Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954, Wyott Ordung)

Monster from the Ocean Floor’s a low-budget creature feature; tourist Anne Kimbell becomes convinced there’s an irradiated sea monster off the coast of her Mexican vacation village. Her pseudo-beau, Stuart Wade, is convinced she’s wrong. He’s a marine biologist.

His boss, played by Dick Pinner in an (eventually) absolutely delightful turn, thinks Wade ought to listen to Kimbell.

Now, Kimbell’s only interested in the sea monster to help the people in the village. Monster opens with some narration about the cooperation of these fine vacation villages (seriously). Wade can’t understand why Kimbell would want to help anyone; she responds maybe the world’s in the bad state it’s in because no one ever wants to do anything to help.

Monster will have numerous delights, such as director Ordung pulling double duty as the local witch’s reluctant hitman, constantly messing up his murder attempts, and then the actually good undersea photography, but Kimbell continually turning down Wade for being a bland flake might be the best. Kimbell doesn’t have any character development other than listening to people, caring about them, and painting.

And not falling for Wade’s bull.

Now, Monster has some terrible ADR. It’s so bad it’s unclear which voices belong to Kimbell and Wade. One of Kimbell’s performances (or performers) is better than the other, ditto Wade, though it doesn’t matter much with Wade. He’s a wet towel either way.

Kimbell’s quest for information will first lead her to Jonathan Haze, a white guy in brownface as a Mexican; the accent is something. Haze will get Kimbell looking for Ordung. Ordung’s the village… layabout? It’s unclear. But everyone knows him, including Inez Palange, who needs him to kill Kimbell as a sacrifice to the Monster.

The Monster only started showing up in the late 1940s, directly tied to the Bikini nuclear tests, so how many people have Palange sacrificed over the eight years? Unclear. Is Ordung doing the killing? Unclear.

Probably not because every time he tries to kill Kimbell it goes wrong, usually because of her competence. Monster is an incredibly slow-moving picture—especially for just over an hour—and much of the film is Kimbell listening to people or waiting for people to respond after listening to her. It’s talky, and it’s slow.

But she’s always ready to go when she’s up. What makes it even more fascinating is how matter-of-factly the film presents her agency; sure, it’s not playing Wade as a doofus, but it’s not pretending anyone finds him any more charming than they should. He seems like a jackass, and Kimbell’s too good for him.

There’s an action-packed finale with miniatures, lots of undersea photography—often involving a really cool personal submarine—and (apparently) Kimbell doing her own underwater stunts.

Monster’s sometimes tedious, but it’s a quirky little picture. Ordung unintentionally gets some rather interesting shots, the budgetary limitations leading to some creative success. And Kimbell’s always a likable lead.

It’s surprisingly solid, given all the constraints.

The Terror (1963, Roger Corman)

The Terror is not camp, which is bewildering, not just because it’d be better if it were camp, but because, based on its vitals, it seems like it can’t not be camp.

The film stars Jack Nicholson as a Napoleonic officer—he does not attempt an accent, thank goodness—who gets involved with some supernatural goings-on involving a European noble (Boris Karloff), the single servant in his giant castle (Dick Miller), a witch (Dorothy Neumann), her sidekick (Jonathan Haze), and a beautiful ghost girl (Sandra Knight). None of the people who presumably grew up in the same area speak with the same accent; Haze whispers all the time (Neumann thinks he’s unable to speak, but really he just doesn’t want her knowing his business), which is more effort than anyone else puts in. Miller plays the whole thing so delightfully straight-faced it’s like he’s doing Shakespeare. Karloff plays it like he’s doing someone a favor.

Karloff’s pretty game throughout, of course. Despite his top-billing, he’s never the protagonist, never even—it’ll turn out by the end—gets an honest scene. The animated opening titles of Terror give away most of the set pieces, just without any context. Also, with less disintegrating flesh slime. And the bird is white. It’s very detailed—visually—so it doesn’t not look like a dove. So, for most of the credits, there’s the white dove of peace flying around disintegrating zombies and whatnot. It’s strange. And ought to be camp. But still isn’t.

The actual bird is a falcon of some kind (maybe?). Shockingly little details out there, even now. The bird is Neumann’s familiar. Maybe? The only thing the script gets specific about, in terms of supernatural rules, is Neumann’s devil-powered, and the best revenge you can get on someone is having them commit suicide because it’ll damn their immortal soul. Also, there’s some heavenly intervention at points, and the interventionist God is a weird flex, considering the villains are trying to trick their prey into committing suicide, but when things go wrong, they get very active in it.

I guess they figured God wasn’t going to pay close attention.

Speaking of not paying close attention… I just realized the movie left a major subplot door open. The script—Leo Gordon and Jack Hill—does not give a hoot about making sense. Terror infamously took ages to complete; despite filming on set for all of Karloff’s material, there was second unit shooting going on for almost a year to pad it out. The film runs just under eighty minutes. They’ve got enough story for thirty, maybe forty. The rest is misdirection, exposition, and Nicholson roaming the countryside looking for Knight.

Knight’s terrible. Like, other people are not good, but they’re amusing. It’s fun to watch Nicholson muscle his way through the part, and Miller’s incredibly compelling. And Karloff, Neumann, and Haze all have a certain amount of charm. But Knight’s terrible. It’s a bad part—she’s either a falcon woman, a vengeful ghost, a possessed innocent, or a reincarnation. She’s either Karloff or Nicholson’s property, though Neumann points out if Knight is a vengeful ghost, she belongs to Neumann, so back off, boys. Knight and Nicholson were real-life newlyweds during filming, and she’s just a couple years younger than him, but she’s also playing like Karloff is the hottest dude she’s ever seen. Knight’s sexy killer ghost is just hot for old British dude bod.

Again, ought to be camp.

The troubled production leads to wanting photography from John M. Nickolaus Jr. (the day for night is ambitious; unsuccessful, but ambitious), as well as Stuart O'Brien’s cutting adding an uncanny mood. O’Brien doesn’t have coverage, and they just weren’t able to get that Nicholson vs. bird effects sequence down, so Terror often comes off as vaguely existential at times. Existential or camp-ready. Nothing in between.

Well, except the occasional gore. There are a couple very gory sequences.

The Terror is a tedious seventy-nine minutes, with some aggravating logic jumps (Knight acts without purpose for most of the film, like they only remembered to give the killer ghost a mission in the third act). It’s never rewarding (it gets closest, thanks to Miller), but it is a singularly weird experience. And the plot twists are goofy enough they’re usually a surprise.

The Terror (1963, Roger Corman)

It might be too easy just to call The Terror terrible or to go into the various puns one could make with “terrible” and the title. It’s not a surprisingly bad film at all. It’s an expectedly bad film, given it opens with a pointless scare attempt. Boris Karloff shows up in the first scene-walking through his spooky castle-and then disappears for about twenty minutes. Corman apparently just wanted to get the horror “name” in the first scene.

After the opening titles, which are deceptively classy-Ronald Stein’s music starts off strong before going bad as Corman uses it all the time-Jack Nicholson takes over as protagonist. Nicholson’s a French soldier in Germany or someplace, trying to get back to the rest of his regiment. Oh, I forgot, it’s a period piece-mid-1790s, I think. A period piece set in Germany, filmed on the California coast, starring Nicholson who doesn’t even try to hide his disinterest.

The Terror is a great example of when low budget filmmaking doesn’t have any inventiveness. The script is unnecessarily talky. Leo Gordon and Jack Hill’s dialogue goes on and on, probably to pad things out. Then there’s all the excess scenes. The Terror, at seventy minutes, should be lean. Instead, it’s bulky.

Karloff can do this kind of garbage with his eyes closed, but Nicholson isn’t able to fake it. Without a compelling lead, there’s just nothing to this one. It’s a dreadful film.

Very pretty scenery at times though.

The Little Shop of Horrors (1960, Roger Corman)

The filmmaking economy in The Little Shop of Horrors is astounding. Most of the film takes place in one set–the titular shop–and Charles B. Griffith’s script works hard to imply the world outside that set. My favorite bit in the script is probably when leading man Jonathan Haze is shocked to discover peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. His mother (Myrtle Vail in one of Shop‘s only mediocre performances) only cooks food with healing properties, which they have because she adds medicinal ingredients. Griffith’s a funny guy.

Corman’s direction is best with the exterior scenes. The masterful chase sequence through a tire factory is stunningly out of place in a horror comedy. There’s also a great sequence with Haze meeting a loose woman (Meri Welles), who keeps magically popping into shots. Both of these sequences come in the second half of the picture; the first half just has to rely on the great acting.

Haze is fine, so’s Jackie Joseph as his love interest, but Mel Welles carries the whole Shop as Haze’s boss. He should be a buffoon–no one in Shop is wholly sympathetic–but Welles’s sincere performance makes the character the film’s most human.

In the supporting cast, there are good performances from John Herman Shaner and Jack Nicholson. Dick Miller’s great in a too small role. Griffith’s script makes sure Leola Wendorff gets a couple decent moments too.

Fred Katz’s music is awesome.

Shop is quite impressive; Corman, Griffith and Welles all do excellent work.