The Phantom Planet: Low-budget, corny, enjoyable space opera

By Doug Gibson

"The Phantom Planet" is a 1961 low-budget space opera that is often mocked for its special effects and melodramatic plot. In fact, the 'bots on MST3K have spoofed it. Nevertheless, I find it a lot of fun. It is part of that endearing 1960s genre of low-budget space exploration films that are too ambitious for their plots. Films such as "Space Probe Taurus" and "The Wizard of Mars" come to mind.

"The Phantom Planet" takes place in 1986 and involves space ships out probing outer space for life. Some U.S. spaceships are disappearing so a new team is sent out. The two-man team is sucked toward a mysterious planet. One of the crew dies but Captain Frank Chapman (Dean Fredericks) survives. He lands on the planet Raydon, where everyone is 6 inches tall or so. He instantly become the same size,due to the weird atmosphere. 

Eventually Frank learns that Raydon is a planet trying to keep to itself and avoid conflict. One assumes there are a lot of people there but you never see more than a dozen or so Raydonians. There are a couple of beautiful sisters and Chapman is offered to choose one as a mate. I must add there is a sort of "Me Tarzan, You Jane" aspect to relations in this film that was common in these genre space operas.

 Eventually, after a few personality conflicts Frank bands together with the Raydonians to fight the planet's enemies, the Solarites. A Solarite is a rather gross, tall chicken-type creature. The budget only allows for one (played by Richard Kiel of Eegah fame) and he proves easy to vanquish. Frank falls in love with a beautiful Raydon girl (starlet Dolores Faith) and frets whether he should return to Earth. I'll spare future plot details to those who want to see this film. 

It's a fun time-waster. It slows a bit in the middle when Frank gets to Raydon and is out of the space craft, but the pace picks up at the end. All the genre fun is there: bizarre-looking space monsters, "popcorn-type" meteorites seen through a space capsule window, teeny tiny spaceship models moving clumsily through "space." It's corny but entertaining, what more can you ask of 90 minutes!

 

 The film is easy to find. It is in black and white although I just saw a colorized version courtesy of Legend Films. It was directed by William Marshall, a 1940s "big band" star who became an actor. One of his wives was Ginger Rogers. Former silent film star Francis X. Bushman played the Raydon leader. Hugo Grimaldi, who later helmed the cultish "The Human Duplicators," was part of the production.

Arthur Lucan -- biography captures Old Mother Riley

By Doug Gibson

Let's face it, in America at least, to most cult movies fans, Arthur Lucan (AKA Old Mother Riley), is a footnote, the eccentric co-star with Bela Lugosi in the 1952 British film "Mother Riley Meets the Vampire." Watching that film, which is available online, Lucan's pantomime dame is frankly, a "whirling dervish" of energy, prancing around the sets, singing songs and speaking 300 words a minute in the working-class dialect.

He's a talent, there's no doubt about that, but a strange one to U.S. viewers, or contemporary viewers today, because his chief skill is a largely forgotten one. As mentioned, Lucan was a "pantomime dame," a not uncommon feature of the British stage and music halls of the first half of the 20th century. "Old Mother Riley" was not a drag act, or geared toward gay audiences. It was comprised of comedy sketches, many of which were bathed in pathos and social messages, explains Robert V. Kenny, author of the new biography, "The Man Who Was Old Mother Riley: The Lives and Films of Arthur Lucan and Kitty McShane (Bear Manor Media, 2014) here.

Arthur Lucan (1885-1954) was married to Kitty McShane (1897-1964), who he described as his Irish beauty. Unfortunately, after a few years of marital bliss, it turned into a dysfunctional nightmare with the mild-mannered Lucan eventually becoming a kept cuckold in his own home, with McShane, who by most accounts exhibited sociopathic behavior, taking control of the money, bankrupting the couple and using her lover, actor "Willer Neal," as her co-star in "The Old Mother Riley ..." films that she starred in with Lucan.  I often seriously wonder if there is an entertainer as universally disliked by those who knew her, and historians, as Kitty McShane. Kenny's account of their lives only seems to add more evidence of her malice, insensitivity and drunken cruelties.

The "Old Mother Riley" films, though, were a huge success prior and during World War II as topics such as the war, war profiteers, parliament, the rights of the poor, and even relations with Ireland were explored within the comedies. The basic premise stayed the same: Lucan played widow Old Mother Riley with McShane as her daughter, who was always seeking romance and usually found it. British audiences loved Lucan and McShane, who had developed the characters, if not with the same name, as early as the 1920s. However, Kitty McShane's narcissism led her to continue to play the "young daughter" in the post-World War II films, despite that she had become a plump matron.

Lucan honed his skills at the turn of the 20th century, learning a lot from a family of actors he lived and worked with prior to going out on his own and marrying McShane. Kitty McShane's pleasant voice and young good looks made the team very popular. One of their first skits, called "Bridget's Night Out," featured pantomime dame "mother" Lucan fretting over "daughter" Kitty's late night out. As Kenny explains, these skits not only were meant for humor, but tapped into the fear in those times of how a wayward daughter's life could be ruined if she was taken advantage of by a man.

I can't adequately explain Lucan as a performer except to say again that he is clearly talented in what he does. On YouTube, there is an early skit with Lucan and McShane that is similar to "Bridget's Night Out." It's heavy on pathos as well as comedy and one can't help but marvel at Lucan's skill, even if it's hard for us to comprehend. Watch it here but note that despite the title card, Lucan was not known as Old Mother Riley at the time (1936).

At their peak, with many movies and a performance in front of the Royal Family in Britain to their credit, Lucan and McShane were very rich, the equivalent of millionaires. McShane blew the money with excess spending and bad investments. Her behavior became so abominable that by the early 1950s, the pair, while married, had split; hence the reason that there's no Kitty McShane in "Mother Riley Meets the Vampire."

Kenny's book still fails to capture the dysfunctional but stubbornly durable connection between Lucan and his wife. Perhaps we'll never know why he put up with her cruelty, that extended to violence on occasions (Once her boyfriend Neal beat Lucan mercilessly). According to Kenny, McShane stopped -- in the late 1920s -- plans for Lucan to team with a comedian in U.S. films because there was no planned role for her.

As it was, Arthur Lucan eventually died as he lived most of his life, in a theater, collapsing while preparing to play his most famous character, pantomime dame Old Mother Riley. As for Kitty McShane, her career was more or less over. She lived almost 10 more years, in increasing squalor, and died shortly after her boyfriend, Neal, passed away.

Today, Arthur Lucan has been rediscovered in Britain and his grave is well cared for and there are occasional analysis of his career, which spanned roughly 50 years. Kitty McShane's funeral was attended by a few mourners, and despite knowledge of the cemetery she was buried in, a stone was never placed, and no one is sure exactly where she is buried.

Kenny's biography is superb. He makes a myth out of the idea that some entertainers are too old and gone to find interesting information into their lives. The book captures a period of entertainment history that few know much about, and appreciates the talent of the master of that particular entertainment. Until this book the most Lugosi fans and generally everyone else in the U.S. knew about Lucan and McShane came from a segment in Frank Dello Stritto and Andi Brooks excellent book, "Vampire Over London: Bela Lugosi in Britain."

Watch Mother Riley Meets the Vampire under a different title. The British version with the title Mother Riley Meets the Vampire is on Tubi.

The Unearthly -- John Carradine as the aggressive mad scientist

 The Unearthly

The Unearthly, 1957, Director: Brooke L. Peters; Cast includes John Carradine, Tor Johnson, Allison Hayes, Myron Healey; About 75 minutes in most prints. *******1/2 out of 10 stars on the Schlock-Meter

By Doug Gibson

"The Unearthly" boasts Ed Wood’s giant Tor Johnson among its cast, which automatically bumps it up a star or two on the Schlock-Meter. The tale is pretty standard fare for 1950s sci-fi/horror filmdom; Mad scientist John Carradine uses unsuspecting patients to try and graft on a “17th gland,” which the “good” doctor hopes will create eternal life. The problem is, all of the previous human guinea pigs he’s tried the gland procedure on have turned up mentally impaired and deformed. They exist -- a pretty motley bunch -- in the basement.

Pretty Allison Hayes is Carradine’s next intended victim, but she’s saved by Myron Healey, who plays an undercover cop who infiltrates Carradine’s sanitarium pretending to be a killer on the lam. Don’t you love these convoluted plots. Anyway, it’s up to Healey to save the day, since the patients of Carradine are too dense to realize that their ranks are shrinking rapidly.

Surprisingly, Carradine makes a pretty effective bad guy in this low-budget offer. He’s more subtle, resisting the urge to revert to his usual “over-the-top” overacting. The few times Carradine raises his voice in anger, his sinister side is effectively revealed. In a more quiet way, he's still chewing up the scenery. Tor Johnson, as Carradine’s hulking helper, is actually allowed a few lines of garbled dialogue. There are a few shots of Allison Hayes in a low cut nightgown, which must have a excited quite a few movie-going boys just entering puberty in 1957.

Some of the more glaring inconsistencies include: The sanitarium appears to be located in a secluded, out-of-the-way site, but it only takes the police a couple of minutes to arrive when called; none of the “patients” of Carradine’s doctor appear too concerned that Tor Johnson’s grotesque “Lobo” is on the staff; also, it’s amusing to see characters feign the effects of being shot in the stomach without any blood or bullet holes showing up.

Director Peters (real name Boris Petroff) basically did a smaller-budget semi-remake of an earlier low-budget film called "The Black Sleep." Carradine was in that one, but as a loony in the basement who leads a revolution against the mad scientist, played by Basil Rathbone. I actually like "The Unearthly" more than "The Black Sleep," which also had Johnson in it, as well as Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. "The Unearthly: simply more lean and mean, essentially a Monogram Poverty-Row of the 1950s, with no pretensions.

The ad above ran in the Aug. 23, 1957 edition of the Cedar Rapids, (Iowa) Gazette. "The Unearthly" was paired with another thriller, "Beginning of the End."

Newspaper mentions of Return of the Ape Man

 

This week at Plan9Crunch we re-visit Monogram with Bela Lugosi's "Return of the Ape Man." For a very long time this was a hard Lugosi poverty-row effort to find. I remember high-fiving after snaring a weak DVD-R duplicate via E-Bay. Of course now, you can buy the Blu-Ray, which I have done. My friend David Grudt and I have checked Newspaper Archives and Newspaper.com and found a healthy selection of ads and even reviews, no doubt from the film's PR department, though.

Here's a few ads. It was paired with many films, including an 'oater, Trail to Gunsight, many serials, including Perils of Nyoka, a comedy short, Wedded Bliss (I ended up acquiring a copy of that Columbia short), as well as a Universal ghost comedy, Ghost Catchers. Also Monogram ran it with an East Side Kids feature, Follow the Leaders, and other features of the glorious '40s. It even was paired with what must have been a re-issue, the mid 1930s Boris Karloff horror, The Walking Dead. The film also headlines a Halloween spook show!

Here is a review of Return of the Ape Man I posted in the past:

In “Return of the Ape Man,” one of Bela Lugosi’s final Monogram offerings, his deviously mad scientist, Professor Dexter, offers , with polite arrogance, this laconic remark at a fashionable party to another guest. “You know, some people’s brains would never be missed.” Shortly afterward, Dexter tries to prove it by luring the intended of his partner’s niece to his laboratory for an unwilling partial brain transfer to a reanimated, prehistoric “ape man.” Only the interference of partner Professor Gilmore, with the added persuasion of a gun, stops Dexter. “He might not die,” is Dexter’s defense.

If not for Lugosi, “Return of the Ape Man” would be virtually forgotten. Even John Carradine underplays his role as Gilmore to the point of near narcolepsy. The rest of the cast also seems to play their roles with lethargy. The script, frankly, is unimaginative, and cheats viewers of a climax with Bela’s character alive. But Lugosi’s Dexter is his second-best mad scientist role; only Dr. Vollin in 1935’s “The Raven,” surpasses Prof. Gilmore in mad, ethics-be-damned-crime-be-damned, obsession. Like Vollin, Gilmore is courtly, charismatic, dedicated and mad as a hatter in his desire to reanimate a primitive human and provide him a decent brain, at any cost.

Casual fans of the genre may not know that Lugosi played a mad scientist far more often on screen than he did a vampire. He has some great lines in “Return of the Ape Man.” They include: “Murder is an ugly word. As a scientist I don’t recognize it;” and “Fool, you’ll pay for this!” is Dexter’s angry retort when Gilmore stops him the first time. The too-passive Gilmore eventually becomes the subject of Dexter’s partial brain transplant, and the mad glee that fills the countenance of Lugosi’s Dexter is chilling and unforgettable. Do yourself a favor, Lugosi fans, see “Return of the Ape Man.

Now, here are a few newspaper "reviews" of the film and more ads.: One review is a "phooey" pan from then Hollywood columnist Jimmie Fidler.

Watch this film via YouTube here.