Tonight's movie was "Monster On The Campus" (1958), which came from my Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection dvd set. '50s regular Arthur Franz stars as a biology professor at a small college who gets into some difficulty when he orders a rare prehistoric fish, a coelacanth, from a laboratory in Madagascar. It arrives frozen in a wooden crate. The fish, a big old ugly thing, has already begun to thaw out from the long trip, and by the time Professor Franz' top student Troy Donohue picks it up at the post office, the crate has begun leaking smelly fish water. Also, as a extra measure, the coelacanth has been shot through with gamma rays as a means of preserving it for study.
Gamma Rays are never good news, in real life or in science fiction, so you are alerted to the probability that something bad is gonna come from having that fish in the room.
The first guy to get a dose is Troy Donahue's dog, a big ol' German Shepherd. He laps up some of the bloody fish water that is leaking from the crate, and the next thing you know he has gone berserk, attacking anyone who comes near him with his brand new extra long fangs. The Professor and Troy wrestle him into a cage and do some blood tests. Holy Smokes!, it seems that the doggie has taken a step backward in his evolutionary process. He has regressed in his genetics and is turning into a prehistoric wolf. He does some classic doggie snarls for the camera, the kind where a dog bares his teeth, crinkles his nose and make his eyes look real big, as if to say, "Hey, I'm scary"!
Luckily, the infection was only temporary, and before too long the dog is a nice boy again. He gets to leave the lab and go home with his human.
Professor Arthur Franz, though, is now obsessed. He is spending 24/7 in his lab trying to isolate whatever it was that regressed the dog. One night the school nurse ( played by hottie Helen Westcott) comes in to flirt with him and she turns up dead outside the science building. Fingerprints clear Professor Franz, but something is fishy besides just the coelacanth.
The cops discover large, apelike footprints at the murder scene. The local papers scream that there is a Monster On The Campus, so there's your title, but who or what is the Monster? And what does it have to do with the prehistoric fish?
A phone call to Madagascar is in order. Professor Franz gets on the horn and grills the head of the lab who shipped the coelacanth. He is on the phone for well over an hour, which pisses off his department head because the long distance rate is five dollars a minute. But Franz learns what he needs to know. Now he develops an extract from the fish blood and begins to experiment with it.
This is never a good idea in sci-fi. I mean, look what happened to the Kurt Russell and the guys in "The Thing" when they were forced to have their blood tested.
Bottom Line : don't agree to anything involving "blood" or "tests" in a sci-fi movie, okay? I mean, c'mon. There aren't that many things I am asking of you, but this is one rule you've got to adhere to.
Alright, we can move on. The print of "Monster On Campus" is as clear as the day it was released, in keeping with the high visual quality of the films included in the Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection. You can't go wrong with the look of these films, and the main location for "Monster On Campus" was Occidental College in Eagle Rock, which gives the film it's quaint old fashioned feel.
I can't say that "Monster" is an out-and-out classic like "Tarantula" (which was also directed by Jack Arnold of "Gilligan's Island" fame), and there is a Cheesiness Factor that does enter into play, but on the whole it is a worthwhile 1950s sci-fi yarn, with all the necessary ingredients to satisfy fans of the specifics of that genre. I myself am a huge fan of a certain type of sci-fi : it's gotta be black and white, it's gotta be from the 1950s (which will mean it has 1950s people in it), and it gotta have some combination of scientists, gorgeous 1950s wives, military officers or some form of authority, young people, and Monsters, be they from the sea or sky or wherever.
"Monster On Campus" has many of those ingredients, and it is fairly well executed, so it gets Two Regular Thumbs Up from me, with an bonus for the pristine print.
Just buy the Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection, watch all the movies in the set, and you won't be disappointed.
Returning to the subject of Mumford & Sons, I hope your plans for the Summer were not completely ruined by the news of their return. Grimsley reminded me that we have collectively survived the massive suckage of other atrocious "bands" from years past, like Limp Bizkit and Blink 182. My own personal nemesis has always been Insane Clown Posse, so I suppose if I lived through them I can somehow grit my teeth through the sold out stadium tour of Mumford and his sons. What makes this task more difficult is just that fact of their ascension to a U2ian level of popularity. With Bizkit or Blink or the Posse you could always take heart in the knowledge that such crumminess was never gonna break out of it's talent-free ghetto, and in that surety you could rest rather easily at the end of the day.
But with Mumford & Sons playing the Los Angeles Coliseum, you are now faced with a massive breakout of all time mega shittiness, which is understandably depressing and confusing. You are at a loss as to how to proceed, and I can feel your pain.
My advice : just try to weather the storm. This, too, shall pass.
See you in the morn. Tons of love all night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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