BACK TO THE RETRO FUTURE: PART 2
Yesteryear’s Movies of Tomorrow
By Will “The Thrill” Viharo

In this second installment of our three-part series, B-movie conoisseur Will Viharo ventures into the vaults of vintage sci-fi cinema to highlight the best in classic spaceship celluloid. This isn’t just a lesson in cinematic history, it’s a look deep into the collective American psyche in the mid-20th century. Ready for more? Then pour yourself a refreshing glass of traggle nectar, lean back, and enjoy the continuing journey into uncharted realms known only to diehard science fiction fans.

“PIE PLATES OF PERIL”: EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)

Fear of an invasion from outer space, spurred by vague but frequent UFO sightings and whispered conspiracies, was as palpable among the panicky population of the ’50s as worry over a nuclear standoff with Russia. And, filmmakers were quick to cash in on this terror-stricken trend. Special effects guru Ray Harryhausen is better known these days for sword-and-sorcery swashbucklers like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, but in the black & white days of the ’50s, his specialty was devising methods for the destruction of various cities, including their most famous landmarks. In Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the first feature film for which he created all the special effects, the prehistoric Rhedosaurus rampages through New York; in It Came From Beneath (1955) a giant octopus ravages San Francisco; in 20,000 Miles to Earth (1957) a Venusian monster called an Ymir makes his last stand on the Coliseum in Rome.

But for Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, Ray’s 1956 alien invaders masterpiece, the creative juggernaut devised ingenious flying saucers that became the most memorable—and mimicked—of all interstellar invasion vehicles (copied outright in Tim Burton’s outrageous 1996 send-up, Mars Attacks). Keeping pace with Ray’s other displays of urban destruction, and taking a cue from Day the Earth Stood Still, the invaders also trash our nation’s capital, but with much more malevolent force than the diplomatic Klaatu: the Washington Monument is totally toppled in the assault!

Also see: George Pal’s seminal and influential classic War of the Worlds (1953), based on the H.G. Wells novel but more inspired by Orson Welles’ infamous radio play, which caused real life panic during its 1938 broadcast; AIP’s drive-in classic Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) featuring Frank Gorshin and a gang of Paul Blaisdell’s bulbous-headed, cat-eyed, alcohol-clawed space monsters, but only one sad little saucer; Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World (1951), the crowd-pleasing classic about a hostile alien veggie-monster-man (James Arness) who crash lands his saucer near the North Pole and proceeds to terrorize a scientific expedition; and The Mysterians (1957), Toho’s entry in the space invader race, as evil aliens armed with a bird-like giant robot named Mogera lay waste to Japan, as if resident giant monsters Godzilla and Rodan weren’t doing their job properly.

“ROBOTS ‘R’ US”: FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)

While many of us want our jetpacks, the homemakers among us yearn for another un-kept promise from the architects of yesteryear: the robot maid. Postwar visionaries often pitched the home of the future as a modern oasis replete with automatic devices, self-sufficient resources and plenty of intelligent mechanisms to aid our leisure. As of this writing in the futuristic year of 2004, they’re still working on ‘em. But, perhaps the most legendary embodiment of this technological Utopia was Robby the Robot, the inhuman star of Forbidden Planet, an interstellar re-imagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest that is arguably the most famous and beloved of all ’50s sci-fi movies.

Robots had been popular in sci-fi literature and pop culture for decades already, but with all the advances made in technology since WW2, people began to actually expect a race of robots to one day serve humankind. Nowadays, robotic humans are regularly seen in political circles or reporting the news, and Arnold’s Terminator is the current standard for our mechanical doppelgangers. But Robby remains the robot for the ages: boundlessly smart, eloquently personable, magically resourceful, and incredibly cool. Only the Robot on the Lost in Space TV series can compete with Robby’s pop cultural standing (and in fact they once teamed up in an episode).

Forbidden Planet is itself a marvel–the vividly colorful sets and costumes of the crew (led by Leslie Nielsen, long before he realized how funny he could be) and the philosophical underpinnings (including a giant invisible monster spawned by the Freudian “Id”) set it apart from its many imitators and descendents. It also boasts the premiere all-electronic score, by Louis and Bebe Barron. Word of a remake has been circulating for some time, but the fact is, only the innocent imagination of mid-century dreamers could create such a warm, vibrant and relevant masterpiece. Though set in a future where interplanetary space travel is the norm, it’s a time capsule treasure of and from the past. Leave it alone.

Also see: Robby’s return in The Invisible Boy (1957); another children’s robot classic, Tobor the Great (1954); and a more menacing metal man in Herman Cohen’s Target Earth (1954).

“SWINGIN’ AMONG THE STARS”: QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958)

This was a plot peculiar to the 1950s: a group or horny frat-boy astronauts, including at least one wisecracking sidekick from Brooklyn or someplace like it, sometimes with a pet monkey, land on another planet and encounter a race of Amazonian women wearing high heels, short skirts, thick mascara, red lipstick, and uptight attitudes supposedly caused by years of forced virginity due to the death/disappearance/unexplained absence of all males in their society. Fortunately for the guys, none of the women are lesbians, and after the requisite fights with the local giant spider puppets and whatnot, the mating process begins.

Of course this is the straight male’s wet dream come true, and it came true several times throughout the decade, reaching its zenith in Queen of Outer Space, starring Zsa Zsa Gabor (though she does not play the titular monarch). This wide-screen Deluxe color cult classic is one of the funniest movies ever made, and rumor has it the camp was intentional, years before that became the fashion, so in effect this was the earliest film to spoof its own genre (like much later efforts such as John Landis’ Amazon Women on the Moon). The script was allegedly developed from an idea by the legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht, though no one has ever really substantiated this rumor, especially not Hecht, who probably talked too loud while drunk one night at an industry shindig, hitting on the local talent. This concept was ubiquitous enough, though, so we’ll let Ben off the hook. If there is a cure for humorless political correctness, this is it.

Also see: the sexist 3D thrills of Cat Women of the Moon (1953), and its remake(!), Missile to the Moon (1958); the oddly titled Abbott and Costello Go To Mars (1953), in which Bud and Lou go to Venus and find a bevy of beauty pageant contestants; and Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956), in which the Brits prove they’re as randy (and as willing to travel for it) as us raunchy All-Americans.

There’s lots more to come, readers. Stay tuned for Part Three of
Will Viharo’s sci-fi cinematic escapades!

Beatnik lounge lizard and writer Will “the Thrill” Viharo and his wife, Monica “the Tiki Goddess,” host a live cult movie cabaret called “Thrillville” at the Cerrito Speakeasy Theater in El Cerrito, CA. Will also has a B-movie tiki lounge at home, where he watches his DVD collection while drinking homemade Mai Tais (which may have influenced these reviews somewhat).

BACK TO THE RETRO FUTURE: PART 1
Yesteryear’s Movies of Tomorrow
By Will “The Thrill” Viharo

In the first of this three-part series, B-movie conoisseur Will Viharo ventures into the vaults of vintage sci-fi cinema to highlight the best in classic spaceship celluloid . This isn’t just a lesson in cinematic history, it’s a look deep into the collective American psyche in the mid-20th century. So, pour yourself a tumbler of rocket fuel, kick back, and get ready to blast off into uncharted realms known only to diehard science fiction fans.

Many of us poor Earthlings stuck here in the dawn of the terror-stricken, economically challenging, morally complex, gas-guzzling 21st Century wonder one simple thing: Where are our personal jet-packs promised by The Jetsons back in the early 1960s?

Today’s sci-fi blockbusters are decidedly more pessimistic than the space-age films of yore. Beginning with cynical cyber-punk classics like Blade Runner (1982), modern science fiction movies invariably depict dreary, dystopian futures for our species, full of screeching sound, smoke and steel. (See also: Mad Max, Matrix, Alien and Terminator franchises, and the more recent I, Robot.) Even relatively optimistic options offered by the sundry Star Trek spin-offs or the Star Wars movies are noisy, busy and, by certain standards, downright ugly. As they say, the future is not what it used to be.

Perhaps this accounts for the current, rampant nostalgia for mid-20th Century pop culture—people of this real “future” are now longing for the pretty past that placed much more faith in us than we do ourselves. The hopes and dreams this nation had for its own technological and cultural evolution following the euphoria of the prosperous 1950s was slowly and systematically shattered by the revolutionary ’60s. The assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, as well as the rebellion of the counterculture, and the angry ascent of rock ‘n’ roll, destroyed the collective aspirations of an entire generation by the finale of this tumultuous decade—which, ironically, also ended with the first moon-landing, in 1969. Although many positive changes resulted from this massive upheaval, mainly in the arena of civil rights, a certain idealism and innocence was tragically lost in the explosive exchange. By the beginning of the 1980s, the country was riveted by Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, not the steps taken by our brave astronauts. Goodbye, Jetsons; hello, Joan Jett.

ROCKETS, ROBOTS & RAYS OF HOPE

Nowhere is the post-WW2 generation’s faith in (and fears of) the future more evident than in the science fiction movies of the 1950s and early ’60s, which often and ironically contradicted the public’s real fears that we’d blow ourselves up any minute and there’d be no future at all. Still, filmmakers dared to dream for the masses. For the purpose of illustrating these reveries, I’ve compiled a list of movies I strongly recommend for your homebound blast to the past. All of these titles are available either on DVD or VHS; some are still occasionally shown on late night cable TV (including re-runs of Mystery Science Theater 3000). I’ve broken them down into eclectic, and rather eccentric, categories, leading off with my own personal favorite of the bunch. But be forewarned: my tastes tend toward the pulpy end of the spectrum. I’ve also provided alternate choices from the A, B and Z lists as well.

This list leaves out obvious ’50s sci-fi categories like Big Bugs (Them!, Tarantula, The Deadly Mantis) or Red Scare Alien Possession (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came From Outer Space, It Conquered the World), focusing more on films that represent the mid-century man’s dreams, and nightmares, regarding The Future, be it In Space, From Space, or right here on “Terror” Firma. Most of these films contain the popular iconography associated with this genre—rocket ships, robots, ray guns—and represent a fairly comprehensive cross-section of sub-genres, commonly bonded with that essential B movie ingredient: Cheese. Welcome to the interstellar cocktail lounge of the Space Age imagination.

“FIRE UP THOSE RETRO-ROCKETS”: DESTINATION MOON (1950)

During the most xenophobic era in modern American history, rife with communist witch-hunts, racial prejudice, and social malaise, many Americans dreamed of a better world “Out There”. George Pal, who by now had established himself as a special effects wizard due to his innovative, award-winning “Puppetoon” animation shorts, was the first filmmaker to successfully capture these starry-eyed ambitions on celluloid. This film, though slow-paced, is a graceful (albeit naturally cornball) little masterwork of style and creativity, also considered to be scientifically sound at the time. While dated, this film is worth seeing because of its historical significance as prototypical space exploration cinema.

Also see: Rocketship XM (1950), rushed into release when it was learned Destination Moon was in production, making it the first official “rocketship” movie, complete with a little theremin on the soundtrack; Cameron Mitchell and Arthur Franz take a very early, and colorful, Flight to Mars (1951), using spacesuits left over from Destination Moon;and Pal’s next excursion into planetary orbit, the more ambitious but less successful Conquest of Space (1955).

“ALIENS ARE PEOPLE, TOO”: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) and THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955)

It’s astounding that right in the middle of a conservative era dominated by militant American chest-thumping, a film with a liberal anti-war message could even get made, much less become a hit. But Robert Wise’s sci-fi masterpiece The Day the Earth Stood Still not only went down in Hollywood history as one of the most sophisticated, exciting and intelligent sci-fi movies ever made, it was also a popular favorite with audiences across all demographics, making it the first big sci-fi “blockbuster.” It also boasted the first major sci-fi soundtrack to fully employ a theremin, composed by the great Bernard Hermann, setting a B movie trend that would last for over a decade (though non-monster movies The Lost Weekend and Spellbound were the very first to use this eerie instrument in their scores).

Day’s iconic imagery—the giant robot Gort emerging from the immense flying saucer on the White House Lawn, led by interstellar ambassador Klaatu, played by Michael Rennie—is both an emblem of classic sci-fi cinema and a symbol of peace during an uncertain, unsteady era. Of course, the actual message from space was a bit more blunt: Earth’s nations either learn to get along or they will be obliterated by an inter-galactic police force, before our volatile inclinations can infect the rest of the apparently peace-loving universe.

Another equally emblematic alien of the era was the big-brained Metaluna Mutant from This Island Earth, Universal’s official entry in the epic outer space sweepstakes. This classic popcorn movie, while not quite in the league of its classy predecessor, opting for cheap thrills over political subtext, also featured an alien ambassador. The visitor, Exeter (played by genre regular Jeff Morrow), whose intentions are at first sinister, is finally revealed as noble only after he has abducted two hapless Earthlings (fellow genre stalwarts Rex Reason and Faith Domergue) to his doomed planet. The Technicolor production still stuns with imaginative visuals, and its soundtrack music, including cues by Henry Mancini, is equally essential. This Island Earth’s “interocitor” machine became as famous amongst ’50s fantasy film fans as the ultimate quote from Day the Earth Stood Still: “Klaatu barada nikto.”

Also see: Edgar C. Ulmer’s moody, sympathetic portrait of The Man From Planet X (1951) ; the bargain basement one-set wonder The Astounding She Monster (1958), with Robert C. Clarke, gangsters and a voluptuous visitor from beyond the stars; the atmospheric British chiller Devil Girl From Mars (1954), whose sexy space-travelling siren also sports her own imposing robot enforcer; and Teenagers From Outer Space (1958), which proved that juvenile delinquency had truly spread to all corners of the galaxy and the most insidious enemy was already among us.

There’s more celluloid magic in store, readers.
Check out Part Two of Will Viharo’s sci-fi cinematic escapades!

Beatnik lounge lizard and writer Will “the Thrill” Viharo and his wife, Monica “the Tiki Goddess,” host a live cult movie cabaret called “Thrillville” at the Cerrito Speakeasy Theater in El Cerrito, CA. Will also has a B-movie tiki lounge at home, where he watches his DVD collection while drinking homemade Mai Tais, the effects of which may have influenced these reviews somewhat.

The King of Skull Island Lives on DVD
By Will “The Thrill” Viharo

In anticipation of the epic Peter Jackson remake of the original 1933 classic King Kong, several studios are going “ape,” unleashing their individual inventories of the Big Guy’s cinematic adventures onto the holiday DVD market. I say, bring it on.

The release (or is that escape?) that’s really driving Kong fanatics bananas is the four-disc set from Warner Brothers (which now owns the valuable vintage RKO library), THE KING KONG COLLECTION. The collection features the first KING KONG plus its immediate and perfunctory sequel, SON OF KONG and the 1949 stop motion monkey masterpiece, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, all from the trailblazing team of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. These two cats were more than visionary entrepreneurs — they were both true-life adventurers in the real world, culling inspiration not only from their vivid imaginations but also from their own exploratory experiences in exotic realms around the globe. This pair of macho, heroic characters shared a passionate patriotism as well as a risk-taking sense of the bold and innovative. Their creative collaboration resulted not only in the enduring success of these iconic movie monsters, but also the groundbreaking early ’50s experiment in hyperbolic cinema sensationalism, This is Cinerama. (Cooper also produced a number of key John Ford Westerns, including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers.)

The duo’s influential exploits are well documented in the second disc of the King Kong DVD, which also includes interviews with New Zealand-native Peter Jackson, Oscar winner for his recent Lord of the Rings trilogy and director of the new Kong. His reverence for the original is almost as legendary as the film itself. Jackson even included Skull Island, Kong’s home, in his outrageous zombie satire Dead Alive (1993). What really impressed me was his recreation, via historically contextual, painstaking accuracy, of the “lost” spider pit sequence from the original Kong. Jackson and his team of special effects wizards — all expressing their reverence for Oakland-born Willis O’Brien, Kong’s masterful animator and the godfather of all modern visual effects — manage to pull off an extraordinary miracle of movie magic. This sequence alone makes the DVD a must-have for all fantasy film geeks (like yours truly).

But then, there are the movies themselves, now available for the first time in this format. King Kong’s pristine transfer is from a recently unearthed British 35mm print that keeps intact the notorious scenes of graphic violence (Kong biting people in half) and implicit sexuality (stripping Fay Wray and then sniffing her!) that were cut from the 1938 re-release (as dictated by the increasingly conservative Motion Picture Code), only to re-emerge in the ’60s via scratchy 16mm sources, awkwardly edited back into subsequent video releases. Now we can see the film in its original uncut glory for the first time, and it is magnificent.

Of course, modern audiences will still cringe at the jaw-dropping racism and sexism that somehow escaped our youthful notice, but taken within historical context, and given the fact the real star of the film is a giant gorilla, these concerns should not detract from the overall experience. Hey, we’re here for the spectacle, for the big ape, and for the dinosaurs — who cares about these stupid little humans, anyway? Not me. They’re just part of the scenery that Kong chews up with relish.

Son of Kong was released within a few months after its popular Pop. It’s a hastily thrown together “comedy” featuring Kong’s unexplained offspring discovered on a return trip to Skull Island by Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) and some treasure seekers. Little Kong makes cute, childlike gestures, wrestles a cave bear and encounters a few other odd creatures, but it’s a relatively brief (70 or so minutes) exercise in exploitation, a quickie sequel too obviously made to cash in on the original’s unprecedented success. But it does have its period charms, and little kids should appreciate the simple story.

The effects are not nearly as impressive as in the first, looking more like an episode of the ’70s TV show Land of the Lost, but for its era, and considering the budget and time constraints, it’s a pleasant enough postscript.

Mighty Joe Young is another chest-thumping tale of an overgrown (17 feet or so) primate brought to civilization by a greedy showman — again played by Armstrong — but this time Willis O’Brien (whose personal life was wrought with tragedy) brought in a young assistant named Ray Harryhausen, later famous for such landmark fantasy classics as Jason and the Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Ray also provides commentary on both King Kong and Mighty Joe Young and appears in two documentaries on the Joe Young disc. The result of this collaboration is a more smoothly animated creation and advanced techniques of rear projection, matte photography and other illusionary feats first pioneered by O’Brien, who practically invented the special effects blockbuster on the fly back in ‘32 while working on Kong. The nightclub scenes alone are among the most astonishing and memorable images in motion picture history. Willis wrote the book on visual effects but Harryhausen expanded it into a Bible still referenced by movie magicians today. Like Obie, Ray could breathe a soul into his puppets, giving them a heartfelt reality missing from many of today’s CGI output, and a natural empathy many actors would kill for.

Of course, in subsequent appearances, Kong was reduced to a man in a gorilla suit. This cheaper route has its own odd rewards, however, especially for the hardcore B movie buff who likes to see a toy plane dangling from a wire now and then. These simple pleasures are abundantly obvious in the two Japanese made Kong flicks from the ’60s, KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962) and KING KONG ESCAPES (1966), just released in a twin DVD package from Universal. Both these movies are often ridiculed and dismissed by Kong purists, but to me, they are pop art classics. I loved ‘em as a kid, and I still dig ‘em now, stupid as they inherently are.

Kong vs. Godzilla (finally available in letter-box format after several pan and scan video versions) was actually the first time the Big Ape had appeared onscreen since his 1933 debut, albeit now in a much goofier incarnation than when he was introduced. And this was only the third film appearance by the Big Lizard. The Japanese version was directed by the great Ishiro Honda, but for the American release there were new scenes, typically bad dubbing, confusing editing and a soundtrack culled from Universal’s garage, including cues from The Creature From the Black Lagoon. (Kong “wins” in both cuts, contrary to rumors of an alternate Japanese ending.) Also missing was the grim tone and relative seriousness of the original films. This flick was marketed more like a wrestling match — and looked just as fake — than a monumental milestone in movie history. The success of this family-friendly team-up also made Toho realize that Godzilla could be as big a matinee idol as Elvis so long as he avoided pursuing his career as a snooty thespian. (Ironically, Col. Parker had the same game plan in mind for his own boy, hence Blue Hawaii instead of another King Creole.) This movie is more on par with Al Adamson’s notorious ’70s schlock fest Dracula vs. Frankenstein than, say, Universal’s revered 1940s classic Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Still, it’s fun to watch Kong drinking from giant mugs of spiked berry juice and falling over drunk on his tiki island, fighting Big G like an enraged sumo wrestler, and peeling a (real) giant slimy octopus from his pointy rubber head.

Even more fun is the non-related King Kong Escapes, inspired by the Rankin-Bass cartoon show. It often plays more like an episode of the TV series Batman than a monster movie, with elements of swingin’ spy cinema popular at the time. After the obligatory island voyage, Kong and his human pals take on the evil Dr. Who and his awesome invention MechaKong, a giant robot duplication of the real (man in an ape suit) thing.

MechaKong is just too, too cool, man. I could put it in more sophisticated terms but that sums up the appeal for me. The miniatures are actually quite effective, too, especially the scenes set up at Dr. Who’s snowbound Arctic hideaway. I fondly remember being totally enthralled by this movie when I saw it at the drive-in as a little tyke, and seeing it again made me goose-pimply with nostalgia.

Those goose pimples got goose pimples when, courtesy of Sony’s Wonder DVD division, I was able to re-visit the inspiration for Kong Escapes, the original KING KONG animated series that ran on Saturday morning TV in the mid-’60s. Few I’ve talked to remember this early example of “Anime” — actually made in Japan for an American audience, a first — but the rousing theme song alone has never left me (“Ten times as big as a man!”). Seeing it again as “grown-up,” I realize in retrospect why I was so enchanted by this show as an impressionable tyke, and why it’s stuck with me for so long, since that’s obviously the target audience, without any subversive “camp” elements to make it more palatable for adults. The stories are always simplistic, sometimes insultingly so, and the animation ranges from passable to a little better than average (the characters were co-designed by the great MAD illustrator, Jack Davis). Still, I highly recommend both volumes for kids of all ages (four half hour episodes apiece, including four installments of Tom of T.H.U.M.B., a silly spy spoof about a miniature secret agent). The fact that this friendly Kong was found on “Mondo Island” by a scientist and his young son (shades of Jonny Quest) excludes any reference to the original film. For this incarnation, Kong was reinvented for the cereal crowd, and I still enjoy watching it with a bowl of corn flakes today, for the sake of sheer, shameless nostalgia.

And not to be left off the banana-wagon, Sony/MGM DVD has reached deep into its vaults to revive the American International Pictures cult favorite KONGA (1961). This one stars the great British actor Michael Gough (Alfred in the ’90s Batman movie series) as a mad scientist who creates his own giant gorilla — out of a chimpanzee! — which then proceeds to wreak havoc on London. This was AIP’s “answer” to Kong the same way I Was A Teenage Werewolf, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula, How To Make A Monster and Horrors of the Black Museum were their drive-in updates of Universal’s classic monsters from the ’30s and ’40s. Konga is indeed a man in a gorilla suit — a pretty neat one, I must say — and this colorful slice of exploitation contains some rather sordid material, but it’s still a must-have not only for Kong completists but for all devotees of classic cheesy cinema.

Already long available on the DVD market are several irreverent Kong-inspired movies from the ’70s like QUEEN KONG, MIGHTY PEKING MAN, A-P-E and of course the technically terrible but still curiously compelling Dino De Laurentis remake of KONG from 1976 starring Jessica Lange, as well as its almost irredeemably bad sequel from 1987, KING KONG LIVES. Take these journeys and bring these monsters home at your own peril.

Kong lives all right — whether as a stop motion puppet, a guy in an ape suit, or a computerized image — and most significantly, as an eternal movie star, a brutishly romantic figure still rampaging through the jungles of our collective dreams. Not even Beauty could kill this Beast.

Beatnik lounge lizard and writer Will “the Thrill” Viharo and his wife, Monica “the Tiki Goddess,” host a live cult movie cabaret called “Thrillville” at the Parkway Speakeasy Theater in Oakland, CA. Will also has a B-movie tiki lounge at home, where he watches his DVD collection while drinking homemade Mai Tais (which may have influenced these reviews somewhat).