Dino-Men

 

 

 (imdb)

UNKNOWN ISLAND-1948-A guy Ted (Phillip Reed) and his fiancé' Carole (Virginia Grey), hire a boat from a tough hardnosed but fairly intelligent captain (Barton McLane; TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE the same year)) and his first mate (Dick Wessell; DICK TRACY VS. CUEBALL (1946)). They want to go to an uncharted island where the guy says dinosaurs still exist. They take along Baxter (Richard Denning), a guy who drinks a lot because he was once on the island. They shove off despite Baxter's warnings and the native crew unsuccessfully tries to mutiny. 

Landing on the island they encounter many prehistoric beasts including Brontosaurs, a T-Rex and a red-haired ape-like creature (uncredited Crash Corrigan). It becomes obvious that Ted cares more about photographing the prehistoric wildlife than anyone's life, including Carole's. Then just when everyone is ready to leave the captain announces he plans to capture the T-Rex alive. The group find a "dinosaur graveyard" and are attacked and the first mate is killed. Later the native crew steal the rowboat, but they all drown. The captain comes down with jungle fever and accidentally burns their supplies. He later kidnaps Carole but Baxter saves her and the captain is killed by the ape who then battles a T-Rex. The survivors make it to the boat and Baxter's heroics win Carole's heart.

 (imdb)

 Terribly cheap color production directed by Jack Bernhard with men in dino costumes, rear projection action and studio jungle sets. Star Virginia Grey had quite a career. She worked with Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, Rondo Hatton, Johnny Weissmuller and started her career playing Eva in the 1927 version of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. She and co-star Richard Denning were later in the seldom seen SF film TARGET EARTH in 1954. Co-star Phillip Reed's last role was HARUM SCARUM (1965) with Elvis Presley.

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Slammer Girls

 

 (imdb)

GIRLS IN PRISON-1956-Prison pastor Rev. Fulton (Richard Denning) tries to help Ann Carson (Joan Taylor; EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS the same year)), in the slammer for a crime she didn't commit. She's in a cell with no nonsense Jenny (Adele Jurgens, in one of her last movie roles), nutty Dorothy (Phyllis Coates) and lesbian Melanee (Helen Gilbert). The matron (Jane Darwell; Ma Joad in THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)) seems pretty ineffectual but Fulton still wants to help. Old time actress Mae Marsh plays Grandma Edwards. Meanwhile, a bank robber (Lance Fuller) threatens Ann's con man father (Raymond Hatton) trying to find some still missing money everyone thinks Ann has. 

Typical 50's moral drama directed by Edward L. Cahn who also made THE SHE CREATURE (also with the acting challenged Fuller) and SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROCK! the same year, both penned by GIRLS screenwriter Lou Rusoff who also wrote IT CONQUERED THE WORLD for Roger Corman in '56. Denning, Jurgens and Hatton had all been in Corman's THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED the year before. Alex Gordon was one of the producers along with Samuel Z. Arkoff and James Nicholsen. Music by Roland Stein.

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Scorpions

 

 (YouTube)

THE BLACK SCORPION-1957-Hank (Richard Denning) and Doc Ramos (Carlos Rivas) investigate a volcano eruption in Mexico. They find a wrecked home, a smashed up police car, a dead police Sgt and a baby. After delivering the baby to a church, the priest tells them of some mysterious deaths and the legend of "the demon bull" that ranchers say kill their cattle. They meet rancher Theresa Alvarez (Mara Corday) after she falls off her horse. They become her guests and try to help out after a giant scorpion attacks. Juanito (Mario Navvaro), a little kid, hangs around acting cute. Dr. Valesco (Carlos Muzquiz) comes to evacuate the city and identifies the creature as a prehistoric scorpion. He says "I beg of you all not to lose your heads...in any sense of the word". Ramos & Hank go down into a huge underground cavern and besides scorpions encounter a giant worm and spider. PITA Juanito hides out with them and almost gets them killed. Dynamite seems to kill prehistoric scorpions but….

Despite it's low budget this movie is saved by the great stop motion SFX by Willis O'Brien and Pete Peterson. Some of it finished, they say, in Peterson's garage due to budget constrictions. The scorpion puppet was created by Wah Chang. Nice climax though I never liked that they killed a character needlessly to make Hank the hero.

 If Warner Brothers had spend some more money on this they would have had a real classic! Director Edward Ludwig began his career making silent short films, went into feature films when sound arrived (WAKE OF THE RED WITCH) and by the time of THE BLACK SCORPION was doing a lot of TV. 

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Sound So Nice They Had To Tell Them Twice

TWICE TOLD TALES-1963-This trio of tales are based on stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne and were probably made to cash in on AIP's successful Corman/Poe series (TALES OF TERROR was released the year before). While director Sidney Salkow is no Roger Corman, he does a capable job on such a noticeably low budget. And he got “Poe” star Vincent Price to be in all three segments! (He's also the narrator)

In “Dr. Heidegger's Experiment”, the old doctor of the title (Sebastian Cabot) celebrates his over 40 year friendship with Alex Melbourne (Price) but the doc still pines for his lost love Sylvia (Mari Blanchard) who died on their wedding night. When a storm damages her tomb, the duo investigates and finds her ancient body preserved with no signs of decay. After some experimentation, Dr. H. finds that the water seeping into her tomb is actually some kind of eternal youth serum. He and his friend drink it and become young again. The doctor decides to use the serum on his dead wife. He brings her back to life with tragic (but predictable) results.

Next is “Rappacino's Daughter”, where a once famous scientist (Price again) has made his daughter (Joyce Taylor) poisonous through the infusion of a deadly plant into her blood stream (or something like that). Anything she touches dies. He has presumably done this to “protect her from sin” after his own wife's infidelity. A young medical student (Price's RETURN OF THE FLY co-star Brett Halsey) falls in love with her. The scientist tricks the student into becoming poisonous too. The student's professor (Abraham Sofaer) creates a serum that might cure them. The deadly love birds drink it and die. The scientist commits suicide.

The final segment is a truncated version of the novel “The House of Seven Gables”, a version of which Price co-starred in in the 1940's. Jerold Pyncheon (Price of course) and his wife Alice (Beverley Garland) return to the haunted house he grew up in and where every male Pyncheon has died. Jerold wants a treasure hidden in a secret vault but a family foe Jonathan Maulle (Richard Denning) stands in his way. Alice becomes possessed by the spirit of a woman who once loved a Maulle ancestor, who was hung by a Pyncheon ancestor. When Jerold's sour puss sister (Jacqueline DeWit) says she deserves a share of the elusive booty he kills her and then buries Alice alive! After finding the treasure he's strangled by a skeleton hand. Somehow Maulle rescues Alice as the House of Seven Gables crumbles. Gene Roth has a small role as a cab driver.

Screenwriter/producer Robert E. Kent worked with Edward L. Cahn on some of the best horror/Sci-Fi movies of the '50's (IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, INVISIBLE INVADERS). Despite it's budgetary drawbacks TTT is entertaining. Director Sidney Salkow worked with Price again when he co-directed LAST MAN ON EARTH.

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The Creature From The Black Lagoon

THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON-1954-This “creature classic” from Universal-International (originally filmed in 3-D) takes place in the Upper Amazon (after a brief intro on how the world began) where the fossilized remains of an over sized claw are found. Two research-ers, David Reed (Richard Carlson), a se-rious level headed science guy and Mark Williams (Richard Denning), a crabby hard nose who's more concerned with financial success, head an expedition to check out the find. They bring along Reed's fiancee Kay (Julie Adams) too. Nestor Paiva is Lucas, the guy who steers their “barge”. Whit Bissell is Dr. Thompson, another victim, I mean researcher. Little do they suspect that the creature who's remains they are looking for is still alive and has killed two local native helpers. 

Their first dig doesn't turn out so good so Reed has a plan to visit the uncharted “Black Lagoon”. After only seeing a scaly claw for a few scenes, The Creature finally emerges when Reed and Williams go scuba diving. When Kay goes for a swim, the creature checks her out. On another scuba dive, the duo have a closer encounter with “the gill man” where Williams spears him. Later, after it's obvious his intentions lay with Kay, they use a native drug to capture him and put him in a bam-boo cage. That doesn't last long and he breaks out and does some plastic surgery on Thompson. When they try to leave the creature blocks their path. In their efforts to clear a path Williams is killed. Just when it looks like they'll escape the creature grabs Kay and takes her back to his pad, I mean cave. Before he can do in Reed the Gill Man dies in a hail of bullets...or does he? 

TCFTBL is one of the great monster movies of the 1950's. The creature itself deserves to be right up there with all the other “famous monsters” like Frankenstein & Dracula.

The year before this director Jack Arnold made another movie in 3-D the Sci-Fi themed IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (also starring Carlson). Producer William Alland was a former member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. He played the reporter trying to find out the meaning of “rosebud” in CITIZEN KANE. He'd also produced IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and produced later Arnold efforts including the sequel THE REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, TARANTULA and THE SPACE CHILDREN. Co-screenwriter Harry Essex had penned IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and later worked a lot in TV. In 1971 he made his own version of an undersea creature, the whacked out OCTO-MAN. Ricou Browning portrayed the creature underwater, while Ben Chapman was the creature on land. The same year as CREATURE star Carlson directed his own Sci-Fi movie RIDER TO THE STARS. There's a also a memorable musical score by the un-credited trio of Hans Salter, Herman Stein and Henry Mancini.

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Atom Brains

CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN-Columbia-1955- I’m really a fan of the ‘50’s low budget filmmaker Edward L. Cahn. He made lots of fun classic stuff in the decade of McCarthyism, drive-ins, TV dinners, the first wave of Rock & Roll and racial unrest. He started as an editor at Universal and became head of the department in 1926.

Five years later he directed his first movie, LAW AND ORDER, a western starring Walter Huston. He kept making movies like THE GAS HOUSE KIDS IN HOLLYWOOD (1947) and I CHEATED THE LAW (1949).

He showed a little of “things to come” in 1950 when he directed EXPERIMENT ALCATRAZ featuring soon to be Inspector Henderson Robert Shayne as a hardened criminal who uses a rehabilitation experiment on “The Rock” as an excuse to kill a rival.

Then in 1955 Cahn unleashed this little opus concerning an exiled gangster’s revenge on the people who crossed him. Simple, right?

Wrong! This gangster (Michael Granger) uses reanimated dead men to do his dirty work! They have pasty white faces and stitches (ala Frankenstein) around their foreheads where the gangster’s German scientist/creator/war criminal/pal (Gregory Gaye/Gay) has planted the title device. All the gangster has to do is talk into a microphone. Through a special TV screen he can see everything his undead henchmen are doing. He can project his voice through them too. And he and the scientist do everything. They even perform the operations that turn the corpses into zombies!


Richard Denning stars as Dr. Chet Walker, a police-scientist who figures out the plot (I guess he read the script) and notices that the dead guys leave radiation trances whenever they strike. This leads to an all out confrontation between the undead gang and a small group of soldiers and policemen. Close-ups in these scenes look as if they could have influenced George Romero on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD! Actually many of these scenes are used earlier in the film to depict the first all out creature attack! Flash forwards?! Shades of Al Adamson!

In the end, Denning’s police-man/ friend (S. John Launer, now a “creature”) kills the gangster and allows our hero to destroy the atomic machine which in turn causes the creatures to drop like flies (there’s only about eight of them anyway). All’s well that end’s well as a newspaper headline exclaims: “ Creatures With The Atom Brains Destroyed”.

The titanic story and screenplay are provided by the legendary Curt Siodmak who is best known, I guess for having written “ Donovan’s Brain”. He also worked on many of the classic Universal horror movies of the ‘40’s after leaving the Germany film industry in the early ‘30’s. He scripted Karloff’s “comeback” film, THE CLIMAX.

The executive producer was none other than the infamous Sam Katzman whose credits are too numerous to name here! For some reason, “Churn ‘Em Out” Sam is uncredited. Maybe he was too busy and forgot. He produced 10 other features in 1955.

Another note is that cinematographer Fred Jackson shot the amazing EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS the next year (which Katzman produced). Mischa Bakaleinikoff did music for tons of low budget movies. This score for CWTAB isn’t very memorable. In fact, I don’t remember much music at all except during the eerie opening credits when a resurrected victim comes closer and closer to the screen. The poster (available from The Nostalgia Factory) says “Based On Scientific Facts” And in actuality some of the dialogue (especially between Walker and an egghead scientist) is based on scientific fact and theory. So in an exploitation kind of way this tag line is true!

Interestingly enough, the actress who plays Denning’s screen wife, Angela Stevens was in several low budget features but had un-credited roles in two major movies: FROM HERE TO ENTERNITY (1953) and THE WILD ONE (1954). Little Jill Bennett who plays The Walkers’ young daughter Penny wound up in FULL IMPACT (1997), a direct to video action drama starring Gary Daniels. Rounding out the cast is Tristram Coffin, a familiar character actor in tons of films and movies (he’s in “The Duke Of Gluton” episode of The Abbott & Costello Show) as a DA and one of the first victims.

Which brings us to the star of our show Richard Denning, best known to TV audiences in the re-occurring role as the governor on HAWAII 5-0. He started out in the early thirties and eventually played in some classic low budget films like TARGET EARTH and THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (both 1954). He was later in Corman’s DAY THE WORLD ENDED (1956) and THE BLACK SCORPION (1957), which featured some wild Willis O’Brien stop motion animation. The same year as CWTAB Cahn also helmed BETRAYED WOMEN, a girls behind bars flick.

CREATURE is a fast, enjoyable little romp which while quite serious in tone never becomes too serious to be un-entertaining. And hey, Eddie C. wouldn’t rest on his laurels with this neglected opus. Hell, he still had THE SHE CREATURE, INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU, IT! THE TERROR FROM OUTER SPACE, INVISIBLE INVADERS and THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE yet to come! Plus a batch of JD and crime dramas (two with Mamie Van Doren)! This guy Cahn rules!

Side note: Punk rocker Roky Erickson did a song based on this movie. Here's a link to a You Tube tribute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVcK2BRvCgU

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This Is Very Long!

DAY THE WORLD ENDED-1956–My two favorite Roger Corman Sci-Fi movies of the ‘50’s are NOT OF THIS EARTH and this one whose “story begins with The End”. Jim Maddison (Paul Burich; NOTE’s alien) has a house in a valley fortified against a H-Bomb drop. He and his daughter Louise (Lori Nelson) await the arrival of her fiancée. He never gets there but 5 others do. A geologist named Rick (Richard Denning), Tony, a gun toting thug (Mike “Touch” Connors) and his abused stripper “moll” Ruby (Adele Jurgens), a prospector (Jonathan Hale) and his donkey Diablo (no credit listed) and the radiation scarred Radek (Paul Dubov).

Trouble starts almost immediately when Tony takes a liking to Louise. This makes Rudy jealous. Tony plans to make Louise his “Eve” and eliminate everyone else. He and Rudy spit vicious dialogue at each other. Jim and Rick discuss “The Matsuo Project” and look at sketches of animals with fangs and claws. Jim thinks the women should bear children as soon as possible. The prospector bemoans his lost gold strike, makes moonshine and talks to his mule. When Louise goes swimming she hears “something” calling her name…

Meanwhile, Radek makes nightly rounds out in the woods eating contaminated animal meat. He has some great eerie dialogue, telling Rick about ‘the wonderful things going on” above the radiation line and declaring, “I have an enemy. He wants to kill me”.

The enemy turns out to be an armor-plated mutant with claws and a third eye! After Tony kills Ruby and throws her (very phony) body over a cliff, Radek decides make a meal out of Diablo but never gets to munch as he’s killed by his “enemy”. Heartbroken, the prospector decides to go get his gold and is killed by the radiation. Unfortunately Jim tries to save him and gets infected.

Through what seems to be a telepathic link the mutant monster gets Louise in a trance and kidnaps her as it begins to rain. Rick goes after her. When Jim discovers the rain is not contaminated Tony figures it’s time to make his move. Meanwhile Rick and Louise encounter the monster but the rainfall kills it. Tony zeros in his gun on Rick but Jim shoots and kills him (the look on Connors' face when he dies is priceless).

Jim dies but not before offering some philosophical wisdom and Rick and Louise go off to become the new Adam and Eve (although Jim hears some voices on the radio before he shoots Tony).

DTWE is a great claustrophobic little sci-fi film. Although a few parts are unintentionally funny Corman keeps it fairly serious and creepy. The mutant as played by it’s creator AIP SFX specialist Paul Blaisdell is cool but a little bit “rubbery” as all of his monsters tended to be but hell, this was the ‘50s! It’s also interesting to note that the monster was probably Louise’s now mutated fiancée, which would sort of explain his telepathic link to her.

Another unusual touch occurs near the beginning when all the survivors are assembled and Jim reads them the riot act. He mentions that “the women” will sleep in Louise’s room and “the men” will sleep in his room. Tony’s reaction, a glance at Ruby, says he's pissed.

Since this was an American International Picture many of the cast and crew made numerous appearances together in other projects around the same time. Paul Burich was in another interesting AIP cheapie in 1956, THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES. He delivers much of his dialogue stiffly but seriously. My favorite line is what he says about Tony: “I know his kind. Spawned in bilge water”. Richard Denning may have seemed a little old to play the heroic love interest lead but after all this was “the end of the world”. How choosy could you be! DTWE was one of two Roger Corman movies Denning made in 1956. The other was THE OKLAHOMA WOMAN (also written by DAY’s scripter Lou Rusoff). He also starred in Edward L. Cahn’s GIRLS IN PRISON with Adele Jurgens. It too was written by Rusoff. Denning’s other well known Sci-Fi films include CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN, TARGET: EARTH, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and UNKNOWN ISLAND.

Lori Nelson herself was terrorized by “The Gill Man” in THE REVENGE OF THE CREATURE. Her other AIP movies include HOT ROD GIRL and UNTAMED YOUTH. Adele Jergens known for playing hard-boiled “floozy” types made only two more pictures then retired. Her husband was Glenn Langan, The Amazing Colossal Man himself! Mike “Touch” Connors was actually an AIP movie vet but would go on to TV stardom in the shows TIGHTROPE and MANNIX. He was also in THE OKLAHOMA WOMAN as well as SHAKE RATTLE AND ROCK (with Jonathan Hale & Paul Dubov) and THE 10 COMMANMENTS in 1956! AIP veteran player Jonathan Haze appears briefly as a hungry radiation victim that Radek winds up eating!

DAY THE WORLD ENDED was one of a bunch of movies remade in the early ‘60’s by the recently departed Larry Buchanan for AIP-TV. That version used the same plot and some of the dialogue and featured former teen idol Paul Peterson (from THE DONNA REED SHOW) in the Richard Denning role.

A made for HBO movie starring Randy Quaid is a remake in name only!

Hey! Look What I Found!

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