Put our service to the test

Though neither of these films is a Mill Creek joint, we initially took an interest in them because of their connection to the Horror Collection 250-pack. One features an actress we first met in the earliest days of our site, while the other is ostensibly a sequel to one of our favorite movies on the box.

However, we didn't foresee that they'd share something else: protagonists who find themselves in the crosshairs of that most terrifying of locations --

--that most bone-chilling of phrases --

-- that limitless vein of potential awkwardnesses and unwanted socializations:

"You can stay in our guest room."

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The Three Weird Sisters (1948)

Grade: C+

Ah, Nova Pilbeam. Even if your name weren't so unusual, we'd certainly remember you from your star turn in Counterblast, not to mention your strong resemblance to a former colleague of ours (at least in that colleague's younger days: you wouldn't recognize 'em now).

And speaking of younger days, it's not clear whether this or Counterblast was Pilbeam's last film role -- though she did make one BBC appearance in 1951 before packing it in for good -- but after a successful career as a child actress, and a reasonable career as a young adult, that was that.

She lived to age 95 -- when we wrote our Counterblast review, she was still alive! -- but was, from all reports, not interested in discussing the past. (Makes sense when your name is "new".)

Anyway, Ms. Pilbeam is Claire (no relation to Emily) Prentiss, a secretary who accompanies her obstreperous boss Owen Morgan-Vaughan (Raymond Lovell) to a Welsh mining village, Cwmglas, where his (ahem) three weird sisters await his arrival at the family home.

(Technically they're his weird half-sisters, but that wouldn't have the same ring, now would it?)

One is blind, one deaf, and one has some combination of bad nerves and severe arthritis, resulting in a strange symbiotic interdependency between the three.

In the film's opening Cwmglas suffers a catastrophic collapse in which several residents die, and survivors opine on the will of God and the suffering of the proletariat.

While hard to follow on first viewing, a quick review of Dylan Thomas: The Complete Screenplays (which also told us how to spell "Cwmglas") makes the details clear. The Morgan-Vaughans are the local muckety-mucks who made their fortune via the mines, while their cheapskate refusal to fill up unused mineshafts beneath the village caused, or at least contributed to, the collapse.

For a while, The Three Weird Sisters is poised on a knife-edge of ambiguity: is Owen just a callous bastard who selfishly wants to wash his hands of all responsibility toward the village? (Given that Owen gets a rock flung at him upon arrival, some of the townspeople clearly hold the affirmative.)

Or is Cwmglas -- the name of which sounds like a "worst of Reddit" thread in the making -- just a decrepit symbol of the corrupt, hopeless old ways? A decaying relic that's undeserving of life support and overdue for destruction? Merely a vessel for a "spent force", one might say?

With Dylan Thomas on board, some sophistication (moral and otherwise) is to be expected. Ultimately, though, the lines are drawn by the participants' willingness to sacrifice innocent Claire in the crossfire -- and given that one of the sisters describes her as "that horrible painted young woman", one need not be exceedingly wise to infer who the baddies are.

So what does that leave us? Suspense, atmosphere, intrigue, and barbed dialogue, we suppose, none of which are extraordinary but all of which are at least serviceable. And we get faces, if one likes faces (as we do), ranging from Ms. Pilbeam's ever-popular visage --

-- to the sisters, especially Gertrude (Nancy Price), whose forbidding countenance somehow intrinsically evokes those stony, mirthless parts of Britain where God's name is perpetually on everyone's lips and yet the old pagan powers feel close at hand.

Or there's this preacher (Hugh Pryse) in his ridiculous middle-aged makeup:

And we get amusing vignettes, as when we find the thersitical Mabli (Hugh Griffith) reciting Marxist dogma to, well, dogs:

Structurally speaking, The Three Weird Sisters is a film-you've-seen-before -- if you understand what we mean -- and offers no great innovation or dramatic uncertainty. So your appreciation of it will likely depend on your affinity for the Welsh coat of paint it's received, and/or your fondness for Dylan Thomas, Welsh terriers, Nova Pilbeam, or handsome older women.

(No judgment, you do you.)

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Devil Bat's Daughter (1946)

Grade: D+

When you expect a film to be a complete piece of crap, it sure is a pleasant surprise when it's not. That's not to say Devil Bat's Daughter even comes close to its predecessor, The Devil Bat, the consensus favorite among Béla Lugosi's Poverty Row efforts (and we agree that it holds up).

We can't help but be curious why Devil Bat's Daughter was even made. Was a five-year-old film really enough of a success to call for a sequel? That is: if this was a cynical cash-in, what exactly was there to cash in upon in the first place?

In any event, Devil Bat's Daughter has little to do with the earlier film, though we can't quite call it an "in-name-only" sequel. Instead it runs along similar lines to Shock, with a traumatized young woman, Nina (Rosemary La Planche), guided through recovery by the authoritarian Dr. Clifton Morris (Michael Hale), who may not have her best interests at heart.

We're not sure whether having a patient living in your home was considered a ridiculous violation of professional boundaries in 1946, though from our vantage point 75 years later, it seems absurd. But living in Dr. Morris's home brings Nina into contact with his saintly wife Ellen (Molly Lamont) and stepson Ted (John James), and guess which one of them falls in love with her?

...no, this is 1946, try again. Though we will say that Ms. Lamont, who hasn't necessarily lit up our screen in movies like Scared to Death and Jungle Girl, evinces a degree of angular classical beauty in this film --

-- while, by contrast, Ms. La Planche's past as a Miss America merely underscores how tastes have changed.

But better either of them than John James, who unfortunately evokes the irritating Jerry Lester -- plus a dash of Mickey Rooney, a sprinkling of Tim Allen, a dusting of John Heard. Those old-young faces are a tough sell.

If one acknowledges that the major plot points of Devil Bat's Daughter are foreseeable, there are a few things that deviate from the expected path. One of them is the body count, or more accurately, the body-count-to-emotional-consequence ratio, which is unexpectedly brutal. Not a film for dog lovers, this, though we're always glad to see a movie go for the jugular.

On the other hand, Devil Bat's Daughter commits an absolutely monstrous act of retconning that, under normal circumstances, should be unforgivable. So instead, we'll forgive it by allowing ourselves to pretend that the literal meaning of the revelation -- which would utterly destroy both this movie and the previous one -- is untrue, and that the character who announces it is mistaken. And frankly, the movie still works if you assume that.

Still, while our initial impulse was to give this one a C-minus, it really needs to be penalized for that misstep. Otherwise, we were shocked to find that we enjoyed Devil Bat's Daughter. It's a predictable and flawed film, but manages to entertain nonetheless -- if you have very low standards, as we seem to these days.

Mass murder? Gee whiz!

Whether or not you think these next two films are classics, they're certainly sci-fi. So unlike some we've seen recently, they've more than proven their bona fides for purposes of this box set (or subset).

They're also brimming with the kind of gee-whiz enthusiasm that makes 1950s offerings fun -- even if there's a surprisingly grim undercurrent to some of the proceedings.

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Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)
(filmed in 1957)

Objective Grade:  C-

Sincerity Surplus: A-

If you nose around the Internet, you'll find snarky reviews of Teenagers from Outer Space that seem to use some pre-existing review of Plan 9 as their template. Heck, their titles both end with "...from outer space". Just remove the references to Ed Wood, Béla Lugosi, and angora sweaters, and substitute Tom Graeff, plus something about lobsters and ray guns. And you're done, right?



But that would be an injustice, because -- unlike Ed Wood's plodding, talky films -- Teenagers from Outer Space moves along briskly and almost never succumbs to endless exposition. Dare we say it, this is actually a competently-directed movie, and at least in terms of pacing, a surprisingly well-edited one.

Of course Teenagers from Outer Space also has some monumentally silly aspects, and let's get those out of the way right upfront. The aliens speak English, the film's title is totally off the mark, most of the actors have little command of their craft, the beards are faker than a six-dollar bill, and the final shot is unintentionally hilarious.

Some of the special effects are actually rather ingenious, but it's patently obvious that the big bad monster is, indeed, just a lobster in silhouette.

None of these things really detract from the experience, though: quite the contrary, because when it comes to the factors that make a "bad" movie fun to watch, Teenagers from Outer Space is almost a perfect storm. When we laughed, it was almost always with affection and without contempt, because most of the film's laughable things are simply a product of being broke. Laugh at Plan 9 or Manos and you feel dirty, but somehow the laughs in Teenagers don't demean the film or anyone in it.

Why? Well, again, it's the crisp pace, which gives the film credibility even when people are fighting giant lobster shadows. But it's also the film's remarkably effective combination of sincerity and brutality. People in Teenagers from Outer Space are kind and trusting folks, and always willing to help a stranger (even when it repeatedly imperils them).

On the other hand, for a 1950s sci-fi movie, Teenagers has one hell of a body count, starting with the little dog that gets snuffed by haughty alien assassin Thor (Bryan Grant).

Begin a movie by killing a dog for basically no reason, and you send a message that no one's off-limits -- not even women and children. We didn't keep an exact count, but the total number of casualties approaches 20, though we can't get into details without spoiling the film's ending.

The other ace Teenagers has up its sleeve is Dawn Bender (aka Dawn Anderson) as girl-next-door Betty Morgan, a gentle soul who falls in love at first sight with tortured alien Derek (David Love aka Charles Robert Kaltenthaler). Bender apparently had a significant career as a child actress before retiring in her 20s and becoming a schoolteacher, and Teenagers from Outer Space was her last film.

And that's a shame because she's something of a revelation here. It's as though Betty has wandered in from several decades prior, or later, as her whole persona has nothing in common with the pinched faces and bullet bras of her era. With her wide-open eyes and girlish voice, she's arrestingly vulnerable, yet smart and resolute: note that Betty kisses Derek, not the other way around -- something that was a big deal back then.



And, with an attractive figure and unexpectedly hipster haircut, one imagines she'd turn a lot of male heads (and not a few female ones) in a Williamsburg bar.



What we're trying to say is that Ms. Bender seems to have had "it", depending on your definition of "it". It's not just that she's pretty, but that she exudes warmth, kindness, optimism, honesty -- and somehow does so without being cloying in the least.

She's not even our type, really, but it's hard to deny the magnetism of her presence onscreen. And if you're going to build a movie around an alien who's caught between his home world and the appeals of Earth, you'll want to cast a female lead whose magnetism makes that conflict thoroughly believable.

Very few actresses can pull that off, even under ideal conditions; that Dawn Bender does it in a shoestring production suggests that she deserved a far more storied career, if she wanted one...

...and maybe she didn't. Nothing wrong with growing old gracefully while teaching young'uns.

So, to our delight, Teenagers from Outer Space turns out to be a jewel. It may not be as jaw-dropping as, say, Maniac, and it certainly isn't a "good" movie in the usual sense, nor can all of its missteps be chalked up to budget. But it's one of the most fun, endearing, sincere, and oddly memorable films we've seen in this box, and deserves more respect than to be grouped with the fetishistic incompetencies of Ed Wood.

It's a terrible shame that Tom Graeff didn't get another chance. From all accounts the failure of Teenagers from Outer Space crushed him, and he committed suicide in 1970. Yet there's some real talent here, and given the obscenely poor trash pumped out by major studios then and now, it's not at all a stretch to believe he could have forged a real career had the cards just gone his way.

Instead, what we get isn't even a cautionary tale -- what did the guy do wrong, except dream? -- but just a tragic one. Someone oughta fire the writer.

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Crash of Moons (1954)

Grade: C+

Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, we haven't seen the likes of you in a long, long time. It's astonishing to think it's been over nine years since we watched Menace from Outer Space, the other TV-to-feature-film adaptation included on Mill Creek's 250-pack.

With that long an interval between reviews, we'll freely admit we don't remember much about Menace...that is, beyond the sad story of actor Scotty Beckett, who plays Rocky's sidekick Winky, and went down in a blaze of abject self-destruction that has to be read to be believed.

Yet it seems like a pretty safe bet that Crash of Moons is the better of the two Rocky Jones edits we've seen. For one it has a compelling and (nearly) implacable antagonist in Cleolanta (Patsy Parsons), a queen -- er, sorry, a suzerain -- who makes no apologies for wanting complete control over her planet and people, and has no interest in making nice with outsiders.

The premise of the story arc is an interesting one, too: two inhabited "gypsy moons", wandering through space and sharing a thread of atmosphere as they revolve around each other, are on a collision course with Cleolanta's planet Ophiuchus. (Well, one of them is, anyway.)

It's not really clear how the moons stay warm -- tidal forces, maybe? -- but, given what we now know about rogue planets and brown dwarfs, at least this is a plausible basis for hanging a tale.

The cast wisely accents the middle syllables in the moons' names, which helps to downplay the obviousness of calling them -- ahem -- Posito and Negato.

We wrote that Menace from Outer Space was weighed down by wooden acting and neologisms, but whatever reason, there's a lot less of that here. True, some characters are irritating, like space couple Bavarro (John Banner) and Potonda (Maria Palmer) --

-- and especially their infant offspring, whose constant mewling gets far more screentime than it deserves. Maybe the vague hints that the child is prophetic pay off in a later episode, but here, they're just a red herring.

Still, at least by TV standards, the sets and visual effects in Crash of Moons are surprisingly good at times, even thoughtful. In particular, when two celestial objects (I wonder which?) collide late in the movie, we see a momentary flash of lightning right before impact. That's a really nice touch, and knowing When Worlds Collide had already come out in 1951 doesn't undermine the point: they could've gotten away without doing that, yet they made the effort to do it. Kudos.

Compared to Menace from Outer Space, there's quite a bit more edge to Crash of Moons: not only are Rocky and his gang faced with execution at one point, but another plot device has a character attempting to kill thousands of people. No points for guessing that it didn't pan out, but that would've been quite a body count.

None of this rises beyond the basics, but -- quoting ourselves here! -- if you seek family-friendly entertainment for your visiting home-schooled relatives, you could do worse than Crash of Moons.



As long as you don't mind that half the gadgets look like repurposed sex toys, that is.

(Scroll back up and look at those two shots of Vena and Rocky holding "communicators". Kinda seems like they went down to the local "adult entertainment" store and bought a couple "marital aids", doesn't it? Shades of Mythbusters!)