Zero Hour! (1957, Hall Bartlett)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: fighter pilot suffering PTSD boards an airplane in a last-ditch effort to salvage a bad relationship only for the plane to serve rotten fish, requiring this unstable pilot to fly the jet to safety. And there’s an exclamation point at the end of the title.

No, it’s not Airplane!, it’s that film’s (still) unofficial source material–Zero Hour!. The difference being Hour plays it straight, instead of making fun of playing it straight, but it’s all the same material; only, you’re watching it and not supposed to laugh at it.

And it’s a long eighty minutes, especially once Sterling Hayden shows up to start barking absolutely pointless exposition.

The movie begins with narration explaining just before the end of World War II, Canadian squadron leader Dana Andrews made a bad call and got most of his men killed. Or at least a large number of them. Hayden may or may not have been one of those men. The movie’s strangely opaque about it. When we leave 1945 for the future, Andrews is in bad shape. Fast forward ten years, and we find out he’s never made anything of himself, despite marrying Linda Darnell and having a kid (an abjectly annoying Ray Ferrell). Darnell’s fed up, and she’s leaving, so Andrews chases her to the airport and buys another seat to follow her.

There will be numerous moments throughout Hour when it seems like Darnell’s going to have something to do other than debase herself at the altar of machismo. She can’t respect Andrews because he won’t get over getting those guys killed and man up. The movie simultaneously tries to show the horrors of experiencing PTSD while also lambasting him for having it. When Andrews has to fly the jet, Darnell’s in the co-pilot’s chair, and it seems like there’s going to be the couple teaming up to solve their problem.

No, not at all. However, that sequence features Andrews’s best acting in the film, when he successfully intensely stares straight ahead in static panic. However, Andrews isn’t the worst performance. Thanks to Hour’s casting choices, the bloated screenplay, and director Bartlett’s failings… every performance in Hour is eventually bad except maybe Jerry Paris, who plays flight attendant Peggy King’s boyfriend. Sorry, misspoke—stewardess, and not just stewardess, but “Stewardess,” most of the characters refuse to acknowledge she may have a name. Paris is bland, but he’s consistent. For a while, it seems like King might turn in a good turn, but then no. She also can’t stop looking into the camera in the third act, which just makes the whole picture seem more embarrassing.

Geoffrey Toone plays the doctor, who luckily didn’t have the fish. He’s absolutely flat and delivers mouthfuls of exposition. Hour’s script is pretty sure all you have to do to convince people it’s legit is use enough jargon. But Toone’s not forceful enough. Hayden’s arguably worse—heck, he’s arguably the worst performance, and Hour also stars former pro-football star Elroy ‘Crazylegs’ Hirsch, and Hirsch is a very, very bad actor. But Hayden’s a phenomenon, chain-smoking, yelling at thin air, staring into space. It’s a masterclass in how not to do a solo performance.

Though he’s not solo, he’s got a bunch of yes-men around to look worried (and get coffee). Charles Quinlivan plays the main yes-man. And until the third act, Quinlivan seems like he will get through Hour unscathed. He does not, but he gives that impression the longest of anyone in the cast.

The special effects are ambitious—except the lousy stock footage (including when the Canadian jet becomes an American Airlines one). They’re not good, but they’re ambitious. The sets are either too big, or Bartlett doesn’t know how to shoot them.

Skip Zero Hour! and watch the remake.

This post is part of the 2nd Annual “Favorite Stars in B Movies” Blogathon hosted by Brian of Films From Beyond The Time Barrier.

I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957, Gene Fowler Jr.)

I Was a Teenage Werewolf opens with a reasonably impressive—for 1957–schoolyard fight. Throughout the film, director Fowler will have these entirely competent low-budget action sequences, with much thought put into them by Fowler and his uncredited editor. It’s not because they’ve got ambition with Werewolf; they’re just trying to pad the runtime.

To its seventy-six minutes.

Anyway. The opening fight: troubled teen Michael Landon is at it again with the roughhousing. Someone slapped him playfully on the back, and Landon doesn’t like being touched, so he went from one to nuclear.

Responding police detective Barney Phillips says Landon’s out of chances. He’s got to go to the aircraft plant psychiatrist to get himself head-shrunk. Of course, Landon’s not into any of that mumbo jumbo and walks off. Sort of.

He walks over to his waiting girlfriend (Yvonne Lime) and is shitty to her in a different way, but it’s 1957, and she’s going to do what he says.

Landon’s issues about being touched—he initially recoils at Lime’s embrace, but if he’s initiating, it’s fine—those issues will never be addressed. When Landon goes nuclear again—beating up on his friend Ken Miller (who deserves it for his ghastly song)—he’ll end up seeing the shrink. The aircraft plant thing is a red herring (unless the plant’s in the middle of downtown), and evil psychiatrist Whit Bissell doesn’t care about Landon’s anger management issues. Bissell’s been waiting years for this perfect test subject; he’s going to give Landon a serum to revert him back to his primal stage. The problem with the modern world is too much thinking; we need to regress to the missing link and start over.

Aiding and abetting Bissell is reluctant fellow scientist Joseph Mell. There could be a whole movie about their antics over the years, with Mell cautioning Bissell not to kill this or that person and Bissell doing it anyway.

Werewolf’s about Landon’s anger issues for the first act, plus setting up the town—he and his fellow kids (he’s the leader of a significant clique) have a clubhouse where they dance, play slapstick pranks, go to second base with girls, and drink root beer probably. It’s entirely inconsistent with Landon’s previously established character. Especially since none of these kids seems to know about his fighting. It’s Halloween when the movie starts (something else entirely unimportant), which means end of October.

Landon’s had the cops called on him for fighting six times already this school year or something.

As time passes, Landon eventually turns into a werewolf—more like reverts to the missing link, but whatever—and starts killing his classmates. At that point, it becomes a police procedural for chief Robert Griffin, with already established Phillips the backup. Landon spends most of the second half of Werewolf in his makeup. He’s an enthusiastic werewolf (missing link), even if the teeth are exceptionally silly.

The finale warns of the dangers of… psychiatrists. The story’s moral is if a boy’s mother dies, he’s broken; just put him out of his misery there. Otherwise, he’ll end up in the gas chamber, and especially don’t send him to aircraft plant psychiatrists. They’re all just out to destroy modern civilization.

Unfortunately, the movie’s too rushed in the third act to embrace any of these big swings. Werewolf pads with teen exposition, fisticuffs, a posse with torches, and slapstick. When it’s actually interesting—like Landon’s dad, Malcolm Atterbury, waiting for news about his murderous son—it’s in a rush.

The best acting is Atterbury, followed by Guy Williams as Griffin’s initial sidekick (who loses his spot to Phillips because the film’s got a weird structure). Bissell’s an over-the-top caricature. Mell’s an under-the-top caricature. Vladimir Sokoloff plays the Maria Ouspenskaya part (it should’ve been Lon Chaney Jr. in a cameo), proving they could still be racist to Eastern Europeans in 1957.

Landon gets a lot to do being an inexplicable jerk and running around in his Larry Talbots. But he doesn’t get an actual arc—when he’s on the run, knowing he’s a murderous werewolf (missing link), the movie’s about everyone but him. So no character arc. His showdown with Bissell doesn’t even pay off.

Lime’s second-billed, but… has very little to do by the film’s end. She starts having very little to do after her second scene. Werewolf’s got no time for love.

The film’s got some definite camp value—Bissell alone—and there’s not-bad low-budget filmmaking on display, but Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel’s script sinks it.

This post is part of the Favorite Stars in B Movies Blogathon hosted by Brian of Films From Beyond The Time Barrier.

12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)

Director Lumet wrote at length about his compositional decisions for 12 Angry Men in his book about filmmaking, aptly titled Making Movies. The camera starts up high, looking down at the jury room and its jurors, then gradually moves down and in; by the third act, it’s in tight, low-angle close-ups. It’s beautiful, sublime work with gorgeous black and white photography from Boris Kaufman.

But it’s only one of Lumet’s moves, and, while eventually the most important, it’s not the most startling. It’s a gradual, deliberate device. You can watch it as the film progresses, identify where Lumet makes changes. The most startling and deftest move is how Lumet brings the audience into the jury room as an active observer. The height and angle of the shot are part of it, but when it comes to the men sitting around talking and arguing, Lumet wants the audience to have a seat at the table. The camera becomes subjective, whether a juror speaking directly into it or the camera peering at someone, trying to suss out what they’re thinking.

But at one point, Lumet entirely flips it, giving the camera a second-person viewpoint. Loudmouth marmalade salesman and baseball fan Jack Warden makes a big scene, then has to apologize to someone. It’s the first time Warden’s acknowledged he can be wrong—he’s bigger on identifying when someone else is incorrect—and Lumet shoots Warden in one shot. There are a couple cutaways to the wronged party, but it’s mostly just this long take of Warden being extra, then realizing his error. The length of the shot isn’t for Warden, however, it’s for the audience. So much of 12 Angry Men is about a group of men looking at others; the shot of Warden doesn’t have the ten other guys. And the wronged party is in close-up, from Warden’s perspective. The rest of the room is silent, some doodling, some daydreaming, many smoking, many silently watching, just like the audience. It puts the audience in the in-group and Warden temporarily in the out-group. It’s an incredible beat and a literal relief.

The film opens with a jury getting their instructions from a bored judge (Rudy Bond); Bond makes sure the men know if they vote guilty, they’ll be sending the defendant to the electric chair. They retire to the locked jury room, and men settle in, making small talk, and reading the newspaper. Really quick ground situation establishing and hints at character details. Only one of them has an actual character arc throughout, Lee J. Cobb. A few others have shorter arcs as they realize they’re not so sure about their initial guilty verdict, but Cobb’s the one who the film—from a strict distance—reveals enough about for him to have an arc.

Led by jury foreman Martin Balsam, the men take an initial vote. Eleven guilty, one not guilty; Henry Fonda is the holdout. He’s not ready to send an eighteen-year-old Hispanic kid (John Savoca) to the electric chair without at least talking about it. 12 Angry Men runs ninety minutes and change, mostly continuously, but it’s not exactly real-time.

Most of the jurors have passively decided: Balsam, John Fielder, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Warden, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec, and Robert Webber. Of course, they’re assuming the prosecuting attorney’s not just going to lie.

Then there are the die-hards with other reasoning. Cobb has issues with his son—Savoca’s accused of killing his punchy father after having enough one night. Ed Begley’s a racist. E.G. Marshall’s a stockbroker who needs the prosecuting attorney to be unimpeachable to preserve his investment in the “system.”

The system, of course, is patriarchal white supremacy, which 12 Angry Men couldn’t even talk about if it knew what it was talking about. Not in 1957. But the film’s very much about Fonda convincing the men to question their prejudices and preconceptions. Some of the men bend to reason; some react to the opposition having such shitty logic (if not the bald racism), and some just need the confidence to (earnestly) share their truths.

Reginald Rose’s screenplay (based on his earlier teleplay for an episode of “Westinghouse Studio One”) never gives the actors too much about themselves. Almost everyone eventually shares the basics: their jobs, their family situations—no names, not until the end, and then only a couple. They’re a group of white men in a situation with social norms, but there are bullies operating on different levels; they’re still strangers, even when they’re in the exact same demographics, and they’re trying to figure out how to talk with one another. Their frustrations (and fulfillments) might play out in dialogue, but the performances are all physical. We’re watching the men find their voices, good and bad, both through their dialogue and just their physicalities. It’s an exceptionally well-made film. The way Lumet watches the performances, the way the men interrupt one another, listen to one another; it’s an actors’ picture, to be sure, but almost more a reaction picture.

They’re all setting one another off, intentionally and not, to great success.

The best performance is Cobb. After him, the top tier is Fonda, Marshall, Warden, Sweeney, and Voskovec. Then Begley, Klugman, Binns, and Balsam. Fielder and Webber are both good but have the most caricatural parts. Webber’s the closest thing the film’s got to comic relief, while Fielder’s just the sweet, meek guy.

Besides Cobb and Fonda, the other big star is Kenyon Hopkins’s score. The film doesn’t need the music for drama—and Men doesn’t use it to punctuate—but the music’s still essential to the experience. Just like the audience, it’s also got a seat in the deliberations, another active participant.

Great editing from Carl Lerner.

12 Angry Men’s one of the true masterpieces of film. Everything about it improves on repeat viewings: the acting, the directing, the music. All of it. Just staggering.

Throne of Blood (1957, Kurosawa Akira)

Co-producer, co-writer, director, and editor Kurosawa loves himself some Macbeth. Throne of Blood is Macbeth in feudal Japan, with Mifune Toshiro and Yamada Isuzu as the doomed couple. Kurosawa and his co-writers structure the film as a historical war epic, with modern-day bookends, and then fit Mifune and Yamada’s Macbeth into the war epic. But as Mifune and Yamada take over the narrative (Throne’s got a sublime pace), the war epic falls back, and it becomes more focused on Mifune as a military commander.

The screenwriters open up the play, adapting it for a different culture (if similar calendar year), with different behavioral norms, but they keep the arc for Mifune—at least in terms of character development–super close to the play. There are a couple things they don’t integrate from the play, but the film’s never the less for it. Not to mention Kurosawa gets to bring in Japanese supernatural; Macbeth’s Weird Sisters—no offense to “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”—haven’t been a trope since, well, long before motion pictures. And they were an extraordinary event in the original play; you couldn’t just go find yourself a witch.

But in Throne, when Mifune and sidekick Chiaki Minoru come across a forest witch (Naniwa Chieko), they’re not super-surprised. Forest witches aren’t unlikely in Throne’s world. It adds a bunch of texture to Mifune’s descent—including worrying the witch has somehow possessed Yamada–and layers to the relationship with Chiaki. Once Mifune starts fulfilling Naniwa’s prophecy, Chiaki gets a very active role.

Kurosawa does a lot to avoid any stagy vibes—Throne’s bookends start in long shots and gradually move in, showcasing the scale but also the merciless onslaught of time itself (another layer, Throne just as a historical drama). And then, whenever anyone’s in the forest, Kurosawa gets the camera into the literal bushes and looks out at them, making the forest a character. At least for point of view.

But when Mifune gets back home and he and Yamada just sit around and emotionlessly bicker about whether he should take the proverbial horse and kill his boss to fulfill prophecy. These scenes are—almost by definition—stagy. It’s just Mifune and Yamada in an enclosed space, no one else but them. Again, Kurosawa turns it into intense character drama; only we don’t know the stakes. There’s no backstory for Mifune and Yamada in Throne and given her capacity for expression is literally painted over (though the makeup will change, relevantly to the plot), their relationship and its changes throughout are unknowable.

It gives both of them lots of potential for the parts, and both realize it, though Mifune gets more just because of the plot. Because of their opaque relationship, Throne is often a character study–especially given the relatively brief present action.

After the prologue, Throne spends about covering a rebellion via messenger updates to lord Sasaki Takamaru and his court (which includes Shimura Takashi, in what amounts to a cameo). Through the updates, Sasaki and the audience learn samurai Mifune and Chiaki basically save the day single-handedly, defeating the invaders and traitors. When the action cuts to Mifune and Chiaki in the forest, we learn more about their take on the rebellion and the general political situation. Throne is a political drama, but Mifune’s not a political animal, something his introduction establishes. There’s significant foreboding even before they realize they’re lost in the forest and come across the witch.

For a while, since the forest is so militarily important (the main castle is the Forest Castle, after all), it seems Throne will spend a lot of time on it. Especially since, you know, it’s Macbeth. But once Mifune and Chiaki are through, it’s a while before it comes back. On their way out, however, they get lost in the fog and the fog will be around for most of Throne. It actually was already in Throne, in the prologue, with Kurosawa and cinematographer Nakai Asakazu showing off with fading back in time. Throne’s a special effects spectacular. There are some big effects sequences, but then there are some obviously complicated, precisely executed in-camera effects to get some of the shots. It’s beautiful work.

Even being a Macbeth adaptation and working toward potentially familiar plot points, Kurosawa, his co-writers, and Mifune surprise, time and again. So good.

Mifune’s performance is fantastic. Even with the battle action in the third act, it’s all about watching him. With Kurosawa structuring the scene perfectly; Throne’s partially a rumination on the universality of Shakespeare and the potentials of adapting.

Great, disquieting score from Sato Masaru. The technicals are all outstanding.

Yamada and Chiaki are both excellent, with the film hinging on them as well, but Mifune’s the star. Well, Throne all together is the star; truly masterful work from Kurosawa and company.

Forty Guns (1957, Samuel Fuller)

Forty Guns occupies that rare position of simultaneously playing like a parody of itself without being any campy fun. It’s a perfect storm of budget, cast, story, era, technology, earnestness, and director Fuller.

Oh, and it’s a singing cowboy Western. Well, singing bathhouse owner. Men’s only, which leads to a couple weird scenes where Fuller is palpably chomping at the bit to start a musical number and have everyone bust out. Sadly, the musical number never arrives, and instead it’s always just Jidge Carroll walking around and singing with some guy nearby playing a guitar.

Carroll has one song about Barbara Stanwyck (High Ridin’ Woman (With a Whip)) and a funeral song (God Has His Arms Around Me, which is an exceptionally problematic hymn about God gaslighting you after abusing you). They’re awful songs. And they’re silly. And Carroll’s not good enough to make them worth it. During the funeral song, it’s clear Fuller doesn’t have a bad idea here; he just doesn’t have the time, money, or onscreen talent to figure it out.

For the first act, Forty Guns feels a little like Fuller saw Seven Samurai and decided to American-it-up, meaning multiply the title by six and then do an entirely different movie.

Guns takes place in Tombstone, Arizona, where a Wyatt Earp-type (Barry Sullivan) comes to town to serve a warrant only to fall for local battle baroness Barbara Stanwyck. Sullivan’s got his sidekick brother, Gene Barry, and his baby brother, Robert Dix, along, though Dix is supposed to be moving out to California to be an “agricultural cowboy.”

The good guys are there on federal business, so when local marshal Hank Worden (a nice but not good cameo) begs Sullivan to help him stand up to Stanwyck, Sullivan gives him the “ain’t my wife, ain’t my life” and goes on his way. Only then Stanwyck’s shitty little brother (John Ericson) assaults Worden, burning out his eyes with coffee and shooting him; Sullivan decides he might have to do something about it.

The film quickly becomes a battle of the “wits” between Sullivan and Stanwyck, who don’t seem to know when they’re supposed to be flirting or not. Like their first substantial encounter: Stanywck’s got a great flirt going, and neither Sullivan nor Fuller acknowledge it. Later on, she’ll be hurrying through, and he’ll be trying to slow it down. Very strange, though it has a few good moments, which is a surprise since Sullivan’s terrible and Stanwyck’s doing everything she can to be terrible. It’s the part, however.

Stanwyck’s part is as follows. She’s a strong, self-made woman who went from cattle rancher’s daughter to most powerful land baroness in the state. She has forty riders with her at all times (her Dragoons). She dresses like the hostess at an extremely racist Mexican restaurant where only white people work. Her costumes will change, however, like when forty-nine-year-old Stanwyck—who does her amazing horse-dragging stunt in this movie—starts wearing around Southern belle outfits to show she’s in love with Sullivan.

Only they never say anything about her character arc. It’s terrible, it’s problematic, but it’s entirely offscreen because Fuller’s not interested.

I’m resisting looking up the trivia to see if he was stuck in some contract, hated the studio, and didn’t like Stanwyck, so Fuller made this movie.

Most of the acting is bad. Sullivan’s a lousy lead. The script’s not there but, wow, does he not have any charisma. Or the ability to walk distinctively, which is apparently crucial in the singing cowboy universe of Forty Guns. Barry’s a little better, though he’s got a romance subplot with Eve Brent, and he’s older than the actor playing her father (Gerald Milton) by a few years, and it’s obvious. He’s still rather bad. But he and Brent do have a couple reasonably effective lusty scenes together.

If it weren’t for the third act, Dean Jagger would break the movie. Jagger’s the corrupt numbskull sheriff who tries to save the day and makes things worse. He’s atrocious. Ditto Ericson.

Wait, is anyone not terrible?

Brent and Milton are okay, I guess.

Fuller’s good direction ranges from okay to excellent, obviously less excellent stuff than okay, but he’s also got some silly moves and some bad ones. He’s indifferent to the performances and Joseph F. Biroc’s competent but flat black-and-white photography. Since it’s so bombastic, it ought to be in color.

Fuller and editor Gene Fowler Jr. cover a lot in the cuts, but it’s still good cutting of bad scenes.

Harry Sukman’s music is familiar, varied, and tedious.

So, yeah, Forty Guns. Definitely could be in the “seen to be believed, but shouldn’t be seen” pile, but it’s so much comfier in the “what the hell was Sam Fuller thinking?” one.

The Brain from Planet Arous (1957, Nathan Juran)

Given its micro-budget and absurdity, The Brain from Planet Arous is often surprisingly okay. Director Juran was so embarrassed he took his name off the final product (using his middle name, Hertz, as his surname on the credits), and the movie does get goofy, but its biggest problem isn’t the budget in the end.

Instead, it’s how Arous treats leading lady and de facto protagonist Joyce Meadows. She’s second-billed, but lead John Agar has been possessed by an evil space brain. For the vast majority of the… seventy-minute runtime, it’s not Agar bent on world domination and assaulting Meadows; it’s this evil super brain. Literal super brain. There are two of them, one bad, one good, and they’re usually physically immaterial but visible, something Agar never figures out when trying to fight the bad one initially. Concerning since he’s a nuclear physicist.

He and his sidekick, Robert Fuller, measure a way too much radiation out at “Mystery Mountain” (Ray Buffam’s script seems written for a “Scooby-Doo” in more ways than one) and go out to investigate. Before they go, they go over to Meadows’s house for some all-American grub. Hamburgers, French fries, and casual sexism. Though not as much as later when Meadows’s dad, Thomas Browne Henry, says he’s going to hide in his office, so he doesn’t have to help with the dishes and will only come out when she’s finished.

Henry is terrible, which ends up helping the film a little. The only time the space brains appear in shots with the actors is when the brains are possessing someone. Otherwise, they never share shots, so there’s a lot of Agar dramatically flailing around the frame all by himself. There’s only so much he can do, right? Like, come on. It’s called The Brain from Planet Arous, after all.

And when Agar’s possessed and planning world domination, he has moments of success. He’s able to get absurd enough to match the script. Rolling around by himself, there’s nothing to be done with it.

He also gets metallic mutant eyes, which are clearly painful to wear, and Agar’s wincing pain makes for a more effective moment.

After the opening, when Agar and Fuller go out and find the alien, most of the movie is set either in Agar’s lab or Meadows’s house. Specifically, her backyard because it seems like the lab is in a different part of that same house. The first scene makes it look like she’s coming in to get them for lunch, not getting in a car and driving over and bringing them back for lunch.

Later, her dog will run between the houses regularly, but Agar always drives back and forth. It’s a little weird, but I guess even Arous knew the idea of scientists Agar and Fuller living with his girlfriend Meadows and her dad Henry was too silly.

Meadows and Agar only get a couple scenes together before he becomes possessed by the evil brain, who taunts Agar about what they’re going to do to Meadows and how she brings out a certain malicious lust in the otherwise asexual brain. It’s a lot, and Meadows spends most of the movie terrified of Agar attacking her. She’s pretty damn good at it.

Of course, after Agar gets back and assaults her, dad Henry tells her to get over it; Meadows doesn’t get any support until the good alien space brain shows up and confirms Agar’s now dangerous to Henry. It’s obvious what kind of world Meadows is living in.

And, just when the film needs to acknowledge her ability to overcome that world’s hindrances… it makes a sexist joke about her. And she’s a silly, silly lady. It’s a mean ending for the character, a bad one for the film, a big diss to Meadows (who kept a straight face not just opposite translucent space brains but also Henry’s bad acting), and a crap end for the film overall.

Instead of having a resolution, the movie literally just has someone gaslight Meadows and make her the butt of a joke.

It’s a bummer since it didn’t have to end so badly. And it didn’t have anything to do with the budget, just bad writing. Arous just needed to take itself as seriously as its two leads did. Agar and, especially, Meadows get nothing for their efforts.

Monster from Green Hell (1957, Kenneth G. Crane)

Monster from Green Hell is impressively boring. Despite running a theoretically spry seventy minutes, the film Hell’s a slog from minute five.

The film opens with unlikely scientist Jim Davis and sidekick Robert Griffin sending rockets into space to test cosmic rays on animals. Their launch site? A very recognizable, very wanting composite still of Monument Valley. One of their test rockets goes off course and crashes in Central Africa. Despite Davis thinking they should worry about that sort of thing, no one cares; not Griffin, not the government, just blandly heroic Davis.

Now, if Hell weren’t just endless long shots of people walking, and the script was talkier, it might achieve some camp value thanks to Davis. He’s profoundly miscast but entirely straight-faced about it. Griffin at least seems like he could be a scientist sidekick. Davis deserves at least a prize for delivering some of the science exposition; incredibly, he’s able to clomp through it, always with his Midwest cowboy drawl.

Unfortunately, Hell isn’t about the talking; it’s about the walking.

The on-location Africa footage is recycled from 1939’s Stanley and Livingstone, which dramatizes events from 1871. In other words, Hell isn’t just colonial; it’s disturbingly colonial. For example, when Davis and Griffin are trekking across Africa, Arab guide Eduardo Ciannelli carries a whip to keep the porters in line. It’s a lot. Especially since the movie’s already established its token credited Black guy, Joel Fluellen, and he’s more modernly presented.

The movie’s first half is Davis and Griffin’s trip across Africa to Fluellen’s village. The audience already knows they’ve run into a monster from the rocket crash; it hangs out in Green Hell and is stampeding the animals, causing turmoil all over the continent. The new apex predator has arrived, and it’s a giant wasp. Or at least it’s head and pincers because they couldn’t afford much more. They certainly couldn’t afford for it to fly.

The special effects on the giant wasp are not great. They’re gross, which helps in effectiveness, I suppose, but Monster’s wasp is a lousy giant fifties sci-fi monster, as it turns out. Primarily because of budget, partially because of writing, nothing is interesting about it. Could a good director have made it work? Probably. Director Crane has a grand total of one decent shot in the entire picture.

Also in Fluellen’s village are Christian missionary doctor Vladimir Sokoloff and his daughter, Barbara Turner. Turner looks miserable the entire time like she agreed to do the movie but didn’t think it’d ever get made. Sokoloff’s terrible and not in a fun way. When they’re around, Monster slogs even more than usual.

The only thing the film’s got going for it is Ray Flin’s surprisingly good black and white photography. In addition, there’s some stop motion animation, which is more creative than the composites the film usually uses for the menacing Monster. But it’s not, you know, good stop motion.

Monster from Green Hell is a bewildering, boring B. However, it’s strange enough you can imagine the behind-the-scenes story is a far better one than the finished product.

Night of the Demon (1957, Jacques Tourneur)

Despite Dana Andrews and Peggy Cummins being perfectly serviceable leads, Night of the Demon never really comes to life without antagonist Niall MacGinnis around. MacGinnis is a Satanic cult leader who conjures forth demons from Hell—hence the title—to deal with his enemies and—while he never explicitly confesses to his enemies… he takes a delight in his villainy. That delight helps quite a bit with all his expository speeches, which lag whenever he’s not giving them.

At first it seems like the film’s going to have some expository shortcuts—for example, Andrews’s introduction is inventive and pragmatic—but then start the various info dumps. Eventually Cummins gets involved—she and Andrews have a mostly chemistry-free relationship other than some seemingly platonic concern (though they have a good “cute meet” on an airplane). Andrews is flying over to England to help fellow psychiatrist Maurice Denham investigate MacGinnis. Cummins is Denham’s niece and returning for some contrived reason. See, once MacGinnis sicks a demon on Andrews, he’s got to be the skeptic but there also needs to be a reluctant believer: Cummins.

The film establishes almost immediately whether or not MacGinnis is full of it on the demonology business; there’s a voice over setting things up, ominously set against various shots of Stonehenge, then it’s time for Denham to confront MacGinnis and we find out what’s really going on. So Andrews’s protracted investigation—which involves local farmer Brian Wilde’s murder trial and a convention to debunk paranormal thinking, specifically MacGinnis’s cult—doesn’t promise a lot of pay-off because the film’s clued the audience in on things he doesn’t know or even suspect.

Andrews even has a separate supporting cast for this subplot, whereas Cummins sticks to the MacGinnis side of things, getting involved with MacGinnis’s sympathetic mother, Athene Seyler.

So most of Demon is rapid exposition—Tourneur gets excellent readings from Andrews and Cummins during their scenes, with this neat trick of delaying reactions so they don’t get in the way of more exposition but they do build up so they’ve got more weight when they do break, sometimes with a nice cut courtesy editor Michael Gordon. When it’s not rapid exposition, the film’s suspense sequences. Tourneur, cinematographer Edward Scaife, and editor Gordon create some spectacular suspense sequences in the film. They’re able to get tension out of MacGinnis offering Andrews a light, but then they’re also able to scale up to full action special effects set pieces too. They can do ominous empty, they can do jumbo action set pieces. Scaife’s night photography is stunning; he and Tourneur do some great work on the suspense here.

Clifton Parker’s music helps too, though not as much as Gordon and whoever did the sound (looks like Charles Crafford). The film teaches Andrews—and the audience—to be afraid of the dark, starting from the first scene after the opening titles. And it’s always night time in Demon. There are some day time scenes in the first act, but pretty soon everyone’s out after dark, whether it’s for a dinner date, a seance, or the paranormal debunking convention. There’s always somewhere for monsters to hide.

Because Demon’s not just a suspense thriller about a Satanic cult out to rid itself of meddling American anti-paranormal psychiatrist, it’s also a monster movie. Maybe. And Tourneur and the crew adeptly pivot between the two genres. It helps the effects are excellent. There’s a quite a bit of process photography during chase scenes, for instance, and it’s always outstanding.

There’s just too much of the exposition in the second act. Even with it “solving” the problem for Andrews, it takes forever while Cummins and presumably MacGinnis are off having a lot more interesting things going on than giving a lecture. If Andrews were better, it might work out. He’s fine, he’s sturdy, but he’s far from compelling. Even with less to do, Cummins manages to be a lot more appealing; Andrews and MacGinnis are both playing jackasses, one of them just happens to be more right than the other about the existence of demons. They play well off each other, with Andrews lighting up for the conflict in a way he doesn’t for the exposition dumps with Cummins.

Excellent direction from Tourneur throughout—even when the narrative is slogging—is key. He likes his jump scares too; while he doesn’t rely on them, he does play with them, trying to keep the audience on their toes but also to jazz up the film after it’s been dragging. It’d be nice for it not to drag, but Tourneur’s compensations work out.

Night of the Demon succeeds, with Tourneur, the crew, and MacGinnis picking up the slack for the script and—consequently—Andrews and Cummins, who always manage to be sympathetic and appealing, but nothing more. It makes the film even more impressive it’s able to get away with not having effective heroes. Good thing it’s so exceptionally well-made.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957, Jack Arnold)

The Incredible Shrinking Man is an enormous feat. It succeeds thanks to director Arnold, writer Richard Matheson, and star Grant Williams. Arnold’s arguably got the greatest successes; he carefully lays the groundwork for the film’s eventual startling visuals. To get to the startling ones, Arnold’s got to get through some absurd ones. Only the first act visuals aren’t startling or absurd, they’re just mundanely peculiar. Even when Williams finally gets it confirmed—his suspicions are correct, he is somehow shrinking—the film gets some energy out of William Schallert giving the news in a very William Schallert way, but otherwise tension doesn’t rise. It’s still early in the film, which only runs eighty minutes and more than half of it is a survival picture; Arnold and Matheson pace things out gradually in the first section. Even though every scene perturbs the plot, Matheson is really just moving Williams into position for the real story to come.

The story of man against his environment, an environment of his own unintentional making. All the smart moves Arnold makes in the beginning as Williams shrinks from six feet tall to three feet tall, all the elaborate set decorating, the outstanding matte shots… the second half survival picture is where Arnold and the crew up the effects work. As Williams shrinks to the height of a doll, then to a matchstick, the effects requirements grow exponentially. It’s a lot easier to have Williams sit shrunk on a couch across the room from regular-size wife Randy Stuart, but getting him into a dollhouse so she can lean down and talk to him like he’s Fay Wray? Arnold doesn’t just up the effects ante, he also takes into account how much more fantastical his visuals are getting. He’s got to sell it all to the audience.

And he does. Shrinking Man is always inventive in how the effects get integrated, because eventually the effects become the visual plane. Reality is long gone.

Matheson does just as well changing gears from the opening medical thriller picture to the survival one. Williams—who narrates the whole picture, usually to solid effect—has entirely different expectations in the second half of the film than the audience. The first half, they’re pretty much inline as far as predicting the plot. Especially if an audience member has seen the posters advertising film as the “Dollman vs. House cat”. Williams doesn’t have the exact same expectations, but he operates with a lot of fear, which comes out in his performance but not the narration. The narration—which ends up being Matheson’s only problem area for specific, somewhat unrelated reasons—is all past tense. Even though Williams spends the first half of the film writing his life story, the narration isn’t that written account. It’s something else, which Matheson never identifies. It’s a soft spot, but given some of the other soft spots in the script, it might be better he doesn’t place it in time and place.

Just to get them out of the way now—the other two soft spots in Matheson’s script? The gentle attempts to comment on Williams’s changing masculine self-image. It all has to do with Stuart, who establishes herself in the first scene as this strong partner. And Williams appreciates her as such. Loads of chemistry in the first scene. Just because the script doesn’t give Stuart anything to do after her second scene, which mostly has her making breakfast, she never gets downgraded either. I guess it’s kind of a larger soft spot overall—the way Matheson abandons Stuart to get to the sci-fi medical thriller. As Williams gets smaller, he gets meaner to Stuart, but he’s really aware of it, both in narration and scene. Stuart’s going to assume he’s really apologetic in a scene because they’re both going through a fantastic trauma. The audience knows from the narration he means it. So it’s all a dramatic wash, which wastes not just Stuart, but Williams as well. They’ve only got so much time together.

Third soft spot is Matheson’s attempt to tie it all into God and the cosmos. The film doesn’t really need it—like, even for 1957, Shrinking Man never gets too sacrilegious in its Nuclear Age sci-fi—but Matheson uses it when he runs out of plot ideas. It’s a really strange move, which might have worked in the source novel (also by Matheson), but doesn’t come off visualized. And given how well Arnold visualizes everything else in the picture, he’s got to know, right?

Besides Williams and Stuart, only April Kent and Paul Langton make much impression in the cast. Kent’s the nice little person who Williams bonds with. It’s an undercooked plot point, but effective. Kent’s good. Langton’s Williams’s older brother, who ends up caring for Stuart after Williams… shrinks too much. It’s a throwaway character, who just sits around taking agency from Stuart, usually in exposition dumps, and Langton’s really bland in the part.

So they stand out for very different reasons.

Excellent photography from Ellis W. Carter, good editing from Albrecht Joseph; great special effects, great sets. The Incredible Shrinking Man is a big success, it just should’ve been an even bigger one.

This post is part of the Richard Matheson Blogathon hosted by Rich of Wide Screen World and Debbie of Moon in Gemini.

Studio One (1948) s09e21-e22 – The Defender, Parts 1 and 2

The Defender is exquisite. It’s a two-part courtroom drama from “Studio One,” so Reginald Rose’s teleplay has some major constraints. There’s budget, there’s content, there’s plotting, there’s pacing. Not to mention it’s two separate broadcasts. No matter how well the two parts of The Defender sit alongside, the reality of its broadcast has to figure in. Rose has got two rising actions set apart by approximately a half hour. He’s got commercial breaks to deal with.

So he works with all of it. The first part is the first day, the second part is the second day. Maybe the deftest thing Rose does in the teleplay is never commit fully to the location constraint. It all takes place in the courtroom. While the unseen world informs everything going on, it’s completely cut off from the characters and the audience. Like I said, exquisite. You sit and watch The Defender–especially in the first part, before the reminder it’s finite–and Rose’s narrative transitions actually please. His intentional foreshadowing works out, whether its something in the story or just something with the characters.

Defender is about a murder trial, but it’s about the trial. Not the case. As the courtroom fills, the film moves across its population. The reporters, the baliffs, the spectors. Never the jurors and rarely the husband of the victim. Also rarely the judge.

It’s about the lawyers. Not equally, but it’s about all of them. There’s assistant district attorney and general goober Arthur Storch. There’s district attorney Martin Balsam. There’s William Shatner. He’s second chair on the defense. Ralph Bellamy is the defense attorney. He’s, you know, The Defender.

Only Rose’s teleplay doesn’t give Bellamy the most striking material. In fact, it specifically doesn’t. He’s set back from the goings on, with politically ambitious Balsam and Storch having a slam dunk case. Balsam’s got no love of the capital L law like Bellamy does. Shatner’s also Bellamy’s son and wants to run the case his way, with some heart. Bellamy doesn’t like heart or sympathy or empathy. Turns out the capital L law is open to interpration.

And Rose sets up all these internal conflicts amid this trial, where defendant Steve McQueen gets his own major character arc. He’s got to break down as the trial goes worse and worse for him. The worse the trial goes, the more openly hostile Bellamy gets about having to defend a punk kid.

McQueen goes all out and then brings it in. He’s hysterical during character establishing, literally waving his arms around. The Defender has a lot of good, showy parts. It’s a credit to Storch he doesn’t break into song to get some of the attention. But when McQueen brings it in, he does so alongside the film itself contracting. It turns out there’s been a narrative focusing going on, so Rose can make it all about Bellamy and Shatner–which The Defender isn’t about–but all of a sudden it can be. More than can be, Rose shows it should be.

Turns out The Defender is a fifties variation on a backdoor pilot–it soon went to series as “The Defenders,” only without Bellamy and Shatner.

Anyway. The whole thing is intricately threaded, with Rose putting actors on layaway for their best scenes. Everyone gets a great scene, never with anyone else, yet they need to be patient. Bellamy’s about the only one who doesn’t get a big great scene. He and Shatner get some scenes, which quickly go from the trial to revealing their WASP angst. Class is a big thing in The Defender. Rose and director Robert Mulligan have to establish people fast–those baliffs, those reporters, this witness, that witness–and class is part of the initial character establishing. It seems like it’s just providing grist, but then it turns out Bellamy’s all about class.

Only it takes Balsam to reveal it. Because Rose works the teleplay on a reward system. You tuned in, you sat through Westinghouse commercials, you get this moment. Seeing Balsam pay off is one of The Defender’s best scenes. It starts the big change in the third act. Or second half of the second episode. Again, even though The Defender is a split narrative, Rose and Mulligan keep the distance minimal. And they probably never thought the episodes would be seen “combined” or without commercials even.

Rose gets to do a lot of echoing in the script to keep things close, but Mulligan has a different approach. He never lets The Defender out of the courtroom constraint. He sets up the location limits–courtroom, an adjoining meeting room, the hallway outside–and he fills them with the same, familiar people. Everyone’s stuck together. So long as you buy into it, you’re stuck in the place, stuck in the procedure. Because The Defender has intro to law stuff; Storch and Shatner are very much in training. It’s great for exposition. But The Defender always makes sure to show the human side of it. Mulligan shoots those scenes beautifully; the humanity in these stock characters’ exposition. Mulligan never seems to force the actors, not to overact, not to underact. He seems like he’s just showing them the best boundaries. So while one part might be closer to melodrama than another, the actors get to determine their intensity as scenes progress.

The Defender is probably as good an example of classic anthology television as one can find, at least for showcasing the medium’s strengths. Good writing, good acting, good directing of acting. All within a lot of unartistic constraint.

Bellamy’s great. Shatner’s good. McQueen’s good. Balsam’s great. Look fast for Ed Asner, who steals the show from the jury box. The Defender–intentionally–leaves the jury out; when the trial starts getting intense, Asner’s face expresses it. He’s always in the background, his face mirroring the viewer’s; those Ed Asner eyes looking at you. It’s neat and presumably unintentional (otherwise he’d be in it more in the first part).

The Defender’s excellent. Rose’s teleplay’s brilliant, Mulligan’s direction is good, the acting is superb. It’s the real thing.