I PASSED FOR WHITE

James Franciscus and Sonya Wilde

I PASSED FOR WHITE (1960). Director: Fred M. Wilcox.

Bernice Lee (Sonya Wilde), who is biracial, finds herself discriminated against by both whites and blacks. She travels to New York, where she discovers that one firm won't hire her -- despite her qualifications -- simply because she's a "Negro." Lying about her race, she gets a good job and begins a romance with a handsome man, Rick (James Franciscus of The Valley of Gwangi), whom she meets on the plane. But when they fall in love, how far is Bernice -- now known as Lila Brownell -- willing to go with her deception, and can she get away with it?

Lon Ballantyne and Sonya Wilde

I Passed for White has a similar premise to the superior Pinky, which came out eleven years earlier. But while both feature interracial relationships, I Passed for White deals with its heroine in the white urban world and has her interacting with her fiance's upper crust family, who are a bit suspicious -- never dreaming she's part black but wondering why she keeps telling false stories about her family. One of the movie's best scenes has her in a nightclub with her husband and in-laws, and encountering her brother, Chuck (Lon Ballantyne), which leads to an ugly scene that clearly suggests that Rick is a racist.

James Franciscus

Sonya Wilde has her moments as Bernice, but at twenty-one she seems a bit inexperienced to completely pull off such a difficult role; she had only a few credits afterward. Many of the other actors offer somewhat obvious and stilted performances, as if they were appearing in a amateur stage play, although James Franciscus is surprisingly excellent as Rick -- it's no surprise the actor went places, however. Of the supporting cast, the most notable are the aforementioned Ballantyne, who is a nice actor, and Isabel Cooley as the sympathetic maid, Bertha. Two other cast members of note are Jimmy Lydon [Strange Illusion] as a friend of Rick's and Thomas Browne Henry [The Robe] as a doctor. Unfortunately, neither has much to do. Fred M. Wilcox had previously directed Forbidden Planet!

Verdict: No Pinky, but it does have several good sequences. **3/4. 

DOUBLE DEAL

Richard Denning and Marie Windsor

DOUBLE DEAL (1950). Director: Abby Berlin.

Buzz Doyle (Richard Denning), a new arrival in town, almost immediately winds up embroiled with two warring women. Terry (Marie Windsor) wants Buzz to work with her and her friend Reno (Carleton Young) on an oil well that she hopes will turn into a gusher. Meanwhile, Reno's sister, Lily (Fay Baker), who hates her brother because she feels he was responsible for her lover's death, tries to lure Buzz over to her side and work against the others. Then there's a murder or two, and the surprise unveiling of the killer. Double Deal is distinctly minor, but it features some likable players, and there's especially zesty work from Baker [The Star], Taylor Holmes [Caged] as the drunken if helpful, "Corpus" and James Griffith [The Amazing Transparent Man] as the slimy Walter Karnes, Lily's plaything. Thomas Browne Henry plays the cop on the case.

Verdict: Ho hum meller that doesn't even have a decent "cat fight" between the ladies. **.

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS

Portrait of evil: Douglas Fowley

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS (1948). Director: Budd Boetticher.

Reporter Kathy Lawrence (Lucille Bremer) importunes new private eye Ross Stewart (Richard Carlson) to work with her to find a missing corrupt judge whose capture will net them $5000 a piece. The only problem is that Ross will have to get himself committed to the La Siesta sanitarium where Kathy is sure the judge is hiding. Once inside the institution, Ross discovers there's more corruption and danger than  he ever anticipated. Carlson is fine as the flip, overly insouciant private eye who discovers some situations are more serious than others, and Bremer [Till the Clouds Roll By] is okay, but the most striking performance is from Douglas Fowley [He's a Cockeyed Wonder] as the sadistic and utterly evil attendant, Larson. Thomas Browne Henry is fine as the head of the institution and there's nice work from Ralf Harolde [Night Nurse] as Dobbs, another, nicer attendant. A fully grown Dicke Moore plays a young patient who is actually Dobbs' son. John Holland plays a state psychiatrist, Kathleen Freeman has a bit as a nurse, and Tor Johnson plays another inmate who tries to box Carlson to bits in the film's liveliest sequence. I don't know if Behind Locked Doors was the first film to use the premise of a sane man feigning mental illness to get inside an institution for some purpose, but in the early sixties two movies followed suit. In Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor a reporter hopes to win a Pulitzer and Shock Treatment presents a guy whose intention is to get information about some missing moolah. This movie is barely an hour long.

Verdict: Snappy B thriller with a highly sinister Fowley. ***.

BEGINNING OF THE END

BEGINNING OF THE END (1957). Director: Bert I. Gordon.

Reporter Audrey Aimes (Peggie Castle) is surprised to learn that the town of Ludlow has been wiped out overnight and all of its 150 inhabitants have disappeared. [Nobody ever suggests a tornado might be responsible even though that is what the damage resembles in stock footage.] No, in a grotesque development Audrey learns that irradiated food worked on by entomologist Ed Wainwright (Peter Graves) has been accidentally eaten by grasshoppers and has turned them into humongous giants that have devoured everyone in town [bones included]! Before long General Hanson (Morris Ankrum) and Colonel Sturgeon (Thomas B. Henry) are leading a desperate battle against the ravenous plague of locusts as Wainwright tries to come up with the solution to destroying them. The climax has Wainwright and Aimes working in a skyscraper in Chicago as the grasshoppers converge en masse ... This is a cheap but entertaining entry in the "big bug" cycle, zippily directed by Gordon, and not badly acted by the enthusiastic cast. Beginning of the End is fast-paced fun but it's not a classic a la Them, its obvious model, nor is it as good as Tarantula. [Gordon also directed Earth vs. The Spider, among many others.]

NOTE: There is a scene in this movie when the Army first encounters the giant grasshoppers but find they are more than they can manage. As a truck pulls away from the forest where the mutants are congregated, one grasshopper suddenly rushes after the truck and nearly catches up with it. However, on the only DVD of this picture currently available, there is a fade out just before the monster appears, stripping the movie of one of its more exciting sequences. Reportedly, the DVD has cut three minutes of footage from the movie. This makes absolutely no sense. The whole point of DVDs with their special features and widescreen format is to show the complete movie as it was intended to be seen. It could be argued that some cuts tighten the movie or remove bad FX work, but fans of this genre want to see the whole movie as it was originally presented, no matter how good the video quality. [ For more on this and similar films see Creature Features: Nature Turned Nasty in the Movies.]

Verdict: Movie: **1/2. DVD: *1/2.

THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS

THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957). Director: Nathan Juran [as Nathan Hertz].

"A very exciting female -- she appeals to me."

Scientist Steve March (John Agar) goes with associate Dan Murphy (Robert Fuller) to Mystery Mountain for some experiments and discovers a hitherto unknown tunnel -- and exploring it encounters the evil Gor from planet Arous. Gor is an intergalactic criminal as well as a ghostly disembodied brain of substantial size who takes over March's mind and then tries to take over the world. Although Gor terrorizes the military and several representatives of world governments by frying enemies and bringing down airliners, there are some compensations: March's girlfriend, Sally (Joyce Meadows), notices that Steve has become a much more passionate kisser. The Brain from Planet Arous is like a fifties horror/sci fi comic book story and just as silly. But it's also extremely entertaining and features a whopping good lead performance from John Agar, who really seems to be having a ball threatening everyone with his evil eye beams. There are also solid performances from the supporting cast, including Meadows and Fuller, as well as old stand-bys Thomas Browne Henry and Ken Terrell. Meadows was primarily a television actor, as was Fuller, although he also appeared in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? with Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon in 1969. 

Verdict: As evil brain movies go, this one is a winner. ***.

HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER

HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (1958). Director: Herbert L. Strock.

"An artist must have no fear."

When make up artist Pete Dumond (Robert H. Harris) is let go by the studio because new executives claim horror films aren't making any money, he hypnotizes the actors playing a teenage Frankenstein (Gary Conway of Burke's Law) and werewolf (Gary Clarke of Missile to the Moon and Michael Shayne) into murdering his bosses. Dumond metamorphoses from a kindly professional into a nasty maniac who slaughters anyone who gets in his way. Robert Shayne plays an agent; Morris Ankrum is a cop; Malcolm Atterbury is a security guard; and Thomas Browne Henry plays a director. John Ashley plays himself in a brief musical guest appearance. The last ten minutes, which are in color, feature a lot of Paul Blaisdell creations hanging in Dumond's workshop as examples of his art. In his only starring role in movies, Harris -- a busy television actor of the period --  is excellent, and Paul Brinegar is fine as his cowering assistant Rivero. As you would expect, the make ups are great.

Verdict: Fun primarily because Harris delivers. ***.

THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE

THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE (1958). Director: Will Cowan. 

Jessica (Carolyn Kearney) is a young lady who can divine things. When her power discovers that there's something buried beneath the ground on her Aunt Flavia's (Peggy Converse) ranch, she warns everyone that it's evil -- but her aunt is hoping for buried treasure and ignores her. Well, they find a chest all right, but what's inside is hardly the treasure Flavia was hoping for. Soon the hands and guests at the ranch find themselves at the mercy of a force that dates back to the days of Sir Francis Drake. This is an entertaining and fast-paced horror flick that doesn't take itself too seriously but never descends into outright camp, either. There are amusing moments, and the actors are all credible. David Duncan's script provides characters who have some dimension to them as well. The score is an effective mish mash of other scores from a host of Universal's horror and sci fi films. William Reynolds is probably the best-known cast member, and we've also got the durable Thomas Browne Henry [Earth vs. the Flying Saucers; Blood of Dracula] in a small role. Villain Robin Hughes had a great many credits. David Duncan also wrote The Leech Woman, The Time Machine and Monster on the Campus. Not to be confused with The Brain That Wouldn't Die. This was the last of 119 movies directed by Will Cowan [who also produced this and about 140 other films]; he lived for another 36 years. 

Verdict: You can't keep a good head down. ***.

SPACE MASTER X-7

SPACE MASTER X-7 (1958). Director: Edward Bernds. 

Dr. Pommer (Paul Frees) experiments with a piece of "blood rust," his name for the red fungus that covers the planet Mars and was brought back by a ship called "Space Master X-7,", and discovers to his regret that it's even more dangerous than he imagined. Laura (Lyn Green), the mother of his son, comes to visit and walks off unaware that she's carrying fungal spores. Agents John Hand (Bill Williams) and Joe Rattigan (Robert Ellis) begin a desperate search for the woman, finding traces of the fungus -- which sort of resembles a glistening, moving carpet -- wherever she's been. The climax occurs on a plane where the fungus begins to break out of the cargo hold. An amusing scene has the passengers reacting to the fungus as it covers the plane windows. Thomas Browne Henry of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Blood of Dracula, and many others, is in the cast as a Professor, and Moe Howard of the 3 Stooges is a helpful cab driver! The acting is more than adequate, and Frees has a better and bigger role than usual; he's excellent. This might have amounted to more if it had a bigger budget and more imaginative direction, but it has its moments. 

Verdict: Creepy in spite of itself. **1/2.

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957). Director: Nathan Juran.

A rocket ship returning from Venus carrying a specimen of a native life form crash lands off Sicily and a young boy (Bart Bradley/Braverman) who finds the little creature brings it to a local professor (Frank Puglia) . Soon the little animal is growing rapidly, until it escapes its cage and has to be recaptured. Now as big as King Kong and then some, it breaks out of a lab in Rome after an accident and terrorizes the city, taking a last stand at the Coliseum. Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation of the Ymir (the name by which the creature became known, although it is never referred to as such in the film itself) is lively and fluid and the FX make the film watchable and entertaining. William Hopper is stalwart and essentially wooden as the hero, but Joan Taylor is better as the professor's grand-daughter, who is studying to be a doctor. Thomas Browne Henry plays yet another military man, giving his usual crisp delivery.

Verdict: Great fun! ***.

BLOOD OF DRACULA

BLOOD OF DRACULA (1957). Director: Herbert L. Strock.

Nancy Perkins (Sandra Harrison) is dumped at a girl’s school by her newly-widowed father (Thomas Browne Henry) so he can go off with his sexy new wife. She’s furious to be leaving behind her friends and steady beau, but there are worse things in store for her. One of her teachers, Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), is dismayed because her thesis keeps getting rejected. She’s convinced that it’s because she’s a woman but it’s just as likely that it’s because a.) she works at a small town girl’s school and is not exactly a professor at Harvard, and b.) her thesis states that there will be no need for A bombs once the deadly, explosive powers of human beings have been harvested (Yes) ! To prove this she needs a girl of angry temperament, and therefore hypnotizes Nancy. For inexplicable reasons, she apparently has Nancy murder a couple of her classmates and friends. There is no "Dracula" in the movie, nor even a mention of him (only of vampires in general), but Nancy transforms into a thick-lipped, shaggy-haired, fanged monstrosity who sucks blood in one of the most hilarious "horror" make-ups of all time. (It’s got to be seen to be believed.) The acting and lensing in the low-budget quickie isn’t bad, and neither is the premise, although Miss Branding’s "science" is below comic book level. Screenwriter Aben Kandel has some decent dialogue along with some clunkers but lots of intriguing stuff goes completely unexplored. It’s unlikely that anyone took this seriously, but in its limited way it’s kind of fun. There’s even a musical number, "Puppy Love," with a guy named Tab (Jerry Blaine).

Verdict: Dopey but amusing. **1/2.