For mood and tone and anatomy and stark portraits of wonder, Frazetta is the master! Each poster awakens your sense of awe and fascination. The colors and details are reproduced magnificently. Breathtaking to see and own!
Silhouetted against an orange moon is the ravening beast of our nightmares, about to pounce on the victim who has unfortunately discovered him! ….. $2.50
There is the treasure chest, spilling its riches into the ocean depth in which the awed skin-diver has discovered it. But what is that fearful, monstrous thing rearing up behind it? ….. $2.50
C. BREAK THE BARBARIAN VS. THE SORCERESS (cover painting for Paperback Library paperback).
Brak, with sword and on horseback, looks up into murky skies to see is it a vision of a woman? Is that evil she seems to convey? Or menace $2.50
Toe to toe, Conan fights with brute savagery, death in every axe stroke, against two frost giants. The scene is a blazingly white mountain top under an ice-blue sky! Thorough drama! ….. $2.50
Bursting like a firestorm into the midst of a hellish battle, Conan comes, astride his maddened charger, cleaving his bloody way! The background is fire and death and savagery ….. $2.50
Where did the Black Hood appear before comic books? When did the long and incredibly successful Shadow series begin? How long did Doc Savage run? The pulp magazines with continued adventure hero features are listed in this compact and efficient reference book. Note: This book is mainly a listing of old pulp mag. characters and titles, of interest to completists and zealous fans, but not of much value to a person looking for samples of the actual surprises. We say this, hoping to avoid confusion or ill feelings.
The world’s favorite Dracula is seen in a bookful of photos of Bela Lugosi in his weirdest roles. Softcover twin volume to the Karloff book. Excellent stills from the great Lugosi horror films, and plenty of them. 52-pages.
Beautiful hardcover book, limited memorial edition, including a magnificent sampling of the art of this great science-fiction illustrator. Mostly black-and-white and some outstanding color plates. Also contains a full listing of Finlay’s work and where to find it, and his bio.
A frank and nostalgic backward look at a childhood of comic book reading. And then adventure after (original) comic book adventure showing us the complete origin of stories of Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern, and episodes in the careers of the Spirit, Flash, Hawkman, and more! All in beautiful color! Dynamite!
Boris Karloff was the magnificent master of disguise and menace. You can see dozens and dozens of photographs of his various roles in this 52page all-photograph softcover book. Each photo is full-page size (81/2 x 11) and is clear and vivid. A horror-film fan’s prize.
This deadly magazine comic book was the cooperative effort of Jeff Jones, Mike Kaluta, Bruce Jones, and Bernie Wrightson. They experiment with stories of the odd and the macabre, in spidery, Gothic style! Moody and dramatic and high quality.
The first actor ever to play the part of Superman has written this memoir. It is filled with film-making stories (how he caught fire while flying), good humor, and many, many photographs. Fun reading, even for non-film fans.
This softcover, thin book is an amazing look at the art nouveau “psychedelic” comic strip artwork of Winsor McCay. Nemo appeared in the early 1900s, and is still the best visual fantasy ever to appear on a comic page:
A sketchbook of a comic art master featuring fantasy, science-fiction illustrations and visual delights such as girls, monsters, swordsmen, and girls! This volume is recommended for serious students of art, illustration, science fiction, fantasy, swordsmen monsters and of girls–but over age 18.
Here is one of the greatest adventure strips ever drawn, by the finest artist the comic art world has ever produced! Even before beginning his 33. year Prince Valiant career, Hal Foster did the Sunday pages of Tarzan, and this book (softcover, Life Magazine-sized) reprints 55 pages of Tarzan’s story. Where else can this “lost” work be seen?
There is a series involved here, and this is volume one. You can find few better descriptions of how comic books evolved (from newspaper strips and pulp adventure magazines), and there are hundreds of photos and illustrations. Nifty reading, great art – poster-sized full-color cover by the author.
A slim sketchbook which covers some of the finest black and white linework by this super-artist, Frank Frazetta. Each figure shows detail, mass, strength, and drama. For collectors of the best. … You must be 18 to buy this volume. State age when placing order.
The first Tarzan ever to appear in comics form was a daily strip drawn by Hal Foster with the text of the book printed beneath each panel. Designed to run for a few weeks, Tarzan has now been going for forty years. But this book contains the first strips ever drawn, reprinted in clear lines in a wrap-around softcover book. Good value.
THE OLD ABANDONED WAREHOUSE
P.O. Box 595, Old Chelsea Station, New York, N.Y. 10011
The proverbial Old Abandoned Warehouse which you’ve heard about in so many comics, movies and pulp adventure and detective novels is open for business. Abandoned Warehouse Enterprises presents the most AWEful, AWE-inspiring AWEsome AWEtifacts AWEvailable at AWE-striking AWE-right prices! Indicate which items you want
NOTE: Add 20¢ postage and handling per item for orders totaling less than $20.00. Make checks and money orders payable to: ABANDONED WAREHOUSE
$2.00 each HEY GANG! DIG THIS TOTALLY LOGICAL HANG-UP IN FULL COLOR! $2.00 each
I COULD DIG SUCH A HANGUP! Enclosed is $………. for No. ………. of your GIANT SUPER FULL-COLOR STAR TREK POSTERS OF Mr. Spock, and the original prop of the Starship Enterprise! Rush it to me in that sturdy cardboard mailing tube, right away! I enclose 20¢ postage for each poster on an order totalling less than $20.00, for postage and handling. By the way, just in case you guys don’t take the time to read the addresses on the letters you get, I’m sending the loot and this coupon to:
THE OLD ABANDONED WAREHOUSE P.O. Box 595 Old Chelsea Station New York, N.Y. 10011
So many of you have been writing in for ’em, we’ve decided to start a special MONSTER TIMES BACK ISSUE SERVICE. Due to costs in postage and handling, all back issues cost $1.00 a piece, except for our rare collectors’ prize, Issue No. 1 at $2.
The CON-CALENDAR is a special exclusive feature of THE MONSTER TIMES. Across this great land of ours are quaint and curious gatherings of quaintly curious zealots. The gatherings called “conventions,” and the zealots, called “fans,” deserve the attention of fans and non-fans alike, hence this trail-blazing reader-service.
To those readers who’ve never been to one of these hair-brained affairs, we recommend it. Detractors of such events put them down by saying that they’re just a bunch of cartoonists and science fiction writers and comic book publishers talking, and signing autographs for fans who, like maniacs, spend sums on out-of-date comics, science fiction pulps, and monster movie stills. But that’s just the reason for going. If you want a couple of glossy pictures of Dracula or King Kong, or a 1943 copy of Airboy Comics (God alone knows why) or if you wish to see classic horror and science fiction films, or meet the stars of old time movie serials, or today’s top comic book artist! and writers–or if you just want to meet other monster or comics science fiction freaks, like yourself, and learn you’re not alone in the world, OR if you want to meet the affable demented lunatics who bring out THE MONSTER TIMES, go ahead and visit one of those conventions. We dare ya!
APRIL 9, MAY 14 THE SECOND SUNDAY – PHIL SEULING – 2833 W. 12 – B’KLYN, N.Y. 11224 STATLER-HILTON – 33rd ST & 7th AVE. – NEW YORK CITY $1.00 (10 A.M. to 4 P.M.) COMIC BOOK DEALERS & COLLECTORS – No Special Guests
May 26-29 FRI, SAT, SUN & MON E.C. FAN-ADDICT CONVENTION – 2623 Silver Court – East Meadow, N.Y. 11554 HOTEL McALPIN – Broadway & 34th Street – New York City Various Prices – Write Con For More Information THE GREATEST HORROR COMIX OF ALL TIME
MARCH 25-27 FRI., SAT., SUN L.A. CON – JERRY O’HARA – 14722 LEMOLI AVE. – CARDENIA, CALIF. 92249 L.A. HILTON, LOS ANGELES. Infor Not Available Write Con. Comic convention; comic books, strips, Guest speakers, Cartoonists.
MARCH 31, APRIL 1, 2 FRI., SAT., SUN LUNA-CON – DEVRA LANGSAM – 250 CROWN ST. – BKLYN, N.Y. 11225 STATLER-HILTON – 33rd ST & 7th AVE. – NEW YORK CITY Infor Not Available Write Con. New York’s Biggest Annual Sci-Fi Convention – Big-Time Writers Galore!
…is our way of getting the latest hot-off-the-wire info to you; reviews, previews, scoops on horror films in production, newsworthy monster curiosities, bulletins, and other grues-flashes. There are several contributors to our hodge-podge Teletype page … BILL FERET, our man in Show Biz (he’s a professional actor, singer, dancer with the impressive resume list of stage, film and TV credits to his name), makes use of his vast professional experiences and leads to Feret-out items of interest to monster fans, and duly report on them in his flashing Walter-Wind-chill manner.
FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL” may have a highly oriental-sounding title, but it’s actually been announced as issuing forth from Hammer studios. Hammer also has on the books remakes of DANTE’S INFERNO” and “LORNA DOONE.” (No, it’s not about Cookie-monsters.)
Fanfare Corp. is readying “TOWER OF EVIL” starring Bryant Haliday and Jill Haworth, for release.
The Italians have a conclave of films due on the scene shortly. “WHO KILLED THE PROSECUTOR AND WHY?”, starring Adolfo Celi (Thunderball) is a thriller and “INFERNAL NOOSE,” is a psycho piece. (No noose is good …) There’ll be some ‘spaghetti’ Westerns too, but the titles are so enigmatically gruesome … “CREEPING DEATH,” “PAID IN BLOOD,” and “DOOMSDAY” starring Ty Hardin and Rossano Brazzi, hey sound more like ‘How the West was Bled.’
Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, ANNABELLE LEE” has been turned into a film version starring Margaret O’Brien. Film was shot in Peru and has a score by Les Baxter.
Anthony Quale is set as host of a half hour anthology teleseries titled “Evil Touch”. The 26 suspense-chiller episodes will star name people each show.
The famous British sci-fi series “DR. WHO.” is planned as an all-new color half hour series of 50 episodes. You’ll remember “DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS.”
The Science Fiction Film Festival at Trieste. France and the Science-Fiction Cultural Center of Venice, Italy are trying to organize a world-wide sci-fi convention for the 3rd week in July. (Lotsa Luck!) Already registered for competition is SOLARIA,” written by Stanislaus Len and directed by Soviet Andrei Tarkovski.
Let’s hear it for the OLYMPIA theater, here in New Yawk, New Yawk, the wunnerful town. Just the other week they ran a complete FLASH GORDON serial at a midnite show, and Roman Polanski’s immortal classic. THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, one of the funniest and yet scarifying vampire classics ever. Fun City is graced with lots of terror treats from hip theater owners, though there could be more. Readers across the country are encouraged to clue in their local theater owners about TMT … and have them submit schedules to TMT of any horror and Sci-Fi festivals, (at least a month in advance). We may become the TV & Movie Guide of Monsterdom!
Somewhere in the mileu, I found notes on a production of “LADY FRANKENSTEIN.
A Texas based company, Chicos Productions, is lensing “DISCIPLES OF DEATH” in Houston.
Warner Bros. is releasing “THE EXORCIST” dealing with a girl who is possessed by the Devil himself.
Also from Warners, by Michael Crichton, author of “THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN,” comes “THE TERMINAL MAN.”, It’s about a man with a computer for a brain and murder on his mind.
Producer Blake Edwards (THE GREAT RACE, DARLING LILI) is currently lensing on British soil a film-musicalization of “TRILBY AND SVENGALI.” Julie Andrews
(Mrs. Edwards) is starred and hopefully Jack Lemmon will be ‘Sven, Golly.’ (The Sound of Mesmer?)
If you’re interested in the H.P. Lovecraft stories, principally his “CTHULHU MYTHOS,” there just recently came out an excellent study about his work and related works by other authors. Lin Carter was the author of this dissertation and he handled it most admirably. Mr. Carter himself had authored several books of the same type, notably the THONGOR” series.
So if you aren’t into Lovecraft’s World of Monstrous Menace…get into it, you won’t be sorry. I personally love (Aha) his craft.
The Saucers have landed! CBS has just bought 26 (hour-long!) segments on a new British TV series entitled “UFO.” It’ll be aired in New York, Philadelphia and LA going nationwide if it’s a hit.
The Series stars American-born Ed Bishop, George Sewell, Peter Gordon, and luscious Gabrielle Drake. It takes place in 1980 and concerns an organization called “SHADO” (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization.) (Only the Shado knows.) They have a moon base, space stations, super-submarines, rocket ships, and computer wizardry programmed by the most glamorous girls of the space age.
Everyone, male and female alike, wear see-thru fish- nettops as uniforms! The miniatures look fair, special effects reasonable, and if they have pretty good scripts, they might have a hit. Let’s hope “UFO” won’t mean Undeniable Failure Overall,
As you can see, there seems to be a real boom in television science-fiction as well as horror. All this stems from the incredible success of the made-for-TV movies.
There is a wealth of stories and books by some of the finest authors of the horror circle available for filming. I certainly hope they make use of them.
I am hoping that you will run a letter column in future issues, so I will tell you a little about myself.
In your ad in ERBdom you mentioned all of the things that I collected; AMAZING! Your publication is the first to cover all the fields that I am interested in. Comics, Large-size Horror Comics, SF Books & Magazines, Pulps, Original and print art, EVERYTHING!
THANKX.
Sincerely yours, Sean P. Kendall San Jose, Ca.
You’re welKong, Sean.
R.F…. REALLY FRIGHTFUL
Dear people at Monster Times,
I’ve just bought the 1st & 2nd editions of your newspaper and loved them. My name is Ronald Fleischer. My initials are R.F., so all my friends call me Rat Fink. I couldn’t survive without monsters. I made spook shows & showed 8mm, films on monsters. I buy every model that comes out on monsters. All I think is monsters. I saw every Horror Movie, on stage, in the movies, or on T.V. I used to buy junky magazines until your newspaper came out. It’s fantastic!
To show how much I love monsters I wrote a song, all about monsters, to the tune of (The Man of La Mancha’s) “The Impossible Dream”. (I’m only 12.) I want to ask you to do me the favor of printing this song in one of your papers.
Your fiend, Ronald Fleischer
P.S. Don’t forget to read the song. P.S.S. I’m also enclosing my picture.
“THE MOST HORRIBLE DREAM”
To The Tune of “The Impossible Dream”
To dream, the most horrible dream To see, the most horrible sight To live, in a cave with Godzilla! Where man, cannot live without fright
Rodan, in the air flying high With Mothra, flying right by his side Monster X, getting ready to battle Gammera, getting ready to hide!
This is their quest: To be our friends, To make very sure, Our hair stands on ends, To be very cruel, And to fight all the time,
With Godzilla, Rodan, Gammera, Mothra and the Green Slime. Memories, we will surely keep, And remember them well, Even when, the time will come When we’re all fast asleep
And we all, will be thankful for this, That we cry, and we shake and we scream And know, when the time has COME! To dream, the most horrible DREAM!
You know, Ron, that new lyric could become a hit record … but we can’t think of anyone who’d have the courage to hit it. Readers may find interesting the monster pasted onto Ron’s envelope, which, amazingly enough, arrived in good condition, What’s even more amazing, is that the stamp on Ron’s letter didn’t get canceled. Somebody “down there” (in the Postal Department) must like us … enough to contribute stamps to our cause. Readers are encouraged to write monster song lyrics like Ron’s. If they are as good and we get enough of them, we may run a special pageful of them, some time.
A MODEL MISTAKE
Dear Sirs,
I was extremely impressed with issue No. 2 of THE MONSTER TIMES and would like to take this opportunity to express thanks for the gracious mention of my models and equipment.
There were a couple of items that someone must have misinformed Chuck McNaughton about. The text gave the impression that I had built the ENTERPRISE that was pictured; I didn’t, that was the model actually used in THE CAGE’ and ‘REQUIEM FOR METHUSALA’. Also, the craft I built pictured in the lower left-hand corner of the article was the ROMULAN, not the KLINGON. Also, if you ever want a better picture of the shuttlecraft model, take a picture of the second one, now in Allan Asherman’s collection. (A shot of it is enclosed.) The lines are more outstanding and it won’t require retouching.
Thanks to Chuck also for suggesting to the fans to write to AMT in hopes of getting a shuttlecraft made. They refused my repeated requests (that’s what got me started on the models) but they at least sent me enough decals to finish another shuttlecraft or two. I will try again, emphasizing how fast the ENTERPRISE models sold at the Con.
Thanks, and BE SEEING YOU! Rich Van Treuren
Yes, Rich, someone misinformed Chuck McNaughton about the ship; the fellow who exhibited it at the STAR TREK-CON, But no matter. What’s a letters page for, but to cop to goofs in preceding issues? Good look with AMT.
WANTED: JAPANESE MONSTERS!
Dear Sirs:
I think the Monster Times is the best newspaper on monsters in New York, and I really like the article on the Sci-Fi picture “Them”. But I wish you could put some more Sci-Fi articles in the Monster Times. Like some Japanese monsters. I have never seen Toho monster articles in Monster Magazines. Like Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Barugan, Gamera and others. I hope I find Toho monsters in one of your issues. Thank you.
Yours Truly, Miguel Ramos New York City
Very soon, Miguel, we will be doing a super article on the life of GODZILLA (as told by himself). Watch for it in issue No.7! Here’s Toho your health!
Send us so many letters, postcards, boosts, detractions, bomb threats, etc., that the Post Office will have to deliver our mail with a bulldozer. Address all correspondence to: THE MONSTER TIMES, Box 595, Old Chelsea Station, NY, 10011.
EDGAR ALLEN POE TALES OF TERROR, Read By Nelson Olmstead, Vanguard Records, VRS 9007. Price about $4.95
Vanguard hasn’t let loose a re-issue of this oldie but moldy for a few years now, but copies of it are still to be dregged from the Spoken Word sections of most large metropolitan record stores. Generally for about $4.95, this record can be yours, for what it’s worth,
It’s really grim, the way there’s little good horror and monster and science fiction stuff available in records, and so much stuff glutting the record stalls, now, that masquerades as music (1 won’t name any particular type, for we all feel any music but our own favorite stuff is a charade). Maybe with “American Pie” tricking everyone into hypnotically chanting that catchy tuneful lyric, “This’ll be the day that I die!” the mood might be set for a mass revival of interest in that writer who died a thousand deaths (even before Roger Corman came along), in his writings and in tragic real life, the ever-popular (and ever dying) late, great Edgar Allen Poe.
Olmstead edited and read the six stories on the record in a manner which, if Poe could hear them, would probably make him die again. For editing the stories down to listenable 8-minute segments, Olmstead did very well, and should be commended … but as for his reading of them? Well, some of you might like it, but then, there’s no accounting for taste. Olmstead HAS A WAY of READing EVery OTHer SYLLABLE in AverRY dra-MAH-tic WAY! If YOU get WHAT I MEAN!!!
Olmstead worked on radio, reading literature over the airwaves to 100’s of thousands of American homes from 1939-49. He was a pretty big celeb, but listening only to his work with Poe, one wonders why. But listening to a companion album, SLEEP NO MORE! FAMOUS GHOST AND HORROR STORIES (to be reviewed another issue), one can understand why. Poe’s writings don’t take well to the overly emotive hamming of Olmstead. They are written in a subtle descriptive prose rich in language-quirks and rhythms, and able to cast glimmers of queasy horror and hidden spectral mysteries on the insweep of the palsy-shaken turn of phrase … the words are in themselves dramatic enough, mellowly so, and call more for a calm, mellifluous-to-sonorous reading voice … a shell-shocked numbed voice laden with stunned foreknowledge of the terrifying inevitable… but NOT the hysterical histrionics of Nelson Olmstead. Not on Poe!
Yet, there are probably many who will disagree with me, or say that Olmstead’s TALES OF TERROR are Great Camp, or something like that. Well, you can’t have your camp and read it, too. There are many subtle mental horrors to Poe’s writing that are better read and not heard. I’ll take a book, any day. If it’s Poe. Olmstead reading Agnew or Martha Mitchell is a Horror record I might well invest another $4.95 in… but not too soon. Only when they’ve been gone from the scene for about as long as old Edgar A. Poe has … and not until!
The stories read on the album are: The Pit and the Pendulum; a Cask of Amontillado; The Fall of the House of Usher; The Tell-Tale Heart; The Masque of the Red Death; and The Strange Case of M. Valdemar. And Corman almost did better
AS HIS COFFIN WAS LAID TO REST, HIS BRAIN SCREAMED – “I AM NOT DEAD!”
ROGER CORMAN meets EDGAR ALLAN POE PART TWO
BY JOE KANE
Last issue, our prolific pounder of the pulpy typewriters (our typing machine keys are made from fingertips of dead children, you know) Joe Kane covered HOUSE ol USHER and PIT & THE PENDULUM. Now he lovingly vivisects Poe-interpreter Roger Corman’s next three films; PREMATURE BURIAL, TALES OF TERROR & THE RAVEN.
So we now witness witless degeneration of the series before our very eyes, our claim supported by photographic evidence. We begin with PREMATURE BURIAL, which, as Poe-ish Joe once cryptically quipped; “Contrarily, PREMATURE BURIAL couldn’t be buried fast enough”. Let us see why…
PREMATURE BURIAL had the fatal feel of programmed horror to it; and programmed horror is something that only works when it fails completely, when it is so bad that it becomes funny, descends to the level of Camp; a dubious kind of success at best. PREMATURE BURIAL is not even funny. Instead it is usually painful to watch and, worse than that, boring.
The slick programmed feel of PREMATURE BURIAL serves as a distancing effect, an effect that turns our attention away from the film and towards God knows what – that’s up to the individual viewer (I, for one, lapsed into a depressing fantasy in which I was being buried alive in an old movie house where I was forced to watch PREMATURE BURIAL through the endless hours of eternity).
With PREMATURE BURIAL, as with others of the Poe-Corman efforts, you are all too aware that you are watching a movie and with horror films particularly. it is essential to forget that fact, and “willingly suspend disbelief.” The only way you could possibly forget that fact in this case would be to walk out of the theater, into a world far more interesting and terrifying than the one Corman is showing you
Part of the failure of PREMATURE BURIAL can be attributed to some limp, uninspired performances, especially the one turned in by star Ray Milland. Throughout the seemingly interminable duration of the film, Milland grimaces! with an expression of annoyance instead of torment on his face, as if he were more concerned about getting a head cold rather than being haunted by the shattering prospect of being buried alive. Also, since it is a surface film, it fails to give any indication that there might be something behind that surface. Corman’s attempts to instill a few moody effects into the film are as trite and transparent as any trick ever pulled from his well-worn sleeve. For all the frantio pumping of the perennial AIP fog! machine, the whistling of “Molly Malone” by the scuzzy scavengers of the grave who Turk about the screen throughout, and the cobwebbed descents into the family crypt, the film is so mechanical in its approach that all the audience can do is nod their collective head in acknowledgment as each pre-fab piece of horror film cliche is meticulously! fitted into place and to try to keep said head from falling into their collective lap from sheer ennui (boredom).
On the plus side (there’s usually something on the plus side in every Corman film) is Floyd Crosby’s vivid color photography and one extended sequence where Milland has a nightmare fantasy of being buried alive in his specially constructed tomb, one equipped with elaborate escape devices designed with that possibility in mind. Even this scene, however, as one by one Milland’s means of escape fail him and even the eup of poison entombed with him to shorten his suffering is overrun with graveyard worms, does not exploit fully the terrifying potential of such a prospect, Only the cup of worms detail succeeds in adding a touch of genuine horror to the proceedings.
“THE PREMATURE BURIAL” (the story)
In the 1860’s in London, in a neglected public graveyard, Dr. Gideon Gault (ALAN NAPIER) and medical students, Guy Carrell (RAY MILLAND) and Miles Archer (RICHARD NEY) are engrossed in the labors of two grave diggers, Sweeney (JOHN DIERKES) and Mole (RICHARD MILLER), who are busy uncovering a coffin in the grave,
Sweeney passes up the coffin lid and on the underside are seen a series of long bloody trails, the frantic efforts of an imprisoned person to gain freedom. The corpse itself offers complete evidence that the person had been buried alive. The sight overcomes Guy and he shuts himself away from the world.
His bride-to-be, Emily Gault (HAZEL COURT), daughter of Dr. Gault, visits Guy to discover why he has called off the wedding plans and gone into seclusion. She is greeted at the door by his sister Kate Carrell (HEATHER ANGEL). Guy explains the strange circumstances under which each of his ancestors met their untimely demise. This, and the fear of being buried alive, is his reason for the wedding postponement. Emily dissuades him and, despite the objections of Kate, Guy and Emily decide to marry.
Miles soon visits the Carrell household and finds Guy is acting strangely, Since the marriage, Guy’s obsession about being buried alive has resulted in his building a tomb. Within, he has built every possible escape device so that should he ever be mistaken for dead, he would be able to free himself.
Miles insists that Guy can never be free of his fears until he opens the family crypt and sees for himself that his father was not buried alive, but the corpse is found as if it had been. It falls against Guy and he collapses as though dead, He is declared dead and buried alive, unbeknownst to his family,
After the interment, Sweeney and Mole open the grave to steal Guy’s body, When they lift off the lid, Guy is freed and destroys them. He goes to Dr. Gault who had intended using his body for scientific experimentation, kills him and goes on to Emily. He binds her and throws her alive into the grave, Miles discovers Dr. Gault’s body and the disappearance of Emily and heads for the graveyard where he and Guy engage in a fierce battle. A shot rings out and Guy slumps to the ground, killed by a bullet from Kate’s gun. She had known all along that it was Emily who was using various devices to bring on Guy’s attack through his fear of premature burial.
ROGER CORMAN MEETS EDGAR ALLAN POE
TALES OF TERROR Roger’s next foray into the oft-trod turf of Edgar Allan Poe’s grave, fared a bit better. Comprised of three short episodes of roughly 30 minutes duration, the film had a unity and a much tighter construction (partially due to the brevity of the individual segments) than PREMATURE BURIAL. Of course, Poe’s material gets mangled again after being run through the AIP movie machine, but TALES OF TERROR manages to work pretty well on its own terms, if you are willing to forgive Corman’s exercise of his only semi-poetic license. With a cast headed by Basil Rathbone, Peter Lorre, and Vincent Price, it would seem pretty tough NOT to make an entertaining movie, although we all know only too well that such a feat has been accomplished time and again (witness Rathbone in THE BLACK SLEEP and Price in the Poe-Corman PIT AND THE PENDULUM).
The three episodes were based on a trio of Poe tales – “Morella,” “The Black Cat” (previously butchered by Universal in the Karloff-Lugosi vehicle of 1934 which, beyond the purloined title, then bore no resemblance to Poe), and “The Strange Case of M. Valdemar.” Corman incorporated a feeling of circus-like horror into the proceedings reminiscent of a tamer and less ambitious version of Fellini. Juicy scenes of Price’s face disintegrating before your very eyes, of Price playing with Peter Lorre’s severed head, and of Price being entombed behind a brick wall enlivened the film and added to the overall fun. The brick wall scene was included as part of the Black Cat episode but was actually lifted from Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” But Corman and screenwriter Richard Matheson had performed similar juggling feats before and this time they took elements from both “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado” blending them into a single story which, for all its infidelity, was still entertaining. A tighter framework and a more generous allowance from AIP mini-moguls also contributed to the film’s success.
Most impressive of Corman’s Poe adaptations are the sets, designed by Daniel Haller. In an interview appearing! in Canadian film magazine TAKE ONE Corman spoke at length about Haller’s uncanny talent for creating extravagant-looking sets on a minuscule budget:
“We would discuss the sets and Dan would kind of sketch them out on a napkin at lunch, and that would be it. When I went to 20th Century Fox it was really a surprise: all these draftsmen, and these guys are drawing things out and the sketch artists and everything else. Dan used to walk out on the set and he’d take a piece of chalk, make a mark, and say, ‘Start it about here.’ Then he’d walk out about 15 feet and say, “Well that looks reasonable, bring it out to here.’ And I think he was totally correct, because they got themselves so wound up in the studio in such needless detail on sets. You know: This wall is going to be 35 feet, 14 inches.’ It means nothing whatsoever in a motion picture. The set will change with every lens you use anyway.”
“TALES OF TERROR” (the story)
“MORELLA”
Locke (VINCENT PRICE) has lived as a hermit for 26 years, mourning the death of his wife, Morella (LEONA GAGE) soon after the birth of their only child. Blamed for her death, the child, Lenora (MAGGIE PIERCE) was sent away. Aged 26, she returns to her decay-ridden home hoping her father will explain her rejection. Dismayed at her reappearance, however, he refuses a reconciliation.
Forced to stay overnight at the deserted house, Lenora explores the rooms and discovers her mother’s bedroom with Morella’s body still on the bed, mummified. Locke enters and orders Lenora out, then reveals that he and her mother thought the girl responsible for her death. This revelation breaks the barrier between father and daughter.
That night, Morella’s tortured spirit rises from its corpse and possesses Lenora. Her screams rouse Locke who finds her dead. As he mourns her, the covered body shows signs of life. Under the sheet, however, lies Morella-back from the dead. Locke rushes to his wife’s bedroom and sees to his horror that Lenora’s body is there, apparently dead for 26 years. When Morella follows him and announces that she has returned to avenge herself, the terrified Locke drops his candle and as Morella strangles him, flames consume the bodies, living and dead.
“THE BLACK CAT”
Montresor (PETER LORRE), who drinks to excess and has a foul temper, prefers alcohol to his long-suffering wife, Annabel (JOYCE JAMESON), a woman of simple tastes and a simple mind. Given no love or attention by her spouse, she transfers her affections to her black cat, Pluto.
On one of his drunken excursions, Montresor is befriended by Fortunato (VINCENT PRICE), a wine-taster who carries him home when he falls into a stupor. Fortunato and Annabel are mutually attracted and enter into a love affair. When Montresor finds out, the effrontery to his pride leads him to plot the murder of the two lovers.
He uses Fortunato’s love of Amontillado wine to drug him and entombs him and Annabel alive behind the cellar wall. Believing that he has committed the perfect crime, Montresor lets the police inspect the cellar, only to be discovered when the black cat, accidentally trapped in the tomb starts wailing.
“THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR”
An old man, M. Valdemar (VINCENT PRICE) is torn by the pain of a fatal ailment. He asks M. Carmichael (BASIL RATHBONE), an unscrupulous mesmerist, to ease his pain, despite the opposition of Dr. Elliot James (DAVID FRANKHAM). Through this difficult period, M. Valdemar’s young wife Helene (DEBRA PAGET), sticks to her husband faithfully, though in love with the young doctor. Carmichael has designs upon Helene, however, and when Valdemar is dying, the mesmerist strikes a strange bargain with him. He agrees to put him under his spell at the end to see if mesmerism can forestall death itself.
Over the protests of Dr. James, Carmichael succeeds in holding Valdemar in a tortured nether-life. When this trance continues for months and the old man starts to speak in agony from nether world, Carmichael exhorts Valdemar to command Helene to give up Dr. James and marry him. To end her husband’s torture and give him the peace of death, Helene agrees. However, Valdemar stirs and rises from his deathbed to envelop the evil Carmichael, who dies from fright. The hypnotic spell lifted, all that remains of Valdemar is a liquid putrescence enveloping the mesmerist’s body.
Like the Karloff-Lugosi quickie of 1935, Corman’s THE RAVEN had nothing at all to do with Poe’s poem of the same name, outside of the ironically-intended incidental presence of a raven perched on Karloff’s shoulders. Teaming veteran horror superstars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Vincent Price as a trio of black magicians locked in an elaborate duel, trying to outdo each other (not only as wizards, but as actors as well) and generally hamming it up in a spirit of pure fun, no seriousness intended, the film works primarily because it allows the three horror film titans an opportunity to kid themselves, each other, and the type of film that made them famous. Refreshingly unpretentious, and sprinkled with several clever bits and imaginative special effects, THE RAVEN gives the trio free reign to camp it up and they do look like they were having a fine old time of it all.
Unfortunately, Corman’s flair for obvious jokes, strained sight gags, and tired low-key attempts at humor show through too often and flaw what might have been a much smoother film. But there are just too many broad swipes of his heavy hand that prevent the film’s moving at a steadier pace.
A typical AIP history surrounds the making of this film. When Corman managed to bring the film in ahead of schedule and discovered that he had Karloff under contract for three more days, he hastily rearranged the RAVEN set, had a script knocked out literally overnight, and another quickie rose from the ashes of THE RAVEN. The offspring was a dull programmer called THE TERROR. Years later Corman turned over several minutes of footage from that film over to Peter Bogdanovich (in his pre-LAST PICTURE SHOW days), who incorporated it into his first film, TARGETS, starring Boris Karloff as elderly horror star Byron Orlock (like Corman before him, Bogdonavich also had Boris only for a couple of days). Scenes from THE TERROR, a film fashioned from the remains of THE RAVEN remember, appears on a drive-in movie screen in TARGETS!
Editor’s Note:
The moral from all this which we can glean, horror hipsters and menacing mites, is that we can always trust American International Pictures to turn a bad penny into a fast buck. When THE RAVEN was made, Boris Karloff was very aged, and beyond his last legs.
Literally. His legs had just about given out on him, and he frequently collapsed in his wheelchair after every take. He was in very ill health, yet he was such a “pro” … a trouper … that the film came in three days ahead of schedule. And he was such a “pro” (and a gentleman) that, even in his very fragile health, he consented to do THE TERROR in three days, respecting the contract with Corman and the other AIP greedy-guts, obviously more than they respected Boris Karloff, or his ill-health. No doubt this incident probably prompted Karloff, the King of Horror, to say of Roger Corman’s Poe-films; “Poor Poe; the things they did to him when he wasn’t around to defend himself!”
“THE RAVEN” (the story)
“The Raven” tells of three sorcerers in Fifteenth-Century England-a primitive time ruled by magic, fear and superstition. One sorcerer, Dr. Erasmus Craven (VINCENT PRICE), has been inactive since the apparent death of his wife, Lenore (HAZEL COURT) and with his daughter Estelle (OLIVE STURGESS) still mourns her loss. One night he is startled by the appearance of a talking raven at his window and learns that it is a fellow magician, Dr. Bedlo (PETER LORRE) who has been made into the bird for daring to challenge the power of Master Sorcerer, Dr. Scarabus (BORIS KARLOFF).
When Dr. Bedlo regains his human form, he tells of seeing a woman resembling Lenore at Scarabus’ castle and enlists Craven’s aid in gaining revenge. Bedlo and Craven, together with Estelle and Rexford, Bedlo’s son (JACK NICHOLSON), journey to Scarabus’ castle and arrive safely despite mysterious interruptions which peril the entire party. Dr. Scarabus greets them as a disarmingly charming host and at a lavish dinner banquet pays tribute to Craven’s magic and allays suspicion about Lenore. However, we soon learn that Scarabus is really scheming to learn the secrets of Craven’s special and long inactive magical powers.
The mystery further unravels when Craven’s late wife Lenore appears on the scene-very much alive. She had tricked Craven into believing her dead so she could desert her husband and daughter for the comforts of Scarabus’ wealth and power. It was Lenore who tried to prevent the party from coming to Scarabus’ castle in an effort to protect her scheme. Now Scarabus admits his evil designs and imprisons Craven, Bedlo, Estelle and Rexford, threatening to torture the girl unless her father reveals the secrets of his magical powers.
When Scarabus, in a rage, once more changes Berlo into a bird, the Raven cuts Craven’s bonds, enabling him to engage Scarabus in a fantastic duel of magic, each pitting the full extent of his power against the other in a fight to the finish.
Humphrey Bogart was a vampire! At least in the science-fiction horror film, THE RETURN OF DR. X, his only monster flick. And it was TERRIBLE! How he came to play in it is a great mystery. Perhaps his agent had a grudge against him. Perhaps he slugged Warner Brothers’ mogul, Jack L. Warner. Perhaps he was drunk when he signed the contract. Perhaps … ah, but we shall never know.
In any case, he had his face sloppily gunked up with greasepaint, and a weird electric streak of white paint striped across his hairline so he resembled an undead skunk.
THE RETURN OF DR. X was a sequel to an earlier (and better) Warner Brothers opus, DR. X.
he couldn’t Return from whence he came
In case your memory of DR. X is dim, suffice to say that it dealt with a one-handed scientist (Preston Foster) of the sinister and slightly deranged variety who concocts a formula for synthetic flesh which the good doctor happily coats himself for the purpose of killing off unsuspecting victims. Naturally the fiend is done in by the last reel of the movie by a reporter, Lee Tracy, who ignites him with a kerosene lamp.
The return opens with a bumbling reporter, Walt Garrett, arriving at a swank! New York hotel to interview actress Angela Morrova (Lya Lys) but instead finds her knifed body sprawled on the floor. He promptly rings up the authorities telling them that there is no trace of the killer, but he found the actress’ pet monkey (“No one is here except the monkey and he couldn’t have dun-it”). But when the police arrive the body has disappeared, however, the next day Merrova re-appears alive and disclaims Garrett’s story.
a science-created vampire
Garrett now joins forces with his doctor friend, Mike Rhodes (Morgan), and they trace the case to the laboratory of a noted hematologist, Dr. Francis Flegg (played by John Liel) who confesses that he has almost succeeded in synthesizing human blood not to mention that he has resurrected the corpse of a Dr. Maurice Xavier (Bogart) who was executed for murdering a child. But science-created Vampire Xavier can only stay alive with a constant supply of a very rare type of blood which he obtains by killing people known to have that blood type. Flegg managed to bring one of Xavier’s victims back to life, Angela Merrova, but only for a limited period of time.
Before Rhodes and Garrett can get to the police, Xavier murders Flegg. The police gun down Xavier as he tries to make a pretty nurse (Rosemary Lane) one of his victims. This ends Bogey’s only monster movie (and almost his career!).
“A stinkin’ pitcher”…Bogey
Humphrey Bogart, being a man of taste, once panned THE RETURN OF DR. X in an interview as “a stinkin’ picture” and one for which he felt the urge to ask Jack Warner for more bread, probably because of the hardship he endured suffocating under a layer of dried greasepaint which looked ready to fall off his face in the movie. Bogie also shrewdly commented that the part should have gone to Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi.
His make-up doesn’t give the illusion of terror, but rather makes us think that we are watching Sam Spade at a grotesque Halloween party. The rest of the cast doesn’t fare much better reading off pages of witless dialogue, but they weren’t as fortunate as Bogie who at least hid his face under all of that make-up.
However, despite the many shortcomings in the film, which by the way, only runs a mere sixty-two minutes, it is a hard movie not to enjoy. After all it was by Warner Brothers (those wonderful folks who brought you Bugs Bunny) and it bears the gloss and fervourous spirit of movie-making that the studio skillfully conveyed in (even their most disastrous stinkeroos!) which gave their products a pulsating personality. It isn’t such a terrible flick that it isn’t fun to watch even if you take your horror thrillers as seriously as the Mummy takes his tanna leaves. And if you can’t have fun watching horror movies, where can you?
trust The Critics…
“Patterned after FRANKENSTEIN, the daddy of horror films, THE RETURN OF DR. X deals in shocks rather than mystery, although there is enough of the latter to provide abundant suspense until light is thrown on the weird experiments of an egomaniac.
The first part is extremely well done, and will have you jumping out of your skin. But after the strange case of Dr. Quesne is cleared up the suspense falls flat while you’re waiting for the inevitable ending. THE RETURN OF DR. X deserves another good word. The relieving bits of comedy are deftly done and in very good taste for this sort of film. You’ll get your thrills from the picture even if it is an anemic copy of the red-blooded FRANKENSTEIN.
MUSHROOM MONSTERS or: The Day The World Ended & Ended Part 3
A baneful bestiary of atomic behemoths bumbles thru our brilliant burgeoning pages this issue as Joe Kane Joekanely pokes fun of the mushroom monsters who showed up a few millennia too late invited by that ghastly ghostly host with the most, your friend and mine, the ever-popular (and present) Mr. Atomic Bomb. You know, that fellow with the glowing (in-the-dark) personality … well, here are some of his old-fashioned friends…
Last time I talked about films that demonstrated what might happen (as seen through the Holly wood eye) when muddled man and monstrous mushroom mixed — usually with disastrous results (the mixture, that is, not my article.). All too often the results were artistically disastrous as well. In this installment, I’d like to talk about another species of mushroom monster – the Prehistoric Menagerie re-awakened by nuclear energy in the 50’s and 60’s to embark on a mission of primal revenge.
invoke a monster or your digestion
This subgenre (which I will term The Bestial-Invocation Film –some fancy phrasing, that) proved to be very popular, not only in this country but in Japan as well. Rooted in the myth that nature’s will is ultimately stronger than man’s, and that the struggle ‘tween the twain can take place on a (more or less) conscious level, these films involve a resurrection of the Primal Beast – the dinosaur and its grotesque brethren – as an instrument of Nature’s punishment for our nuclear abuse, capable of catapulting man all the way back into the iron chops of primitive struggle and brutal daily survival. In the true Hollywood tradition, studio filmmakers found a basic fundamental formula for this kind of film and repeated it ad infinitum or ad nauseum, whichever came first. If memory serves, it was the latter.
So the formula they developed usually entailed an atomic blast disturbing the lair (a mountain volcano, or shelter on the ocean floor) of a long-sleeping prehistoric beast (e.g.. THE BEAST FROM 20.000 FATHOMS), or has the fallout contaminate and magnify and/or multiply a once-normal animal or insect (ala THEM!). The nuclear misbegotten are then usually destroyed either by nuclear energy (stressing the Jekyll-Hyde idea that said energy is a force that could potentially be used for survival as well as for suicide) or through a return to more traditional means, like fire (showing a reaction against technology – “See, with all the genius that went into the harnessing nuclear energy all it did was bring Hell down upon our heads and in the end it was a simple thing like fire (or water or whatever) that saved us, dig?”). It was a simplistic means of revoking the dangers of nuclear misuse, and one which was repeated, as I’ve mentioned, over and over again. Anyway, the range of revived and magnified monsters was pretty impressive. Outsized ants (THEM!), spiders (TARANTULA, THE BLACK SCORPION, THE SPIDER); grasshoppers (BEGINNING OF THE END); a praying mantis (THE DEADLY MANTIS); dinosaurs (THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS); and spontaneously-generated weirdos like the things who turn up in THE COSMIC MONSTERS all found their ways to the screen during the ’50’s. The Primal Beast films were generally even less imaginative than the Human-Mutation types discussed last installment. In this genre the monster or monsters are hatched or re-awakened; they stomp the local yokels; they are, in turn, destroyed. The Primal Beast-type monsters depended too heavily on sheer size and special effects like those awkward back projection techniques and the obvious miniature models. Also these films posed the question, “How will it be destroyed?” while the Human-Mutation films only asked, “What can happen to a man once he has been touched and contaminated by the devil’s paw of radioactivity?”
hobbling their way into your heart…
Most of the Primal Beast films were cheap hack jobs and their monsters unbearably lame. Witness the paper-mache octopus Bela Lugosi keeps caged in his mad doctor basement in his lamentably last, and worst, film role (discounting his silent, stock footage appearance in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, a Grade-Z quickie whose ineptitude reaches previously untapped depths of film depravity! in BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, which was alternately called BRIDE OF THE ATOM. Or how about the obviously superimposed back projection spider who, by stepping on the local movie house (unfortunately the wrong one), provides a convenient outlet for adolescent aggression in AIP’s THE SPIDER. Or the shapeless mass of seaweed with the huge eye in its center who hassles the crew of THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE. And if you think some of those are bad, pick up on some of the following titles when they hit your TV screen: tasty items like THE ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, BEACH GIRLS AND THE MONSTERS, THE GIANT LEECHES – not to forget THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH – a real live number about human remains lying on the ocean floor coming to life in the form of walking fish-monsters after chemical waste material had been inadvertently dumped on their “heads”. But these beach monsters adapt to the California culture with remarkable ease. In fact, the first thing they do after getting themselves oriented is to crash a pajama party inhabited by a bunch of bubble-brained beach girls and devour the whole lot – one of filmdom’s greatest camp achievements.
THE BEAST WITH 1,000,000 EYES, a 1956 winner produced by Roger Corman and directed by an unsung worthy named David Kramarsky, saved money in the special effects department by having real animals go berserk and attack a group of actors who, admittedly, deserved no better fate. Although technically outside the realm of the nuclear film (the animals are influenced not by radioactivity but by an “alien intelligence”), this rarely-screened gem merits mention for its sheer weirdness. In it a cow goes crazy and brutalizes its owner. An Alsatian dog freaks out and stalks a middle-class home in search of something to kill. A mentally retarded farmhand takes an axe and does a Carrie Nation number on some confused locals, and, to wind it all up, the “alien intelligence” transplants itself into the brain of a small desert rodent who is promptly swooped into the sky by an American eagle! Talk about a deus ex machina! Talk about fantasy! The American “Bald” Eagle has just about become extinct, due to pollution & insecticides, which keep its eggshells from hardening. A true-life horror story!
But, back at the bestiary, Hollywood was turning out films of occasional quality, films like Warner Brothers’ THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS – which ranks as one of the better efforts in the Primal Beast genre. French director Eugene Lourie, a former art director for Jean Renoir and Rene Clair and a collaborator with Sacha Guitry, was assigned the handling of that particular film. Based on a Ray Bradbury story called “The Fog Horn” and scripted by Lou Morheim and Fred Friebarger (the producer who didn’t save STAR TREK), Lourie managed to establish a powerful mood in the film, combining his models and special effects with a conventional script to convey a feeling of stark fantasy.
The Colossus Rhedosaurus
An archetypical (that critic-talk for “classic”) film of this genre, BEAST, begins with an atomically. induced awakening of an ancient Rhedosaurus frozen in the Arctic ice. After offing a few local folk, it stumbles back to its ancestral breeding grounds (which happen to lie right off the coast of New York City!), rumbles with the urban populace, smiles at his pork dinner (he eats a meddling cop), steps on heads and infects attackers with special germs, before being trapped in the Manhattan Beach Amusement Park perishing in a burning roller coaster, destroyed by a radioactive isotope, shot into an open wound.
Despite its phony philosophizing (something Hollywood screenwriter hacks can’t seem to resist) and predictable romantic sub-plot, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS works primarily because of the special effects concocted by Lourie and veteran special effects ace Ray Harryhausen. The final scene brings it all together in an orgy of frightening images – the monster writhing about among the ferris wheels and roller coasters, crazy thrill machines that have a nightmare quality of their own, while men in white radiation suits sneak through the carnival carnage and scale the giant coaster in hot pursuit of the Beast. When the park catches fire, the Beast strikes out blindly at the flaming wreckage surrounding him, and is brought down by a radioactive lance.
The fact that Lourie employs a night setting greatly enhances this scene. The highly atmospheric ambiance created by Lourie and Harryhausen (when we first espy! the beast, for example, he is half-hidden by a raging Arctic blizzard) was soon abandoned by the studio and Warner’s next Primal Beast production, THEM!, although a classic in its own right, was bereft of such moody details. The odd thing about the scrapping of Lourie and his counterparts’ moody, European style was the fact that THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, brought in at a cost of $250,000, eventually grossed over $5 million. But, considering the nature of Hollywood studios, I suppose it isn’t really “odd” at all. They are the only enterprises (save for the U.S. Government) that makes business of short-changing themselves. The Hollywood studios are today dying.
Other worthwhile titles in this genre include THE DEADLY MANTIS which, despite its inept special effects, managed to achieve a great degree of tension thanks to the taut and skillful direction of Nathan Juran. Juran was also responsible for 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH in which a tiny Tyrannosaurus Rex (another Harryhausen creation) arrives in Italy via a spaceship returning from a space probe on Venus and grows up to terrorize the land of grapes and gangsters. But not only were America and Italy feeling the effects of the sudden and drastic comeback of the Primal Beast and other gangsters, residents of England, Sweden, and especially Japan were hearing their thundering footsteps as well.
Eugene Lourie went to work in England where he was responsible for the birth of the GIANT BEHEMOTH in 1959. The following years saw the emergence of GORGO and his mother who slouched through London, wreaking innocent havoc wherever he went (Gorgo, in dinosaurian terms, was only a little kid at the time and did his damage without malice aforethought ), Sweden fell prey to REPTILICUS in 1962, who considerably altered the face of their previously beautiful countryside. But it was Japan who couldn’t escape the rampaging onslaught of those prehistoric monsters who loved nothing more than to take Tokyo apart in film after film. Their dedication to the destruction of Japan remained unparalleled, at least until we undertook a similar crusade in Vietnam.
Japanese monsters attack world: World giggles to death!
Throughout the late 50’s and 60’s, Japan suffered (and continues to suffer — as does anyone who has to sit through these films) from the destructive advances of the hordes of the strangest spawn of the Bomb ever to crowd the screen. Included in Japan’s filmland zoo, were bullies named RODAN, GODZILLA, MOTHRA, GAMERA, GHIDRA, YOG (among many, many others!), and even a playful looking version of KING KONG, Many of them were created by Ishiro Honda, who set the tone for Japanese horror films for years to come, beginning with Godzilla and with no end in sight.
Not that they have fared any better in terms of artistic success than their American counterparts. With washed-up American actors like Brian Donlevy, Rhodes Reason, and Myron Healey (yes, Myron Healey, who starred in VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE), unsteady special effects, and execrable dubbing, they became little more than imitators of a previously established mediocrity.
It all depends on what you think is worse – the rotten egg or the sick chicken who hatched it.
