CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, USA

d. Denis Sanders (1959)

Dostoevsky goes beat, man. Well, sort of. George Hamilton plays Robert Cole, a beer can bongo playing high school drop out with a very punchable face and a massive superiority complex. Ray believes that he is special, an Alexander the Great, a Napoleon Bonaparte, albeit one who lives in a Los Angeles bedsit and spends most of his days either asleep or drifting aimlessly around amusement arcades. Cole believes that important people like him shouldn't have to operate within the normal moral framework of society and that, as they know best, they should do whatever the hell they like. Typical student, really. His view is that if, for example, he had beaten a pawnbroker to death, then he probably had a very good reason, and he's too clever to get caught, so let's leave it at that.    

I haven't read Dostoevsky's original novel (I haven't read ANY Dostoevsky, please don't tell my mates), but I am familiar with the basics, which is just as well as you certainly don't get any help from the film itself, which cleverly reconfigures the source material so that it becomes virtually incomprehensible. Despite the inherent drama of the storyline there is no tension here whatsoever and the narrative is reduced to a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes in which an out of their depth cast are left spouting cod philosophical non sequiturs in lieu of characterisation and dialogue. The music is quite good, though. 

The Cole/Raskolnikov character needs an actor able to convey a fierce intellect, a complex personality and a monstrous personal philosophy. Instead we get a very young George Hamilton, who looks a bit thick and keeps stiffly throwing his arms in the air and shouting. With a better actor the film might have had a chance but, as the producer later admitted, they simply couldn't afford Anthony Perkins.   

I didn't set up this blog to be mean to films, by the way, but Crime and Punishment, USA is pretentious and poorly executed and it would be dishonest of me not to say so - and I'm nothing if not a deeply moral and upright person.   

CURSE OF THE UNDEAD

d. Edward Dein (1959)

An uneven horror western, Curse Of The Undead isn't completely successful but it does come up with the brilliant idea of a vampire working as a hired gun, a black clad killer who isn't particularly quick on the draw because he doesn't have to be: you can shoot him all you like with ordinary bullets, it doesn't make a scrap of difference.

The vampire himself (played by Australian character actor Michael Pate) is almost sympathetic and, in his attacks on the necks of the local girls, regretful and tender. It seems that, some twenty years previously, he found out that his new wife had been sleeping with his brother, so he stabbed the brother to death before killing himself. Via a route that is not particularly well signposted, he then came back as a vampire and few soft necks have been safe since. To his credit, he hates what he has become, shouting 'do you think I wanted this?' as he kills. It's not all nibbling virgins and long lie ins, you know.   

Somehow the vampire ends up in a love triangle with a beautiful local land owner called Dolores and her pompous and overbearing preacher boyfriend (Eric Fleming*) and, as this is cowboy times, it can only end in a shoot out. Although you're rooting for the vampire, the preacher prevails, killing his undead rival with a holy bullet, a slug capped with a sliver of thorn from the site of the crucifixion. As the vampire's body fades away into nothingness, Dolores looks on in horror, knowing that this means she will now have to marry the boring, bossy Vicar and spend the rest of her life hearing about how he saved her life . Oh well, Dolores does mean 'sorrows', after all...

* I don't like Fleming's character in this film, but I always feel a bit sorry for the actor himself. In 1966, he was making a film in the Amazon when his boat overturned and he was eaten by piranhas. 

THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE

d. Spencer Gordon Bennett (1959)

For a long while The Atomic Submarine goes around in circles as we watch the bickering crew of the state of the art USS Sharkfish scour the Arctic Ocean looking for the cause of a series of maritime disasters. When their quarry is revealed as a flying saucer, however, things start to gather pace, culminating in a small group of sailors boarding the alien craft and establishing contact with its pilot. Most of the men end up dead, horribly burned by a heat ray or crushed between automatic doors, but 'Reef' Holloway (Arthur Franz) survives, establishing a psychic link with the invader, a hideous creature who resembles a clump of seaweed with tentacles and has one enormous, all seeing eye. This unprecedented close encounter of the third kind prompts the following exchange:

Alien: We meet face to face.

Holloway: That’s a face?

Alien: Point of view is everything.   

The alien snottily explains via telekinesis that his race want to colonise the Earth and need human specimens to experiment on, and Holloway's life has been spared so that he can be vivisected. Holloway has other ideas, of course.

Holloway: To navigate, won’t you have to see your way?  

Alien: Obviously.

(Holloway pulls out a Very pistol and shoots the alien, blowing out its eyeball)

Holloway: Could be rough!

The triumphant submariner then makes his escape as his blinded foe throws his fronds around in agony, viscous gunk glooping from its brand new hole. The previously rather smug alien has learned an important lesson about human beings: never under estimate their survival instinct, or their capacity to cause pain. It’s a short period of reflection, though, as the UFO is almost immediately destroyed by a ground to air missile: job done, Earth saved. For now.

Please note: this is not a proper submarine film, so do not expect any popping rivets, sweaty faces or corpses and oil being jettisoned to the surface to fool enemy battle ships. I'm still quite miffed about that, actually.