Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959, Bernard L. Kowalski)

Attack of the Giant Leeches stops more than ends. Some plot elements seem to go unresolved, but since the film never actually explains those stakes, maybe they don’t. Director Kowalski likes long lingering shots implying giant leech attacks, except there’s little distinction between ominous shots with leeches and those without. Since the characters never pay attention to the ominous spots, just the camera… no one, human or leech, can say.

The film opens with redneck George Cisar shooting at one of the giant leeches. Does Cisar kill it? Never resolved. What are Cisar’s later motivations, which put him in the same vicinity as wayward wife Vickers? Never resolved. Yvette Vickers isn’t Cisar’s wayward wife, but rather Bruno VeSota’s.

Approximately a sixth of the film are fat-shaming comments directed at VeSota. He owns the only general store in the swamps, so the locals hang out there. And lust after Vickers, who finds VeSota an unpleasant and undesirable life partner.

Given the second half of the film usually involves Vickers being bled by the giant leeches, one forgets the character flaws and defaults toward empathy. Though Kowalski makes sure everyone remembers even if Vickers is in mortal peril and bloody, we can still ogle her gams.

See, Vickers is carrying on with Michael Emmet, the best-looking swamp fella. Emmet’s performance proves wanting. He does okay enough with the accent–they’re all going for one redneck exploitation trope or another–but there’s nothing else to the performance. Emmet kind of gets the accent; nothing else matters.

Top-billed Ken Clark is from out of town and isn’t asked to attempt an accent. He’s the federal game warden, and if there are giant leeches, he ought to know about them. He teams up with girlfriend Jan Shepard’s dad, played by Tyler McVey, to investigate mysterious goings on. Most of the film’s hour and change runtime–at least when Clark does show–has Shepard getting mad at Clark disagreeing with McVey, then not being able to react authentically because… what’s she going to do, not make the men sandwiches? Come on, now.

So even though Shepard tags along with Clark during the boat rides, she doesn’t get anything to do. Possibly because she’s not all about the gams.

Now, Leeches could be a “hide the monster and have them hunt,” but the filmmakers apparently thought the audiences wouldn’t stand (or stay seated) if they didn’t show off the monsters. The Giant Leeches are (visibly) trash bags with accruement. And then, obviously, the giant sucking mouth thing. Except the leeches don’t really look like anything–a giant star-shaped trash bag covered in flaccid teeth. Leeches goes all in on the blood to compensate for the fakery. All of the victims are covered in open sores where the giant leeches feed. And the victims spend lots of their time screaming in agony. It’s a bizarre vibe at times.

While Vickers’s abject terror is often the best acting, otherwise, the most reliable is Gene Roth as the sheriff who thinks Clark’s falling for the ramblings of drunken swamp folk. Roth never gets any pay-off (no one does, except maybe Emmet and pay-off’s a stretch); he maintains a consistency the other actors cannot.

Technically, Giant Leeches actually impresses. Sadly, only because they manage to make the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden look like wherever in the coastal South it’s taking place. Overall, John M. Nickolaus Jr.’s photography is no great shakes (there’s so much day-for-night, and none of it’s good). Still, he and Kowalski make the botanic garden in California look unlike a botanic garden in California.

If the ending had landed at all, the garbage bag monsters would’ve been fine.

The Twilight Zone (1959) s02e15 – The Invaders

One of my major complaints about “The Twilight Zone” is the ending reveal somehow distracts from the rest of the episode. It’s a “gotcha” moment. And The Invaders does have a gotcha moment, and it does shuffle star Agnes Moorehead off-screen ingloriously, but at least it doesn’t do anything to undercut her performance.

The episode begins with host Rod Serling explaining we’re at a farmhouse, not unlike many other farmhouses, except this one doesn’t have electricity. And its sole occupant, Moorehead, has lived on her own for many years. That detail seems to be setting up Moorehead not to have any dialogue. Throughout the episode, as she becomes more and more agitated, she gets more and more vocal, but there’s a hard limit.

The “no electricity” detail allows for much of the episode’s terror. Moorehead goes from hearing sounds on the roof to battling the unexpected–tiny little alien men. The aliens have heat weapons, which cause welts–one of Moorehead’s best scenes (in twenty-some minutes of great scenes) is when she’s silently discovering her injuries and trying to dress the wounds. They may or may not jet pack technology. The episode’s definite about how many Invaders Moorehead has to fight, but it also likes having danger behind every door, around every corner. It’s dark, after all, and there are going to be noises from their spacesuits, so why not amp it up?

Heyes does a fantastic job directing the episode, embracing the limited lighting–Moorehead’s on a quest for survival through the unseen familiar, but with new danger. Most of the episode showcases Moorehead’s performance. There are a handful of action set pieces; otherwise, it’s all about Moorehead’s expressions of fear, determination, and anger. With the scant details Serling delivers at the opening, we’re able to contextualize Moorehead’s experience until the twist, which intentionally turns it over.

Outstanding teleplay from Richard Matheson. Did he write all the little moments for Moorehead or were they actor’s prerogative? There are certain story beats–finding the spaceship, losing this candle or that candle, planning scenes–but when it’s not an effects sequence, Invaders feels more like Moorehead’s doing a one-person show and showing off. She’s spellbinding.

The special effects are adorable. The aliens are just mechanized toys, which someone had a great time making ambulatory. They mostly stand still and shoot at Moorehead with their phasers or whatever, but every once in a while it’s like somehow tossed them across the shot and–whee–jet packs.

The ending twist changes the entire episode–Rod Serling’s got to be the least reliable narrator in television history–but Moorehead’s already done such fantastic work, there’s no lessening factor. Also–highly recommend watching with the lights out. Heyes and cinematographer George T. Clemens clearly meant it to be an uncanny tale for the dark.

Oh, and the Jerry Goldsmith score is excellent, too.

This post is part of the Third Agnes Moorehead Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959, Monte Hellman)

Besides the unfortunate special effects execution (the conceptions are fine), the only thing wrong with Beast from Haunted Cave is the title. And, I suppose, some first-act budgetary shenanigans—the movie’s about Frank Wolff’s crew knocking off a gold reserve in a mining town and heading across the mountains on skis to escape, and they have this big exposition dump about the heist. Only when it comes time for an effects sequence, the movie entirely skips it. Someone should’ve ponied up for emergency vehicle stock footage.

They don’t skimp (by Beast’s standards) on the Beast for the finale, which helps the movie stick to its landing.

Here’s the setup: Wolff has hired ski instructor Michael Forest to take he and his crew (who Forest ostensibly thinks are just Chicago businessmen) on a two day, cross-country ski trip. It just happens to be timed after Wolff and the crew knock over the reserve. They’re in the sticks–Beast shot on location in South Dakota, which sometimes means better locations, sometimes not—and the reserve’s not guarded on Sundays. Or they can distract the guards? It might be in the exposition dumps, but the subtext of those scenes is always Wolff’s main squeeze, Sheila Noonan, making eyes at Forest.

Noonan and Forest have a contrast flirtation. He’s a hunk, she’s a babe, but he’s wholesome (they’re heading to his cabin, where he gets away from it all to read the encyclopedia and learn about the world he doesn’t want to experience), and she’s fallen. Much of Beast is their getting-to-know-you scenes. Forest’s not good, but he’s not godawful, and he’s sympathetic. Noonan’s good, though. For most of Beast, they don’t know they’re in a horror movie; they think they’re in one of those back-to-nature noirs, and they toggle beautifully.

It helps the third act is maybe eight action-packed minutes.

The best performance is Wolff, who’s an awesome asshole. Forest isn’t so worried about his party having guns until he witnesses Wolff’s management style—Richard Sinatra (cousins) is going off the rails because he watched the Beast eat his hot date, and no one believes him. The Beast is chasing Sinatra; if you see the beast, it’s coming for you. Because it’s a terror. It taunts its prey with visions of digested victims and so on. It looks terrible because it’s 1959 and low budget, but the concept–some faceless spider monster draining your precious bodily fluids–is terrifying.

And director Hellman gets how to oscillate between the terror and the crime suspense. Beast is always done straight, just cheap. Wolff’s got some questionable makeup decisions, but the acting’s so good beneath them, it doesn’t matter. Finishing the quality triangle is Charles B. Griffith’s script. Griffith, Hellman, Wolff. They make Beast something special.

Wally Campo plays the other goon, who’s goofier than Sinatra, even when Sinatra’s freaking out. But both Campo and Sinatra get to show some humanity, while Wolff’s just an exercise in cruelty. Him, you watch for the tension, while they’re a combination of comic relief and dread. Then, Noonan and Forest have their star-crossed flirtation.

And there’s a spider monster out to eat them all.

Hellman’s direction is often quite good, with solid black and white photography from Andrew M. Costikyan, nice enough cutting from Anthony Carras, and a score full of personality by Alexander Laszlo. Laszlo flexes in odd directions at times, with varying degrees of success, but it’s always hep.

Beast from Haunted Cave is more than all right.

Except that title. Like, call it The Hold-Up or something generic heist. It’s a heist movie with a monster, not a monster movie with a heist. Otherwise, though, real cool.

The Killer Shrews (1959, Ray Kellogg)

I’m not sure The Killer Shrews is the best movie with a protagonist with the first name Thorne, but it’s got to be very high on the list. James Best plays that lead—Captain Thorne Sherman of the S.S. Minnow, and he and first mate Judge Henry Dupree are on a three-hour tour… okay, no, but only because the script doesn’t put any thought into the setup.

Sherman’s delivering supplies to a remote island. It’s his first time doing the run; the other guy is sick. There’s a hurricane due in, so Sherman and Dupree are racing it to the island. They’re planning on holing up onshore until it’s done, then heading back. When they arrive on the island, they discover a peculiar setup.

Swedish mad scientist Baruch Lumet is trying to shrink human beings so we use fewer resources. Except they’ve been testing on shrews—oh, there’s an opening monologue about how shrews need to eat three times their body weight in a day, or they’re going to eat people (basically)—and one of their treatments turned the shrews into twenty-pound beasts. The shrews run the island, except they’re nocturnal (basically evil moles), so the movie’s first act is Lumet’s daughter, Ingrid Goude, trying to convince Best to stay in the house.

Most of the film takes place in the living room of the house. It’s an unconventional lab, but they’re an unconventional team. There’s Gordon McLendon as the brain, Lumet as the visionary, and Ken Curtis as the drunken screw-up whom Lumet’s paired off with daughter Goude. The general assistant, Alfredo de Soto, gets stuck making drinks and doing security rounds.

Everyone on the island is a big lush because they spend all their time waiting for the shrews to eat each other, except before then, the shrews will try to break into the house and eat the people. The people also don’t have radio, so they’re unprepared for the hurricane.

The movie is Best unraveling the initial mystery, falling for Goude, and fighting back 800 giant Killer Shrews. It’s a mix of labored exposition, dogs dressed up as shrews (badly; very badly), adorable, cheap rodent puppets (a quick FYI: shrews aren’t rodents; I was serious before: they’re really mole cousins), and violent love triangle stuff. See, Curtis isn’t ready to give Goude up to some flyboy skipper like Best.

Best, bless him, is a thirty-year-old man dressed up in a captain’s outfit like a five-year-old getting his picture taken. He deserves an award for keeping that hat on. While the special effects have considerable ambition, which they fail to deliver on spectacularly, Best’s hair is always great. Must have used so much product.

Best does not make the material good. But he manages not to embarrass himself too much in the film, which seems impossible thanks to director Kellogg’s failings as well as the supporting cast.

Lumet’s quite bad as the mad scientist. Goude may be worse as the daughter. Curtis isn’t good—though he does have a couple good scenes—and he sometimes does particularly poorly, but he’s nothing compared to Lumet and Goude. They’re atrocious.

Curtis also produced, which is funny since his character’s a complete shitheel.

Dupree and de Soto do all right considering they’re the two people of color in the film, and Shrews is definitely a horror movie if you’re wondering how to figure out who will get it first.

There’s some good photography from Wilfrid M. Cline and some bland photography from him. The house isn’t a great set, and Cline can’t make it not look like a cheap set. Certainly not with Kellogg’s tedious direction. Shrews is either talking, action, or waiting for action. Kellogg directs the talking and waiting exactly the same, leaving all the suspense for the action. Except Jay Simms’s script is all about the tension breaking people down. It’s practically a Southern Gothic, and Kellogg totally misses it.

Simms’s script deserves better, even with its not inconsiderable problems.

But, all things considered, Shrews isn’t bad for a no-budget fifties atomic-age sci-fi monster movie.

The Giant Gila Monster (1959, Ray Kellogg)

I thought this one was called The Great Gila Monster, not The Giant Gila Monster. During the first act, I kept thinking how Great was one heck of a flex given the content, but it’s not Great; it’s Giant, which is technically correct. The film is about a giant Gila monster terrorizing a bunch of hot-rodding Christian high school post-grads as they try not to go too fast, either with their cars or their girlfriends.

The film never identifies the location beyond “The Southwest,” with an opening narration about the vast empty plains (they’d be perfect for high-speed rail, don’t you think), in what turns out to be an homage to one of the Citizen Kane newsreels.

In this no-budget regional indie giant monster movie. It’s a cool enough way to start, and while the film never reaches those heights again (knowing Citizen Kane exists), it’s reasonably good, all things considered. The leads are Don Sullivan and Fred Graham. Sullivan’s the leader of the hot-rodders; the film opens with their richest kid member getting eaten by the Gila monster, which leads to the kid’s obnoxious father, poorly played by Bob Thompson, getting sheriff Graham to start an investigation. Thompson’s kid was with his girlfriend, but besides acknowledging she has a family, the film completely forgets about them.

What’s interesting about Gila is how long it takes everyone to find out about the monster. They don’t have the budget for much in the way of special effects—the Gila is an uncredited Mexican beaded lizard who only gets to crawl around the model train set when there’s an effects sequence. There aren’t even miniature cars until the finale. For a movie without Matchbox money, Gila does all right.

There are some obvious problems. Texas explains the casual, low-key racist slang and Christianity (Sullivan’s also a singer-songwriter who’s got a doozy about Adam and Eve, apparently because he doesn’t know the end of the story). Kellogg’s a lousy director for most of the material; everything’s a medium two-shot, which is fine with Sullivan and Graham; they’ve got personality and charisma. Everyone else is an energy vampire, starting with Thompson. Oh, wait, I’m forgetting about town drunk Shug Fisher. He hates his wife and drives drunk everywhere and gets away with it. He’s not good, but he’s not an energy vampire.

But Sullivan’s got a little sister—Janice Stone—who just got her leg braces, so she’s learning to walk again; their dad recently died (which is apparently when Graham took an interest). Thompson hates Sullivan, whose father died working for Thompson, and Sullivan’s dating Thompson’s French maid, Lisa Simone.

It’s all very convoluted, and only in Gila to get the run time past sixty minutes. Without the character drama and musical numbers, Gila would struggle to crack an hour.

Surprisingly good photography from Wilfrid M. Cline—his black and white day-for-night is noteworthy—and maybe an actually great score from Jack Marshall. Maybe some of it on a Theremin. It’s weird but also way more imaginative than the film needs.

Sullivan’s not exactly good, but he’s got a decent screen presence. Though once you realize he looks like a young Robert Taylor doing a James Stewart impression, you can’t unsee it. Graham’s just full-stop good. It’s a bewildering, welcome performance.

Giant Gila monster isn’t great (or really giant), but it’s engaging and successful as a “Giant” monster picture, at least a close to no-budget one.

The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959, Ranald MacDougall)

The World, the Flesh and the Devil is one of those rare films where even the opening titles are spoilers. Devil is an end-of-the-world picture, all about coal miner Harry Belafonte emerging from a cave-in to discover he’s the last man alive. Except we’ve had the titles, so we know we’re also watching a movie with Inger Stevens and Mel Ferrer. They really should’ve asked SAG for an exception. Or filled the picture with cameos, like Belafonte watches a very special clip from “Bonanza,” and they can get some more names in the credits.

The first act is all Belafonte, starting with the cave-in drama. Devil only runs ninety-five minutes, but they could’ve gotten another four good minutes in montage of Belafonte waiting to be rescued especially since he appears to run out of food at some point. On the other hand, it might’ve just been another Belafonte singing sequence, so maybe not. Director MacDougall often does quite well within constraints—and his suspense finale is spectacular—but he can’t figure out a way to shoehorn in Belafonte’s singing. The sequences are usually charming—Belafonte’s a great lead when he’s the lead—but they’re practically commercial breaks. They could be commercial breaks. He could sing jingles.

What I’m saying is apparently World, the Flesh and the Devil didn’t have enough corporate or brand synergy in 1959, and they should remake it as an ongoing streaming series with integrated commercials and so on.

Or not.

Anyway.

Belafonte comes out of the mine to discover everyone’s gone. He was in the mine five days. The bad guys poisoned the atmosphere, and the nuclear war-obsessed populace all went into their shelters. They came out on the second day. And all got poisoned and evaporated (there’s nary a corpse in Devil, something they really should have addressed). If you stayed in until five days, you survived. Presumably. We never find out Ferrer’s story. Devil tries to be a human drama in a sci-fi setting without much sci-fi, but MacDougall’s approach is to entirely avoid the subject, even when there’s pronounced details. So the film—and its characters—need to pretend they’re not sitting right on the table.

When you’re the last man on Earth, there’s only one place to go: New York City. It makes sense from a movie perspective—Belafonte running through the city’s empty streets provides many a striking visual—but we never find out why Belafonte’s going there. Is he from there? Family? Doesn’t matter. He finds a nice apartment building and some transport and starts setting up the new world, complete with a radio transmitter to broadcast to other survivors.

Like Stevens, who enters the picture in the second act, which is when Devil becomes a very strange race drama. The film was banned in the South, but it certainly seems like the distributors were still hopeful. Stevens and Belafonte are the last people alive. She likes him, likes him, but she’s a young white woman, and he’s a Black man. White supremacy might not exist right now, but add another white person, and it will. Some of it is subtext—Belafonte never really gets to talk about what he’s saying, and Stevens always seems super ignorant—but there are some honest moments in their burgeoning relationship.

And they’re both incredibly sympathetic and likable.

So when Ferrer arrives—the harbinger of the third act—and all of a sudden, there is another white person, and it’s a white man, it’s clear the film’s headed towards some kind of conclusion. It just takes the movie forever to get there, as Ferrer and Belafonte keep avoiding the potential for conflict and instead mope around. Belafonte mopes productively, saving relics of the old world like books and paintings—it’s not even a subplot, just something for Belafonte to be doing as he exits scenes with Ferrer and Stevens. Meanwhile, Ferrer keeps telling Stevens the clock is ticking on when he cares whether or not she’s at all enthusiastic about her consent.

The third act’s suspense finale on the rooftops of New York City almost saves Devil. The movie cops out, but the sequence itself is superb. It’s also where the film’s always admirable, but only sometimes successful matte paintings shine, and editor Harold F. Kress doesn’t have any bad cuts. Devil usually looks fine or better—Harold J. Marzorati’s black and white photography is solid—but either MacDougall didn’t get enough coverage, or Kress’s got no cutting rhythm because sometimes the editing is way too jumpy.

The Miklós Rózsa could be better at times, but it’s not like it breaks anything.

Belafonte’s always good; Stevens’s is usually good (in a tricky role; while she doesn’t consciously acknowledge white supremacy, she does realize she doesn’t like the patriarchy much), and Ferrer’s solid… enough. Ferrer’s successful as far as the part goes, but there’s nothing else to it. The part’s got more subtext than Belafonte’s or Stevens’s, so Ferrer doesn’t have to flex. And he doesn’t.

Devil’s okay. It’s trying too hard to be milquetoast, but it’s far from a failure.

The Crimson Kimono (1959, Samuel Fuller)

The most gracious explanation for The Crimson Kimono’s politics are it takes place in a universe where the U.S. didn’t concentrate 125,000 plus American citizens in camps during World War II. Even in that universe, there are problems, like white people Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw gaslighting Asian guy James Shigeta about his ability to perceive racism. Short answer: he can’t, and he’s projecting his own feelings of inadequacy (for not being white) on others. Then a bunch of the movie is just about white over the age of thirty not being able to compete with coeds and strippers for men’s attention, which is the true validation.

Except for that metric shit ton of worms, Crimson Kimono’s pretty great, actually. It’s director Fuller with a crane, tracking shots, and location shooting in L.A. He loves it. He also loves showcasing the Japanese culture as it exists in L.A. He even lets it get ahead of him, like when he lets an actual Buddhist reverend (Ryosho S. Sogabe) act in addition to performing a ceremony. The ceremony’s for Bob Okazaki’s son, who received a posthumous Medal of Honor in the Korean War (there was one Nisei soldier who did at the time; it took the military until 2000 to award the rest). It’s a lovely sequence, even if it’s a bunch of icky propaganda. Ditto the Big Red One recruiting poster in Little Tokyo.

The film starts as a streamlined police procedural. Stripteaser Gloria Pall does her number, goes backstage, and finds a gunman waiting in her dressing room. The gunman chases her out onto the street, where he shoots Pall dead. The cops show up—Corbett and Shigeta—and while interviewing Pall’s manager (a fantastic Paul Dubov), discover she’d been working on a Japanese culture-influenced act… The Crimson Kimono.

The act involves someone breaking bricks before Pall strips. Shigeta goes to find that guy while Corbett tracks down the artist of Pall’s portrait in the kimono. The opening titles are a time-lapse of the portrait being painted, so it all wraps together very nicely. Again, Fuller directs the heck out of Kimono.

Thanks to the Skid Row Michelangelo Anna Lee, Corbett discovers the artist is a fetching coed (Shaw). While he’s trying to get her to identify their prime suspect through sketches and mug books, Shigeta tracks down Pall’s stage partner for the new act, George Yoshinaga. Yoshinaga’s a delight. So’s Lee, but Lee’s a delight because of her performance and the script; Yoshinaga’s a delight because he clearly loves being in a movie. There are a few other background actors who also clearly think it’s a hoot, but Yoshinaga’s got the most significant part.

Except then Corbett puts Shaw’s sketch of the suspect on the news, making her a target, so she needs to move in with them.

Oh, right. In a bold narrative efficiency, Fuller’s script makes Corbett and Shigeta roommates. At a hotel. They were in the Korean War together; Corbett, the white sergeant in a Nisei unit, and Shigeta the guy who saved his bacon. Now they’re L.A. detectives; Shigeta’s trying to make sergeant, but it’s a strange red herring subplot—everyone forgets about it about four seconds after it comes up. But they spend all their money living in a nice enough hotel suite, splurging on room service every once in a while (though it sounds like every day).

When Shaw’s in danger, they move her in with them. But don’t worry about it being untoward; even though Corbett very much uses the close quarters to put the moves on her, they’re going to bring in Lee to chaperone. And supposedly the rest of the suite’s full of plainclothes cops (we never see any).

Having all the characters together means Fuller doesn’t have to go anywhere to get the love triangle going—Shaw goes for soulful Shigeta instead of pretty boy lothario Corbett (who’s such a man slut even the local nuns have the hots for him)—but also Lee’s around to offer womanly advice to Shaw when needed.

Awesome efficiency and kind of a great idea for a TV show, albeit it one with racial gaslighting and intense copaganda.

The acting’s all decent with asterisks. Except Lee; she’s just great. Corbett’s playing a few years older (check the gray streaks), which doesn’t quite work. He’s blandly good-looking, blandly charming, but not in bad ways. Shigeta gets to do more, but often against amateur actors. Not to mention the eventual gaslighting. Shaw’s fine, though given how Corbett possessively paws her without her reacting, it’s low-key terrifying imagining what the movie thinks her life is usually like when she’s not a police witness.

Great black and white photography from Sam Leavitt, occasionally, forgivably bad cutting from Jerome Thoms (Fuller was shooting amateur actors and locations without filming permits, I’m sure the footage was a delight). Fine music from Harry Sukman. It’s a good-looking, extremely inventive low budget production. Fuller and Leavitt luxuriate in those long tracking shots.

Fun uncredited bit part from “Batman” police chief Stafford Repp.

Crimson Kimono’s problematic in the extremis, but also a darn good picture.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959, Edward D. Wood Jr.)

There’s not a lot to say about Plan 9 from Outer Space. It’s comically inept on almost every level—the uncredited sound editor (unless it’s also director Wood, who wrote, produced, and edited) does all right. The chirping crickets in the graveyard as the cast mugs their way through an alien zombie invasion give it a distinct feel. Even when it’s obvious they’re on the same set, even when Wood goes through the same footage over and over (special guest star Bela Lugosi died during production—or at least the Ed Wood movie says).

And before Ed Wood, there might have been more to say about Plan 9. At the time of its release, maybe one could gin up enough enthusiasm to blather about it. Or maybe just plain gin would help.

But as to Plan 9 being “so bad, it’s good,” I mean… it gets really boring at fifty minutes. It’s been getting more and more boring but once space aliens Dudley Manlove and Joanna Lee get introduced it’s a snooze-fest. Even with Tor Johnson zombieing around, though it turns out he’s a disappointing zombie; almost nothing’s more amusing than Johnson deliver his cop dialogue with a heavy Swedish accent. Well, maybe Duke Moore rubbing his gun barrel all over the place. And Manlove’s temper tantrum at the end. Manlove’s temper tantrum is where Plan 9 could have really done something.

But most of the movie is just bad actors giving bad performances in a poorly written, poorly directed movie. I guess William C. Thompson’s photography is all right. It’s nowhere near as incompetent as the scenes its lighting anyway.

Wood, as writer, has a silly narration—Plan 9 is presented (by vitamin slinger Criswell) as a true story so the narration does a documentary thing—but he occasionally hits just the right amount of absurd in the dialogue for it to be amusing. Momentarily. Again, Plan 9 gets long fast and its inconsistent in the amusing badness. If you gave up early, you’d miss Manlove’s temper tantrum at the finale but you’d also miss whatever else, which probably makes up for it. Leading man Gregory Walcott is really bad in an unlikable fifties alpha male kind of way. Moore’s at least silly bad. Tom Keene is kind of not terrible. You can tell Keene has occasionally not been terrible. No one gives that vibe. They all seem like they’re always as terrible as they are in Plan 9.

Wait, wait—flight attendant Norma McCarty and co-pilot David De Mering; they’re kind of amusing. Wood writes them this strange flirting scene and it doesn’t work but it’s… endearing. Ish.

And leading lady Mona McKinnon is nowhere near as bad as husband Walcott; she gets some sympathy being married to him.

Cops Carl Anthony and Paul Marco are funny bad.

There’s just not enough funny bad to keep Plan 9 going.

Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959, John Guillermin)

Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure is a fairly solid action thriller. Tarzan (genial, musclebound Gordon Scott) is hunting nemesis Anthony Quayle through the jungle. The movie opens with Quayle and his crew robbing an African settlement. They’re after the dynamite but they end up killing a couple people. They’re also in blackface, which would just be a dated oddity if you didn’t realize they were in blackface until one of them is deliberating the fate of an actual Black person, a sick African child. It’s this really weird moment in the film and it’s the first really memorable sequence. Greatest Adventure seems a little different from the start.

So the gang. Sean Connery is the cocky, rough and tumble one, Niall MacGinnis is the nerdy Dutch one (he’s the diamond guy—turns out it’s all about diamonds), Al Mulock is the secretive boat driver, Scilla Gabel is Quayle’s woman. Connery and Gabel are flirty but it’s never a thing for Quayle because Quayle’s so secure. Connery worships him, MacGinnis is terrified of him, and Mulock respects him. Because Quayle and Mulock are the older guys who aren’t shifty Dutchmen or cocky heartthrobs, they’ve got the experience. Half of Greatest Adventure is this “after the heist” movie, just set in Africa on a questionable boat. There are certain exterior shots where the boat looks really fake. And I think always when it’s on a set. And now I guess I better just get the set-talk over with.

Greatest Adventure has profound production deficiencies. Director Guillermin and cinematographer Edward Scaife are mixing location shots from two obviously different locations—usually with a jump cut courtesy Bert Rule—but Guillermin and Scaife also have some set shots, then some projection composites, then stock African safari footage. And then Rule’s jump cuts. And Guillermin’s composition. He’s so close on it, every time. The way he shoots leading lady Sara Shane ruins her performance. Well, okay, Rule’s cutting probably hurts it worse, but Guillermin has a very strange way of shooting Scott and Shane—like he doesn’t trust them with the scene, and then when they succeed (occasionally with qualifications, yes, but still success), Guillermin doesn’t acknowledge it. Scott and Shane have this relatively effective love affair in this tense experience. Because Shane didn’t mean to tag along with Scott, she just wanted to be a jerk to him—Shane’s a model but mostly just a special friend to a very rich guy. The characterization of Shane and Gabel—their character setup—is not great. But Gabel and Shane get caught up in the events—Scott hunting Quayle, Quayle deciding to hunt him right back—and both women start their own character arcs, totally separate from the boys.

It’s cool. Even with all the issues.

Scott’s fine. Well, until the end when he needs to carry the movie, even for a moment and he can’t, but he’s fine. Even with the goofy dialogue. He’s got very goofy dialogue to show he’s Tarzan and not some regular dude. Formal but grammatically incorrect or something. But it’s all about Quayle. Quayle gives a truly superb performance. He gets to Ahab out, he gets to bare his soul, he gets to handle the mundane personality conflicts between his crew, he gets to have this weird but sincere romance with Gabel. Quayle takes the role as written and adds all sorts of depth to it. Guillermin helps a lot with adding texture—with the bad guys, anyway—but it seems like Quayle’s out there on his own and Guillermin is just getting to watch like the rest of us. It’s a great villain performance. And rather grounded, especially considering it’s Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure.

It gets good for a long while, then the end fumbles. Badly.

But Guillermin tries a lot and some of it succeeds. Quayle’s legitimately fantastic performance, for example.

Black Orpheus (1959, Marcel Camus)

There’s a lot to love about Black Orpheus. Director and co-writer Camus does a bunch of great stuff, just not when it comes to how he and Jacques Vito adapt the legend part. Orpheus is about, you know, Orpheus (Breno Mello), who is now a Brazilian trolley car driver slash musician slash dancer, and Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn), who is now a… young woman who comes to Rio trying to avoid a stalker (Adhemar da Silva). They meet and Mello is immediately infatuated, which is complicated by his impending nuptials to Lourdes de Oliveira. For her part, Dawn doesn’t fall for Mello until she hears him singing.

Now, Camus and Vito go rather on the nose with the adaptation—de Oliveira and Mello hear about the legend from the marriage license clerk. Apparently Mello has never heard of it before, which seems… if not impossible, at least improbable. If Dawn knows about the legend or hears about it during the film’s present action, it happens off screen.

But it’s not clear how much this matter-of-fact handling of the source plot is going to affect the film until the finale, when it turns out Camus and Vito don’t have anything up their narrative sleeve. Mello’s trip to the underworld—updated to late 1950s Brazil—is perfunctory. Narratively, Camus and Vito have spent most of the film building the subplots; even though Dawn knows she’s on the run from this stalker and in danger, she doesn’t get to be the protagonist when it’s important. She does for the chase scenes (one of them), but Camus and Vito’s narrative distance doesn’t really allow for traditional protagonists. Mello, for example, is a constant mystery. First, you wonder how he’s got it worked out in his head de Oliveira is going to be okay with him throwing her over for literal stranger Dawn on the day they get their marriage license. It’s also a little weird Dawn’s cousin, Léa Garcia, is so supportive of Mello’s conquest—though, some of it might just be every woman in Black Orpheus secretly hates every other woman in Black Orpheus, at least if they’re not related. The parts are fifty percent good, fifty percent iffy.

Visually, most of the film is about movement. It’s Carnaval. It’s time to sing and dance and there’s a lot of it going on. Camus and editor Andrée Felix do a fine job editing together these sequences, which are often focused on the dancers’ expressions (and how they convey the experience) rather than their footwork. But there’s some very impressive footwork. Mello’s great.

And the third act loses that movement. Sure, Camus still focuses on some movement, but they’re smaller scale movements. For example, when Mello’s at a de facto seance, Camus showcases someone who’s got the spirit and is speaking tongues. Is their movement important to the scene overall? Not really, but it gets even worse when it turns out it’s all a foreshadowing MacGuffin.

Of course, the third act loses a lot more. Camus and Vito drop supporting cast, but they also turn the cast they’ve got into avatars at best and caricatures at worst. They all become functional, losing their personality. It’s worst with kids Jorge Dos Santos and Aurino Cassiano. They’re omnipresent in most of the film; they think Mello’s awesome and follow him around, trying to get him to play guitar for them; they think Dawn’s amazing and follow her around, trying to help with her burgeoning romance with Mello. But then they lose most of their agency in the final third, inexplicably separated on the way to Carnaval just to provide for a reuniting moment at Carnaval. It ought to be foreshadowing things might not go well for the wrap-up, something further confirmed when it turns out the value the characters place on human life is… shockingly low. That and manslaughter. And guilt.

The best acting is from Garcia, de Oliveira, and the kids. Mello and Dawn are both likable but their performances aren’t particularly deep. They’re never able to convincingly convey their characters apparent desires, though everyone around them is fine doing so. Maybe it’s how they’re written.

Great photography from Jean Bourgoin, great music from Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Feix’s editing is uneven but only because there are constantly shots where the cast is clearly looking at someone for direction. Not clear if Feix just didn’t cut right or if he didn’t have an alternative.

As far as the surface goes—setting Orpheus in modern-day Brazil during Carnaval—Black Orpheus does fine. But it definitely doesn’t fully utilize its available resources.

And the big dramatic finish seems way too rushed in how Camus shoots it.