The Growing Juvenile Delinquency Problem: Village of the Giants

Now Playing: Village of the Giants (1965)

Pros: Interesting cast made up of former child stars, future stars and sons and daughters of acting royalty; Striking images; Catchy music
Cons: Variable special effects and abrupt changes in mood and tone make for a head-scratching experience

Movie blogger Rebecca Deniston at Taking Up Room has done it again with her Fake Teenager Festivus, an opportunity for the blogging community to celebrate all those egregious instances of 20-something-plus actors portraying teenagers in movies and TV.

As she points out in her call for submissions, employing older actors as teenagers has long been a filmmaking tradition for a number of reasons, not the least of which are those pesky child labor laws that limit the number of hours a real teenager can work. And then there’s the need to hire a tutor for the little darlin’s schooling if the production is a particularly long one and commuting is impractical. What a bummer!

Another consideration is the actor’s competence. Like any complex skill, acting requires patience, perseverance, and time to perfect. In many cases, it takes a more mature professional to credibly portray an angst-ridden teenager.

But it’s something of a tight-rope act. Go too far, and you risk turning your “teenager” into an unintentional parody. I was curious about how far filmmakers have pushed the envelope, so I googled “Older actors who have played teenagers in movies.”

Since it’s such a fun topic there are plenty of lists out there, but the most comprehensive one I found was on IMDb with 186 (count ‘em!) entries. According to the list, the all-time age disparity record-holder is O.Z. Whitehead, who was 51 (?!) when he played a school boy in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Other notorious cases are there, like 30-year-old Olivia Newton-John playing 17-year-old Sandy in Grease.

O.Z. Whitehead, the oldest movie teenager ever!
(Seen here in The Grapes of Wrath, 1940)

While mid-to-late 20s is pretty old to be playing a teen, there are 33 actors and actresses on the list who were 30 or older when they were asked to channel their inner teenager. Yikes!

There are no 30+ actors pretending to be teenagers in Village of the Giants, but it does boast several 20-somethings. I chose Village for several reasons:

1. My specialty on this blog is looking at plucky low- or no-budget genre movies that strive to overcome their limitations (or at least thumb their noses at them);
2. It features an intriguing cast, including two childhood heroes of mine, Disney child star Tommy Kirk and Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman fame; Beau Bridges, son of Lloyd and brother of Jeff; and Ron Howard, who at the time was still making cute as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show;
3. Village was written and directed by Mr. B.I.G. himself, Bert I. Gordon, who famously made do with limited budgets and modest special effects in his obsessive quest to make pictures about REALLY BIG people and animals. 

In the spirit of the original Festivus, I plan to air my grievances against this movie (but not in an overly derogatory manner, as this would violate the rules), and demonstrate feats of mental strength in analyzing plot and character development (dinner and the Festivus pole are not included). If you decide to perform your own feat of mental toughness by sticking with this post to the bitter end, just be aware that there will be a quiz. 

Where to begin? First of all, Village of the Giants is a cinematic examination of the tendency of even freedom-loving societies to succumb to authoritarianism in the face of extreme power differentials and high levels of inequality. It also highlights the difficulty in a high-tech society of ensuring that inventors are suitably rewarded while at the same time the benefits of new technologies are fairly distributed. Lastly, it examines the age-old generation gap, and the balancing act that a healthy society must perform between encouraging the enthusiasm of youth and respecting the wisdom of maturity. But more on that later.

Before I get into the airing of grievances, I will try to sum up the plot as succinctly as I know how to.* On the outskirts of Hainesville, Anywhere, USA, a group of spaced-out juvenile delinquents** run their car into a mudslide, and after celebrating the occasion by dancing sensuously in the mud, they hike into the nearby town.

Meanwhile, the town’s child prodigy, “Genius” (Ron Howard) accidentally creates a compound in his basement lab that can grow animals to enormous size, which he not-so-creatively dubs “Goo.” When Genius’ big sister Nancy (Charla Doherty) and her boyfriend Mike (Tommy Kirk) watch a cat and then two ducks accidentally eat the Goo and grow into giants, they immediately recognize the money-making potential, not to mention the implications for the world’s food supply.

Opie, er, um Genius patiently explains the amazing properties of Goo.

A little while later, anybody who’s anybody under the age of 20 (wink, wink) has converged on the local dance club to rock out, including Mike and Nancy, Mike’s friend Horsey (Johnny Crawford), and the delinquent gang led by Fred (Beau Bridges).

Everyone is freaked out when the two giant ducks crash the party and “dance” alongside the kids. Mike dopily spills the beans that the ducks are his, and hints to another delinquent (Harry, played by Kevin O'Neal) that they’re the result of a “million dollar” secret food additive. Harry reports back to Fred, who tasks his girlfriend Jean (Tisha Stirling) with pumping Mike for information, while he tries his charms on Nancy.

The delinquents fail to pry any more information out of Mike or Nancy, but later that night, they sneak over to Nancy’s house and one of the gang (Pete, played by Tim Rooney) breaks into the basement lab. He manages to grab the Goo, but not before setting off a burglar alarm of Genius’ that, among other things, shoots fireworks into the sky.

Mike, Nancy, Horsey and other assorted good kids race over to Nancy’s to confront the delinquents, but in the ensuing altercation Fred and the gang make off with the Goo. The gang retreats to their makeshift hideout in an abandoned downtown theater, where they argue over what to do with the stuff. Peer pressure being what it is, they all succumb to curiosity and eat the Goo, turning into 30-foot-tall giants. (The girls, demonstrating that even delinquents have limits, modestly cover themselves as they quickly outgrow their clothes.)

They fashion toga-like costumes for themselves out of theater curtains, and decide to make a huge impression at yet another teen party at the local park. One of the giant girls grabs Horsey, and he holds on for dear life to her makeshift top straps as she dances around. When Mike objects, Fred sends him crashing into the bushes with one sweep of his hand.

Soon, the sheriff (Joe Turkel) and his deputy show up and demand that the overgrown teens vacate the park. (Somehow, none of the partygoers or the sheriff seem particularly alarmed at the presence of a group of giant delinquents, as if they were more a nuisance than a threat to life and limb.)

The giant teens look down on the puny citizens of Hainesville with disdain.

The next day the sheriff confronts the overgrown youths at their theater lair and tells them to get out of Dodge (er, Hainesville). But they’ve got an ace up their giant toga sleeves: they’ve kidnapped the sheriff’s young daughter and are holding her hostage. Fred announces that it’s a new regime -- adults are out and giant teens are in.

He issues a list of demands, including a 9 pm curfew for adults, public speech must be pre-approved by the group, a work party of adults is to be formed to bring the group food, all communication with the outside world must be suspended, and all guns and ammo are to be rounded up and delivered to the theater. Uh-oh. As they say, power tends to corrupt, and being a giant corrupts absolutely.

Will Mike, Nancy and friends rescue the sheriff’s daughter and overthrow Fred’s tyrannical regime? Will Genius come up with an antidote to the Goo to save humanity from the threat of petulant 30-foot somethings with hormonal attitudes? These are monumental questions.

And now for the airing of grievances…

Extraneous dance numbers. At the risk of sounding like one of the dour town elders from Footloose, there is a lot of dancing in Village of the Giants. I mean… a … lot … The bad teens dance in slow motion in the semi-psychedelic titles sequence, then there’s the sensual mud dancing, then there’s the big party at the dance club with everyone, including the two giant ducks, shimmying to the tunes of the Beau Brummels ***, then there’s a close-up of a go-go dancer (Toni Basil as “Red”), then there’s a reprise of the giants dancing in slo-mo in the park, and then there’s Red dancing in front of Fred and the boys to distract them while some of the good kids try to rescue the sheriff’s daughter… whew! I get it that this is a youth picture, but most of these scenes could have been cut down to size.

On the upside: The slow-motion dancing with the kids decked out in make-shift togas is almost hypnotic, the theme-music has a nice beat, and the Beau Brummels dance club song isn’t bad either.

There is sooo much dancing! So very, very much...

Shifting tone and mood. IMDb lists Village as first and foremost a comedy, but this is not your ‘60s era light fantasy-comedy like The Shaggy Dog or The Absent Minded Professor. Village’s tone veers wildly from light (e.g., cute little Ronnie Howard patiently explaining his experiments using polysyllabic chemical compound names) to dark (kidnapping the sheriff’s daughter with an implied threat of violence) to light again, causing whiplash of the brain. The worst instance is showing the giant ducks happily dancing and flapping their wings at the dance club (cute!), and then in the next scene displaying their giant plucked carcasses on a barbecue spit as the teens gather round to munch on them. Oh the humanity!

Little do they know that they will soon be guests of honor at a community barbecue.

Variable special effects. As mentioned above, filmmaker Bert I. Gordon’s reach for all things BIG in his movies often exceeded his grasp. Gordon reached for the sky in Village, featuring, in addition to the giant teenagers, a giant cat, dog, two ducks and a big-ass spider. In his autobiography, Gordon described a number of techniques he used on Village, including traveling mattes, rear projection, and wide angle shots from a low angle to force the perspective. [Bert I. Gordon, The Amazing Colossal Worlds of Mr. B.I.G.: An Autobiographical Journey, 2009, pp. 72-85]

Unmentioned is the film’s cheesiest and most laughable effect: A pair of 10 foot tall legs, complete with simulated hair, constructed for a scene in which some of the town’s teenagers, riding around on motorcycles and in hotrods, try to lasso and trip up Fred as he steps outside. The legs, which look like they’re made out of paper mache, don’t move at all during the way-too-long scene, making them unintentionally comical (at least I think it’s unintentional).

Another pseudo-effect is filming the giant teens in sloowwww-moootion, emphasizing their ponderous size, while intercutting with shots of the town’s normal-sized citizens scurrying around at normal speed. This makes the normies look like Keystone Kops tripping over each other. It's funny in an odd sort of way.

On the upside: The shots of a panicked Johnny Crawford dangling from the giant girl as she swirls around are memorable (if you're into that sort of thing). Mr. B.I.G. apparently liked this effect a lot, as it’s prominently featured on the original poster.

Fred's giant legs are down for the count after the Hainesville Hot Rod Rodeo.

And now for the Festivus feat of mental strength and acuity…

It’s your turn! From the cast list, can you guess who was an actual teenager at the time and who was not?

• Mike - Tommy Kirk
• Nancy - Charla Doherty
• Horsey - Johnny Crawford
• Fred - Beau Bridges
• Rick - Robert Random
• Merrie - Joy Harmon
• Jean - Tisha Sterling (daughter of Ann Sothern)
• Pete - Tim Rooney (son of Mickey Rooney)

I dare you to witness the far-out grooviness on display here:

Where to find it: The MST3K version is available on multiple streaming platforms; For a rad Blu-ray copy, try here.

_________________
* In other words, not very succinct.
**Juvenile delinquency is not so much a thing anymore, since today’s pressure to cultivate and protect one’s social media image means that a teenager (or pre-teen for that matter) can scarcely put down his/her smart phone long enough to get into trouble.
***The Beau Brummels was a San Francisco rock band formed in 1964. When Village was released in 1965 they were red hot, with smash hit singles Laugh, Laugh and Just a Little debuting that year.

Safety Last: Close Calls in B Movie Stunt Work

This brand new year is a particularly auspicious one for me, as I started a new job last week. With a new job comes new challenges, not the least of which is trying to find out where HR is holding its employee orientation in a maze-like building the size of a small city block. I was running late, had wolfed down a burnt toaster waffle for breakfast, didn't have time to make or buy a coffee, forgot my water bottle, and was desperately looking left, right, up, down and around the main foyer of the Services building, trying to find some clue as to where they were holding the orientation, when a fellow new employee (who had the presence of mind to get there early) came out of a nearby restroom, took pity on me, and mercifully guided me to the appointed meeting room.

"I think I have just enough time
to grab a quick cup of coffee!"

I was absolutely sure there'd be coffee, maybe even doughnuts (or at least bagels), but alas, there were no refreshments whatsoever. It was all business at an ungodly early hour of the morning. Plus, the HR people were fiendishly clever. There was a sign-up sheet up front, but also sheets to be signed and turned in only after they'd covered the material. There was to be no quick scribbling of initials, then quietly skipping to track down a nice grande latte or a fresh blueberry muffin. Instead, I had to absorb scores of Powerpoint screens full of dry information only the most zealous accountant or personnel manager could love… all without a trace of caffeine in my system!

Ironically enough, the morning was saved by the last part of the presentation… on, of all things, workplace safety. While not exactly a stand-up comedian, the presenter at least knew enough to grab attention with photos and videos of some of the most diabolical workplace hazards ever cobbled together by caffeine-starved clock-punchers whose only excuse could be that they were sleepwalking through their jobs. There was a photo of a rickety ladder tied to another rickety ladder to make the mother-of-all dangerous makeshift extension ladders. There was a daring workman, barefoot, with sopping wet pants, busily using an electric drill and extension cord while standing on an aluminum ladder set up next to a pool of water. Yet another featured a pair of workmen perched on a high, narrow ledge ringing an impressive atrium -- no railings, no tie-offs, the one using a short ladder on the ledge to get to an even higher window, the other kneeling at the foot of the ladder. One sneeze, one slip and …

But the coup-de-grace was a video clip of the one of the more dangerous workplaces I've ever seen. Behind a bar, a woman can be seen in the foreground filling a glass, her back turned to the counter. Two other employees pop into the picture, and one lifts a trapdoor in the floor (?!) right behind the woman and walks down the steps to a cellar. Oblivious, the woman finishes filling the glass, takes a step back, and promptly disappears down the hole! (The presenter assured us that although it looked bad, the woman was not killed. Apparently the investigators concluded that lack of communication was a key -- as in, "Hey there Norma, we're right behind you and and please be aware that we just opened the trapdoor to this incredibly dangerous, incredibly stupidly planned cellar located right in the center of the busy, cramped space behind the bar….")

Although it's unlikely that I'll be grappling with these kinds of safety issues (my biggest challenge will be making sure that all that hot coffee I swill stays in the mug instead of ending up in my lap or on my keyboard), it was certainly an entertaining and educational way to wrap up the orientation. It never ceases to amaze me the ingenuity that human beings bring to cutting corners so that they can grab an extra cup of joe or a quick smoke behind the dumpster.

Speaking of ingenuity and lots of corner cutting, the B movies featured on this blog couldn't have been made without those key ingredients. Lack of time, money and resources usually leads to suboptimal outcomes, but once in awhile, with talented people and the planets aligned just right, it can stimulate creativity and lead to something sublime. Val Lewton proved that you can often frighten audiences by not showing them in graphic detail the object of their fears (and save some time and a lot of money). But in the movie business, one area where you most definitely do not want to cut corners or fly by the seat of your pants is stunt work.

Unfortunately for many B productions of yore, the pressures to just get the thing in the can on time and on budget meant that directors who didn't know a pick point from a nose pick doubled as stunt coordinators, and unsuspecting actors who just wanted to get another picture on their resume suddenly found themselves risking their necks doing their own stunts. Fortunately, the guardian angels who look after fools and B movie crews apparently did double-duty, as there are many more close calls in the lore than actual tragedies.

So without further ado (and before I get carpal tunnel from typing too much), here are a few close calls from the annals of "make-it-up-as-you-go-along" B movie stunt work. And remember: Don't try this at home!

"That was a disastrous film to work on."

"I'm not getting paid enough for this crap!"

There are no two ways about it. Richard Devon, a fixture (especially as villains) in Roger Corman's early films, didn't particularly appreciate the King of the Bs. But then, if you'd witnessed Roger choosing to save a buck or two at the expense of his actors' safety, you might have been bitter too. In an interview with Tom Weaver, Devon talked about risking life and limb doing location shooting for The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957; aka The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent… whew!):

"That was a disastrous film to work on. It was as if Roger were really trying to short his skimpy shooting schedules, even more than what he had done. He was trying to beat his own record. He didn't want to waste a frame, nor did he spare anyone's feelings on the set. He was an absolute demon. As I said before, in his office he would purr like some wide-eyed kitten-- but he could be dangerous.
…
In one sequence in Viking Women I had to ride this horse through a small cave. It was like seventeen and half hands tall, and that's a tall horse. I was leading the other Grimaults [film characters] through the cave on this huge horse, and the sucker hung me up on a wall and damn near tore my kneecap off. As I recall,  there was never any nurse or first aid people on the set; Roger said 'uh huh' to my problem, and, 'Let's get on with it.'
…

[Speaking of shooting the Viking Women's voyage on location at a beach]. That was a condemned beach at Cabrillo. Nobody bothered to tell us it was condemned. They used to post signs when they condemned a beach; somebody had picked up the sign and threw it in the bushes, but I found it. And then we saw the water, and there was a tremendous undertow-- it was sort of scary. We were all down there on the day when Roger shot the scene where the Viking women launch their ship. If you recall the film, the rudder falls off the boat. Needless to say, that was not supposed to occur, but Roger is undaunted-- nothing stops Roger. They just kept going. The girl who swam after the boat was swimming to save her life, because of the undertow. She got to the boat, and they pulled her in."

[Tom Weaver, Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes: Interviews with  Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers of the 1940s through 1960s, McFarland, 1991]

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Where to find it:

Oldies.com

The She-Creature Meets The Three Stooges

Paul Blaisdell in his She-Creature suit.

Tragically unheralded makeup and effects artist Paul Blaisdell created some of the most memorable and outrageous B movie creatures ever to slither, stalk or stomp across a drive-in movie screen. He was a genius at taking a handful of cheap materials, locking himself in his garage, and delivering the goods just in the nick of time to satisfy the pickiest, most time-pressed director. Predictably, many of his creations were featured in, you guessed it, Roger Corman's '50s sci-fi flicks. If it was a creature suit, Paul usually wore it himself, which from time to time was his undoing. Biographer Randy Palmer relates some Three-Stooges-like miscues on the set of The She-Creature (1956):

"For the scene in which the creature smashes into Johnny's (Paul Dubov) apartment, the crew had prepared a specially scored door made of balsa wood that would come apart easily in sections. The only problem was that it was so delicately fitted together that if anyone brushed up against it the whole thing came tumbling down. Since there was just the one door (there was never enough money in the budget to do these kinds of things twice), someone had the foresight to protect the breakaway prop by reinforcing it with plywood from the opposite side. When it was time for Blaisdell to knock the hell out of the door, no one remembered that it had been reinforced. … When [director] Cahn called 'Action,' Blaisdell raised a creature claw and smashed at the door, but the rubber-coated pine costume just bounced off. Blaisdell hit the door with such force he was knocked backward and fell on the creature's tail. There was so much latex and foam in the tail it almost bounced back up. ...
…

The climatic appearance of the monster was filmed on location at Paradise Cove near Los Angeles. This was the only time in the film the monster would actually be seen emerging from the waves, and Eddie Cahn wanted it to look impressive.
'Get out in the water, Paul,' Cahn told Blaisdell. 'Way out.'
Blaisdell walked into the surf and turned around.
'Farther!' Cahn yelled.
Blaisdell backed up a few paces.
'No, no! Get really far out! Farther! Get out up to your waist!'
By the time Paul reached the point where Cahn was happy with what he saw, Blaisdell had become a mere dot in the camera lens. Cahn had set everything up as a wide-angle long-shot, but Blaisdell didn't know that. Besides, he had other things to worry about. The costume was acting just like a big sponge. The foam rubber was saturated with so much sea water he could barely move. … The water-logged suit of foam rubber felt like it weighed a ton. Every time Paul pushed forward the outgoing ocean current pushed him back. So he started lunging through the water. It was the only way he could make any progress. … As it turned out, Blaisdell suffered through the oceanic acrobatics all for naught. The image of the monster lumbering out of the ocean had been shot from so far away that nobody could tell what it was, and most of the footage ended up on the cutting room floor."

[Randy Palmer, Paul Blaisdell: Monster Maker, McFarland, 1997]

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Where to find it:

Amazon

"Are you wearing underwear?"

Writer, producer, director and all-around B movie entrepreneur Bert I. Gordon (aka Mr. B.I.G.) was notorious for his obsession with all things gigantic in such films as The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), The Cyclops (1957) and The Food of the Gods (1976). In Attack of the Puppet People (1958), he turned giantism on its head by featuring a group of unsuspecting people shrunk down to doll size by a mad scientist. In an interview originally published in Filmfax magazine (and reprinted in John "J.J." Johnson's Cheap Tricks and Class Acts), Puppet People cast member Ken Miller relates one of the funniest and scariest moments in all of Mr. B.I.G.'s long line of B productions:

"The most horrendous physical thing I've ever had to do was on that movie during the scene where I climb up the door to peer through the keyhole. Well, that climb was 50 feet up to the top of the soundstage and I was using a thick rubber rope tied to the giant doorknob at the top. When I was about halfway up, the doorknob started to come off. ... They weren't recording sound in the scene so I yelled down, 'The damned doorknob's coming off!' and the director yelled back, 'Keep going, it looks great!' Then, to make matters worse, my pants, which felt like they'd been glued on, started to split at the crotch. So I yelled, 'My pants are starting to rip' and Bert yelled back, 'Are you wearing underwear? Then keep going!' I got to the top of the rope and held on to the doorknob as two grips reached around and grabbed me. Just as they pulled me up, the doorknob came completely off, it was that close. And the pants just ripped right up my ass. Thankfully, it doesn't show in the film. The next day I couldn't move, I had used muscles in my body that I had never used before. They had to shoot around me while I went in for some physical therapy."

[John "J.J." Johnson, Cheap Tricks and Class Acts: Special Effects, Makeup and Stunts from the Films of the Fantastic Fifties, McFarland, 1996]

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Where to find it:

Oldies.com

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

Now Playing: Tormented (1960)

Pros: A very quirky, offbeat story for the time period and genre; Stolid B movie leading man Richard Carlson plays against type; A surprisingly good child actress
Cons: Uneven and misused special effects serve to dissipate the spooky atmosphere and tension

A little while back a friend and I were speculating on what new social media application(s) young people will turn to now that their parents and grandparents have invaded Facebook and ruined it for them.  Facebook investors take note: I've been on it for a year or so now, and the surest sign of the decline and fall of a service like this is when old people like me start grudgingly using it.

The mass exodus of the young from Facebook is just another, though potent, indicator of the widening generation gap. (No doubt my use of an old term like "generation gap" only serves to further that gap-- my apologies to anyone under 30 who might have somehow stumbled upon this post!) Obviously, tensions between the young and the old are part of being human, but from my grumpy old man perspective, the divisions have gotten a lot worse.

Those of you who've lived more than a couple of decades may be thinking, how could the generation gap be any wider than it was in the late '60s and early '70s, with hippies and yippies howling at their scowling elders, burning draft cards and bras, turning on to drugs, tuning in, and dropping out?  In contrast to the Vietnam-era generation, today's youth are generally reserved, rule governed, conformist, and materialistic. In 21st century America, what's not to like about that?

Just this: rebellion is still a form, albeit a crude one, of engaging with your perceived adversary. With engagement, there's hope for resolution or at least an uneasy truce. Some rebellion is a good, healthy thing-- testing boundaries is an essential part of the maturing process. But it seems to me that young people today don't rebel in healthy ways. They simply ignore anything and everything that is not an immediate part of their social circle. Nothing interesting happened or was created before they were born. Nothing interesting or creative will happen after they're gone. It's as if we've unleashed an entire generation of mutant Anthony Fremonts who have banished anything that's not all about them -- their age, their interests, their culture -- to the "cornfields" of their minds (The Twilight Zone's "It's a Good Life").

Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) is bewitched,
bothered and tormented.

But don't take my word for it. The people who create products and services for teens and twenty-somethings know them very well. Take movies (my favorite subject) for example. Have you noticed how adults, not to mention old people, have essentially been banished from most contemporary sci-fi, fantasy and horror films? From Harry Potter to Transformers to Twilight, films aimed at the youth market have either eliminated adult protagonists altogether, or reduced them to the equivalent of the invisible, unintelligible adults who blah, blah, blah with trombone voices in the Charlie Brown animated specials.

It wasn't always so. For every Invasion of the Saucer Men or Giant Gila Monster featuring teen protagonist-heroes, there were at least 2 or 3 sci-fi/fantasy flicks of the '50s and '60s that featured honest-to-goodness adult protagonists, some well into middle age and beyond. Kids flocked to drive-ins and hometown theaters to see these films, and apparently had no problem with significant adult characters.

One very significant adult "character" from 1950s sci-fi was stolid B movie leading man Richard Carlson. He was already in his 40s when he made his first B sci-fi movie, The Magnetic Monster, in 1953 (see the post on this and other Fantastic Faceless Foes of '50s Sci-fi elsewhere on this blog). The classics for which he's known today, It Came From Outer Space and Creature From the Black Lagoon, followed quickly after that (1953 and 1954 respectively). He even found time during that period to direct a sci-fi movie (Riders to the Stars, 1954) and a western (Four Guns to the Border, 1954). Later in the '50s he turned almost exclusively to television, writing and directing as well as acting.

Like his B movie cohorts John Agar and Robert Hutton, Carlson projected a straight-arrow, Dudley Do-Right image in most of his films. He was that square-jawed, intelligent, levelheaded guy you wanted on your side when the chips were down. Almost always. In Tormented, he's a regular, very flawed human being who pays dearly for his indiscretions.

Vi Mason (Juli Reding) confronts her old flame at
the abandoned lighthouse. Watch that handrail!

Carlson plays Tom Stewart, a successful jazz pianist who seems to have it made-- he lives a plush life on a sunny island, and he's about to marry an attractive girl (Meg Hubbard, played by Lugene Sanders) who also happens to come from a wealthy family. There's just one hitch. One of his past flings, the beautiful and buxom Vi Mason (Juli Reding), has tracked him down and wants to resume where they left off. Tom, not wanting to attract the wrong kind of attention, takes Vi to the island's abandoned lighthouse to try to reason with her. Vi's got it bad for Tom-- when he tells her he's getting married, she threatens to send some steamy letters to the bride-to-be. For whatever reason, they've decided to climb all the way to the top of the lighthouse to talk, where Tom catches a "lucky" break. The angry ex-girlfriend leans against an old rusted railing that gives way. As she holds on for dear life to another part of the railing, she pleads for Tom to save her. He leans over, ready to grab her hand, then thinks better of it. Her strength gives out and she falls to her death. Whew, problem solved!!

Well, not quite-- Tom's problems have only just begun. Like the self-obsessed cad he is, Tom tries to tell himself that Vi's death wasn't his fault. But Vi's very active ghost begs to differ. When she told Tom "I'll never leave you, I'll always be with you," she really meant it. Just like a Master Card from Hell, her vengeful spirit starts turning up everywhere Tom wants to be. Walking on the beach, Tom spies her body floating in the surf, picks her up, and carries her onto the beach. As he looks on in horror, the body suddenly morphs into a stinking human-sized pile of seaweed. Later, as Tom and his fiance stroll leisurely along the beach, footprints from an invisible being follow closely behind.

Vi seems to have lost her head over the
suave jazz pianist Tom Stewart.

Tom starts to doubt his sanity as the phantom Vi turns up the heat. As Tom embraces Meg, the smell of Vi's perfume fills the room. Tom's record player starts up all by itself and plays a record of Vi's (she was a singer), even after it's been unplugged. Vi's watch and necklace suddenly show up in the oddest places, while a disembodied hand steals the ring Tom bought for the wedding. Vi's disembodied head floats over the engaged couple in a Polaroid taken at a pre-wedding party.

But Tom's problems aren't all other-worldly. A very corporeal threat in the form of a tugboat captain (Joe Turkel) turns up just before the wedding. Seems he'd been promised money by a beautiful blonde to ferry her over to the island for a visit with a well-known jazz musician. But she hadn't kept her appointment to go back to the mainland, and the boatman knows she didn't take the regular ferry. He puts two and two together, and decides he can make a lot more than just the price of a boat ride off the harried Tom. Big mistake. Tom decides to deal with the blackmailer in the same unsafe lighthouse that took Vi's life, but he just digs a deeper hole for himself. His fiance's little 9 year-old sister Sandy (Susan Gordon) adores Tom, but is concerned about him as he starts losing it from the stress of the hauntings and the blackmail. She follows him to the lighthouse, and sees something she shouldn't… Now Tom's really up the proverbial creek without a paddle. What to do… what to do?!

Susan Gordon as little Sandy is surprisingly good.

Richard Carlson gets big points for playing against the stolid hero type. His role in Tormented is richer and more textured than the characters he played in Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space. He's a skunk and a murderer, but he also clearly loves his fiance and little Sandy, and is desperate to preserve his future with them. Susan Gordon (daughter of producer-writer-director Bert I. Gordon) is also a delightful surprise-- unlike most child actors of the period, she is natural and engaging, and a real asset to the film. (Sadly, Gordon died of cancer at the age of 62 in December of last year.)

Bert I. Gordon (or Mr. B.I.G.) also gets points for originality. Bert was known for his fixation with all things gigantic (e.g., The Amazing Colossal Man, 1957), so a ghost story was quite a departure for him. In addition to writing, directing and producing, Bert also supervised the special effects for his films. Unfortunately, his penchant for effects serves to subvert the tense, spooky atmosphere of Tormented. Ghosts in the movies are the opposite of children -- they're best heard, not seen (for an absolutely masterful example of how to scare with just sound and suggestion, see Robert Wise's The Haunting, 1963). Vi's ghost is bold, brassy and in-your-face… but not very scary. Bert seems to mistake quantity for quality. He throws every ghostly cliché at the screen -- footprints from an invisible being, disembodied hands and heads, flowers wilting in the ghost's presence, etc., etc. By the time poor Tom holds up Vi's disembodied head as it yells "Tom Stewart killed me!" over and over, we've given up being scared and at best, are mildly curious about what effects stunt Mr. B.I.G. will pull next. (See more about Mr. B.I.G. in my post on The Cyclops.)

Still, what's Halloween without ghosts, however cheesy they may be? Tormented would be a fun, kitschy addition to a ghostly movie marathon with say, The Haunting and The Woman in Black to provide authentic scares. Tormented is available in its entirely on YouTube and the Internet Archive, as well as on DVD from Alpha Video.

"You belong to me Tom... you belong to a ghost!"

Giant Ambitions and Small Budgets

The Cyclops (1957)

I doubt that the critics who came up with the auteur theory of film had Bert I. Gordon in mind, but Bert is the very definition of an auteur. The Cyclops credits say it all: Written, produced, directed, and special effects by Bert I. Gordon. Movies rarely get more personal than this.

Bert earned the nickname Mr. B.I.G. for the string of giant monster movies he churned out like sausages starting in the 1950s. His list of writer-producer-director credits is somewhere between humongous and ginormous:

• King Dinosaur (1955) - You guessed it-- extraterrestrial dinosaurs
• Beginning of the End (1957) - Giant grasshoppers threaten Chicago
• The Cyclops (1957) - More below
• The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) - A military man exposed to an atomic test starts to grow and grow
• Attack of the Puppet People (1958) - People become small as the world around them turns gigantic
• War of the Colossal Beast (1958) - The protagonist from The Amazing Colossal Man returns after a fall off Hoover Dam-- madder than ever
• Earth vs. the Spider (1958) - You guessed it again-- giant spiders
• Village of the Giants (1965) - Mutated 30 foot tall teens take over a small town
• Food of the Gods (1976) - From the H.G. Wells story, the wildlife on an island (including rats) grow to enormous size from a mysterious food supply

Note the 6 B.I.G. creature features released in the space of a couple of years!  While perhaps only Bert's psychoanalyst truly understands his fixation on gigantism, a simple explanation is that a very canny B movie entrepreneur made some quick bucks off the public's fascination with (and fear of) science run amok. Bert's giants are stand-ins for the enormous problems that a naive 1950s American populace read about in the newspapers: nuclear bombs and radiation, Communist infiltration, the Cold war, etc.

The Cyclops is not Bert's best work. The plot construction is amateurish, the acting spotty, and the technical effects are weak (more on that later). But Gordon valiantly tries to make the most of limited resources, making L.A.'s Bronson Caves and County Arboretum stand-in for the wilds of Mexico. He sprinkles in a little mythology to add some class to the proceedings. And it doesn't hurt that the movie features a cool, hideous monster that scared the heck out of me when I was a kid.

Cyclops starts out in a small Mexican town, where Susan Winters (Gloria Talbott) is trying to convince the governor to approve her trip into a remote area to look for her fiance, whose plane crashed there 3 years before. (You have to wonder why it took her so long to get the search party organized!) The governor not only tells her that there is no chance her fiance could still be alive, but the area is off-limits to everyone, and he will supply a security guard to fly back to the states with Susan and her party "just to make sure they don't go in the wrong direction." Susan, however, is undeterred, and she and her companions hatch a plan to ditch the security man and take off in their Cessna.

Susan's purpose is clear and simple: to find her fiance, Bruce Barton, who she is certain is still alive. The motivations of her companions are varied: Russ Bradford (James Craig) is a microbiologist and friend of the fiance (and, we find out later, in love with Susan); Marty Melville (Lon Chaney Jr.) is a wealthy financier who's convinced that the wild country they plan to search is full of uranium; and the pilot Lee Brand (Tom Drake) is a devil-may-care type who recently lost a bundle of money and needs the job. The tension in the first part of the movie, such as it is, grows out of the incompatible goals and motivations of the group. What makes Cyclops stand out from the typical fifties B movie fare is that from beginning to end Susan is by far the strongest member of the group, and enforces her will on the reluctant, distracted men. She WILL find her fiance, come hell or high water! She is Ulysses in this poor-man's Odyssey.

On the flight into the Mexican interior, Melville panics after a little turbulence and thrashes around the small cockpit, knocking the pilot out! Susan, sitting in the back seat, manages to revive him just in time to land the plane safely on a large, grassy field. Inexplicably, the other members of the expedition don't even seem to be perturbed that the unstable man has almost gotten them killed! Perhaps they're in shock, or they're just grateful to be alive (and Melville is supposed to be rich after all; maybe they think he'll compensate them). 

The scene and its predecessors illustrate Gordon's weaknesses in story construction. A substantial chunk of the movie is drab exposition: Susan talking to the Mexican official; the group telling their sad life stories over drinks at a cantina; Bradford spending an interminable amount of time trying to buy an American magazine from a young woman who speaks little English; and so on. I got to wondering if Bert took some money from Mexican backers in return for playing up the local color and culture. Melville's tantrum and the near crash seems like a lame, contrived way to generate a little suspense after the tedium of the first 20 minutes of so of the movie. Forget the travelogue, forget Melville -- let's get to the monsters already!

Melville has brought along a spiffy scintillator counter, and he excitedly reports that the whole area is lousy with uranium. As Susan and Russ go off to look for Bruce, he unsuccessfully tries to convince the pilot to fly him back to civilization to stake his uranium claim. In the meantime, Susan and Russ witness a twelve foot tall hawk devour a mouse the size of a large dog. Pretty soon, the group is being menaced by giant spiders, lizards, and other assorted creepy-crawlies that are scary enough normal-sized.

Russ and Susan play fetch with a giant lizard

Writing, producing, and directing on the same film is onerous enough for one person, but add technical effects on top of it all, and you can bet somewhere along the line something's going to suffer. And yes, the technical effects, especially the matte work, are subpar even for the 1950s. The monsters are washed out and differently lit than the backgrounds and the human figures. I can imagine kids at a '50s matinee getting really impatient with the pale, sleepy-looking "giant" lizards to the point of throwing popcorn at the screen and at each other (not that I did any of that).

Approximately 40 minutes into this short 66 minute feature, Gordon finally comes through with the goods, and we (and the expedition) get to meet the titular character. So, is all the clumsy build-up worth the pay-off? At my first viewing (around the age of 10), I jumped at the first appearance of the Cyclops, and was alternately fascinated and repulsed. Jack Young's make-up is startling, imaginative, and just plain gross. A huge fold of skin covers the right eye, as if the creature's forehead had melted. The remaining eye is lidless and bloodshot, and pops out of the skull like a watery ping-pong ball. The right side of the mouth and jaw have been ripped away, displaying enormous teeth. Voice artist Paul Frees provided the monster's caveman-like grunts, groans, and screams.  Frees contributed to countless movies, cartoons and TV shows, including scads of 50s sci-fi movies where he was often featured as a portentous narrator: The Thing From Another World (1951), When Worlds Collide (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), The Deadly Mantis (1956), Beginning of the End (1957), etc. His talents are wasted here, as almost anyone (perhaps including Bert himself) could have grunted to similar effect.

A lot of action is packed into the movie's last 25 minutes. Amazingly, the expedition finds the wreckage of Bruce's plane (either Susan is incredibly lucky or she's psychic). A nifty p.o.v. shot has the monster staring down at Susan as she examines the wreckage (complete with a watery-looking film over the camera lens). As she becomes aware of the thing looking down on her, she slowly looks up, and screams. The monster takes her to a cave, where the rest of the group find her. Gordon cleverly makes us feel sympathy for the hideous thing. This is no unthinking, homicidal beast, but rather a bewildered, injured man stumbling about, his brain turned to mush and his body horribly mutated. In a purely physical role, Duncan "Dean" Parkin does a good job of conveying the Cyclops' confusion and frustration with gestures and facial tics, while still chilling the viewer to the bone.

The radiation, or whatever it is that's mutating all the wildlife in the area, must work very quickly on the brain as well as the body, as the expedition members seem almost as confused as the Cyclops. It takes science-wiz Russ a… very … long … time… to put two and two together: the radiation readings, and the huge animals, and the plane wreckage, and the 25 foot tall, disfigured man hanging around the wreckage... hmmmmm.... Russ doesn't seem to be the whippiest Ph.d on the block. Stoic Susan doesn't seem to get it at all -- or maybe the point is she doesn't want to get it.  At any rate, the characters are so dimwitted that the viewer is tempted to yell at the screen and/or throw popcorn.

Gloria Talbott appeared in countless TV shows in the 50s and 60s, taking time out to make a few B sci-fi and horror movies here and there:  Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957; which played on a double-bill with The Cyclops); I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958; great fun and a near-classic), and The Leech Woman (1960; a nothing role as a scientist's assistant). While certainly not a great actress, her jet-black hair and strong, attractive features make quite an impression.

By the time of Cyclops, Lon Chaney Jr. was tipping the bottle quite a bit, demonstrated by his bloated features and stumbling delivery. He is wildly miscast as a wealthy financier lusting for uranium. Rough, alcoholic cowhand I could believe -- financier… I don't think so. Adding insult to injury, his character is just plain unbelievable, doing incredibly stupid things seemingly just to get some action going.

Tom Drake as the alcoholic pilot Lee Brand lends a little comic relief to the film, joking at one point that once his bottle of hooch is done, it's time to go home. Trapped in the cave by the Cyclops, he reaches for his bottle only to find it empty. "Time to go home," he says bitterly.

So, if The Cyclops is so weak, why include it in a blog dedicated to obscure but worthwhile B movies? Let's let Gloria Talbott have the last say. In Tom Weaver's Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers (McFarland, 2006) she talks in some detail about the making of The Cyclops and the audience reception at its premiere. Her judgment:

Were you happy with the results on The Cyclops?
   I was amazed. There are parts that are corny, but considering the time involved; the amount of locations we went on; how quickly we did it; some of the not-too-reliable actors; and Bert I. Gordon's personality-- considering all that, I think it's not bad. I'm not ashamed of the film; and I'm not ashamed of Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, either.

Indeed! There's a lot to love about little movies that attempt big things on minuscule budgets that would drive mainstream filmmakers into rehab or retirement. If you're interested, a DVD-R copy is available from Oldies.com.

"Unknown terror stalks a forbidden land!"