The Fly (1958)

Kurt Neumann's original 1958 version of The Fly was way better than I thought it would be. I expected the usual 1950's monster movie, something along the lines of the stuff you would see on Mystery Science Theater 3000. There is some camp, of course, but there are some genuinely creepy moments, the characters are three dimensional, and the narrative structure is quite smart.

The story begins in a factory, where the body of Andre, a scientist, has been found, his head and arm crushed in a pressing machine. We meet the scientist's brother Francois, played by Vincent Price, and his wife, Helene, who was at the scene of the crime, and under suspicion for murder. They are unsure if she is insane or just faking it. After earning her trust, Francois gets Helene to tell the story of the events leading up to the incident.

In flashback, we learn that Andre was developing a matter transporting machine. He excitedly shows it to his wife, demonstrating it on an ashtray. When it dissipates and appears in another chamber, the letters on the bottom are all jumbled up, so apparently it still needs work. After fixing it, he tries it on the family's cat. It disappears and never reappears. It's one of the creepier moments in the movie, when you just hear the cat's seemingly tortured cry coming from nowhere. Finally, sure he's fixed it, Andre tests his matter transporter on himself. Unfortunately, a fly gets in with him and their bodies are crossed with each other.

The movie is told from Helene's point of view. She is unsure what has happened to Andre, just that he refuses to leave his lab and speaks to her through notes. When she finally does see him, he has his head covered up by a cloth, which is also creepy. She finally learns that the fly has his head and one of his arms, and the only hope of returning him to normal is to find that fly. She and her son and the maid all go on a hunt for a fly with a white head, before Andre loses his grip on his humanity and becomes a monster.

I liked the slow reveal of Andre in fly form. It's sort of like how you don't see the shark in Jaws until the end, just glimpses. This works the same way, where you know whatever is under that sheet is horrifying, and when you finally do see it, well, it's kind of fake looking but it looks pretty great for the 1950's.

I won't spoil the ending, of course, but since you know that Andre's head and arm are smashed from the very beginning, you know it can't end well. I actually can't believe they got away with the way they ended the movie. Or the whole pressing machine thing. The movie is pretty gruesome for its time, and unsettling.

I enjoy being surprised by a movie like The Fly. I had already written it off as B-movie fare before even watching it, and it wound up being genuinely good. It's nice when one's preconceived notions are proven pleasantly wrong.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

I would stay the night at a haunted house for $10,000.  The trick is this: Stay in one place for the whole night, and never separate from the group.  Why doesn't anybody ever do this?  Come on, losers!

House on Haunted Hill is a fun little chiller brought to us by the great P.T. Barnum of B-Movies, William Castle.  He added another layer of fun to his movies with his love of twists, gimmicks, and trickery.  Even though these gimmicks were primarily to put butts in seats, there was a real sense of showmanship behind them too. 

The characters in this movie are a lot like the audience of a William Castle movie.  They have been issued a challenge by a millionaire to stay the night in a haunted house.  If they stay all night, they get $10,000, no ifs, ands or buts.    The millionaire is played by Vincent Price, a man who is on his 5th unhappy marriage.  The other four wives have met unfortunate ends. 

One of the guys staying in the house is played by the jittery dude from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.  He's a bit of a drunk, but he knows the history of the house, and he explains to the others (and the audience) that there have been a lot of grisly goings on in there.  Bodies found with missing heads, a giant pit full of acid in the basement.  A question to all you homeowners: If you buy a house with a giant acid pit already installed in the dungeon, do you keep it?  Does that increase the property value? 

So the group gets locked in, and there are some ghost sightings, but to me they don't look like ghosts, they just look like an old lady on wheels.  But still, severed heads appear and disappear.  One particular lady appears to be seeing all these things.  Then somebody turns up dead, hanging from a rope.  Also, I don't know how far ahead Vincent Price planned for this, but he has a bunch of adorable little coffin shaped boxes containing a handgun for each of his guests, just in case.

Anyway, the plot makes little sense, and once the twists start adding up, one after the other, the house of haunted cards comes tumbling down with even a little bit of questioning.  Who is betraying who?  Is the house really haunted or not?  How long did they have that planned?  Not important.  What matters to Castle is that the shocks keep coming.  He surely knew if he kept surprising the audience, the logic of the surprises wouldn't really matter in the long run.

I've read that House on Haunted Hill played in theaters specially rigged to release skeletons upon the audience at certain times in the movie that might call for skeletons.  See?  That sounds like fun, doesn't it?  That's what William Castle's movies were all about.  Fun.  And as ridiculous and hilariously convoluted as House on Haunted Hill was, it was still a lot of fun.

The Last Man on Earth

Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend is one of the great sci-fi/horror stories. That I am aware of, it was the first time vampirism was established as a medical condition rather than a supernatural one, a concept that has been used many times since. Sydney Salkow's The Last Man on Earth is the first of three adaptation, of I Am Legend, and it is probably the best.

Vincent Price stars as Robert Morgan, the seemingly lone human survivor of a global outbreak. He spends his days maintaining his sanity and humanity through a strict routine: Checking the radio for survivors, carving wooden stakes, going out for supplies, hunting and destroying vampires, disposing of the bodies, making repairs to his heavily barricaded home. At night, the vampires come to him. Led by Morgan's old colleague, Cortman, they gather outside his house and call him out, taunting him, and trying to break their way in. All Morgan can do is try to ignore it until daylight comes and he can begin his routine again.

A break in his routine occurs when Morgan finds a dog. The dog leads him to more signs of human life. Everything he is and believes himself to be is thrown into question when he finds a woman and takes her to his home.

The movie, written by but not credited to Matheson, keeps very close to the novel. There are a couple of pretty big changes, but this is the most faithful version of the three (the other two being The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, and of course, I Am Legend with Will Smith).

The first act is largely without dialogue, driven by Morgan's narration as he drives around the empty streets and hunts and scavenges his way through the wasteland. It's all very starkly shot and well executed, and is probably the best section of the movie. There's an extended flashback showing the beginnings of the outbreak and how Morgan lost his family and so on. Then, after he learns the intentions of Ruth, the woman he finds, the movie concludes with a chase sequence and finally a faceoff between Morgan and the creatures.

One thing I didn't like is that the vampires are not very strong. They seem to have pretty terrible coordination and they amble around like zombies. They also really have no distinctive features that set them apart from any other human. They just wear clothes that are too big.

Vincent Price is fun to watch, though he is not really a good fit for the role. In the first third when he is alone, going about his business, he's pretty good, but when it gets to the flashbacks that show him as your average family man, the illusion is shattered. His very distinctive voice and inflections don't really sell that. Same with when he's playing opposite Ruth.

The story of I Am Legend has a timeless quality and a true resonance. The fact that Hollywood keeps returning to it is proof of that. There has yet to be a perfect adaptation, but it's fun to watch how the story has evolved with each incarnation. It seems to get farther from the source material each time. They should do a new version every decade or so, just for the fun of it.