No Beautiful Woman Is Safe

‘Womaneater’ is an enjoyably daft tale of a mad scientist (George Coulouris) and his obsession with bringing the dead back to life. He hopes to achieve this morally equivocal task by using a huge, malevolent plant that he has transplanted from the Amazon jungle. He feeds it women, then, after it’s had time to digest its dinner, he milks it, puts the residue through some complicated looking scientific apparatus and the result is a drug which can (briefly) bring things back to life.

The obvious issue is an ethical one, i.e. is it worth taking a human life to be able to reinvigorate a dead heart for a few seconds? The answer is clearly ‘no, of course not, don’t be stupid’. Then there are other questions: why does the plant only eat women? And why do they have to be young and attractive? Only the savage misogynistic Plant-God knows, and he’s saying nothing, just waving his arms about and growling.

50’s starlet Vera Day makes for an attractive and down to earth heroine (elocution lessons haven't quite taken the edges from her working class accent) and the scene where her magnificent cantilevered bosom distracts her fiancée from fixing a car is priceless.

Relatively brisk at seventy minutes, I thoroughly and wholeheartedly recommend this ridiculous frippery, especially if you’re interested in gardening and/or reanimating corpses.

Womaneater

Agonizing Horror

‘The Trollenberg Terror’ (aka ‘The Crawling Eye’ in territories where they want it all spelling out for them) is a tight, cheap little film adapted from an ITV presentation which, presumably, was even tighter and cheaper and littler.

It doesn’t sound much, but I’ve always found it extremely entertaining and occasionally pretty dark, with several nasty beheadings and some weird alien mind control shit that turns perfectly nice people psycho. Much of the violence is directed towards a poor young woman who, unfortunately for her, has mediumistic qualities. The aliens hate this because she’s onto them and their dirty schemes, so strive to get her knocked off at every available opportunity, the cheeky, slimy baskets.

It all ends in a big bonfire and the aliens learn, as so many do, that humans may not be able to fly around the universe causing problems but, by Christ, they can certainly KILL. The climax is often mocked for its extensive use of models and stop-motion camera work but, unsophisticated as it is, it works in the context of the film, so don’t sneer at them, smart-arse, that’s like having a go at Vasco Da Gama for not using a sat-nav, i.e. wrong.

The Trollenberg Terror

Armchair Theatre: The Greatest Man In The World

‘The Greatest Man In The World’ is an ‘Armchair Theatre’ presentation from 1958.

It opens with familiar TV face Ludovic Kennedy introducing a live link from Washington, where the state funeral of Jack ‘Pal’ Smurch is taking place. Smurch, it appears, was the most revered hero in the history of mankind, ‘the greatest man in the world’, and his death has caused an outpouring of national and international grief.  The President (Donald Pleasence), his face taut with emotion, gives a touching eulogy to the enormous crowd that has gathered but, as he observes a moments silence, we hear his private thoughts: ‘it’s a good job they don’t know what the lousy bastard was really like’…

Smurch’s fame is based on a single amazing thing: he piloted a spaceship to the Moon, got out and walked around a bit, threw up (he was drunk) and then came back. The rocket was designed by a dipsomaniac high school teacher, and was developed entirely independently on a tiny fraction of the huge budget the government has expended on not getting to the Moon. Naturally, the President orders that everything possible is done to ensure that this incredible story is rewritten to include the full support of the US government, and the Press are briefed that, if they want to keep their jobs, they help keep the secret.

The big problem, however, is Smurch himself, who is the most incredible arsehole (he’s described as a ‘congenital hooligan' but there are much shorter words). Lazy, dishonest, violent, lascivious, cruel, astoundingly obnoxious, Jack Smurch is universally hated by everyone he has ever come into contact with. His High School teacher shows off a six inch scar Smurch gave him; his Army Sergeant admits that he put him on point while on patrol in the hope he might get shot. His own mother, when told that he is attempting re-entry, says ‘I hope he gets blown to bits’. When he finally arrives in person, he more than lives up to expectations: he’s unbearable – a gum chewing, aggressively ignorant braggart. He’s also played by Patrick McGoohan which, is wonderful and, although his accent is a bit hit and miss (to say the least, he sounds like Jimmy Cricket auditioning for ‘Guys & Dolls’) McGoohan makes Smurch a truly loathsome character, the sort of bloke you want to keep hitting until your fists are worn down to the wrists.

What’s worse, of course, is that everybody has to put up with his shit: the President, the Press, the F.B.I, the Army, the Air Force – they’re all committed to the lie that he is an inspirational person, a man of the highest courage and calibre, simply because of the enormous benefits of ‘the greatest man in the world’ being an American.  

At an official reception a few days after landing, General Smurch (as he is now) is holding forth on his own genius and courage whilst making crude moves on the waitresses and other female guests and showing everybody the nude lady he has tattooed on his chest. When he is told that he is to embark on a World Tour, visiting China and Russia to spread the American message, he starts to rant about how much he hates the Chinks and the Commies, and how he can't wait to tell them that he’d like to drop a bomb on them all. The President and the Secretary of State exchange glances and, realising that Smurch will always be a diplomatic timebomb waiting to explode, the President nods and the Secretary of State calmly pushes Smurch out of an open eighteenth storey window. I wonder if Mr. Mc remembered this scene when he did exactly the same thing to somebody else in 'Braveheart'?

From a story by American satirist James Thurber, ‘The Greatest Man In The World’ is a bitumen black comedy that benefits enormously from a careful, considered turn from Donald Pleasence and a scenery chewing tour de force of infuriation from McGoohan that you really have to see for yourself --

Monsterpiece

'The Revenge Of Frankenstein' is a direct sequel to 'The Curse Of Frankenstein', the mega successful macabre masterpiece that changed the direction of the Hammer studio forever. 'Revenge...' starts with Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) about to be guillotined for the various crimes he has commited in the name of science. Needless to say, Frankenstein escapes the chop in quite shockingly ruthless way, before moving to another city and setting up under the inspired pseudonym of Doctor Stein.

Herein lies the marvellous ambiguity of Hammer's Frankenstein character: he is a good physician and has set up a hospital where the poor can be treated free of charge, which is marvellous - but every now and again he will perform an unnecessary amputation or organ removal in order to continue with his pet project: the creation of a healthy body, cobbled together from spare parts, into which he will transplant the brain of his (quite willing) crippled and hunchbacked henchman, Karl. Which, again, is sort of nice when you think about it, or sort of horrible when you think about it bit longer.

The operation goes well, and Karl is given a fully functional body. Easy peasy, really, as (Franken)Stein has already transplanted the brain of an orangutan into the body of a chimp. Hybrid ape Otto is perfectly healthy, except that he now has a voracious appetite for meat, prompting this fantastically deadpan exchange between 'Stein' and his medical assistant, Dr. Kleve (Francis Matthews) --

Kleve: Did Otto eat flesh before you operated?

Stein: No, I discovered it soon after the operation. He ate his wife.

Kleve: Ate another monkey?

Stein: What else would he be married to? 

Kleve: You mean he turned into a cannibal?

Stein: Yes. I didn't attempt to correct it. He's perfectly happy and in good health.

Of course, this couldn't happen again, especially not to a human subject, well, not unless the patient received a bang on the head or something silly like that.

After having received a bang on the head, Karl becomes a hungry homicidal maniac and, to add insult to brain injury, his new body turns against him, becoming twisted and deformed. In the end, Frankenstein's true identity comes out and he is beaten to death by his own patients, who aren't exactly happy about having unknowingly donated bits of themselves to Stein's science project. That said, Frankenstein is a hard man to put down, so I expect he'll turn up again in another city under another name, Dr. Frank, or something cunning and unexpected like that. 

'The Revenge Of Frankenstein' is superb: shocking, unexpected, compelling, ridiculous, and all conducted at top speed. This is Hammer at its best, and Hammer at its best is absolutely brilliant.

The Revenge Of Frankenstein

Interesting Postcards

Giant Panda, Chi Chi

Pandas feed on bamboo shoots and are confined to the area around Szechuan in Western China. Chi-Chi was captured there in 1957 and lived in the London Zoo from 1958 to 1972

British Museum (Natural History) London SW7 5BD

There’s an inherent contradiction in a nation of animal lovers who wrench creatures from their natural habitat and put them in a cage for the duration of their lives, but there it is, we’re complicated people. The same ambiguity extends to our furry friends post mortem: having loved the creature, we have it cut up, emptied out, stuffed and put on display again - this time for all eternity. No wonder Chi Chi looks so forlorn.

I Know What I Like

Gulley Jimson, 'Nude In Bathtub' (c. 1938).