MAN BEAST

d. Jerry Warren (1956)

My expectations were low for this film, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself watching lots of (generally well filmed) footage of a small group of people traipsing through snow and climbing mountains hunting for the Abominable Snowman, especially as, every now and again, a scruffy looking Yeti would appear from behind a rock or from a hole in the ice to watch their progress and shake his manky head at the folly of it all. Then, towards the end of the film, when a sinister mountain guide ripped open his silk chemise to reveal a coarsely matted white hairy chest, declaiming that he was part Yeti himself, I choked on my can of Lilt and ascended into psychotronic heaven powered by the sheer silly brilliance of it all.  

It seems that the Yeti are simultaneously at several stages of evolution. Some look like albino gorillas with skulls for faces (they mainly do the heavy work); some are more man than beast, facilitated by a breeding programme with kidnapped local women. The sinister mountain guide is particularly excited about getting his hands on the sole female in the expedition, an American woman, as he believes that their offspring would perhaps skip two generations of development, maybe putting a Yeti in the White House by the year 2,000.

Triple threat film maker Jerry Warren is often criticised for the sheer shoddiness of much of his output, but, on this evidence, he could also put something half way decent together when he wanted to. Man Beast is cheap, yes, but it is also fun, engaging, surprising and the mountain footage is nicely done. Sure, it's no La Regle du jeu, but then I've always thought the highly rated French classic conspicuously lacking in Yeti action.       

CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON

d. Curt Siodmark (1956)

Routine technicolor exotic adventure potboiler with a variety of vicious animals and some shrunken heads. The titular beast is an extraordinary thing, a sort of malevolent parrot with piercing blue eyes, fearsome tusks and slashing talons: it's also fake, a ruse by a native witch doctor to keep the white man and his disease ridden civilization away. 

The fakeness of the monster doesn't really matter, however, as elsewhere real nature is working overtime to demonstrate it's redness in tooth and claw. The protagonists are attacked by crocodiles, several big snakes, a spider the size of a dinner plate, a jaguar and a load of piranhas, represented several times with mismatched, washed out stock footage. 

Shot on location in Brazil, the film never really takes off, despite being punctuated by somewhat manic dance routines and having a beefy male star who never stops smoking, regardless of whether he's eating, kissing or having a medical examination.

I was particularly impressed by the no nonsense heroine, played by Beverley Garland. She is beautiful, yes, but she's also a doctor, a scientist and an explorer, a person of great intelligence and nerve who is determined to make the world a better place. These qualities are even noticed by our carcinogen addicted hero who admiringly says: 'You're not frightened of anything, are you?' Disappointingly, she responds 'Of course I'm frightened, I'm a woman'. Bah.   

GIRLS IN PRISON

d. Edward L. Cahn (1956)

There’s not much to distinguish Girls In Prison as anything other than a very generic b-movie: a mass stabbing, perhaps, a slight allusion to lesbianism, an earthquake that facilitates an escape, a prison chaplain who is a bit too interested in one of the new inmates. Much of the film is just as you’d expect, and given the advanced ages of most of the cast, the definition of 'girls' is fairly loose, to say the least.

The best thing in it is Adele Jergens as Jenny, top dog and matriarch of the prison. Jenny is fairly genial most of the time, even likeable and kind, but is hard as nails when it comes down to tin tacks, a gun wielding, wavy peroxided, scarlet lipped force of nature. She’s also absolutely gorgeous, even when chewing gum whilst simultaneously smoking a cigarette (actually, especially when chewing gum whilst simultaneously smoking a cigarette). The film would be almost insufferably dull without her.

After an hour and twenty minutes of molasses slow mayhem, the film climaxes in a bruising brawl and a gun fight. It’s a good way to end any drama, I find. After the dust has settled and the wonderful Jenny has gone the way of all pistol packing mama's, we end on a close up of a church steeple while some quasi-religious music plays, as if God has in some way been responsible for the restoring the balance of law and order. Rubbish. God was not responsible, although maybe he set off the earthquake to punish some other sinners in the general area. As for the rest, omniscient he may be, but micro management is not exactly his style. 

THE MOLE PEOPLE

d. Virgil W. Vogel (1956) 

The Mole People is a legendary b-movie, a sort of barometer of the psychotronic. It's cheap, ridiculous and has men grown dressed up as moles - but it is also inventive and entertaining and commits itself fully to the endeavour. There is no smirking, no camp, no sense that this film (about the discovery of a race of evil Sumerians who have survived for 5,000 years by living under an active volcano) is anything other than the greatest story ever told. This sense of purpose, this dogged belief, is essential in the creation of great b-movies, as any doubt or irony always shows on screen.

There's very little to dislike about this film, even if you're a historian, a Sumerian or, perhaps, even a mole. A catalogue of simple pleasures: the brief prologue in which the enthusiastic and engaging Dr. Frank Baxter runs through some hollow earth theories and introduces the film as a fable; the Sumerians themselves who still wear ancient costumes and have genetically mutated after years underground to become albinos, so much so that they are terrified by electric torches and are burned to death by direct sunlight; the fact that they have enslaved the original inhabitants of the volcano, the Molemen,  who are whipped by the Sumerians constantly as they scrabble around in the dirt looking for the mushrooms that everyone eats for every meal EVERY DAY. I was also entertained by the interpretive dance set to an accompaniment of gongs and bongos and, perhaps most of all, I enjoyed Alan  Napier* as the High Priest, caked in white face powder and wearing rheumy contacts and a straggly moustache, beautifully declaiming his lines with the dignity and diction of a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

I am smiling rather than sneering and quite sincere when I say that this is one of the high watermarks of low quality films. I absolutely guarantee that you will enjoy it more than anything else on telly this evening, so why not give it a go? 

* Best known as Alfred the Butler from the Adam West Batman series.

THE WEREWOLF

d. Fred F. Sears (1956)

Cheaply but carefully made, The Werewolf provides a surprisingly contemporary retelling of the hoary old lycanthropic legend, placing the action in Smalltown USA and making it a condition of mad modern science rather than arcane folklore.

The origins of the werewolf are somewhat odd, with responsibility falling to a couple of fascist scientists who plan to outlive the impending nuclear apocalypse by combining human genes with the survival traits of other successful species. When a timid salesman injured in a car crash falls unexpectedly into their clutches they ruthlessly inject him with a syringe full of lupine essence and sit back ready to note down the results.

Their victim escapes, of course, and trudges through the snow to the small ski resort town of Mountaincrest. Here, the poor, frightened fellow transforms into a ravenous, drooling wolf: a hairy, hungry killing machine. The townspeople, dressed almost exclusively in plaid, form a posse to track him down.

The werewolf spends most of his time running, but never really gets anywhere, not least because there’s nowhere to go. In his old life he was a nice man with a wife and a son but now he is a crazed killer, a beast who inadvertently seals his fate by ripping apart the scientists who made him like this in the first place. With literally no turning back, he ends up full of yokel bullets, a bloodied heap of hair. His dying act is to revert to his human form, a pitiful and questioning look upon his face. 

It’s rather a depressing spectacle, but then werewolf films never have happy endings, they just don’t work that way.