The B-Masters Cabal

I hope you’ve all been saving your pennies. This weekend in Dallas, an extraordinary collection of horror movie memorabilia will be auctioned, including an original one-sheet for the Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, an Argentinian poster for London After Midnight, and the jewel in the crown, an original one-sheet for Dracula that was obviously produced before the film was completed and released, as it features a scene aboard the Demeter. There is a serious chance that the standing record for a poster sale, US$443,000 for an original one-sheet for The Mummy, will be broken: the opening bid for the Dracula poster stands at US$100,000. The London After Midnight poster, conversely, starts at a mere US$17,500.

What global economic crisis?

The same auction also carries a series of posters for Mickey Mouse cartoons (including one for The Mad Doctor that I really want), an insert for Freaks (speaking of great taglines: Can a full-grown woman really love a midget – ? Classy, MGM, classy), and a lobby card set for Mad Love. Oh, and there’s also an original one-sheet for Citizen Kane, but who cares about that, right?

[Edited to add: ooh, and an original poster for The Adventures Of Robin Hood, at just US$7,500. Want!]

By now, you have probably got the idea that I like to seek unknown movies. Unknown movies of different genres from different places. But sometimes I like to look at a movie that is really unknown – with no information about it available anywhere. That’s what I got when I found a copy of Door To Door – I couldn’t really find anything about it anywhere when I did some research. And about all I got from the video box description was that it was a road movie of sorts, one with Ron Leibman, who I had seen earlier in Your Three Minutes Are Up. That movie was a sleeper, and I wondered if this new discovery of mine was a sleeper as well. Did I find a lost gem, or does this movie deserve to be obscure? Read the review.

Just a few tweaks and touches:

• I’ve finally resurrected my Immortal Dialogue section; the main link is on the front page
• I’ve also resurrected Taglines; the main link is part of Etc., Etc., Etc…
• I’ve fixed up the screenshots in Grizzly, which due to technical issues came out fuzzy the first time around
• And I’ve found a rather gorgeous Danish poster for The Last Warning (although oddly it fails to mention star Laura La Plante); I’ve added it in at the foot of the review

… for the “On Time & Under Budget” Roudtable. The irony is not lost on me.

And my chosen AIP film is…

The Brain Eaters (1958).

(Well, duh.)

Man, we’ve got this AIP thing covered. Liz took you back to the studio’s very earliest days when they were still ARC. The Teleport Boys have covered the middle years. And here you can read about the film that finally killed AIP off. Samuel Z. Arkoff went big budget and learned to regret it with the 1979 disaster flick Meteor.

JOURNEY TO THE 7TH PLANET

Before we get into this article, let me get something off my chest and, in the process, confess to you all that I am going into this movie with a considerable chip on my shoulder. You see, as can be ascertained from the title, this movie deals with a journey to the planet Uranus, and as anyone can tell you, it is the God-given right of people discussing this planet to make as many “Uranus” jokes as they can (and believe me, I can make a lot of them). Especially when a movie turns out to be as dull and uneventful as this one, we who regularly engage in discussion of such films need those Uranus jokes to make it through to the end credits. Now some movies will try and head you off at the pass, using the alternate “Urine Us” pronunciation, but as you can see, even though it is less versatile, that pronunciation comes with its own cargo of hilarity.

So it was with barely contained boiling rage that I discovered Journey to the 7th Planet is not only dull, but it also steals, like a horrible goblin in the night, the one ray of joy it could have otherwise delivered to us. It does this by making up a wholly new pronunciation for Uranus, something that goes a little something like “Your Ahhh Niss.”

HELL UP IN HARLEM
Despite Hell Up In Harlem’s many problems, I have to say that I think I prefer it over its predecessor. While it’s certainly true that Black Caesar is the more earnest and ambitious of the two, I don’t think that the abilities of Cohen and his cast were always up to that level of earnestness and ambition. Williamson, for instance, while undeniable blessed with a glaring surplus of charisma, gives an enthusiastic performance in both movies, but is seemingly incapable of giving a convincing line reading, with the result that Caesar’s level of melodrama is really not his friend. Leading lady Gloria Hendry, on the other hand, is just a little too cozy with melodrama, and comports herself throughout much of her screen time in both films as if she were chained to the wailing wall. Factors like these, along with the rough edges of Cohen’s direction, combine to make Black Caesar a bit of a bumpy ride for fans of consistent narrative tone. By contrast, Hell Up In Harlem, with its frenetic opening deconstruction of Black Caesar’s final act, lets you know from the get-go that it’s going to be a wild ride through crazy town, and never disappoints.

DR GOLDFOOT & THE BIKINI MACHINE
I have my moments were I am quite happy to take a stroll down “dumb street.” I can sit through some of the most juvenile movies and still not get bored by the lame shenanigans on screen. Bikini Machine is certainly a walk down “dumb street,” and for the first three quarters of the film, I had no problem with that. I enjoyed Price’s over the top abuse of Igor. It didn’t matter how many times he called him “a blithering idiot” or told him to “chop, chop.” It raised a smile from my chapped lips. But for the last quarter of the film, somebody decided that the film needed more action. This action appears in the form of a laboriously painful chase through the streets of San Francisco. And the chase is repetitive. Dr. G chases Gamble and Armstrong, who are in a car. Dr. G uses his remote control to blow up Gamble and Armstrong’s car. Gamble and Armstrong steal another car. Dr. G uses his remote control to blow up Gamble and Armstrong’s car. I am sure you get the idea.

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THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES (1955)

Another example of what the American Releasing Corporation used to palm off on the general public as “a film”. In an almost textbook example of a fifties science fiction tale, an invading alien that calls itself “a strong mind” tries to take over the world, but is defeated by the power of love, religion and the American way.

First, however, the alien stages an attack via its ability to control those with weak minds and wills: animals; people with brain damage; women…

It’s time for the roundtable contribution by The Unknown Movies, and the choice is a kind of an oddity for American-International Pictures. They took a subject that could have been fashioned into one of their countless exploitaiton movies, yet here they took things very seriously. The subject matter in Panic In Year Zero! is nuclear war, and the actions that the movie’s protagonists make as a result of that will teach you, dear reader, just what you should do if there is a nuclear war. Getting food, finding shelter, and protecting yourself… it’s all here.