Celebrate the Drive-In Week: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

Celebrate the Drive-In is a tribute to a beloved venue of the past. During it's heyday, a trip to the drive-in was one of my favorite things, both on the rare occasions as a child, and in my early adulthood. This blog is going to celebrate Drive-In Day (Jun 6) with a series of movies that I was too young to see (or in a couple of cases, not even born yet) that I wish I could've experienced in a drive-in. Keep coming back for the entire week as there will be one per day for the duration.

 

Don't you just hate it when a magician shrinks your fiancee to the size of a GI Joe doll? Presenting the next Coming Attraction! The 7th Voyage of Sinbad!

 

A few years ago I covered a couple of movies featuring an adventurer named Sinbad (no relation to the African American comedian...), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Both of those I was fortunate enough to have seen at a drive-in theater when I was still in my teens. As I related in the review (and you can follow the link if you want to read the whole thing yourself), the story of Sinbad and his adventures captivated me. A lot of that had to do with the stop-motion special effects of Ray Harryhausen.

Those films came out in the 70's. But those were not the first pairing of Sinbad the Sailor with the special effects expertise of Ray Harryhausen. (And actually there was an even earlier film, Sinbad the Sailor from 1947, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr in the title role, but that was just a "plain Jane" swords and sandals pirate melodrama, lacking the monsters that populated the Harryhausen films). The best Sinbad movies were these later epics which added some fantastic creatures for the pirate to battle.

Sinbad had his origins in classic literature, specifically a book called One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. They were originally published in English in the early 1700's, but the history dates even before then. The collection was of stories and legends that had been collected Middle Eastern folktales circa the 8th to the 13th century. 

The story behind the collection of tales, if you are not familiar, focuses on a girl in a sultan's harem. The sultan would have sex with a girl in his harem and then have her executed the next morning. Scheherezade, one his girls, told stories to the sultan each night, always leaving a cliffhanger at the end of the night, thus postponing her execution. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and the tale of Aladdin were two of these stories, and you have probably heard of several others. 

Sinbad was a hero that ended up having seven classic voyages, although none of the classic films were actually directly based on the print stories. Instead, the films were more or less original tales inspired by the adventures of the literary character. I suggest you find a good copy of the book and read some of those stories however. They are entertaining in their own right. Sir Richard Burton (the British adventurer from the 1800's, not the actor) has the best version.  

 

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958): 

The film opens as Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews) and his crew are sailing to Baghdad. They have been looking for a place to resupply their ship, as they have apparently run out of food. Sinbad, the heir apparent to the Caliph of Baghdad, is on his way back with the princess of Chandra, Parisa (Kathryn Grant). The imminent marriage between the two serves two purposes; one they are truly in love, but also a marriage between the two will be able to stave off a war between the two countries.

 

They  make landfall on the island of Colossa, where they encounter a giant Cyclops, as well as a magician who has been stranded there, with his magic lamp. The magician, Sokurah (Torin Thatcher), has some incredible magical powers, plus he has the genie in the lamp (Richard Eyer), but seems to be unable to get off the island by himself...

 

Cyclops

 

Sokurah

Genie

As Sinbad, Sokurah and his crew try to make their escape, Sokurah loses the lamp, which is recovered by the Cyclops. When Sinbad finally gets to Baghdad, Sokurah does everything he can think of to try to get the Caliph, Sinbad's father (Alec Mango), to authorize and finance a trip back to Colossa to get the lamp again. Not all of his efforts are above board... He finally uses some of that (seemingly) elusive  magic that he is capable of to shrink the princess to the size of a porcelain doll. 

 

 

Then he manages to convince the Caliph that some other magic has caused it, but that he, Sokurah, can reverse the spell. The only thing is, he needs a part of the shell from an egg of a roc, and that creature can only be found on...wait for it....Colossa.

 

 

Due to the fact that most of Sinbad's crew is not willing to go back with him to Colossa, he has to get a crew of prisoners from the local jail. And you can see what's coming. That crew of reprobates is not interested in fulfilling their mission, probably because they know if they succeed they'll just be back in prison when they get back. So they mutiny. But forces beyond their control end up with them back on Colossa anyway.

On the island Sinbad and company divide forces. One group of them find the Cyclops' stashed treasure trove, and of course, lose track of the original mission. While they are overcome by the greed inspired by their discovery, the Cyclops captures some of them, including Sinbad. It is up to the miniature Parisa to help free them, and at one point she enters the lamp and meets the young boy who is the genie. The genie only wants one thing in life, to be free from the curse of imprisonment in the lamp. Parisa promises to help. (It's a sure bet Sokurah isn't going to be so magnanimous...)

Since Sinbad holds all the cards (read: the lamp), he has the necessary motivation to get Sokurah to reverse the curse. But Sokurah is not going to go so gentle into that good night. He kidnaps the princess and takes her to his cave, which is guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. The genie helps Sinbad get by the dragon, and confronts Sokurah, making him follow through with the promise to reverse the curse. 

 

 

Ultimately there is a battle between the Cyclops and the dragon, and wonder of wonder, the good guys end up winning. (Did you expect it to end any other way?) 

 

And Parisa follows through on her promise to help the genie escape his bondage. 

 

Throughout the film there are several scenes that involve other Harryhausen creations. In one, Sokurah turns one of Parisa's handmaidens into a serpent woman.

Serpent woman

 

In another, Sinbad does battle with a skeleton (which might be confused with a similar battle in Jason and the Argonauts, although in that movie it was an entire contingent of skeletons).  

 

The 7th Voyage skeleton

Jason vs. the skeletons

 

 

 

 

 

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is one of those rare movies that garners a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Most critics agree that it is the best of the Sinbad movies. Roger Ebert, although not a reviewer at the time it came out (he was still in high school), reminisces in an article that it was one of his favorites. It made a fairly decent profit, managing to get a little over $3 million in tickets sales against a budget of only $650 thousand.  

You can't go wrong watching any of the movies that Ray Harryhausen was involved in, whether it be the Sinbad movies or Jason and the Argonauts, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers or even Valley of the Gwangi . Like I say, the stop motion animation that he helped advance may seem quaint to people who grew up on CGI, but I can't name one movie in Harryhausen's oeuvre that is not worth watching multiple times. 

It's hard to believe he was never nominated for an Oscar, although he did get an honorary award in 1992. How he was passed over for a even a nomination nod for the 1981 film, Clash of the Titans, is a mystery, although he probably would have ended up losing to Raiders of the Lost Ark, since that film was one of the darlings at the Academy Awards that year... Especially effective, visually, was his Medusa. 

 

 

Realizing after writing this review that Harryhausen has been neglected in my 10 year span of writing, I am going to start posting a few more movies of his over the next few months. Just gotta find the time.  I have a LOT of projects going on at this time. But since I am retired, there is no excuse of "I gotta work"... 

See you next time, folks. Drive safely. And don't pick up any suspicious looking magicians... Come back tomorrow for The Born Losers!

Quiggy

 

 

 

Blood Drive

 

 

 

This is my entry in the 4th Annual Spooky Classic Movie Blogathon hosted by Hoofers and Honeys.

 

 

 

 

 

The Midnite Drive-In has played host to quite a few movies of varying caliber from the 1950's over it's ten year existence. The '50's. in the opinion of your humble blogger, is they heyday of the essence of what I term as the "drive-in movie".  Elsewhere on this blog I have mentioned that the drive-in was essentially a venue for low quality sci-fi, horror and motorcycle films, the kind of stuff that the average 20-25 year old male drive-in patron would be enticed to see. Below is a typical newspaper ad for films discussed in this entry. Note the draw of "All New! Never anything like them before!" Not entirely true really. Many of the drive-in features had the same recurring plots, but that doesn't mean they didn't each have some entertainment value in their own right.

 

 

 

The year 1958 had lots of movies like the ones previously mentioned in the opening of last week's entry, the 10th Anniversary piece. If you read that piece, you know what you are in for here, because these movies feature the same "high" standards of quality film making that the three movies featured in that post had. Of course, I'm not so isolated that I don't know that some of you probably won't find these two films in your own bailiwick. But they do have their own following, even so. Years ago I gave up the hope of getting my sister to watch these kinds of movies. But some of my friends really get a kick out dancing under the limbo bar required to sit through them, and those are my kind of people...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blood of the Vampire (1958):

 

"The most loathsome scourge ever to afflict this earth was that of the Vampire.  Nourishing itself on warm living blood,  the only known method of ending a vampire's reign of terror was to drive a wooden stake through its heart."

 

As the credits roll, the opening features a ritual, circa 1874, as a corpse is being buried. But prior to the burial a stake is driven through it's heart. After everyone else has left the scene, the gravedigger begins the process of competing the burial. But he is stopped by a hunchback (Victor Maddern), who kills him. 

 

 

 

The next scene features a pub in riotous gaiety as the hunchback enters. With every suspicious and wary eye on him he approaches a man and gestures that the man must leave with him. It turns out that the man had been previously hired to do a heart transplant on a body. As if you couldn't guess, it's the body of the grave victim that the hunchback had rescued from being buried. The man, a surgeon, completes his task, but makes the grievous error of demanding more money, with the threat of exposure of the illicit activity, and the hunchback dispatches him, too.

 

The scene shifts to a courtroom, 6 years later, where Dr. John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is convicted of having committed "malpractice leading to manslaughter" of a man, through supposed "incompetency" as a surgeon. His grievous error involved him trying to do an early form of blood transfusion, but the patient died. He claims innocence and requests that the court contact a fellow doctor in Vienna to corroborate his testimony. Unfortunately a letter from said doctor claims he has no knowledge of Pierre, and requests that the courts give him the maximum penalty available. He is sentenced to a penal colony, but someone has used his influence to get Pierre committed, instead, to a prison for the criminally insane.

 

 

 

No, Pierre himself is not insane, but he has a knowledge of certain medical processes, including his experimental work on blood transfusions, a new idea on the frontier of the medical community at the time.  This reason is why the director of the prison has manipulated the system to get Pierre committed to his prison. 

 

 

You see, the director of the prison is, (surprise, surprise), the character that the hunchback rescued from being buried and had the hapless surgeon perform a heart transplant on in the first part of the picture. The prison director, now going by the name of Dr. Callistratus (Donald Wolfit), is being kept alive by blood transfusions. The poor denizens of the prison cells are the unwilling blood donors.

 

 

Pierre is put in a cell with fellow inmate Kurt (William Devlin). (Devlin looks a heck of a lot like The Howling Man from the Twilight Zone episode, but it's not the same guy...) 

 

Kurt tells Pierre that there are some strange things going on in the prison, that he, Pierre, is in "the bottomless pit of Hell itself". Kurt later tells Pierre that many, if not all, of the prisoners are there through the manipulations of forces that the outside world is helpless to combat. For instance, like Pierre, Kurt was also innocent of the crime that got him convicted. Kurt tells him that once Pierre realizes that no help from the outside is going to be of any use, perhaps they can help each other.

 

Meanwhile, on the outside, Pierre's fiancee, Madeleine (Barbara Shelley) tries her best to find a way to prove Pierre is an innocent man.  In doing so she contacts Dr. Meinster (Henry Vidon), who insists that he had never received any contact from the courts or the Prison Commission. He tells the head of the Prison Commission, Auron (Bryan Coleman), that he is going to reopen the investigation into Pierre's trial. But Auron was not the person he should have told this. Because it was Auron who, working with Callistratus, managed to get Pierre convicted and also sentenced to Callistratus' prison. He also sent the forged letter that denied any knowledge of Pierre from Dr. Meinster...

 

 

Auron informs Callistratus that the Commission has ordered that Pierre be released, but Callistratus tells Pierre a different story: that the Commission found no evidence that would overturn his conviction. Meanwhile Pierre has come across some clue as to what is going on in the prison when a patient is discovered whom Callistratus is draining his blood. The truth of the sinister goings on is that Callistratus is draining blood from his prisoners in order to have the blood injected into himself, to keep him alive.

 

 

 

Eventually Pierre has had enough of this folderol and works with Karl to escape the prison. Unfortunately Callistratus is wise to the escape and Karl ends up supposedly killed.  Pierre comes away from the attempted escape alive, but Callistratus rigs the report of the attempt to read that Pierre had died in the escape attempt, too.  Back at home, fiancee Madeleine is suspicious of this report and manages to get a job at the prison as Callistratus' housekeeper. (Callistratus has as high turnover rate for housekeepers as he does for inmates...) As would be expected, Madeleine runs into Pierre in her duties as housekeeper, which not only is not good for job security, but also not a conducive atmosphere for continuing to exist on the planet. 

  

If you've noticed by now, there is no "vampire" in this film, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. No fangs, no midnight rendezvous with dulcet dames, no avoiding direct sunlight or religious icons, none of the trappings of the vampire trope one comes to expect. This is more of an intense psychological horror, with more emphasis on science than any supernatural horror. The film seems awfully similar to something that might have been produced by the Hammer Studios, although the Hammer name is not associated with it. 

 

In actuality, the scriptwriter, Jimmy Sangster, did have some work with the early Hammer films this movie seems to emulate before this film, and continued to crank out stuff for Hammer afterwards.  The film actually seems to be more of a science-fiction film as opposed to a horror film, what with all the "new" science of blood transfusions, and the added emphasis on discovering why certain victims' blood are more harmful than good. (In case you are one of those people who slept through biology class, you can't mix A+ blood with B- blood... it can be deadly.)  

 

Despite that, the film is intriguing in it's own right.  Donald Wolfit, the sinister Dr. Callistratus. is one of the better actors in the film. Apparently towards the end of his career he had to take on many roles in the motion picture industry, including The Hands of Orlac and Dr. Crippen, a significant step down from his years as the leader of an acting troupe that did touring productions of Shakespeare. Most of the other actors a pretty much run-of-the-mill type. Vincent Ball, who played Dr. Pierre, probably had the more prolific career, although much of his output was in the realm of second or third tier credits.

 

If you like the old Hammer Films horror output, it's not a bad imitation. It drags in some points, especially when Callistratus and Pierre start talking about the difficulties of blood type incompatibilities.  And if you can get over the disappointment that there is no actual "vampire"... 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Monster on the Campus (1958): 

 

You could be forgiven if you thought you were going to see a light hearted family movie with the opening scene. With a lilting happy score, Jimmy (Troy Donahue), drives up in a van marked "Dunsfield University Science Department" to his fraternity house to pick up Samson, a German Shepherd. 

 

 

 

He then drives to the university, where Dr. Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) is creating a mask of one of his assistants, Madeline (Joanna Moore), who is also Blake's fiancee, to be used to represent the "modern woman" display of an exhibit on the evolution of man.

 

 

 

Blake, a bit of a pessimist, expresses his opinion that the human race may be doomed if they can't figure out how to control "the animal-like instincts from our ancestors". (We seem to have survived for thousands of  years, so far, doc, but maybe we ARE just around the corner from self-destruction...)  

 

Jimmy shows up with a coelacanth, a fossil from the bygone prehistoric age. A coelacanth is a prehistoric fish, BTW.  

 

 

 

Some of the water that was in the crate leaks out on the ground and Samson licks at it. Jimmy pulls him off of the puddle, but it is too late for Samson. He transforms from a docile dog to a vicious mutt that tries to attack Madeline and does attack Jimmy.  

 

They take Samson to another doctor, Dr. Oliver Cole (Whit Bissell) who tells Blake to keep him under observation to see if he has developed rabies.  He wants Blake to get a sample of the dog's saliva for further investigation. While having Samson under observation, Blake notices Samson's teeth, which oddly are a throwback to an evolutionary earlier form of what we now call a "dog". 

 

 

When Blake tries to move the coelacanth to the refrigeration to preserve it he accidentally cuts his hand on it's teeth. Then, while moving the crate, his grip on it slips and he ends up dunking his hand into the water (the same water that Samson tried to drink...)

 

He starts to feel woozy, so Molly (Helen Westcott), Dr. Cole's assistant who happens to be helping Blake, offers to take him home. When they arrive, Molly finds Blake has passed out in the passenger seat, so she goes in to his house to call for help. But she is attacked by some creature we can't see. Meanwhile Madeline is waiting on Blake to show up for a prearranged date. When he is still a no-show, she firsts checks the lab to see if he lost track of time and is still working, but with no sign of him there, she heads over to his house.  What she finds there is that the house is in a shambles, as if some wild creature had gone berserk in it. Which apparently it has... 

 

 

 

 

She finds Donald out on the back yard lawn, apparently a little groggy. She finds Molly dead, also, hanging from a tree. When the police investigate, naturally Blake's story of being unconscious and not remembering anything after getting in the car with Molly at the lab becomes a little suspicious. Plus the fact that they found a tie clip which Blake admits is his in the grip of dead Molly's hand.  But to cast suspicion on those conclusions are some hand prints and fingerprints that the investigators find which are not only not Blake's but unlike any they have ever seen before.

 

 

 

Back at the lab, Samson appears to have lost the characteristics of a throwback that Blake had observed earlier and has reverted to its former normal self. Even though Blake swears he had pointed the dog's canine teeth out to Molly, since she was the only other person to have seen them, Blake feels inclined to admit to Cole that he probably imagined it, although he doesn't really believe that. 

 

The lieutenant in charge of the murder investigation, Lt. Stevens (Judson Pratt) shows up, inquiring whether Blake had any enemies that could enlighten the investigation, but Blake is like a saint as far as he himself is concerned. Lt. Stevens reveals an interesting fact in the murder investigation; Molly did not die of injuries, she died of fright. 

 

Several strange events happen over the next few hours, including a situation where a dragonfly comes into the lab and is checking out the coelacanth. Later, you guessed it, the dragonfly ends up being reverted to a form of it's ancient biological ancestor, and becomes several times it's normal size, and ends up attacking Blake and Jimmy and his girlfriend. (The two had come to collect Jimmy's dog). Samson had reverted back to his normal self, so is no longer a threat. And, eventually, that dragonfly reverts back to its normal state.

 

 

 

Apparently that coelacanth, or at least the water it was in, has some kind of power to cause whoever comes into contact with it to become a savage ancestor of it's evolutionary past. At one point it is revealed that the coelacanth had been subjected to gamma radiation, ostensibly to help keep it preserved. (Ah! The dangers of the atomic age!  In the 50's, Hollywood's biggest bugaboo was the new and mysterious atomic science...)  As it slowly dawns on Blake that all this regression into primitive state is connected with contact with the blood of the irradiated coelacanth, he decides to performs an experiment to prove his theory.

 

 

 

It all comes to a head when Madeline and his colleagues and the police come to a cabin where Blake has gone to perform an experiment on himself to prove his theory. Then, as with any good man who realizes that he himself is unwittingly responsible for the havoc that has been caused, he arranges it so the police can shoot him while he is still in the regressive state.

 

I saw another movie a few years ago, (one which I am still getting around to reviewing, BTW), called The Monolith Monsters. (And if that title is highlighted at some future point, you'll know I finally did it.) That movie, like this one, has what may seem like a fairly ridiculous plot, but it is in the execution of the plot and in the acting of the cast that makes the whole thing remarkably well done.  

 

One of the reasons this movie turns out so well, in my opinion, is that it was directed by... Jack Arnold.  Many films that Arnold had a hand in became classics of the genre, but if these films had been in the hands of some other director I doubt they would have turned out as well. That's because Arnold was a stickler for making the science in these films plausible. You actually believe there could be a remnant of a prehistoric age living in the jungles of Brazil in The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  The idea that a lab developed nutrient to help the human populace in need could, in it's undeveloped stages, cause a lab spider to grow to enormous size is not entirely unbelievable in Tarantula! And, despite the strangeness of the idea, a strange mist could actually cause a man to shrink in size in The Incredible Shrinking Man becomes fairly realistic.

 

The reviews of the day considered the film "very good". It is only in retrospect of time that the film has gone down in it's  reception. The modern public, as evidenced by another review website, the Popcornmeter, only gives the movie a 27% rating.  A lot of the bad reviews seem to center on the makeup used for the monster, as it is compared to the makeup in The Wolf Man and found wanting. Even it's director was not entirely enamored by his final product. An interview with Arnold. quoted in a Wikipedia article, claims that he "really didn't hate it, but [he] didn't think it was up to the standards of other films" he had done.

 

Other than the somewhat overemphasized philosophical sub context, that man needs to curb his irrational aggressive nature before he becomes no better than his prehistoric ancestors in the emotional state, the movie is well worth checking out, in my opinion.

 

Well, folks, that wraps it up for today. Time to crank up the old Plymouth and head home.  Drive safely.

 

Quiggy

 

 

 

10th Anniversary of The Midnite Drive-In

 

Well, folks, your humble(??) blogger has achieved yet another milestone! 

Friday marks the 10th anniversary of this blog.  (As to why today, instead of Friday for this post, I have another entry already committed to post on that day, and I didn't want to overwhelm you with multiple posts...) 

Back in October of 2015 I came across a blogathon: The Universal Pictures Blogathon. That blogathon was hosted by Silver Scenes, and it inspired me to create this blog with the intention of delving into the kind of shock and schlock of the old drive-in theaters of yesteryear.  A daunting task in itself, I admit, but made even more daunting by the fact that I kept straying from my original goal.

True, there were plenty of low budget trips into the kind of stuff that both my idol, Joe Bob Briggs, and I love.  But often I would stray into mainstream fare, too (what Joe Bob referred to as "indoor bullstuff").  And worse, between late 2020 and early 2023 the blog was pretty much in idle. I managed only 4 posts during that period. Blame it on COVID. But in late 2023,  I made an effort to revive it. And this time I have (mostly) kept to that theme of drive-in shlock.

When I realized that the 10th anniversary of the blog was coming up, I decided, much as I did with the 5th anniversary, to try to find a suitable set of movies that would exhibit the heart of the drive-in experience.  So, I browsed some pictures of old drive-in movie newspaper ads to inspire me.  Unfortunately, many of the ones that appealed to me included one movie I had already covered, and I was loathe to rehash it just to get to the other movie(s).

But finally I found one that had three new movies for the blog. And after watching them, I thought they really were meant to be for this anniversary celebration, given that I am trying to return to cheesy schlock.  All three were released in a landmark year, 1958.  The three movies in question, reviewed below, were: Night of the Blood Beast, The Brain Eaters, and The Screaming Skull.

Among the other great classic movies released that year were: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, The Blob,  The Fly, Frankenstein's Daughter, From Earth to the Moon, I Bury the Living,  I Married a Monster from Outer Space, It! Terror from Beyond Space, Missile to the Moon, Queen of Outer Space, The Space Children, Teenage Caveman and War of the Satellites. 

You could also add to that list Attack of the Puppet People, Blood of the Vampire, Colossus of New York, The Crawling Eye, Curse of the Faceless Man, Earth vs. The Spider,  Frankenstein 1970, The Lost Missile, Macabre, Monster on the Campus, She Demons, Space Master X-7, Terror from the Year 5000, and The Thing That Couldn't Die.

(Oh, yeah... The year also saw the release of A Night to Remember, Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Damn Yankees, Gigi, I Want to Live!, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, King Creole, The Last Hurrah, No Time for Sergeants, The Old Man and the Sea, Separate Tables, South Pacific and Teacher's Pet...  if you're into that kind of stuff... But you are going to wait a loooong time if you expect to see most of them being shown at The Midnite Drive-In...)

So now the management presents you with a triple feature.  A trio of movies that will have you on the edge of your seat.  A trilogy of films that will make your hair stand on end. A trifecta of cinema from Spook Central. In other words...

An event to give you THE SCREAMING MEE MEES!

The horror genre would be seriously deficient without the efforts of American International Pictures. Elsewhere on The Midnite Drive-In, I have given bits and pieces of the history of the company, so I won't rehash it here. (Feel free to click on "AIP" link in The Greatest Movie Studio of All Time (American International Pictures) section of the home page. You'll find every AIP movie I have reviewed there. Or you could just click that highlighted link in the text above...) All of the movies today were a product of AIP.

 

Night of the Blood Beast (1958):

Directed by Roger Corman, one of the first things you notice in the credits is it was written by Gene Corman. That's right, the director's brother. Boy, Roger knew how to save money in more ways than one... Along with a newcomer, Martin Varno, who did most of the screenplay credit, this script, which was originally titled Creature from Galaxy 27 went into production in early 1958, with a 7 day shooting schedule and a budget of $68,000.

The film starts out like it might be a science fiction movie as opposed to a horror movie because we get a scene of a rocket ship about to blast off into space. After some fairly cheap special effects during the opening credits (except for the scene where it blasts off from Earth, the ship looks like cartoon drawings, rather than models), the film wastes no time in getting to the meat of the story.

 

 

The astronaut, Major John Corcoran, has successfully completed his space launch, but on trying to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere he experiences a malfunction. Neither the rockets nor the emergency chute that would slow down the space ship seem to be working and the rocket crashes to the Earth, killing Corcoran.

At the scene of the crash two fellow scientists inspect the wreckage. They are informed by higher ups to clean up the wreck site, but there are some strange things around. For one, one of the scientists, Donna Bixby (Georgianna Carter) says that the wreck has traces of some strange mud composition. And when other scientists show up, the other scientist who was first on the scene, Dave Randall (Ed Nelson), points out to the newcomers that the hole in the space ship seems to have gotten much larger. (Not to mention the fact that there appears to have been some invisible creature or something moving through the underbrush, unnoticed by either of the first scientists...) 

 

Coming up on the scene are fellow scientists, Dr. Alex Wyman (Tyler McVey), Steve Dunlap (John Baer) and Julie Benson (Angela Greene). Julie has the added interest in the events because she was engaged to be married to Corcoran sometime after his return. Dr. Wyman notices something strange when he examines Corcoran's body. After 3 hours since the crash there is no sign of rigor mortis in Corcoran's body! Wyman says they are going to take Corcoran's body back to the lab to continue his examination.

At the lab Wyman is a bit perplexed. Corcoran's body is almost assuredly dead, but the expected after effects of the deterioration of his body issue is still not there. 

 

Also, all communication with the outside world seems to be stopped. They can't raise HQ or the Air Force or anybody on the short wave radio. While the body is still being examined, with Wyman finding a mysterious scar on Corcoran's body, Dave heads outside to see if he can find a problem with the communications tower. While out there he is attacked by a mysterious creature coming from the nearby woods.

Although Dave survives, things continue to seem to be going wrong at the station. It appears that someone, or something, wants to isolate the station. Both vehicles that could be used to go get help have been disabled somehow. There is a magnetic force field surrounding the area that is the cause of the malfunctions of the radio and the vehicles... 

And Corcoran's body continues to act weird. Now it seems like his blood pressure is back to normal for a body that should be alive, not dead. Plus a blood sample taken reveals that it has, not the normal two blood cells, white and red, but a third type of blood cell that seems to be attacking the other two. And there seems to be alien embryos growing inside of him. At this point, most people would probably say there is too much weird s**t going on here and abandon the base, but these are scientists who have more curiosity than prudence in their make-up.

The crew decide that they have to stay at the station and keep watch, but things go drastically wrong. Something kills Wyman, taking Wyman's head, and (apparently), Corcoran's body. (Because, after all, Corcoran is dead, so he couldn't move himself... or...) Well, it turns out that Corcoran has come back to life, which can't happen, but it did.  He seems to be normal at first, curious about what is going on. But gradually it becomes apparent that some alien creature has a telepathic communication going on with Corcoran. (OK, so it is science fiction after all..)

 

 

The alien finally makes it's appearance and Corcoran pleads with his friends not to kill it. Why? Because the creature is not a threat it only wants to help the human race... (Yeah, so do any number of alien races who supposedly come in peace...) Corcoran (or maybe the alien communicating telepathically through him) tries to plead with his friends to give the alien a chance to explain itself. ("Can't we all just get along?" and all that folderol...) 

Well, as it turns out, the plan to "save" the human race is to actually destroy it and replace it with the aliens. Corcoran realizes this and realizes that the only way to stop this plan is to kill himself, and thus the alien embryos inside him.

 

This is a much better movie than it sounds like, believe me.  While there are some parallels that make it seem like it is sponging off of previous better films, such as The Thing from Another World and even Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the film does have a bit more in it than just a cheesy knockoff. To be fair, it wasn't well received, and some reviews are downright scathing. One reviewer claimed that the alien looked "like the San Diego Chicken after it had been tarred and feathered"and another said that it resembled "a human-sized parrot that had been covered in feces"...  Ouch.

 

 

OK, the alien aside, which admittedly does look kind of ridiculous, the story is pretty good. The creature does resemble a bird man, but that was made necessary because someone in the front office said the original alien's nose looked "too Jewish". The film was not without it's controversy. Martin Varno sued Roger Corman twice over the writing credits. Check out the "WGA arbitration" section of the wikipedia article on the film if you are interested.

 

Aliens come in all sizes, however, as the next feature will prove.

 

 

 

The Brain Eaters (1958):

"A few weeks ago Riverdale, Illinois was just another quiet small town. Then on that Saturday, shortly after midnight, a living nightmare began."

 

And with that not so subtle beginning, the movie jumps right in to the meat of the story.  Two men encounter each other and one bumps in to the other, causing the first man to drop his glass container.  Rather than have a cordial (or maybe not-so-cordial) discussion about the accident, the man carrying the container starts to beat the crap out of the other man.

 

The star and narrator, Glenn (Alan Frost) is traveling with his fiancée, Elaine (Jody Fair), to meet with his father to share the good news about his impending wedding. But they get sidetracked. Something odd is going on up ahead, so the two get out to investigate. While walking through the woods they come upon a couple of dead animals. But the weirdest thing is they discover a cone like object that they don't understand. 

 

 

 

Elaine asks Glenn "What is it?"

Glenn: I don't know. (Which turns out to be an oft repeated phrase....)

The curious object becomes a point of interest in Washington. A senator, Senator Powers (Jack Hill), demands to be apprised of the situation and takes control of the investigation. One wonders how much free time the Senator has if he can go off gallivanting around the country rather than spend time voting in Congress, but this is the movies, so I guess he can vote on his time off...

 

 

 

So off he goes to the site, where the scientist of note investigating this object, Dr. Kettering (Ed Nelson) is finding some intriguing facts. And using some highly questionable methods to do so. (One of the most ridiculous things he does is fire a gun into the interior of the cone. Seems to me that a qualified scientist would realize that that could result in the bullet ricocheting around and ultimately damaging valuable equipment inside, if not actually ricocheting enough to come back out the opening and hitting HIM...)

 

Eventually Kettering clambers inside, but doesn't find anything useful. Meanwhile, Glenn's father, who is coincidentally the mayor of the local town of Riverdale, has returned from a disappearance.  And he is emotionally unstable.  The crew go back to his office to find out what has happened to him. The mayor tries to kill his son and his friends, but he, himself, is killed instead.

 

 

 

After he dies, they inspect the body and find that some parasite has attached itself to the back of his neck. They figure that the parasite had injected some kind of poison that would have eventually killed him if they hadn't shot him. There is something going on with these parasites, but where did they come from?

Eventually they determine that the cone did not come from outer space, but actually came from the interior of the Earth.

 

Seems these parasites are a remnant from an earlier prehistoric age. They are determined to take over the Earth and bring about an age of peace, and their intentions are good (at least to their way of thinking...) The essence of their takeover and their motives is reminiscent of the typical "red scare" movies of the time. (In other words, mankind is diseased and only the parasites can bring about a new age where everything can be fixed, as long as the populace submits to their rule.) One look at these creatures and you'll get the idea that maybe they need to grow a pair before they try taking over the world...

 

 

(No that's not some delicacy from the buffet table at the sushi bar... those are the intelligent parasites...)

 

Of course, the humans don't want to be controlled by the "saviors" and put up a fight.

 

Leonard Nimoy (curiously, credited as Leonard "Nemoy") makes an appearance late in the film as Dr. Cole, a scientist who had disappeared 5 years before. He is alive, but he has been controlled now by the parasites.  (BTW, you might not recognize him, because he is made up to look like an old man. Only his voice is enough to trigger your recognition.) 

 

 

 

The Brain Eaters has one claim to fame in the fact that the producers were sued by Robert A. Heinlein, a science fiction author who found many similarities in the story to his own novel, The Puppet Masters. He got $5,000 dollars in a payoff and one stipulation, that no mention of his name be used in conjunction with the film.  A plan to adapt the novel, The Puppet Masters, to the big screen was jettisoned as a result.  Although, eventually a film version more true to the original novel would be produced in 1994.

 

As this film is also only an hour in length (and even that seems a little long considering), it has some entertainment value.  The suspense is enough to keep you watching, but it suffers from some pretty subpar acting. There are some familiar faces here however, if you watch the same kinds of movies I do. Joanna Lee, who plays Alice, was also in Plan 9 from Outer Space, as Tanna, one of the aliens,. Ed Nelson was a frequent actor in many AIP films, including the first movie in this entry Night of the Blood Beast.  

 

 

 

 

 

The Screaming Skull (1958):

Frightfest Guide to Ghost Movies, by Axelle Carolyn, lists The Screaming Skull as one of it's 200 "must see" ghost movies. She refers to this one as an "atmospheric, yet unevenly paced" picture.  

And, BTW, you can't go wrong if you add the Frightfest Guide series to your reference collection. All of them are not only entertaining in their own right, but excellent go-to guides for the horror genre. As of this writing there are seven books in the series, covering, in order of publication, (with each having "Frightfest Guide to" preceding them) Exploitation Movies, Monster Movies, Ghost Movies, Werewolf Movies, Grindhouse Movies, Vampire Movies and Mad Doctor Movies.

  

The film opens, in the time honored tradition of such exploitation film makers like William Castle, with a warning: 

"The Screaming Skull is a motion picture that reaches it's climax in shocking horror. It's impact is so terrifying that it may have an unforeseen effect... It may kill you! Therefore, it's producers feel they must assure free burial services for anyone who dies of fright while seeing... The Screaming Skull."

And to put an exclamation point on that the camera zooms in on an open coffin with a placard that reads

 

(BTW, unlike William Castle, who went so far as to actually hiring people to pose as nurses in the lobby to deal with frightened patrons, and even had a real insurance company on hand to sell life insurance policies in case the patron died of fright (Macabre), there is no indication that the producers followed through with any subterfuge of having someone on hand to provide "burial services" to patrons...) 

 

OK, so now that you are well informed and, if you wish to continue on despite that warning I will begin this portion of the review... don't say you weren't warned...

 

The film opens with newlyweds Eric (John Hudson) and Jenni Whitlock (Peggy Webber) arriving at Eric's estate.  Eric is on his second marriage. His late wife, Marian, had died not long after their marriage.  The house that Eric and Jenni are now planning to make their newlywed home is barren, because Marian had all the furniture in it moved out in preparation for she and Eric to stock it with new furniture. (Eric apparently never put the old furniture back in after she died...) But he tells Jenni he will bring it all back tomorrow.

 

 

 

Unseen by either is a figure peeking in on the two. This is Mickey (Alex Nicol, who was also the director of the movie), the gardener for the home, who is later revealed to be mentally disabled. Mickey kept up the garden for the two years Eric had been away, and as Eric tells Jenni, he and Marian used to spend hours working in the garden.

 

 

 

The Reverend Snow (Russ Conway) and his wife, only introduced as "Mrs. Snow" (Tony Johnson), show up to greet them. Mickey shows up and Eric introduces him to Jenni. The two visitors each take one of the pair aside, and during the course of discussion it is revealed that Jenni is rich and Eric is barely struggling to keep his head afloat. (And if you don't see what's coming, boy, are you naive...)

 

Mickey is somewhat reserved in talking or even greeting Jenni, and instead seems to have a longing for the return of Marian. He even talks to a portrait of Marian and asks her to "send them away." Apparently Mickey is still not convinced that Marian is actually gone.

 

Eric reveals to Mrs. Snow that Marian has had an unhappy past, which included her losing her parents. They had been in a drowning accident. Coincidentally then, that Reverend Snow reveals to Jenny that Marian, too, had been in an accident that resulted in her drowning in a pool on the garden property.   

 

During their first night as newlyweds, Jenni is awakened at night by a weird banging downstairs. When she goes to investigate she finds an open window banging in the wind, but after she closes it she sees a painting of Marian and it startles her.  

 

 

 

She tells Eric it looks just like her mother. She confides her fears to Eric, and Eric tells her (implants the idea, that is) that Mickey is up to some shenanigans.  He is mentally disabled, after all, and just can't accept the idea that Marian is actually gone.

 

At least, that's what Eric tries to convince Jenni is going on.  Except nothing entirely untoward has even happened yet. Just a window left open, maybe inadvertently, and a leaf from the pond in the house. But that doesn't last for long. Jenni hears strange noises and finds a skull in a cabinet, one that wasn't there the last time she looked.

 

 

 

Eric, ever the loving husband, tries to help her by burning the portrait of Marian with Jenni.  But in the ashes Jenni sees a skull. Eric insists that there is no skull.  But after Jenni passes out, Eric picks up the "non-existent" skull, and hides it in the pond.  At this point, you are probably coming to the conclusion that this is just a cheap cheesy knock off of Gaslight.

 

 

 

Ah, but friends, this isn't the world of psychological thriller, this is the world of horror. Admittedly, up to this point there is nothing entirely "horror" about the movie, and I admit, by 50 minutes into this 70 minute movie I was getting kind of bored. But as it turns out, Eric was involved in a superficial attempt to scare his newlywed rich wife to death, but someone still blames him for the death of Marian, his previous wife.  No, it's not Mickey, who is probably too mentally challenged to even dig up a grave to find a skull.

 

Nope, and I probably don't need to tell you who is going to enact revenge on Eric, who apparently was responsible for the death of Marian, after all. 

 

 

 

Alex Nicol, who played Mickey, chose this script for his first attempt at directing. The script was based on a story by Francis Marion Crawford, which in turn drew it's inspiration from a real legend of a screaming skull. Every review quoted in the Wikipedia article on this film is pretty dismissive of the film. One claimed it was a "truly awful example of drive-in cinema". That may be my opinion for the first 50 minutes of the film, but really. if you can last until that last 15 minutes, I think it improves the film exponentially. Cheesy as it is. 

 

Better yet, just find a copy of it and skip everything up to the point where Jenni tells Eric that Reverend Snow is convinced the skull is real as is going to bring a crew of people onto the property to search for it. (About the 53 minute mark). At that point the movie actually becomes interesting. Eric begins to look for the skull he hid earlier, but now cannot find, and suspects Mickey of having seen him hide it and  taking it.  

 

Although much of that last 15 minutes, including the expected attack on Eric by an unknown force, is kind of shoddy, it is still intense enough to garner some interest. Eric, as expected, gets his comeuppance. 

 

Of the three movies in this entry, I think this may be the worst of the three, but still, it's not as bad as Teenage Zombies...

 

Well, folks, sleep well. 

 

Quiggy