Beast with a Million Eyes, The (1955)

... aka: Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes!, The
... aka: El monstruo del millon de ojos (The Monster with a Million Eyes)
... aka: Unseen, The

Directed by:
Roger Corman (uncredited)
David Kramarsky

Historically-speaking, this "nothing brings the family together like random farm animal attacks" flick is quite an important production as far as horror and sci-fi flicks are concerned. For starters, it is one of the earliest films ever to depict normal animals suddenly turning on humans and attacking them. In fact, there are a enough surprising similarities between this and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) to suggest this was a major inspiration behind that classic film. Second, this is not only an early producing credit for the prolific Roger Corman, but also the very first genre film that he stepped behind the camera to direct. Though Kramarsky receives sole credit, Corman had replaced him early on into the production. Third, this was a key establishing film for the fledgling company American Releasing Corporation, run by a few fellas named Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson. ARC would later become American International Pictures. Of course if you know anything about vintage horror, drive-in and exploitation films, you'll know just how important these names are.

Beast (originally titled The Unseen) was also a production beset with problems. Originally part of a multi-picture package arranged between Corman and Arkoff / Nicholson, the film's budget was initially slated to be way higher but had to be slashed down to just 29,000 dollars. Problems with the filmmaker's union led to the production being shut down after just a day a filming. It also resulted in the original director and cinematographer both having to be sacked and Corman having to complete the film along with new D.O.P. Floyd Crosby (who also received no credit for his work). Reputedly, the two managed to knock out all of the interior shots (48 pages of the script!) in just two days on studio sets! The exteriors were filmed in Indio, California and, all things considered, the photography actually looks quite good.

Paul Birch - later to appear in Corman's Day the World Ended (1955) and NOT OF THIS EARTH (1957) - stars as Allan Kelley, a farmer who lives on a date ranch deep in the California desert along with his wife Carol (Lorna Thayer) and teenage daughter Sandy (Dona Cole). The family have seen better times, especially Carol, who's neurotic, miserable because of the constant isolation and bitter to the point where she starts resenting and hating her own daughter out of sheer jealousy. An alien spacecraft that makes a strange humming noises lands in a cave in the desert, all of the glassware in the home shatters and, soon after, all manner of animals start going crazy and attacking. Birds of all kinds begin swooping out of the sky, a cow tramples over a farmer, chickens flog Carol and the family dog turns vicious and must be chopped up with an axe!

Also living on the farm is a character that would later become a staple of these kinds of films: the perverted, creepy, half wit handyman. The one in this one, played by Leonard Tarver, is a lonely mute referred to as only "Him." He's not only a voyeur who constantly stares at the females through his window, but he also spies on the daughter character stripping down to her swimsuit and going for a swim and then tries to touch her. "Him" sleeps in a shack next to the house where the walls are plastered with pictures of bikini or lingerie clad girls and he lies in bed looking at girlie magazines while his eyes bug out. I've seen this character countless other times in various exploitation movies, portrayed almost exactly the same as it is here, but never before 1955. This adds a rather sleazy touch to the proceedings, which is especially odd considering the film is essentially a family drama whose core message is about how it's important for families to stick together and support one another.

Though interesting and boasting an intriguing and original premise, this really isn't a very good movie. It's slow, the dialogue is hokey, the acting is gratingly melodramatic and the animal attacks are very poorly staged and edited and are mostly accomplished by filming the animals approaching the camera followed by a terrified reaction shot from the actor. People also rightfully snicker at the special effects, which include a tiny little spaceship that looks like something you'd serve coffee out of and an alien so bad they had to make the image all hazy and then superimpose a giant eyeball over top of it. Then again, the movie was originally filmed minus all that. Since Arkoff had pre-booked the film on the promise of a "beast" based on the title, he insisted a "beast" be in the film. Special effects man Paul Blaisdell was then given a whopping 200 bucks to create both the ship and the alien creature on short notice. The fact he was able to come up with anything at all is actually quite impressive in itself.

A young Dick Sargent (going by "Richard" here and years before finding fame as Darren in Bewitched) plays a small supporting role as a deputy and Sandy's love interest. Production manager "Jack Haze" would become Jonathan Haze and later became immortalized for playing Seymour in Corman's cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

After somehow managing to bypass a home video release here in America for decades, MGM finally put this out on DVD in 2005 as part of their "Midnite Movies" series. They've paired it with the lousy THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES (1955).

★★

It Conquered the World (1956)

... aka: It Conquered the Earth

Directed by:
Roger Corman

Often dismissed as a cheap knock-off of the same year's hit INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, this one's main claim to fame for many is its incredibly silly-looking, Paul Blaisdell-designed alien creation, which many viewers compare to a giant vegetable. But if you can look past the creepy carrot, planet-hopping pickle, evil eggplant or whatever else you'd like to call it, and forgive some wooden performances and a clumsy final denouement delivered with stone-faced perfection by star Peter Graves, you'll find a good little film with heart and soul underneath. Like Snatchers, it's set in the contained environment of an ordinary small town, which works as an efficiently small scale reminder of what will happen to the rest of the world if the alien invader isn't stopped and stopped soon. It contains the same Cold War paranoia themes prevalent in so many other 50s sci-fi favorites and, like Snatchers, features a creature capable of possessing humans, who are then stripped of all of those pesky feelings that make us who we are. Conquered is, above all else, about the importance of human emotion - something else touched upon in Snatchers - but nicely expanded upon here. Screenwriter Lou Rusoff's message is not subtle, but it's given a sense of importance and urgency thanks to the firebrand performance of co-star Beverly Garland; playing the impassioned wife of a brilliant, though misguided, man who all but lays out the red carpet for the alien takeover.

Illustrious physicist and all-around genius Dr. Tom Anderson (Lee Van Cleef), who's retired because he's sick of not being taken seriously by the "fat heads" at the top, tries in vain to warn the military and NASA that their new satellite project is going to spell doom for the Earth. And when he says that we better keep out of the skies or else and that "alien intelligence watches us constantly" he means it. After all, he's been communicating with them by bouncing radio waves off of Venus for years! Everyone, including Tom's long-suffering wife Claire (Garland), thinks he's losing it when he says that Venusians are heading toward the Earth. Meanwhile, the satellite launched three months earlier has mysteriously disappeared. Military scientist Paul Nelson (Graves) - a friend of Tom's who's the head of the satellite project - and others try to get to the bottom of things. In the meantime, the satellite crashes by some nearby caves. Guess who hitched a ride on board? Why, one of the aliens, of course! It gets word out to Tom that it's finally arrived and he's kind enough to hand out the names of all the important people in town... including his best buddy. Coinciding with the alien's arrival, there's a strange power failure in most modern conveniences. Watches, clocks, cars, radios, phones, flashlights, airplanes and everything else has mysteriously stops working. Well, for everyone except those in cahoots with the alien.

Possession is achieved by use of "control devices:" small, flying, bat-like creature which latch onto the back of the victim's neck and sting them, making them blank-minded emissaries for the alien. The chief of police (Taggart Casey) is the first to get stung and goes on to gun down an innocent man for not cooperating and organizing an evacuation; herding the town's citizens into the desert. Next up is army general James Paddock (Russ Bender), who lies and tells his officers they're in the middle of a Commie takeover, as well as several other scientists at the military base. Dr. Nelson is even forced to gun down his own wife Joan (Sally Fraser) after she becomes possessed. Tom - lashing out at a world who has laughed at and ridiculed him over the years - is in full cooperation with the alien and its plans. Claire loves her husband regardless and makes some very sensible arguments against what he's doing. It all falls on deaf ears, though, so Claire finally takes it upon herself to try and stop the alien. During one of the most memorable scenes, Claire marches into the alien's cave dwelling brandishing a rifle and promptly informs it "You think you're going to make a slave of the world? I'll see you in hell first!"

Corman regulars Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze both have (rather useless) roles as army grunts and Charles B. Griffith (who'd go on to write LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and others for Corman) also appears in a small role. The score is by Ronald Stein and Frank Zappa's song "Cheepnis" was apparently influenced by this movie. Conquered was mocked on an episode of the cable series Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and was remade for TV by director Larry Buchanan as ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS in 1966. Academy and RCA/Columbia issued VHS versions but the film has yet to get an official DVD, which is insane.

★★★

Terror, The (1963)

...aka: Castle of Terror, The

...aka: Haunting, The

...aka: Lady of the Shadows

Directed by:

Roger Corman

Francis Ford Coppola (uncredited)

Monte Hellman (uncredited)

Jack Hill (uncredited)

Dennis Jakob (uncredited)

Jack Nicholson (uncredited)

Yes, it's the legendary film shot in just a couple of days (either 2 1/2 to 4 depending on your source) on leftover sets from THE RAVEN and THE HAUNTED PALACE and with Boris Karloff still under contract for two days work for director/producer Roger Corman. The so-called "plot" (devised by writers Jack Hill and Leo Gordon, which I strongly suspect was made up as they went along) involve one of Napoleon's lost soldiers, Lt. Andre Duvalier (a badly miscast Jack Nicholson, giving a performance nothing short of terrible) chasing down a beautiful, ghostly woman he sees on a beach (played by Jack's then-pregnant former wife Sandra Knight) to the castle home an insane Baron von Leppe (Karloff); the mysterious woman's supposed husband. Corman regulars Dick Miller (as Leppe's manservant Stephan) and Jonathan Haze (as Gustan the hermit) show up to contribute to the confusion. Legend has it that up to five other directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Hill, Dennis Jacob and even Nicholson himself) worked uncredited and shot separate scenes for this extremely disjointed but somewhat interesting little film. That it is able to muster up some genuine atmosphere (especially scenes shot along the California coastline) is a testament to the Corman stable’s underrated talent, though the film is mostly enjoyed now as a curio item for film buffs.

That same year, Corman employed Coppola to write and direct a PSYCHO derivation in Ireland (DEMENTIA 13), which became a cult item itself. Scenes (and outtakes) from THE TERROR have been reused many times in other Corman productions, most notably as the film screened at the drive-in in Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature TARGETS (1968), also with Boris in a starring role. Director Jim Wynorski also cleverly inserted a scene of Karloff into his amusing 1989 horror spoof TRANSYLVANIA TWIST.

★★

X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

...aka: X

...aka: Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The

Directed by:
Roger Corman

Review coming soon.

★★★1/2

Not of This Earth (1957)

Directed by:
Roger Corman

Sunglasses-sporting Paul Johnson (Paul Birch) stops in at a clinic one afternoon and demands an immediate blood transfusion, and he doesn't seem too concerned about pesky things like blood type, RH factors and other peculiarities getting in his way of obtaining his blood. After slitting his own wrist to show he's tapped out and using his telepathic abilities to put Dr. Rochelle (William Roerick) under a trance, Mr. Johnson not only gets the red stuff he wanted but also the employ of the doctor's nurse Nadine Story (Beverly Garland, who had just appeared in Corman's hit IT CONQUERED THE WORLD a year earlier). Nadine is sent off to live in Johnson's home so she can administer daily blood transfusions and finally comes to the realization that her new patient is, well, not of this Earth! Mr. Johnson is actually a black-eyed alien being from the planet of Davanna, where the population is so exposed to nuclear war that their blood has begun to evaporate. He's on Earth to harvest blood from unwilling donors using a special pump with clear tubes and then sends it, as well as live human specimens, back to his home planet through a special portal. Not only adept at mind control, Johnson can make anyone drop dead with direct eye contact. Also living in the home is a small time crook/punk named Jeremy (LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS star Jonathan Haze), who acts as chauffeur, security and errand boy. Jeremy takes an instant liking to Nadine, though she's already seeing motorcycle cop Harry (Morgan Jones), and the two team up to try to find out what's up with their strange new employer.

Corman does his usual workman-like job here; making the most of a low budget from the first frame to the last. The screenplay by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna is wonderfully imaginative; full of interesting ideas and concepts that don't need a huge budget to pull off. It also has its share of amusing, sometimes hilariously droll one-liners. The casting is also terrific. Birch is amusingly and appropriately one-note as the seemingly emotionless alien being, Garland is a plucky and enthusiastic heroine and all of the other principal actors deliver competent performances. "Richard" (Dick) Miller even gets a funny cameo as an ill-fated door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman who ends up in the downstairs furnace. Special effects man Paul Blaisdell contributes a bloodsucking umbrella monster to the proceedings, but it only gets to appear in one scene. All in all, this is a clever, breezy, humorous and highly enjoyable way to spend an hour of your time. Unfortunately, it's never officially been released to video or DVD to my knowledge (at least in America) and is hard to track down nowadays. Hopefully one day it will get a decent release and build up a strong cult reputation like it deserves.

Corman himself served as producer on at least three color remakes that followed years later. The first was made in 1988 by Jim Wynorski and received a lot of publicity at the time because it starred Traci Lords (then in the news for the whole underage porn scandal) in her "legit" acting debut. It's basically the same exact story, most of the same exact lines and the same lead characters, with the added attraction of frequent nudity. The other remakes, in 1995 (starring Michael York) and 1998 (with a female - Athena Massey - in the alien role), were made for cable television.

★★★