THE MONOLITH MONSTERS

d. John Sherwood (1957)

After a marvellously solemn monologue about the nature of comets and the daily threat they pose to the Earth, The Monolith Monsters starts with a chunk of obsidian black space rock smashing into a Californian salt flat, spreading debris all over the desert. When the rock gets wet, it grows, forming vast towers which then topple over and smash, with each broken piece growing again to form a new tower. For the people of the small community of San Angelo this presents two problems: firstly, their little town is directly in the path of the rampaging rocks and, secondly, anyone who gets too close to the space debris has all the silicone sucked from their bodies and subsequently turns to stone. It’s a hell of a concept (sci fi film genius Jack Arnold was one of the men behind it) and it’s well executed, too.

The shots of the black monoliths growing, falling, then springing up again, in particular, are startling, especially when you realise that, with nothing to stop them, they could, with time and rain, crush the whole world. There’s no question of the rock being intelligent, it just does what it does, over and over, unthinking, unfeeling, and unaware of any consequence. It’s rather chilling, but then nature, regardless of its point of origin, often is.

The main characters in the film are Geologists* and Doctors, so the focus is on finding a logical, scientific solution rather than simply screaming and hoping for a lucky break or an act of God. I’m not sure if a sentence like ‘Chert, Feldspar, Pyroxene, almost all of the Olivine group, Flint, almost solid Silica' makes any sense to someone with a BSc, but it sounds right to someone who hasn't, and that’s half the battle.

* The chief scientist is the excellent Grant Williams, perhaps best known as The Incredible Shrinking Man, another Jack Arnold master work.

THE MAZE

d. William Cameron Menzies  (1953)

Sir Gerald MacTeam (Richard Carlson) doesn’t have any trace of a Scottish (or even recognisably British) accent, even though he is heir to a Baronetcy and a large, gloomy castle in the Highlands. When he receives an urgent telegram (is there any other type?) he drops everything (including his pretty fiancée)to hurry  home – and doesn’t come back. After a few weeks, his wife in waiting and her Aunt decide to investigate, only to find themselves embroiled in a terrifying world of shadows, secrets and slime.

You can tell that The Maze was originally shown in 3D by the sheer amount of things that get shoved towards the viewer: the animate (a lithe lady dancer); the inanimate (a telegram), and the somewhere in-between (a rubber bat on a piece of string). Like the rest of the film, however, this is all window dressing for the genuinely surprising finale, in which an enormous frog looms into three dimensional view before throwing itself out of a window.

This shock climax is concluded with a long scene in which the Sir Gerald tells us what the hell just happened. I’m not going to give it away but it involves Teratology. At first his explanation sounds absolutely ridiculous but, because he perseveres with it, his story ultimately achieves some degree of pathos, if not verisimilitude. It’s still absolutely ridiculous, though*.  

* Director William Cameron Menzies isn't at his best here, unfortunately: perhaps he was still thinking about his other 3D film of 1953, the extraordinary anti-Communist fever dream Invaders From Mars.

BLACK GESTAPO

d. Lee Frost (1975) 

I know what you're thinking: this film would have to be absolutely extraordinary to live up to its jaw-dropping title. It isn't, of course, but it's far from a failure, being a thought provoking allegory about power, corruption and the way they intersect - absolutely.

In a Watts, California, a sidestep away from reality, the Government have decided to 'help' the black population by empowering a People's Army, a do-gooding paramilitary organisation led by the idealistic General Ahmed. It's hard to think of any circumstances in which the formation of a black army would be seen as a good thing by white America, but here it's qualified as part of a more believable policy: the money is both inadequate for what they need and all they get, i.e. the ghetto is left to its own devices entirely and, as a result, is at the mercy of low life scum and crime syndicates, who are bleeding the people dry through drugs, gambling, prostitution, extortion and violence.

Colonel Kojah, a firebrand Peoples Army officer who is frustrated by his leaders pacifism, sets up his own unit, ostensibly to provide an element of security and protection. Pretty soon, they are dressed all in black and wearing SS caps, castrating rapists and running the gangsters out of town once and for all, which is slightly regrettable as the mob boss, played by the film's director, Lee Frost, is probably the best character in the film: a pyjama clad, dog stroking, wig wearing weasel  who, nevertheless, is hard as nails when he needs to be, except when it comes to his girlfriend, who speaks to him like shit.   

Kojah's unit are far worse than the threat they replaced. The officers live in splendour, eating suckling pig by the pool, while the lower ranks are put through a stringent programme of military training. Kojah quickly adapts to the role of Fuhrer, breathing hard with his eyes glistening as his men salute him and chant 'Vengeance! Vengeance!'. He's no long sticking to The Man, however, he's sticking it to everybody: robbing from the very people he claims to protect, replacing one system of violent oppression with another, one criminal organisation with another.

Blaxploitation films are often social issue films before anything else, the social issue being how it feels to be black in a white world. The cornerstone of joy in such films is community and honour, the way people come together to fight back against injustice, to support each other, to hold each other up. The Black Gestapo is a warning from history: beware of big men who are for little men, and seize power to 'make things better'. It always ends in blood.

THE MADMAN OF MANDORAS

d. David Bradley (1963)

More brains. Well, sort of. Hitler crops up a lot in psychotronic films, either in person or as the justification for various nefarious goings on. Although he is clearly a villain, he is not always the genocidal monster that we know and despise him as. Instead, he is a stereotypical bad person and common or garden megalomaniac, sometimes slightly silly, even comical. It's a facile and potentially offensive view, but I think it comes from an understandable place: these films were made in the aftermath of the war and, even twenty or thirty years later, the enormity of Hitler's crimes were still too much to process - too hard to remember.        

The Madman of Mandoras is a load of claptrap about poison gas and the threat to world peace posed by a Third Reich who have run away / relocated to South America. The Nazis have Hitler's head in a jar and it is still giving them orders and rolling his eyes in frustration and anger. No idea why they haven't attached a body to the head, they're clearly pretty technologically advanced. Perhaps it's better to know where that guy is.

Do the Nazis succeed? Do they fuck, and we get to see the flesh burned from Das Fuhrer's skull, a sight that is unedifying but strangely satisfying, which is perhaps why we get to watch it for a whole minute and a half.