Snow Creature, The (1954)

... aka: Terror in the Himalayas

Directed by:
W. Lee Wilder

Botanist Dr. Frank Parrish (Paul Langton), along with boozy photographer Peter Wells (Leslie Denison), travel to Shekar, a small village at the base of the Himalaya Mountains. There, they hope to discover and study rare plants growing in the rugged terrain for The Corey Foundation. They enlist the aid of Subra (Teru Shimada); the only English-speaker in the area, as their guide, and hire ten other locals, referred to by our narrator as "human mules" (!), to carry the heavy equipment. The expedition then scales the Himalayas and a base camp on flat ground is established. Meanwhile, back in the village, Subra's wife is scooped up and carried off by a Yeti; which we're told means "Creature of Snow" in the native dialect. Subra's brother Leva (Rollin Moriyama) organizes his own group to scale the mountain and find the expedition. Once he does, he informs Subra of his wife's abduction, but neither Dr. Parrish nor Peter believe them. Irregardless, both men are stripped of ammo and pretty much forced to move higher up the mountain in search of the fearsome beast.

Subra shoots the radio machine so our heroes cannot call in for help, as the group follows Yeti tracks to a higher elevation. Soon, one of the men is found dead outside their camp and the Yeti shows up again to cause an avalanche. After many long walks, the men finally find a huge cave system and set up camp there. Subra discovers his wife's necklace inside and orders a thorough search, which uncovers a male Yeti, a female Yeti and a baby Yeti. A cave-in accidentally caused by the male kills the female and baby, but the male manages to survive. Frank gets control of the gun, gives the injured creature a shot of sedatives and orders Subra and his men to help haul the creature out of the cave and back down the mountain. He then leads the party directly to the police and has them take care of the Yeti ("And, uh, can you give him an injection every six hours?") while he's away in Bombay making further arrangements.

Soon, Frank and Peter are in a heated disagreement about what to do with their find. Frank wants it to go to the Corey Foundation, while Peter would rather make money off of it. Frank gets his way and the beast is put in a telephone-booth-sized refrigerator unit and shipped to California. Upon arrival, Frank is greeted by his wife Joyce (Darlene Fields), his boss Mr. Corey (George Douglas), a grand total of two reporters and an immigration officer (Robert Bice) who asks for the beasts' papers (!!) After all, is it really a man or is it a beast? And besides, the last thing this country needs is yet another illegal immigreti running loose. They call in anthropologist Dr. Louis Dupont (Rudolph Anders) to run tests to find out more, but he doesn't have a chance. Put under the watchful eye of just one security guard, the beast manages to tip its unit over by rocking it back and forth, punches the guard over the head in a hilarious scene and then escapes.

One woman is killed (off-screen), so police Lieutenant Dunbar (William Phipps) is put on the case. He sends out a radio bulletin ("A dangerous killer beast is at large!") warning citizens not to leave their homes at night. The Yeti scares another woman, heads to a meat packing plant to cool off and get a bite to eat and has been hiding out in the sewers, where the big finale takes place. All of the scenes taking place in America are very reminiscent of MONSTER A GO-GO (1965) and if you've ever seen the inept yet excruciatingly boring Monster you know that's a very bad thing indeed. Despite endless scenes of people walking around and scaling a mountain, poor matte work, lame narration and our leads behaving like arrogant douche bags with an obnoxious Western superiority complex throughout, the first half is slightly better than the second, which plumbs depths of dull and inept not too often seen.

Though this may be historically important as the first ever Yeti movie (Jerry Warren's Man-Beast and Val Guest's The Abominable Snowman soon followed), the editing is terrible, the acting's poor, the dialogue's even worse and there's poor use of stock footage used throughout. The plane shown transporting Frank and the precious cargo to Tibet from American and back is a silver military jet but when it finally arrives to its destination it's suddenly a white TWA passenger plane. As far as the monster is concerned, it barely gets to do anything and is impossible to make out in the extremely dark light in which it is always cast. They apparently didn't shoot enough footage of it, so the same exact shot of the beast walking toward the camera is repeated endlessly. When they needed the creature to stop they simply froze the same shot mid-motion and when they needed the creature to retreat they simply reversed the shot. This is done dozens of times.

Director W. Lee Wilder (using a script from his son Myles Wilder) shot this the same year his brother Billy made the hit romantic comedy Sabrina (1954) starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. The less-famous Wilder brother also made PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953), KILLERS FROM SPACE (1954), Fright (1956), THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY (1957), BLUEBEARD'S TEN HONEYMOONS (1960) and The Omegans (1968). Snow Creature is by far the worst thing I've seen from him.

★

Killers from Space (1954)

Directed by:
W. Lee Wilder

Despite having a reputation as one of the worst of its day, I really didn't think this was that bad. Operation A Bomb Test is underway in Soledad Flats, Nevada. While an Air Force pilot and atomic scientist Dr. Douglas Paul Martin (Peter Graves) fly above the mushroom cloud in their plane Tarbaby 2 (!!), they spot a fireball-like object beneath them. The light has magnetic properties that draws the ship straight down, where they crash. A helicopter rescue unit is sent out to the wreckage and the pilot is found dead, but Dr. Martin's body is nowhere to be found. He eventually wanders back to base with no recollection of what happened after the crash. He's miraculously unharmed aside from a strange surgical scar on his chest. Thorough testing is done on him, which uncovers nothing peculiar about his health, so he's eventually released into the care of his wife Ellen (Barbara Bestar). At home he has a hard time sleeping and has visions of floating eyeballs coming at him from the window. Paranoid they're continuing on with the atomic tests, which he's been a key part of, back at the base without him, Douglas returns against the orders of his superiors.

Because of the mysterious circumstances behind his resurfacing and the fact he hasn't been acting himself as of late, Dr. Martin is taken off the project by Colonel Banks (James Seay). Before he leaves, he sneaks into his colleague Dr. Kurt Kruger's (Frank Gerstle) vault and gets his hands on some top secret information before disappearing again. A Code 4 emergency is put out for his capture. Detective Briggs (Steve Pendleton) eventually finds him in the desert - right where the plane had crashed earlier - trying to place a piece of paper under a rock. Dr. Martin punches him out, ends up in a car accident after seeing the floating eyeballs again and awakens in the hospital in a daze yelling "They're here! They're here! They're going to destroy us!" There he's given truth serum and remembers what happened immediately after the plane crash. He'd actually had an alien encounter.

Actually killed when his plane went down, Dr. Martin was taken from the accident site to an underground cavern (Bronoson caves) where the aliens have been hiding out and revived with a heart transplant. The beings are from the planet Astron Delta in a different solar system with a dying sun who now need a new home and solar system to call their own. They're intelligent and have sophisticated technology but lack of sunlight for a prolonged period of time has caused their eyeballs to grow and bug out. The current members of their race on Earth are scouts who've been sent here to prepare things so 1 billion more of their kind can take over the planet. To accomplish this, they've tapped into our electricity to run their machines and have been harnessing the energy from nuclear explosions for other reasons. Those 'other reasons' include creating an army of giant carnivorous animals and bugs to eventually unleash on the surface and wipe out all existing life as we know it. Amongst their collection are giant lizards, horny toads, tarantulas, hissing cockroaches and the all-important grasshoppers.

Because Dr. Martin was unwilling to cooperate willingly with their schemes, they went about giving him amnesia and then hypnotizing him to provide them with further information. But the truth serum has helped Martin remember an idea he had while discussing things with alien leader Deneb-Tala ("John Merrick" / John Frederick). Recalling how dependent the aliens are on our electricity, Martin makes a mad dash for the local power plant to cut the freeloaders off...

Standard issue low-budget 50s sci-fi, this is from the director of PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953), THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY (1957) and numerous other horror and sci-fi pictures. Wilder was the brother of acclaimed director Billy Wilder and his other brother Myles Wilder wrote the story from which this is based. Fx are hokey (and those silly bug-eyed / bushy eyebrowed aliens in their hooded black jumpsuit designs are somewhat famous in bad-movie-lover circles) but there's an OK story and OK acting. Graves makes for a likable hero and gives a better performance here than he did in Corman's IT CONQUERED THE WORLD (1956). Not great, but it adequately passes the time.

This was deemed bad enough to include in the 2004 documentary THE 50 WORST MOVIES EVER MADE, but since that list also included movies like THE KILLER SHREWS (1959), SPIDER BABY (1964) and GREETINGS (1968), few actually take it seriously.

★★

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (1960)

... aka: Bluebeard's 10 Honeymoons
... aka: Woman Killer, The

Directed by:
W. Lee Wilder

Considering the fame of its Oscar-winning lead actor and that it's based on a factual case (there's always a market for true crime), it's strange that this attempt to recount the crimes of infamous French serial murderer / "wife-killer" Henri-Désiré Landru has slipped between the cracks over the years. Then again, maybe there's just not that much interest in Landru. Renowned director Claude Chabrol tackled the same subject matter with a much higher budget and a more professional cast just two years after this one (1962's LANDRU) and no one has seen that film either. Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons currently has fewer than 50 votes on IMDb and I don't think it's ever officially been released on a home viewing format, though it used to pop up on TV every once in awhile. Good luck finding a copy in either case. It was made by W. Lee Wilder, the brother of famous director Billy Wilder. While Billy was making his classics in Hollywood, W. Lee was on the outskirts trying to cash in on the 50s sci-fi horror craze with such efforts as PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953), KILLERS FROM SPACE (1954) and THE SNOW CREATURE (1954). This attempt at a more sober horror is - just as all his other films - a mixed bag of the entertaining and inept. George Sanders - admittedly not giving one of his finer performances here; though fine nonetheless - is the film's real drawing card.

Parisian furniture and antiques dealer Henri Landru (Sanders) is a man in love... and he's found the wrong hussy to fall for! The object of his lust is voluptuous blonde Odette (Corinne Calvet), a hard-drinking cabaret singer who's only interested in money. Odette devises a scheme with her shady boyfriend to bilk Henri of 5 thousand franks, claiming her ill mother needs an operation. After sleeping with him, she gets angry when he only gives her half of what she wants and takes no time in informing him she'll soon be looking for "someone who can really afford to have me!" Henri tries everything to get the rest of what she wants, including selling a prized piece of family jewelry. Spotting an ad in the newspaper, Henri goes to meet Madame Vivienne Dureaux (Patricia Roc), a widow who wants to sell three rooms full of furniture before she moves out of town with her sister, Giselle (Ingrid Hafner). Henri meets her, the two go to dinner and Henri ends up accidentally pushing her over a balcony to her death during a struggle. He decides to lay her out on the train tracks to make it look like a suicide and goes ahead and sells her furniture for a tidy profit. Afterward, he's able to shower Odette with the money and gifts, including a ring he removed from Mme. Dureaux posthumously!

Discovering that murder is more profitable than dealing in tables and chairs, Landru starts targeting other lonely women for their money. Using a new identity and claiming to be either a writer or a diplomat, he rents out a secluded villa on the outskirts of Paris, where he romances his victims, gets them to fall in love with him and eventually give him access to their bank accounts. He then poisons them, dismembers their bodies with a hacksaw and burns the pieces in a stove. His next victim is Madame Guillin (Jean Kent), whom he overhears placing a lonely hearts ad in the newspaper for a husband who can match her financial means (40,000 franks). Many others follow. Away from his villa, Henri drowns one of his lady friends in the bathtub of her hotel room. Another is stabbed and her body is buried at a construction site. After claiming many victims and once his wealth is established (he's also able to fleece nearly 200 thousand from a wealthy widow whose husband disappeared while on safari), he's finally able to impress Odette. She finally agrees to marry him but, unfortunately for her, Henri finds out about her other lover on the side and decides to terminate those plans. And her. While all of this is going on, the first victim's sister is busy at work piecing the clues together and trying to locate her missing sibling.

I need to immediately point out that this American-shot film fails hard at its attempt to recreate Paris. The sense of both time and place are incredibly screwy. It doesn't help that the cast consists of a British lead actor, a French lead actress and mostly Americans in the other roles. Most (including Mr. Sanders) don't even bother with attempting an accent. Not much of the art direction recalls Paris either and stock footage of the Eiffel Tower and Moulin Rouge are a poor substitute. While the original crimes took place from 1914 to 1918, this film also doesn't bother with period detail and simply updates the story to 1960. A surprising number of details from the real Landru case make their way into this film. Landru was a furniture seller, did use multiple identities, lured some victims with personal ads and disposed of bodies the same way they are here (one of the reasons it took so long to catch him is because their were no bodies). A sister of one of his victims did indeed hunt him down and her independent research did help convict him... though here, Landru is ultimately brought down by one of his victims' Siamese cat!

Skimpy production values aside, one huge plus here is the amount of dark humor to be found. Landru is very business-like about his murders. He's also very cheap! Immediately upon killing a victim, the first thing he does is raid their pockets and purses. Landru also keeps tabs on all of his expenses in a little black book. In one column he keeps tabs on his out of pocket expenses (dinner, etc.) in ensnaring victims and then deducts it from what his net gross will be upon killing them! He also steals tip money off a table at a restaurant and, when ordering train tickets to his villa, always makes sure to order one a round trip and the other a one-way as not to waste any extra money!

Maxine Audley (the killer's blind downstairs neighbor in the same-years PEEPING TOM) and Greta Gynt (from the 1939 Edgar Wallace adaptation THE HUMAN MONSTER starring Bela Lugosi) play victims and George Coulouris and Sheldon Lawrence (from the director's very fun THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY in 1957) have small roles as well.

★★1/2