Are you there Puma? It's me, Rygor. . . Puma? Puma!

And we're back! Took a bit of an unofficial break for summer . . . and the beginning of fall . . . but to start things off again, here are a couple films we saw way back in May, but have put off reviewing until now. Neither of these is too obscure, so if you're reading this, you probably already know what there is to know. Puma!

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Ring of Terror

Objective grade: F
Camp value bonus: C+

What's scarier than trying to get a ring off a dead guy's finger?

• Med school frat "boys" who looked like they should have been out golfing in funny pants, or having mid-life crises; seriously, none of these guys could have been younger than 30. Leading man George Mather, who plays pledge Lewis B. Moffitt--23 years old, according to his gravestone--was actually somewhere close to 40(!) at the time of filming. Not a particularly young 40, either.
  
• That band member who forgot to fake it along with the music. Nothing like playing a smokin' sax solo with your horn still resting on your knee.
  
• Fat people! Nobody was worried about being too politically correct in those days. I do like that fat dude defended his fat girlfriend when she entered that swimsuit contest, and for good reason -- she didn't look all that bad!
  
• Terrible "skips" in the film that make poor Rygor jump two feet to the left in the middle of his monologue. This, oddly, was our biggest laugh-out-loud moment of the entire film -- couldn't really tell you why, though.
  

These are just some of the many horrors that await you in Ring of Terror! Actually, this is really about all to expect from the unintentionally(?)(ok probably not "?") campy/kinda funny/slapped-together turd of a film . . . but there are just enough horrors to put this one on our "watch it at your next party" list.

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Mistress of Atlantis

Grade: C
Artistic value bonus: C+

The first thing that needs to be said about this film is that the print is fantastic. So fantastic that for a good long while we wondered whether modern-day footage had been spliced in to replace damaged sections of the original. It wasn't. However, it does appear that some of the opening credits may have been compromised, and were redone in an appropriately old-timey script by a different company (Festival Films, from which Mill Creek must have borrowed -- or "borrowed" -- this print). But anyway, blah blah blah, enough with that -- onto the film!

This one is certainly artier than the various serials and things we've seen from this era -- more in a league with Maciste in Hell than with, say, The Phantom Empire (which is still great, just more straight-up). Atlantis -- not buried under the sea, but in the North African deserts -- is home to the smoldering Queen Antinea, who is prone to luring men into her lair and driving them completely bonkers. Dialogue is limited, so the film suffered a bit from being completely confusing half most of the time. I must say, though -- the sudden cutaway to the can-can hall was completely disorienting and amazingly brilliant. Still confusing, but artfully so.

Fun fact -- this film was shot in different languages (English, French, and German) all at the same time, so there are three distinct versions out there, with a unique mix of actors in each. I almost wish more films were shot like that these days, rather than slapping subtitles over everything or (shudder) overdubbing. Imagine the debates one could have regarding the relative merits of each version! But I digress. Bottom line -- you like old, you like artsy, you like being a little baffled: go for this one!

Trading in that one-way ticket for a round trip

As these movies prove, it's one thing to go on a journey to a strange land -- but finding your way back can be quite a different matter.

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The Lost City (Parts 1 & 2)

Objective grade: D-
Camp value bonus: B-

This feature version of The Lost City (1935) was specifically edited for Mill Creek for inclusion on the Nightmare Worlds box set. They were apparently expecting a typical 70-80 minute serial reduction, and in fact, there were already several existing feature versions around, all of them two hours or less. But thanks to a miscommunication, the film editor instead assembled this 204-minute epic, which includes just about all of the content in the serial's 12 chapters, minus the chapter titles (except for Chapter 1) and recaps.

So what we have here is a very rare bird indeed: not just original editing/authoring work from Mill Creek, which is unusual enough to begin with, but something that literally isn't available anywhere else. Kinda cool. (Note that the division into halves is totally arbitrary; I suspect Mill Creek just needed to be able to count it as two movies for purposes of their "50 movie box".)

As for the film itself, what can we say, really? It's slapdash in every conceivable way; they literally wrote the script as they went along, and the production and acting are thoroughly half-assed. The villain is amazingly, hilariously useless throughout the second half of the movie, quite literally "phoning it in" -- apparently because the actor was thoroughly drunk (he died shortly after filming) and basically got written out of the script.

But the notoriety attached to The Lost City mostly has to do with its racial politics, which really have to be seen to be believed. The simplest way to describe it is that all the black characters are either: (a) seven-foot zombies in Afro wigs; (b) scrambling, subservient, superstitious savages; or, (c) part of a tribe of spider-worshipping white midgets (I kid you not), thanks to a magic serum that transforms the natives from black to white.

Given all this, The Lost City should be approached with caution, but I suspect most people will find it too ludicrous and over-the-top to be genuinely offensive. There are some dull stretches, and at 3 1/2 hours it's probably best watched over two nights (as we did), but if you're not too put off by its treatment of race, it's a genuine camp classic.

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Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Menace From Outer Space

Objective grade: C-
Camp value bonus: C+

Edited together from three episodes of the 1950's Rocky Jones TV show, this good-natured space opera has lots of gee-whiz charm, some decent visual effects, and not much else, really. Invented slang and neologisms abound ("Super-stellar!" is a popular one), as do plenty of inadvertent double-entendres, starting with the trick Rocky uses to defeat his first adversary.

Rocky's various cohorts are mostly stock characters, cardboard cutouts in performances that range from hilarious to grating; as so often happens, the only one who shows a hint of having real acting chops also turns out to be the one who met a scandalous and untimely end. So it goes.

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Maciste In Hell (1925)

Grade: B+

We won't say much about this one, except to note that P. had heard good things about this infernal saga, and it lived up to the hype. Maciste all'inferno was allegedly the inspiration for Fellini's directorial career, and you can certainly see why would've blown a young moviegoer's mind; visually, it's quite spectacular, full of eye-popping set pieces and special effects.

The version on this set clocks in at 60-odd minutes long, and was taken from a Grapevine Video release (it even has their logo on a couple of the intertitles). The score, meanwhile, was a loose assembly of classical pieces, including the opening movement of Schubert's "Unfinished", that exactly duplicated the pieces used on The Lost World; since it's generally much more appropriate here, we're guessing that it was probably initially put together for Maciste...but maybe it was just serendipitous coincidence and we're just gettin' all Dark Side and Oz on you, man.

There's apparently an uncut version out there somewhere that's about a half-hour longer, but hasn't been released on commercial DVD, and only circulates between traders. We'll reserve final judgment until we see that version, and/or a copy with a proper musical score.

I can't stand it, I know you planned it . . .

Sure, it's a common theme in a whole ton of movies, but these three were a bit tougher to link together than most.

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How Awful About Allan

Grade: D

No, we won't go on about how awful (har har) this one is, because it isn't. In fact, it's something just a bit worse than awful: predictable. Maybe that's not worse per se, but it sure makes for a dull evening. P. had the ending pegged after only 15 minutes, which left us with about an hour to wait and see how the movie got there.

To be fair, this is a made-for-TV cheapie, and Psycho's Anthony Perkins turns in a fine performance as the title character, struck with psychosomatic blindness after accidentally killing his dad in a house fire. The shadowy camera work is often genuinely creepy, and for added realism Perkins wore special contact lenses that limited his vision. However, to anyone who's seen even a few "psychological thrillers" of that era (and this one too, actually) the "twist" is just too obvious, and isn't twisty enough to be interesting.

SABOTAGE: Somebody wants to hamper Allan's recovery (or worse!) . . . but who could it be???

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The Lost World

Grade: B

No, not the Jurassic Park sequel -- who needs CGI when this 1925 silent adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel is so much more fun to watch? This is the original dino movie, with all sorts of advanced (for the time) effects involving split screens, stop motion, double exposures, and the like. The film does get off to a somewhat plodding start: all sorts of exposition and backstory to make sure we all know who's heading down to South America and why. Once the mission is underway though, it's all about those dinosaurs, with a love triangle and some mildly offensive blackface action thrown in for good measure.

There are several versions of this film floating around, including a version shown only through the George Eastman House -- a good history is at this site, which reviews the Image Entertainment release. What we saw was pure Mill Creek, all the way down to the ludicrously inappropriate soundtrack. That they probably lifted the score from another film [EDIT: probably Maciste in Hell; see the next post] became abundantly clear as we watched a knock-down, drag-out fistfight set to the strains of some lovely Romantic piano and violin piece. We hadn't laughed so hard at something for quite some time.
SABOTAGE: A kindly Brontosaurus (sorry, Apatosaurus) cuts off the party's exit from the high-up dino plateau . . . how will they ever escape?

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The Phantom Creeps

Grade: D

Another edited-down serial starring our main man Bela. This is the sixth one we've seen him in (not counting Ed Wood, which didn't have the real Lugosi anyway), and out of these half dozen only Shadow of Chinatown ranks lower. Lugosi hams it up as Dr. Zorka, who uses a powerful meteorite to make all kinds of crazy gadgets: a giant attack robot, an invisibility belt (hence our title), and even a few dastardly exploding spiders! Naturally the government wants in on this, and even more naturally, Dr. Zorka would rather destroy the world than share. Add a few stock characters (chiseled lawman, plucky female reporter, shifty henchman) and we've got ourselves a serial.

(An aside: do all the bad guys, scientists, and aliens in sci-fi films really need names beginning with Z? Zorka, Zontar, Zarkov--enough!)

Like Shadow of Chinatown, and most of the other edited serials we've seen, this one suffers from a disjointed, rushed, and somewhat confusing plot, with nothing compelling enough to really draw us in. Radio Ranch is a great example of how an edited serial can be successful, but this one just didn't survive all the cuts. A full 70% of the original material didn't make it into the re-edit, and it makes us wonder (at least a little) about what we missed out on.

SABOTAGE: Zarkov's assistant makes off with the meteorite in hopes of making a quick buck . . . what's an evil scientist to do?

(Oh, and did you know that it was Dr. Zorka who really caused the Hindenburg disaster? Look for it towards the end.)

Surviving extreme conditions: a cinematic guide

The theme for this week's batch of movies (which we actually watched several weeks back): survival in extreme conditions. In all three films, characters needed to acquire special gear in order to withstand the challenges of some harsh, unforgiving, or otherwise alien environment.

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Purple Death From Outer Space

Grade: C-

This heavily edited, retitled version of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe was put together for TV in 1966, more than a quarter-century after the original came out. In the process it lost much of whatever coherence was there to begin with, but retains a certain degree of goofy enthusiasm, as well as an appealing visual style that freely mixes the impressive with the totally half-assed. (That applies to the sound design, too: we got a big laugh out of the hilariously feminine shriek they use when people fall down Ming's bottomless pit.)

Still, despite a wealth of dimestore rockets, lumbering self-detonating robots, and crackling death rays, it all feels a bit empty and slapdash: characters come and go, problems are posed and solved, and there's no real reason to care. Perhaps the complete serial would be more rewarding.

The extreme condition: the frozen wastelands of Frigia, in search of polarite

The path to survival: Prof. Zarkov's special "contra-freeze" spray-on formula

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Attack Of The Giant Leeches

Grade: C

Much has been written about this Roger Corman cheapie, so we'll keep it quick. Arguably more of a Southern gothic soap opera than a monster movie, its assets include sleepy bayou ambience and better-than-average characterizations. Add to this a helping of brazen adultery, as practiced by Ms. Yvette Vickers -- Playboy's Playmate of the Month in July 1959 -- who apparently took up residence in Stephen King's fantasy life shortly thereafter.

All these things may win you over, or not; most viewers will either fall into the "slow, but thoughtful, atmospheric and pleasantly offbeat" camp with P., or the "it's not quite good enough to be good, not quite bad enough to be good" camp with K.

The extreme condition: taking on the titular leech-man in his home environment, underwater

The path to survival: scuba gear, a spear gun, and a generous helping of dynamite

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Radio Ranch

Grade: B-

This feature-length version of The Phantom Empire was easily the most entertaining of all the condensed serials we've watched so far, and doesn't seem to have suffered much at all from the editing process. Neither of us had ever really seen Gene Autry before, and it's amusing to compare our modern archetype of the cowboy with his clean-shaven, almost feminine look.

The plot to Radio Ranch is completely loopy, which is of course one of its biggest assets; see here for a decent summary. None of the performances are anything to write home about, but they don't get in the way of the movie, with the possible exception of Betsy Ross King, whose portrayal of Betsy Baxter (the main girl among the Junior Thunder Riders) is strident at best, grating at worst. She makes up for it, though, with some fancy trick riding -- indeed, there's a lot of impressive horseplay in Radio Ranch.

The costume and set design are intermittently wonderful. As the link above says, the matte painting is well done, the special effects reasonably special, and the robots are totally cute. Whoever edited this did a nice job, all told -- things move at a good clip throughout, and there were only one or two places where we felt unsure about what exactly was going on.

The extreme condition: the subterranean domain of Murania, miles below the surface of the earth

The path to survival: actually, Gene did fine down there. It was the Muranians who couldn't handle our air, and needed special breathing apparatus. We're so extreme!

Warning: In case of aliens, do not fly or operate outdated machinery

Continuing with our themed entries: apparently aliens love talking with folks via now-quaint technologies (short-wave radio and old-fashioned wood-paneled television sets, respectively), and really really love to mess with prop planes (what better way to showcase their destructive power over us?) Without further ado, we bring you one unjustly under-rated gem, and one deservedly panned bomb.

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They

Objective Grade: D+
Taking into account camp value: B-

AKA Invasion From Inner Earth (missing an entire reel of footage, apparently)
AKA Hell Fire (missing several scenes, including the entire ending)
AKA The Selected (the "director's cut," whatever that means)

1.6 stars, IMDB? This one deserves far, far more credit than that. Maybe it's just our soft spot for deep woods shenanigans, but this one had all the things (or some of them, anyway) that make you want to get together with a big bowl of popcorn and some good-humored friends.

An opening credits sequence set to a synth rip-off of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly could be good news, or it could be bad news; when it's accompanied by folks screaming and running away from plumes of red smoke billowing from the sewers, we quote Martha and say it's a good thing. The music is completely off-the-wall throughout, unexpectedly cutting from one "song" to the next and set at a high enough level to be slightly obtrusive at best, crazy overbearing at worst (though not nearly as annoying as furry-hatted rich grad student, the unfortunate pilot of the plane taken down by mysterious alien forces. . . good riddance).

The thing that many other reviewers seem to miss (and what makes this one worth watching, in our opinion) is the humorous thread woven unexpectedly throughout the plot. Every now and then we found ourselves turning to each other with amused and slightly perplexed looks, as if to say, "did we just see that?" Case in point: our bearded friend Stan (already the go-to comic relief guy) gets entirely slapstick while out hunting, falling head-over-heels into a snowdrift while accompanied by a goofy wah-wah sound effect; he gets up, blows snow off the end of his rifle barrel [possibly a pantomimed suicide joke? - P.], and moves on. Brilliant! (Also, watch out for wacky radio announcers, faux news interview shows, and even more crowds running away from red sewer gas, sprinkled randomly [and seemingly arbitrarily] throughout.) Truly a case of being just bad enough to be good.

Finally, there's the ending. . . and we're just going to leave that one alone. As another reviewer noted, the best thing is to see it cold--it's just that bizarre.

To all those other reviewers who claim this one is pointless, talky, and unwatchable: take a look at UFO: Target Earth and get back to us.

(Oh, and if anyone out there is into road trips, P. and I might just head out to Wisconsin to see slapstick Stan, aka Paul Bentzen, in the American Players Theatre. . . I mean, after all, why not?)

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UFO: Target Earth

Grade: D-

Now HERE we have pointless, talky, and (nearly) unwatchable. A college student accidentally listens in on a couple of government types talking about mysterious spacey stuff, so he grabs all the electronic equipment he can fit in his truck and goes to a nearby lake to investigate. Along the way he gets help (and long expositions) from a number of colorful characters: there's Dr. Whitham, who looks something like Roy Orbison with snow-white hair; Dr. Mansfield, an aging female scientist who reminds me a bit of Kate Reid in The Andromeda Strain; Rivers the assistant, who happened to play Ranger Tom in Grizzly (which we only discovered after almost skipping his bio -- that'll teach us not to ignore minor characters!); and then Vivian the crazy empath. Ah, Vivian, who looks so cute in some scenes, but then has to go and style her hair all weirdly, and ruin a perfectly good outfit with hideous seafoam green wideleg pants.

This could have been one of those "good" bad films. After all, it starts out with a series of mockumentary-style interviews with abductees and ufo spotters (plus the requisite plane crash footage), along with a wacky narrator voice-over à la Plan 9. Unfortunately, like so many others in this box, there's just far too much telling, and not enough showing. Well, except for what the aliens show us at the end: a solid 3 minutes of psychedelic screen-saver action set to an equally psychedelic synth soundtrack as a trippy philosophical/psychological send-off for our protagonist. P. was kinda into it; K. says thanks, but no.

(By the way, this one was filmed in Georgia. We dipped down into the state for a few miles on our way to Alabama, but we're not too keen on going back--not enough B-movie actors doing outdoor Shakespearean theater for our tastes.)

Brazen adulterers, punished with hellfire

Partway through both of the films at hand, we get characters who commit flagrant, unrepentant infidelity. They don't just cheat, they do so without a hint of remorse, and right in front of their heartbroken spouses. Then at the end, these adulterers are cast into the fires of hell...or at least a reasonably close approximation thereof.

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This is Not a Test

Grade: D+

It's tempting to remember This is Not a Test as being a better movie than it really is. Certainly, it's ahead of its time in a few ways -- for starters, in depicting a nuclear war as unwinnable madness. Add to that its portrayal of authority figures as clueless and stupidly dictatorial, and its intense, thoroughly downbeat ending, and you've got a film that, by the standards of the day, is surprisingly frank and grim.

But let's be honest with ourselves: most of this movie was a real uphill slog, poorly paced and scripted, and not especially well-acted. For instance, while it made sense for the Deputy Sheriff to be a dumb galoot, Seamon Glass makes him such an insufferable, heavy-handed dolt that most of his scenes were almost unendurably annoying to sit through. The hipster character's sub-beatnik patter was embarrassing, the psycho killer was totally tacked-on, and really, none of the characters were engaging enough to care much about.

There are some loopy moments that help to liven things up. Chief among them are two (TWO!) distinct scenes with totally bizarre, unexpected animal killings; the second one makes some kind of sense, but the first one comes completely out of left field, and may be unfeigned à la Pink Flamingos. Still, despite its ambitions (and potential), This is Not a Test just isn't executed well enough to deliver on them.

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The Manster

Grade: C

If it hadn't lost steam so completely at the end, The Manster would easily have been among the most enjoyable movies we've seen so far in this 250-pack. It's tautly paced, tightly constructed, and (contrary to some reports) mostly well-acted.

Peter Dyneley is thoroughly engaging as reporter Larry Stanford, who begins the movie planning to return home from a long-term assignment in Japan. Stanford starts out as a genteel and loving husband, and turns into a belligerent, hard-drinking boor who cheats on his spouse (played rather twitchily by Jane Hylton, who was also Dyneley's wife offscreen).

Dyneley does a better job of capturing a drunk's slurred diction, without overdoing it, than any other actor P. can recall. (Maybe he just got hammered on gimlets right before the scene.) He also has the prematurely aged face of an alcoholic: we laughed when his character claimed to be thirty-five, but afterward we were astonished to read that Dyneley himself was only a few years older than that -- we'd thought him close to fifty, at least. (Same thing with his wife, actually.)

Like This is Not a Test, one of The Manster's strongest assets is its candor; the movie deals with infidelity, murder, prostitution, alcohol abuse, and other dark themes in a refreshingly straightforward way, at least by 1959 standards. Sure, there are some clunkers in the script, but unlike so many of its companions on this box set, the film has real momentum, thanks in large part to good directorial technique. (Another reviewer saw The Manster as an allegory for alcoholism, which is an interesting idea.)

Too bad it all falls apart at the end. After an hour or so of psychological drama, the film degenerates into your standard monster-movie fare: a pointless chase sequence that lasts ten minutes or so, followed by an unsatisfying climax, and capped with a hilariously stupid closing speech. Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted.

There's an angry beast loose in the hills

About ten minutes into the second of these monster movies, we couldn't help but laugh: "It's the same movie!" said K.

Indeed, the similarities are extensive. Both were made in the wake of Jaws; both are set in mountainous wilderness areas, with thriving tourist trades; both depict beasts that go berserk and start killing said tourists; in both movies, the female lead is a reporter. And so on.

So, since we watched them practically back-to-back (last Sunday night and Monday afternoon, respectively), we'd best review these two in the same manner, eh?

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Grizzly

Grade: C-

Our first exposure to the films of William Girdler. P. had high hopes for this, and there are a few nice touches -- the dismembered little kid, the unexpectedly bleak ending, and some decent work by the supporting cast, especially Scott, the goofy, proto-Grizzly Man bear expert.

Still, whatever greater ambitions it might have, the movie is basically schlock, and never quite gets enough momentum to become compelling. The narrative stumbles badly in a few places: where does Allison the newsie go? What's the point of having Scott wake back up, and then do basically nothing before the bear comes back and kills him? And especially, a bazooka?! Obviously, audiences didn't mind too much, as the film was a huge financial success, but beautiful scenery and decent technical execution can't make up for the missing sense of fun and excitement.

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Snowbeast
Grade: B-

Here, the beast in question is a raging yeti, slaughtering skiers at a mountain resort. The opening scenes left us little reason to expect anything more than we got from Grizzly, since Snowbeast comes front-loaded with some lousy acting from its bit players. In particular, Annie McEnroe's Aspergerian performance (as a yeti-fodder candidate who just misses the cut) makes one wonder if she might've mentored Faith Clift. And Robert Logan, as Tony Rill, comes off at first like a weirdly overbearing version of Ben Stiller, frequently talking too loud for no apparent reason.

But then this TV movie shows some unexpected class, with genuinely nuanced characters and good work from all three leads. Central to the plot is a love triangle which, instead of the usual cardboard cinematic shenanigans, is handled with the kind of quiet dignity and decency one seldom sees outside of Merchant-Ivory productions. Well, maybe that's a stretch, but it's still refreshing to see that kind of intelligence in this kind of movie: no histrionics or mustache-twiddling villains, just human beings trying to figure their lives out.

As the Olympic skier Gar Seberg, Bo Svenson was a particularly nice surprise. (If you want to develop an inferiority complex, take a look at his bio!) When he first appeared on screen, we were anticipating a typical dumb, macho jock type -- but in lieu of the stock character we expected, this Big Swede turns out to be a genuinely good-hearted and thoughtful guy. (And heck, it even makes sense that he'd be a crack marksman.)

Having said all that, Snowbeast does show its limits. Though a much better movie, it's hampered by the same lack of momentum and urgency that undermined Grizzly. Here, all the tension is in its interpersonal dynamics, not in its monster scenes: though each individual attack sequence is well-executed, the monster never really feels like a palpable, fully-fledged adversary, partly because its motivation isn't very clear. And like many movies of its kind, we lose some coherence in the last 20 minutes -- in particular, important props abruptly disappear with no explanation.

Still, all things considered, Snowbeast is a good deal better than one could reasonably expect, and was certainly pleasant fare for a snowed-in Monday afternoon. And if all else fails, the scenery and camerawork are gorgeous, with some terrific shots of downhill skiing that made P. reconsider his lifelong antipathy to the sport.