PYGMY ISLAND

Billy Barty and Johnny Weissmuller

PYGMY ISLAND (1950). Director: William Berke.

Army Captain Kingsley (Ann Savage of Dangerous Blondes) disappears when she leads an expedition into territory where she hopes to find a certain plant. This plant has unusual properties and will provide "strategic war materials." Major Bolton (David Bruce of Lady on a Train) arrives in Africa to search for Kingsley and confers with the famous Jungle Jim (Johnny Weismuller), who tells him that this plant grows primarily in pygmy territory. Some nasty foreigners led by Leon Marko (Steven Geray)  and his confederate Novak (Tristram Coffin) try to exploit the pygmies, who are led by Makuba (Billy Curtis). Billy Barty [The Day of the Locust] plays the likable pygmy, Kimba; in fact all of the pygmies seem to be played by Caucasian little people. Elephants go on a mini-stampede at one point, crushing a jeep and a truck, and Jungle Jim has an exciting battle with a crazed gorilla that tries to throw him off of a rope bridge into a watery chasm; the picture's best scene. Tamba the chimp gets in on the action as well. While this looks like an ultra-cheap Monogram production, the early Jungle Jim features were released by Columbia.

Verdict: Kind of dull for the most part. **.

THE UNDEAD

 














THE UNDEAD (1957). Producer/Director: Roger Corman.

 "Keep thy place, malignancy!"

Diana Love (Pamela Duncan of Attack of the Crab Monsters) is a prostitute who is regressed to a past life via hypnotism. Suddenly she finds that she is a witch named Helene living in medieval times and dealing with stuff she never had to deal with in the 20th century -- such as the fact that if she doesn't  die in the past she will have no future lives at all, and presumably this means her current life as Diana -- as well as such folk as Pendragon (Richard Garland, who was also in Crab Monsters), another witch named Livia (Allison Hayes), Smolkin the gravedigger [there's a nifty scene with Helene inside a coffin with a corpse essayed by Paul Blaisdell], and others. Richard Devon as Satan is a little hokey in the prologue, but gets better as the film proceeds. Dick Miller [A Bucket of Blood] is a leper, Billy Barty [The Day of the Locust] is an imp, and Bruno Vesota [The Wasp Woman] is an innkeeper, while Val Dufour plays Quintus Ratcliff and Dorothy Neumann is the elderly witch, Meg Maud. Duncan gives a good performance, and Hayes is as vivid as ever. This is an interesting picture with an unusual plot; it should have been made into a full-fledged fantasy film with FX, monsters, color and the works. As it is, it's entertaining and special fun for Corman fans.

Verdict: It's certainly different! ***.

PETER GUNN Season 1

Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn

PETER GUNN Season 1. 1958.

"I hear when she wants to look at pictures of her friends, she just drops into the post office." -- Mother

The action of this private eye series, which was created by Blake Edwards, takes place in an unnamed coastal city. The first season consists of 38 half hour black and white episodes. The central location is a waterfront night club called Mother's [after the owner, "Mother," played by hefty Hope Emerson], which Gunn uses as an office, despite the fact that he is highly successful at his trade -- judging from the way he throws fifty dollar bills around to various sources on virtually every episode. Gunn (Craig Stevens) is not a comparative "lout" like Mike Hammer, but is cut from the same urban cloth as Richard Diamond, albeit west coast style. The other regulars on the show, besides Emerson, are Herschel Bernardi as Lt. Jacoby, who practically seems like Gunn's unofficial partner [stretching credulity], and Lola Albright as his girlfriend and a singer at Mother's. [Although Albright is very pretty and a competent actress, and has a pleasant singing voice, as a vocalist she is hopelessly bland, singing every song with the same inflection and lack of panache.] Albright's character, Edie, seems a bit childish at times, when she gets jealous over practically every female client of Gunn's. Although no one could ever accuse Stevens of being a "great" actor, he's fine as the "cool" [i.e. rather unemotional] Gunn [or is Gunn unemotional because he's played by Stevens?], but when he's given a chance to show some versatility, such as an episode in which he pretends to be a naive country boy, he delivers the goods.  Bernardi is quite good as the cop; other semi-regulars include Billy Barty as stool pigeon Babby, and Morris D. Erby, who shows up late in the season as the likable and highly positive black police officer Sgt. Davis. Like most fifties detective programs, Peter Gunn could be fairly violent at times, and there are some wonderful fist fights and well-choreographed action sequences.  

While Peter Gunn is not quite as good as the aforementioned Mike Hammer, most of the episodes are at least of a "B" quality and some much better. Among the more memorable episodes are "The Frog," in which an old lady (Jean Inness) wants revenge for the killing of her friend and companion (Whit Bissell scores as a mobster); "Death House Testament," in which an inmate tells Gunn about some money; the borderline homoerotic "The Jockey," with an excellent Frankie Darro and Robert Gist; "The Lederer Story" involving skulduggery on a yacht with a family headed by a notable Otto Waldis [who was in everything from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman to Judgment at Nuremberg]. An especially delectable Mara Corday is featured in "Keep Smiling;" "Skin Deep" involves a missing sister and a gigolo; "Family Affair" features a death plot against a wealthy old man (John Hoyt); "Killer from Nowhere" spotlights Wesley Lau from Perry Mason; and "The Painting" concerns a plot to "embarrass" a senator via his philandering and desperate wife. The three best first-season episodes, arguably, are ""Pay Now, Kill Later," with Torin Thatcher as a man wrongly convicted of the murder of a business partner who's actually still alive; "Vendetta," in which Edie is shot by a man bent on vengeance against Gunn; and especially "Love Me to Death," a twisted tale with Jeannette Dolan as a wealthy spinster and Robert H. Harris as a fortune hunter. Directors for the series include Boris Sagal [Mike Hammer], Lamont Johnson, the aforementioned Robert Gist, and even Jack Arnold [Tarantula].

And then there's that sensational, sexy theme music by Henry Mancini, which seems to be fondly remembered by people who can barely remember the show or have never even seen it!

Verdict: Okay, maybe not a great show like Perry Mason, but often very entertaining and well-done. ***.

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST

The movie premiere that climaxes Locust

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST (1975). Director: John Schlesinger.

"I could only let a fabulously rich man love me. I could only love a man criminally handsome. Please try to understand."

In Hollywood of the 1930's, artist Tod Hackett (William Atherton) lives in the same complex with aspiring star Faye Greener (Karen Black) and her father, an old-time performer named Harry (Burgess Meredith). Although Tod is very drawn to Faye, she wants a man with money, and winds up sexlessly cohabiting with the somewhat strange but wealthy Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland). There is a nasty-minded midget (Billy Barty) and a bratty Shirley Temple clone (actually played by the male Jackie Earle Haley), as well as two guys who run cockfights out of Homer's garage. After two hours of meandering, the film arrives at a climax at a movie premiere that seems intended to wake the benumbed audience out of their lethargy but is too little, too late. When The Day of the Locust was released, it was overpraised in some quarters because of the admittedly vivid climactic riot and a "daring" scene of a child being stomped to death, which fooled people into thinking this piece of treacle was more adult and "meaningful" than it really was. Time has, unfortunately, not made the movie any better. Karen Black probably gives her all-time worst performance, so irritating is she that she almost sinks the movie right from the first, and Burgess Meredith isn't that much better. Atherton isn't bad at all, but Sutherland gives the best performance as Homer. Barty can do nothing to make his character less of a caricature, but Haley in drag is certainly vivid and memorable. Still, the movie presents unpleasant, and worse, uninteresting characters that you simply don't care about. Natalie Schafer, Nita Talbot, and William Castle [as a director] have small roles, as does Geraldine Page as an evangelist. A scene when a set collapses is well done from a technical standpoint. This was based on a novel by Nathaniel West; I don't know how faithful Waldo Salt's screenplay is to the source material, but it's pretty bad. The absolutely most disgusting scene shows poor Billy Barty kissing a rooster on its bloody beak. Dick Powell Jr., plays his father at the premiere-within-the-movie, which explains why he looks so much like the actor. Although Schlesinger was considered a "serious" director as, say, compared to Robert Aldrich, this movie is in reality little better than Aldrich's atrocious Legend of Lylah Clare! This is almost as bad as Schlesinger's Darling.

Verdict: Just a mess -- and boring to boot! **.