This blog was begun Thursday night April 2nd, and completed the following evening :
Tonight's movie was a cut above, although you won't believe it when I tell you the title. It was called "The Alligator People"(1959), and while it sounds cheesy and did have minor elements of same, overall I found it to be very well executed and pretty scary. In fact, it is exactly the kind of movie that would've scared the beejeezus out of me when I was a kid, in the same way that "Outer Limits" episode did, the one with the horrible lizard men that had big squishy feet and boomerang weapons, who lived on a planet with bubbling pits of acid. That sounds cheesy, too, but trust me it isn't. It's doggone terrifying, especially to a kid, and that's because it's well executed. That's really the question in these movies : "Can you pull it off"? i.e. can you get the audience to suspend disbelief, regardless of budget or how goofy your story may sound on paper. Can you pull it off, make it scary or at least interesting but hopefully both. That's what the makers of "The Alligator People" have achieved, and then some, because this is also one weird film.
Beverly Garland (of the TV series "Decoy", more about her later) stars as Joyce Webster, a nurse working for a psychiatrist (Douglas Kennedy) who specializes in narcohypnosis, a relatively new discipline at the time. To help him advance his techniques, she has volunteered to be "put under" herself, just for routine questioning. He asks about her life before she came to work for him, and this is where the movie begins, because while she is in the hypnotic state, she tells a story so off the wall that he calls in another noted shrink for a second opinion. "How could this be true"?, he wonders. "Have I made a mistake? Administered too much sodium pentothal"? The other shrink suggests they hook Garland up to a lie detector and run the hypnosis again, asking the same questions. They do this and it turns out she is telling the truth. From here, as she begins to answer their questions, the story will be told in flashback.
Garland is on a train with her husband Paul. They've only been married a few days and are on their way to a new city (unnamed) to begin their life together. Paul has a story of his own. He was the lone survivor of a plane crash, who made a recovery so miraculous that he doesn't have a mark on his body, not a scar anywhere. "It's amazing", she tells him. "No one would ever know you broke every bone in your body". Paul doesn't really want to talk about it, which is understandable, so they get back to celebrating their marriage. The porter brings another bottle of champagne. He has some telegrams for them as well, congratulatory messages from friends and relatives, which the happy couple open separately and read.
Suddenly the look on Paul's face changes. He gets up with a start and leaves their compartment, Garland calling after him : "Honey, what's wrong"? He doesn't answer, but runs down the aisle until he finds a steward. "When does this train make it's next stop"?, he demands. The steward looks at his watch. "In three minutes, why"?
"Is there a telephone there"?
"Yes, but it's only a mail pickup. We'll only be there for thirty seconds, you'll have no time to make a phone call".
Paul ignores this and walks to the exit door, waiting. Beverly Garland finds him there and asks again what's the matter. "I've got to make a phone call", he says, averting his eyes. "He won't have time"!, repeats the steward. "It's only a mail stop"! And then the train does stop. Paul gets off and runs to the pay phone. We see him from Garland's point of view, talking nervously into the receiver as the train pulls away.
"Paul!......Paul!", she yells. She runs to the conductor, begging him to stop the train but it's no use. Soon they are miles away and she is riding alone. It will be some time before she sees her husband again.
Months pass. Garland has returned to the couple's former town to do some research on Paul, who she's come to realise she knew little about. She can locate no records on his family. She never knew where he worked, assuming he'd been unemployed due to his lengthy recovery. She hadn't known Paul for very long before they were married. Finally, she is able to locate his high school records (I forget how), and it turns out that he's not even from their town but from Louisiana, some little known burg in Swamp Country. She takes takes another train down there, but there are no buses out to this hidden hamlet, so she hitches a ride from a workman (Lon Chaney Jr.) who just so happens to be heading out that way. He lives on the premises of an Old Gothic Mansion where he is the caretaker. "This is as far as I can take you", he says, "but maybe you can ask the lady here about your husband. Ain't many folks around these parts, but ever'body who lives here knows ever'body else". He says this with a leer (of course, he's Lon Chaney Jr!), and there's something Very Creepy about him. Still, Garland knocks on the door, and when the owner answers, she makes her inquiry. "Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you so late at night, but I'm looking for a 'Paul Webster', my husband. He went to high school in this town and I wonder if you might know of him or his family"?
The woman (Frieda Inescort) becomes indignant. "No, I've never heard of such a man. Now if you'll please leave I'll have Manon (Chaney) drive you back to the station".
"But Missus Hawthorne", he leers, "there's no trains running at this time of night. She'd have to sit there til morning". Being of genteel Southern tradition, Mrs. Hawthorne agrees to let Garland stay the night, but she really doesn't want her there. "You're not to leave this room", she declares, showing Garland her quarters. "And in the morning you're to depart for the first train".
Okay, this is me your Reviewer breaking in here to tell you that I'm gonna have to condense the rest of my review to avoid being here all night and revealing to you every last scene in this movie, which I am tempted to do because it is so great!
So we're back inside the Old Mansion. Now, it's a law in any horror movie, that when someone is told not to leave a room that they must do the exact opposite. So Beverly Garland leaves the room in the middle of the night to go snooping around. She finds Mrs. Hawthorne's office and roots through her desk until she finds some Damning Information, with which she confronts the lady.
I am trying to think of a way around telling you what it is. Let's just say that Mrs. Hawthorne was being disingenuous earlier, when she claimed never to have heard of Paul Webster. Their confrontation is broken up, however, when gunshots are heard outside. Mrs. Hawthorne knows the source and orders the butler to put a stop to it. As you may have guessed, it's Lon Chaney doing the shooting. Turns out the surrounding swamp is filled with alligators (Holy smokes, shades of "Eaten Alive"!). Chaney is drunk and won't stop shooting, though he hasn't hit a single one. "I hate 'gators, an' I'm gonna kill every one of 'em", he insists, and the butler implores him to come inside. But Chaney isn't listening. He holds up his arm to reveal a hook where his hand was. "See what they did to me? Im'a kill ever' one of 'em"!!
He finally stops shooting when he runs out of bullets, but now Beverly Garland is intrigued. She will go down to Chaney's shack - very unwisely as it turns out - to ask him about his missing hand. He is even drunker than before and accosts her with what we will call "unwanted attention". Garland will be rescued from this situation, and I'm afraid that's all I can really tell you about the plot. This is one movie you've gotta see for yourself, and you'll be glad you did, take my word for it. I will tell you that there's a Mad Scientist in it, which you can probably figure out anyway from the movie's title. He has the best Mad Scientist Laboratory that we've seen so far since we began watching public domain flicks on Youtube, but in reality it's not fair to call him Mad because he started out with good intentions. He's not Evil, in other words, but boy did he mess up!
The screenwriter has come up with some very original ideas on which to base the scientist's research, and if they weren't so crazy they'd sound plausible, haha! Besides the Mad Scientist and his work, which will take place later in the film, what's so spooky about this movie is it's atmosphere. Director Roy Del Ruth actually went down to Louisiana to film and had a budget of 300 grand to work with. He was also a Hollywood veteran with some big time films to his credit, including classics like "The Maltese Falcon" and "It Happened On 5th Avenue", so you've got a guy who really knows what he's doing with camera setups and lighting, and just the overall look and pacing of his film. He's also got a real talent for his leading lady. Beverly Garland would become known mostly for television work, such as "Decoy" (mentioned above) which premiered the same year. In it, she starred as a New York City policewoman in the first such portrayal on network TV. Garland, besides being a cutie, was an intelligent actress with a good degree of range. She's as believable playing a cop as she is as a Scream Queen, and she will have a lot of screaming to do as the movie progresses. If you like her in "The Alligator People" I recommend you check out her series "Decoy", which is most excellent and is available in complete form for a low price on Amazon. It features some great performances from many up and coming Method Actors who would go on to become famous, and also has some very cool location shooting in late 1950s New York.
I'm gonna wrap up now, but before I do I am gonna give "The Alligator People" Two Huge Thumbs Up. It's another one of those movies where I simply cannot understand why I'd never heard of it. It should be ranked up there with the absolute best of '50s Sci-Fi. You could even call it a horror film, it has elements of both genres. But see it, see it, see it!, and be sure if you see it on Youtube to watch the Cinemascope version, which is the way the movie was originally presented, in widescreen. The print I saw was perfect. I don't have the actual link at the moment but you can find it. /////
That's all for now and I'll see you later tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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