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Creation of the Humanoids (1962)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:03 pm    Post subject: Creation of the Humanoids (1962) Reply with quote



This one is enjoyable if the viewer is prepared for the movie's distinctly odd nature and low budget.

World War III has depleted the Earth's population, but reconstruction efforts are progressing rapidly with the help of a newly developed race of "humanoids" (hairless, green-skinned androids who possess high intelligence and who serve with total faithfulness). In fact, the androids are so intelligent and sensitive that many people want to have them destroyed because they fear the androids will overthrow mankind.






A few sympathetic humans have sided with the androids including the sister of the most outspoken anti-android activist. She actually marries one of the androids! One rebel scientist conspires with the android members of a secret group who strives to perfect the androids and make them even more human.





Shot on a shoestring budget, the sets are fairly simple (although reasonably imaginative), and the acting is sometimes pretty bad. The soundtrack music is a kind of low rent version of the "Forbidden Planet" tonalities. Oddly enough, all these apparent flaws somehow endear it to the more forgiving viewers, perhaps because the film works hard to put across some very strange and imaginative concepts, including a nifty little surprise ending. Directed by Wesley E. Barry from a screenplay by Jay Simms.





Watch for several recognizable props and costumes from classic science fiction movies, such as the glass tubes and the gray one-piece uniforms from This Island Earth, although they've been dyed brown for this production. One of the "early prototype robots" seen during the film's opening prologue is actually one of the armored alien spacesuits from Earth versus the Flying Saucers, spray-painted silver.



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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun Jul 05, 2020 11:01 am; edited 10 times in total
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 22, 2014 2:48 pm    Post subject: Re: Creation of the Humanoids - (1962) Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
A few sympathetic humans have sided with the androids including the sister of the most outspoken anti-android activist. She actually marries one of the androids!

Not marriage per se, but intimate unions between humans and robots called "rapport." The physical aspects (if any) of such a relationship are left to the audience's imagination.

Flash forward a decade to Westworld. That movie didn't dance around the subject of sex with robots -- in fact, it was one of the Delos resort's main attractions!

Postscript: Frances McCann, who played Esme, was an opera singer who appeared in a handful of films. In 1963 she was murdered in her hotel room in Rome, shot dead by her business manager who apparently had an obsessive -- and unrequited -- infatuation with her.

Fame . . . ain't it a bitch.


Last edited by scotpens on Tue Jan 18, 2022 2:11 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Tue May 09, 2017 12:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I always thought that this movie owed a lot of it's design and costume on the Wally Wood EC WEIRD SCIENCE story THE PRECIOUS YEARS.

Also, the odd staging makes me think that this was originally imagined as a stage production.

















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Sens8
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PostPosted: Tue May 09, 2017 8:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gord Green wrote:
Also, the odd staging makes me think that this was originally imagined as a stage production.

Actually, the film's pretty much of a direct lift from Karel Capek's stageplay, R.U.R., from the 1920s (which introduced the world to the word "robot").
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PostPosted: Tue May 09, 2017 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sens8 wrote:
Gord Green wrote:
Also, the odd staging makes me think that this was originally imagined as a stage production.

Actually, the film's pretty much of a direct lift from Karel Capek's stageplay, R.U.R., from the 1920s (which introduced the world to the word "robot").

True, but I read in a book, or magazine back in the 70s/80s, that is based on a stage play. Don't know where, or if it was ever preformed though.

David.
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PostPosted: Tue May 09, 2017 12:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Wally Wood's artwork is always spectacular. Thanks for sharing these, Gord! Very Happy

Photobucket has a sharpness feature that helps clarify jpegs like these. Hostpic doesn't, I'm sorry to say.

And one feature of a wonderful "Photoshop-like" app called Paint.net that I found helpful when I posted the Dell movie comic books recently was its "sharpness" control.

Using features like that makes the text a little easier to ready and it improves the details. Paint.net also makes it very easy to resize them to 700px.

Click here to download this free and very useful app. You'll love it! Very Happy

Paint.net

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 1:38 pm    Post subject: Re: Creation of the Humanoids - (1962) Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Flash forward a decade to Westworld. That movie didn't dance around the subject of sex with robots -- in fact, it was one of the Delos resort's main attractions!

That was the creepiest thing about The Stepford Wives, the idea that the husbands could murder their own wives and then happily have sex with perfect copies of their victims!

I'd be creeped out in Westworld just knowing I was having sex with a machine!
Shocked
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 2:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wonder if they're like the rides you used to see outside supermarkets. 25 cents for a two minute ride!

And someone always put gum in the coinslot!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 4:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gord Green wrote:
I wonder if they're like the rides you used to see outside supermarkets. 25 cents for a two minute ride!

I get a rather lewd mental image a Stepford Wife "ride" outside a supermarket, with a line of teenage boys waiting impatiently for their turn. Shocked
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 10:11 pm    Post subject: Re: Creation of the Humanoids - (1962) Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
I'd be creeped out in Westworld just knowing I was having sex with a machine! Shocked

Some guys have sex with an inflatable partner. Now, that's creepy. At least the Westworld robots move, talk and feel like the real thing!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:19 am    Post subject: Re: Creation of the Humanoids - (1962) Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Bud Brewster wrote:
I'd be creeped out in Westworld just knowing I was having sex with a machine! Shocked

Some guys have sex with an inflatable partner. Now, that's creepy. At least the Westworld robots move, talk and feel like the real thing!

True, but the worst that can happen with an inflatable doll is it springs a leak and goes flat.

But look what happened when the Westworld robots developed a problem. They killed people! A guy could develop erectile function from worrying about his mechanical lover developing erector set dysfunction!
Shocked
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~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

_____________________________________

I found an awesome video of Creation of the Humanoids on YouTube! The picture quality is pretty good..

________ The Creation of the Humanoids (1962)


__________



And it looks like this movie is coming true!


___Hot Robot At SXSW Says She Wants To Destroy Humans


__________

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a really interesting movie. The design and atmospheric use of color combined with the "stage" form in the presentation by the actors made this stand out as a homage to the classic Sci-Fi comics of the 50's and 60's as I've previously pointed out.

Some aspects of this film are pointed out in the entry from Wikipedia:



The Creation of the Humanoids is normally dated to 1962, the year of its general release, but one screening in 1961 is documented by an advertising flyer and the film itself displays a 1960 copyright date (MCMLX in Roman numerals), indicating that it was a complete film before the end of that year.

Short items in contemporary trade publications indicate that it was being filmed in the summer of 1960 under a working title variously reported as This Time Around or This Time Tomorrow.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences lists August 1960 as the completion date.



Producer-director, former child star and Hollywood area native Wesley Barry's Genie Productions was located in Hollywood,and the cast and crew credits are populated by Hollywood personnel, but no information about the actual filming location and other specific details has yet come to light.



The film's limited budget is most apparent from its rudimentary sets, which consist mainly of a few blank flats, floor-to-ceiling drapes, or other simple elements set up in front of a painted background scene or a black void, as well as from its costumes, most of which are either generic jumpsuits or a uniform composed of stock costume rental items such as Confederate Army caps. Yet the producers opted for the added expense of filming in color at a time when black-and-white was still being used for many major-studio productions and was readily accepted by audiences, and they obtained the services of two top-tier behind-the-camera talents, albeit in the twilights of their careers.



Cinematographer Hal Mohr had a very extensive Hollywood career and two Academy Awards to his credit. Mohr used lighting and camera angles to make the best of the sets and add some visual interest to the long, actionless talking-head scenes that make up nearly all of the film. He sometimes used classic Hollywood "glamor lighting" techniques when photographing the normal-looking "human" characters, giving some scenes a degree of visual polish seldom seen in a low-budget exploitation film.

Jack Pierce was Universal Pictures' master makeup artist during all of the 1930s and most of the 1940s and created the iconic Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein makeups among many others. The most unusual features of Pierce's makeup design for this film are the large reflective scleral contact lenses that give the humanoids the appearance of having metal ball eyes.



The lenses were furnished by Dr. Louis M. Zabner, an optometrist who pioneered the use of contact lenses to change actors' eye color and is credited in the film for "special eye effects". At that time, scleral lenses were made of a hard plastic. Wearing them was uncomfortable and they had to be removed frequently. Pierce had used similar silvery lenses in 1957 for brief close-ups in The Brain from Planet Arous.



The musical score consists of electronically generated sounds and wordless female vocalizing that suggests the Theremin music often used in science fiction films of the 1950s (e.g., The Day the Earth Stood Still and It Came from Outer Space). The credit appearing in the film is "Electronic Harmonics by I.F.M." The Internet Movie Database lists producer Edward J. Kay as the composer, though this information is nowhere verified.

The Creation of the Humanoids is often said to be "Andy Warhol's favorite film". The original source for this claim appears to be a 1964 art review of new Warhol paintings that begins with a short description of the film and states that the protagonists' climactic discovery is "the happy ending of what Andy Warhol calls the best movie he has ever seen."

In the opening scene where they go through the the progression of robotic design, the robot shown as R1 is a prop left over from the 1956 movie "Earth vs the flying saucers". It's the same outfit worn by the invading aliens who piloted the flying saucers.



At that time, scleral lenses were made of a hard plastic. Wearing them was uncomfortable and they had to be removed frequently. Pierce had used similar silvery lenses in 1957 for brief close-ups in The Brain from Planet Arous. Most of the considerable time and effort it took to apply the rest of the humanoid makeup was spent on hiding the actors' hair, which it would have been unthinkable to expect them to actually shave off for a few days' work in a low-budget film.



Latex rubber "bald wigs" were glued on, eyebrows were stuck down flat, then putty was carefully applied to cover rough textures and blend in tell-tale edges. Finally, the actors' heads were painted all over with blue-gray greasepaint and they were given rubber gloves of the same color.

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Last edited by Gord Green on Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:19 am; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 4:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Gord, you've contributed an excellent post for this neglected classic. Thanks for enhancing this discussion. I'd love to watch this one with you in the chat room sometime. Very Happy

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

IMDB has 14 interesting trivia items for this production. As I read through them, I noticed that the writing was not only consistently good, the style was very similar.

I suspect that all (or most) of the trivia items are by the same author, and that they're excerpts from an article he wrote about Creation of the Humanoids.
________________________________

~ In the opening scene where they go through the the progression of robotic design, the robot shown as R1 is a prop left over from the 1956 movie "Earth vs the flying saucers". It's the same outfit worn by the invading aliens who piloted the flying saucers.






Note from me: I'm not entirely sure this is an actual suit from Earth vs the Flying Saucers, painted silver. Click on the image above and study the scene closely at the 3:25 mark. There seem to be some differences . . . but I'm not sure. Confused

~ Makeup artist Jack Pierce participated in the 1962 publicity campaign by giving interviews and by making up Los Angeles TV movie host Wayne Thomas as a humanoid, complete with silvery contact lenses, during a live broadcast.

Progress in the application of the makeup was televised during commercial breaks in the unrelated film being shown. The live segments were temporarily saved on videotape and rebroadcast several times in the following days.


Note from me: I'm sure we'd all like to see that demonstration! Very Happy

~ The film's running time is often listed as 75 minutes. The Dark Sky DVD release runs 84 minutes and is presented in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, which approximates the matted aspect ratios most commonly used for 35 mm projection in the United States in 1962.

The earlier videocassette releases are not pan-and-scan versions of a widescreen image, but simply unmatted full-frame 1.33:1, revealing areas at the top and bottom of the image not normally seen in a theater.


Note from me: I first saw this on a VHS tape, so I've seen the 4:3 version (aka 1.33.1). The YouTube video fills the screen, so it's 16:9 — which means we're getting the theatrical aspect ratio.

This next item is pretty long, but it's packed with interesting info! Smile

~ Though very low budget, producers obtained the services of two top-tier behind-the-camera talents, albeit in the twilights of their careers: Cinematographer Hal Mohr and Universal makeup artist Jack Pierce.

Mohr had a very extensive Hollywood career and two Academy Awards to his credit. Mohr used lighting and camera angles to make the best of the sets and add some visual interest to the long, actionless talking-head scenes that make up nearly all of the film.

He sometimes used classic Hollywood "glamor lighting" techniques when photographing the normal-looking "human" characters, giving some scenes a degree of visual polish seldom seen in a low-budget exploitation film.

Jack Pierce was Universal Pictures' master makeup artist during all of the 1930s and most of the 1940s and created the iconic Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein makeups among many others.

The most unusual features of Pierce's makeup design for this film are the large reflective scleral contact lenses that give the humanoids the appearance of having metal ball eyes. The lenses were furnished by Dr. Louis M. Zabner, an optometrist who pioneered the use of contact lenses to change actors' eye color and is credited in the film for "special eye effects".

At that time, scleral lenses were made of a hard plastic. Wearing them was uncomfortable and they had to be removed frequently. Pierce had used similar silvery lenses in 1957 for brief close-ups in The Brain from Planet Arous.

Most of the considerable time and effort it took to apply the rest of the humanoid makeup was spent on hiding the actors' hair, which it would have been unthinkable to expect them to actually shave off for a few days' work in a low-budget film. Latex rubber "bald wigs" were glued on, eyebrows were stuck down flat, then putty was carefully applied to cover rough textures and blend in tell-tale edges.

Finally, the actors' heads were painted all over with blue-gray greasepaint and they were given rubber gloves of the same color.


Note from me: This explains why this movie seems to have more class than one would expect from such a low budget movie. Cool

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