Creepy Creature Double Feature, Volume One: Monster
From The Ocean Floor/Serpent Island (all 1954) + Volume Two: The Crawling Hand/The Slime People (all 1963/VCI DVDs)/Crush (2012/Millennium Blu-ray)/Gorgo (1961/VCI Blu-ray)/The Green Slime (1968/MGM/Toei/Warner
Archive DVD)/Manborg (2011/Dark Sky
DVD)
Picture:
C & C-/C/B-/B-*/C+/C Sound: C
& C+/C/B-/B-/C+/C+ Extras: C/C/C/B-/D/C Films: C/C/C/B-/C+/C-
PLEASE NOTE: The Green Slime is only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Here is a
decent group of B-movie genre films you should know about…
The first
two volumes of the Creepy Creature
Double Feature offers bad movies we know are bad and are issued in this
spirit. Volume One offers the uber
cheapie Monster From The Ocean Floor
(1954) known as Roger Corman’s very first major hit and is still discussed
today, including in how bad it was, is and always will be. It is not very good, but it is amusing and
event historical as it is hysterical. It
is worth a look and reminds us how cheap used to be fun. Extras include a Corman audio interview, text
trivia, Original Theatrical Trailer and even Deleted Scenes.
Tom
Gries’ Serpent Island (1954) has Sonny Tufts in the
same scenario, but in color, with a bad voodoo side story and hilariously
sloppy editing and filmmaking at its hackneyed best. The print here is very bad (more on that
below) which hurts the presentation’s fun, but the then $18,000 budget (that
would be actually a tenth of the cost to do the same film today on film or even
HD) is somewhat ambitious for its time, but the way it takes itself seriously
is to be commended, especially because they should all be laughing
throughout. There are sadly no extras.
Volume Two offers two more howlers. Herbert L. Strock’s The Crawling Hand (1963, known as one of the worst films ever made
on many such lists) as an astronaut returns only to have his hand (and really
arm, dressed in his astronaut suit sleeve) go on its own and kill people
(Oliver Stone could not make this work in The
Hand back in 1980, so you know the idea is doomed to be a joke in The Addams Family franchise) but we
also get some unintentionally funny moments all over the place. The hoot of a trailer for Hand is thankfully included.
Robert
Hutton’s The Slime People (also 1963)
had more governmental happenings as in this wreck about slime-dripping (latex?)
monsters a few people left behind in a federal evacuation must face. The storyline is wacky, script a goof fest
and this also has made some of those worst-of-all-time lists. Yes, it is so bad, you have to see it to
believe it. Again, a good pairing of
similarly bad films that should all be in print.
An
Original Theatrical Trailer and audio interview with co-star Susan Hart are the
extras.
Malik
Bader’s Crush (2012) is part of an
increasing number of attempts to update the bad, dated 1980s domestic enemy
within sexual obsession thriller, but using increasingly younger actors. This time it is Crystal Reed as the “psycho
chick” and Lucas Till (X-Men: First
Class) is the sports jock target of her soon to be highly unwanted
affections. The idea is that we are to
assume this is for an audience that has never seen this before, but in the
digital and home video era, what does that mean anymore?
There are
a few moments that are not bad, but this is more thriller than character study,
especially at 94 minutes with some of the twists and turns not always
believable and that sabotages the few that are plausible. The makers are probably betting one of these
actors will become a big star and the curio factor will eventually make this
profitable, but that is a poor excuse for a lack of a good, consistent script.
As well,
after 9/11, all the terrorist attacks and that this aspect of the thriller
genre is played out, does the yuppie or post-yuppie in jeopardy enemy within
thriller really hold any water anymore?
Not enough by a long shot. The
1980s are over, but too many filmmakers have not gotten the message yet. Sarah Bolger of TV’s The Tudors also stars.
A Making Of featurette is the only extra
here, but you get the impression they were trying to make this work, even if
they did not succeed much.
VCI has
issued Eugéne Lourié’s Gorgo (1961)
in an upgraded Blu-ray that is one of the best surprises on the list. The ultra-cheap King Brothers made this Godzilla rip-off with shades of King Kong (Gorgo is brought to
Piccadilly Square to make money for the capturers) and set it in London, where
few of the giant monster films have been set (Konga might be one of the others) that MGM issued, was a moderate
hit and has a following, a following that has bought the VCI DVD versions
often.
Now on
Blu-ray, you can really enjoy and appreciate how good some of the film turned
out, that it is better looking than the previous DVDs would have you believe
and has William Sylvester among the British cast. We have see it all before, somewhat, but I
like the way this is handled and despite the budget limits, model work is fun,
the monster is not the worst we have ever seen (and he is not in CGI) and the
script at least knows its way around the genre.
Truth be
told, outside of Toho, giant monster movies that work and are memorable are few
and far between. As cheesy as this is, Gorgo holds a special place in that
subgenre with King Kong, Ultraman, Super Inframan and Gamera. Now you can see for yourself why.
Extras repeat
an old featurette on the film and an Original Theatrical Trailer, but add some
new features including Daniel Griffith’s new documentary on the film entitled Ninth Wonder Of The World!, a Video
Comic Book, French Comic Book, Pressbook Gallery, Photo Gallery, Lobby
Card/Poster Gallery, Toys & Collectibles Gallery, Production Notes,
Restoration Video Clip and Isolated Music Score & Sound Effects track which
is a great way to see the film in a different light.
Taking
its cue from The Blob (1958, see the Criterion Blu-ray reviewed elsewhere on
this site), Kinji Fukasaku’s The Green
Slime (1968) was the Japanese Toei Studio’s attempt to compete with rival
Toho (those Godzilla films, though we get no giant monster here) as well as
what Gerry Anderson was doing on international hit TV series like Thunderbirds! and the success of the
original Ultraman was also figuring into the equation. MGM picked this import up to and backed it,
even processing it in their own color format.
With a
mix of Japanese, American Hollywood and other actors, a space exploration team
is on a planet when one accidentally tracks the title substance back to the ship
breaking the usual quarantine procedures.
Bad news for them all because when it comes into contact with blood,
giant killer creatures result (not unlike The
Slime People above) and the space crew has a war on its hands.
Done
almost too seriously, it does not necessarily become funny, so we instead get
this oddly cold film at times despite it not being serious science
fiction. The model work is not bad for
its time, but any aspect of it that could compete with Toho and other companies
was rendered aged that year by MGM’s own release of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that same
year. Richard Jaeckel and Robert Horton
lead the serious men cast, while Bond gal Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball) becomes the love interest, et al.
The film
reminds me of some similar scope and colorful Sci-fi productions of the time (Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun, Quatermass & The Pit, Planet Of The Vampires) that were
ambitious productions that might not have been 2001, Alphaville or Fahrenheit 451, but still intended to be
big motion pictures (Fantastic Voyage
also falls under this category to some extent despite being an all-Hollywood
production) even if they did not age well.
Though it eventually becomes a howler, The Green Slime is also worth seeing for the unusual moments that
work, the ideas of the future that did and did not happen and the interesting
chemistry the co-production and cats brings to it.
There are
sadly no extras, though several trailer compilations (including a few we
covered) do feature the hilarious original trailer you should see when you can.
Steven
Kostanski’s Manborg (2011) has the
newly-built title character (Matthew Kennedy) getting together with a band of
stereotypical misfits (think every action archetype they can rip off) to take
on Count Dragulon (I am not making that up) in a sometimes-comical mash-up of
everything you have seen before in the worst possible ways. Nothing here is fun, original, has much
energy, spontaneity, propose or even pace to possibly work.
The lame
opening is like a discount RoboCop/Six Million Dollar Man (or even Super Inframan, all reviewed elsewhere
on this site) that looks like it will not work, then it starts badly and gets
worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. The actors (guess we’ll call them that) look
confused and clueless too often, let alone not being into their roles, what
little there is too them. Music is bad,
editing worse and you could do this better at home with PlayDoh or Colorforms
if you felt like it. This is not even
good fanboy work. It is a mess and
almost total disaster. See it at your
own risk and to think t=hose old B-movies above are more ambitious by
comparison.
Extras have
far more effort than the production and include a Short Film, Premiere Q&A,
three making of featurettes, two long
feature length audio commentary tracks, Bloopers & Interviews.
*The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Gorgo and Crush are the
best performers here as expected, but still have their own separate issues with
Gorgo being restored as well as a
King Brothers film can be. VCI has spent
time and money to fix the film up as well as it can be, but even with a few
more million dollars, nothing can fix the bad, cheap visual effects (et al)
that are inherent to the film. The
result is that color looks as good as it can with a restoration that brings the
film mostly back to what a British 3-strip, dye-transfer Technicolor print
would look like, a little dark at times, but pretty consistent and a big
improvement over the previous DVD editions.
Grain is expected, especially in some of the cheap optical printing from
the original film, but I doubt we will see this one looking much better unless
a very mint condition print is uncovered somehow.
Crush is an all-HD shoot that has some
good shots, but also has a digital look at times, many shots that do not look
as natural as they should and a few that are not bad. Despite being 52 years newer than Gorgo, it cannot look manage to
outperform it, meaning we also get too many generic shots.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 color image on Serpent is unfortunately the poorest performer on the list,
originally shot in 16mm Kodachrome film stocks, this copy has none of that old
format’s great color schemes or classic look, is fading, colors bleed and the
print (possibly a poor 35mm blow-up or bad 16mm dupe) just does not show how
good this could have looked. The 1.33 X
1 black and white image on Ocean,
plus anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 images on Hand and People, along
with the newer anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 images on Manborg tie for second poorest presentations with the older filmed
presentations having an excuse for looking bad.
Manborg is simply a soft, sloppy
mish-mash of superimposed digital images throughout that looks cheaper than
even its cheap intents and is just way too sloppy for its own good. Visual productions like this show that the
makers have a very limited understanding of the genre (we keep seeing them
made) and makes the poor material that much harder to view.
That
leaves the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Green (shot in real anamorphic 35mm ToeiScope) the best of the DVD
presentations with the MetroColor looking good, but not great. I wondered if it would have had better
saturation, richness and range on Blu-ray, but this DVD is just fine for what
the film offers and we get a few dated effects shots that also give us more
grain, but the model work is first-generation.
The Dolby
TrueHD 5.1 mix on Crush is very
narrowly the sonic winner here, but by default and ties with the PCM 2.0 Mono
on Gorgo, which is a nice
improvement from the old lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono DVDs VCI issued
before. Crush tends to have an inconsistent soundfield, though some moments
are for dialogue or silence, but not badly recorded. Gorgo
shows its age, but has been cleaned up and is even a bit on the warm side, so
it is a nice upgrade and much better than those DVD versions.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on all the Creepy
films also show their age with background his and limited fidelity, save
Serpent whose sound has somehow survived in a better form. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Green is a sliver better, but rates the
same and has that howler of a title song that wants to be a Tom Jones Thunderball-like theme song. That leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo on Manborg with some mixed recording, sloppy editing (Is some of this on
purpose? It shouldn’t be.) and another
unsatisfying aspect of that production.
To order The Green Slime, go to this link for it
and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
