Jack H. Harris Presents 4D Man!

Jack Harris follows up The Blob with the same team which made us all believe that Steve McQueen was a teenager (not really). After the success of The Blob, Harris had more sway in getting his next movie off the ground and found funding a bit more easily. He says the story was inspired by a cover of Weird Tales, but I can't find a cover that he describes and at around the time 4D Man was being produced, the long published Weird Tales was in suspension I think, so it may have been another magazine. 

This movie boasts a grand cast led by Robert Lansing who lights, smokes and tosses aside cigarettes as fast he can in an hour and half. Lee Meriwether is her gorgeous self as she unknowingly (perhaps) pits two brothers against one another for her affections. The object of her desire is James Congdon who has invented a way for things and people to pass through solid material.

Lansing, a man losing his girl and his reputation is desperate and finds the ability a convenient way to get what he wants. The side effect is that he ages swiftly and ends up needing the lifeforces of those he touches to keep him running. The shenanigans are weird as the police for once seem to accept the impossible premise though it doesn't make them more capable to stall the threat.

Actually, truth told this movie takes a dang long time to get rolling with exposition upon exposition holding forth in the first thirty minutes. Then things get interesting and sadly the ending sort of falls apart. I don't know this to be true, but it seems they might've forgotten to film some crucial scenes, and we get some strange off-screen demises. I'm all for movies that keep you in suspense and I also believe that less is more, but less ain't nothing and this movie goes there at least once.

For fans of The Blob this one is interesting if only for its style. Next time it's more from Jack H. Harris with Dinosaurus! 

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Jack H. Harris Present The Blob 1958!

Jack H. Harris kicked off his long career in and around movies with this bonafide hit. Despite its many flaws, this low-rent monster flick has captured the imaginations of countless folks across the decades. It certainly is inscrutably a favorite of mine. The movie was made by a group which specialized in Christian movies, the star was a unknown who acted like a diva and drove like maniac, the screenplay is credited to a woman who only worked on the movie for two days, and Harris had to mortgage his house to get some of the money to make it. It's working title was The Molten Meteor.

The Blob starring "Steven McQueen" is a movie I've seen many times over, and each time I'm somewhat at a loss to understand the appeal of this sometimes dreadfully slow, arguably lumbering, 1958 monster flick. But nonetheless a few years later there I am watching it again. There's clearly something about this movie which draws you in, not perhaps unlike the pulsing red blob from space which gives the film its title.

One of the things which always jumps out at me when I view this movie is the rather crude production quality. It's an independent movie and it's in color, a downright novelty for a movie of this kind and vintage, but it nonetheless acts like a home movie in many places. The editing is suspect as we move awkwardly from interior set to countryside especially in the opening shots. And the sound mixing is downright wretched -- I noticed that the background noises are so prominent in most of the scenes it distracts from the dialogue. The characters sound like they are walking on glass in many scenes.

(McQueen makes his Case)

The story for the few who might not know is a simple one. A meteor falls to Earth and unleashes a small amorphous mass of pulsing tissue which upon contact with flesh absorbs that flesh and increases its mass. The "blob" (never called that in the movie) is found by an old man who quickly succumbs, and he is in turn found by uber-whitebread "teenagers" Steve Andrews (McQueen) and Jane Martin (Aneta Corsault - who grew up to be "Miss Crump" on The Andy Griffith Show) who take him to the local doctor who through a series of bumbling maneuvers eventually also falls victim. The blob is unleashed on the town and only the teenagers believe while the police dither away, concerned to distraction with the menace of teenage delinquency. The blob rolls through the night absorbing first this bar full of patrons and then that garage mechanic until finally it lands in the local theater full of midnight-movie fans. It has a weakness, but it takes the ingenuity of the teenagers to discover and exploit it.

(The Blob takes in a Movie)

The movie rarely achieves anything one could dub as pace, as it will follow a scene of violence and tension with a limp scene chatting about innocuous teenage concerns such as dodging the cops or treating your girl with proper respect or overweening concern for some bewildered mutt. The teenagers in this movie all look a little suspect too, most seeming to be in their twenties at least. McQueen looks like he actually might be thirty in some scenes which it turns out he almost was at the time.

(Teens and Cops United)

Looking at The Blob as a basket of movie elements there's no way you'd call this movie successful, but somehow despite the abundant evident flaws it hangs together, sometimes just barely to deliver a most memorable monster and a very remarkable ending.

If you perchance have never seen The Blob by all means do so, but stay patient with it, because like its titular monster it sneaks up on you.

Next time it's more Jack Harris with 4-D Man starring Robert Lansing and Patti Duke. 

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The Magician's Nephew!

The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis was published in 1955 and is the next-to-last novel in The Chronicles of Narnia. That said, it's the one in which Lewis decided to share the story of how Narnia came to be. It's a story told well into the series and so Lewis is able to foreshadow many elements of this fanciful land, which is found by several means, but most famously through a wardrobe. Just a quick note to compliment the interior art by the renowned Pauline Baynes. 

The story begins in 1900, the turn of the previous century and our attention is drawn to Digory. He's a young boy who lives in a row house and is constantly on the lookout for something interesting to do. He finds a potential partner in the girl Polly who lives next door. They choose to go upon an adventure of sorts by prowling the dingy depths of the attic and find themselves unfortunately in the study of Digory's Uncle Andrew, a man with a bit of a recluse with a strange reputation. They soon discover that he's discovered a means to travel to other places in time and space and being a coward of sorts, he uses the two children as guinea pigs without hesitation. 

The two kids find themselves in a strange quiet wood and ultimately in the clutches of Jadis, a cruel and murderous sorceress. Despite their best efforts, Jadis follows the kids back to Uncle Andrew's study where she immediately schemes to conquer our world. That goes poorly and before you know the children, Uncle Andrew, Jadis and some other unfortunate souls find themselves in a distant territory in which they encounter the great lion Aslan. They have come at a propitious moment as they are witness to Aslan's creation of Narnia itself.

This is a nicely crafted tale with a really good pace. Both Digory and Polly are proper protagonists you can root for and both Uncle Andrew and Jadis are proper villains. The encounter with Aslan upsets the status quo in all sorts of fascinating ways.  We discover some cool secrets from the next volume, such as where a certain wardrobe came from and why there is a streetlamp in the middle of the forest. But this is just the beginning of the stories in Narnia. 

Next time, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

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When Monsters Ooze!

Before I launch into a month-long celebration of the works of the "Father of the Blob" it might be salient to take some time and look at the long history of blob-like monsters. We'll start with the debut issue the esteemed Weird Tales from over one hundred years ago in 1923 which showcased as its first cover feature "Ooze" by Anthony Melville Rud. 

"Ooze" was apparently a favorite story of H.P. Lovecraft, and I can see why. The structure of the story is very much Lovecraftian, in that we get the information in a backhanded fashion. The primary participants are either missing and presumed dead or insane. And it's left to a family friend to unravel the mystery of what lies behind the hastily erected wall around the demolished house deep in the mysterious and rather nasty swamp. 

Apparently, a scientist found a way to grow an amoeba beyond microscopic levels and things got out of hand, almost quite literally. The locals involved in building the wall aren't talking and it's only when he finds a singularly drunken inhabitant that he's able to decipher the gruesome tale. I rather enjoyed reading it again. It's available online at this weird link. 

On a side note, the story "Ooze" puts in mind of Marvel's classic monster comic tale "Sporr, the Thing that Could Not Die!" from the pages of Tales of Suspense in 1960. Sporr seems a little bit more aware of its surroundings and is attracted to sugar, whereas the Ooze is just hungry for meat. 

I love the Quatermass stories. I didn't always know about them, and when I did learn of them there was little practical way to access them. But in recent years both the original BBC serials and the feature film versions have become available. The first of the series is The Quatermass Xperiment, which was dubbed The Creeping Unknown in its American feature length release and it compresses the story of a three or so hour serial into a brisk hour and a half or so. In this one case we do not have the original serial which did survive the rigors of time and disdain.

The creator of Quatermass and writer Nigel Kneale posited three methods that the Earth might encounter extraterrestrials -- we find them, they find us, they've always been here. In the three main Quatermass yarns he explores each of these scenarios. With The Creeping Unknown he explores what happens when man ventures into space and brings home something dangerous.

Of course Quatermass refers to Dr. Quatermass, the leader of a rocket group dedicated to getting mankind off the planet and into space. To that end of course dangerous missions are undertaken and one such mission ends tragically when the rocket returns to Earth in a farmer's field. The only survivor, in fact the only man aboard the vessel is overcome with some sort of infection which is steadily stealing his mind and transforming his body as it has more swiftly done to his compatriots.

The Creeping Unknown is on one level a classic science fiction monster movie with an eventual giant creature threatening the population. On a second level it's also a horror film following the slow and inevitable destruction of one man's self as he is transformed. What makes this transformation so potent in many respects is that the man himself never speaks but only communicates through posture and through his eyes the desperation.

It's well documented that Nigel Kneale's opinion of Brian Donlevy, the American selected to portray Quatermass, is quite low. It's equally documented that Val Guest, the director of the cinematic verson of the story found Donleavy with his abrupt surly attitude to be an excellent choice. The disagreeable combative nature of Quatermass reminds me of Arthur Conan Doyle's second great creation Professor Challenger, the often agitated protagonist of The Lost World and The Poison Belt among other tales.. I'm always impressed with the professional craftsmanship of British monster movies and always know when I'm watching one the story will make sense.

X the Unknown was to have been the sequel to The Creeping Unknown, but Nigel Kneale refused to allow Hammer to use the Quatermass names, so Jimmy Sangster and the gang at Hammer just finagled it a bit, dropped the Quatermass references and produced a nifty little monster movie. This time the menace erupts from inside the Earth itself. Dean Jagger is our protagonist, a Quatermass-like scientist with a less grumpy attitude. Dean Jagger as the resident scientist who leads the defense against the strange enemy is good deal less histrionic than he might have been if he were portraying Quatermass. 

 

X the Unknown hits all the marks. It's a slow build to a larger menace. We follow a group of soldiers which include a very young Antony Newly as the run up against a strange radioactive enigma. Michael Ripper is on hand as the Sergeant barking orders in fine fashion. After a little boy dies, Dr. Adam Royston (Jagger) gets involved. He's soon assisted by Leo McKern as "Mac" McGill a cop from London and Peter Elliot the son of the stuffy project director. This critter rises from the depths of the Earth seeking sources of radiation. Anyone caught between the creature and its radioactive goal gets burned, sometimes even melted. 

This is a movie in which I rather liked all the characters more or less and it was rare for the story to pick a victim and make the deserving of their demise The deaths of true innocents always elevates the concern of the viewer. A dandy flicker indeed. 

I'm not sure when my consciousness was properly invaded by knowledge of Caltiki The Immortal Monster, but it hasn 't been all that long. This is a 1959 Italian black and white movie set in Mexico and featuring one of the more intriguing of the amorphous monsters which were a bit popular at the time.

The trend began with The Quatermass Xperiment  which had a oozing monster come down from space to threaten mankind by absorbing many individuals before getting fried with electricity. It continued with X the Unknown which had a creature bubble up from beneath the Earth to irradiate and kill many a man before being sent packing. 

This movie feels amazingly like a filmed version of one of Marvel's monster stories from its heyday. An ancient Mayan site is being explored and a mysterious pool is found and before you can say "Run" a giant monster is up and oozing all over everyone. The "heroes" make a getaway but not before getting a sample. One of the team is killed outright, another is infected and goes mad becoming a dangerous murderer, while the third member tries to save himself and his buxom wife from the crazy guy and the monsters at the same time. Innocent bystanders are killed and many toy tanks and trucks are sacrificed to end the threat. If you like monster movies I cannot see how you cannot like this one. It's got ancient menace, radioactive monsters, crazed maniacal killers, and a big old finale with tanks and guns and havoc galore. 

Thanks to TCM I discovered viewed four of the five "Gamma-1" movies. The best of these, and technically not really part of the series I guess is The Green Slime, a 1968 Japanese sci-fi effort starring Robert Horton and Richard Jaeckel. The Gamma-1 series was produced in Italy by Antonio Margheriti under the named "Anthony Dawson". I was first attracted to this oddball series when I discovered that Batman co-creator Bill Finger had a hand in the scripting of some of these. The movies are strictly low-budget, but with some surprisingly interesting special effects in places (the jet cars are impractical but pretty cool). 

The four movies - Wild, Wild Planet, Battle of the Planets, Battle Between the Planets, and Snow Devils - were all produced at the same time and were prepared for television presentation in the United States. All the movies feature many of the same actors and some the characters as the Earth is assaulted by various alien threats. For examples, four-armed androids abduct humans a madman seeking a perfect race, gaseous aliens occupy the forms of humans and link them in a hive mind, and the legend of the Yeti is inspired by aliens seeking to alter Earth's climate to suit themselves.

Part of the same scenario, though produced in Japan by the Toei Company for MGM, The Green Slime is a great improvement on its predecessors with brisk pacing, much more deliberate and focused acting, and a goofy if dangerous alien threat. The Earth is threatened by an oncoming asteroid which threat must be met by Jack Rankin (Robert Horton) and Vince Elliot (Richard Jaeckel), two former partners who have had a falling out over leadership styles and the obligatory women, a sexy doctor played by Luciana Paluzzi. They work together and use the resources of "Gamma-3" to stop the asteroid, but the space station is then overrun by a green slimy life form which proves exceedingly dangerous and damned difficult to remove.

This movie is helped by really excellent pacing throughout, and an actual back story of animus between the two leads which gives some vigor to the proceedings. The Toei special effects are dandy and up to the task of telling the story effectively, and while the monsters themselves are pretty hilarious, they nonetheless are pretty lethal too. The Green Slime is a surprisingly effective movie. 

I close with Larry Cohen's The Stuff seems to be a movie that wants to hit a number of the same notes as the The Blob, but with perhaps a bit more pointed humor and a little sharper satire. The Blob came from outer space, but the 1980's Stuff seems to come from the depths of the Earth itself.

An old man finds a bit of the Stuff in a mine and finds the white goo tastes surprisingly good. We cut forward many months and discover that The Stuff is a popular food product which is taking the nation, if not the world by storm. We are treated to some well-designed ads for The Stuff and then we meet our hero, an industrial spy with a wild wit and perverse attitude. (To put this movie within a very narrow time frame of pop culture awareness, Clara Peller of "Where's the Beef?" fame has an exceedingly appropriate cameo. )He quickly finds that this Stuff is something which has a profound effect on people, even to the point of making them not people anymore. Those who have come under its spell fight mightily to keep it safe and to keep its secret.

The only problem with this movie is that its got some dissonance in tone, with some characters played too broadly to fit in with the overall scheme of biting satire. But that aside, the movie still lands many punches not the least of which is how modern culture is addictive to pleasure at its core and all too susceptible to the whims of modern marketing.

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IT Happens!

One of the most original and influential stories was created by science fiction master Theodore Sturgeon. Marvel adapted the long short story "It" in its debut issue of Supernatural Thrillers which sported this iconic Jim Steranko cover.

(An It of a different color. It is eye-popping!)

The granddaddy of all swamp monsters likely dripped from the pen of Theodore Sturgeon in the pages of the August 1940 issue of Unknown magazine. A book with little regard for covers to begin with, this title didn't even feature the short story by Sturgeon on its lackluster green cover.

The story is an atmospheric masterpiece and tells of a weirdly animated being which doesn't seem to understand its own genesis which comes to "life" in the remote mountains and encounters a family already torn by some degree of mistrust. The creature kills a dog and potentially many others but in the end comes to an ignominious demise, its origins suggested but never stated directly. The creature was a strange blend of human remains and plant life blended into a synthesis which suggested a brute intelligence and life.

Thanks Mr. Sturgeon. If you'd like to read the story for yourself check out this intriguing PDF presentation of the original Unknown pages.

The story was later reprinted in 1975 in the black and white pages of Masters of Terror with the somewhat misleading but still evocative Jim Steranko cover for Supernatural Thrillers reinterpreted by Gray Morrow for the cover of this presentation. I wish either Steranko or Morrow, preferably the latter had been tapped to do the artwork on this story. It would have been more successful. But that said, this story's reach is still amazing as it clearly seems to have inspired the creation of The Heap in various pages of Hillman Comics and the Heap gave rise indirectly to both the Swamp Thing at DC and the Man-Thing at Marvel. Without "It" none of these mucky swamp critters would likely exist.

Here is more on how this offbeat tale adapted by Roy Thomas, Marie Severin and Frank Giacoia fits into the larger Marvel mythology. And below is a look at Severin's and Giacoia's original artwork up close.

A Dojo Monster Classic. More slippery monsters tomorrow. 

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Emergency! Emergency!

Charlton's 1976 runs of Emergency reminds me of a time, not all that long ago when. E.M.T.'s as we call them in America (Emergency Medical Technician) were not a commonplace in society. It's quite normal now to hear the sirens and if in traffic pull out of the way to let a vehicle pass which is responding to some medical situation. I've had them at my house more than once to help with some of my late wife's emergencies. But there was a time when they didn't exist. When such dire events were handled by the cops or ambulance crews alone. Emergency the TV show documents the invention of the concept in a fictional setting. 

The magazines were written by Charlton staff such as the always ready Joe Gill and Nicola Cuti and the artwork came from Continuity Associates, a gang of up-and-coming artists also known as the "Crusty Bunkers" under the guidance of Neal Adams and Charlton veteran and former editor of the beloved "Action Heroes" line-up -- Dick Giordano. The fourth issue of the magazine was more of a Charlton in-house affair with Jack Sparling pitching in. The covers of the last two issues were painted by Earl Norem. 

The comic books were handled by completely different talent from inside Charlton's ranks.

The debut issue of the comic was and maybe still is quite collectible because it was drawn by the soon-to-be star John Byrne. Joe Staton supplied the cover for this debut effort. 

Joe Staton did the cover for the second issue well, but Byrne was gone and by the third issue both were replaced by Jack Sparling among others.

These tales of Rampart General and the two fireman who became medically competent before our eyes are a pure example of the type of TV one could rely upon in the 70's. The shows have more than a little rust on them these days, at least in my opinion, but not unlike other shows from Jack Webb's operation, showcased to some extent the workaday worlds of those we now call "First Responders".

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U.S.A. R.I.P.

I really, really hope I'm wrong. 

But is it over for the nigh two hundred-and-fifty-year-old experiment in democracy dubbed the United States of America?  The Republicans long ago sold their withered souls in worship of their criminal cult leader. But that seems just fine with a majority of Americans, or at least a sufficient number to win the Electoral College and now possibly the popular vote as well. The Supreme Court seems to have been bought off by jokers with cavernous pockets. We now stand on the precipice of a theocracy with its help. 

The ugly truth is the ultra-rich have purchased their pet politicians who only pretend to pay lip service to the citizens, who are likely sooner than later to be robbed of even the illusion of a proper democracy in order that even more wealth can be transferred from a future serf class into the pockets of preening neo-nobility. We will be allowed enough pocket money to fulfill our roles as consumers, but little else beyond that. I really hope those saps who bought the Republican lies like being peasants. 

As the planet Earth is puking up humanity in general, we seem to not want to even go out with some dignity. We shall live a world thoroughly fracked but without enough potable water. The rising temps and the rising oceans will slowly but surely change the world in the centuries to come. Will man survive? Earth doesn't care. The Solar System cares even less. And the Universe doesn't even know of our existence. 

I am an old man and while sad and more than a wee bit bitter to see this day arrive, I know that my children will really be the ones to suffer. All of this so a handful of fat old white men can cling to their power a few hours longer. The very order of the world, one fought for generations ago by regular men and women who sacrificed it all, will be transformed for the worse. Ironically, my daughter who teaches history is scheduled to teach about "The Shot Heard Around the World" today. The irony drips she said, as he teaches about the beginning of the nation on possibly the very day it began its ending. 

The United States of America 1776-2024?

I really, really hope I'm wrong.  

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