Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.
In 1963’s Hud, Paul Newman plays a monster named Hud.
Hud Bannon is the son of rancher Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas). Hud lives in a small Texas town, where he’s known for his pink Cadillac, his heavy-drinking, and his womanizing. When we first meet him, he’s leaving the home of a married woman and narrowly escaping the rage of her husband. Throughout the film, he mentions that he’s heading into town to meet “Mrs.” So-and-So. Hud’s father fears that Hud might be incapable of caring about anyone but himself. Hud’s nephew, Lonnie (Brandon deWilde), at first looks up to Hud but, over the course of the film, he comes to see his uncle for who he truly is. Though Hud is quick to defend Homer from others, he himself views Homer with contempt and even plots to have the old man declared incompetent so that he can take over the ranch. His flirtation with the family housekeeper, Alma (Patricia Neal), soon crosses the line into something much more dangerous. Hud is charming and handsome in the way that only a 30-something Paul Newman could be. But he’s also a complete monster.
In Hud, Newman gave one of his best performances and director Martin Ritt and cinematographer James Wong Howe captured some haunting images of the most barren parts of the Texas panhandle. Howe’s black-and-white imagery not only captures the harsh landscape but also the harsh outlook of the people who live there. Hud’s ruthless personality as is much a product of the demands of the land as his own narcissism. The characters in Hud live in a land that doesn’t allow sentimentality. It’s a land that’s allowed Hud to become the monster that he is.
At least, that’s the way that Paul Newman saw Hud. That was also the way that the film’s director, Martin Ritt, viewed Hud. They viewed him as being about as villainous and unlikable as a character could be but, to Newman’s surprise, audiences actually walked out of the film embracing the character and making excuses for him. Newman was shocked to learn that teenagers were putting posters of him as Hud on their walls.
Why did viewers embrace Hud?
Some of it is due to the fact that Brandon deWilde gives a remarkably bland performance as Lonny. We first see Hud through Lonny’s eyes and we are meant to share Lonny’s growing disillusionment with his uncle. But Lonny comes across as being such an empty-headed character that it’s hard to really get emotionally invested in his coming-of-age. When Hud eventually dismisses Lonny and his concerns, Lonny really can’t defend himself because there’s not much going on inside of Lonny. On the other hand, Paul Newman gives such a charismatic performance as Hud that we find ourselves continually making excuses for his bad behavior. When he talks about how he was raised and his difficult relationship with his father, we have sympathy for him even though we know we shouldn’t. The viewer makes excuses for Hud because that’s what we tend to do when it comes to charismatic bad boys who don’t follow the rules.
Indeed, Hud is proof of the power of charisma and screen presence. As a character, Hud does some truly terrible things and yet, because he’s Paul Newman, we want to forgive him. We want to try to figure out why someone who is so handsome and so charismatic would also be so angry. Lonny may be the “good” character but Hud is the one who we want to get to know. When Lonny flips through a paperback to read the sex scenes, he comes across as being creepy. When a drunk Hud flirts with a woman who he has just met, we ask ourselves what we would do if Hud ever tried that with us. The truth is that we all know what we would do. That’s what makes Hud both a dangerous and an intriguing character.
In the end, Hud is an excellent film that features Paul Newman at his best and which uses the downfall of Homer’s ranch as a metaphor for a changing American society. Though Hud was not nominated for Best Picture, it was nominated for almost everything else. Melvyn Douglas and Patricia Neal won acting Oscars. James Wong Howe’s cinematography was also honored. Paul Newman was nominated and perhaps would have won if not for the fact that Sidney Poitier was nominated for playing the exact opposite of Hud in Lilies of the Field. Hud was meant to be a picture about Lonny discovering his uncle was a monster. Instead, the film became about Hud’s refusal to compromise. It turns out that people like good-looking rebels who do what they want.
Even if viewers missed the point, Hud was one of the best films of the early 60s and Paul Newman’s powerful performance continues to intrigue.
Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.
Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.
Ed Neilson (Ken Metcalf) is a business executive who just wants to spend the weekend grilling with his family but then a bunch of gunmen show up and, in a surprisingly violent sequence that even shows children being shot in slow motion, massacre his entire family.
Ed barely survives and begs his old friend, a former CIA agent named Duke Smith (Robert Conrad), to find out who murdered his family. Duke would rather hang out on the beach with his wife (Aline Samson) and daughter (Nancy Conrad) and he refuses to help Ed. But then Ed gets blown up in his car and Duke and his former partner (Felton Perry) come out of retirement to get justice. Duke’s investigation leads to a corrupt businessman (Thayer David), a murderous government official (John Ashley, who also produced), and a ruthless hitman (Don Stroud).
Filmed in The Philippines and directed by Eddie Romero, Sudden Death is a violent and brutal thriller with a twisty the plot that is nearly impossible to follow. It seems like a lot of killing for no particular reason. The thing that sets Sudden Death apart from other action films is its willingness to violently kill off anyone, regardless of age, gender, or relative innocence. The 70s was a decade known for downbeat endings but, even by the standards of that decade, Sudden Death‘s ending is shockingly abrupt and bleak. In the lead role, Robert Conrad shows off the ruthless intensity that made him the most feared of all of the coaches on Battle of the Network Stars.
Originally, the sidekick role was offered to Jim Kelly. When Kelly dropped out, the role was given to the far more laid back Felton Perry. I think if Kelly had stayed with the film, it would probably be a cult classic today. Instead, it’s an obscurity that reminds us of how bleak even exploitation films were in the 70s.
Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.
Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.
1965’s Attack of the Eye Creatures is an odd little movie.
It starts, as so many bad sci-fi movies do, with Peter Graves narrating about how the government has been keeping an eye on a flying saucers that’s apparently been hovering over the Earth for quite some time. However, a quick visit to Project Visitor reveals that the soldiers assigned to protect us are more interested in using their monitoring equipment to spy on teenagers making out in their cars!
Agck!
EWWWWWW!
Total invasion of privacy!
Of course, what’s particularly sad about the whole thing is that you know that’s totally what would happen in real life as well. Give a group of people the power to spy on anyone in the world? Of course they’re going to end up spying on people fooling around in cars! That’s one reason why Earth is just as doomed today as it was in 1966.
Anyway, the flying saucer does eventually land. Unfortunately, our government is too incompetent to do anything about it. The aliens inside turn out to be …. well, not that impressive. For one thing, they don’t speak. There are none of the grandiose threats to conquer the world that we’ve come to expect from aliens. At the same time, we also don’t have to hear about how the rest of the universe is disappointed in us for polluting our planet and blowing each other up so that’s a good thing. So often, intergalactic visitors can be so judgmental! Anyway, these aliens are lumpy and gray and they’ve got several eyes. They don’t really look that impressive. Seriously, check this jerk out:
As I said, the government turns out to be pretty useless when it comes to battling the aliens and the local police are skeptical that any intergalactic visitors would bother to land in their crappy little town. Fortunately, as always happens whenever the controlling legal authorities fail to do their job, there are teenagers and they’re willing to do what needs to be done to protect the world!
Of course, if Stan (John Ashley) and Susan (Cynthia Hull) are going to rally the troops against the aliens, they’re going to have to borrow someone’s phone. That’s going to mean convincing the local old man to let them use his phone. The old man, who has had enough of those crazy kids with all their kissing and the jazzy lingo, is more interested in using his shotgun to keep people off his lawn.
Meanwhile, two drunks decide that they want to get in on all this alien business. They both later die and no one in the movie seems to care. That’s just the type of movie that this is….
….and if it sounds familiar, that’s probably because you’ve seen the 1957 drive-in classic, Invasion of the Saucer Men! Basically, in the mid-60s, American International Pictures commissioned Texas filmmaker Larry Buchanan to remake some of their most successful drive-in films. Apparently, the plan was to sell them to television. So, Buchanan took the script for Saucer Men, tossed in some scenes of the government spying on people (Buchanan was a noted conspiracy theorist who previously directed The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald), and called his film Attack Of the Eye Creatures!
Yet, while Invasion of the Saucer Men was a genuinely clever sci-fi satire, Attack of the Eye Creatures is done in by Buchanan’s inability to keep his story moving at a steady pace and it doesn’t help that the iconic Saucer Men have been replaced by men who appear to be wearing trash bags. Attack of the Eye Creatures is an unfortunate remake and one that should be viewed only after you’ve watched Invasion of the Saucer Men and maybe every other public domain sci-fi film that’s currently on YouTube.
The “Beach Party ” gang’s back and so’s the familiar formula in MUSCLE BEACH PARTY, second in the American-International series. It’s Easter vacation and Frankie Avalon is still horny, Annette Funicello’s still waiting for marriage, and a beautiful foreign woman is again coming between them. This time it’s Lucianna Paluzzi as Countess Julie, a rich heiress who wants to make Frankie a singing star and her personal property.
Eric Von Zipper and his Rats aren’t around this time, replaced by a bunch of bodybuilders led by trainer Jack Fanny (the inimitable Don Rickles). Julie first sets her sights on “Mr. Galaxy” Flex Martian, but dumps him when she spies Frankie. This leads to war between the surfers and the musclemen, with the inevitable slapstick melee. Flex is played by Rock Stevens, a real-life bodybuilder who muscled his way through a few Italian peplum films before reverting to his real name of Peter Lupus and…
Finally! The weather here in New England has begun to break, and we’re heading into summer. I even managed to get some beach time in today. TCM beat me to the punch when they aired BEACH PARTY as part of their month-long salute to American International Pictures, a blast from the past filled with sand, surf, teenage sex, and plenty of good ol’ rock’n’roll! BEACH PARTY spawned a series of films and a whole slew of imitators , but AIP did ’em first and best.
Teen idol Frankie Avalon and ex-Mouseketeer Annette Funicello starred in most of the AIP’s, using the same plot over and over. Frankie wants sex, but Annette wants to wait for marriage. They fight, and try to make each other jealous by dating someone new, but wind up together by film’s end. Simple, and rehashed using gimmicks like bodybuilding, drag racing, sky diving, and skiing to make things seem fresh…
