The Blob (1958)

 "Excuse us, we were just looking for a monster..."

You know how you can sort of cheerfully accept that a film is flawed in many ways but still love it? Yep. This is yet another example. All the same, though, a lot here is genuinely good. This is far more than just another '50s science fiction B movie...

Yes, Steve McQueen- although he's very good- is far too old to be a teenager. Yes, it's blatantly obvious that they are (quite wisely) relying on suspense and keeping the Blob out of sight as much as possible. And yes, worst of all, too much of the film's run time consists of Steve and Jane trying fruitlessly to get the police to believe that the Blob exists, and being disbelieved. This sort of thing is never fun to watch.

And yet... the plot makes good sense. The characters may be very flat indeed but they all have clear roles. And it all looks very impressive, with a strong climax and a satisfying conclusion.

And the central conceit may be simple, but it works. The Blob as a parasite that falls to Earth inside a meteorite- very Quatermass II-  and the slow realisation that it will, if unchecked, continue to absorb people and grow bigger until it's absorbed all of humanity. 

If it wasn't for Steve... it would surely have absorbed the whole town. And then...?

A flawed film, yes. But still quite good overall.... actually, no. I've changed my mind. Because that song over the opening titles really is that awesome. With a song like that, how can the film be merely "quite" good?

The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)

 "It should have been perfect!"

It's been a while since I've blogged a Hammer Horror film, not least because there are relatively few of them left. But, incredibly, I've yet to see or blog any of the sequels to The Curse of Frankenstein, so here goes. 

This is,let's face it, Hammer horror by numbers. It's ninety minutes of Peter Cushing dominating the screen as the deliciously obsessive and amoral Baron Frankenstein. The good Baron may speak of "revenge", but after cheating death in such a gloriously improbably way he wishes only to consider his experiments. I'm not sure how, even back in Bismarck's Prussia, one could practise medicine under a pseudonym as surely qualifications would have sort of mattered. I'm a little surprised, too, at how friendly the good Baron can be when blackmailed. but let us think not of such things, and just enjoy ourselves. 

This time Frankenstein has a willing volunteer, a disabled man who wants his brain to be transported into a new, perfect body. It's just that he didn't bother to clarigfy before the operation that Frankenstein intends him to be a public spectacle, which he's less than keen on. Oops. It's also made hilariously clear, with a bit of foreshadowing with a chimp given the brain of an orang-utan, that transplanting Karl's brain into the new body will probably turn him into a crazed, cannibalistic killer. How lovely. How very Hammer. The scenes where the inevitable happens and Karl goes made are a delight.

And if all that isn't fun enough, we get the perfect ending. And any film about brains in jars just has to be adored. So yes, Hammer by numbers... but Hammer by numbers isa very good thing indeed.

Camp at Blood Island (1958)

 "No room for shirkers!"

This film is a definite oddity- a non-horror Hammer film (this weekend's theme) made in 1958, several films into the company's horror era, directed by Val Guest and starring Andre Morell, both familiar faces from late '50s horror.

Yet it feels utterly Hammer. It's weird to see Morell not playing a maverick scientist, and the token Amercan is played not by Steve McQueen but by Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen. There's the obligatory cut price Charles Bronson figure. The sadly late Barbara Shelley is in a very Tenko role, and she's wonderful. It's all very lurid, with staggering amounts of torture and brutal violence for its time- but this probably got hrough the censors precisely because Japanese POW camps really were as bad as this and worse.

The budget is low, the direction is no more than competent, yet Morell is a compelling lead and there's a surprisingly plot that makes this a much better watch than its reputation. The film is gripping throughout, which I wasn't expecting.

The film is, of course, incredibly racist, with the Japanese officers portrayed by made up white actors. And yet this particular racism- although nothing can exactly excuse the yellowface make-up, used in other contexts in contemporary films, and we shouldn'r excuse the various European colonial empires in the Far East or anywhere else- can perhaps not be described as prejudice. Many British people, including my Grandad Gordon, fought in Burma and elsewhere, witnessing many Japanese atrocities and refusing to buy Japanese cars for their whole lives. I'm a lover of Japan, and Japanese culture, but this generation of Japanese soldiers, treating their prisoners of war with sheer cruelty, were utterly without honour.

The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy (1958)

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

This film has, you must concede, a magnificent title. And it was, I correctly assumed, the perfect film for the Friday of a knackering week where I wanted something very undemanding.

I’m nearly always ridiculously anal about not watching either sequels or remakes until I’ve seen the original, and this bonkers ‘50s Mexican horror/sci-fi insanity is not only the third film in a trilogy but more than half the film is taken up with footage from the first two- and there’s an absurd amount of narrated recapping before anything happens. But, and let’s not pretend otherwise, I’m not going to see the first two.

This is an easily watched hour of hilarious runaround with absurd concepts (past life regression! A hilarious mad scientist called Dr Krupp! A hilariously ‘50s robot that only appears in the last ten minutes and from which the hilarious Dr Krupp intends to make a mechanical army to do his bidding!), but underneath all this low camp nonsense is a pretty standard Egyptian mummy film with the rather cool variation that, with this being a Mexican film, the mummies, pyramids and cultural trappings are all Aztec rather than Egyptian. That adds something culturally cool into the mix, however tokenistic it may be.

The film is a load of old tosh, of course. But it’s fun and quick to watch.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

"What evil sorcery is this?"

I've seen this splendid Ray Harryhausen film (and is it not instructive how we all see this as his film, director and obscure cast notwithstanding) several times before. Of course I have. But my DVD went missing years ago and only now do I get to blog it.

It's a splendid tour-de-force of stop motion brilliance, of course; very much a Technicolor King Kong. I mean this literally; the stars of the film are not Kerwin Mathews and Kathryn Grant but the horned Cyclops, the Roc, the dragon and the skeleton- and the final fight between the Cyclops and the dragon is very King Kong indeed.

Of course, Rocs aside, the story owes far more to The Odyssey than to Arabian Nights. And the acting, aside from Torin Thatcher’s splendid scenery chewing as the sneaky magician Sokurah, is pure plywood. Indeed, there is a major plot hole- why do the Caliph and Sultan not suspect the clearly dodgy wizard of being the man who shrunk the princess? Why, after declaring war on Baghdad for no obvious reason, does the Sultan allow his daughter to remain there? Actually, how come a Caliph and Sultan both exist, as equals? Were there sultans before the Ottomans, anyway?

Ultimately, we don’t care about any of this. The stop motion is awesome, therefore the film is awesome. It’s one of those films, and Ray Harryhausen was the greatest ever in his field.

Blood of the Vampire (1958)

"They called me a vampire!"

This film is rather cheeky to bill itself as a vampire film. One has certain expectations from a Jimmy Sangster script; the title certainly implies vampires, and the film starts with some on-screen text strongly implying vampires. Instead we end up with a film about a man framed for murder and sent to a sadistic prison so he can help the mad scientist governor with his blood experiments.So, while not a bad film on its own terms, Blood of the Vampire was very cheekily titled and marketed. Blame the studio, I suppose.

Anyway, this is an interesting little obscure film, featuring a young Barbara Shelley in a prominent role, from about the time when Hammer were resurrecting the horror genre. Yet it doesn't really commit to being a horror film, entertaining though it is as a melodrama. It has its charms, though: Carl, the Igor with the unconvincing rubber eye hanging from its rubber socket; John Le Mesurier in a serious cameo as a judge; an opening bit of text saying it's 1874 yet where dialogue establishes it's 1880 and a tombstone for a recently deceased character proclaims it to be 1892. Is this a record? Also, a major organ in a jar and the look of the Igor character- an influence for the Doctor Who story The Brain of Morbius?

In spite of everything, though, this is not a bad film if you enjoy a good old-fashioned melodrama.

The Hidden Fortress (1958)

"What you make of another's kindness is up to you."

Let's get the obvious comments about this being a blatant influence on Star Wars out of the way quickly, shall we? The directorial style, with the wipes; there's a princess, who gives out a medal at the end; Tahei and Matakishi are C-3PO and R2-D2, and their squabbling at the start of the film is awfully similar, as are all their early scenes. That's enough to be blatant, and I suspect the great Toshiro Mifune's General Matakishi is a big influence on Obi-Wan. Will that do?

But as an Akira Kurasawa film, shockingly only the second I've blogged although I saw a fair few in my pre-blogging days? Well, it's not his best; perhaps it lacks the thematic or aesthetic depths of his best work. But it is nevertheless awesomely made even if the script is odd; shorn of anything more than superficial themes of honour and vague spirituality, it contains Mifune being Mifune, an awesome duelling scene with lances on foot(!), and of course a comic chorus in the form of Tahei and Matakishi, who are rather interestingly foregrounded from the very start, the film being more or less their POV. They also, however, highlight the oddity of a film which is classily directed and made in a modern manner, with a new script, but set entirely within an early modern value system of feudalism, where peasants are simply rude mechanicals, crude and greedy as opposed to the noble behaviour of the posher characters.

It's a brilliant film for all the usual Kurosawa reasons, though, even if it probably would have ended up as one of his lesser-known works if not for George Lucas.

The Trollenberg Terror (1958)

"His head! It was torn off!"

Oh my God. Those special effects are... somewhat vintage. You can see why Mystery Science Theatre:3000 chose this almost-Hammer to start off with.

It feels uncannily like a third Quatermass film, with the plot and the character being played by Forrest Tucker both being very much in that lineage. Yet the original TV series upon which this is based (now sadly lost) was not penned by the mighty Nigel Kneale, and the whole effect is somewhat more light-hearted. And, yes, those monsters are... unique. Not for nothing was the film, under its US title of The Crawling Eye, used by Stephen King for an, er, tribute in It.

It’s fun and entertaining from the unconvincing matte paintings of the first scene to the realisation that the balding scientist with the balding late is being played by Alf Garnett. It’s formulaic, feels exactly like a sort of late Fifties Hammer monochrome sci fi film in spite of not technically being one (although it is from
Jimmy Sangster’s pen) and it doesn’t outstay its welcome. You can sort of tell it’s a truncated version of the lost six part telly series but it isn’t badly paced. And with that monster I think I may actually prefer it to either of its two Quatermass bedfellows.

Carry On Sergeant (1958)

"Your rank?"

"Well, that's a matter of opinion..."

It's almost a cliche to point out that the first of the Carry Ons is not in any way like what we would later think of as a Carry On film. There's relatively little smut, not many of the tropes and it feels very much like a one-off comedy about National Service. William Hartnell is excellent in one of his signature sergeant roles- he was horribly typecast at this point- while Bob Monkhouse is, well, Bob Monkhouse. But the film is only mildly diverting, holding the attention but not exactly a laugh a minute. What raises a so-so script from mediocrity are the performances of certain members of its ensemble cast.

Charles Hawtrey, to begin with, is a huge comic talent wherever he appears. And you know exactly what to expect from him. Kenneth Connor is superb in his major role as Horace here, and a strangely non-camp Kenneth Williams impresses in what is only a middling part. Hattie Jacques is also superb as the exasperated doctor. This is a textbook case of a film being elevated by its cast.

Yet Hartnell, too, is an excellent straight man and it's a shame this is his only Carry On. It's a film well worth seeing for the performances and the curiosity value.

Dracula (1958)

“Sleep well, Mr Harker…”

We get a statement of intent very early on, with some blood spattering on to a coffin- these early Hammer horror films certainly like their bright Technicolor red blood!

We're in some vague part of Horror Film Mittel-Europa in 1885. As with Curse of Frankenstein, this is a stylised and intentionally vague setting.  Jonathan Harker is heading to Castle Dracula and, in a slight nod to the epistolatory nature of the novel, this part of the plot is narrated through his diary. The inside of the castle is at the same time luxurious and bleak, with the large rooms marked by harsh straight lines and a total absence of carpets or any hint of softness.

After a brief and disturbing encounter with a woman whom Dracula is apparently taken prisoner, Harker finally meets Christopher Lee’s Count who, although sinister, appears polite enough, to the point of complimenting a picture of Harker’s fiancée, Lucy Holmwood. It seems Harker, a scholar, is to work as his librarian, but it soon becomes apparent that Dracula is only available during the hours of darkness, and that Harker’s door is locked during the night.

But Harker, we learn, has ulterior motives, and is here to kill the notorious Count, who from this point on ceases to be a character and just becomes a monster, never speaking another line for the rest of the film. But poor Harker is doomed; he agrees to help the temptress he met earlier, and gets bitten in the course of a vamp-fight between her and the, er, vampire. Both she and Drac look great, and there’s lots and lots of blood.

Harker, himself doomed to become undead, manages to make it to the crypt before sundown, but chooses to stake the woman before the Count himself. WHY?

The inevitable happens, and we cut to Peter Cushing in one of those Hammer inns where all the locals stop talking as soon as a stranger enters. Still, armed with Harker’s diary, he’s soon delivering the news of Harker’s death to Arthur Holmwood (played by Michael Gough, later to play the Celestial Toymaker in Doctor Who and Alfred in Tim Burton’s Batman), brother of Harker’s fiancée, and his wife Mina, future star of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s splendid The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He receives a frosty reception, however, and Lucy can’t be told the news as she’s very ill with anaemia.

We soon see the reasons for this, however; Lucy is delivering her windows open at night and removing her crucifix, allowing Dracula to come in and bite her, night after Night. The erotic charge is so electric here that I’d be tempted to say “get a room, you two” except… they have. For the first time in the film we have the obvious use of vampirism as a metaphor for sex, and as we’ll see this tells us quite a lot about the sexual mores of late Victorian times as opposed to the late 1950s. On the surface this is an unhealthily puritanical message about sex but I don’t think the film is quite playing this straight. Like Curse of Frankenstein there’s something camply humorous about this film, even if it’s played very, very deadpan.

It’s a bit jolting to see Van Helsing listening to audio recordings of himself, even if it is from an ancient-looking gramophone and even though his butler seems to be amazed. There are plenty of audio recordings from the 1880s on Youtube (look for Gladstone and a very drunk Robert Browning!) but none of them have anything approaching this sound quality.

Van Helsing uses this rather obvious expository device to inform us that vampire bites are addictive and that this eventually results in death through loss of blood. Consulted by Mina, he soon discovers that this is what is happening to Lucy. He orders the windows to be closed and Lucy’s bed to be surrounded by garlic, but this is not adhered to and the girl dies.

Van Helsing now has no choice but to let Arthur into his confidence, especially as the undead Lucy is now walking the grounds of the house, threatening their daughter Tania. Arthur catches the undead Lucy the following night, and is only saved from being bitten by Van Helsing. These scenes are atmospheric, effective, and really bring home how this film is set in a dreamlike, stylised world of cemeteries, castles, inns, sleepy border guards and nothing else, which feels culturally German, Slavic and Romanian all at once, and vaguely evokes the cultural mix of Habsburg Austria, yet is full of characters with English names.

Lucy is stakes, and Van Helsing and Arthur have a bit of a chat in some comfy chairs with some brandy, as gents in Hammer films are wont to do. It seems that vampires cannot in fact turn into bats; evidently the budget won’t stretch that far. But, just as our heroes are beginning to get a grip, Mina is lured to Dracula’s base of operations, and from that point onwards is under his spell. Again, there’s a sexual subtext here, and in this case it’s a rather emasculating one for poor old Arthur; apparently he’s not satisfying her. Actually, given the blatant eroticism of what can only be described as the sex scene between Dracula and Mina, I’m not sure the word “subtext” is entirely appropriate…

Arthur’s implied emasculation is even more tragic as he’s clearly a decent and loving husband, as we see him selflessly donating an alarming amount of blood to save his wife, who presumably shares the same blood group. Understandably, he’s a little sapped after this, but Van Helsing has some sound medical advice: “Now, you need plenty of fluid. Tea, coffee or, better still, wine.” Yes, that’s right, Van H. Wine isn’t in any way dehydrating, is it?

We finish with a chase, incorporating a bit of comic relief at the border, and Dracula’s final gruesome death by sunlight. An excellent film, this- atmospheric, just erotic enough, just gory enough and very well-acted indeed.