By
Hank Reineke
Roger Corman had, over a relatively short period of time,
directed and/or produced more than a
half-dozen pictures since his entry into the movie industry in 1955. His first efforts were modest successes, but
the filmmaker firmly broke into a dependably bankable stride within two years’
time. Though already having helmed two
low budget science-fiction pictures with some success (Day the World Ended (1955) and It
Conquered the World (1956) his reputation in Hollywood - as a budget-minded
money-spinner - was properly recognized following the box office counting of his
1957 chiller combo: Attack of the Crab
Monsters/Not of This Earth. Variety noted the package – each film made
on a “slenderized bankroll of $85, 000,” had brought in an impressive domestic
gross of $800,000. By early November of
’57, that package, distributed through Allied Artists, had earned back the
entirety of its production and marketing costs within twelve weeks of its release.
Through the remainder of the 1950s and well into the early
1960s, Corman continued to grind out a dizzying array of feature films, not all
of the horror and sci-fi variety: there were plenty of exploitative teenage
rock n’ roll pictures and crime dramas offered as well. But from 1960 through
1964, Corman worked primarily – though not exclusively – producing and directing
an impressive slate of upscale horror classics. He had already given fans such soon-to-be low-budget cult favorites as Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960). But in 1960 he more famously scored with House of Usher, the first of his iconic and
moody cycle of Poe and H.P. Lovecraft adaptations - many featuring Vincent
Price in roles as both tormentor and tormented.
One of Corman’s most important collaborators in his early
years was screenwriter Charles B. Griffith. Griffith would receive screenwriting credit – or co-credit – on no fewer
than eight of Corman’s earliest films 1956-59. The writer would later recall for Beast
from Haunted Cave he had been commissioned by Corman to essentially rework
the storyline of an earlier film they had crafted together – Naked Paradise (1957) aka Thunder Over Hawaii. Naked
Paradise, of which Griffith was brought on late to the project for a
re-write, was essentially a South Seas crime-drama set in a pineapple
plantation under the umbrella of a glistening sun.
Since that film had done well enough, Corman wanted to revisit
the scenario of Naked Paradise for the
reimagined crime drama titled Beast from
Haunted Cave. There would be a new
twist: the new scenario was to take place in and around a gold mining community
nestled in the dead winter snow of South Dakota’s Black Hills. Oh, and Corman advised Griffith that he also wanted
a genuine cave-dwelling monster thrown in for good measure - that sort of thing
was still selling. That was essentially
all the background material given to Griffith to get started on the project.
Despite its menacing title Beast from Haunted Cave appears more a crime-drama than horror
flick in the course of its 65-minute running time. The story revolves around the criminal doings
of a circle of bandits: chain-smoking mastermind Alexander Ward (Frank Wolff), his
two minions Marty Jones (Richard Sinatra) and Byron Smith (Wally Campo) and
Ward’s oft- inebriated “secretary” Gypsy Boulet (Sheila Carol). The thieves have gathered in the snow-capped
mountain winter of the pioneer town of Deadwood, South Dakota. Their plan is to plant an explosive in an
abandoned cave in the early hours of a quiet Sunday morning. The explosion is set merely as a strategic
ploy to distract authorities for a time, enabling the thieves’ free reign to
steal gold bars from an unattended payroll office of a local gold-mining
company.
Unfortunately, their plans don’t run smoothly. Ward’s dissatisfied and affection-starved
lover-secretary, Gypsy, has a bit of a drinking problem. She complicates matters when she falls hard for
ski instructor and trail guide Gil Jackson (Michael Forest), a swarthy,
dark-haired gentleman of gentle temperament. (As an aside, I occasionally had a
bit of trouble understanding actress Sheila Carol’s dialogue in this film: her
diction seemed a perplexing amalgam of drunken slurred words and a faux
Katherine Hepburn accent). The cold Ward
takes notice of his woman’s wandering eye but is unworried. He has plans to kill Jackson once the skier -
unwittingly - guides this gaggle of crooks on a cross-country trail run to a
remote location.
Ward had plans to rendezvous with a waiting plane to
ferry his gang - and their misbegotten treasure - off to safe sanctuary in
Canada. But this plan too is scuttled by
an unwelcome blizzard passing through the mountains. (As a second aside, Ward’s cross-country ski scheme
is surely the most ineffectual escape route ever mapped by criminals carrying weighted
gold bars in rucksacks. They really would
have done better just hightailing it out of town in their rented car). To complicate matters further – and this is
where the horror finally comes in - their explosive mine charge has awakened
the titular beast, sort of an upright walking, giant spider that collects his victims
by webbing them against cave walls and drinking their blood at his leisure. Let’s just say the moral of the story is a
familiar one: essentially, crime doesn’t pay.
In Corman’s attempt to make their chilly time in the
Black Hills more productive and worthwhile (i.e. profitable), the filming of Beast was to be produced back-to-back on
location in Deadwood with yet another Charles B. Griffith script, Ski Troop Attack. This second film was to be a somewhat more
ambitious project, a snow-bound WWII action-adventure pitting American
ski-troopers against their wintry Nazi counterparts. The Corman team would use the same primary
on-and off screen talents featured in the cast and credits of Beast for Ski Troop Attack.
The scenario of Ski
Troop Attack referentially takes place in the snow-capped mountains of
Germany’s Hürtgen Forest, circa
December 1944. A small American band of
ski-troopers are the only remaining Allied force active in this Nazi-controlled
region, hiding themselves behind enemy lines so they can spy and report on SS
ski-troop movements. The level-head
Lieutenant Factor (Forest), a graduate of the Army’s Officer Candidate School,
wishes to stay clear of engaging in active combat with the enemy. As the only team of Allied forces positioned
inside the Nazi-controlled German-Belgian border, it is Forest’s belief his
outfit should purposely avoid direct contact. He instead wants to concentrate his efforts on secret reconnaissance
missions. By acting as the covert eyes of
the good guys behind enemy lines, his outfit would be able to transmit vital
information on Nazi troop movements back to HQ.
But Factor is at loggerheads
with tough-talking Sergeant Potter (a mustache-less Wolff, again cast in a
“heavy” role). Potter is described by
Factor as an old school “regular army guy,” a man of pure fighting spirit but someone
strategically short-sighted. Potter desperately
wants to engage the Nazi ski-troopers in active combat and is mostly dismissive
of the Factor’s civilian background and wartime decision-making capabilities. Potter does get a number of chances to engage
in hand-to-hand combat. The film actually
offers no shortage of brutal on screen violence with competing ski-troops ambushing
and beating one another with fisticuffs, rifles butts, bayonets, knives and
machine-gun fire.
Ultimately, the American’s
decide to blow up a strategic railroad bridge that Allied air powers are unable
to access and target. But while
attempting to get to the base of the bridge to set off their detonators, they
must first successfully climb an ice-covered vertical cliff side. If this isn’t problematic or dangerous enough,
they must also fend off a team of six pursuing Nazi ski-troopers hot on their
trail. The German skiing contingent,
incidentally, is led by the badly-dubbed Roger Corman himself. The film’s climactic ending is, somewhat surprisingly
for this type of adventure, more bleak than celebratory.
Griffith’s screenplay is
actually far more nuanced than it is given credit for in the film’s original
round of reviews. The sensitively written
dialogue is mature – the scene where soldier Grammelsbacher (Sinatra) sits
around a campfire musing if somewhere out there there’s still “a bullet with my
name on it” – is particularly gripping. The better written dialogue also brings out better acting performances
of all involved – including Shelia Carol who appears midway through the film as
a spiteful German captive of the Americans.
The film does plod a bit. There’s a lot of wartime newsreel footage
interlaced throughout, and no matter how beautiful the mountain settings are
photographed, there’s far too many time-filling shots of ski-troopers silently
trudging cross-country style through the tundra. Having said that that, there’s also some
well-executed ski chase scenes captured on screen, such action-footage surprising
for a film shot on a threadbare budget. The soundtrack of the film is riddled with the sound of machine-gun fire
and a decent score courtesy of composer Fred Katz – though fans of Corman’s
earliest films will surely recognize a good number of Katz’s recycled musical
motifs are in play.
As both projects were to be shot on tight schedules,
Roger’s brother, Gene, stepped in as the de facto producer of Beast. Once a Hollywood agent, Gene Corman was co-founder (with Roger) of their
company Filmgroup, Inc. Gene’s earliest
entries as producer would include a number of exploitative sci-fi efforts such as
Night of the Blood Beast (1958) and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). With Roger set to both produce and direct Ski Troop Attack, the directorial duties of Beast were given to first-timer Monte Hellman - whose only previous
film experience was having worked as an apprentice editor at ABC-TV.
In his entertaining memoir, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime
(Random House, 1990), Roger Corman recalled the wintertime location shooting in
and around snowbound Deadwood as “unbearable” and “a very tough
challenge.” When shooting was to
commence on the peak of Mount Terry, Corman recorded temperatures of a frigid thirty-eight
degrees below zero. In the recollection
of script supervisor Kinta Zertuche, her primary job was simply “to find ways
to keep the film warm enough so it wouldn’t get brittle and crack.” She was
also deigned to find ways of keeping the production cameras from freezing – not
always successfully.
Production assistant Paul Rapp recalled he had been
tasked to drive the parsimonious Corman – and an automobile-filled cache of
film props - from Los Angeles to Deadwood, so the director “could save on
airfare and have an extra car on location.” When filming one downhill ski sequence, Corman accidentally set off a
small avalanche by shouting “Action!” too loudly through a bullhorn. Rapp recalled while the incident scared him
half-to-death, Corman quickly realized the potential visual impact of what the
camera was capturing. So the team was
commanded to continue to roll film, Corman exhorting via bullhorn that his terrified
skiers try their best to “Stay Ahead of the Avalanche!”
In March of 1959, there was a trade announcement that
“Corman’s distributing outfit, The Filmgroup,” was planning to release Beast from Haunted Cave nationally (paired
with The Wasp Woman) as early as June
1, with Ski Troop Attack (to be paired
with Task Force 38) a little more
than a month later, July 13. But neither
of those prospective release dates would actually roll out as planned, even
though the films themselves were
ready to roll. Beast would come closest to realizing its projected release date,
appearing on some screens in July 1959.
As early as February of 1960, Variety reported that the steamroller that was Filmgroup was
optimistically planning to roll out eight feature films a month between March
and June of 1960. Ski Troop Attack was to see release on the very tail end of that
schedule. The Hollywood Reporter suggested Filmgroup’s plan as more ambitious
than even originally announced: the company was planning on issuing no less
than twenty-four features over a
year’s period, with eleven of those titles already in the can and ready to go.
The company was also interested in testing international
markets. It was reported that the usually closed-to-outsiders Soviet film
market was interested in importing four Corman titles – including Beast and Ski – assuming whether or not Irving Allen, president of Canada’s
Astral Films, could finalize a deal while visiting London. Later in May of 1960, it was reported
Filmgroup had sealed another deal to distribute eight films – again, including Beast and Ski - throughout the Philippine islands. Finally, in August of 1960, Continental
Distributors would obtain rights of Filmgroup product for European markets.
But the U.S. market was of most concern to the filmmakers. On March 16, 1960, there was a very belated press
screening of the Beast and Wasp combo at the Hollywood Theatre. Variety was generally impressed with Hellman’s
Beast, but suggested the film’s scenario
was completely illogical. The critic
also pondered that perhaps interest in horror films was generally on the
wane. He opined, audiences were growing
“inured to monsters and hardly blink when this one guzzles its customary quota
of blood.” The review of Wasp was likewise middling in
praise. The trade noted, while the film
was certainly an “exploitable” passable entertainment, “it’s pretty slow and not
very frightening.”
The “official” premiere of Beast from Haunted Cave was to take place at dual locations in
South Dakota: Rapid City’s State Theatre
and the Hile-Hi Drive-in outside of Deadwood: the latter venue was to enjoy a
four day night run of Beast beginning
August 2, 1959. This was obviously a nod
of acknowledgment to the folks living in the area of the Black Mountain Hills
who hosted and assisted the film’s production. But no matter how well-intentioned the “premiere” honor, Beast from Haunted Cave and The Wasp Woman had already been
projected on screens in the mid and southwestern U.S. as early as July of ’59.
Earlier that spring, director Gene Corman had written
Allan “Birdie” Arnold of Deadwood’s Chamber of Commerce City Council, a champion
of the film shoot. “We saw a rough cut of our picture, it is very good and I’m
sure everyone who helped, especially you, will be proud and pleased,” Gene
wrote, adding, “I plan to make it a full length picture and hope to release it
in the summer.” For their assistance,
both Arnold and Mayor Ed Keene of Lead, South Dakota, were given “Technical
Advisor” credits on Beast.
Though it had earlier been promised as a summer of ’59
release, Ski Troop Attack was
belatedly screened for the press at the Warner Hollywood on April 26, 1960. It was to showcase as the top-bill of another
wartime adventure picture Battle of Blood
Island. There were no true raves for
Ski, Variety citing Griffith’s screenplay as cliché ridden and faulting
Corman’s non-use of long-range establishing shots to bring “a perspective of
depth and distance” to the snow-covered peaks. The reviewer did concede Corman and his team managed a “reasonably
picturesque production” which might perform “Okay” at the box-office. The film would finally see release in June of
1960. The Hollywood Reporter thought the film’s miniatures were “adequate
though not entirely believable,” citing comparisons of the film as a mere low-budget
piggyback to David Lean’s Bridge over the
River Kwai (1957).
Middling reviews aside, Corman didn’t seem terribly
bothered. Less than a week following the
theatrical release of Ski Troop Attack,
Filmgroup was already in negotiations with United Artists television to sell a
package of fifteen of their film holdings for TV broadcast. The films were to be broadcast much in the order
they were produced, the oldest films in the catalog to go “first and newest
last to allow theatrical distribution of latter to be completed.” Among the films in this TV package were to be
the most recent, including both Beast
and Ski Troop Attack - the latter title
to be supposedly broadcast in some markets less than a month into its
theatrical run.
But there were delays and contractual issues to first be
sorted out and the deal with UA fell through. So it wasn’t until February of 1963 that several of Filmgroup’s horror
and sci-fi efforts would finally reach television screens. In March of 1962, Allied Artists Television
Corp. acquired (as per an advert placed in the trades) a “rocket-powered
package of 20 science-fiction full-length features.” This package would be warmly
received by folks caught up in the midst of early 1960’s monster-movie
mania. In the early winter of ’63,
Allied would add an additional twelve titles to their catalog of sci-fi “exploitables,”
including Beast from Haunted Cave. Beast was in fact one of the first films
televised on Pittsburgh’s influential Chiller
Theatre TV series, it’s first (of many subsequent) broadcasts televised as
early as September 22, 1963.
Now, sixty-years following that initial broadcast, we
hold in our hands this Special Edition Blu- ray set from Film Masters. This package offers a Newly Restored 4K Scan
from 35mm Archival Materials of Beast
from Haunted Cave and a “bonus” High-Def print of Ski Troop Attack. There are two different versions of Beast offered on disc one: there’s the original theatrical 65 minute
print as well as the 72 minute extended-for-television-version cut. The set also includes the original 35mm
theatrical trailer for Beast as well
as a pair of 2023 “re-cut from restored film elements” trailers for both Beast and Ski.
For the record, my first comments here are in regard to
the theatrical cut of Beast. The film, once another victim of
public-domain discourtesy, simply looks fantastic. Film grain is nicely present, and aside from the
occasional emulsion scratch and some minor frame jumps where source material
was damaged or lost, the film has never looked better on any commercial disc
already in my library. The extra seven-minutes
of the TV-cut are really only superfluous fillers to the somewhat more tightly
edited theatrical version – but certainly nice for collectors to have,
especially those who might dimly recall these extraneous segments when watching
Chiller Theatre at home in 1963. As for Ski
Troop Attack, I could detect nary an on-screen blemish. The HD print was
obviously sourced from near-perfect film elements.
Film writer-historian Tom Weaver and filmmaker Larry
Blamire knowledgably handle the commentary duties for Beast, Weaver also offering up some fifty or so rare stills from
the film for a presentation gallery. The
commentary for Ski features the learned
musings of author C. Courtney Joyner and filmmaker Howard S. Berger. The set also features the sixteen-minute Ballyhoo
Motion Pictures documentary Hollywood Intruders:
The Filmgroup Story: Part One. Joyner
recalls the backstory of Filmgroup’s incorporation which was, essentially, to
see that profits were not unfairly siphoned off to the wallets of such
distributors Allied Artists or A.I.P. Corman
was, in Joyner’s description, “unhappy with the accounting” of A.I.P. The doc wisely front ends the commentator’s
thoughts of Beast and Ski before he muses on several of
Filmgroup’s earlier efforts as The Wasp
Woman, Day the World Ended, and Corman’s
earliest teen rebel dramas.
The set also contains a twenty-four page booklet
featuring Weaver’s “Bantering with a Beast,” an interview he conducted with actor
Chris Robinson, who created the costume for the horror film’s Spider creature. The booklet’s second essay, “Corman Goes to
War,” comes courtesy of C. Courtney Joyner. While acknowledging Ski Troop Attack had “ambitions far
exceeding its budget,” he allows the director managed to make a dystopic WWII
film where even the victor is “left to wander an injured world and as
spiritually isolated as any tortured character from Corman’s Poe films.”
Finally, there’s also a hidden “Easter Egg” included as
an extra bonus (hint: maneuver to the “Beast” image highlighted on the
right-side bottom frame of that film’s screen menu). There you will discover a six-minute
black-and-white filmed interview with actor Chris Robinson. Robinson offers stories of his early days in
Hollywood and of his subsequent involvement in Beast from Haunted Cave. (Among
his reminiscences, the actor recalls Corman allocating all of $29 to craft the
creature outfit!).
Film Masters promises that there are more films from
Corman’s extensive back-catalog already in the pipeline – all to arrive on Blu-ray
mastered from newly restored elements and in Hi-Def transfers. Should you decide to pass on these “Special
Edition” releases due to already having copies of the films on one of those 20
or 50 DVD public domain multi-packs, you are doing yourself a disservice. These are the transfers worth seeking out, no
question about it.
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