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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
Jack of all trades film
producer/director Sam Katzman went through a number of film studious throughout
his career including but not limited to Monogram Pictures and a checkered
tenure with Columbia Pictures during the 1950s.
Often known for generating lower budgeted fare that turned over massive
profits, Katzman’s sprawling film production career lasted all the way from 1934 up until 1970, making him a legend
in his own time. During his time at
Columbia when he was shifting his focus away from musicals and action pictures
towards teen exploitation horror fare, he and two of his stock-trade directors
Edward L. Cahn and Fred F. Sears helped generate four science-fiction/horror
films ranging from 1955 to 1957.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
Ostensibly low-budget B-movies produced
cheaply yet all tapping into differing facets of fears pertaining to our ever-changing
world, films such as The War of the Worlds, Them!, When Worlds
Collide and of course The Day the Earth Caught Fire all touched on
this kindred terror of nuclear obliteration and/or transformation. In other words, the irradiated desert landscapes
of nuclear test sites became a fertile creative playground for horror
filmmakers eager to cash in on the then-omnipresent cold-war nuclear anxieties
plaguing 50s America. These were the
kinds of films that addressed still-burgeoning unease Americans felt with the
ever-growing threat of nuclear apocalypse looming overhead.
Characterized by cold-war nuclear warfare
fears and still-waning WWII postwar fears, these four films curated and restored
by Arrow Video in their new limited edition blu-ray boxed set entitled Cold
War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman represent a brief period in
which drive-in American horror dealt specifically with ever growing nuclear
fears in contemporary fiction. Something
of a more specified update on The Criterion Collection’s own bevy of
nuclear-age horror Monsters and Madmen, the boxed set intends to give
viewers a smattering of some of the best examples of this very distinct period
of 50s science-fiction horror. Mostly
though, the films in the set showcase producer Sam Katzman’s ability to make a
solid B movie with little resources and a lot of ingenuity.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
One thing viewers will notice when
assessing all four of these little indie monster movie drive in flicks is their
brief running time. All four films run
just over an hour and move at a brisk pace not felt since the early heyday of
Universal Pictures’ talkies from the Universal Horror monsters era. Presented in the order of their original theatrical
releases, the set kicks off with the 1955 zombie sci-fi/horror crime flick Creature
with the Atom Brain starring Creature from the Black Lagoon star Richard
Denning as Dr. Chet Walker who is tasked with investigating a series of murders
seemingly committed by irradiated dead people, leaving police stumped.
Upon further investigation, his
findings lead him towards a secret hideout involving American gangster Frank
Buchanan (Michael Granger) who forces former Nazi scientist Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory
Gaye) into creating remote controlled zombies from the bodies of dead men. Setting them loose like preprogrammed drones,
the gangster uses them to track down and murder those who previously deported
and incarcerated him, fixing to quickly regain control of the city he once
completely controlled. Soon the proceedings
develop into an all-out war involving a madman threatening to take apart the city
versus the lone few who know how to stop him ala the 1957 tokusatsu flick The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
The next film The Werewolf gives
viewers an altogether different take on the werewolf mythology involving an
amnesiac man played by Steven Ritch who wanders into a rural town trying to
find out his identity and whereabouts, leading him towards an encounter with a
local thug that leaves the thug dead and a bystander horrified by what she’s
seen. Soon as the man is on the run from
the local authorities, it becomes clear a group of scientists who are
developing an anti-nuclear vaccine might be responsible for the man’s
Lycanthropy after testing the vaccine on him after a near-fatal auto
accident. You could argue the film
embarks on the science-gone-awry twists and turns taken by Chuck Russell’s
remake of The Blob.
Jumping back into zombie fare, albeit
moving the arena from America to Africa, is Zombies of Mora Tau or The
Dead That Walk in some territories.
An ensemble horror thriller involving a team of deep-sea divers lead by
American tycoon George Harrison (Joel Ashley) who descend upon a shipwreck
which crashed in the African coast in search of diamonds. Unbeknownst to them however, the ship is in
fact cursed and surrounded by the ship’s undead zombified crew who fight to the
death to kill any and all who come near.
Only destruction of the diamonds themselves can end the curse, if the
divers and crew can get past the zombies first.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
Lastly is the giant killer bird film The
Giant Claw or The Mark of the Claw about an aeronautical engineer
named Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow) who on a routine radar test flight spots a
UFO. After three aircraft pursue the UFO
with one plane going missing, MacAfee and fellow mathematician Sally Caldwell
(Mara Corday) are sent to New York where they encounter the UFO midflight once
again. They discover that in fact they’re
not being attacked by a UFO at all but an intergalactic bird from an antimatter
galaxy determined to cripple the Earth’s surface and rule the planet, but not
before MacAfee and Caldwell discover an exotic atom may be the key to defeating
the unearthly monster.
Though all four films bear their share
of shortcomings budgetary and technically speaking, bordering on silliness at
times, the Cold War Creatures set taken as a whole offers up a unique
period of distinctly cold-war nuclear fear infused science-fiction horror. Made on the cheap fly with a little
innovation thanks to the direction of Fred F. Sears and Edward L. Cahn, both
productions are clearly extensions of Sam Katzman’s personality and ability to
create inexpensive double-bills that generated more revenue than they cost to
produce.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
Precluding each film is a detailed
introduction by film critic Kim Newman who covers all the good, bad and ugly
that went into each and every one of these mostly forgotten 50s cold war
monster movies ripe for rediscovery. Also
included are plentiful extras commenting on the film’s varying legacies as well
as collectible booklets detailing the film’s back-histories and public
reception. Most of these films were
paired together with another unrelated feature and are presented here on their
own for the very first time.
Fans of old 50s schlock monster-movie
science-fiction and horror will find a great deal of fun to digest here across
these four films which function as both time capsules of distinctly 1950s
cold-war fears and a specific type of cheaply rendered drive-in monster movie
paired with another movie presented as a double feature.
While these aren’t exactly known for being
particularly “scary”, with many of them veering towards out and out cheese, they
do have an undeniable charm to them and further illustrate why the low budget
horror genre remains an ever lucrative one for film producers. Cold War Creatures as an Arrow Video limited
box won’t reinvent the horror wheel but you’ll be so tickled pink by the
infectious charms wafting off of this set you won’t mind checking your brain at
the door for a few hours.
--Andrew Kotwicki
