Taking A Knee!

When I look at this movie poster for one of Roger Corman's vintage movies I get a nigh unquenchable need for extensive and even I dare say, long term invasive medical care. And that's probably a good thing since today I'm scheduled for a knee replacement. Service will continue here unabated, but my responses to any comments might be slow for a few days. See you on the other side of my misadventure with the American healthcare system. 

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Not Of This Earth!

Not Of This Earth is a horror movie pretending to be a science fiction movie, and those are movies I usually like quite a bit. I like this one too, but being a Roger Corman low-budget affair, it has its weaknesses of course.

Not among those weaknesses is the vivacious Beverly Garland, an actress I first encountered on TV's My Three Sons and was startled a bit to discover had such a racy past in small-budget films. She plays a nurse in this one dispatched to tend to a weirdo in sunglasses who spends a few minutes most days stealing blood, sometimes from living people. Garland when she's on the screen though is the show and has a particularly erotic stockings scene just about in the middle of the movie.

Alongside Garland is Paul Birch who plays the part of the alien vampire. He's come to Earth through a dimensional doorway to find a place for his dying people to live as their home world though this is a bit confused. He knocks you out with his wicked eyes then sucks out your blood with a hand machine he carries in a metal briefcase. He's a demanding S.O.B. and has Garland and some gangster punk working for him while he wanders around killing people.

Often in these movies the authorities are inefficient or ineffective and that proves to be the case here. While there is a lot of furious rumbling across the streets and parkland grass on motorcycles, the cops despite having inside information (one cop's girl friend is Garland) they seem unable to understand the nature of the threat or to be able to locate it until the very end. Particularly memorable is the debut appearance of Dick Miller in a Corman flick, who plays an unlucky vacuum cleaner salesman.

Aside from some terrifically painful looking eye lenses that Birch has to wear at times, there are few special effects in this one. Paul Blaisdell though did supply a transportation booth which has some spinning knobs (which apparently, they forgot to turn on all the time) and a little flying beastie which looks like a cross between a beach ball and a swimming cap. But this show ain't about special effects, if you buy the story, it's because of the acting and for a movie of this stripe the acting is well above average in most instances.

NOTE: This is a Dojo Revised Classic Post. 

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Dojo Classics - Teenage Caveman!

Teenage Caveman starring Robert Vaughn is a movie that's been on my bucket list for some time. The title alone makes it appealing in its own strange way. You have to want to see what that's all about.

What it is all about is a small society of cave dwellers (the cave is the famous Bronson Cavern) who are restricted in their goings and comings by a collection of "laws" that prohibit their exploration of the seemingly much more fertile lands beyond their limited range. Admittedly those lands have dinosaurs, but those dangers are offset by a more bountiful food supply.

The "Teenage Caveman" wants to explore, despite what his elders tell him and ultimately ignores the pleas of his parents to be a dutiful member of the society and goes off to find out what lies beyond the river. He finds battling dinosaurs and some of the most miserable movie quicksand ever, which sadly gobbles up one of his buddies. This death means he himself should die, but he doesn't immediately.

He ventures forth again into the forbidden lands, this time followed by his dad and other cave dwellers intent on his punishment. But they are all surprised to find a mysterious creature who theoretically can unleash death with its mere touch. What happens then makes this movie much much more interesting.

Spoilers follow so unless you have already seen the movie or never plan to, do not read.

The twist is a simple one, but not one I ever saw coming. The mysterious creature is actually an impossibly old human being who along with twenty-three of his colleagues survived the atomic war which devastated the world and reduced the population to a mere handful who eke an existence like their Cro-Magnon ancestors. He is the last of his group who have been given extremely long lives due to radiation and who have watched over the survivors from a distance hoping they will find a successful way to rebuild society. The world it seems has been destroyed and rebuilt many times.

End of Spoilers.  

 It's a neat twist, not uncommon in stories I've read, but nothing in this movie prepared me for this turn of events. I immediately liked the movie better, which is pretty dreary most of the time, because the payoff is so good.

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Sorcer-Less!

Sorceress boasts one of the best posters ever wrought for a movie of this genre. I've always found the image by Robert Tannenbaum above of a haughty sword-wielding maid against a mysterious dragon-inspired background fascinating. Too bad it has virtually nothing to do with this hilariously bad movie featuring a pair of lovely twins who cannot act much and are mostly famous for appearing in their double-mint naked glory in Playboy. 

The twins are Lynn and Leigh Harris and they are the heroines of this ramshackle affair which puts out some of the dopiest scenarios captured on a sword and sorcery movie. This one came from the bowels of the famously cheap New World Pictures operation helmed by infamously miserly Roger Corman. And this movie showcases Corman's penny-pinching ways to the max. He wouldn't even cough up the cash to cast notorious and all-purpose B-movie actor Syd Haig. And this movie desperately needs a Syd Haig. 

The gimmick is that the twins are like the Corsican Brothers in that what one feels the other also enjoys or endures. This comes quite handy when one sister is introduced to sex and we watch the other sister writhe as she also begins what it means to be a girl. There are few "special effects" toward the end, one featuring a lion with wings, which explains the other poster made for the movie. But it's exceedingly minor. There are "Monkey Men" who reminded me a lot of  "Chaka" from Land of the Lost. This movie has a barbarian or two (the best actor is a Viking-like chap) and a sorcerer and I guess a small role for a woman who might be deemed a sorceress, but really it's a mystery why this movie is titled what it is. This is not a good movie, but it's a funny one in spite of itself. 

But it's got a great poster!

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Aliens All Over!

Galaxy of Terror jumped into theaters in 1981, a brazen rip off of Alien by the shlock-meister of exploitation Roger Corman. Based on what I've read Corman's main contribution to this grim and gritty little flicker is a surreal rape sequence on a gorgeous dame by an enormous and squishy alien worm. That encounter is depicted in the poster above, sort of. This is a grim movie, with dark grisly sets recycled from Battle Beyond the Stars. I found few of the characters in this movie likable. They are either too weak and scared, too brazen and cruel, or too stupid and cracked up to trust. Some are better than others and Sid Haig as a mostly silent blade-wielding joker is my favorite. What's that say about the script, that my favorite character says virtually none of it.

Forbidden World from 1982 is another attempt to rake up some of the leftover money stirred up by giving us a heart-warming tale of a distant outpost at which they concoct deadly mutant monsters (none of which look like the critter in the poster) which immediately escape and set about killing all the staff, including some very attractive babes. This one has some humor to leaven its horror and some really nifty nudity for those who like that sort of thing. The special effects won't light up anyone much, but they serve to move the plot along. This one is better than its predecessor from the Corman farm because of its lighter tone and if only to wait to see some really compelling images of  some very pretty girls with their shirts off. 

Contamination is a movie by Luigi Cozzi (Lewis Coates), the man who gave us StarCrash and sadly it lacks the charm of that galactic mind-bender. Astronauts are possessed and bring alien seed pods to Earth to raise in hidden farms and then contaminate the world with the deadly results. A former disgruntled astronaut, a NYPD cop and an attractive lady scientist are called upon to get to the bottom of what appears to be a scheme to take over the world. It's not quite Invasion of the Body Snatchers nor Alien but it's a low-budget blending of both in equal parts. It's pretty darn gory though, much much more than StarCrash. Lots of exploding bodies and such when many rounds of bullets are fired. If grisly don't bother you, then Contamination (sometimes called Alien Contamination) is worth a quick look. 

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Battle Beyond The Stars!

I have very nice memories of seeing Battle Beyond the Stars in the theaters way back in the day. The movie is infamously a Roger Corman production which immediately gives it a cache and a name recognition which many an exploitation movie might lack but it is perhaps Corman's most expensive movie and that makes it look pretty good still after all these decades. There's a lot of young energetic creativity on display and the movie benefits from solid non-ironic acting by seasoned pros as well as vital creativity in the creation of the myriad aliens. 

John Sayles wrote a damn good movie which took the time-tested template of The Seven Samurai and stuck into outer space. With a familiar and immediately compelling plot the stage is set for a wide variety of aliens, an assortment which is allowed for the most part to play out during the course of the heroic tale. But of course this is a movie made under the auspices of Roger Corman so the first and last edict is to bring in the project either on or under budget so that a profit can be made. Corman is only an artist when his debts are paid and his pockets are full and that is not necessarily a criticism on my part. He's an entertainer and that has less rigid expectations of quality. 

This movie launched the career of James Cameron and much is made by those on the spot of how he was elevated to lead the special effects efforts after the first guy fell behind. Those early tales also point to the elements of out-sized ego which seem to permeate Cameron's personal style. James Horner got his start on this one too, and was exceedingly young when he composed a very effective score. 

Richard Thomas though still young at the time heads a veteran cast. A movie cannot stray very far when the rock solid talent of  John Saxon, George Peppard and Robert Vaughn are dominating the proceedings. On hand in smaller roles are Jeff Corey, Morgan Woodward, and Sam Jaffe. Youthful beauty is delivered by Darlanne Fluegel and Marta Kristen. 

But as lovely as they are the overwhelming presence of the bombshell Sybil Danning marks this movie as a keeper. There's not a scene she's in that your eyes don't clamber all over that stunning frame and much of that curvaceous frame is well positioned for maximum audience enjoyment. 

This is a movie about divergent peoples joining forces for a host of reasons to stand up to a tyrant who demands they willingly surrender their liberty and become slaves. It's about people overcoming their differences to stare down an enemy to them all. It's a movie which offers a lesson for the modern world indeed. 

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Keeping Abreast Of The Medical World!

I'm not feeling ill, so why is it when I look at this movie poster for one of Roger Corman's vintage movies I get a nigh unquenchable need for extensive and even I dare say, long term invasive medical care.

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Attack Of The Giant Leeches!

The Giant Leeches is cheapo delight of a monster movie. It's loaded with bristling memorable characters, not the least of which is the vivacious Yvette Vickers.  But that's saying a lot. The plot of this movie is dead simple. Giant man-sized leeches appear in the bayous and begin to abduct and kill the local population. While this is going on a woman cheats on her jealous husband and a local warden tries to date while fighting off monsters in his spare time. 

I would love to see a really good copy of this movie as despite owning it several times I have yet to run across a print which wasn't muddy and too dark. While the script is minimal this movie is filled with some good character acting and even the leads are above what you'd expect in a production this small and cheap. So on the human front this movie out performs. 

But famously it's in the area of monsters that it falls short. The monster leeches are difficult to decode as the movie tumbles along and at no point is any of them larger than the men who operate the cheap-jack costumes. I only wish there had been a leech as giant as the one on the poster -- that's scary stuff. 

This one is fun for what it is, a low to no budget offering filled with some fun lines delivered by folks who know their craft, at least a little bit. 

And did I mention Yvette Vickers?

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The Man With The X-Ray Eyes!

X - The Man With the X-Ray Eyes is one of those movies that begins as a bit of B-Movie schlock and somewhere along the way makes a left turn into profound. I'm not sure to what extent the makers of the movie knew this, but that's the result nonetheless.

The idea of X-Ray vision is a tantalizing notion which is most reduced to teenage boys grabbing quick glance of girls under their clothes. But while this movie does pay homage to that idea with a goofy scene of a private party in which our hero can see folks in their birthday suits, it's only a passing moment.

Perhaps that has to do with the man, played by veteran actor Ray Milland. Milland brings a gravitas to his role which a lesser actor might well have lacked and so diminished the potential seriousness of the idea of seeing beneath surfaces. And that's the point, we have a doctor here who seems to have a blend of altruism and the usual Frankenstein instincts which inform doctors in low-budget sci-fi, a shouting out for good, but hidden beneath a desire for recognition and sheer confirmation that his work hasn't been in vain. This doctor hits the jackpot and by injecting himself with his miracle drug can see beneath skin and muscles to perform life-saving operations as well catch a glimpse of a pretty dame underneath her knickers. But his mind is changed too and he kills his best friend and has to go into hiding as a carnival act. This leads to an understanding that he can make a killing at the gambling tables and despite the intervention of a worthy woman, he still ends up destroying himself when he sees behind the secret of the universe and cannot bear the sight.

This movie is a Roger Corman effort, an above-average one and one of the very few which was actually adapted to comic book form. Check out this link to get a closer look at the comic. If you haven't seen this movie I highly recommend it, it's a better than you'd think.

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Down The Lazy River!

One of the great novels if not the greatest novel of American literature is Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's masterpiece of storytelling in many ways, but one aspect of the yarn which has always appealed to me is the peripatetic nature of the journey, the way life comes at Huck and Jim as they drift along the river on their humble raft finding this adventure and that situation. Although I doubt it's true, you almost get the sense that Twain himself allowed the saga to unfold, letting the focus shift from yarn to yarn as new vistas appeared around the bends of the mighty Mississippi the two heroes navigate along. It's a plan I want to employ this summer at the Dojo, or the lack of a plan really, just allowing each day to bring into view what that day will be about.

That doesn't mean there will be no known events, but look for odd shifts in topic and maybe even tone as my personal lazy summer voyage unfolds.  Some things I know are coming up (maybe) are some more reviews of Roger Corman movies. Truth told, I just stumbled into all of those in May as one led logically to another. Thee are several more to go.

And I've been slowly but steadily digesting the vast trove of Three Stooges films, both of the short and feature variety and I will sooner than later finish that mini-project and if so I will begin to report.You all are most welcome to drift along with me as the river of life flows along.

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Creature From The Haunted Sea!

Creature from the Haunted Sea was a bonus movie for Roger Corman. To take advantage of some tax breaks he'd taken a few folks down to make two movies -- Attack on Blood Island and Last Woman on Earth -- and after those films had wrapped they still had a little time and some film, so he cajoled the cast from Last Woman on Earth to hang out and make another quickie, this time a vintage monster flick. Ripping off the plot of Beast from Haunted Cave and cobbling together one of cinema's most hilarious and inept monsters they made a movie.

They were smart enough to keep the  outing light and play it for laughs. Creature from the Haunted Sea is a true farce with inept heroes, damsels who don't desire saving, and baddies who make animal noises and kill their enemies with toilet plungers. The "action" rumbles along with a helter-skelter energy until the cast stumble across a real "monster". But it's certain that the monsters in this movie are all mostly humans.

This movie has been included on most public domain monster movies and like much of the Roger Corman material from the Filmgroup era is often overlooked because of its cheapness and relative easy access. It's a dopey monster movie that is just looking to have some fun and consequently allows the audience to have fun too.

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The Last Woman On Earth!

When is a science fiction movie not a science fiction movie? The Last Woman on Earth directed by Roger Corman is a good example. While the poster would have the potential viewer believe they are about to see another apocalypse movie, what you actually get is a surprisingly complex character piece with three actors running the whole show because everyone else has taken their last breath.

It's never explained what happened, but for some matter of minutes all the oxygen was scrubbed from the air and most living things perished. Three people -- a gangster-like business man and his wife and his lawyer were scuba diving and so were spared and lived long enough for the air to return to normal. These three people deal with the demise of the world in different ways. The gangster goes to work immediately seeking to use constant activity to replace his confrontation of the new world. His wife suddenly realizes her new place in the world and uses that new-found power not maliciously but uses it to seek some sort of satisfaction. The lawyer is the most unstrung of the trio and has a hard time finding his footing, seeking to woo the wife but succumbing to the new world order.

We have some really deft acting here, really subtle stuff considering the speed of a Corman production and the cheapness of the movie. You might go to this movie to see the end of the world, but you end up seeing the beginning of a fairly decent love story which starts at a cockfight and ends in a church -- symbol alert.

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Battle Of Blood Island!

Battle of Blood Island is a lurid evocative title for a movie which turns out to be a surprisingly subtle character study of two soldiers isolated on a Pacific atoll after surviving a vicious battle with Japanese forces. Even more surprisingly this Roger Corman produced war yarn was based on the Philip Roth short story titled "Expect the Vandals". The movie stars a familiar face in Richard Devon who does the bulk of the work here as a stalwart Jewish soldier named "Moe", and he is joined by a rookie named Ron Kennedy in the role of "Ken".

We have two survivors who must work together despite one having lost the use of his legs as they hide out in a cave, stealing resources from the Japanese troops they are constantly hiding from. The interplay between the two men is mature for the most part and according to director and writer of the screenplay Joel Rapp made heavy use of the original Roth wording. The two men struggle with each other and as time passes seem at times to give in to despair, but the end is a bit of a surprise. All I'll say is it involves a goat.

This movie was the first of what turned out to be three movies financed and in some cases directed by Roger Corman. All have fallen into public domain, but a collection of the three films supplied great insight into how they were made on location in Puerto Rico, all in the typical Corman tiny time frame. Expect to see the other two (Last Woman on Earth and Creature from the Haunted Sea) in the next few days, but I thought this Memorial Day was an ideal time to review a movie about war which focused not on the battles and sweeping campaigns, but what the day is about, the soldiers who fought and all too often died in those wars.

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Queen Of Blood!

Queen of Blood is the third of three Russian movies picked up by Roger Corman and his Filmgroup and given an English-language brushing to allow it find a new audience. And this one is the most successful of the three by a large margin.

You have a team of astronauts who answer an alien distress call and upon landing on a bizarre asteroid find a crashed ship with only a single dead alien. Later a second team finds a living alien who has a yen for human blood. Th movie has a good solid cast with John Saxon and Dennis Hopper on hand to find English words to slather onto the visuals. Basil Rathbone is on hand also as the leader of the organization which sends the astronauts forth and apparently his role here and in Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet were filmed pretty much on the same day. That's efficiency!

The alien bloodsucker is a bit of looker too. The novel cover above shows off her assets in ways the movie never does, but that doesn't mean that sexual attraction isn't an aspect of her ability to pick off the astronauts as they try to return to Earth.

When I thought of a vampire from space I thought of the movie Lifeforce which in its telling of finding life-sucking aliens in space skips over most of the return trip home. We have that trip here.

And when I think of vampires from space I also think of the lovely femme fatale for Warren Magzines, the erotic Vampirella. Now having that thought is not one in a vacuum because guess who is in this movie as Basil's right-hand man -- Forry Ackerman! The Acker-Monster is silent but present throughout this movie and he has a gleam in his eye at the very end as if a notion has sprung upon him about another "Queen of Blood".

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