Saturday, April 1, 1972 (Noon): Monster A Go Go (1965) / Hangover Square (1945)

Synopsis: A Mercury space capsule returns to Earth far off course, landing in the Illinois countryside. Dr. Chris Manning (Peter Thompson) and Dr. Steve Connors (Philip Morton) are dispatched by NASA to recover the vehicle.  They find that it was badly damaged upon re-entry and contaminated with massive amounts of radiation.  The astronaut, Frank Douglas (Henry Hite), is nowhere to be found.

Before long, reports of a ten-foot tall creature wearing a silver suit begin to filter in.  The thing is wandering across the countryside, leaving bodies and destruction in its wake.  Manning and Brent quickly realize that this is Douglas, irradiated and apparently mutated into some kind of monster.

Dr. Conrad Logan and his assistant, Dr. Nora Kramer (Losi Brooks), try to work out what has happened to Douglas. They determine that the emits a field of deadly radiation around it that extends out about 10 feet. The field is gradually growing, and if the creature isn't stopped the field will grow to hundreds of feet in diameter. This is especially troubling since the monster is making its way toward Chicago.

Dr. Logan manages to capture the creature and gives it doses of an anti-radiation drug. But it breaks loose and heads toward the city. 

The civil defense forces manage to corner the thing in the sewers of Chicago.  They pursue it, but what can they do, even if they manage to corner it?

Comments: The story behind this odd little movie is far more interesting than the movie itself.  In 1961 would-be director Bill Rebane shot about 40 minutes' worth of footage with the intent of making a Quatermass-esque horror movie about a crashed space capsule and its sole inhabitant, a man who has mutated into a 10-foot tall radioactive monster.  The monster goes on a rampage through the countryside, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. A gaggle of Air Force investigators try to track it down.

This scenario isn't terribly original, but it's workable enough for a low-budget horror flick.
Unfortunately, what Rebane put in the can was awful. He simply had no talent as a filmmaker, on any level: no concept of how to tell a story or build narrative tension, no ear for dialogue, no talent for coaxing good performances out of actors, no knack for composition, no skill at editing. The scenes he filmed are poorly staged master shots, loaded down with dull and excruciating dialogue. Every scene is slack, with little at stake and nothing to propel the narrative forward. Eventually Rebane ran out of money and the project was abandoned.

A few years later cult director Herschell Gordon Lewis came on the scene. Lewis didn't have much more talent than Rebane, but he did possess a keen eye for exploitation.  He also knew how to economize. Lewis needed another feature to fill out a double bill with his hillbilly drive-in flick Moonshine Mountain.  He bought Rebane's footage, shot some new scenes with gyrating teenagers, added his own over-the-top narration and rock-n-roll-flavored soundtrack, and managed to cobble together an almost-70-minute feature that he titled Monster a Go Go (the title doesn't really fit the movie, but I bet it looked good on a drive-in marquee).

Lewis was a successful ad man who had produced a number of schlocky but profitable drive-in movies, stuff like 2000 Maniacs (1964),  Blood Feast (1963) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). He also produced nudies early in his career, and later made soft-core exploitation fare such as Linda and Abiline (1969) and The Ecstasies of Women (1969).

There was little chance that Rebane's footage could be turned into anything entertaining, but Lewis makes a fair effort, adding some T and A scenes as various partying teenagers wander off into the woods and get cooked by the monster. He also shot an ending that made good use of Civil Defense emergency vehicles, though it doesn't add much in the way of suspense.

Is Monster a Go Go a bad movie? Yes. Thanks for asking. Is it unwatchable? No, but it's much more of a slog than perennial "worst movie of all time " nominees like Plan Nine From Outer Space and Robot Monster.  Those movies are terrible in their way, but at least they're lively. This one seems determined to bore the audience to death and it requires a heroic effort to keep your eyes fixed on the screen.

The marketing campaign for this one is notable because it's so shot through with an irony that seems better suited to the cynical 1970s. "An astronaut went up -- and a 'guess what' came down!" the one-sheet chortles. Inviting the audience to snicker at your movie was kind of a new thing in 1965. In our cynical, post MST3K world, it's become a lot more common.








 Hangover Square

Synopsis: Gifted musician George Harvey Bone  (Laird Cregar) has been commissioned to write a piano concerto for his patron Sir Henry Chapman (Alan Napier). Sir Henry is so pleased by what George has written so far that he promises to give the concerto a grand premiere as soon as it is finished, and this is all but certain to make his reputation in the music world.

But George is a deeply troubled man.  All his life he has suffered from occasional blackouts, but lately they are becoming more frequent and more disturbing.  George even has a vague memory of attacking a shopkeeper during one such fugue and setting his place on fire by tossing a kerosene lamp to the floor.  But the people around him, including Sir Henry's daughter (Faye Marlowe) assure him that he's simply overwrought. The pressure he's under to complete the concerto is getting to him.

He is advised to take a break -- to get out into the world, to do new things.  In walking about London he meets a dance-hall girl named Netty (Linda Darnell) with whom he has little in common.  But she is pretty and charming, and he quickly falls in love.  Netty, intrigued that he is a musician, asks him to write a song for her to perform.  

At first reluctant, he does so, and it's immediately a success.  She presses for more, and he again complies, even though it is taking valuable time away from his concerto. In time Netty is a rising star on the London music-hall scene, thanks to the popular songs George is writing for her. George, meanwhile, is under increasing pressure to complete the project that he is now late in delivering.

Before long he asks Netty to marry him. But she rejects him, revealing to him that she is already engaged to another man.  She does not love him, she confesses; she has just been using him to write the songs that are making her career. Stunned, George returns home, and places a curtain-sash into his coat pocket, and it's clear that he is entering into another of his murderous blackouts....

Comments: We've talked about how influential the popular and deeply psychological thriller Gaslight was on filmmakers in the 1940's, and this smart entry from Fox is a good example of a film that tries to capture its spirit.  Hangover Square is a period piece that somewhat mimics Gaslight's look; the atmosphere is dark and moody, and the plot turns on whether the protagonist is a killer or just an overly sensitive type whose conscience is working overtime.

Any good movie must have a protagonist trying to reach a goal, and this one is no different.  Aside from the question of guilt or innocence, George's goal is to complete his masterpiece and perform it for the public.  In spite of everything he does manage to succeed in this, so no matter what else goes wrong in his world, no one can take away the triumph of his premiere.

Laird Cregar really dominates this production as the troubled musician, and there is a deep vulnerability visible beneath his hulking shoulders and coarse features.   This physical awkwardness actually makes him more sympathetic and appealing than if a typical Hollywood prettyboy had been cast in the role. Cregar looked older than he was, which makes his death shortly after Hangover Square wrapped production even more shocking. He apparently died of complications from a crash diet he embarked upon in preparing for this role.  In his earlier films he was obese, and even the slimmed-down Cregar is husky in the manner of a young Orson Welles. He is splendid in this movie, and it's a shame he wasn't able to take on more starring roles.

Linda Darnell is pitch perfect too as the calculating Nina, and she convinces us that George would buy her act hook, line and sinker.  It's an intelligent and understated performance, featuring not just her legs (as the one-sheet implies) but also her eyes, as she constantly checks from moment to moment to see how much of her story George is buying. 

I haven't even mentioned George Sanders, who is in a relatively small but important role as a psychologist.  As always, Sanders is understated and authoritative, the perfect counterpoint to George's barely-contained bundle of nerves. And Alan Napier is his old reliable self as Sir Henry Chapman: cool, cultured and unflappable. 

Saturday, March 25, 1972: The Return of Dr. X (1939) / The Death Kiss (1932)

Synopsis: Newspaper reporter Walter "Wichita" Garrett (Wayne Morris) is thrilled to score an interview with celebrated actress Angela Merrova (Lya Lys).  But when he arrives at her apartment, Garrett finds Merrova dead, stabbed through the heart. Like any good newspaperman, he calls not the police, but his editor.  Before you can say "stop the presses!" his newspaper blares this scoop on its front page.  It's only after the late edition comes out that the police find out about the crime and arrive at Merrova's apartment, but they find no body, and no sign of a struggle.  Garrett is perplexed, but insists that Merrova is dead and someone must have moved the body.

Later, Garrett is called into his editor's office, where he is astonished to find Angela Merrova, not only alive, but threatening a monster lawsuit.  Garrett insists that he saw Merrova dead, and that this woman must be an imposter. The editor sees things differently and Garrett is fired. But because he is that plucky breed of newspaperman that we often encounter in old movies, this doesn't deter him.  He seeks out his friend, Dr. Michael Rhodes (Dennis Morgan) to ask him whether someone with a stab wound of the type Angela Merrova sustained could survive. 

The good-natured Dr. Rhodes is tolerant of Garrett's questions but he's a little busy.  He is preparing to assist hematologist Dr. Francis Flegg (John Litel) with a tricky blood transfusion.  The donor, a man with a rare blood type, hasn't shown up.  Nurse Joan Vance (Rosemary Lane) tells him that she has the same rare blood type, and volunteers to take the donor's place for this procedure.

Joan clearly has a crush on the handsome Dr. Rhodes, and volunteering for a transfusion succeeds in catching his attention: after the procedure he asks her out on a date.  But instead of dancing under the stars, she ends up tagging along as Rhodes and Garrett check up on the missing blood donor.  They find him dead in his apartment, his body drained of all blood.  In fact the only blood they do manage to find doesn't seem to be human blood at all.

They take the blood sample to Dr. Flegg, but Flegg seems rattled by it, angrily asserting that it's ordinary human blood.  While there, they meet the doctor's creepy assistant Marshall Quesne (Humphrey Bogart), a pallid man with a streak of white running through his hair. Certain that he's seen Quesne somewhere before, Garrett searches the newspaper archives until he stumbles onto the photograph he's looking for: Quesne is none other than Dr. Maurice Xavier, whose diabolical experiments sent him to the electric chair years earlier.  Garrett now knows of two dead people who have turned up alive.  But how is it possible?

Comments: This is Horror Incorporated's second go-round with The Return of Dr. X, best remembered today as Humphrey Bogart's only horror film.  While Bogart absolutely didn't want to do this picture, and struggled mightily to get out of it, to his credit he made a valiant effort with the role once he realized he was stuck with it.

Don't get me wrong: Bogart is definitely miscast.  He doesn't project anything close to the aura of menace the character is supposed to possess (and would have possessed, if Karloff, the actor for whom the part was written, had stuck around the Warner lot long enough to appear in it). But he gives it his best effort and has a couple of nice moments -- the knowing smirks and glances when talking to Garrett and Rhodes, the absent way he pets the rabbit whenever he talks about...you know.... blood.

So many people focus on Bogart's performance that this film is rarely judged on its own merits.  It's surprisingly light-hearted for a horror film, owing mostly to the presence of Wayne Morris as "Wichita" Garrett, a breezy naif of a protagonist who supplies his own comic relief.   Wichita's goofy one-liners undercut the almost noirish atmosphere the rest of the cast tries to build.  Interestingly, Dennis Morgan's Dr. Rhodes is a bit more of a conventional leading man type -- he gets the standard-issue romance, for example --  but we have a bit more fun with Wichita. He might be a goofball, but he's at least a moderately interesting one.   Rhodes is a stuffed shirt, and pretty dull company.

John Litel makes a pretty menacing Dr. Flegg; he is much more the mad scientist than the titular Dr. X, who has to do double duty as both lab assistant and monster. Rosemary Lane plays a rather unfortunate nurse, a sweet and innocent young woman who's looking to get her MRS degree, and Lya Lys is intriguing as Angela Merrova but disappears from the movie all too soon. I was looking forward to seeing what her real agenda was, but it was not meant to be.

The Death Kiss

Synopsis: At Ton-Art Studios in Los Angeles, a murder mystery called The Death Kiss is being filmed. Lead actor Myles Brent plays a character who is being targeted for murder in the final act.  He falls under a hail of gunfire.  Director Tom Avery (Edward Van Sloan) halts filming and complains that Brent's death scene was unconvincing.  But moments later it's discovered that Brent is really dead -- killed by one of the shots fired on the set.

Police Detective Lt. Sheehan (John Wray) arrives at Ton-Art and questions those who were present for the death scene.  He also collects the prop guns and determines that all of them were loaded with blanks.

Franklyn Drew (David Manners), a screenwriter on the lot, pokes around the set and discovers a .45 slug buried in one of the flats. He brings it to Lt. Sheehan as proof that the murderer was in possession of a .45, not one of the prop .38s.  That proves it's murder -- since none of the prop guns were .45 caliber weapons.

Sheehan questions Marsha Lane (Adrienne Ames) who is Brent's ex-wife.  As it happens Brent had named Lane sole beneficiary in his will, something the police find very interesting.  But Drew, who seems to have a close relationship with Lane, tells Sheehan that the actress' lawyer had convinced her not to sign documents naming her the sole heir.

Nevertheless, it's clear that Sheehan sees Lane as his prime suspect. Drew knows that there are plenty of other people on the lot who wanted to see Brent killed.  And he means to unmask the real culprit, even if it means risking his own life.... 

Comments: The Death Kiss is an interesting little movie for a number of reasons. It was shot at California Tiffany Studios (which itself starred as the "Ton-Art Studios" lot). California Tiffany was located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, just a block or two from where Kaiser Permanente Medical Center stands today. This was a plucky little film factory, founded in 1921, and it reached its zenith in the middle of the decade producing silent westerns and comedy shorts and other low-budget fare.  Its 1930 feature Mamba is apparently the first ever to be shot in Technicolor.  By the time Mamba premiered, however, the studio was struggling, and The Death Kiss seems to have been the last feature to be filmed there. The studio lot was eventually sold to Columbia.

The cast is also intriguing: made only a year after Dracula, it boasts three members of that film's cast: Bela Lugosi, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan.  Manners winds up with the lead in this one, and while it may not be the best role of his career, it's certainly the one he's best suited to.  Manners always had a boyish, insouciant style that undercut him as a dramatic lead, but that style works quite well in this picture, where he plays a boyish, insouciant screenwriter who takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of Who Killed Myles Brent, star of the movie-within-a-movie The Death Kiss.  

Manners' Franklyn Drew seems to be having the time of his life solving a real-life murder right under the noses of the police, and we find his company enjoyable.  Lt. Sheehan is a bit too much in the Lestrade school of incompetent police, but this was a common depiction of police detectives at the time, and we go along with it.  John Wray (apparently no relation to Fay Wray, with whom he appeared in Dr. X) plays Sheehan with a hard-nosed attitude, understandably resentful of the upper-class pretty boy horning in on his act.

Edward Van Sloan plays somewhat against type as a tightly-wound director, and Bela Lugosi isn't menacing at all, even though he is flagged as such in the marketing materials. Lugosi plays studio manager Joseph Steiner, a guy who is supposed to keep the trains running on time.  Clearly his character is supposed to be one of the many suspects in this whodunit, but the role isn't really designed to be a red herring; it becomes so only because Lugosi was chosen for the role. 

Overall this is a fun little romp, not a horror film in any real sense, but a small gem of the kind we used to discover now and again on late-night TV.

Saturday, March 18, 1972: The Thing From Another World (1951) / The Face of Marble (1946)

Synopsis: Capt. Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) is the pilot of a C-47 transport plane that makes frequent runs to a scientific research station at the North Pole. He and his flight crew are at the Air Force base in Anchorage, waiting to be deployed again. While playing cards in the officer's club, Hendry is introduced to newspaperman Ned Scott (Douglas Spencer), who has just arrived at the Anchorage base. Scott is looking for a story, and is intrigued to hear that Hendry's crew frequently visits the remote station where the famous Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) and a gaggle of other scientists are working. Scott asks Hendry to consider bringing him along on their next run.

Scott doesn't have to wait long; almost immediately Hendry is summoned by his commanding officer, General Fogerty.  Dr. Carrington's team has reported that a large aircraft has crashed in the vicinity, and Fogerty wants Hendry to investigate. Hendry asks permission to bring Scott.  "I don't care if you maroon him up there," Fogerty says tartly, then adds, "Now, don't get me wrong about who gets marooned." He refers to an landing ski that was broken on a previous trip to the pole, which delayed Hendry's return.  Hendry calls the broken ski "an unavoidable accident", but it's clear that Fogerty doesn't believe him.

Within hours Hendry's crew along with Scott are on their way up to the research station. Almost as soon as the plane has landed Hendry seeks out Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), an assistant to the scientists at the station. We learn that the two have not seen each other since Nikki's last visit to Anchorage; she had come down at Hendry's invitation, but the visit didn't go well.  Hendry behaved like a drunken boor (he doesn't even remember the times that he spent "making like an octopus", as Nikki puts it).  He is angry that she not only left without saying goodbye, but put a note on the passed-out Hendry's chest, listing his unattractive attributes, including his legs.  "Now the whole Air Force is laughing at me," he complains.

He asks if it's possible to start over.  She doesn't say no, but there isn't time to discuss the matter: it's time for Hendry to meet with Dr. Carrington, who turns out to be a frosty and condescending sort.  Carrington tells Hendry that he wants to proceed directly to the crash site.

Carrington's urgency is driven by the fact that whatever crashed is too massive to be an airplane, and it isn't a meteor either.  Once on the scene the scientists and military make an assessment, deciding that the object that crashed melted the ice surrounding it and sank before it re-froze.

Attempting to determine the shape of the dark object, the group discovers that it's round - the object is, they deduce, a flying saucer.  Eager to uncover it, and spurred on by a winter storm headed their way, they set thermite charges, but instead of melting the ice as expected, the ship is destroyed.  All that is salvaged is an alien body frozen in ice. They cut a block encasing it and transport it back to the base.

The scientists argue about the best way to thaw the creature so they can examine it, but Hendry tells them that they should do nothing until he gets further orders from Fogerty.  But the winter storm has knocked out communications and they are on their own.

Hendry assigns Corporal Barnes (William Self) to guard the room where the frozen alien is lying.  But Barnes, not wanting to see the alien's open eyes, carelessly tosses an electric blanket on top of the ice. Within a few hours, the ice has melted and the alien body is gone....

Comments: The Thing From Another World was one of the first films to combine the old genre of horror with the new genre of science fiction, and even today it's one of the best examples of that hybrid. It is an absolutely riveting film, still as tense and scary as it was upon its release in 1951.

For many years science fiction aficionados looked down their noses at this picture.  Though it was based on the well-regarded short story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr., the plot was significantly changed for Hollywood.  Instead of a monster that created cunning duplicates of its victims, leading to a situation where everyone in the camp suspected his neighbor of being an imposter, the movie offered a more prosaic monster-running-loose-through-the-research-station scenario.  That -- and the fact that a woman was added to the cast to create some romantic interest -- led to the charge that The Thing was a profoundly dumbed-down interpretation of Campbell's story.

But judged on its own merits, this is really one of the best horror films ever made. It gets rolling quickly and never takes its foot off the accelerator. The screenplay by Charles Lederer (said to have been substantially reworked by Ben Hecht) absolutely crackles, without an ounce of fat on it. It smartly moves from one setpiece to another, keeping the viewer off balance. The brisk pace also keeps the viewer from thinking about the plot holes until later (for example, there's no real reason for everyone to be in such a hurry to dig out the spacecraft; a winter storm might dump a foot or two of snow onto it, but considering it's already encased in ice, that's trivial).  The film also benefits from one of the greatest film scores of the decade, a nerve-jangling and theremin-infused work by Dmitri Tiomkin.

 A minor though interesting subplot to the movie is the way in which Hendry redeems himself in Nikki's eyes.  He is a distinctly unimpressive fellow in his early scenes. Even allowing for the boys-will-be-boys attitude of the 1950s, Hendry initially comes across as something of a lout. We learn he'd embarrassed himself by getting drunk and regaling Nikki with his sexual escapades in Hawaii, before "making like an octopus" and then passing out.   He is all but accused by his C.O. of sabotaging his own aircraft in order to get more personal time with a pretty girl.  The pretty girl in question, once she got an opportunity to see him up close and personal, decided there was less to him than meets the eye.

But as the crisis builds, Hendry's best self emerges: he is sensible, diplomatic, decisive; he is willing to listen to advice from those around him, regardless of their rank or status.  He is scrupulous in following the orders of his superiors until he determines that the situation has changed enough that he can act on his own authority.

Hendry's leadership style is quite different from that of military men in other science fiction films of the era, which usually assume a good leader is someone who barks out a lot of orders. Nor is there the standard macho posturing and / or fistfight between romantic rivals as was standard in films of this era (e.g., Richard Carlson and Richard Denning in Creature From the Black Lagoon). It's a relief, frankly, to be spared the dreary, standard-issue romantic triangle.


The character of Nikki herself is surprisingly self-assured for a woman of this era, though as has been pointed out many times elsewhere, Nikki is very much in the mold of brassy Howard Hawks females. She is refreshingly smart and resourceful, and gets her share of one-liners ("If I start to burn up again, who's going to put out the fire?"). While she is never central to the action, she is far stronger and more sensible than women in films of this era.

One weak point in the film is the depiction of Dr. Carrington, who as the designated champion of science and reason repeatedly butts heads with Capt. Hendry.  Everything about Carrington is designed to telegraph that he's not a "real" American, or even a real guy -- everything from his attire (furry Russian-style hat and expensive-looking but impractical cloth coat) to his effete-looking goatee and supercilious manner. Carrington's pedigree is further called into question by the fact that he seems not to notice the presence of his strikingly attractive secretary. In fact, he only has eyes for the monster.

 Carrington is clearly enamored with the creature and its asexual method of reproduction, believing it to possess a cool, cerebral purity unsullied by base emotions and needs. There isn't really any reason for Carrington to believe this except that it's necessary to the plot that he do so; in fact the Thing behaves more like a snarling monster than the "intellectual carrot" that we keep hearing about. Nevertheless if the film can claim to be making any sort of social commentary it appears to be that xenophobia is the correct default response to anything coming from outside, and that intellectuals are dangerously lacking in common sense.  When one of his colleagues refers to the Thing as an enemy, Carrington pushes back. "There are no enemies in science," he says sharply, "only phenomena to be studied". This notion would have seemed particularly dangerous at the height of the Cold War, and we are clearly supposed to regard Carrington as deeply misguided at best and a traitor at worst.

We can actually forgive this clumsy characterization for a number of reasons.  First, from a screenwriting standpoint, there must be ongoing points of conflict between the human characters in order to maintain tension, and with the exception of Carrington, there really aren't any.  Everyone gets along very well -- almost too well.  Hendry's men work together smoothly and efficiently, and the scientists at the base are sober and helpful.  Nikki effortlessly becomes a valued member of the team in spite of her early verbal sparring with Hendry, and despite his cynical wisecracking Scott is as much on board with Hendry's decisions as everyone else. It's a bit clumsy for Carrington to keep turning up as the sole enabler of the Thing's agenda, but somebody has to throw up obstacles for Hendry's team to overcome, and Carrington is a convenient fall guy.

Second, the presence of Carrington's colleagues helps to soften the anti-intellectual message.  With the exception of the snooty Carrington himself, all the scientists are portrayed as friendly, patient, cooperative, and happy to explain difficult concepts to the layman. They quickly grasp the threat the Thing poses.  When Dr. Stern sees the nursery that Dr. Carrington has arranged for the creature's progeny, he is fascinated, but he also recognizes that breeding them is a bad idea.  "Imagine what a thousand of them could do," he says. Dr. Voorhees, an early Carrington ally asks, "What if this being came not to visit the Earth, but to conquer it?" These are reasonable people who don't let their passion for knowledge overwhelm them. The reassuring presence of the avuncular Dr. Stern and the level-headed Dr. Voorhees and Dr. Chapman prevent us from viewing scientists in general with contempt.

By the same token, the military gives Carrington the benefit of the doubt at every turn, always operating from the assumption that while the scientist might be mistaken or even misguided, he is not their enemy.  Hendry in particular is patient with Carrington and goes out of his way to respect his point of view, even when Carrington's actions are dangerous. They treat him the way Nikki sees him -- as "a kid with a new toy" -- and chalk up his misdeeds to exhaustion and an excess of enthusiasm. At the end of the film, in Scott's radio report of the incident to Anchorage, he notes that Carrington is "recovering from injuries sustained in the battle" -- a technically true but deeply misleading statement. "Atta boy, Scotty," one of the men says behind him, and we must assume he speaks for everybody. 

A lesser film would have been much less subtle with this relationship; we would no doubt have had had the military men complaining loudly about Carrington, shaking their heads and wondering whose side he was really on. It's to Lederer and Hecht's credit that the military men are as low-key as they are depicted here.

This film was enormously influential; a whole slew of filmmakers including Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante and John Carpenter cited The Thing as having a big impact on them as kids. Stephen King wrote extensively about it as well in his book of essays Danse Macabre.  The film was commonly referred to simply as The Thing for decades, but it's now usually referred to as The Thing From Another World in order to distinguish it from Carpenter's own The Thing (1982) and Matthijs van Heijningen's prequel to the Carpenter version, confusingly also called The Thing (2011). 

While there's much to admire about the Carpenter version, I found the characters to be rather sour and unlikable, and I never really cared what happened to any of them. The van Heijningen version offered a more interesting set of characters and some clever variations on how to prove one is a human instead of an imposter.  But because it was a prequel, we knew how it was going to end, deflating a good deal of the suspense.

The original is deft and spectacular in its own way: not as cool or cynical as the later versions, but a  taut and suspenseful picture that still packs a wallop. It's the kind of movie late-night creature features were made for.


 The Face of Marble

 Synopsis: Dr. Charles Randolph (John Carradine)  lives comfortably in a large seaside house with his wife Elaine (Claudia Drake). Working in the basement with an array of high-voltage appliances, Randolph and his assistant David (Robert Shayne) are trying to find a method of bringing the dead back to life.
As the movie opens, Randolph and David are trying to restore to life a drowned sailor they found washed up on the shore. David is uneasy with this, fearing that they have crossed a moral line; but Randolph insists that they can't do any harm to a man who's already dead.
As they apply higher and higher voltages to the body, Randolph notes that the face of the sailor has taken on a stone-like appearance.  As the two men watch, the sailor sits up, then stands, but suddenly collapses, dead.  The experiment has failed, but Randolph feels they were very close to success.  He notes that the electrical generator has burned out, and  he goes into town to get a replacement.
The next day the local chief of police comes to visit Randolph, who had earlier alerted the authorities a body had washed up on the shore. The chief says the sailor Randolph found died under curious circumstances. --  an autopsy has revealed he was electrocuted.  Furthermore, the sheriff notes that Randolph had gone into town to buy a replacement generator, and he wonders if there is a connection. Randolph tries to laugh it off, but it's clear that the police chief is suspicious.
Meanwhile, we learn that Elaine has fallen in love with David.  Randolph is entirely unaware of this; and David's behavior is quite above-board, but the Randolph's maid Maria, who's very loyal to Elaine, practices voodoo, and plants a doll under David's pillow - one that she believes will make him fall in love with her mistress.  Meanwhile, Dr. Randolph, noticing David's growing uneasiness around the house, arranges for David's girlfriend Linda (Maris Wrixon) to come and visit.  This only increases the tension in the household, and before long Linda becomes troubled by the house's odd vibe and leaves.
Dr. Randolph decides to try the experiment again -- this time on Elaine's beloved Great Dane Brutus.  He and David fail to revive the dog.  But before long, they hear Brutus barking from another room.  The dog is alive, but somehow changed: it has an odd, stony faced appearance, seems to have turned savage in the presence of humans, and has an odd ability to walk through walls.
Unexpectedly, Elaine dies, and Dr. Randolph can only think of one way to save her --by reviving her the same way he revived Brutus, and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be....

Comments: Hoo boy, another Monogram picture, and perhaps not coincidentally, another picture about scientists working on a way to bring the dead back to life. This no doubt seemed like a jolly good idea back when Frankenstein premiered. But really guys, enough already.

The problem with The Face of Marble isn't that it's bad (though it isn't good, exactly); it's that it never quite figures out what sort of movie it wants to be, and lurches from one disconnected plot point to another until time runs out.  Using electricity to revive the dead and stealing corpses for the experiments is borrowed from countless movies that in turn borrowed from Frankenstein; the voodoo maid could have come from Night of Terror or I Walked With a Zombie or a dozen other movies. The small-town chief of police who keeps stopping by for friendly "chats" about sinister doings about town is equal parts The Devil Commands and Son of Frankenstein.

Only two plot points come across as even slightly original.  The love triangle stands out because it's Elaine, not one of the men, who wants to change the romantic equation.  In this era, women characters were distinctly lacking in agency, particularly involving matters of sexuality.  By introducing Maria and her black magic, the movie cheats a bit, taking some of the onus off Elaine.  But there's no way around the fact that Elaine hungers for something she doesn't have and which society says she shouldn't want.  And this is made more interesting by the fact that the movie chooses not to stack the deck against her husband, Dr. Randolph. He is not depicted as a jerk or a boor.  To the contrary, he is charming and generous to those around him, certainly more likable and lively a character than stuffed-shirt David.

The other point of interest is the mysterious transformation of Brutus. The dog's personality changes as a result of the experiment -- he becomes savage -- and he also gains the ability to move through solid objects, which even for a movie like this is an unexpected side effect. And so it's a bit novel to have the dog wandering around the house, walking through solid walls.  And later, when Elaine inevitably undergoes the same treatment, she and the dog become a tag team, moving through solid objects like ghosts in a spooky seaside manor. 

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a John Carradine fan but I have to admit that I liked him here.  He plays a character not unlike the one he played in The Invisible Man's Revenge, which perhaps not coincidentally was the other Carradine performance I liked.  I never find the man's evil characters interesting or compelling, but for some reason I find him more believable as a good-natured (but slightly naive) tinkerer. 
 Claudia Drake is perfectly acceptable as Elaine, and Robert Shayne gets all of his lines right as David.