Just when
I think I’ve seen all the sci-fi and horror flicks of the fifties I find
another one. This one was brought to my attention by a good friend, and I knew
that I had to check it out right away. Terror from the Year 5000 extremely low
budget regional movie was shot in Florida and follows the story of a brilliant
scientist working on time travel. He has figured out a way to send items into
the future and have items sent back. It seems that he has managed to contact
those future humans and has started working the machine out.
Sadly, his
money man and assistant Victor is very impatient. He decides to crank the
machine up and when he does, he brings a future woman back to the present, of
course the present for this movie is the fifties. She is horribly mangled by
radiation and wants to retrieve him for his uncorrupted genes. But since
everyone freaks out when they see her, she kills a nurse and steals her face!
Eventually the scientist, his daughter, and a colleague Dr. Hedges all rush to
the lab to prevent Victor from going to the future, though their efforts don’t
end the way I think they hoped.
Terror
from the Year 5000 is a low budget cheesy fifties science fiction/horror flick
that tries it’s best. The cast is decent but are saddled with a story that is
thin and lacking much action. We get a lot of sneaking around as Hedges tries
to figure out why Victor is stalking around the house at night. There is also
some swimming, getting of supper, and even a bit of peeping tomfoolery. All of
this is fine except I signed up for a monster movie and I’ve not gotten much… no
check that any monster at all!
Eventually
we do get to see the future lady, but she is kept in the darkness and out of
sight for a long time. When we do finally see her, she is wearing the stolen
face of the unfortunate nurse. This is late in the story, so it basically
escalates quickly and before you know it, we get to see the monster in all its
glory. Damn even for the time this is a silly makeup effect. The ending feels
rushed and after waiting all that time for something to happen I kind of felt
cheated.
I was
amused to find out that the creature in this movie is played by an actress
named Salome Jens who has had an amazing career with this being her first
feature film credit. It seems that she does a lot of voice work, but I
recognized her, well her voice anyway, from her role as the lead bad guy
changeling on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Yep, both times I’ve seen her she has
been buried under makeup. Though she also played the nurse so when the monster
is wearing her face it is her.
Do I like
this movie? It has issues and I was disappointed in the lack of monster action.
That said I’m a big fan of regional filmmaking and drive-in movies, so this
checks a couple of boxes for me. It is also a very short movie clocking in at
around sixty-six minutes, so it isn’t a huge investment of time. I guess if you
like these old cheesy movies then you will want to check out Terror from the
Year 5000, if not then probably not.
This bit of sci-fi horror from the fifties introduces us to a woman named Susan who is looking for her lost fiancé Bruce. He disappeared in a plane crash three years prior, but she hasn’t given up hope. Along with her are a hired pilot named Lee, a friend named Russ, and a businessman named Marty who tagged along while paying some of the expenses. Marty is looking for some uranium to stake a claim too, while the others are looking for Bruce. This becomes important later on.
Their plane is forced to land in some forbidden territory that the local authorities refused them permission to search. They quickly realize that the area is heavily irradiated, which makes Marty happy. But Susan doesn’t care and insists that they keep looking for Bruce. They find him but along the way realize that the radiation has caused all of the local critters to grow very large. This includes Bruce who looks like he was banged up really bad in the crash. Stuff happens and they eventually make their escape.
This is a straightforward creature movie from director Bert I. Gordon. We get giant lizards, a giant mouse, a giant hawk, a giant spider, a giant snake, and of course a giant Bruce. These are brought to the screen with a combination of old movie tricks. Composite shots are stitched together with rear projection to make it look like the actors are interacting with the oversized critters. While far from Gordon’s best work this isn’t too terrible. You do see on more than one occasion the creatures become transparent, but that is normal for the techniques that they were using. For a movie that is over sixty years old it isn’t too bad.
I normally talk about the plot first but that isn’t why you watch a Bert I. Gordon movie. Still lets briefly take a look at it. The movie is very short, clocking in at barely over an hour with a running time of sixty-six minutes. That is a wise decision because there isn’t much to the story. They get told they can’t fly somewhere, they do anyway, Marty freaks out and the plane lands. Then giant monsters happen, someone does something stupid, and they fly away. See not much to it, but it does adhere to the “B” monster movie tropes. Again, you watch a movie like this to see the oversized assorted threats to the cast rather than an engaging story and/or interesting characters.
Despite not having much of a story they do have a fairly strong cast. The highlight for me is Lon Chaney Jr. as the businessman Marty. He does some inexplicably dumb things, but I blame the script and not the actor for that. It was also cool to see Gloria Talbott who I recognized from I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Tom Drake who plays the pilot Lee did a bunch of television, including one of my favorite Kolchak episodes. Most everyone in this movie were working actors and do a good job.
I like these cheesy fifties flicks. I know that they aren’t for everyone and I think that you have to be a fan of these to get a kick out of The Cyclops. Silly and gimmicky this was right up my alley but may not be up yours. With that caveat I recommend this one.
The government is conducting an experiment in the arctic circle where they are testing out some atomic bombs. The most recent test sets something free from the ice. The scientists find this out when they go to check on the results of their latest experiment and run into a dinosaur that had been frozen in the ice but is now on the loose and hungry. Bad things happen leading to the death of one of the men and the other is ignored and sent to talk to the psychiatrist. You know because it couldn’t have been a dinosaur.
When a fishing boat and lighthouse are destroyed those in charge start to listen. A paleontologist gets involved and helps to identify the dinosaur and determine that the creature is trying to return to it’s old hunting grounds. Unfortunately, that turns out to be where New York City is! The creature goes stomping around town eating people and smashing buildings and generally making a nuisance of itself. The army comes along and starts shooting it, but soon discover that it is carrying some nasty prehistoric diseases which means its blood is toxic. So, no pew pew unless they want everyone to die. In the end they shoot/inject it with a radioactive isotope that will kill it as well as the diseases it carries.
This is one of those fifties movies that has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms has everything you could ask for from a creature feature. The pacing is great with the monster showing up early and often. It was a nice twist that we the audience gets to see what our main character sees but have to watch him be dismissed by everyone else. When the doubters are onboard, the action continues with a series of attacks and battles with the beast as it smashes its way down the East Coast. I also thought the twist of it having diseases and not being able to just blow it away was cool. I don’t remember another sci-fi movie using this as a plot point before, at least not one of these creature features.
The special effects work is a lot of fun. The titular beast is brought to the screen thru the magic of stop motion which is blended in perfectly with some nice model work. They do a fantastic job of adding in the actors and sets to match it up. This is done with some rear projection techniques that are old school, which of course I dig. Some of the best gags are an underwater diving bell, the big finale with a roller coaster, a wall that falls on some actors, and the lighthouse getting smashed. That last one with the lighthouse is an iconic sequence.
My personal favorite and the one that scared the hell out of a very young me is a bit with a police officer. He shoots at the monster and while reloading gets snatched up. The scene lingers on the now stop motion legs kicking as he is chewed up and swallowed. That is gruesome for a movie from the fifties, and it has always stuck with me. Now of course the desensitized old man that I am just smiles with nostalgia. None of the above should come as a surprise though since the legendary Ray Harryhausen was responsible for all of the miniature and stop motion effects.
The monster is toast!
I have a few more things to mention. The cast includes genre favorite Kenneth Tobey, who shows up in a lot of these science fiction flicks. We also get small roles from two very young actors that would go on to be famous. James Best (Killer Shrews, Dukes of Hazzard) is a radio operator and the great Lee Van Cleef (Spaghetti Westerns… so many Spaghetti Westerns) is the sharpshooter brought in to take the monster down. If that weren’t enough the script was based on a story by Ray Bradbury. Is it any wonder that this movie is so good?
Clearly, I love The Best from 20,000 Fathoms. I grew up on movies like this and can say if I were to list my top five fifties sci-fi/horror flicks this would easily make the top ten if not top five. If you haven’t seen this yet do yourself a favor and track down a copy. It is well worth the effort.
I’ve been
kicking around the idea of covering the exploitation/horror movies of the
Philippines, especially those made in the late sixties and seventies. I even
went as far as buying a couple box sets as well as tracking down a few other
movies. I suppose it is time to actually get started and I couldn’t think of a
better place to start then the first movie in the Blood Island series, Brides
of Blood.
Things
kick off on a boat as we are introduced to our main characters. We have Jim, a well-meaning
Peace Core volunteer traveling to the remote island to help the locals with
sanitation and irrigation. You know the real tree hugger crap they do. There is
also Dr. Henderson and his much younger wife Carla. He is coming to do some
research and she is basically just miserable. He has needs that her husband
seems disinterested in helping her with. They arrive on the island and are met
by the locals, including the lovely Alma who becomes Jim’s love interest. Also,
there is a fellow American (though he is clearly not…) Esteban who lives in a
big house near the village.
Not long
after they realize that something is horribly wrong as they encounter mutated
animals and plants. Yeah, the trees are trying to kill them! The worst of it is
a particularly nasty monster to whom the villagers keep sacrificing lovely
ladies. Why only the ladies? It seems that the monster has needs if you get my
meaning. When they pick Alma that is the last straw for Jim, and he frees her
and flees to Esteban’s home with her in tow. Along the way we find out that the
island has been affected by radiation from the atomic bomb tests and that is
why the local flora and fauna has become so homicidal. After one big twist
involving the identity of the amorous monster we get to a satisfying conclusion
to the movie, a big dance number.
My recap
of the movie makes it sound like I didn’t like it, or at least like I’m being
snarky about it. The truth is this isn’t a great movie and has its fair share
of flaws. That said I enjoyed the heck out of it. There is a certain cheesy fun
to be had with a movie like Brides of Blood, or really any movie that was made
for the drive-in crowd in general. That is if you do it right. For me you have
to have a decent creature or at least an entertaining one. Here we get a big
bug on visible wires, some tentacles springing forth from the trees, and of
course the man in a rubber suit. For the late sixties and on such a small
budget all of these are executed pretty well. My favorite creature related bit
has to do with a tree trying to eat a kid! Yeah they went there. All in all I
was satisfied with what I saw on screen.
Now this
is going to sound creepy but, in my defense, it is a staple of the drive-in
genre and that is nudity. We see a lot of skin in Brides of Blood. While it
might seem tame by today’s standards (my how the internet has changed things)
this was pushing the boundaries of the late sixties. It is likely that if these
movies weren’t dismissed as trash, they wouldn’t have been able to get away
with as much as they did.
The cast
is solid with Kent Taylor, Beverley Powers, and John Ashley all doing good
work. Some of the local Filipino cast is good as well. Eva Darren as Alma does
a great job and Mario Montenegro is good as Esteban. A lot of effort was put
into trying to write the best script and get decent actors and it shows. The
direction from Gerado de Leon and Eddie Romero is solid. That said the movie
does drag a little bit here and there and the big dance scene tacked on at the
end does nothing for the story and feels like padding, which they didn’t need.
My only
other complaint with Brides of Blood is the music. While I don’t mind the
soundtrack itself my issue is with how loud it gets. There are times where it
drowns out what is on screen, not dialogue but just the ambient sounds of the
jungle. It feels intrusive and took my attention away from the action on
screen. This and the slow spots are the only real issues that I have with the
movie.
For years
I had warned people away from the Blood Island flicks based upon me watching
them on VHS years ago. I’m not sure if it is the transfer on the new Blu-Ray
set or if my tastes have changed but I feel like that was the wrong thing to
do. Again, I can’t say Brides of Blood is a great movie, but I’ll be damned if it
isn’t entertaining. Now I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of them to
see if they are also better than I remembered. Consider this a recommendation.
Time for
another fifties movie review and I thought I’d go back to some radioactive
monster action with The Giant Behemoth. Though for a fun twist this is a
British production. So instead of New York or Chicago being menaced we get
London.
Things
start off with a scientist warning an audience of his peers about the dangers
of the atomic tests. Even though they were conducted in a remote location
thousands of miles away you can’t put a fence up in the ocean. The radiation
effects the eco system and gets more concentrated the higher up the food chain
you go. This is proven to be correct when a dinosaur rises from the depths
totally irradiated. So much so that it seems to be able to glow and “throw”
deadly radiation off itself at will. After terrorizing the coastline of
England, the big fella eventually ends up in London. The military knows that it
needs to destroy the Behemoth, but how? If you blow it up radiation will go
everywhere! They finally figure out that a torpedo will do the job… because the
water will contain the radiation! Isn’t that how this got started in the first
place?
Other than
that logical quandary of shooting it with a torpedo so that the water contains
the radiation The Giant Behemoth is a decent movie. There is an unusually well
thought out plot covering the pollution of the sea with atomic tests and how
that would change the ecosystem. These scenes don’t linger and drag down the
pacing but do stick around long enough to setup the story and make the audience
think a bit. Before we really get to see much of the monster, we get beaches
full of dead fish and men out of work unable to feed their families. For a
fifties creature feature that has a lot more depth to it then I would normally
expect. This is a well written movie with something to say.
The monster looks great
No worries
though because we do eventually get a lot of the monster. It eventually reaches
London and attacks a ferry. From there it crawls out of the Thames and starts
to zap (remember it has a radiation attack!) and stomp on the locals and
landmarks. The creature is brought to life with some decent miniature work,
stop motion animation, and rear projection screens. They even manage to pull
off a decent underwater battle between a sub and the monster. I don’t think
that I’ve seen that in an old school monster movie before which makes The Giant
Behemoth stand out. It might not look as realistic as a new movie would, but I
love this type of effects work. I grew up on them and still think they have a
charm that the new digital stuff totally lacks.
I can’t
think of a bad thing to say about The Giant Behemoth. It is a solid movie with
a decent creature and story. This one was in heavy rotation back in my days
watching the late-night movie shows and I remember seeing it many times. After
all these years it still holds up pretty well. This shows up all over the place
so tracking it down shouldn’t be an issue. I recommend checking it out.
Another
Friday means another fifties movie review. This time I went away from my
comfort zone to check out a flick that I don’t remember having seen before. I
think I would have remembered Monster from the Ocean Floor.
A pretty
young lady is visiting Mexico to draw pictures and swim. She meets up with
Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist. After some romantic talk about how the human
race is doomed because the population is exploding they help look for a missing
diver. They only find his suit, but where is the man? This combined with an
earlier conversation about the local sea monster sets the girl on a search to
prove it exists. Of course, she is just a woman, so the science guys go off to
do some more science. Then the locals decide to appease the monster by
sacrificing her to it. Luckily, they choose Pablo to kill her and he is really
bad at it. Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist, returns just in time to kill the
monster and save the girl. End of movie.
This is
bad. I can’t think of a good thing to say about the movie at all. I’d say that
the pacing is terrible, but that would insinuate that something actually
happens to point out how slow parts of the movie are. Really nothing happens in
Monster from the Ocean Floor. We get some talking, then swimming, then talking,
then more swimming. Nothing happens! There is a bit where the girl “fights” a
shark and is scared to the surface by a little octopus because you know women
and stuff… This is the longest hour of my cinematic life and I’ve watched Manos
Hands of Fate without the MST3K jokes!
Prepare for lots of swimming...
The
creature here is hardly on screen at all. That is probably for the best because
it looks terrible. Basically, a rubber puppet that is hidden by “underwater”
photography. This means they slapped a crappy filter on the camera, so you
couldn’t see how bad it looks. Not only do we barely see the creature, but it
is quickly dispatched in an anticlimactic ending that takes all of thirty
seconds. Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist, rams his pedal sub into its eye
killing it. Honestly the only fun that I’m having here and with the movie is
saying Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist, and that joke is wearing old already.
Not
everything that Roger Corman was involved in, here just as a producer, turned
out good. This might be the worst thing associated with him that I’ve watched,
and I’ve seen a lot. This has the feel of a movie that he picked up to stick on
the end of a triple feature only to be shown when most of the audience was
asleep or otherwise engaged. While the main purpose of my fifties review series
is to turn people onto some movies that I dig it is also important to steer you
away from the turkeys. This is a serious waste of time. Avoid at all costs.
