Shocktober: Hidden Horrors, Part 2

I promised more less-than-well-known monster movie picks. Now? I deliver.

Strangler of the Swamp (1946). Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC for short) was the lowest of the low for movie studios on Hollywood's Poverty Row in the 1940s--you only worked there if you were desperate. Director Frank Wisbar must have been, because he made more than one movie for PRC after emigrating from Germany in 1939. This, though, is his best effort, a remake of one of his earlier films. A man who was lynched for a murder he didn't commit (Charles Middleton, best known for playing Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials) comes back to haunt and exact revenge not only on the men responsible, but their descendants as well, including the granddaughter (former Miss America Rosemary LaPlanche) of one of the men. The pacing is leisurely and the romance between the granddaughter and another descendant (future director Blake Edwards) is stale, but the scenes with the ghost, who is always shown as a soft-focus wraith with a commanding voice, are riveting and memorable.

The Werewolf (1956). A successful stab at combining traditional horror and '50s-style sci-fi: An auto accident victim (Steven Ritch) is irradiated by a couple of mad-but-well-intentioned scientists and becomes a hairy, snarling beast. The budget is low, but the werewolf makeup is seriously scary.

Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Writer Nigel Kneale wrote four sci-fi serials for British TV featuring rocket scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass, who investigated and defended against various alien invasions. Three of them were adapted for the big screen by Hammer Studios, with the first two filmed in black & white and starring American actor Brian Donlevy as the gruff, irracible Quatermass. The third one, though, is in color and stars Andrew Keir as the professor, this time checking into what looks like a spaceship full of grasshopper-like monsters buried in the London underground. Is it a hoax perpetuated by the Nazis during World War II? Or a remnant of an invasion that's been hidden for millions of years, waiting patiently for someone to find it and complete the original mission? Some of the special effects are lousy (the scenes of the grasshoper alien things marching across the surface of Mars usually provoke laughter), but many, many other moments are tense and terrifying. One of Hammer's best, released in the U.S. under the title Five Million Years to Earth (which just meant that it got inevitably confused with the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion epic, 20 Million Miles to Earth).

Witchfinder General (1968). A historical horror starring Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins, a witch hunter in England during the reign of Oliver Cromwell. Hopkins is much more interested in making money and getting laid than finding any actual witches, but is perfectly willing to torture and execute anyone who isn't willing to go along with him. Price is often dismissed (the way many of the great horror film actors are) as overly theatrical, but his performance here is restrained, subtle and menacing--arguably his finest. (Because Price had just finished a run of Roger Corman-directed adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories, the American distributor of Witchfinder General renamed it Conquerer Worm and had Price add a voiceover of the poem--my favorite Poe verse--for the beginning of the movie.)

I, Monster (1970). Hammer's chief competition in Great Britain was Amicus, a studio that specialized in horror anthology movies like Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and the House That Dripped Blood, frequently borrowing Hammer stars like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. This was their adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's oft-filmed novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For some odd reason, though, they changed the names of lead characters to Dr. Marlowe and Mr. Blake (suddenly, all the English majors sit up straight) and the story. Maybe that's why not many people remember this more-or-less faithful adaptation of Stevenson's story, even though it stars Lee as the doctor who unwisely experiments on himself and unleashes a fiend, and Cushing as his friend. Whatever you want to call it, it's an entertaining version of the classic tale, with Lee doing a great job in both roles, that stands up well against the many, many renditions before or since.