Jules Verne: Master of the Science Fiction World

Now Playing: Master of the World (1961)

Pros: Vincent Price and Charles Bronson give solid performances; The Albatross airship is impressive in exterior shots; Presents some interesting moral quandaries.
Cons: Cheap production values; Weak direction and editing; Comic relief scenes fall flat.

Note: I am participating for the second straight year in the "Classic Literature on Film Blogathon" hosted by Paul Batters at his Silver Screen Classics blog. Do the classy thing and after you finish this post, head on over there for some great perspectives on the always tricky business of adapting literary works to film. (If you're curious about what I did last year, see my post on Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables.)

As I write this, NASA engineers are preparing for the first ever helicopter flight over the surface of Mars. To commemorate this interplanetary aviation first, they installed a small piece of fabric from the Wright brothers’ original airplane on the Ingenuity helicopter. Which is appropriate, since this new pioneering flying machine looks a little like something cobbled together by two guys in their bicycle shop.

"Mars base here, the Mosquito has landed!"

It’s weird to imagine such a frail-looking contraption zooming over the surface of Mars (knock on wood that all goes well). The nerdy kid in me is tempted to think, “good grief, this is 2021, shouldn’t we be zipping from one Mars colony to another in hovercraft by now?”

On the other hand, there’s something mind blowing about operating a remote control helicopter on another planet.

I’m also tempted to think that Jules Verne, the venerable pioneer of science fiction, would have approved. Much like what the NASA people are doing, Verne used his fertile imagination to take the existing technology of the day, fiddle with it, and apply it in ways no one had thought of before.

Jules Verne, circa 1856

In From the Earth to the Moon (1865), he imagined a colossal cannon firing a manned projectile to the moon. In Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) his protagonist Phileas Fogg races across the globe on a bet, using the era's new transcontinental railroads and steamers. Ditto for submarines, where he extrapolated from the day’s primitive semi-submersibles to a powerful, spacious vessel that could travel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870). [Editor's note: embarrassingly, my original summary of Around the World in Eighty Days confused the movie's premise with the novel's; I have corrected it.] 

Which brings us to Master of the World (1904) and Robur, the conqueror of heavier-than-air flight. The brilliant inventor actually figures in two Verne novels. Robur The Conqueror and his awesome aircraft The Albatross made their debut in 1886. In that novel Robur hijacks several influential members of the Weldon Institute, who had insisted that heavier-than-air flight would never be feasible, and makes believers out of them.

Robur returned in spectacular fashion in Master of the World, considerably upping the ante with a craft dubbed the Terror, capable of tremendous speeds on land, on and under the sea, and in the air.

With Disney having scored big with its lavish production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1954, it was a sure bet that Robur would get his chance to do for the skies what Captain Nemo did for the seas on the silver screen.

American International Pictures (AIP), no doubt recognizing an opportunity to piggyback off of Disney’s success, teamed up with Alta Vista Productions to create their own megalomaniacal captain. They combined the two Robur novels and made the character a Nemo-esque fanatic who uses his formidable airship to try to enforce world peace. Master of the World took its maiden flight in theaters in 1961.

AIP tapped Vincent Price, fresh off his role as Roderick Usher in Roger Corman's House of Usher (1960), to play Robur. With his imposing stature and aristocratic demeanor, Price was a natural for the part. To add to the bigger than life effect, Price was outfitted with a tropical white suit, a full beard, and huge, Mephistophelian eyebrows. (The intimidation factor is mitigated, however, by Robur’s crumpled captain’s hat, which looks a bit like the Skipper’s from Gilligan’s Island.)

"You starched my underwear again, didn't you?"

The film opens with a couple of citizens of Morgantown, PA, circa 1868, complaining about how their town is the most boring in the entire country. Right on cue, the ground shakes, thunder sounds, and eerie lights are seen over a nearby mountain. A booming, god-like voice is heard over the cacophony: “Harken ye people… for the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies… he shall utterly destroy them.”

Cut to a meeting of the Weldon Balloon Society in Philadelphia, where John Strock (Charles Bronson), an operative for the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, is watching a debate between Mr. Prudent  (Henry Hull), a wealthy arms manufacturer, and Phillip Evans (David Frankham), over whether a propeller should be placed in the front or the rear of a modified manned balloon.

Strock is there to commission the Society’s balloon to fly over the Pennsylvania mountain in an attempt to find out what was behind the weird events. The three men and Prudent’s attractive and spirited daughter Dorothy (Mary Webster) take off in the supposedly state-of-the-art balloon. As they float over the site, a rocket suddenly shoots out from a crater at the mountain’s summit, grazing the craft and forcing it down.

Prudent, the pompous industrialist, is master of all he surveys...
until he meets Robur the Conquerer.

Knocked unconscious by the crash, the four wake up to find themselves in what appears to be a spacious and well-appointed sailing ship. The befuddled group is taken by a crewmember to meet Robur, who calmly informs them that they are aboard an enormous airship, the Albatross, 150 feet long by 20 wide, weighing several tons, and capable of speeds up to 150 mph.

Robur takes the group on a tour, proudly explaining that the Albatross is powered by electricity generated by “dense metals cutting through magnetic force lines,” and that to save weight, the ship is largely made out of extruded straw paper mixed with clay and dextrin.

Prudent, old school to the core, blusters and snorts in disbelief, but there’s no denying that they’re in an enormous ship flying thousands of feet above the earth. When Prudent challenges Robur to turn himself and his fantastic invention into U.S. authorities, Robur tells him that he will do no such thing, that he is a citizen of the world, loyal to no country. Moreover, he has declared war on war, and intends to use his ship to force the world’s nations to disarm.

Robur proves that he is in deadly earnest when, as the Albatross is flying across the Atlantic, they encounter an American warship. Through the ship’s voice amplifier Robur warns the crew to abandon ship, but when the warship fires its cannons, he sinks it with some well-placed bombs.

Outraged, Evans and Prudent want to try to escape at the first opportunity, but Strock is skeptical that it can be done. He thinks the better part of valor is to stay onboard and observe Robur and the ship’s capabilities before doing anything rash. Hot-headed Evans accuses Strock of being a coward, or worse yet, a collaborator. But his feelings may have more to do with Dorothy’s obvious attraction to Strock.

The crew of the Weldon Society balloon are a little worse for the wear
after their encounter with one of Robur's rockets.

Eventually, the four prisoners agree to take action against Robur, but before arriving at their do or die moment, they have ringside seats as the madman sinks English warships at harbor near London, and intercedes in a North African war by bombing the two opposing armies.

When Master of the World opened in 1961, ads proclaimed that it was “In the tradition of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Around the World in 80 Days.” To continue the tradition, the producers and screenwriter Richard Matheson took Verne’s Robur, who was primarily concerned with demonstrating his brilliance to lunk-headed skeptics, and turned him into a fanatical Nemo knock-off with far more grandiose plans to make war-loving nations bend to his will.

Unfortunately, AIP’s ambitions far exceeded its resources. Cheapness rears its ugly head at every turn through the film’s 102 minute run time. In the opening scene, Robur’s god-like demonstration at the Pennsylvania mountain features a particularly unconvincing backdrop painting. Later, paintings rather than models are mainly used as stand-ins for the warships that Robur sinks. Much of the other action and spectacle is accomplished via rear projection or stock footage.

The exterior of the Albatross is impressive enough; the ship is dirigible-shaped with bright orange anthropomorphic suns painted on its sides, large propellers fore and aft, huge fish-like fins at the stern and a small forest of helicopter blades on its topside (not to mention the bomb bay door underneath). But the interiors, with the exception of Robur’s cabin, look more like a 19th century boarding house than a stately clipper of the air (after the Weldon group is abducted but before they figure out what sort of craft they’re being held on, Prudent guesses that it’s a riverboat). An airborne Nautilus it is not.

The Albatross soars over the coast of Ireland.

Moreover, the ambitious premise is frittered away with long stretches of the captives bickering and blustering among themselves, and an unfortunate stab at comic relief featuring the ship’s French chef (Vito Scotti), complete with a comically thick accent, who keeps getting banged in the head with his pots and pans whenever the airship makes sudden maneuvers.

William Witney’s indifferent direction doesn’t help matters. Inexplicably, several exchanges between the protagonists on the exterior deck of the airship are shot with a heavy wire mesh in the foreground (at least Robur was safety-conscious). Witney also has a bad habit of shooting principal characters from the back even as they’re delivering impassioned lines.

Still, I wouldn’t write about Master of the World if there wasn’t something to like. Matheson includes an interesting aviation variant of the cruel sailing tradition of keelhauling. After the captives’ first escape attempt, Robur makes examples of Evans and Strock by tying them up with ropes and lowering them from the bomb bay door. He then proceeds to fly low over a mountain range, to the point where the men have to push off from outcroppings with their feet to avoid being smashed.

The love triangle between Dorothy, Evans and Strock is also a nice touch. Even though Strock saves Evans’ life early on, the simmering tension, which is constantly threatening to erupt into all-out conflict, suggests that Evans might not return the favor when the time comes. Fans of Charles Bronson will appreciate his signature cool, steely resolve, punctuated by an occasional disarming grin, which makes for a good contrast to Evans’ bombastic hotheadedness. (On the other hand, veteran Henry Hull almost comically overplays the gruff Prudent, as if he were delivering his lines in an actual 19th century melodrama.)

Robur contemplates his divine mission to rid the world of war.

The film also greatly benefits from Vincent Price’s nuanced performance. Robur’s mission stems from deep-seated religious convictions. The Albatross is not only a means for him to end war, but is also a sacred sanctuary. Some of the windows on the bridge and in Robur’s stateroom are stained glass, giving the ship a church-like ambience. At one point, Robur clutches a Bible in his hand as he inscrutably gazes down at a globe.

But if you’re going to wage war against war, there are probably going to be internal conflicts. Innocent people die in wars. Robur gives fair warning to the crews of the warships he’s about to sink, but when they fire on the Albatross in self-defense, he grits his teeth and sends the ships straight to the bottom with all hands.

Robur is similarly ambivalent about his captives. He first tries to kill the Weldon group by downing their balloon with a rocket, but then, finding that they’ve survived the crash, brings them aboard the airship and proceeds to play the civilized host.

And even as he decides to “keelhaul” the rebellious Evans and Strock, he’s stricken by a pang of conscience. As the men are dangling precariously beneath the ship, Robur is preoccupied on the bridge. When he realizes that he’s forgotten all about them and they’re in danger of being smashed against the rocks, a look of sheer panic crosses his face and he rushes down to the hold to rescue them.

Charles Bronson and Vincent Price made just two films together:
House of Wax (1953) and Master of the World.

In his detailed review of Master of the World, sci-fi movie historian Bill Warren lauds Price’s performance:

“Vincent Price has one of his best roles as Robur the Conquerer. Although clearly the intent was to create a Nemoesque figure, Price’s Robur is at once more lofty and congenial than Nemo. He’s in love with the Albatross, and delighted to share this love with others; Nemo was jealous of the Nautilus. Price seems more controlled here than in his other AIP films of the time, although his best performances for them would be in the two Corman-Poe films made in England, Masque of the Red Death and Tomb of Ligeia. Price has a strong tendency to go over the top, but keeps it check here, and his Robur is more than adequate, though not as vivid as James Mason’s Nemo.” [Bill Warren, Keep Watching the Skies, Volume II, McFarland, 1986, p. 566]

Apparently Price greatly enjoyed playing Robur. Warren cites a quote of the actor’s in Vincent Price Unmasked (Steven Whitney and James Robert Parrish, Drake Publishers, 1974):

“I loved Master of the World because I thought it had a marvelous moralizing philosophy. I adored it. It was of a man who saw evil and wanted to destroy it. And if that meant the whole world, then it had to go.” [Ibid., p. 566]

Price’s enthusiastic portrayal, combined with Charles Bronson’s solid presence, serves to mitigate, if not overcome, the film’s cheap production values and weak direction. And they’re backed up by the Albatross itself, which is impressive and retro-looking at the same time.

Master of the World pales in comparison to adaptations like Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but it does grapple with some sophisticated ethical and moral quandaries while at the same time providing a thrill or two 6,000 feet above the sea.

Where to find it: Streaming; DVD 

Roger Corman's Price-less Poe Picture

Now Playing: The Premature Burial (1962)

Pros: As usual for a Corman Poe adaptation, the cinematography and production design make for a sumptuous and expensive-looking B-movie.
Cons: Adds a lot of padding to a simple story, resulting in slow pacing and dull stretches; the reveal at the climax is predictable and disappointing.

The idea of being mistaken for dead and buried alive seems so antiquated to us advanced lifeforms living in the 21st century. Medical science has progressed way beyond the hoary old cliches of checking for a pulse and holding a mirror up to the nose to detect a faint breath. We can diagnose brain death now, and all those crude methods for determining death were long ago buried by history and science.

Or so we thought. I don’t want to scare you, but for all our vaunted technology and expertise, misdiagnosed death is still a thing. In 2014, there was a case of a 78 year old hospice patient who was declared dead, only to wake up the next day in a body bag in the morgue. The same year, a woman who was declared brain dead at a New York hospital revived just as she was being prepared for organ harvesting.

Fortunately, such cases of Lazarus Syndrome are rare -- only 38 cases have been reported since the syndrome was first described in the medical literature in 1982. [Honor Whiteman, “The Lazarus Syndrome: When the ‘Dead’ Come Back to Life,” MedicalNewsToday.com, May 2017]

But that’s cold comfort for anyone who has been unlucky enough to be prematurely given up for dead. The same Medical News Today article describes the hair-raising experience of a UK woman with “locked-in syndrome,” a form of catalepsy wherein

“...a patient is aware of their surroundings, but they experience complete paralysis of voluntary muscles, with the exception of muscles that control eye movement.

In 2014, The Daily Mail reported on 39-year-old British woman Kate Allatt, who had locked-in syndrome. Unaware of her condition, doctors declared her brain dead. Medics, family, and friends stood by her bedside and discussed whether or not to switch off her life support. Allatt heard everything, but she was unable to tell them that she was fully conscious.

‘Locked-in syndrome is like being buried alive,” said Allatt. “You can think, you can feel, you can hear, but you can communicate absolutely nothing.’” [Ibid.]

With knowledge of such uncomfortably recent documented cases, the protagonist’s obsession in The Premature Burial becomes more relatable and less dated.

Ray Milland plays a wealthy middle-aged bachelor, Guy Carrell, who lives with his sister Kate (Heather Angel) in a gloomy mansion located in the fog-shrouded countryside somewhere in England. Guy’s mood is as gloomy as his surroundings, as he has recently witnessed the disinterring of a body for medical research purposes. To his horror, he saw that bloody scratches on the inside of the coffin and a look of abject terror frozen on the corpse's face indicated the poor man had been buried alive.

This poor fellow is the star of Premature Burial's pre-titles sequence.

This sends him into a deep depression. When Guy’s beautiful fiancee Emily (Hazel Court) shows up uninvited at the mansion, he tries to send her away, telling her that due to a family curse, they can never be married. It seems that his father was subject to cataleptic episodes, and when Guy was 13, the man slipped into a trance, was declared dead of a heart attack, and was promptly interred in the family vault below the mansion.

That night, Guy heard his father’s cries dimly echoing from the vault, but he couldn’t get anyone to believe him. Guy is morbidly afraid that catalepsy runs in the family, and that at any moment he will have an episode and share his father’s terrible fate. Sister Kate sternly dismisses the notion that their father was buried alive, and Emily is able to convince Guy that he will fare much better with her by his side.

They are soon married, with many well-wishers in attendance, including Emily’s father, Dr. Gideon Gault (Alan Napier) and family friend Miles Archer (Richard Ney). The happy mood is quickly dispelled, however, when the new bride, prompted by the guests, sits down to the piano to play. She picks an old folk tune, Molly Malone, which coincidentally, one of the gravediggers was whistling when they dug up the man who had been buried alive.

Guy and Emily relax by taking a walk in a fog-shrouded cemetery. Uh-huh.

This sets Guy off into another bout of paranoia, and instead of going to Italy on a honeymoon, he uses his time and resources to construct a mausoleum with more fail-safe ways for a misdiagnosed “dead” man to free himself than you can shake a gravedigger’s shovel at.

Emily, chafing at being holed up in the gloomy house with her obsessed husband, teams up with Miles to convince Guy to tear down the mausoleum and free himself of his gnawing fear. But when they try to seal the deal by opening up Guy’s father’s crypt to prove he wasn’t interred alive, it backfires spectacularly, and Guy’s worst nightmare comes true.

All the elements of Roger Corman’s justifiably admired Poe adaptations are present in The Premature Burial (except for one -- Vincent Price -- which we’ll get to in a moment). The lush cinematography was by Floyd Crosby, who had lensed The Pit and the Pendulum the year before and would carry on with The Raven, Tales of Terror, and The Haunted Palace in the next couple of years.

Art director/production designer Daniel Haller was a genius at making Corman’s Poe pictures, budgeted in the mid $100,000s, look like a million bucks (or two).

Two very talented writers contributed the screenplay. In addition to Premature Burial, Charles Beaumont penned The Haunted Palace and The Masque of the Red Death for Corman, as well as some of The Twilight Zone’s most beloved episodes for Rod Serling, before his untimely death in 1967. Ray Russell was also a celebrated master of horror, whose credits include the source novel and screenplay for William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus, and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (a Corman cheapie that has gained an authentic and loyal cult following over the years, and features one of Ray Milland’s best performances).

In spite of all the talent behind it, The Premature Burial suffers from a lack of energy and suspense compared to Corman’s other Poe adaptations. The problem stems partly from the need to pad the main elements from the original short story -- a horrible discovery in a reopened crypt and the building of a “fail-safe” tomb to avoid a similar fate -- with filler to bring it up to feature length.

Raiders of the Lost Tomb, aka Guy and friends and family.

The film passes on too many spine-chilling opportunities. Guy relates a story about hearing his supposedly dead father crying out from the vault, but we don’t hear it directly (unlike Corman’s first Poe film House of Usher, where the audience, along with Roderick, hears his sister scratching and screeching in her tomb). The intermittent use of the Molly Malone tune that sends Guy into paranoid fits doesn’t quite cut it.

Premature Burial uses up most of its energy in a scene where Guy, manic with anxiety, shows off his new mausoleum to Emily and Miles. They stand there gaping as he demonstrates a trick coffin that opens from the inside, a belltower that can be rung by the “dead” man after he’s woken up, an escape hatch on the roof and rope ladder for access, and if all else fails, dynamite to blast the tomb open. And if that fails, there's poison on hand for the ultimate exit. It’s all so elaborate, it would make Wiley Coyote's head spin.

This is quickly followed by an hallucinogenic nightmare sequence in which Guy is trapped in the mausoleum -- seemingly years after he’s been placed there -- and every fail-safe contraption fails spectacularly. That really reminded me of poor Wiley.

Guy's mausoleum is the work of the finest designers on the planet:
Wiley Coyote and Rube Goldberg.

From there, the film grinds down to an ending that, for all its morbid imagery, lacks any real suspense, and features a “twist” that you can see coming for miles.

It’s tempting to conclude that much of the film’s problems lie with the absence of Vincent Price in the title role. Ray Milland was a talented, award-winning actor, and he would prove just how much he could do with a B horror role with his inspired performance in The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. But Price was born to star in Corman’s Poe pictures, and his absence is a letdown. On the other hand, I suspect Vincent would only have made a nominal improvement. The script spends too much time with various characters trying to talk Guy down from his morbid delusions (not to mention the time spent showing off the mausoleum contraptions), and not enough on the horrors that have driven the man to near-insanity in the first place.

Corman wanted to make The Premature Burial with Vincent Price and without the involvement of American International Pictures, but again, like a Roadrunner cartoon, his best laid plans went astray. As Corman biographer Beverly Gray recounts:

[The Premature Burial] was a direct result of the Corman brothers’ [Roger and Gene’s] business relationship with Pathé American. Pathé’s owner, William Zeckendorf, had originally agreed to distribute The Intruder [Roger Corman’s social message movie about racial tensions in the Deep South] in exchange for Roger’s promise to shoot a Poe adaptation for his company. When [AIP head] Sam Arkoff got wind of the arrangement, which threatened the AIP monopoly on the highly lucrative Poe films, he warned that AIP would retaliate by withdrawing its business from Pathé’s respected film laboratory. Zeckendorf capitulated, and Corman was surprised to see Nicholson and Arkoff show up on the set of The Premature Burial, cheerfully informing him that he was once again working for them.” [Beverly Gray, Roger Corman: An Unauthorized Biography of the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking, Renaissance Books, 2000, p. 76]

To add insult to injury, when Corman started the project with Pathé’s backing, Vincent Price’s exclusive contract with AIP prevented him from appearing in the film. AIP took over anyway, and filming went ahead with Milland.

"I'm so glad I went with the sunroof option on this coffin!"

WARNING: AN IMPORTANT PLOT POINT REVEALED BELOW

A redeeming feature of the film is the presence of Hazel Court, who always brought elegance and class to her roles. By this point in her career, Court had established her horror credentials by appearing in Hammer’s groundbreaking Curse of Frankenstein and the less groundbreaking but nonetheless atmospheric The Man Who Could Cheat Death.

On the set of The Premature Burial she was the consummate trouper, to the point that she became uncomfortably familiar with the feeling of actually being buried alive. In her autobiography, Court recalls that she nixed the idea of a stunt double for the climactic scene:

“At the end of the picture, I had to be buried alive. Roger asked me if I would do it or if I would rather have someone double for me. I said, ‘Heavens no! I will do it.’ Well, I lay on the ground, with a straw in my mouth so that I would have air, as they shovelled the earth over me. The straw was removed when the director said ‘Action!’ I was to hold my breath for as long as possible. I made it for over one minute -- long enough to get the shot. As I got to the end of the minute, the pressure on my body began, as the claustrophobia was setting in. It was one hell of an experience.” [Hazel Court, Horror Queen: An Autobiography, Tomahawk Press, 2008, p. 112]

Acknowledging that The Premature Burial was not as successful as the other Poe films, Court offered her own theory.

“Some critics felt it was because Vincent Price wasn’t in it. I felt it might have been because a lot of people have fears of being buried alive -- or of developing the condition of catalepsy in which one would be alive but presumed dead. The film was kind to me, and as I’ve mentioned, a very good part.” [Ibid., p. 115]

Hazel rests after a hard day on the set.

Regardless of its deficiencies -- or its effectiveness in bringing on queasiness at the thought of being buried alive -- The Premature Burial features a talented cast, delivers a couple of morbidly imaginative scenes, and looks absolutely fabulous.

Where to find it: For the moment, The Premature Burial is streaming free for Amazon Prime subscribers, or own it on DVD or Blu-ray with an assortment of interesting extras.  

Monster Trading Cards: Special Accidental Monsters of the ‘50s Edition, Part One

I was going through one of my social media feeds the other day and saw some pics of movie monster trading cards from the ‘60s that triggered a bout of nostalgia. I was pretty sure I had owned a couple of the cards, but there wasn’t a lot of information, so naturally I googled ‘em.

I found a very helpful webpage on vintage monster trading cards from 1959 through the end of the ‘60s (“The 1st Ten Years of Monster Cards”), that helped me identify even more card sets that had gone through my grubby little kid fingers. One that I immediately remembered with great fondness was Leaf’s Spook Theatre, which was issued in two sets between 1962 and ‘65. The Leaf cards featured black & white pictures of (mostly) the classic Universal monsters complete with cheesy gag captions. On the flip side were jokes that were uniformly lame, even for an 8 year old.

Others I remember: Topps’ Outer Limits series, which featured colorized stills of the series’ monsters on the face and mini-stories on the flip side that had nothing to do with the actual episode; and the Mars Attacks cards (also from Topps), which included luridly violent color illustrations and stories to match.

Another card set I distinctly remember that topped (pun intended) Topps’ Mars Attacks series for graphic violence was their Civil War News set, which depicted gross-out scenes of bloody war carnage. The Spook Theatre and Outer Limits cards were innocuous enough, but I don’t think my parents would have approved of the other two sets, so my memory conveniently tells me that I owned a bunch of the former two and I had to rely on the wilder kids in the neighborhood to look at the latter two.

To make a long story short, this jaunt down memory lane inspired me to design my own line of pretend monster trading cards (i.e., not printed, not for sale or other commercial purposes, available freely online to lucky readers of this blog, etc., etc.). For this first set, I decided to feature accidental monsters of ‘50s sci-fi and horror; characters who, by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, become ravening monsters through no fault of their own.

And, in honor of those endearing monster cards of yesteryear, I’ve included dumb captions, monster backstories, and, exclusively for this set, I’ve rated each accidental monster for pathos on a 1 to 5 scale (1 being the least pathetic, 5 the most).

Yeah, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. Anyway, here are the first two in the set of six. Check back here for new cards. Collect ‘em all! (Bubblegum not included.)

The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) is inadvertently caught out in the open during a test of a new plutonium bomb in the Nevada desert. Horribly burned over most of his body, Manning nonetheless survives, and to the amazement of the doctors and his fiancee Carol (Cathy Downs), his wounds heal up overnight! Adding to the medical mystery, he starts growing ten feet a day. Getting enough to eat is the least of the colossal man’s worries, as the doctors discover that his heart is not growing enough to keep an adequate blood supply flowing to the brain. The prognosis: insanity, then death.

With his mind going, Manning escapes from the base and takes a walk over to Las Vegas, where he tears up part of the strip. Military helicopters herd the giant towards Hoover dam for his date with destiny.

Fun fact: American International Pictures adapted The Amazing Colossal Man from an old science fiction novel, The Nth Man (Homer Eon Flint, 1928) in order to cash in, in a reverse sort of way, on the earlier success of Universal’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

4 out of 5 Pathos Points for Manning having to walk down the Las Vegas strip wearing only a giant adult diaper

Blood of Dracula (1957). Only a couple of months after the death of her mother, troubled teen Nancy Perkins (Sandra Harrison) is sent away to boarding school by her unfeeling father who is only interested in his new wife. Nancy is harassed by the other girls, to the point of being injured in chemistry class when two of her conniving classmates switch chemicals on her.

The chemistry teacher, Miss Branding (Louise Lewis) seizes on the opportunity to gain Nancy’s trust and use her in an experiment to prove Branding’s theory that there is a terrible, destructive power in every person -- and therefore humanity can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons (!!) Branding hypnotizes Nancy with the aid of an amulet from the Carpathian mountains (Dracula’s old stomping grounds), and proceeds to unleash the unwitting Nancy’s inner vampire, with fearful consequences.

Fun fact: Blood of Dracula shares striking similarities with another American International Pictures release, I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), in that an unwitting teenager is hypnotized and turned into a monster by an adult obsessed with drawing out humanity’s primitive instincts.

3 out of 5 Pathos Points for Nancy not being able to cash in on her rad new look and lifestyle in a pre-Instagram era.

Edgar Allan Poe meets Jules Verne meets Vincent Price

Now Playing: War-Gods of the Deep (aka City in the Sea) (1965)

Pros: Great production design, sets and costumes; Excellent cinematography.
Cons: The romantic leads are badly miscast; Comic relief featuring Herbert the rooster misfires; Underwater action scenes are overlong and plodding.

Special note: This post is part of the Vincent Price blogathon intrepidly hosted by Gill and Barry at the Realweegiemidget Reviews and Cinematic Catharsis blogs. Check it out for more priceless Price reviews and tributes than you can shake an Edgar Allan Poe tome at!

Allow me to make a bold statement. If in Vincent Price's lengthy film career, his only appearances in the horror genre had been the handful of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired films for American International Pictures (AIP), he would still be regarded as one of the great horror stars.

But fortunately, horror fans can choose from a treasure trove of memorably chilling and sometimes campy (in a good way) performances, from the early Universal days of The Invisible Man Returns (1940), to his horror break-out role as Prof. Jarrod in House of Wax (1952), to the sci-fi horrors of The Fly (1958) and The Return of the Fly (1959), to the high camp of the Willam Castle films (House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, 1959), and the even higher camp of his roles as Dr. Phibes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes, 1971; Dr. Phibes Rises Again, 1972) and Edward Lionheart, the hammy and deadly Shakespearean Actor in Theater of Blood (1973).

Even in the lesser known, less successful horror films (The Mad Magician, 1955; Diary of a Madman, 1963; Twice-Told Tales, 1963; Cry of the Banshee, 1970, etc.), Price’s presence lent them a modicum of dignity and distinctiveness. Price had his work cut out for him in War-Gods of the Deep (aka City in the Sea), a film that came towards the tail end of AIP’s fixation on Poe as a marketing ploy, and one that really didn’t do the brand any favors.

With some of the AIP Poe films, the connection with the author’s works is tenuous at best. Previously, the company had slapped the title of a short poem, The Haunted Palace (1963), on an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft novella, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. And The Raven (1963) was a campy fantasy-comedy that was completely antithetical to the somber tone of the famous poem.

In the case of War-Gods/City in the Sea, the producers decided to establish the film’s Poe credentials and set the mood by having Price recite select lines from the poem after the titles sequence (and at a couple of other points in the film). At the outset, things look promisingly spooky and atmospheric: it’s a dark and windy night, and a body has washed up on a rugged stretch of the Cornish seacoast.

"I'm just going out for a bit of fresh air, I'll be - Whoops! WHHAAAAAAA-A-a-a-a-a-h-h-h..."
KER-PLUNK!

A visiting American mining engineer, Ben Harris (Tab Hunter), helps the locals retrieve the body. When they identify it as Penrose, a lawyer staying at the nearby hotel (a converted mansion perched precariously atop a cliff), Ben elects to hike up to the place to let the proprietors know.

He meets the beautiful daughter of the hotel’s owner, Jill Tregillis (Susan Hart), and in turn is introduced to an eccentric artist staying at the mansion, Harold Tufnell-Jones (David Tomlinson). Harold’s constant companion is Herbert the rooster.

When Ben and Jill go to take a look at Penrose’s room, they hear noises inside. Ben surprises an otherworldly intruder who hurls some bric-a-brac at him and then escapes out a window.

Between the superstitious locals and Tufnell-Jones, Ben learns that the hotel and nearby village are the epicenter of strange happenings: weird lights seen in sea, the soundings of eerie ghost bells, mysterious disappearances, and bodies periodically washing up on shore.

Later that night, the strangeness escalates as Jill is grabbed by the intruder and the two disappear through a hidden door off of the study. Ben hears the commotion and in the darkness and confusion, mistakes Harold for the intruder.

Ben discovers seaweed on the floor and immediately concludes that Jill has been taken. With the help of Herbert the rooster, they discover the secret passageway and take off in pursuit (with Herbert along for the ride in a basket).

They descend into a large cavern, at the end of which is a whirlpool. Ben steps out onto a rock ledge to get a better look and promptly loses his footing. When Harold reaches out to help, all three are sucked into the swirling water.

"When the innkeeper said they had a hot tub, I wasn't expecting this!"

The whirlpool delivers them to the underwater lair of an imperious mystery man known as the Captain (Vincent Price), where they are taken prisoner. Gradually, the Captain’s story is revealed: He and his band of not-so-merry men were notorious smugglers who, while fleeing from the authorities, stumbled upon an immense, ancient underwater city and made it their new home.

Like Atlantis, the city was built by an ancient civilization and eventually overtaken by the sea. The last remnants of that civilization have devolved into primitive gill-men who are most at home in the water, but who can also maneuver on land.

The Captain and his crew have been there for longer than they can remember. Air, heat and energy are delivered by immense pumps powered by a nearby underwater volcano. The Captain has convinced himself and his crew that the peculiar mix of atmosphere in their lair has suspended the aging process -- but if they were to expose themselves to the UV light on the surface, they would die of old age in seconds.

However, the volcano has become much more active, causing violent tremors, and the pumps are failing. The Captain has been sending gill-men to the surface to scavenge for scientific books, equipment, even people -- anything that might help in figuring out how to stop the volcano from erupting. When, after a recent raid of the hotel, the Captain discovered a sketch of Jill that Harold had made, he became convinced she was his long-lost wife, and had a gill-man kidnap her.

"Ah, the volcano's really boiling over now -- anybody wanna make s'mores?"

The Captain learns that Ben is an engineer, and gives him an absurdly short period of time -- a matter of hours -- to figure out how to save the city, or be drowned like the others who have outlived their usefulness. The landlubbers have their work cut out for them: find a way back to the surface before the volcano blows or the Captain decides they’re expendable. A rebellious member of the Captain’s gang and a doddering old clergyman who had been kidnapped decades before may hold the keys to their freedom.

Thanks to the early 1900s setting, the period costumes, and the gorgeous “Colorscope” widescreen cinematography, War-Gods, especially at the beginning, looks like a worthy successor to AIP’s Roger Corman-directed Poe pictures. There’s a tongue-in-cheek homage to House of Usher, as a decrepit man-servant at the old hotel escorts Ben by candlelight to see Julia. As thunder sounds in the background and they pause at the door to the study, the servant ominously warns Ben about the weird artist guest who has brought “the beast” with him. The beast turns out to be Herbert the rooster. Yikes!

From there, the film immediately doubles down on the “comic” relief. After introductions, Harold proudly shows Ben a full-length self portrait he’s done. Ben takes note of the acronym next to the artist’s signature:

Ben: “Harold Tuffnel-Jones, FRA. Oh, Fellow of the Royal Academy?”
Harold: “Not actually. Founder of the Roosters Association, very selective.”

And that's one of the high points of the alleged comedy. Louis M. Heyward, then head of AIP’s London-based division, was responsible for the questionable comic relief. In an interview with film historian Tom Weaver (Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers of the 1940s through 1960s, McFarland, 1991), Heyward remembered getting a call from War-God's English producer (George Willoughby), saying that the script was “impossible” and they couldn’t possibly shoot it.

Heyward’s boss Sam Arkoff told him to fix the situation, and he ended up traveling to AIP’s studios in England to referee between feuding co-producers Dan Haller and Willoughby. His ultimate solution was to rework the screenplay and add Herbert the rooster:

“The one thing I felt was missing was humor, and that’s where the chicken appeared. There was no chicken in the script, so I wrote it along with the David Tomlinson character. Tomlinson was enjoying great vogue at the time because he had just done Mary Poppins (1964) for Disney. At the point when the English producer saw that I had written in a chicken, and knew that whatever I wrote was going in, he quit -- he said, ‘I don’t do chicken pictures!’ And Dan Haller took over the reins.” [Weaver, p. 160]

Herbert the rooster hitches a ride with Harold inside the Jules-Vernesque diving suit.

One can certainly sympathize with Willoughby. While Tomlinson was a talented actor, his character’s relationship with Herbert is a tiresome distraction from the action, and a direct steal of Hans’ Gertrude the duck in 20th Century Fox’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).

While Poe’s poem may have furnished the title, the film’s real tribute is to Jules Verne. When Ben and Harold race through the secret passageway and find themselves in a huge underground cavern with stalactites, stalagmites, treacherously narrow stone bridges and a dizzying whirlpool, it feels like a scaled-down version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Then, when they end up in the Captain’s underwater lair, with its 19th century costumes and steampunk paraphernalia, there’s a definite Captain Nemo vibe going on.

It’s in the sets and production design that War-Gods really excels. Heyward credited producer Dan Haller with coming up with some “awfully good” sets. [Ibid.] They provide an impressive otherworldly backdrop and make the film seem far more expensive than it was. Colossal statuary of ancient man-beast hybrids and hieroglyphics running the length of the walls create a phantasmagorical mix of ancient Egypt, Babylonia and some Lovecraftian temple of the Elder Gods.

Stephen Dade’s excellent widescreen cinematography also contributes to the sumptuous, decadent feel. Splashes of color from costumes, sets and the Captain’s steampunk equipment punctuate the deep shadows of the underwater realm. The photography is on par with the very best of the Roger Corman-directed Poe pictures.

"Dang it! I told you we were going to be late for the new Survior auditions!"

Unfortunately, the top-notch production values can’t compensate for the mediocre script or miscast actors. Vincent Price is of course the anchor for this ostensible Poe picture, but his character lacks the tragic depth of some of his other Poe roles, and he’s reduced to looking alternately imperious and pensive and barking orders at his men and the captives.

Tab Hunter and Susan Hart look fine in their roles, but at various points Hunter looks like he’s about to burst out laughing, and Hart comes off like a high school thespian reading her lines for the first time. Tab and Susan had previously appeared in Ride the Wild Surf (1964), a “teen” beach comedy from Columbia Pictures. One wonders what combination of chance circumstances and wheeling-dealing ended up scooping up two insouciant, all-American heartthrobs from the beaches of Hawaii and dumping them into the middle of an atmospheric, Gothic horror-fantasy.

David Tomlinson was still basking in the glow of a signature role in Mary Poppins when he was tapped for War-Gods. Despite his comedic talents, he flounders like a fish out of water in a role that was grafted, like a parasitical suckerfish, onto the production at the last minute.

"Will she be all right? I told her this wasn't a surf picture, but noooo, she had to try out her new board!"

The guiding hand of legendary director Jacques Tourneur should have been a big plus for War-Gods. There are flashes of the old Tourneur touch, such as Ben’s first encounter with the intruder at the hotel, in which the gill-man sticks to the shadows and we see only enough to get an impression of a bizarre, otherworldly creature. However, when the story switches to the underwater city, the action and suspense largely grind to a halt and are replaced by static shots of the Captain telling his backstory and the landlubber captives furtively conspiring with disgruntled underlings to escape.

AHOY MATEY, SPOILERS AHEAD! (SORT OF)

The climactic action that does take place is all underwater. The chase and fight with the gill-men is certainly ambitious, a sort of Creature from the Black Lagoon meets Thunderball. But the sequence is ponderous and poorly edited. The frequent intercutting of the action with close-ups of actors’ faces inside their Jules-Vernesqe diving helmets serves more to slow things down than to clarify who’s doing what to whom.

Worst of all, in the one sequence in which the gill-men finally get some healthy screen time (“Alright Mr. Tourneur, I’m ready for my close-up…”), the compromise between an effective-looking creature suit and one giving the stunt-men sufficient underwater maneuverability is starkly obvious. These are pretty poor cousins of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and a disappointing payoff for viewers wanting thrilling action and scary monsters after sitting through dull stretches of exposition.

"The Krusty Krab? Go straight past the volcano for about a half a league, then turn
right at Poseidon's Palace. You can't miss it!"

This was Jacques Tourneur’s last film. While only in his early ‘60s, the industry had moved on, and according the Heyward, he was more than happy to get one more opportunity to practice his craft:

“Jacques was, again, at the nadir of his career, but he wanted to direct another picture or two. He was overly agreeable, and there was a sadness to that. At AIP, it was the same with directors as with actors. If you were a young director, AIP was giving you a chance; if you were an old director, your career was on its way down and we inherited you. You were usually afraid to fight because it would influence the next picture. But face Jacques with a technical problem and he would come up with answers. He knew his craft and his media.” [Weaver, p. 161]

On the other hand, Vincent Price was not done by a long shot. According to Price’s daughter Victoria, this film and an even greater stinker, House of 1000 Dolls (shot in Madrid in 1967), soured him on AIP. But Vincent had too many interests and too many irons in the fire to let a few cheesy B pictures get him down:

“Although my father was in despair about the sorry run of films he was being forced to make, at the same time he was in the most visible and popular era of his career. As an actor in his mid-fifties, he did not take his growing appeal for granted, and from judging the Miss American Pageant to appearing as Grand Marshall of the Santa Claus Parade in Hollywood, he brought grace and charm to every event with which he was associated.” [Victoria Price, Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography, St. Martin’s, 1999, p. 260]

War-Gods doesn’t come close to scraping the bottom of the barrel the way House of 1000 Dolls did. It’s an ambitious sci-fi-horror-fantasy that at least looks more expensive than its budget. But it’s done in by a weak script made even weaker by forced comic relief, and a couple of egregiously miscast romantic leads.

It appeals more for its curiosity factor: as Jacques Tourneur’s last feature film, and as that AIP Poe film that everyone forgets. But hey, if you really like chickens, this one might be right up your alley!

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, The City in the Sea

Where to find it: try here for the DVD; or stream it (for now) on Youtube.