The Savage Bees and TV Movies

 There was a time, reader, when the major networks used to produce movies. The golden age of the TV movie was in the 1970s, of course, and for a content starved horror fan, in addition to the horror hosts, I would scan the 'Movie of the Week' on the major networks to see if they were airing a genre piece that might interest me. And there were some gems in the lot too... The Night Stalker (1972) and  The Night Strangler (1973) introduced my childhood hero, Carl Kolchak... a little vampire film in 1982 called I, Desire (aka Desire, the Vampire) staring David Naughton of An American Werewolf in London sticks in my head. Steven Spielberg's debut, Duel was a made for television film in 1971. Gargoyles first creepily graced the small screen in 1972 while Trilogy of Terror appeared in 1975. These are not lightweight throwaway films but some of the most memorable horror of the era. 

That being said, for every one of those, there was a dog of a film, whether it was Devil Dog: Hound of Hell (1978) or The Cat Creature (1973). However, one thing could be relied on, the TV Movie of the week tended to have its hand on the pulse of the American Pop Culture zeitgeist. You could usually be assured that if some topic was trending in the population it would find its way into a TV movie. So, it was not unusual to see environmental horror or disaster films showing up. These might be about ozone depletion or pollution, such as Where Have All the People Gone? (1974) or... the subject of today blog entry, The Savage Bees (1976).

There will, of course, be spoilers....

Like quicksand, growing up in the 70s made 'killer bees' seem like it was going to be a much bigger issue in the future than it turned out being. I remember earnest and fearful discussions among my gradeschool class members about the speed of the 'killer bee' invasion and how long it would be before they reached us in distant Ohio, and the swath of devastation they could cut across America with their passage. I also remember that even then I couldn't really take the threat seriously and I remember the shocked and surprised look on a classmates face when he asked what I would do when the bees arrived, and I simply shrugged and said "Go inside and close the windows". He was appalled that I undermined such a serious threat so easily!

The Savage Bees is set at Mardis Gras in New Orleans, and has a pretty standard setup for killer bee films. It also plagerizes borrows from the plot of Jaws (1975). A ship from Brazil carries the swarm of bees to the waters around the Port of New Orleans, where they disembark just in time for Mardi Gras. One of the first victims happens to be the beloved dog of Sheriff Don McKew (Ben Johnson) who vows vengeance. 

No, really.

He is convinced some ne'er-do-well has poisoned his dog, and so takes the dog to be autopsied... so that he can determine the poison, so that he can then track down the source of the poison, and hunt down the villain who killed his dog in order to apply some police brutality to him. Wow. 

It is perhaps worth noting that this is by far the MOST police work that is done in this film. Human victims do not get this sort of deep investigation. Only the Sheriff's dog. 

Ok, I'll buy it.

However, bees are discovered in the dog's stomach, and we are off and running. No, they didn't find stingers in the poor dogs hide, which would have been a far less gross discovery. The coroner, Dr Jeff DuRand (Michael Parks) links these bees to a pair of dead sailors, and suddenly everyone in law enforcement and the medical community are on board with the danger of killer bees....

However, as it is Mardi Gras, the Mayor and the City Council are NOT happy about this, and make various threats to the Sheriff's job as he tries to lessen the danger by clamping down on Mardi Gras celebrations. It threatens business and tourism, after all.... now... where have we seen that before? At any rate, Sheriff Brody McKew does not tolerate any political interference in his quest for vengeance for his poor dog, and so that particular subplot goes nowhere. 

I am making the film sound much worse than it really is. There actually are some effectively tension ratcheting moments in it. There is a scene where a little girl wanders close to the swarm, and its genuinely sort of unnerving as you see the girl from the bees perspective. The stories of former bee attacks help set an atmosphere of growing dread and fear. 

However, the bad moments... they REALLY stand out.

We have a scene where the Sheriff's department has found out where the swarm is, and block off the roads to give bee-expert Dr Jorge Mueller (Horst Buchholz) time to dispose of the swarm... though his plan is more than a little vague... These terribly professional deputies blockade a road and leave a wide open field right next to them, where, of course, an open convertible with a pair of drunken revelers dressed as pirates speed through without even glancing at the roadblock. The deputies just sort of stare at one another and wonder what they should do now that the perimeter has been breeched by wily alcoholics. These two naturally pull up directly to the place where the bees are, and are instantly attacked. The driver of the car inexplicably decided to accessorize his pirate costume with a REAL SWORD with which he attempts to DUEL the swarm of killer bees.... about as effectively as you'd expect. He DOES manage to slash open the protective suit of Dr Mueller, causing both of their deaths. 

The ending of the film also had me scratching my head, as they somehow coax the swarm to land on a red VW Beetle... because.... its RED, and that makes the bees mad... and then drive said Beetle 

 * V E R Y   S L O W L Y * to the Superdome. Meanwhile the police drive ahead and broadcast some of the funniest warnings I've ever heard on film in order to clear the street:

"Y'all are in danger! You have 60 seconds to clear the street! We're bringing through a swarm of killer bees! We have an emergency! You're in danger! You have 60 seconds to clear the street! I repeat: killer bees! Any loud noise is gonna rile 'em! Absolute quiet is necessary! Turn off all radios, all machinery, and get off the street!"

Unrealistically, the inebriated Mardi Gras revelers actually listen to these warnings and go indoors, rather than remaining to drunkenly point and laugh at the Volkswagon with a beard of bees. I also note that these bees are remarkably considerate, and leave a small window on the windshield open in front of the driver so she can see where she is going. Killer bees they may be, but they are SAFETY CONSCIOUS killer bees!

Once in the Superdome, our heroes turn on the air conditioning. This takes MOMENTS to cool the entire Superdome down to 45F. That is some AMAZING HVAC action there. My AC won't even reach to the upstairs of my house. And like magic, the second it hits that special temperature, the bees all fall off the car. Roll credits.

Don't laugh! That was a MAJOR CRISIS averted through the intersection of reasonably priced cars, modern sporting arenas and the power of HVAC. 

Honestly, it IS better than it sounds, but there really is a lot to laugh at here. 

Interestingly, there was one point I noted that was NOT really funny, but quite an interesting moment for non-Christian representation in mid-70s horror. Two of the deputies are cruising through the parish back roads looking for signs of the swarm, and spot something white lying in a field. They go to investigate and find a dead chicken. Next to it is a peculiar figure in chalk. They radio the sheriff about this discovery and he advises them that the figure is a Veve and not to touch or disturb ANY of it, because its sacred. This is the remains of a voodoo protection ritual, and he tells them they need all the help they can get. Its a throwaway scene. It doesn't really add anything to the film overall... but its a POSITIVE image of a NON-CHRISTIAN belief system in a HORROR movie. And it goes out of its way to demonstrate how to respect it. That's amazing. With that scene alone, I came to respect this film a little.

A little.

I am a little leery of how they might have treated the bees. Which is not to say that they necessarily MIS-treated the bees. The fact is, they had a professional bee-handler on set with them, and he helped them safely use them. There were almost no bee-related injuries among the cast and crew, apparently. But I don't have any data on how many bees might have been killed in the course of the film. Some scenes very obviously use real bees... others, such as the final scene in the superdome, when the bees are sliding in clumps off the car? I don't know if those are real or not. 

Actor-wise, the notables here are Ben Johnson, Horst Bucholz, and James Best, giving this a sort of Western flavor, and Michael Parks who has had a late career revival in the films of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez in films like Death Proof and Kill Bill. 

Johnson was in such high profile Westerns as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), and The Wild Bunch (1969), as well as genre classic Mighty Joe Young (1959) and not so classic Cherry 2000 (1987). Horst Bucholz is of course best known to American audiences as being the odd man out in the star-packed The Magnificent Seven (1960), though he is better known in his native Germany and Europe. James Best hardly needs an introduction, as he is well known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coletrane from the long running Dukes of Hazzard TV series, and of course beloved genre stinker The Killer Shrews (1959), as well as guest appearances on practically every Western TV series from the 1950s through the 1970s. 

The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)

 Continuing my trend of confusing films I've not seen with films I've seen, I'm bringing you this time the 1961 British film The Day The Earth Caught Fire. What did I confuse this with? Two staples of Saturday Afternoon, Crack in the World (1965), and possibly Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). All of these films are Science Fiction\Disaster fare, but the most dramatic treatment of it, and the most ambiguous in its outcome is The Day The Earth Caught Fire.

The opening of the film is stark and eye-catching. Done with an orange filter, a sweaty and exhausted looking Edward Judd staggers through an abandoned looking London to a newspaper office where he phones an equally tired and sweaty Janet Munro and they talk briefly about a countdown. The orange tinted and empty newsroom dissolves to a much cooler looking and traditional black and white footage of the same newsroom, now crowded and busy, as the flashback begins and the story unfolds as to what has happened.

This is a slow burn, and that's not a bad thing at all. Its something of a character study. We meet our main characters; Edward Judd plays burned out newspaper reporter Peter Stenning, Janet Munro plays a temporary office worker and typist in the British Met Office (the Office of Meteorology) Jeannie Craig, and the late great Leo McKern as gruff science reporter Bill Maguire. What follows is a slow, but increasingly tense and desperate story... reports come in that the United States and the Soviet Union, in aggressive shows of one upsmanship, have simultaneously detonated nuclear tests at opposite poles. This is wearily shrugged off by the reporters as 'just another thing' and they go on with their lives. Stenning is divorced, and the breakup of his marriage has led him to drinking too much and being given fewer and less important assignments... sending his career into a downward spiral. He struggles to maintain at the very least, a good relationship with his 7 year old son. Over the next few days or weeks, odd weather patterns start to emerge globally, and Bill Maguire starts to suspect something has altered the climate and thinks it may have been the nuclear tests... and he asks Stenning to gather some information for him at the Met Office where he meets Jeannie Craig... they trade a few insults, but are attracted to one another anyway. As conditions worsen, and the temperatures steadily rise, it is discovered that something far worse that climate change has occurred... the Earth itself has been knocked out of its orbit, and is slowly moving toward the Sun. 

We see the gradual unravelling of society, as first weather conditions make everyday life difficult, and then more serious things begin happening, including riots, looting, bandits, criminal activity, and disease ramps up. Having just come through the pandemic (which is still going on), its a bit curious to see that the people in the film had a great deal more patience before fraying and fighting back against the public health and safety measures than what has happened in real life. I suspect it was in part due to the nearness in time of WWII and the fact that people still remembered the sacrifices they had to make during that time in order to keep themselves and their neighbors and their country safe. 

It DOES however touch on Government Cover-ups, and it is a plot point that the governments of the world DID try to conceal how serious the situation really was, and it is left to the Press to reveal the truth of it. There are no cries of 'Fake News' here... this is the old days, the golden era of the press as fighting to get the true facts out to the people and let the people take it from there. The press here is shown as heroic champions of the people. That would be considered rather innocent and naive these days I'm afraid, but I for one believe that's what the press ought to be. Its aspirational, I suppose.

But while all this is going on, there is genuine human drama going on as well. The complexities of human relationships are on full display here. Stenning's self-destructive tendencies are stemmed as he and Jeannie grown closer... and their relationship is strained when he uses information she provides in confidence to break a big story. Stenning's devotion to his son is put to the test as the situation becomes more dire, and he has to make decisions to protect the boy which hurt him personally, by sending him out of the city to someplace 'safe' with the boy's mother and stepfather, with no guarantee of ever seeing him again. And, he discovers what it means to him to be a reporter again, and tries to rebuild his shattered reputation.

Edward Judd is excellent here. He has a lot of emotional baggage he has to bring to the character, and he has to balance the character's negative personality traits carefully with the positive ones. He can't make you hate him entirely, or you wouldn't be invested in his story. But, he 's also not a saint either, and his struggle between those poles of his character are fascinating to watch. He reminded me a bit of Richard Burton in this role. Charismatic, but also, deeply flawed. He doesn't abruptly change his personality... you SEE him make every decision to change, for better or worse. 

Janet Munro only has a handful of credits, but what credits they are. In addition to this film, she also played Anne Pilgrim in The Crawling Eye (1958) (also known as The Trollenberg Terror) and Katie O'Gill in Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) among other things. Here she has some remarkably risque scenes for 1961... in one instance, walking around completely topless and wet, with only a loose towel draped around her neck to cover her breasts for an entire scene. I'm not sure I've ever seen something that explicit in a film this old. The sexual tension between her and Edward Judd in the scene that follows is something to behold. She is more or less the moral center of the film, and also to victim of some of the only violence in it, which is hard to watch, even though it is not explicit at all. 

And what do we NEED to say about Leo McKern other than he is as amazing as he ever is? For those who don't know off the bat who he is, I will direct you to his multiple appearances in The Prisoner (1967) in which he played the mysterious Number 2 on several occasions, and most memorably in the last couple episodes, as well as brilliant but curmudgeonly barrister Horace Rumpole in the Rumpole of the Bailey series, his turn as Thomas Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons (1966) and of course Father Imperious in LadyHawke (1985). While the character of Jeannie Craig may be the moral center of the film, Bill Maguire is the heart. He's the gruff, veteran newspaperman with a heart of gold... self deprecating but driven by the truth, and while he's willing to support Stenning, he can't abide self pity or self-destruction, and gently encourages (and later almost orders) Stenning to continue his relationship with Jeannie when he sees that she's a good influence on the other man. While he talks like a cynic, and says its not his problem when the girl gets arrested for leaking information to Stenning, its all talk (possibly talk to get Stenning to do something about it himelf), and when push comes to shoves its HE who goes and gets her and gives her a new job at the newspaper. I really expected something bad to happen to him, as that seems to be the fate of mentor figures in films of this era. However, he remains until the bitter end. 

And its quite the ending. 

Stenning is waiting in the newspaper offices for the official announcements from the world governments as to the success or failure of their plans to push the Earth back into its orbit with more nuclear detonations. The two printing presses are set, each with its own headline, depending on what the outcome is: Plan Succeeds, Earth Saved, or Plan Fails, Earth Doomed. We never find out which runs.

The imagery is quite something in this. We see London and Brighton slowly drying out, bleaching out, and falling apart as the heat increases. One particularly striking image was of the Thames river dried to a mere trickle of water through a parched and cracked set of mud flats... a single tiny police boat barely managing to navigate it. Or earlier, when a dense, low-hanging mist rolls in and closes down much of Brighton, so low-hanging that you can see above it if you are on the second level of a double-decker bus, but impenetrable below that. 

And again, we return to the pandemic and the fears that brings. At one point it is discovered that black-market obtained water may be contaminated with Typhus, and even one of the newroom figures collapses from the disease. And in the next scene we are shown a huge group of nihilistic young people, partying and rioting, and splashing water all over themselves and other people, and you cannot help put wonder if that water is some of the disease contaminated water we just heard about, and wonder how many of those people are doing to die because of it. I was reminded of the filled beaches and public venues during the early Covid era, when so many people refused to wear masks. 

This is not an entirely easy film to watch. It asks some tough questions, and really its almost more about what kind of person you are in a crisis than about a science fiction disaster. I was trying to think of more recent films that might have similar themes, but there aren't any that leap to mind. There are disaster movies aplenty, as well as many science fiction and horror movies that have a similar apocalyptic arc to them... but they seem to fail to examine the way people react to it. The closest may be something like various Zombie Apocalypse films, or a TV Show like The Walking Dead, which, unfortunately but maybe realistically, don't so much depict people rising to become better people in a crisis, but watching them abandon the trappings of civilization and become something feral in order to survive in a feral world. That's a cynical take on it... unfortunately, watching the behavior of people during the pandemic, and the post-2020 election, I despair of anyone attempting to remain moral and ethical in an apocalypse.

Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory (1961)

 I'll be honest, I hadn't seen this film before this week. I THOUGHT I had seen it, but I think I was getting it confused with 1957's Blood of Dracula which has a similar setting and a somewhat similar aesthetic. However, this is far more engaging that the other, and has a mystery element to it that works well. This is one of the first times I recall seeing the werewolf used in a 'whodunnit' scenario. This gets more common in later films, most prominently I think it The Beast Must Die (1974) and The Howling V: Rebirth (1989), among others.

Made in Italy in 1961 and released under the title Lycanthropus, this film seems somewhat transitional, positioned somewhere between gothic horror and giallo. I've seen it mentioned that it has a lot in common with the West German krimi films of the 50s and 60s, but I'm not familiar enough with those at this time to do more than note it. 

The plot centers on a girls reformatory/school, where a new professor has arrived. We quickly see that there is a somewhat seedy side to this place. One of the girls sneaks out at night, to meet with one of the male professors and we learn she's been trading her affections for his assistance in getting released. She then proceeds to blackmail him. The plot kicks off when she returns to the dorm and is attacked and killed. The autopsy concludes it was an animal attack, most likely from the wolves that seem to abound outside the walls of the place, but our main character Priscilla (Barbara Lass) is convinced it was murder and sets out to expose the unknown person responsible. In doing so, she uncovers the blackmail plot and the criminal or at least unethical activities of many of the staff. And gradually, rumor comes out that there is a werewolf at large...

As werewolf movies go... this isn't great. But it is engaging enough as a murder mystery, albeit a REALLY unusual murder weapon. 

What's more, it continues a trend I'm seeing of a lot of films of the late 50s and early 60s that push the envelopes of what we generally consider 'acceptable' subject matters. This film not only contains a rather graphic looking corpse, but also deals in a lot of very 'mature' subjects, ranging from blackmail to student-teacher sexual relationships, and sometimes bordering on the inappropriate. The girls in this reform school are supposed to be teenagers, and yet one of them clearly has an affair with an older teacher in order to get blackmail on him, and another one, possibly less predatory relationship, seems to kick off between Priscilla and the new professor (apparently to the envy of the other girls). This film, at times, FEELS a little grimy, but manages to keep it sort of classy, and only bits and pieces are shown, told, or hinted at. 

Part of the reason behind the confusion I had about this film is that it does continue the trend at this time of applying pseudo-science to supernatural legends. We've seen this before in I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957), the aforementioned Blood of Dracula (1957), and How to Make a Monster (1958). Here, the acknowledgement of Lycanthropy as an actual medical condition, and the search for a cure for it is pivotal. 

All in all, I was surprised by this, and I need to go back and watch it again. 

Halloween Season

 Its the most wonderful time of the year...

Well, sort of. Its the one time of the year when it seems to be ok to be a horror fan. Its the one time of the year when networks and cable channels seem to recognize that we exist, and program towards us. Halloween, and October, tend to be a magical time for fans of horror films and scary movies, and its often then only time of the year we get to see screenings of obscure gems that otherwise languish in network vaults or are exiled to 2 AM programming slots.

Mind you... Christmas keeps on creeping backwards, and has come to threaten Halloween. Last year, I heard my first Christmas carols the DAY AFTER Halloween.... and that doesn't even begin to approach the terror that is 'Christmas in July'... I think in fairness that if you are going to have 'Christmas in July' then you need a 'Halloween in May', but I digress...

I've been thinking of films that put me in a Halloween mood. As is no surprise, many of these are vintage horrors of the Golden Age of Hollywood... but not all.  I had an idea of posting one for each day in October, but... maybe I'll just post them all here.

These are not in any particular order, or theme... just films that are listed as they come to me. I'll maybe put a little note as to why this one speaks to my Halloween spirit...

1) I'll start by listing all these together: Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and possibly to a lesser extent: The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Dracula's Daughter, House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Ghost, and Son of Dracula. All of these are like comfort food. The atmosphere of all of them just put you in the frame of mind to go walk in the fog. I didn't put EVERY one of the Universal Monster cycle here, because some just don't work for me on Halloween, despite being great films. I LOVE The Creature from the Black Lagoon, but its not an October kind of film. As an added bonus, these are all pretty short, with most clocking in right around an hour... so you can get 2 of these for every modern film.

2) Silent films tend to lend themselves to October. One year, I put these on a screen while I was handing out candy to the kids, and it seemed to be a hit. Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and Haxan are the best for this, but you could also throw in Der Golem and The Phantom of the Opera for good measure. I know for a fact the Nosferatu is a good choice... I had Nosferatu playing on my porch one Halloween, and one little girl, maybe 5 years old, and dressed as a princess, peeked cautiously around the corner before approaching me, and asked if the music was from a movie. When I told her it was, she breathed a sigh of relief and told me "Good.... I thought it was a werewolf." Because of course, you can always tell when monsters are nearby because you can hear their theme music.

3) Some other Golden Age horrors, that are perhaps lesser known: The Black Cat by Edgar Ulmer pairs Karloff and Lugosi in what I consider their finest film. Its creepy, atmospheric, and visually stunning. What more could you want? Mad Love with Peter Lorre is also an appropriate journey into the macabre, with some wonderful acting and just … Lorre-flavored weirdness. I might throw in Mark of the Vampire which, for my money, is Tod Browning's best directorial effort (Yes, even over Dracula and Freaks). 

4) Because Halloween is also FUN as well as scary, we need to throw in a bit of humor, and there are no two better horror comedies from this era than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Arsenic and Old Lace. Its really a shame that Boris Karloff couldn't reprise his role in Arsenic and Old Lace, because I would have loved to have seen him do it. Raymond Massey is fine, but, Karloff would have made the whole role so much funnier. Abbott and Costello are at the top of their game in this feature too... more so than the other films where they meet the monsters. To push it out a bit later, maybe include Bell, Book, and Candle with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, for a fun and romantic piece of horror comedy (or if you wish to keep in in the black and white era, I Married a Witch with Veronica Lake and Frederic March, which is much the same story). 

5) Because I can, I will throw out a couple Val Lewton pictures that help the season along.... I Walked With a Zombie, Isle of the Dead, and Cat People. These require paying a bit more attention, but they are full of an atmosphere of dread.

6) Because Hammer Studios managed to reboot things in the 50s and 60s, its only appropriate to throw those films into the mix too. My choices from the Studio That Dripped Blood are: The Horror of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, Plague of the Zombies, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. If you have extra time, and want more, maybe Brides of Dracula and Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter would be good additions. 

7) The 50s and 60s in general brought a number of worthy films to the screen that fit this list: The Haunting, Night of the Demon, and The House on Haunted Hill are the top of the Halloween heap here. However, also worthy of a Halloween look is, of course, Night of the Living Dead. I mean... a house besieged by hungry weirdos? That's obviously Halloween... the fact that in the film they are after human flesh while in real life its kids after sugary treats is really all the difference....

8) Corman's Poe cycle of films with Vincent Price is also quite appropriate. I would recommend... Masque of the Red Death. That is simply the best of them. Its like the best Halloween party ever, too. Throw in the anthology film Tales of Terror, and finally another Horror Comedy, The Raven, and maybe round it out with The Haunted Palace (Though despite the title, that was based on Lovecraft and not Poe.)

9) Speaking of Anthology films, there are a couple that would work well for the season. My suggestion is Mario Bava's Black Sunday, and the stellar Amicus production The House that Dripped Blood and maybe 1980s The Monster Club and those will serve you well I think. All of those have a wonderful Halloween atmosphere to them, and Monster Club is practically a perfect Party film, with some fun music as well. 

10) It may seem obvious, but I'm going to throw out there the original Halloween. I'm not a slasher fan, but I cannot deny that this film captures the holiday well, and its probably the very best of the slasher films anyway. I'd pair it up with the criminally underrated Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Both of these films are simply perfect for the holiday. 

And that's about as far as I can go.... Most modern films just don't FEEL like Halloween to me, but these I've listed.... when I watch them I can feel the chilly wind and hear the rustle of leaves against the streets. I can smell wood smoke, dead leaves,  and pumpkins, and the taste of maple and cinnamon.... These films ARE Halloween to me. 

I know I'll get criticism for not including later films, or 'scarier' films.... but this isn't about special effects, or scariness... this is about the FEELING of Halloween. I'll get criticism for most of this list being Black and White films... I actually know people who refuse to watch a film if its in black and white, and that's a shame to me...  There's nothing particularly earth-shaking or ground breaking, or even controversial in this list... its just Holiday favorites for me.

 

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

 I had the chance to rewatch Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) on the new version of Creature Features this last weekend. I'm going to be honest, I have avoided rewatching this film since the first time I saw it back in the early 80s. I saw this for the first time on The Ghoul's Saturday afternoon show, and I remember watching it on a tiny black and white 13 inch TV in my bedroom, and it scared the living hell out of me. This was my first exposure to the Zombie genre.... some people had Romero's films... I had this one. 

Its still pretty damn scary, to be honest. Not just from the perspective of the living dead rising to eat people, but from the perspective that the villain of the piece is just a horrible human being, running things through fear, and messing with forces he doesn't understand.... which really stands in for a large number of people, especially in politics, today. 

What we have, aside from a zombie apocalypse, is an egotistical theatrical director, Alan (played by Alan Ormsby) who really is just the worst human being... Alan makes lewd comments to his actresses and implies he intends to exact sexual favors from them, he talks down to his actors, insults them, threatens them, and even patronizes them by calling them his 'children', he delights in making them all uncomfortable, but threatens them into compliance with his whims, he conducts cruel practical jokes on them, and continues to push the boundaries of taste even when the others object, he makes himself out to be the smartest person in the room, when he's clearly not, he's willing to sacrifice anyone else for his own benefit.... hmm... who does this sound like in the political/business world?

Perhaps to drive home this point, there is a sequence at the end of the film where he and Anya are the only characters left and they are being backed slowly up the stairs by a zombie horde. Alan is literally cowering behind Anya, who has been one of the few people arguing for respect of the dead in the film. Alan finally shoves Anya from behind into the Zombies…. And the reaction of the zombies is one of the funniest parts of the film, because rather than instantly tearing her apart, they just stop for a moment and all turn to look at Alan with an expression that can only be read as “Dude! what the hell is wrong with you?” Anya is passed to the back of the crowd where she is presumably dispatched, but the ones in the front continue after Alan.

While this may be a bit of a spoiler, he is LITERALLY the last person to die in the film, and even the nice, helpful people that try to save anyone else in the film all die horrible first. In fact, one of those scenes is one which stuck with me from my first viewing of it. One young man offers to sprint to the boat and get help for them. So everyone draws the zombies to one side of the shack, and he goes out the back door. When the others retreat back inside, and lock the front door, they hear a keening sound, and look out the back door to see he got about 10 feet before a zombie took him down and is currently feasting on him. A heroic act... which fails utterly. That image, of the 'hero' lying there while a single zombie eats him just terrified me and stuck with me. It may be that scene alone which makes me afraid of zombie movies to this day.

The downbeat ending is de rigeur of course, but in this case... The world is doomed due to Alan's ego and poor taste. The zombies board the boat to sail over to Miami.  Thats the other scene that stuck with me. 

This film was directed by Bob Clark... Bob Clark went on to a fairly prestigious film career which included directing Black Christmas (1974), Murder By Decree (1979), Porky's (1981), Porky's II (1983), A Christmas Story (1983), and Turk 182 (1985) among others. He apparently wanted to film a reboot of this film, and was in the planning stages when he was, unfortunately, killed in a car accident in 2007.

Alan Ormsby went on to a fairly decent career as a screenwriter, with credits such as Deathdream (1974), My Bodyguard (!980), Cat People (1980), Porky's II (1983), and The Substitute (1996). 

Put into context of the time it was released, this is one of the earliest 'living dead' films in the vein of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). 1972 also saw the release of Garden of the Dead, and Tomb of the Blind Dead but the flesh eating Romero style zombie really wasn't all that common just yet. 1973 and especially 1974 saw the release of a few more of this type to really get the ball rolling. In those years we get Return of the Blind Dead (1973) and The Ghost Galleon (1974) to continue the Blind Dead series, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (AKA Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) (1974), and The Corpse Eaters (1974). Sugar Hill (1974) was the last gasp of the voodoo style zombie.

The weird thing about this film is how fast it seems to move... while at the same time, putting off the raising of the zombies. I guess its a credit to the script that it holds your interest for the entire time, albeit watching how horrible Alan is, and seeing exactly how low he is willing to go with his increasingly unfunny 'pranks'. The zombies aren't active until probably the last third of the film, but once they get started, they waste little time. 

The story is essentially the same as Night of the Living Dead (1968), in that our survivors are holed up in an old house besieged by flesh-eating zombies, however, despite the infighting among Romero's crew, they work together like a well-oiled machine compared to the idiots in this film. Alan's pompous proclamations (including invoking something he calls 'primal juncture' to try and bed the new starlet Terry.... he is TRYING to use the term Prima Nocte, or Droit du Seigneur, but botches it horrible... He also seems to mix it up with the term ‘primogeniture’ which is the medieval right of the first born son to inherit his father’s titles and lands.  Is this bad screenwriting, or a subtle clue that he is making things up as he goes, and is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is?), Anya's genuinely crazy new age babbling (Anya played by Alan Ormsby's real life wife Anya Ormsby), Jeff (Jeff Gillen) is ALMOST as disrespectful as Alan, and goes along with his every gag... These are not people you would trust to go out an buy coffee, let alone help you survive a zombie apocalypse.

Its billed as a 'Horror Comedy' but I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. It doesn't feel like a comedy to me, but.... I have been accused of not having a great sense of humor. I tend to feel I have a somewhat GOOD sense of humor, but I prefer better taste comedy than mocking the dead... So, your mileage may vary wildly humor-wise.

The Flesh Eaters (1964)

 I don't know if I remember things poorly or not. Sometimes, when I rewatch films I saw a long time ago, I have some distinct memories of them. Sometimes, I don't. Is it because they were heavily edited for television back then? Maybe, but in some cases, it seems almost arbitrary what got cut.

I remember, for example, watching The Thing from Another World (1951) on Superhost back in the 1970s. The scene where they are in the barracks, and the Thing bursts in, and they splash gasoline on it and set it on fire was completely cut out. It was my first time seeing the film, so... how did I know? The next week, Superhost explained that he'd gotten letters asking why that had been removed, and he went on to say it had been an editorial decision to cut it out because it was deemed 'too scary' for younger viewers... but THEN actually showed the clip of the censored portion in its entirety. It wasn't too scary for me, of course, I loved it! But it was my first dim awareness of how things came to be edited for content on television, and how perceptions of that content can vary.

(As a side note, I loved the fact that they went and re-evaluated the edit based on viewer feedback, and changed their opinion on it. You don't see that very much these days.)

Cut to this last weekend, as I rewatched the low-budget 1964 film The Flesh Eaters. 

Wow. Did they really show a film this brutal on Saturday Mad Theater back in the 70s? For kids? Yes... yes they did. I had forgotten how dark and vicious this film was, but... I remember every gore scene distinctly. This didn't get cut, from what I remember, and I'm not really certain why or how that came to be...

The film was directed by Jack Curtis (who did the cinematography under the pseudonym Carson Davidson). Curtis was primarily known as a voice actor, and did dubbing and incidental voices in films like Killer's Kiss (1955), Planet of the Vampires (1965), Godzilla vs The Thing (1964) and on television he provided the English language of many voices on Speed Racer including Pops Racer and Inspector Detector. The script was provided by comic book writer Arnold Drake, who may be best known as the creator of DC Comics Doom Patrol. Apparently, he provided very detailed storyboards for the film in Comic Book style, which led to some very interestingly framed shots in the film itself.

The story is straightforward for the most part. There will be spoilers from here on out.

The film opens with a gruesome scene as a honeymooning couple on a yacht enter the water for a swim, and are devoured by something in the sea. As the woman sinks down into the depths, there is a dark cloud of what is apparently blood that fills the sea where she sank, screaming. Its a tense and scary scene! I couldn't help but be reminded of Jaws (1977), and I wonder if Spielberg was influenced by this. It was a mere 13 years earlier, after all. 

Down-on-his-luck pilot Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders) is hired by Jan Letterman (Barbara Wilkin) to fly her boss, aging actress Laura Winters (Rita Morley) from New York to Provincetown. (This is the one thing that strikes me odd... its only about 300 miles, so not a hugely long trip, and even in the sixties, it was pretty drivable). A storm forces them to land at an island somewhere along the coast, and they take shelter on the small island and make the acquaintance of the sole inhabitant of the place, a marine biologist named Professor Peter Bartell (Martin Kosleck) who is apparently doing some sort of research there. In the aftermath of the storm, their plane has been lost, and they start to discover skeletal remains... including humans, and worse, some sort of micro-organism in the sea that voraciously devours all flesh, and strips it to the bone. They are joined by Omar, a beatnik (Ray Tudor) from a raft, and then all their private agendas start coming to the fore as they try to find a way to get off the island and past the deadly little creatures in the water.

And when I say it gets brutal, I mean it. People die in horrible, bloody ways. The  beatnik is murdered by Prof. Bartell who slips one of the microbes into his drink, and he's eaten from the inside out. The professor records his death screams and puts the body back on his raft and sets it sailing with the recoded screams playing at full volume. The actress is knifed in the belly. Another person graphically shoots himself in the head with a bloody skeletal hand holding the gun. We hear stories of Nazi atrocities.... no punches are pulled here. And although its a black and white film, there is blood.

The film has some fantastic camera shots in it, and in this way it keeps true of Drake's vision of the film. The special effects are basic, but the very basic nature of them also makes them both weird and effective. The 'microbes' are little more than scratches on the film negative.. and their size varies wildly.

The characters ae effectively drawn, even if they seem to be caricatures. Their motivations are believable for the most part, with only Prof. Bartell seeming to be a little over the top. Of interest to me is Laura Winters.... This character reminds me of one of Arnold Drake's creations in The Doom Patrol comic; Rita Farr. Rita, or Elasti-Girl as she was known, was also a fading actress. While they are not exactly alike, it seems like Drake was experimenting with the character type here. I wonder if April Bowlby was familiar with this performance as she was researching Rita Farr in the Doom Patrol TV Series... they seem quite similar in mannerism and attitude.

I would also point out Murdoch's story about his short-lived marriage at the end of World War II. He explains that he got married to a girl in Texas, and then left to become a pilot in the War. He flew a dozen missions, and then returned.... to the shock and dismay of the bride. She had been running a scam, marrying soldiers in high risk military roles and then collecting on their life insurance when they were killed in action. This was a genuine scam that was run during the war, and Murdoch's story rings true in that regard. But beyond that, there is the 'punchline' to the story... she must have loved him a little, since she normally went for Tailgunners, because tailgunners were more likely to be killed than pilots... and his own admission that he really did 'love that little tramp' is tinged with exactly the right amount of both fondness and bitterness to make it believable. 

In researching it, I see that they released the film with a gimmick, of small packets of 'dehydrated blood' given to people in case of Flesh Eater attack. 

Apparently, George Romero originally intended to call 'Night of the Living Dead' 'Night of the Flesh Eaters'... however he was forced to change the name of the film to the more iconic one, to prevent confusion with this film. 

Martin Kosleck is probably the busiest actor in this film. His credits include a large number of TV appearances in things ranging from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to Sanford and Son. He often played Nazis, which is interesting since he fled from the Nazi regime in the 1930s to come to the United States. 

The creatures at the end of the film are pretty decently conceived and realized. They aren't the most memorable or iconic, but they are effective I suppose. Certainly, they LOOK like something bizarre and somewhat alien. Its a good look... but they seem underused.

Also... look at the tag line on the bottom of this poster... "The only people who will not be STERILIZED with FEAR are those among you who are already DEAD!"  .... Sterilized with Fear? When was that ever a phrase? What does that even mean?

Rodan

 

I make no apologies for being a Kaiju kid. Watching monsters level cities was simply what was on TV when I was growing up, and one of the earliest I can remember is Rodan. I think I was probably in kindergarten or younger when I first saw it. I remember learning that films were on long strips that would run through a projector with a light behind it, but it still hadn't occurred to me that the strip needed to be somewhat CLEAR for the light to pass through it.... And I made an attempt to create a Rodan 'film' by drawing individual cells on the movie onto a strip of manila paper and asking my parents to show it on the little Super 8 projector we had. Those 'cells' were not in sequence, they were just individual scenes, but... I was too young to actually know how movies worked. Even if it had, it was more like a filmstrip. 

Needless to say, my early Rodan opus never got showed. I remember my mom handing me a flashlight and telling me that if the light shined through the manila paper, we could watch my production... and... imagination aside, manila paper is a poor substitute for celluloid. 

But I remember the real film fondly. 

Rodan (1956) was in frequent rotation on Superhost's Saturday Mad Theater, on Channel 43 in Cleveland when I grew up. I vividly remember watching it, and being enthralled by the colors of it. The blue of the skies, the yellow outfits of the miners, the bright red of the lava... It was, and still is, mesmerizing. And the monsters? Really perfect, and a close, early favorite to the "big guns" of Godzilla and Gamera. 

I think one of the keys here was that there was no sense of malevolence in Rodan and his mate. They were confused animals. Even as a child, I couldn't really blame them for the destruction they were creating... they were simply animals, confused and panicked, reacting as animals would. That made them less scary. And the end of the film was pure pathos, and was genuinely upsetting to 6 year old me. It was SAD to see Rodan and his mate perish in the volcano. 

You can't fault Ishiro Honda for his direction in this. Its brilliant. he managed to wring genuine fear and sadness out of a film with men in rubber suits destroying miniature sets. 

Watching the film again recently, there is something else I can point to as being something that is almost unique in the Kaiju genre... a compelling story about the human characters.

Its something of a truism that in a Kaiju film, we just don't care about the human side of the story most of the time. There ARE times when its compelling... such as in the original Gojira (1954) when the love triangle of Ogata/Emiko/Serizawa was such an intense and meaningful counterpoint to the monster, and it was skillfully woven into the story so that eventually the humans' and monster's story connect at the end. But most of the time, the human side of the story is almost a separate, and vastly inferior film to that of the monsters (I'm looking at you Godzilla Vs The Sea Monster (1966)). 

In Rodan though... the human story WORKS. I REMEMBER the Human story from when I watched this as a child... I remember it almost as vividly as the monster scenes. Maybe its because the trauma that happens to Shigeru is relatable to a child. He is separated in the mines from his companions and lost for a time, and suffers from something he is unable to explain. The idea of separation and loss is something every child can relate to. While its unlikely a child getting separated from his parents at the mall will encounter Meganulon larva or baby Pteranadons, they will likely still have a fear of monsters waiting for them. 

I can't speak for others really, but this is a more compelling human story for me than one involving Interpol officers hunting aliens...

I am also shocked that this is the first time I connected Rodan to 2000's Godzilla vs Megaguirus. I have no excuse. 

Another interesting bit of trivia... The dubbing of Rodan into English was accomplished by only about 4 people. George Takei (in his first professional 'acting' job), Keye Luke, Paul Frees (frankly the hardest working voice actor in Hollywood in those days), and a woman, who's name is sadly lost to us these days. Takei was actually the first Japanese-American to provide voiceover work for Toho films released in America.

Curiously, I see Martin Scorsese, of all people, praised the imagination of this film. Curious then that he is so negative about the current trend of superhero films, and can't see the imagination there. He is someone who really confuses me. It may be an article for another time, but he is one of those film makers who is acknowledged as a genius.... but whose works have NEVER 'spoken' to me. He gets a lot of praise for his gangster films, but... honestly? What is there to admire about gangsters? Sure, you can make a film about them feel 'real'... but what good is 'real' if its telling you a story that still feels hollow? 

As I said, a post for another time, and possibly a different blog. I connect more with giant monsters. superheroes, and supernatural and science fiction menaces than I do ordinary criminals. I am not the person Martin Scorsese is making films for, and he tends to look down on the people who make films for me. 

Let's talk about this poster for a moment. This is one of my favorite posters of the 50s... its an Australian one for Rodan. The drawing of Rodan looks NOTHING like the one in the film, but has a weird sort of charm to it. The tag line is also fantastic: "More Startling than Jules Verne!" Well.... yes, I suppose a giant supersonic monster who flattens cities with hurricane force winds WOULD be more startling than ... uh... 19th Century Steampunk visions of technology...  I mean... what do Rodan and Verne even have in common? At least Wells and Burroughs WROTE about dinosaurs, I can't think of a single mention on them in Verne, unless you want to count the Squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or the giant animals in Mysterious Island.... but I don't...