BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1962)

Joyce Taylor and Mark Damon

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1962). Diretor: Edward L. Cahn.

Althea (Joyce Taylor) travels with her father, Count Roderick (Dayton Lummis), to a kingdom presided over by the young and recently coronated King Eduardo ( Mark Damon of The Young Racers). Althea, who is affianced to Eduardo, expects a warm greeting but discovers that her fiance is "indisposed" and there is hardly any staff in the castle aside from his chief aide Orsini (Eduard Franz). Althea sees the handsome Eduardo in the morning, but he tells her that their wedding may have to be postponed. It's worse than that -- a curse was placed upon Eduardo by a alchemist who was sentenced to death by Eduardo's father when he refused to share his secrets. Now each night Eduardo grows fur, claws and fangs and becomes a benign if tormented werewolf (of sorts). If Eduardo's nasty Uncle Bruno (Michael Pate) finds out, his regime may come to a decidedly violent conclusion.

Anders, Pate and Burrke

Beauty and the Beast is a rarity in that it's probably the only TechniColor film directed by B Movie maestro Edward L. Cahn. (This was Cahn's last film, as he died the following year.) Mercilessly skewered for its low-budget and a comparison to Cocteau's 1946 film of the same name, on its own terms Beauty and the Beast is a minor but entertaining film that probably works best for young viewers. Taylor and Damon, especially the latter, give good enough performances; Pate and Merry Anders as his gal pal, Sybil, are fine; Franz and Lummis are credible; and Walter Burke gives the most notable performance as the slimy and scheming Grimaldi, servant to Bruno.

Mark Damon. 

The werewolf design is by Ernie Young and the famous Jack P. Pierce. It doesn't look bad, although an unfortunate side effect of the big teeth is that it comically affects Damon's speech. Hugo Friedhofer's musical score is a plus, especially the theme music. A former pop singer and Howard Hughes discovery, Joyce Taylor appeared in Atlantis the Lost Continent and other genre films; her last feature was in 1971. Mark Damon starred in Roger Corman's House of Usher, did many films overseas, and became a producer. Merry Anders was in Hear Me Good and Ib Melchior's The Time Travelers, among others. Beauty and the Beast has a notable climax when the couple race to get married with Bruno's hate-filled followers in rabid pursuit. Edward L. Cahn directed Zombies of Mora Tau and about a zillion others.

Verdict: More than acceptable children's fantasy film. ***. 

THE YOUNG RACERS

Friends or enemies? Mark Damon and William Campbell

THE YOUNG RACERS (1963). Director: Roger Corman.

Stephen (Mark Damon of Young and Dangerous) is a writer who discovers that his fiancee, Monique (Beatrice Altariba), has been seduced and abandoned by a famous Grand Prix driver named Joe Machin (William Campbell of The High and the Mighty). Stephen's initial intention is to write an expose of the married, womanizing sleazeball, and to that end befriends the man and even joins his team. Joe is unaware of Stephen's history with Monique, but discovers it just before the climactic race, with surprising results.

Marie Versini and William Campbell

The Young Racers is an odd, strangely unconvincing picture that somehow manages to hold the attention -- it helps that the pace is fast -- but just never builds up to anything especially explosive (despite the car wrecks in the movie). Mark Damon would have been better cast as the married playboy driver, but he gives a disconnected, unemotional performance -- probably because for some reason his every line was dubbed by William Shatner! -- and Campbell is only somewhat better. You sometimes get the sense that the actors in this were given the script pages only moments before stepping in front of the camera, which may well have been the case. Marie Versini is appealing as Joe's neglected wife, Sesia, but R. Wright Campbell, who wrote the screenplay for this and other Corman films (such as Masque of the Red Death) and was William Campbell's brother, is pretty wooden as Joe's brother, Bob, who hates him but loves his wife. It's no surprise that Wright Campbell never acted in another movie.

Mark Damon

Although Luana Anders [Dementia 13] , who plays Stephen's secretary, Henrietta, can be very effective in other movies, in this she just seems weird, even giving off-kilter line readings. Christina Gregg and Margrete Robsahm make a better impression as two of Joe's girlfriends. Also notable is Patrick Magee, who plays another man whose wife was stolen away by Machin. The action in this veers from Monte Carlo to France to England, and the race at the climax is well-edited and fairly exciting, but this has too much flat acting and a rather inferior script despite its interesting premise.

NOTE: Francis Ford Coppola, who has a bit in this film and was assisting Corman, was allowed by the boss to shoot his own movie with the same crew, set and actors -- Anders, Campbell, and Magee -- as long as it didn't interfere with the shooting of the main picture. The result was the aforementioned Dementia 13, which is lots better than Young Racers.

Verdict: Even Vincent Price couldn't have saved this one. **. 

THE PARTY CRASHERS

Bobby Driscoll

THE PARTY CRASHERS (1958). Director: Bernard Girard.

Teenager Barbara (Connie Stevens) is torn between two boys: her nice, quiet steady Josh (Bobby Driscoll) and the sexy bad boy Twig (Mark Damon of Black Sabbath). Twig enjoys crashing parties and causing trouble, and his home life sucks, as his father (Walter Brooke of Conquest of Space) is a drunk and his mother (Doris Dowling) is always going off to "the movies" dressed to the nines. Everything comes to a head when Josh grudgingly agrees to crash a party at a motel lodge because Barbara insists she'll go with someone else, probably Twig, if he doesn't take her. The teens discover that grown-ups can be just as drunk and nasty as anyone. The Party Crashers is an interesting picture with good performances from the leads, as well as Brooke and Dowling. Frances Farmer [Son of Fury] is cast as Josh's sympathetic mother and Denver Pyle as his father, and Onslow Stevens and Cathy Lewis [The Devil at 4 O'Clock] play Barbara's parents; all are effective. Even with some more character development this low-budget Paramount flick might never have been an East of Eden, but it's not as trashy and dumb as some other "Juvenile delinquent" pictures of the era. Bobby Driscoll was a former child star who won a special Oscar and died tragically at age 31. This was the last film for him and Farmer, although both did TV work afterward. Bernard Girard also directed As Young As We Are and The Mad Room.

Verdict: B movie simmers but never quite comes to a boil. **1/2.

YOUNG AND DANGEROUS

Good-looking couple: Mark Damon and Lili Gentle

YOUNG AND DANGEROUS (1957). Producer/director: William F. Claxton.

19-year-old Tommy Price (Mark Damon) is considered a "bad boy" who spends all of his time chasing bad girls for "all-night petting parties" and showing no signs of doing anything with his life, to the consternation of his father, Dr. Price (Edward Binns). But when Tommy goes on a date with 17-year-old Rosemary (Lili Gentle) -- which initially goes badly -- she brings out some of the inner sensitivity that was always inside of him. But can they convince his parents that he's changed? This mis-titled film sounds like a typical juvenile delinquent-jukebox melodrama, but while it's certainly no East of Eden, it is a well-done and quite well-acted romance. Damon and Gentle not only play together beautifully, but they are very good actors. Gentle married Richard D. Zanuck (son of Darryl) the following year -- their marriage lasted a decade -- and only made two more movies before retiring. Damon made some other teen movies, appeared with Vincent Price in House of Usher and with Boris Karloff in Black Sabbath -- he made several films in Italy -- and is now a successful producer. Handsome and with considerable acting ability, Damon was geared for a major stardom that never quite materialized. Dabbs Greer and Ann Doran offer strong support as Rosemary's parents, and Binns is fine as Tommy's father. One very long sequence, filmed in one shot without cutting, shows Tommy's friends "Weasel" (George Brenlin) and Roscoe (uncredited) in a phone booth trying to make a date with an "old reliable" girlfriend. Meant to be comedy relief, it just stops the picture dead. Produced in widescreen for Regal pictures, this was released by Twentieth Century-Fox.William F. Claxton later directed the lovably notorious creature feature Night of the Lepus.

Verdict: Not bad light drama with very appealing leads. ***.

BLACK SABBATH

BLACK SABBATH (aka I tre volti della paura/1963). Director: Mario Bava.

A trio of horror stories from the director of Blood and Black Lace. In "The Telephone" a young lady is bedeviled by an old boyfriend who escaped from jail, or is it really a woman friend [or lover] who is causing the turmoil behind the scenes? This segment is interesting but half-baked, bordering on stupid. In the best and second segment, "The Wurdalak," starring Boris Karloff and Mark Damon, a family must wonder if their returning patriarch has become a vampire. The best scene has a dead little boy crying out pathetically for his grieving mother. In the final sequence, "The Drop of Water," a woman steals a ring from a hideous corpse that haunts her. Like most of Bava's films, the art direction is excellent, but sometimes the garish color works against the film's atmosphere. Frankly, the first and third sections should have been dropped and the middle segment expanded into a full-length feature.

Verdict: One out of three ain't bad. **1/2.