IT! (1967)

Director: Herbert J. Leder

Writer: Herbert J. Leder

Producer: Herbert J. Leder

Cast: Roddy McDowall, Paul Maxwell, Jill Haworth, Alan Sellers, Noel Trevarthen, Aubrey Richards, Oliver Johnston, Ernest Clark, Richard Goolden, Dorothy Frere, Ian McCulloch, Tom Chatto, Steve Kirby, Frank Sieman, Russell Napier, Brian Haines, John Baker, Mark Burns, Raymond Adamson, Lindsay Campbell 

Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall), the assistant curator of a London art museum, discovers that the latest piece to be put on display is the legendary Golem of Prague. This Hebrew statue can be brought to life and serve the will of its master. The frustrated and unstable Pimm is infatuated with the possibilities of the power he can wield controlling the indestructible Golem (Alan Sellers). 

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It may surprise my readers to know that this classy and cultured character doesn’t frequent museums very often. Is that due to this retro reprobate’s arrested development and intellectual laziness? Of course not! I avoid public collections of historic and cultural interest due to a finely developed sense of self-preservation. My lifelong study of cinematic artifacts has discovered that museums are very dangerous places. Hang around a museum too long and you run the risk of becoming a wax-covered display, getting strangled by mummies, or being disemboweled by demonic beings. The best you can hope for is that the gorgeous museum patron you obsess about will drive you nuts.

There is no clearer example of the warning about the danger zones that museums pose to the public than It! The joint in this flick makes headlines with the fatalities suffered by its staff and contractors at an alarming rate. Morbid bastards that the public are, it turns out to be good for business. Morbid bastard that I am, It! keeps me returning for more viewings, as well.

The novelty of this movie’s menace is that there had not been much done before with the Golem legend. Since there had been only a handful of Golem films made over thirty years earlier and one Czechoslovakian film in 1951, this monster seemed like a pretty fresh gimmick. Although this is not a Hammer Films production, this British film seems to be following Hammer’s lead by doing a contemporary take on an old movie monster. In fact, Carlo Martelli’s music score here is actually using similar themes he used a few years earlier in Hammer’s The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964). 

The title menace itself is a monster lacking in any character aside from an unwillingness to stay idle. The Golem is little more than a weapon used by our villain. As portrayed by Roddy McDowall, Arthur Pimm is the one that brings the Golem to life, and Roddy McDowall’s performance is the force that animates this entire film. 

If ever a movie was carried by its star, It! is certainly held up by Roddy McDowall as nutjob protagonist Arthur Pimm. While his Golem can tear down Hammersmith Bridge, such power pales alongside McDowall’s performance singlehandedly lifting this wild and unwieldy story. He is funny, crazy, and sympathetic. We know he is wrong, yet as the main character he keeps our interest wanting to see just how long he can get away with his crimes that were already underway before he animated his stone henchman. 

As if to atone for being one of the biggest knobs I have ever seen in a horror film back in 1958’s How to Make a Monster, Paul Maxwell is the hero in It! As Jim Perkins, the visiting American representative of the New York Museum, Maxwell gives a nice performance that plays well off of McDowall’s. Perkins’ manner borders on smug, but his easy confidence contrasts nicely with Pimm’s instability. Of course, the fact that he scores instantly with Ellen Grove (Jill Haworth), Pimm’s object of unrequited lust, makes us empathize even more with the mad curator. 

Speaking of madness, there is another obvious horror film influence lumped into this narrative. Fans of Psycho (1960) can’t miss it and I rather like it. Derivative though it may be, it pumps up the ghastly content in the thin story and demonstrates how flawed our protagonist Arthur Pimm is. The whole point of the movie is that when power falls into the wrong hands, as it does with Arthur Pimm, that power will be misused. 

I appreciate a simple story well told, and It! is a fun bit of horror hokum. The only lapse for me is that, although the Golem is indestructible, it is awfully slow. Even if the military can’t destroy it, they could certainly outmaneuver it to raid Pimm’s hideout late in the film and waste the mad curator. Of course, that would still leave the Golem at large, and destroying it seems to be the military’s main objective. There may have been some concern about the safety of Ellen as Pimm’s hostage, but eventually the army decides to hell with that and goes for the nuclear option. This provides another heroic opportunity for Paul Maxwell to make me forget what an absolute jerk he was in How to Make a Monster. 

The thing I have always found to be most unsettling about the film is the warning that is engraved on the Golem. In attempting to understand the Golem and how to control it, Pimm takes a rubbing of the engraved characters to an old scholar (Richard Goolden) for translation. It is such a bleak prophecy that it is as nihilistic as anything appearing in any horror film at the time when things seemed to be taking a much darker turn in the genre.

LASERBLAST (1978)

Director: Michael Rae

Writers: Franne Schacht, Frank Ray Perilli

Producers: Charles Band, J. Larry Carroll

Cast: Kim Milford, Cheryl Smith, Gianni Russo, Roddy McDowall, Keenan Wynn, Ron Masak, Dennis Burkley, Barry Cutler, Eddie Deezen, Mike Bobenko, Rick Walters, Simmy Bow, Wendy Wernli, Joanna Lipari, Janet Dey, Steve Neill (uncredited), Michael Rae (uncredited), Eric Jenkins, Franne Schacht, Michael Barrere, Melinda Wunderlich 

In the California desert, an extraterrestrial humanoid (Steve Neill) is pursued and disintegrated by two reptilian beings. When the alien assassins depart in their spaceship, they neglect to retrieve the laser gun and the amulet worn by the humanoid they killed. Young Billy Duncan (Kim Milford) discovers the two alien devices and quickly figures out how to wield their destructive power. The troubled youth is sporadically transformed into a monster by the alien technology and goes on a spree of destruction targeting his enemies. 

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Another usually dismissed and damned flick that I find to be almost too simple to find fault with. It shares the same basic premise with that schlock icon of the '50s, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958): An unhappy and mundane domestic situation is disrupted by an extraterrestrial contact that empowers someone to get revenge. Instead of a betrayed, rich housewife, Laserblast deals with the neglected and bullied young man Billy Duncan. The situation and motives are basic and direct. We may identify with Billy and celebrate his new power and the payback he indulges in, yet we also realize that he has become a menace far worse than his personal enemies.

 

While the film tells a very simple story, it does contain some ambiguity. We are never quite sure how much of the violence is solely Billy’s responsibility or the result of an alien influence. We never see Billy plotting to take revenge on any of his victims. He suddenly appears in his transformed state ready to laserblast away his enemies. He even claims ignorance about his first act of criminal destruction, and it is never clear if he is sincere or lying. In a later scene, he is hitchhiking while in his human state, but he never says a word and has a malevolent smirk on his face. He clearly is up to no good, but is that his will or the alien’s? When he has transformed into an alien monster he seems bestial and inarticulate as he kills and destroys; yet he seeks out victims that have abused or threatened him in some way. Plot-wise, this ambiguity works either way; all the destruction may be the result of the alien influence and/or Billy’s malice. How tragic you find the film’s conclusion depends upon how much responsibility you want to attribute to Billy Duncan. 

 

Oddly, Billy never wonders where this strange weapon and amulet came from. Again, he may know the answer to that if he is under an alien influence. He sure as hell is not about to discuss it with anyone. Billy Duncan enjoys having the awesome weapon and must know it is something that the authorities would want to take away from him.

Just as ambiguous is the federal agent Tony Craig (Gianni Russo). He seems to be looking for something he expects to be a threat in the area, but we don’t ever find out what his objectives are or how much he knows about the alien visitation and the menace that has made out of Billy Duncan. I appreciate that secretive aspect to this character, but like so many authority figures in horror movies, he has no effect on the outcome. His investigations also provide no further information about the extraterrestrials, their motives, or their technology. However, Tony Craig does excel at being a demand-respect asshole. The way he treats the local sheriff (Ron Masak) makes you hope he winds up in the laserblaster’s crosshairs. 

Mike Bobenko and Eddie Deezen play a macho lout and his nerdy sidekick that are both at the top of Billy’s shit list. They are so one-dimensionally obnoxious that I enjoy their presence even as I hope that they get blasted out of the cool cars they cruise around in.

Barry Cutler and Dennis Burkley are the Laurel-and-Hardy cops that harass Billy and provide some comic relief. Unfortunately, Billy does not find them amusing until he is brandishing his laserblaster. 

Veteran actors Roddy McDowall and Keenan Wynn each put in a day’s work to add a little vintage star power to Laserblast. 

The leads Kim Milford, as Billy Duncan, and Cheryl Smith, as his girlfriend Kathy Farley, are simple characters simply played. Again, I find this simplicity an asset to the film. Scriptwriting 101 may dictate that everyone should have a character arc and that a bunch of contrived plot twists make great filmmaking. I say that such so-called complexities had better be pretty inspired or else they become insincere clichés that distance anyone that has seen more than a couple of hundred movies, because they know they are being fed more “movie stuff.” This whole film is about just a few days in the lives of this young couple that is complicated by alien technology.

Laserblast sets out to do little more than give the popcorn crowd a science fiction menace and lots of explosions in a youth-centric storyline. Whether by intent or accident, the simplicity of the story provides only enough information to allow the viewers to follow along. Our scant knowledge about the science fiction aspect of the story is still far more than what all of the characters know. Again, we have more ambiguity that plays out a bit more like real-life. The story is simple, but it also refuses to tie up all the loose ends. The characters, as well as the audience, are left with the unease of not knowing how and why this all had to happen. There is a fine line between a sense of the unknown and senseless bullshit that can make or break a fantasy film. I think Laserblast stays just on the right side of that line. 

The best thing about Laserblast is its music score. As soon as the film begins, the main theme grabs me. It was the first film score for both Joel Goldsmith (son of soundtrack legend Jerry Goldsmith) and Richard Band. I doubt this movie would have made half as much of an impression on me without this music. 

Laserblast is a Jekyll-and-Hyde story for the Star Wars (1977) era. The question it raises is: Does power corrupt or does power only get abused by bad people? Give me that cool laserblaster and I’ll blame it all on the damned aliens.