Monster March: Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy is a film of lasts. It’s Abbott and Costello’s last film at Universal (and their penultimate film together), it’s the final mummy film in the Classic Monsters cycle, and it’s the last movie I’ve watched in reviewing Monster March. There is, for me, an unintentional sense of finality in this movie, which can only work in favor of the film; it also helps that this is, as Mummy Mondays have taught us, the second-best of the original mummy films.

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (playing themselves, lest the credits fool you) overhear that the mummy Klaris (Eddie Parker) has been discovered – and with him the fabled treasure of Princess Ara. Abbott and Costello blunder their way into a murder investigation, the disappearance of a crucial amulet, and eventually the dig site itself as they try to dodge treasure seekers (Marie Windsor, Michael Ansara) and high priests (Richard Deacon) alike.

 

Where Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man felt tired and overlong, a collision of genres that didn’t play well together, Meet the Mummy is tight, energetic, and laser-focused on spoofing the Egyptian adventure genre. The plot is overfull, to be sure, particularly when it comes to gangs of avaricious conspirators (many of whom look perplexingly similar), but there’s a sense that Abbott and Costello don’t quite know what’s going on either, making it much easier to roll with the punches. 

 

This being Monster March, there is a surprising dearth of mummy action. There is a mummy, though it’s unclear whether Klaris is Kharis with a name change or an entirely different mummy defending a princess’s tomb. He’s not on screen very much, though, and he never leaves his tomb. His wrappings look a little more like striped pajamas, but there is something iconic about the way his nose is obscured by a bandage as he snarls and hisses at his prey. Where the other mummies looked a bit like they were wearing full-face masks or faces made of papier-mâché, this mummy finally looks as though there’s a rotting corpse under the bandages. It’s only a pity we don’t get to see more of him on screen – though as fast as Costello runs away from danger, a lumbering mummy stands no chance of catching him.

 

While we don’t have as much mummy as the title promises, the chemistry between Abbott and Costello is stronger than it was in Meet the Invisible Man. For one, they don’t have to work around the premise of being private detectives or boxers; those aren’t highbrow concepts, to be sure, but compare that to Meet Frankenstein, in which their occupation as delivery boys was only incidental to the plot and quickly disregarded. Here, they’re just two drifters who happen to bumble into the plot, fumble around it, and tumble headlong into the mummy’s tomb for the final act. It’s a perfect set-up for a monster movie send-up, especially continuing the cynic/believer dynamic from Meet Frankenstein. What’s more, their patter is back to form; in one hilarious sequence, they argue about the meaning of the word “pick” – “My pick is the shovel!” “My pick is the pick!” and so on. 

 

In another great moment, Abbott and Costello try to pawn a cursed medallion off on each other. It’s first a game of pickpocketing, then a back-and-forth burger swap with one burger containing the amulet as an ersatz topping. While these bits go exactly where you would expect, the cumulative effect of seeing the situation play out longer and longer, doubling down on confusion rather than trying to illuminate, is uproarious. Compounding the comedy, perhaps more than in the other two parody films, Lou Costello has a penchant for breaking the fourth wall with a well-timed stare. Sometimes he’s saying, “Look what I have to put up with,” while other times it’s an impish “Ain’t I a stinker?” Every time he does it, without fail, it’s good for a chuckle.

 

It’s a boon that Abbott and Costello are so engaging here, because the rest of the cast is comprised of human “wet paint” signs. As the treasure seekers, Marie Windsor and Michael Ansara are mostly lifeless; their only saving grace is that their accomplice is played by Dan Seymour, sporting the same fez he wore in Casablanca, where he played the doorman Abdul. I point this out as a good thing because any reminder of Casablanca automatically raises my estimations of the movie (see also Invisible Agent). Meanwhile, Richard Deacon plays the cult leader Semu like a somnambulant Miguel Ferrer. It’s hard to imagine anyone being intimidated by this lanky, balding, sentient monotone; say what you will about George Zucco, dying multiple times as the same character in the same franchise – at least he had presence. 

 

At the end of the day, though, the Universal Classic Monsters franchise has never thrived with strong supporting casts. You get by with a little help from your mummy, and this is the first time since Karloff that I’ve enjoyed a mummy movie. Abbott and Costello are back to form here, sniping at every Egyptian cliché and genre trope. Meet the Mummy does a lot without doing too much, and watching this as my thirtieth monster movie took Monster March out with a smile. But don’t you go anywhere – you’ve still got three more days to go!

 

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy is not rated. Directed by Charles Lamont. Written by Lee Loeb and John Grant. Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marie Windsor, Michael Ansara, Richard Deacon, and Eddie Parker. 

Tune in tomorrow for Mummy Monday, with The Mummy’s Curse (1944) starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Virginia Christie.

Monster March: The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

As Monster March winds down, you’ve seen me start to get more nostalgic and reflective. We’ve still got a few days of reviews yet to go, but The Creature Walks Among Us represents the end of the road. From 1956, it’s the third installment in the Gill-Man trilogy, but more importantly it’s the final Universal Classic Monsters movie. (The gauntlet would more or less pass the following year to Hammer Horror, with 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein.) You might expect a robust cinematic universe to go out with a bang, but the truth is that The Creature Walks Among Us is, for a number of reasons, a very sad finale.

Abusive husband and scientist William Barton (Jeff Morrow) sets off with his wife Marcia (Leigh Snowden) in search of the Gill-Man (Don Megowan and Ricou Browning) after the creature’s escape from a Florida theme park. Against the protests of fellow scientist Tom Morgan (Rex Reason), Barton captures the Gill-Man and experiments on the creature, stripping away his gills and activating his dormant lungs to force him to breathe oxygen before interring him in a private zoo.

 

If The Creature Walks Among Us sounds bleak, it is. When it’s not cripplingly dull, which its first half interminably is, this Creature is horrifyingly depressing. The first two movies introduced an intriguing new monster to the Universal canon, a creature who could garner our attention whether he was stalked by humans or was gleefully eradicating them. Director Jack Arnold, who helmed the first two, managed to create a compelling atmosphere of tension and terror (even if Revenge of the Creature took its sweet time getting there). With John Sherwood at the wheel, however, there is no fear, no terror, despite the heavy lifting done by Henry Mancini’s blaring, shrieking score. There is only pity – abject pity – for the Gill-Man.

 

You’re probably thinking one of two things: either you acknowledge that a Universal Monsters movie always has some degree of sympathy for the monster, or you’re incredulous that one could feel any sympathy for an unthinking murderous beast. On the former count, you would be absolutely right. We’ve always already felt sympathetic toward Frankenstein’s monster as he struggles to find his place in the world, and we couldn’t help but empathize with the Wolf Man when he wrestled with his own darkest impulses. But other monsters have also been entirely heartless, especially the more monstrous they became – Dracula and the mummies, for example, bear little semblance to their own long-dead humanity. They’re entertaining to watch, but it’s hard to root for them beyond that popcorn factor.

 

How, then, does one end up feeling so compassionate toward the Gill-Man, serial killer of the sea? The Creature Walks Among Us spends much of its nearly 80 minutes visiting torment and torture upon the body of the Gill-Man, reducing him to a tragic victim of a litany of violence he cannot understand. Indeed, of all the cinematic subgenres the Universal Monsters can be said to have inspired, this Creature might well be an early forerunner of modern-day torture porn. (Heads-up that I’ll need to spoil the film to explain fully the true horrors in this film.) After stalking the Creature and spearing him with no less than three harpoons, the so-called scientists light him on fire, melting away his outer scales. While the Gill-Man lies in pain, Barton begins to play Mengele by surgically “enhancing” the creature, performing a tracheotomy and essentially rewriting the beast’s DNA to turn him into a land creature. This process, we’re told, likely breaks the creature’s mind, and he cannot understand why he can no longer breathe underwater. Then the horror continues when the creature is jailed in an ad hoc zoo, where he spends his time blankly staring at the sea just beyond his reach. He’s then framed for murder and electrocuted before he tears down the electric fence, kills the mad scientist, and wades into the sea, presumably to drown.

 

The whole film is fairly numbing in its brutality, particularly because the film takes great pains to remind us that the Gill-man is unable to speak or to reason, especially after sustaining significant brain damage to match his new physical scars. Unlike Karloff’s Monster, the Gill-Man has no capacity to learn, no way to understand why his every waking moment has become agony once the scientists trap him in a body he cannot use. It’s truly horrifying to watch, which may be the whole point, but there’s no ethical center to the film beyond Dr. Morgan’s halfhearted and unheeded pleas that all this is wrong. What’s more, no one in the film is particularly bothered by the fate of the Gill-Man, and even his one redemptive act is tossed aside in a brief epilogue in which the characters rationalize away the plot. (Then again, killing Dr. Barton to save his put-upon bride is a far cry from the horny fish monster we met in Creature from the Black Lagoon.) Again, if the film identified any of them as complicit, it’d be a compelling moral claim about who the true monsters were – a hallmark of the Universal canon. Instead, the film is only interested in the violence visited upon the Gill-Man’s body insofar as it makes him more monstrous, more gruesome to behold.

 

Nobody’s likeable, the monster is pitiable to the point of pathetic, and it’s such an overall dour proceeding that it’s hard to find anything to appreciate in The Creature Walks Among Us. There’s a very compelling message in here somewhere about man’s capacity for destruction and the way that we build cages to imprison the things we love; there’s even an ecological reading about environmental destruction buried somewhere in the ruined body of the Gill-Man. But the film is mired by its own squandered potential – another sad tradition of the Universal Classic Monsters, especially the sequels. What could be an opportunity for fresh horror and a fitting conclusion for a trilogy quickly becomes the cinematic equivalent of rubbernecking at roadkill.

The Creature Walks Among Us is not rated. Directed by John Sherwood. Written by Arthur A. Ross. Starring Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, Leigh Snowden, Don Megowan, and Ricou Browning.

Tune in tomorrow for Silly Sunday, with Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and Eddie Parker.

Monster March: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Despite having met an invisible man (Vincent Price) in the final frames of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello continued their monster spoofs with an invisible man all their own three years later, in a film that could only be titled Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man. Like most of Universal’s Invisible Man franchise, this Meet is a hodgepodge of genres designed to be a life support machine for special effects sequences – and it’s not the comedy duo’s finest hour, either.

Newly graduated from detective school, Bud Alexander and Lou Francis (Abbott and Costello) strike out on their own, but to their bad luck the first case is that of accused murderer and boxer Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz). Tommy hires the newly-minted detectives before shooting up with the Griffin invisibility serum in hopes of clearing his own name. Bud and Lou have to dodge mobsters and Detective Roberts (William Frawley) until a series of zany shenanigans puts Lou in the boxing ring himself as “Louie the Looper.”

 

After all that Monster March has thrown our way, I’ve come to expect the unexpected from an Invisible Man film. The film begins as a kind of detective noir parody, which suits me just fine – I’d had occasion a few nights earlier to rewatch The Maltese Falcon for the umpteenth time, and it seemed to me that Abbott and Costello were about to add a dose of monster mischief to the noir formula. With the addition of gangsters, however, we verge into Some Like It Hot territory (though Meets predates Hot by eight years), but before long we’re in a full-on boxing picture. (Barton Fink, eat your heart out.) If anyone had “underdog sports movie” in your Universal Monsters bingo, mark that square – the rest of us are stunned.

 

In the way that most of the latter-day Universal Monsters movies are retreads of previous iterations of the same story, this Invisible Man bears more than a few similarities to The Invisible Man Returns (1940), which starred Vincent Price in a mystery about an invisible man proving his innocence. Indeed, several of the special effects shots from that film – like the disappearing guinea pig and the Invisible Man traipsing through the woods – have been repurposed and recycled here. Audiences at the time might not have recognized the scenes eleven years later, but I suppose that’s why God invented critics like me. Then again, audiences certainly should have recognized the fact that a photograph of Claude Rains hangs prominently in this film’s laboratory; I certainly did, and it was akin to spotting a Stan Lee cameo in a Marvel film, the kind of throwback reference I’ve wanted from these films all along. It’s surprising that it took until 1948 for the franchise to stop taking itself so seriously and start to wink at the audience.

 

Three years may not seem like a long time, but it must have been for Abbott and Costello. The idea of casting the 54-year-old Abbott and 45-year-old Costello as greenhorn detectives is frankly preposterous without assuming that these are two men in a midlife crisis looking for their career’s second act. It’s such a struggle that the two have to be pitted against an endearingly aggravated William Frawley, ten years their senior, to make them look young and goofy. Their comedy is a bit slower, too – though when it’s fast, it’s fun, as when they trot out an old vaudeville sleight-of-hand gag passing dollar bills from hand to hand. On the whole, however, many of the gags stretch out a little too long, as in an extended sequence in which Costello struggles to order food and eat it without the intervention of invisible man Tommy Nelson.

 

This is to say nothing of the film’s third act, which becomes almost entirely a boxing picture. As one who isn’t quite a connoisseur myself, I can’t say whether this plays better for someone who likes boxing movies, but for me I found it unsurprising and dull. At first, it seems a clever premise, watching Costello swing at his opponent while the invisible man does all the heavy hitting, but then it keeps going, and going, and going. By the time the fight ends – as inevitably you might expect it to end – the gag has long since stopped being funny, if ever it actually was. Then follows a kind of epilogue, a coda in which a blood transfusion accidentally renders Costello invisible; it’s the sort of joke you might expect more of the movie to engage, since Meet Frankenstein made Costello’s brain pivotal to the Monster’s plot. Here, though, it’s a throwaway gag or two, riffing on the “invisibility=nudity” punchlines of Invisible Woman. 

 

By the time you get to the epilogue, one feels as though the writers – and there are an astonishing five of them – have run out of ways to thread the jokes together, resorting instead to coupling them like train cars. (To say nothing of how the invisibility effects are noticeably poorer, as if the budget had well and truly run dry.) The comedic fruit of Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man is low-hanging, and the script plucks it all in the hopes that some of it won’t be rotten. To be fair, this Invisible Man isn’t rotten, but it’s a far cry from the timeless comedic genius of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Like most Invisible Man movies, though, this one just doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. 

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man is not rated. Directed by Charles Lamont. Written by Hugh Wedlock Jr., Howard Snyder, Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, and John Grant. Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Arthur Franz, Nancy Guild, Gavin Muir, Sheldon Leonard, and William Frawley. 

Tune in tomorrow for Mummy Monday, with The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Next week for Silly Sunday, we’ll wrap things up when Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1954), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and Eddie Parker.

Monster March: Revenge of the Creature (1955)

The Gill-Man made quite a splash into the Universal Classic Monsters cinematic universe with an exceptionally strong debut in Creature from the Black Lagoon. A scant year later, Revenge of the Creature brought audiences back to the Amazon, though not for long – after the first reel of the film, I found myself bored silly, attentive only when I realized I enjoyed this movie better when it was called Jurassic World.

Joe Hayes (John Bromfield) mounts an expedition into the heart of the Amazon to capture the fabled Gill-Man (Tom Hennesy and Ricou Browning). After successfully apprehending the beast, Joe brings it to the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida, where the Gill-Man is the subject of both scientific scrutiny and tourist obsession. The Gill-Man is studied by Clete Ferguson (John Agar) and Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson), but it’s the latter who catches the Gill-Man’s eye as he waits for a chance to escape.

 

We’re not even far enough into the Marvel Cinematic Universe to make a good analogy for a franchise debut twenty-three years after the series began (that’d be 2031, from Iron Man in 2008), but the advent of the Gill-Man felt a bit like, say, something as off-beat as Groot. Both Gill-Man and Groot don’t seem like obvious fits for their respective cinematic universes, but that innate weirdness ends up being their great asset, and they manage to blend in seamlessly, thanks to an almost corporate adherence to the vibe of the brand. What kept Groot top of mind, though, was that James Gunn, Vin Diesel, and the rest of the crew at Marvel kept finding new things for Groot to do – despite his limited vocabulary, he could dance, he became a baby, and he saved the day in numerous surprising ways.

 

The Gill-Man, on the other hand, is explicitly forbidden from doing anything different in Revenge of the Creature. If it’s intentional, it’s brilliant, because the plot of Revenge finds the Gill-Man shackled in a cage for the amusement of his captors and the tourists who flock to Florida to see him. It could be a clever metaphor for sequel-as-sideshow, reducing the Gill-Man to the star attraction in a freak show while forcing him to relive his greatest hits from the previous film. I think there’s ripe metafictional ground to be ploughed with such a storyline, one that acknowledges the cyclical and recursive sequel formula while finding something new for the franchise to address. I have no sense, however, that returning director Jack Arnold is using his own source material for satire. Instead, it often feels like a cost-cutting measure to relocate the aquatic monster series onto dry land, with a built-in excuse for why the water sequences look like they were shot at SeaWorld.

 

It’s unfair for me to criticize Revenge for not being the low-hanging satirical fruit I might have made it, so I’ll say instead that the premise of the film reminded me a great deal of Jurassic World. Both films are about the ill-advised nature of building a theme park around a murderous creature, and the overall arcs of both films are virtually identical. They even share the stock character of a female scientist (there, Bryce Dallas Howard; here, Lori Nelson) who wonders if she should give up all the science and amusement park scenery to settle down and start a family. The only difference, it seems, was the budget, and maybe that’s why I found Jurassic World mindless yet entertaining, while Revenge nearly put me to sleep.

 

For the better part of an hour, the Gill-Man doesn’t do anything. He’s imprisoned first in a wading pond, but when he proves able to leap out of his enclosure, the Ocean Harbor staff sedate him and relocate him to a larger aquarium tank, chaining him to the bottom. Then we’re regaled with sequences of him eating fish and menacing his captors, but it’s a far cry from the slasher rampage we saw in his debut film. The minute he’s introduced to Helen, a comely ichthyologist who delivers dialogue like she doesn’t want to disturb paint drying, you know exactly where the film is headed, but there’s something less compelling about seeing it the second time around, no tension in the chase this time. It feels inevitable instead of alarming, in the Universal Monster sequel tradition of retreading familiar ground. 

 

Just about the only bright spot is that the sequel brings back Nestor Paiva as Captain Lucas, here cast in a role roughly analogous to Edward Van Sloan’s turn as Van Helsing. Like Van Helsing, Lucas is on hand to assure us of the Gill-Man’s existence, to brush off the initial skepticism and encourage his passengers to embrace a wider understanding of the supernatural. Of course, Lucas also ends up guiding a new cast of the doomed right to the Gill-Man’s lair – leading me to believe that he might also be the Renfield of the Black Lagoon. Yet Lucas, a bright spot in the first film, is used perfunctorily in Revenge, right down to the reuse of footage from the first film. (Lucas using the boat’s horn to startle an alligator wasn’t all that funny the first time we saw it; recycling it for Revenge is distractingly perplexing.)

 

With Revenge and all the other Universal Classic Monsters sequels that preceded it, I am fast coming to the conclusion that, if the Universal Monsters popularized the notion of franchises and sequels, they must also be responsible for the truism that sequels are never any good. Film sequels were not exactly common when Bride of Frankenstein (the first monster sequel) debuted in 1935, and for many years they would seldom be as good. Revenge of the Creature is proof that sequels like Bride were the exception, not the rule. 

Revenge of the Creature is not rated. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Martin Berkeley and William Alland. Starring John Agar, Lori Nelson, Jon Bromfield, Tom Hennesy, and Ricou Browning. 

Tune in tomorrow for Silly Sunday, with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange.

 

In two weeks, the Gill-Man trilogy concludes when The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), starring Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, Leigh Snowden, Don Megowan, and Ricou Browning.

Monster March: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

With only three movies under his fishy belt, and coming to the party more than ten years too late, the Gill-Man – the eponymous star of Creature from the Black Lagoon – had some rather large shoes to fill, following as he did in the footsteps of five giants in the Universal Classic Monsters cinematic universe. Thirteen years after the debut of Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man and a full twenty-three years after Dracula, the Gill-Man might best be seen as the spiritual successor to Chaney’s other monster, Kharis the Mummy. Fortunately for filmgoers, Creature from the Black Lagoon finally got that formula right.

After Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) finds the fossilized hand of an amphibious humanoid, he invites a pair of Californian scientists, David Reed and Mark Williams (Richard Carlson and Richard Denning), to Brazil to help corroborate his finding. Another colleague, Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), joins the expedition, but their arrival is disrupted by the discovery that some of Carl’s assistants have been brutally murdered by the Gill-Man (Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning), who’s become smitten with the hapless Kay.

 

At the risk of spoiling the rest of Monster March for you, the Universal Monsters movies tend to start strong, with diminishing returns for each sequel added to the canon. (That means that the first half of the month will be lots of good feelings, while the second half will leave many of us in cinematic despair.) For the first half of that statement, Creature from the Black Lagoon is no exception – it’s a fantastically strong debut for Universal’s latest and last original monster. Recalling the rhythm of a slasher film, Creature finds its titular antagonist swimming through the plot, surfacing only to commit homicide before retreating into the murky Black Lagoon. While the blaring trumpet score feels a little dated – we get it, the Gill-Man is scary! – there’s something timeless about the pacing and structure of the film, particularly the way that the film doles out brief sightings of the Gill-Man until his full appearance is revealed, almost as though he’s Godzilla being sighted piece by slimy piece.

 

To continue to reveal where Monster March is headed (for those playing the home game, I’ve watched the films in chronological order but reviewed them in thematic sequence), Creature truly reminds me of the later Mummy sequels starring Tom Tyler and later Lon Chaney Jr. Those films too anticipated the slasher horror sub-genre, but they did so in ways that was, shall we say, less than compelling. There is not much to fear from a mummy whose shambolic gait reminds one of a lurching, limping zombie. The Gill-Man, on the other hand, is quick and nimble, darting through the lagoon with balletic poise. So too does the Gill-Man’s very appearance put Kharis the Mummy to shame; while the mummy looked wrinkled, sad, and fragile, the Gill-Man is downright weird, covered in scales and fins with expressionless eyes and a piscine mouth that flaps open. It’s the kind of riveting screen presence that turned the Gill-Man into an unconventional matinee idol – any time he’s on the screen, I defy you to look away.

 

Here’s the catch with Creature from the Black Lagoon, though – and it’s the same catch we have with most of the Universal Classic Monsters movies – the human cast is tragically white-bread to the point where the Gill-Man can’t help but emerge the standout star. The supporting cast is often the weak link in a Universal Monsters picture, and I have to confess that I frequently lost track of how many humans were aboard the exploratory vessel. Julie Adams gets all the attention for being carted away a few times in the Gill-Man’s arms, though I was more drawn to the performance of Nestor Paiva as Captain Lucas, who seems to be the only character with a personality aboard the Rita. Lucas cackles and cracks wise, apparently the only person having fun in the movie. The rest of the characters putter about the plot, largely without emotion, firing off dialogue so dry that you expect someone to dub a wisecrack over the film. 

 

In that sense, maybe one more comparison needs to be indulged. Like Bela Lugosi in Dracula, the Gill-Man elevates the entire picture. Any time he’s on, it’s riveting stuff, and you feel you’re in the presence of true greatness, a classic in the making. (If anyone had “treating Gill-Man like an Oscar winner” in Monster March bingo, stamp your cards now.) The rest of the film struggles in his shadow, even as you know that anyone not wearing gills may not be long for this world – and, honestly, the sooner the better. It’s not that these characters are actively offensive, but the best parts of the movie are the creeping tingles of expectancy as we wait for the Gill-Man to make his next move. Even though much of the film is clearly shot on a soundstage, occasionally with the use of hokey rear projection, Creature manages to drum up suspense with each movement of the Gill-Man’s murderous pursuit.

 

But like Dracula, the Gill-Man is surprisingly lusty, maybe even more lascivious than Dracula’s suave seduction. In sequences that must have inspired the opening to Spielberg’s Jaws, the Gill-Man creeps up on the swimming form of Kay Lawrence, grasping at her exposed ankles. We’ve all been there, felt the wayward tendrils of seaweed brush against our legs in the deep, and the Gill-Man’s slack-jawed and unblinking expression layers on a frightful new dimension to the quotidian. Dave Edmunds warned us that “all he wanted was a lady,” but the fact that he is only ever interested in the sole female scientist adds a creepy subtext. Both Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster wanted brides, but the Gill-Man wants a conquest. Even if none of the characters in the film knows it, the Gill-Man brings a weird erotic charge to a genre that often sublimates that element deep into the unconscious.

 

In terms of franchise development, Creature from the Black Lagoon is so reminiscent of The Wolf Man because it’s a creative shot in the arm. Finally, something new happens in the stagnating cinematic universe. Even though he would never meet the other Universal Classic Monsters – the closest he got was a television appearance with Abbott and Costello, before joining The Monster Squad – the Gill-Man is a fantastic and fun example of a franchise raging against the dying of its own light. If only I’d been able to see it in 3-D! 

Creature from the Black Lagoon is rated G. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Harry Essex, Arthur Ross, and Maurice Zimm. Starring Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, Ben Chapman, and Ricou Browning. 

Tune in tomorrow for Silly Sunday, with Invisible Woman (1940) starring Virginia Bruce and John Barrymore.

Next week, the Gill-Man hits dry land in Revenge of the Creature (1955), starring John Agar, Lori Nelson, Tom Hennesy, and Ricou Browning.

In a Lonely Place (1950)

I love Humphrey Bogart, and I "get" deconstructionism, but In a Lonely Place proves that the two just don't belong together.

Director Nicholas Ray helms this self-conscious, self-reflective look at Hollywood during a changing of the guard - the younger generation is starting to take over, much to the chagrin of aging screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart). Looking for a hit to revitalize his careeer, Dixon finds himself adapting a dud of a novel while romancing the girl next door (Gloria Grahame) and dodging a rep as the prime suspect in the murder of a hatcheck girl who went home with him. That's the film in a nutshell, but factor in the defining character trait for Dixon - a temper a short as the mayor of Munchkin City.

In many ways, In a Lonely Place could be described as a cross between The Big Sleep and Barton Fink. There's the same MacGuffin of a mystery with the character-driven focus on a Hollywood screenwriter. The difference is that both films in comparison were intentionally purposeless, with the ambiguity and off-kilter nature as a functioning element of the work, not as a distraction. In a Lonely Place begins as a murder mystery, becomes a romantic dramedy in the middle, and concludes as a dystopic dissection of the relationship between Bogart and Grahame, but it does so unevenly, with the audience just settling into the idea of the film as A before the film becomes B. As such, it's difficult to get a bead on the movie.

Bogart's performance is grade-A, as always. Though the plot meanders, there's something compelling about Bogart's performance; the switch from hard-boiled noir to simmering violent passion is a little more palatable in the deft hands of an actor of Bogart's impeccable credentials. Grahame isn't bad, but it's fairly obvious (and subsequently disappointing) she's subbing for Lauren Bacall, who I think is fabulous - especially when paired with Bogart. The rest of the supporting cast float in and out without any real significance; indeed, the roles could have been played by anyone.

What's most problematic about the film is its script. Chekhov has that wonderful line about guns in plays - if it's on the wall in the first act, it has to fire by the time the final act is concluded. In a Lonely Place never actually fires a lot of guns that it hangs on the wall. For example, the murdered girl cries "Help! Help!" several times in Dixon's apartment before she leaves for the evening; though Dixon expresses worry that she'll be heard by the neighbors - particularly because we know at least one is spying on him - no mention is made of this vital clue that might convict Dixon in the eyes of the police. Later, an unseen character is described as a UCLA student; when newspaper headlines carry a story about a young man from UCLA being beaten by one of the principal characters, one would expect these two story threads to intermingle, but no soap. Consequently, larger plot threads get dropped prematurely; the murder mystery all but disappears until a confession that comes in the final minutes of the film, problematizing the viewer's relationship to this A-to-B-to-C flick.

I'd hardly give In a Lonely Place an A. Bogart's performance is top-grade as always, particularly if you like to see him playing against type. Me, I prefer him as his type; there's a reason that "the Bogart character" has become archetypal, and deconstructing that archetype seems like a blatant exercise in intellectualism. The social critique of the changing tenor in Hollywood is intriguing and merits further study, but I'm not sure that Bogart needed to be anatomized the way that he is in this film. He does a good job, but ultimately it's not his strongest work.

The MPAA weren't handing out letter grades in 1950, but by today's standards In a Lonely Place would probably rank a PG for mild violence and moderate thematic content.

North by Northwest (1959)

I've always said that my favorite film from Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock was his voyeurism drama Rear Window (1954). Then I graduated to loving Shadow of a Doubt (1943), doubtless because I was a budding Joseph Cotten fan at the time. This spring I had the opportunity to re-view Hitch's 1960 masterpiece Psycho and declared it my favorite.

Now that I've had the pleasure of finally seeing the master chase film North by Northwest, I'm reconsidering my list. I'm contemplating throwing it out altogether due to the sheer impossibility of choosing a favorite from among these. And I haven't seen enough Hitch, I know, to fairly assess the entire canon. More gems, I'm sure, await me.

As Madison Avenue exec Roger Thornhill, Cary Grant finds himself enmeshed in a world of espionage, all thanks to a case of mistaken identity. Superspy Vandamm (James Mason, whose voice I now realize Eddie Izzard has perfected in his imitative routines) confuses Thornhill for CIA operative George Kaplan, and the chase is on: Thornhill is off to find the real Kaplan with the help of femme fatale Eve Kendall (the radiant Eva Marie Saint), while Vandamm wants to stop Thornhill/Kaplan from thwarting the dastardly smuggling of secrets.

In some ways, this is, as screenwriter Ernest Lehman remarked, "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures." It's a sweeping epic across America, unlike anything Hitch had done before. The suspense is non pareil, the score by Bernard Herrmann thoroughly rousing, and the direction extraordinarily gifted. This was Cary Grant's last film with Hitchcock, and the two - as if knowing this was their final collaboration - have thrown everything into the movie.

The brilliance of the film lies in the film's ability to thrust us directly into Thornhill's shoes. Like the hapless ad exec, we have no idea who George Kaplan is, and we have even less idea what he has to do with the whole story. As Thornhill pieces together the stray tidbits of information he gets, so do we. However, very early on, we learn something that Thornhill doesn't: George Kaplan isn't real. This is the ultimate MacGuffin, Hitchcock's favorite film device - the plot element that drives the story and characters forward but is ultimately inconsequential (think the $40,000 in Psycho or the eponymous Maltese Falcon from 1941). The characters are ultimately chasing a ghost, yet it's not the ghost that holds the weight of the story. It's how firmly characters believe in the ghost that truly matters.

I tend to be a more passive filmgoer than most; that is to say, it's very seldom that a movie gets me physically riled up. Of course, emotions run high when I'm watching a movie, and I'm not embarassed to say that film has made me cry as many times as it's made me laugh. Yet by the end of North by Northwest and its (in)famous grapple atop Mount Rushmore, my heart was racing. Take that, Jack Bauer - this is the ultimate spy story.

So much literature has been exhausted in lauding Hitchcock for his masterful direction, yet I must beg permission for a few more words of praise. The direction here is perfect, never allowing the viewer to forget important plot elements such as the pistol loaded with blanks. And of course, for sheer potent sexual suggestion, nothing beats the film's closing shot of a train driving into a tunnel. It says a lot that no one's beaten this imagery, the strongest in subtle erotic imagery since the dual cigarettes in 1942's Now, Voyager.

If it's a no-holds-barred thrill ride you're after, I can't think of a better one than North by Northwest. Coming before James Bond, Jason Bourne, and all those other similarly-initialed superspies, I can't help but feel that this was a pioneer film from which a lot of espionage dramas have taken their cues. You'll be surprised at how familiar the film seems, yet you'll be dazzled by how immersive the experience is.

Just keep an eye on the MacGuffin.