Invasion of the Animal People (Virgil W. Vogel, 1959)

Diane Wilson (The Flesh Eaters' Barbara Wilson) is awoken by a piercing noise that causes her to run out into the street, where she is picked up by the police. Her doctor is unable to determine the cause of her seizure, but ultimately pronounces her in sound health. There is some speculation that Diane's attack is related to a UFO sighting that occurred at the same time. Later, Diane goes to Sweden for a skiing vacation. She receives a letter from her uncle Frederick (The Slime People's Robert Burton), an archaeologist, who she is planning to visit. Meanwhile, a spaceship crashes in Lappland, causing an avalanche. Believing the ship to be a giant meteor, Col. Robert Bottiger (Bengt Blomgren) asks Frederick and Dr. Erik Engström (Sten Gester) to investigate. Meeting Diane, Erik is immediately smitten, though Diane plays hard-to-get. Receiving a report of mutilated reindeer in Lappland, the scientists go to look into it, and find the footprints of a creature that they deduce must have been 20 feet tall.

Invasion of the Animal People has an interesting history. It was originally a Swedish film called Rymdinvasion i Lappland, directed by American filmmaker Virgil W. Vogel, best known for The Mole People. When it was released in the States in 1962, distributor Jerry Warren trimmed it to 55 minutes, also adding ponderous narration by John Carradine (who worked with Warren on his own films The Incredible Petrified World and Frankenstein Island) and a new opening scene with Diane's seizure. This wouldn't be the last time Vogel and Warren would be associated - footage of the Mole People was integrated into Warren's The Wild World of Batwoman, one of the contenders for the worst movie I have ever seen. Invasion of the Animal People isn't that bad, but it's not remarkably good either. Despite the title, there's only one animal person. The furry suit (not that kind of furry suit, ya pervs) does look reasonably cool, and the monster has tusks and padded feet. Diane Wilson isn't exactly a strong female character, spending a lot of her screen time after the monster shows up screaming and hobbled by a wrenched knee. At one point, she expresses a desire to go with Uncle Frederick and Erik to investigate the meteor, but Erik tells her, "You just stay here and look pretty!" How she resisted the urge to kick him in the balls, I'll never know. The aliens look kind of like the Coneheads cosplaying as Brain Guy from MST3K. Disappointingly, we never find out just why they came to Earth. A singer performs a song called "The Land of the Midnight Sun" in Swedish, with Erik translating for Diane. Invasion of the Animal People is better than 95% of the films Jerry Warren's name is attached to, but anyone expecting a classic of the genre will likely be disappointed.

The Immoral Mr. Teas (Russ Meyer, 1959)

A few "typical" days in the life of Willie Teas, a dental appliance salesman who finds himself constantly coming in contact with beautiful well-endowed women, about whom he often fantasizes.

I've always loved Russ Meyer's films, but even I admit some are simply better than others. Lorna didn't do much for me. The Immoral Mr. Teas is an example of what are known as "nudie cutie" films, and is therefore heavy on female skin (though never viewed fully frontal, even when the women are completely nude), but virtually free of plot. As a result, I couldn't warm to it the way I do Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or my personal favorite, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Mr. Teas, played by Bill Teas (who served as a combat photographer in the Pacific during WWII, where he served in the same unit as Russ, becoming good friends in the process), sees a lot more boobs in the course of his day-to-day life then you would think a seller of truly scary-looking dental equipment who looks kinda like Paul Bartel with more hair and Carl Kolchak's hat would see. The straw hat isn't his only questionable fashion choice: his work outfit consists of a pink jumpsuit, and his beachwear is trunks with a drawstring and two back pockets(?). I'm tempted to say Teas is a nudie cutie take on Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot, but I haven't seen any of Tati's Hulot films, so my gut instinct may very well be wrong.

Of course, Russ doesn't skip on the pulchritudinous pneumatic females. One dentist's nurse shows considerably more decolletage than most women I've seen in non-sexploitation movies and TV made in 1959, while also going braless. Interestingly, though Teas peeps at and fantasizes about many of the women he meets, none of those dreams involve him actually, y'know, having sex with them. This may explain why he is seen crossing "Cantlay Street" more than once during the course of the film. Also, his jumpsuit is blue rather than pink in said fantasies. Maybe he feels self-conscious about wearing a color perceived by many as effeminate? Russ himself makes a cameo as an audience member at a burlesque show. Famous British sex symbol June Wilkinson's bare breasts can be seen through a window. The film has no dialogue whatsoever, but plenty of "funny" narration written by Edward J. Lakso (who, in addition to also providing the film's music., wrote for a lot of well-known TV series in the '60s and '80s) and spoken by G. Ferrus. Perhaps the most inexplicable line is the claim, made while Teas fantasizes about three of the ladies he's met frolicking nude as he watches from a distance, that rubber was invented in 1873. Rubber is found in nature, and according to Wikipedia Charles Goodyear patented vulcanized rubber in 1844, so not sure what the hell Mr. Ferrus is talking about there.

If you enjoy beautiful women showing what their mama gave them, this film delivers. But if you're looking for Russ at the top of his game, this is probably not the way to go.

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (William Beaudine, 1952)

The natives of Kola-Kola Island, including Chief Rakos and his daughter Nona (Charlita) find crooner Duke Mitchell and his partner comedian Sammy Petrillo (playing themselves), who fell out of a plane they were taking to perform for troops in Guam. Duke and Nona hit it off, while Sammy finds himself having to deal with the unwanted attentions of Nona's heavyset sister Saloma. Nona acts as lab assistant to Dr. Zabor (Bela Lugosi), a scientist engaged in evolutionary experiments. Zabor is himself in love with Nona, and doesn't take kindly to Duke's obvious interest in her. Like Saloma, Zabor's lab chimpanzee Ramona takes a shine to Sammy, and locks him in with her in her cage. Pepe Bordo, the local policeman, offers to use his wireless set to contact one of the other islands and arrange to get Duke and Sammy off the island, but Nona is saddened by the thought of losing Duke. Later, Duke, Sammy, and Zabor attend dinner with Chief Rakos and his daughters. Duke and Nona sneak away to discuss wedding plans, unaware Zabor's manservant Chula is spying on them. Chula reports this to Dr. Zabor, who then uses a serum to turn Ramona into a smaller monkey (not to mention a different kind), and somehow concludes that now he can turn a man into a gorilla. Chula grabs Duke, and brings him to Dr. Zabor, who sure enough turns him into the Brooklyn Gorilla of the title.

This movie hurts. Quite badly, in fact. Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo blatantly lifted their whole act from Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who justifiably sued them. Duke, however, doesn't have a third of Dino's suavity or musical talent (he sounds like he's in physical pain at times during his songs), while Sammy is like an even more annoying version of Jerry Lewis, if such a thing is possible. (I maintain Jerry is at his finest in a rare mostly-serious role as talk show host Jerry Langford in Scorsese's The King of Comedy.) Literally every line out of his mouth is a bad joke, and even worse he laughs at many of them himself, the sign of a true douchebag in my opinion. He also frequently refers to Duke as "Dukie," which is a truly unfortunate homophone. Bela Lugosi is as fun to watch as ever, though it's depressing to think he was at that stage of his career when he was deep in the throes of drug addiction and taking pretty much any role that was offered him. In the only halfway amusing gag in the movie, upon first meeting Duke and Sammy the latter recognizes Zabor as "that guy who go around biting people's necks!" Charlita (born Clara DeFreitas in Lowell, Massachusetts) is a dull love interest, although she does look nice in a sarong. Sammy constantly running away from Saloma and making jokes about her weight (something Nona, her sister, never objects to) is pretty offensive, and that's coming from a large man who nevertheless laughs uproariously at MST3K's savaging of Joe Don Baker. Duke tries to inform Sammy of his transformation via charades(!!!), but is unable to do so until he sings one of his (s)hit songs, "'Deed I Do." Because apparently he can sing but not talk as a gorilla. The ending serves up one of the hoariest "fuck you" cliches in the history of cinema. Director William Beaudine has been nicknamed "One-Shot" because he allegedly seldom retook scenes with flubbed lines or special effects failures. Actually, this is a disproved claim made by Michael Medved, the cinematic and political moron who propagated the laughable idea that Lugosi's friend and collaborator Ed Wood was the worst filmmaker of all time. (Incidentally, Martin Landau watched Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla as research for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of Lugosi in Tim Burton's biopic of Wood. Like me, he considered Bela the film's sole redeeming quality.) Bela appeared in a good few of Beaudine's films, though the only one of their other works together I've seen is Voodoo Man, which isn't a particularly good film but still beats the hell out of this one. Late in his career, Beaudine produced the horror Westerns Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, which have a certain notoriety all their own. Sammy went on to star in sexploitation icon Doris Wishman's Keyholes Are For Peeping, while Duke directed and starred in Gone with the Pope, where he played an ex-gangster who hatches a plan to kidnap the Pope and demand a dollar apiece in ransom from every Catholic in the world. Full of bad writing and worse comedy and music, this is very much a film for Lugosi completists only.