Tag Archives: Jonathan Haze

Horror Film Review: Day The World Ended (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“You finally did it!  You blew it up! …. Goddamn you to Hell!”

That’s right.  Just as how the original Planet of the Apes showed us what the world would look like centuries after a nuclear war, 1957’s Day The World Ended shows us what things would be like in  the weeks afterwards.  And guess what?  It wouldn’t be a lot of fun.

Day The World Ended starts with the bombs dropping and mushroom clouds forming in all of their fearsome glory.  (Oppenheimer may have hated his greatest achievement but aesthetically, the atomic bomb is still an impressive invention.)  Jim Maddison (Paul Birch) and his daughter, Louise (Lori Nelson), manage to survive by camping out in a steel bunker that Maddison built especially for the moment.  As a former Navy commander, Maddison understood that the world was on the verge of nuclear war and he also understood that only those with discipline would survive.  He’s filled with bomb shelter with supplies and he’s told Louise that only the two of them can use the shelter.  Anyone else is out of luck.

Unfortunately, people keep showing up at the shelter and asking to come in.  And while Maddison is prepared to leave them outside with the fallout and the mutants that have started to roam the desert, Louise just can’t stand the thought of leaving anyone to die.  Reluctantly, Maddison starts to allow people to join him and his daughter.  Some of them, like geologist Rick (Richard Denning), are a good addition to the group,  Rick is actually an expert in uranium mining and a potential husband for Louise.  (Louise has a fiancé but he’s missing.  She keeps his picture by her bed.  The picture, of course, is actually a photo of director Roger Corman.)  Unfortunately, not everyone is as likable and well-intentioned as Rick.  Lowlife hood Tony (Mike Connors) and his girlfriend, Ruby (Adele Jergens) show up and continue to act as if they’ve got the police after them even though the police were probably atomized with the rest of civilization.  And finally, there’s a man (Jonathan Haze) who is transforming into a mutant and who develops a strange mental connection to Louise.

No one said the end of the world would be easy!

Day The World Ended was Corman’s fourth film as a director and it was also his first film in the horror genre.  (It’s actually a mix of science fiction and horror but whatever.)  The film was enough of a box office success that it inspired Corman to do more films in the genre.  Seen today, it’s obviously an early directorial effort.  It lacks the humor that distinguished Corman’s later films.  In fact, the film is actually a little bit boring.  Watching a film like this really drives home just how important Vincent Price and his energy were to Corman’s later films.  This film doesn’t have an actor like Vincent Price or Boris Karloff or even Dick Miller, someone who could energize a film just through the power of their own eccentricities.  Instead, Mike Connors, Paul Birch, and Richard Denning all give dull performances as the survivors.  This is a historically important film because, without its box office success, Corman probably would have stuck with doing B-westerns and gangster films.  Filmgoers should be happy that audiences in the 50s were drawn in by the film’s title and their own paranoia about nuclear war.  It’s a film that one appreciates as a piece of history, even if it doesn’t quite stand up to the test of time.

Horror Film Review: X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (1963, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Floyd Crosby)

Eyes.  They’re one of the most important parts of our body but they’re also frightening easy to damage. Unlike the heart or the liver or the brain, they don’t have a protective covering of skin and bone.  They sit exposed and  are easily injured.  They can be ripped out of one’s head, which is a scary thought.  As well, they tend to grow weaker over time.  I love my multi-colored eyes and I think they’re one of my best features but I still spend a lot of time wishing that they weren’t quite as vulnerable as they are.  I often say that I’m blind without my contacts or my glasses.  That’s not quite true, of course.  I can see enough to get by if I forget to put in my contacts but I still have to do a lot of squinting, enough so that most people can take one look at me and say, “You forgot to put in your contacts, didn’t you?”  In my case, my eyesight has definitely gotten even worse over the past few years.  I’ve been told that’s normal but it still freaks me out.  I worry about waking up one day and not being able to see anything at all.

Director Lucio Fulci, a diabetic who was slowly going blind during the final years of his life, was infamous for including scenes of eyes being either pierced or gouged out in his films.  The New York Ripper even featured one scene where an eye was slit in half with a razor blade.  (This occurred in a close-up, no less!)  In Joe D’Amato’s Beyond the Darkness, there’s a scene where a mad taxidermist replaces the eyes of his dead fiancée with glass and for me, that’s one of most disturbing elements of the film.  Horror directors understand the vulnerability of the eyes and the sadness when life is extinguished from those eyes.  Eyes are said to be the windows to soul and when those eyes are lifeless, it’s a reminder that a living soul is a fleeting thing.

Perhaps that’s why 1963’s X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes is such an effective work of art.  Directed by Roger Corman, the film tells the story of Dr. James Xavier (Ray Milland), a doctor who has developed eye drops that, when taken, allow one to have x-ray vision.  Dr. Xavier claims that the eye drops will allow doctors to more easily diagnose their patients and certainly, he has a point there.  His friend, Dr. Sam Brant (Harold J. Stone), points out that the eyes are directly connected to the brain and that using experimental eye drops on them could potentially drive a person mad.  Dr. Xavier proves Dr. Brant’s point by losing his tempter and accidentally pushing him out of a window.

Ah, x-ray vision.  It all starts out fun.  Dr. Xavier is performing miracle surgeries and seeing what everyone looks like naked.  (The swinging jazz party scene is a classic example of how 60s B-movies teased audiences while never quite showing everything.) But once he’s forced to go on the run from the police, Xavier finds himself making a living as a carnival psychic while still trying to refine his eyedrops.  Xavier’s sleazy manager (Don Rickles) tries to turn Xavier into a faith healer but, with Xavier’s x-ray vision growing more erratic and more intense, Xavier ends up running off to Vegas with a former colleague, Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vils).

And again, it’s all fun and games as Xavier uses his powers to cheat at cards.  But then the megalomania kicks in and, after Xavier basically announces that he’s cheating, he finds himself being chased through the desert by a police helicopter and freaking out as more and more of the universe is revealed to him.  Much like a Lovecraftian protagonist who has been driven mad by the sight of the Great Old Ones, Xavier finds himself overwhelmed by the center of the universe.  At a tent revival, a preacher shouts, “If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out!”

The film’s final image is a shocking one and it stays with you.  (There were rumors that the film originally ended with Xavier shouting, “I can still see!” but Corman himself said that never happened.)  Even without that final image, this would be one of Corman’s best films, a surprisingly intelligent and rather sad story about a man who, in trying to see what is usually hidden, was driven mad by what he discovered.  Ray Milland was well-cast as Dr. Xavier and watching him go from being a somewhat stiff but good-hearted scientist to a raving madman at a revival is quite an experience, a testament to the vulnerability that all humans share.  In the name of science, Xavier goes from being a respected researcher to being chased through the desert by a helicopter.  The man who wanted to be able to see everything finds himself wishing to be forever blinded.  Sometimes, the film suggests, it’s best not to be able to see everything around us.  Sometime, the mysteries of the universe should remain mysteries and the rest of us should respect our own vulnerabilities.

Horror on the Lens: The Terror (dir by Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Dennis Jakob, and Jack Nicholson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, “I’d love to see a movie where a youngish Jack Nicholson played a French soldier who, while searching for a mysterious woman, comes across a castle that’s inhabited by both Dick Miller and Boris Karloff?”

Of course you have!  Who hasn’t?

Well, fortunately, it’s YouTube to the rescue.  In Roger Corman’s 1963 film The Terror, Jack Nicholson is the least believable 19th century French soldier ever.  However, it’s still interesting to watch him before he became a cinematic icon.  (Judging from his performance here and in Cry Baby Killer, Jack was not a natural-born actor.)  Boris Karloff is, as usual, great and familiar Corman actor Dick Miller gets a much larger role than usual.  Pay attention to the actress playing the mysterious woman.  That’s Sandra Knight who, at the time of filming, was married to Jack Nicholson.

Reportedly, The Terror was one of those films that Corman made because he still had the sets from his much more acclaimed film version of The Raven.  The script was never finished, the story was made up as filming moved alone, and no less than five directors shot different parts of this 81 minute movie.  Among the directors: Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Jack Nicholson himself!  Perhaps not surprisingly, the final film is a total mess but it does have some historical value.

(In typical Corman fashion, scenes from The Terror were later used in the 1968 film, Targets.)

Check out The Terror below!

Horror Film Review: It Conquered The World (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Man is a feeling creature, and because of it, the greatest in the universe….”

So says scientist Paul Nelson (Peter Graves) towards the end of 1956’s It Conquered The Universe.  Paul may be a scientist but he understands the importance of emotion and imagination and individuality.  He knows that it’ll take more than just cold logic to save humanity from destruction.

Unfortunately, Paul’s best friend, Tom Anderson (Lee Van Cleef), disagrees.  Tom worked at Los Alamos.  Tom helped to develop the atomic bomb.  Tom is convinced that humanity will destroy itself unless a greater power takes over.  Tom feels that he has discovered that greater power.  Tom has recently contacted a Venusian and invited it to come to Earth.  Upon arriving, the Venusian promptly disrupts all electrical power on Earth.  It sends out bat-like creatures that inject humans with a drug that takes control of their minds and turns them into a compliant slaves.  Paul tells Tom that robbing people of their free will is not going to save the Earth but Tom remains committed to the Venusian, even as it becomes obvious that the Venusian’s main concern is with its own survival.

It Conquered The World is very much a film of the 1950s.  Along with tapping into the era’s paranoia about nuclear war and UFOs, it also features Peter Graves delivering monologues about freedom and the inherent superiority of the human race.  When Paul confronts Tom, he not only accuses Tom of selling out the Earth but he also attacks Tom’s patriotism.  When Tom’s wife, Claire (Beverly Garland), confronts the alien and orders it to leave her plant along, she does it while wearing high heels and a tight sweater and holding a rifle.  The one female scientist (played by Karen Kadler) spends most of her screentime being menaced while wearing a white slip and there’s a platoon of bumbling but unbrainwashed soldiers hanging out in the woods.  If one looked up 1956 in the dictionary, there’s a very good chance this film would be the definition.

At the same time, the film’s story feels like a metaphor for modern times.  When the Venusian-controlled police turn authoritarian and start threatening to punish anyone who questions their orders, we’re reminded of the excesses of the COVID lockdowns.  When the editor of the town’s newspaper is shot by a policeman who says that words are no longer necessary in the new world, it’s hard not to think of all the writers, commentators, artists, and ordinary citizens who have run afoul the online cancellation brigade.  When Paul is reduced to riding a bicycle from place to place, it’s hard not to think of the environmental Luddites, with their hatred of anything that makes life more convenient.  When Tom rationalizes his activities by saying that humanity must be saved from itself, he’s expressing an opinion that is very popular among several people today.  Tom’s embrace of cold logic feels very familiar.  Of course, today, people don’t need a Venusian to order them to accept authoritarianism.  Instead, they’re more than happy to do on their own.

It Conquered The World was directed by Roger Corman.  It was his eighth film as a director and it remains one of his most entertaining.  As one might expect from a low-budget sci-fi film, It Conquered The World produces it’s share of laughs.  It’s hard not to smile at the sight of the extremely serious Peter Graves peddling his bicycle from location to location.  (It doesn’t help that Graves never takes off his suit or loosens his tie.)  And the Venusian simply has to be seen to be believed:

At the same time, It Conquered The World holds up well.  Lee Van Cleef and Beverly Garland both give performances that transcend the material, with Van Cleef especially doing a good job of paying a man struggling to rationalize his bad decisions.  It Conquered The World holds up today, as both a portrait of the 50s and 2024.

Horror on the Lens: The Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi!  Welcome to Horrorthon!  It’s a tradition around these parts that we offer up a classic (or not-so-classic) horror film for our readers to watch every day in October.  As we have just lost the great Roger Corman, it seems appropriate to start things off with one of his best films.

And so, without further ado….

Enter singing.

Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…

For the 2024 Horrorthon’s first plunge into the world of public domain horror films, I’d like to present you with a true classic.  From 1960, it’s the original Little Shop of Horrors!

When I was 19 years old, I was in a community theater production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.  Though I think I would have made the perfect Audrey, everybody always snickered whenever I sang so I ended up as a part of “the ensemble.”  Being in the ensemble basically meant that I spent a lot of time dancing and showing off lots of cleavage.  And you know what?  The girl who did play Audrey was screechy, off-key, and annoying and after every show, all the old people in the audience always came back stage and ignored her and went straight over to me.  So there.

Anyway, during rehearsals, our director thought it would be so funny if we all watched the original film.  Now, I’m sorry to say, much like just about everyone else in the cast, this was my first exposure to the original and I even had to be told that the masochistic dentist patient was being played by Jack Nicholson.  However, I’m also very proud to say that — out of that entire cast — I’m the only one who understood that the zero-budget film I was watching was actually better than the big spectacle we were attempting to perform on stage.  Certainly, I understood the film better than that screechy little thing that was playing Audrey.

The first Little Shop of Horrors certainly isn’t scary and there’s nobody singing about somewhere that’s green (I always tear up when I hear that song, by the way).  However, it is a very, very funny film with the just the right amount of a dark streak to make it perfect Halloween viewing.

So, if you have 72 minutes to kill, check out the original and the best Little Shop of Horrors…

Horror Film Review: Monster From The Ocean Floor (dir by Wyott Ordung)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Are you ready to go in the water?

That’s the question asked by the 1954 film, Monster From The Ocean Floor.  Taking place in a Mexican fishing village and artist’s colony, Monster From The Ocean Floor features a lot of underwater action.  It also features a monster who lives on the ocean floor and who has been terrorizing fisherman, swimmers, and divers.  Unfortunately, despite being featured in the title, there’s not really much of the Monster in this film.  It takes a while for the Monster to even be acknowledged and, when the Monster finally does show up, it’s over all too quickly.  I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised by any of that, seeing as how this is a 1950s Roger Corman production that was apparently made on a budget of $20,000.  Producer Corman and director Wyott Ordung had to choose between devoting screen time to a potentially expensive monster or to a one-man submarine that they could use for free as long as they listed the submarine’s manufacturer in the opening and end credits.  They went with the submarine.

In fact, the submarine was apparently the main reason that Corman decided to make this film, his first as a producer.  He read an article about it in the Los Angeles Times and decided that it sounded like the perfect thing to feature in a movie.  In what would become typical Corman fashion, Corman got the submarine first and then built a movie around it.

As for the movie, it features Stuart Wade as Steve Dunning, the hunky Marine biologist who loves the ocean and frequently pilots the submarine.  When Steve and his submarine first emerge from the ocean, they briefly frighten Julie Blair (Anne Kimbell), an artist who is at the village in search for inspiration.  Later, when Julie actually does briefly see the monster rising from the ocean, Steve and Dr. Baldwin (Dick Pinner) theorize that the Monster From The Ocean Floor is actually a prehistoric creature that was in a Cthulhu-like slumber until it was reawakened by atomic bomb testing on the nearby Bikini Islands.

The people at the village don’t really care where the Monster came from or what the Monster might mean for the cause of science.  They just want the Monster go away so that they continue their lives in peace.  Pablo (played by the film’s director, Wyott Ordung) and Tula (Inez Palange) think that the solution might be a human sacrifice and they make plans to summon a shark to eat the diving Julie.  Agck!

As I mentioned earlier, this film was Roger Corman’s debut as a producer.  Corman was only 25 at the time and he didn’t direct the film but still, everything about Monster From The Ocean Floor — from the low budget to the casting of Jonathan Haze (and Corman himself!) in a small role — easily identifies this as being a Corman film.  It has its fun moments and, for a 1954 film, Anne Kimbell’s Julie Blair is a refreshingly independent and liberated character.  Unfortunately, the overall film is a bit slow and it does seem to take forever for the monster to actually show up.

Ultimately, Monster From The Ocean Floor‘s main importance is as a piece of B-movie history.  With this movie, the glorious filmmaking career of Roger Corman began.

Horror on the Lens: The Terror (dir by Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Dennis Jakob, and Jack Nicholson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, “I’d love to see a movie where a youngish Jack Nicholson played a French soldier who, while searching for a mysterious woman, comes across a castle that’s inhabited by both Dick Miller and Boris Karloff?”

Of course you have!  Who hasn’t?

Well, fortunately, it’s YouTube to the rescue.  In Roger Corman’s 1963 film The Terror, Jack Nicholson is the least believable 19th century French soldier ever.  However, it’s still interesting to watch him before he became a cinematic icon.  (Judging from his performance here and in Cry Baby Killer, Jack was not a natural-born actor.)  Boris Karloff is, as usual, great and familiar Corman actor Dick Miller gets a much larger role than usual.  Pay attention to the actress playing the mysterious woman.  That’s Sandra Knight who, at the time of filming, was married to Jack Nicholson.

Reportedly, The Terror was one of those films that Corman made because he still had the sets from his much more acclaimed film version of The Raven.  The script was never finished, the story was made up as filming moved alone, and no less than five directors shot different parts of this 81 minute movie.  Among the directors: Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Jack Nicholson himself!  Perhaps not surprisingly, the final film is a total mess but it does have some historical value.

(In typical Corman fashion, scenes from The Terror were later used in the 1968 film, Targets.)

Check out The Terror below!

Horror on the Lens: The Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(It’s tradition here at the Lens that, every October, we watch the original Little Shop of Horrors.  And always, I start things off by telling this story…)

Enter singing.

Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…

Hi!  Good morning and Happy October 24th!  For today’s plunge into the world of public domain horror films, I’d like to present you with a true classic.  From 1960, it’s the original Little Shop of Horrors!

When I was 19 years old, I was in a community theater production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.  Though I think I would have made the perfect Audrey, everybody always snickered whenever I sang so I ended up as a part of “the ensemble.”  Being in the ensemble basically meant that I spent a lot of time dancing and showing off lots of cleavage.  And you know what?  The girl who did play Audrey was screechy, off-key, and annoying and after every show, all the old people in the audience always came back stage and ignored her and went straight over to me.  So there.

Anyway, during rehearsals, our director thought it would be so funny if we all watched the original film.  Now, I’m sorry to say, much like just about everyone else in the cast, this was my first exposure to the original and I even had to be told that the masochistic dentist patient was being played by Jack Nicholson.  However, I’m also very proud to say that — out of that entire cast — I’m the only one who understood that the zero-budget film I was watching was actually better than the big spectacle we were attempting to perform on stage.  Certainly, I understood the film better than that screechy little thing that was playing Audrey.

The first Little Shop of Horrors certainly isn’t scary and there’s nobody singing about somewhere that’s green (I always tear up when I hear that song, by the way).  However, it is a very, very funny film with the just the right amount of a dark streak to make it perfect Halloween viewing.

So, if you have 72 minutes to kill, check out the original and the best Little Shop of Horrors…

Horror on the Lens: The Terror (dir by Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Dennis Jakob, and Jack Nicholson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, “I’d love to see a movie where a youngish Jack Nicholson played a French soldier who, while searching for a mysterious woman, comes across a castle that’s inhabited by both Dick Miller and Boris Karloff?”

Of course you have!  Who hasn’t?

Well, fortunately, it’s YouTube to the rescue.  In Roger Corman’s 1963 film The Terror, Jack Nicholson is the least believable 19th century French soldier ever.  However, it’s still interesting to watch him before he became a cinematic icon.  (Judging from his performance here and in Cry Baby Killer, Jack was not a natural-born actor.)  Boris Karloff is, as usual, great and familiar Corman actor Dick Miller gets a much larger role than usual.  Pay attention to the actress playing the mysterious woman.  That’s Sandra Knight who, at the time of filming, was married to Jack Nicholson.

Reportedly, The Terror was one of those films that Corman made because he still had the sets from his much more acclaimed film version of The Raven.  The script was never finished, the story was made up as filming moved alone, and no less than five directors shot different parts of this 81 minute movie.  Among the directors: Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Jack Nicholson himself!  Perhaps not surprisingly, the final film is a total mess but it does have some historical value.

(In typical Corman fashion, scenes from The Terror were later used in the 1968 film, Targets.)

Check out The Terror below!

Horror on the Lens: The Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(It’s tradition here at the Lens that, every October, we watch the original Little Shop of Horrors.  And always, I start things off by telling this story…)

Enter singing.

Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…

Hi!  Good morning and Happy October 24th!  For today’s plunge into the world of public domain horror films, I’d like to present you with a true classic.  From 1960, it’s the original Little Shop of Horrors!

When I was 19 years old, I was in a community theater production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.  Though I think I would have made the perfect Audrey, everybody always snickered whenever I sang so I ended up as a part of “the ensemble.”  Being in the ensemble basically meant that I spent a lot of time dancing and showing off lots of cleavage.  And you know what?  The girl who did play Audrey was screechy, off-key, and annoying and after every show, all the old people in the audience always came back stage and ignored her and went straight over to me.  So there.

Anyway, during rehearsals, our director thought it would be so funny if we all watched the original film.  Now, I’m sorry to say, much like just about everyone else in the cast, this was my first exposure to the original and I even had to be told that the masochistic dentist patient was being played by Jack Nicholson.  However, I’m also very proud to say that — out of that entire cast — I’m the only one who understood that the zero-budget film I was watching was actually better than the big spectacle we were attempting to perform on stage.  Certainly, I understood the film better than that screechy little thing that was playing Audrey.

The first Little Shop of Horrors certainly isn’t scary and there’s nobody singing about somewhere that’s green (I always tear up when I hear that song, by the way).  However, it is a very, very funny film with the just the right amount of a dark streak to make it perfect Halloween viewing.

So, if you have 72 minutes to kill, check out the original and the best Little Shop of Horrors…