Last night's movie was "Die, Monster, Die!"(1965), starring Boris Karloff as an elderly scientist, living in a mansion in England and protecting a family secret. Yeah, not very Christmassy I realise. I haven't done Christmas movies this year, because......well, you can guess. It's been very hard for me since Pearl passed away, and if I watch a Christmas movie I might dissolve. Still, we might try one or two by Christmas Eve. I certainly didn't set out to go to the opposite extreme and watch a horror flick, but because this one was a Youtube recommendation and it had Boris Karloff, I decided to give it a try. Boris plays "Nahum Witley", a botanist and heir to the Witley Estate. His father and grandfather were scientists before him.
As the movie opens, an American named "Stephen Reinhart" (Nick Adams) is getting off a train in the village. He's en route to see a girl named "Susan Witley" (Suzan Farmer), who he met in college in New York. He asks around for directions to "the Witley place" but the locals won't help him. Worse, they shun him as if he's speaking of the Devil. Therefore he sets out on foot. When he reaches the mansion, there's no answer to his knock. Of course, it's a horror movie so the door is ajar. It swings open, he enters into an expansive living room, in which the furniture looks like it hasn't been changed in a century. As he walks toward the hall ("Hello? Is anybody home"?), another door opens. There sits Nahum Witley in his wheelchair. "Who are you? Get out of this house"! Obviously, there's a bad vibe at the joint. Reinhart noticed it on his way up. The hillside below the property is burned to a crisp. Nothing grows there, not even weeds.
He tells Mr. Witley that he's not about to leave. "I came to see your daughter and I was invited by your wife!" It was one of those "please come at once" letters that you see in movies like "Dracula". Witley isn't pleased by Reinhart's insistence, but he's old and infirm. There's not much he can do to prevent him from staying. Reinhart finds Susan, who's elated to see him. Later he finds her mother in her bedroom. Now things are getting weird. Mom is in bed behind curtains of gauze. She begs Reinhart to take Susan away. "I beseech you! Take her back to the United States"!
The mother, "Letitia" (Freda Jackson), gives Reinhart an earring. "You want to know what's going on here? This will give you a clue. It belonged to my maid, Helga, who's since disappeared. She became ill after she started wearing it. It isn't a coincidence, Notice the stone in the middle". That night, Reinhart goes snooping around in the basement, where there are all kinds of creepy paintings of demons and other abominable figures. One is a portrait of old Corbin Witley, Nahum's grandfather. Man, he's a spook. Nahum rolls up in his wheelchair and catches Reinhart staring at the painting. "Ahh, you insist on prying. I've tried to tell you to leave. I was not the one who brought the evil into this house, not I who uttered the incantations". He's insinuating it was Grandpa Corbin. Reinhart leaves early in the morning to find the local doctor, believing Letitia is ill. On his way, he's attacked by what looks like a troll. The doctor tells him the family has a history of fatal illness. "Corbin Witley died in my arms! But don't ask me how or why. I've got nothing more to say about it".
If you've ever seen Nick Adams as "The Rebel" in the Western TV series, you know he doesn't take "no" for an answer. He's the same way here as Reinhart. When he gets back to the mansion, he passes by the greenhouse. It appears to be glowing in the early morning light. He grabs Susan to investigate. Inside, they discover plants that are thrice their normal size, each one a perfect specimen. However, their scent is too sweet, the smell of decomposition. "What the hell is going on here"?, Reinhart asks. Then a horrid scream pierces the fetid air. It's coming from a locked room. Reinhart busts the door down, he and Susan rush inside. What they see turns their stomachs and also their minds. In cages are a menagerie of mutant creatures. Are they animals? Were they animals? They look like rejects from H.R. Puffnstuf.
The sight of them repulses Reinhart, but he thinks he's knows what's going on now. "Those things are mutations. Think about it, Susan. The plants, the whatever-it-was that attacked me, the burned area on the hillside.......what do they all have in common"?
If you said "radiation", give yourself a gold star. The movie was based on "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft, which I've never read, but I know he had a fascination with the Otherworldy. Further poking in the greenhouse leads Nick and Susan to discover green stones buried in the soil of each plant, as fertilizer. "They're the same as that rock in the earring"! I won't tell you where they came from, though Lovecraft's title probably gives it away. Reinhart is now out to shut down the entire Witley operation. The troll reappears to try and stop him. Nahum Witley feels guilty about suppressing the family history and tries to destroy the radiation source. "I was only a horticulturist! I wanted to feed the world". Alas, he gets contaminated and turns silver, emitting so many rads that the filmmakers use an optical effect to show him phasing.
It's plodding at times and there's a lot of wandering around the house. It's one of those "I'm not leaving til I get some answers"! plots. Still, the production design is as good as in a Hammer Film (the Witley Estate is a terrific set), and Nick Adams is the perfect foil, with his stocky build and tough guy Chicago accent, to Boris Karloff's lisp and sunken-eyed pallor. There aren't a lot of scares but the atmosphere is A-plus. That's why it gets Two Big Thumbs Up. It's widescreen and in color and the picture looks brand new. "Die, Monster, Die!" is highly recommended. ////
The previous night we watched "The Counterfeiters"(1948), a self-explanatory title about a hood (Hugh Beaumont), his moll (Doris Merrick) and a stooge (Lon Chaney Jr.), who steal the plates for a phony but perfect looking twenty dollar bill. An agent from Scotland Yard (John Sutton) tails them from England where they've also stolen the plates for a five pound note. Sutton introduces himself to Beaumont on the plane, posing as a fellow counterfeiter to get his attention. Beaumont sees through the scam, and after the plane lands, he beats Sutton up on the way to Santa Monica. Actually he's about to kill him until Merrick steps in. "You said there'd be no murder"!, she screams. Beaumont reluctantly leaves Sutton lying in the road.
Later, at the race track, Lon Chaney tries passing some of the funny money. His horse wins big, which gets the attention of a chiseler named "Frankie" (George O' Hanlon, famous as the voice of "George Jetson"). Besides providing comic relief, Frankie has all kinds of big investment plans for the counterfeit, which gets Lon Chaney in trouble with Hugh Beaumont. "I told you not to use the money at the track"! Now the Feds are also on the trail. They haven't identified Beaumont yet, but they're gonna use Lon Chaney and Frankie to get to him. Meanwhile, Doris Merrick is making nice with John Sutton, who she still believes is a fellow counterfeiter. She wants him to help her steal the plates from Beaumont, but he can't trust her and neither can the viewers. Merrick pulls more double crosses in this movie than in all Noirs put together. You can't even keep track of 'em. Lon Chaney doesn't even know who he should pound, so confused is he by the machinations of Merrick.
There's also a Mr. Big above Hugh Beaumont, the man who created the plates. He's Herbert Rawlinson, playing Doris Merrick's father, a talented artist. His personal enforcer is a squinty-eyed thug named "Jerry" (Scott Brady, the real-life brother of Lawrence Tierney). Sorry if I'm confusing you by using the actors' names instead of their characters but I'm writing this a million miles an hour. Don't worry too much about the plot, it's simple : everybody wants the plates, no one knows who's got 'em. That's why Merrick keeps pointing a gun at everyone. The movie was directed by Sam Newfield who worked mostly for Poverty Row. He gets a good performance out of Hugh Beaumont, who's as mean and ruthless as the hood, as he is nice and fatherly as "Ward Cleaver", his most famous role. John Sutton went on to play cold-blooded English highbrows in many a TV Western. Here he's a handsome charmer. Lon Chaney is hapless, huge and easily hoodwinked. He's the reason I chose the movie, after finding Lugosi in "Postal Inspector" the night before (and then we found the Boris Karloff movie too, giving us three horror legends in three nights. We'll make up for it by watching Christmas movies next Halloween).
Give "The Counterfeiters" a try for fun and fast action. It gets Two Solid Thumbs Up. The picture is slightly washed out. ////
And that's all I know for tonight. Rams won again, hooray! Today is the Winter Solstice, which means the Sun is heading back in the right direction. I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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