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It Came From Outer Space (1953)

Svengoolie strikes again! I saw this one as I’ve been clearing out my DVR of old Svengoolie episodes and I admit I was jazzed for this one.

I’ve heard about this one forever. It Came from Outer Space (1953) was Universal’s first 3D entry directed by Jack Arnold, who would make “Creature of the Black Lagoon” which is often considered the last classic Universal monster to be introduced.

As Seen on Svengoolie
As Seen on Svengoolie

On top of that, it is often stated that Ray Bradbury, classic SF novelist, wrote this script entirely though Harry Essex carries the screenplay credit.

Unfortunately, if I tell you the twist this movie has that other alien invasion films didn’t have at the time, it would ruin the entire thing….so don’t read those IMDB comments. I paid for it!

It Came from Outer Space (1953)
Watch out! The tall guy is doing something scary!

Having said that, it has a mysterious plot, but it isn’t terribly exciting or engaging. It kind of plays out a little like Tremors at times, but it just talks itself to death. Argh.

All the SF 50’s McCarthy tropes are here: a seeming outsider trying to alert authorities of the threat, a straight laced All-American couple, a town ridiculing the beliefs of the hero and even a cockeyed ball cap on the smart aleck sidekick.

It Came from Outer Space (1953)
Sigmund the Sea Monster scares some locals. He must be lost, because this is the desert.

All of that to see an alien that resembles Sigmund the Sea Monster through a “bubble cam.”

The lead is held down by Richard Carlson, who is one of those actors that you see the mug of and say “Oh, that guy!” He is probably best known as the antagonist without gills in the aforementioned “Creature of the Black Lagoon” but he plays a pretty convincing hero here. I just found myself not being too interested in his character. I guess that happens.

It Came from Outer Space (1953)
Barbara Rush looking awesome!

The female lead is Barbara Rush, who has literally done so much television it staggers the imagination. Her career spanned 50 years yet this film and “When Worlds Collide” are in 2 of her top 4 spots on IMDB. Her work as the lovely girlfriend and then becoming very sexy toward the end of the film is good, but her low threshold before she screams is annoying. She screams at everything. It is comical.

Russel Johnson is here. He was Gilligan’s Island’s Professor, but outside the trivial connection to a well known franchise, his performance simply isn’t notable.

It Came from Outer Space (1953)
The Professor sees a sea monster emerge from the island’s lagoon

The movie pivots on a twist I can’t mention…but frankly, it isn’t all that clever or shocking (even though it was spoiled for me). It just kind of hangs there and this movie is just a little too talky for me.

Grade: C+

It Came From Outer Space (1953)

PageantCast Mail Bag: 07/04/2020

Happy Independence Day!

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Brides of Dracula (1960)

Yeah. I hear ya. That’s a Hammer film. It has a gothic castle. It has really beautiful women in the lead. It has Peter Cushing for goodness’s sake! It’s a Hammer film.

True. But it is also a Universal film. That’s the logo at the top of the flick (Universal distributed many, if not all, of Hammer’s classic monster output) so I am calling it.

I watched Brides of Dracula on Svengoolie on Me-TV that was lurking on my DVR for literal years. I guess I have always been mixed on Hammer films, because they are nostalgic, but I always found the original Drac and Frankenstein much more charming. Hammer was always attempting to be “gritty” with the most gorgeous color ever committed to film. Just look at those reds pop!

This was Hammer’s second vampire movie. It was a followup to the classic “Horror of Dracula” which featured Christopher Lee as the Count. In this one, Peter Cushing reprises his role as the great vampire killer, Van Helsing.

Also returning is Terence Fisher who was responsible for many of the top Hammer horror films and gave up his career concurrently with the fall of the house of Hammer.

Freda Jackson steals most of the scenes she is in as the deranged mortal protector of our fanged friends. This is where I change gears….

Brides of Dracula (1960)
Yvonne Monlaur and David Peel give performances fit for a corpse

Yvonne Monlaur, as the our female lead, is a very beautiful woman…and not much else. If she didn’t fill out a shirt so well, I’d declare her an empty one. No fire or life is in her performance. And how can we get behind her…she causes this whole mess! After warnings from the townfolk and the mistress of the castle (who lets her stay the night for free in her magnificent home), she still stupidly releases David Peel, the vampire, Baron Meinster.

Now, the Baron is a bore. Peel appears to have mainly been a TV actor. In this flick….he’s mainly absent. Now, that’s fine since Peter Cushing is the real draw of the piece, but when your female lead (who has no sparks with Van Helsing as per usual) and your antagonist literally just lie there, that’s a problem with your film.

Brides of Dracula (1960)
Andree Melly brings the fangy fun in “Brides of Dracula” 1960

In fact, all the scares come from the fetching Andree Melly, who is beautiful…until she flashes that fangy smile. Those fangs, alone, change the entire shape of her face along with her emoting makes her from beauty to beast in the speed of a smile.

The flick features the usual uber-red gore of Hammer and an exciting final reel, but the middle act is a crashing bore. It’s here where you really miss Christopher Lee. Lee was, of course, killed off in the last Dracula film, but apparently was offered the role. Lee declined because he didn’t want to get typecast. Can you say….too late? It was even then! He returned to the role naturally and if I remember correctly played Dracula more often than any other actor.

What’s odd about this slow second act is that’s when Van Helsing/Cushing shows up. You are already a third into the movie before he shows himself. Unfortunately, as good as Cushing is, this is also the point where they decide to TELL the story instead of SHOW the story. The whole proceedings crash to a grinding halt.

Peter Cushing praying for a good review on OWC

To add to it, the worst flying bat prop you have ever seen shows up about halfway through the film. I mean, you have a better bat prop that you bought at Halloween Express for $5 last October. This is on top of the previous Hammer vampire entry scoffed vampire transformations into animals to try to give the vampire a more “realistic” feel. Well, one flappy, flappy and that was gone.

The staking scenes are top notch, as you would expect from Hammer. The showdown between the Baron and Van Helsing, which dominates much of the final reel of the film, has many great touches and worth sitting through the seven years in the wilderness you get in the middle of the flick.

This is where watching this on Svengoolie or a similar show can really help. At least you have the break in’s to wait for!

A decent, if not my favorite, vampire entry in the house of Hammer and worth a viewing the next time it comes on Me-TV or watch it on Prime today!

Grade: B

Brides of Dracula (1960)

PageantCast Mail Bag: 06/27/2020

We know no one uses mail anymore, but here in the mailbag we put a selection of Instagram posts, Facebook posts and Twitter posts that we’ve been tagged in.

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Matinee (1993)

Joe Dante is not a name like Alfred Hitchcock or Stephen Spielberg in the halls of Universal Studios. He did make Explorers, after all, which wasn’t exactly on their top ten moneymaking movie list. But Joe Dante very well might be one of moviedom’s most knowledgeable movie fans.

He loves movies. I mean he really, really loves them. He created the podcast series “Trailers from Hell” which hearkens back to his early days working for American International with Allen Arkush on their latest trailers for fabled flicks of the Roger Corman exploitation era.

He went on to direct films himself including Piranha, The Burbs, The Howling, Gremlins, and one of my favorite all time films: InnerSpace. Matinee (1993), however, is probably his most overlooked gem (besides Gremlins 2, which is surprisingly awesome and sure to be in an upcoming column).

Matinee (1993)

Matinee is the story of Laurence Woolsey (a William Castle standin) played to perfection by a loveable John Goodman. Woolsey has just directed his latest late 50’s/early 60’s Sci Fi epic “Mant.” (The film-within-the-film has some of the movie’s greatest moments.) He is at a career low and could really use a hit and plans to open his film at a theater in Key West, Florida right at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. A young man befriends the director with their love of monster movies and showmanship in this coming of age while celebrating a by-gone age flick.

Matinee (1993)

It wouldn’t be Joe Dante without his buddy Dick Miller (see him in his own bio-documentary That Guy Dick Miller–highly recommended) and other great cameos. Robert Picardo, in particular, sticks out as the frightened theater manager during this high tension time.

The theme is a tad obvious when you get down to it. It is hard to scare people with a movie about a man with an ant costume on when real life horrors like the Cuban missile crisis are all too real.

For fans of Svengoolie monster flicks of the late 50’s, this entire film is a love letter and a great companion piece to things like It or Stranger Things–despite their 80’s backdrops, they are really more in keeping with this time frame than the 80’s.

Matinee (1993)

It’s all here. The scientist that explains it all (the original Morris the Explainer characters) that literally sounds like a thesaurus at times so that none of the fancier words sail over the head of the kiddies in the audience. The wild, loud military man (played with campy perfection by Dante fave, Kevin McCarthy) and the clueless female lead that seems just a little dumb for loving a man turning into a giant ant.

This might be Goodman’s best character. He plays Woolsey with a bravado while keeping the character centered and kind, where it could have easily come off as egocentric and greedy.

In the end, I love the scenes near the end (I won’t spoil them) that show that the real nature of fear isn’t in loud, bombastic battles with insects of ridiculous size, but a quiet, grim reality that chills while drawing people together.

I have to mention the send up of Disney movies where inanimate objects come to life is worth seeing alone (“The Shook Up Shopping Cart” seemed like they just found the movie and didn’t even bother shooting a new sequence.) Stay, though, for a great film about one of the most interesting periods in film…and show business.

Grade: A

Matinee (1993)

PageantCast Mail Bag: 06/20/20

We know no one uses mail anymore, but here in the mailbag we put a selection of Instagram posts, Facebook posts and Twitter posts that we’ve been tagged in.

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The Nutty Professor (1996)

The Nutty Professor (1996) is a remake featuring Eddie Murphy. The original, unfortunately, was made by Paramount (LOL) by Jerry Lewis in 1963. Many consider the original comedy classic. Personally, I’m not a huge fan. I always thought “Buddy Love” was a gigantic tool and the professor character was over the top.

In the remake with Eddie Murphy, Buddy Love is still a huge tool. This time, instead of making him an obnoxious lounge singer type, he’s a testosterone fueled fast talking clown. Irritating as he is loud, Buddy made me ill with each appearance.

The Nutty Professor (1996)

But where this movie makes it more endearing to me was Murphy’s performance as the self loathing Klump. While all the jokes seem to be about weight and farts, Klump’s sadness in his eyes with each barb makes the character loveable to more than the future Mrs. Will Smith. (I did that so I could get Jada Pinkett Smith’s significant other tagged in the post. That may make me a Bad Boy.)

While the movie probably has more farts per minute than a late 80’s Weird Al Yankovic music video, I admit I had a grin on my face more than once during the famous dinner table sequences where Eddie plays multiple characters in the scene.

The Nutty Professor (1996)

My favorite character, though, is not played by Murphy, though. The angry Dean of the university is played by the fantastic Larry Miller. His slow burn gives Edgar Kennedy’s famed slow burn a run for the money, but he manifests the anger with a cruel sarcasm that is a better payoff than Edgar’s frequent ire induced throwing of various objects to the ground.

Overall, if you haven’t seen the film yet, you should give it a shot. Universal may be the king of horror, but this is definitely a nice change of pace.

Grade: B

The Nutty Professor (1996)