The Alligator People (1959)

 

Roy Del Ruth's The Alligator People is an interesting picture.  What we got here is a monster movie almost completely devoid of actual monsters.  By that I mean, there are no creatures out to get us.  Only encroaching nature and a drunken one handed lunatic.  I don't mean that as a negative.  This picture is actually pretty impressive.  It's the story of what happens when you inject reptile hormones into mutilated accident victims and also the unfortunate bastards that are cursed with loving them.  

Also, this controversial treatment involves being zapped with gamma rays.

Anyway, we got that all-to-common framing device where a couple of doctors inject their nurse with sodium pentathol (truth serum) and the nurse recalls a series of astounding events.  In her hypnotic state, she flashbacks to a time when she went by a different name (Joyce Webster) and she's a newlywed on a train travelling to an unidentified location.  She's just been married to a guy named Paul Webster.  He seems like a good guy.  No skeletons in his closet would be a good assumption.  Assumption blown as soon as a train attendant delivers them some mail including one letter that causes Paul to quickly get off the train at the next possible stop and, presumably, disappear from Joyce's life forever.  Joyce spends the next few years tracking him down.  Her investigation leads her to the Louisiana bayou.  Paul once listed some plantation (The Cypresses) down there as his address.  At the train station in the bayou, she manages to hitch a ride with a hook handed Lon Chaney Jr (playing a character named Manon), the Cypresses drunken caretaker.  

Chaney Jr is brilliant in the role, a sort of cajun Captain Hook.  The drive to the plantation reveals him to be a man full of grudges.  And all those grudges are held against alligators.  He badmouths the things the entire ride.  Joyce finds herself in the somewhat awkward spot of having to defend them.  Manon points out she wouldn't survive ten minutes in the swamp.  She relents.  He then spots a gator up the road and guns his truck towards it, running it over in one of the pictures more visceral, and convincing, scenes.  He's Ahab of the bayou.  Gator took his hand.  He wants it back.  Also, no gators were harmed during the making of this picture.  They used real gators and those wrasslers were professionals.  And that gun Manon fired wildly at them was full of blanks.  Also, he was drunk and kept missing.  

On the plantation lives a strange off putting woman named Lavinia and her slaves...er staff.  Lavinia takes an immediate dislike to Joyce.  Wants her to leave.  Train won't come until morning.   She'll stay until then under the condition that she doesn't leave her room which is pretty much an open invitation to leave the room and go snooping.  Lavinia is hiding something.  When Joyce asked her about Paul, Lavinia proved herself a bad liar.  Eventually, we and Joyce learn the truth.  We get there first.

Turns out there's a clinic down in the bayou easily accessible by river boat.  The clinic is run by Doctor Mark Sinclair.  We see patients, with strange masks concealing their faces, manhandled by beefy orderlies.  Later, one of the patients sneaks onto the plantation and into the house so he can play a few keys on the piano.  We see his scaly face in shadow.  Joyce follows the music in an homage to Frankenstein (or maybe Mel Brook's homaged this scene in Young Frankenstein.  Who can remember?).  The shadowy stranger turns out to be (spoiler) her husband.  An accident victim from years back.  Apparently, the procedure was a success.  At first.  Then the doctor telegraphed Paul (somehow knowing exactly where he was and on what train, etc) to let him know that, not only were the results temporary, Paul would eventually turn into some kind of weird reptile man-thing...alligator people.  Understandably, Paul took off before Joyce was subjected to some kind of bizarre reptile-man coitus.  He was protecting her, still loves her, wants to get it on with her, but doesn't she find him hideous? 

What's truly unusual about this picture is just how tragic it all is.  Sure, plenty of monster movies attempt to emphasize the tragic elements of their creatures, but in the end it's just a misunderstood creature stomping all over civilization.  We can almost buy the science here.  Reptiles are known for regenerating limbs so why not isolate what causes this regrowth and apply that shit to humans?  Ok, so it's 3rd grade science.  Still, works for me.   What's really tragic is the real monster in this picture is Manon whose hatred of alligators extends even to alligator people.  Why is this tragic?  Once again, a drunk is the villain.  

Things are not going to end rosey.  How could they, in a swamp?  Turns out Lavinia is Paul's mother.  She wants to embrace Joyce but tries to turn her away to protect Paul.  Circumstances are keeping these people apart and will likely end up destroying their lives.  Joyce will probably be left so traumatized that she'll block everything from her memory, change her name, and become a nurse or some shit.  The fact that she did this leads us to believe that Paul stayed in the bayou and that everyone else was probably killed in a radioactive explosion or something (only a spoiler if true).

I don't know man, I really dug the picture.  The atmosphere was thick, the music strung us along, and the makeup more than did the job.  At 74 minutes this thing flew right by.  I liked how it wasn't routine.  The "mad scientist" wasn't mad at all.  He was just an aging doctor who has dedicated his life to helping people.  The character is full of traits that make him human; empathy, love, humor, kindness, stupidity, god complexes, etc.  We also got the interesting flashback framing device, the monsters that want to be human, the human that wants his hand back and is figuratively a monster, and also the hero who, in a last ditch effort to make himself normal, gets zapped with gamma rays that may or may not leave him with a ridiculous looking gator mask for a face.  The alligator people are more human than most humans and especially that drunken biggot Manon who tries to kill Paul after attempting to have his way, sexually, with his wife, which is a pretty monster-ish course of action, even by bayou standards.  So, if you ever want to see a movie like Swamp Thing crossed with Frankenstein and maybe a dash of Moby Dick, then look no further. 

Robot Monster (1953)

At this point, I have a hard time distinguishing the bad pictures from the good ones. To me the worst possible thing a movie can be is boring. I'm not a fan of the phrase "so bad, it's good". If a movie is bad then it's bad. If it's good, it's good. I like to keep it simple. Plan 9 From Outer Space is great. I enjoyed every second of that thing. Well, I'm here to tell you that Robot Monster is even better. Somehow the director, Phil Tucker, has made a picture that features scene after scene of an alien Robot, with the body of an ape and the head of a deep sea diver, lumbering across a desert canyon highly entertaining. It probably doesn't hurt that this thing clocks in at a brisk 62 minutes either.

What we got here is the story of Ro-Man (the ape/diver/alien/robot) who has come to earth on a mission to cure it of the virus known as man (also women and children). Why? Because if they don't kill us then we'll kill them. He's got a point. So, Ro-Man arrives and destroys most of humanity with a calcinator ray. This ray is so powerful that it also manages to bring back stock footage of fake dinosaurs that proceed to destroy one another for no reason other than it looks pretty "cool". Unfortunately, for Ro-Man, the ray fails to kill a scientist and his family; which includes a couple of children (Johnny and Sally or some shit), a pretty hot broad considering the alternatives (I think her name was Alice), etc. There's also an assistant to the old scientist (who has the hots for Alice). Also, the scientist's wife. Why are they alive? The scientist has developed some sort of serum or whatever that defrays the effects of the calcinator ray. Why doesn't the Ro-Man just kill them with his bare hands? Apparently, the scientist has found a way to cloak their home from his scanners. Their home consists of a rock wall which is apparently within short walking distance from Ro-Man's cave. This is the set up.

What follows is a series of video conferences set up between Ro-Man and his otherworldly supervisor, who happens to look and talk just like Ro-Man, and also between Ro-Man and the last surviving family on earth. During one such conference, Johnny sticks his tongue out at Ro-Man to which Ro-Man replies "that child is impertinent!" Ro-Man proposes a truce: He offers the humans a "painless surrender death" as opposed to "the horrible resistance death". Ro-Man falls in love with Alice and can't bring himself to kill her. He has no such problem in dealing with the little girl. The child's murder does result in one of the picture's most touching scenes when the scientist, in a heartrending eulogy, offers these words of comfort to his remaining brethren: "Well, we enjoyed Sally while she was alive...", rubbing hands together...."we'll just have to think of something else to enjoy now". Maybe I'm paraphrasing.

Anyway, Robot Monster is a classic alright. We got sub par acting, horrid special effects, some incredibly hamfisted acting, inept plotting, etc. And yet, all this shit comes together to create something breathtaking. I hope they rerelease this thing in 3D someday. Oh yeah, almost forgot about the score created by oscar winning composer Elmer Bernstein (Thoroughly Modern Millie). Um, it's not bad. Perhaps I wouldn't be as enthusiastic about Robot Monster if it had been longer. 62 minutes is the perfect length. It's 17 minutes shorter than Plan 9 From Outer Space. Shorter, in this case, equals better. Check it out.

It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955)

It Came From Beneath the Sea is perfect viewing for a lazy saturday afternoon. One of those days where, nursing a massive hangover, you crawl out of bed only to collapse in front of the TV, in your lazy boy with a bowl of cap'n crunch, or whatever. One of those days. I'm not saying this is the kind of picture you should pass out to (at least, not without having seen it first). Let's say you watch a double feature. This should be the first movie. Passing out for the second (say, something like Reptilicus) is fine. I suppose you could watch something on the Sci-Fi network, or syfy as they go by now, but that wouldn't be the same. Those are the kind of pictures best enjoyed drunk and, right now, you're just not in the mood. So relax, sit back, recline, whatever, finish your cereal and enjoy a Ray Harryhausen masterpiece.

Well, actually this ain't exactly a Harryhausen masterpiece, I went a little overboard there. In case you don't recognize the name, Ray Harryhausen is a master of visual effects, stop motion style. He learned under Willis O'Brien (King Kong, The Lost World) and also was self-taught. It Came... was the first real movie to his credit, although he did some army promotional videos as well as a series of fairy tales like "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Three Little Pigs", "Hansel & Gretel" and other good shit like that. Unfortunately, the series didn't last very long since each episode took about seven years to make.

It Came From Beneath the Sea involves a giant octopus from beneath the depths of the pacific ocean. The picture's from the 50s so we can assume that radiation is involved. In this case, the radiation didn't exactly make the octopus giant (it was already giant), it just changed its eating habits. Now, instead of fish, it eats people. And submarines, and bridges, etc. Two scientists, and one sub commander who spends all but the opening on land, race against time to discover the nature of the beast and figure out a way to kill it before it eats California.

The octopus may only have about five minutes of screen time, but it's presence is felt throughout. In the beginning, it attacks a submarine, commanded by Kenneth Tobey (The Thing From Another World). It shows up as a pretty big fucking blip on sonar and creates some palpable tension as it closes in. Tobey, narrowly escapes, and ends up in San Francisco with the beautiful Dr. Joyce and her partner-in-science John Carter. I'm pretty sure a large part of the film's subtext is that Carter is gay. I could have missed this one entirely. I mean, he works closely with Dr. Joyce, they behave like husband and wife, she cares about him, etc. Then she's making out with Tobey, while Carter looks on seemingly uncaring, so I don't know what to believe. A strong case can be made that Carter is the hero of the picture so, if I read the subtext right, then that's pretty damned impressive. Also, did I mention they're in San Francisco?

The octopus attacks are few and far between but, when they come, they are damned impressive. When is stop motion coming back as a legitimate filmmaking tool? Has anyone noticed that CGI seems to be getting worse? Fuck man, let's bring it back. The only time we see it these days is from fringe filmmakers. I've gone on and on about it before and, at this point, it probably seems like I'm jacking off, but here's the difference. Both tools call attention to themselves, there's no question (although CGI can be used effectively and with subtlety, it rarely is). CGI, however, calls attention to itself for being fake. Like, that's a pretty cool cartoon sabretooth tiger. It almost looks real...and yet is completely weightless. Stop-motion on the other hand is actually real. There's substance there. Well, man, you don't need me to half ass explain this to you, you know. Just see the picture I guess. Anyway, one poor bastard gets squashed on a beach, tentacles come out of sewage drains spanking pedestrians like flap jacks and, in the film's greatest moment, the beast attacks the golden gate bridge (echoed later in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, where the beast attacks a lighthouse). It's probably some of the finest stop motion work I've seen. The beast sorta herky jerks it's way up the bridge. Woulda been strange if there had been a guy jumping off the bridge at that very moment, maybe land in the creatures maw. I guess that's a bit of a missed opportunity. Interestingly, Harryhausen wasn't put off by the miniscule budget. He even saved a few bucks by giving the octopus six tentacles instead of eight. It's impossible to tell since they, smartly, never show the entire thing at once.

Well, this isn't the best Harryhausen (I prefer Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans or even the aforementioned Beast from 20,000 Fathoms), but it's still enjoyable. Forgive my lack of detail. This is another review I've sat on for over a week. I started writing it last thursday, got tired, went to bed and forgot I even saw it for a while. If you're afraid of the black and white, you can supposedly watch a colorized version. Not sure why you'd do that, but they're both available, so no big deal. Robert Gordon directed this and did a fine job. This seems to be the only big movie on his filmography. After that he went into television, did some fine work there too it seems ("The Texan", an episode of "Maverick", etc). Seriously, if you're feeling like shit, hung over, dry heaving, etc, watch this picture and you probably won't be disappointed. If you're feeling really awful, afflicted with dry mouth and alcohol blindness, I recommend you skip this one and put in Peter Benchley's magna-epic, four hour monstrosity, The Beast. Both good pictures.