Movies That Witness Madness Part III
By
Ian Watson
Copyright Ian Watson 2012
Published At Smashwords
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Introduction To Part III: “Monster Suit Mayhem!”

There isn’t a comedy funnier than a low-budget man-in-a-suit monster movie.  When a filmmaker’s vision is humbled by economic factors, the results often resemble what Joe R Lansdale said about watching an alligator eat a pig – messy, but fun on a primal level, especially if you’re not the pig.  Budgetary constraints have over the years been responsible for countless economically-staged invasions by walking tree monsters, man-jellyfish hybrids as well as that perennial favourite, the rubber-suited Man From Mars, but in terms of sheer ineptitude and jaw-dropping incredulity none can match the first exhibit in this dime-store Hall Of Fame…

Robot Monster (1953)
Years before Harry and Michael Medved bestowed upon it a Golden Turkey Award for Most Ridiculous Monster In Screen History, Robot Monster was a staple of late night television, where it caught the attention of a young Stephen King.  In Danse Macabre, King recalls how he watched the movie while smoking reefer “and almost laughed myself into a hernia.  Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I was literally on the floor for most of the movie.”
The principle cause of the author’s amusement is Ro-Man, a prototype Teletubby whose costume consists of a gorilla suit, a stocking over his face and a plastic deep sea diving helmet that comes with two antennae attached to make him appear ‘futuristic.’  When we first meet him he’s already wiped out the human race with stock-footage of bombed cities and is living in a cave in Bronson Canyon with a bubble machine and a “viewscreen auditor” that relays instructions from his boss, a mirror-image space gorilla named Great Guidance.  There are of course survivors, and when one of them calls him a “pooped-out pinwheel” before running away, Ro-Man stands there shaking a clenched fist in the air, as he is wont to do to anyone more than three feet from him.
Though initially cold-hearted, he has his emotions stirred by Alice (Claudia Barrett), much to the chagrin of his boss, who threatens to destroy him if he starts behaving like a “hu-man.”  “Yes!” he retorts.  “To be like the hu-man!  To laugh.  Feel.  Want.  Why are these things not in the plan?”  Unimpressed, the Great One orders him to kill the girl or face execution, which really brings out the Bard in him.  “I cannot, yet I must,” he soliloquizes.  “How do you calculate that?  At what point on the graph do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet?  Yet I must.  But I cannot.”  Sound familiar?  It’s Hamlet’s famous question, re-tooled for a 3D sci-fi flick that is at heart a Beauty And The Beast tale, albeit a fairly messed-up one.  
Great Guidance, meanwhile, has decided to terminate his employment: “You wish to be a hu-man?  Good.  You can die a hu-man!”  And he extends his hand toward camera, sending the Cosmic Beam that causes Ro-Man to keel over as though experiencing a coronary before stock-footage dinosaurs start wrestling as the ground opens up and then….it all turns out to have been the daydream of a hyperactive eight year-old.
Ending aside, there appear to be more than a few similarities between Ro-Man and Darth Vader.  Think about it: they’re more machine than man yet both unconsciously strive, and ultimately succeed, to retain some shred of humanity, even though it hastens their demise.  They both renounce their pasts after having their cold, cold hearts thawed by a wholesome protagonist.  And both are Libras.
Hailed by The Castle Of Frankenstein’s TV Movie Guide as “among the finest terrible movies ever made” and numbering among its fans the likes of Joe Dante and George Romero, Robot Monster may be the ultimate monument to incompetence but it’s so endearingly silly you can’t possibly not go with it.  Watch it with some quality reefer.

Horror Of Party Beach (1964)
The first beach party picture to combine rock and roll, rubbery monsters with conservative values and physics, Horror Of Party Beach was the unlikely brainchild of an artistic director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in New York City.  Del Tenney’s previous foray into low-budget filmmaking, Voodoo Bloodbath, sat unreleased until 1970, when distributor Jerry Gross retitled the movie I Eat Your Skin and released it on a double-bill with I Drink Your Blood.  Tenney’s only other celluloid offering, Curse Of The Living Corpse (featuring a pre-Jaws Roy Scheider) was shot back-to-back with Party Beach and played on the bottom half of the same double-bill, with patrons invited to sign a ‘Fright Release’ absolving the filmmakers of responsibility should anyone die from fright during a screening, though the biggest shock comes from learning that they were distributed by a major studio, Twentieth Century Fox.
With its pale skies and paler teenagers, Malibu has never looked less appealing, possibly because the movie lensed in Stamford, Connecticut, whose comparative proximity to New Jersey ensures that barrels of radioactive waste are routinely dumped off its coast.  Spilling their load across skeletal remains on the seabed creates an army of monsters – well, three – dressed in pantomime dragon costumes and rubber masks with what appears to be a mouthful of hotdog sausages.
So yes, our antagonists look silly.  But since the only parent in the entire film – one Dr Gavin – is somewhat lacking in the discipline department, allowing his daughter to mingle with all manner of hot-rodding creeps and bare-chested bozos, it falls to them to establish some order.  Their zero-tolerance initiative sees them crack down on promiscuity and underage drinking by despatching the sluttiest girl on the beach, attacking drunks and invading a slumber party, causing the attendees to flee.  Which, you have to admit, is more effective than a virginity pledge.
Incensed, Dr Gavin sets about finding a way to destroy the monsters and reassert his ‘authority’ in between condescending to his black maid, played by Eulabelle Moore, who appears to be the main source of ‘comic relief.’  In the same year that Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Prize, audiences were treated to the sight of an African-American portraying an apparently uneducated supplicant given to “yessuh massuh” dialect humour and ignorant enough to ascribe events to superstition (“It’s duh Voo Doo!  Dat’s what it is!”).  With such a lowly role, we might expect Ms Moore simply to disappear from the proceedings, but her presence in fact proves crucial to the plot.  When she accidentally spills salt on a creature’s tissue sample, causing it to burn up (“I’se sorry!  Oh lordy lordy!”), the doc gets the break he needs and the means with which to regain his former standing  “That’s the answer we’ve been looking for!” he proclaims, and immediately sets about making the beach safe for boozehounds, promiscuous teenagers and white supremacists once more.
Not much happens at Party Beach when the monsters are offscreen, certainly not enough to fill its seventy-eight minutes, so it’s left to the Del Aires, a trio of Buddy Holly clones, to provide such show stoppin’, foot stompin’ ditties as Wigglin Wobblin and The Zombie Stomp (“Everybody do The Zombie Stomp/ Doo doo doo doop/ Just bring your foot down with an awful bump”) for the bikinied masses to gyrate to while supporting players provide ‘repartee.’  If that sounds like a high old time, tune in!

Sting Of Death (1965)
Though one of the legendary Brill Building’s composers as well as friend to Neil Diamond, Connie Francis and Carole King, and despite achieving a #1 hit in August 1962 with his signature song, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Neil Sedaka was left without a recording career from the mid to late Sixties thanks largely to the success of The Beatles, forcing him to accept the kind of work he’d be only too happy to sweep under the carpet in later years.  A role in 1969’s Playgirl Killer (sample dialogue: “I didn’t mean to leave you half-oiled, Arlene”), after which he never acted again, was humiliating enough, but in order to know the singer’s deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secret, you have to watch Sting Of Death.
Billed as “Special Singing Star”, Sedaka doesn’t appear onscreen but makes his presence felt via his sole contribution to the soundtrack, the ska-tinged Do The Jellyfish, which encourages the listener to “Forget your Cinderella/ And do the jella/ The jilla jalla jella/ It’s really kinda swella/ To do the jalla jellyfish.”  So enamoured of this finger-snapping froth are the cast that they fail to notice the man/jellyfish hybrid that emerges from the swamp to take up residence in their pool, whose presence comes as something of a surprise to the first drunken bimbo to dive in fully clothed.  However, given the hilariously unconvincing costume, you’d think it’d be hard to miss.
Wearing flippers, a wetsuit adorned with beads and an inflated trashbag over his head that gives him an uncomfortable resemblance to Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin, actor Doug Hobart lumbers about like a cut-rate Creature From The Black Lagoon, kidnapping grade-z starlets and slobbering over them in a polystyrene cave furnished with a fish tank, TV antennae and a machine with dials and flashing lights.  It’s all something to do with the ‘research’ being conducted at a ‘scientific community’ in the Florida Everglades that throws parties for sorority sisters who, when they’re not showering or lounging around in bikinis, are too busy doing the jilla jalla jella to notice one of their number being mauled on the front lawn in broad daylight.
With its scenes of actors being attacked by painted Ziploc bags intended to represent jellyfish and showering starlets who remain unaware of the creature lurking outside their stall, William Grefe’s movie reaches the same delirious heights of tacky ineptitude as anything dreamt up by fellow Florida filmmaker Herschel Gordon Lewis.  It should come as no surprise that Sting Of Death was co-written by William Kerwin, the incompetent detective in Blood Feast as well as the psychopath in Playgirl Killer, to whose soundtrack Sedaka contributed If You Don’t Wanna You Don’t Hafta and Waterbug (“See a bug walkin’ on the ground/ He moves in a straight line/ But the waterbug must’ve flipped his tug”).
Inducted into the songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983, history has failed to record whether Sedaka thanked Kerwin in his acceptance speech.

Ape (1976)
Released in Christmas of 1976, the Dino de Laurentiis-produced King Kong redux was a $24m folly for which a forty foot high, six and a half ton monster robot was specially constructed, even though the filmmakers decided not to use it.  In theatres within a week was Ape, a no-budget Korea-lensed 3D knock-off whose star appeared to be an extra in a monkey mask and wool sweater.  “Not to be confused with King Kong,” claimed the poster, which also featured the hirsute hero fighting a giant shark – a year after Jaws stormed the box office.
On the latter count at least, the poster was truthful.  The shark battle occurs in the opening moments when Ape/Kong, having escaped the toy boat on which he was held captive, leaps into the ‘ocean’ (which was no visible horizon) to tussle with the lifeless creature.  If this sequence seems unfamiliar to viewers of previous Kongs, that’s because director/ co-writer Paul Leder has dispensed with the expedition to Skull Island, the dinosaurs, plus Kong’s introduction and subsequent capture to start three quarters of the way through the traditional story.  In other words, our mask-and-sweater monster is going to stomp a lot of model buildings and throw a lot of Tonka toys around before the end credits.
First, though, we have to meet our Fay Wray, in this case a garlanded actress played by Joanna Kerns who’s just arrived in Seoul to shoot her first major picture outside America.  ‘Major’ might be pushing it, however, as she’s required to do little more than stand around in her undergarments while the director (named “Dino”) motivates a co-star by asking him to “rape her gently.”  This touching sequence is interrupted when Ape/ Kong wades inland to destroy some miniature props before kidnapping Joanna/ Fay, so it’s up to Alex Nichol’s bonkers General to launch a military strike to get her back.
Forget de Laurentiis, RKO and Toho Studios: this version is far campier, more outlandish and boasts the cheapest, most guffaw-inducing effects you’ve ever seen.  In a sequence strangely absent from its bigger-budgeted breathren, our antagonist, smitten by a hanglider, skips along merrily behind it, arms aloft, head moving from side to side.  “Let’s see him dance for his organ grinder now,” growls an unimpressed Nichol before sending in some wire-supported helicopter gunships.  He’s left open-mouthed, however (as is the audience), when Ape/ Kong swats them aside before giving him the finger.
It may be silly, campy and plotless, but you won’t find a better-paced, more entertaining monster movie outside of Toho Studios.  It’s just a shame that Leder’s daughter Mimi, employed here as Unit Photographer and Assistant Director, didn’t share her father’s execrable taste and went on to make ‘good’ movies like Deep Impact (1998) and The Shipping News (2001).

Night Of The Demon (1980)
When Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin claimed to have shot footage of an ape-like cryptid in Bluff Creek, California, in 1967, they unwittingly launched the screen career of the creature known as Bigfoot (or Sasquatch), who went on to ‘star’ in a string of productions that even the most charitable viewer would describe as “Shoddy.”  After all, any amateur filmmaker who had a camera, a monkey costume and some very game friends could knock one out over a weekend.  No need to come up with a story, just have a college Professor lead some students into swamp country, throw in some talk about myths and legends, then have your leading man show up to shake some trees or, depending on the rating, carry off a co-ed or two for breeding purposes.
To the delight of the exploitation crowd, director James C Wasson goes the latter route, setting his dime-store Chewbacca on the usual suspects, including a redneck biker who suffers the film’s greatest indignity while relieving himself.  We don’t fully see the creature until the climax, but an early sequence in which Sasquatch twirls a victim around before impaling him on a broken tree limb suggests we’ll be in for a treat.  Sure enough, when we do see him up close, he looks a lot like Ape – after having undergone cosmetic surgery by Lou Ferrigno.
He may resemble a hirsute Hulk, but Wasson’s Bigfoot is one stealthy beast, capable of sneaking up on an unsuspecting lumberjack and divesting him of his axe before splitting his cranium in two.  Clearly circus trained, he’s also able to make two knife-wielding girl scouts stab each other repeatedly while banging their heads together.  You never saw that in Harry And The Hendersons.
When the anticipated ‘academic’ leads his students into harm’s way without protection or even photographic equipment, they encounter a local girl given to flashbacks of a midnight encounter with our horny beast that lead to the birth of Bigfoot junior.  This sets up a present-day reunion of sorts when junior knocks down the door and begins dismissing the class one by one, ripping out intestines, burning faces, tearing out throats and impaling bodies on pitchforks – while nobody attempts to escape.
Following the expected formula, Night Of The Demon yields more entertaining results than others of its ilk (Legend Of Bigfoot, Search For The Beast etc.), and would probably be reprehensible if possible to take seriously.  Judge for yourself.

The Barbaric Beast Of Boggy Creek Part II (1985)
The docudrama horror film, done well, knows the power of myth.  No matter how exaggerated an urban legend might be, it can take a hold on people’s minds unless it becomes concrete.  When you shed light on the mythic and a fella in a costume stares back, people start laughing.  Game over, man.
One of the original docudramas, Charles B Pierce’s The Legend Of Boggy Creek (1972) was only okay, but it had the sense to keep its monkey man an enigma and not show him upfront in broad daylight so that the audience knew it was watching some guy in a suit.  It was a big hit for Pierce, a true independent who drove around LA with the film until he secured a post-production deal, so a follow-up was inevitable, but since 1977’s Return To Boggy Creek was made by other hands, Pierce ignored it and made his own sequel.
This proved to be a bad idea for several reasons.  Distribution had changed.  The Drive-in audiences that had made the first movie a smash had given way to teenagers who wanted slasher sequels, not a micro-budget follow-up to a cheesy 70s relic starring the director, his son and their friends.  So Pierce, in a move that sealed the project’s fate, chose to abandon the docudrama format in favour of a more traditional narrative.
While the first instalment invited us to ponder the barbaric beast’s existence, this time there’s no doubt as we see him in the opening moments and the only speculation his arrival invites is where the costume was rented.  Pierce continues to shed light on the legend with a series of hokey ‘encounters’, although these may not have taken place because they’re recounted by drunks and rednecks.  The most bizarre – and amusing – has a good ol’ boy attacked while attending to business in an outhouse.  He survives the assault, having merely soiled himself, so it’s laughed off because he’s a wife-beating asshole.
There’s plenty to laugh at here, from an attack by a ‘rabid’ dog with shaving foam slathered across its mouth to the yee-haw locals Pierce suggests he might shoot if they try to spook him.  Trying to obtain proof of the creature’s existence without a camera or video  equipment, Pierce makes an unlikely academic but he’s more credible than his shirtless slug of a son and their ‘assistants’, two raven-haired centrefolds who prove inept at everything except modelling hot pants.  He does have a motion sensor, though, which the beast sets off while trying to cop an eyeful of the ladies, leading to much screaming and running around, as is the wont of the scientific community.
Saving the best for last, Pierce visits a tobacco-chewin’ local who wears denim dungarees but no shirt and discovers the reason for the beast’s behaviour: the hirsute hillbilly has its offspring locked up in his cellar.  That’s right – Pierce rented a second costume in child’s size, and after dad bursts through a balsa wood door a reunion is on the cards, leading to an unforgettable shot of father and son walking away hand in hand.  Now there’s more bang for your buck.

The Galaxy Invader (1985)
Something of an auteur of alien invasion epics, Don Dohler’s Baltimore-lensed movies are as threadbare as anything Roger Corman or Lloyd Kaufman directed but less sleazy, less tasteless.  His films may be inexpensive but, generally speaking, he resists the urge to make every female character a skinny-dipping, monster-baiting bimbo whose purpose is to pad out the proceedings with heavy doses of T&A.  Nor does he make intentionally schlocky pictures that send up their own cheapness.  Whether he’s aware of his limitations as a filmmaker or not, he won’t cover them up by making fun of them and winking at his audience.
As in previous offerings The Alien Factor and Nightbeast, there’s a rubber-suited ET running loose through Baltimore farm country but this time it’s a benevolent creature and the rednecks are the bad guys.  He immediately regrets choosing Hicksville a vacation spot when some yahoos shoot on sight, not even stopping to ponder why an alien would wear braces.  Dollar signs flash in their eyes when they come into possession of the glowing ball strapped around the creature’s waist, prompting the rounding up of a drunken posse for a hunt-and-capture mission, much to the dismay of anthropologist Richard Dyszel (aka horror host Count Gore De Vol) who argues that the being is an important scientific find that reacts only when fired upon by Busch-swillin’ good ol’ boys in trucker caps and torn vests.  So they shoot him.  Then take off after it anyway and get picked off one by one etc.
You won’t find many critics willing to embrace this economically-staged, straight-to-video effort.  It’s really pretty amateurish.  Even a low-budget monster movie needs stars and good make-up to succeed, so when you’re shooting a sci-fi epic in your backyard with a few friends and your half-brother in the alien suit, the odds are stacked against you before you burn a foot of film.  As such productions go, however, The Galaxy Invader ranks as one of Dohler’s best.  While The Alien Factor flatlined in its second act and Nightbeast felt like a short stretched out with pointless fight sequences and endless scenes of characters discovering bodies with cries of “ohmigod”, Dohler hits paydirt here and delivers a sincere, entertaining movie.
Not that this is a lost classic.  The home movie production values, floppy monster costume and amateurish performances are rarely less than mirth-inducing, but it’s all mounted with such genuine, straight-faced sincerity you’ll feel guilty for laughing.  Probably.