Further Sci-Fi Sampling ...

 

Ackerman Owed Us All An Apology for Endorsing the Above

Fruit That is Fantasy Ripens With Age

I sort of “collected” genre pictures from television before there was such thing as accumulating them on tape, discs, later 16mm. This was mid-1964 when simply seeing something conferred brag rights, if not to neighbor boys, then at least to my mirror image. There was next door occupant who saw The Killer Shrews theatrically in 1959 and swore it reached a summit of scary. What others saw that I had not seen was an advantage they knew would bedevil me. A cousin clung to The Mysterians as rare artifact I’d never know. Time well spent was any Saturday afternoon that Charlotte’s Channel 9 would offload a previously unseen title, say Monster from the Ocean Floor, which need not be good so long as I saw it and could subsequently say that I’d seen it. Merit was never at issue one way or the other. Channel 9 ran Forbidden Planet flat, B/W, wretched in all ways and cut for ninety minutes besides, but no matter, I was there and could pin on the merit badge. There were no books or listings to tell how long these films were supposed to be. It was in ways like going into jungles to look for lost species, victory the sweeter where one stayed awake longest to achieve a goal, like when The Monster of Piedras Blancas showed up one midnight. Again, who cared how tedious a view it was, as morning would hang another trophy upon my viewing wall. I have in recent weeks raided tombs housing sci-fi, some new to me and joining an ever-expanded list, plus ones not visible for a past sixty years (like Monster from the Ocean Floor). Happy to report they play better than before, even so-called worst ones, especially those, bad or worse a relative term to ones dedicated enough. Science fiction has the built-in advantage of knowing that an alien, or monster, or possessed, thus dangerous, friend or family, will turn up somehow within seventy or so minutes, this alone our basis to stay.

Ten-Year-Olds Need Their Sleep, But I Forfeited Mine to See Monster from Piedras Blancas

Science-fiction paid, but only up to a point.  Spending beyond that was generally a loser proposition. Did wider audiences (that is, grown-ups) look on sci-fi as pulpy, childish, or both? Attitudes would change by the seventies, a point where perhaps we all had arrived at pulpy and childish. One might figure the fifties for summit of interest, which in many ways it was, what with fascination for space travel and other worlds, yet look at tepid reception to War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, and Forbidden Planet. There arose a barrier to budgets across an industry by 1956. Spend at your peril on space themes … leave them instead to scavengers. Ideas were big even as budgets were not. Visionary things could be done with minor money. Want oversize on terms of dinosaurs or moon monsters? Use puppets, animation, or blown-up lizards. Audiences mostly children didn’t mind. Everyone seemed to understand limit of resources and so grooved with them. I prefer cheapies to plusher carpet for artistry applied to them. To begin at beginnings, Roger Corman for instance, there was Monster from the Ocean Floor done with less than peanuts. The monster was absent from nearly whole of length, but given diminished expectation, we didn’t and don’t mind. This was 1954, when such a title and certainly such execution belonged to exploitation bills that teens and their little siblings would alone attend. There was a sweet, if narrow, spot between outlay and receipts that enabled Corman and his kind to move forward and make more monsters. He had help too that displayed real talent, as for sure he did.

Did Folks Paying Their Way To See Creature from the Haunted Sea Really Expect to See This?

A writer named Charles Griffith did horrors, wearied of horrors, then made comedy out of horrors. One he and Corman assembled was Creature from the Haunted Sea, lately out on Blu-Ray from Film Masters, a company to watch for fanta-gems. Creature came of “Filmgroup,” a shingle Roger and brother Gene Corman hung to realize dollars they’d otherwise be rooked out of by partners Jim and Sam at AIP. Roger had a thankfully long life to recount how he stayed just ahead of snakes in gardens that was “Hollywood,” a place he seldom moved in mainstreams of. His and handiwork of others was cheap, but not dumb. Actors weren't for swapping winks as in lame case of moderns inspired by Corman and likes. We note effort lent these projects, pros being pros whatever surface absurdity they’d face. To look back may be to laugh, but also to admire craft if not content, plus commitment to see them through. I met Beverly Garland at an autograph show thirty or so years ago and among other things on her signing table was a still from The Alligator People with her in clutches of titular fiend, Beverly looking scared as though men really could grow gator snouts and rampage accordingly. I held up the photo and asked her what she was thinking where posed thus. “The paycheck” was all she said and all that needed saying.

Just Him Makes It Worth My 70 Minutes To Watch

The Colossus of New York turned up in a Kino box set. Paramount released it with The Space Children in 1958 when black-and-white combos still were viable, the pair having distribution advantage and getting greater trade respect than scratch-penny AIP’s. Like weirdies from Universal, these were steps above what independents might manage, Para and MGM for instance good for one, maybe two, thrill couplings per annum, usually during summer months. With regard rentals, Paramount might wonder if chasing after AIP’s market was worth it, for instance: The Colossus of New York earned $234K in domestic rentals, The Space Children $243K. Considering they ran mostly together, you could credit $477K to the combo, which after factoring foreign receipts, whatever those were, likely came to profit, if modest. Freaky chills done as much for laughs, at least going in, earned better still, Para prospering off The Blob ($711K), plus co-chair I Married a Monster from Outer Space ($283K). I came across The Colossus of New York featured in a FILMFAX (#16) from August 1989, contributing editor Al Taylor scoring an interview with actor Ross Martin in 1981, just months before Martin’s passing, great reminiscences to enhance Colossus viewing, reminder again what a resource FILMFAX is for vintage genre lore. What I notice going over past issues was how fan needles have moved in forty years since #16 was out. FILMFAX has only recently stopped publishing. Its focus was films from the silent era through the fifties, emphasis kept on older players and titles. Seems we now celebrate, at least at You Tube, movies from the eighties forward, latter decade itself forty years back. Everyone is entitled to their own nostalgia, that to naturally revolve around childhood or adolescence. Magazines during the eighties that monitored then-new fantasy/fear topics included Fangoria, Cinefantastique, others. I see by Google that Fangoria still thrives, having started in 1979. Has any genre fan publication lasted so long? Two occur offhand, Midnight Marquee and Little Shoppe of Horrors, former having begun in the sixties, Shoppe productive since the early seventies.

Something Tells Me Mr. Vargas Did Not Base His Art on Characters Seen in World Without End

We get but so much from far-fetch stories. Balance of narratives must rely upon conflict per usual for melodrama, be it family, romantic, whatever common threads weave through yarns set then, now, or fanciful future in this world or another. The Colossus of New York engages for its dead brought back to mechanical life, but also for brother rivals seeking scientist dad’s approval, one sibling intent to skip interval for mourning to claim the other’s widow, something Zachary Scott might do to Dane Clark so as to access Joan Crawford were this Warners of a previous decade. Point here is that however robot or brain transplanting goes, we still are dealing with conflicts basic to all, if exaggerated per custom of movies. I enjoy Colossus a lot for playing straight against science gone reliably amok and veteran Otto Kruger, his customary splendid, called upon to exchange dialogue with a seven foot metal man voiced just offscreen by Ross Martin, latter giving account of this to FILMFAX and boy, did it ratchet up my attention. Of sci-fi lensed in color there were fewer instances, all-a-more noteworthy when scope plus color was the lure. How many besides World Without End served such heaping fifties plate? WWE bore Allied Artists label and might have achieved greater grandeur if not for spending confined to color and wide but with settings confined, astronauts traveled through time not able to go outdoors because mutants are everywhere (couldn’t similar conditions keep all of us in the house nowadays?). Pinup artist Alberto Vagas came aboard to do pin-ups for poster use, these alluring but no way what the movie tendered. World Without End sat among AA fanta-science and horror titles for syndication purpose, thus us getting the lot on Saturday mornings via High Point’s Channel 8, visual values of WWE lost thanks to black-and-white broadcast and merciless cropping, lately corrected by Warner Archive with its very fine Blu-Ray.

Cuss Their System All You Like, But This Commie Crew Had It All Over Us for Special-Effects

Extras Choose: Play Dead Here, or Be Dead in Siberian Salt Mines

Rehab for begotten sci-fi takes in ones obscure that for years seemed altogether gone, like previous topic Battle of the Worlds. These per usual need not have merit to those who seek them. Latest along such line is First Spaceship on Venus, for which Col. Forehand gave me a pressbook with a full-color cover, novelty in itself. Despite having and tendering the PB, he had no plan to play the feature, thus I’d wait till now to catch up on what Eastern Bloc filmmakers were doing re space themes while we worried about them teaming up against free nations including our own. One thing potential aggressors did have was expertise with special fx, our interplanetary screen travels way short of theirs for conviction. Happy solution was to either buy iron-curtain work outright for domestic release or pull footage from them to sweeten our cheaper efforts. First Spaceship on Venus had (again) color plus scope, here a bushel barrel to leave US rivals at starting gates. With Soviets and their satellites so capably depicting orbits beyond our own, how soon before they’d cross Atlantic water to enslave us all? I recall stunned reaction friends had when Moon Mullins ran off his 35mm trailer for Sword and the Dragon with its seeming millions of extras doing battle and leaving corpses piled up mountain-high. To my own gee-whizz over extras falling en masse, a fellow watcher noted that hapless players had no choice but to show up and work. Did our defense system keep an eye on Russian-and-kin fantasy output? If so, they’d have plenty basis to be Red-scared, considering skill of Soviet efforts. Talk about stolen valor, borrowed valor, or whatever that term is, how's about our buying up such impressive work by unknowns (who’d stay that way) for mere morsel, Americanzing names for changed credits, then slapping on AIP or Crown-International or whatever logos hardly deserved the association with such stellar effort.

There Was Something Distinctly "Other" About Euro Sci-Fi ... Recent Blu-Rays All the More Revelatory 

Another lately watched was same sort of porridge, Ikarie XB-1, released here, and by Jim/Sam, as Voyage to the End of the Universe in 1963, another that the Liberty tossed onto bier that was Saturday night “late show” at 9:30 pm only so I could not possibly attend. Again the wait for seeming eternity, though at least now there is the original Czech version, with subtitles, improved visuals, pretty much an art film, but who wants to know beyond hardest core fans of a genre on most obscure setting. Back round to Creature from the Haunted Sea mentioned earlier, but worth lauding again for comedic departure from norm that was serious, at least intended so, sci-fi. Here was hipster fun poked at a genre on by-then fumes (1961), even hipsters tired of laffing at themes their juniors long since jeered and heaved popcorn boxes at. This time the monster being silly (“ping-pong ball eyes”) was a given and Creature’s cast could slum. Was it OK now to take brakes off irony? Writers (like Charles Griffith here) were out-loud spoofing late shows old as they were (Antony Carbone pleasingly summons spirit of Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not), fun for all except ones who came expecting to be scared by monsters. These would feel ripped-off and bitch loudly to managers, who’d then carry complaints to trades. Fun was fun, as in Creature from the Haunted Sea, A Bucket of Blood, and Little Shoppe of Horrors, etcetera, but business tended light toward thrillers viewership preferred straight. Customers chose when to laugh, generally at rather than with, action on the screen. They didn't like being prompted along such lines. As familiarity bred contempt, science-fiction, let alone ongoing black-and-white sci-fi, showed up less at theatres, largely shunned when they did. Wish I knew how many paid way to the Liberty in ’64 to see The Earth Dies Screaming alongside me. Were they there specifically to see the feature or was it just another Saturday and here we all were riding ennui express from habit rather than enthusiasm.