Cancel the state funeral, tell the king to stop blubbing, Ithil did not miss a day of his October marathon, I simply had no time to post thoughts yesterday. So you're getting four overly long reviews to scroll past from me today.
The two films I watched yesterday:
15) Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
And I thought the Mississippi was something.
Aaand the colour's gone already.
One more Universal monster film, and a fine one to end it on. While the story has been done a thousand times, hell this movie was twenty years after King Kong, compared to the average 1950s monster flick this one showed a lot of restraint and patience. The eponymous Creature isn't clearly seen until quite a ways into the film, but thankfully it's not to hide dodgy creature effects a la The Giant Claw. The Creature looks great, as far as a man in a rubber suit goes. The design is just "fishy" enough to look inhuman but not enough to look ridiculous. It also allows it to look very elegant when swimming underwater, rather than cumbersome.
Speaking of which, the underwater phototography in the film was excellent, featuring not just nice scenery but also a great sense of energy. The Creature is always moving in and out of seaweed, clouds of dust and weeds are being kicked about, it all keeps the underwater scenes from seeming slow.
They even had a bit of a moral in the film, as the Creature is merely a wild animal defending its territory, and the scientists in fact, try to treat it scientifically, to document and study it, before it ends up becoming too violent. That they are forced to resort to attacking it to escape the lagoon was portrayed as regrettable, a nice sentiment to see. The cast itself is adequate, fairly standard, but I do have to say that after a week of old horror films, I'm getting tired of women whose only role is to stand and scream at the monster and don't get any agency of their own.
I also must give specific praise to the musical score. The fun brass sting they like to play any time the Creature appears aside, the rest of the score is elegant and adventurous, very well composed.
16) The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too.
Well, this was a surprise to say the least.
I was expecting a fun adventure, perhaps I was thinking of something lighthearted like Honey I Shrunk the Kids. However, the camp premise of a shrinking man is treated shockingly seriously. His radioactive shrinking is no laughing matter, in fact, it's downright tragic. It quickly ruins his life, strains his marriage, and reduces him to a punchline. There's virtually zero humor about the whole situation, and the first half of the film is really a drama, and a depressing one.
Once he becomes action figure sized and has to fend for himself trapped in the basement, then the adventure begins. But again, a surprise, it's not a fun adventure, it's terrifying. I guess I'm used to films like Innerspace or Fantastic Voyage, but this was legitimately a horror film.
The "greenscreen" aspect of the effects has not aged well, but the shots using huge props or forced perspective hold up great. I particularly liked the detail in the huge props, like pencils or matches, a lot of effort shown.
A word of warning, the climax of the film really sucks if you are someone who happens to have arachnophobia. Someone like myself, for instance. Unfortunately for me the effects of said climax hold up very well and you'll rarely see a scarier spider on screen. Actually, I found myself wondering if this film was an influence on Peter Jackson, as a number of the shots in his fight with the spider looked very much like ones in the battle with Shelob in Return of the King.
Overall a very well made, but surprisingly serious and morose film.
Thus ends my Universal Horror trawl. Now it's Hammer time.
