Tormented (1960)

No one will ever have you! Jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) lives on the beach in Cape Cod and is preparing to marry Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders) when old flame Vi Mason (Juli Reding) turns up to stop him and falls to her death from the local lighthouse when he refuses to lend her a hand as the railing breaks.  Wet footprints turn up on his mat, a hand reaches out to him, Vi’s voice haunts him and he starts behaving strangely particularly in front of Meg’s little sister Sandy (Susan Gordon).  Blind landlady Mrs Ellis (Lillian Adams) explains to him that similarly supernatural stuff happened when someone else died in the area. Then the beatnik ferry captain Nick (Joe Turkel)  who took Vi to the island to see Tom appears and starts getting suspicious that she never returned particularly when wedding bells are in the air … I’m going to live my life again and stop running. With a pedigree crew – director Bert I. Gordon co-wrote with regular collaborator George Worthing Yates – who did the screenplays for some great pirate movies and sci fis including Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, which starred Hugh Marlowe, frequently mistaken for Richard Carlson – you’d be expecting a class act. And it’s a good story hampered by a minuscule budget which gives off a different kind of aroma. The effects are hilarious – particularly good is some woman’s hand entering frame when Tom is in young Sandy’s company and he hits it and runs off.  Sandy sees nothing, of course. My favourite moment is when Vi’s disembodied head appears and Tom reaches out and enjoys a tussle with a blonde wig which he then wraps in paper and throws down a step only to have it picked up by his blackmailer and opens it only to find dead flowers. Despite Carlson’s character mutating into a murderous beast and his ex spinning a Monroe-esque vibe, and the hilarious hey-daddy-o exchanges with the beatnik boatman (whom you’ll recognise as Lloyd the bartender in The Shining), by far the most complex performance comes from young Gordon (the director’s wonderfully talented daughter). The ending is satisfying indeed if you like really proper ghost stories. However if you think you’re going to hear some decent jazz, well, it’s hardly a priority in a camp outing such as this. This was Sanders’ last film in a strangely brief career.  She’s a perfume, she’s a footprint, she’s a hand, she’s a space in a picture

The Spiritualist (1948)

Aka The Amazing Mr X.  Alexis, do you think I’d make a good celestial companion? The wonderful Carole Landis committed suicide in the most horrendous way a couple of days before shooting began on this;  she was replaced by the estimable Lynn Bari, no mean actress in her own right. She’s widowed Christine Faber, haunted by the ghost of her late husband (Donald Curtis) rising from the surf, but a tall dark stranger (Turhan Bey) materialises who knows more about her than he ought, faking his way as a medium, and luring her into a dangerous game … With Cathy O’Donnell as her sister Janet and my sci fi heart-throb Richard Carlson as a lawyer, Harry Mendoza and Virginia Gregg rounding out the ensemble, we are taken into truly villainous territory with Bey making for an alluring bad guy who gets in way too deep.  In his eyes, the threat of terror! In his hands, the power to destroy! Crane Wilbur’s story was written for the screen by Muriel Roy Bolton and Ian McLellan Hunter and directed by Bernard Vorhaus. This film noir is gilt-edged thanks to the luminous cinematography by John Alton and good use is made of Chopin’s Prelude for Piano, opus 28 no. 4 in E minor. A special experience and one of my new favourite Forties movies! PS:  Wilbur was first cousin to Tyrone Power and he said of his work, I’m going to give people what they want. Sensation, horror, shock. Send them out into the streets to tell their friends how wonderful it is to be scared to death.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

The original Fifties monster movie! This is the story of a team of fossil hunters and anthropologists on an expedition down the Amazon who discover something quite fascinating. They encounter a gill man who has evolved underwater and now has a thing for Julie Adams whom he’s observed swimming. The team get picked off, one by one, as he escapes from their boat and takes her to his cave …. Originally shot for 3D with great sequences by William E. Snyder, the creature is played by Ricou Browning in water, Ben Chapman on land. The non-amphibians are played by Whit Bisssell, Richard Denning and Antonio Moreno.  Star Richard Carlson is reunited with director Jack Arnold from the previous year’s It Came From Outer Space and plays a Californian icthyologist based in Brazil who is called in to analyse a skeletal webbed hand. Both he and Adams look very nice in their swimming togs when they take a break from romancing on the tramp steamer.  Producer William Alland based the film on a tale he was told during production on Citizen Kane, when Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa regaled him with a myth of half-human half-fish creatures in the Amazon. His notes, with some aspects of Beauty and the Beast, were expanded into a story treatment by Maurice Zimm and then the screenplay was written by Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross.  Arnold handles this material with appropriate seriousness, getting decent performances in a story that could have descended to the ridiculous. This archetypal Universal production boasts some very influential marine photography particularly the POV shots of Julie Adams which would later resurface in Jaws.  A classic, it spawned two sequels.

It Came From Outer Space (1953)

One of the best 50s sci fis and directed by Jack Arnold, who was responsible for another, The Incredible Shrinking Man, a brilliant existentialist work. He was also responsible for some of the original creature features – The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature and another sci fi, The Space Children. This was adapted from a story by Ray Bradbury and has both his sense of wonder and his sense of optimism. With Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush – and their doubles!