Ads and Oddities #11

 

You Can't Tell Me This Isn't Rudy Revived Through Early Realized Miracle That Was AI.

Ad/Odds: They Revived Rudy in 1956!, Cosmic Carradine, Snooze and Lose

Was Rudy So Tall As This? Sources Indicate He was Between 5"8' and 5'9" 

FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE (1956) --- Z as in grade but also for Zzzz, destination sand land for many watching, or trying to, 74 minutes yawning toward eternity. Fire Maidens from Outer Space was a “Saturn Production” released by “Topaz,” anyone’s guess as to what/who these entities were. Principal creative was Cy Roth, who evidently did it all here. What immortalized Fire Maidens was AI (yes, Artificial Intelligence) apparently in use for a very first time. Who knew it went back so far as 1956, yet here is Rudolph Valentino in a starring role thirty years following his demise. Fire Maidens was 50's Rudy doing dialogue, fast action, clinches with co-star Susan Shaw (was she AI too?). Never mind credits that call him “Anthony Dexter.” I aver it was Rudy himself revived, recreated, call the miracle what you will. Surely such technology ate up what budget there was for Fire Maidens from Outer Space. Imagine costs of cloning the silent era’s sheik to live and love again. No wonder the rest seems so threadbare. These artists made history and we must applaud them for it. Fire Maidens looks admittedly like a Rocky Jones episode done stricter from hunger than even Rocky on most impoverished terms, titular Maidens to dance singly and in groups to fill running time. Leave it for Rudy to galvanize proceedings with dynamism his alone. Yes, there was only one Valentino, and it was great having him back for this final inning. See Fire Maidens from Outer Space (Blu-Ray via Olive) and be astonished.

First Billing Flipped Between Ads and Film Credits --- Did Bruce and John Flip a Coin or Arm Wrestle?

Yes, He Did The Last Hurrah a Year Before This, But JC Was Never One to Keep Score

THE COSMIC MAN (1959) --- Pondering John Carradine after a look at The Cosmic Man, lately installed by Film Masters at You Tube in HD and though full frame, readily converted to 1.85 by simple flick of the ratio button. Carradine is top-billed, though oddly enough, not on posters, even though he comes first in credits. Behind him is Bruce Bennett. Don’t offhand know whose company I’d prefer keeping, Bennett to admire for shucking Tarzan cloth to study the craft and come back as a reliable character man, or Carradine who, chances are, mastered Shakespeare in the cradle. He was by 1959 gnarled as fiends he’d be pressed to play, crippling arthritis an always companion. There’s nobility to him in whatever capacity, here an alien, the titular one, shading the part where he can, reciting as though from the Bard or poets of yore. Carradine took his money and ran, if nothing else from memory of doing quickies the sad lot of classical actors amidst mumblers and Method boys consigning his sort to Museums of Thesporial History (I know there aren’t such things, so …let’s build one). Seeing him shot down so unceremoniously at the end of The Cosmic Man was for me akin to Lear brought low, but Bennett murmers He’ll be back, a perhaps improvised line Bruce came up with as tribute to his colleague as much as service to a script he’d barely consult (like me if stuck in something like The Cosmic Man). Black-and-white sci-fi was on slippery ground by 1959. This one was independently produced, distributed by Allied Artists, claimed after years missing by Wade Williams, gone again with him in possession, back now that Wade has passed. Oh for bleak years we went without The Cosmic Man, but here it finally is, and what with no expectation, there’s less disappointment for catching up. What is appeal of space yarns where we never step foot in space or see aliens that truly are alien. Carradine could be anyone’s strange uncle, or the neighbor you’d as soon not encounter, yet without him, I may not have ventured to The Cosmic Man.

My Man John in his Mid-Fifties Jungle Trekking, Well Into Maturity Tower of Strength We Love

Filmfax #14 paid tribute to John Carradine with a profile and interview. In fact, there are a couple of interviews, Carradine’s attitude differing between one and the other. This was published in 1989, the year after Carradine died. His chat with writer Dennis Fischer was among last he did. The other, more candid, was with Jack Gourlay. Carradine’s response to questions, mostly about his horror parts, go as follows: “Just a job” … “It’s the same old grind” … “Half of that crap I don’t remember” … “I just take what’s given to me.” We could use artists as forthcoming. Many were obliged to take lame parts. Carradine knew crap better than anyone. He just wanted to work and so went where crap work was. He’d go for instance to Africa in 1960 to oppose Gordon Scott in Tarzan the Magnificent ... how promising could that prospect have been? … yet look how strong a performance Carradine gave. Was he surprised by the quality of the script so as to rise to it and give of his best? “Abel Banton” to my thinking is the best part Carradine had since the fifties and to come, that including the Ford pictures and all else. As criminal father to worse sons, he is villainy personified and, along with Anthony Quayle in Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, sternest threat of all to the jungle King. Should you want to see great men rest Shakespearian robes to genre service, playing straight plus sinister, get these two Tarzans from Warner Archive and be profoundly impressed. Maybe much of what Carradine got stuck in was rubbish, him reassuring presence for me at pictures risible even for a ten-year-old. Two landed at the Liberty to bitterly recall: The Incredible Petrified World and Curse of the Stone Hand. I entered knowing that with John Carradine on hand, I would somehow sustain. This was true even as his character in Stone Hand was identified as “the old drunk.” I hope Carradine realized what he meant to ones of us satiated just for seeing him work in films even hardest core fans might otherwise skip.

This Monster More Pathetic Than Paralyzing Was Complaint I Often Heard

THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958) --- Was movie pursuit more fun when there was urgency to it? We make no more effort now than starting a DVD or streaming whatever needs watching. Everything can be had, anytime and at anyplace. If you had a Dick Tracy wristwatch, you could look at Ben-Hur on it. There was a time, however, long and thankfully past, when seeing a show was opportunity you got just once. At least it seemed so. Be there or live in torment for having thrown away your one chance ever. I suffered for sake of ones that came and went, my having muffed chance to be there. Such is why it took forty years to align with Black Zoo, She, Devil Doll, numerous others. The ad at left was 1958's invite to despair, Revenge of Frankenstein being bumped so The Key could play another week. Assurance is that Frankenstein will arrive July 17, but what if The Key stayed beyond even that? Theatres were known for promises not kept. My own experience paralleled the Hipp's in Cleveland, also with a Hammer film as prize being dangled. We got A Hard Day's Night in August 1964, a four day booking to be followed by Evil of Frankenstein, which for me was British invasion to be preferred even over the Fab Four. Unexpected were lines for the Beatles unknown since Elvis did Kissin' Cousins. The Liberty gave Frankenstein a heave-ho minus a rain check. I asked and was told "maybe later ... if we can get it," which to me was good as "never, so live with it." A following month was spent with conviction that I'd finish a lifetime without seeing Evil of Frankenstein. Of course, it drifted finally in with other backwash delayed by Beatlemania. I could sleep again, as  sometimes I do when occasion arises to revisit Evil of Frankenstein.