I have always been a fan of so-called B movies. I’m not sure I like that description because it implies that B movies are not as important as A movies, not as serious, not as good. Well, I’m not so sure about that. Of the B movies that I love, my favorites are, without a doubt, the science fiction monster movies. Yes, those wonderful creations conceived of by some of the most colorful characters in Hollywood and beyond. Studios like AIP, Toho, Daiei, Hammer and Universal are synonymous with creatures that crawl, creep and are able to stamp a city flat.
Names like Ray Harryhausen, George Pal, Bernard Herrmann and H.G. Wells come to mind. As do those of Ken Toby, Less Tremayne, Paul Frees and Whit Bissell. Each of these names, plus thousands and thousands of others, can immediately conjure up a favorite film, a scene or even just a great line or look that impressed us as kids and perhaps continues to do so.
When I think about those elements that I love in my favorite sci-fi monster movies, my mind can easily dwell for hours on the creatures themselves, the settings, the art direction, the machinery and technology and everything in between. I never grow tired of that stuff. But I also love, with equal passion the characters that people the story. They are really what it’s all about. So, indulge me as I invite you to take a little trip through my memory, recalling some character moments that stand out for me in the B genre of scifi monster movies.
The Thing from Another World
This is without a doubt one of my all-time favorite movies, of any genre. There is so much great about The Thing, that I feel it should be used as a template of what to do right in making movies.
Every character from Scotty the newsman to Tex the radioman to the scientists, including my own personal favorite Bob Cornthwaite’s unforgettable Dr. Carrington, is each wholly enjoyable and rich in believable detail, even if they lasted only seconds on screen.
My mind moves along as I recall this great film touching on some memorable moments. Some that come to mind are the constant problem solving by Dewey Martin joined with Captain Hendry’s humorous jabs on his subordinate’s expertise in all things resourceful. Newsman Scotty’s incessant, but enjoyable whining about getting his exclusive story out through the morass that is the military. Without Scotty, the viewer would have needed another in to the technical details of what happens. Scotty serves both as story chronicler and informer for the audience. When thermite is to be used to melt the ice, it’s Scotty who asks, for himself, but really for us, “What will that thermite do?” And it’s Scotty who soon after chastises the men for botching the job. “That’s just dandy. Standard operating procedure.” Brilliant.
How about that great sound cue from the Tiomkin score when the men recreate the shape of what lies beneath in the ice? The overlapping, excited utterances, “It’s almost…” “Yeah, almost a perfect….” “It is.” “It’s round.” “We finally got one!”, ” We found a flying saucer!” is priceless.
Speaking of scoring cues, another that ranks right up there is that great cut to Gort suddenly appearing on the ramp after Klaatu is shot by a nervous soldier in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Still another that comes to mind is an accented William Conrad uttering the dreaded “Marabunta” in The Naked Jungle. The cue itself practically brings Leinengen’s house down to the dirt. Yes, there really is nothing like a good sound cue to raise the blood pressure.
War of the Worlds
“This is amazing!” Gene Barry exclaims at his first glimpses of how the aliens are able to move about. His excitement is that of a boy launching his very first model rocket from the backyard. This amazing film is a bounty of excellence in sci-fi monster movie making. As Stan Winston said, it has just about every special effect in it. He was more than right. The characters on display make the awesome visual spectacle a personal and lasting one.
There’s a throwaway moment in the opening at the ranger watch tower where one ranger while phoning in the ‘meteor’ is distracted while the other subtly takes a peek as his partner’s cards. Great stuff. Les Tremayne’s slow and deliberate sipping from the (empty?) coffee cup directly after uttering his ominous “once they begin to move, no more news comes out of that area” has never failed to stir in me that familiar excitement when watching a monster movie on a Saturday afternoon. Sure his drinking is a bit unnatural – his ‘business’ a bit clunky, but who cares? It’s a great movie moment.
After the kindly Pastor is unmercifully smote by the alien’s heat ray after doing nothing more than just trying to say ‘hello’, the Marine Colonel’s ‘LET ‘EM HAVE IT!” order to his men, unleashing the statement that no being, alien or native is going to get away with that kind of stuff. Our hearts join in as every man, religious or not, strikes back with all he’s got at that unprovoked act.
Most if not all of the actors in these films can be seen and enjoyed in scores of other films as well. This, the B movie, was their bread and butter. But their prolific on-screen work had not only a monetary benefit to their careers, but it also had an emotional one for the audience. Their formidable repertoire of recurring and usually similar roles created a growing bank of emotion within us each time we saw them anew. It grew and grew. Actors we’d seen in television series or other films retained the decency and integrity they evoked each time and that we came to rely on. We’d see their name in the opening credits, or see their face on screen when they walked in the door or answered the phone and think… “Hey, that’s the captain from The Thing. Now here he is in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Boy, am I glad to see him!” Or, “Isn’t this doctor in The Day the Earth Stood Still the same guy who played the reporter in Them! – the one who wants to interview the mother of the missing boys?” This linking of character and body of work helped forged a connection with the audience that is stronger than a block of KL 93.
Some people criticize B movies, calling them pure escapism. I say, so what? Isn’t all film pure escapism? Personally, I think that’s the highest compliment you could ever say about a film, that it’s pure escapism. By the same token one of the worst things you could say is “that film is so much like real life!” Give me a break! Who wants that? As Ray Harryhausen said when remarking about the over reliance of CG in special effects, “you don’t want it to be too real.”
Another criticism of Bs often heard is that the performances are poor, cliched or just plain bad. Sure they are! Some of them, anyway. And that’s often why we love them. But some performances, some scenes, are not bad in the least, and I’d argue, are as moving, as powerful and as emotionally charged as anything else on screen or in print.
To this day, I cannot watch the scene in the sewer pipes at the end of Them! without pure emotion welling up inside me. When James Arness consoles a mortally wounded James Whitmore who in his last breathes lets him know that the boys he rescued got out and are in the tunnel, it’s just too much.
That moment and what leads up to it, chokes me up every time. Even writing about it now, I find I’m moved to the point where I have to take my fingers off the keyboard for a moment. That’s greatness. Aside from Greg Peck’s final stare at a departing Audrey, Montagu Love’s reading of Kipling to the three remaining and one gone, or pretty much every darn thing that happens after Jimmy Stewart finds Zuzu’s petals, there aren’t many other film moments that can evoke such an immediate and powerful effect on me just from memory.
When James Arness continues on in the tunnels and is trapped behind fallen earth and timbers it doesn’t look good. With nothing more than the rounds left in his Thompson he is all alone to fight off the giant ants that are now attacking from all directions. But just as the creatures close in, beams of light and firepower from the other soldiers breaks through the splintered wood and fallen earth and saves him with dramatic punch. Powerful stuff, and I’m quite sure Steven Spielberg lifted it for a scene in Saving Private Ryan, of course without the ants.
It’s true. The Thing from Another World, War of the Worlds and Them! and so many others were meant as escapism, as ‘Drive-in fare, as they called it, when there were things like Drive-ins. But it’s undeniable to many of us that these films, that B movies contain moments that are special, very special for their genuine ability to move us and remain with us for a lifetime.
And that’s what movies are all about, Charlie Brown.
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