THE CREMATORS (1972)

Director: Harry Essex

Writers: Julian May aka Judy Ditky (original story), Harry Essex

Producer: Harry Essex

Cast: Marvin Howard, Maria De Aragon, Eric Allison aka Eric Sinclair, Cecil Reddick, R.N. Bullard, Mason Caulfield, Tim Frawley, Jax Jason Carroll, Ola Kauffman, Barney Bossick, Al Ward, Jim Ragan, Chuck Hillig, David Essex (uncredited) 

Three hundred years ago, a meteor fell to earth landing in Lake Michigan. The extraterrestrial object is actually alive and periodically rises from the waters to roam the sandy shore and surrounding area as a huge rolling fireball. This has spawned the local “dune roller” legend. Present day biologist Iane Thorne (Marvin Howard) has discovered small stones that pulse with a strange glow. Thorne believes the stones have a connection to the deaths of local people being mysteriously incinerated. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The Cremators is a crudely filmed, clumsily dialogued, and indifferently acted film. It is a true disappointment as it is based on a fine novelette first published in 1951 by Julian May (aka Judy Ditky) called “Dune Roller.” It had already been adapted for a 1952 episode of the television series Tales of Tomorrow and for a BBC radio drama in 1961. This movie is a pretty faithful adaptation, but its execution falls flat.

It had great potential with its unique monster menace that is very well realized by the fireball special effect creation done by Doug Beswick. This effect is the only reason this movie made any impression on me, though I am not an effects geek. I will watch an interesting and even inane film with poor effects work before I will waste my time on the mega-budgeted drivel we are fed today. Most of the modern product is relying on the rapid-fire razzle-dazzle of its CGI gimmicks to gloss over its lack of logic, sincerity, and originality. Despite the many months of production time and multi-million dollar budgets, many modern day extravaganzas are filled with even more absurdities and plot holes than their low-budget ancestors.

Writer-director-producer Harry Essex had the advantage of basing The Cremators on a great novelette that operates as both a horror story and an intriguing science fiction yarn. To his credit, he remains faithful to the concepts and characters with very few deviations. 

It would be easy to let Essex off the hook for this film’s faults by blaming its $50,000 budget, which even by early '70s standards was very low, but that doesn’t account for the haphazard choice of shots, poor lighting, and lack of interest in any of its characters. As the movie’s running time is a mere 74 minutes, there was surely more time available to add at least a couple scenes to establish some sort of chemistry between the couple that is supposed to fall in love and earn our sympathies. There is one attempt in this direction that seems rather stilted and oddly dialogued that somehow results in the two immediately having sex. Don’t get your hopes or anything else up; it’s just as flaccidly executed as almost everything else in this flick.

Like his other early '70s monster flick Octaman (1971), Essex strives for this film to be a throwback to the heyday of '50s sci-fi frights such as It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). His kinship to this sort of thing is evident as he was involved in the scripting of those two classics. Essex must have decided that a musical composer from films of that genre and era would suit The Cremators. Albert Glasser had scored '50s genre fare such as Indestructible Man (1956), The Cyclops (1957), and The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). Glasser’s score for The Cremators seems desperate to stoke some energy into this lackluster film. There is a lot of music, but most of it is trying to elicit interest that the direction fails to create. As the story is building to its climax, the music becomes annoying rather than exciting.

Equally annoying and downright puzzling is the flaming point of view shots scattered throughout this film. We see close up flames in the foreground as the camera is focusing through the flames on various people in the background. It seems that this is supposed to represent the viewpoint of the dune roller monster spying on some characters, yet why don’t any of the characters notice it? It is a fifteen-foot tall ball of fire!

The closest thing to a name in the cast would be Maria De Aragon as Jeanne, the love interest of the biologist hero Iane Thorne. De Aragon was featured in a number of exploitation flicks around this time, but she seems to be most revered for appearing without credit and for being unrecognizable as Greedo, the green alien creature blown away by Han Solo in the cantina bar scene of Star Wars (1977). The only time she registers much emotion is when she is screaming burning murder during the film’s best scene. While piloting her boat across the lake, she is being pursued by the fifteen-foot high fireball rolling across the water. Again, a very nice effect achieved on a very miniscule budget.

Everything else in this flick seems rather perfunctory, despite the very original sci-fi premise. It has a solid story with a unique, deadly, and interesting phenomenon. It is the people in the story that fail to engage any interest. They should have been as quirky as the dune roller. If the characters were given more care in their dialogue and performances and the cinematography and shot choices were better, this could have been a remarkable little movie. As it is, The Cremators really fizzles out.