NO PLACE TO LAND

John Ireland and Mari Blanchard

NO PLACE TO LAND (1958). Director: Albert C. Gannaway.

"Come over and give daddy a big goodbye kiss." -- Buck

"I don't want to spoil my breakfast." -- Iris

Super-tramp Iris (Mari Blanchard) is married to the portly and dangerous Buck (Robert Middleton), but she has a thing for a crop-duster named Jonas (John Ireland) and won't give him up. In her schemes to get him she uses other men as her pawns, employing both her body and blackmail to get her ends. Meanwhile, Jonas and his pal Swede (Jackie Coogan) go to work for a drunk named Roy (Douglas Henderson) and Jonas and Roy's wife, Lynn (Gail Russell), who is not a tramp, wind up falling for one another. Then things get even more complicated ... No Place to Land has an interesting plot with lots of possibilities, but the execution is strictly mediocre, although Blanchard [The Crooked Web] offers a zesty performance and Middleton is excellent. Robert Griffin [Monster from Green Hell] is fine as a grocer who admires Iris a little too much, and both Bill Ward and Burt Topper make an impression as two lover boys that Iris beds for her own purposes. Ireland looks disinterested most of the time, but Coogan has his moments. William Peter Blatty, who later wrote "The Exorcist," plays a cop. Burt Topper later directed The Strangler.

Verdict: Simmers but never quite smolders. **.

I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF

Michael Landon as teen wolf

          













 I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957). Director: Gene Fowler, Jr.

"This is modern America -- not a hamlet in the Carpathian mountains!"

Tony Rivers (Michael Landon), who has serious anger management issues, is sent to a nutty psychiatrist named Dr. Brandon (Whit Bissell). Brandon has developed the insane theory that the only way to save mankind is to regress it back to its primitive state. To this end he experiments on poor Tony, using hypnotic regression to turn him more or less into a werewolf. Teenage Werewolf works on the level of an old horror comic book story, is nevertheless played more or less straight, and is not a bad picture. There is a genuinely well-done attack scene in a forest [greatly abetted by the performance of victim Michael Rougas] and the wolf make up is reasonably effective (even if the teeth could use a little work). Landon and Bissell give very good performances, and there's nice work from Louise Lewis as the concerned principle Ferguson, and Malcolm Atterbury as Tony's father. Guy Williams [Captain Sindbad] and Robert Griffin [Monster from Green Hell] are the cops on the case. The movie probably could have done without the "Eenie Meenie Minee Mo" number sung by the teens. Yvonne Lime makes virtually no impression as Tony's girlfriend. Released on a double-bill with I was a Teenage Frankenstein.

Verdict: Fun if downbeat horror flick. ***