mritchie

Someday, H.P. Lovecraft might get a big-budget adaptation, but until then, it's B-movies all the way and this is as "B" as you can get, and I actually admire it for not trying to be more than that. Unfortunately, except for some good effects late in the film, there's not much here worth recommending. The 1970 film of the same title was mostly just inspired by the Lovecraft story; this version sticks a bit more closely to the original tale about the awful Whateley family and their blasphemous breeding of human woman and the demonic monster Yog-Sothoth in an attempt at opening up a portal for the horrific Old Ones to return to Earth. Wilbur Whateley (Re-Animator's Jeffrey Combs) is a drooling backwoods idiot (supposedly a 10-year-old who has aged 40 years physically) looking for a missing page in the evil book The Necronomicon which will allow him to finish the rite of re-entry.

What's been added to this version is a romantic lead couple, played by Griff Furst and Sarah Lieving, who are helping a Miskatonic University professor (Dean Stockwell) find the missing page before Combs does. There's lots of Lovecraft name-dropping; in addition to Miskatonic University and the Necronomicon, we meet Alhazred the Mad Arab, the author of that evil book, and Olaus Wormius, a decadent Necronomicon scholar. The decent opening sequence is right out of The Exorcist, there are nice effects in the climactic scene involving Yog-Sothoth's appearance, and an effective brief shot of an ancient Lovecraftian landscape. Furst, who sometimes looks like Peter Sarsgaard or the early Mickey Rourke, is good, but the rest of the cast is mediocre, including Stockwell (who played Wilbur in the 1970 film) who practically sleepwalks through his part. Very bad dialogue doesn't help anyone, and why they felt the need to transport Lovecraft's New England towns to the Bayou is beyond me--the change adds nothing interesting.

I'm a fan of B-movies, but this Poverty Row film is so bad, I'm tempted not to bother reviewing it, but that cool title is what suckered me into watching it, so maybe my review will save others who might be equally tempted. This begins with a good scene that was duplicated in a later (and much better) Ronald Reagan B-movie, SECRET SERVICE OF THE AIR, in which a pilot, smuggling a Chinese family of illegal aliens, dumps them out in mid-air to their deaths when he's attacked by another plane. The pilot, angry when his boss won't pay him for the aborted delivery, calls the Feds and offers to give them the goods on the smuggling ring, but is shot to death just before the agents raid the Chinese restaurant which is the front for the gang. The leader, Sidney Blackmer, gets away, but agent Regis Toomey, his older sidekick (J. Farrell McDonald), and a prominent judge's daughter (Esther Ralston) try to infiltrate the gang, only to wind up in danger. The 70-minute movie is filled with inept photography, bad sets, and flubbed lines left in, and the lack of any background music at all only accentuates the sheer boredom of the proceedings. Even the promise of a moderately exciting air chase at the end goes nowhere. The actors, all pros who have done good B-film work elsewhere, are left at sea by bad direction and zero production values. Blackmer gets one nicely slimy, almost campy line, when he says, "Orientals have a peculiar irresistible fascination for me," but despite the promise of the melodramatic title, this one will hold no one's interest.

This Poverty Row detective film is dreadful, but for a B-movie buff like me, still has moments of interest. While struggling detective Tom Neal is out of his office, his secretary/fiancée Pamela Blake takes on a case for him; a mysterious man with an obviously fake goatee says he wants her to get photographic evidence of his wife's adulterous activities. He tells Blake where to take the picture and even gives her a hat box with a hidden camera to use. However, when Blake goes to take the photo, it turns out that the box is rigged with a gun, and she shoots the wife. With equal parts help and hindrance from bumbling sidekick Allen Jenkins, Neal works to clear Blake. The plot is serviceable but with a weak script and a 45 minute running time, this ends up feeling more like a summary of a movie with most of the action and explanatory detail left out. I like both Neal and Jenkins (though the handsome Neal, only in his mid-30's, looks rather seedy here) and they both try hard, but the weak material defeats them. Blake is totally forgettable, though comic actress Virginia Sale gets some chuckles as a burger slinger and Jenkins' long-suffering gal. The most notable part of the film is at the very beginning, when the four leads introduce themselves directly to the camera, first in character, then with Neal giving their real names.