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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Beyond The Time Barrier!

Beyond the Time Barrier is a low-budget sci-fi offering I'd never known about really until I found it among several other "classics" on a small collection I picked up for another film. This movie directed by Edgar G. Ulmer can trick you. The images I've seen online make it look very intriguing. The poster art is well above average and the stills suggest a richness that the movie fails to deliver.

It stars Robert Clarke, veteran of many well remembered lower-budgeted sci-fi classics, is the hero in question who is a test pilot in 1960 named Major Bill Allison. While conducting a test he slips out of sync with the Earth and slides into the future about sixty years or so. He finds a desolated world with enclaves of silent survivors huddled in protective cities. They need protection because the world is apparently brimming with mutants. The first stage of the decline is the loss of hearing and speech, so aside from a few leaders no one in this world talks. It makes a strangely quiet movie and adds a small element of weirdness.

Also on hand are three other time travelers (of which Arianne Ulmer as "Markova" is the most interesting by far) from various periods who prove not quite as reliable as our hero. During his brief stay in the future the pilot falls in love with Trirene, the pert granddaughter (Darlene Tompkins) of the "Supreme", the leader of the stricken people (Vladimir Sokoloff), and survives his encounter with the crazed mutants. He eventually tries to fly back home by reversing his direction and the movie does offer up a very Twilight Zone twist on this cautionary tale.

The movie is actually a bit duller than I've described with lots of walking in the sprawling sets which apparently made use of some visually interesting but abandoned architecture from the 1930's era Texas Centennial Exhibition Fair. Also the mutants are represented by some interesting inset shots from an old Fritz Lang movie. This is a movie that knows what it is and proceeds accordingly, but sadly despite assistance by the U.S. Air Force even, lacks that special something to elevate beyond its limited amibitions.

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Return To Planet X!

I got hold of a DVD copy of the sci-fi classic The Man From Planet X. I've had this on VHS for several years and enjoyed it. Watching it again, I was struck by the atmosphere of the movie, the somber mood which enhances the mystery.

To be honest as a sci-fi movie it's limited. Apparently it's the first to trade in this stuff by a small margin, beating The Day the Earth Stood Still by a few months. It's nowhere near as good as that classic, but it's interesting in its own way.

Robert Clarke does the best acting job I've ever seen him do, and that might must be the result of some good direction from Edgar Ulmer, a quality talent relegated to B movies, but a director with real flair. Sadly Clarke is often directing himself and that doesn't seem to bring out the best in him.

William Schallert is on hand as the obligatory baddie, and he does a really top notch job. A face you've seen a thousand times, this time he's got an edge we don't associate with his good-neighbor mug.


Everyone else is adequate and keeps the story moving. But that's the problem. There's not really all that much story. A mysterious planet is heading for the Earth and an astronomer has made some intriguing deductions about it, so Robert Clarke as a reporter with some ties to the guy goes to Scotland to get the story. He meets the daughter who has grown up into a love interest and Schallert who is a down-on-his-luck guy with a bad rep and is helping the astronomer at his remote tower lab. The town folk are typically nervous about what is going on. A ship lands and quickly a little big-headed alien appears and the story unfolds. Whether the alien is a threat is seemingly solved.

It's a decent movie, with some outstanding images of remote landscapes. As a movie I give it a solid grade, but as a sci-fi flick I'd have to give deduct a few marks. The weakness is in the alien design. The alien is never more effective than he is in the movie poster. He looks weird, but that's about it. He doesn't speak and he doesn't really do anything all that overtly interesting, save walk around. It's great to look at, but it doesn't come to much as the film unfolds. He seems frankly disinterested in humans and certainly doesn't seem intrigued by heaving bosoms as the poster suggests.


On an ironic note, the comic book adaptation from Fawcett is getting reprinted along with several other vintage movie comics. See this link for details.

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The Hideous Sun Demon!

I've been wanting to see this movie pretty much my whole life. I can't remember exactly how old I was when I saw a still of the Sun Demon in a vintage issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland but I was a mere boy. At that time, there were literally hundreds of movies that I despaired ever getting a chance to see, isolated as I was in the hills of Kentucky. But the miracle of VHS hit when I was a young man and I've been collecting and watching these old monster flicks ever since. Now it's DVD but the search is the same. As more and more of these quaint old things become available it's fun to finally get around to seeing them.

Well in this instance it was a distinct disappointment. The movie is a spare offering with Robert Clarke in the lead. Clarke is a sure sign of an impoverished movie, and one that relies on talk instead of show. That's a given, but this story seems fragmented from the get-go. The accident that starts all the trouble is one we never see, nor really do we see the atomic lab where it happened. All we know is that our "hero" was exposed and now is sensitive to sunlight. We get this information in huge doses of really dull exposition from doctors, friend, and such of the hero. In the first few minutes of the movie the "hero" seems almost a bit character in the movie and I suspected that maybe the exposition bits were done after the original show. I'm still convinced that Clarke and his leading lady were only in one or two scenes together really in the whole thing.

The only thing that sets this mopey thing apart is the distinct unlikeability of the "hero". He's a drunk, and it's suggested this might have caused the accident. Well anyway this barfly is now sensitive to sunlight, so much so that it triggers a change in his DNA and he reverts to a lizard form. He runs around growling like the wolfman, then recovers after finding shade. Each time he changes it gets quicker and easier to do. Nonetheless despite the obvious need to stay inside and avoid the sunlight, he of course keeps heading out to the nearest bar and getting a drink and as we find lots of trouble. Trouble that keeps getting him stuck in the daylight.

All this guy has to do is stay inside the house and he's safe. Sheesh. There are pretty girls in this one, and a really fast car. But mostly there's talk, talk, talk. The movie alas is really rather dull. Even the action sequences are edited in such a way as to draw out the time and so undercut the sense of tension. Rarely does the movie really get compelling. The finale is okay, but it took a long time to get there.

The make-up on the creature ain't bad for a movie of this vintage and budget, and it's the only thing that recommends this movie even a little. I like monster movies, and I'm willing to listen to lots of exposition, but I need more than this offers to really enjoy the show. I've waited a long time to see it, and I'm really sorry it wasn't better. It's still got a great title though.

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