Thursday, October 22, 2009

Prepare to be shocked

If I'm flipping through the channels and I see a giant radioactive ant, I'm laying the remote down.

There's a siren like call that hits my brain when I see an opportunity to see a really bad B movie.

Especially if it's in black and white.

With really bad special effects.

And has guys in suits with matching hats and women who run away from danger in heels, and then swoon and let the monster carry them away to its evil lair.

Or to its space ship.

Case in point? Patricia Neal in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Patricia swoons JUST as Gort gets to her.

Gort comes at her…. his giant robot plodding steps slowly…oh so slowly bringing him nearer…. he gets bigger and bigger in her field of vision…the tension mounts…..he gets closer and closer……until finally she is backed to the edge of a metal barrier….topples a chair, screams and swoons.

Classic.

Now, to be clear I am NOT saying that The Day the Earth Stood Still is a bad movie. Or even a B movie.

Not the original one anyway.

It's an amazing movie.

And it really speaks for its time.

Which was 1951.

And in 1951 Michael Rennie was hot.

Swirl together Rennie's great English cheek bones, a swooning heroine, a giant robot, really fake looking visual effects and sound effects that anybody swinging a piece of a hot wheel track in circles over their head could recreate in their living room and you couldn't pry me out of my chair.

To sum up?

The only thing that could have made the original The Day the Earth Stood Still a better movie would have been a giant radioactive ant.

Maybe they should have put one in the "remake" with Keanu.

Two or three more folks might have gone to see Keanu's version if it had featured a giant radioactive ant.

10 comments:

Laura Eno said...

"Them" of the giant, radioactive ant fame was the most influential movie of its time for me. :)

Karen from Mentor said...

Oh great choice Laura. I'm also partial to stop action dinosaurs and Godzilla....

:0)

Lauren C said...

Saw a real winner a couple of weeks ago, called "The Crawling Eye." As you might imagine, the monster was a giant gelatinous eye... with goofy pipe-cleaner tentacles... surrounded by a mysterious freezing mist... which was attacking mountain climbers in the Swiss Alps.
And there was a swoony girl who was a psychic, a heroic researcher, and various expendable Swiss folk.

I think you'd like it!

Karen from Mentor said...

The Crawling Eye sounds fantastic Lauren!!! I've added it to my list.
I looked at the trailer on youtube and was delighted to see FOREST TUCKER starring in it! Oh my gosh he brings back memories. F troop was such an awful awful show...one of those where it was just on that line where you had to watch it because it was so very bad.

On the same youtube page as "The Crawling Eye" was a trailer for "Beach Girls and the Monster" ......laughing....oh man does that one look like a winner. Girls in bikinis being stalked by this monster with big googly cookie monster eyes.
And the narrator for the trailer fluxuated between a dramatic and a leering tone....it was VERY 1965.

:0)

Unknown said...

From "Crawling Eye" to the "Beast with Five Fingers" (1946). Synopsis: Locals in an Italian village believe evil has taken over the estate of a recently deceased pianist where several murders have taken place. The alleged killer: the pianist's severed hand.

As a young girl studying piano, this old b&w movie scared the beejeezus outta me! (Also scared of vampires, mummies, air raids, and giant spiders.) Why did my older cousins insist that I go to horror movies on Saturdays with them?

Karen from Mentor said...

Dark shadows did it for me as far as vampires go [shudder] still can't deal with vampires...

But now you've got me wondering what the heck the name of this movie I saw where there was a severed alien hand with pointy claws that dripped poison. It was loose in a car and it almost kept getting one of the Dead End Kids.

Anybody recognize that really lame description?
[google didn't...damn google...laughing]

~Tim said...

Maybe they should have put a radioactive ant instead of Keanu in the remake.

Have you seen the movie Zotz! with Tom Poston? No radioactive insects, but I remember it being a good bad movie. [Of course, I probably saw it 40 years ago, so take that for what it's worth....]

Karen from Mentor said...

I just watched the trailer for Zotz! laughing... it was a good bad trailer...the mouse down the dress and the cake in the face made me lol....and I never knew Tom Poston was actually young.

I don't blame Keanu for the remake. I blame all studios for remaking classics. Hate it when they do that. They should just ask me first. That would solve all the movie industry problems right there.

:0)

T. M. Hunter said...

The trouble is, the studios think that if they remake movies that were once successful, they'll obviously be successful again. Alas, that's not always the case.

If they truly don't want to be original, I have this novel sitting over here which could easily be made into a movie.

;-)

I just hope Keanu got his payment upfront, and not as a percentage of profits...

Karen from Mentor said...

I love Keaunu, I just wish someone would write him something he could actually sink his teeth into [and maybe have a facial expression or two] Hey maybe we could collaberate on something Aston lol... I could see Keaunu as a space pirate...ooh..and I could write the bedroom scenes. [give me a minute]

I read a statistic once that said something along the lines that ANY sequel makes 1/2 the amount of the original. So that explains a lot of the thinking behind some of the really bad sequels out there too....

Karen :0)