1954, Beverly Garland as Dr. Andrea Romar in Curucu, Beast of the Amazon 1956 & and her gutsy Clair Anderson in It Conquered the World 1956, Tina Carver as Dr. Terry Mason in From Hell It Came 1957and Faith Domergue as Dr. Ruth Adams in This Island Earth 1955 & Prof. Lesley Joyce in It Came from Beneath the Sea 1955, and Lola Albright as Cathy Barrett in The Monolith Monsters 1957.
Some sci-fi films were visually surreal landscapes or existential masterpieces such as William Cameron Menzies’s Invaders From Mars 1953 or Ib Melchior’s The Angry Red Planet 1959 and Jack Arnold’s magnificent adaptation of Richard Matheson’s The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957.
The Angry Red Planet (1959) The Rat Bat Spider puppet monster!
Grant Williams sails into the radioactive mist in The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957.
Invaders from Mars (1953) Jimmy Hunt awakens to a UFO crashing into the sand dunes.
“To sleep perchance to dream”-Hamlet-William Shakespeare
This dream-scape is a visual masterpiece, with the appearance of the sublimely brilliant Finnish painter Hugo Simberg, ( I happen to get permission from The National Museum of Finland to use Simberg’s ‘At The Crossroads’ as the cover of my album Fools & Orphans) thanks to the art design by visionary William Cameron Menzies!
A scene from Invaders from Mars (1953)
It is absolutely true about one thing— that it’s wholly complex to begin dissecting what makes a film solely and definitively Science Fiction and what constitutes it being a hybridization of horror & fantasy. There are way too many that fall right on the gray line that either exists in the middle or transects both themes at once.
Vincent Price can’t get that pesky Tingler off his arm in William Castle’s terrific horror/sci-fi extravaganza equipped with buzzing chairs-The Tingler (1959).
For example, I am covering William Castle’s The Tingler 1959, because, while the central terror surrounds a monstrous ‘horror movie themed monster’ a creeping fiend that lives inside us all and grips our spines the moment we are in abject fear, it is discovered by scientific and medical research. One could say the film is also a crime drama. There are too many nuances and parameters that intersect. James Whale’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein 1931is called a Monster movie by Universal and by fans of all generations. But it falls into the deep well of hybridization as so much of it focuses on the very philosophical questions around scientific hubris, the creation of human life, and the question of god, ownership of one’s identity, and what is monstrous.
“A lot of science fiction films are also horror films in which monsters are spawned by scientific experiments, but not all horror films are science fiction, because science fiction does not deal in the supernatural. Science fiction takes place in the realm of the not-yet; supernatural horror films operate in the realm of the impossible.”— “Cult Science Fiction Films” by Welch Everman
The enormous influence that Science Fiction cinema had long-lasting effects on the advent of television. Just look at Rod Serling’sFantasy/Sci-Fi anthology series which aired on CBS from 1959-1964. The show came in at the end of the decade. Stories that were infused with the themes of the 50s and set the tone for future decades to come. The Twilight Zone was groundbreaking and thought-provoking, dealing with issues of war, class, and race, it was a socially conscious program that constantly tried to remind us of our humanity. The decade of 1950s Science Fiction also bled into the mindfulness of my favorite early 60s science fiction anthology series The Outer Limits.
The Zanti Misfits-one of the many fabulous Outer Limits monsters!
—There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, and make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to – The Orwellian Control Voice from The Outer Limits anthology television series aired from 1963-1965.
Mark Jancovich writes “Again and again, the threats which distinguish 1950s horror do not come from the past or even from the actions of a lone individual , but are associated with the processes of social development and modernization. In this period, it is the process of rationalization which is the threat, and in this way horror texts were at least as concerned with developments within American society as they were with threats from without… Here rationalization is understood as the process through which scientific – technical rationality is applied to the management of social, economic and cultural life…
… this new system of organization was seen by many as inherently totalitarian system which both created conformity and repressed dissent.”
Vincent Price fights off zombies from a plague that wiped out most of the human race in Richard Matheson’s adapted screenplay from his story I Am Legen- The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The outsider narratives– were illustrated as contrasting and conflicting to accepted norms, we see this with Richard Matheson’s writing (I Am Legend which became Vincent Price’sagonizing journey as The Last Man on Earth 1964, and later The Omega Man 1971 and Jack Arnold’s films involving “the reoccurring preoccupation with alienation, isolation and estrangement” -Jancovich- seen in Creature From the Black Lagoon 1954 and The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957.
Grant Williams’s protagonist Scott Carey becomes engulfed in a glittery mist of atomic dust particles in The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957 the film exudes anxiety about his diminishing masculinity by not only losing his literal size and his physical height but he loses his maleness as a husband and as a regular man. This estrangement becomes a journey of his eternal soul and its place in the vast unknown other world.
Grant Williams is feeling ‘literally’ like such a small man.
There would be films that embrace the dystopia narratives, and curiosity with technical advancements like robots!
These Science Fiction/Fantasy films have left a deep and abiding impression on so many of us. Whether you grew up actually seeing them for the very first time, or becoming a new fan who is excited to embrace the heart and soul of a genre that made you think beyond what if? Either way, Science Fiction is an exploration of our imaginations, both glorious and often terrifying but it’s a genre that is here to stay, and the 1950s in particular truly rang the alarm bell that is still reverberating today!
Added to the mix in many of these film favorites was the essential mechanism of ‘not being believed’added to the fear and paranoia of the moment!
The Face of Paranoia
Invasion Anxiety!
FEAR OF THE ATOMIC BOMB! The Atomic City 1952 trailer.
I see you with my million eyes!
Hey, big fella got a light!
The theremin ‘the dulcet tones’ that wavered throughout sci-fi and beyond!
‘The modern world.’
It’s intermission time! Head out to the snack bar for some 50s refreshments!
Directed by Irving Picheland producer George Pal along with a screenplay by Robert Heinlein took a very documentary approach to the narrative and the landscapes. The film stars John Archeras Jim Barnes, Warner Anderson as Dr. Charles Cargraves, with Tom Powers and Dick Wesson. The film was a critical success and revived the Sci-Fi genre.
Destination Moon 1950 was an attempt to show a serious technical side to space travel. based on what science actually knew at the time. Actually it was in response to a spread that ran in Collier’s Magazine of series of paintings done by artist Chesley Bonastell of gleaming space craft.
Steven Spielberg had said of the picture, “DESTINATION MOON is a scientific attempt to create suspense based on no bad guys no villains and no aliens.
Similar to almost Apollo 13(1995) or Marooned 1969)
George Lucas says “At the time it was a very provocative idea because nobody had ever seen anyone go to the moon.”
Though it’s been called the precursor to 2001 Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick never admitted to having seen the movie. Which is highly possible, and given his genius we’ll take his word for it.
In the midst of the Cold War, the film reflects America’s desire to conquer, and according to the generals in Destination Moon, the moon would be the ideal location for a strategic military base of operations. And thus the race for America to get there first. There’s also a conflict seen as there were those who would embrace the new technologies and those who saw the impending modernity as a threat or a ‘bad thing’.
Pichel and Pal wanted to situate this film farther away from the fantastical science fiction ‘soap opera’ serials of the 1930s. Physicists and astronomers were consulted in order to stay true to the realistic view Heinlein, Pichel, and Pal desired as their vision of the future. They also used striking paintings by Chesley Bonestell to imagine the gorgeous lunar landscapes along with designer Ernest Fegte who create the realistic cratered look of the Moon.
The film features the first lunar landing that was envisioned as realistic and not melodramatic or surreal. The crew led by actor John Archer manage to land on the Moon but they run out of fuel, and they seem doomed to be stranded. They lose all the excess weight in order to get the ship space worthy again, but till they are over the weight limit. In a noble act of courage and sacrifice Dick Wesson (Tom Powers) figures that he can remove his cumbersome pressure suit and re-enter the ship a lighter and better man in order to save the rest of the crew…
Dr. Charles Cargraves:You can’t buck public opinion; I’ve tried. Have you seen this? [Newspaper headline:MASS MEETING PROTESTS RADIOACTIVE ROCKET] General Thayer:That isn’t public opinion – it’s a job of propaganda! Jim Barnes: You’re almighty right it is. Manufactured and organized – with money and brains. Somebody’s out to get us.
Directed by Mikel Conrad, stars Mikel Conrad as Mike Trent, Pat Garrison as Vee Langley, Hantz von Teuffen as Hans, Lester Sharpeas Col. Marikoff Roy Engel as Dr. Carl Lawton and Denver Pile as Turner! Because we feared the Russians in the early 1950s much of the paranoia around UFO sightings was connected to those pesky Reds! When CIA secret agent Mike Trent tracks a flying saucer to Alaska he finds out that it is a ship built by scientist Dr. Carl Lawton who hopes to sell it to the Americans!
Pat Garrison and Mikel Conrad-50s cool!
Col. Marikoff: Mr. Trent, you’re giving us a great deal of trouble. Why didn’t you stay in New York with your drunken friends of the night club?
Prehistoric Women would find a resurgence in the 60s! Here’s British actress Martine Beswick in the 1966 movie with the same title!
Prehistoric Women (1950) Directed by Gregg C. Tallas Shown from left: Jo Carroll Dennison, Joan Shawlee, Laurette Luez, Kerry Vaughn, Mara Lynn (bending over), Judy Landon
Directed by Gregg C. Tallas, (Siren of Atlantas 1949) offers an adventure sci-fi fantasy film. Prehistoric Women stars Laurette Luez as Tigri, Allan Nixon as (Mesa of Lost Women 1953, Pickup 1951) Engor, Joan Shawlee as Lotee, Judy Landon as Eras, Mary Lynn as Arva, Jo Carroll Dennison as Nika, Kerry Vaughn as Tulie, Tony Devlin as Rulg, James Summers as Adh, Jeanne Sorelas Tana, and Janet Scott as Wise Old Lady.
As Bill Warren puts it in his wonderful series Keep Watching the Skies published by the awesome McFarland Press-Prehistoric Women “Were this picture not so naive, it would seem more sleazy than it does. It’s not good in any way, but has a certain daffy charm because of its unsophisticated unbelievability.”
The Commentator: “And Engor called it Firee, which was his word for Fire.”
The film is narrated documentary style because the cast are primitives who are Amazonian cave-women and had little to no dialogue, it just adds to the laughable style and god-awful Cinecolor production. I’d like to know how they got a turkey vulture to wear a mask poor thing, the film is so blurring it’s hard to tell what the hell is flying up in the prehistoric blue sky… scourge of the skiesindeed! Still, prehistoric films, though considered mostly adventure stories seem to be included in books on the Sci-Fi genre. Though it could also easily be branded as a very cheap sexist exploitation romp!
Look it’s a flying dragon the scourge of the skies!
Bill Warren cites a review from the Monthly Film Bulletin: “They assert feminine superiority ruthlessly, setting their captives to hard labour, clubbing them intermittently and cutting off their escape… {Engor-} (the intelligent troglodyte who invents fire) uses a flaming torch to destroy a giant winged dragon (a disguised turkey vulture they must have tortured off set by putting fake ears and beak on it) that threatens their encampment {and}the girls are stunned with fear and admiration and surrender unconditionally.”
Tigri and her clan hate men but realize that they are sort of needed for some things, so they capture a bunch of fellas and try to force them to become their mates. But when Engor, escapes and discovers fire gets re-captured and not only slays the “flying dragon the scourge of the skies” but uses the fire to fight off the ugly brute who threatens their lives Tigri has a change of heart and all is right with the primitive world again. The women start running around panicked and screaming hysterically and the men are once again in charge… it’s ludicrous.
This giant is a real 9-foot giant… named Guadi in the film is Johann Petursson The Viking Giant was the Tallest Man From Iceland and traveled with Ringling Bros. Circus!
The Commentator: “Strangely enough, the swan dive was invented before the swan.“
GASP AT THE DARING COURAGE… AS THEY THUNDER BETWEEN PLANETS ON A RUNAWAY ROCKET!
Directed by science fiction story aficionado Kurt Neumann ( Secret of the Blue Room 1933, Half a Sinner 1934, Island of Lost Men 1939, a slew of Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan pictures, She Devil 1957, the outstanding Kronos 1957, and The Fly 1958 ) Rocketship X-M stars Lloyd Bridges as Col. Floyd Graham, Osa Massen as Dr. Lisa Van Horn, John Emory as Dr. Karl Eckstrom, Noah Beery Jr. as Maj. William Corrigan, Hugh O’ Brian as Harry Chamberlain, Morris Ankrum as Dr. Ralph Fleming, and Sherry Morland as the Martian girl.
Cinematographer Karl Struss (Sunrise 1927, The Great Dictator, 1940, Limelight 1952, The Fly 1958) and art direction by Theobold Holsopple create at times a sublime and beautifully desolate landscape using matte paintings, and miniatures among the technical effects. For all the scenes on Mars, the film is tinted a pinkish sepia tone (filmed partly in The Mojave desert). Struss lenses a landscape that is eerie and atmospheric.
Rocketship X-M was a B picture designed to beat DESTINATION MOON in the movie theaters, and even with its grim ending, it actually did better at the box office. Director James Cameron called it an ‘Anodyne answer to Destination Moon 1950.’ It was a cautionary tale about how we will not be able to control this new technology. It’s a warning about too much hubris surrounding this powerful technology that sometimes ‘precedes a tragic fall’-Mark Hamill.
The crew finds the remnants of a Martian Civilization that was destroyed by its own technology much like the revelation in Ridley Scott’s Alien 1979.
The film though with its bleak message is quite a surprisingly interesting science fiction tale about a trip to the moon, by way of Mars that is interesting because of its earnestness and visual style. And to be honest a lot more interesting and its characters more full of life than with its predecessor in 1950 Destination Moon.
Rocketship XM Staffing Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, John Emery, Noah Berry Jr. You heard this year’s Oscar Winner for Best Actor credit his father for his acting career. Well, here he is folks. Third from the left: Lloyd Bridges.
German director Neumann came to Hollywood in 1925 and became best known for his work on The Fly. (1958) Rocketship X-M is a sober and beautifully filmed piece of science fiction realism blended with romance and crisis. Like Destination Moon, it features the first manned rocket ship to the Moon that winds up knocked off course and winding up on Mars, stranded on the bleak landscape where the crew led by Dr. Karl Eckstrom stumble upon a dome-shaped structure and an odd metallic mask. They deduce from all the radioactivity that there must have been a superior race of intelligent beings who had once inhabited the planet but fell victim to some kind of atomic catastrophe, leaving only a few mutant savages to forage the bones of the now desolate planet.
These crazy-looking bald Martians sort of remind me of Pluto in The Hills Have Eyes 1977.
The crew is eventually besieged by the remains of that once thriving Martian race, which in a shocking reveal shows Sherry Moreland the Martian girl to have a lifeless stare as she is blind. The Martian troglodyte attackers kill Dr.Eckstrom and Maj. Corrigan, wounding Chamberlain. Col. Floyd Graham and Dr. Lisa Van Horn make it back to the ship but don’t have enough fuel to get back home. In a very intense and poignant scene as the two hold each other and embrace their inevitable fate with a transcendent fatalistic sense of hope, much like Grant Williams at the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the lovers watch through the view Finder as they plunge toward Earth to their deaths, in a darker film ending– as they crash. Rocketship X-M seems to have brought the warning not to earth in the form of Klaatu the benevolent but has placed us on a hostile planet much like Planet of the Apes that gravely warns us that our future could very well wind up the same way if we pursue atomic weapons.
Lloyd Bridges holds Osa Massen It ends badly for everyone. As they look out the porthole “It’s only seconds now, try not to be afraid” She clings to him-Suddenly she is not afraid anymore. She feels like something is lifting them up and holding them right before they crash…
Osa Massen sees her tragic end as a new beginning she sheds her fears and finds a courageous way to embrace their impending death. It’s a rather poetic scene when they hold each other and look out at the viewfinder and watch as life rapidly escapes them. It’s a very dark ending.
Doomed to crash and burn Floyd and Lisa cannot control the technology. There is a conflict with the machines and mechanisms we build that can either annihilate us or set us free to explore and thrive.
‘Their last desperate hope is for transcendence”
ROCKETSHIP X-M — Director John Cameron calls it a ‘dualistic dance’ with technology -referring to the end being so nihilistic potentially– then the head of the program says they’ll start construction tomorrow.
Already on Earth, they are planning another mission called Rocketship X-M2!
PROGRESS MARCHES ON-“No gentlemen the X-M was not a failure tomorrow we start on the construction of the X-M2”
Floyd: I’ve been wondering, how did a girl like you get mixed up in a thing like this in the first place.
Dr. Lisa Van Horn: I suppose you think that women should only cook and sew and bear children.
