In short: Monster on the Campus (1958)

aka Monster in the Night

aka Stranger on Campus

University professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) is very happy to have acquired a coelacanth for the business of doing science on it. Alas, the fish brings trouble: when a friendly Alsatian drinks from its condensation, it becomes aggressive, growing large canines for a time. Blake himself cuts his hand on one of the coelacanth’s teeth and accidentally also gives that hand a good dab in the fish’s condensation water. So when a series of brutal murders shakes the campus, it’ll come as no surprise to anyone in the audience (at least of today) that the nice professor is regressing into some pre-human form and doing the killing.

Blake does eventually figure out what’s going on, but convincing anyone else of the ridiculous truth is near impossible.

The nice bit of 50s science fiction horror that is Monster on Campus is certainly not its director Jack Arnold’s best film, but particularly in the 50s, Arnold made such a great string of b-movies, a film that’s in that period’s lower third of his output is still pretty wonderful.

As is generally typical for him, Arnold has a much tighter reign on the film’s pacing than usual in 50s science fiction and horror, understanding that drama and excitement isn’t typically created by people spouting exposition. That’s not to say that Monster is an action heavy film. Its script by David Duncan is full of scenes of characters discussing evolution, the concept of civilization and so on, but unlike in many another film of the period, this is actually the film defining its main theme of civilization as the thin membrane that divides humanity, even a pretty bright and civilized guy like Blake, from utter barbarity, of which becoming an ape man is only the outward symptom. It’s a very pessimistic view of humanity the film consciously and subtly undercuts repeatedly, particularly in an ending that finds Blake turning himself into the apeman again on purpose to commit suicide by cop and convince university president Howard (Alexander Lockwood) - who is also the father of his girlfriend - of the truth of his rambling. Which is a very civilized act.

For a 50s genre movie, Monster is also rather sceptical of authority figures – sure the cops are not of the keystone variety, but when they need to make the mental jump that could save lives, they fail; and Howard can’t see how his own passive-aggressiveness towards his daughter’s girlfriend and his general conservatism blinds him to possibilities.

Also of interest are the – again very Jack Arnold – hints at the caveman’s murders as the dark side of Blake’s sexuality; at least the first one suggests an element of sexual – off-screen of course – violence, particularly since the victim was flirting with Blake beforehand.


This thematic richness does not get in the way of Monster on the Campus being a fun 50s monster movie, though, so we get all the expected thrills, just with a bit more going on under the hood of the film and minus a lot of the woodenness in acting and writing you can get in the genre.

In short: Black Eye (1974)

Ex-cop of course turned private eye - as well as beater of drug dealers and protector of prostitutes - Shep Stone (Fred Williamson) stumbles into quite the case. When looking in on prostitute Vera (Nancy FIsher), he only finds her corpse, as well as her murderer. The guy is armed with a knife but also swinging a cane with a special silver handle. We the audience already know that cane belonged to a silent movie star, and Vera stole it from the top of his coffin. After a pretty intense fight, the killer escapes with his cane and most of his bones intact. Shep’s not the kind of guy to let this sort of thing slip, so he convinces his ex-partner in the police to hire him to work the case, instead of the people actually responsible for investigating murders.

Because our hero’s a bit of a multitasker, he also agrees to a second case a couple of hours later. He is to find runaway daughter Amy (Susan Arnold) for a guy named Dole (Richard Anderson). Working the cases – if indeed these are separate cases – will lead Shep through all sorts of very 1974 situations, as seen through the eyes of nearly 60 years old director Jack Arnold.

The late 60s and the 70s didn’t exactly treat low budget movie pro Arnold too well, or perhaps he just never really managed to adapt his sensibilities to the new era of filmmaking. In any case, the non-TV work of late period Arnold always feels to me a bit like the work of a man who is trying his best to follow the contemporary exploitation angles but doesn’t quite have the vocabulary needed to do it convincingly. In Black Eye’s case, all attempts to depict the early 70s life and mores of younger people seem to come from a position of raised eyebrows, the director nearly audibly tutting at homosexuals, lesbians, late hippies, religious zealots, and letting his lead tut right with him. It’s often rather awkward, and could indeed be pretty unpleasant at times if not for the joy it is to watch Fred Williamson at work. Williamson spends much of his time using his nearly proverbial (at least if you’re moving in my circles) laidback swagger to stroll from slightly off kilter scene to slightly off scene as a character you might imagine to be played by James Garner in case of Wiliamson’s unavailability, flirting, pretending to be shocked by stuff my grandmother wouldn’t have been shocked by at the time – and how I love him for so clearly only pretending – and from time to time hitting deserving people in the face.


Every couple of scenes – when the film isn’t suddenly turning into a Sunday afterschool special or spends its time on a slow motion romance montage you gotta see to believe and which incorporates a nearly naked Williamson and later a tandem  – Arnold gets up to more timeless things. The handful of action scenes are mostly spirited and fun, and demonstrate that Arnold still had his old directing chops and just didn’t really warm to his material. Still, if you’re interested in the bodies of work of Arnold and/or Williamson, or want to see a 70s private eye film with a black lead that isn’t really a blaxploitation film, this one has enough good moments to be worth your while.

No Name On The Bullet (1959)

A gunman named John Gant (Audie Murphy) comes into the quiet town of Lordsburg. Gant is a very reserved and earnest chap, doesn't talk much, observes a lot. Gant is also a professional killer with a peculiar modus operandi. His method is well known - and would not work quite as well if it wasn't. He comes into a town, checks into a hotel, watches and waits and makes his potential victims so nervous that they are just bound to pick a fight with him, putting him into the position to shoot them in "self defence" and merrily go on his way.

The killer's arrival causes panic in the peaceful town, and soon everyone who thinks there might be a reason for Gant to come for him is on edge. It turns out that the peaceful little town isn't as peaceful as it seems, and that a lot of its citizens have good reason to be afraid, be it the man who ran away with another man's wife and learned to hate her, as she did him, or the businessmen squabbling over a mine. All too soon, there is the first suicide, and shoot-outs between citizens will not be far behind. All the while, Gant hasn't even fired a single bullet.

The killer obviously enjoys this part of his job very much. He's keeping to a strict codex of not killing those people for whose death he wasn't paid and he is convinced that he's doing the world a favour killing those for whose deaths he was, a never explained sense of biblical justice hangs about him and his techniques. Righteous people have no need to fear Gant, after all.

Seemingly the only man who doesn't fear Gant at all is the local physician Dr. Luke Canfield (Charles Drake). The doctor is an idealist willing to put his head on the line for the things he believes in, as driven a healer as Gant is a killer. This makes the doctor Gant's opposite as well as his mirror image, and both he and Gant know it and feel a certain attraction to each other.

It is only a question of time until it will come to a confrontation between the two men.

It is a well-known fact that B-grade Western in the 40s and 50s could get away with much more daring scripts than their high budget counterparts, but it is also true that most of them had to take much of what they had said back for their final reels so as not to shake the status quo up too much. Somebody must have forgotten to send the memo about the final reel to No Name On The Bullet's director Jack Arnold (yes, the former monster film specialist) or its scriptwriter Gene L. Coon (yes, the future Star Trek writer), leading to a film that is as thematically unified as one could wish for. It is not that the film's ending is utterly pessimistic or cynical - the bad are being punished and the good live on, after all - but it is far away from the kneejerk "and everything is alright again" ending that mars many a movie of the era.

Not being a Spaghetti Western, the film clearly takes Canfield's side in the conflict with Gant, yet it does so sharing the empathy and the need to understand Canfield shows for everyone around him. On another level, the film seems to be as much about theology (or possibly moral philosophy) as about a killer coming to a frontier town. Here, the film puts Canfield's New Testament morals above Gant's Old Testament ones without ever pretending not to understand the lure of the latter.

No Name on the Bullet is also part of the sub-genre of the psychological B-Western. As such, it is more interested in observing (very much like Gant must have done a hundred times before) how men cope with their feelings of guilt when coming under pressure from an outside force. The conclusion the film comes to - people break - isn't exactly pretty, and, again surprising in its honesty for a movie made in 1959, in the USA, the film doesn't judge its characters for that.

No Name On The Bullet is exceedingly economically filmed. Arnold only has 73 minutes to tell his story, give enough depth to half a dozen characters, set up the Canfield/Gant conflict and put a handful of shoot-outs or near shoot-outs on screen, so there's no time for him to be flashy or to demonstrate what a good director he is. Instead, he does what truly good director does, puts his ego out of the way and tries to do justice to an excellent script. This approach leaves much work for his actors, and all of them use their chances to build on the audience's knowledge of stock characters and make them something more.

I was especially impressed by Audie Murphy, an actor who isn't exactly known for giving his characters much depth, but who here brings Gant to life as a man at once relishing the role he plays in life with a hardly controlled sadist glee yet who is also able to be compassionate, in his own way even kind.

 

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