Monster From The Ocean Floor – A great 1950s sea creature movie

 

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Roger Corman's first produced film, Monster From The Ocean Floor (1954), is a tightly directed and entertainingly low-budget creature feature. The man behind the camera, director Wyott Ordung, is also responsible for writing the 1953 monster classic – Robot Monster. Ordung also plays the role of Pablo, a Mexican native to a small coastal town whose citizens believe in a sea creature who emerges from the depths of the ocean to murder some of the villagers.

Julie Blair, played by shapely blonde beauty Anne Kimbell, is enjoying some rest and relaxation at the ocean when she encounters a Mexican boy who tells a story of his father being abducted by a sea creature near an ocean cove. Blair dismisses the boy's story as a wild imagination. Blair also encounters a handsome marine biologist named Steve Dunning (Stuart Wade) who invites her on board his boat to discuss his work in marine biology. Dunning navigates the ocean in his small self-propelled mini submarine. Blair hitches a ride on top of the submarine to get to Dunning's boat.

Blair soon becomes intrigued by accounts of local villagers claiming to witness a sea monster. She goes to Pablo (Wyott Ordung) to hear his account of the sea creature. Pablo says the sea creature first appeared around 1946, about the same time that nuclear tests were being conducted in the ocean. A villager named Tula (Inaz Palange) claims the sea creature abducted her beloved dog Alfredo, leaving the dog's collar behind on the beach.

Tula convinces Pablo that in order for the sea creature to leave the villagers alone, a human sacrifice to the creature is necessary. She suggests that Blair be the next sacrifice to the creature. Pablo fails twice to offer Blair as a sacrifice to the creature. He first drips some of his own blood into the ocean to attract the creature as Blair is under water swimming. He fails a second time by draining oxygen out of Blair's scuba tank.

The underwater sequences in this film are quite well done for a low-budget film and appear to not employ stand-in actors or stock footage to replace the main actors. We see a number of scenes of actress Anne Kimbell swimming with her scuba gear in the ocean, and it is obvious that it's her and not a stand-in actor. Actor Stuart Wade also appears to be doing his swimming sequences at the end of the film, instead of a stand-in actor.

Animated sequences of the sea creature in the ocean seem to match quite well with the footage of divers in the water. The sea creature looks a bit similar to the eye creatures in The Crawling Eye (1958, aka The Trollenberg Terror), with his outstretched tentacles and cyclops appearance. Dunning steers his mini submarine directly into the eye of the creature. Blair manages to hook a chunk of the sea creature onto her boat anchor and uses it as proof to Dunning that the creature exists.

Every time I watch Monster From The Ocean Floor, I can't help but think of the 1975 classic – Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg. Although Jaws is a much bigger budgeted film and is listed as one of the best films of all time, Jaws borrows some of its plot from a film like Monster From The Ocean Floor. Writer Peter Benchley may have been thinking of low budget films such as Monster From The Ocean Floor when he wrote Jaws in 1974. Bigger-budget Hollywood films often borrow many elements from low-budget science fiction and horror films.

Jonathon Haze, an actor who would go on to star in a number of Roger Corman films, plays the role of Joe – a Mexican fisherman whose friend is the first victim of the sea creature in the film. Haze is best known for his hilarious role of a florist – Seymour Krelborn in Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

Monster From The Ocean Floor played on a double bill in drive-in movie theaters with the 1952 film – The Queen of Sheba. Although the film was not well received by many critics, Monster From The Ocean Floor is significant because it was the start of Roger Corman's career as a low-budget auteur and launched him into the realm of directing. Happy viewing.

Steve D. Stones

Curse of the Demon a classic of its genre

 

Curse of the Demon, 1957, 95 minutes, B&W, British. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Starring Dana Andrews as Dr. John Holden, Peggy Cummins as Joanna Harrington, Liam Redmond as Mark O'Brien, Niall MacGinnis as Dr. Julian Carswell, Maurice Denham as Professor Harrington, and Brian Wilde as Rand Hobart. Schlock-Meter rating: 9 stars out of 10.

Curse of the Demon is based on a short story, Casting the Runes, by M.R. James, a British writer who gained fame depicting horror in a subtle manner that often left a victim's fate to the imagination. The story is about an American psychologist (Andrews) who travels to England to try and expose the leader of a devil worshipping cult (MacGinnis) as a fraud. On the way, Andrews' character, Dr. John Holden, becomes acquainted with Joanna Harrington, the niece of a colleague of Holden's, Professor Harrington (Denham), who was murdered while investigating MacGinnis' cult leader, named Julian Carswell.

Holden's a cheerful skeptic, and he's amused that so many of his colleagues believe that Carswell can really raise demons. He gets to know Carswell, who informs Holden that he will die in three days. Before he dies, the cult leader informs Holden, he will suffer great anxiety. From that point on the suspense builds as evidence grows that Carswell can do what he says, and Holden slowly grows to realize that he's battling a terror he must learn to believe in.

MacGinnis, as the evil cult leader Carswell, is magnificent. He is a contrast, always full of arrogance, but able to apppear as cheerful as Kris Kringle. However, within seconds, he can move to anger, revealing his lack of humanity, yet never losing his courtly manner. Andrews is in a role where he slowly has to change his beliefs, and he does a good job of trying to resist what his instincts tell him can't be. Director Tourneur builds suspense with little surprises, such as Holden discovering that his date book appointments are all torn off after the 28th of the month, the night he is slated to die. Wilde is wonderfully creepy in a small role as a catatonic ex-disciple of Carswell's who is brought back to consciousness for a short time.

Curse of the Demon is a classic of its genre, and recommended for any cult film library. One minor quibble: The demon in the film should have been implied, rather than shown. It's adequate as a fright piece, but ultimately not as scary as our own thoughts can conjure it to be. Notes: In Britain, the film is titled Night of the Demon and runs 82 minutes; Liam Redmond, who plays a colleague of Andrews in the film, starred several years later as a typesetter in the Don Knotts semi-cult ghostly comedy The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

-- Doug Gibson

 

The Blob is a great popcorn monster movie for the 1950s

 

By Steve D. Stones

Actor Steve McQueen was just 28 years old when he played his first screen role as a teenager on a date tracking down a giant cherry colored blob that comes to earth from a meteor crash. His girlfriend, actress Aneta Corsaut, -- last name misspelled in credits as -- would later appear as Helen Crump on the 1960s TV series – The Andy Griffith Show. The Blob has everything a low-budget 50s sci-fi movie could offer – poodle skirts, Brill creamed hairstyles, classic cars and dopey, untrusting cops.

While necking in a car high in the neighborhood hills, McQueen and Corsaut witness a meteor crash nearby. They track the meteor to the property of an old farmer. The farmer cracks open the meteor to discover a Jell-O-like substance that consumes his arm.  Writer Stephen King pays homage to this scene in Creepshow (1982) – by also playing the role of a curious farmer who finds a meteor in his backyard.

McQueen and Corsaut take the farmer to a local doctor, where his body later becomes fully consumed by the Jell-O growth on his arm. The farmer transforms into a giant blob and consumes the doctor and his nurse. McQueen reports this incident to the local police, but they have a tough time taking the report seriously, even after investigating the scene of the crime at the doctor’s office.

Meanwhile, the blob grows larger and larger as it consumes more victims in the town. McQueen and Corsaut track the blob to a local supermarket and are forced to barricade themselves in a meat locker. Here they discover that the blob does not like the cold as it tries to slither under the meat locker door but is repelled by the cold.

In a scene shown at the drive-in from the movie Grease (1978), dozens of teenagers run out of a theater as the gooey blob slithers through the theater doors and out into the street. The marquee on the theater advertises the film – Daughter of Horror and actor Bela Lugosi’s name.  

After warning many local teenagers and attempting to warn local police again of the blob menace, McQueen and Corsaut become trapped once again, but this time in a local diner. The blob has consumed the entire diner, trapping everyone inside. McQueen sprays a CO2 tank on the blob as it crawls down the basement stairs of the diner.

The local high school principle, Mr. Martin, assigns the teenagers to gather up fire extinguishers at the school. The extinguishers are used to freeze the blob – allowing the victims inside to escape.

The film ends abruptly with a shot of a parachuted crate landing in the snow of the frozen arctic. The viewer has to assume that the blob is contained inside the crate. The shot is likely stock footage because it is grainy and out of focus.

In 1972, a sequel was made entitled - Beware! The Blob (aka Son of Blob).  A 1988 remake of The Blob was also made. As remakes go, this 1988 version is not too bad, but does not reach the level of a drive-in classic of the original 1958 version. Happy viewing!

The Black Scorpion a dull programmer but has superior stop-motion effects

The Black Scorpion, 1957, 88 minutes, AMEX Productions, B&W. Directed by Edward Ludwig. Starring Richard Denning as Hank Scott, Mara Corday as Teresa Alverez, Carlos Rivas as Artur Ramos, Mario Navarro as Juanito and Carlos Muzquiz as Dr. Velazco. Schlock-Meter rating: 5 and 1/2 stars out of 10.

This tale of giant scorpions is a mostly dull programmer that is enhanced a bit by superior stop-motion animation special effects of giant scorpions attacking humans, animals, cars, trains and each other. Despite the better-than average FXs for this low budget, the film is marred by repeated close-up viewings of a giant black scorpions' face. It's a sort of silly looking, staid puppet-like image that drools, and will draw a few chuckles.

Here's the plot: Mexico is suffering a spate of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. This unleashes a whole group of giant black scorpions from the bowels of the earth that crawl out at night and ravage the countryside. A pair of geologists (Denning and Rivas) help the police and scientists try to find the creatures' weak spots. The climatic battle takes place in a huge soccer stadium in Mexico City.

The acting is pretty blah, and the plot recycled fatigue. We have a dull love tale between Scott and Corday, an annoying stereotypical, nosy boy (Navarro) who you wish a spider would kill, and some unfunny, tasteless jokes. But scenes of the scorpions attacking a train, fighting each other in a volcano's cave, and one terrorizing Mexico City are fun to watch. You can rent the film at YouTube. A bright spot is the FXs were prepared by Willis O'Brien, the creator of the stop-motion effects for King Kong.

The Black Scorpion has much better FXs than Earth Versus the Spider, another '50s cult film, but it's uninspired story and dull stretches rate it lower as a cult film than than the gleefully inept Spider. Worth renting only for the effects, and keep the fast-forward on your remote handy.

-- Doug Gibson