The Naked Monster!

The Naked Monster (once called Attack of the B-Movie Monster) is one of those works prompted by fan adoration and nostalgia and consequently must be seen and judged on those terms...somewhat. I say that to say this, this is not a very good movie in most of the traditional ways that one might mean that statement. But it is a cavalcade of monster fan wonderment, filled to nigh overflowing with images from past movies and the actors who made them. The movie operates in an oddball fictional universe where most if not all of the monster and alien invasion movies you've ever seen are real and that the heroic folks who helped save the planet from these threats are all up and around in locations like Santa Mira and Winnerden Flats.

The movie's lead is the great Kenneth Tobey who was important in several movies such as It Came From Beneath the Sea, Strange Invaders, and The Thing from Another World. It is as "Colonel Patrick Hendry" from the latter movie he portrays in this movie. Alongside him from the same flick are Robert Cornthwaite and George Feeneman. The former in his role as Dr. Carrington and the latter as the narrator of the movie.

From The War of the Worlds we get Les Tremayne as "General Mann" and Ann Robinson as "Dr. Sylvia Van Buren".

From The Return of the Creature both John Agar as "Clete Ferguson" and Lori Nelson as "Helen Dobson" make a showing.

The Monster from Piedras Blancas is represented by two folks playing similar roles. The keeper of the lighthouse and his wife are played by John Harmon and Jean Carmen, though in this brief appearance they are husband and wife and not father and daughter. Harmon was the god-father of Wayne Berwick who was the son of Irvin Berwick who wrote and directed The Monster from Piedras Blancas.

From Beyond the Time Barrier appears as "Major Allison" portrayed by Robert Clarke.

From The Indestructible Man we get Robert Shayne (left above) as "Professor Bradshaw".

Paul Marco who famously played "Kelton the Cop" in several of Ed Wood's epics, most famously Plan 9 from Outer Space comes to a grisly end in this movie.

"Scream Queen" Brinke Stevens is the true star of the show along with Tobey and has probably the most screen time. A bunch of that time is making really bad puns (which I enjoyed mightily) and a teensy bit of it was presenting some totally gratuitous nudity. One scene simply says that her character takes a shower, a pointless (as far as the plot anyway) diversion, though I for one found it very entertaining. The Weird Tales above feature Stevens on the cover and has a story by her inside. This issue appears in the movie at one point.

Lots of other cameos are spread throughout by the likes of Forry Ackerman, Bob (The Gorilla Tracey) Burns, Gloria Talbot, and Lennea Quigley (who engages in some delightful gratuitous nudity of her own). This is a riot of images and characters in a movie made over a twenty year period on the ultra cheap.

The eponymous monster was at one time early in the production a stop-motion creation, but that was deemed unworkable when the project expanded to feature length and a stunningly miserable costume is substituted. It makes one pine for the subtle creations of Paul Blaisdell. Sadly many of the veteran cast members who donated their time to the projected died before it was completed. The producer and director Ted Newsome (who appears in the movie much as William Castle did many years ago) put the film together bit by bit over too many years. 

The movie is almost like a moving collage of monster-movie images lifted from too many different films to count, and blended with new footage with little success. This is a wannabe bad movie made badly at times, but it has a fondness for the genre at its heart which keeps it pumping along. I cannot in any way recommend this movie save to those steeped in the love of 50's monsters like me, because only someone with that affliction can truly appreciate this ramshackle bit of cinema.

This is a Dojo classic re-post.  

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The Brain From Planet Arous!

The Brain from Planet Arous is one of the very first old 50's sci-fi flicks I latched onto when VHS made getting these old gems possible. I'd never seen it on television, but was attracted to it by the weird title and the fact it starred John Agar, an actor I admire for his work in such awesome movies from Universal as The Tarantula and the totally awesome The Mole People. Agar is no less entertaining here, in a movie which gives him the room to play not a soft-spoken know-it-all good guy, but a brazen and cackling know-it-all bad guy.

The trouble begins when Steve March (Agar) detects weird gamma radiation at "Mystery Mountain". He and his partner Dan (Robert Fuller) head out into the desert (Bronson Caves it looked like to me) and find an alien floating brain named Gor who quickly dispatches Dan and inhabits the body of Steve. Steve then returns and begins to act most strangely, fondling his girlfriend Sally (Joyce Meadows) pretty roughly and generally being an asshole to everyone around him.

Then he begins to shoot down airplanes with energy emitted from his silvery eyes and making threats to the military. Eventually he announces his plans to gain world domination by terrorizing the nations of the world with the threat of annihilation. But at the same time this has been going on Sally and her dad have been visited by Vol, a good alien of Gor's race who inhabits the body of their dog and bides his time until Gor is most vulnerable, a time when he must leave Steve's body to oxygenate his own brainy form. Sally endures Steve's lustful advances while they wait for the right time to strike and meanwhile Gor as Steve kills more and more people.

The Brain form Planet Arous is a zany old sci-fi movie, filled with many of the cliches of the form. A hostile alien, a hapless scientist, mostly helpless military types, and so on and so forth. The movie is held together by the remarkable acting of John Agar who chews scenery with gusto as the Steve March possessed Gor. His grabby advances on Meadows as Sally are some of the most palpable I've ever seen in a movie of this type, almost scary. Usually the hint of sex is pretty arid stuff in these movies with a lot of talk, this movie does more than talk. You get the sense that March-Gor is just moments from raping Sally who is time and time again put in harms way for the good of the planet.

This is far from a great movie, some might even say it's not a good one. But I've seen this movie many times over in VHS and now in DVD and it always entertains. That's what they're supposed to do.

NOTE: This is a Dojo Revised Classic Post. 

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Invisible Invaders - An Unearthly Enemy!

Invisible Invaders from 1959 is a hilariously wild and funny science fiction flick which blends radiation with zombies and alien invaders to create a heady brew. It pretends to be a moralistic tale about the desperate nature of nuclear weapons but what it really is, is a booster film for war yahoos everywhere.

A respected scientist named Professor Noymann (John Carradine) is blown up by a beaker of atomic stuff and at his funeral his colleague Dr.Penner (Paul Tonge) has doubts about the use of nuclear energy for defense. His daughter Phyllis (Jean Byron) is by his side as well as his protege Dr. Lamont (Robert Hutton). When the reanimated corpse of Noymann shows up at Penner's door to tell him the Earth is doomed, he sends Lamont to Washington to pass the word and he is immediately ridiculed.

Then the Invaders start killing people in stock footage accidents and using the reanimated corpses to pass along additional warnings at hockey games (believe it or not) and sports stadiums. Eventually the world believes thee is a threat as stock footage fires break out all across the world. The three folks we've already met are shuttled to an undisclosed location by Major Bruce Jay (John Agar) to help develop a defense against the Invaders who are invisible when not animating the dead.

They putter about with Jay and Lamont getting into sundry pissing contests with Lamont coming across usually as a cowardly wimp. That leaves he-man Jay to win the evident affections of the largely useless Phyllis. Eventually of course they figure a counter to the threat, but not before they do a ton of stupid things in a myriad of stupid ways.

This is a stupid movie, made for a song but it is reasonably well cast. It is directed by Edward Cahn but it doesn't feel that far away really from the notorious Plan 9 From Outer Space by the exotic Edward Wood. In fact if both of them weren't from the same year, I'd suspect Wood had seen this one. This one has better acting and stronger set design, but the limited way they constrain the action to a few interior sets and some unconvincing countryside makes for a very static looking movie.

Agar plays his generally annoyed character while Hutton always looks like he's trying to think  of his next line. I think he's going for pensive, but it doesn't always work. There's countless oddities in this movie, but I'll let you discover those for yourself. This one should be seen by anyone who likes an entertaining bad movie.

NOTE: This is a Dojo Revised Classic Post. 

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Beware Of Zontar!

This is one of those so-bad-it's-good kinda' movies, except in this case it's just all bad. Really that's a bit unfair. Zontar - The Thing from Venus is a cheapo remake of Roger Corman's It Conquered the World. Why we needed a remake in 1966, a mere decade since the original is anyone's guess.

The plot is dead simple. The beings of Venus want to invade the Earth and to expedite that incursion they convince an Earthly named Dr. Keith Ritchie that they are the only salvation for the world now that mankind is moving into space. He assists Zontar with advance information through a communication device and converts other human beings to Zontar's way by  using winged bats of a sort to deliver stingers which  allow Zontarr to take over their will. Standing up for Earth is Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar) who tussles intellectually with his mate as to what is the proper path.

The movie wanders all over the place, with some comedic attention paid to some soldiers who weirdly seem not under Zontar's controls. Also reluctant and willing to fight are Ritchie's lovely wife. Many folks fall victim and are killed before the threat is repelled.

This is not a good movie by almost any measure, but despite all its dullness and incessant talking, it does manage to at least offer up a few characters you care about before they die needlessly. I can't recommend it, but it won't do you any harm. The Corman original with Graves, Garland and Van Cleef is a much superior diverson.

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Dojo Classics - The Mole People!

This is the one! This is my favorite of Universal's 1950's monster flicks. It's as bizarre as movies of this era get. I can remember seeing this one on Saturdays or on Halloween Eve marathons and being pretty dang frightened of the Mole People.

The story is told in elaborate and brilliant detail here, but in brief, four archeologists find evidence of a lost Sumerian society high atop a forbidding mountain and seek it out, only to find themselves and the society itself lost in the depths of the Earth. The people have become albinos and live in extremely limited circumstances. They enslave the native Mole People, and see the surviving archeologists as gods. This lasts a while, but the High Priest wants power and plots to burn the men in the fire of Ishtar. But the Mole People revolt and the society crumbles. The surviving men find themselves with an opening to the sky and escape in the nick of time.

John Agar is ideal in the role of Dr.Roger Bentley, an idealistic man who is not afraid to stand up for what he believes to be right even at the cost of his own life. His friend Dr.Jud Bellamin played by Hugh Beaumont stands by him through all the trouble. Nestor Paiva is Professor Etinne LaFarge, a man who lets his fear tear away at him. Paiva's struggles really add an element of emotion to a story that unfolds pretty straightforwardly. Without LaFarge we'd have little to care about as our heroes seem to face trouble unabashed.

Cynthia Patrick plays Adad, a throwback in the Sumerian society who is taken in by our heroes after they release her from punishment. Her story almost becomes the center of this tragic saga toward the end. Alan Napier as the High Priest Elinu is delightfully conniving and gets his quite handily.


The movie though also has a peculiar prologue provided by Dr.Frank Baxter, an English professor who waxes on for many minutes about different theories of Earth and how it might be hollow. This is an odd way for the movie to begin, especially since it goes on so long, but it does seem to work for me. I note that the Warren Magazine fumetti of the movie dispenses with this prologue and gets right into the action.


The Mole People has lots of great touches. The way the opening titles seem to rise out of the Earth is fantastic. The great lair of the Mole People looks like something out of Dante's inferno. The movie has a relentless progression that takes you from the relatively mundane into the utterly fantastic, slowly raising the ante step by step. This is a well constructed story with a highly capable cast and crew, a truly professional effort all the way around.

I give this classic my highest recommendation!


If you want to read the great fumetti from Warren Publishing, check out this link.

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Dojo Classics - Tarantula!

Tarantula is one of those Saturday afternoon classics that made me fall in love with science fiction and horror stories. This Jack Arnold flick was in heavy rotation with other movies from Universal's 50's library, all of which I'll get to later, and it gave me the creeps exceedingly well for all its sunny sets.

The titular monster is pretty scary in its own right, but that takes at least half the movie to develop. The early parts of this monster epic are taken up with deformed men in pajamas raising all sorts of questions and creating all manner of trouble for our protagonists.

Our hero Dr.Matt Hastings flies back into the town of Desert Rock, Arizona just in time to be summoned by the sheriff (played to the hilt by Nestor Paiva) to identify a mysterious body which turns to be the partner of Professor Deemer (Leo J. Carrol), a somewhat eccentric but generally kindly scientist isolated in his desert home. The dead body is overcome with the symptoms of acromegaly, but the symptoms for this chronic but not immediately fatal disease seem to have come on with amazing swiftness. That's the core mystery for the first half of the flick and its pursued by Hastings even as Stephanie "Steve" Clayton arrives to take on a role as assistant to the scientific operation.

Between bouts of flirting, the mystery is unraveled bit by bit by the pair, as Deemer is attacked by another deformed man and his lab burned out. A Tarantula at least six feet across escapes. Then cattle start to die, leaving only stripped bones and pools of venom. It's not until the movies' third act that the full-sized Tarantula appears, but then appear he does in spades. It lumbers around the landscape at will attacking people and threatening the town of Desert Rock itself.


This movie has it all. A small threat created by the insane and deformed men, and the large threat of the Tarantula. The jovial John Agar is in perfect form as Hastings and he's well matched by Mara Corday as Clayton. Paiva heads up a dandy cast of sidekicks and characters who inhabit the town, though the town itself seems straight out off the back lot, which of course it is. That doesn't mean the natural settings are any less effective, as putting this story in the desert is an ideal choice not only for hiding the monster, but creating a sparse and isolated mood for the story.

The use of a real Tarantula is very effective and makes this one above average, and a movie that holds up remarkably well over fifty years later. The damage it causes is well realized, in particular a truck which is convincingly flung off the road.

If you've never had the chance to catch this one I highly recommend it. It doesn't scare me like it did so many years ago, but it's still a fantastic entertainment. One oddball connection with these sci-fi classics is that in another Universal monster mash (Cult of the Cobra) Edward Platt, the "Chief" of CONTROL from Get Smart had a small but pivotal role as the leader of the Lamians, and in this one Leo J. Carrol or "Alexander Waverly" of U.N.C.L.E. fame has a big part. Spymasters galore it appears!

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Revenge Of The Creature!

Revenge of the Creature hit the movie theaters in 1955, hot on the scaly heels of the first Creature feature and this too was in 3-D, though that element was less impressive. The first movie was amazingly successful as it isolated our cadre of scientist-heroes in a remote lagoon to do battle with a deadly beast they were just beginning to fathom. The sequel flips the script and brings the Creature into the modern world, namely a film variation of Marineland which offered up its facilities.

We get the usual mish-mash of empathy and cruelty though a bit more thoroughly blended this time. None of the characters, led by B-movie idol John Agar are outright villainous but their callous treatment of the Creature is by any measure cruel and his eventual escape and deadly rampage is largely understandable if regrettable.

He cottons to another girl, this time Lori Nelson and Agar and John Bromfield are barely able to save her before the inevitable deadly denoument. The sequel is not as elegantly paced as its predecessor and the scenes at Marineland get a bit tiresome pretty quickly. The Creature roams about in the community a bit longer than seems logical, but eventually he is found and sent to what we presume is yet another watery grave.

That's not true of course as the third and final Creature movie will show. More on that later.

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