A man is taken over by an evil brain from outer space, which decides it wants to take over the planet. Fortunately, a good brain from outer space comes on the scene and takes over the man’s dog.

You know, sometimes you can just tell from reading a plot description that you’ve entered a B-Movie pulp paradise. The story sounds laughable, but irresistible, and the movie doesn’t disappoint. It has John Agar in one of his best SF roles; he always seemed to me to be better suited for villains than heros, and this movie gives him a great one, and he looks like he’s having a lot of fun, even if those contacts must have been painful. Credit Nathan Juran for once again having the good sense to know that the best way to handle a story like this is to keep it moving.

SPOILER COMING

One of the questions I’m left with after watching this movie is how John Agar is going to explain all this to the authorities. Though he’s won out against the evil brain, only him and his girlfriend know about it, and the good brain (the only character who could convincingly back up their story) has left for parts unknown. He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do when the police show up!

An old scientist experiments on travelling salesmen that visit his inn. He comes under the suspicion of the town jack-of-all-trades and a woman who has agreed to buy the inn.

If Boris Karloff hadn’t been with a touring company doing “Arsenic and Old Lace” when the movie version was being shot, he most likely would have appeared in it in the role he’d done on Broadway. As it is, he ended up in this “Arsenic” rip-off, which borrows a number of elements of the play (there is a romantic couple, there are dotty old people around, Peter Lorre shows up) and changes the mix slightly. Even if it is a rip-off, Karloff is having fun, and shows great comic timing. The plot is muddled, and it definitely ends with a thud, but it has some nice moments throughout. Peter Lorre plays the banker/lawyer/sheriff/justice of the peace/etc. character, and my favorite moment is when Karloff explains to him the nature of his experiments (he’s been trying to turn travelling salesmen into supermen to aid the war effort), Lorre’s reaction is relief that the old scientist wasn’t a crackpot like he thought.

As a bit of trivia, I noticed when I researched this that Lorre and Karloff had only appeared in four movies together, and all of them were comedies.

A doctor framed for murder is sent to a special prison, where he finds himself working with the warden to study blood types, unaware that the warden has contracted a disease that requires a constant replenishment of blood.

I’d seen stills of this movie for years, particularly ones that featured Victor Maddern as the hunchback. The movie itself is supposed to be in color, but my print was so faded that I could only tell it was in color when there was red in the scene (it does make the blood stand out). It’s definitely a movie of its period; like THE VAMPIRE, it attempts to come up with a scientific equivalent of vampirism, and it shows some definite influence from Hammer horrors of the period. It was written by Jimmy Sangster, and stars Donald Wolfit as the evil Dr. Callistratus. It’s not great, but it’s entertaining enough for ersatz Hammer. I hope to see a decent color print some time.

Two teens discover a shapeless blob from outer space is consuming the residents of a small town.

This was the first of three movies produced by Jack Harris and directed by Irwin S. Yeaworth, Jr. It also remains their best collaboration. Taking an opposite strategy than AIP was taking at that time, they took enough money to make two low-budget movies for a single picture that they could shoot in color and make as good as they could, and the results are actually pretty impressive. The monster is as basic as you can get, but the end result is pretty impressive. What I like best, though, is the way the characters are fleshed out, especially the teens and the policemen; you get a strong impression that these characters have known each other a long time. There’s a number of really nice touches, including the chess game the police play over the radio. This is one of my favorites, and I always enjoy watching it again.

A devil worshipper is visited by an old enemy who has sworn revenge on him.

This is definitely the strangest of the classic Universal horror movies of the thirties. The art deco house of Hjalmer Poelzig is even more unsettling than all the gloomy castles that make up the other movies of that era. It’s also the first movie together for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and both of them have great roles that pit them against each other beautifully; if I’d been casting, I most likely would have reversed their roles, but I’m not so sure it would have worked any better that way than it does now. The plot is a bit muddled, most likely as a result of censorship, but the interplay between the characters is so strong, the dialogue so witty (“Do you hear that, Vitus? The phone is dead. Even the phone is dead!”), and the direction by Edgar Ulmer so strong, that it doesn’t matter. Even the comic relief sequence with the two policemen works in its own offhand way. This is one of my favorites.

A Rhedosaurus is released from the icy polar regions to wreak havoc on the world.

This isn’t the first movie in which Ray Harryhausen worked on the special effects, but it’s the first one where he was in charge, and he does a fine job of showing that he’s learned his lessons well. It’s also an important movie in that it pretty much kicks off the “giant monsters rampaging through modern city” genre that arose in the fifties, and probably influenced the creation of Godzilla as well. I also find it to be one of the more consistent of his black-and-white movies; the surrounding story is somewhat stronger than it would be in EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS or IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, for example. Though it lacks the poetic sadness of “The Foghorn”, the Bradbury story that spawned the movie, it carves out a niche of its own, and works well on its own level. By the way, that’s Lee Van Cleef with the rifle in the final scenes.

A female government agent investigates the disappearance of a scientist named Duran Duran.

All right, so it’s based on a sexy French comic book, which means I really shouldn’t judge it too harshly; it’s nothing more than a funny and sexy action thriller; it’s not supposed to be compared to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. That is all well and good. Unfortunately, as far as the funny parts go, the only laughs I got were at the gags surrounding the broken down machinery in use by the rebel camp in the city. As an action thriller, I found it unconvincing and sluggish; the action scenes move a lot slower than they should, and I never really believe that any of the characters are in danger. This leaves the sex, and I suppose this is the level at which it is the most successful, but even at that, the leering attitude prevalent in the movie gets awfully tiresome, and the “sexy” costumes look contrived and uncomfortable.

Of course, all of this may mean nothing more than that I’m missing the point, and there’s probably some truth to that. The movie, as far as I can tell, is “campy” fun; the problem is, I’m just not into the whole “camp” thing. I leave this movie to those who can appreciate this type of entertainment.

The sets are impressive, though.