Monster From Green Hell

This movie is a hybrid of two B-film sub-genre. It's 80% jungle safari movie and 20% giant bug film. It covers no new ground in either. Them ('54) opened the big bug sub-genre. Judging from the poster art, the producers tried to position the movie as another big-bug tale. On the other hand, the jungle safari sub-genre (more prevalent in the 40s) must have still had some audience appeal. Since Monster from Green Hell (MFGH) is only partially a big-bug movie, it's place in the sci-fi genre is a bit tenuous. Still, it deserves at least some mention as part of the 50s sci-fi family. One of its writers, Louis Vittes, wrote the screenplay for I Married a Monster from Outer Space ('58), which was better than its title suggests. Producer Al Zimbalist gave us Catwomen of the Moon ('53). Near the end, MFGH shares the location shooting of Bronson Canyon with Robot Monster ('53). That's enough peripheral connections to merit at least one viewing.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Dr. Quent Brady and Dan Morgan are sending V2 rockets up into space with various animals aboard, to test their reaction to "cosmic radiation." These are our old friends, the checker-painted V2s, by the way. One rocket had too much thrust. Instead of exposing its animals to 40 seconds of radiation before coming back down, it stayed up for 40 hours. This rocket happened to have aboard it, some wasps, including a queen. This rocket then came down on the African coast, near the Congo. There, in an area around an active volcano the natives call "Green Hell", all animals are fleeing and natives are being killed. A local missionary, Dr. Lorrentz treks into the jungle to solve the mystery, but is himself killed by "monsters". Brady and Morgan arrive to check out the reports. They suspect the radiated wasps are the cause. After a great deal of trudging through jungle, they come upon the volcano and the nest. Sure enough, giant irradiated wasps. The explosives they brought with them do not kill the monster-wasps. The safari escape to a cave but are trapped in there for awhile. The volcano erupts. Lava pours down its sides. The lava kills the giant wasps. The safari folk are saved. The end.

Why is this movie fun?
Even though the "monsters" don't get much on-camera time (as is typical), they're actually pretty well done (for B monsters). There is a combination of large, articulated models and small-scale stop animation model work. By modern standards, quite cheesy, but in 1958, still above average. They came off better than the superimposed real bug type of films.

Cold War Angle
There isn't much of the Cold War angst here. Instead, we have a tepid example of the radiation cautionary tale. Radiation turns nature into monsters. Beware.

Notes
Radiation Angst -- MFGH caters to 50s audiences' built in anxiety about the effects of radiation. It was often the catalyst of choice in the 50s for introducing dangerous change. Surgery, chemistry and electricity each had their vogue periods. For the 50s, it was radiation. The only twist here, is that it's "natural" cosmic radiation from space, not man-made atomic radiation. Space was still a scary place in the late 50s. Many a film hinged on exposure to "space" causing bad things to happen. Riders to the Stars ('54) tried to make a serious plot of this. The Quatermass Experiment ('55) played up this angst. Later movies would too. People worried about radiation then.

Stereotyped Africa -- An amusing sidelight to MFGH is seeing the mishmash of african footage glommed together. Even in the later 50s, Africa was still stereotyped as wild place, with every corner filled with natural dangers. Elephants, pythons, lions and lava all existed side-by-side with fierce tribes of generic war-like natives. This generic vision was typical enough in the 30s and 40s, but apparently hadn't improved by the late 50s. Anything african was imagined to exist everywhere in Africa. Each sector contained both tropical jungle, arid savannah, swamp, desert canyon AND active volcanos. The only thing missing was the dinosaurs of Lost World.

For Love of Trudging -- A trait of many a jungle B-movie, is the obligatory marching through the jungle scene. MFGH had far too many of them. Dr. Lorrentz (an Albert Schweitzer copy) has his safari trudge through to get at the cause of the native chief's death. Much trudging. Brady's safari from Libreville to Dr. Lorrenz's camp went through yet many more minutes of trudging. Then they have to mount yet another safari to find the monsters that killed Dr. Lorrentz. The movie could have been perhaps 20 minutes shorter if all that trekking had been edited out. The fact that it wasn't suggests that the producers (who had made prior jungle films) must have expected their audiences still liked the vision of white men leading black porters through the jungle. It should be noted that the typical porters-deserting-white-leaders scene happened twice.

Stock Footage Fare --For fans of stock footage, there are numerous examples to spot. The V2 footage had become almost one of the four food groups by this point in the decade. Stock natives, stock wildlife clips and recycled footage from Stanley and Livingstone ('39) This helps explain why Dr. Brady gets decked out in the classic 19th century British pith helmet, khakis and tall boots. It helped him blend in with the '39 footage better.

Weak Ending -- Where most cautionary tales end with a moralizing moment, MFGH did not. For a brief moment, Dr. Lorrentz's daughter, Lorna, blamed science for the trouble, but Brady quickly corrects her that science is wonderful. Still, there were monsters out there. In the end, they're stopped, but unlike in other tales, man did not get wiser and stop the danger. Good did not triumph over evil. Instead, the wasps are killed by the lava. Since they were said to "not like fire," it's a bit incongruous that they made their nest on the side of a volcano. In the end, nature kills the monsters. As the Morgan character says at the end, "Nature has a way of correcting its own mistakes." Yes, nature killed the monsters, but its a bit odd that they gave nature the "credit" for making the monsters. Who shot the wasps into space? This may be a vestige of an old fear-of-nature theme.

Bottom line? At the end, MFGH may be a movie that only 50s sci-fi collectors will tolerate, or perhaps fans of jungle movies. Big bug movie fans will enjoy the big bugs, though they get only a little screen-time near the end.

The Trollenberg Terror

This UK sci-fi movie ran as the second feature to Cosmic Monsters. For American promotion, it marketed as "The Crawling Eye" even though the credits retained the original title. The movie was itself an adaptation of a six-part serial aired on British TV in 1956. The original was entitled "The Trollenberg Terror." For a B production, Trollenberg manages to be a reasonable horror/mystery story set in the Alps. Only towards the end the actual aliens appear on camera. For many viewers, this is the movie's downfall. In truth, the crawling eye aliens are not all that bad (compared to say the space bird in The Giant Claw ('57). The quality of the first three-quarters of the movie has raised expectations, such that merely B monsters tend to disappoint. That aside, Trollenberg is actually a fair bit of British sci-fi from the 50s.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Three young men are climbing Mt. Trollenberg, one above them, off camera. He talks of fog and seeing something, then screams and falls. He comrades are horrified to see that he has no head. A young woman on a train gets a vision of the three climbers, then passes out in the lap of Alan Brook, special investigator for the UN. Alan, Ann and her sister Sarah all get off at Trollenberg. Alan visit Professor Crevett at the high mountain observatory. He's tracking a mysterious radioactive cloud on the mountain. The villagers talk of mysterious deaths of climbers and curses. Two other men buck the warnings and climb. That night, Brett leaves the hut. Something returns to to get Dewhurst. Ann sees this too, as a vision. A rescue party finds Dewhurst decapitated. Brett shows up in the village acting odd. He tries to kill Ann, but is stopped. The cloud is coming down the mountain towards the village. It covers the only road out, so everyone must evacuate to the observatory. Hans, now an alien-animated zombie arrives and makes another attempt to kill Ann. The aliens are moving up, surrounding the bunker-like observatory. They start to break in. Alan gets the idea that heat or fire will stop them. They make some molotovs, but they're not enough. Alan calls in a bomber with fire bombs. After a few passes, the fire does stop and burn the aliens. The people emerge safe. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
As a horror murder mystery tale, Trollenberg moves along fairly well. Qhentin Lawrence keeps the mood spooky and the pace reasonable. Though much maligned, the eye monsters are not all that bad, for a 50s B movie. They're actually rather similar to how H.G.Wells describes his martians in his novel "War of the Worlds". Janet Munro is also a pleasure to watch.

Cold War Angle
There is a touch of the venerable "invasion" trope as a tie to the Cold War. This, however, is far overshadowed by the larger (and simpler) horror and mystery story.

Notes
Quatermass Formula -- The structure of Kneale's Quatermass stories was popular with British audiences. A mysterious and bizarre creature is terrorizing the countryside. Only our lone take-charge expert seems to know what's going on. Hammer's X-The Unknown ('57) used it, but with a Dr. Royston in the Quatermass role. In Trollenberg, the Quatermass role is performed by Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker), special investigator for the UN.

Monster Motivation -- Not much screen time is spent on the aliens as anything other than murderous monsters. There is, one brief scene, however, in which Professor Crevett theorizes about them. He thought that maybe they came from a dying world, in search of a new home. They pick mountain peaks because they're accustomed to lower pressures and cooler temperatures. The clouds, he mused, could be them making their own atmosphere. They appear to multiply by division, as the cloud splits and re-splits. Since they use mental suggestion to murder, they would appear to be a hostile invasion.

Zombie Tools -- The aliens animate and control the bodies of dead people to do their manual labor. Brett dies up on the mountain, but returns to kill (and decapitate) Dewhurst. He then appears in town on a mission to kill Ann. Hans rashly tries to drive out of the village, but is apparently killed by the aliens. His zombie appears at the observatory, again with the mission to kill Ann. Interestingly, in both cases, our heros are able to kill the already dead men.

Geo-Trivia -- There IS a quaint little village named Trollenberg, but it's not in the Alps. It's due north of Zurich, in the German state of Baden Württemberg. It is in the Black Forest, but there are no alpine mountains nearby.

Bottom line? Don't let the MST3K spoof throw you off. View the original and cut the producers some slack on the monsters. It's a B movie. Get over it. Trollenberg is actually a pretty good B movie.

Cosmic Monsters

Originally, this movie was titled "The Strange World" or "The Strange World of Planet X" when it was released in the UK in 1957. When it was released in America in late 1958, it was marketed with the title "Cosmic Monsters" (CM). Since the British film industry did not use promotional posters as actively as the American film industry did, it's the American poster shown at left. By whichever title, the film itself is a nice example of British B sci-fi. CM is yet another recasting of the Klaatu trope, but with a British entry into the big bug sub-genre. In some areas, (England, perhaps?) The Strange World of Planet X double billed with another British sci-fi starring Forrest Tucker, The Trollenberg Terror.

Quick Plot Synopsis
The opening narrator sets the tone of the cautionary tale. Man has advanced in many areas, but there is so much that remains unknown. At a country laboratory, men fire up a room-sized machine. It overloads, sparks, and injures one of them. The overload blows out TVs in the area and stops clocks. Wilson, a government man, sends a Cartwright to check on Dr. Laird's work because it has national defense implications. Wilson gives the Cartwright two bars of metal for Laird to experiment upon. Gil and Cartwright privately discuss the potential of a projected beam weapon. Laird is prickly about doing only 'pure research' in high-energy magnetic fields. The injured worker is replaced with a pretty French woman scientist. They fire up the machine again, with one of Cartwright's bars in the 'oven'. At full power, Cartwright's briefcase flies across the room. Gil shuts down the machine to save Michele. The metal bar now crumbles. The machine's overload also caused lightning storms and caused a 'meteor' to fall. A tramp in the woods sits up with a burned face. Turns out that Laird's magnetic field machine warped the earth's magnetic field, allowing deadly cosmic rays to get through. The tramp becomes a deranged killer. Local insects have mutated into giants. A mysterious stranger eventually explains that he came to warn us not to continue the experiments. The giant bugs eventually attack, killing some individuals. Soldiers arrive and attack the bugs. Gil and the stranger rescue Michele from a giant spider's web. Laird is about to fire up his machine again. With the earthmen's permission, the stranger summons a flying saucer which blows up the lab. The earth is saved. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
The blend of a typically British Klaatu-like alien, and the big-bug sub-genre, can't help but be fun. The pacing is good. The big bug shots are not Bert I. Gordon's work, but interesting in their own right.

Cold War Angle
The Cold War is a background element, in that the British government wants Dr. Laird's research to become a projected beam weapon for neutralizing hostile aircraft. Late 50s audiences knew who that was. The bulk of the movie, however, is more the typical cautionary tale about the dangers of science.

Notes
Klaatu Returns -- The trope of the benevolent messenger had "legs", as they say. It is best remembered in Klaatu of The Day The Earth Stood Still, but reappeared many times. We saw it reworked in an earlier British B film, Stranger From Venus ('54), and will see it again in early 1959 in Cosmic Man. Mr. Smith in CM is much like the man from Venus in '54 and Rennie's Klaatu in being the model of benign civility.

Mad Scientist Redux -- Another trope within CM, almost a parallel plot line, is the selfish obsession of Dr. Laird to continue his work, even to the point of killing Wilson for trying to stop him. In this, there is a typically British understated message about the dangers of hubris in science.

Snow On Their Boots -- There is a great cultural "tip of the iceberg" line in CM. It may have been totally lost on American audiences. Early in the movie, Murray, the security man, is talking with Wilson, the government man, about all the hoopla (flying saucer stories) in the press about Laird's work. Wilson says, "You may have to find some chaps with snow on their boots, if you know what I mean." Do you? It would be easy to blow by that line, but it's actually full of meaning.
In the early days of World War One, British public opinion rankled at the lack of any British attack on Germany. Rumors arose about Russian soldiers traveling in closed trains from sea ports in Scotland to the channel coast. "Eyewitnesses" said they figured they were Russian soldiers because they saw snow on their boots. The implication was that Britain was actually "doing something" to stop Germany by transporting Russians (who were allies) to the front lines. The rumors were false, of course. It was suspected that the government and press cooked up the stories (or fed them) to deflect criticism over government inaction. Hence, the notion that Murray might need to use the flying saucer stories to cover up the real defense project truth. How many Americans would have gotten that?

Bottom line? CM is breaks no new ground in sci-fi, but is a very watchable remake of the TDESS plot, with some interesting variations. It is also a rare British example of the big-bug sub-genre. For fans of 50s sci-fi, it is well worth the time.

The Lost Missile

In some ways, The Lost Missile (LM) is a stereotypic Cold War sci-fi B-movie. It is stuffed to the gills with Department of Defense stock footage. Jets taking off, radar operators, control rooms, etc. all consume many long minutes of LM's run time. Much of the movie comes across as reassurance propaganda to a nuke-wary populace. There are many similarities between LM and The Giant Claw ('57), in that some outside danger menaces the United States. America's full defense capabilities are showcased dealing with that threat. American technical superiority manages to save the world. Written, produced and directed by the same man, William Berke, LM actually fares better than most one-man-show movies do.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A mysterious missile approaches the earth from outside the solar system. As it nears, Soviet defense officers order their anti-missile missiles fired at it. They explode near it. This fails to stop the mysterious missile, but does settle it into a low earth orbit of only 5 miles up. The lost missile radiates a million degrees of heat, therefore leaving a five-mile wide swath of burned out destruction behind it as it orbits the earth. It starts its scorched trail in northern Canada Jets are scrambled, but cannot stop it. Any munition explodes from the heat before getting close enough. New York City will be destroyed in a little over an hour. A few human interest threads are woven into the tale. David, the chief scientist on a new super-nuke missile named Job (The biblical name, not an occupation). He was planning to marry his assistant Joan the day the missile arrived. David's associate Joe's wife was due to deliver their first baby, etc. etc. The children of NYC are being evacuated, but everyone else huddles in shelters. David convinces the commanding General to fire Job at the lost missile. It, alone, has the speed to pierce the heat barrier and detonate on target. Meanwhile, Ottawa is incinerated. While driving the warhead's nuclear material to the launch site, hoodlums hijack David's jeep. They die of radiation when they open the box. David catches up to the jeep. In closing the box, he's exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In his last minutes, he drives the box to the base and loads it into the warhead. He expires. Job is launched. The warhead penetrates the heat and explodes. The lost missile is destroyed. People emerge from their shelters. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Fans of stock Defense Department footage will love this film. The acting is varied (some almost over the top), so fascinating to watch. LM is such a pure example of Cold War sci-fi, that it's like finding a four-leafed clover.

Cold War Angle
The opening credit thanks the Department of Defense for its cooperation. The whole movie is like a dress rehearsal for what everyone thought a nuclear attack would be like. The lost missile is a surrogate for the expected communist attack. This role is underscored by how the origin of the missile (while clearly extraterrestrial) is never addressed. The lost missile is treated as purely an Earth problem. LM is a blatantly Cold War angst 50s sci-fi movie.

Notes
DoD Saviors -- Much about LM paints the Department of Defense as America's saviors. Of the brave men of an arctic radar station named Keyhole Advanced, who heroically stay at their posts, announcing the deadly missile's approach, a general says, "Thank God there was a Keyhole Advanced." Audiences were expected to share this reverence. Most of the stock footage is from the D.o.D.: radar stations, control centers, intelligence offices, jets, jets and still more jets. Clearly, even though nothing could stop the lost missile, it had to have left a pretty big impression on the viewing public to see all the weaponry in place to defend them. What chance would a mere Russian bomber have?

Civil Defense Heros -- Near the denouement, we get several views of Civil Defense in action. Average citizens and workers drop everything and don their white helmets and take charge. The narrator says, "They are soldiers and officers of Civil Defense. Theirs is the most important job of any right now." Radio announcers repeatedly tell people to obey their civil defense officers. The average citizen is also praised for having practiced what to do in the event of an attack, "The people of the city know what to do." Where the Civil Defense system is mocked in The Blob as the ineffectual haunt of old men, in LM, it is held up as the noble grassroots protection organization. There is even some clips of the old "duck and cover" footage.

Claw 2 -- Much about LM matches the story structure of The Giant Claw ('57), but without the bizarre bird as the menacing power. Both films boil down to promotional pieces for how wonderful America's defense systems are. Both movies tout the virtues of the early radar warning systems. Both films showcase the awesome military might America could bring to bear on any invader. Both also conclude by American technical genius supplying the special weapon that can stop the unstoppable. LM manages to do all this without the burden of the ludicrous bird puppet, so it is actually much more effective.

Plane Crazy -- For fans of Air Force stock footage and the old planes they preserve, LM is a treasure trove. There are too many to list here, but range from the usual P-80s and F-86s, including many types of fighters and bombers, up to the B-52 and the strange-looking B-36. Of special interest is the footage of the F-89 Scorpions with missile pods on the wing tips. There is some great footage (some in slow motion) of the folding-fin missiles being fired from the tip pods. Each pod carried 52 of the unguided "Mighty Mouse" missiles. A marvelous bit of rare D.o.D. footage.

Bottom line? LM has a passable, if not original, plot. It has some eclectic acting but minimal special effects. It relies on copious amounts of Defense Department stock footage, but some of it actually interesting from an historical perspective. Watch LM to see what The Giant Claw could have been.

I Married a Monster From Outer Space

Perhaps one of the more unfortunate titles for a 50s sci-fi movie, I Married A Monster From Outer Space (IMMOS) is actually a much better film than its title suggests. Produced by Paramount's B division, IMMOS ran as the second feature to the much more memorable The Blob. Being upstaged by that A-feature film, and perhaps its own silly title, may be why IMMOS is little known beyond the ranks of 50s sci-fi fans. This obscurity is undeserved, however. IMMOS is rather well done for a low budget film. It fits squarely in the alien takeover sub-genre. The first human to be taken over is a young man about to be married the next day -- hence the title. He is but the first of a wave of invaders seeking to make Earth their new home.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A group of young men are holding a bachelor party Bill at Max's bar. Amid the usual faux laments about marriage is much drinking. When Bill is driving home, he stops, thinking he sees a man lying in the road. An alien confronts him. A mysterious cloud engulfs him. Bill is almost late, but the wedding goes as planned. Only a short while later, however, Marge can tell Bill is not the man she fell in love with. He acts odd and clueless. Dogs snarl at him now. She tries to tell people, but they don't take her seriously. Others in town are being taken over too: a couple of policemen, the police chief, and Bill drinking buddy Sam. Marge follows Bill one night, to the woods. There, she sees the alien leave Bill's shell and enter the ship. Eventually, Dr. Wayne believes her. He has a plan. Marge has gone home, where Bill is waiting. She's at his mercy, but Bill has softened. He tells her the truth. The sun was dying back in the Andromeda constellation. They had to build ships and leave. Before they could evacuate, all of their females had died. Since then, they've roamed space looking for habitable planets. They planned to breed with earth women to save their species. Meanwhile, the doctor has rounded up unassimilated young men from the maternity ward. With his virile posse, they attack the ship. Bullet holes in the aliens heal instantly. An attack dog, however, rips one of their "veins", killing the alien. Another dies the same way. The men go inside the ship to find the human bodies of the abductees hanging from wires, hooked up to transmitters. The possessed men try a counter attack on the ship, but when the wires are pulled from the transmitters, they double over and die -- turning into gelatinous suds. The possessed police chief radios the fleet that Earth is no good. They're onto them. He turns into suds. Marge confronts possessed Bill in the woods. He says he's sorry, that he was starting to learn love. His wire is pulled. He dies and turns into suds. All the "real" men emerge from the ship just before it explodes. Everyone is restored. The fleet departs. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
IMMOS is a nice twist on the alien-abuction trope. There is a bit of the tension of Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('56). The story is told from Marge's point of view. The interplay between Marge (the vulnerable) and possessed-Bill is interesting, and rather well done. The special effects, while spare, are adequate to the task.

Cold War Angle
The corruption of local authority figures was a common anxiety in the Cold War climate. What if the police and town leaders became commies? Who would protect the vulnerable citizen then? This was the private angst of the period.

Notes
More Abduction -- IMMOS continues the theme of aliens taking over the bodies of humans. They weren't outright replacements as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('56) They were copies, as in It Came From Outer Space ('53. The aliens create duplicates with the real humans hidden away. As in several alien take-over stories, the aliens take over key authority figures in town.

Real Men -- The alien-men do not prove to be "potent." They marry earth women, but sire no children as they planned. Dr. Walsh uses this as the litmus test for whether a man is human or alien. He recruits his posse from the maternity ward. By their fruit ye shall know them. Real men become fathers.

They're After Our Women -- The oft implied theme of many B sci-fi movies (especially their posters) turns out to really be the case in IMMOS. The aliens from Andromeda have no females. They planned to take on humanoid bodies of men in hopes that they could produce offspring, which they assumed would be Andromedans. Why this would be so, with a human mother and simulated human father, is not covered. In a twist of poetic justice, the alien-men turn out to be impotent.

The Power of Love -- All the other alien-men follow the customary stoic pattern. The Andromedans did not feel love. Alien-Bill, however, feels the stirrings of emotion for nice young Marge. He's conflicted over the whole invasion idea. Love had begun to conquer the aliens. As with many other alien-abduction stories, it is love, or emotion, which is the essence of humanity.

Bottom line? Don't let the silly title throw you. IMMOS is worth watching as an above average B sci-fi movie.

The Blob

As the last "A" venture of the 1950s in the sci-fi genre by a major studio, The Blob is a sort of landmark. The big studios would produce A-level sci-fi in the 60s, but by then, the mood and tenor of sci-fi films had left behind the simpler themes that marked the 50s. The Blob is pure 50s. A creature from space falls into small town America. In keeping with the trend of the later 50s, it is the spunky teens who manage to save the world. The Blob doesn't lack for production value, but does suffer from an almost adolescent identity crisis. It wavers between campy parody and a serious tale, never quite settling on either. The Blob endures as a memorable sample of 50s sci-fi culture. It was remade in the 1980s (in a more gore-centric 80s style). The B film that ran with The Blob has been nearly forgotten. I Married A Monster From Outer Space was a better movie than the title implies. It, too, was aimed at the teen audience.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Steve (McQueen) has Jane up at a lookout point on the pretense of looking for shooting stars, but kissing is what he's after. She's not that kind of girl. The awkward moment is broken by a falling meteor. They go investigate. On old man also investigates. He finds the volleyball sized meteor. He pokes it with a stick. It cracks open to reveal an orange-sized glob. He pokes this with his stick. it gloms onto his fingers. Steve and Jane find the old man in the road, writhing in pain. They take him to Doc Hallen. Doc sends them back out to find more clues. Meanwhile, the blob has grown. It eventually consumes the old man, then attacks Doc's nurse. It consumes Doc too, just as Steve returned without news. Steve glimpses Doc's demise. He tries to tell the police is not believed. From there, the blob consumes other late night townsfolk. Several scenes underscore how the adults don't believe "the kids" as they try to warn people. Eventually, the now giant blob attacks a theater full of people while all the adults are present. The blob engulfs a diner across the street, where Steve, Jane and a few others are holed up. No escape. High voltage shock does not kill the Blob, but does spark a fire in the diner. Using CO2 extinguishers, Steve notices that the blob recoils from cold. He gets word to the adults who round up all the CO2 extinguishers in town. With them, they chill and shrink the blob. Steve, Jane and the others escape. The blob is airlifted to the arctic. The End?

Why is this movie fun?
This is one of the classics of 50s sci-fi, so it has a certain mystique. The premise is pure 50s (a deadly invader from space). The "monster" as a faceless (and clawless) red mass is refreshingly different, even if it's not the first blob monster.

Cold War Angle
There is a sort of legacy connection to the Cold War, in that many of the prior invader movies were analogies for Cold War anxieties about invasion. By this time, however, invaders from space had started to become a trope unto themselves.

Notes
Power Failure -- One of the fun features of The Blob is seeing the hackneyed solution fail. In many sci-fi films, high-voltage electricity is used to kill the monster. It started with The Thing in 1951 and persisted through the 50s and into the 60s. Good ol' electricity will save the Earth. The writers play to movie tradition. Audiences expected the power line to kill the blob. It doesn't. This was a fun twist. The blob cannot be killed. It can only be chilled.

Mismatched Music? -- The opening theme music, beneath the credits, has spawned much conversation. The jazzy, rock tempo and silly lyrics suggest a comedic parody of a monster movie. Yet, the movie itself is played out very much in earnest (aside from a few light comic-relief scenes). The dissonance is difficult for many to reconcile. From a teen-aged point of view, however, it's not so contradictory. The jazzy music reflects the teen mindset, out for an evening of fun and diversion at the movies. The movie itself is like a scary campfire story -- told in serious tones, but for entertainment.

Teens Rule, Adults Drool -- Reflecting the trend of the late 50s, the protagonists in The Blob are high school teens. They are the smart ones, the responsible ones, the heroic ones who will save the world. The adults are cast as shallow fools. Only Policeman Dave and Doc Hallen get treated with any sympathy, and this only because they believe the teens. The screenplay definitely panders to its audience's ego -- teens are always right. This trend will stay in vogue awhile longer in movies, and eventually become embedded in American youth culture.

Blob, Mark II -- Paramount's 1958 blob is the better remembered blob monster, but it wasn't the first. Their blob was much like the one in X-The Unknown ('57), a UK film about a blob monster from within the earth. The '57 blob melted people with its radiation, but it 'fed' on isotopes. Like the '58 blob, it was semi-sentient in moving and seeking food. The "blood rust" of Space Master X-7 (June '58) was a blob-like fungus which did feed on human flesh, though it was less animate. It was suggested to have an intellect, but this was never evident.

Old Boy -- Steve McQueen does a good enough job of acting his role as a semi-miscreant teen, but his face isn't up to the part. He was, at the time of shooting, in his late 20s. It takes a bit of willing suspension of belief to accept his as a high school boy.

Bottom line? The Blob is one of the 50s classics, so really ought not be missed. It's not high art. It is drive-in entertainment and can be appreciated as such.

Earth vs. The Spider

Bert I. Gordon did not rest after his giant man trilogy. The last, War of the Colossal Beast was in theaters in June of 1958. By September, Gordon was back with his own version of Jack Arnold's Tarantulal. The big bug sub-genre had pretty well run its course by this point in the decade. Gordon's garage-tech special effects are a bit better by this point. There's little that makes Earth vs. The Spider (EvS) a science fiction tale. The script offers no science explanation for the existence of the giant spider. It simply was. This makes Gordon's film more of a monster movie than sci-fi, but it is usually classified as sci-fi. It ran as the "A" feature, actually, over The Brain Eaters.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Carol's dad is returning one night with a birthday gift. His pickup hits a rope stretched across the highway. The next day, Carol and her boyfriend Mike go looking for him. They find the wrecked truck and go looking in a cave for him. They find a giant spider web and a 30 foot spider (tarantula). They escape, but no one believes their story except their science teacher. He prods the sheriff into investigating. They find the dad dead, all fluids sucked out of him. The spider attacks, but they spray it with DDT. It "dies". Science teacher has it hauled up to the school auditorium. The University is to come get it the next day. That night, however, the teen's rock and roll band practices in the auditorium. The loud rock wakes up the spider. It begins rampaging around the town. Death and destruction. Spider then heads back to its cave. Trouble is, Mike and Carol went back in the cave to look for her present. She dropped it. The find the bracelet, but must flee the returning spider. The townsfolk arrive at the cave and blow it up to seal in the spider. When everyone finds out Mike and Carol are still in there, a rescue tunnel is dug. The spider chases Mike and Carol onto a dead end ledge. Just as it's lowering itself for the kill, Mr. Kingman arrives on the other side with two lightning rods, each wired to a heavy cable. He throws one (and rubber gloves) to Mike. The utility worker throws the switch. Huge arcs leap between the lightning rods, through the spider. It screeches and drops dead. The kids are safe. The rescue tunnel is blown up too. The final shot is of the spider impaled on a tall stalagmite. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Arnold's Tarantula was fun, so a second episode is fun for the same reasons. Gordon's usual special effects tricks work better than usual.

Cold War Angle
It would be a bit of a strain to find Cold War symbolism in the giant spider. The script suggests no parallels. Any symbolism draws from the same well as traditional monsters.

Notes
More Big Bug -- Even though the big bug sub-genre had pretty much run its course by 1958, it still had enough draw for one more installment. Many of the big bug scenes are (by this point) customary -- such as the rampage down the city street.

Bugs and Photos -- Gordon repeats his trick of having regular bugs crawl on photos of buildings, as he did in The Beginning of the End ('57). Here, it works better. If you can, stop the movie where the spider is in town, about to "get" the sheriff. Note the split screen with the sidewalk tree in the center. Live action on the left, tarantula crawling past a photo of storefronts on the right. It works pretty well for a low-budget effect. Notice, too, in the later cave scenes, that Gordon had photos of the Carlsbad Caverns columns cut out and set in front of a full photo, so the tarantula could walk between them. Viola! Giant spider in a cave.

Dang Rock Music -- An interesting bit of social commentary is that the teenagers' loud rock and roll music (practicing for the big dance) awakens the stunned (not dead) spider being stored in the school auditorium. Rock music awakens the demon within, they always said. Here's proof!

Hot Rod -- An fun bit of 50s atmosphere is hot rod belonging to Joe (the 30-year-old high school senior). It's a black highboy Model A convertible with chopped windshield and bobbed fenders. Quite a sweet ride to be loaning out so freely.

Earth vs The Spider? -- Originally, the title was to have simply been "The Spider". This was changed in production to "Earth vs. The Spider" for a clearer sci-fi draw. To coattail on the success of The Fly, released just a few months earlier, the movie was promoted as simply "The Spider" (as in the posters). The longer title was already produced in the credits footage, and no time or budget to redo them. Hence the two titles. But "The Earth"? At best, it's a big spider vs a dozen people in a remote small town. Kingman wants to study the spider's genetics to see why it got so big. Why? Because a batch of such huge bugs could devastate the "whole earth", he said. Scientists needed to understand to mount a defense.

Product Placement -- Gordon was fond of promoting his own work in his movies. In EvS, Mike works at his father's theater. The full size poster is for The Amazing Colossal Man. Mike is reluctant to take Carol to the cave because his father just got in a new movie that he wanted to see -- "something about Puppet People."

Star Gazing -- June Kenney stars as Carol. She starred as Sally in Gordon's Puppet People, which makes MIke's desire to see that movie an amusing detail. Also look for Gene Roth as the bombastic sheriff. He was the villain Vultura in the early 50s serial Captain Video.

Bottom line? Fans of the big bug sub-genre won't find anything particularly new in EvS. There is more of what made the big bugs famous -- a giant creepy bug menaces people and tears up a town.

The Brain Eaters

Ed Nelson produced and starred as Dr. Paul Kettering in this very low-budget alien takeover movie. Somewhat loosely based on Robert Heinlein's 1951 novel "The Puppet Masters," as was the more famous Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956. The Brain Eaters (TBE) is yet another tale of aliens who take over the minds of people in an attempt to invade the earth. This was hardly a fresh theme by 1958, yet TBE manages to be an interesting retelling just the same. There are a few twists and surprises amid the usual who-can-you-trust atmosphere.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A 50 foot metal cone appears just outside of Riverdale, Illinois. The mayor's son, Glenn, and Dr. Paul Kettering are joined by Senator Powers in trying to discover where it came from. The cone reveals nothing. The mayor has disappeared and there are unexplained deaths in town. The mayor reappears days later, acting strangely. He pulls a gun on the sheriff and is shot dead. They find a parasite at the base of his neck. A policeman is infected with a parasite by two other infectee-zombies. Thus, the invasion spreads. Telephone, telegraph and radio communications are compromised by infectees. Back at the cone, an old scientist is found who was lost five years earlier. His parasite left him. He gasps out about the invasion and creatures from the Carboniferous Era, before dying. The cone came from inside the earth, not outer space. Meanwhile, infectees put a parasite into Paul's girlfriend's bedroom. She becomes possessed. Paul and Glenn climb into the cone again. In the now foggy interior, they are addressed by a zeus-like man with a long white beard. He tells of the invasion as a good thing for mankind. Glenn and Paul blast away with their guns and flee. Outside, Paul has a plan to drape a wire from the power lines to the cone and electrocute the parasites. Just as he planned to fire the harpoon gun at the power lines, zombie-Alice emerges. Paul tries to talk her off the scaffolding, but she shoots him. Paul tells Glenn to fire the harpoon. He does. Thousands of volts pass through the cone and scaffolding. All the critters die, as do Paul and zombie-Alice. Senator Powers rushes off to deal with the remaining infectees in town. Glenn and Elaine walk away. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
It's a very low budget retelling of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but with distinct parasites. At just 60 minutes long, things seldom drag. Some of the camera work and directing are interesting -- especially the parasite-cam view of the critter sneaking up on sleeping Alice.

Cold War Angle
Like it's more well-known trope-mate, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the paranoia about people being taken over -- particularly people in authority or communications -- was not a tough sell in the 50s. The purportedly benign intentions of the invader parasites mimics communist propaganda.

Notes
Good ol' Electricity -- Once again, high voltage electricity proves to be the savior of mankind. When bullets won't stop the aliens and all seems lost, we have always been able to count on kilawatts to kill the aliens.

Neck Ties -- TBE shares ties with two earlier sci-fi films in that the mark of having been compromised by the alien was a mark on the neck. Invaders From Mars ('53) had a small X shaped scar on the back of the neck. It Conquered The Earth ('56) had the alien bat-things implant a small electrode into the base of the neck, a small antenna protruding. It's possible the various writers had some medical knowledge about the brain stem. It's also possible they were simply repeating the mode used by Robert Heinlein in his 1951 novel "The Puppet Masters" which laid the foundation for many of the aliens-take-over-humans stories. Heinlein's "slugs" attached themselves to the base of the back of the neck.

New Direction -- Bruno VeSota had acted in small parts in over twenty films before trying his hand at directing. He was not a particularly experienced director, but manages a fair effort, despite some quirks. He keeps things moving, avoiding long strings of fixed-camera exposition or overuse of stock footage. VeSota does manage a few bold moves for a directorial neophyte. One was his use of tilted camera angles for the confrontation on the mayor's office. The most memorable is the critter-cam parasite's eye view in Alice's bedroom as it trundled along the carpet, climbed the bedspread and slowly stalked up on sleeping Alice. Visually interesting.

Conflicted -- Unlike most alien-take-over victims, DeVosta shows the take-over victims as conflicted. Their human half trying to resist the mind control of the parasites. The scene in the mayor's office does this rather well as he fumbles with the pistol, attempting suicide rather than be taken over. Even the stoic sheriff manages some visible conflict. Most, however, are complacent in their zombie role.

Forced Nirvana -- Leonard Nimoy, as the Zeus-like spokesman for the parasites explains their purpose. "We are in complete harmony. We are inseparable. There is no conflict of purpose here, as there is among mankind. We will not engage in combat. No violence of any kind. Why should we? When we can scatter like seeds in the wind." (like a plague, says Paul). "Our social order is pure, innocent. It has the exactitude of mathematics. We shall force upon man a life free from strife and turmoil. Ironic, that man should obtain his life long goal as a gift instead of something earned." Many an earthly invading force liked to imagine that they were bringing improvement to those they invaded.

Bottom line? TBE is a bit rough in production quality, and lacks the ambiguity (who has been compromised and who hasn't?) of its more famous predecessor. Yes, the special effects are minimal. Yes, the parasites look more like big steel wool pads with curly pipe cleaner antennae, but low-budget movies need to be cut some slack. It is still an entertaining tale with some visual interest too. Fans of the alien-take-over sub-genre should not miss it.