A couple or three times a year, the secondary PBS station in Chicago (Channel 20, the City Colleges station, not Channel 11, WTTW) plays this ghod-awful 1970s horror movie as the 10pm Saturday movie.
Just how bad is it? A mummified 2-million-year-old half-ape half-man is found in the Chinese desert by a British scientist who carries it back to London on a Russian train. It’s still alive! :rolleyes:
It escapes and kills people with its growing red eyes! :rolleyes:
It sucks up their memories before they die, and then their eyes turn white! :rolleyes:
In the middle of the movie, it develops the ability to take the shape of someone it killed! :rolleyes:
And then a thoroughly-insane Cossack army captain, played by Telly Savalas, comes aboard with his troops to try and kill it. :rolleyes:
The Brits are stereotypical Brits, the American(s) are stereotypically American, the Russians are stereotypically Russian, etc., ad nauseam. :rolleyes:
Even though it’s supposed to be set in the Edwardian/Czarist era (1906), you can tell in about 15 seconds that the movie was made in the 1970s. :rolleyes:
Actually, the monster doesn’t take the shape of its victims; it’s mind jumps into the body of one of its victims when the body it is currently inhabiting (the ape man) is shot to death.
Also, the film contains one of my favorite dialogue exchanges:
Outraged Lady: “I’ve heard of evolution – it’s immoral!”
Pompous scientist: “It’s a fact, and there’s no morality in a fact!”
Telly Savalas chews scenery mercilessly, but Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are fine in the leading roles.
Hardly enough to qualify as PBS fare, but I saw this film back when viewing movies (for me) like digging through the mud for the occasional nugget of gold.
Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com
Christoper Lee is luscious, and is number 5 on my Top 5 list of great horror actors (with Peter Cushing being number 2), but if they want to show a Lee/Cushing film, there are much better ones to choose from.
Heh… having worked for a PBS station (in Master Control) before, let me tell you that they’ll show all manner of crap depending on what they can get. We used to show a daily movie at 10:30pm until 12ish (sign off for the station) and it ranged from vintage 1940s films to cheesy 70s westerns to semi-recent though horribly bad films. On three separate occassions, I ran “Troop Beverly Hills” :eek:
I think university PBS stations get their stock via donations or films the studio has put into public domain for PBS purposes (not really public domain, but allowing PBS to use them). Maybe they get a tax write-off or something. All I know is that they sure don’t give the PBS stations the “A” material to show.
The funniest line is when Savalas points out that Lee or Cushing could be the monster, and Cushing replies, indignantly, “Monster? Sir, we’re English!”
Aaagh!
I remember that movie! But until now, I’d never known the title. Thanks, John Bredin! And I actually mean that without sarcasm 
See, I saw this flick for the first (and I think only) time when I was a wee tot. Scared the living bejeezus out of me. I developed a deep fear of “The Rock Monster,” which was my name for the ape-dude, and lived in fear of his ability to “boil your eyes,” which is what I thought he was doing.
My talented mom used to be able to roll her eyes up so you could only see the whites (at least that’s how it looked to me as a kid). She, being a sensitive, loving mother, realized that this made me a crying basket case, and proceeded to do it all the time. No wonder I’m in therapy…