Cardboard Science: Siri, How Many Fathoms Are In A League?

Year: 1953
Director: Eugène Lourié
Cast: Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway
Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Happy Halloween, everybody! It's time for the final leg of the annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue, in which I task him with tackling three 1980s slasher reviews and in exchange he assigns me three 1950s/60s B-movies. Last time, we covered a film from Cardboard Science stalwart Bert I. Gordon. This time, we're tackling The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which brings us another legend of the genre, in the form of stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen. Also, it was directed by Eugène Lourié of The Colossus of New York, but I hope nobody will blame me for finding that fact a touch less exciting.

We've seen Harryhausen's work many times before as part of this project and others, in titles including Mysterious Island and It Came from Beneath the Sea. But you know what The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms has that they don't? The distinction of being a direct inspiration for a Cardboard Science Hall of Fame title, 1954's seminal Japanese masterwork Godzilla. 

Comparing The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms directly to Godzilla is a fool's errand, and we're gonna do it anyway. But first, the plot.

That is, if you really need a story hook other than "big monster go aargh."

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (which, for good measure, is based on the Ray Bradbury short story "The Fog Horn") follows Atomic Energy Commission physicist Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian of The Day the Sky Exploded). After he witnesses a bomb test in the Arctic freeing an ancient, still-living Rhedosaurus from the ice, he tries desperately to get anyone to believe his story as a series of mysterious and deadly incidents take place along the Atlantic coast, heading south.

He, and eventually the lovely paleontologist Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) and her mentor Professor Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and, more importantly, 1959's The Shaggy Dog), are the only ones who know that a giant monster is the reason for these attacks. That is, until the monster surfaces and stomps around in Manhattan for a bit.

Honestly, he's doing the neighborhood a favor. What's knocking over a couple buildings if it lowers the rent?

Let's cut right to the good stuff: the monster. Ray Harryhausen's work is a perfect encapsulation of the best of 1950s science fiction filmmaking. You're never at any point unaware that you're watching a stop-motion creature interacting with composited shots of humans running away screaming. However, at a certain point the magic of cinema takes over and you stop caring about any of the flaws (which include the fact that Lourié keeps trying to shoot the monster through ugly distorted lenses).

That's because, no matter how jerky the frames got, Harryhausen simply got how to breathe life into a stop-motion model. The second the Rhedosaurus stops hanging around and attacks, its muscular physicality is absolutely captivating. Your disbelief has gone weightless. No suspension is required.

I also think that there is one advantage to this being a dry run for Godzilla, which is that the monster is rather smaller than you might expect for a kaiju movie. He is not city-stomping size, which requires him to pummel buildings and rip them apart instead of merely squishing them beneath his sheer bulk. 

Another part of what makes this particular monster so convincing are the little touches. Its eyelids are blinking, and its tongue is flicking out, smelling the air. In addition to stomping around town, it is doing all of those little unconscious, barely noticeable things that living creatures need to do in order to stay that way.

Thanks to Harryhausen's delicacy and attention to detail, when his Rhedosaurus looks toward the camera, you feel like it can see you. And that makes every second spent with the monster absolutely worthwhile and dazzling. Alas, there is a larger number of monsterless seconds than just about anyone would prefer.

Oh yeah. Them.

I'm a seasoned veteran of Cardboard Science, so I knew not to expect 80 jam-packed minutes of monster mayhem. They simply couldn't have afforded that. We had to have a human plot in there somewhere. 

While The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' human characters could certainly have been worse, they mostly just rattle around the frame, reenacting various sci-fi tropes until the screenplay can finally dispense with them in the third act. Yes, the movie itself clearly resents that it had to have people in it, too, to the point that it has the most perfunctory finale, both in terms of the conclusion of its romantic arc and its literal final frame.

That said, the bland human story does have its bright spots. Its requisite "stirring narration about the progress of science" opening sequence is a particularly good one, running through a roughly hourlong countdown in the space of just a few minutes to ratchet up the tension, and kicking around the movie's most dramatic lighting in the process.

None of the rest of the human plot can live up to those moments. Though Lee and Tom do parade around in some pretty nifty coats throughout the movie that prevented my attention from ebbing entirely.

But really, the most interesting way to watch The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is one that was not available to audiences at the time: comparing it to Godzilla. It was fascinating to see how differently a Japanese film handled the idea of a nuclear monster as opposed to an American movie (though with a Russian-French director and a Swiss lead, Beast is hardly the most flag-waving American motion picture there ever was).

It should be no surprise that Godzilla handles things better, tapping into its premise in a more potent and impactful way. Its nuclear monster is a stand-in for the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' approach involving a nation's fear of its own power growing too great (which, come to think of it, is also a thematic motif in Godzilla that is handled better). 

Beast is best represented by its final sequence, which takes place on a flaming roller coaster. It's meant to be a thrill ride that deposits you safely on the ground at the end. It's not its fault that Godzilla sought to be something more complex and interesting and devastating than that. And we should thank Beast for being one of the many reasons that Godzilla exists in the first place. But it's hard to completely admire The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms knowing what was soon to stomp its way through global cinemas just over a year after its release.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*The most fantastical moment of all in this monster movie was the fact that they expected us to believe Professor Elson could climb through a hatch in a diving bell that was clearly about half his size. You can't trick me with a judicious cut, editor Bernard W. Burton.
*Yes, the best place to store those barrels of flammable materials is at the base of the wooden roller coaster, why do you ask?
*I can't even come up with a joke that roasts the name of the top secret research project harder than just telling you what it is: "Operation Experiment."

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*About 25 minutes in, I noticed that Tom Nesbitt hadn't gotten a standard-issue sci-fi movie love interest, and I wondered out loud if he was going to just stay single the whole movie. The movie then answered my question by more or less immediately cutting to the door of the university's Paleontology department, which reads something like "Professor Thurgood Elson, Assistant: Ms. Lee Miller." They quite literally hung a sign on it.
*The duties of said Lee Miller would lead me to believe that she only minored in Paleontology while majoring in Making and Dispensing Coffee and Sandwiches.

Sensawunda:

*Seeing Times Square bedecked with posters for Clark Gable and Judy Garland movies is such a lovely time capsule.
*One less delightful time capsule is the absolutely arbitrary underwater sequence where a shark and an octopus fight to the death, presumably to entertain us without adding to the special effects budget. Boo.
*I must praise the Manhattan sequence for being unusually brutal for a sci-fi movie of its vintage. Sure, we see the monster munching on a person or two, but where the movie really kicks things up a notch is a harrowing sequence of a blind man being trampled as the people around him try to escape the destruction. This is a much more effective "the horror, the horror" moment than the knocked-over mailbox from The Spider.

TL;DR: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms rocks some excellent Ray Harryhausen effects, though the material that surrounds them is understandably a bit drab.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1479

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Cardboard Science: Spins A Web, Any Size

Year: 1958
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, Eugene Persson
Run Time: 1 hour 13 minutes

It's time for the second entry in our annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue, in which I task him with tackling three 1980s slasher reviews and in exchange he assigns me three 1950s B-movies. Hunter is now bringing us The Spider (previously known as Earth vs. the Spider, which is a much less accurate but much better title). After all, it's not truly Cardboard Science without a movie helmed by the notorious Bert I. Gordon (The Cyclops, Beginning of the End, and so many more).

The plot of The Spider is just as simple as its updated title: high school student Carol (June Kenney of Attack of the Puppet People, which was at the time Gordon's most recent of three 1958 directorial features) ropes her reluctant, gaslighting boyfriend Mike (Eugene Persson) into helping her find her missing father. When investigating a cave near where they find his car abandoned on the side of the road, they discover the lair of a giant spider. Said giant spider emerges from the cave to rampage about in their small town of River Falls for a bit. Then it returns to its cave, where special effects are cheaper, for a final confrontation with the unlikely duo of Professor Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer) and Sheriff Cagle (Gene Roth of Attack of the Giant Leeches).

They're gonna need a LOT of rain to wash this spider out.

Now, cheap movies can be great fun. I can appreciate that. I did give It Conquered the World 7 out of 10, after all. But Roger Corman knew how to wield a shoestring budget like a lasso. Bert I. Gordon may have gotten it right every couple movies or so, but more often than not, he ended up accidentally tying both hands behind his back.

This is one of those pictures, unfortunately. There's just not a lot of spark here, at least when it comes to finding creative ways of bringing its core premise to life. In a movie like this, it's wise to tap into gut-level emotions rather than appealing to the rational side of the brain with convincing special effects. The effects used to supersize the spider do look somewhat decent, but said spider mostly just ambles around, waggling his legs in a friendly manner. It doesn't exactly keep you on the edge of your seat.

Nor do the majority of the spider-related deaths, which mostly involve people cowering as the camera slowly approaches them (a very traditional, but boring approach).

The best way to overcome a low budget is with a sharp script and compelling actors, which don't tend to cost quite as much money as, say, a giant rampaging spider. This movie has neither a sharp script nor compelling actors, alas. The screenplay is tedious as all get out, doling out endless expository dialogue (hardly unusual for a 1950s sci-fi movie, but I can't pretend to love it) and relying on Carol and Mike to supply The Spider with its most intense moments of pathos.

Unfortunately, Carol and Mike are outrageously miscast. It's hardly shocking to see a Hollywood movie where high schoolers are played by people who actually look like teenagers. Plus, Kenney was 25 and Persson was 24, so they're nearly a decade younger than Stockard Channing was in Grease, at least. But an actor in this position needs to do their best to play a teenager, and both of them look and act like a newlywed couple who are bickering about their plans for an upcoming dinner party.

Don't even get me started on their classmate Joe, who is weeks away from getting his pension.

Carol and Mike's sniping drags down a subplot where they get lost in the spider's cave during the climactic battle. This is deeply troubling, because that subplot was actually clever enough to have covered up the holes in the movie's budget if they had pulled it off. 

For one thing, the cave does look pretty neat, especially when it comes to the expressionistic diagonal slash of a stalactite-covered ceiling that marks one of its first chambers. It's one of the only things in the movie that feels like it was designed with cinematic aesthetic in mind (unlike the spiderwebs, which are clearly made of rope that the actors must pretend is sticky - at least spray paint the rope white or something!).

The other thing is that "we're trapped in this cave" could have been a compelling low-budget subplot that takes some of the pressure off the more expensive spider mayhem. However, in practice it just traps the viewer with Carol and Mike, who are irritating and have long since ceased to have any sort of plot function.

Pictured (left to right): Carol, Mike, The Movie's Momentum

I've been mean to The Spider for long enough that I should probably point out some things it does right, because those do exist! It sometimes slips into campy time capsule mode in a way that is satisfying (the teens having a sock hop in the restricted room that contains the supposedly dead giant spider is an indelible scene). And it has quite a few moments that are more intense and ooky than horror films of this vintage usually boast.

I'm a sucker for any scene featuring an air raid siren, but there are other moments that effectively crank up the horror atmosphere out of nowhere. For instance, Carol discovering the desiccated corpse of her father, or the casual shot of a lonely toddler on the street covered in what is heavily implied to be his mother's blood. The Spider quite frequently goes a bit harder than was strictly necessary, and I respect it for those instincts.

So all in all, the movie isn't terrible. It's charming just often enough to prevent that. And most of what it contains is just tedious rather than bad. Except the music. The score is awful oooooWEEEEEEoooo horseshit that makes it sound like the spider is seconds from being abducted by an alien at all times.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*Professor Kingman tells us quite a bit about how spiders operate, including injecting their prey with venom to stun them and sucking all the juices out of its victims. So it's weird how he neglects to actually explain the science behind this particular spider's M.O., which is mostly to smack people about the face with one of its legs.

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*When the kids inform Professor Kingman that they have discovered a giant spider, the first thing he says is "the man to see about it is the sheriff." If you say so, Artie...
*Speaking of, the first thing the sheriff does when he arrives in the cave (which is known to have stalactites so delicate that a mere shout can knock one from the ceiling) is shoot a bat to death by firing multiple rounds into the ceiling.
*I'm so sad that the 1950s are over and I've missed my chance to stop by River Falls to shop at Gay Mattress Company.
*At the end of the big rampage sequence, the filmmakers linger on a shot that they clearly view to be a potent metaphor: a U.S. Mail box has been tipped over. The horror!

Sensawunda:

*Mike's dad's movie theater is heavily advertising Bert I. Gordon's The Amazing Colossal Man and just got in Attack of the Puppet People. In fact, the latter title is so new that Mike tries to excuse himself from a second cave adventure so he can stay and watch it. If only he had. I certainly wish I had gotten to watch Attack of the Puppet People rather than spending more time with Carol in that cave.

TL;DR: The Spider is a reasonably affable B-picture, but it doesn't have a whole lot of gas in its tank.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1331

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Cardboard Science: I'm Looking Through You

Year: 1963
Director: Roger Corman
Cast: Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Harold J. Stone
Run Time: 1 hour 19 minutes

Happy October, everybody! It's time for the 12th Annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue. For those who are new here, it's the time of year when I assign Hunter three 1980s slashers from my Census Bloodbath project to review. Keep an eye out for those. In exchange, he assigns me three of his Cardboard Science titles, which are science fiction movies from the 1950s (well, mostly the 1950s - his timeline is not quite so strict as mine).

Notice that I did say three movies! For the past couple years, I've only had the bandwidth to do one title in October, but this time I was able to jump pack into the pool with both feet and return to the traditional trio of reviews, which I'll be publishing throughout the month! Thankfully, that pool has been nice and warm and comfortable, because this year, Hunter has been especially nice by assigning three titles with huge names of the genre attached. 

We're gonna kick off with one of the biggest. You see, X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes was directed by the late, great Roger Corman. Corman is the perfect lynchpin for any year's Switcheroo, because - in addition to helming titles under the Cardboard Science purview like It Conquered the World - he went on to produce a number of Census Bloodbath movies as well, including Stripped to Kill, The Slumber Party Massacre, Sorority House Massacre, and Mountaintop Motel Massacre. 

What can I say, the man loved a massacre.

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes follows Dr. James Xavier (Oscar winner Ray Milland; you know, the guy from Frogs!), who experiments with eye drops that will allow him to see a broader spectrum of light than any person has ever seen before. Dr. Sam Brant (Harold J. Stone) has grave misgivings about this, but helps him anyway. Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vlis), who represents the foundation that is funding Xavier's research, has less grave misgivings, but mostly because she has the hots for him.

Anyway, his experiment gives him X-Ray vision, but only for temporary periods. However, his continued use of the drops leads to permanent, compounded intensity of his X-Ray vision, to the point that he can see through the fabric of the universe into the Lovecraftian madness at its center. Things don't go all that well for him. 

Oh, and along the way he works at a carnival briefly because... well, why not, I guess.

So, I do love a time capsule, and X certainly provides on that front. Even though it's a fairly tried-and-true sci-fi horror story about a scientist's hubris destroying his life that boasts a screenplay that could have been written a good 10 years earlier, its aesthetic trappings allow you to carbon date it to the exact second it was shot, which is one of the great things about many Roger Corman movies.

Largely, this is evidenced in the overall look of the movie, which is cozy and colorful, with great big splashes of that burgundy red that we used to have in such abundance back when movies had saturated color schemes. But there are some sequences that are totally far out, including the big purple spiral swirling behind the opening credits and the hyper-mod party where everyone does that absurdly gyratey 1960s dance that everyone seemed to innately know how to do back then, where you swing your little T-Rex arms around too rapidly for the human eye to process.

Unfortunately, in spite of these manifold 1960s delights, there really just is no getting around that story. It starts off fine, at least. It cuts right to the chase, which I appreciate, to the point that Ray Milland is giving himself X-Ray vision by the time we hit the 12 minute mark. And about 3 of those minutes were credits.

However, once it gets cracking, the pacing immediately goes slack and the movie just sort of meanders around for an hour and change until it's had enough of itself. It has no direction whatsoever, and I wish it had just chosen a path. If it was hornier, it would have been camp fun. If it made the lead into more of a Bond villain, it would have been camp fun. If it was more cosmic, it might have been legitimately great.

More of this, please and thank you.

However, it just kind of floats around like a detached retina. There are several clear attempts to mold the story into some genre or other, but they never stick. It's a romance sometimes, and a sci-fi movie other times. Then it's a horror movie and eventually even an action movie. Like, it literally ends on a car chase.

It's perhaps at its best when it's a horror movie, because that's the register that Ray Milland's plummy, perfect performance is channeled in the most exciting way. I could watch him waxing poetic about the skeleton of a city or his unwanted ability to see through his own eyelids all day. If it was purely a character study giving Milland free reign, it might have been an all-out masterpiece.

It's just too distracted to ever really get there. Yes, some of the moments that the movie vomits up on screen are quite good. I do like when the movie gets cute with his X-Ray vision (particularly in a scene where he's being given an eye test, or the part where he sees everybody at the party dancing naked). And he briefly has a fabulous scene partner in Don Rickles as a crooked carnival barker (Rickles laces a bit of poison around his showman's charisma that is quite compelling).

But ultimately, the sum of X's parts swings the wrong direction, especially because some of those parts are, say, the scene where Xavier is diagnosing a sick little girl by X-Ray visioning through her clothes and only then through her skin. And then his colleague comes in and comments about how pretty the little girl is and Xavier agrees and we're meant to be heartwarmed or something. Let's just say that not everything about a time capsule is worth the effort of digging it up.

Oh, also, I unequivocally hate the way his X-ray powers actually look onscreen. The shots that are filmed in what I've dubbed "eyeball-vision" are surrounded by this blood red frame that's meant to mimic the shape of an eye. Never mind the issue that you don't see your own eye sockets when you're looking out of them. You've got to let a genre movie do its thing. But it's just an ugly visual, and we get so damn much of it. Boo.

Anyway, it's so good to be back! Long live Cardboard Science!

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*So in the scene where he can see everybody at the party dancing naked, including being able to see through their shoes, how come everybody's feet are touching the floor instead of floating a couple centimeters above- you know what, nevermind.
*I would also like to take issue with Xavier's "X-Ray vision" while driving into Vegas, which is literally the same collage of neon signs that any movie with a Vegas sequence does, but seen through a distorted filter.
*I've been really trying not to nitpick a silly Roger Corman movie, I promise, but it's baffling how Xavier is able to see the blackjack cards using his X-Ray vision. It would canonically just show him the back of the next card in the deck. Make it make sense!

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*The scene where Ray Milland lights a cigarette using a Bunsen burner might be the most 1960s thing I've ever seen, and I'm including that party sequence.
*When Dr. Xavier pushes Sam out the window in a fit of pique (happens to the best of us), Dr. Fairfax urges him to escape, lest he be accused of murder. She, however, stays put in the room where a man was just murdered, because I guess the police would never suspect a woman of having the upper body strength to pull off such a crime.
*As he begins his winning streak in Vegas, Xavier hands Fairfax a coin and she protests "I don't gamble!" as if it would somehow be a moral failing to put his coin into the machine so he can try and win some money. Some people need to take a chill pill.

Sensawunda:

*I shall not embarrass myself by revealing how long it took me to notice that Dr. Xavier's name begins with... an X!
*By far the best scene in the movie is when Roger Corman stalwart Dick Miller and his Little Shop of Horrors co-star Jonathan Haze show up to heckle Dr. Xavier when he's working at the carnival.
*The movie starts on a 37-second still frame of a bloody eyeball with music playing behind it, which was actually effectively unsettling, but mostly because I was worried I had broken my TV.

TL;DR: X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is a charming movie, but it's ultimately pretty empty.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1541

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Census Bloodbath: Now That's What I Call Scissoring

Year:
1985
Director:
Carlo Vanzina
Cast:
Tom Schanley, Renée Simonsen, Donald Pleasence
Run Time:
1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Nothing Underneath (Sotto il vestito niente) follows Yellowstone park ranger Bob Crane (Tom Schanley) traveling to Milan after having an intense bout of twin telepathy where he senses that his sister Jessica (Nicola Perring) is in grave danger while on a modeling job. When he finds that she's missing, he teams up with the local police commissioner, Commissario Danesi (noted Italian Donald Pleasence, and if I need to tell you that he's Dr. Loomis from the Halloween franchise, you probably shouldn't be starting your journey through this blog with my Nothing Underneath review).

Naturally, because we're in giallo territory after all, a black-gloved murderer wielding a lethally sharp pair of scissors is hunting down models in the meantime. But is Jessica one of the victims, or is she herself the killer? And will Bob's simmering flirtation with model Barbara (Renée Simonsen) ever come to a boil?

Analysis: If you've even seen a single giallo movie, you've probably seen between one and nineteen Italian models getting murdered. That's just statistics. So for Nothing Underneath to bust out this premise a good two decades after Mario Bava's The Man Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace kickstarted the genre is a little redundant. And guess what Blood and Black Lace was about, in the first place. A murderer hunting down models, of course! 

I'm just saying, this story is played out. So it's a good thing that Nothing Underneath is pretty fucking weird on top of everything else it's delivering. It's not necessarily weird in a way that would shock a seasoned viewer of gialli, but it's got a lot of beautifully florid stuff going on around the edges. 

For instance, that twin telepathy thing, which causes the unusually sexy protagonist Bob (by that I mean it's unusual for men to be sexy in giallo movies) to nearly tumble off a bridge when he goes into a fugue state. Or the apartment building that randomly has a spinning statue on the lawn in front of it. Or the fact that Bob convinces a telegram operator to bend the rules by helping her decide the best place to put her hamster. That is not an innuendo.

The extremely pleasant thing about watching a weird giallo movie is that the filmmaking craft is almost always on point, so you don't even have the excuse of the movie being shoddily made to explain any strangeness in the storytelling. A weird giallo just boldly proclaims its weirdness while looking from top to bottom like a major motion picture.

Give or take some audio issues, that it very much the case with Nothing Underneath. There are no Argento-esque flourishes to the cinematography that make it truly breathtaking, but cinematographer Beppe Maccari shows a real facility with landscapes. And composer-of-note Pino Donaggio (Dressed to Kill, Tourist Trap, Seed of Chucky, Night Game, Phantom of Death, Crawlspace, The Fan) provides the whole thing with a rich, lush score.

So that's basically why I enjoyed watching Nothing Underneath even though it's tedious as all hell. You'd be a fool for going into a giallo movie expecting the murder mystery to be tightly plotted, but we are forced to sit through so much of the investigation, and we get very little in the way of slasher kills for our trouble.

There are just enough murders that I couldn't strike it off my list for this project completely, but they are doled out at a snail's pace and generally disappoint once they do arrive. There are a few spurts of blood here and there, but the kill that should be a showpiece is placed delicately offscreen, and the ones we do get to see are presented in a cursory, almost resentful manner. 

[SPOILERS ABOUND FOR THE REST OF THIS REVIEW]

If you want to take a bath in mid-80s vibes, then this is the movie for you. If you want to watch a compelling slasher, pick literally anything else. At least Nothing Underneath has the decency to end with some of its best material. There is a prolonged flashback that involves a Russian roulette game gone wrong, and that does manage to wring some genuinely thrilling tension from the material.

Additionally, the lesbian panic killer reveal is gloriously overcooked. Maybe I was just grateful it wasn't the trans panic killer reveal that I had predicted, but my head was practically spinning from how loopy and deliciously unhinged it was, all the way down to the final slow motion shot of the killer (Barbara, naturally) grabbing Jessica's corpse and jumping out of the window in a full-on Thelma and Louise blaze of glory).

Killer: Barbara (Renée Simonsen)

Final Girl: Bob Crane (Tom Schanley)

Best Kill: Margaux's death via being stabbed in the back with scissors has the showiest gore effect, but it also has a cool moment where the camera sort of woozily tracks the scissors moving in the killer's hand afterward, so that's more than enough to shove it to the top of the pile.

Sign of the Times: Everything in this movie is incredibly 1980s. I mean, just look at that image up there. There's also a scene where a dude does coke in a bathroom that is done up in black and white tiles. But I think the moment that most specifically places Nothing Underneath in Europe in the mid-1980s is the incredibly random (and very welcome) needle drop where "One Night in Bangkok" plays during the big fashion show setpiece.

Scariest Moment: Babara suddenly uses her phallic power drill on the closet door, behind which Tom is hiding.

Weirdest Moment: Commissario Danesi and Bob go to Wendy's, where Danesi makes a big deal out of being unused to eating in this way and insists that he needs 10 napkins, whereupon he proceeds to chow down on sauceless spaghetti (which he always order plain because tomato sauce reminds him of blood).

Champion Dialogue: “I always notice people who don't notice me."

Body Count: 4; I'm not counting Barbara even though she jumped out the window, because the credits start before she hits the ground.

1. Jessica is scissored in the chest (but we don't find out until way later).
2. Carrie is scissored offscreen.
3. Margaux is scissored in the back.
4. Cristina shoots herself during Russian roulette in a flashback

TL;DR: Nothing Underneath is a dull late-period giallo that is sometimes pretty to look at, but really only good when it's at its goofiest.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1097

Census Bloodbath: Write What You Know

Year:
1984
Director:
Rufus B. Seder
Cast:
Rufus B. Seder, Eugene Seder, George Kuchar
Run Time:
1 hour 32 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Screamplay follows aspiring horror screenwriter Edgar Allan (Rufus B. Seder, who is the director, writer, producer, matte painter, sound editor, and special optical effects technician for Screamplay and exactly zero other movies, though he later became notable as an author of Scanimation children's books) moving to Hollywood, where he gets a job as the custodian at the Welcome Apartments, which is populated by a strange cast of characters including faded star Nina Ray (M. Lynda Robinson), bodybuilder and casual drag queen murderer Martin (underground director George Kuchar), wannabe actress Holly (Katy Bolger), and fire-and-brimstone rocker Lot (Bob White).

Whenever one of these people crosses him, he writes a scene in his screenplay, where they are murdered. However, when they do begin to die in the ways described on the page, this attracts the interest of homicide detective Sgt. Joe Blatz (George Cordeiro, who also co-composed the movie with Basil Bova). Meanwhile, down-on-his-luck agent Al Weiner (Eugene "Father of Rufus" Seder) sees this screenplay as his ticket to the big time and encourages Edgar to finish it, no matter the cost.

Analysis: Screamplay is kooky as fuck. Normally that would be right up my alley, but something about it was a little too off-putting, at least with this first-time watch. It's certainly unlike any other 1980s slasher out there, which I give it kudos for. It's in black and white, for one thing. It's also self-reflective and meta in a way that wouldn't really come to the fore in horror cinema until the 1990s, so it's ahead of the curve.

But it's just such a slog. There are multiple reasons for this, one of the most striking being the acting. The best performers in the cast are inconsistent and the worst are downright unwatchable. Plus, more than 50% of them are identical balding white men. In fact, I didn't even know that Martin was a different character from his neighbor Kleindorf (Ed Callahan, who did props for Sweet Sixteen and was a sound effects editor on Elm Street 4, Elm Street 5, and the Robert Englund Phantom of the Opera) until very close to the end of the movie. I just thought his name was Martin Kleindorf!

Another reason is that it is deeply unfunny. It mistakes referencing classic movie titles and stars as having anything remotely satirical to say about them. And everything else relies on gags that are so broad that you couldn't fit them into an airplane hangar. There's very little that is more exhausting than a whole lot of bad comedy, and Screamplay had me coming out of it feeling like I'd just done a triathlon.

Also, its meta pretensions could have resulted in something fun, but they are handled in such a loose, incoherent way that they never land. However, the movie grows increasingly proud of what it's doing, even though it's clearly failing, which greatly increased the already intense sense of distance between me and the story.

So ultimately you're stuck with a movie that merrily rockets up its own ass while flat comic beats endlessly unspool in front of you. I got the sense that, if it was better at doing what it was trying to do, it would be something I liked very much, so that's cool. It's at the very least not generic, which makes it more engaging to watch than something like Sledgehammer. 

And I did enjoy some of the kills, which is not nothing. They're not particularly bloody, but they're presented enthusiastically and some of them are reasonably creative. Really, at the end of the day, Screamplay is not a bad time, but I couldn't fathom why anybody would actually sit down to watch it unless they were doing something as categorically unwise as watching every slasher movie from the 1980s.

Killer: Holly (Katy Bolger)

Final Girl: Edgar Allen (Rufus B. Seder)

Best Kill: Even though it's drenched in homophobia, there is a bizarre and arresting scene where a drag queen who has just mugged Edgar is twirling on roller skates and Martin grabs her head, causing her to break her own neck and spin her head around 360 degrees.

Sign of the Times: Edgar is alarmed by how expensive his $1 cup of coffee is.

Scariest Moment: Lot grabs Edgar's hand and forces him to burn it over a candle in penance.

Weirdest Moment: Nina asks Edgar to fix her tub, he accidentally knocks the faucet off with a sledgehammer (knocking over a bottle of bubble solution in the process), and she assumes that he has drawn her a bubble bath, so she undresses and has sex with him in the overflowing soapy tub before he has a chance to fix his mistake.

Champion Dialogue: “You're still very young looking."

Body Count: 10; because this movie presents both the fictional and "real" deaths of certain characters onscreen, I've counted doubled-up murders as one death, though I also counted characters who only died on the page but survived the movie.

1. Waitress has a pie-slicer slammed into her face, in the screenplay.
2. Drag Queen has her head spun around while twirling on roller skates.
3. Rocky the Dog eats ground beef with glass mixed in, in the screenplay and in real life.
4. Nina Ray is drowned in the tub, in the screenplay and in real life.
5. Lot is lit on fire, in the screenplay and in real life.
6. Nicky Blair drives his motorcycle into a truck.
7. Kleindorf has his hand shoved in the garbage disposal and his throat slit, in the screenplay and in real life.
8. Edgar is strangled from behind, in the screenplay.
9. Holly is strangled in the screenplay and hit in the head with a sledgehammer in real life.
10. Martin is shot.

TL;DR: Screamplay might be charmingly weird to some, but my mileage was limited.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 991

Census Bloodbath: Jack Of All Trades

Year:
1985
Director:
Christopher Lewis
Cast:
Tom Schreier, Mona Van Pernis, Tom Savini
Run Time:
1 hour 42 minutes

Plot: The Ripper follows Tulsa professor Richard Harwell (Tom Schreier) discovering an antique ring that belonged to Jack the Ripper (Tom Savini, whose name does ring a bell, now that you mention it) at the same time that he's reached the Whitechapel murders unit in his film class about movies adapting real crimes. Not so coincidentally, women around town have begun to turn up dead in slayings that seem eerily similar to the real Jack the Ripper's crimes.

As Harwell begins to have dreams of Jack the Ripper and fall into fugue states where he loses time as the body count rises, he nurses suspicions about the ring, as does his obsequious student Steve (Wade Tower of Revenge), a film geek who calls Harwell three times a night to remind him about what Vincent Price movie is on TV that night. Will either of them solve the problem before Steve's girlfriend Cindy (Andrea Adams of Revenge and Blood Lake), a fellow student, or Harwell's girlfriend, dance professor Carol (Mona Van Pernis), end up at the wrong end of a blade?

Analysis: Christopher Lewis is a director we've seen quite a bit of in 1985, because he was the director of that year's early shot-on-video slasher Blood Cult. The extremely low-budget regional Tulsa production had its ample flaws, as I detailed in my review, but I also couldn't help but being won over by its handmade charms.

That said, I wasn't exactly champing at the bit to see his immediate follow-up. However, nervous as I was, Lewis pulled out all the stops with a movie that is leaps and bounds better than Blood Cult. It still retains some of the movie's flaws (most notably an intense lack of interest in the victims who provide the body count, the majority of whom wander into the movie during the same scene in which they are bumped off). However, it shines in a number of meaningful ways.

First is the fact that the kills themselves are 1) legible and 2) actually quite brutal. In spite of the fact that the majority of them have the same M.O. (throat-slitting, sometimes followed by Herschell Gordon Lewis-esque disembowlment), there is enough variety to the way that they are presented that they feel consistently brutal and shocking. That feeling is enhanced by some half-decent, disgusting, drippy gore. You'll find blood spurts aplenty in The Ripper (even for wounds where there probably shouldn't be any), which was more than enough to keep me entertained during the murder sequences.

The movie also manages to ditch the atmosphere-killing police procedural element of Blood Cult while retaining all of its little idiosyncrasies and weird regionalisms, including two inexplicably long scenes with a pushy antique store clerk (Bennie Lee McGowan of Blood Cult and Revenge) that are about nothing and hold no importance and yet are riveting from start to finish. Another beautiful idiosyncrasy is the seemingly intense psychosexual relationship between Steve and Harwell. I'm not even sure the filmmakers are aware of its presence, simmering beneath the surface, but when you have a character calling his professor while shirtless in the dark of night, any responsible viewer must ask questions!

The movie is still far from perfect, though. Naturally so, considering the movie allegedly had a budget of just $75,000. However, the majority of its flaws come from places that have nothing to do with its price tag, including the fact that the plot is a little repetitive and really peters out in the third act. It can't even sustain enough energy for Tom Savini's big scene to be remotely interesting (even though it cost them a full 20% of that budget just to get him for one night).

The gore maestro's turn as Jack the Ripper is notable only because he allowed it to happen in the first place and not because he deigned to imbue the character with any actual menace. It truly feels like Christopher Lewis wished on a monkey's paw to have Tom Savini work on his movie.

So no, not perfect. But The Ripper is ever so charming, even more than its predecessor, to the point that I'm almost excited to take a gander at Lewis' next feature, which was the 1986 Blood Cult sequel Revenge. Stay tuned, I guess.

Killer: Jack the Ripper (Tom Savini) acting through Richard Harwell (Tom Schreier)

Final Girl: Carol (Mona Van Pernis)

Best Kill: As neat as the throat slittings tend to be, my pick would have to be the woman being garroted with a phone cord, both because it stands out and because I do love a good improvised weapon.

Sign of the Times: I mean, it has to be the dance class that Carol teaches, which involves students in aerobics leotards doing a minutes-long performance to a faux Bonnie Tyler song while smoke machines fill the room with haze. On day one, mind you.

Scariest Moment: The opening sequence where Jack stalks a woman down a foggy London street has more atmosphere than every scene in Blood Cult put together (in addition to somehow transforming Tulsa into a halfway convincing facsimile of 19th century Britain).

Weirdest Moment: The class clown Brian (Jeffrey Fontana) sings a song about Jack the Ripper in front of a chalk drawing of the man himself while accompanying himself on the harmonica.

Champion Dialogue: “You can jump on me any time you like."

Body Count: 6

1. Fancy Lady has her throat slit.
2. Old Timey Carol has her throat slit in a dream.
3. Cocktail Waitress has her throat slit.
4. Judy is garroted with a phone cord.
5. Cindy has her throat slit offscreen.
6. Richard Harwell is shot.

TL;DR: The Ripper is a totally charming SOV slasher that has a few tricks up its sleeve.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 978

Census Bloodbath: Heads Will (Rock And) Roll

Year:
1985
Director:
Mats Olsson
Cast:
Jeff Harding, Naomi Kaneda, Michael Fitzpatrick
Run Time:
1 hour 29 minutes

Plot: Blood Tracks follows a crew shooting a music video for the hair metal band Solid Gold (played by the members of the real-life Swedish band Easy Action, including future Europe guitarist Kee Marcello) in the Colorado Rockies (played by Funäsdalen, Sweden). It goes horribly wrong when an avalanche traps them in an isolated cabin. It goes horribly wronger when various members of the party - including director Bob (Michael Fitzpatrick of Scream for Help) wander into the nearby abandoned factory, where a mother (Filippa Silverstone) and her brood of children have been hiding for the past 40 years after she murdered her husband in self defense. Somehow this has turned them into Hills Have Eyes-esque mutants.

Meanwhile, star Suzie (Naomi Kaneda) desperately tries to get in contact with their helicopter pilot liaison John (Jeff Harding, also of Scream for Help), who is already suspicious that something has gone terribly wrong.

Analysis: I love the time capsule nature of 1980s slashers, so when they focus on trendy music of the era, they tend to be interesting, even if those installments are rarely very good (see Terror on Tour, New Year's Evil, Rocktober Blood, Trick or Treat, and so on). Unfortunately, that rule of thumb has been severed with a pair of garden shears, because while I was eager to see what Blood Tracks had to offer, it came up empty at every opportunity. 

All it would have taken to win me over was for the filmmakers to simply set the camera down and let the 1980s happen at the lens, and Blood Tracks is too incompetent even for that. I was willing to let the weird ADR dialogue slide, because even though I didn't know it was Swedish when I turned it on, I can sniff out a European slasher at thirty paces. However, the incompetence is so much more deeply entrenched than that. 

The cinematography is incompetent. Everything is muddy and dark and uninteresting.

The screenplay is also incompetent. There are way too many characters in play here, and the movie never settles enough for any of them to come to the fore among the gnashing throng. You'd think that the fact that the movie has two screenwriters (Mats Helge Olsson and Anna Wolf) would allow them the opportunity to look at one another and figure out at least two different potential personality traits the characters might have, but they can't even come up with one, bless their hearts. 

The killers at least look different from one another, so that's nice. But there are also too many of them, only one of them ever gets a name, and I was never quite clear on exactly how many of them were actually kicking around in the first place.

The editing is also incompetent. It works in tandem with the cinematography and the staging (also incompetent) to render most of the kills completely illegible. I have spent years of my life trying to parse incoherent slasher movies, and I flatter myself that I have gotten quite good at it. So please believe me when I tell you that this is the most difficult time I've ever had merely trying to figure out what happens to the characters onscreen, let alone when and why. The kills are presumably the reason that any slasher movie existed in the mid-80s, so the fact that they are so abhorrently constructed is downright criminal. 

Frequently the editing conveniently leaves out the type of weapon that's in use, the exact part of the body to which it is being put to use, and sometimes even the identity of the poor sap who it is being used upon. Two separate murders involve the killer kind of simultaneously pulling on a person's body while crushing it in a process that seems to be effective but in such defiance of the laws of physics and the language that we have to describe such things that I had to invent the term "yanking" just to find some way to mark it in my notes.

You'll see below that I have failed to give Blood Tracks a completely bottom-of-the-barrel score. But trust me, that is not so much because the movie has merits, but because - as I said - I have been doing this for years and know just how much worse things can get. At least getting to look at the snowy Swedish landscape was nice.

Killer: The Family

Final Girl: Suzie (Naomi Kaneda)

Best Kill: It's technically not a kill, but the best gore effect by far is the lead killer's arm being shot right off.

Sign of the Times: Easy Action knew how to do the 1980s right.

Scariest Moment: The end credits open with a list of the actors that doesn't credit their characters, which felt uncanny and sinister in a way I can't quite explain.

Weirdest Moment: One couple is having sex in the car when an avalanche buries said car, and even though the rescue operation takes several minutes, the woman is still buck naked when she is pulled out of the snow.

Champion Dialogue: “We're buried! We're buried, you fool!"

Body Count: 15; not including several characters who are kidnapped by the killers and never heard from again, which means they're probably dead, though I have no proof of it.

1. The Father is stabbed in the back.
2. Frank is pushed off a platform.
3. Dave gets yanked.
4. Kee is decapitated offscreen. 
5. Nick is doused in gas and lit on fire.
6. Linda is killed in some way by a pulley-based trap.
7. Carrie is thrown from a platform and impaled on a spike.
8. Mary (I think) is killed in the face offscreen.
9. Sarah is yanked.
10. Fuck-Ass Bob Killer is shot.
11. Bob has a hatchet thrown through his forehead.
12. Louise is impaled with a blade pendulum thing.
13. Dark-Haired Killer is shot.
14. Leper Killer is stabbed in the neck and shot.
15. The Mother dies of... smoke inhalation? Falling?

TL;DR: Blood Tracks has a solid premise that it wastes with a scattershot, muddy approach.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1024