Flickers in Time

Journey to the Center of the Earth
Directed by Henry Levin
Written by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett from the novel by Jules Verne
1959/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Cooga Mooga/Joseph M. Schenk Enterprises
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sir Oliver Lindenbrook: Do you realize we know less about the earth we live on than about the stars and the galaxies of outer space? The greatest mystery is right here, right under our feet![/box]

I thought this was fairly dull for what is supposed to be a fabulous adventure yarn.  James Mason stars, though, and that is never a bad thing.

Sir Oliver Lindenbrook (Mason) has just received a knighthood.  He is also a professor of geology at the University of Edinburgh.  A student, Alec McEwan (Pat Boone), is in love with Lindenbrook’s ward (?) Jenny (Diane Baker).  Alec gives Lindenbrook a piece of volcanic rock which turns out to have evidence that an Icelandic scientist found a route to the center of the earth.  Lindenbrook is now determined to explore himself.  He takes Alec with him.

They set out for Iceland.  There he finds that all the equipment necessary for his mission has been scooped up by a rival scientist.  That scientist has been murdered and Lindenbrook gets the equipment only on the condition that he, a confirmed misogynist, take the widow Carla (Arlene Dahl) along.  The party is rounded out by a husky young Icelander and his pet duck Gertrude (who won a PATSY award for animal acting).

Eventually, the party makes it deep underground where they are hounded by the evil son of the Icelander who came before them.  There are a number of fantastic happenings in the surprisingly well-lit earth’s core, including encounters with giagantic beasts (played by large lizards), discovery of the lost continent of Atlantis, etc.

As the plot description might indicate, this movie takes awhile to get going.  By the time it did, I was pretty distracted.  I just never felt these people were at any risk or believed they were at the center of the earth.  There is some witty repartee, however, and the movie was a big hit so it must have got a lot of people’s juices flowing at the time.

Crooner Pat Boone actually has top billing and sings a couple of tunes which do not enhance the period vibe of the picture.

Journey to the Center of the Earth was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Sound; and Best Effects, Special Effects.

Trailer

The Wasp Woman
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Leo Gordon; story by Kinta Zertuche
1959/USA
Film Group Feature/Santa Cruz Productions Inc
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Arthur Cooper: I’d stay away from wasps if i were you, Mrs. Starlin. Socially the queen wasp is on the level with a Black Widow spider. They’re both carnivorous, they paralyze their victims and then take their time devouring them alive. And they kill their mates in the same way, too. Strictly a one-sided romance.[/box]

Kindly, but whacky, old scientist Eric Zinthrop is employed to collect royal jelly from bee hives for use in the cosmetics industry.  Instead, he researches his own theory about uses for royal jelly from wasps and treats the tiny creatures like prized pets.When he is inevitably fired from his beekeeper job, he offers his ideas about wasp royal jelly as a rejuvinating agent to Starlin Cosmetics.

Starlin has been losing market share since it started using new model.  Formerly owner Janice Starlin was the best advertisement for her own products but she has now aged too much to be attractive (indicated by her glasses).Thus Starlin gives Zinthrop carte blanche to do his research and offers herself up as the first human subject.  At first the modest amount of serum Zinthrop injects work wonders.  Then Starlin decides things are going too slowly and surrepticiously ups the dosage and frequency.  I think we can all see where this is going …

Had there been more Wasp Woman and had she resembled the poster, this would have been awesome!  As it is, Corman gets in some digs at the youth culture and it’s an entertaining watch.  Available in several complete versions on YouTube.

The Bat
Directed by Crane Wilbur
Written by Crane Wilbur from a play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood
1959/USA
Liberty Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Cornelia van Gorder: [locking their door] Nothing should get us now, I think, this door seems good and solid.

Lizzie Allen: Like the door to a tomb.[/box]

It was fun to watch Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead combine forces in this “old dark house” mystery story.

The story is a remake of The Bat (1926) and The Bat Whispers (1930) and harkens back to a simpler time.  Mystery writer Cornelia van Gorder (Moorehead) and her maid/companion Lizzie Lane have rented a country mansion for the season.  All her other servants are on the verge of quitting because of rumors that 1) a murderer known as “The Bat” is once again on the loose and 2) The Bat has released rabid real bats in the area.  This fazes Cornelia not at all.

Concurrently, $350,000 in negotiable securities have gone missing from a private vault in the bank.  Later investigation reveals that $1 million has disappeared from the books.  The likely suspect is bank’s president who is also the house’s owner.  The smart money is betting that the cash is hidden somewhere in the house.  The Bat is clearly after that money.  But who is he among the many suspicious characters?  With Price as a local physician and rabies researcher.

Both Price and Moorehead are at their slightly hammy best and this is a short and entertaining ride.  It is about on the quality level of good late 50’s TV.  Multiple complete versions are currently available on YouTube.

The Cosmic Man
Directed by Herbert S. Greene
Written by Arthur C. Pierce
1959/USA
Futura Productions Inc.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] I’ve made some of the greatest films ever made – and a lot of crap, too. — John Carradine[/box]

When your space ship resembles a golf ball and your alien resembles John Carradine in a trench coat and shades, you know you have got a dud.

A strange spherical object drops out of the sky near a nuclear research lab.  Noble scientist Dr. Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett) is convinced there is something inside.  The military wants to exploit the UFO’s secrets to build bigger and better weapons.  Sorenson, who helped develop the atom bomb, fights them every step of the way.  Then a mysterious man arrives to seek lodging at the home of a widow and her crippled son.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.

This is more or less a The Day the Earth Stood Still rip-off without any of that film’s merits.  A whole lot of talk transpires before we get to the uninspiring Carradine reveal.

Trailer

North West Frontier (AKA Flame Over India, AKA Empress of India)
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Written by Frank S. Nugent, Patrick Ford, Will Price, and Robin Estridge
1959/UK
The Rank Organization
First viewing/Netflix Rental

Catherine Wyatt: The British never do anything until they’ve had their cup of tea, and by then it’s too late.

This is a grand British Cinerama spectacle in the Western tradition, with the British army standing in for the cavalry and hordes of enraged Muslims standing in for the Indians.

The story takes place at around the turn of the last century when Victoria was India’s Empress.  Warring Muslim factions have united in an effort to overthrow a Hindu maharajah. The maharajah calls on the British Army to take his six-year-old heir to safety in Delhi.  The rebels manage to disable the train the British had planned to use.  Then they eliminate the maharajah.

Captain Scott (Kenneth More) is put in charge of the boy.  He locates a decrepit steam engine, “The Empress of India”, and makes plans to break out.  Accompanying the party are the prince’s independent-minded American governess, Catherine Wyatt (Lauren Bacall), an arms merchant; a half-cast independence minded journalist (Herbert Lom); a kindly old India-hand (Wilfred Hyde-White) and the snooty wife of a British official.  Much adventure ensues.

This film has been aptly compared to Stagecoach in an Indian setting.  It is basically a road movie exploring the arcs of the various characters.  J. Lee Thompson is no John Ford, of course, nor does Kenneth More have the gravitas of John Wayne.  It’s pleasant enough viewing.  The outstanding aspect is the beautiful widescreen Eastmancolor cinematography.

Montage of clips

The Tingler
Directed by William Castle
Written by Robb White
1959/USA
Columbia Pictures/William Castle Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Dr. Warren Chapin: Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic! But SCREAM! Scream for your lives!

William Castle and Vincent Price make delightful co-conspirators.

Dr. Warren Chapin (Price) is a pathologist with an inquiring mind.  One of his duties is to perform autopsies on executed prisoners.  He discovers one of the dead men died of a fracture to the spinal column rather than electrocution.  Xrays reveal that there was some kind of foreign object living in the area.

Through means too complicated to describe, Chapin decides that the object is what causes death from fright.  He calls it “The Tingler”.  The only way to overcome The Tingler is to scream.  A theater owner’s deaf-mute wife is the perfect test subject …

This movie is one gimmick after another.  That is what makes it so much fun!  There are all sorts of scares designed to prompt screaming by the susceptible.  Even the most jaded will at least smile.  Price is at his hammy best.  What I would have given to have seen this in the theater on release.

Trailer

The Killer Shrews
Directed by Ray Kellogg
Written by Jay Simms
1959/USA
Hollywood Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Jerry Farrell: Looks like a rat, smells like a skunk – some call them bone-eaters.[/box]

The title and poster just ooze potential …

A boat captain and his sidekick take refuge from an impending hurricane on an isolated island.  They are surprised to find it is inhabited by a Swedish scientist (with a German accent) and his lovely daughter (with no accent).  Two other scientists, one a drunk, complete the laboratory team.  Their experiments have gone awry and now they are holed up in a house waiting for their creations to cannibalize each other to extinction.

The voracious creatures are mutant shrews.  Not only have the tiny animals grown to an enormous size but they now greatly resemble large dogs wearing wigs and false teeth.  To make matters worse, they have turned poisonous.  Our captives bravely battle the animals who really don’t want to eat each other until they finish off anything else with a heartbeat on the island.

The plot is imminently forgettable, and it lacks the weirdness of genius B movie making, but the shrews more than make up for it.  Only for connoisseurs of this kind of thing.

Trailer

The Snow Flurry (Kazabana)
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Written by Keisuke Kinoshita
1959/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/FilmStruck

“The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.” ― E.E. Cummings

This was one of those convoluted flashback stories that tends to lose me.  The color made up for some of my confusion.

The story begins where it ends, with a young man watching a bridal procession and running in despair to a river.  A woman runs after him, possibly to prevent his suicide.

Flashback to earlier days, when a man and woman attempt double suicide in that same river.  The man, Hideo, dies but his lover Sachiko survives.  Hideo was the son of a proud land-owning family and Sachiko is of humbler origins.  The patriarch of the family is so infuriated with his son that he dumps the ashes in the river.  He would really be glad if Sachiko would make a more successful attempt.  But she is pregnant.  The grandfather adopts the child who he names Suteo (“abandoned”?) into the family but both mother and son are treated essentially as servants.

They are not the only miserable people in the household.  The daughter of the family is trapped there waiting for a suitable marriage while secretly in love with Suteo.  There is no snow involved.  The title refers to a phenomenon in which flower petals are blown around by the wind.

I think I might enjoy this more on a second viewing when I had some idea of the general plot line.  I didn’t love it enough, however, that that is likely to happen any time soon.