How Green Is The Archer?

I've been hankering to see The Green Archer forever and a day, but for whatever reason I never picked up a copy and never sat down to enjoy this Columbia chapter play starring Victor Jory as the hero seeking to get inside a displaced castle in which is held captive a lovely woman and where a gang of thieves hide and plot their schemes. It's a castle full of the usual, hidden doorways galore, mysterious steps, dungeons in offbeat places, and one of the wackiest garages you'll ever see.

It's generally assumed The Green Archer inspired the creation of DC's longtime bowman Green Arrow. The timing of this film's release over many months and Green Arrow's debut in the pages of More Fun Comics is certainly coincidental if nothing else. But I think this serial has progeny in the TV realm as well, specifically The Green Hornet show. There's a giant hedge that opens up automatically when the villains drive off their lot and they rise up into position to do that by an dandy elevator, and all these gimmicks stay hidden pretty much through the entire movie. It's not quite as cool as the kissing pair billboard or the turntable garage for Black Beauty, but it sure put me in mind of them.

The story is an ambler. The hero drops into the castle and out with varying motives, sometimes it seems forgetting all about the damsel in distress. And the cops appear unusually feckless, though that is kind of explained later as well. One thing which really pops out is the gang employed by the top villain, in that they are an unusually specific and unusually funny gaggle of baddies. Attention is given to them to a surprising degree for a serial, but that's good since it adds some zest to a show which gets rather repetitive quickly.

I haven't mentioned the Green Archer himself yet. Well, he's a ghost supposedly and represented in the movie in three ways. There's a painting and a fake Archer who works for the villain. And then there's a mysterious other Green Archer who  helps the hero and foils the villains and seems to have an unusual familiarity with castle's hidden avenues. Arrows zing all over and some deliver messages, a few deliver death, but always they mark a turn of plot.

This one can get a little rusty, but try to have fun with the bad guys, because they singularly good.

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Classic Horror!

Picked up a set of four flicks gathered under the title Classic Horror from a local shop the other day and have thoroughly enjoyed them all, each in its own way.

Terror of the Tongs starring Christopher Lee is the reason I dropped a few dollars to begin with for this set. Though the reviews of this movie are generally tepid, I still had a hankering to see what Lee did with an Oriental menace clearly in the Fu Manchu tradition. He didn't disappoint, though he's not on screen all that much, he does chew the scenery in dandy fashion when he does. The story is a rather hoary one admittedly, though with some real surprises. A sturdy and forthright sea captain finds himself pitted against the local criminal outfit, the Dragon Tong. Their murderous ways strike close to him and he seeks vengeance and goe about it in the most ham-fisted way possible. But there are some neat ruckuses along the path he chooses as he pits his good guy power against the murderous hatchet men of the Tong.

Five is a post-apocalyptic tale, according to some sources the first post-nuclear movie fable ever. It's a cheapie for sure, filmed largely at the house of the writer and director Arch Obloer. The actors are largely unknowns and the film has that spare quality many such low-budget efforts have, though there is a grace to certain scenes many of these films do not aspire to. It's largely the story of five people who gather together (eventually) at house in the mountains after the bombs have dropped. They each have their own tale of survival though we mostly follow the saga of the sole woman who it turns out is pregnant. One of the male survivors is black and race does become an issue in the story. One of the notable features of the movie is that the house was apparently designed by Frank Loyd Wright and it's a handsome ediface for sure.

Vincent Price is outstanding (per usual) in The Mad Magician. The story is straightforward enough. Price is a master builder of great illusions who seeks the limelight for himself but is forestalled by his partner who demands he remain a faceless technician. They also shared the same woman as wife and that tension results in a flurry of murders, each carried out with aplomb and style and ferocious energy. Lots of fun characters, especially a married couple who dabble in solving murder mysteries and a pretty assistant make this one a totally watchable bit of fluff. My favorite moment is when Price loses track of one of his decapitated heads and has to chase across the town to locate it before it falls quite literally into the hands of the police. Humor like this gives the movie a grisly quality that is quite effective.

And finally we have The Man Who Turned to Stone. I expected little of this story of a girls reform school haunted by a mysterious killer, but it turns out there was much more to it thanks to a completely competent cast filled with the likes of Victor Jory. It turns out the killer works for a deadly cabal who run the joint and use the hapless girls as guinea pigs in experiments which have gone on longer that anyone can suspect at first. A well-meaning young woman seeks to investigate the mysterious deaths and is helped by the local young and handsome doctor. The two conduct an investigation that's filled with blunders, but of course we all know justice will eventually win out. This one has some really rather creepy scenes in it and the back story is quite rich.

All in all, a completely solid set of four movies which one might be inclined to overlook. They are worth the time and money (small money really) for any fan of horror. Highly recommended.

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Cat-Women Of The Moon!

Cat-Women of the Moonis one of those infamous flicks I've read about for decades, but had never seen. When I found it with its companion Missile to the Moon, I knew I had to have them. More on that other film later. 1953's Cat-Women of the Moon begins right in the middle of the action, with a really suspect crew blasting off to the Moon with what appears to be limited expectation of what they will find and frankly what they will do. The movie was made on a small budget and nowhere does that show up more obviously than in what to my memory is the most makeshift interior of a spacecraft I've ever seen on screen. It's clearly just some office furniture and a few specialty hammocks in front of some exceedingly cheesy looking dials and knobs.

Flying into space inside this sardine can is a crew made up of Sonny Tufts as mission leader Laird Grainger who seems an incredibly naive scientist type, Victor Jory as Kip Reissner, a no-nonsense second-in-command who harbors feelings it seems clear enough for Marie Windsor in her role as Helen Salinger, the crews largely pointless female member and who is tied romantically to the mission leader. Along for the ride are William Phipps as Doug Williams, a youthful innocent radio man and Douglas Fowley as Walt Walters, an avaricious engineer. The plot is mostly revealed within moments of meeting the crew as their key personality traits are uncovered. The only surprise might be Helen who it seems is under the mental control of the Cat-Women, who by the way don't actually appear until half way into the movie.

Thanks to Helen the crew touches down right outside the cavern entrance to the lair of the Cat-Women who have manipulated events to get their claws on the spaceship so they might leave the Moon, their society on the verge of collapse with only a few folks remaining, all of them slinky femme fatales it seems. They are led by Alpha (Carol Brewster) and Beta (Suzanne Alexander) and there's also Lambda (Susan Morrow) who falls in love with Williams.

After much haggling around, and increasingly stupid decisions the crew fall victim to their various emotions and almost to some of the most haggard looking giant spiders it possible to imagine. Only Kip stays vigilant, but eventually even he succumbs and the crew is in desperate straights before the finale which comes abruptly and to my chagrin mostly off stage.

Cat-Women of the Moon is a hapless movie with some fun and funny scenes. The acting is properly hammy and effects create more giggles than suspense. No one in the cast is taking it easy and they earnestly plow ahead through this exceedingly cheesy material to their credit.

Missile to the Moon appeared in 1958 several years after the Cat-Women movie, but is largely identical in the larger scope of its plot, and is considered a remake of the earlier film. Sources suggest that this movie had a smaller budget than the earlier flick, but they sure the bang for their dollar as it looks a little sleeker, especially in the early stages. The spaceship is slightly more convincing for sure and the action on the Moon is more elaborate with some actual outdoor shooting.

The story is similar but also different in some remarkable ways. This time the action begins well before lift-off, in fact it's an attempt by the United States government which prompts a quick launch. The creator of the rocket ship, one Dirk Green it turns out is an agent of the society which once thrived on the Moon, but which some years before had sent a mission to Earth to find a way to stave disaster. He hastily returns, using some juvenile delinquent escaped convicts named Gary and Lon.

Green's partner is a guy named Steve Dayton who along with his girl friend June end up tagging along on the trip accidentally and this merry troop head off into space. Sadly Green soon succumbs to an accident and gives Dayton a medallion and tells him to allow the ship to land itself. They follow those instructions and soon find themselves on the Moon and facing off against some really neat rock monsters. Soon they find a cave and a culture of exclusively women, this time the place looks rather like Fu Manchu's hide out. The dames want pretty much the same thing they did in the last movie, but it takes some few different twists getting there. 

Missile to the Moon is a movie that gets a little bit stupider as it goes along, forcing characters to do some really lame things to keep the action moving forward. Richard Travis as Dayton gives a remarkably flat performance, among the weakest in the cast which all seem to have been under orders to keep things relatively calm. Tommy Cook and Gary Clarke are fun as the hoods, but their presence makes little sense if you stop to think about it even for a second.

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Manfish!

When you see the title Manfish on a collection of horror movies you might expect to see some knockoff of the classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. Well I did, and despite there being no creature at all (there is a shark), I wasn't disappointed that much.
Despite no monster, there is some pretty good underwater filming in this one.

Turns out the "Manfish" of this 1956 flick is a boat, and its crew is comprised of John Bromfield as a lusty and disreputable captain (Bromfield was actually in Revenge of the Creature ironically enough), Lon Chaney Jr. as a good-hearted but doltish first mate and a couple of Caribbean natives as divers. This crew is barely making ends meet when they come across Victor Jory, a black-hearted academic who is on the trail of some pirate gold, and his sloe-eyed girlfriend.

This tale it seems is a blending of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold-Bug" and "The Tell-Tale Heart". After a somewhat laborious opening act, the movie eventually gets into Gold-Bug gear as Bromfield, Jory, and Chaney go after the treasure following obscure clues only Jory's character can decipher. Jory's "girlfriend" (Tessa Pendergast),an exotic beauty, comes between Bromfield and Jory, playing them both against each other. The two want to murder each other through most of the movie and one succeeds, where the Tell-Tale Heart stuff kicks in.


The less said here the better as the movie's second and third acts aren't all that bad, but can be easily spoiled. There are some very dark and very funny moments in the final act of the movie, though I'm not certain the movie is going for laughs. The ending is appropriately ironic though, giving the whole affair a nice ring.

Jory is outstanding in this movie, and Bromfield is darn good. Even Chaney, usually awful at this stage of his career turns in a pretty decent role. This is one of those movies that's better than it ought to be, but beware the dull beginning. It does get better.

And if you want to see it, it seems someone has put the whole shebang on Youtube. Here's a link:

MANFISH

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