The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

Full Fathom Thrive

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
USA 1953 Directed by Eugène Lourié
Warner Brothers/HMV UK Exclusive
Blu Ray Zone B

I think I must have been four or five when I last watched The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms... which would have been a TV broadcast in the early 1970s. So it’s good to finally revisit this classic film on a nice Blu Ray edition because, frankly, I remembered absolutely nothing about it. At the time I first saw it, I certainly wouldn’t have been that aware of the pedigree of the movie. I may have associated the spectacular stop motion animation with the great Ray Harryhausen as something similar to what I might have seen in a Sinbad movie. This was only the second feature length film on which he’d worked, after his uncredited contributions to the great Mighty Joe Young. I’d certainly not yet quite heard of (I suspect) his friend on whose short story the film was cribbed as a starting point, the great writer Ray Bradbury. But I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed it at the time, although I might well have gotten it mixed up with Gorgo in my head, to some extent... which I’ve just myself found out was directed by the same guy.

Okay, so the plot is simple... a giant dinosaur is awakened from hibernation due to a test nuclear explosion overseen by some scientists in the arctic. Two of the people who go out onto the snow to bring back some post explosion readings, see the dinosaur but, one is killed and the other injured. That other being the film’s main male protagonist, Professor Tom Nesbitt, played by Swiss actor Paul Hubschmid. Everyone thinks he’s crazy... even his friend Col. Jack Evans, played by Kenneth Tobey, the star of 1951’s sci-fi/horror classic, The Thing From Another World (reviewed by me here). However, after meeting a paleontologist played by Cecil Kellaway (who you may remember from The Mummy’s Hand, reviewed by me here) and his gorgeous assistant Lee Hunter, he finds the dinosaur in some sketches and gets corroboration from a witness who has also seen the ‘sea serpent’. Hunter is played by Paula Raymond, who eventually ended up in Al Adamson’s movies Blood Of Dracula’s Castle (reviewed here) and Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here)... not to mention playing Margot Lane in an unsuccessful 1954 TV pilot of The Shadow.

Eventually, the creature makes its way to New York but the army have trouble dealing with it because, in a detail which is not usual with these kinds of movies (at least it seems that way to me), exposure to the blood and general vicinity of the monster leads to catching a debilitating virus. Luckily, Nesbitt is a nuclear physicist and suggests shooting the creature with a radioactive isotope into an open wound caused by a bazooka earlier in the film. I’m not very scientific myself but I can only assume this is a good cure for destroying both the creature and the virus... which is what they eventually do, killing the creature as it demolishes a rollercoaster in Long Island, standing in for Coney Island.

So yeah, simple plot but an entertaining film... if not one you have to keep your brain turned on for. Other actors of note in the film are the wonderful King Vidor from such movies as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (reviewed here) and Singin’ In The Rain (turning up as the psychiatrist asked to diagnose Nesbitt after his crazy dinosaur sighting) and the youngish, unknown actor portraying the army sharpshooter who is none other than the legendary Lee Van Cleef, who would go on to ‘appear’ in such westerns as High Noon (reviewed here) before finding his star in a variety of classic spaghetti westerns (For A Few Dollars More, The Big Gundown, Days Of Anger and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly... among many such oaters) and, of course, in his wonderful turn in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.

And while the film is simple, it does have some nice touches to it, such as a wonderful shot of a whirlpool on which the title card is superimposed and, some pretty good and thoughtful animation by Harryhausen of the titular beast, it has to be said. Okay, so maybe on occasion the lines where the live action footage is matched up to the stop motion animation footage can be a little blurry at times but, it’s mostly pretty good stuff with a lot of attention to detail, I would say. I mentioned the inclusion of Kenneth Tobey from The Thing From Another World in the cast but, it’s interesting to note that when they first bring in Nesbitt to the arctic camp infirmary, they are reusing a set from that film. 

And like I said, the movie has a few things which you wouldn’t expect from a relatively formulaic monster movie, such as the inclusion of a virus subplot... not explored in detail but it’s certainly there and relevant to the plot mechanics, for sure. But another unusual thing it does is keep up the bluff of people not believing various eye witness reports (including that of Nesbitt) for a good deal of the way through the movie, focussing on the professor going to great lengths to get people to believe him, with odd punctuations of the dinosaur attacking more people who won’t be believed until the dinosaur finally pitches up in New York city.

One last thing though. If you are a lover of 1930s Hollywood Screwball comedies (and frankly, why wouldn’t you be?), you might want to take note that the big fake, prop dinosaur skeleton seen in Cecil Kellaway’s work area is actually the same model used in the truly great 1938 Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant movie Bringing Up Baby. So, yeah, now you know... a good prop not wasted.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was made in response to the massive success of a re-release of the 1933 version of King Kong (reviewed here) from the year before (that must have been the slightly censored version of the film) and this movie was also a runaway success at the box office. So much so that Toho studios in Japan turned their gaze westward to come up with their own beast, which would of course materialise the very next year in the form of Godzilla (which I reviewed here). That being said, although the film is vastly entertaining and probably better written than many of the other 1950s behemoth movies, this isn’t up near the top of them for me. I prefer a whole host of others before I get to this one but, regardless, I would still recommend it to anyone who likes their giant monster movies and it would certainly be a great one to include in a marathon viewing session of such creature features for sure. Worth having a look at if you’ve not seen this one before.

The Mummy’s Hand

 

Wrap-ture!

The Mummy’s Hand
USA 1940 Directed by Christy Cabanne
Universal  Blu Ray Zone B

So, following on quickly from The Invisible Man Returns earlier that year (reviewed here), Universal continued their revival of monster movies from the previous decade with The Mummy’s Hand and, I have to say, even though I love the original The Mummy and its importance in the pantheon of Universal Classic Monsters, I think The Mummy’s Hand is also a very important and influential film in its own right. The main reason for my thinking on this is because, although we have a new Mummy character completely, in the form of Kharis The Mummy, played here by B movie Western star Tom Tyler... who would go on to play the titular superhero characters in both the 1941 serial The Adventures Of Captain Marvel (reviewed here) and 1943’s The Phantom... we also have the first, to my knowledge, American movie where the Mummy is an actual bandaged monster who slowly limps around killing people with its superhuman strength. In The Mummy, Karloff was only seen opening his eyes in bandages, followed by a shot of his bandaged hand reaching for some papyrus... so this is the first time that we get the full monty, so to speak, of the Mummy in all his wrapped up glory. So all later films which feature mummies swathed in bandages and shambling about owe a debt to this movie in particular, I think.

Now, in The Mummy (reviewed here), the titular character was Imhotep (who would later be revived in the Stephen Sommers reboot movie in 1999). Here, however... and for the next three sequels too... we have Kharis but, this is the only time he is played by Tom Tyler. After this, Lon Chaney Jr would don the bandages three more times.

Now, the film primarily focuses on the lead protagonists of archeologists Steve Banning (played by Dick Foran) and Babe Jenson (played by Wallace Ford), who make up a kind of Abbot and Costello straight man and funny man partnership. Here they are joined by Cecil Kellaway (who we saw in The Invisible Man Returns) as stage magician Silvani plus Peggy Moran as his daughter and love interest for Banning... Marta. Silvani is bankrolling Banning’s expedition (after a little way into the picture, after some fairly entertaining shenanigans) but they are abetted by George Zucco as Andoheb, one of the guardians of the High Priests of Karnack, who will stop at nothing to ensure the American ‘defilers of tombs’ will not find the tomb of the Princess they are looking for. As luck would have it, they find Kharis instead... who is controlled by Zucco to kill for him.

In a long sequence before we even meet any of the main protagonists, a High Priest who is Andoheb’s father passes down the secret of making Kharis mobile and its all to do with the bizarre and unfortunately persistent plot device of the brewing of a potion made from Tana leaves. A brew made form three leaves during the full moon will ensure Kharis continues to live but, nine leaves allows him to get up and start doing killer shenanigans for his masters. And I seem to remember in terms of Kharis getting up to his tricks in the next three movies, these rules keep changing or at least being broken somewhat but, we shall see.

Now, in this opening sequence we find the High Priest character has a little pool which acts just like Boris Karloff’s did  in The Mummy... it projects pictures of what the guy is talking about. Here, he tells the back story of Kharis the mummy which is, it has to be said, almost identical to that of Imhotep... barring the inclusion of the Tana leaves. That’s handy then, since an awful lot of the back story of The Mummy is included via re-used footage with the odd shot of Tom Tyler inserted whenever we need to see his face. It’s quite comical once you start spotting the way the footage has been put together. Here’s a hint... when the footage looks just a little grainier and doesn’t include Tom Tyler’s face, you are almost certainly looking at the back of Boris Karloff’s head and other bits from the previous film. One truly dead giveaway is when Tyler is bending over a box of Tana leaves and turns his head to see the temple guardians behind him... in long shot with his head turned away from us, he is suddenly bending over a scroll... he turns his head back in close up and... it’s magically a big casket of Tana leaves again. So yeah... Karloff standing in... err... bending in for Tom Tyler there via the miracle of re-used footage. There’s a heck of a lot of that kind of thing in this sequence and, if you are familiar with the first movie, it’s fairly easy to spot.

More recycling is Andoheb’s father as the Writers here are... maybe not trying to be lazy, just on brand... with a bit of famous dialogue recycled to give a similar beat from the very first talking Universal horror movie, Dracula (reviewed here). In that movie Bela Lugosi hears the wolves howling and says... “The children of the night. What music they make.” Here, the guy hears the jackals baying and says... “The children of the night. They howl about the Hill of the Seven Jackals and Kharis must be fed.” So, yeah, trying to echo their earlier successes no doubt.

Now, at just under 67 minutes, the film is fast moving, entertaining and has some nice dialogue. The classic Hans J Salter music, partially recycled, is augmented by some Flash Gordon fight music during a bar fight and its one of those films that trundles along nicely to its inevitable conclusion.There are some interesting little errors and oddities I noticed about the film which I’ve not come across listed anywhere else though... not to mention the huge problems with continuity which would go on to kill the credibility of the entire Mummy franchise after this one.

Okay, so something I noticed was that, when Kharis enters the tent shared by Silvani and his daughter and strangles the father (more in that in a moment), Marta screams and then feints before being carried off by Kharis. However, when we cut to Banning and Babe’s reaction shot outside the tent, they then hear her scream a second time. But... hey there Mr. Director... she’d already feinted.

Secondly and, as far as I’m concerned, much more interestingly... when Banning investigates Silvani he replaces what looks like his lifeless corpse back on the bed. Even though they both have a line of dialogue! Well, since Silvano does look so lifeless here, my guess is those two lines were added in post synch to pull together continuity. I don’t know what the script was like in terms of changes on a day to day basis but later on, when Banning tells Marta that her father is going to be okay, when he’s trying to rescue her from the clutches of Kharis, I suspect that the decision had been made to have Silvani’s character survive too. However, I also suspect when the scene was shot with Kharis in SIlvano’s tent earlier, the idea was probably that the father would be the next victim of... The Mummy’s Hand. Somewhere before filming the later scene, the decision was made and they overdubbed the dialogue in on the earlier scene to try and hoodwink the audience. That’s completely a guess, by the way and, I’ve not seen it mentioned anywhere else but... that’s my deduction as to what happened here.

And then, of course, there’s the really alarming thing. Not for this movie but for the next three sequels... some of which would also compound the problem themselves. From the contract Banning draws up with Silvani in a bar near the start of the movie, it’s clear that the film is set in 1940. However, when the next mummy film came out in 1942... well, I won’t jump on that one just yet, I’ll wait until my review of The Mummy’s Tomb before I spring that one on you.

Nevertheless, for all it’s faults , The Mummy's Hand is also, as I said, quite influential in its own right and, perhaps more importantly, a very entertaining film with some stand out performances from the principal actors. As always, a pleasure to watch and recommended viewing for anyone who wants to take in these classic, Universal monster movies. A gift-wrapped bundle of joy.

The Invisible Man Returns

The Price In Sight

The Invisible Man Returns
USA 1940 Directed by  Joe May
Universal Blu Ray Zone A

After the success of Son Of Frankenstein in 1939 (which I reviewed here), Universal’s interest in revisiting their classic horror stable was renewed and the first out of the gate was The Invisible Man Returns which is, as the credit following this one at the start of the movie proudly emblazons, ‘The Sequel To The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells’. It’s also, more to the point, a direct sequel to James Whale’s successful ‘adaptation’ of The Invisible Man (which I reviewed here).

Indeed, Claude Rains photograph is even briefly referenced in a newspaper near the start of the film as we are informed that the main villain of the last film left behind a brother, Dr. Frank Griffin, played by John Sutton. He’s not the film’s lead protagonist though... that would be the title character whose name is Geoffrey Radcliffe. Radcliffe, played here by a young Vincent Price, long before horror movies became his thing (and this isn’t really a horror movie anyway, of course), is in prison awaiting public execution the next morning for the murder of his brother... even though Dr. Griffin and Radcliffe’s fiance Helen know he is innocent.  Helen is played by Nan Grey, the same young lady who fell victim to the early vampire lesbionics in Dracula’s Daughter (reviewed here).

But wait, what’s this? Following a visit by Dr. Griffin the night before his execution, Radcliffe mysteriously vanishes from his cell. Could it be his friend has given him a dose of the old invisibility formula so he can walk out undetected, find the real culprit for his brother’s death and clear his name. You betcha! That’s one of the two things which the story works towards resolving here...

One plot is the attempt by Radcliffe to clear his name, by terrorising a confession out of both men responsible -  the boss of Radcliffe’s coal mine operation, Richard Cobb, played by Cedric Hardwicke (who would turn up a few times in these Universal monster movies) and his nefarious henchman Willie Spears, played by Alan Napier who would, of course, grow up many years later to be the elderly Alfred the butler opposite Adam West’s Batman.

The other plot thread is Frank Griffin’s race against time to try and discover the antidote to invisibility which had eluded his brother before Radcliffe suffers the same fate and is driven to insanity by the dangerous chemical used in the formula. Meanwhile, of course, both he and Helen are also trying to thwart the intelligent but kindly Chief Inspector Sampson (played by Cecil Kellaway) and his police force.

So yeah, it’s a romp and... it’s okay. It is kind of an enjoyable piece of fluff and the special effects, for their time, are very good it has to be said. I mean, yeah we get the old rocking chair with nobody in it trick and various other episodes of moving scenery and props to denote the passage of the invisible Radcliffe but we also get some quite sophisticated tomfoolery with various camera tricks. There’s even a sequence where he pulls up Willie Spear’s legs to tie him up with a piece of rope and then they cut to a close up of the ends of his legs... which are dummy legs as they don’t flex at all... and what looks like stop motion animation of the rope tying around them. Presumably there was some flexible wire inside the rope to ensure it would stay in position for every frame that was filmed.

There’s also a nice bit where Radcliffe’s almost lifeless body reverts back to visibility near the end, allowing Griffin to save his life with an operation after all! First we see his skeleton appearing, then some of the veins, then the muscles and skin etc... revealing Vincent Price in the flesh, finally. I don’t know if this was the first time that this kind of anatomical precision was attempted in film but it’s astonishing for the period, I think.

There’s the occasional bit of cute dialogue too. When the two guards who let Radcliffe escape from his cell at the start of the film are being questioned, instead of saying... “That’s the way it was, so help me God!”, one of them says “... so help me Bob.” He then follows it up with “Wasn’t it Bob?” After which, the other copper, who is presumably named Bob, puts his oar in. So, yeah, some good humour carrying on in James Whale’s tradition which certainly makes the film agreeable and watchable.

What’s perhaps also as impressive as the special effects in this, though, is the fact that, while the various ‘bobbies’ are tumbling about in their usual ham fisted shenanigans as Radcliffe escapes them time and time again, Inspector Samson is actually quite an intelligent fellow who works out the truth of certain elements of the plot way before everyone else and is often two steps ahead of most people in the film. He even, in one nicely done special effects sequence, fills his general area with cigar smoke which reveals that the invisible fugitive is standing mere inches away from him. So, yeah, an intelligent police inspector in the film is a refreshing change of pace from the way the police are treated in most set ups.

The film is elevated by the scoring of Frank Skinner and Hans Salter with, as you might suspect given Universal’s musical modus operandi in this period, some lifts from Skinner’s score for Son Of Frankenstein. It’s not the most memorable score in the series though and there are lots of silent passages throughout too but it certainly works a charm and is good as a stand alone listen too.

Things buzz along to a double ending, first at the coal mine where the main villain of the piece comes to a sticky end and then, of course, in the race to try and save Ratcliffe’s life. I seem to remember this coal mine set though and I’m pretty sure that the same place was used in one of the many Mummy sequels a few years after this film was shot. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

So there we are. Not much to add here on The Invisible Man Returns other than Vincent Price would, of course, very briefly reprise his role as the voice of The Invisible Man at the end of Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein. He would continue on in much more romantic, matinee idol kinds of roles such as his turn in the famous film Laura until, at some point in the 1950s, he would become indelibly linked to the horror genre which he is still mostly remembered for. The Invisible Man films would continue on without him, of course, with the next two in the series being very unusual entries in the directions they take. In fact, the next movie doesn’t feature an invisible man at all... but I’ll get to that when I rewatch it again for this blog sometime soon.