What could possibly go wrong?: Four Sided Triangle

Now Playing: Four Sided Triangle (1953)

Pros: The unique, ironic premise of out-of-control science is still fresh and relevant to our present age; Terence Fisher's direction shows flashes of a talent that would make Hammer world famous for its horror films.
Cons: Some will find the pacing slow and the production design of the laboratory "slapdash."

Terence Towles Canote is hosting his 13th annual Rule Britannia Blogathon over at A Shroud of Thoughts, wherein bloggers are invited to write about any British film or any topic related to Britain's contributions to film. Not being particularly superstitious, I signed on to this year's event with the thought that not only would I write about a British film, I'd write about one in which Britannia indeed rules, at least in terms of its setting and plot.

An obvious choice would be an adventure or war film set at the height of Great Britain's empire, but since this blog is focused on sci-fi and horror, and since I'm not a big fan of empires, you'll have to go elsewhere for that sort of thing. Nope, Four Sided Triangle has no sword fights, broadsides between sailing ships, or any of the derring-do that you might normally associate with a phrase like "Rule Britannia."

In place of daring action, Four Sided Triangle features a daring idea that, brought to fruition by two unassuming British inventors, has the capacity to revolutionize the world economy and life in general. "A load of rubbish!" you say?  "Nothing earth shattering or innovative came out of Britain after it was exhausted by two world wars and could only manage to shed itself of its costly empire!" you say? Well, Hammer Films, and reality, beg to differ.

I'll let Bill Bryson, American expatriate and travel writer, speak to the British innovative spirit (if not their marketing genius): 

"The British are an ingenious race. There can be no question about that. Their contribution to the world's comfort and knowledge are way beyond what, measured proportionately, ought to come off a little island in the North Sea. Some years ago, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry made a study of national inventiveness and concluded that in the modern era Britain had produced 55 percent of all the world's 'significant inventions,' against 22 percent for the United States and 6 percent for Japan. ... It is remarkable how often Britons invent or discover something of great value, then fail to cash in on it. The list of things invented, discovered, or developed in Britain that benefited Britain barely or not at all includes computers, radar, the endoscope, the zoom lens, holography, in vitro fertilization, animal cloning, magnetically levitated trains, and Viagra." [Bill Bryson, The Little Road to Dribbling, Doubleday, 2015, pp. 148, 150.]

In the first half of the 1950s, before Hammer Films went all in on Gothic horror, the studio echoed that innovative spirit with several black and white sci-fi films. While American sci-fi movie heroes were set back on their heels battling space invaders (It Came from Outer Space, 1953) and giant monsters unleashed by atomic tests (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, 1953; Them!, 1954), British protagonists were proactively preparing rockets for the first piloted flights into space (The Quatermass Xperiment, 1955; Spaceways, 1954).

Okay, so the spacecraft in The Quatermass Xperiment ended up nosediving into the ground, but still... brilliant!

And most unusual of all (if not quite as glamorous or terrifying), British inventors Bill and Robin (Stephen Murray and John Van Eyssen, respectively) were perfecting their ground-breaking matter duplicator in Four Sided Triangle. The film invests heavily in the romantic notion, so beloved by sci-fi filmmakers and fans, of the lone, eccentric inventor (or mad scientist) making earth-shattering discoveries in his remote laboratory, unhindered by the prying eyes of the uncomprehending masses.

Okay, so in this case it takes two to tango with the laws of science and dance the two step with things better left alone, but there's still a healthy helping of suspended disbelief necessary to accept that these pioneering tech bros have managed to make matter out of energy in a converted barn in the middle of  the English countryside. (AI tech bros take note: Bill and Robin have also apparently figured out how to do their scientific magic without hogging their neighbors' electricity and water. Also noteworthy: the pair's fictional breakthrough predated by several years Andre Delambre's notorious experiments with matter teleportation in 1958's The Fly.)

The men may be scientific geniuses, but in matters of love and life they're a little less whippy. As narrated by the village's kindly (and somewhat busybody-ish) doctor Harvey (James Hayter), in their childhood Bill and Robin had been thick as thieves with a local girl, Lena. Inevitably, the trio had broken up -- the two boys going off to university to learn how to upend the laws of physics, and Lena (Barbara Payton) emigrating to America with her mother (thus explaining the actress' American accent). Just as the geniuses were perfecting their invention, Lena had returned to the bucolic village where she grew up, confiding to the doctor that she considered herself a failure, and had only returned to sell off her deceased mother's things in order to scrape by for a few more years.

Everyone's happy that the childhood friends have been reunited... well, maybe not everyone.

Lena's path veers in a direction she could never have imagined when Bill and Robin demonstrate their matter duplicator to her and Dr. Harvey by exactly reproducing the good doctor's pocket watch. With the success, Robin's wealthy and influential father Sir Walter instantly becomes an enthusiastic investor instead of a reluctant one (the good doctor -- ever supportive of the lads -- had sold his practice to provide more capital for the experiments after Sir Walter had turned his son down, not wanting to throw "good money after bad.")

At this point, Lena has become, in the words of the sentimental doctor, "cook, nurse, confessor, chief bottle washer, and occasional mechanic to those two conspirators." (Patronizing, but then this was 1953.) But unfortunately for Bill, she's not above playing favorites, up to and including handing over her heart to good old, smiling, guileless Robin. And who could blame this woman who, just a short while ago, had been at poverty's door and been so down on herself?

As we learn from the doctor's narration, Bill had been born on the wrong side of the tracks (I guess in this case, the wrong side of the hedgerow), and had grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father. While possessing a brilliant mind, he's also alternately taciturn, impulsive and impolitic, at one point telling his partner he's already bored with their invention and ready to move on. By contrast, Robin is enthusiastic, optimistic and practical (not to mention handsome and rich).

Poor long-faced Bill doesn't stand a chance. Instead of talking to Lena, Bill confides in the doctor about his love for her, and in his hesitation, loses out when Robin and Lena announce their engagement at a dinner party celebrating the team's success.

Handsome, wealthy and charismatic Robin is smiling like the cat that ate the canary.

After the wedding, practical Robin is off to London to negotiate more money, equipment and security arrangements with the government, while Bill stews in his bitter disappointment. But, in the grand tradition of the genre, you can't keep a mad scientist down for long, even a depressed one, and before you know it, Bill, with the aid of the conflicted and worried Doc Harvey, is experimenting with guinea pigs and rabbits to take the invention to its logical conclusion -- the duplication of living organisms.

"I think you know where I'm going with this," Bill tells the doctor, who at first refuses to help with the mad scheme. But sure enough, Harvey's scientific curiosity gets the better of him, and soon he's staring wide-eyed in amazement at the duplication of living beings. Curiosity so overtakes the doc's rational caution that he ends up convincing Lena to submit to being duplicated, assuring her that no harm will come to her. Et tu Doctor Harvey?

Also in the grand tradition of the genre, there is no way this is going to end well, and it doesn't. It's not because Bill, as a true blue mad scientist, has been reckless or careless (as in a fly in the duplicator chamber), but because he has done his job too well. Lena 2 (dubbed Helen) is a perfect replica of the original, right down to her wants, desires and... loves. Oops. Now, all Bill has to do is erase Helen's memories (along with her desires) so that the two can start over. What could possibly go wrong?

"Okay, back to the duplicating board..."

The rustic country setting and the kindly doctor's voiceover narration initially lend an almost quaint fairytale atmosphere to the film. Early on we know a reckoning is coming with the reuniting of the childhood friends, but the mood is as light as the sun on an English meadow. Director Terence Fisher does some interesting shot blocking, giving Bill a physical prominence that suggests that he is the more valuable member of the inventor duo (in one scene in the converted barn laboratory, Bill is standing on a platform, visually dominating the other characters as if his scientific prowess has made him King of his own little world).

But once it becomes obvious that Lena has chosen between her childhood pals, Triangle trades in its day-lit quaintness for the Gothic darkness and brooding that is the hallmark of mad science. As Bill becomes more haggard and desperate in his quest to reclaim (or more accurately, reproduce) his lost love, nighttime takes over, and the barn/laboratory grows darker even as new equipment for duplicating human beings fills up the space.

The production designers go full on Frankenstein with Bill's lair, and the bubbling beakers, lights and assorted levers and dials on the equipment panels harken back to Universal's Gothic labs while prefiguring the Hammer Films domain that Peter Cushing as Frankenstein would thrive in several years later. A couple of shots of Bill's under-lit face as the machinery buzzes and flashes around him, make him seem far madder and ominous than Colin Clive or Peter Cushing. (Interestingly, for all the equipment in the lab, there's nary a computer in sight or a reference to one, even though by the early '50s mainframes were fairly well known in popular culture. It's truly mad, magical science that can create matter out of energy without the help of a computer.)

You can't have mad science without a bubbling beaker.

Of course, every mad scientist needs a loyal assistant, and Doc Harvey steps in as one of the more gentle and erudite assistants to help expedite a barkin' mad scheme. Before there's any mention of duplicating living beings (not to mention beautiful Lena), the doctor is excited at the prospect of cheaply duplicating expensive or rare medicines for the benefit of humanity. But then, his empathy for poor "wrong-side-of-the-tracks" Bill and an innate human curiosity override his caution, and soon he's pulling levers and twisting dials to help in the dangerous work of replicating living things. (You also have to wonder if the doctor is himself smitten with the beautiful creature Lena has become, and would have been as enthusiastic if the human guinea pig had been someone else.)

In real life, Barbara Payton (Lena) was no stranger to love triangles, four sided or of the more conventional kind. In 1951, at the height of her brief Hollywood career, she was sharing her affections with two actors simultaneously, Franchot Tone and Tom Neal, which resulted in a vicious fight between the two men that sent Tone to the hospital. She married Tone, but after only seven weeks went back to the handsome but brutish Neal. Along the way, she wracked up affairs with the likes of Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, John Ireland, Howard Hughes and Guy Madison (not to mention five marriages). [IMDb] Incautiously burning her candle at both ends, she most definitely could have used a machine for duplicating herself.

With scandal haunting her in the U.S., Payton traveled to London to make two films for Hammer, one of which was Four Sided Triangle. While she was very graciously received by Hammer chairman James Carreras and son Michael, unfortunately the two bottom-of-the-bill B movies did nothing for her career, and by the mid-'50s she was immersed in alcohol, drugs and petty larceny; tragically she would succumb to heart and liver failure at the age of 39.

Payton biographer John O'Dowd is pretty harsh on the film and Barbara's performance:

"As the lone American in a provincial setting, Barbara delivered a distracted performance, leading one to believe she had only taken the job as a temporary diversion from her nightclubbing activities in London. ... In a prosaic bit of pap like this, Barbara must have felt she was under no obligation to extend any more than the most rudimentary effort ... and it showed. Additionally hampered by a stagnant, creeping pace and its slapdash special effects (the latter aptly described by author Philip Strick in his book, Science Fiction Movies, as 'flashing lights and cork-screws'), Four Sided Triangle proved a crashing bore and did nothing for Barbara's career." [John O'Dowd, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story, BearManor Media, 2006, p. 225]

In the grand tradition of British science, Bill works feverishly on an invention from which he will not profit in the slightest.

On the flip side of fate, Triangle's director and co-writer Terence Fisher would go on to helm some of Hammer's best and most iconic horror films, starting with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and following up with a parade of classic monsters: Horror of Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1958), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and The Gorgon (1964), among a slew of others.

In writing about Four Sided Triangle, film scholar Peter Hutchings is not nearly as dismissive as O'Dowd, and he finds some interesting character dynamics and ideas in the modest B programmer:

"[F]our Sided Triangle is that rare beast, a pre-1956 British science fiction film. While it follows Spaceways in privileging romantic relationships over scientific investigation, it nevertheless embraces more thoroughly some of the ideas and conventions associated with the SF genre. ... As is the case with those other pre-1956 Fisher films that are distinctive in some way or other, there appears to be conservative tone to the proceedings here. A comment made by the old doctor in Four Sided Triangle might well stand for the aspect of the work generally: 'There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire.'" [Peter Hutchings, Terence Fisher: British Film Makers, Manchester University Press, 2001, pp. 63, 67.]

While Four Sided Triangle can't be counted among Hammer's classics, this modest black and white film benefits from a unique, ironic premise, and serves as a modern fairytale-like warning that love can't be understood or captured by rationality and science. Maybe in the age of runaway AI simulacra flooding our culture and erasing the boundaries between humans and machines, we need this message more than ever.

"Damn, there's a fly buzzing around the laboratory! Now where did I put the flyswatter?"

The Frightful Fate of a Forlorn Flunky: The Mummy's Shroud

Now Playing: The Mummy's Shroud (1967)

Pros: The performances of the supporting cast, especially Michael Ripper as a harried, put-upon factotum, are a joy to watch; A couple of the mummy's kills are set up masterfully.
Cons: The recycled plot of a reanimated mummy wreaking vengeance on the expedition members that discovered its tomb is as musty and dusty as the mummy himself; The pre-titles sequence set in ancient Egypt lasts over seven grueling minutes.

Blogger extraordinaire Rebecca Deniston over at Taking Up Room has come up with a very simple and original blogathon idea: write about a film or TV show that underwhelmed you when you first saw it, but upon subsequent viewing(s) grew on you. If that concept appeals, by all means head over to her blogathon for more intriguing reassessments.

My choice for the blogathon is precisely no one's favorite of the many technicolor reboots of the classic monsters that Hammer Studios hammered out over a three decade period. Hammer is rightly famous (notorious?) for their Dracula and Frankenstein reboots featuring legendary actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. But they didn't stop with that Dastardly Duo.

From the late '50s through the '70s, Hammer added their own colorful spins to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, 1960 and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, 1971), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), werewolves (Curse of the Werewolf, 1961), and the Mummy saga with four (count 'em!) entries: The Mummy (1959), The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1967) and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971).

Somewhat like Universal's Mummy series, Hammer started out strong with their 1959 offering, starring Christopher Lee as the ancient cloth-wrapped instrument of vengeance, and Peter Cushing as a bookish yet formidable target of the curse. Although lacking in the mystical atmosphere of Universal's 1932 classic with Boris Karloff, 6'5" Lee brought several extra levels of physicality and impending doom to the title role.

1964's Curse of the Mummy's Tomb added some comic relief in the form of a brash, self-centered American entrepreneur (played by Fred Clark), but also leveraged the reincarnation angle to set up a surprise climax. By 1967 and The Mummy's Shroud, it seemed as if Hammer, like Universal's Mummy B pictures of the '40s, had run out of ideas and was in the lather, rinse and repeat mode. (However, they would infuse new blood, so to speak, into the series by adapting Bram Stoker's novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars and releasing it as Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.)

A synopsis of The Mummy's Shroud will seem very familiar to fans of Universal's Mummy franchise:

• An Egyptian royal runs afoul of court rivals and is entombed in a secret location along with his loyal manservant and guardian. Check.
• A 1920s expedition finds the tomb, which sets in motion the terrible consequences for the expedition members. Check.
• A modern-day Egyptian keeper of the tomb warns the expedition to stay away or be cursed. Check.
• The keeper reanimates the mummified guardian of the tomb by reading a sacred text from the royal shroud. Check.
• One by one, the defilers meet terrible fates at the hands of the avenging mummy. Check.

"Is anyone else feeling a sense of deja vu?"

When I first saw The Mummy's Shroud sometime around my high school days (not quite 3000 years ago, but sometimes it feels that way), my reaction was "been there, done that." Mind you, that was a time of pimply-faced adolescence when I couldn't get enough of Hammer's bloody technicolored reboots of the Universal classics I'd been raised on. So of course I was going to see Shroud at the first opportunity, regardless.

But that first viewing was a slog, kind of like sifting through tons of Egyptian sand to find a shard of pottery or two. There was the seemingly interminable pre-titles sequence (lasting over 7 minutes!) depicting the Egyptian prince's flight into the desert to avoid being assassinated, and his lonely death attended only by his loyal manservant. Okay, it was poignant, I guess, and filmed in glorious color with striking costumes, but did it have to be that long?

And instead of being rewarded with a bit of action for making it through the sonorously narrated fictional history lesson, my juvenile self was treated to yet another interminable sequence, this time featuring a pompous, rich jackass bellowing at the help as he arrives at an Egyptian hotel.

Stanley Preston (John Phillips), is the jackass and wealthy financier of the expedition, which includes his son Paul (David Buck). It seems the expedition hasn't communicated with the outside world for some time and is feared lost, and Preston has arrived in Egypt to yell at underlings to do something.

Preston blusters and berates his way through more exposition and back story as his meek and harried press secretary Longbarrow (Michael Ripper) twists himself into a pretzel trying to keep up with his boss's demands. It seemed to take forever in my teen hormone-clouded mind for the film to just get to the expedition camp, where the search party headed up by Preston arrives just in time to learn that they've finally found the lost tomb of the benighted Egyptian prince Kah-to-Bey (played in the pre-titles sequence by Toolsie Persaud).

Longbarrow (Michael Ripper) tries to ingratiate himself with his irate boss.

After being threatened by the sinister self-appointed keeper of the tomb Hasmid (Roger Delgado), the expedition leader, Sir Basil Walden (Andre Morell), wants to be cautious, but the arrogant money-man Preston forces the issue and gets the excavation going pronto, little knowing that he is sealing his, and the expedition's, doom.

Some 45 long minutes into the film, the mummy of the Prince's manservant Prem (played in the prologue by Dickie Owen; the mummy is played by Eddie Powell), finally gets around to his bloody avenging of the tomb's desecration, jump-started by Hasmid's malevolent ministrations.

Okay, so at this point the film goes on to do a credible job of building suspense and an impending sense of doom with the giant mummy lurking in every dark corner of the old city, but man, there's a ton of exposition and dialog to get through first!

Fast forward to 2019, when I was bit by the Hammer mummy bug after a rewatch of the original 1959 reboot. Being the red-haired stepchild of Hammer's mummy series, The Mummy's Shroud seemed to have successfully eluded any streaming services, so I took advantage of a classic horror convention I was attending to secure a DVD copy.

Far older and somewhat more mature, I was more receptive to the character development in the first part of the film that my younger self saw as an unforgivable delay in getting to the good stuff. But it wasn't John Phillips bloviating as Preston that got my attention, so much as master character actor Michael Ripper's wonderful performance as the put-upon factotum Longbarrow.

They never learn. That thing is going to start walking, and it's not going to be pretty.

At this point in Hammer's filmography, Ripper was a very familiar face, popping up in seemingly everything bearing the Hammer name. Many of his appearances were brief, but they were always memorable. Complementing the exotic classiness of stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Ripper specialized in rough and tumble working class characters, from barkeepers to coachmen to day laborers. He was a relatable everyman who provided a bit of comic relief or a simple, common sense perspective in Hammer's world of monsters and swashbucklers (for more on Ripper and his extensive career, see my friend Barry's tribute to the versatile character actor over at Cinematic Catharsis).

His portrayal of Longbarrow in Shroud is something of a departure -- in the film he is dapper in a linen suit, complete with immaculate hair and pince-nez glasses (not to mention this is one of his heftier roles). At the beginning of the film Preston refers to Longbarrow as his press secretary, but like many underlings of the capricious rich, he has a boatload of "other duties as assigned," arranging hotel accommodations, getting together search parties, booking passage on ships, ad nauseum.

Ripper's poor, harried character doesn't even merit a first name, and the name he does answer to brings to mind "wheelbarrow" -- appropriate, as Preston seems to only see him as an expendable tool to haul around his baggage, real and metaphorical.

Ripper is a wonder to behold, at one and the same time meek, unctuous and efficient; one moment smiling in self satisfaction at a job well done and the next knitting his brow in worry that his master is displeased.

As the expedition members start to get picked off one by one, Preston's former brash self confidence collapses into gnawing fear, and he instructs his flunky to book passage for he and his wife on the next steamship out of Dodge -- against the explicit instructions of the Egyptian police inspector to stay put until the murders are cleared up. You can see the wheels turning under Longbarrow's brow as he wonders, "are you taking me with you?" and we're relieved for the worried assistant as Preston begrudgingly tells him he can book for himself as well.

"I can't take you with me Longbarrow, but here, get yourself something nice out of the hotel vending machine."

Alas, the police get wind of Preston's plan to escape and shuts it down. When yet another expedition member, the photographer, is burned to death in his hotel room, the financier goes into full panic mode and commands poor Longbarrow to get up in the dead of night to make arrangements for the first ship out of port. When Longbarrow realizes that his boss won't be taking him along after all, the look of grief and disappointment on his face is heart rending. And, without spoiling too much, the pitiful assistant's fate is so very, very undeserved (but at least there's some justice in the Mummy universe -- Preston pays dearly for being Preston as the film draws to a close).

I would be remiss not to mention two other supporting actors who help elevate the film from a trite snoozefest to something that, for all its faults, bears a rewatch. Elizabeth Sellars plays Preston's elegantly cool and composed wife, Barbara, who for most of the film keeps to the background with a detached, slightly bemused smile as her husband grandstands and sucks the air out of every room he's in.

"Whoa Preston, you're way too tense! Here, let me give you a shoulder rub..."

With nothing more than subtle facial expressions and some offhand comments, Sellars makes it clear that her character has calculated the trade off she has made -- affluence at the cost of living with a horse's ass -- and decided it was a bad bargain. When her panicked husband tells her to pack up, that they're leaving Egypt, she calmly tells him she's not going. "I'll be alright," she icily informs him. "After all, I didn't enter the tomb." Ouch!

Mirroring Barbara Preston's icy contempt, but hiding that contempt behind a twisted, toothless grin and a cackling, menacing laugh, is Catherine Lacey as Haiti, Hasmid's fortune-telling mother and prophetess of doom for the expedition members. Looking like a prototypical refugee from a central European gypsy camp and armed with a stage prop crystal ball, Lacey complements Sellars' cool detachment, her eyes glinting with mischievous glee at the terrible fates of the English interlopers.

Some viewers will chuckle as Haiti keeps tabs on the tomb defilers by watching their movements on the crystal ball as if it were a TV monitor. But there is one chillingly effective scene with the prop, when Sir Basil, exhausted and on the run from authorities who want to commit him to an asylum, encounters Haiti. Told that he has mere seconds to live by the malevolent soothsayer, Basil blinks wearily as he looks at the crystal ball and sees the cloudy reflection of the mummy creeping up behind him.

Haiti and Hasmid are hoping there's a DoorDash delivery in their near future.

If you need someone to blame, or alternately, compliment for The Mummy's Shroud, John Gilling, who directed and wrote the screenplay from a story by producer Anthony Hinds, is your man. The previous year, Gilling had helmed two Hammer horrors, The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies, filming them back to back at Bray Studios for budget savings. Although not involving popular characters like Frankenstein or Dracula, over the years the two films have acquired a loyal cult following. An earlier Gilling-directed horror film, The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), starring Peter Cushing, is a very good adaptation of the infamous Burke and Hare murderous grave robbers story (see my review here).

While Shroud is nowhere near the top of Gilling's resume, it does represent the end of an era for Hammer, as it was their last film shot at Bray Studios, which had been home to the company for 16 creative and lucrative years.

Another notable feature is the mummy itself. According to Hammer historians Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes, the creature was based on "a genuine relic resident in the British Museum's Egypt rooms of a later, Roman-era body. Its impressive demise, wherein the creature claws away at its own, disintegrating head, was filmed in Les Bowie's Slough studio. It was assistant Ian Scoones' gloved hands that crumbled a dummy wax head filled with fuller's earth, paint dust, and a prop skeleton." [Hearn and Barnes, The Hammer Story: The Authorized History of Hammer Films, Titan Books, 2007, p. 115]

If you haven't seen The Mummy's Shroud (and there's no reason you should have), it still presents challenges to the curious who want to check it out. It doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere, but there are DVD and Blu-ray copies available for those who have some spare change lying around. If you're a Mummy or Hammer completist, you definitely will want to take a look. Or maybe you're a Michael Ripper fan, and want to see him at the top of his game in one of his very best and most poignant Hammer roles. Whatever the reason, "beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet" (as the tagline goes) as you mount your own expedition to unearth The Mummy's Shroud.

In addition to the requisite avenging mummy, The Mummy's Shroud features a fictional ancient Egyptian history lesson.

Suboptimal Summer Vacations: Special Giant Monster Edition

Summer vacations aren't what they used to be. A number of unfortunate developments -- sky high fuel prices, increasingly severe weather, arbitrarily canceled flights, crumbling roads and infrastructure, ad nauseum -- have coalesced into a perfect storm that has blown away all the joy and relaxation of the vacation season and replaced it with anxiety and disappointment.

When I was a kid, road trips were all the rage. We'd stuff the station wagon full of luggage, games and picnic lunches and take off for the lake, or some attraction that was far enough away to feel exotic, but not so far as to let the delicate micro-ecosystem of the family break down.

In those days, disappointment was stopping to eat a boring picnic lunch instead of partaking of a real, sit-down restaurant. Today, it's being stranded at the airport at 2 am after your flight has been cancelled, with the food court long closed and nowhere to go.

If it's any consolation, the denizens of the sibling universe adjacent to our own, where monsters are the norm and not just an occasional aberration, also struggle with a variety of issues when they attempt to take hard-earned vacations. And sometimes the setbacks are truly humongous.

The Rhedosaurus was peeved that he was too tall for the Coney Island roller coaster.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953).

Godzilla had been looking forward all winter to a relaxing cruise, but was furious when he realized that the ship was way too small.
Godzilla 2000 (1999)

Gargantua cursed the slow-as-molasses TSA security line when he realized he had missed his flight.
The War of the Gargantuas (1966)

The 50 Foot Woman was so disappointed with her hotel accommodations, instead of trashing them on Yelp, she decided to just trash the hotel itself.
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)

Ebirah was outraged when he traveled all the way to Australia for a cookout, only to learn that the main course was shrimp on the barbie.
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966)

Gorgo was looking forward to his first visit to the circus, until he discovered he was the main attraction.
Gorgo (1961)

The Colossal Man was sure he would win big in Vegas, but instead he lost his shirt.
The Amazing Colossal Man (1957)

The Little Old Horror Convention from Pasadena: Monsterpalooza 2026

Okay, so Monsterpalooza is not little (it features hundreds of vendors and exhibits and scores of celebrity guests and panels), nor is it old (unless you think 10 years is getting up there; it's been doing its thing in Pasadena since 2016). What it definitely is for me is accessible, being just a few hours drive from where I live. (For more background on the convention see my post from 2023.)

 

I'm not an inveterate convention goer like some people I know, but neither am I abstemious, having been to 4 horror and fantasy conventions since 2019.

Monsterpalooza skews to a relatively younger audience of 30 and 40 somethings, and it specializes in showcasing practical special effects and makeup, attracting a lot of artists and shops from the greater Los Angeles area.

This year's convention, held at the Pasadena convention Center on May 29-31, also catered to moldy old Monster Kids like myself, with a panel celebrating the 95th anniversary of Universal's Frankenstein and Dracula, a tribute to suit actor, superfan and original Monster Kid Bob Burns, and a talk on the career of Peter Lorre, among others.

Here are highlights from the panels and talks I managed to attend over the three day run (in chronological order):

Paul Williams

At the venerable age of 85, Oscar and Grammy winning composer, songwriter and actor Paul Williams looks like a spry, benevolent leprechaun who has just discovered a pot of gold and wouldn't mind sharing some of it. Williams did share some gold with the audience, in the form of stories from nearly six decades of involvement with the music and entertainment industries.

Williams touched on some very personal career highlights in the hour long interview and audience QandA. He quipped that working with Jim Henson and the Muppets on The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie (1979) was like "being with a bunch of buddies in a tree house." He also poignantly described being inspired by the desert of the American Southwest, and the aspirations of a "land-locked" bird, in writing Gonzo's song, "I'm Going to go Back There Someday" for The Muppet Movie (at first Henson passed on the song, but then changed his mind and told Williams that he would create a scene for it).

Of course, this being Monsterpalooza, a couple of audience members were dressed up as the Phantom of the Paradise (1974), and questions about that production inevitably came up (Williams wrote the music for the film and co-starred as the villain). When asked what it was like working with the Phantom William Finley, Williams complimented his co-star on the pathos that Finley could express with just his one eye visible behind the mask he wore.

Williams also fondly recalled the time he went from the set of Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) to appear on the Tonight Show and engage with Johnny Carson in full Orangutan makeup and costume.

Sybil Danning

Austrian born Sybil Danning was the definitive B movie action heroine of the '80s. In that decade, the statuesque blonde star intimidated and fought opponents in outer space (Battle Beyond the Stars), ancient Rome (The Seven Magnificent Gladiators), the jungle (Jungle Warriors), and gritty urban streets (L.A. Bounty), among other things.

Danning talked about starting out as a model in the late '60s, which resulted in her screen debut as the folklore character Lorelei in a cheap German exploitation film. Just a few years later, she secured a role in the Richard Burton horror-thriller oddity Bluebeard (1972), as well as in Richard Donner's epic hits The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), where she became good friends with Geraldine Chaplin.

Although not realizing it at the time, Danning's role as the "Valkyrie" warrior Saint Exmin in Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars would establish her credentials as an action heroine and typecast her for the next decade. She said Corman was great to work for, but he could be tough, especially when money was at stake -- he fired an actor who kept muffing his lines and causing retake after retake. She is also proud that her iconic performance inspired a Saint Exmin action figure (although to date, it's the only action figure based on one of her characters).

Danning also spoke of the great respect she had for Christopher Lee by the time they made Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (they had made four films together prior to that, including the Donner Musketeer movies). The production was located in the former Czechoslavkia; when the director received his "werewolf" costumes from the producers in the U.S., he was dismayed to find recycled ape costumes from a Planet of the Apes movie. To transform the characters into werewolves, they had to improvise and painstakingly apply small hair appliances over the face and body to achieve the effect, which took hours. Danning reports Lee as being impressed by her stamina and professionalism in submitting to long hours in the makeup chair.

Sybil Danning talks about her co-star Christopher Lee.

Bob Burns Tribute

Bob Burns, who passed away at the age of 90 last December, was a TV and film editor, a special effects designer and gorilla suit actor par excellence (one of his claims to fame was portraying Tracy the gorilla, the sidekick to Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch in the mid-70s TV show Ghostbusters). Bob and his wife Kathy were huge monster and sci-fi movie fans who used their industry connections to rescue props, set pieces and other paraphernalia that had been used in many productions over the years.

Bob and Kathy's famous basement collection included the armature used to animate the first King Kong, the time machine from the George Pal film, and the original wolf's head cane from The Wolf Man (1941), among other amazing finds.

A large panel of movie industry professionals, including makeup maestro and 7 time Oscar winner Rick Baker, paid affectionate tribute to Bob and Kathy as photo after photo of their joyful life, surrounded by human and monster friends, were projected on the backdrop screen. Baker related how he met the Burnses when he was just 13, and hung around with them so much that he considered them his second parents. Bob gave Rick encouragement even as others were saying how impossible it was going to be for him to get into the movie business.

Various panel members related how modest and generous Bob was, contributing a large amount of his time to helping out friends such as special effects and suit designer Paul Blaisdell on his creations, while taking no credit. They also related a story about Bob asking 20th Century Fox for some memorabilia from the Alien movies, and the studio responding by delivering a semi-truck full of props and sets to his door.

The panel also reminisced about how for many years Bob and Kathy would stage elaborate Halloween shows at their house, enlisting technicians, effects people and actors to help them recreate scenes from such films as The Exorcist, War of the Worlds, and Alien. Besides the basement museum, it was another fun, imaginative way for the Burnses to give back to their community.

Dracula and Frankenstein Turn 95

While much of Monsterpalooza is dedicated to later horror fare of the 90s and beyond, this year the organizers enlisted a panel to celebrate the 95th birthday of the Universal monsters that started it all. Julian David Stone, author of It's Alive (2022), a fictionalization of the making of Universal's Frankenstein, led the discussion with co-panelists Antonia Carlotta, host of the YouTube vodcast Universally Me and a descendant of Carla Laemmle, niece of Universal Head Carl Laemmle, and Scott Essman, director, producer, writer and film historian.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on a number of topics and intriguing facts surrounding the production of the the two films and the huge impact they had on the industry:

• Carl Laemmle Sr. made Carl Junior head of Universal's film production at the tender age of 21.
• The father was not a big fan of what came to be known as horror, but gave his son latitude to make his impact.
• Lon Chaney Sr., who was a huge star of the silent era, was slated to appear as Dracula, but died before production could start. Lugosi, who had played Dracula on Broadway and added exotic sexual chemistry to the role, got the nod over more familiar and popular actors. 
• Makeup artist Jack Pierce was disappointed when he found out that Lugosi would be doing his own makeup on the film, but he would soon have his chance to pull out all the stops in creating the look for the Frankenstein monster. 
• Dracula was ground-breaking in that the title character was truly supernatural in origin; prior fright films and villains had been thoroughly grounded in the "real" world, with prosaic explanations for seeming supernatural events.
• Frankenstein was originally slated to be directed by French expatriate Robert Florey with the new hit star Bela Lugosi as the monster. Stories circulated that Florey's test footage with Lugosi did not go well (none of the footage has survived). Meanwhile, Laemmle Sr. was so impressed by James Whale's success with Waterloo Bridge (1931) that he promised him any project of his choosing, and Whale took on Frankenstein.
• The story goes that Whale spotted Boris Karloff in the Universal commissary, on break from a small role in another movie, and quickly realized he had his monster.
• When Jack Pierce and Boris Karloff were at an impasse as to how to make the monster appear more frightening, Karloff suggested making his eyelids droop more severely, and Pierce used mortician's wax to achieve the effect.
• Frankenstein, which had its world premier in Santa Barbara toward the end of 1931, was an even greater hit than Dracula. Other studios realized they needed to jump on the bandwagon. Paramount, which had passed on Dracula, started production of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde with Frederic March (who would win the Oscar for best actor for that role). 
• MGM's Irving Thalberg reportedly demanded his writers come up with something more disturbing than Dracula. The result, Todd Browning's Freaks (1932), was too disturbing for 1930s audiences and ended up being a huge money loser for MGM (which promptly suppressed it for decades after).

Panelists discuss Universal's one-two punch of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931.

Other Panels

• Peter Lorre: Master of Menace. Karie Bible, tour guide at the Hollywood Forever cemetery (where Mr. Lorre is interred) and Dawn Fratini, film historian, gave a lively talk about the life and film career of one of the great character actors of the 20th century. They showed clips from some of his more notable films, including Fritz Lang's M (1931; featuring Lorre in a breakout role as a child murderer), The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), The Raven (1963), and an assortment of cartoons in which Lorre voiced characters based on his iconic looks. 
• Planet Terror. Actor Freddy Rodriguez and FX master and actor Tom Savini reunited to reminisce about the making of the apocalyptic zombie movie. The 2007 film was produced by Quentin Tarantino and released on a double feature with Death Proof (starring Kurt Russell) to recreate the 1970s grindhouse theater experience. They played multiple clips from the movie, including one where Rodriguez whips a gun around at lightning speed, sharpshooter style (which Rodriguez said took months of practice to perfect). 
     Savini paid his co-star a great compliment, saying he was sure at the time that Rodriguez would become the next popular action hero, but the films flopped, much to the consternation of everyone involved. Savini speculated that the order in which the films were screened as a double feature, with frenetically-paced Planet Terror coming first, followed by Death Proof, a thriller that takes some time to ramp up the action, contributed to audiences rejecting both films.

The teeming crowds and enthusiastic panel audiences at the Pasadena Convention Center proved that the classic monsters could cohabitate with the likes of Michael Myers and Art the Clown, if only for a weekend.

Gallery of Monsterpalooza Photos

Ray Harryhausen's creations live again at the Monsterpalooza museum.

This creature needs no introduction.

A waxwork Bob Burns in his Tracy the Gorilla suit.

A Comedy of Terrors.

Even monsters need to keep up with their social media accounts.

Dead Guys & Dolls: The Dead Don't Die

Now Playing: The Dead Don't Die (TV Movie; 1975)

Pros: Creates an atmosphere of darkness and dread in various spots; Some well-executed, spooky sequences.
Cons: The film's protagonist is miscast, and some veteran actors are wasted in small roles; awkward use of clunky expository dialog.

Okay, so I'm a sucker for the made-for-TV horror and sci-fi movies of the 70s. Life was good back then -- my parents broke down and got a color TV, so I could enjoy my favorite late night horror hosts, The Ghoul and Hoolihan and Big Chuck, in living color as they broadcast from the great metropolis of Cleveland.

When I wasn't looking forward to the hosted horror shows, the networks were tantalizing me with their movie of the week offerings that so often included horror, mystery-thrillers and sci-fi. The network execs had finally figured out that broadcasting movies in prime time could be lucrative, and by the early '70s, their own made-for-TV features were capturing eyeballs and in some cases generating eye-popping ratings. For example, as the vampire Janos Skorzeny was draining the blood of Las Vegans in the original airing of The Night Stalker in 1972, he was also racking up a 33.2 rating and 54 share -- monstrously large ratings almost unheard of for scripted TV at the time. Fortunately, the Night Stalker's success guaranteed that there would be many more TV fright features to come.

When I started this blog with the mission to revisit the nearly forgotten B horror and sci-fi flicks of my misspent youth, made-for-TV fright fare was in the mix, but my go-to titles were the generally low hanging fruit of things already in my DVD collection or readily available in cheap public domain collections. Over the years, the list of TV movies available on demand has grown exponentially, especially on YouTube (and with an honorable mention nod to Tubi). It's almost to the point that if you can remember it, you can watch it -- just don't expect a pristine copy in all cases. As a result, I've been wandering the made-for-TV corridors more and more: sample some of the posts here.

FYI, the subject of today's post is not one of those movies I recall fondly from my days in front of the Magnavox console TV. Somehow, The Dead Don't Die flew over my head, under my radar, and around whatever TV guide I was using, because I was completely unaware of the existence of this movie until recently. To further obscure matters, it shares a title with with the very peculiar Jim Jarmusch zombie film starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver (itself rapidly receding from collective memory, as it did not connect with audiences).

I think I was looking up the Jarmusch film when I stumbled, zombie-like, across a reference to the 1975 film and became intrigued. The cast was certainly interesting, with veterans Ray Milland, Ralph Meeker and Joan Blondell, eye candy in the persons of Linda Cristal and George Hamilton, and the always creepy character actor Reggie Nalder mixing things up in a horror tale set in 1930s Chicago.

"What's not to like?" I thought to myself (readers of this blog will probably understand, if not necessarily members of the population at large). Well, to trot out a time-worn cliche, the result is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Some of the parts are reasonably effective and atmospheric, but we'll get to that in short order.

George "Crispy Colonel" Hamilton plays Don Drake, a sailor who has taken leave to visit his brother, who unfortunately is on death row for the murder of his wife. Before being executed in Old Sparky, the brother (Jerry Douglas) swears his innocence and gets Don to promise that he will find the real murderer and clear his name.

Don is no private investigator, but reasonably, he starts his quest at the scene of the crime -- the Loveland Ballroom, where brother Ralph and his wife had been participating in a dance marathon, and where he had been found passed out in a back room next to his wife's body.

The ballroom owner Jim Moss (Ray Milland) is cooperative and sympathetic, even giving Don the money that his brother had earned in the competition. Something seems off however, when one of the near walking dead marathon contestants drops in a heap on the floor, and Moss roughly tells his attendants to get her out of there before genially resuming his conversation with Don. (For the uninitiated, dance marathons that lasted for days on end were an exploitative fad in the grim days of the the Great Depression, with desperate contestants willing to literally run themselves into the ground for the slim hope of winning prize money. They figure prominently in the celebrated novel and film adaptation of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. The backdrop of the marathon in The Dead Don't Die helps set up its dark atmosphere and prefigures later developments.)

Don Drake (George Hamilton) has a conversation with ballroom owner Jim Moss (Ray Milland) as dance marathon contestants shuffle around like zombies in the background.

Moss sends Don on his way by suggesting he track down Frankie, the trainer who found Ralph with his wife's body -- although Frankie has mysteriously disappeared. At Ralph's gravesite, Don is shadowed by a mysterious and beautiful woman dressed in black. As Don is dining at his hotel, the mystery woman, Vera LaVelle (Linda Cristal), approaches Don and begs him to leave Chicago immediately for his own good. As they're conversing, Don glances out the window and sees what he thinks is his brother Ralph standing in the street.

Linda Cristal as Vera LaVelle looks absolutely funereal. 

Don rushes outside, following Ralph to a shop door, where he disappears. Don barges into the place, an antiques shop, where he is confronted by an old woman, Levenia (Joan Blondell) and the creepy-looking shop owner Perdido (Reggie Nalder). They insist no one came into the shop. Convinced they're hiding something, Don struggles with Perdido, who hits his head hard as the pair fall to the floor. Levenia insists Don has killed Perdido, and while he's looking for signs of life, the woman brains him with a lamp.

Don regains consciousness at Vera's place. The next morning, Don discovers Vera hurriedly packing to leave. She pulls a gun on him, which he grabs. Vera tells the disbelieving sailor that he is in grave danger from Varek, a voodoo zombie master who is enslaving the dead for his own evil purposes.

When Don insists upon meeting Varek, the pair take a cab to a funeral home (an appropriate enough place for a zombie-maker to hang out). The attending undertaker has never heard the name Varek, but directs Don to a room where Perdido's body is on display. As Don approaches the body in the casket, a hideous, rasping voice that seems to be coming from the body identifies itself as Varek, whereupon  the corpse reaches out and grabs Don by the throat.

Tearing himself away, Don is aghast as the dead (?) Perdido climbs out of the coffin and shambles toward him. The panicked man fires several shots into Perdido, to no avail, and then flees the room. 

Perdido (Reggie Nalder) decides to get up and greet the mourners at his own funeral.

Don breathlessly reports the strange events to Lt. Reardon (Ralph Meeker) at the local police station, who wearily decides he has to check it out. At the antiques shop Don is shocked to see that Perdido is very much alive and kicking. Reardon figures he's got a nutcase on his hands.

WARNING: Before you scroll zombie-like to the next paragraph be aware that there are spoilers ahead.

Before all is said and done and the last zombie has stopped shambling, our intrepid protagonist

• has another encounter with Vera, who tells him that she is one of Varek's zombies sent to kill him, but she has broken the Master's spell by falling in love;
• travels with Moss to the cemetery where Ralph is buried to dig up his body;
• is saved from another zombie attack by Frankie the trainer, who reveals that it is he who actually killed Ralph's wife while under Varek's spell;
• finally confronts the Zombie Master in an abandoned warehouse (that also doubles as a zombie cold storage unit), and learns of his plan to use a zombie army to take control of the city and eventually the world.

Ray Milland makes a wardrobe and attitude adjustment for the final act of the film.

If this sounds to you like an overheated Poverty Row B programmer on the order of something like King of the Zombies (1941), with a mad zombie-maker hell bent on world domination, you're not far off. The Dead Don't Die also indulges in a few film noir cliches, including a protagonist on a mission to clear a loved one's name, and a femme fatale who can't decide whether to kill him or kiss him. The plethora of scenes that take place in the dead of night further enhances the noirish atmosphere. 

The 1930s setting is somewhat curious -- the plot could just have easily fit into a contemporary setting. One wonders if the producers had ready access to period sets and costumes and chose the time period to set it off from the other TV movies that were being churned out. On the other hand, the Depression-era dance marathon, with its weary, desperate contestants shuffling like zombies around the dance floor, nicely foreshadows events to come.

Don's unjustly executed brother Ralph (Jerry Douglas) is somewhat miffed at being used as an unwitting pawn.

Unfortunately, fighting against the film's dark atmosphere is the casting of George Hamilton, whose fabulous California tan sticks out like a bronzed sore thumb in a night world populated with pallid zombies. Hamilton could be effective with the right material -- see my post on The Power (1967 -- but in this he wears a constant pained expression as he stumbles around, dazed and confused (at least his pencil mustache fits with the time period).

Playing coy with the villain role is veteran Ray Milland, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend (1945), and in The Dead Don't Die portrays a madman drunk on power. Milland was one of those actors who didn't know how to quit working, and consequently over the years appeared in many beloved B horror and sci-fi movies, including X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963; see my post here) and The Thing with Two Heads (1972), among many others. 

The director, Curtis Harrington, recalled how he offered on the set to burnish Milland's image, but the old pro would have none of it:

"Ray Milland was well past his Academy Award-winning days, but I felt very privileged to work with such a distinguished actor. He was still very handsome and would have looked even more so if he had allowed us to put a toupee on him. But his attitude was the he should be accepted as he was, so he played the part entirely bald. He was open to accepting whatever parts came his way at this point in his career. He told me that he had been talking to his friend James Stewart, who expressed envy at the fact that Ray was working and he was not. James Stewart was still the bigger star, and I doubt anyone would have had the temerity to offer him a part in an ordinary television show." [Curtis Harrington, Nice Guys Don't Work in Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Business, Drag City Incorporated, 2013, p. 172.]

Don Drake finally gets it: the dead really don't die.

Harrington also employed two other veterans, Joan Blondell and Ralph Meeker, presumably for their name value, but both are wasted in bit parts. Joan is just an appendage to Reggie Nalder's character Perdido, but at least as an actress whose heyday was in the '30s, she fits into the period ambience.

Meeker, who was so intense as PI Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955), is reduced 20 years later to playing a stereotypical Irish cop whose function is to give the protagonist the stinkeye when he insists that there are dead guys walking around. 

Whatever chills The Dead Don't Die manages to conjure up is entirely due to boogeyman Reggie Nalder's presence. The Austrian-born actor suffered facial burns as a young man, which contributed to a distinctive, gaunt look that made him a natural for certain parts, especially menacing ones. Nalder appeared in a small but key role in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and is perhaps best known for his work in the infamous exploitation film Mark of the Devil (1970), as well as for the Nosferatu-like vampire in the mini-series Salem's Lot (1979).

My heart would leap for joy when I saw ads like this.

For better or worse, Nalder didn't need much makeup to look like a walking corpse. The scene in which Varek's rasping voice seems to be coming from Perdido's dead body lying in the coffin, its mouth stretched back in a deathly rictus, induces real goosebumps. Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the producers recycled Perdido footage in a later nightmare sequence, which ends with a hackneyed shot of a hand breaking through the cemetery dirt to clutch Don's ankle.

Less effective in her part is leading zombie lady Linda Cristal. She starts out mysterious and enigmatic, but the Argentinian actress struggles with her thick accent in relating her incredible and complicated backstory to the disbelieving protagonist. Her character's final exit should have been one of the film's highlights, but crude practical effects and editing veer it into unintentional comedy. Let's just say that the scene brings new meaning to the phrase, "smoldering looks."

Suspense and horror master Robert "Psycho" Bloch wrote the teleplay from his short story. With its clueless, meandering protagonist and clunky expository dialog that slows down the proceedings, the film is not a highlight in the esteemed author's resume. Bloch would go on to contribute better material to such classic TV anthology shows as Boris Karloff's Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hammer's Journey to the Unknown, Night Gallery, and Tales from the Darkside, among others. Bloch himself quipped, "Two years later we [Curtis Harrington] teamed up again for another TV movie, The Dead Don't Die. Maybe they don't but the show did." [RobertBloch.net]

The film may not have been a hit at the time, but over the years it has refused to die, clawing itself out of the grave of forgotten TV movies and into places like YouTube with the help of appreciative fans. If only for corpse-like Reggie Nalder menacing some familiar veteran actors, you should check it out.