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Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)

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50ftwoman00On TCM, the intro by Ben Mankiewicz points out that the movie cost less than $100,000 and was shot in a week.  He gleefully points out some of the shortcomings. Fine, they did the best they could.

We open with a newscast report sightings of a UFO in the Barents Sea, Cairo, Capetown South Africa and leaving Aukland NZ travelling northeast.  Using a globe that looks like the one I had as a kid that had a pencil sharpener in it, he estimates that it will reach California in just a few minutes.

Strangely, he seems to be in California, however his station KRKR is an actual station, located in Nebraska.

Shrewish heiress Nancy Archer is getting her kicks on Route 66 when she sees a huge sphere descend onto the road.  The car stalls and she takes off on foot as a giant hairy-knuckled hand makes a grab for her.  Meanwhile, her husband Harry is getting pretty handy himself with floozy Honey Parker in the local malt shop.  They are talking about how they can get their hands on Nancy’s fortune — that stay in “the booby hatch” might be the ticket.  Hmmmm, if only she made some outrageous hysterical claim.

She hoofs it back to town and tells the police the story of the 30 foot giant.  Harry blatantly slips the deputy a fiver to keep his whereabouts quiet while the police go to look for the giant.  They find Nancy’s car, but nothing in an extra large.

Back at Casa de Archer, Nancy warns Harry to stay from Honey.  She tries to tell him about the giant, how she could feel his hand on her throat, and that maybe he was after her diamond.  He carries her up to bed, and gives her a sleeping pill.

The next day on the news, Nancy hears a story describing her encounter with a “satellite” and its 30-foot inhabitant.  “Was he pink with big ears and tusks,” the impertinent newscaster asks.  After he mocks her rocky marriage, she hurls a scotch bottle glass through the TV (tellingly, not the half-finished cocktail glass already in her hand).  Half-full kind of gal, that Nancy.

She insists that Harry get his gun and take her to the desert to find the giant.  After hours of driving around, they do find the “satellite.”  Nancy gets out of the car and runs to it.   A bald giant starts pawing at Nancy.  Harry fires a few shots to no effect, then gets in the car and abandons Nancy to the hairy-knuckled brute.

50ftwoman03

Obligatory scale-establishing powerline shot

Harry returns to their home to pack a bag.  When the butler demands to know where Mrs. Archer is, Harry belts him, and they have a pretty well choreographed fight.  It ends abruptly with Harry grabbing yet another whiskey bottle — clearly the weapon of choice in the Archer home — and braining Jeeves with it.  He meets Honey at her hotel, but the deputy hauls them both in.

Mrs. Archer is found mysteriously at home.  When Harry tries to give her a fatal overdose of her medication, the nurse switches on the light and catches him.  She shrieks when she sees Nancy’s gigantic hand, and presumably proportionately gigantic body.  Not having a 7,000 gallon whiskey bottle to clock her with, Harry backs away.  How the rest of this enormous woman is able to fit in the bedroom is unexplained.

The doctor places an order to Acme Medical Supplies which oddly enough stocks meat-hooks, chains, block & tackle and an elephant syringe.

After finding some giant footprints, the sheriff inexplicably sends the deputy to the office to man the phones, and drafts Jeeves into service to find the giant.  They locate the “satellite” and are able to enter it.  Oddly, the interior, heavy on pegboard and thick with smoke, is scaled to accommodate a normal sized man.

In a scene reveled in by Ben Mankiewicz and IMDb, the giant grabs their car throws a completely different model of car to the ground.  To which, I say shut up.

Nancy wakens from her coma and begins screaming for Harry.  She bursts through the roof, raining debris upon her doctors.  “I know where my husband is!” she bellows.  In this scene, she also reveals a luscious mane of hair as opposed to the effect of gigantism on men, which is to make them bald.

Nancy, in a true 1st-wife move, pulls Harry out of the malt shop and kills Honey.  She makes the obligatory giant move towards the power lines and is killed.

Despite taking almost an hour for the 50-foot woman to appear, this is highly recommendatable.

Post-Post:

  • Satellite.  They keep using that word.  I do not think it means what they think it means.
  • The newscaster helpfully notes that it must have been a Boer in South Africa that made the sighting.  Perhaps because it was reported as a UFO and not a MOFO.
  • Yvette Vickers (Honey Parker) was Miss July 1959 in Playboy, photographed by Russ Meyer.  Sadly, when she died, her body remained undiscovered in her home for a year, leaving her mummified.
  • Writer Mark Hanna also wrote the screenplay for The Amazing Colossal Man released one year earlier.  You want to make a movie about giant people, he’s your guy.  Or was until 2003.
  • Director Nathan Juran also directed 5 episodes of Land of the Giants.
  • OK, I’m no better than Ben Makiewicz.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Momentum (S1E39)

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ahmomentum01Richard Hertz, er I mean Paine begins the episode with a semi-voiceover. That is, he is narrating, but appears as a translucent ghost over scenes of the big city rat-race that he is bemoaning.

Having just been passed over for yet another sales job, he goes home to wife Beth.  She insists that he go to see his former boss who owes him $450 in back-wages.  He decides a better course of action is to hit a bartender up for a loan.  Sadly, this rock-solid source of capital lost it on the ponies.  So he goes to see his ex-boss.

When he gets there, he sees that Mr. Burroughs has company and doesn’t wish to embarrass him by asking for his wages.  He’s not above peeking in his window, however, where he sees Burroughs pull out a wad of cash and hand it to his unseen guest.

ahmomentum02After the guest leaves, and the lights are turned out, Paine lifts up a window and crawls inside to get his $450.  As he is counting out the exact amount, because he has told us he will only take that amount, Burroughs enters with a gun.  There is a struggle as Burroughs is calling the police and he is shot.

Paine heads back to Beth.  Because this couple has the communication skills of Oceanic 815 passengers, there is more death. As always in AHP-world, justice is eventually served.

This was the final episode of season one and it is suitably nasty as far as the censors would allow at the time.  Justice is served, but after 2 even more senseless than usual deaths. Good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  We’ve got a couple of live ones!  Skip Homeier and Joanne Woodward are still with us.  Possibly a couple of others, or their obscurity just means their deaths were overlooked by IMDb.
  • AHP Proximity Alert: Harry Taylor was in 6 episodes this season, including one just 2 weeks earlier.  Give somebody else a chance!
  • The apartment hunter was just in Decoy 2 weeks ago.
  • Joanne Woodward = Mrs. Paul Newman for 50 years.
  • Skip Homeier is famous for 2 iconic roles – both of them in Star Trek:  Melakon the Nazi and Dr. Sevrin the space hippie with the designer ears.

Enemy (2013)

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enemy00Now here’s a good candidate for movies boxed 20 for $5.  Not that it’s bad, it just is extremely slow and poorly shot.  OK, I guess that is the definition of bad.  However, it is partially redeemed by a fascinating (if unoriginal) plot and the performance of the increasingly reliable Jake Gyllenhaal.

A colleague recommends a movie to history professor Adam (Gyllenhaal).  In the background of one scene, he sees an actor who looks exactly like himself.  This set-up has been used in countless movies and TV shows. Fortunately it is a classic trope, often involving the nature of reality or identity, which never goes stale.  Unless it is the one about Peter Brady.

Adam tries calling the actor Anthony and has a very awkward conversation with his wife.  Later he has an awkward conversation with Anthony, which seems to be progress.

Then Anthony takes the initiative and calls Adam to set up a meeting.  Anthony’s pregnant wife snoops on Adam at his school.  Finally the stalking reaches its apex when Anthony takes Adam’s wife away for the weekend, and Adam pays the pregnant Ms. Anthony a visit and pretends to be Adam.

And there is this:enemy02No idea.

Anthony gets into an accident with Mrs. Adam, and Mrs. Anthony figures out that she is in bed with a doppelganger.  Then some really crazy shit happens that I can’t even begin to convey.

There is a really good Twilight Zone in here somewhere.  And not even a 4th Season TZ padded out to an hour.  This is a 30 minute episode slowed down to fill 90 minutes and shot all in sepia tones.  Only my suckertude for this kind of story kept me interested.

Post-Post:

  • Based on a novel entitled The Double by Jose Saramago.  Coincidentally, there was another movie released in 2013 also entitled The Double, based on a Dostoevsky novel.  Still not as confusing as The Returned.
  • I have another DVD based on a Saramago novel entitled Blindness.  That one was part of an 8 movies for $5 collection.  Hermano can’t catch a break.

Tales from the Crypt – Dead Right (S2E1)

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tftcdeadright01Dinty Moore goes to see a psychic on her lunch hour.  Madam Vorma has the second sight and reads vibrations.

Vorma reads her as a secretary wasting her life away, waiting to meet Mr. Right or Mr. Rich.  She says Dinty will lose her job and get another one today.  Dinty says her boss is out of town so this is impossible.  But Madam Vorma knows her stuff.

Dinty is fired (by Sarah Connor’s shrink) for for taking 25 minutes too long at lunch.  Walking down the sidewalk, a strip club manager offers her a job.  Sadly, as a waitress.

tftcdeadright03aDinty goes back to Vorma.  She “sees” Dinty getting married, and her husband inheriting a lot of money shortly after they are married.  After he inherits the money, he will die violently.

Back at the club, Miss Nude Nebraska 1948 is introduced.  Thank God this was not set in present day.  Dinty sees George (or possibly Oscar) Bluth waddle into the club.  He begins hitting on her.  Jeffrey Tambor, not a looker on his best day, is padded out in a repulsive fat suit, blubber and prosthetic nose.

Dinty is disgusted by him but her greed out-weighs her nausea.  Soon they are dating and married.  Unexpectedly, Dinty wins $1 million by being the one-millionth customer at the tftcdeadright04automat.  Taking place 50 years ago, this must have been the combined revenue of every automat in the country.  That’s probably what killed them.

Vorma is proven correct in her predictions and, as always, justice is served like apple pie at an automat.  Sadly, though only to Dinty —  Tambor is really an object for pity in all of this.  A hideous hulk who actually thought he was going to be happy with a beautiful wife — what a maroon.  And though he did kill her, it was her greed and cruelty that propelled him to old sparky.

The episode ends ominously with another customer coming to Vorma.  Yet another botched ending as it suddenly shifts perspective to make Vorma the focal point of the evil.  All she did was correctly predict the future.tftcdeadright05

Still, a good twist and some excellent performances from the leads make this a great episode .  Also some great make-up on Tambor, and some great style — fashion, make-up, hair — from Dinty.  She really comes off as a classic movie star.

Post-Post:

  • This aired just as Demi Moore was becoming huge — Ghost was the same year.  A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal and Disclosure would open in the next four years.
  • She really was nothing short of perfect in this.  It’s too bad she didn’t use that comedic talent in more of her roles.
  • Howard Deutch also directed the episode Only Sin Deep.

King of the Zombies (1941)

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kingzombies0220 movies for $5.  What could possibly go wrong?  part VIII.

I went into this expecting something like White Zombie with Bela Lugosi.  In tone and quality, it was no White Zombie.  King of the Zombies is a comedy intended to capitalize on (i.e. ripoff) the success of Bob Hope’s Ghost Breakers released the previous year.  I can’t say how successful it was at the box office, but as a comedy, it is not a complete failure, except by all modern cultural standards.

Mac McCarthy is piloting a plane carrying Bill Summers and Jeff Jackson.  They have lost their way “somewhere between Cuba and Puerto Rico”, which is apparently what they called Haiti in 1941.  Running low on fuel, Mac says he must put the plane down in the jungle.  Jeff observes, “I knew I wasn’t cut out to be no blackbird.” Thus, Jeff is established as the comedy center in a Stepin Fetchit sort of caricature; he is even sitting in the back of the plane.

kingzombiemoreland0The model plane lands in the model jungle knocking over a few model trees on the way.  Despite all 3 men being thrown from the fuselage in the crash, they are unhurt.  Jeff, however, wakes up believing himself to be dead.  When Bill assures him they are alive, Jeff says, “I thought I was a little off-color to be a ghost.”

Anyway.

They find a house in the jungle and let themselves in.  The owner Miklos Sangre greets them and offers them drinks.  You can’t accuse the movie of not being multi-culti when the villain is an Austrian refugee with a Greek first name, Spanish last name, and German accent. Mac tells the owner that they picked up a strange radio broadcast as they were landing.  The owner says he must be mistaken, there is no broadcast.  The next boat is not due for 2 weeks,  but he offers them rooms.

Naturally, Jeff can’t stay upstairs with decent (i.e.white) folk, so he is escorted downstairs. Getting a glimpse of the titular Zombies, Jeff bolts back upstairs and begs his companions to leave.

Sangre introduces them to his wife who seems to be a Zombie, or at least a real cold fish.  And his niece who is not. Mac inquires about another plane which crashed in the area recently.  Sangre pleads ignorance, but will “ask the natives” in the morning.

Sangre is clearly modeled after Bela Lugosi’s character in White Zombie.  Lugosi was actually offered the role, but was unavailable.  The script still reflects his participation when Sangre says, “Zombies never eat . . . meat” mimicking Lugosi’s line in Dracula, “I never drink . . . wine.”  Although that doesn’t make sense when you think about it.

kingzombiemoreland01This is all Mantan Moreland’s movie.  Apart from a few quips from Sangre’s “help”, no one else has any laugh-lines.  It is easy to cry raaaaacism, but really, was Bob Hope a symbol of manhood playing so many cowards back then?  Didn’t Lou Costello play a a man-child idiot for decades?  Moreland became one of the first black millionaires, and was a pretty funny guy, often improvising lines.  Sadly, it appears that Hollywood was offended by his shtick and banished him in 1949; he did not make another movie for 15 years.

Someone would have to be having a pretty bad day for me to recommend them spending 67 minutes of it on this. In fact, I can’t imagine such a scenario.  On the plus side, I did finish it and had a couple of guilty laughs.

Unratable.

Post-Post:

  • Incredibly, Edward J. Kay’s musical score was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942.  He didn’t win, but then his competition included Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, and Bernard Herrmann for Citizen Kane.  Impossible to imagine Hollywood snobs today even admitting to watching a movie like this.
  • Mantan Moreland was considered as a replacement in the Three Stooges after Shemp died.  Anyone who saw the post-Shemp shorts knows that he could only have improved them.
  • Holy crap, I had no idea Stepin Fetchit lived until 1985.
  • Or that his son killed 3 and injured 15 as the Pike Killer shooter on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1969.
  • Available on YouTube, but why would ya?