ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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20th Century Fox takes a crack at horror/science fiction in the midst of Universal's heyday, using a good cast but a fairly routine concept. Scientist George Zucco turns a gorilla into an ape-man, portrayed by J. Carrol Naish.

This competent little yarn from director Harry Lachman runs less than an hour.
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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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Here's a demonstration in how to come up with new posts for All Sci-Fi to keep it from dying out like so many other messages have done since I first created the original version of this one in 2006.
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First, look for the full movie on YouTube and post it in the deluxe style I do. Like this!

__________ Dr Renault's Secret 1942 Full Movie


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Then simply copy-and-paste Wikipedia's spoiler-laden synopsis and prove that my initial comments on this move are guilty of selling this interesting movie short!

While doing that, you can have fun "revising" the Wikipedia synopsis by fixing its typos and adding the punctuation and paragraph breaks the all seem to desperately need!

That's what I did with the one below.
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A young doctor named Larry Forbes (Shepperd Strudwick) arrives in a French village in order to wed the niece of prominent local doctor, Dr. Renault (George Zucco).

Dr. Forbes learns from the innkeeper that a storm has washed out the bridge to Renault's house, and he ends up spending the night at the inn. There he meets most of the film's main characters, including Dr. Renault's strangely deformed man servant, Noel (J. Carrol Naish).

It is during the night that the first of the murders occurs. Another tourist takes a room in the Inn and is killed mysteriously!

The next day, Forbes travels to the house of Dr. Renault, where he is reunited with Renault's pretty young niece, Madeline (Lynne Roberts).

A sequence of strange events, including an incident in which Noel is viciously attacked by a stray dog that Madeline picked up, convinces Forbes that there is something unusual about Noel, but he does not know what it is.

Also, it quickly becomes clear that Noel is interested in Madeline as well. (Uh-oh . . .)

Renault confronts Noel, and it is revealed that his man servant is actually an experiment — an animal given the physical and mental characteristics of a man. Fearing for Forbes' life (as well as his own), Renault locks Noel in a cage, but the former animal is able to use his strength to escape and follows Forbes and Madeline to a carnival.

There he is heckled by a pair of villagers — who are promptly murdered in their homes!

Forbes' suspicions increase, and he sneaks into Dr. Renault's laboratory. There he finds a book detailing the experiments Dr. Renault carried out to transform Noel from an ape into a man. Renault catches Forbes reading his notes and threatens to kill him if he reveals the truth to anyone.

But Noel sneaks up on the both of them, and he kills Dr. Renault!

In the closing sequence, Madeline is abducted by her gardener, an ex-convict named Rogell (Mike Mazurki), and Noel pursues them. After a lengthy chase, Rogell shoots Noel. Before succumbing to his wounds, Noel strangles Rogel.
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Right after doing this, I discovered that the new YouTube version I posted above is stretched horizontally — something I really hate! But the Double Feature version I posted earlier looks terrific!

After watching a few scenes from the latter part of this movie, I realized that this sci-fi story from FOX is considerably more to my liking than many of the old Universal horror movies, with all those non-sci-fi vampires and mummies!

Having said that, I'm now tempted to check the 2nd feature on the Double Feature version which YouTube offers — The Undying Monster!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Steve Joyce]

From the for-what-it-is-worth department:

Renault is based upon a story by Gaston (Phantom of the Opera) Leroux called "Balaoo".

Balaoo was filmed twice in the silent era. First time was 1913. Second time was in the lost film called "The Wizard".

Gary Rhodes and Tom Weaver have uncovered the script to "The Wizard" and will be releasing it and other related stuff into a book. Henry Nicolella is also writing for the book and I'm please to say that I contributed a chapter on the book "Balaoo" and first silent version. I consider that pretty good company to keep!!
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"There is a planet in the Solar System where the people are so stupid they didn't catch on for a million years that there was another half to their planet." - Kilgore Trout.

[Bud Brewster]

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Good company, indeed! I'd be jealous if I weren't above such things!

(Okay, heck, I'm jealous . . . )
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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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A wonderful trailer for this interesting movie, and the picture quality is superb. I'd love to see this one.
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____________Dr. Renault's Secret (1942) trailer


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