Gog

"...and then without warning, the machine became a frankenstein of steel," says the sensationalist poster text. This is the third story in Ivan Tors' OSI trilogy. His first "Office of Scientific Investigation" story was Magnetic Monster in early 1953. The second was Riders to the Stars in early '54. With Gog the loose trilogy is complete. Unlike the Star Wars trilogy in which the stories build upon each other, each of the three OSI stories are separate tales which have nothing to do with each other. The common thread is the idea of there being a sort of Science FBI agency whose job it is, is to check out the scientifically strange. In that regard, Tors' OSI is a bit like a foreshadowing of the X-Files TV series, but without any of the New Age paranormal focus.

In keeping with the previous two stories, Gog is more of a detective murder mystery movie. Tors was a huge fan of "hard" science, not fanciful fiction fluff, so Gog, like the other two movies, is chock full of reveling in sciencey stuff in an almost geeky way. This reverence for real science keeps things from getting out on shaky limb, as many sci-fi films to. The events are much more plausible, less fantastic.

Quick Plot Synopsis
At a secret underground research facility, far out in the desert, scientists working on preparations for a manned space mission, are getting murdered mysteriously. Two agents from the OSI are dispatched to solve the mystery and keep the super secret space station program on track. The scientists are killed in various ways, mostly through equipment malfunctions. The facility director and the agents suspect sabotage. Small transmitter/receiver boxes are found within equipment in different parts of the facility. They suggest that someone on the outside is transmitting in the "malfunctions" in order to kill off the program's scientists. Occasional alarms indicate some flying high intruder, but nothing is clearly found. One of the base's two robots, named Gog, kills another technician while it's mate, Magog, tries to set up an overload within the base's atomic pile. The OSI agents stop Magog with a flame thrower. Meanwhile, interceptor jets scramble and find the highflying spy jet and destroy it with missiles. Once the trouble is past, the Director announces that they will be launching their prototype space station the next day, despite the sabotage attempts to stop it. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
The time spent reveling in techno-geekery has a certain Popular Science charm to it. There's an evident gee-whiz air about space and defense sciences which is fun to see. People were fascinated with things rockety and atomic. For various fun bits, see the Notes section.

Cold War Angle
Gog oozes Cold War from every frame. First is the base's underground location to make them safe from A-bombs. Next is the mysterious killer trying to stop the space station program. The high-flying mystery plane is "not one of ours." (that leaves: Them, and we all knew who they were.) The space station is to be powered by a solar mirror. Even that benign mirror has sinister possibilities. While demonstrating the mirror, the scientists use it to burn a model of a city. "This could happen...if we're not the first to reach space," says the Director. Space is the next "high ground" to be contested. At the end of the movie, when discussing the launch (despite the sabotage attempt) of the prototype space station, the Director says, "Through it's eye, we'll be able to see everything that goes on upon this tired old earth." The Defense Secretary says, "Nothing will take us by surprise again." An obvious reference to Pearl Harbor.

Notes
Seeing Old Friends -- B-films often re-used props and sets from prior films in order to save on their budgets. Gog, even though shot in Eastman Color, was no exception. Two old prop friends show up in Gog. One is our venerable old friend, the space suits from Destination Moon ('50). Look for the centrifuge scene. The research assistants are dressed in them, and as an added bonus, they wear the all-acrylic fish bowl helmets used in Abbot and Costello Go to Mars ('53). Our second old friend is scene in the radar / security room, (the one with the annoying tuning fork device). Check out the monitor wall. It's been gussied up a bit, but it is the spaceship control panel wall from Catwomen of the Moon and Project Moon Base -- complete with the empty 16mm film reels on the right side. It's fun to see old friends.

Stock Footage Star -- B-films often include stock footage of military units, tanks, jets, battleships, etc. to fill things out. Gog is no different, and even commits the common continuity error of showing one type of plane taking off, but a different kind in the air. What amounts to a small treat amid the usual stock footage of jets, some shots of a rather obscure bit of USAF hardware -- the F-94C Starfire with its straight wings and huge wing tanks. In 1954, the Starfire was one of America's coolest combat jets, yet we hear little about it. The swept-wing F-86 Sabers (which we see taxiing and taking off) were the agile fighter which gained fame over Korea. They're common stock footage stars. The F-94, with its onboard radar (in the nose cone) was deemed too advanced to risk falling into enemy hands. So, it didn't see much action , and therefore little fame. The heavier, yet powerful F-94C (one of the first US jets to have an afterburner) was 1954 America's hottest Interceptor -- designed to stop high flying Soviet bombers. It's blatant cameo appearance in Gog, intercepting the high-flying mystery plane, was a fun little bit of patriotic showing off.

What's in a Name? -- The very name of the movie, Gog, is charged with meaning to American audiences of the mid 50s, though virtually lost on viewers of the 21st century. The names of the two robots, Gog and Magog, come from the Bible. More specifically, from the prophecies of Ezekiel (Chapter 38) and the Book of Revelation (chapter 20). While just who they are (nations? kings?) has been debated for centuries, their role as tools of Satan in the battle of Armageddon is clear. Mainstream American patriotic christendom had settled on the idea that the Soviet Union was the prophesied "nations from the north" who would join Satan to oppose God. This gives the title of the movie a special Cold War significance. It also puts an interesting spin on the Dr. Zeitman character for having named the two robots in the first place. Since they were tools of the mega-computer NOVAC, what was he saying about NOVAC?

Proto-stealth -- It is interesting that the base's radar could not detect the mystery plane (which was beaming in the 'kill' instructions to NOVAC) because it was made of "fiberglass" which rendered it invisible to radar. Now, fiberglass itself isn't sturdy enough for high-speed jets, and it would take until the 1990s before composite materials advanced to make the dream of a stealth aircraft a reality. Nonetheless, the dream (or nightmare) of stealth aircraft was on-screen in 1954 in Gog.

Early Technophobia -- the super computer, NOVAC, controlled everything on the base. Even though the machines were not really killing scientists on their own, but following human orders from the mystery plane, there was the on-screen depiction of machines having a murderous mind of their own. (all pre-Steven King) In the techno starry-eyed 50s, it was fairly uncommon for the technology itself to be turning on its masters. This idea would gain traction later in the 50s, and especially in the 60s, but in '54, it was unusual.

Don't Trust Them Computers -- A cautionary subtext to Gog is the danger of trusting in a supercomputer to manage defenses and a whole base. NOVAC doesn't go bad on its own, as the computer will in The Invisible Boy, Hal in 2001 or Colossus in The Forbin Project. In this movie, it was the nefarious "others" who hacked into NOVAC to make it do the killing, but this just demonstrates the danger. People were getting a little nervous about letting machines take over too much responsibility. We were starting to distrust our creations.

Inhuman Robots -- Until Gog, robots were fairly humanoid. They had two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. Audiences had seen the mechanical Maria in Metropolis ('27), the fedora-wearing metal men in Gene Autrey's Phantom Empire serial ('35). The water-heater-like Republic robot appeared in several rocketman serials. There was the gleaming giant Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51) and the cute left over fedora-dudes in Captain Video ('51). The metal giant in Devil Girl from Mars ('54) was also humaniod, in a chunky way. Gog and Magog were a departure from the stereotype. They were noticeably in-human, which was part of the mood.

Bottom line? Gog seems a bit bland, as far as sci-fi tends to go, but it has a lot in it for fans of 50s sci-fi.

Them!

This is the movie that started the giant bug sub-genre within sci-fi. Sure, cheap B-grade sci- fi would later become typified by radiation-spawned giant tarantulas, grasshoppers, praying mantises, wasps, etc. But when Warner Brothers released Them!, it was the first time audiences had faced giant carnivorous insects. Others would repeat the premise, but never matched the power of Them! and the giant ants. It pays to be first.

Them! is in black and white, but not because it was done by one of the usual B-grade studios. Warner Brothers, an "A" studio" got cold feet just prior to shooting and scaled back the budget. Plans to shoot color were scrapped. In many ways, this not only didn't hurt Them!, but actually helped. Them! was Warner Bros. top grossing movie of 1954, which included Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, a variant of the Edgar Allan Poe story, Phantom of the Rue Morgue, and a Doris Day / Frank Sinatra romance, Young at Heart. Given the context, Them! was more of a solid successful A film than B-cheapy.

Quick Plot Synopsis
State Police troopers find a little girl walking through the New Mexico desert. She's in shock. Her parents are missing and their travel trailer is wrecked. A few miles away, a local store owner is found dead in his wrecked store. A trooper is also missing and presumed dead. A father-daughter pair of scientists join trooper Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) and FBI agent Robert Graham (James Arness) in looking for the answer. They find a giant nest out in the desert. Even though they kill all the ants within, three young queens have hatched and flown away to establish new nests. Two of the new nests ultimately fail, but one succeeds in the sewer tunnels beneath Los Angelos. Strange sights and bizarre deaths alert the authorities that the ants have a new home. Ben, Robert, the two Doctors and good ol' US Army troops comb the storm drain tunnels for the ants and two lost boys. Ben finds the boys, rescues them, but is crushed by the jaws of a giant ant. Robert leads the army in to killed the ants in the egg chamber before three new queens can fly and spread new nests. The world is saved.

Why is this movie fun?
There's much to enjoy in Them!. The acting is A-level, neither wooden nor over-the-top. The format is part murder mystery, part monster film. The direction is tight, with a variety of shots employed, (long shots, close-ups, cuts, etc.) that keep the pace brisk. The director and cinematographer showed great skill in getting rich tones and textures out of black and white. Note, especially, the night scene in the floodway basin.

Oh sure, the giant ants are just big articulated props and look a little silly after decades of special effects refinements and CGI. They do, however, benefit from being "full size" rather than superimposed (close-up) real bugs or stop-motion models laced in via green-screen. The actors have the benefit of actually seeing a giant ant head to react to.

Cold War Angle
Them! is mostly the radiation fear sub-genre, giant critter variant. Atomic testing, imprudent introduction of radiation, caused the humble ants to mutate. To paraphrase Ishiro Honda (creator of Godzilla) the giant ants become radiation made flesh. They kill innocents. They spread far and wide on the wind to bring new destruction far from the original site.

Notes
Actor Spotting -- Look for William Schallert as the ambulance driver. Young Leonard Nemoy gets a bit part with a couple lines, as a sergeant in the intelligence office. Fess Parker, who would become Disney's TV Daniel Boone, gets the small role as the Texas pilot institutionalized for crazy talk about ant-shaped UFOs.

Pseudo-biblical -- At one point, Dr. Medford worries aloud about mankind's chances against giant ants. "We may be witnesses to a biblical prophesy come true. 'And there shall be destruction and darkness come over creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth.' " That sounds biblical, but there is no such prophecy in the Bible. Movies today can spout fake verses and get away with it because most viewers are biblically clueless. But, back in the 50s, the general public had much more Bible awareness.
To give the writers the benefit of the doubt, it could be a paraphrase of Jerimiah's prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem at Nebucanezzer's hands. Or, perhaps it's conflation of events in the Book of Revelation. The trouble with both, is that the beasts never rule. They just move in because God removed the people. This doesn't resolve Dr. Medford's non-verse, however, so it remains a bit of movie mystery.

Flattering Imitators -- Many of the scenes in Them! were so strong that they were repeated in later movies. These were sci-fi "firsts" in Them!. Look for the searching-through-sewers scenes. You'll see it again in the 50s, but even as late as T2. The egg chamber and burning the eggs shows up again in Alien and others. The big critter head popping into the scene will get copied almost ad nauseum. The images from Them! made a big impression on the sci-fi movie culture. Watch for the repeats in later films.

They're NOT After Our Women -- Despite the movie poster, which shows a giant ant clutching a scantily clad screaming beauty in its mandibles, no such scene ever happens in Them. In fact, the only people the ants kill are men (excluding Mrs. Ellinson, whom we never see a trace of). There's only one brief scene in which the lone scout ant startles Pat. She scrambles away and the men loose a hail of gunfire on the beast, killing it. It is interesting that no attempt is made to evoke the tribal abduction angst. The ants were never after our women. Refreshing.

Devil Girl from Mars

This is an obscure little British sci-fi, from producers who did everything but sci-fi before (or after). This might explain why Devil Girl from Mars (DGfM) is such a departure from the usual sci-fi formulae. On the surface of things, DGfM is akin to the usual saucer-alien-invasion motif. That kinship is only skin deep, though. Beneath the surface is a delightfully different movie.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Reports come in of a strange meteor landing the remote area of Scotland. A professor of astrophysics and a newspaper reporter are traveling up from London to find it. They stop for the night at a country inn. Meanwhile, a man who escaped from prison has snuck into the inn to seek help from his girlfriend who works there. Also staying at the inn is a fashion model hiding/sulking from a failed romance, and a young boy, the nephew of the man and woman who run the inn. With a grand flash, a flying saucer lands dramatically near the inn. Inside is Nyah, a tall shapely woman dressed in black leather, a black leather skull cap and long black leather cape. She announces that she's from Mars. The male population has grown weak and feeble on Mars, so they are looking for breeding stock. She's the first of what will be a wave of invaders taking the best men, now her trip has proven the success of "organic metal" ships. The people are powerless to stop her. She cannot be shot or electrocuted. Nyah has a force field around the inn, so no one can escape or get help. Nyah has a big robot which can disintegrate things with his head-beam, so resistance is futile. The professor does some recon aboard the ship. He feels the ship's power source is its achilles heel. The men draw straws to see who will go with Nyah -- essentially a suicide mission to destroy her ship. While they argue, the convict tells Nyah that he's the one. Her ship leaves and blows up high in the sky. The earth is safe. The end.

Why is this movie fun?
Sure, it's low on action and very talky. It was adapted from a stage play, after all. But there's just so many little touches in DGfM that are delightful. One thing is the total reversal of the usual they're-after-our-women trope. This is so refreshing. What makes this even more fun is that the men do not act all wolfish and slobbery about being a stud for martian women. Instead, they act like it's exile to Siberian salt mines. This, despite Nyah being a hot chick in her own way. Hollywood could not have done this story. Another very fun visual is Nayh herself, all in black with Vulcan-like eyebrows and stoic demeanor. She's like Spock's evil sister or Darth Vadar's wife. This is just great fun for viewing. The model work and matte art are pretty good for a low-budget B-film.

Cold War Angle
Other than the customary invasion-by-martians as allegory to invasion-by-commies, DGfM is in its own little world.

Notes
Mars Needs Men -- As mentioned above, DGfM reverses the usual alien agenda. Instead of the ruthless alien trying to take away our curvaceous ladies, a leggy lady arrives to take away earth's hunkiest men. This isn't treated like the usual adolescent fantasy about being the lone guy in the girls' dorm. No, the men at the Bonnie Charlie Inn regard Nyah's plan as a terrible fate. Perhaps the Brits were able to see beyond their underpants that the martian women's plans would mean the subjugation of the entire earth. There was much more at stake than their own personal gratification. How un-Hollywood!

Love vs Loveless -- The writer sets up an interesting contrast between earthly love and the martian woman's buisness-like approach to procreation. Between Robert, the convict and Doris, we see her loyalty and charity. Robert shows a sort of desperate reaching out for help, but then the willingness to sacrifice himself for others. Between the reporter, Michael, and Miss Prestwick, the budding of new romance which softens his cynicism and coaxes her out of her funk over a failed prior romance. Mr. and Mrs. Jamison show parent-like concern of little Tommy. The Professor shows an altruism for mankind. All these earthly manifestations of love stand in contrast to Nyah's passionless approach to duty.

Ship, Heal Thyself -- DGfM features a little thing that gets attention in films much later. Her ship is made of "organic metal" which can heal itself. She miscalculated the density of earth's atmosphere, so upon entry a part of her ship broke off. That was the meteor people reported. Nyah had to land in Scotland instead of London, as originally planned, so that her ship could heal itself. In the meantime, she figures to take the best of the men at the inn, just to make the side trip worthwhile. We won't see the concept of organic metal and ships healing themselves until the Alien series in the 90s. Stargate Atlantis has it's Wraith ships which are partially organic too. DGfM might be the first film to feature self-healing ships.

Robo-phobia -- The robot in DGfM is tall, but like many other B-movie robots, it's so slow and clumsy it's hard imagine it inspiring fear. Oh sure, it has its disintegrator beam, but it's even slower than a muzzle-loading musket to fire. Instead of running away (or even just walking away) from it, everyone stands "paralyzed" in fear while the walking refrigerator lumbers up to them. This is necessary, of course, since it's a sound-stage production, not an action film, but it looks a little odd. They could have tackled Nayh and taken away her remote control before robo-fridge could manage turning around. Perhaps in the early 50s the concept of killer robots were more frightening.

Why are we safe now? -- Many B-films end on a supposedly happy note when the lone alien is killed, as if there was no other threats out there. DGfM might look like one of these loose-thread flicks, but it's not. Nyah's ship was THE experimental prototype of the organic metal ship. Only such a ship could make the trip from Mars and hold up to our harsh Earth conditions. She said that when she returns to Mars, it will prove the success of the organic metal and a whole fleet of ship will be built like hers. By Robert blowing up her ship, the Martians will assume the organic metal ship was a failure and not re-try Nayh's organic metal approach. This buys Earth much needed time. All this assumes Nayh had no radio chats with Mars once she got here. A naive assumption.

Bottom line? Devil Girl is certainly worth watching, not for the effects or action, but just for the sheer role-reversal aspect.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Universal was already famous for iconic "monster" movies. Frankenstein and Dracula became part of the culture. Creature from the Black Lagoon (CBL) is mostly in the same vein of monster-horror flick, but with a little science in its fiction. Unlike magical or demonic monsters, this one is supposedly a "natural" anomaly of evolution. CBL is often classified as sci-fi, so it's worthy of inclusion here.

Budget-wise, CBL is a B movie, but it's a cut above the usual B crowd. The acting was reasonable. The cinematography was impressive. The only "special" effect was the creature's costume. While the Creature is, in many people's mind, THE icon for man-in-rubber-suit monster costumes, something about the creature found resonance in movie-goers. He was strong enough to merit two sequels.

The producers tapped Jack Arnold for director. Arnold, who directed It Came From Outer Space had an excellent eye. His use of many camera locations, angles, framing and cuts, he lets the camera become invisible. Viewers are in the scene, not simply watching it.

The actors didn't get in the way of the story. Richard Carlson was already a big name in the sci-fi movie world. It Came From Outer Space, Magnetic Monster, and Riders to the Stars. Richard Denning was a hunky star of many westerns and detective movies. He would go on to star in a few more sci-fi films. The female lead, Julie Adams was perfect as the beautiful damsel. The supporting cast were a little quirky at times, but not as stiff and wooden as second-teir actors tend to be.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A old archeologist, working in the remote Amazon, finds the fossilized hand -- somewhat humanoid, but obviously aquatic. He shows it to some other scientists who agree to mount an expedition to find the rest of the skeleton. While Dr. Maia was doing all this, a creature with the same kind of hand tears up his camp and kills his two native helpers. The scientists spend many days digging and sifting, but come up empty. They decide to go further upstream to the Black Lagoon to search. There, they encounter the Gill-Man. The two scientists are at odds over what's best -- capture the creature alive, kill it and bring it back, study it and leave, etc. All this debate becomes moot when the creature begins killing off crew members. The creature barricades the entrance to the lagoon so the ship cannot leave. The expedition becomes a battle for survival. They manage to drug and capture the creature, but it escapes its cage-tank. It kills Dr. Williams. It then captures the beautiful woman, taking her to his cave lair. The men follow, find her and the creature. After taking several bullet hits, the creature staggers away and dives into the lagoon. The final image is of the creature floating downwards, limp and lifeless.

Why is this movie fun?
This is one of those cultural icon movies that even non-fans of sci-fi know. In that regard, watching it like seeing a celebrity in person. Arnold does a good job with pacing and keeping tension up. It's interesting that the creature gets his own theme music, of sorts. Arnold that the same ascending three note phrase, "do da DEEEEE!" accompany each appearance. The creature's mixture of vulnerability and apparent invincibility, kept you off guard. Spear gun hits or bullets seemed to almost take him down, but not quite.

Cold War Angle
CBL doesn't have any firm connection to the usual Cold War themes. It's much more about the dangerous bigger-than-man side of nature.

Notes
Dueling Scientists -- Dr. Reed (Carlson) represents the "good" side of science. He wants to study the creature, but not interfere or harm anything. He wants to expand the field of knowledge for altruistic reasons. Dr. Williams (Denning) represents the dark side of science. He's focused on the fundraising potential, the economic cost of expeditions. When confronted with the creature, he's all for killing it (not so much for the safety of the others) in order to bring it back for exhibition. This dualism of scientists is somewhat two-dimensional, but works as a sub-theme.

Visible Monster -- Many B-grade sci-fi films show their low-budget monster as little as possible. CBL breaks that rule in a big way. Viewers get several partial views right away (the hand) and not too far into the film, a full view of him. Since the producers didn't cheap out on the gill-man's costume, viewers aren't let down. He looks, moves and acts much one would think a gill-man would.

Beauty and the Beast -- The gill-man is not simply a killing machine type of monster. His curiosity with (attraction to) Kay makes him more complex. In the swimming sequence (a strong foreshadow of the swimming girl scene in Jaws), he swims along with her, unseen, in a sort of parallel dance. He, the ancient, strong and primal male matching moves with the lithe, beautiful, innocent female. Some suggest that the gill-man's popularity was how well he echoed the adolescent male condition: awkward, unattractive, misunderstood, full of rage, attracted to beautiful women, but insecure approaching them. The big scene, in which the gill-man grabs Kay off the boat and swims her down to his cave lair is easily a young male fantasy.

They're After Our Women! -- CBL has the classic they're-after-our-women scene. It lives up to the poster art. The gill-man grabs the woman and runs (swims) off with her. He carries her in his arms toward his lair. Unlike other versions of this classic image, the gill-man appears to actually want the woman.