By Hank Reineke
Rightfully or wrongfully, I’m going to concentrate this
review of Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi from the
Vault Blu on two of this Blu-ray set’s decidedly lesser films: Creature
with the Atom Brain (1955) and The
Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959). This is partially due to the fact that the set’s two most prominent
titles, 20 Million Miles to Earth and
It Came from Beneath the Sea, were
previously issued by Mill Creek back in 2014 on their twofer Ray Harryhausen Creature Double Feature
from the same transfers. Though Creature with the Atom Brain is making
its U.S. Blu debut on this set, the film has seen a previous Blu issue on the UK
import Cold War Creatures: Four Films
from Sam Katzman. So only The Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock is making
a worldwide debut on Blu with this set.
All four films in this new set come, as per the title,
from the vaults of Columbia studios. Creature
earlier appeared on the commentary-free DVD set Sam Katzman: Icons of Horror Collection (2007). As I am not privy to the sales figures of
that set, I can only surmise should Mill Creek release a Sci-Fi Vault Vol. 2 on Blu, we might see the “missing” Katzman titles
sprinkled into a future U.S. set. This Mill
Creek set is not an “all Katzman” edition (ala Icons). The workhorse
producer has no connection to either 20
Million Miles to Earth or The Thirty
Foot Bride of Candy Rock.
It’s with no disrespect to the late, great special
effects wizard Ray Harryhausen that I’m not going to do a deep dive into 20 Million Miles to Earth and It Came from Beneath the Sea. Though these two films are genuine and iconic
sci-fi classics, both have previously gotten the Mill Creek Blu treatment and
also received transatlantic Blu releases as well. So I can’t imagine anyone interested in these
Harryhausen-associated titles not already in possession of copies. Fair to say, if you own Mill Creek’s previously
published twofer, their reappearances here are redundant.
This new set, priced at an MSRP of $29.99, is – happily -
available far less expensively from any variety of on-line retailers. In some sense, it’s a bargain. This recent edition does offer a new and informative audio commentary on It Came from Beneath the Sea, courtesy
of Justin Humphreys and C. Courtney Joyner. So if you’re an enthusiast of commentary tracks, that’s a checkmark in
the plus column. On the other hand,
there’s no audio commentary included on 20
Million Miles to Earth, a film no less deserving of annotation. So that’s a checkmark lost.
Oddly, Edward L. Chan’s Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), an arguably less-deserving
film, does come with a commentary
track – this time courtesy of film producer-writers’ Phoef Sutton and Mark
Jordan Legan. It’s nice to have a
commentary supplied by two established screenwriters since Creature producer Sam Katzman had conscripted the great Curt
Siodmak (The Wolf Man) to script his low-budgeter. The often curmudgeonly Siodmak was a pretty
productive scripter, memorably knocking off no fewer than nine sci-fi/horror programmers
for Universal 1940-44 – and many other original scenarios for other studios.
Though Siodmak provides a decent enough script for Creature, director Kahn’s film proves a
B-film guilty pleasure a best. On their
commentary, Sutton and Legan provide a breezy, lighthearted narration filled
with the usual, occasionally colorful, anecdotes, often based on their rattling
off resumes of the film’s various cast and crew member. To their credit, the two honestly acknowledge
the film’s shortfalls, mulling that “the first four and a half minutes are the
best thing about it.” The film is a bit
of slow-going unless one has a sense of nostalgia about it.
It was late October 1954 when Variety reported that Katzman had tapped Kahn to direct Creature, the first of the producer’s
first sci-fi feature film forays. News
of actor Richard Denning signing on to star was reported the following week. Similar to Katzman, Kahn was a film industry
workhorse, a director not identified with any one particular genre. In the 1950s, Kahn helmed war films,
westerns, gangster pics and teenage melodramas. But he also managed to put the
fright into the “Frightened Fifties,” cranking out no fewer than eight serviceable
sci-fi pics in a four-year period: beginning
with She Creature (1956) and finishing
with Invisible Invaders (1959). Actor Denning provided a face familiar to
50’s sci-fi fans: the actor had lead roles in The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Target Earth and The Black
Scorpion, to name only a few.
It was Columbia’s intention to bill the more pedestrian Creature as the supporting feature to It Came from Beneath the Sea. In June 1955 it was reported the double-bill was
to be first rolled out to thirty-one theaters in and around the Los Angeles
area. Both films would be produced under
the aegis of Katzman’s Clover Productions. Though Kaufman’s low-budgeted independent offerings weren’t expected to
bring in boffo box-office numbers,
Columbia’s accountants were aware the absence of big name stars and inflated
production costs brought better returns on investment.
A trade paper reported bluntly that Columbia, “feels it’s
better to make a 15% to 25% profit on a picture than to stand to lose 50% to
75% on a wholly-made studio picture.” While
Katzman’s pictures for Columbia (Creature
with the Atom Brain, The Giant Claw, Zombies of Mora Tau and The Werewolf) might not have produced
great art, they did bring in worthwhile returns on investment. It Came
from Beneath the Sea, the far stronger
film (with a bigger budget) managed great
business, helped in part by a combination of Harryhausen’s screen magic, word-of-mouth
excitement and a supportive radio-television-print campaign of $250,000. Though It
Came from Beneath the Sea was not
the first “giant” monster movie of the 1950s, it was among the earliest, and
this monstrous sci-fi sub-genre would blossom throughout the 1950s and well
into the 1960s.
Which leads us into our discussion of the final “giant” film
offered on this set. The working title
of Sidney Miller’s The 30 Foot Bride of
Candy Rock was originally titled The
Secret Bride of Candy Brock. The
film’s co-screenwriter, Arthur Ross, was familiar writing for films featuring
gargantuan(s): he had already helped craft the screenplay for Columbia’s The Three Worlds of Gulliver, a soon-to-be-
released pic in 1960. But Candy Rock was to serve primarily as a
vehicle for comedian Lou Costello. Though
his 1940s heyday was behind him, the roly-poly actor had been introduced to a
new generation of fans in the ‘50s through airings of The Abbott and Costello Show television series.
The
30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock was to be the comedian’s first feature
film project following the dissolution of his partnership with Bud Abbott in
July of 1957. That pair’s final film, the
saccharine comedy-drama Dance with Me,
Henry (United Artists, 1956) was generally dismissed as a tired re-play of
routines long gone cold. Now, as a solo
player, Costello was hoping that Bride
might reestablish his box-office prowess. This indie production, shot on the Columbia studios lot, saw Costello’s
manager, Eddie Sherman, serving as the film’s executive producer. With such leverage Costello was even able to
gift a small role to daughter Carole.
Producer Lew Rachmil suggested to a reporter from London’s
Picturegoer that Costello’s titular
bride, Dorothy Provine (a 22 year-old blonde that stood 5’ 4” tall), was a
“born comedienne – nearly as funny as Lou at times.” Provine was a relative newcomer to Hollywood,
having worked only two studio soundstages, one for The Bonnie Parker Story and for a two- episode role as a twelve
year old (!) on TV’s Wagon Train. Provine told gossiper Erskine Johnson that
she hadn’t “missed a day’s work since I arrived in Hollywood, but I was always
scared about every job being my last job.” She needn’t have worried, following Bride
the actress was picked to star alongside Roger Moore as a regular character on the
television series The Alaskans and
would also have a prominent role in the 1963 Cinerama comedy It’s a Mad,
Mad, Mad, Mad World.
In conception, Bride
seems little more than Lou Costello’s attempt to lampoon the popularity of the ongoing
“giant monster” craze. Whiling away his
days in an amateur laboratory, Costello’s rubbish collector and would-be inventor
Artie Pinsetter (‘a world-famous scientist who’s not famous yet”) is determined
to unravel secrets: primarily he wishes to learn how the prehistoric beasts that
once roamed a local region known “Dinosaur State Park” had achieved gargantuan
sizes. He’s investigating an ancient Native American belief that these
creatures achieved such measurement due to a mysterious stream of steam
emissions emanating from a canyon cave.
To this end he has constructed an elaborate electronic contraption
that he calls “Max.” His invention is part
time machine – due to its ability for “changing time curves” - and part
straight man. Pinsetter hadn’t needed to
go through all the trouble of mechanical tinkering. Walking through the canyon, girlfriend Emmy
Lou (Provine), accidentally walks through a plume of canyon steam and finds
herself having gained an additional 25 feet in height. The steam, we are told, is the castoff of atomic
energy escaping from the bowels of the earth.
To make matters worse for Pinsetter, we learn Emmy Lou is
the niece of the town’s self-involved and self-important bank president/gubernatorial
hopeful Raven Rossiter (Gale Gordon, of Our
Miss Brooks fame). Rossiter doesn’t
care much for Pinsetter, and his ill-tempered behavior provides much of the
film’s lukewarm comic tension. But ultimately,
the film’s concentration is whether or not the townies – and alarmed Pentagon
officials – can escape the problems wrought by Costello’s foolish inventions or
of his skulking thirty-foot bride.
Shot in the fanciful descriptions of “Wonderama” and
“Mattascope,” Bride is not a great
film by any measure. But having said
this, it’s an innocuous 73-minute nostalgia trip that admittedly brought a
number of head-shaking smiles to my face. The film is an innocent bit of nonsense, a “family-friendly” movie that
I’m certain brought fun to kiddie audiences of its day. My favorite time capsule moment occurs when
an airborne Costello nearly collides with the Soviet Union’s recently launched Sputnik 1 satellite.
Sadly, Lou Costello would not live to see the finished
film released to the public. The
legendary film star would die of a heart attack, just days shy of age 53, on
March 3, 1959 – a mere ten weeks following his first day of shooting on Bride in November of 1958 (production wrapped
a mere month later). On March 24, 1959,
executives at Columbia announced the aforementioned title change. The film was still in editing by June of 1959
– as was the Three Stooges’ sci-fi comedy Have
Rocket, Will Travel. In July Columbia shared plans to package Bride as a late summer trip bill of such
other family fare films as Rocket and
Ted Post’s The Legend of Tom Dooley.
There were studio previews as early as July 7, but when Bride finally was unleashed on movie
screens it was not as one-third of the aforementioned package as scheduled - but
rather as the under bill to Disney’s Darby
O’ Gill and the Little People or Have
Rocket, Will Travel. Though there
were no critical raves for Bride –
truthfully the film was undeserving of such praise – most reviewers found the
film harmless and wholesome family entertainment. Which it was. I suppose it would have been in poor taste to completely dismiss the value
of the final film of one of Hollywood’s most beloved – and successful –
actor-comedians.
In any event, Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi from the Vault collection has made The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock available for the first time on Blu-ray. Previously the film had only appeared on VHS
by Columbia/Tri-Star in 1986 and – with a far lesser transfer - on the cheapie
Good Times label in 1988. Its first
digital appearance was a 2010 release as a DVD MOD from Sony/Columbia Screen
Classics. So, regardless of merit, it’s
nice to get this one on Blu. Its
appearance here should interest fans of both Abbott and Costello-related
productions as well as collectors of vintage 50s Silver Age sci-fi. There’s also a light-hearted but informative
audio commentary for Bride provided
by the Monster Party Podcast team. Think
of a few wise-cracking - but informative - movie-buff friends sitting on the
couch alongside you. The commentary adds
a bit of color to an otherwise monochrome film.
To its credit, the set also includes two bonus features
well worth a look: Daniel Griffith’s 25-minute
doc They Came from Beyond: Sam Katzman at
Columbia as well as his 14:30 minute doc Fantastical Features: Nathan Juran at Columbia. The former gives us a thumbnail tracing of
Katzman’s career in film. The producer
knocked out dozens of serials for Victory and Columbia - including Superman (1948) and Batman and Robin (1949) - from the mid-1930s on. He later moved on to producing features for Monogram
– a studio described here as Hollywood’s “lowest echelon” - where he enjoyed
the first of his feature film successes.
Katzman’s films for Monogram and others were usually made
on shoestring budgets with tight shooting schedules. The producer didn’t necessarily favor the
horror sci-fi genre during his 40+ years working in Hollywood. But having employed Bela Lugosi on the 1936
serial Shadow of Chinatown, Katzman
managed to bring the now underworked and underappreciated actor to Monogram for
a series of guilty pleasure, fan-favorite cheapie horror-melodramas. But Katzman was not shy on capitalizing on whatever
fad was capturing public fancy. His filmography included everything from ghetto
dramas, gangster pics, East Side Kids/Bowery Boys comedies, westerns, sword and
sandal epics, early rock n’ roll pics – even a couple of Elvis Presley films (Kissin’ Cousins (1964) and Harum Scarum (1965) .
In the mid-1950s, sensing sci-fi was proving popular with
audiences, Katzman scored big as the Executive Producer on such less penny-pinching
epics as It Came from Beneath the Sea
and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
(1956). Both of these films featured the
completely amazing stop-motion special effects of the great Ray Harryhausen,
with whom Katzman was happy to collaborate. In all likelihood, it’s the appreciative audience of so-called “Monster
Kids” that continues to stoke interest in Katzman’s work.
The second bonus doc, Fantastical
Features, has C. Courtney Joyner and Justin Humphreys taking a brief look
at the films of the fast-shot flicks Nathan Juran directed for Columbia. Though not necessarily a horror/sci-fi film
director, Juran had previously helmed The
Black Castle (1952) for Universal and, more importantly, for that studio’s
great giant insect epic The Deadly Mantis
(1957). Once moving to Columbia, Juran
managed a number of sci-fi/fantasy epics including such cinematic touchstones
as 20 Million Miles to Earth, Attack of
the 50 Foot Woman (1958) and The 7th
Voyage of Sinbad (1958).
For the most part, all of these black-and-white films
look great for their age, though they’re not entirely pristine: one can expect
a few not terribly distracting scratches or speckling throughout. Personally, I’m not sure how many more times
I will revisit Creature with the Atom
Brain or The 30 Foot Bride of Candy
Rock – they’re not great films - but it’s still nice to add these titles to
my ‘50s sci-fi film collection. You’ll
have to decide if they’re worth adding to yours.
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