This blog was begun Wednesday night April 8th and completed the following evening :
Tonight I've got a two-fer for ya. The first film was so-so, so I decided to watch another. That one wasn't much better, but you can judge for yourself as always. Mix and match, watch one now save one for later or nix 'em both - the choice is yours. My initial selection was "The Earth Dies Screaming"(1964), a title chosen for it's melodramatic value. On the Scale of Histrionics it's up there with "The Hideous Sun Demon", though sleeker and presented in the form of a statement. Don't you love Statement Titles? Those are always a good bet, such as "It Came From Outer Space". A Statement Title is meant to implant in the viewer's mind the notion that he is being Told Something Important.
"It Came From Outer Space".
"It did? Holy smokes, I'd better pay attention"!
Any title with "Came From" makes a Statement, which is why there were so many sci-fi movies where Something "Came From" Somewhere.
But now I am getting off track. I meant to tell you about the picture. "The Earth Dies Screaming"(1964) was directed by Terence Fisher, a long time horrormeister for Hammer Studios. The title does have a certain Brrittishh-ness about it , come to think of it, like a headline in one of their tabloid newspapers. It's too bad the movie wasn't very scream-inducing, though it'd could've been, with a rewrite focusing on action and conflict rather than the overlong dialogue scenes involving the main characters. It sure started off with a bang : right away we see a train crashing, a car drives into a wall at high speed. Something's wrong, all hell is breaking loose! Cut to : a small English village. A jeep cruises slowly down the street, dodging dead bodies laying where they fell when disaster hit. What was it? We don't yet know, and neither does the jeep's driver, a Test Pilot (Willard Parker) who was up in the air when the end came. It does appear as if the world has ended. No one is around. The Pilot takes his rifle and exits the vehicle, scanning the area for any survivors. Suddenly he observes a Fearsome Creature walking toward him from across the road. It steps haltingly but with purpose and is enormous in size. Is it an Alien From Another World? It's silver suit and large glass helmet would suggest so. The pilot is taking no chances. He fires at it, again and again, but his bullets have no effect. That's because it is a robot, one that is seemingly indestructible.
The set-up is a good one, and for the first ten minutes it looked like I had a winner on my hands. The movie then segued into the familiar plot device of "gathering together the disparate survivors", wherein the Lone Hero gradually comes across the others, one at a time or in pairs. In this case, soon after the pilot takes shelter in a pub, a middle-aged couple comes running in. They will turn out not to be married; the man has forced the woman to come with him, to say she's his wife, so there you have the makings of a change in plot already, through the curveball of kidnapping or whatever has taken place. Next to arrive at the pub will be a posturing drunk and his girlfriend, and finally a strident young man and his pregnant wife. Three couples in all (one false) and a singular man, our pilot, who must keep them under control if he is to maintain order and survive. This is the theme of many a horror and sci-fi movie - "Night of the Living Dead" again comes to mind - where a group of people of varying age and personality are all trapped together and must bridge their differences if they are to defeat whatever is confronting them. In "Night" the plot worked well because George Romero never lingered too long on the victims' psychologies. Right when they'd be getting into yet another argument, he'd have some Zombies break through a window to get the bickerers to focus on the task at hand. Romero kept the action going, in other words, and the scares. That's what we're here for, right?
Well, for some inexplicable reason, Terrence Fisher doesn't do that, and looking at his resume I can't understand why. The man has been at the helm of a lot of great horror films, so he certainly knows how to terrify an audience. Here, however, he chooses to spend an inordinate amount of time delving into the life problems of the characters : the kidnapped woman, the middle aged bully, the drunken braggart and the sullen young man. What results is waayyyy too much navel-gazing dialogue, too much time spent inside the pub with these folks, and nowhere near enough with the Deadly Robots outside. Considering that the movie is only 62 minutes long, Fisher didn't have a lot of time to waste, but waste it he did, and when he finally does make something happen, at around the 50 minute mark, it feels a bit late. This is too bad, because he has a terrific start to his movie and a good finish. He's also got some of the best looking Giant Robots I've seen in a '50s Sci-Fi, but then he doesn't make much use of them, concentrating instead on the infighting of the folks in the pub. I'll give it A Thumb and A Half, because of the 'Bots and the overall look of the film which is good, but the title was misleading to say the least.
I was disappointed, so I tried my luck again with another short one: "Night of the Blood Beast"(1958), a Roger Corman production that was written by his brother Gene and directed by Bernard L. Kowalski. Here again we have an interesting premise : An astronaut (Michael Emmett) is attempting to take a satellite into orbit. Corman seems to have had a fascination with manned satellites, but anyhow, he suddenly loses control of his craft and it plunges back to Earth, crashing inside Bronson Canyon where it is discovered by the project's radio operator (Ed Nelson) and his assistant (Georgianna Carter). The astronaut is dead, but when they take him back to base, the doctor on duty is stunned to find no rigor mortis. He also has a normal blood pressure reading, yet there is no pulse and no brain activity. What can be happening? A blood sample is taken and it turns out that the astronaut has an unusual cellular form amongst his red and white corpuscles. That night, the examining doctor turns up dead, and the astronaut mysteriously comes back to life.
Another good setup, the difference this time being the evident lack of budget Kowalski is working with as compared with Terrence Fisher in "Earth Dies Screaming". "Blood Beast" is an ultra-cheapie (even by Corman standards), so it just doesn't look very good. Unlike Fisher, though, Kowalski has made the most of his script, which has a lot of intelligent dialogue dealing with scientific and philosophical themes. The thrust of the conflict is this : now that the astronaut has revived, he is suspected of killing the doctor. But how could he have done so? He was laying on a table "dead" the night before, wasn't he? It will turn out that a Blood Beast was incubating in his body and has erupted - "Alien"style - during the night. It was the Blood Beast that killed the Doc, and is now using his mind and voice to conduct business here on Earth. The astronaut has sympathy for the Beast and doesn't want it hurt. He says he can sense it's intent and it means no harm. But if that is true, why did it kill the doctor? Many possible solutions will be discussed while the Blood Beast is hiding out, with the astronaut arguing for mercy on the Beast's behalf. It will ultimately be trapped and confronted but allowed to present it's case, which it does in the doctor's voice. It's a thoughtful story, but there simply wasn't the money to give the movie a convincing look. The rubber-suited creature isn't the problem (we love those) but rather the almost complete lack of hardware or even a semi-realistic military setting. The result is a lot of good dialogue uttered in makeshift rooms alternating with characters running around in the dirt on the Hollywood mountainside. Too bad they couldn't have switched budgets with Terrence Fisher, then they'd have had something. "Night of the Blood Beast" had good intentions but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to give it the same score as "Earth Dies", which is One and One Half Thumbs. In all it was a lackluster night, but we shall try again this evening. //////
it's now 8pm on Thursday. If it ever stops raining I will go for a walk.
Elizabeth, as always I'm glad to hear that you're writing. There's a nice melody apparent in the short clip you posted. I was sorry to read about the voting fiasco in your state the other day. They should've postponed it or allowed mail-in ballots so that everyone could have a chance to vote. I hope you were able to, but if you weren't don't worry - I was in the same boat on Super Tuesday back in early March, when we had a fiasco of our own, though of a different kind. I ended up not voting as I described in one of my blogs. But thank goodness it was only the primary. There is no way I'm gonna miss the general election, virus or no virus or whatever the situation. We've gotta get rid of the Virus in the White House or we won't survive another four years, lol.
I trust that all is well and that you are hanging in there. Today there were hints that the curve is flattening a little bit, so we may see some light at the end of the tunnel before too much longer.
And P.S. I just now saw your clip with the backing tracks, so the piece is coming together. That's great!
See you in a little while at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment