FROM HELL IT CAME (1957)
Article #190 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-22-2001
Posting date: 2-5-2002

When a South Seas island prince is executed, he comes back to life as a killer tree to exact revenge.

This movie has one of those unfortunate titles that makes it easy to come up with a bad review; just tell the reader where the movie should go back to. To further the problem, the movie itself doesn’t exactly inspire a good review; the story is slow, talky, confusing, and badly acted, and the monster is one of the least spry this side of Kharis. Still, i can’t help but love the monster; the Tabanga suit was designed (though not built nor performed) by Paul Blaisdell, and it has his trademark, “Grr! I’m scary!” expression. I always felt the best way to avoid being killed by this monster was to lie down and force him to pick you up; that should keep him busy for a couple of hours. the strangest aspect of this movie is the attempt by the doctors to find some scientific basis for the existence of the monster, trotting in that magic monster word of the fifties, “radiation”; IMHO, this is one monster that really defies any scientific explanation.

Oh, and as for Tina Carver’s legendary screams in this movie, the last time I heard that sound, I had to clean up after the cat.

Is it my imagination, or have I had more than my share of turkeys lately?

FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1958)
Article #189 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-21-2001
Posting date: 2-4-2002

The assistant to a scientist is actually the evil Dr. Frankenstein, and he’s performing hideous experiments under the scientist’s nose.

I approach my discussion of this film with a little trepidation, as I know that it is quite popular among many people I’ve known. Unfortunately, the only real appeal I can find to this movie is in the “so campy it’s good” category; as a genuinely scary movie I think it’s quite awful, despite the fact that the first minute does catch my attention. In order for a movie like this to work for me, I need to believe it on some level, but in order to suspend my disbelief with this one, I’d need a crane. Most of the problems I have revolve around the character of Dr. Frank; I find it unbelievable that he would have secret storage areas in another scientist’s house that nobody but him and his assistant know about, or that the scientist wouldn’t fire him after all the stunts he pulls (such as destroying the scientist’s hard-bought supply of Degenerol) and his constant attempts to seduce the scientist’s daughter. I also consider Donald Murphy’s performance as Dr. Frank to be one of the worst I’ve ever seen. The character doesn’t come across as being deliciously creepy, but as being a creep (and there is a difference); I almost expect to see scenes of him going through the dirty laundry and smelling everyone’s underwear. All in all, I don’t find the movie a great deal of fun; rather, I find it somewhat stupid and more than a little repellent.

FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1964)
Article #188 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-20-2001
Posting date: 2-3-2002

A giant version of the Frankenstein monster does battle with a burrowing monster known as Baragon.

The fifties and sixties were a bizarre time for Frankenstein and his creations, with several variations on the theme that were quite offbeat. This was one of the strangest, with the heart of the Frankenstein monster being sent to Japan during World War II, where it is on hand for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing a giant version of the Frankenstein monster to grow from it. The monster is basically good, but misunderstood, more a victim than an aggressor, Once again I admire the skillful model work that Toho put into their movies; the scenes of him walking through the city are quite effective. I also like the touches of humor and (possibly) good-natured parody; when the heart is taken away from the scientist at the beginning of the movie, he destroys his own lab in much the same way we’ve known the monster to do so in the Universal movies. Two of my favorite moments are comic in nature, both involving the monster’s hunt for food. The first is where he tosses a tree at a wild boar, and the second is when he digs a pit to catch it and what he catches in its place. It’s colorful and energetic, but ultimately I find it a little dull and disappointing; I prefer the sequel, THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, even though the English version of this movie excised all references that tied the two movies together. Nick Adams is on hand as one of the scientists.

THE FLYING SAUCER (1950)
Article #187 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-19-2001
Posting date: 2-2-2002

From the title, you’d think this movie would be about visiting aliens from another world. Well, let’s find out.

SPOILERS A-PLENTY AHEAD (If you just want a hint as to what the movie is about, just scan through quickly and look at the words in caps.)

In the SNOW-covered lands of Alaska, there have been sightings of a flying saucer. One old woman is so terrified after seeing one, she turns to the camera and screams, the sounds reverberating back and forth across the SNOW-covered landscape. (You have now seen the good part of the movie).

Our governement decides to investigate the sightings, so they send a hard-drinking playboy to the SNOW-covered wilds of Alaska, along with their own agent, disguised as the playboy’s nurse. They take a long cruise up to Juneau, where we, the viewers, are treated to many shots of the beautiful SNOW-covered scenery.

When they reach the cabin in the middle of a field covered with SNOW, they meet the caretaker, whom nobody has met before and who acts suspicious and speaks with a Russian accent. They don’t suspect he’s a Russian spy sent to kill them and leave their dead bodies in the SNOW. They now embark on their ingenious method of investigating the saucer, which involves waiting around for something to fall into their laps (which gives them ample time to shovel the SNOW, have SNOWball fights, make SNOW angels, build SNOW forts, and try to build a romance). The spy makes some pathetic attempts to knock them off, but someone keeps entering the room and spoiling his plans; apparently he figures he doesn’t have a SNOWball’s chance in hell of knocking them off at the same time.

Eventually, the playboy comes to the conclusion that there is a flaw in their ingenious scheme, so he decides to pursue HIS plan, which is to go to Juneau, get stinking drunk, and wander around from bar to SNOW-covered bar to find old friends. Amazingly, this works, as he encounters a friend who is in the employ of Russian spies who are also hunting for a flying saucer in the SNOW-covered wilds of Alaska. The spies kill the friend, and beat up the playboy, who is left to die but is saved by the nurse when she spots his body, which must have stood out quite well against the milky whiteness of the SNOW.

He recovers and rents a plane which flies for five minutes over MANY ACRES AND ACRES OF SNOW. He finds a shed with a flying saucer in it, and so he flies back the way he came, once again giving us a view of the SAME MANY ACRES OF SNOW we saw on his flight out. He gets back in time to be kidnapped by Russian spies, along with the nurse and the scientist who build the saucer, and they take a long journey in a tunnel that runs under the SNOW-covered mountains. When they’re almost to the shed, the playboy tricks one of the spies into firing his gun, causing an avalanche which drops TONS OF SNOW on the heads of all but one of the spies. The survivor of the spies runs to the shed and takes off in the saucer, not noticing the safety device the scientist had installed (a bomb), which goes off, destroying the spy and the saucer, scattering little pieces of them over the VAST SNOW-COVERED LANDSCAPES OF ALASKA, where there is a plenteous bounty of SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW.

I think you know what the movie is about by now.

FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)
Article #186 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-18-2001
Posting date: 2-1-2002

A scientist experimenting with telekinetic powers taps into the power from a nearby atomic plant at a military site, and ends up creating a hoard of invisible brain-sucking creatures.

There’s more than one fiend to begin with, and since they’re invisible, of course they don’t have faces. But they do become visible later on, and when they do, they still don’t have faces; they look like disembodied central nervous systems, all brain and spinal cords, and they crawl around like inchworms, or launch themselves like grasshoppers into the air in order to feed on their unsuspecting victims. The movie is a bit uneven, with more dull spots than it really should have, but there are some interesting touches to the story, such as the subplot on how the residents of the area resent the military base because the jets are upsetting the cows so they don’t give as much milk. The romance angle is dull and could have been dispensed with, but once the inchbrains become visible and surround a farmhouse, it turns into kind of a killer brain version of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (and like the zombies in that movie, they’re defeated by shooting them in the brains). There’s lots of great stop-motion work, and some of it is pretty explicit for the time, with the crawling brains expiring in disgusting piles of goo. The attacks are pretty strong stuff, too, even when the brains are still invisible; thank the foley artists who came up with some truly unsettling sound effects for these sequences.