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Night the World Exploded, The

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

company: Columbia Pictures
and Clover Productions
year: 1957
runtime: 64′
country: United States
director: Fred F. Sears
cast: Kathryn Grant, William Leslie,
Tristram Coffin, Raymond Greenleaf,
Charles Evans, Frank J. Scannell,
Marshall Reed, Fred Coby
writers: Jack Nutteford
and Luci Ward
cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline
music: Ross DiMaggio (musical director)
not on home video in the USA

Plot: A newly discovered mineral element that expands and explodes when it is exposed to nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere threatenes to destroy the world.

Prolific producer Sam Katzman’s excursion into the science fiction genre was limited, encompassing only a handful of the nearly 250 pictures he financed between 1933 and 1973.  His assembly-line approach to film production produced a few genre gems – the early Ray Harryhausen / Charles H. Schneer collaborations It Came From Beneath the Sea and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and the underrated sci-fi horror The Werewolf.  Most, however, were little more than lean programmers that relied more on memorable titles and fanciful ad art than content to draw in the necessary business.

1957’s The Night the World Exploded, half of a Columbia double bill featuring the Wtf-Film creature favorite The Giant Claw (another product of Kazman’s Clover Productions directed by Night’s own Fred F. Sears), will never be remembered as a classic.  But with no video release and only the rarest of representation on modern television, Night is probably lucky to be remembered at all.  Those who grew up on the television late shows of the 60s and 70s (perhaps even more recently, though I never chanced upon it as a kid myself) will recall Night as the picture in which Earth is threatened by exploding rocks pulled from Carlsbad Caverns.

The Night the World Exploded runs along standard contemporary genre lines:  Young scientist David Conway (William Leslie, Hellcats of the Navy) invents a new magical device (a quartz tube “pressurometer” in this case) just in time to predict a major earthquake in Los Angeles.  While the city pieces itself together Conway comes to a startling revelation – immense pressure is building in the Earth’s crust, and the first earthquake is only a warning of more severe disasters to come.  The cause of the pressure reveals itself to be the new Element 112, an explosive mineral that earthquakes worldwide are threatening to expose with cataclysmic results.  From the moment Element 112 is discovered the race is on to find a means of averting a seemingly inevitable apocalypse.

The story may be prototypical sci-fi hokum, but The Night the World Exploded at least manages to toss an interesting idea into its recipe for worldwide carnage.  Like Kronos the same year, Night makes something of an argument for the conservation of natural resources.  The incendiary Element 112 is an entirely natural phenomena, benign in its usual environment.  It’s the pesky meddling of mankind, gung-ho in their coal mining and oil drilling, that have weakened sections of the Earth’s crust enough to allow the Element to expose itself.  The film is careful to point out that it’s not all our fault (natural erosion at the Carlsbad Caverns has exposed the Element as well, for instance), but the message is clear all the same.  ”It’s almost as though the Earth were striking back at us for the way we’ve robbed her of her natural resources,” Laura ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (Kathryn Grant, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) says early on.  Erosion be damned, Mother Nature is pissed and all of her stock footage wrath is upon us.  It’s a sentiment that places Night among the very earliest of the ecological disaster films and, in that single sense, well ahead of its time.

Predictably, a solution to the Element 112 crisis is reached before the situation become too catastrophic.  Conway discovers that the Element is reverted to a harmless inert state when submerged in water, leading to a poverty row public works project in which library footage from World War II works to flood the areas where the mineral menace has been exposed.  The special effects are of the usual Katzman quality, and new shots are commissioned only when vast libraries of stock shots or earlier bits from old serials were deemed insufficient.  The most impressive moment occurs rather early, when the opening title explodes off the screen – there must have been a few dollars of the budget to spare come time for the titles to be printed.

Dramatically The Night the World Exploded fluctuates between being boringly typical and unintentionally hilarious.  Romantic triangles are normal for pictures of all genres, but I’ve never seen one handled in quite the way it is here.  Scientists Conway and Hutchinson are obviously fond of each other, but Hutchinson intends to marry another man as Conway is too involved in his work.  Night leaves little doubt of which man will get the girl, as Hutch’s intended husband never appears in the film!  We learn his name (Bryant) and of Hutch’s involvement with him, but the character himself never once materializes.  By the time the sun rises over a newly-salvaged world he has been forgotten all together.  Otherwise things are pretty standard issue, with lots of meetings between scientific types and government officials to pad the brief running time.

At just under 64 minutes in length, The Night the World Exploded doesn’t overstay its welcome, and underrated director Fred F. Sears keeps things moving at a reasonable clip while providing narration as well.  Writers Jack Natteford and Luci Ward were seasoned professionals approaching the end of their lengthy careers, just the kind of people Katzman was fond of hiring.  Their work is never as lively as that of the blacklisted Bernard Gordon (who worked for Katzman credited by the name Raymond T. Marcus), but it gets the job done.  Cinematographer Benjamin H. Kline (Before I Hang) keeps everything nicely framed, not that the open matte video masters floating around show it, while music director Ross DiMaggio fills the soundtrack with familiar library cues.

No one will ever mistake The Night the World Exploded for good film making, but there’s a comfort food appeal to it for those of us who grew up on old Columbia programmers.  I certainly enjoyed it.  The studio got more than their money’s worth out of these Katzman productions, re-issuing them in double and triple bill weekend matinees well into the 60s.  It’s a pity more aren’t readily available on DVD, though Sony’s recent collections of deep catalog titles are promising to say the least.  For now Night is a rarity, though it is out there (even without resorting to bootleggers).  I say see it.

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Earth vs. The Flying Saucers

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

company: Columbia and
Clover Productions
year: 1956
runtime: 83′
country: United States
director: Fred F. Sears
cast: Hugh Marlowe, Joan Taylor,
Donald Curtis, Morris Ankrum,
John Zaremba, Thomas Browne Henry,
Grandon Rhodes, Larry J. Blake
writers: Bernad Gordan, Curt Siodmak
and George Worthing Yates
cinematography: Fred Jackman Jr.
music: Mischa Bakaleinikoff
visual effects: Ray Harryhausen
disc company: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
release date: October 7th, 2008
retail price: $107.95
(Blu-ray only available as part of The
Ray Harryhausen Collection 4-film set)
disc details: region free / dual layer BD50
video: 1080p / 1.85:1 / b/w + colorized
audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround (English)
Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (French)
subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish,
Portuguese, French, Hindi, Arabic, Japanese
(Portuguese, French, Spanish, Japanese
for supplemental content)
special features: audio commentary with
Ray Harryhausen, Remembering Earth vs. The
Flying Saucers featurette, The Hollywood Blacklist
and Bernard Gordon featurette, Original screenplay
credits, Interview with Joan Taylor, photo galleries,
Colorization demo, Sneak peak of Flying Saucers
vs. The Earth comic book, trailers (It Came From
Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth,
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad)
order this film from Amazon.com:
2-disc SD DVD | 4-disc Blu-ray Collection

Plot: Earth is attacked by a fleet of flying saucers from a disintegrated solar system.

The second collaborative effort between producer Charles H. Schneer, still under contract to Sam Katzman and here working under his Clover Productions banner, and visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen is another formulaic science fiction programmer elevated to near-classic status by its labor-intensive effects production.  The picture was another big success for Columbia and Sam Katzman, who released it on a double bill with the even cheaper The Werewolf (a memorably grim horror noir from director Fred F. Sears).  Earth vs. The Flying Saucers would be Schneer’s final film as a Katzman underling, and 1957 would see the release of his first two independently produced efforts – Hellcats of the Navy starring Arthur Franz and Ronald Reagan and the genre classic 20 Million Miles to Earth.

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers is well-paced if utterly derivative, and follows newlyweds Dr. Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe, the Judas of The Day the Earth Stood Still) and secretary Carol (Joan Taylor, 20 Million Miles to Earth).  Both are employed in the Air Force’s top-secret Operation Sky-hook satellite program, which has encountered an odd problem.  None of the satellites are staying in orbit as they should, all having mysteriously crashed back to Earth shortly after their launch.  A few strange encounters and a full-on ray gun attack later, the culprits in the odd disappearances are revealed: a civilization from a dead solar system has set its sights on the planet Earth, which they hope to conquer through the shear obviousness of their technological superiority alone.  Dr. Marvin and his fellow Earthlings are understandably displeased with the invader’s imperialist intentions, and rush to perfect a new anti-saucer weapon before time runs out.

The screenplay by Curt Siodmak, George Worthing Yates and blacklisted writer Bernard Gordon (Hellcats of the Navy, Day of the Triffids, Krakatoa: East of Java – the authors name, originally listed as Raymond T. Marcus, has been restored in the opening credits of Sony’s latest release of this film) is a mish-mash of original and judiciously absorbed ideas from previous efforts strung together with a little drama and a lot of military hearings and scientific exposition.  The notion of intellectually superior and physically frail extraterrestrials invading the less-advanced Earth dates back to Wells’ 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, while several moments throughout – a General (Morris Ankrum, of course) commenting on the electronic screens protecting the invaders, an examination of some of their optical equipment – are culled from George Pal’s big-budget 1953 adaptation of the same.

A misunderstanding that leads to the death of the alien’s first Earth delegate harkens to Wise’s 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, as does a mid-picture show of force by the invaders, who cut all manner of Earthly communication in preparation for their final attack.  Then there are the interiors of the saucers themselves, the extraterrestrials’ pontifications of the vast speeds at which they travel, and even the closing lines (“. . . such a nice world.  I’m glad it’s still here.”), all of which are rather reminiscent of Universal’s color spectacle This Island Earth from the previous year.  Derivative as it may be, the film has proven to be quite inspirational as well.  Toho’s Monster Zero follows the same basic plot elements right down to the truck-mounted anti-saucer rays, and Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! makes too many direct homages to it for me to even begin to list them here.



Earth vs. The Flying Saucers bypasses the standard romantic arc that dominated so many of its predecessors, beginning with a married couple who have gotten that troublesome love-finding out of the way before the film has even begun.  Hugh Marlowe and Joan Taylor make a believable couple and solid enough foundation for the rest of the picture to rest upon, though precious little screen time is given to their relationship.  Most of the running time is devoted to military meetings (disbelieving Generals and all) and that 50s genre perspective of the scientific process, complete with the obligatory cost-cutting stock footage montages and a newsreel-style narration (perhaps It Came From Beneath the Sea’s William Woodson again, though the IMDB lists his credit as “unconfirmed”).  Fred F. Sears does what he always did best, making the most of the meager finances and drama that was handed to him, and fills the screen with his trademark mis-en-scene, with actors stacked deep into shots and almost menacing shadows cast on the walls of mundane locations.  I’ve always been a fan of Sears’ work, visually if not substantively, but his position as one of Katzman’s most prolific work-horse would shuffle him off the mortal coil just a year later – dead of cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 44.

The film certainly did nothing to hurt Harryhausen’s budding film career, and his carefully animated flying saucers would easily usurp those from The Day the Earth Stood Still and This Island Earth to become the most iconic of the decade.  The aliens themselves, stuffed in clunky rounded suits made of “solidified electricity”, may be anemic, but the saucers in which they fly are alive brimming with menace – he can’t seem to resist giving even these inanimate machines a distinct personality.  The animation is a fine example of the classic Harryhausen style, the saucers delicately weaving back and forth, each motion counterbalanced against another to give the illusion of suspended weight.  It all works amazingly well, and count me as one of those who is amazed, even today, at the actual size of the saucer models.  Imperfections are more obvious now some 20 years since I first saw the picture, imperfect matte lines or jitteriness of elements within the frame, but many of the tricks, like the model of the capitol dome inserted above a photo plate of the rest of the building, are seamless.

I continue to find immense satisfaction in Sony’s Blu-ray Ray Harryhausen Collection, which has given me a much-needed excuse to catch up on four of the films I was raised on.  Like the previously reviewed It Came From Beneath the Sea, Sony has opted to make their Blu-ray of Earth vs. The Flyings Saucers available only as a part of their 4-disc Blu-ray collection.  As with that film, a 2-disc special edition SD DVD with the same supplemental content is individually available and has been linked to at the top of this article.



Like the other two black and white features in the Ray Harryhausen Collection, a Harryhausen-endorsed colorized version of Earth vs. The Flying Saucers has been included along with the original black and white.  While technology has obviously improved since digital colorization was introduced in the 80s, the end product still looks very much like what it is.  Some hues still look bad, and reds are rendered particularly poorly here (an American flag looks dull and pastel, while a briefly glimpsed stop sign is nearly pink).  Skin tones continue to be an issue, with one character (the military man standing next to Morris Ankrum as they gaze out of the control tower at an approaching saucer) is cast in a ghastly yellow.  In spite of the Harryhausen endorsement and the preponderance for discussion of the topic in the commentary, the black and white original is clearly the way to see the film.

Transfer-wise, this is another strong effort.  The 1080p 1.85:1 image presents with tremendous detail and beautiful contrast (see the image of Morris Ankrum’s troubled face), with a healthy layer of grain present throughout.  Damage in the original footage of this popular attraction is limited to speckling here and there, with stock shots varying from pristine to battered – just as they were when the film was released.  Harryhausen’s extensive effects work looks fantastic, only improving with the increased scrutiny the HD transfer allows for.  Audio is presented in another excellent Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track, and the recording sounds like it could have been made yesterday (from Columbia’s canned effects library, of course).  A Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic French dub is available as well.  Subtitling options are extensive on this region-free disc, with additional French, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese translations available for the supplements.

As with It Came From Beneath the Sea, supplements here are stacked.  The package begins with another fun commentary from Harryhausen, this time joined by fellow effects artists Jeffrey Okun and Ken Ralston.  Aside from the frequent “oohs” and “aahs” over how wonderful the colorization job looks, this is a great track – well worth a listen.  Next up are a series of featurettes totaling around 70 minutes, including a retrospective of the film, a piece dedicated to blacklisted writer Bernard Gordon, and an interview with co-star Joan Taylor, who seems positively delighted that she’ll be remembered for her performances in two of Harryhausen and Schneer’s effects pictures.  The original opening credits for the film, complete with the Raymond T. Marcus credit, are included here for posterity.  We get another Harryhausen inspired comic preview, this time for Flying Saucers vs. The Earth, as well as a collection of trailers and image galleries.  The trailer for this film is, again, strangely omitted, though it is available on other discs in the set.  A little bothersome is The Colorization Process, which plays a bit too much like a late-night infomercial for Legend Film’s services and is entirely skippable.

While probably the weakest of the four films available in the Ray Harryhausen Collection, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers was none-the-less influential and remains a fun, if dated, science fiction programmer.  Harryhausen’s meticulous one-man effects production makes the upgrade to HD a no-brainer, just one more reason to pick up the full collection.  Earth vs. The Flying Saucers comes recommended.


order this film from Amazon.com:
2-disc SD DVD | 4-disc Blu-ray Collection

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It Came From Beneath the Sea

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

company: Columbia
year: 1955
runtime: 79′
country: United States
director: Robert Gordon
cast: Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue,
Donald Curtis, Ian Keith,
Dean Maddox Jr., Chuck Griffithe,
Harry Lauter, Richard W. Peterson
writers: Hal Smith
and George Worthing Yates
cinematographer: Henry Freulich
music: Mischa Bakaleinikoff
visual effects: Ray Harryhausen
disc company: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
release date: October 7th, 2008
retail price: $107.95
(Blu-ray only available as part of the
Ray Harryhausen Collection 4-film set)
disc details: Region Free / Dual Layer BD50
video: 1080p HD / 1.85:1 / b/w + colorized
audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround (English)
subtitles: English, English SDH, Portuguese,
Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic
(Portuguese, Spanish, French, Japanese for extras)
special features: Audio commentary with
Ray Harryhausen, Remembering It Came From
Beneath the Sea featurette, Tim Burton Sits Down
with Ray Harryhausen featurette, David Schecter
on Film Music’s Unsung Hero featurette, A Present
Day Look at Stop Motion Animation featurette,
theatrical trailers (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,
20 Million Miles to Earth, The 7th Voyage of
Sinbad), video image galleries
order this film from Amazon.com
2-disc SD DVD | 4-disc Blu-ray Collection

Plot: A mammoth octopus roused by nuclear testing rises from the Pacific Ocean and attacks San Francisco.

While its low budget production values may hint otherwise, It Came From Beneath the Sea was a landmark science fiction production, worth noting if only for its pairing of stop motion auteur Ray Harryhausen (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Clash of the Titans) and producer Charles H. Schneer.  It was a relationship that would last through the end of both men’s careers and result in some of the most beloved fantasy and adventure films of the past half century.   Without it many of us would never have experienced the many voyages of Sinbad, the wonders of Captain Nemo’s Mysterious Island, or Jason’s adventure with his Argonauts.

As with many beginnings, this one was humble.  Schneer was working under contract to legendary schlockmeister Sam Katzman (producer of such anti-classics as The Giant Claw and The Zombies of Mora Tau) at the time he offered Harryhausen his first post-The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms gig.  It Came From Beneath the Sea plays as a reworking of basic ideas from that box office success, sending a giant radioactive menace on a collision course with a thriving American metropolis.  The details may be different, the monster in this case is an octopus and San Francisco the doomed city, but the end result was much the same.  It Came From Beneath the Sea meant big money for Sam Katzman and Columbia, and its success only solidified Schneer’s confidence in the young Harryhausen’s stop motion process.

Kenneth Tobey (The Thing from Another World, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Bigamist) stars as Naval Commander Pete Matthews, who is overseeing the maiden voyage of the latest American nuclear submarine when it has a close encounter with a massive unknown something in the Pacific.  Back in dry dock a piece of fleshy material is discovered on the submarine’s hull, and two marine biologists are called in to classify it.  Between romantic moments and dinner outings (Tobey wastes no time in snagging hotty scientist Faithe Domergue for himself) the scientists discover that the flesh belongs to a gigantic octopus, a finding the Navy begrudgingly accepts after more ships are lost in the Pacific.  With the monster making a bee-line for the American West Coast, it’s up to the scientists and the Commander to come up with a new weapon to stop it.


The writing, credited to regular Bert I. Gordon writer George Worthing Yates (The Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs. The Spider) and prolific actor and voice talent Hal Smith (Otis of The Andy Griffith Show, I kid you not), ranks a few solid clicks above the garbage that was to take over the genre by the latter half of the ’50s and certainly serves its purpose.  Dialogue is consistently literate, and even the obligatory goofy science lessons (an embarrassed-looking Don Curtis explaining cephalopod propulsion with a rubber balloon, for instance) are above par.  The narrative falls back on tried-and-true melodrama to provide the majority of the distraction, with ample scenes devoted to the rather cold romance between Kenneth Tobey and Faith Domergue.  The main cast is a professional lot, though some can’t keep from looking utterly disinterested or even annoyed with the material they’ve signed on to perform.

Actor-turned-director Robert Gordon plays the material in the semi-documentary neo-realist fashion that was popular for such pictures at the time, and keeps things moving and interesting, if formulaic.  Brief snippets of narration (by voice talent William Woodson) accompany many of the non-romantic scenes, but never becomes so overbearing as in some contemporary efforts (like The Deadly Mantis and The Lost Missile).  Gordon builds good suspense on a several occasions and the opening, with the submarine’s sonar display slowly filling with a writhing black blob of contact, is the stuff classic monster movies are made of.  Mischa Bakaleinikoff’s original monster themes, full of brassy power, are great no matter how often we’ve heard them repeated, and were new at the time It Came From Beneath the Sea was produced.  It’s music that figures prominently into my formative childhood memories.

The main attraction of the show, and the reason it was as big a success as it was, is without a doubt Harryhausen’s effects work, which still holds up to scrutiny after all these years.  The climactic assault of his six-armed octopus armature on the famous sights of San Francisco is enough to rate It Came From Beneath the Sea a near classic of the genre, and its dismemberment of the Golden Gate Bridge is one of American science fiction’s most iconic images.  There are more than a fair share of flubs to be seen for those on the lookout, but the experience as a whole is quite effective and it’s still mind-boggling to imagine Harryhausen alone in his rented studio space making it all work.  The details of his labor really come alive in the new high def presentation, the almost sentient attitude of the individual tentacles and even the occasional puckering of a suction cup.


Sony has made a good first effort in committing their extensive science fiction and fantasy library to high definition with their Ray Harryhausen Collection from October, 2008.  The set includes he and Charles H. Schneer’s first four productions under the Columbia banner from this film through Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles to Earth and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.  While 20 Million Miles to Earth and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad are both available separately, the Blu-ray editions of It Came From Beneath the Sea and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers are at present only available as part of this collection.  2-disc SD DVD editions of both are available for purchase individually, with identical supplemental content, and I’ve linked to the SD release for It Came From Beneath the Sea at the start of this review.

The dual layered Blu-ray of It Came From Beneath the Sea combines all the contents of the two disc set in one easy-to-use package, one of the major benefits of the new format for those like me who are quickly running out of shelf space for multi-disc editions (apartment living will be the death of me).  The disc comes with two 1080p 1.85:1 editions of the film, the original black and white and the new colorized variant handled by Legend Films.  Having watched both and given the colorized version its fair shake, this reviewer will be sticking with the black and white original.  The color transfer has a rather processed look to these eyes (understandable given the technique) and while colorization practices have certainly improved since the days when King Kong was fighting a T-rex in cool pastels on TNT, they’re still a far cry from perfect.  Skin tones in particular are flat and lifeless, and some of the effects, like the sunset colors in the background of the mid-film romantic dinner, are flat out terrible.

Both transfers are sharp and very well defined, and have obviously undergone some restorative work to get rid of damage.  The crisp, clean black and white variant is a startling improvement over what I remember seeing on TV as a child, which made the beautiful Faith Domergue appear positively morose.  The experience was like seeing the film for the first time.  The feature is alive with film grain, in understandably higher amounts during the stock footage and effects scenes, and I’m happy to see that no effort was made to smooth it out.  Audio is a powerful Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, which sounds great to these ears (Bakaleinikoff’s themes burst through the opening credits) even if separation is limited.  No original monophonic track is offered.  Subtitle options are extensive (see the full list at the top of this article) for this all-region disc, and even include Portuguese, Spanish, French and Japanese translations for the supplements.

Supplements are surprisingly stacked compared to the SD edition from 2003.  The feature commentary, featuring Ray Harryhausen and effects artists Randall William Cook and John Bruno, is lively and informative, and Harryhausen’s memories are still pretty clear after all these long years.  Next up are a host of featurettes (totalling 83 minutes), including one devoted to Mischa Bakaleinikoff’s work for Columbia hosted by David Schecter (see the full list of featurettes at the top of this page).  Also included is a digital preview of the comic book continuation of the story, It Came From Beneath The Sea Again.  All supplements appear to be 480p SD with the exception of the trio of trailers for the rest of the films in the set, which are all Mpeg-2 encoded HD.  Oddly, the trailer for It Came From Beneath the Sea itself is omitted.

It Came From Beneath the Sea comprises 1/4 of the most expensive home video purchase I’ve made in a while, and I dare say it was well worth it.  The fact that the first two titles of the Ray Harryhausen Collection are only available as part of the collection will infuriate some, especially those who already own the Blu-ray releases of 20 Million Miles to Earth and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.  That said, my advice is to suck it up, sell your dupes, and pick up the whole set – in my mind, even a sci-fi programmer like this is worth the HD upgrade.  The 2-disc SD package is also available otherwise.  The film itself is a minor classic made at the cusp of that mid-50s genre nose-dive, and comes recommended.


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2-disc SD DVD | 4-disc Blu-ray Collection

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Tarantula!

Monday, January 25th, 2010

company: Universal International
year: 1955
runtime: 80′
country: United States
director: Jack Arnold
cast: John Agar, Mara Corday,
Leo G. Carroll, Nestor Paiva,
Ross Elliot, Edwin Rand,
Raymond Bailey, Hank Patterson
writers: Robert M. Fresco,
Martin Berkeley, and Jack Arnold
cinematographer: George Robinson
music: Joseph Gershenson (supervisor)
special effects: David S. Horsley,
Clifford Stine and Wah Chang (puppet creator)
dvd company: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
release date: January 2, 2007 / May 13, 2008
retail price: $19.99 / $59.98
disc details: Region 1 / NTSC / dual layer
video: 4:3 open matte / progressive
audio: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic)
subtitles: English SDH, French
order this film from Amazon.com
OOP 2007 collection | 2008 Ultimate Collection

Plot: A scientist investigating a new growth serum in the Arizona desert inadvertently lets an ever-growing tarantula loose on the countryside.  It’s up to a country doctor, local law enforcement, and the air force to stop the beast.

Tarantula! is the prototypical ’50s monster picture, and one in a long line in which the creeping unknown descends upon small-town America.  Throughout the decade the Rockwellian fantasy would be invaded by fifty foot women, perverse space brains, blobs, and even an econonomy-sized crystal garden.  Tarantula! also fits well into the cold war atomic paranoia of the time, and while the bomb doesn’t play a role in the titular creature’s creation (the closest we get is an isotope that holds the good scientist’s growth formula together) the idea of science creating an unstoppable and inhumanly huge force of destruction is of obvious inspiration.

Made just a few years before Universal International’s science fiction cycle would descend into low-budget idiocy (I’m looking at you, Monster on the Campus), Tarantula! is a solid production with a name cast and memorable iconography.  The sight of the title creature cresting hills and progressing with all deliberate speed across the desert landscapes, devouring cattle and people and downing power lines along the way, is hard to forget.

Typical for the genre, Tarantula! plays as a mystery – that the audience is in on the solution ten minutes in is of little consequence.  Dr. Matt Hastings (John Agar) is called in when a horribly disfigured man is found dead of unknown causes in the desert.  Hastings determines that the man died of complications from acromagaly (a syndrome caused by an excess of growth hormone), a diagnosis confirmed when Professor Deemer (Leo G. Carroll) arrives in town to identify the body.  The man turns out to have been Deemer’s assistant, his acromagaly having appeared and progressed to life threatening proportions in just a few short days.

Hasting, knowing that acromagaly is a condition that takes years to develop, senses that something is amiss and, with the help of Deemer’s newly arrived assistant Steve (Mara Corday), starts an investigation into the matter.  Steve lets Hastings in on what Deemer is working on in his laboratory outside town – an artificial nutrient he hopes will help alleviate the food shortages of the future.  Injected into test animals, like mice, guinea pigs, and rabbits, the nutrient results in spectacular growth, with the test subjects reaching maturity in a matter of hours.



Meanwhile, strange things are happening outside of town.  A rancher finds the bones of part of his cattle herd lying in a field, a truck is mysteriously thrown tens of yards off the road, and a pair of prospectors go missing.  The only evidence connecting the incidents are the large puddles of liquid left behind at each – liquid that, when tested, reveals itself to be a kind of venom . . .

There is certainly silliness afoot in Tarantula! – take the acromagaly subplot that links the cast together, for instance.  The cause of the condition seems to be “instability” in the nutrient, which Deemer’s assistant had been injected with for dubious scientific reasons.  Why would men inject themselves with a nutrient that causes uncontrollable growth in test animals and, for that matter, what are they doing injecting something like a tarantula with it?  Methinks that if Deemer and company had settled on something quick-growing and harmless like fruit flies as test subjects then this whole mess could have been avoided.  Then again, a title like Fruit Flies! doesn’t offer quite the number of horrifying possibilities that Tarantula! does.

Of course silliness in a film like Tarantula! is obligatory, and Jack Arnold’s Them!-inspired yarn is more than competent enough in its dramatics to keep things from diving headlong into self-parody (a la Beginning of the End).  John Agar and Mara Corday make a fine leading couple even if the script offers them little of substance.  Corday’s working girl is more typical of the genre here than in the later The Giant Claw (as she tells Deemer before heading into town, “Science is science, but a girl must get her hair done”), though she’s still far from the usual scream queen, only reduced to hysterics when giant spiderlegs are tapping at her window.  The supporting cast are familiar faces – Ross Elliot (Monster on Campus, The Indestructible Man) as Joe the reporter, Nestor Paiva (The Mole People) as the town sheriff, and bit actor and Bert I. Gordon regular Hank Patterson (Earth vs. the Spider, Beginning of the End, Attack of the Puppet People, etc.) as Josh, the nosy desk clerk.

Leo G. Carroll as the not-mad scientist Professor Deemer is the most recognizable actor on board, lending much-needed believability to the part of the noble scientist gone wrong.  The Hitchcock regular (Suspicion, Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest) was immortalized forever for his involvement in Tarantula!, his part one of many of classic sci-fi-dom evoked in the “Science Fiction/Double Feature” number from The Rocky Horror Show.  Carroll takes the role in stride, even when donning his own ridiculous acromagaly prosthetics and tangling with a life-sized tarantula limb.



The real star of the show is, of course, the tarantula, actually several directed around white plaster molds of filmed landscapes with compressed air.  Veteran Universal effects man David S. Horsley (Bride of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London, This Island Earth) and the accomplished Clifford Stine (King Kong, Gunga Din, This Island Earth) get away with a fare share of flubs, like the spider’s legs suddenly disappearing behind invisible matte lines and the occasional transparency of the menace, by virtue of how often their techniques simply work.  The visages of the monster creeping down hillsides, growing ever larger as it stalks its prey, are impressive in their dimensionality and even creepy.  Wah Chang’s scale puppet, plastered all over the advertising for the film, is wisely avoided, but is seen briefly leering (as salaciously as a spider reasonably can) at future Playmate Corday through a gigantic bedroom window (a scene copied outright for 1957’s The Deadly Mantis).

Universal Studios Home Entertainment took its sweet time bringing Tarantula! to DVD domestically, finally releasing it in the boxed set Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection Volume 1 in 2007, alongside The Mole People, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Monolith Monsters, and Monster on the Campus.  That Best Buy exclusive release went out-of-print in short order and was fetching ridiculous prices through third party sellers (this reviewer made a pretty penny offing his in preparation for the repackaged release) before Universal repackaged it, along with the second installment (including Dr. Cyclops, Cult of the Cobra, The Land Unknown, The Deadly Mantis, and The Leech Woman), as The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection Volumes 1 & 2 in May of 2008.  The film is not currently available in the States as an individual release.

Tarantula! comes paired with The Mole People on a dual layered DVD (oddly the only disc of the first set not to feature an image of Mara Corday), and the ostensibly single layer transfer greatly improves upon the previously available laserdisc and VHS editions.  The progressive image sports healthy grain, detail, and contrast, but is unfortunately presented open matte.  While the film still plays well full screen, those with widescreen televisions will find that it crops perfectly to a 16:9 set (I’ve cropped the images for this review to 1.78:1 give a representation of the originally intended framing).  Damage is present throughout but not terribly invasive, limited to light dirt and speckling in most instances.  Audio is presented in a nice Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic track in the original English.  The older recording still retains some nice punch, particularly when the Henry Mancini cues from This Island Earth come into play.  Both English SDH and French subtitles are available.

The only extra to be had on the disc is a trailer in rough shape, but don’t let that deter you as the 10 film The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection Volumes 1 & 2 is still a great buy for fans (it can be had new for around $4.50 per film on Amazon.com).  As both an old-school genre fanatic and a long-time tarantula keeper, Tarantula! is nothing short of a minor classic for me in spite of its frequent silliness, and as an archetypal example of the B-budget monster opus it’s hard to beat.  Highly recommended.

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In the Folds of the Flesh

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
poster

cover for the Severin Films release - art copyright 2008 by Severin Films LLC.

a.k.a. Nelle Pieghe della Carne
companies: Talia Films
and MGB Cinematografica
year: 1970
runtime: 92′
country: Italy / Spain
director: Sergio Bergonzelli
cast: Eleonora Rossi Drago, Pier Angeli,
Fernando Sancho, Alfredo Mayo,
Emilio Gutierrez Caba, Mario Rosa Sclauzero
writers: Sergio Bergonzelli,
Mario Caiano, and Fabio De Agostini
dvd company: Severin Films
release date: October 28, 2008
retail price: $19.96
disc details: region 0 / NTSC / single layer
order this title from Amazon.com
reviewed from a screener provided
by Severin Films LLC

Plot: A twisted family kills off visitors to their castle thirteen years after the mysterious and traumatic disappearance of the head of the house, a mafia boss named Andre (Alfredo Mayo).

I’ve seen few films that seek to entertain through shear confusion and preponderance of style, but Sergio Bergonzelli’s [BLOOD DELIRIUM] twisted and violent giallo does just that.  The screenplay by Bergonzelli with Mario Caiano and Fabio De Agostini tears through enough plot to fill a slew of feature films, racing through such saucy subjects as incest and patricide before finally resolving itself . . . Sort of.

Confounding as contending with its twists and turns (sometimes four in a single scene) may be, never let it be said that IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH is boring.  Things start off with a bang, with a recently disembodied head lying on the floor of a bedroom on a dark and stormy night.  Lucille (Eleonora Rossi Drago) takes to burying the remains of the murdered in the backyard of her employer’s seaside castle and, for reasons unknown at the time, sends a motorboat puttering out to sea unmanned.  Escaped convict Pascal (Fernando Sancho) sees everything but opts to say nothing when captured by the police, paving the way for his future extortion of the family.

Thirteen years pass.  Lucille has raised Andre’s daughter Falesse (Pier Angeli) and her own son Colin (Emilio Guitierrez Caba) by herself in the castle, telling them that it was Andre who was beheaded that night and that Falesse herself wielded the sword.  They are content creating strange art and taking care of family pets Kiki and Kioka (a pair of vultures caged out back!) until people start snooping about the place, and things go quickly downhill from there.  Falesse kills two men, stabbing one in the back and decapitating the other, leaving Lucille and son little to do but dispose of their remains in an acid bath they keep in the shed (!).  Soon the recently released Pascal returns with blackmail on his mind, only to find himself gassed to death with cyanide and dissolved in the aforementioned acid bath for his troubles.

Each murder reveals a little more about the mysterious disappearance of Andre, information that only confuses the audience more as to what actually happened.  That confusion reaches a dizzying peak when an elderly man, claiming to be the deceased Andre, returns to the castle with a young institutionalized woman, supposedly the real Falesse, in tow.  I’m not sure even I can rightly explain what happens from there, and for the sake of preserving some of IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH’s multitude of surprises I won’t even try.

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I suspect that Freud himself, quoted in hilarious fashion just before the opening credits roll (“remains . . . REMAINS! . . .”), would have been baffled by the time this one was through.  I was that for certain, but I had a good time of it all the same.  While its subject matter tends towards the perverse, Bergonzelli’s thriller plays as more serious than sleazy.  The frequent violence is never overtly graphic (though there is quite a collection of disembodied heads on display) and nudity is kept surprisingly limited.  The most one can expect is in a flashback involving a group of female prisoners shuffling into a Nazi gas chamber (!), and that’s hardly of a titillating variety.  It may be a far cry from good clean fun, but a Bruno Mattei Nazi-sploitation sex fest this certainly isn’t.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me in viewing IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH is the amount of style it packs in.  Bergonzelli will never be confused with Bava, Fulci, or Argento, but one can’t fault him for trying.  Psychedelic lighting, filter effects, and flashes of still photo montages are frequent among the more traditional flourishes.  Expect lots of crash-zooms.  The score by Jesus Villa Rojo is suitably bizarre, alternating between a beautiful main theme, dramatic musical stings, and incidental tracks that can only be described as carnival-esque.  The cast is a well chosen lot.  Eleanora Rossi Drago (beautiful here in her final film role) and Pier Angeli [SODOM AND GOMORRAH] are always nice to have around, and Fernando Sancho [RETURN OF THE BLIND DEAD] and Emilio Guitierrez Caba both put in memorable turns.

Severin Films has more or less rescued IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH, greatly overshadowed by the genre works of Argento, Fulci, and Bava from the same time period, from obscurity, offering it legitimately on home video in the United States for the first time.  The enhanced and progressive transfer presents the film in its originally intended 1.85:1 aspect ratio and looks very strong.  Colors are striking and contrast is spot on, and the image seems blessedly unmanipulated.  The vault elements from which this disc was mastered appear to be in more or less fine shape, with the exception of a few dropped frames and scratchy cuts.  Audio is represented by a suitable Dolby Digital stereo English track – there are no subtitles.  Extras are limited to a theatrical trailer, but the reasonable retail price will make it an enticing release for Euro-cult fans all the same.

Bergonzelli’s film is a bucket full of crazy and I had a blast with it.  The Severin Films disc is bare bones, but the transfer is one of their strongest yet in SD and the price (a sticking point on many a disc I’ve reviewed from them) seems about right in this case.  Wtf-film recommends.

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Cannibal Mercenary

Saturday, November 21st, 2009
cover for the long-OOP English language VHS release

cover for the long-OOP English language VHS release

a.k.a. Mercenary / Employ For Die
company: unknown
year: 1983
runtime: 104′
country: Thailand
director: Hong Lu Wong
cast: Lek Songphon, Sugud Namcham,
Sormud Chiarekcheua, Chaw Mekhunkud,
Rom Rachan, Uthane Boon Ying,
Thoon Thankphrom
not available on home video in the USA

Plot: Wilson, a Thai veteran of the Vietnam War and all around master of combat, leads a group of men on a daring mission into the jungles of Vietnam to topple a dangerous drug lord and his cannibal army.

Well, that was weird.  I never thought much about just how far the short-lived cannibal craze that dominated Italian exploitation cinema in the first couple of years of the 80’s might have reached, but here is evidence that it was indeed a worldwide phenomenon.  CANNIBAL MERCENARY is an obscure yet notorious Thai actioner that does just what its title suggests – it merges the popularity of macho jungle combat pictures with the gut-munching gospels of Lenzi and Deodato.

MERCENARY doesn’t really have the gross-out factor of that which it imitates, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Most of the gnarlier effects are disgusting less for their realism than because whatever the crew used to accomplish said effects (slimy goopy something-or-other) simply looks disgusting.  The worst things ever get is when Wilson’s small company of soldiers happens upon a maggot-covered head hanging from the trees.  While the majority of the company is taken aback, one soldier grabs a handful of maggots and starts chowing down.  It’s not the first time a Thai film gag has made me do just that.

Speaking of Thai humor, this film follows in the country’s proud cinematic tradition of scatelogical jokes.  Wilson’s commandos take temporary refuge under a foot bridge and are peed on by a pair of drunken Viet Cong for their troubles.  Later three of the troop is captured by disgruntled townspeople and tied down with stakes before being peed on again.  One of the locals is obviously unhappy with just urinating on his captive and insists on squatting down to rub his crotch in their face as well.  I’m happy to say that, in stern opposition to the work of Sampote Sands, nothing in CANNIBAL MERCENARY is ever seen crapping on anything else.

Scat jokes aside, this is a relentlessly grim if utterly ludicrous action film that refuses to sink into self parody even with an army of gun-toting cannibalistic martial arts masters running, leaping, and swinging through the trees.  Lead Wilson starts the film as a messed-up vet, having lost his wife in the war and now watching his daughter slowly crippled by polio, and ends the film in even worse shape.  Watching his new brothers-in-arms die a veriety of gruesome deaths at the hands of cannibal booby traps and worse has devastating effects, and the film ends with Wilson institutionalized and utterly mad.  That his daughter is saved by money earned for his troubles and that the army recognizes him as a hero seems of little consequence when said father and hero is so obviously out of his mind.

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His fellow mercenaries receive far less in the way of characterization, and several are never really introduced at all.  What we do learn about them is in keeping with the grimness of the rest of the picture.  One is rightly tormented by his murdering of his own cheating fiance several years in the past while another does little but try to rape every woman who wanders past.  The lackeys of the drug lord fare worse if that’s possible, hanging people for fun and finding child murder an acceptable past time.  Whatever picture of humanity CANNIBAL MERCENARY may be trying to paint, it’s not a pretty one.

Action direction could best be described as kinetic.  The tag team hand-to-hand combat blends well with the over-the-top firefights, and a bit of well placed slow motion and frame-snipping certainly helps.  The level of on-screen violence is certainly at the high end, and one can expect to see toes blown off, men blown up with grenades, decapitations, dismemberments, and lots of spurting blood.  Handling of the more dramatic elements is rather bland, and the director stretches many a suspense-building moment with endless repetition of quickly cut footage.  It’s not necessarily bad, especially considering the industry and time period, but it grows quite tedious by the end of things.  The soundtrack is comprised, as were those for many a south Asian film of the time, entirely of unlicensed tracks.   Cues from Goblin’s score for ZOMBI: DAWN OF THE DEAD are frequently called upon and suit the violent action well.

There’s really not much else to say about this, other than that it was one of many films imported by Tomas Tang’s Filmark company and bastardized for increased Western appeal.  In this case CANNIBAL MERCENARY was trimmed of its gore and edited to fit a new story concerning a treasure hunt, then re-released as THE JAGUAR PROJECT.  The only legitimate English-friendly home video release for this one is a way out of print VHS from the ’80s, and a Thai VCD release under the odd title of EMPLOY FOR DIE appears to be out of print as well.  I didn’t mind this one as much as the above review may indicate, but it’s certainly not for all tastes.  Those interested should be able to find it at cinemageddon or elsewhere without much issue.

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