Taking a Bubble Bath in the Cave of Death

The Unknown Terror (1957)

Until recently, I knew The Unknown Terror by reputation only-- a reputation for some of the more lamentable, laughable effects in all of 1950s B movie sci-fi (more on that later). Having misspent my youth, middle age, and now advanced middle age watching just about everything in the horror and sci-fi genres I could lay my eyes on (especially from the 1930s through the 1960s), it's a wonder this one evaded me for so long. Perhaps there were rights issues. Or perhaps it was just too lame even for the packagers of the Creature Feature-type shows of the '60s and '70s. It certainly seems to have been considered too obscure and/or unmarketable for even a halfhearted commercial video release. Fortunately, with all kinds of analog to digital transfer options and an international marketplace for everything in the form of the internet, an aficionado like myself doesn't have to be rich or a super sleuth to catch up on all the esoteric film fun out there.

Bottom line, is The Unknown Terror worth the small amount of extra effort and expense to see? Well, yes and no. Yes in the sense that if you're like me, it grates on you that there's this elusive sci-fi or horror title that you've read about from time to time, but never seen. It doesn't matter if the judgment of it over time has been harsh. Someone thought they had an idea good enough to invest some time, money and talent (yes, talent-- even bad movies require some talent to make). It was made for kids like me, growing up in the Midwest in the '50s and '60s. Maybe I was sick the day it popped up on the afternoon Creature Feature or the late show. Regardless, as a boomer with a predilection for vintage sci-fi and horror movies, I am duty bound to seek it out and give it a chance, even to the point of writing about it in this blog.

But enough temporizing. Unknown Terror is not a good film. However, it doesn't miss the "fair to good" category by much. A sprinkling of lackluster performances and some missed plot opportunities might be forgiven, but the special monster effects that induce giggles instead of gasps are the final nail in the coffin. In this regard, Unknown Terror reminds me of The Giant Claw released the same year, which I managed to catch a couple of months ago on TCM. Claw is standard giant-monster-on-the-loose '50s sci-fi, with a competent script, fair to good acting, and some suspenseful moments. But the monster of the title is anything but standard. According to legend (and related by TCM's Robert Osborne), Claw's producer Sam Katzman saved a few bucks by outsourcing the monster effects to a shop in Mexico. The result is an ungainly, moth-eaten giant bird with an uncanny resemblance to Beaky Buzzard of cartoon fame. In the words of classic sci-fi maven Bill Warren (Keep Watching the Skies!, McFarland, 1982), "The sight of this pathetic horror has been known to bring strong men to their knees in laughter." (Lead actor Jeff Morrow, who liked to catch his movies at the local theater where he could visit with friends and neighbors, reportedly had to slink out of the theater when the first appearance of Beaky, aka the Giant Claw, elicited howls of laughter from the audience.)

Warren has similar things to say about The Unknown Terror:

The Unknown Terror is a pretty bad movie in most respects, but it isn't as poor as it might have been; the primary defect is a monster done by a method so foolish that it causes only gales of laughter whenever this picture is shown, which is rarely. Had the monster been done differently, the picture would have been an acceptable programmer." (ibid.)

A fair assessment. But Unknown also misses the mark in other ways. Considering the locales and themes it presents -- a simmering, tense love triangle played out in the jungles and dark caves of an unnamed Caribbean island, with the danger of a mysterious contagion thrown in for good measure -- the film plods along, only managing to generate occasional suspense or interest. The main characters spend most of the movie fighting among themselves or with their own, veiled inner demons for reasons that the viewer can at best only dimly understand. If you're going to squander plot and character opportunities, then at least the effects and/or the monster should be pretty exciting to lift the thing into the realm of the watchable. But the effects, and the monsters, fail… so… spectacularly… (don't worry, I'll get around to the juicy details shortly…)

Unknown reminds me of yet another 1957 sci-fi programmer-- The Cyclops (featured right here in a March 2011 posting). At least on the surface, they have quite a bit in common: the female protagonists, with the aid of a wealthy man, go searching for a lost fiance/brother in the wilds of Central America/the Caribbean and encounter mutations/monsters. (You have to wonder if the writers or producers from each had a long three-martini lunch together, or if someone from production A just happened to glance at a story outline on the desk of someone from production B… but I guess we'll never know.) Both films suffer from some logic lapses, the most obvious being the slim-to-none chance of the missing loved one being alive to justify mounting an expensive, time-consuming rescue expedition. And they both feature some below-average-even-for-a-B-movie effects work (Bert I. Gordon's matte work in Cyclops is patently crude).  Where they part company is in that ultimate payoff for B sci-fi movie fans: a decent monster. For me, The Cyclops redeemed itself with frighteningly memorable monster make-up (check out the video clip at the end of my post and judge for yourself). As for The Unknown Terror -- well, its supposedly monstrous threat might not cause viewers to convulse in laughter like The Giant Claw, but it is good for some pretty hearty chuckles.

Calypso star Sir Lancelot sings a cryptic
ballad about la Cueva de la Muerte.

So what is the extraordinarily lame Unknown Terror that haunts the Cave of Death? It is … soap suds. Or more precisely, soap suds masquerading as mutated, extremely quick-growing fungi. After spending about 60 minutes out of the film's 76 minutes watching the protagonists wondering what might have happened to the lost explorer, flying out to the unnamed Caribbean island, trying to convince the locals to take them to the Cave of Death (Cueva de la Muerte) that he had supposedly discovered, being harassed and intimidated by the natives, and finally stumbling upon the mysterious cave, this is the payoff we get… soap suds. Soap suds that seep from the walls of the cave. Soap suds that cover the faces and arms of unfortunate natives who've been subjected to a mad doctor's experiments with fungi. Soap suds that, according to the deranged doctor Ramsey (Gerald Milton), will grow and grow and take over the world if allowed to escape from the confines of the cave. Uh huh.

Mala Powers, who played Gina Matthews, sister of the missing explorer, explained in an interview how she approached some of the less than stellar work, like Unknown Terror, that came her way:

You may read a script and say to yourself, 'I wonder why this is being made at all.' But if you need the work, if you need to stay in front of the public, if you need the money-- whatever your reason is-- and you say yes, at that point it is incumbent upon you to fall in love with the script and fall in love with your part. At that point you put on blinders that enable you to permit your love for your profession to shine a radiance over everything. This allows you to put all of yourself into it. (Tom Weaver, Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes, McFarland, 1991.)

She was also quite generous when talking about the special effects:

They used a lot of soap suds and some other stuff that was kind of like plastic goo. It was a real conglomeration, and to find out exactly how it was done you'd have to go to Merlin the Magician [laughs]! The prop man was very inventive, and it was quite effective. It's quite different now that they have these special effects laboratories-- it's much more sophisticated today. The effects in The Unknown Terror were just done by very good, inventive prop men. (ibid.)

While I disagree with her assessment of the effects -- this is just bad work for any era -- I certainly appreciate her sense of professional ethics. Very simply, if you agree to do the work, you give it your all. There is nothing worse than an actor, writer, producer or director who feels that he/she is above the material, and takes great pains to let everyone know it. Such cynicism and hack work is almost always painfully obvious to see in the finished work.

Dr. Ramsey, the fungus expert, is cooking up something
in his humble abode. I wouldn't eat that if I were you!

Unknown's redemption is in the professionalism of its actors. The three main leads in particular do their best to transcend the mediocre material. Joining Mala in the sudsy proceedings are John Howard, playing Mala's/Gina's wealthy husband Dan Matthews, and Paul Richards, playing the third wheel (and real love of Gina's life), Pete Morgan. John played supporting roles in a few A pictures like The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Lost Horizon (1937), while also playing leads in programmers like the Bulldog Drummond series. By the 1950s his work was almost exclusively in television. Paul Richards is a familiar face to fans of '60s and '70s TV, guesting on such diverse series as Perry Mason, The Untouchables, Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-O (where he was the very first villain to hear Steve McGarrett say "Book-em Dano!"), and Rod Serling's Night Gallery. He was only 50 when he died.

The Unknown Terror's obscurity is no mystery. Even with a bigger budget and more care taken with the effects, Unknown would still only be a footnote in anyone's survey of good vintage sci-fi. But if you're a completist like me, you'll want to check out Sci-Fi Station's video catalog. It's there, along with equally obscure but tantalizing titles.


Daring explorers Dan Matthews (John Howard) and Pete Morgan (Paul Richards) encounter chills and water spills in the Cave of Death:

Synapses and Circuits

The Colossus of New York (1958)

What is it that makes you unique among all the billions of people in the world-- what is that makes you, you? Is it your mind alone? Is it some combination of mind and body? Is there such a thing as a soul that can be severed from both mind and body at death, and start floating around the universe (or heaven, or some other dimension), preserving everything that is you for all time? Philosophers and religious scholars have grappled with this problem  for a very long time with very little consensus.

Lately, with supercomputers undreamed of even five years ago, and molecular and quantum computing on the horizon, speculation has turned to the possibilities of mind uploading or "whole brain emulation" -- digitally mapping a biological brain and processes in such complete detail that it could continue functioning in some kind of computer system. Imagine taking an image of your brain, uploading it to the most super of supercomputers, and finally connecting it up with digital sensors and robotic capabilities. Suddenly, the concept of a "new you" becomes literal instead of figurative.

On second thought, forget the digital brain scan -- what if it was your actual, living brain that was now divorced of its body and hooked up to all the electronics. Would that still be you? Or is there something special about the mind-body interaction, some whole beyond the sum of the parts that really accounts for all that is you, and when that's messed up, the result is something else, something… not you anymore…

The great science fiction writer Damon Knight explored that very topic in his famous 1968 story "Masks." In a secret research project, a horribly injured quadriplegic has his consciousness transferred into a brand new, gleaming cyborg body. Sounds great, right? Not only have all his health and mobility problems been solved, but there's nothing preventing him from living for a very, very long time, if not forever. Only, as he interacts with the scientists and other people around him, he begins to develop a new aesthetic, and a growing distaste for these messy, sweaty, greasy, disease-ridden and very imperfect bio-organisms. He loses his connection with not only humanity, but all living things, with tragic consequences. Ten years before Knight's groundbreaking story, The Colossus of New York explored the same territory, with darkly surprising and at the same time head-slappingly silly results (after all, the film was made by fallible humans).

Colossus begins by introducing us to the Spenssers, a veritable think-tank of a family whose collective IQ is off the charts. Patriarch William Spensser (Otto Kruger) is a noted brain surgeon, and son Henry (John Baragrey) is a whiz with robotics and automation (quite fortuitous skills, as we will shortly see). But the youngest member of the family, Jeremy, is even more brilliant--  "one of the few authentic geniuses in the country," in the words of old family friend Dr. John Carrington (Robert Hutton). He's just gotten back from a trip to Stockholm where he accepted the "International Peace Prize" for his work in producing hardier, cold-resistant crops to feed a hungry world. Doting father William patiently explains to a reporter that his son works at the highest level of genius, which tries to address the needs of all humanity.

All that promise is tragically obliterated in the next few minutes. A wind kicks up as the ebullient Jeremy, family and friends prepare to leave the airport. Jeremy's son Billy loses his toy airplane in the wind, and foolishly, the dutiful father and peace prize winner chases the toy into the street. He looks up just a split second before a truck barrels into him.

William's grief seems to have gotten the better of him when he has Jeremy's body delivered to the Spensser mansion instead of a mortuary. No one understands why he's operating on a dead man in his home laboratory. Hours later, a grim-faced William emerges from the lab to tell John, Henry, and Jeremy's wife Anne (Mala Powers) that "I did all I could." Which apparently is quite a lot, as they soon discover.

At the funeral, Carrington declares in his eulogy that despite the seeming senseless of Jeremy's death, there must be in God's infinite wisdom a profound meaning in the loss of such a great genius. William jumps up, yelling "No! No!" and rushes out the room. Later, he has it out with Carrington. While keeping the results of the operation a secret from the old friend, he recklessly implies that not even death has to keep a good man down:

Brilliant scientist Jeremy Spensser's brain
is preserved in classic sci-fi style.

William: Don't you realize that Jeremy's brain was unique? It was like Darwin's, like Michelangelo, like DaVinci, like Einstein. Now suppose, all those great brains had been allowed to continue their work, unhampered by their bodies? Think of the advance in civilization there would be.
John: No, no… I believe that every man, and that includes every great man, is the product of his mind and body. It's through the divine spark of the creator that the interconnection of body and mind is achieved through the soul…
William: Oh, now don't speak to me of antiquated notions like a soul! You're a scientist-- can you measure a soul?
John: As a scientist, I believe that any brain, unable to feel hunger and cold, pleasure and pain, love and hate -- any brain -- divorced from human experience, must become dehumanized to the point of… monstrousness.
William: You are an idiot… an idiot! I tell you, that in the brain, and in the brain alone, lies the glory of man, the ability to think, to create… why, these go on eternally! I tell you that the brain is supreme, it is immortal, and I can prove…
John: Wait, wait, this is merely a theoretical discussion.
William (hand over his mouth, hesitating): Er, yes… quite…

Here then is the crux of the age-old mind-body problem, and the crux of the film. And, with a good working knowledge of Frankenstein and all the other "he dabbled in things best left alone"-type films, it's an easy guess who will be proved the greater fool in the end.

Brother Henry, no slouch himself as a scientist, has chafed for years at all the attention lavished on Jeremy by his father, and by the world. With Jeremy's death, he decides to make a move on his brother's attractive widow Anne. But a short time later, he finds out things aren't so simple. William gives him a tour of the dark lab, where Henry discovers that his brother's brain is still alive in classic sci-fi style in a glass container, hooked up to a plethora of tubes and electronics. The brain can receive voice transmissions, and in turn can "speak" through a teletype machine. Henry's response: "It's inhuman!" But William's doting on Jeremy has now become an obsession. "With your knowledge of automation, you can help him live again!" he pleads with Henry.

The product of the collaboration between the brain surgeon and the automation specialist is one of the more eerie creations in all of '50s sci-fi: an 8 ft. tall automation with a huge domed head; glowing white eyes; a crude, chiseled face; a mouth that moves slightly, but never fully opens; and huge metal hands with long, jointed fingers. An enormous cloak and Frankenstein monster-like boots complete the effect. (The Colossus is played by 7' 6" Ed Wolff, who had been a circus giant before getting work in movies.)

Henry, whose motivations are perhaps less than pure, makes William promise that once the new body is activated, he will let Jeremy decide if he wants to go on living in such a fashion. William, obsessed with the idea that Jeremy's genius can help the world cure much of its ills, reluctantly agrees. The activation scene is very well done, and in a low-key way produces more chills than all the arcing electricity and pulsating dials of all the Frankenstein films put together. In a nice point-of-view shot, the interference in the automaton's visual circuits clears up to reveal a concerned William staring up at the giant. In a distorted electronic voice that makes the flesh crawl, Jeremy wails that "he can't move." "You can move!" William insists. It's a physical therapy session from Hell that gets kicked up several notches when the bewildered Jeremy sees what he's become in a less-than-ideally-placed mirror. His spine-chilling electronic screams wake up Anne, who insists she heard a voice like her husband's before the ruckus. The patronizing men reassure her it was nothing at all. (Later on in the film as the Colossus finds his voice, it's clearly Jeremy's/Ross Martin's, which is satisfying from a dramatic standpoint, but not from a scientific one-- how in the world, and why, did they recreate such a unique human attribute in the giant's electronics, when everything else about the thing is otherworldly in the extreme?)

Anne (Mala Powers) has just about had it with
her manipulative father-in-law (Otto Kruger).

After the shock of seeing himself in the mirror, Jeremy pleads with his father to destroy him. But the obsessed William talks Jeremy into continuing by appealing to his sense of duty to humanity:  "Jeremy, you still have a priceless gift to give to the world… I can give you destruction, or you can give us a world of abundance!" How can any self-respecting cyborg turn an appeal like that down? But Jeremy has one condition-- "I don't want anyone ever to see me…"

Henry is bummed, skeptical and frightened: 1.) even after Jeremy's "death," he's still being eclipsed by the favored son; and 2.) this 8 foot tall monstrosity he himself designed might just stand in the way of his designs on Anne. He unwisely taunts the Colossus, and then hurriedly shuts the creature down remotely when it moves menacingly toward him, hissing in its creepy electronic voice, "Don't taunt me Henry…"  (the scientists have wisely built another safety mechanism into their creation-- a shutdown lever attached to the back of Colossus' body where he can't get to it with his mechanical hands!)

Ever the good son, Jeremy tries to adapt to his electronic/mechanical "prison." Not only does he adapt, but he develops new faculties. He describes to William and Henry a disturbing vision he's had of two ships colliding in a fog-shrouded sea. Hours later, the collision is worldwide news. But along with the ESP, he's developed something darker-- a growing cynicism. When his father excitedly reports that the World Food Congress will be held at the United Nations and Jeremy's work will be featured, the Colossus sneers that it's good to be remembered, especially on this day-- the first anniversary of his death. He declares that he shall commemorate his own death with a trip to the gravesite. When William forbids it, Jeremy/Colossus reveals yet another talent-- the ability to hypnotize with his flashing white eyes (see the clip below).

It's at this point that Colossus veers from dark, gothic, Frankenstein-inspired sci-fi to Saturday matinee chapter-serial stuff. By itself, Colossus' ability to hypnotize by flashing his eyes is acceptable, if a little corny. But in the latter half he acquires all kinds of superpowers that come out of nowhere and leave you scratching your head: precognition, the ability to walk underwater, and coolest of all, the ability to shoot death rays from his glowing eyes. To top it off, the filmmakers try to tug at the heartstrings by having Jeremy/Colossus meet up again with his son ("Are you a good giant, or a bad giant?" the implausibly calm boy asks Colossus at their first meeting). At one point he even gives the boy a new toy airplane. Ouch!

The first half of the movie is darkly effective, and the rest so cartoonish that you have to believe at some point the money people started turning the screws to make the thing more kid-friendly. As Jeremy's paranoid psychosis blooms, so do his superpowers. With his ESP, he can see where Henry is and what he's doing at all times-- the duplicitous would-be wife stealer gets his comeuppance with some well-placed death rays (the monster surprises his no-good brother by suddenly emerging from the East River after a nice underwater stroll). And his mind takes even a darker turn. "Why should we work to preserve the slum people of the world?" he asks his stunned father. "Isn't it simpler and wiser to get rid of them instead?… It will be necessary to get rid of [the] humanitarians first!"  Hmmm…. maybe John Carrington wasn't such an idiot after all. Divorced of the essential mind-body connection, Jeremy/Colossus has become as soulless as a Wall-Street bankster or a Washington politician.

The Colossus tries to "enlighten" the world's
top scientists gathered at the United Nations.

The climax takes place at the United Nations building, where the misguided humanitarians have assembled to talk about world hunger. Yes Virginia, there are death rays, and shouting, and screaming, and shattered glass-- all against the backdrop of the Isaiah 2:4 quote inscribed at the U.N., "They shall beat their swords into plowshares [and so on]." And yes, that safety shutdown lever built into the Colossus becomes quite handy.

Besides the overdone pathos, other production elements served to take Colossus down a peg or two from minor sci-fi classic status. Van Cleave's original score for single piano strikes just the right ominous tone in the title credits, but as the movie progresses, the dirge-like piano music begins to sound like a cheesy accompaniment to a silent movie. The sound effects are also amateurish. The cartoonishly-loud clomping of Colossus' boots sounds the same regardless of location-- lab, forest, lawn, or the marble floors of the U.N. And the electric-current buzzing that follows the cyborg around wherever he goes wears thin pretty fast.

Sadly but predictably, Colossus was not a resume highlight for most of its cast and crew. In Keep Watching the Skies (McFarland), Bill Warren relates that director Eugene Lourie signed onto the picture while waiting for the go ahead on a much larger sci-fi project, The Giant Behemoth (1959). Despite reservations with the script (or maybe because of them), he shot Colossus in eight days. In an interview published in Fantastic Films #17, he's extremely dismissive: "I remember very little of the actual shooting as I remember very little of the scarlet fever I had when I was eight years old." Okay then! (Lourie made more of a name for himself as an art director, but he did direct some of the greatest "giant monsters on the loose" movies of all time: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, 1953, Behemoth, and Gorgo, 1961.)

Robert Hutton, a character actor with leading man-looks who seems to have been in half of all the sci-fi movies made in the 1950s and '60s, was similarly unimpressed with the production: "To be quite honest with you, I had completely forgotten that I even made that movie until I saw it recently on television. It was wonderful working with Otto Kruger (William Spensser) -- he was great, a fine actor. Except for that, it was not a very memorable experience [laughs]." (Tom Weaver, Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes, McFarland)

Anyway, I remember it pretty vividly for scaring the heck out of me as a kid. The scene in which William activates Colossus for the first time, and poor Jeremy takes a good look at his new body, is especially effective and chilling. Even though the film -- like the title character --  loses a bit of its soul midway through, it's worth the trouble of looking up. A watchable (but not great) copy is available from Sci-Fi Station.

Update: Olive Films will be releasing Colossus on DVD on August 16, 2011. The film is finally getting the kind of video release it deserves!


Brilliant scientist Jeremy Spensser (Ross Martin), now a hulking Colossus, decides to take a stroll and visit his own grave: