Richard Burton’s Marcellus Gallio is a tribune in the Roman army and we meet him as he hangs out in a town marketplace. He peruses the slaves, fights with his girlfriend, and meets up with a gal from his youth. Since she is played by Jean Simmons (The Big Country and Elmer Gantry) his fight with the girlfriend understandably doesn’t seem as important as it once did. If I thought for one second that anyone from my childhood ended up looking like Jean Simmons instead of Gene Simmons, I’d probably be booking my hotel room for my high school reunion now instead of planning on egging my English teacher’s car that night. Continue reading “The Robe (1953)”
Category: 1950s
The Mole People (1956)
First time director Virgil Vogel mixes up traditional 1950s monsters with one of those lost civilizations populated by rulers and priests in cheap looking robes and stringy kung fu beards from 1930s cliffhangers like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and ends up with a painlessly stupid effort highlighted by people getting pulled down through what looks like kitty litter by stuntmen in bump-ridden bug-eyed masks.
Jud (Leave it to Beaver‘s Hugh Beaumont) and Roger (genre vet John Agar of Tarantula among others) are doing some archeology at a site in Asia and discover stone tablets that have all sorts of back story about Sumerians and how they were flooded and had to take an ark to some place not so wet. Continue reading “The Mole People (1956)”
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The shocking conclusion you come to after watching Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, and Barry Sullivan cavort around in one of these typically self-loathing movies about the movies is that no matter how bad someone hosed you in the past, if there’s a hit picture to be made with them again, no professional or personal vendetta you have against him or her is so great that it couldn’t be put aside for at least the duration of shooting.
As Kirk’s reviled producer John Shields tells Dick’s author James Bartlow, some of the best movies have been made by people that hate each other. That’s a fascinating concept and must make for some fun days at work, but I’m not sure that it adds up to much of anything beyond the film industry’s obsession with itself. Continue reading “The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)”
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
Giant birds, crabby cyclops, dragons, skeleton warriors, and a snake woman? Just another day at the office for Sinbad the Sailor. Throw in an evil sorcerer, a mutinous crew, and having to not only rescue his fiancee, but also find some way to un-shrink her and you can understand why this particular Sinbad set about his seventh voyage with very little humor and cheer.
Director Nathan Juran knew that when people were going to a movie about Sinbad and his legendary seventh voyage that they were expecting plenty of scenes of guys chucking spears at stop motion clay figures of various mythological creatures. There was plenty of time for Sinbad to talk and philosophize about the meaning of what it is to be a carefree sailor on his previous six voyages. Actually, I think the movie really picked up at the end of his sixth voyage because we first meet Sinbad and crew while they’re floating around in some ocean or other in search of land. Continue reading “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)”
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)
How does an alien invasion begin, you ask? At a bachelor party, of course! Our hero (though once he gets taken over by some aliens with a funny looking face, he becomes our villain) is named Bill Farrell and he’s getting married to Marge in the morning, so he and his crew are tearing up the town one last time before he takes his solemn vows and enters a life of involuntary celibacy. (You married guys know what I’m talking about.)
Since this is 1958 and happens in the very small town of Norrisville, a rip snorting good time does not involve going out to a local Indian riverboat casino and gambling away the honeymoon money. Nope, Bill and the rest of Norrisville’s biggest partiers are sitting around a table in a bar, slumped over, greasy hair slightly mussed in that faux-wasted pose these movies are prone to use. Continue reading “I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)”
The Black Archer (1959)
Who was that masked man? Well, it sure as hell wasn’t the Black Archer! Because apparently that dude doesn’t even exist! At no time in Piero Pierotti’s The Black Archer did a costumed vigilante who swiped William Tell’s gimmick ever make an appearance!
Not to worry though because Pierotti didn’t go on to direct such memorably forgotten Italian adventure films as Giant of the Evil Island by hosing its audience out of what was promised in the title despite that there wasn’t any giant in Giant of the Evil Island. So it is that instead of The Black Archer, we get… The Avenging Arrow! Continue reading “The Black Archer (1959)”
Son of the Red Corsair (1959)
If I wanted to see a real butch he-man like Lex Barker dressed in his satiny finest and wearing a powdered wig, I would go to that premium members only web site that’s discreetly billed to my credit card at $29.98 month!
But it wasn’t as if the transgendered appearance of one our great Tarzans was the only thing marring my enjoyment of what should have been an easy sell to someone as indiscriminate as me when it comes to Italian adventure films. There was the nasal and simpering voice used to dub Lex’s no doubt brawny real life voice, the fact that Lex fought sword fights while undercover with a blade that had his real name on it, and of course the pansified dance scene Lex and the audience were forced to endure during one of the movie’s numerous bouts of action anorexia. Continue reading “Son of the Red Corsair (1959)”