ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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gort

Attention members! If you've forgotten your password, just email me at brucecook1@yahoo.com.
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Phantom has been a member of every version of All Sci-Fi since the first one was created in 2006.

Even before that, he and I exchanged messages on the IMDB message boards. He's a busy man these days and doesn't have much time to post on All Sci-Fi, even though he's the most dependable member of our chat room group which includes Scotpens, Pow, Trekriffic, Gord Gord, and BigCatRik.

I especially like his comment beilow on Beginning of the End. Phantom definitely has a way of putting a new slant on a subject!



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Beginning of the End

I saw this in '57 on a double bill with The Unearthly (a guilty pleasure, really guilty).

You won't get many positive words about B.I.G. from me, but I have to admire the scene in which a hoard of giant, horny grasshoppers try to mate with a public address system in the middle of Lake Michigan, It's as absurdly hallucinatory as Roy Scheider blowing Jaws out of the water with an oxygen tank.
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A Great Team Fading Away

Abbott and Costello were on the downside by the time they made this one. The presence of Karloff and the Jekyll-Hyde theme elevates it above their encounter with The Invisible Man (I may be in the minority on that one) and their last monster mash-up with The Mummy.

Most of the time Eddie Parker subbed for Karloff as Hyde, particularly in the more strenuous scenes.

John Dierkes, one of my favorite character actors shows up as Dr. Jekyll's mute butler/henchman. Dierkes had a long career, but is forgotten today, except to those fans who recall his work in The Red Badge of Courage, The Thing From Another World, John Wayne's version of The Alamo and dozens of lesser films. He was a gentle, soft spoken giant who fitted in well with other physically huge stars of the era (Wayne, Arness) but he never rose to their level of accomplishment on the screen.

A&C Meet J&H was drubbed by the critics and doesn't have a large fan base. The best scene in the film is probably Costello's transformation into a giant mouse, which had the house rocking when I first saw it around '55. It isn't bad enough to be a "guilty pleasure," but it's good enough to drop into the video machine when you're in the mood and nothing else will suffice.
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Great Jump Scare

I didn't think this movie excited anymore, until I found the dino segment on YouTube. Not sure about the rest of the film (which I don't remember anyway).

This was the last movie that played in the theater I haunted as a kid. I can still recall everyone nearly jumping out of their seats when that brontosaurus skeleton came to life (yeah, I know it's now called Apatosaurus).

It wasn't the greatest jump scare of the fifties. That honor belongs to the scene in which the Old Caretaker floats past Nora in the dark closet in The House On Haunted Hill. But it was memorable enough to germinate at the back of my mind for over a half century.

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