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| Day the World Ended / Phantom from 10,000 Leagues; December, 1955 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 10 2016, 05:27 PM (232 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Jan 10 2016, 05:27 PM Post #1 |
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![]() ![]() Day the World Ended - Dir. Roger Corman Phantom from 10,000 Leagues - Dir. Dan Milner ITB Strange Science Cinema #050/051 Roger Corman: "They [American Releasing Corporation] had been getting rather modest rentals for their previous films. With this double bill experiment, exhibitors agreed to give them the same rental figure as they paid major studios. This pioneering strategy - two low-budget films from the same genre on a double bill - was destined in large part to lure teenagers and young adults to drive-ins. It became a standard AIP approach once it proved to be commercially profitable." Sam Arkoff: "Unfortunately, we didn't have the money to make the second feature ourselves. We had a script ready and the ad campaign was finished, too. All we needed were some investors to put up the money." Sam and his partner, Jim Nicholson, found a group of Japanese investors looking to get into the film business, and Day the World Ended and Phantom from 10,000 Leagues were ready by the fall of 1955 - but few exhibitors wanted the double-bill once they saw it, feeling each film should play as a "B" movie with a bigger, more expensive film. Detroit to the rescue: the newspapers went on strike at the end of the year, and the major studios held back their big releases there, not wanting to risk the lack of publicity. The theaters scooped up the double-bill, which proved very successful and blazed the trail for the rest of the country. By the spring of '56, the two films had proven to be a massive hit. Both films were written by Lou Rusoff, who could really churn 'em out, but that's where the similarity ends: Day the World Ended is a superior low-budget "end of the world" flick with a pretty good cast, an interesting premise, a fairly imaginative monster, and good direction by Corman; Phantom from 10,000 Leagues is a hot mess. Day gives us Paul Birch and daughter Lori Nelson, mountain dwellers and soul survivors of a nuclear holocaust - or so they think. Stragglers start coming to their cabin, including tough guy Michael "Touch" Connors and his stripper girlfriend, Adele Jergens; geologist Richard Denning; old coot Raymond Hatton and his mule; a dying, radioactive man who likes to eat animals and people; and a big, weird monster with a LOT of arms, lurking in the woods nearby. Corman mixes up a lot of drama and romance, some action, a few shocks, and even a bit of nuclear warning into the stew, and turns out one of his best films. Million-dollar Dialog: Touch to Lori, after he's tried to assault her and she slapped him, but good: "You won't hit me when there's just the two of us. There'll be no point to it, know what I mean?" I could watch this movie until the nuclear cows come home, and when I was asked to work on the first wave of AIP films for UK release, I think this was the first one I selected. It's in SuperScope! And watch for Jonathan Haze as a dying man, Paul Blaisdell as the monster, and Roger Corman as "Guy in Photo next to Lori's Bed". Like all good post-apocalyptic films, it ends not with "The End" but with "The Beginning". After that masterpiece, which was released briefly stateside by Lionsgate, matched with The She-Creature, we enjoyed a surprisingly good Casper cartoon (I wasn't sure there WERE any) called Frightday the 13th; our Friendly Ghost tries to help a black cat be lucky rather than the norm. We also saw a trailer for next week's feature attraction: Tarantula! Wow! Sadly, there was a movie to go. Luckily, I've reviewed this before, and don't have to write all this again. So, Sam & Jim tossed their investors' money at the Milner Bros., editors and sound men, who counted it and said, "Did you need us to go get lunch?" and Sam and Jim said, "No, we need you to make a movie, dopes. You told us you wanted to be producers, so go produce." I can wrestle enjoyment out of almost any 1950s science-fiction movie, and I've only begun qualifying the statement with "almost" since I saw this puppy. A fisherman is killed by a sea monster that looks like a man-sized saber-toothed seahorse, and from this we learn two important things about movies that somebody should've told the Milner Bros. -- Don't show your monster in the first scene of the picture. -- When your monster looks this crappy, try not to show it at all, but for heaven's sake, whatever you do, don't break bullet point #1's rule, you stupid bastards. "The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues opens upon a dead flat stretch of water upon which very little is happening, thus masterfully setting the tone for everything that is to follow." - Elizabeth A. Kingsley, And You Call Yourself a Scientist This film has scientists, foreign spies, hapless victims, government investigators, cops, secretaries, family members, romantic interests, and science students, none of whom seem to know each other. "The league is an old-fashioned unit of distance; like (say) the furlong, it's not usually used to refer to depth... Even if it were possible for a sea monster to come from a depth of 10,000 leagues — about 30,000 miles, a distance greater that the circumference of the Earth — this wouldn't make any difference: there is absolutely nothing deep about this Phantom. The title creature lives in such shallow waters that to call it the Phantom from 10,000 Millimeters (or about 33 feet) would be an exaggeration. And the script is even shallower." - Braineater.com Oh, yeah, did I mention the movie is stupid, too? The plot, such as it is, has government agents investigating the murders and suspecting Dr. Kent Taylor of being behind the sea monster. Million-dollar Government Agent Dialog: "Dr. Stevens, in a laboratory experiment, successfully activated hydrogen isotopes in heavy water to form an atomic reaction. He called this development the first workable death ray." Actually, though, old professor Michael Whalen is behind the monster; he's been performing experiments down at the oceanography college (which has one employee besides him and one room, about the size of your kitchen, if your kitchen is small and has no counter). The professor's daughter, Cathy Downs, is worried about it and shows her concern by falling in love with one of the government agents investigating him. Because this isn't quite enough plot, even for Sam and Jim, foreign spies, who appear to be from Belgium(!) and who speak perfect English, when everyone knows foreign spies are supposed to sound like Boris and Natasha or at least General Burkhalter, are trying to track down the death ray and avoid the monster and to kill a few people for one reason or another, only they use a spear gun when it would be much more sensible to claw them to death with a garden tool and leave them on the beach and blame it on the Mutant Sea Horse and HEY, maybe *I* should've written this thing. Oh, and now you're sitting here going, "Well, that's a lot of plot, isn't it?" and I haven't even mentioned the lady secretary who's trying to kill the old professor because her son died as the result of one of his experiments. Million-dollar Foreign Spy Dialog: Guy Spy to Lady Spy: "I didn't know they could put beauty and poison together so cleverly in one package!" Lady Spy to Some Guy in the Cast: "You don't look well, George, or is it just that I don't find you attractive any more?" Million-dollar Cop Dialog: "They're burned worse than the other ones! I think it's time we did something about this." One of the very, very worst. Yet in any case, the double-feature was very successful and American Releasing Corporation became American-International Pictures and a legend was born, so who are we to complain that the movie is gawd-awful? Funny, I saw all the AIP monster movies over the years but I'd never seen this one or, more likely, slept through it. And now it's on a brand-new Blu-ray from Kino, with commentary and everything. Funny world, no? Yes. As for the Milner Bros., they went on to make another all-time cinema masterpiece, From Hell it Came, and then went to work on the Bozo the Clown TV show. What? Huh? Oh, no, not me, I'm not making a joke. |
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6:33 AM Jul 11