Curse of the Swamp Creature – One of Larry Buchanan's Best Films

 

The films of Texas filmmaker Larry Buchanan have really grown on me over the years. I place Buchanan in the top five of my favorite cult film directors. After reading author Rob Craig's excellent book – The Films of Larry Buchanan: A Critical Examination (McFarland 2007), I have an even greater respect for Buchanan's films. Craig gives the reader great insight into the mind and films of Buchanan. Buchanan directed six made for television films for American International Television under the Azalea company title. One of these Azalea films is the 1968 science fiction thriller – Curse of The Swamp Creature, starring John Agar.

In Curse of the Swamp Creature, oil surveyor Driscoll West (Bill Thurman) arrives at the Fly-N-Fish Motel and sits down at the bar for a drink. A beautiful raven-haired woman named Brenda Simmons (Shirley McLine) sits down at the bar next to West and begins to flirt with him. Simmons pumps West for information about oil surveying in the local area, but West refuses to answer her questions and decides to go back to his hotel room.

West returns to his motel room to find young Ritchie (Cal Duggan) going through his personal belongings in the motel room. The two men fight, punching and wrestling each other to the ground. Ritchie stabs West in the stomach with a knife, killing him. The motel manager named Frenchie (Roger Ready) and Simmons enter the room and plot how to get rid of West's body. They decide to put West's body through a swamp-cutting machine.

Before West's death, he was scheduled to meet with geologist Barry Rogers (John Agar) at the hotel for a trip to survey the local swamp. Simmons comes up with the idea that when Rogers arrives, she will simply tell him that West could not attend the meeting and that she is West's wife sent to fill in for him. Rogers arrives at the Fly-N-Fish motel and is greatly puzzled by Simmons' news that West will not be joining them. Nevertheless, Rogers, Simmons and a swamp guide named Rabbit embark on a trip through the local swamp the next morning.

Meanwhile, Dr. Simon Trent (Jeff Alexander) is conducting bizarre experiments at a nearby swamp plantation not far from the Fly-N-Fish Motel. A scaly hand of a monster similar to the Gill Man in Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) emerges from a vat of mist in Trent's laboratory. He yells at the creature to “Breathe! Breathe! Live!” Unfortunately the creature dies, and Trent wraps him up in a white blanket and throws him to the alligators who happen to dwell in his backyard pool.

Dr. Trent tells his assistants, Valjean and Tracker, that he expects them to keep close eyes on the plantation and not to allow any intruders near the plantation so that no one will interfere with his work. Local natives suspect that Trent is conducting evil experiments on the natives. Both Valjean and Tracker appear to be incompetent at their jobs because the natives have come near the plantation many times looking for lost family members. Trent tells them that he will not tolerate any more incompetence if they continue to allow natives near the plantation.

Rogers, Simmons, Ritchie and Rabbit eventually arrive near Dr. Trent's plantation. Instead of hiding from the group, Dr. Trent orders Tracker to bring them to the plantation mansion so he can offer them hospitality. The group meets in Trent's home and he discusses with them some of his experiments and research. Trent's wife Pat (Francine York) is excited to meet the group because she has not seen other people in over a year. The group is offered to stay the night at Trent's home. Trent keeps Pat locked up in a room and secluded from the rest of the world.

Tracker is persuaded by Pat to release her from her locked room. She wanders into her husband's laboratory and finds Dr. Trent's assistant – Tom (Enrique Touceda III – billed as “Anthony Huston”) floating in the lab tank with wiring attached all over his body. She flees the room, screaming and hysterical. Dr. Trent catches her and tries to assure her that Tom is not dead, and that Tom volunteered for the experiment. Mrs. Trent of course does not believe him. Tom questioned Trent's work, so he was drugged and placed in the tank for experimentation. Trent later wraps Tom up in a white sheet and dumps him into the alligator pool. Another failed experiment. The alligators feast on Tom's body.

After his failed experiment with Tom's body, Dr. Trent uses Brenda Simmon's body as his next experiment. She quickly evolves into a masculine looking green monster with bulging eyes. Dr. Trent orders the creature to kill the natives that have come to his home to confront him. The Simmons creature disobeys Trent and instead picks up Trent and throws him into the pool of alligators. Simmons then offers herself as a sacrifice by plunging off the dive board of the pool into the alligators.

One very strange aspect of this film is when Dr. Trent places his assistant Tom in the vat for experimentation. After placing Tom in the vat, he never fully evolves into a creature. Even after the camera shows him in a number of scenes in the vat, he remains in human form unchanged. However, when Dr. Trent places Brenda Simmons' body into the vat, she immediately evolves into a green masculine creature. It's as if experimenting on a woman achieves immediate results in contrast to experimenting on a male subject. Why is this? The viewer is left puzzled by this (at least I was).

At the time actor John Agar was cast in Curse of The Swamp Creature, he was battling a lifetime of alcoholism, which negatively impacted his acting career and ended his earlier marriage to actress Shirley Temple. Agar spent the decade of the 1960s being cast in a number of low-budget features, including another Buchanan Azalea TV film – Zontar – The Thing From Venus (1967), and Night Fright (1967), Journey To The Seventh Planet (1962), Women of The Prehistoric Planet (1966), and many others.

As mentioned at the beginning of this writing, Buchanan made a total of six made-for-TV films for American International Television under the Azalea company title. The five other Azalea films are: Zontar – The Thing From Venus (1967), Mars Needs Women (1968), The Eye Creatures (1965), In The Year 2889 (1969) and Creature of Destruction (1967). Stay tuned for other articles on Plan 9 Crunch about these Buchanan films produced by Azalea. Happy viewing.

- Steve D. Stones

Journey To The Seventh Planet is a routine and familiar space travel film

Review by Steve D. Stones

From the team of Ib Melchior and Sidney Pink, who brought us – The Angry Red Planet (1960) – Journey To The Seventh Planet (1962) has similar plot elements to The Angry Red Planet. Similar plots had been shown on the big screen in many science-fiction films of the previous decade – such as Cat Women of The Moon (1953), Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956), Queen of Outer Space (1958) and the most horrible of the group – Missile To The Moon (1958).

Like the above mentioned films, Journey To The Seventh Planet takes us to familiar territory with five young men who arrive on a planet, then encounter sexy, scantily dressed women who fulfill their lustful desires. One of the sexy ladies is Danish actress Greta Thyssen, who also starred in the cult classic – Terror Is A Man (1959) and appeared in later Three Stooges shorts. The crew's real mission is to investigate a radiation source coming from the planet Uranus.

The year is 2001, and the United Nations is now the complete governing body of the entire world. The United Nations selected a crew of five men to represent an international expedition. The expedition is to last for ten days as the crew investigates the source of radiation on the planet Uranus.

Even before landing on the planet Uranus, the crew succumbs to a planetary force that appears to control their minds. When landing on the planet, one of the crew members experiences a state of deja vu in knowing he has been to the location before. The location appears to be a place where the crew member spent time as a child. In this particular sequence, actor John Agar pulls up a small tree from out of the ground and is puzzled that the tree has no roots. The look on Agar's face as he examines the tree is unintentionally funny.

As the crew investigates the area, a large opening in a tall bush is discovered. The opening appears to be a portal into another world. Before entering the portal, some of the crew members experience hallucinations and mirages of experiences and places of their past.

In full space gear, the crew enters the portal into a surreal, petrified forest of paper mache rocks and styrofoam particles used for snow. The group encounters a stop-motion Cyclops dinosaur that is killed by crew member Karl with a ray gun shot in its eye. In a second attempt to explore the petrified forest, the crew encounters a giant Cyclops brain who is the source of what is controlling their minds. This is familiar territory for actor John Agar, since he battled a giant brain in The Brain From Planet Arous (1957) that also controlled his mind.

Some of the music used in Journey To The Seventh Planet may sound familiar to science-fiction viewers of the 1950s and 60s. The music is also heard in Invasion of The Saucer Men (1957) and Roger Corman's film - The Last Woman On Earth (1960). English speaking voices were later recorded over the Danish actresses' voices.

Perhaps it's not fair to compare this film with director Pink's earlier effort – The Angry Red Planet (1960), but I find Journey To The Seventh Planet to be a bit on the dull side and very leisurely paced in contrast to the earlier Pink film. Even the beautiful Danish women featured, such at Thyssen, cannot save the film.

Journey To The Seventh Planet only has two monsters in the entire film for the crew to encounter and overcome. The Angry Red Planet brought us the interesting octopus plant monster, the iconic rat-bat-spider, a creepy three eyed alien who peers into a space rocket, and the giant amoeba gelatin shaped cyclops monster. 

Plus, The Angry Red Planet also employed an interesting marketing gimmick known as “Cine-Magic” in which scenes shown on the planet Mars are filmed with a red filter. Writer Ib Melchior's greatest effort is – Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964).

For further information about the life and career of writer and producer Ib Melchior, see Robert Skotak's book – Ib Melchior: Man of Imagination (2000 Midnight Marquee Press). Happy viewing.

Creature Chronicles: The Black Lagoon Trilogy, a review

The Creature Chronicles – Exploring The Black Lagoon Trilogy - By Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg. (McFarland, 2018) McFarland's website is here. Order line: 800-253-2187. (Amazon link is here.)

Review by Steve D. Stones

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Any die hard fan of The Creature From The Black Lagoon and its two sequels will find The Creature Chronicles, by Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg, to be a book of exhaustive reference and research to all things related to the trilogy of films. Lots of photographs, interviews, and biographies of actors and production crew fill the 394-page book. Everything you could ever what to know about the Gill Man can be found in this treasure trove of a book. The information contained in this book is absolutely overwhelming and detailed.

A wonderful introduction to the book was written by actress Julie Adams, who plays the shapely Kay Lawrence in the film. Adams mentions her love of classic horror films as a child, such as the time she saw Frankenstein (1931) in her home state of Arkansas. Adams saw her role in The Creature From The Black Lagoon as just another paying acting job and didn't think the film would go on to be regarded as a great classic some sixty-plus years later. Many of Adams' experiences of starring in The Creature From The Black Lagoon are documented in this book and her autobiography – The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections From The Black Lagoon (2009).

Producer William Alland attended a party at Orson Welles' home in 1940, where he revealed his idea for “The Sea Monster,” which was an early treatment for The Creature From The Black Lagoon. The story was obviously borrowed from King Kong (1933) and the silent classic – The Lost World (1925).

Creature Chronicles shows the many treatments the story and script went through before it was filmed and delivered to the screen. While producer Alland and director Jack Arnold were making It Came From Outer Space (1953), the script for The Creature From The Black Lagoon was being adapted and refined. In the first treatment by Maurice Zimm, the creature is referred to as “Pisces Man.” By the time the film was made, the creature is referred to as “Gill Man.”

Several writers wrote their own treatment of the story, as the book points out. Harry Essex was one of the writers who contributed a treatment. Both he and Arthur Ross contributed to the final script that made its way to the screen. Director Jack Arnold tried to take a lot of credit for the script, but Ross and Essex claim he contributed nothing to the final draft used in the film.

Plans to shoot The Creature From The Black Lagoon in color were being considered, but never came to fruition. Producer William Alland admitted many years later that The Creature From The Black Lagoon, along with other Jack Arnold-directed films such as Tarantula (1955), would have looked better in color. I happen to disagree with this analysis. The black and white treatment of Arnold's films, particularly The Creature From The Black Lagoon, give a look and feel that is unique for the time in which they were filmed in the 1950s.

It's interesting to note that the book points out that buxom brunette beauty Allison Hayes did a test screening for the role of Helen Dobson in the sequel - Revenge of The Creature (1955). The role was given to blonde actress Lori Nelson, who was barely out of her teens at the time she took the role.

Being a big fan of Hayes, I would have liked to see her in the Helen role, although I'm not sure the chemistry between her and actor John Agar as Professor Clete Ferguson, the animal trainer, would be very convincing. In my opinion, Hayes is a much better actress than Nelson. Although I have to admit that I do like Nelson in Hot Rod Girl (1956).

A critic of Agar once said: “I have to confess that John Agar was never one of my favorites. He always seemed . . . well, a little goofy. The awkward, stiff smile looked forced.” Revenge of The Creature was Agar's first science-fiction film. Agar also appeared in many other 1950s cult classics, such as Tarantula (1955), The Brain From Planet Arous (1957) and Invisible Invaders (1959).

I've always considered the third film, The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), to be the weakest of the three entries. This is usually the case in any trilogy of films. I've always found it a bit silly and bizarre that the creature at one point in the film walks around in what appears to be prison clothes or pajamas. It just doesn't seem to work. The design of the gill man in this film greatly deviates from the original design by sculptor Millicent Patrick used in the first film. The earliest design of the gill man was jokingly referred to as “The Pollywag,” and was later rejected for the Patrick design that we see on screen.

If you're a fan of The Creature From The Black Lagoon and its sequels, I highly recommend the book Creature Chronicles – Exploring The Black Lagoon Trilogy. The photographs in this book alone are worth the price of the book. Happy Reading.

The Brain From Planet Arous - Giant Brain Bent On Ruling The World!

Former Mr. Shirley Temple, John Agar, stars in this 1958 sci-fi gem from Howco International - the same studio who produced Attack of The 50 Foot Woman, also from 1958. Agar plays a nuclear physicist who discovers a crashed meteor in the California desert at a location named Mystery Mountain. This location is actually the famous Bronson Canyon near Hollywood - seen in a number of 1950s low-budget, drive-in features. Agar and his assistant travel to the site of the crash and are confronted by an evil floating brain named Gor from the planet Arous. Gor murders Agar's assistant and transforms his soul into Agar's body. Gor makes it clear that he is determined to possess world power and domination, and feels he can obtain it through Agar's scientific knowledge. Agar's finance, played by Joyce Meadows, and soon to be father-in-law notice an immediate change in his personality. He expresses a desire for world power and seems to be devoid of any human emotions, except getting extra rough with his finance when he kisses her. To demonstrate Gor's power, Agar arrives at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. to meet with top military officials and world leaders. He demonstrates Gor's dangerous powers by showing the group a random nuclear explosion in the desert, and by bombing a commercial jet in flight. Considering the fears we have today of terrorist attacks on commercial airliners, this is a very scary thought to contemplate. Meanwhile, another alien brain from planet Arous named Bal arrives at the home of Agar's finance. This brain claims to be a "good brain," and wants to stop Gor's evil plans. Bal transforms his soul into the body of Agar's dog named George. This allows Bal to be able to confront Gor without being fully recognized. Gor departs Agar's body for good at the end of the film, giving Agar time to chop up the alien brain with an ax. Watch carefully for the wires holding up the brain as Agar chops away at him, adding some unintentional humor. Director Nathan Juran (aka Nathan Hertz) is known for a number of interesting 50s drive-in cult classics, such as The Black Castle with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr., The Deadly Mantis (1957) and Attack of The 50 Foot Woman from 1958. Happy viewing! Steve D. Stones