FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was October 26, 1973…The United Nations recognized the

independence of Guinea-Bissau…

California's Alcatraz Island and the federal prison building that had been located there, were

both opened by the U.S. Park Service as a tourist attraction.

Born:  Seth MacFarlane, American comedian, TV and film producer, and actor, known for

Family Guy and Ted; in Kent, Connecticut

Top of the Pops back when: MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO GEORGIA by Gladys Knight and

the Pips.

Gladys Knight and The Pips - Midnight Train To Georgia

FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR

Or;   LA MARCA DEL HOMBRE LOBO …

I wanted to take another look at FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR. Why would

I--or anyone on Earth--want to do that? Well, it’s that old Fifty Years Ago thing. I first

saw this Paul Naschy mishmash in October of 1973, at a drive-in, and sensibly hadn’t

seen it since.

But… I was surprised and even a bit shocked to find how tough it is to see that

blighted U.S. version of LA MARCA DEL HOMBRE LOBO. I was NOT prepared to

spend the big bucks for a VHS or evidently rare DVD of the thing. 

YouTube did offer a version of the movie. Though the title on the print is the original

Spanish, the movie is listed on YouTube as being under the German title: DIE VAMPIRE

DES DR. DRACULA. Them Germans, huh? And, despite the highly visible Spanish title,

this print did feature a German-language soundtrack and (only) German subtitles. But

better’n nothing, hey? I know a smidge of Deutsches and, with the subs on, I could

pretty much follow the simple storyline. Plus, I had seen it before after all.

I will say that the print looked sensational. I’m pretty ding dong sure that it didn’t look this

good on the big screen at the Clarksville Drive-in. On the other hand, I had nothing to eat

while watching this which could remotely match the terrific Clarksville hot dogs. Boy, I’d

like to have me a couple o’ them right now…

This was, of course, the first horror film from Paul Naschy and probably remains his

most-seen. I can’t remember definitely, but I believe that when I saw this in 1973, I was

well aware that Naschy, numerically at least, was positioning himself as a genuine

latter-day horror star. I also am pretty sure I knew that, American title notwithstanding, this

was no Frankenstein movie. So I was very interested in seeing Naschy at work, and I was

not surprised by the cheaty ending.

----------------------------------------------

Okay, here I make a wild and kind of embarrassing confession. I wanted to relate how

poorly I judged this movie on first viewing, so I just now dipped into my old records to

check what rating I’d given it on my old 1-10 scale. I find that I rated it at only 2, so,

terrible. But, though that’s probably too low, it’s not the embarrassing thing. 

Those old records tell me that I originally saw FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR

in October, 1973, so that’s on the nose. But they also tell me that I saw the movie on

TV. On Cincinnati’s Channel 19, brought to me by cable TV. No Clarksville Drive-in, no

hot dogs.  I have what seems to be a strong, crystal-clear recollection of seeing that

feeble American “explanation” for the movie’s title and that recollection is of viewing it

real big on a drive-in movie screen. The Clarksville’s screen, to be precise. And that’s

just not so. I was astounded to learn this…but not really.

In recent years, I’ve become all too painfully aware how mistaken even the strongest,

clearest memories can be. These days when research proves that an old memory is

true and right, I’m kind of surprised. I’ve come to expect to find that memory lies. But

this memory was so SO clear. It’s kind of scary to think my mind can fool me so totally

like that.

-------------------------------------------------------

Anyway. The movie is definitely better than my old rating would have it. I’d probably rate

it at 5 out of 10 these days. It’s silly, but the genuine European settings are impressive,

the lighting and photography are impressive. The ladies are lovely. We get a genuine,

snarling, biting werewolf and a couple of vampires. The male vampire even wears

Lugosian evening wear, including a cape with a bright red lining. Cool Monster Kid stuff.

Naschy is not much of an actor but he’s certainly the most physically wild and energetic

werewolf ever. Lon Chaney may be the most iconic, Oliver Reed the most intense,

Henry Hull the most…I don’t know…boring? But Senor Molina is, far and away, the

most physically scary. He jumps all over the place, including all over his victims. It's as

if a strong, furious madman attacked you. And he's also a werewolf.

Ahh, I kind of enjoyed re-watching this one, but that painful dent in my memory…that hurts.

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was October 21, 1973 … The Oakland A's defeated the New York Mets, 5–2 in Game 7 to win the World Series, 4 games to 3… Piloted by Heino Brditschka, the first flight of an all-electric airplane took place as the Militky MB-E1 took off under its own power from Linz in Austria and flew for nine minutes and 5 seconds….Fred Dryer of the Los Angeles Rams became the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game. The 24-7 win for the Rams over the Green Bay Packers came on consecutive safeties in the fourth quarter from sacks in the end zone by Dryer of Green Bay quarterbacks Scott Hunter and Jim Del Gaizo…

Top of the pops this week:  ANGIE by The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones - Angie - OFFICIAL PROMO (Version 1)

My childhood theater was The Le Rose, where I spent a million and one Saturday matinees soaking up monster movies. Because The Le Rose so often drew on the cheap rentals from the back catalog, I got to see lots of ‘50s faves: THE THING, THE BLOB, THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, many more. It was great. But when those days passed and I started catching all the others on TV, I so regretted that I wasn’t able to see them all in that crumbling cinema palace. And every now and then, I’d see one which I really, REALLY wished I’d seen there. Top of the list of these regrets are, probably, CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN and this one… 

FIEND WITHOUT A FACE

It’s just such fun, I can only imagine what a brain-searing treat it would have been to a ten-year-old on the big screen. But at least I saw it, even if only on commercial TV. I have such fond feelings toward this one. Let’s see if another showing provokes similar warmth.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Our first victim was killed “at three in the morning”, but it looks more like three p.m. To be honest, the day-for-night scenes throughout the movie are almost all of the Ed Wood variety…

There’s a little stock footage, but not enough for a ‘50s s-f epic. Not enough for me anyway…

For years I confused Marshall Thompson with Arthur Franz (still do occasionally), but when you’re into a movie, mixin’ it up with ‘em, it’s just so much more pleasant to spend 80 minutes with Marshall than with the uber-crabby Art…

Marshall is awfully cavalier about pushing the nuclear reactor into the “Danger” zone. But, hey, his radar keeps “fading out!” Heat that atomic pile up, man! We got radar to run!...

This British film does a pretty good job of faking North American-ness. The actors, almost to a man, either have North American accents or do a good job of faking it…

I actually kept count for a while. I tallied 13 actors nicely passing as Canadian, and five failing the test…

This is notably smarter and better made than the average ‘50s s-f meller. Which makes me wonder-- what would be the average of the breed?  Something like REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, maybe? Or NOT OF THIS EARTH? AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN? Shoot, now I’m all a-wonderin’ about this…

But…smarter though this may be, it’s still dumb enough to have Marshall Thompson make a couple of titanic, indefensible, out-of-nowhere deductive leaps…

The title page of “The Principles of Thought Control” show that Prof. Walgate is as interested in calligraphy as in science…

In the brief fight scene between Marshall and Kim Parker’s hot-headed suitor, there are some epically missed punches still managing to make loud POW noises…

By the way, though the suitor is clearly at fault, Kim gets mad at Marshall and runs him off. Next time she sees him she’s still furious at him. Next time, she immediately smiles a “meet-me-in-the-hayloft” smile at him. Fickleness, thy name is woman…

There’s lots of good stuff in the monster scenes, but the monster sounds are not among them. This “CRUNCH”-ing noise sounds like amplified peanut-chewing mixed with the thump of the marching boots of the 5th Army…

We get a much deeper, more detailed “scientific” explanation of how we came to this pass and it almost--ALMOST--seems to make sense…

“There’s some lumber in my laboratory..” why of course there is…

The ultimate stop-motion invasion of the now-visible brains is one of the small wonders of ‘50s s-f. And it’s also almost certainly the goriest sequence of the entire decade…

How on earth do they stop this madness?! Marshall has an idea--he’ll get some dynamite and go blow up the control room at the nuclear reactor! Great idea! What could possibly go wrong??...

And here’s what I always really wondered about: Why was Kim Parker’s shower scene so much more titillating than all the other bathing, swimming, showering scenes in those movies? No more flesh is exposed. It’s not shot in any more woo-woo fashion. She’s not prettier than those other ladies. So what is it? Now I think I know…

It’s a couple of things. For one, that frosted shower door. Nothing can be seen, but it almost seems as if something should be visible. And, second, when she gets out with the towel wrapped around her, there’s a momentary slip when it seems as if exposure might occur. It doesn’t, of course, but in rescuing the towel and pressing it against her chest, Kim gives us an instant of clear “bobble” of the breast flesh. And, in the ‘50s, that’s all it took… 

Despite all the problems listed above (and a couple I omitted), FIEND WITHOUT A FACE is still a major winner. And I still so so regret not having seen it at The Le Rose.

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, October 13, 1973…All 122 passengers and crew on

Aeroflot Flight 964 were killed when the Tu-104 jet crashed during its approach to Domodedovo

Airport in Moscow. An electrical power failure on the aircraft disabled its navigation system. The

jet struck power lines roughly 10 miles from the runway while tilted to the left at a 70° angle.

Among those killed was Lieutenant General Fyodor Bondarenko, Chief of the Soviet Union's

anti-aircraft missile defense….The first father-son combination in major league U.S. sports was

unveiled as ice hockey legend Gordie Howe was joined by his sons Marty Howe and Mark

Howe for the Houston Aeros' opening game in the World Hockey Association against the Los

Angeles Sharks.

“Half-Breed” by Cher was still top of the charts… Cher - Half-Breed (Official Video) [HD]

 

Myself--still in the middle of the run of GUYS AND DOLLS. That is all. Wish I had some photos

to share. Wish I had some photos just for my own remembrance sake, but no. There are a

couple of newspaper publicity photos around here somewhere, but they are almost worthless

in the original. Trying to reproduce them here would only make it worse.

On TV that night: STARLOST, EMERGENCY, NBC SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (THE

ANDERSON TAPES), HEE-HAW, MASH, ALL IN THE FAMILY, MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW,

BOB NEWHART SHOW, CAROL BURNETT SHOW (“Eydie Gorme and Paul Sand in a salute

to old time movie serials, Tarzan, the Cisco Kid, and the Wolfman.”), ABC SUSPENSE MOVIE,

GRIFF. On channel 41’s FRIGHT NIGHT, The Fearmonger hosted viewings of THE

MYSTERIANS and THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK.

Here we see Harvey Korman as "Sir Larry Talmadge". Unfortunately, this comic 

face-pulling is as close as he gets to being a wolf man.

I’ve loved Barbara Steele since that Saturday afternoon in 1961 when I sat, utterly rapt, in the

dark and crumbling confines of The LeRose Theater, getting my first look at BLACK SUNDAY.

Or maybe I fell for her even earlier, when I first saw the image of her spike-dented but still

beautiful face in Famous Monsters magazine. 

Whichever…despite this helpless infatuation, other than BLACK SUNDAY and THE SHE

BEAST, I can never remember which of her Italian Gothics is which. It’s “The Barbara Steele

Confusion” (“The Barbara Steele Confusion” to be sung to the tune of “Crystal Blue

Persuasion”): 

Tommy James&the Shondell_Crytal Blue persuasion

So I’m really interested to see 

THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK

…just so I’ll know which movie this is.

The movie gets off to a strong horror film beginning--digging in a cemetery at night, opening

a coffin, caressing a beautiful corpse. Oh, yeah. Bring it on…

I love how all the fancy-schmancy guests crowd around to hear the hostess’s droning,

sleep-inducing, and highly discordant piano playing…

Babs looks gorgeous (of course), but may be working a bit too hard at that acting stuff…

 

I was shocked when some character mentioned being in London. I don't think I've ever seen

a movie which felt less London-ish than this, including LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and THE

SEVEN SAMURAI…

Robert Flemyng is really sweating his way through that acting himself…

 

Never ceases to amaze me how a single match can illuminate an entire wing of the old

dump…

Flemyng's fake sideburns do provide occasional amusement. So that's something…

This is muy Gothicky, got a bunch of the old standard spooky castle bits, but an almost total

lack of originality or subtlety. You could almost call this Stoic Horror. There's no action, no

movement, no life or interest in the dialogue. No wonder Babs and Bob are straining at

Thespis's chain. They are about all that's there… 

What teensy bits of interest there are all arrive in the last three minutes of this movie…

Babs tryin' to escape from a coffin. 

Or...is she trying to escape from the MOVIE?????

Awww, it’s basic and not bad to look at, but it’s so very unspecial. Maybe this is

another DVD to dump.

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, October 6, 1973 … Egypt and Syria staged a surprise attack on Israel with an invasion of the Israeli-occupied Sinai peninsula and the Golan Heights, beginning the Yom Kippur War…. Born: Ioan Gruffudd, Welsh film and television actor known for the HORNBLOWER films and for FANTASTIC FOUR; in Aberdare, Mid Glamorgan …Died: Sidney Blackmer, 78, American stage and film actor, 1950 Tony Award winner for Come Back, Little Sheba, better known to the masses for ROSEMARY’S BABY (b. 1895);...Dennis Price, 58, English actor who ranged from Ealing comedies early to Jess Franco late, with some Hammer in between, died of heart failure following a hip fracture… Top song in the country was Cher’s “Half-Breed.” That’s all I ever heard…

                                Dennis Price having a bad day at the THEATER OF BLOOD

                                    Sidney Blackmer making life tough for Rosemary, baby.

Hey, I was actually doing a show at this time. We were right in the middle of our run of GUYS AND DOLLS in which I played Sky Masterson. I hadn’t wanted to do the show originally and was sort of trapped into it. Of course, I ultimately loved it and have wonderfully fond memories of it. This was my last non-Equity show, eight months later I joined the union and, against my wishes, was a fully professional actor.

I did see this movie 50 years ago, I swear I did. But I don’t remember anything about it. Not ANYTHING. Generally, even for a movie I don’t remember well, there will be a scene, or a single shot, or at least a feeling held onto from that viewing. But for this one--nothing. Nothing at all. It makes me think that, though the TV was on, and I was there in the room with it, maybe I wasn’t paying so much attention. I wrote the title down on my list, and I felt that I’d earned that, but that list and that small sense of satisfaction are the only evidences I ever had that I had actually seen…

THE FLAME BARRIER

Was this ever called BEYOND THE FLAME BARRIER? Because that’s what I wrote on my index card when I entered it into my files all those ages ago…

Some familiar names under the screenplay credit: Pat Fielder and George Worthing Yates…

The movie gets off to a great ‘50’s black-and-white, sci-fi start: Stock footage, a stentorian narrator and the gorgeous Kathleen Crowley…

Star Arthur Franz has been long noted, primarily based on first-hand testimony from co-workers, to have been a singularly sour, crabby man. Here he found his perfect role. This guy is sour and crabby to the max. Franz could have done this in his sleep…

There they are: Crabby, Pretty, and...who's that again?

This feels like the least familiar (to me) of all ‘50s s-f movies. It’s almost--actually more than “almost”--like watching a totally unknown, unseen flicker…

The look of this jungle reminds me of THE DISEMBODIED, while the endless walking reminds me of MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL. Not a couple of movies one cares to be reminded of. Especially since this one has neither giant wasps nor Allison Hayes as reward for my suffering…

From their meager backpacks they manage to pull out quite a bit, including a tent which, from the outside, looks to be a nicely spacious jungle camp tent. From the inside it looks like the Biltmore Ballroom, or perhaps the hangar for The Spruce Goose…

There’s way too much soap opera in the in-between stuff. Kathleen Crowley--not a bad actress usually--is reduced to arch, obvious, GUIDING LIGHT histrionics…

Non-scientist Franz, with no evidence to go on and with no previously exhibited intelligence, instantly knows exactly what’s going on and what to do with this evidently not-so-superior alien lifeform…

                                                 Here we see the scary, deadly thing from space. 

                                                        Whatever it was. Spooky, huh, kids?

The climax provides a bushel of fake and failed tension as a guy climbs a “dangerous” 12 or 15 feet of fake movie rock. Not tense, just dull and almost laughably predictable…

If memory serves (I’m too old and tired for research), the folks behind this turkey made three other low-budget s-f/horror movies during that same slim era in the ‘50s. The other three were MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, RETURN OF DRACULA, and THE VAMPIRE. All three of those are nice, well-above-average ‘50s shockers. Each is fun and smart and well worth a Monster Kid’s time. So what the hell happened here? I can only assume that they had run entirely out of money, energy, ideas, and talent. Because this one is crummy, and not crummy in a fun, entertaining way. 

It’s a lousy movie, and I suspect that much of my displeasure here comes from having to spend over an hour with the terminally cranky Arthur Franz.

This was playing at the old hometown drive-in and I didn't attend. Hmmm.

Best guess: I was busy doing a show. And I had a fiancee not enamored of such flicks.

And, I'd already seen three of the four. Maybe THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW 

didn't seem worth the trouble.