ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

An unpromising concept gets an uninspired treatment. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays a butcher convicted of murder and sent to the electric chair. A scientist brings him back to life, and Chaney hunts down several of the criminal cohorts who betrayed him.

Eventually the police track the killer to his sewer hideout. A documentary-style narration is provided by Ross Elliott, the detective who pursues Chaney.

Directed by Jack Pollexfen. Chaney's 1941 sci-fi film "Man Made Monster" is much better.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Watch the movie and see if I sold it short with my rather negative comments above.

Don't be shy. Give it to me straight. Doc. I can take it, I tell ya! I'm The Indestructible Bud!!!

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

[MetroPolly]

No, you're pretty much on track there. After all, it ended up on MST3K. Still, the plot isn't that bad, the execution screwed it up though.

[Sens8]

Well, it has a certain sentimental value for me — it was my first view of the legendary Lon Chaney Jr. It actually came out in (1956), not (1959) — double billed with WORLD WITHOUT END — and the Shock Theater package hadn't got on TV yet (at least in my neck of the woods). I would've been late 9-early 10 years old then. And it made its intended impact at the time, tho, yeah, the execution leaves much to be desired. Especially the editing, based on out-of-original-plotline rewrites, resulting in some noticeable continuity gaps/dislocations, and an over- reliance on repeated insert shots of a lone closeup of the tremblin'-with-fury Lon, to generate "chills".

[Bud Brewster]

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Thank you! I corrected the release date.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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The film is told in flashback and hence has annoying narration. Lon Chaney plays an unpleasant convicted killer called "Butcher" — sentenced to death.

He's got issues with his own lawyer, who he thinks back-stabbed him, and swears revenge. Of course, the lawyer doesn't think too much of this threat since Butcher is executed later that night.

However, the body is taken to a local scientist who has just perfected a technique involving electricity. He zaps Butcher's body and Butcher returns to life — although the narrator explains that he's no longer human due to the change to his cellular structure. He is now impervious to everything from needles to bullets, and he's immensely strong.

Also, he can no longer speak because the electricity fried his vocal cords. He quickly goes on a killing spree while seeking the backstabbing lawyer and his cronies.



Though very low budget and slow in parts, this is also strangely effective at times, a combination Frankenstein and Point Blank (1967). When Chaney is in action, the scenes are fairly entertaining. Chaney's backstory is almost without dialog — he had just undergone surgery for cancer, but I dunno if this was the original script or it had to be changed.

The narration is sometimes intrusive and seems to have been incorporated to make up for the lack of dialog in Chaney's scenes. The title sounds like it's from a comic book, with Chaney's Butcher an early film version of a super-villain. There's an action-packed finale as the police throw everything in their arsenal at the superhuman.

BoG's Score: 4.5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB only has 6 trivia items for this movie, but two of them (when read together) are unintentionally funny.
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~ Lon Chaney Jr. reportedly asked director Jack Pollexfen not to make any dialogue changes or additions after the lunch break, when he usually drank heavily.

~ Lon Chaney Jr. has no spoken lines in this movie following the opening scene in his prison cell.

Note from me: Apparently the director decided to make things really easy for Lon so that he could guzzle his lunches to his heart's content!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ralfy]

720p, probably upscaled:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY5JOgRphDQ

[filmdetective]

This film is one of my all-time favorites because of the super chaste sexuality in it.

Eva is a stripper? in a burlesque house, or at least some kind of stage performer there.

As much as I have watched the film, I don't remember if it actually showed any of whatever Eva did onstage, as Dick watched her act, but her workplace is a sexually oriented business.

Especially delightful to me, is Dick and Eva's first date, hamburgers at a drive-in restaurant, where they tell each other their life stories, Dick having served in the Air Corps, after which he knocked around, and Eva telling of winning a talent contest, expecting a good career, as she pantomines violin playing, but when she got to SF (or was it LA? I can make just as many mistakes as those people I am correcting), she didn't go any further, and not having a home to go back to, she wound up in the burlesque house.

To me, this scene is so wonderful, I might just transcribe it for posting to this thread!

And, Bud, knowing it's not a favorite film of yours, Butcher Benton was sent to the gas chamber, which was clearly stated as he awaited execution, I can forgive that mistake.

The really incredible thing to me, is that in a Midnight Marquee book of Guilty Pleasures, a writer who is totally In Love with this film, also mistakenly mentions the Butcher being executed by electricity.

But for for someone who spent 10 pages going gagga over the Indestructible Man, forgiveness is difficult.

Well, just saying it is an All Time Favorite film of mine, is enough, so I won't continue.

[filmdetective]

It was in the late 1960s or early 1970s that Lon Chaney's voice was affected by cancer treatments. And, in the film, it was poison gas from the execution which caused the Butcher's muteness.

I'm glad Eva didn't sit like a princess perched in her electric chair, (Elton John) and Dick would have been too much of a gentleman to tell her dirty jokes while he saw her there alone in her electric chair.

I've wondered if the electric chairs those singers referred to were the chairs which have electric powered vibrators in them, the lonely ladies they sang about, were seeking self comfort?

[filmdetective]

I did a Net Search on non-lethal "electric chairs" basically vibrating and heating chairs to ease the pain of various illneses.

The price range from a low of $45, which I suppose would be a vibrator you attach to a reclining chair as a do-it yourself gadget, to vibrating, reclining padded chairs designed by doctors to ease various pains, and with a price tag in the $2,000 range.

Grandpa Munster must have been an S & SM enthusiast who enjoyed non-lethal electric shocks, with his electric chair.

And, when I was in grammar school, one of my childhood sweethearts tried to have some fun scaring me by telling me about something I had done, and in the previous year, the school principal had taken this poor boy who had done the same thing I had done into the hallway and put the electric paddle on that boy for two whole minutes.

I think it was on the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, where I learned that some Dominatrix had actually manufactured a real electric paddle, whereas the electric paddle the kids talked about at school, was purely a fictional fantasy.

(Well, if anyone does know of a grammar school where the Principal had a real, honest to G-d Electric Paddle, please let me know).

I spoke to a senior citizen who when I told that story about my childhood sweetheart trying to scare me about the Electric Paddle (which I never believed was "real") that as a grammar school student he was really scared of the Electric Paddle.

And, he said that none of the teachers ever told him and the other grammar school students that the school did not have a "real" electric paddle, presumably because they wanted the kids to be scared of that non-existant device.

[Gord Green]

Filmdetective, your posts are inspiring!

I had pretty much relegated this to a potboiler of Lon just stumbling around in a drunken stupour...but now I see a few more angles on it! Thank you!

PS.
That "electric paddle" is commonly available as an electric bug zapper....Looks like a tennis racket with batteries.



Kinda kinky....especially when applied in a testicular fashion , but...You know!



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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[filmdetective]

Gord, glad I could inspire you with my posts about Indestructable Man.

It's not really a good film, but I'm feeling inspired now, to go on ahead and transcribe Dick and Eva's conversation at the drive-in restaurant, which I fondly remember from the film.

[filmdetective]

On the Zap It bug exterminator electric paddle, a gentleman applying that device to his testicles would be a good example of someone using a machine or object for something other than its intended purpose.

I'm hesitant to mention Hamilton Fish Better known as Albert Fish, aka, the Werewolf of Wisteria and the Brooklyn Vampire, but he reportedly used sewing needles for self testicular torture, which he found to be Too Much, as the song about Caveman Alley Oop stated.

Sewing needles were certainly not made for such a horrible use.

I doubt if Mr. Fish was a tailor who sewed new blue jeans for a guy going to a gambling emporium in New Orleans.

But, if he was, would he have been called a Seamster, rather than the female form, Seamstress (remember Forry Ackerman on Music for Robots discussing Metropolis and the Robotrix, "it was in female form, you see.")

I did some reading on the Teamsters Union, and before that group was formed, teamster (lower case) was a generic term for, was it a stagecoach driver?

Don't know if it's still the case, but at one time, according to my reading, the Teamsters Union included included Tailors, I suppose the song about the House In New Orleans guy's mother, might have been called a Teamstress?

Oh, well, this is getting off topic and into Forry Ackerman type word play, when I've got more important things to do (Guess Who song lyrics), such as transcribing dialog from The Indestructable Man.

[Bud Brewster]

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Here's a great double feature, complete with vintage drive-in "welcome messages", two terrific trailers, a Three Stooges episode, and then the double feature!

"So, get comfortable, folks! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!"

Enjoy!_

INDESTRUCTIBLE DRIVE-IN DOUBLE FEATURE - THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN and THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE


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