Safety Last! (1923) – You’ve seen this image of silent movie star Harold Lloyd clinging to the hands of a huge architectural clock, right? This movie is where it comes from. Lloyd is a small-town boy moved to the big city to become “a success,” after which he’ll send for his sweetheart and they’ll get married. The problem is that he’s stuck on the lowest rung of the department store sales staff. He weaves tales of success and promotion into his letters home, though, so when his sweetheart decides to visit him out of the blue, he has to pretend to be the general manager! Hyuk hyuk!
It’s a fun little feature, moving at a fair clip, and of course it relies on sight gags (including the aforementioned clock scene). Recommended.
Octaman (1971) – What a puzzling movie. Writer/director Harry Essex wrote the screenplay for Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and a bunch of other classic B-movies. Leading man Kerwin Matthews had played Sinbad, Gulliver and Secret Agent OSS 117 (and was, I suspect from facial resemblance, the sperm donor for Beto O’Rourke). Leading lady Pier Angeli (then 49 and ending her career) had been the heartthrob love interest in dozens of movies. In other words, there were enough career professionals to know that THIS WASN’T WORKING.
Nevertheless, they persisted, and what we have… is a laughable bipedal octopus costume lumbering around, waving its tentacles in stereotypical “raaah i’m a monsta” fashion, and even worse rubber baby octopuses, plus Matthews gamely attempting not to show up the inexpressive monster costume by trying to be as uncharismatic as he can… Blech.
Caltiki The Immortal Monster (1959) – The production of this movie is fascinatingly bizarre. Helmed by Italians (including up-and-coming cinematographer Mario Bava, rumored to be the uncredited co-director) but starring all English-speaking actors, it was filmed with the cast speaking their lines in English… then dubbed into Italian (which is now the “original” version of the movie), and then re-dubbed into English for the American release. Except the dubbed version is mostly lost now (when present, it’s apologetically cobbled together from a multitude of sources of varying quality), so I watched it with the actors lips not matching the dialogue I could hear but not understand, while I read the subtitles.
Oh, the movie itself? Imagine an Aztec Mummy movie crossed with The Blob, wherein archaeologists are menaced by a protoplasmic “god” from the Mayan pantheon that looks like a soggy load of animated laundry. There’s also some falderol about a radioactive comet, but really, isn’t the menace of a wet sweater enough for you?
I’ve always wanted to find Caltikibecause I have read
(a) it touches on Lovecraftian themes (ancient evil god awakened when the stars are right), and
(b) the monster Caltiki is chitlin’s (animal innerds) animated sockpuppet style.
So many people have warned me that Calitiki is just tripe.
[wah wah wah waaah]
The Lovecraftian touch is very light — the Mayan mythology has the Caltiki “goddess” awakening when her “husband” reappears in the sky, but what that turns out to mean is that the mindless protoplasmic blob becomes active when the radioactive comet comes around.