The Mole People

Mole Keeper

The Mole People
USA 1956
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel
Universal/101 Films
Dual Edition 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Yeah, this one has a bit of an ending spoiler.

Okay, so The Mole People is not exactly the best of the Universal atomic age monster movies, for sure but, for all its faults, I still find it a lot more watchable than Tarantula (reviewed here), it has to be said. It is quite a sluggish movie, however and, certainly does nothing to hook the audience from the start. After the familiar Universal logo comes up, we are presented with Dr. Frank C. Baxter appearing as... Dr. Frank C. Baxter, in a bizarre attempt to fool the audience that he’s a real expert on what he’s talking about. And he talks and talks and talks. Audiences are treated to around four and a half minutes of him telling us of various theories put forward over the centuries, using illustrations on a board, consisting of speculation about what lays beneath the Earth’s surface. Frankly, I would imagine he’s already lost half his audience fairly quickly and half of the drive-in customers would have possibly turned around and driven out again. 

For those that stayed, we are then treated to some opening titles which are quite well done, with the various bits of typography rising from the foreground rim of a steaming crater, presumably implying some volcanic activity. Then we join the three main male protagonists of the movie... Dr. Roger Bently (played by the sturdy block of wood that is John Agar), Dr. Jud Bellamin (played by Hugh Beaumont) and Professor Etienne Lafarge (played by the always watchable Nestor Paiva). The three of them, with various colleagues and diggers, are in Mesopotamia trying to find out what happened to the Chero dynasty. As luck would have it, they find a tablet which points to a snowy mountain. They climb it and find the ruins of a Sumerian temple but, one of their number is swallowed by the earth, opening a long shaft beneath the surface of the mountain. They follow their now dead colleague down and discover a race of Sumerian albinos who have been living beneath the Earth for years. How they’re albinos I don’t know... they have black hair and white painted faces which tend to make everyone look like Data from Star Trek The Next Generation. The sumerians also employ a bunch of mole monsters to do the digging for their mushroom food. 

Anyway, the doctors convince the antagonistic Sumerians, by way of their torch (the Sumerian’s are sensitive to strong light) that they are ambassadors to their God, explaining away Nestor Paiva’s death at the hands of a mole monster as him being summoned back to heaven. But the king and especially the high priest are unsure and it’s a race against time as to whether they can find their way back to the surface world before tensions become murderous for them. The high priest is played by none other than Alan Napier who, ten years later, would play the role he is probably best remembered for these days, as Alfred the Butler opposite Adam West’s Bruce Wayne in the Batman TV show. Meanwhile, the female love interest for John Agar appears in the form of Cynthia Patrick as Adad. She is given to Agar as she is different from all the others, not being born an albino. Things get a bit vague here I think.

And, it’s not a bad film but certainly not a pacey one for sure. We have to wait for almost half an hour of the 77 minute running time, for example, before we even catch sight of a mole monster. Now, it has to be said the many mole monster costumes and masks aren’t really anything to write home about in terms of convincing anyone that these are genuine living organisms, as opposed to just various men in monster suits but, it also has to be said, I do like the design of the monsters and they are a bit iconic (enough that they’ve been reproduced as various Universal monster themed action figures over the years). The make up design is credited, as a lot of these movies, to Bud Westmore but, yeah, whether it actually was Westmore who did these or one of his underlings well, I couldn’t tell you. I certainly don’t take it on trust (see Mallory O’Meara’s fantastic book, The Lady From The Black Lagoon, which I reviewed here for more information on the notorious Westmore). 

Actually, the monsters are pretty much everything here, as a lot of the first half an hour is various stock footage from previous films mixed in with close ups of actors dressed similarly, as the three original protagonists climb the mountain etc. Another bit of padding comes along when an ‘albino’ girl does a long and less than sexy slave dance to fill out the time. This film doesn’t really have an awful lot going for it when you put it down on paper but there are a few other things of interest asides from the monsters. 

One is a comment from one of the male heros when they are caught in a snowy avalanche and he remarks that sitting there in the middle of the avalanche is still safer than crossing Times Square. So, wow, Times Square must have had a bit of a reputation even in the 1950s, it would seem. 

Another interesting moment of genuine horror (for those days) is when three slave girls are sacrificed to the ‘Light Of Ishtar’... aka put in a room which lets in the bright sun from an opening above. Being as they are sensitive to light, when the dead bodies of the three girls are brought out of the room, they are burned black and flaky all over and it’s kinda interesting to see this strong an image as they are carted off in a 1950s Universal monster movie, to be honest. Earlier in the film, the director even tries a ‘fake out’ jump scare but, to be honest, it doesn’t really work. He does give it a good go though. 

One last thing of note is that, in the original cut presented to the studio, Bently and Bellamin escape with Bently’s new middle earth girlfriend Adad and, originally Bently and Adad were supposed to go off hand in hand, living happily every after. This doesn’t happen in the final release print however. In a bizarre twist, just as they get back to the ruined temple above ground, there is a small ground tremor and a big column falls on Adad, crushing her to death. Apparently, this reshoot took place at the insistence of the studio because, even though Adad is clearly not an albino and is just a normal looking person, the powers that be didn’t like the idea that this was still promoting an interracial relationship... so they nipped that in the bud by dropping a column on her. 

And there you go, that’s The Mole People. It’s not the film I remembered it being and it’s certainly a bit ploddy but, if you are a fan of these 1950s B-movie monster flicks then you should still have a good time with this one, especially when, in another moment which defies audience expectations, the mole monsters rise up to overthrow their oppressors and help the heroes escape. Yep, did not see that one coming for a while into the plot, it has to be said. So The Mole People does have a lot of interesting moments, for sure. Whether you think they add up to be something more than the sum of their parts though, is up to you.