FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY
Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, April 28, 1973..A series of munition explosions injured 48 people in Roseville, California. The blasts and fire at the Southern Pacific Railroad yard were traced to overheated brakes on a box car that was transporting highly explosive aircraft ammunition… Six Irishmen were arrested by the Irish Naval Service off County Waterford, on a coaster carrying five tons of weapons destined for the Provisional Irish Republican Army... Six elderly women were killed in Kansas City, Kansas after their apartment building was set on fire. An 18-year old newspaper carrier and a 16-year old accomplice were arrested later in the day on charges of arson and six counts of murder.[
The top song in the country this day was TIE A YELLOW RIBBON ROUND THE OLD OAK TREE by Tony Orlando and Dawn. I trust everyone knows that one.
Personally, I got nuthin’. I was between shows at the time. We’d just recently closed THREE MEN ON A HORSE and GUYS AND DOLLS was a few months off.
I was married at the time but I can’t tell you much about it. I remember a few incidents from that not-quite-two-year disaster, but of daily life—not a clue. I honestly can’t remember our living together, what we did, what we didn’t. It truly seems as if it was something I heard about happening to someone else. Nothing to do with me.
But a Saturday night in 1973 meant “Fright Night” on Channel 41. That night The Fearmonger had his usual double feature in store for us, a John Carradine duo: the second feature, which I’d already seen, was THE UNEARTHLY. But the opener, a genuine old Universal Horror was new to me. I didn’t expect much from it, but still it was pretty neat to finally see…
CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN
It feels as if I should have seen this in ’62 on Shock Theater. It was included in the second Shock package, titled Son of Shock. But I like to think that someone at Channel 32, back in 1962, decided to spare us any of the adventures of Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman.
Probably not, but I still like to think so.
I did not enjoy CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN that night and why should I? It’s not a good movie. I’ve seen it a few times over the years and it hasn’t gotten better. Tonight I’ll be watching it again in honor of the 50th anniversary of that first viewing. There’s no reason to expect it’ll be any better this time.
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Evelyn Ankers’s considerable beauty is much too covered by the enormous hat she wears in her first scene. Then, later, she’s all smothered in a hat/scarf combo thing. She’s much too pretty to be hidden away by her own wardrobe…
Fred’s bragging of bringing back 20 tigers, 20 lions, and blah blah blah doesn’t sound so great in these more enlightened times…
So Carradine’s character has taken Ankers out to dinner “several times” yet she still calls him “Dr. Walters”…
Milburn Stone was supposedly cast because his physical resemblance to Clyde Beatty made it easier to pass old Beatty footage off as being Stone. Well and good, and some of the trickery works well enough, but the resemblance is not all that strong and frequently it’s clearly not Stone when it’s supposed to be. There’s also a couple of particularly clumsy bits. Once we can clearly see Beatty in a scene of which Stone is a supposed onlooker. Another time we see Beatty in the cage facing off against the critters before Stone enters the cage…
Here in 1943 Carradine is calm, cool, a very acceptable leading man (villainous variety). Please compare to his wild-eyed moron in ’44’s VOODOO MAN. Hmm. Wonder which was more of a stretch?…
The nurse says that Carradine shouldn’t “tamper with things no man or woman should ever touch.” If she’d said “tamper in God’s domain” it would have been perfect…
It’s odd that when we first see Paula Dupree, she’s already a woman fully growed. Nothing apish about her. She’s Acquanetta! There’s no scene of monkey becoming woman…
The treatment of the animals—surely typical of the time—is frankly horrendous…
Acquanetta is a true beauty but, even with no lines to speak, it’s painfully obvious that she’s no actress. By the way, no one ever mentions her total lack of speech. Or are we supposed to think that, off-camera, Paula Dupree’s mouth runs non-stop?…
“I wonder if you’ll be that easy to train after we’re married..” Yeah, the treatment of women is also very last century…
I hate the old and/or amateur actor’s habit of holding his hands at waist level in front of him. It’s a sure sign of an actor who doesn’t know what to do with his hands. And it seems to be Lloyd Corrigan’s normal stance…
Yeah, a gorilla gal and a cage full of big cats isn’t enough excitement for a 60 minute movie. We need a big storm too and, hey, let’s have an audience panic as well…
Well…it ends, but that’s not exactly an ending.
Between the sexism, the racism, and the animal abuse, this is particularly problematic in these days.
Not a good movie, and silly in the extreme, but not without some low-brow entertainment value. And that’s quite the compliment, isn’t it?
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