Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit.

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.)

Join our community!

If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
It! The Terror from Beyond Space / Curse of the Faceless Man; July, 1958
Topic Started: Jul 16 2017, 05:45 AM (278 Views)
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Posted Image

32nd Annual FNF Drive-In Double Feature

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) Dir. Edward L. Cahn
Vogue Pictures, Inc.
69 min. / B&W / 1.85:1

ITB Strange Science Cinema #134

Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) Dir. Edward L. Cahn
Vogue Pictures, Inc.
67 min. / B&W / 1.85:1

ITB Shock Theatre #208

I have some basic awareness that the 1950s were full of Martin & Lewis, Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Ma & Pa Kettle and Francis comedies, dark drama we've come to call film noir, peppy musicals from MGM, William Bendix pictures, and westerns, but really, when we think of 1950s movies here in the Balcony, it's all these wonderful double-features what we can revisit through the magic of the Balcony time machine. This one's a special treat (the word "special" being used haphazardly) because the second feature is one we've never, ever seen before, a rarity for us and 1950s monsters.

First up, though, following a plethora of snack bar ads and reminders to remove our speakers when leaving, is It! The Terror from Beyond Space, a precursor to Alien (but a movie we like better).

In the far future year of 1973, a rescue craft lands on Mars to pick up the survivors of a space crash from the year before - only to discover that they're all dead but the cap'n, accused of murdering his crew so that the food and oxygen would last longer. The rescuers accidentally leave the door to the hold open (what, were they born in a space barn?) long enough for a BUM to sneak aboard (uh, not a hobo, a Big Ugly Monster), which starts to kill them off one by one as it makes its way to the control deck. Can nothing stop... IT!?!?!?

One of the best of the 1950s sci-fi monster movies, credited to Jerome Bixby, the writer who'd go on to Star Trek and Twilight Zone and who also wrote our second feature. Marshall Thompson is the sole survivor of the first trip, Shawn Smith is the scientist lady who makes goo-goo eyes at him (there are two scientist ladies, both of them seem to have no duty beyond making sandwiches and coffee for the guys), and Dabbs Greer is the officer who keeps coming up with theories as to why this or that happened - theories based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

Million-dollar Dialog:
Crewman: "Mars is almost as big as Texas. Maybe it's got monsters."

Saw this as a kid, and the scene that stuck with me throughout the decades is still an edge-of-your-seat thing: a spaceman with a broken leg, wedged in the corner, fending off It! by blasting it in the eyes with a welder's flame whenever the thing tries to claw him out of there. As for It! (movingly portrayed by Crash Corrigan), he seems to enjoy breaking every bone in his victims' body and and then sucking out all the blood. Mostly, he seems to enjoy punching his way through spaceship doors.

And it should be mentioned that for a rescue trip to Mars, the ship sure carries a lot of firearms, including poison gas and masks, rifles, handguns, grenades, and a bazooka(!), none of which, incidentally, do much good against Crash. Oh, and the ship also has a locker with about 20 cartoons of smokes, to which the crew avail themselves at every possible opportunity.

A real favorite 'round here. It's on Blu-ray from Olive Films, and in HD you can really see how cheesy the special effects are, if you go looking for that sort of thing.

We had a hefty intermission this week, with a slew o' coming attraction trailers, including Revenge of Frankenstein and The Wasp Woman (wow and wow), an ad for bringing the whole family to the drive-in early to enjoy a delicious chicken dinner with all the trimmings before the show (and based on the shadows, I'd say dad brought mom and the kids down to the drive-in at about 1 in the afternoon), and a Herman and Katnip cartoon in which Katnip gets hurt. A lot. On to our premiere show, Curse of the Faceless Man!

A workman discovers a petrified body near Mt. Vesuvius and they cart it off to a museum, not knowing that every once in a while it hops off its pedestal and goes looking for its long-lost girlfriend. Seems that 2000 years ago it was a gladiator named Quintillus, who fell into a forbidden romance and thus became a slave as punishment (a slave for love - ah, I know the feeling). For 2000 years, he's been trying to rescue his lady friend from the eruption, and now, he's gonna find a woman and take care of that chore for good.

Same writer and director, different result - no doubt the film was made from what little was left over from the budget for It!. Richard Anderson is the only recognizable name in the cast, most of whom either speak English poorly or speak with Italian accents poorly. As described, this is basically a remake of the 1932 version of The Mummy without the artistry; the Faceless Man is fairly well created and scarily designed (interestingly, both of today's monsters are played by famous screen gorillas, Crash Corrigan as It! and Charles Gemora as Quintillus) but awfully rubbery when he starts moving about. And today's drinking game is "Take a shot every time the narrator describes exactly what's going on on-screen."

As for Mr. Anderson - who later stated that the reason he took the role was because he'd never been offered a lead part before - he's ludicrous, spending most of the time arguing with the rest of the cast of the impossibility of what keeps happening right in front of their noses (and described in detail concurrently by the narrator).

Million-dollar Dialog:
Anderson, after his psychic girlfriend exactly describes to the smallest detail how the truck driver was murdered by the Faceless Man, which we all saw and the narrator related in case we were blind: "It was only an accident, that's all it was. It was an odd coincidence!"

If I were being completely honest, I guess I'd admit that Curse of the Faceless Man is rather dull, so it's good that I'm not completely honest. Still, it was a fun double feature and the Kino Blu-ray is excellent, comes with bonus monster movie trailers, and offers expert commentary from some film expert I've never heard of who does a fairly poor job of talking about the film, but heck, what can you really say about it?
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · 100 Years in the Balcony · Next Topic »
Add Reply