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Movies

Beware the Blob! (The Blob; 3-15-1959)

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Hello, again, dear readers. 

As you know, I had planned to write an article for this column yesterday, but I was unable to do so because I'd misplaced my wrist braces.  Manual typewriters have very stiff keys, and composition is difficult without braces (shall I take up a collection for a lovely electric?)

Adversity always proves to be advantage, however.  I took the opportunity to catch a double feature at the local dive cinema where last autumn's The Blob is still playing along with I Married a Monster from Outer Space.  I must say, I got my eight bits worth!


This led me to believe radiation might be involved.  It wasn't.

I'll talk about the latter film later–right now, I want to talk about The Killer Jello-Mold!…er… The Blob.  The film starts on an odd note for a sci-fi/horror–with a catchy tune by "The Five Blobs," which I note has gotten a lot of airplay lately.  It was a smart move; while the movie is not awful, where it falters, it can be excused because you were all ready for something camp.


Our heroes.

Meet Steve Andrews and Jane Martin, a pair of…ahem… teenagers who, while making out on Lover's Lane, spot a falling star.  But this is no ordinary meteor.  It is, in fact, an egg.  Prodded by an old farmer, it hatches a little translucent blob that adheres to the man's hand and begins to digest it.  Panicked, the farmer runs across our two heroes, who obligingly take him to the town doctor.


Don't touch that!

This is one of the more unsettling bits, watching the parasite eat the hapless old man alive.  After the teens leave to check out the spot where the meteorite landed, the doctor and his nurse are eaten.  Steve returns to the doctor's house just in time to see the doc digested. 


Nurse Kate's brave assault was to no avail.

Most of the rest of the movie is devoted to Steve and Jane's attempts to warn the police and, when this is not immediately fruitful, the town as a whole, of the danger. 


Listen to him!  He knows!

Their efforts prove to be rather superfluous.  The blob, increasingly red with the blood of its victims, and ever expanding in size with each meal, eventually becomes big enough to be unignorable (though, I was pleased to note, the blob did not seem to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics; it merely assimilated its food with remarkable efficiency).  It eats 50 movie-goers at the cinema and then turns its gooey pseudopods on our heroes, who become trapped under its now-enormous bulk in a diner.


Oozing out of the theater and looking surprisingly tasty.

As had been hinted at earlier, the blob hates cold.  It is ultimately subdued, but not destroyed, by an onslaught of fire extinguishers.  The Air Force then airlifts the beast to the Arctic, where I'm sure we'll never hear from it again…


Dig this Carbon Dioxide!  Blob, schmlob!

Sounds pretty dumb, right?  Well, sure.  But there's also a lot to like.  For one, the movie is aware that a pile of tinted gelatin is not a particularly scary sight.  You don't see the blob very much.  It's just this menacing presence that you know is eating people right and left just off camera.  There is real tension in the film, though the pacing is a bit strange.  There are lots of long, pointless scenes that are fun in a character sense, but have little to do with the plot.  Life is like that, though. 

I particularly liked the character of Lt. Dave, the head policeman.  No matter how fanastic Steve's story is, and despite the chidings of his police sergeant, Dave gives Steve respect and credence.  If there's any subtext to the movie, it's that kids aren't all bad, despite what you've seen at the pictures lately.


Kids ain't so bad.  Especially ones in their late 20s!

I also thought it a nice touch when Jane's father, a prim, socially conscious school principal, reluctantly but with grim determination, smashes the door to his school to retrieve a score of fire extinguishers.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The acting is no great shakes, though I thought Steve McQueen (Steve Andrews) did a decent job.  I don't know if this film will make or break him, but I wouldn't mind seeing him lead in future movies.

The film was shot in some kind of widescreen Technicolor, and it's very pretty.  Black and White is increasingly a thing of the past, and I'm enjoying the transition. 

Now, I know I have a reputation for being a Fantasy & Science Fiction snob, but The Blob is worth a look.  It is genuinely suspenseful and interesting.  Moreover, it leaves room for speculation.  What is the blob?  Is it a weapon?  A planetary sterilizer?  It has some interesting traits.  It doesn't like to break into smaller units (which would have made it truly unbeatable) though it will partially disassemble to get through grates and windows.  It only eats living creatures, and we only ever see it attack people.  That kind of menace seems a bit too tailored to be an accident.  I bet it heralds an alien invasion.

Or how's this for a wild thought–what if the blob doesn't kill its prey but merely assimilates them into a collective?  Maybe the blob is a peaceful being trying to unite all of humanity into a red, gelatinous mass.  And now all those poor souls are trapped in a frozen ball at the North Pole.  Brrrr…

Maybe I'm just thinking too much.  You be the judge!

See you tomorrow…

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Movies

Moon Maidens (Missile to the Moon; 1-07-1959)

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Seeing how the moon has been front and center in the headlines and in this column for the past week, I thought it a good idea to round out things with a movie about a trip to Earth's celestial neighbor.

As my faithful reader(s) know, I spare no expense when it comes to securing only the finest entertainment to review.  I see your eyes gleam: will it be Fritz Lang's Frau im mond?  Or perhaps George Pal's adaptation of Robert Heinlein's Destination Moon?

Nay, my fans.  What would be the point of revisiting old classics?  The key to this column is its currency.  Hence, for your reading pleasure, here are my thoughts upon viewing:

Some nitpickers will note that this epic actually came out almost a year ago.  For some reason, one of our town's less reputable theaters still had this three-reeler running as a companion to an old gangster movie.  How fortunate for us.

Missile is a tale of interplanetary derring-do capitalizing on the new fad, the Space Race.  Of course, the film was made solely to spotlight the amazing technology that will one day take us to the moon.  Well, and these:

I noted in an earlier article how space travel stories always focus on the pilots, and a journey through the great beyond is little more exciting or involved than a drive down Highway 80.  In Missile, an eager scientist with an unplaceable accent has built his own rocket ship in his backyard.  He then shanghais two escaped prisoners (one with a heart of gold, the other desirous of gold) and takes off for the moon.  This is, perhaps, the movie's best sequence.  To be fair, given the film's reported budget of $65,000, the cinematography is not bad.

The scientist's partner and the partner's wife accidentally stow away on board the rocketship before it turns into stock footage of a V-2 rocket and blasts off toward the moon.  The scientist dies along the way, leaving his partner in charge.  Of course, the rocket has limitless fuel and blasts away at one gee the entire way to the moon, making for a very short trip).

Once on the moon, our heroes (well, two heroes, one heroine, one scoundrel, and one corpse) discover that, though the moon has no air, the sky scatters the sun's rays in a decidedly Terran fashion.  Standing in the sun is instantly fatal due to the intense heat (much like one encounters driving down Highway 80).  We do not get to see the effects of the moon's lesser gravity on the travelers, as they have special "gravity boots" on.  I suppose I should be grateful that they even made a nod to the issue.  Thankfully, they astronauts all have space suits, though they seem less than adequate in the neck area.

More importantly, they discover that the moon is inhabited by several species of inimical creatures including

and

But most importantly, they discover this colony of female space people, the last of a dying race.

Ah, there are our pageant winners. 

Of course, I would not wish to further spoil the plot of this (rather short) masterpiece.  Suffice it to say that the ending is bittersweet.  Which is to say that it is sweet that it ends at all, and bitter than the ending does not come closer to the beginning.  I look forward to many more films like this one, at least until the novelty of Space wears off for the under-21 crowd.

Next up: a wrap-up of the January 1959 F&SF–then, on to the new stuff!  Thanks for reading (and replying).

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Movies

Godzilla raids.  Again.  (11-17-1958)

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Greetings from Nagoya, Japan!  This industrial city emerged from the Second World War a drab and gray place with little of the charm of the new Tokyo.  Still, it is not without its attractions.  For instance, Nagoya castle is a national treasure dating back to the warring fiefs period of Japan; it is the legendary birthplace of Oda Nobunaga, the first of the 16th century warlords who tried to unify Japan.  It's all very picturesque what with the brilliant fall colors accenting everything.

But you didn't tune in to read about my travels.  You tuned in to hear about my encounters with giant sea monsters.  Dear readers, I shall not disappoint.

“Giant sea monsters?” you ask.  Yes, the use of the plural was deliberate.  The Japanese film industry has determined that, if one sea monster is thrilling, then two will be twice as much so (or more).  And thus, we have a movie about the recently-deceased Gojira and his intense rivalry with the Ankylosaurus, Anguirus.

The film's title translates as “Gojira's counter-attack,” and I am not certain whether or not it will reach American shores, though it came out three years ago (1955).  It is a decidedly inferior film to the first one, though Shimura Takashi does gamely reprise his role as Dr. Yamane (if you're wondering where you have seen Shimura-san before, he was the lead samurai in the now-classic The Seven Samurai). 

The city that enjoys urban renewal this time around is Japan's #2 metropolis, Osaka.  There is a good deal of interminable fighting between Gojira and Anguirus with the attendant collateral damage.  Gojira is ultimately the victor, biting the neck of the Ankylosaur and tossing him onto picturesque Osaka castle, or at least an unconvincing model thereof.  It is determined that Gojira cannot be stopped with conventional weapons, and they have lost the formula to the anti-oxygen concoction that (seemed to have) killed Gojira last time.

Gojira is thus not killed but simply stopped when the air force leads it away to the side of a frozen mountain, which is then blasted by missiles causing an avalanche that buries the giant dinosaur.  I remember this scene most distinctly from the movie as I had doubts it would ever end.  Perhaps they simply cut the same footage of a model plane doing spins around Gojira and spliced several copies into a ten-minute sequence.  That was the impression I was left with.

Were I an optimist, I would say that the film marked the death knell for Japanese monster movies given the sharp decline in quality from the original.  More have come and are coming out, however, including the turgid Rodan and the not-terrible Mysterians.  And so a genre is born.

I think the most significant difference between the movies is the attitude toward the atomic bomb.  In both movies, it is H-bomb testing in the Pacific that awakens the beasts and mutates them to their improbable sizes and gives them their incredible powers.  In the first movie, significant parallels were drawn between the destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused by American bombers and the devastation of Tokyo at the hands of Gojira–in essence, another atomic event.  Gojira was a cautionary tale: should we believe ourselves masters of these monstrous forces, we shall become victims of the monster.  A bit heavy-handed, but certainly legitimate, especially given the national source.

By this second movie, the moralizing is virtually absent.  Instead, the atomic bomb is merely a vehicle for creating giant monsters that knock down model cities and eat miniature trains.  The TOEI monster franchise has clearly shifted its demographic target.  It is now a series for children, the ones for whom World War II is a now-distant memory. 

That said, I am but a human; my inner child did delight in watching two actors in rubber suits locked in mortal overcranked combat amidst a miniature cardboard city.  If that's all you want from a movie, by all means, find this film when it is translated into your language and enjoy.  Just don't expect anything as well-made or thoughtful as the original.

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

Gojira (Godzilla) 1954 (11-11-1958)

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Greetings from the Orient!  More specifically, hello from the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, Japan.

It is hard to believe that, just thirteen years ago, the ward that is now Shinjuku had been virtually destroyed by American bombs.  Shinjuku today is a bustling commercial and transport hub with a giant train station and every imaginable kind of shop.

These days, if the movies coming out of Japan are any indication, Tokyo's biggest threat comes not from the skies, but from the sea.  In 1954, Japan began what appears will be a long-running series of motion pictures featuring a giant dinosaur from the deep ravaging the countryside of this archipelago.  The Japanese call him (her?) Gojira, which is a punning combination of Gorilla and Kujira, the Japanese word for whale.  This name is meant to convey Gojira's immense size. 

You may not have heard of Gojira, but you certainly know its renamed alter-ego–in 1956, a largely similar cut of the film was released in the United States, dubbed in English, and with linking scenes featuring Raymond Burr.  In this version, the monster was named Godzilla, and it looks like it will keep this name when the sequels come to America.

The phrase “Japanese product” generally connotes a cheaply made, mass-produced good.  When I watched this film back in '54, this is what I expected.  I was pleasantly surprised.  The premise is simple: Godzilla is a several-hundred foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex that can shoot fire from its mouth.  He comes out of the sea, attacks Tokyo, is repelled at first by an enormous, hastily erected electric fence, but he quickly recovers and demolishes the city.  He is repelled at last through the use of a pseudo-scientific substance that strips an area of all of its oxygen thus removing the flesh of all creatures within the affected zone.

That does sound awfully silly at first blush.  What redeems the film is its style.  It is shot in a very effective moody fashion, almost film-noir.  The characters are nicely developed, especially Hirata Akihiko, who plays the erratic, noble scientist who develops the anti-oxygen substance; the famous Shimura Takashi, playing the elder scientist, Dr. Yamane Kyouhei; and the lovely Kochi Momoko, who plays Dr. Yamane's daughter, Emiko.  Takarada Akira, who plays the movie's protagonist, Hideto, is handsome enough, but he failed to impress as strongly. 

What's particularly affecting, and this was highly controversial with the Japanese public, are the scenes of widespread destruction.  Japan's war wounds, self-inflicted though they ultimately may have been, are but half healed.  The burnt wastelands shown in the film can't help but evoke landscapes that were widespread a short decade ago.  For many, it was gratuitous and exploitative.  I'm sure many moviegoers walked out.

On the other hand, the movie scratches the same itch as knocking over sand castles.  Let's face it–most people have an inner child that likes seeing things go boom, and Gojira/Godzilla does this very satisfyingly.  Moreover, it manages to do so while maintaining high production values, good acting (at least in the original Japanese), and even some decent moralizing.  If you get a chance to see the original film with subtitles, I recommend it.  It is a more serious film, I think. 

As for the sequels… well…

Stay tuned for the next article!

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