Tag: San Francisco

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956) **1/2
I should have already learned my lesson.

I bitch about the yucky suck face between scientists John Agar and the lovely Lori Nelson through most of the second half of Revenge of the Creature, so it only serves me right that I got immediately served with the miserably married couple played by Jeff Morrow and Leigh Snowden in The Creature Walks Among Us, the third and final entry in the Creature series released by Universal Studios. Morrow and Snowden are truly a downer and their scenes drag The Creature Walks Among Us down a notch or two from being a perfectly enjoyable creature feature.

All three Creature features benefit heavily from their underwater photography and Walks Among Us works best when the action takes place underwater. Above water, especially when Morrow and Snowden provide us another unpleasant scene together, it’s not so hot. Watching Revenge and Walks Among Us in close proximity, it’s obvious just how much influence these earlier films had upon the later Jaws series also produced by Universal. Jaws 3 borrowed major plot developments from Revenge, for crying out loud.

In a fundamental way, though, Walks Among Us cheats us. It doesn’t really live up to any part of that title until the very end of the picture, when the title character escapes from captivity. I certainly don’t remember a city screaming in terror and the poster incorporates the Golden Gate Bridge into its promotional campaign. Good job, marketing department. Sure, we see the Golden Gate, kinda sorta obligatory for any film shot for any length in San Francisco, but I don’t recall any character being held up above the Golden Gate by our title character, sure to be thrown to his death. Now, that would be an impressive scene.

I feel like I must make amends in this review for cheating Ricou Browning (born 1930) in the Revenge review. He’s the man in the creature suit in the underwater scenes. In Walks Among Us, Don Megowan plays the Gill Man on land. In Revenge, it was Tom Hennesy. In Creature, it was Ben Chapman. I believe it’s a testament to the quality of Browning’s work in the underwater scenes that he filled the creature suit in all three movies.

Strangely enough, I felt a certain sadness during Walks Among Us, alternating with a sense of overall wonderment toward the Universal Classic Monsters series. Walks Among Us ended a stretch where I watched 16 classic horror films, from 1935’s Werewolf of London to 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us, for the first time, having already watched Universal’s true classics like The Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man several times before. Because I even sometimes enjoy watching a bad movie, like The Invisible Woman, this stretch greatly satisfied both the historian and the horror movie fan living inside me.

Top 12 Universal Classic Monster Movies
1. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
2. Frankenstein (1931)
3. The Wolf Man (1941)
4. Son of Frankenstein (1939)
5. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
6. The Invisible Man (1933)
7. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
8. The Mummy (1932)
9. Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
10. Dracula (Spanish version) (1931)
11. Dracula (English version) (1931)
12. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The Manitou (1978)

THE MANITOU (1978) *1/2
California is going to hell.

— Donald J. Trump on Twitter

Obviously, President Trump — a big movie fan, the biggest movie fan ever — forgot The Manitou from 1978, because then he would have known California, at least one San Francisco hospital, had already gone straight to Hell for one absolutely positively bloody ridiculous 103-minute horror movie.

The Manitou just might help explain what’s happening today in California and many other places, for that matter. Yes, that’s right, it’s another possession movie.

Tony Curtis plays a phony baloney psychic seen in movies upon occasion (normally bad movies) — one of them who reads Tarot cards to little old ladies and other suckers — and his former flame discovers a growth on the back of her neck. The foremost tumor expert calls it “malignant.” It’s definitely malignant, alright, it’s the reborn spirit of the most powerful 400-year-old medicine man on his fifth reincarnation. You think you’re having a bad day or a bad time, just wait until you see what happens to poor Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg) in The Manitou.

This is yet another one of those movies where I am thankful every actor maintained a straight face reciting all their dialogue. To be honest, though, I want to learn their secret. The Manitou combines doctor talk, psychic talk, spiritual talk, and Indian talk into one concoction that’s overloaded and overheated with jive, like, for example, we all — even us White people — have a Manitou and that we includes all our possessions. I cannot help myself when I laugh at such dialogue like “Gichi Manitou? Harry, you don’t call Gichi Manitou. He …” and (in response) “Oh, yeah, well he’s going to get a person-to-person call from me … collect!”

The Manitou somewhat redeems itself with a spectacular psychedelic light show late in the picture. It comes in about 90-95 minutes to be a tad bit more precise and that display earned the picture a half-star bump in overall rating. By the way, I almost rescinded that half-star boost after The Manitou hits us with the following statement:

Fact: Tokyo, Japan, 1969.

A fifteen-year-old boy developed what doctors thought was a tumor in his chest. The larger it grew, the more uncharacteristic it appeared. Eventually, it proved to be a human fetus.

After 100 minutes of The Manitou, about the last thing in the world we needed was any claim to factual basis.

The Manitou is so bad that I hope it will not be reborn in 400 years, when it would be ever more powerful and worse.