In June this year, 1964, my family and I took a three week vacation to the island nation of Japan. Though I have been many times before, this was the first time I felt changed as a person after coming home. Perhaps it was the fact that I was finally old enough to appreciate the world around me; or perhaps it was because we’d chosen to stay in a new place: Hiroshima was still under construction, but I could tell it was going to become a beautiful city, despite the air of tragedy. Regardless, I saw Japan in a new light, and it has brought me to see the world in a new light as well.
If you’re intrigued about our other experiences in Japan, you can check out my dad’s articles. Alright, now that all the travel gurus and those interested in philosophical debate about the effects of war and nuclear weapons are gone, let’s talk about giant monsters!
"Yess! Yeeeeessss!"
Mothra vs Godzilla is by far my favorite giant monster movie to date. It starts us on a scene of a great typhoon overtaking the Japanese coastline. The waves are crashing, the storm is raging, it is an epic way to open this movie.
"Actually, this is typical June weather in Japan."
In the next scene we meet our protagonists: The jaded, kind of a jerk male reporter, and his (gasp!) competent female journalist trainee that is there to be a character rather than a romantic interest?? Times are changing!
The reporters are at a small island to record the destruction from the typhoon, but surprise: A giant monster egg has washed onto shore due to the typhoon, and some money-grubber wants to buy it and turn it into a theme park attraction… Because that worked out so well with Mothra’s maidens three years prior (and Gorgo, too) [Ed.]).
But wait, Mothra does not attack Japan in retaliation for stealing her egg, because Godzilla beats her to it! Also washed up by the typhoon, Godzilla breaks free from the ground and starts destroying Japan, because why not?
"Phew, what did I have to drink last night?"
At this point my father pointed out that Godzilla doesn’t need to eat, he just destroys Japan because he feels like being a total jerk all the time. True to character, after knocking over Nagoya Tower and a lovely ancient castle, Godzilla decides to go after Mothra’s egg!
"I hope there’s candy inside…"
Will Mothra agree to help save Japan for the sake of its egg? Or will Godzilla get to the egg first and destroy the legacy of Mothra? I urge you to discover yourself, as I hear this film will be hitting American theaters soon! (Though for some reason they’ve changed the title to Godzilla vs The Thing even though American audiences are already familiar with Mothra. I will never understand marketers.)
"Wait, when did Mothra get tentacles??"
I’m not sure if Mothra being kept a secret is good or bad, because Mothra was by far the best part of the movie. Everytime she was on screen I was simultaneously enamored with her adorableness and awed by her formidable power. Immediately after watching the movie I began a search for a Mothra stuffed toy, which has sadly failed to bear fruit for the moment.
The special effects were particularly good this time. Some clever tricks with camera angles and filters conveyed the massive size of the monsters, not to mention the tiny size of the Mothra Maidens (shades of The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad).
"Don’t mind me, just here to destroy things."
"Mosura ya! Mosura…"
There were also pyrotechnics. The destruction was fun and exactly what I’d paid to see, but there was also a nice extra layer to the movie. This film had a nuance that no other giant monster has: the fights had strategy.
My father and I went into this movie wondering how Mothra would stand a chance against the seemingly invincible and range-weapon-equipped godzilla. Needless to say we were pleasantly surprised with how thought out the fight scenes were. Long gone were the days of Godzilla vs King Kong’s extreme rubber suit flailing. This was calculated, powerful, and epic monster warfare. The writing was so effective in fact, that after the movie my father and I proceeded to have a deep discussion about the monsters and their fighting tactics.
"You’re in timeout, mister!"
But of course, the monsters were only half the movie. The other half had to be carried by human actors furthering the plot. This end of the movie did not disappoint either. The cheesy overacting of Japan is something I’ve become familiar with over the years. It was refreshing to see the acting toned down a bit for this movie, though a little cheese never hurt a giant monster flick. Well, we probably could’ve done without the "natives" again, but other than that, it was perfect.
"You look exactly like the natives from Kong Island!"
All in all, Mothra vs Godzilla is the giant monster genre done right. A classic plot twisted just enough to make it feel reminiscent rather than overdone; a great cast with several strong female characters (especially if you include Mothra herself); equally interesting and memorable monster fights; stunning visuals with beautiful pops of color; and amazing special effects add up to the best monster movie I’ve ever seen. Mothra vs Godzilla does everything it came here to do and executes it beautifully. For that, I give it a legendary 5 out of 5 stars! Now, off to find a Mothra toy so it can fight my Godzilla figure.
This is the Young traveler, signing off.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
A decade ago, Walt Disney Productions had a big hit on their hands with their cinematic adaptation of the famous Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was popular with both audiences and critics, winning Academy Awards for Art Direction and Special Effects. It was a lovely film, full of charming details combining futuristic technology with aesthetics of the past.
The super-submarine Nautilus; a thing of beauty.
The success of this nostalgic science fiction adventure led to a number of Verne adaptations. Most notable was Around the World in 80 Days, a lush, big budget production notable for the number of Hollywood stars who made cameo appearances.
Old Blue Eyes in a tiny role as a piano player.
Since then we've had enjoyable films taken from the French author of Extraordinary Voyages, including Journey to the Center of the Earth, Master of the World, and Mysterious Island, all reviewed here at Galactic Journey. A couple of lesser Verne adaptations, namely Valley of the Dragons and Five Weeks in a Balloon, did not escape the acid pen of our local critics. There was also From the Earth to the Moon, which somehow managed to slip under the radar of our Galactic Journeyers. This was a handsomely filmed, if rather dull, account of an American munitions manufacturer (Joseph Cotton) using a powerful explosive to send a spaceship to the Moon just after the Civil War.
Blast off!
Not to be outdone, H. G. Wells, the British master of Scientific Romances, came to the big screen not too long ago in the George Pal production of The War of the Worlds, another Oscar winner for Best Special Effects.
A Martian war machine on the prowl for Earthlings.
Although this version of the story updated the setting to modern times, Pal returned to the Nineteenth Century with an even more highly regarded Wells adaptation, The Time Machine, which won kudos from our host.
With the exception of The War of the Worlds, what these films have in common is the fact that they take place in the Victorian Era. For lack of a better term, we might refer to this sub-genre of fantastic cinema as Steam Science Fiction. I was recently able to attend a secret sneak preview of the latest offering of this kind, already released in the United Kingdom, and due to appear in American theaters later this year. Watch for the trailer the next time you're at your local cinema.
Fly Me to the Moon; Or, A Trip to the Moon on Gossamer Wings
In Dynamation and LunaColor, no less.
First Men in the Moon is directed by Nathan Juran, a veteran of science fiction films, both good (20 Million Miles to Earth) and not so good (The Brain from Planet Arous.) The screenplay for this British production comes from the combined pens of Nigel Kneale (best known to SF fans across the pond for his television serials The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass II) and Jan Read, who contributed to the delightful fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts.
Don't forget, it's in, not on.
We begin in the near future, as an international team of astronauts land on the Moon. They find a Union Jack and a note claiming the satellite in the name of Queen Victoria.
A mystery!
The note happens to be written on the back of a legal contract mentioning the name Katherine Callender. Investigation leads to the discovery of Arnold Bedford, the man Miss Callender married long ago, now nearly a century old. He tells his incredible story, and we go into a long flashback, firmly in the land of Steam Science Fiction.
Martha Hyer and Edward Judd as the two Victorian lovebirds.
In 1899, our happy couple encounter Joseph Cavor, an eccentric scientist who creates a substance that deflects gravity. Having a healthy ego, he names the stuff Cavorite. As if that were not enough, he plans to use it to launch a spaceship on a lunar voyage.
Lionel Jeffries as the inventor.
Arnold agrees to go to the Moon with Cavor, which seems like a rash decision for a man about to be married. Through a series of unforeseen circumstances, Katherine winds up accidentally accompanying them; you know how much trouble women are! The unlikely trio winds up on the surface of Earth's satellite after a particularly rough landing.
The charming little spaceship approaches its target.
Katherine is left behind, no doubt to prepare tea and crumpets, while the two men don diving suits and set out to explore this strange new world.
Things really get interesting when our heroes fall down a shaft and wind up inside the Moon, justifying the title. It seems that the interior is inhabited by insect-like, sentient beings, whom Cavor dubs Selenites. The plot, mostly played for light comedy up to this point, takes a more serious turn when Arnold, panicking at the sight of the aliens, attacks and kills several of them. The two men escape back to the surface, only to discover that the Selenites have dragged their spaceship, and the woman inside it, underground.
A Selenite, brought to life through the magic of Dynamation.
What follows is a fast-moving adventure, as the intrepid pair explore the city of the Selenites in search of Katherine, battle a huge, caterpillar-like monster, and encounter the Grand Lunar, ruler of the Selenites. An interesting aspect of the story is the contrast between Cavor, the man of science, who wants to exchange knowledge with the Selenites, and Arnold, the man of action, who believes they pose a threat to humanity.
What good is a science fiction thriller without a huge monster?
The Grand Lunar, not at all happy about human aggressiveness.
An ironic ending brings us back to the near future, as we find out what happened to the three explorers and the Selenites.
Adding greatly to the film's appeal is the outstanding stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen. The eerie and imaginative world inside the Moon excites the viewer's sense of wonder, and the Victorian design of Cavor's spaceship provides a great deal of charm. You might have to be a little bit patient with the relaxed pace of the opening scenes, but the result is well worth the wait.
Four stars.
As we enter a new era of space exploration, with the very real possibility that a human being will stand on the surface of the Moon within a decade, it's fitting that we look back on those who imagined the future and wrote about it. I hope that more Steam Science Fiction movies appear in theaters in the days to come, and that we never forget the dreamers of yesteryear.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
According to the previews for Robinson Crusoe on Mars, the movie is "scientifically authentic. It is only one step ahead of present reality." This update of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe is directed by Byron Haskin, best known for directing The War of the Worlds, which was produced by George Pal (The Time Machine (1960)). Haskin and Pal have also made another picture that attempted to depict a more accurate Mars: Conquest of Space (1955). Intrigued by these films and interested in Haskin’s more recent work on some of my favorite entries of The Outer Limits thus far, like The Architects of Fear and A Feasibility Study, I was determined not to miss Robinson Crusoe on Mars.
So, is the movie worth a trip to your local theater?
The movie opens up aboard a spaceship carrying Commander Christopher Draper (played by Paul Mantee, appearing in his first film major film role), Colonel Dan McReady (Adam West, an actor commonly found on television westerns) and an adorable monkey named Mona. Things take an unexpected turn when they detect a meteoroid and are "forced out of orbital velocity to avoid collision with planetoid into tighter orbit of Mars." As the situation worsens, the crew is left with no other option than to immediately attempt to land on the fourth planet. While fleeing the vehicle in their individual escape pods, Draper is separated from McReady and Mona.
Welcome to Mars
Draper adapts to the conditions on the red planet, while searching for McReady and Mona. Even though he is part of the first crew on Mars, Draper learns quickly what it takes to survive. He finds shelter in a cave. For heat, Draper discovers yellow rocks that "burn like coal.” Heating the rocks not only keeps him warm, but also produces oxygen, which he then uses to refill his oxygen tank. Throughout the film, Draper keeps a careful audio record about all that he experiences, which provides a useful narrative device when things happen off-screen.
After many days, Draper finally locates McReady’s pod, but the poor colonel did not survive the landing. Shortly after giving McReady a proper burial, Draper runs into Mona, who is happily alive. Reunited with her and assuming that they are all alone, Draper tries rationing what little food and water they have. Surprisingly, the reduced rations do not seem to bother Mona one bit. She "spends most of her days off somewhere." Finding this unusual, Draper devises a plan, which involves feeding her a salty meal without water, believing that she might be able to lead him to a water source. Sure enough, she does — an underground hot spring. In the water, Draper also notices some strange plant that his little primate pal is eating, which resembles seaweed on the outside, but once peeled, contains something that looks an awful lot like sausage. Draper calls it "Martian food." He soon finds that the plant has several other uses, because you can "eat it, weave it and you wear it.”
No happy sunset for Adam West this time
Martian hot springs
After more than four months on Mars, Draper longs for human companionship. All of his training has not prepared him for the extreme isolation he experiences while stranded on a strange planet, and his mind begins playing tricks on him. Snapping out of an episode in which he is visited by the ghost of Colonel McReady, he concludes that "a guy can lick the problems of heat, water, shelter” and that that loneliness is the greatest obstacle that he has encountered while on the planet. Around this time, he stumbles upon alien remains. On the extraterrestrial skeleton are strange black bangle bracelets. Draper believes that the being is a murder victim due to its skull showing signs of trauma and being charred.
Later, Draper's radio picks up signals of an "interplanetary vehicle.” Draper rushes toward the spaceship, only for its crew to shoot directly at him and narrowly miss. In the chaos, Draper runs into an alien bearing a striking resemblance to a man, dressed in clothing that looks straight out of some ancient civilization, with black bracelets on both wrists identical to the ones he found on the skeleton earlier. He soon realizes that the alien (played by Victor Lundin of Ma Barker’s Killer Brood) is an escaped slave who worked in mines on Mars, while other human-like creatures in spacesuits held the slaves at gun-point.
Hebrews building the Martian pyramids
Draper feeds the slave and offers him a place to stay. Draper believes that the slave owners are from a planet "other than Mars” and that they handle their slaves "electronically”, using the black bangles. He names the slave, who he presumes to be mute, "Friday, with apologies to Robinson Crusoe."
Friday, as it turns out, is actually capable of speech. Once Draper realizes this, he tells Friday, "You’re going to learn English, if I have to sit on your chest for two months.” The two eventually become close friends. Friday is part of an alien species originally from ”the center of the belt of Orion.” Friday shares with Draper painful memories of working in the mine. The alien also expresses concern that "the enemy" will use his bracelets to track him down, so Draper tries to help Friday remove them. Friday’s captors return for him, but Friday, Draper and Mona are determined to stick together.
Thus ensues a long trek to the Martian North Pole, mostly underground to avoid the slavers. This portion of the film is very scenic, although not much happens. Upon reaching the polar ice caps, Draper picks up a spaceship again…but this time, it's an Earth rescue vessel. The three will be saved.
A Mixed Bag of Oxy-rocks
Robinson Crusoe on Mars feels like two completely different movies in one, due to its changing tone midway. The first half of it is a much more serious and slow story about a man’s struggle for survival. But once Friday enters the picture, things speed up and get a lot sillier. To be perfectly honest, the transition from one part to the other is not as smooth as I would have liked. That said, screenwriters Ib Melchior (The Seventh Planet) and John C. Higgins do a surprisingly good job of bringing Defoe’s story to space.
The first half of the movie is not just slow, but also fairly quiet. Most spoken words are Draper recording himself or talking to a pet monkey. Draper seems like a person with good intentions, but I have to admit he is not the friendliest guy and often treats Mona better than Friday. Draper whines about not having someone besides Mona and when he finds someone kind of like a human, he treats him pretty poorly at first.
Single living on Mars is a drag
To the movie’s credit, Robinson Crusoe on Mars does seem to be much more rooted in science than many science fiction films that came before it. Most equipment used by the actors seems fairly realistic. The actors are pretty believable operating their spaceship and using different devices. Many of the characteristics of Mars seem a bit more accurate than you tend to see in the movies. Still, one has to suspend disbelief to enjoy the film.
My big issue with the film was the way it handles the planet’s lack of oxygen, which the characters deal with by consuming their pills that "bypass the lungs and produce oxygen right in the blood”, or using an oxygen tank as sparingly as once every 10-15 minutes. It's not that there isn't enough oxygen, but that there is still probably far too much compared to what we actually know of Martian conditions. There are also fires that manage to burn heartily on Mars’ surface, despite the lack of oxygen, though they did contribute to the overall look of the film.
Two ways to deal with the lack of oxygen on Mars
Visually, Robinson Crusoe on Mars is a stunning achievement. It is more than a movie, it is an experience with Winton C. Hoch’s gorgeous Technicolor photography, Matte paintings by Albert Whitlock, and auroras which dance in the sky to yet another memorable score by Nathan Van Cleave. The highly-saturated colors and all the Death Valley exterior shots look incredible on the big screen. Also, fans of 1953’s The War of the Worlds might be amused by some of the miniatures used in the film.
Alien craft looking…strangely familiar.
All in all, I am happy to report that I did not leave the theater disappointed. The movie is worth the price of a ticket, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves. Reportedly, the picture was made independently and distributed through Paramount. The film is superior to many movies with much larger budgets, which is why I am giving it a pretty solid three stars.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Last month, I talked about the successful West German film series based on the novels of British thriller writer Edgar Wallace as well as the many imitators they inspired. The most interesting of those imitators and the only one that is unambiguously science fiction is the Dr. Mabuse series.
Dr. Mabuse is not a new character. His roots lie in the Weimar Republic and he first appeared on screen in 1922 in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse – The Gambler, based on the eponymous novel by Luxembourgian writer Norbert Jacques.
By day, Dr. Mabuse is a respected psychoanalyst and by night he runs a criminal organisation. Mabuse uses his position to infiltrate the corrupt high society of the Weimar Republic and then uses his powers of hypnosis as well as his talent as a master of disguise to commit crimes. Mabuse also employs science fictional technology such as an automobile that turns into a motorboat at the pull of a lever. Dr. Mabuse – The Gambler clearly reflects the fears of the early Weimar Republic with its hyperinflation which plunged many Germans into poverty, while the profiteers of the First World War were partying.
In the movie, Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is a much more unambiguous villain than in the novel. And while Norbert Jacques' Mabuse wants to establish a utopian colony in Brazil, Lang's Mabuse wants to install a reign of terror right there in Berlin. In retrospect, it's obvious why the Nazis did not like the Mabuse films.
At the end of the novel, Mabuse apparently falls to his death from an airplane. In the film, Mabuse is captured alive, but insane, leaving open the possibility of a sequel. That sequel, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, was made in 1933.
Mabuse, still played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, is now an inmate in a mental asylum run by Dr. Baum and spends his days scribbling plans for elaborate crimes onto scraps of paper, which he calls his testament. When Berlin is hit by a wave of crimes based on Mabuse's scribblings, this attracts the attention of Kommissar Karl Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) of the Berlin police. Based on the real life Berlin police officer Ernst Gennat, Lohmann first appeared in an unrelated movie, Fritz Lang's 1931 crime drama M. where he hunted down a child killer played by Peter Lorre.
Mabuse is the logical suspect. But he cannot have committed the crimes, since he is incarcerated in Baum's asylum. The solution to the mystery lies once more in Mabuse's hypnotic powers, which he uses on Dr. Baum. In a chilling sequence, Mabuse's spirit takes over Dr. Baum, while his body dies. The movie ends with Mabuse, now occupying the body of Dr. Baum, once more locked up in the mental asylum, madly scribbling away. With this film, the Mabuse series not only crosses over into the supernatural, but also opened up the possibility of a revival.
The film was supposed to premiere in March 1933, two months after Hitler had come to power. Joseph Goebbels, head of the newly established Ministry of Propaganda, found the movie very exciting, but banned it anyway for incitement to crime. But then, Mabuse's modus operandi bore some uncomfortable parallels to the way the Nazis spread fear and terror, while passages of Mabuse's testament were copied almost verbatim from Mein Kampf. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse became the first movie banned by the Nazis and remained unseen in Germany until 1951. Fritz Lang left Germany the day after the film was banned and went to Hollywood. Meanwhile, the evil Doctor was forgotten, as Germany descended into terror on a scale that would have exceeded even Mabuse's imagination.
But this was not the end. For Mabuse's creator Norbert Jacques sold the rights to film producer Artur Brauner, who also persuaded Fritz Lang to return to West Germany, not to adapt Mabuse, but to remake his 1921 movie The Indian Tomb.
Inspired by the success of the Edgar Wallace movies, Artur Brauner wanted to remake The Testament of Dr. Mabuse as well and asked Fritz Lang to direct. Lang, however, wanted to make a sequel. Norbert Jacques had died in 1954, so Lang adapted the dystopian novel Mr. Tot Buys a Thousand Eyes by Polish-German writer Jan Fethke a.k.a. Jean Forge. Mabuse was inserted into the storyline and the movie was released as The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse in 1960.
The Night has a Thousand Eyes
Most of the film is set at the Hotel Luxor, a luxury hotel built by the Nazis and equipped with hidden surveillance cameras in every room (the thousand eyes of the title). The hotel is now owned by a criminal organisation headed by none other than Dr. Mabuse, who after laying low during the Third Reich (or did he?) is up to his old tricks again. He records wealthy hotel guests in compromising situations and then blackmails them. If compromising situations don't happen on their own, Mabuse and his gang engineer them.
But luckily, Kommissar Kras (Gert Fröbe) is on the case. Kras is basically Kommissar Lohmann in everything but the name and also remembers Mabuse's reign of terror during the Weimar Republic, linking the old and the new Mabuse movies and making it very clear that The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is a sequel rather than a remake. There is only one problem. Dr. Mabuse very definitely died in 1933, so who is behind this new wave of crimes?
In the end, the blind fortune teller Peter Cornelius (Wolfgang Preiss) is revealed to be Mabuse. Though Cornelius isn't his real name nor is he really a fortune teller nor really blind. Instead, he is one Professor Jordan, a psychiatrist who feels compelled to continue Mabuse's work. It is implied that Professor Jordan is the same psychiatrist in whose mental hospital Mabuse was incarcerated back in The Testament of Doctor Mabuse, even though the character names are different. But then, it is also implied that Kras and Lohmann are the same person.
Kommissar Lohmann (Gert Fröbe) confronts Dr. Mabuse (Wolfgang Preiss)
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse moves away from the stylish expressionism of the earlier movies towards a quasi-documentary style. The scenes inside the Hotel Luxor are implied to be footage recorded by Mabuse's cameras, turning the viewer into a voyeur. The science fiction elements are fairly light. It would certainly be possible to recreate the Hotel Luxor and its surveillance cameras with 1960s technology and indeed the new East German Interhotels are real life versions of the Hotel Luxor.
Thousand Eyes ends with Mabuse presumed dead once again. However, the film was a big commercial success and so Mabuse was promptly resurrected barely a year later. Fritz Lang had retired, so Harald Reinl, who previously worked on the Edgar Wallace series, took over the directing duties for Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse. The international title is the unimaginative The Return of Dr. Mabuse, a literal translation would be In the Steel Web of Dr. Mabuse. Shot in atmospheric black and white, Steel Web is stylistically closer to the expressionist Mabuse films of the Weimar Republic than Fritz Lang's Thousand Eyes.
Mabuse's organisation now works with the Chicago mob in his quest to conquer the world. As a favour to his new allies, his gang murders a woman who is burned alive by a flamethrower that emerges from a flap in the side of a truck. Her burning body is seen lying on the sidewalk for several seconds in a scene that is shockingly brutal by the sedate standards of West German cinema.
The Berlin police once again puts an inspector played by Gert Fröbe on the case. This time, the character is actually called Kommissar Lohmann and it is strongly implied that this is the same Kommissar Lohmann as before. We also briefly meet Lohmann's wife and children at the beginning of the movie, a pleasant contrast to the many lone wolf investigators who dominate the crime genre.
Because of the mob connection, the FBI sends an agent named Joe Como (former Tarzan and current Old Shatterhand Lex Barker). Together, they uncover Mabuse's latest scheme: using a mind control drug on prison inmates to force them to commit crimes. In the end, prison warden Wolf is unmasked (literally, via ripping off a rubber mask) as Mabuse (still played by Wolfgang Preiss). During the final battle with the police, Mabuse escapes into a railway tunnel and is apparently killed by an oncoming train. Or is he?
The second postwar outing of Dr. Mabuse is a curious mix of gangster film and science fiction thriller. The gangster film elements are clearly influenced by the popularity of the German pulp hero G-Man Jerry Cotton – also note the similarities of the names Jerry Cotton and Joe Como. There are plenty of creepy moments, such as the vacant eyed convicts converging upon a power station, while a sound truck blasts out the words "I have only one lord and master, Dr. Mabuse" over and over again.
Flirting with SF
The science fiction elements were ramped up for the third movie, Die unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse (The Invisible Dr. Mabuse), which premiered in March 1962, directed once more by Harald Reinl.
Lex Barker is back as Joe Como, this time working with Kommissar Brahm (Siegfried Lowitz, a regular of the Edgar Wallace series), since Kommissar Lohmann has apparently taken the long deserved holiday he had to postpone in the previous film. Together they tackle the case of an invisible man who haunts a theatre and stalks the dancer Liane Martin (Harald Reinl's wife and Edgar Wallace regular Karin Dor).
In spite of the title, the invisible man stalking Liane Martin is not Dr. Mabuse but Professor Erasmus, who has invented an invisibility device. An accident left the Professor disfigured and so he uses his device to visit his beloved Liane Martin, failing to realise that being stalked by an invisible man is a lot more terrifying than a scarred face.
Joe Como (Lex Barker) and Professor Erasmus (Rudolf Fernau), not invisible for once.
Mabuse appropriates the device and the movie ends with Mabuse's army of invisible killers converging on a plane to kill a passenger. However, the police have placed strings with bells around the airfield and then make the invisible killers visible by spraying them with water. This time around, Mabuse is even captured, though he has gone insane.
The Invisible Dr. Mabuse seems to be two separate movies, for the haunted theatre plot and the invisible man plot don't come together until the end. Gert Fröbe is sorely missed as well. Nonetheless, the film has several memorable moments such as Liane Martin getting (almost) guillotined no less than three times, Joe Como confronting the invisible Professor in a steam bath and the army of invisible killers becoming slowly visible again in a spray of water. The special effects are surprisingly good by West German standards.
A New Testament
The next movie, released in September 1962, was a remake of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Mabuse is now incarcerated in a mental hospital run by Professor Pohland (Walter Rilla) and still manages to give orders to his gang via hypnotising the hapless Professor. Gert Fröbe makes a welcome return as Kommissar Lohmann, though Lex Barker's Joe Como is sadly absent, since Barker has found a more lucrative gig as Old Shatterhand in the film adaptations of Karl May's Winnetou novels. As before, Mabuse's body seemingly dies, while his spirit takes over Pohland's body.
Testament is a solid entry in the series, though it suffers in comparison with the 1933 original. It also doesn't help that anybody who has seen the original already knows the big twist. And while Mabuse's plan of causing economic collapse via flooding the market with forged banknotes clearly plays on the fears of the 1920s and 1930s with its hyperinflation, the Black Friday and the Great Depression, it feels anachronistic in postwar West Germany in the middle of a so-called economic miracle. Harald Reinl's atmospheric direction has been replaced by the more pedestrian Werner Klingler as well. I'm not the only one who feels that Testament was rather lacklustre, since the movie bombed at the box office.
Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse (Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse) premiered in September 1963. Mabuse, still in the body of Professor Pohland, has had enough of the Berlin police continuing to thwart his attempts to establish a world reign of crime and so decamps to Britain to continue his villainous ways. This time around, Mabuse steals a mind control device and plans to use it to destabilise the British government. He also stages impressive demonstrations, such as inducing a hangman to hang himself in a memorable scene.
The hanging scene from "Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse"
But Major Bill Tern of Scotland Yard (Peter van Eyck,) and Kommissar Vulpius of the Hamburg police (Werner Peters) are on Mabuse's trail. Luckily, it turns out that people wearing a certain hearing aid are immune to Mabuse's mind control device and so the police manages to arrest Mabuse and his gang. Alas, Mabuse's spirit has already moved on, leaving a hapless Professor Pohland repeating "It wasn't me, it was Mabuse. He used my brain" over and over again.
It is notable that the mind control motif – whether via hypnosis, drugs or electronic devices – appears again and again in the Mabuse series. And Professor Pohland insisting over and over again that he is completely innocent of the crimes Mabuse committed does bring to mind many former Nazis who make the same claim, though with far less justification.
Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse is a thoroughly entertaining film and curiously prescient, since one of the crimes committed by Mabuse's gang eerily mirrors the recent Great Train Robbery in Britain. Though the tendency to reuse the same actors in completely different parts (e.g. Werner Peters appeared in four of five postwar Mabuse movies, playing a different character in each one) is getting confusing by now. Of course, the Edgar Wallace films also tend to reuse the same actors over and over again (and to make matters even more confusing, several actors appear in both series). But unlike the Wallace movies, the seven Mabuse movies to date have an internal continuity.
Though like Mabuse himself, the movies tend to change their appearance from film to film. In the past forty years, the series has moved from reflecting the economic anxieties of the Weimar Republic (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) via Cold War paranoia (The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) and offbeat gangster thriller (The Steel Web of Dr. Mabuse) to science fiction thriller cum theatre horror (The Invisible Dr. Mabuse) back to economic fears (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, take two). With Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse, the Mabuse series has morphed into an Edgar Wallace movie. And indeed, the screenplay is a loose adaptation of the 1962 novel The Device by Bryan Edgar Wallace, son of Edgar.
Whither Mabuse?
The flexibility of the Mabuse series and the character himself ensures its longevity. Dr. Mabuse has terrorised Germany for forty years now and may well continue for years or even decades to come, for Mabuse's nature as a malevolent spirit allows him to jump from body to body, plotting new crimes and leaving behind muttering hosts who insist that they didn't do anything, Mabuse did.
What form will the Mabuse series take next? Rumours suggest that the next Mabuse movie Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse (The Death Rays of Dr. Mabuse), due out in September, is inspired by the popular James Bond movies.
I certainly will be in the cinema, watching as Germany's greatest supervillain plots yet again to conquer the world and establish a reign of crime and chaos.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
I feel sorry for those who rely entirely on the words of critics to determine whether or not a film is worth seeing. It's so easy to miss out of some of the most absurd and fun movies out there if the viewer approaches them with too analytical a mindset. For instance, those who read The New York Time's review of The Comedy of Terror really missed out on the humor of seeing the iconic actors of horror from the 30s and 40s satirize their own legacies.
In anticipation of the June 24th release of Roger Corman's new movie, The Masque of the Red Death, I dared to take a look at an advanced review of the film from Variety Magazine. Since seeing the film after its premier in Los Angeles, I can sympathize with some of the negative points in the above mentioned article, but it still annoys me that there will be people who will avoid this new Edgar Allan Poe tribute film simply because the Variety review and others seem to be approaching it with a lukewarm reception. Yes, The Masque of the Red Death has its faults, but for a horror movie that takes itself seriously in a time when classic horror themes have become passé, this is a very competently done and memorable movie.
Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) is a malicious yet pragmatic and cuttingly frank man whose province in medieval Italy has all but succumbed to the fictitious disease, the Red Death. Although a proud and evangelical self proclaimed Satanist, the Prince is able to rationalize his beliefs in Satan as an all powerful living God by drawing direct inspiration from the morally dubious nature of humanity and the ever present suffering of the world. Taking a woman named Francesca (Jane Asher) from one of the nearby villages after she pleads for the life of her fiancé and father, Prince Prospero makes it his mission to convert her from a believer in God to a hand maiden of Satan, and consequently a hand maiden to himself as a sort of high priest to Satan.
His harsh lessons ultimately culminate in a grand celebration at his palace where his “friends” and followers within the Italian aristocracy plan to feast and revel in a masquerade. All must dress in any human like garb they wish, but per his orders none are allowed to wear red. When a lone figure arrives in towering red robes, Prince Prospero angrily pursues him. The intruder is nothing that he expected, however, and bears a message that he is horrified to hear.
Roger Corman has drawn inspiration from the dark elegance of Edgar Allan Poe's bibliography for years now. Since his production and direction of the 1960 gothic horror film House of Usher, Corman has had at least one Poe-themed film released every year, all of which have been financial successes, if not necessarily critically received. In The Masque of the Red Death Corman once again captures the grandiosity and bleak horror of Poe's writing with the aid of his favorite go-to villainous gentleman, Vincent Price.
The Masque of the Red Death is unique in Corman's work to date. In the 1950s the young and ambitious schlock producer gained a name for himself by churning out many of the low budget, drive-in titles that we grew up on – The Fast and the Furious (1954), Day the World Ended (1955), and Machine Gun Kelley (1958). Using his growing reputation as a Hollywood force who could corral the crew, shoot a film in as little as five days, and still present a profitable final product, Corman swiftly moved on to producing and directing.
His subject matter has included some very interesting forays into edgier territories within American film since the enforcement of the Hayes Code in 1934. Of particular note I would point to the agency of the female characters in The Wasp Woman (1959), the self-aware satire in A Bucket of Blood (1959), and the rage of white racists against school desegregation in The Intruder (1962). In The Masque of the Red Death the topics of the film's plot are not so much unique as they are distinct for being so well interwoven.
The screenplay is credited to Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell (who wrote the screenplay for the 1957 film Man of A Thousand Faces). Their combined effort added an immense amount of humanity and depth to the original sparseness of Poe’s writing. Although the title clearly states that the movie is an adaptation of Poe's 1842 short story "The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy", the film is actually a merger of “Mask” with another Poe short story from 1849 titled, "Hop-Frog; Or, the Eight Chained Ourangoutangs". Given that the story of “Mask” is so sparse in characters outside of the protagonist Prince Prospero and the plague personification in The Red Death, the film was obviously in need of other characters to flesh it out into a feature film. The end result penned by Beaumont and Campbell is so perfect that it could easily be believed that the two stories were originally written as one.
The visuals in Corman’s Poe movies are likewise a stark departure from the static and clunky cinematography of his 1950s productions. Working with cinematographer Nicolas Roag (best known for his work on David Lean's 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia), The Masque of the Red Death kept the sharp colors and excellent sets of Corman’s earlier Poe movies. Roag's artistic eye brought it above and beyond that, however. The movement of the camera and the actors achieves a flowing and poetic feel that is new to Corman’s movies. The scene of The Red Death gliding through the revelers at the climax of the film is particularly gripping, as is the creative decision to have the end credits consist of a red and black dichromatic color scheme with the credits appearing in white around slowly placed tarot cards.
It’s a pleasure to see that as Roger Corman gains momentum in the film world he is readily making use of the network of talent opening up to him. Meanwhile, those he has relied upon for previous projects, particularly Vincent Price and R. Wright Campbell, seem to be flourishing under his more experienced directorship and heavier production budgets. My final thought on the film is that as a long time fan of Vincent Price I was thrilled to see that the poor performance I witnessed from Price in The Last Man on Earth was not indicative of a downward spiral for him. While he looked old and brittle in his role as Dr. Robert Morgan – a lonely, despondent, and disillusioned scientist – Price sprang to full vibrant life in a role that really allowed him to channel his inner devil – that of a swarthy, learned, arrogant, pompous and cruel classic villain. No matter what viewers might hear in the critical response to this film, it is a work that is absolutely worth the cost of admission. Of Corman's current bibliography this is a four and a half out of five stars. If Roger Corman continues to assemble and wield his creative team this well in his future projects then he is going to become a force to be reckoned with.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Natalie Devitt, bless her soul, is a good sport. When even my own wife and daughter won't come to the Drive-In with me, I can count on the Journey's resident film and TV expert to share the popcorn. I'd learned that Del Tenney had a new double-feature of schlock presenting at the local spot, combining The Horror at Party Beach and The Curse of the Living Corpse. The newspaper even said you had to fill out a waiver so you wouldn't sue if the films gave you a heart attack (an old Castle Films gimmick).
When Natalie came over for our monthly record-listening date, I showed her the clipping. How could she refuse? So, we trundled down to San Diego (I understand they might build a Drive-In in Oceanside soon, which would be nice) and promptly became the one pair of moviegoers that wasn't necking.
I'm shocked, I tell ya. How could they fail to be entranced by Tenney's brilliant fusion of the beach and horror genres? Well…it wasn't that hard. Read on and find out.
First up, we get a jazzy soundtrack and the rumble of engines. Our hero and his current flame are toodling along in a very nice convertible. Main Man is not too thrilled by the biker gang escort, nor his girlfriend's making of the goo-goo eyes at the head cycle enthusiast. A race ensues, which the car handily wins.
"Hey! No passing on the right!"
Meanwhile, out to sea, we witness a conscientious barge crewman dropping canisters of clearly labeled radioactive waste into the water. It turns out that he is not depth charging a German U-Boat but simply getting rid of the stuff in as cost-effective a manner as possible. It's too bad we don't have laws against this kind of thing. Maybe LBJ can make it part of his Great Society.
Making The Enemy Below.
Main Man and his +1 arrive at their destination, the swingingest beach party ever filmed in monochrome, without the benefit (liability?) of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.
Hey! It's Hank Marvin of The Shadows
Just your typical beach party.
The movie was billed as "The First Horror Monster Musical", but it really just had a lot of beach band scenes played by a weird cross between the Beach Boys and the Shadows. I was perfectly fine with this. In fact, I probably would have watched the forty-five minute short film that could have been stitched together from the party footage; they looked like they were having fun.
At least until the bad guys showed up…
Beautifully choreographed entrance by the Charter Oak Motorcycle Club of Riverside, Connecticut.
Main Man's fickle flame does a passion dance for the leather jacketed biker hunk, and of course, a the male domination ritual ensues.
I know I packed my muscles in here somewhere.
The fight is soon over, brain having triumphed over brawn. I guess. Interestingly enough, the biker turns out to be a swell fellow about it.
This is the most romantic tension in the film.
Fickle Flame (you can see how much of an impression the movie made on me — I can't remember any of the names) decides she can't compete with a couple of Real Men and goes off to swim on her own. This is a Bad Idea.
Being smeared with chocolate syrup is painful and lethal.
This murder is big news. The local law enforcement gets involved and quickly realizes this is above their pay grade, so they contract out to the local scientist, the Platonic ideal of an egghead.
Glasses and pipe, Eric Dolphy's latest hit.
Cecil the Seasick Sea Monster, in the meantime, somehow spawns a buddy, and they attack a local slumber party.
"Wanna come over and eat S'mores and hit each other with pillows?"
"NEVER MIND!"
And then three ladies get stranded on the side of road with a flat tire. For some reason, the shortcut to New York City from Connecticut runs through a roadless forest. Too bad for them.
"Is it the Auto Club man?" No.
After that mauling, we get a romantic interlude between Main Man and Egghead's Daughter. This scene is welcome because it features more music by the Pseudows.
"It's so good to just relax after all the mass murder that's been going around."
Cut to a hungry Sea Zombie who, after missing out on his chance to eat another pair of women, decides to try his luck on a store window mannequin. Instead, the monster slices its arm off on the glass. This proves fortuitous, for it gives Doc Egghead the opportunity to probe into the monsters' nature. He determines that they are revived corpses, mutated from skeletons (!) by radiation. As former humans, only one substance is sufficient to sustain them — human blood. Apparently the array of sausages in the monsters' mouths is actually a set of suckers. Not that this is ever made clear in the action.
Eulabelle, the superstitious, Voodoo-worshipping maid (because, of course she is), spills a beaker of sodium on the arm, and it bursts into flame. It's all the water in its make-up, apparently. Now the good guys have a defense against the Cecils!
"But how will we get the stain out, Eulabelle?"
But how to find them? Despite being shambly and not terribly bright, they are somehow impossible to find. That is, until Egghead's Daughter hatches (haha!) the idea to use geiger counters to track their radioactive trail. With no time to lose, given that the population of the small town has already shrunk by about half, everyone disperses to track the Uranium traces.
Alone.
I generally have better luck with a jig or a spinner.
This puts Egghead's Daughter at risk. In fact, she is soon assaulted by not two, but a full dozen monsters (but we never see more than two at a time close up, probably because Tenney only had two suits).
One fish, two fish, gray fish, gray fish.
Luckily for her, the MEN arrive in time, sodium grenades in hand, and torch the bad guys.
In a scene right out of Zulu!
The seven remaining townsfolk live happily ever, and the credits roll, made all the better by a return of the band.
No kidding — they're called the "Del-Aires"!
Post-mortem
That's the plot. How was the movie? From my sardonic description and the attached clips, I imagine the movie looks pretty bad.
That's good. It was pretty bad.
However, schlock it might have been, but it wasn't entirely dreck. Sure, it was no Psycho, but someone on their team was a decent editor, keeping the scenes and the overall movie trucking right along. I was flabbergasted, I was made to roll my eyes, but I was never bored. And while the film's score was no great shakes, consisting of one vibrato-laden underwater sting, the band was good in a "high school kids making ends meet over the summer" kind of way. Plus, I got to see what all the kids were wearing to the beach last year (the movie has a 1963 copyright date).
If there was a disappointment it's that the film missed an opportunity. At one point, the Cecils decide to prey on a pair of affable drunks (two of the three men slain in the film, as opposed to at least twenty women). I had hoped they'd show the Sea Zombies stumbling around in a drunken stupor, but nothing doing.
Bugging Out
Anyway, neither Natalie nor I were enthused about watching the second flick of the double feature. Luckily, the new Paramount technicolor flick, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, was playing on the Drive-In's other screen. After a brief stop at the concession stand for more popcorn, we decided to give the bigger budget film a try.
But that's a story for another article…
(Note: you can buy the 8mm prints of both Tenney movies, with sound, here.)
Speaking of films, enjoy this latest appearance by the Traveler and Young Traveler — this time, we're talking about the Van Allen Belts!
The biggest phenomenon in West German cinemas in the past five years is none other than Edgar Wallace, Britain's king of thrillers.
The enduring popularity of Edgar Wallace in Germany may seem baffling, since Wallace died in 1932 and most of his thrillers were written in the 1910s and 1920s. American readers will probably best remember Wallace as the creator of King Kong and screenwriter of the eponymous movie.
Edgar Wallace
However, Germans have long loved Edgar Wallace, which is odd, since Edgar Wallace did not particularly like Germany, as many of his writings show. Nonetheless, his thrillers were hugely popular in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, until the Nazis banned them along with the entire crime genre as "too subversive". In the 1950s, paperback publisher Goldmann started reissuing the Edgar Wallace thrillers to great success. And as always when something is successful, others took note. One of them was "Heftroman" publisher Pabel, whose Utopia Kriminal line of science fiction thrillers was directly inspired by the popularity of the Edgar Wallace novels.
German film producers also took note and indeed there were a few German Edgar Wallace adaptations during the silent and early talkie era. However, plans to adapt Edgar Wallace novels in 1950s repeatedly failed, because crime and thriller movies supposedly did not sell in postwar West Germany, since viewers allegedly demanded harmless musicals and romances set in beautiful landscapes rather than tales of crime and murder. In 1959, Danish film producer Preben Philipsen took a chance and adapted the Edgar Wallace novel The Fellowship of the Frog for German audiences. The result was a huge success and led to a wave of more or less faithful Edgar Wallace adaptations (nineteen to date) and copycats that show no sign of abating.
Poster for Face of the Frog (1959)
The Edgar Wallace movies are primarily crime thrillers, though there is nothing remotely realistic about them. Instead, the films are set in a fog-drenched England and particularly London that never was, full of dodgy harbour bars where nefarious crimes are plotted as curvy sirens sing torch songs, where the River Thames is used a convenient corpse disposal and where Scotland Yard is headed by a dim-witted gentleman named Sir John (played by Siegfried Schürenberg who serves as a sort of link between the various movies) with a taste for buxom secretaries. Inspectors are handsome and dashing, played by either Heinz Drache or Joachim Fuchsberger, unless they are played by the plump and balding Siegfried Lowitz, in which case he has a dashing Sergeant. There is always a comic relief character, often a bumbling butler, who is usually played by Eddi Arent.
Joachim Fuchsberger, Siegfried Schürenberg and Eddi Arent in The Squeaker (1963)
Women in Edgar Wallace movies come in three flavours, mysterious elderly ladies, usually played by veteran UfA actresses, who may or may not be involved in the villain's machinations, buxom femme fatales who are involved with the villain and often end up paying the ultimate price for their villainous ways (Eva Pflug in Face of the Frog was the best of them) and finally, young and pretty damsels in distress (often played by Karin Dor), who find themselves pursued and often kidnapped by the villain, before they are rescued and end up marrying the dashing Inspector.
Eva Pflug being admired by Jochen Brockmann in Face of the Frog (1959)
Occasionally, the Wallace movies manage to subvert expectations. And so the dashing detective is unmasked as the killer in The Red Circle (1960), while the wide-eyed ingenue is revealed to be the showgirl slashing killer in this year's Room 13.
Poster for The Red Circle
Wallace villains are never just ordinary criminals, but run improbably large and secretive organisations with dozens of henchmen. At least one of the henchmen is deformed or flat out insane, played either by former wrestler Ady Berber or a charismatic young actor named Klaus Kinski, who gave the performance of his life as a mute and insane animal handler in last year's The Squeaker.
Klaus Kinski threatening Inge Langen in The Squeaker
The crimes are extremely convoluted, usually involve robberies, blackmail or inheritance schemes and are always motivated by greed. Murder methods are never ordinary and victims are dispatched via harpoons, poison blow guns, guillotines or wild animals. The villains inevitably have strange monikers such as the Frog, the Shark, the Squeaker, the Avenger, the Green Archer or the Black Abbot and often wear a costume to match. Their identity is always a mystery and pretty much every character comes under suspicion until the big reveal at the end. And once the mask comes off, the villain is inevitably revealed to be a staunch pillar of society and often a member of Sir John's club.
The Frog kidnapping Eva Anthes in Face of the Frog (1959)
The Green Archer terrifies Karin Dor in The Green Archer (1961)
Eddi Arent attempts to apprehend the the Black Abbot in the eponymous film (1963)
The Edgar Wallace films are cheaply made, with Hamburg or Berlin standing in for London and German castles standing in for British mansions. Nonetheless, they have a unique visual flair, courtesy of directors Harald Reinl, Jürgen Roland and Alfred Vohrer. All films are shot in stylish black and white, using the widescreen Ultrascope process. Contrasts of light and shadow are used to great effect, such as the shadow of a dangling noose falling onto a stark white prison wall in Face of the Frog. Strange camera angles are common and scenes are shot through the eyes of an unseen killer, through the dial of a rotary telephone and in one memorable case, though the mouth of Sir John chomping on a carrot. The highly stylised look of the Edgar Wallace films is uncommon in contemporary German cinema. Instead, the Edgar Wallace films take their visual inspiration from the expressionist cinema of the 1920s and early 1930s, returning German filmmaking to where it was before the Nazis took over.
Karin Dor spies on The Terrible People (1960)
Are the Edgar Wallace films science fiction? Well, they are mainly crime thrillers, though they also include horror elements and take visual inspiration from the German horror cinema of more than thirty years ago. The Dead Eyes of London from 1961 is probably the closest the Wallace series has come to pure horror to date, largely due to the performance of Ady Berber as the blind and supernaturally strong killer Jack.
Program book for The Dead Eyes of London, featuring Ady Berber threatening Karin Baal
Science fiction elements also frequently appear in the Edgar Wallace movies, often in the form of death traps and complicated murder methods. The Green Archer (1961) uses the old standby of the underground chamber (in which the villain, played by the excellent Gert Fröbe, has kept the lover who spurned him imprisoned for decades) that slowly fills with water. The Strange Countess (1961) features a deadly electrified grid, which protects the jewels the titular villainess has stolen. The Countess, played with chilling haughtiness by silent era veteran Lil Dagover, is eventually electrocuted by her own death trap. Meanwhile, in The Dead Eyes of London, a domed glass tank in the basement of a church-run home for the blind is used to drown wealthy men before their bodies are thrown into the Thames, allowing the villainous Dead Eye gang to claim their life insurance. And in The Squeaker, the titular villain dispatches his opponents via a blow gun shooting crystals of snake venom. As mentioned above, the criminal plots and murder methods in the Wallace are always convoluted and often don't make a whole lot of sense. But that doesn't matter, because you're usually much too captivated by the going-ons on screen to worry about such little matters as logic.
Lil Dagover prowls her castle in The Strange Countess (1961)
The 1962 film The Door With Seven Locks even features a bona fide mad scientist, played by Wallace film regular Pinkas Braun, who conducts medical experiments such as brain transplants in a hidden vault underneath a country mansion. This makes the otherwise not particularly remarkable The Door With Seven Locks the most science fictional Edgar Wallace film to date.
Poster for The Door with the Seven Locks (1962)
Critics don't like the Edgar Wallace films, complaining about the lack of realism, the alleged predictability, the lurid and sensational nature of the crimes portrayed and the (by West German standards) high levels of violence. Those critics have a point, for the Edgar Wallace films are lurid and sensational, violent and completely unrealistic. However, the sheer artificiality is why I enjoy these movies so much and why I inevitably head for the neighbourhood movie theatre whenever a new Edgar Wallace movie premieres (and we currently get several of them every year). Even the lesser entries of the series are well worth watching and the standouts such as Face of the Frog, The Green Archer, The Dead Eyes of London, The Inn on the River, The Squeaker or The Indian Scarf provide excellent chills and thrills.
Poster for The Squeaker (1963) )
As for those who claim that the Edgar Wallace movies have nothing to do with real life, well, they're mistaken, for the Wallace films do reflect contemporary West German concerns, though through the distorted lens of a funhouse mirror. The fact that the motive for the bizarre crimes on screen is always greed reflects concerns about the rampant materialism in postwar West Germany. Just as the fact that the villain is inevitably revealed to be an upstanding pillar of society under his (or more rarely her) mask is all too reminiscent of recent revelations that quite a few politicians, judges, doctors, professors, civil servants and captains of industry used to be Nazis and still somehow managed to continue their careers unimpeded in postwar West Germany. As for the tendency of henchmen in Wallace movies to mutter, "But I was just following orders. You can't blame me", when captured – well, where have we heard that before?
Poster for The Terrible People (1960)
The Edgar Wallace movies offer pleasantly comforting shudders, as the viewer delves into a strange parallel world, where London is the murder capital of Europe and the Squeaker, the Frog, the Black Abbot and the rest of the Wallace menagerie stalk the fog-shrouded streets to commit bizarre crimes. And even though all movies stand alone, they are set in the same universe with Siegfried Schürenberg's Sir John acting as a link between the different stories. This shared universe concept occasionally shows up in literature such as the Cthulhu mythos, but has never really been tried in movies so far. The possibilities are limitless.
Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) is shocked that the latest villain turns out to be yet another member of his club.
The success of the Edgar Wallace movies quickly spawned a host of imitators. Producer Artur Brauner acquired the rights to several crime novels by Bryan Edgar Wallace, son of Edgar Wallace, while Constantin Film adapted several novels by Czech writer and Edgar Wallace imitator Louis Weinert-Wilton. Other imitations are more of a stretch, such as a series of Wallace style movies featuring G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown.
However, the most interesting of the many crime thrillers released in the wake of the Edgar Wallace movies are the Dr. Mabuse movies produced by Artur Brauner. Based on a supervillain character created by Norbert Jacques in the 1920s, they are not just unambiguously science fiction, but also a return to the glory days of German cinema during the Weimar Republic. But that's a subject for another day.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
In every reader’s life there comes a time which we all dread. A time we try to forget as soon as it happens. A time when we finish reading a book that by all accounts should be a delight but that instead bores us to tears and makes us wish time travel was real just so we could go back in time and skip the experience altogether.
And sadly, dear readers, that is exactly what happened to me when I turned the last page of The Amphibian.
But first things first.
The novel was written by Alexander Beliaev in 1927 and published just a year later, first in a magazine, and then as a stand-alone book. It was published in English in 1962 by Moscow’s Foreign Languages Publishing House.
The story is set in Argentina and follows Ichthyander, an adopted son of a world-renowned surgeon, Salvator. When he was but an infant, Ichthyander was very ill and to save his life Salvator transplanted a set of shark gills onto him, giving his son the ability to breathe underwater. Hence the name, as the parts of it come from Ancient Greek, translating to “fish” and “man”. The pair live a fairly idyllic life in large mansion, the father treating locals and the son spending much of his time playing in the ocean.
However, as Ichthyander grows older, he become more reckless, attacking Argentinian fishermen and returning their hauls back to the water. Until one day, one of the local pearl gatherers, Pedro Zurita, sees him, and realizing the boy’s potential as a pearl diver, tries to catch him.
That doesn’t sound too bad, you might say. And you would be right, the plot looks quite interesting. In theory. In practice, the story has been flung head first against a truly horrendous writing style, flat characters, and unnatural dialogues.
The Russian text reads like a badly done translation. It is all the more unfortunate, when the rest of Beliaev’s books (at least the ones I’m familiar with) are written perfectly well. I suppose the author wanted to mimic the often more abrupt style favored by Western writers, but if so, he failed. And failed spectacularly.
Therefore, it will not come as a surprise when I say: read the book in English. Ignore the original Russian text and skip right to the translated version. I dare say, you will find yourselves much more satisfied with the book than I did.
Still, there were a couple of passages, all of them describing nature, the ocean specifically, that hinted at what the book might have been had the prose been more… engaging. But they were few and far between.
Out of all the characters the only ones that had at least a small spark of life in them were Baltasar, Zurita’s right hand and the father of Ichthyander’s love interest (don’t start me on that particular train wreck), and Zurita’s mother, a cranky old woman. The rest were blander than cardboard.
(You might have noticed – I really didn’t like the book.)
And now we come to the crux of the problem. The book was bad. Why would I, or anyone else for that matter, bother to read it?
And the answer, dear readers, is that in 1962 it was made into one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.
The Amphibian Man turned flat and uninteresting characters into real people, dry prose into stunning visuals. It has you gripping the edges of your seat, from the beginning to the very end. You fret over Ichthyander’s naive and innocent nature, tie yourself into conflicted knots over don Pedro’s actions, empathize with Salvator, and curse the cruel Argentinian policemen.
This is a movie that, I’m sure, we will be watching even after the turn of the second millennium, no matter how optimistic that sounds.
And The Amphibian is the book that made it possible. That alone turns it into a worthy read, even if nothing else does. That is why, at the end of it, I give The Amphibian one bookish and five cinematic stars out of five.
(Now go watch the movie!)
[And come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
The neat thing about film festivals is not just being able to see more than one film in a short period of time. It's the gossip, the revelations, the people who show up, some of them onstage. In this case the festival site was Denver, Colorado. Seem an unlikely place for a film festival? But there it was that "7 Faces of Dr. Lao," made last year, enjoyed its first U.S. release on March 18. I went there basically to see that one film, but my ride-sharing friend went to see many. So I saw a little of Denver outside the movie theater. But I'm not here to review Denver.
My mom's postcard—I don't have a camera
Place Number 2: the MGM lot
If you saw my review of Finney's Circus of Dr. Lao back on June 16, 1962 you would know why I went to such (literally) lengths to see this movie. It did not disappoint, but I did object to the interpolations of a soppy romance and a hackneyed Western takeover-the-town plot. The "Circus" was filmed, according to sources, on the MGM back lots, although some of those Culver City hills must be pretty rough if that's so. My theory is that filming on location was out due to the many roles of Tony Randall, who plays Dr. Lao, the Abominable Snowman, Merlin, Apollonius of Tyana, Pan, The Giant Serpent, and Medusa. All those makeup and costume changes (to say nothing of any other cast) must have needed the workshop of famed makeup artist William Tuttle and a large selection of MGM costumes, as well as (not credited) costumer Robert Fuca.
Place Number 3: Chujen, Chu, China
This was the last place Laozi was seen alive (531 BC), if indeed he did live. In the movie, but not the book, the Abalone newspaper editor, Ed, asks where he is from, and after Dr. Lao tells him this place, Ed looks it up (providing an opportunity to see his love Agnes, who in the movie is a librarian as well as a teacher) and confronts Dr. Lao with the news that Chujen no longer exists, so what is going on? So we and Ed see the circus tent and Merlin (not in the book) for the first time. And that provides me with an excuse to tell you the following. The plot of both Finney's story and the film was, very briefly, that the circus comes to town, the town of Abalone, to be exact. But it's not a Barnum & Bailey-type circus. It arrives somehow with, or in the person of, the Chinese legend Laozi (Lao-Tse, Dr. Lao, or as you wish), since in the movie he arrives on a donkey with only a fishbowl and fish, as well as a pipe, which he ignites with his thumb as lighter. It consists of other legends, myths, and gods in—as it were—the flesh. The rest is what happens to, of, with, by, and from the circus and its hawker, guide, medicine man, and (in the movie) magical self, Dr. Lao.
Courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections
Place Number 4: Abalone, Arizona
MGM's Abalone, understandably, looks just like all those old western towns you see in television shows and movies, more than one horse, but not more than half a dozen, and not more than that many streets. I always thought of Finney's Circus as taking place in the late 1920s, when he began the story while he was still billeted in China by the U.S. Army. But this version of the story takes place in that same smeared-out time zone that westerns always use—somewhere between 1890 and 1910, when record players were known as gramophones, and when men were men and women were uh … unable to take care of ourselves.
Place Number 5: Tucson, Arizona
Many people, including me, think that Abalone, Arizona—the setting of more than one Finney story—was actually Tucson. And there is an "Old Tucson," a movie set just outside Tucson that became a tourist attraction in which the stagecoach gets robbed twice daily. The set really epitomizes that "Old West" stereotype that dominates in "7 Faces." But in desert scenes, saguaro cacti figure heavily in the movie's landscape. Most people don't know that saguaros are not found anywhere but in the Sonoran Desert. There is a certain creep, perhaps a foot or so per year, as the cacti spread around mainly southern Arizona (U.S.) and northern Sonora (Mexico), but at this point they only live in the Southwest, and not on the MGM lot in California. The ones on the MGM lot look pretty strange. I would have said that the cacti were the worst things about the movie, were it not that I realized that their strange appearance (looking like cardboard cutouts) adds to the surreal nature of the film.
A real—not surreal—saguaro cactus near Tucson, Arizona
Place Number 6: Dr. Lao's circus tent
The circus tent of the good doctor is said to be "bigger on the inside than it is on the outside" by one observer in the movie, and indeed it has many twistings and turnings. In fact it is rather like a layered labyrinth and is a remarkable movie set, one of the best inventions of the movie, I think. There is a lair for every beast, a spiel for every part of the tent. Steps up, steps down– Hurry! Hurry!–a very strange circus tent that provides the setting for the fish from Dr. Lao's fishbowl, not in the book, but in the movie an excuse for some animation when it grows to the size of the sea serpent advertised. The book ends with the story of Woldercan (below), but the movie has a showdown with villain Clint Stark's henchmen that burns the tent.
Place Number 7: Woldercan
Woldercan was a city dominated by a vengeful god in Finney's Circus, and now, in the movie, destroyed by improbable cataclysms. In both the movie and the book, Woldercan is shown as if unfolding outside as the rear of the tent rolls up, but in the movie the people of the city look like the people of Abalone, and they are led astray by a man who looks like Stark. In the book they are threatened by starvation and flock to the temple, where a dispute over which virgin to sacrifice leads to the deaths of three people—not the whole city. In the movie the story of Woldercan becomes the turning point in the Stark v. Abalone battle.
The author, courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections
As I think of it, the movie was funny although not Finney, worth seeing for the performances of Randall and Barbara Eden (Angela), the jokes and pokes at westerns—oh, and don't forget the surrealism. Go see this circus when it comes to town.
And now for a little catalog. Finney put one at the end of his story, so I thought I'd put just a short one in:
Plots & bits interposed in Finney's tale:
romance of Angela & Ed
politics of Clint Stark v. Abalone, including meetings, printshop destruction
Lao's interruption of beating of George who is supposed to be a Navajo (Indians from Northern Arizona) played by a Lakota (Plains) Indian
inflation of sea monster
Lao's trick of lighting his thumb
Lao's trick of speaking any dialect, not just perfect English v. Chinee American stereotypical dialect.
Men-like creatures not in book:
abominable snowman (screenwriters' solution to the book's Russian v. bear problem)
Mike (Angela's son)
Clint Stark
cowboy muscle and snark
Merlin the magician (Apollonius was the magician in the book)
Ed Cunningham (Angela's honey and editor of the newspaper)
Woman-like creatures not in book:
Angela's mother-in-law
Ending as it began
As for Laozi (not pronounced LOWzee), he was last seen riding into the west, but in the 6th century BC that was on a water buffalo. On the MGM lot in 1963 it was on a donkey, and in the direction of some cardboard saguaros. Or, as the movie's Dr. Lao (pronounced LOW) would say, "Hello. Goodbye. Thank you."
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
As creators and Hollywood producers have found, horror is a versatile complementary genre that has been instrumental to the fear factor within thrillers, the stark human experience in film noir, and the complex depth of character behind a compelling villain. Recently, the genre has been going through a bit of a self-imposed revolution as it moves away from late 1800s and early 1900s stock-stories to pair off with 1950s science fiction literature such as John Wyndham's book The Day of the Triffids. Comedy has increasingly been a partnered with horror, as in The Tingler (1959), the self-aware movie The Comedy of Terrors (January 1964), and the upcoming freaky-family sitcom The Addams Family.
Those who have made a name for themselves as character actors within horror (Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Peter Cushing, and of course Vincent Price) are more and more finding themselves in roles that are written to be the very embodiments of the characters they were initially typecast as. While they take on these roles with flair and aplomb, seeing them act outside of their comfortable and accommodating niches is an exciting opportunity for their fans. This month the debonair gentleman-villain/tragic aristocrat character actor Vincent Price was given the opportunity to showcase his acting talent in the newly released film, The Last Man on Earth, a film that promised to be a stark departure from his previous roles.
Based on the 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The Last Man on Earth follows the depressing life of Robert Morgan (played by Vincent Price) after a deadly plague sweeps the planet, turning infected people and animals into shambling, blood thirsty vampire ghouls. Even with the book's heavy reliance on internal dialogue and the writing's somewhat disjointed flow, a brilliant movie adaptation of I Am Legend would be entirely possible in the hands of a succinct screenwriter, a brooding leading actor, and a director capable of bringing severe emotional distress to the screen. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the talented team behind Last Man, none of these elements quite linked up with one another. The result is severely disappointing.
What Happened?
Robert Morgan was once a scientist working to find a cure to the plague creeping across the globe. But when the disease took his neighbors, his fellow scientists, then his child and finally his wife, Robert found himself alone with the terrible burden of quite possibly being the last human being alive.
Boarding up his house and festooning it with garlic strands, crosses and mirrors, Robert whiles away his evenings making stakes and farming garlic as the zombie-like vampires beat away at the outside of his house. Alcohol, records, books and home videos are some comfort, but also stand as constant reminders of the civilization he is now bereft of. During the day when the vampires seek shelter from the sun Morgan methodically sweeps the area to hunt them down, stake them, load them into his station wagon and drive the bodies out to an ever burning plague pit.
After three years of this grim routine Robert happens to come across a woman named Ruth Collins (played by Franca Bettoia) who is out walking in the sunlight. He chases her down and brings her back to his home. Robert soon deduces that she is one of the infected, but comes to find out that the vampire disease has been contained with a drug that must be taken regularly lest the victim lose their sanity. She tells him that she was sent to spy on him by order of the new society of vampires she belongs to. The group intends to find a way to take revenge on Robert for killing many of their number as they hid from the sun. She explains to him that he is the new monster in this world, killing during the day while the new norm sleep.
After a short altercation Ruth becomes unconscious. While she is out Robert filters Ruth's blood through his own body via a makeshift dialysis setup, effectively curing her of the vampirism. But Robert's discovery of a cure is too little too late. As Ruth and Robert come to realize the miracle that has taken place a vampire breaks into the house and bites Ruth, effectively ending her brief return to full humanity. Just then black vans full of heavily armed vampires roll up and begin to slaughter the feral ghouls stalking around Robert's property. Their mission is to exterminate Robert, just as he has been doing to any sleeping vampires he has come across. Fleeing the house and running into a church, Robert is pursued and fatally wounded. Spitting venom and insults at the vampires, Robert crumples on the steps to the pulpit and dies as Ruth looks on. The church begins to fill with worshipers as Ruth walks out. She comforts a crying child saying that there is nothing to be afraid of anymore, and then the film fades to black.
What went wrong
To preface my oncoming analysis of The Last Man on Earth, I wholeheartedly believe that a movie adaptation of a book is not obligated to be a carbon copy of its source material. Movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Most Dangerous Game (1932) prove this well, both of which were wonderful films even though the creators took liberties with the characters, scenes, and atmosphere of the literature they were based on. That being said, given what the writers of Last Man chose to keep from Matheson's novel and what they chose to tweak, the movie just doesn't come across as raw, desperate and angry as it should be. The blame lies primarily in the music, and as much as it pains me to say this, in the casting of Vincent Price as Robert Morgan.
Upon hearing the opening trills of the music, heralding the credits to begin rolling onto the screen, I felt something was wrong. The music blares loudly over the words with a cliché cacophony of horns and violin before switching to a melodramatic lilting tune, then back to clashing force full of a powerful energy completely at odds with the fragile looking, depressed Vincent Price mulling around his boarded up home. The musical scoring doesn't get any better from there. At times when the audience is supposed to feel the tedium of Robert Morgan's existence there is music that makes you feel as if his daily routine is full of exciting danger. In actuality it is full of mundane horror as he forces himself awake day after day with only the acts of eating, repairing his home, and exterminating the sleeping vampires (men and women alike) to keep his mind occupied.
Most insultingly the entrance of Franca Bettoia's character brings with it a strange romantic subplot that seems to come out of the blue with little buildup and conflicting sincerity. The interplay between Price and Bettoia takes on a very jarring fast succession of shoulder shaking, menacing staring, hysterics and hugging. During all of this the score flips wildly between lovely crescendos and stricken horns blares and drum rolls to show betrayal and hurt. It's reminiscent of the sweeping operatic film scoring common of old horror films from Universal Pictures, but feels very out of date for a modern movie that is supposed to be seething with barely repressed despair and scant few moments of actual hope.
Finally, the visual reason the film fails to emote properly comes to rest on the unfortunately sub-par performance of Vincent Price. For a character who is fast coming to believe that he is the last uninfected human on Earth, Price plays the role of Robert Morgan with too much restraint. Robert Morgan is a man with a young family taken by the plague and who lived to see his wife and neighbors come after him from beyond the grave. Such a character should be deeply shaken and depressed as he goes through his remaining days with monotony and acceptance of a life alongside the undead.
Price, however, carries himself like someone who is physically fragile and emotionally cold. His rounded back and stiff-armed walk speak of a man afraid he might break a bone if he moves with more than a shuffle, as opposed to a barely middle-aged man with a heavy burden on his shoulders but a determination to survive. His emotional connection to the other characters in the story seems very distant as well. One could argue that this was a fault of the script, but when the audience sees him chasing the van carrying his still living daughter to the plague pit to be burned, Price is turned away from her body with little effort. He barely struggles at all, and walks away in a daze too easily for a man supposed to be a hysterical, grieving father.
At one point in the story Price's character encounters a ragged dog out in the daylight. His disappointment at learning that a wounded animal he brings home with him is infected is minimal, and in the next scene we see him burying a small bundle with a stake in it. There is little remorse in his posture or expression, even though he is burying the first living creature he has had contact with in three years (before he meets Ruth). Vincent Price just can't do desperation. He can emote long suffering sadness well as is evident in the scene when he visits his wife's tomb and when he is watching home movies and begins to laugh before breaking down into tears, but he just can't seem to nail down what it must be like for a character as raw, desperate and hungry for social contact as Robert Morgan.
The verdict
Sadly, this particular movie is only worthy of a two and a half star rating.
In terms of its competence as a whole, The Last Man on Earth is a solid enough science-fiction/horror movie from directors Sidney Salkow and Ubaldo Ragona, and will likely please the casual movie goer looking for a darker story. But given the material it had to work with in I Am Legend, the movie feels flat. Some films are better when you have read the novel beforehand, but this is not one of them. For those who are die hard fans of Vincent Price I would also avoid seeing this movie as it is hardly his best performance. Instead save your money for the upcoming Roger Corman film The Mask of the Red Death in June.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
![[Aug. 7, 1964] Rematch! (<i>Mothra vs. Godzilla</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/640807poster.png?resize=597%2C372&ssl=1)
![[July 26, 1964] Yesterday's Tomorrows (<i>First Men in the Moon</i> and Other Steam Science Fiction Movies)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/first-men-in-the-moon-trailer-title.jpg?resize=640%2C272&ssl=1)
The super-submarine Nautilus; a thing of beauty.
Old Blue Eyes in a tiny role as a piano player.
![[July 10, 1964] Greetings from the Red Planet (The Movie, <i>Robinson Crusoe on Mars</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/640710b.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[July 8, 1964] The Immortal Supervillain: The Remarkable Forty-Two Year Career of Dr. Mabuse](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Testament-1933.jpg?resize=386%2C372&ssl=1)
![[June 24, 1964] Death Has No Master (Roger Corman's <i>The Masque of the Red Death</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/masqueposter.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[June 10, 1964] What washed up (<i>Horror at Party Beach</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/640610horror.jpg?resize=459%2C372&ssl=1)
![[June 4, 1964] Weird Menace and Villainy in the London Fog: The West German Edgar Wallace Movies](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/640604The_Green_Archer.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[Apr. 4, 1964] A taste of brine (the book and movie, <i>The Amphibian</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/640403AM_1.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[March 31, 1964] 7 Faces and 7 Places (The movie, <i>7 Faces of Dr. Lao</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/640331a7_Faces_of_Doctor_Lao_.jpg?resize=213%2C325&ssl=1)
![[March 19, 1964] When Vampires Rule the World (Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow's <i>The Last Man on Earth</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/640319lastmanposter.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
