::stamping foot::
Them! isn’t cheese! The ants were cheesy – I recognized that when I was 9 years old – but that movie was way better than it needed to be.
The professor wasn’t even in Them!. You’re thinking of It Came From Outer Space. Both excellent films.
I’m putting both in my queue. It’s been far too long, obviously.
And, even tho I enjoyed Them!, it falls into my parameters for cheese. The atomic mutations of things is a cheese factor in my book. Se also: The Man Who Grew Too Much
It Came From Outer Space must have been on the same day or something when last I saw it. You’re right. A Bradbury mystery done in 3D is no cheese ball.
(Had to go open IMDb in another thread to keep all this straight)
That wasn’t cheese; that was a documentary about the Reagan/Bush administrations.
My nomination is Planet of Blood. I remember even as a kid thinking “She DRANK HIS BLOOD and you’re going to keep her on board?!?”
While you’re at IMDB, see if Them! was one of the first of the atomic mutant movies. I’m thinking it was, and that the cheesy locusts, leeches, crabs, octopi, and spiders came later.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a mutant story that worked quite well, IMHO. The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, not so much.
Which movie had the giant tin cans roaming the desert?
The Beast of Hollow Mountain was pretty bad. I think Guy Madison was in that one.
I would nominate two films that share a theme:
The Man Without a Body (1957), about a millionaire with a brain tumor who has a doctor transplant the head of Nostradamus onto his body.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962), about a surgeon who keeps his wife’s head alive in his lab after a car crash.
I think you’re thinking of Kronos, with Jeff Morrow and, um, Morris Ankrum.
I gotta agree that too many people are choosing some really good flicks and misidentifying them as “cheese”. I’ve defended Forbidden Planet many times, and It! The Terror Beyond Space as well. (Much better than Alien, IMHO. And I don’t recall anyone using abazooka on board – grenades and guns, unbelievably, yes, but no bazooka. I think you’re misremembering.) Them! and Kronos were pretty good, too.
I agree that This Island Earth was cheese. It wouldn’t be if thety hadn’t jettisoned the book almost completely. Even in the part they kept – the "aptitude test when my namesake, Cal Meacham, builds the Interociter – they missed the point completely. The Metalunans didn’t just give him the plans, making it an interstellar Heathkit project. He had to dope it out himself from the descriptions of the parts. And he had to fabricate some patrts himself whebn they wouldn’t replace broken parts. It was a real test of his abilities. (And he learns of others being tested as well, and failing their tests) The other stuff – the Metalunan Mutants, the planet becoming a sun, the aliens who, against all reason, need earth scientists to help them by doing their research --m are just too dumb for words.
“Cheese” implies really bad, yet fun to watch. Here are a few:
**Plan Nine from Outer Space
Robot Monster
** The "bevy of Beauty Pageant films (often with the same girls in them):
Abbott and Costello Go to Mars
CatWomen of the Moon
Queen of Outer Space (really high cheese quotient here!)
** Fire Maidens from Outer Space**
The Phantom Planet
World Without End
Invasion of the Saucer Men
It Conquered the World
The Amazing Colossal Man
War of the Colossal Beast (Wait! Glenn was fifty feet tall!")
The Forty Forty Bride of Candy Rock
The Three Stooges Meet Hercules
The Green Slime (might be early 1970s, but spectacularly cheesy for a released-to-major-theaters film)
*Invasion of the Body Snatchers * hasn’t been mentioned, probably because it’s really a well-conceived flick. Together with *The Day the Earth Stood Still * and War of the Worlds, it’s one of my trio of favorite SF flicks from that era.
It’s easy to knock any kind of film from earlier eras as cheesy and corny, but try to remember that later generations will probably laugh at Alien and The Matrix. Films age much more quickly than any other art form.
For cheese, though, I’d nominate both *The Tingler * and The Fly. "Help me! Help me!
Auntie Pam writes:
While you’re at IMDB, see if Them! was one of the first of the atomic mutant movies. I’m thinking it was, and that the cheesy locusts, leeches, crabs, octopi, and spiders came later.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a mutant story that worked quite well, IMHO. The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, not so much.
Which movie had the giant tin cans roaming the desert?
The Beast of Hollow Mountain was pretty bad. I think Guy Madison was in that one.
The UR-1950s Monster Movie was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. It gave us
– the monster awakened/created by atomic explosionms/nuclear power
–the Buildup
–The Hero who knows what’s going on, but isn’t believed
–the Monster making its destructive way toward populated centers
–the Beautiful Young Assistant
–the Military can’t Kill the Moster, even with modern weapons
–They only have One Shot to kill the Beast.
Of course, it was the very first time this was all done, so it wasn’t a cliche then. And Harryhausen invented new effects techniques to ejke out his small effects budget, since he couldn’t afford the kind of elaborate miniature sets and glass paintings they’d used in films like King Kong. The script was literate, too, with some clever stuff (the idea that the Beast was ill, with infected blood that prevented the military from simply vaporizing it is a clever touch, as is the idea that it was instinctively going to peresent-day NYC to spawn, a la the eels in the sargasso. It explains why the mobnster wouldn’t simply avoid such a hostile environment in the first place – a detail all subsequent monster flicks simply ignored) Claims that it’s based on the Ray radbury story of the same name (later retitled “The Foghorn”) are a bit skewed – evidently the screenwriters already were far advanced on their script when Bradbury’s story was published in the Saturday Evening Post. There’s not much similarity, although Harryhausen added an atmospheriv scene with a lighthouse. I suspect they connectec the two to avoid lawsuits, to acquire a little sophistication by association, and because Harryhausen and Bradbury were high scool friends.
The Incredible Shrinking Man was based on Richard Matheson’s excellent book of the same name, with screenplay by him, and is a perfectl example of a “B picture” (which refers to the budget and importance, not the quality.) For a low-budget flick by a major studio, it ain’t bad. The 50 foot woman, like the Amazing Colossal Man (whose title consciously apes that of TISM) were quick cheapies intended to cash in on the success of the original. 50 Foot Woman has appallingly bad effects – the “giant” alioen and later the woman seem transparent. The “giant” hand is laughably bad. Considering that the film probably had a microscopic busget, it’s pretty well done. It’s got some neat shots in it (Like the “through the magnifying glass” shot of the sherriff’s face as he looks at the “jewel”), but it’s impossible to deny that it’s still not very good.
I kinda like The Beast of Hollow Mountain (which doesn’t have Guy Williams, or anyoner else you may have heard of). It gets points from me for featuring an animated dinosaur that doesn’t really look very bad. Certainly a lot better than the "giant lizards as dinos school of cheap films so common in the 1950s.
THEM! is a personal favorite of mine. An interesting script, & a wonderful cast make it a real winner. Good locations, too.
However…
We must never forget the destruction of Tokyo, as revealed to us in Ishirô Honda’s 1954 documentary, Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. (original Japanese title, Gojira.)
Encore (either Action or Retro…I can’t remember) ran a super-cheesy one yesterday. Mr. K and I were laughing our asses off! The flying saucers would crash into the Washington monument and the husband-and-wife stars would just look in that direction, dead pan, and crouch beside a military vehicle. She’s all runnin’ around in heels and a smart suit. The control board was just unpainted plywood. It was a thing of beauty.
[quote]
Encore (either Action or Retro…I can’t remember) ran a super-cheesy one yesterday. Mr. K and I were laughing our asses off! The flying saucers would crash into the Washington monument and the husband-and-wife stars would just look in that direction, dead pan, and crouch beside a military vehicle. She’s all runnin’ around in heels and a smart suit. The control board was just unpainted plywood. It was a thing of beauty.
[/quotes]
Sounds like earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, another Harryhausen opus.
You might fault the acting, but Harryhausen delivered on the effects. Even as a kid I was impressed – I’d seen films where you see the obviously fake “flying saucer” descend, then cut away, then see a cheesy shot of destructuion – usually some stock footage tthat has nothing to do with the object supposedly destrroyed. Harryhausen, though, really gave you what you came for – you actually see the flying saucers crasshing into the Capitol dome, the Supreme Court colonnade, and cutting the Washington Monument in half. So I’m not gonna bad-mouth EvTFS.
The Giant Claw, however, stole its best special effects from EvTFS. It also has what is easily the stupidest looking monster in all 1950s monsterdom, and the most embarassing explanations.
This one is from the 70’s Logan’s Run but it’s always been my favorite cheesy sci-fi movie. Dreamed about Jessica 6 for many nights!!
Actually, this might not be It Came From Outer Space (in which Russell Johnson’s character is taken over by an alien), but attack of the Crab Monsters, in which Russell Johnson does play a scientist, then gets taken over by/turned into a Giant Crab.
By the way, long before he was The Professor on Gilligan’s Island, Johnson had played professor/scientist/techician roles in:
This Island Earth
Attack of the Crab Monsters
Space Children
anf an episode of the original Twilight Zone. He was never of the “Mad” Scientist variety, so he was admirably placed to become The Professor on GI.
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
Well, I’ll give you quality crashes (but just barely), with the exception of a few, but the acting was just sooooo baaaaaad. She’d just trot out to the battlefield and start hanging out with her husband! It was beautiful.
Some favorites from my childhood spent watching “Chiller” and “Creature Features”:
Curse of the Faceless Man
Monster of Piedras Blancas
Bride of the Monster
King of the Zombies
Zombies of Mora Tau
The Cyclops
Frankenstein 1970
I’ll agree with these. Chiller theater also seemed top own copies of:
Voodoo Island
The Ape Man
Monster on the Campus
The Neanderthal Man
The Cape Canaveral Monsters
as well as the aforementioned
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
Plan Nine ffrom Outer Space.
OOO!
OOO! OOO! OOO!
The Valley Of Gwangi!
Cowboys vs the Dinosaur.
Boo-Yah.
Well, that explains my faux pas. I had several movies all jumbled together in my mind.
Oh man, Valley of the Gwangi was AWESOME!! Rawhide meets Jurassic Park.