(thanks, All Classic Video!)
One of those crazy 50’s “B” sci-fi/horror flicks that sticks in the mind thanks to the performance of its lead, The Indestructible Man is also one of those forgotten gems that modern audiences would most likely laugh out of a theater or change the channel after a few minutes of dialog during a slower moment. Of course, I grew up seeing this flick countless times on TV, so it was a formative part of my misspent youth. Combining sci-fi, horror and film noir elements and featuring a creepy performance from Lon Chaney Jr., this is one of those short, snappy little movies that makes for a nice jolt as well as few unintentional laughs.
Chaney plays Charles “Butcher” Benton, a convicted killer and thief who’s been given the gas chamber treatment, but has his dead body illegally sold to a scientist for research purposes. Of course, it being the 1950’s and a “B” movie and all, that scientist happens to be studying the effects of electricity and his own chemical concoctions on dead subjects and ends up quite thrilled when Benton is brought back to the land of the living. Naturally, when you beef up a dead man with voltage and vitamins, his first response will be to kill you and your assistant then take off with intent of wiping out just about anyone who sent him behind bars. Maybe that stupid scientist should have invented a time machine so he could pop up today and read this post, then zap back and get better prepared…
Ha! Motivation-killer flu, you can’t keep me from posting! Anyway, onward! It took Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen fifteen years to follow up their classic fantasy film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with the second of three movies starring the fabled sailor and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad both looks and feels almost as timeless as that first adventure.
When I was a wee bairn, I actually went to two different schools where some kids thought this 1967 film was based on actual facts and at least one really deluded kid thought it was a documentary. Seriously. My ears still spin in opposite directions thinking about that, but I digress. You’re either watching One Million Years B.C. for its faux historical value, Ray Harryhausen’s excellent dinosaur effects or Raquel Welch with a side order of Martine Beswick in that cave gal cat-fight sequence. Don’t deny it, now…
While I was too young to see this one in a theater during its initial run, I do recall the poster giving me the creeps whenever I saw it in a subway station back then. When it turned up on TV a few years later as an ABC Sunday Night Movie, I can recall watching it and being to scared to stick around for the ending, but not being able to move from my spot in front of the TV. I don’t recall whether or not I slept that night, but I think I was not good for much for a few days afterward.
Yet another Charles H. Schneer/Ray Harryhausen production featuring a brilliant Bernard Herrmann soundtrack, 1961’s Mysterious Island is another classic fans of the master stop motion animator cite as some of his best work of the decade as well as a pretty solid genre entry. It’s certainly got a nicely varied cast of creatures going for it from a giant crab, an very angry and huge prehistoric bird, a few huge bees in their cliffside hive and a majorly over-sized cephalopod near the end. You also get a nice balloon escape at the beginning that gets most of the cast to that titular island, a few ladies tossed into the mix courtesy of a shipwreck and a surprise appearance by Captain Nemo that adds another layer of the fantastic to the film…
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