Three Films Make A Post: Hear how it all began.

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024): I wasn’t terribly fond of the first Quiet Place movie and consequently never bothered with the second one (unlike with the films of M. Night Shyamalam, that I can’t seem to give up on, despite their general suckiness).

But people with interesting taste recommended this prequel, so off I went, and found myself really rather taken with Michael Sarnoski’s film. Clearly, the writer/director only finds the monsters of the franchise of limited interest, and instead focusses on the human impact of their apocalypse. The film is full of scenes of genuinely touching humanity (at its worst and at its best) centred around a fantastic performance by Lupita Nyong’o and a basically immortal cat. This doesn’t mean Sarnoski doesn’t apply himself fully to the monster set pieces – in fact, the way he uses a quiet/loud dynamic in many of the suspense scenes is often brilliant and inventive, making the best out of pretty run of the mill monster designs (the xenomorph still has a lot to answer for) via the wonders of proper sound design.

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957): While they are of course ultra-cheap AIP monsters, Paul Blaisdell’s creatures in this Edward L. Cahn teens versus space invaders film do have a certain something, even if that something is just the kind of lovely grotesqueness that gets my private sense of wonder working overtime.

For once, a director of one of these things actually makes proper use of Blaisdell’s work, only showing bits and pieces of the designs, hiding the rest behind shadows, tree branches and in between frames, so that they sometimes – there’s a great attack sequence on some innocent livestock – even feel actually threatening.

On the negative side, there’s a lot of painfully knowing camp to get through, which is exactly the sort of thing that’ll make it pretty difficult for me to get through a seventy minute movie. Hipper daddy-os may have a different mileage there.

Succubus (2024): One of these days, a director making a film called “Succubus” will actually know what a succubus is traditionally supposed to be. Until then, Serik Beyseu’s Russian movie (not to be confused with another film of the same title coming out this year)about a bunch of horribly horny and rather stupid people on a cultish couple’s retreat will have to do.

At least, the film attempts to deliver on the expected thrills of direct to whatever movies, so there’s some lame sex, the kind of “twisty” plot you can come up with while scribbling on the back of a propaganda flyer, and, surprisingly enough, a couple of half decent horror set pieces.

These are never enough to make the film actually interesting or effective, but in the realm of direct to streaming low budget horror, a couple of decent scenes and a pretty cool looking monster reveal are better than what you can typically expect, so I’ll take this as a win.

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

After the first manned Mars expedition crashes down on the planet, a rescue ship commanded by Colonel Van Heusen (Kim Spalding) is sent to rescue any survivors. There is only one member of the first flight left alive, its commander Colonel Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson). Carruthers tells a somewhat wild tale about his men and himself having been attacked by some sort of creature, but Van – as everyone calls him - is utterly convinced Carruthers somehow managed to murder all nine of his colleagues to stretch his food rations from one year to ten. He’s so convinced of Carruthers’ guilt, Van has already ordered an instant court martial back on Earth for the man.

Not all of the rest of Van’s crew is quite as convinced of Carruthers’ guilt as their boss is, but believing the man or not isn’t going to be much of a question very soon, for the monster that killed the first expedition has managed to sneak on board the ship and is now using the time until they can land on Earth to make a meal out of the new load of Earthlings.

A rather more obvious influence on the tone and structure of Alien than the A.E. Van Vogt story that film supposedly ripped off, this is one of the very best works of multi-genre low budget director for hire Edward L. Cahn. It has a tight, mostly clever script by Jerome Bixby that makes much of the claustrophobic (and cheap) spaceship location this nearly completely takes place in, understands and applies concepts of suspense and escalation, and doesn’t spend too much time on the horrors of 50s SF romance.

Atypical for a 50s low budget movie, there seems to have been quite a bit of care spent on the look of the production, aiming for the sort of work-a-day future that would only really start to dominate science fiction films for a time beginning in the second half of the 70s – I’d even see Star Wars as part of this lived-in look. It is still a cheap 50s SF horror movie in technical look and feel, but one that puts visible thought and effort into making things feel real.

The monster suit – by AIP stalwart Paul Blaisdell – is a good example for this as well: while it certainly never looks real (most probably also never looked real to a contemporary audience), it has more weight and design sense than you’d usually see in this sort of thing, turning it into a much more believable presence and menace. It does help that Cahn makes quite a bit of use of shadows and half shadows when showing it, not exactly hiding its weaknesses but making it at once more plausible and more menacing.

Generally, Cahn works a lot more with expressive light and shadow than you’d expect when you’ve seen some of his AIP movies, generally keeping things visually interesting and atmospheric. Here, he also shows a hand for simple yet striking effects work: the EVA scene for example may be realized in quite an obvious manner, yet it never feels goofy or too old-fashioned to work.

Apart from being tight and effective, there are also some moments here that can at least be read as attempts at further depth. At least, if you squint in just the right way, you might read the film’s treatment of the increasingly unhinged Van as a tacit, practical criticism of the kind of square-jawed know-it-all manliness 50s science fiction loved even more than other genres did, with the less obviously manly Carruthers who is allowed to fear and be troubled by things but then proceeds to make the right decisions presented as the more human as well as more effective alternative. Let’s just keep away from the film’s gender politics, where the main roles of the female crew members appear to be bringing coffee and presenting emotional-sexual support. There’s an astonishing amount of massaging and hand-holding of sick men that’s more than a little perturbing to modern eyes. Nursing practices really have changed rather a lot, apparently.

Three Films Make A Post: There are no partners in crime

The Invisible Guardian aka El guardián invisible (2017): For a time, Fernando González Molina’s serial killer procedural seems a decent enough entry into this particular genre, with some spectacularly moody shots of corpses in foggy and wet woods as its visual main attraction. The longer the film goes on, the more it goes off the rails, the family connections between the investigating police inspector and the case bringing out a lot of screeching melodrama that’s simply not well enough written or staged to evoke the emotions it so desperately wants to. The procedural bit becomes increasingly ridiculous too – this is the sort of film where our heroine cop is surprised and disgusted she can’t continue a case where her own sister is the main suspect, and the film agrees with bombastic nonsense on the soundtrack. For some reasons that may very well be clearer in the books this is based on, the film also shoehorns in a supernatural element that really has no place in the plot as it is whatsoever, as if the filmmakers were just adding random stuff to the already slow and ponderous thing.

Sentinelle (2021): A French soldier with PTSD sent home to now patrol public places with a loaded assault rifle (a thing that looks absolutely insane from my cultural perspective, and can only be bound to feel everyone less secure) gets violently upset at the rich guy who rapes and nearly murders her sister. Because she’s played by Olga Kurylenko, there’s a lot of scowling and actorly intensity before the outbreak of violence. Director Julien Leclerq seems genuinely interested in his main character’s inner life, so Kurylenko has much opportunity for a not original but pleasantly nuanced portrayal; that she’s also a good action actress certainly helps the Netflix film considerably.

Creature with the Atom Brain (1955): The main surprise about this Columbia cheapie directed by Edward L. Cahn is how thoroughly enjoyable it still is. A gangster uses the nuclear zombie (this seems to be part of the lineage leading directly to the Romero-style zombie, see also Cahn’s own later Invisible Invaders) creation method of a Nazi scientist for vengeance, with later plans for world domination. Mad science and evil gangster speeches are made! The hero’s intensely 50s home life is shoved into our helpless faces (it’s called horror for a reason)! Zombies with clever minimalist make-up attack in genuinely well-staged sequences that do their utmost to get around the tiny budget!

I have no idea what else I could ask of a movie like this.

Three Films Make A Post: EVERY SECOND YOUR PULSE POUNDS THEY GROW FOOT BY INCREDIBLE FOOT!

The Pack (1977): By now, I’m quite sure that Robert Clouse’s films and my approval shall never meet beyond Gymkata. This is even the case with what should be a shoe-in as a movie to at least slightly disturb a guy like me who gets pretty nervous around larger dogs (I blame a certain Doberman of my past). Unfortunately, The Pack’s dogs never do end up making me nervous, or feel as threatening as they should, mostly because Clouse isn’t one for mood building in his direction at all. He’s pointing, he’s shooting, he’s keeping things in focus, but beyond that, I always get the impression from his films he just wasn’t that interested in them himself. That’s not much of a problem in a film as insane as Gymkata that isn’t hindered by a lack of directorial vision, but in a tepid little nature strikes back film like this, you really want someone behind the camera who works for his audience’s excitement.

But at least Joe Don Baker is in it playing, of all things, a marine biologist (don’t ask), so there’s that.

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959): This, on the other hand, is quite the thing, as macabre a 50s film as you’ll probably get to see, full of outrageous pulp ideas, and one of Edward L. Cahn’s most energetic directorial efforts.

Sure, the performances are somewhat mediocre, but who needs great thespian efforts in a film that features a most excellent shrunken head based curse and has no problems at all with throwing stuff like post-mortem decapitation, a living dead guy with stitched up lips whose bodily fluids contain more curare than blood, and another gentleman whose body belongs to a dead Amazonian tribesman and whose head is that of a mad anthropologist? This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call art.

A Dirty Carnival (2006): Yoo Ha’s gangster film mixes the traditions of classical US gangster movies made after the fall of the US studio system and of jitsuroku style yakuza films, aiming for its own kind of stylized hyperrealism. It’s a film that knows how many gangster movies its audience has probably already seen, yet somehow still manages to aim for and hit an audience’s emotions instead of the irony glands. Which I think is a particular achievement in a film that counts a director making a gangster movie among its cast, and therefore threatens to become much too meta and self-conscious for comfort. A part of the film does indeed concern itself with truth and fiction echoing one another, but it’s done quite intelligently and with so much care, this approach enriches the film as a tale instead of resulting in the empty poses of ironic distance.

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Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)

A worker discovers a man turned to stone in the ruins of Pompeii. Unlike most stone people, the man we will later learn once was called Quintillus Aurelius (Bob Bryant), is at least still half alive, and tends to get rather grabby with other people's necks only to fall into deep stone(d) sleep again afterwards, which is just the kind of behaviour that makes a murder look like a car accident to the police in this particular movie.

Though he really can't prove anything untoward about the stone man, the director of Naples' Pompeii museum, Dr. Carlo Fiorello (Luis Van Rooten), is discomfited enough by the whole affair to call in the former fiancée of his daughter - also a doctor, and that in a 50s film! - Maria (Adele Mara), snarly-voiced American Dr. Paul Mallon (Richard Anderson). Mallon doesn't believe in walking stone men, but he'll perhaps change his tune in the future, for his new fiancée, the artist Tina Enright (Elaine Edwards), has a peculiar connection to the stone man. Before she even knew he existed, Tina had a dream about, and painted a picture of, Quintillus. Once she has learned he does exist, she feels strangely compelled towards the stone man, and it is pretty clear that he feels drawn towards her as well. Why, one could think Tina is the reincarnated love of his life!

For the lesser movie in a two-fer feature together with It! The Terror Beyond Space, which was of course also shot by Curse's director Edward L. Cahn, who made more films between 1955 and 1959 alone than many directors do in their whole careers, this isn't half bad. At the very least, Jerome Bixby's script's attempt to transplant elements of The Mummy into modern Naples and the site of the former Pompeii (both of course played by the usual places in California) is rather interesting and at times unexpected.

50s monster movies usually don't show quite as much interest for the backstory of their monsters as Curse does. The film's emphasis on its monster as a nearly tragic figure repeating the tragedy that cost him his life two millennia ago is also rather uncommon for its time. Sure, there's the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but otherwise, 50s movie monsters seldom got a foot in the door beyond being monstrous, something that always seemed like a bit of a shame to me.

In its actual execution, Curse isn't all that different from your run of the mill monster movie, though, for while Cahn did hit on a good film or two between the disinterested crap he often did, he really wasn't the man to delve deep into the possibilities the script offers, or really, to delve even very shallowly. What we get from him is a pacy, straightforward film that looks and feels alright, which probably is the best we can hope for under the circumstances of the production.

The film's biggest weak points are the usual ones: heroine Elaine Edwards couldn't act her way out of a paper bag (which is particularly problematic since it's her job to sell us on the reincarnation biz), "hero" Richard Anderson is bland when he isn't rude, while all the much more interesting and much better acted minor characters (like Felix Locher's rather wonderful Dr. Emanuel) never get the moment in the spotlight they deserve. The film is further weakened by a particularly egregious piece of off-screen narration (perhaps done by Morris Ankrum, perhaps not) that won't ever stop telling us the things we are able to see just fine without its help, as if someone involved in the production had problems understanding the difference between a movie and a radio play.

Still, I'll take a competently done 50s horror movie with a handful of underdeveloped good ideas and some rather painful flaws over a boring one any day, so while Curse of the Faceless Man isn't a film I'd recommend whole-heartedly, it is a film with a certain amount of interest.

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