ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Phamtom pulls out all the stops and regales us on subjects like a mad doctor in South America, a strange creature that lives in the Amazon, and a post apocalyptic tale about a depopulated Earth.

These are three comprehensive reviews by a fine writer.
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Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

I have to agree with Bog on this one. It has never been a favorite of mine. Apart from the iconic monster and Julie in that famous swimsuit, the movie never catches fire. Even the supposed killing of the monster lacks energy.

It may be that, like the universal mummy series, the Creature on land is just too slow moving. I can picture Carlson racing through the jungle at breakneck speed while the Gillman lumbers behind. Carlson stops to take a breath, turns and there is the crustacean looming over him.

The same can be said for Revenge of the Creature. By the way, did anyone ever question how a freshwater monster is able to function in the ocean? Duel gills?

The Creature Walks Among Us, no one's favorite, is the most intriguing of the three, especially in these ecologically sensitive times. Granted, there is too much soap opera padding between the characters, but the mutilation of one of nature's most amazing animals, even if to save its life, is tragic and the final scene on the beach as he stares at the water that will now kill him is a memorably haunting conclusion.

I saw movies two and three in a theater prior to catching the original, which I finally got to see during a movie night in a church basement in the late fifties.
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Doctor X (1932)

You won't find Curtiz listed among the great directors by film critics, but he was genuinely one of the greatest. Scan his output on the IMDb and you will be astonished at the number of award winning classics he made during the thirties and forties.

Besides Dr. X and Mystery of the Wax Museum, he was responsible for 20,000 Years in Sing Sing with Spencer Tracy, The Black Legion and Casablanca with Bogart, Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood with Flynn, Angels With Dirty Faces and Yankee Doodle Dandy with Cagney, The Sea Wolf with E.G. Robinson and his last picture, The Comancheros with Wayne. There is at least one movie for every genre in the book.

He made his first film in 1912 and his last in 1961, and even directed Presley in King Creole.

As for his malapropisms, they were genuine.

During the shooting of one of his films the director demanded "Bring me a poodle." No one ever questioned the mercurial Curtiz, so the next day someone brought a poodle to the set.

Curtiz exploded. He didn't want a poodle, he wanted a puddle of water.
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The Quiet Earth (1985)

The Quiet Earth (1985)

Intriguing film from New Zealand in which three people seemingly find themselves the sole survivors on Earth after a scientific experiment goes wrong.

The movie is neatly divided into three segments, each about thirty minutes long, the most striking being the first act in which Zac Hobson wakes to find himself on what appears to be a totally deserted planet. His slow discovery of a landscape devoid of people, which he describes as, “This quiet Earth” and his eventual disintegration into insanity, is stretched to the breaking point, a tour de force for a single actor. Despite its length, it never becomes tedious, mostly due to the inventive script that finds new challenges for Hobson.

The entrance of Joanne and eventually, Api, a Maori, begin the second and third acts and alter the dynamics of the action, setting up a duel motivation of jealously and struggle for control. It is somewhat disappointing and rather banal after the first two thirds of the movie.

Cinematic images of ruined, deserted cities are charged with an unsettling ambiance. The early scenes in Target Earth, the breakdown of civilization in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, the empty streets of New York City in The World The Flesh And The Devil (a kindred spirit of The Quiet Earth) and the final images of On the Beach are often all that remain in memory.

Some of the photographic effects are striking. When Hobson visits his job at the scientific lab where he works, he is bathed in an eerie blue light. Later, at the height of his madness, he eschews his own clothing for the comfort of a woman’s slip and gathers together an audience of manikins to which he delivers a speech from the balcony of a mansion, augmented by recorded cheers. In a truly bizarre sequence, Hobson enters a church waving a rifle and looking for God for some answers. Striding up to a statue of the crucified Jesus, he demands, “Come out or I’ll shoot the kid,” then proceeds to blow away the statue, the ultimate blasphemy of a man who has lost all reason. It is at this brink that he pulls himself together, dives into the ocean and emerges baptized and reborn. Maybe God answered him after all, even if somewhat belatedly.

There is a haunting moment when Joanne visits a deserted hospital with rows of empty baby cribs and another when she and Api jog along a country road shrouded in a blue mist that is almost liquid in consistency.

The movie leaves us with more questions than answers.

There are indications that others were alive after the disaster. Hobson discovers the disfigured body of a co-worker in the lab. At one point, he samples a cherry on a cake he finds in a deserted store and later finds the bodies of two people beside the road. However, these events take place days, perhaps weeks after he wakes into the deserted world, yet the cake and cherry are still edible with no signs of decay and the bodies appear to have died only a short time before discovery.

Each character is given a brief flashback as they attempt to reason the situation. Api is attacked by an unknown assailant and wakes in the middle of a stream to see an unusual light in the sky. Joanne appears to have been electrocuted while using a hair dryer. Hobson wakes from sleep and we see a medicine bottle on the shelf with a warning about over use.

So, where are they in time and place? Is this Hobson’s dying hallucination? Are these his final desires, fears and prejudices exploding like some psychological Big Bang in his brain? Or, do they all really exist, trapped in some purgatory, waiting to be transported to another existence? Is this some form of hell in which they are eternally shunted to an infinite number of planes, each with their own set of inscrutable laws?

The final famous image leaves us with no clue.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)