ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Science fiction movie titles make clever us of emotion-ladden advjectives. Here’s three example.

~ A “Sun Demon” sounds pretty scary. But a HIDEOUS Sun Demon is far worse!

~ A movie called “Submarine” might be good, but the title is dull, But make it an ATOMIC Submarine and the title has pizzaz!

~ How about a movie called The World? Too vague, right? But called it The LOST World and it’s irresistible!

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The Hideous Sun Demon (1959)

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Robert Clarke, who'd been in a few low budget sci-fiers in the fifties as an actor, decided to go it on his own as producer-director, besides also starring in this pic, because he realized there's money to be made on low budget efforts.

His was the typical shoestring effort — filmed on weekends, made for about $50,000 — but it gained a certain cult film appeal eventually.

Clarke has stated that he based his premise on the old Jekyll-and-Hyde story, but I found that it turned the old werewolf legend on its head. Instead of the moon causing a change in the main character, it's the sun.

In the plot, the character gets a bad dose of radioactivity, but he baffles the doctors in that he seems to suffer no ill effects (though he does seem feverish). While still at the hospital, he decides to sunbathe on the roof and that's when the change occurs — he becomes scaly.

One would expect the monster to run amok then-and-there, but the story holds off on such terror. He merely causes some fainting.



The film then attempts to build up tension by showing how the man must now live the life of a recluse, asking the audience to wait for the eventual havoc that we're sure must come.

The trouble is, it's a long wait and tension is low. For some reason, the Sun Demon takes out all his aggression on a poor rat during the first 50 minutes and we must content ourselves with glimpses of the $500 monster suit for that time.

There are a couple of fight scenes among normal humans and these are clumsy and amateurish. Later, the monster viciously kills a dog. So, this may not be for animal lovers.



What really betrays this film's low budget roots is the curious disinterest that everyone — doctors, his girlfriend, cops — has in regards to this guy's potentially dangerous condition until he does in fact kill a man and then a cop (he hits him with a car). Only then does this become a 'fugitive monster' plot in the last 20 minutes — that's when the picture does "move" as Clarke has stated in interviews.

Hideous Trivia: one of the few old sf films which were re-dubbed with a comedic audio track later for the amusement of fans; in this case the revised film was called Revenge of the Sun Demon or What's Up, Hideous Sun Demon?

BoG's Score: 4 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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The Atomic Submarine (1959)

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______________The Atomic Submarine Trailer


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Something is destroying ships in the Arctic Circle, so shipping lanes there are closed down and the special sub Tiger Shark is sent to investigate (and possibly eliminate) the mysterious threat.

There are several specially-selected scientists aboard to help figure things out.

There's a bit of drama involved regarding the exec (Arthur Franz) and a young civilian scientist (Brett Halsey). The young scientist is the son of a former military man whom the exec reveres. But the scientist is a pacifist whose outspoken attitudes have ruined his father's life.

The sub's crew eventually encounter an alien flying saucer creeping around under the waves and then, after ramming this saucer, they encounter the saucer's occupant, a one-eyed monster (but, as the alien explains, it's all relative. To the alien, we are very ugly).



This is on the slow side for the first two-thirds of the film. The sub spends a lot of time looking for the elusive threat - over a month — weaving in and around the Arctic (this is also shown via maps).

But, the final act is fairly entertaining, with not all the crew surviving the alien encounter — the manner of death, getting roasted, is sort of horrific for that time.

Some of the interior sets are very low budget and do not look like the interior of a sub. And some of the exterior shots of the sub, perhaps purposely blurred so that we don't notice that it's a very small model, are lame.

The alien does explain — via telepathy — the strategy of his alien race, that of scoping out a potential new world for themselves, but the alien's voice is unintentionally comical with all the melodramatics.

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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The Lost World (1960)

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As most agree by this point, this version of the famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle adventure and remake of the silent 1925 film is a series of missed opportunities.

Prominent among the mistakes are the FX involving the so-called dinosaurs: director Irwin Allen chose to skip Harryhausen-type effects and expediently employ real lizards with fins attached.

This film also seems to copy the previous year's Journey to the Center of the Earth, but most of the plot and characters come off as cardboard & juvenile.

~ Claude Rains plays Professor Challenger, intended as the exasperated, colorful scientist, but he's tiresome and derivative.

~ Michael Rennie is 1st-billed as the cool big game hunter.

~ David Hedison, fresh off The Fly '58, is the reporter.

~ Jill St. John is the daughter of the financier of the expedition and Rennie's paramour.

~ Fernando Lamas is the local (meaning he lives near the lost plateau) and the probable monkey wrench in the works.

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The film starts off slow — introducing all these characters and unveiling the plan to find the dinosaurs — and never really picks up.

It's filled with all these cute little bits, such as the lady's small dog, aimed at the juvenile market, it seems, and most of the dialog follows suit, never rising above TV family fare.

But it goes beyond simple silliness — Challenger, supposedly one of the smartest scientists around, comes off as a fool with his observations of dinosaurs which are obviously common lizards (obvious even to kids watching the movie). There's also an unfortunate bit of optical FX with a large green tarantula (see pic above).

All that said, this is pretty colorful if you're a kid, with some nice matte paintings (huge trees when they first arrive at the lost plateau). The group helicopters in and things go bad the first night when their transport is smashed. From then on, it's a trip just to escape the locale.



Things do become a bit more serious in tone as some tension surfaces amid the group — Rennie and Hedison get into a brief fistfight and Rennie's seemingly strong alpha male turns out to have feet of clay.

There's also a hidden hostility stemming from the character played by Lamas. But instead of focusing on the giant beasts, the story becomes one about the hostile natives of this plateau; these primitives — who resemble Inca Indians - capture the group and are revealed to be cannibals, though nothing is really shown of their savagery. Predictably for a family flic, the good guys and gal survive while the troublemakers are toast.

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

____________ Mick Garris on THE LOST WORLD


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Lost Trivia: Allen remade this — sort of — as an episode of his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series in the 1st season, Turn Back the Clock, by plugging in stock footage from this film into that episode. The series co-starred David Hedison so it worked pretty well.




BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)