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| Earth vs. the Spider / The Brain Eaters; September, 1958 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 27 2017, 11:28 AM (277 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Aug 27 2017, 11:28 AM Post #1 |
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![]() Earth vs. the Spider (1958) Dir. by Bert I. Gordon 73 min. / B&W / 1.85:1 On DVD from Lionsgate (paired with War of the Colossal Beast) The Brain Eaters (1958) Dir. Bruno VeSota 60 min. / B&W / 1.66:1 On DVD from DVD UK Ltd., UK (Region 2) Released by American-International Pictures ITB Strange Science Cinema #137-138 Golly, it's time once again to revisit another classic drive-in double feature of the past: my best girl 'n' I piled into dad's trustworthy Edsel for tonight's fun evening's lineup. As promised, we got two Paramount cartoons tonight; first up, Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Katnip awakens from a sex dream about Katharine Hepburn(!) to discover he's going bald, but Buzzy the Crow has some good ideas for growing hair, most of which consist of hurting Katnip in various unpleasant ways. Then it was on to our first feature, The Brain Eaters, an extremely cheap offering in the sci-fi firmament. It says here the budget was $30,000, but if so, they must've had a LOT left over for a REALLY impressive wrap party. During a pre-title sequence, the narrator tells us, “Riverdale. Just another quiet, small town. And then on that Saturday, shortly after midnight, a LIVING NIGHTMARE began!” Yikes! Is Archie Andrews okay? Well, leading man Ed Nelson discovers a mysterious metallic cone in the woods, and it has a big open window in its side, so naturally a team of scientists descend on the cone and fire bullets into the window to see what happens, and that's the level of intelligence we get from this film. The movie's so low-budget, most of the dialog is supplied by the enthusiastic narrator, who sounds a lot like William Conrad on The Bullwinkle Show: “The NATURE of the cone remain UNDETERMINED!” Turns out the cone contains LEECHES that are actually puffy yarn-looking things with pipe-cleaner antennae who attach themselves to your neck and turn you into their puppet slave! Way! Eventually (and pretty quickly, too, the film's only an hour long) Nelson gets inside the ship and discovers - LEONARD NIMOY dressed up as the old wizard SHAZAM! The cone is from the center of the earth and they came up to see what we're all doing up here but actually, they're not particularly interested once they find out. Million-dollar Dialog: Angry Politician: "It seems to me as if the local law-enforcement department has an ample supply of bunglers!" Professor Nelson, assuring the crowd he knows what he's doing: “Some of this is fact and some of this is scientific hunch." Daffy science, stilted dialog (“Could anything have gone wrong?” “I don’t know.”) and a lack of special effects but the film has a certain low-budget charm that escapes other too-low-budget sci-fi films of its era, perhaps because it's supposedly ripped off from a Heinlein story. Anyway, we enjoyed it. Then it was on to several snack bar ads (mostly for mosquitos eating popcorn and then dying, or maybe I'm confusing two different sets of ads) and another cartoon, Galaxia, not to be confused with the soft-core sex movie Galaxina, sadly. This one has a little Russian guy trying to find a mate for a spaceman from another planet who's in love with a gumball machine and I KNOW you think I make this shit up but I just report it, honestly I do. Our coming attractions were for The Blob and I Married a Monster from Outer Space, which sets the bar pretty darn high for THIS week's second film, but heck, I've seen it before (many times) and it's a great favorite of mine. Young love has smitten Mike and Carol, who live in a remote mountain town, and young people in love do silly things, like continually wandering into a cave wherein lives a giant, huge, colossal, terrifying killer spider, who has recently eaten Carol's dad. Eventually their high school science teacher figures out a way to kill the beast and they drag it down and put it - get this - into the school gym. When a bunch of "teenagers" (led by actor Troy Patterson, who was 35 and looked older) form a rock 'n' roll combo and put on a show in the gym, it wakes the spider up, and the darn thing HATES rock 'n' roll and so eats school janitor Hank Ziffle from Green Acres. (Well, he DOES.) It then rampages through the town (growing or shrinking depending on the shot, this IS a Bert I. Gordon film) and even cranky Sheriff Gene Roth finally figures there might be somethin' to this silly story the teenagers have been tryin' to foist on him. They chase the spider back to its cave (the spider shrieks "HOOOOOME!" when it gets there) and blow up the entrance, but of course Mike and Carol have wandered back in there, so Sheriff Roth and company have to figure out a way to get 'em out a-fore the Spider gets 'em. Yes, I think you can tell from the description: I love this movie. Of course I do. I want to come live in a town where 35 year olds can still be in high school and the only theatre in town only shows AIP pictures (The Amazing Colossal Man has just ended its run, and the next attraction is Attack of the Puppet People). Million-dollar Dialog: Professor on the phone to his wife when he learns the voracious giant Spider is headed for their street: "It'd be a good idea if you'd stay inside the house for awhile." Ed Kemmer is the professor, Sally Fraser (who's in several 1950s AIP pictures) is his wife, and Eugene Persson and June Kenney are our young lovers. With the upcoming release of Attack of the Puppet People on Blu-ray, I have high hopes for a future restoration/release of this one. It's a classic of its kind. |
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6:32 AM Jul 11