The Deadly Mantis (1957)

Who's In It: Craig Stevens (Peter Gunn), Alix Talton (The Man Who Knew Too Much), and William Hopper (Perry Mason).

What It's About: After we learn way more than we want to know about the Cold War DEW line, random seismic activity frees a giant, prehistoric insect from its icy prison.

How It Is: I was really pleased that the effects team actually created a giant mantis instead of just superimposing insect footage over human actors like I expected. The only character I like though is Talton's Lois Lane-like reporter and she doesn't get enough to do to carry the movie for me. Stevens and Hopper passive-aggressively fight over her and no one's really being all that smart about tracking and stopping the monster. There are a couple of memorable set pieces, but also a lot of nobody doing nothing.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 murderous mantodea

Them! (1954)

Who's In It: James Whitmore (Planet of the Apes, The Shawshank Redemption), Edmund Gwenn (Miracle of 34th Street), Joan Weldon (Them!), and James Arness (The Thing from Another World, Gunsmoke). With Daniel Boone and Mr Spock in bit roles.

What It's About: Nuclear testing creates giant ants that threaten to destroy the world.

How It Is: I love '50s scifi movies, especially when they involve alien invasions and giant, mutated animals. Maybe because they speak so deeply to my Cold War Kid's heart, since I grew up in a time when we were terrified of communist invasion and atomic weapons.

But even with a fairly high baseline to star from, Them! is a step or two above the others in the genre. To start with, the performances are strong, which wasn't always the case with the genre. But what I really like is the way the story unfolds through a serious, procedural style. Whitmore is especially great as Sgt Peterson, the main character for most of the movie. He's one of the police officers who discovers the first of the ants' victims and his obsession with learning the truth and then eliminating the threat is what drives the film for a good long while.

Unfortunately, as more and more people get involved, like the scientists played by Gwenn and Weldon or Arness' FBI agent, the less character work the movie is able to do. In fact, by the time Whitmore's character reaches the conclusion of his story arc, it's barely commented on because so much else is going on. 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 enormous arthropods

The City of the Spiders: H Warner Munn's Forgotten Classic [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The early issues of Weird Tales are full of surprises. They leap out at you when you aren't expecting them. The stories before 1935 are especially hard to locate unless they were written by Seabury Quinn, HP Lovecraft, or Robert E Howard. H Warner Munn's short novel, "The City of the Spiders," (Weird Tales, November 1926) is a case-in-point. This wonderful old story is largely forgotten despite being one of the best tales of giant spiders ever written. EF Bleiler says it was well crafted and unappreciated, unlike Munn's more famous werewolf clan stories. I was completely unaware of the tale until I came across it in Famous Science Fiction #4 (Fall 1967). Once again I am indebted to Robert AW Lowndes for knowing better.

Appearing in that November issue of 1926, Munn's work did not receive the cover, despite being the best story in the issue. The cover went to EF Hoffman's "The Peacock Shadow," a story that might have been better in WT's sister magazine, Oriental Tales; not yet created (1930-34). Hoffman's tale would certainly have pleased Farnsworth Wright better, as Wright was always looking for a reason to put a half-dressed (or less) woman on the cover and Munn's story has no love interest. But a little digging also found that the cover of June 1925 bore an Andrew Brosnatch illo for Paul S Powers' "Monsters of the Pit," featuring a man attacking a giant spider with an ax. Perhaps Wright simply felt that he'd "been there; done that".

The plot of "The City of Spiders" has Jabez Pentreat, the leader of an expedition in South America, pushing his local bearers into an unknown part of the jungle where their camp is surrounded by large, venomous spiders. The men keep the arachnids at bay with fires and push on. The second attack has larger, grey and red spiders intelligently organizing the mass of crawlers. Pentreat and his men try to flee the jungle but are herded to an ancient city swarming with arachnids. They see other animals such as snakes and jaguars corralled and killed to feed the vast army. The narrator expects to be eaten by the rulers of the city:

“In answer, I heard thuds on the low roofs as trap-doors fell back, and from each structure crawled a creature that dwarfed our captors into insignificance. It was a disgusting, heart-stopping sight, and our stomaches retched as we saw eight enormous spiders, each the size of a horse. But it was not their incredible size and filthiness, nor their bloated bodies which betokened an unthinkable age, that so horrified our souls! It was the look of an incredible, superhuman knowledge within their eyes, a knowledge not of this earth or era, a look as they saw us that might shine in the eyes of Lusifer, conscious of a kingdom or a world that had been gained, ruled and lost! And I knew that they looked upon us as an upstart race, born to serve, that had by a freakish accident turned the tables on our masters.”

Pentreat is saved by the spider king for another purpose. Using a weird form of mental link, the spider king invades Pentreat's mind and sees the vast populations outside the jungle. Munn has some fun with this as the narrator remembers old friends and wonders why he did not pounce on them and suck their blood out. Realizing these are not his thoughts, Pentreat delves deeper into the spider's memories and discovers that men once served the spiders and suffered under their depredations. Pentreat promises those lost people that he will avenge them.

The spiders retain memories genetically, so more history lessons follow, with humans serving as slaves in the ages before the dinosaurs. Rebellious men are fed as an object lesson to a form of gelatinous slime that lives in the water. Munn, like Robert E Howard with his "Hyborian Age," creates a pseudo-history that involves conquering armies of beast-men and spiders until the Ice Age forces the spiders to evolve into smaller, hairier animals; losing their sway over the humans. In a long, dangerous migration, a small band of spiders make it to the equatorial jungles and survive in their city, rebuilding and waiting to take the world back. Munn ignores timelines and slow evolutionary forces much as Howard did, arriving at an age in which humans forget they were once slaves to the spiders. Munn would return to this form of fantasy-history in his Merlin saga - King of the World's Edge (Weird Tales, September-December 1939), The Ship From Atlantis (1967), and Merlin's Ring (1974) - and then actual historical fiction in his Roman novel, The Lost Legion (1980).

The novella ends when the spiders give Pentreat the choice between death or leading them to civilization. He obliges them, all the while planning his escape. This comes when the spider army meets up with a group of headhunters. Pentreat ruthlessly sacrifices the natives when he escapes in a canoe, setting a forest fire behind him. All the spiders and headhunters are burned alive except for the spider king who escapes long enough to make it to the river where the piranhas finish him off. Pentreat returns home to tell of the spiders and is laughed at. He plans to go to the Arctic and locate evidence of an early race of men killed by the spiders and vindicate himself. Munn ends with the explanation for humans hating spiders instinctively: a racial memory of our long enslavement by spiderkind.

The giant, killer spider theme used for a combination of SF and horror (as opposed to fantasy, which has plenty of giant arachnids of its own) can be traced back to HG Wells and "The Valley of the Spiders" (Pearson's Magazine, March 1903). Murray Leinster may have been the first to have gigantic spiders in his series: "The Mad Planet" (Argosy, June 12, 1920), "The Red Dust" (Argosy All-Story, April 2, 1921), and "Nightmare Planet" (Science Fiction Plus, June 1953). Others before Munn include Paul S Powers' mad scientist story "Monsters of the Pit" (mentioned above) and Edmond Hamilton's "The Monster-God of Mamurth" (Weird Tales, August 1926), which has a giant invisible spider.

After 1926, Edmond Hamilton created a race of giant spiders in "Locked Worlds" (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1929), SP Meek wrote "The Tragedy of Spider Island" (Wonder Stories, September 1930), and Edgar Rice Burroughs featured giant jungle spiders in Pirates of Venus (Argosy, 1932). There were also giant spiders in "The Wand of Doom" by Jack Williamson (Weird Tales, October 1932) and Fritz Leiber used a giant arachnid for horror purposes in "Spider Mansion" (Weird Tales, September 1942), while Richard Matheson made men small in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1956) and then matched them against real spiders. Many horror writers such as MR James, Erckmann-Chatrian, Basil Copper, and Ramsey Campbell have all used spiders to create thrills. Perhaps the closest to HG Wells is John Wyndham's last novel, Web in 1979.

Munn's inspirations may not have been Wells' alone but his friend and colleague, HP Lovecraft. Munn's super-intelligent spider king from out of the ages has that same elder evil that Lovecraft gave to his creations. And again, here is where 1920s Weird Tales fiction is so refreshing. Unlike all the later August Derleth-driven pastiches, Munn is working in a Lovecraftian mode but not trying to imitate the master. As with Fritz Leiber's later horror classics, Munn is Lovecraft's equal; not a slavish imitator.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

What happens when a podcaster violates the code?

This month on Mystery Movie Night we're joined by special guest Paxton Holley (Nerd Lunch, Cult Film Club, Hellbent for Letterbox) to discuss some older films: The Uninvited (1944) starring Ray Milland, Konga (1961) with Michael Gough, and Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971). Hear what we thought and see if you can guess the secret connection between the three films!

Apologies for some background noise we picked up from somewhere (including a siren).

The Univited review starts at 3:17
Konga review starts at 20:42
Get Carter review starts at 37:00

Manly Wade Wellman's "Lee Granger, Jungle King" [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Manly Wade Wellman has many feathers in his cap: famous Weird Tales writer, a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Edgar Award for True Crime, a Pulitzer prize nomination for non-fiction, and the notoriety of appearing in court during the famous Fawcett vs. DC trial of 1948 (which Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood parodied in "Superduperman" in the fourth issue of Mad Magazine, April-May 1953.) Manly spoke from the stand of how his editors had encouraged him to steal freely from Superman for their comic, Captain Marvel Adventures. It was a strange place to end up. But where did it all begin?

Manly Wade Wellman decided to try writing comics after his friend and fellow Weird Tales author, Frank Belknap Long, had ventured into the world of "squinkies" as Manly called them. By March 1941, Manly would be writing the very first Captain Marvel tale "Captain Marvel vs. Z" in Captain Marvel Adventures #1. But before that he sharpened his pen on a few other comics including "Lee Granger, Jungle King" for Slam-Bang Comics (March-September 1940).

Slam-Bang was a Fawcett title that ran for only seven issues, but Manly and Granger appeared in them all. Beginning with issue #1, Lee Granger got the last nine to ten pages of each issue. The scientist-explorer sets out on a mission to fly over a part of unknown Africa. His plane is sabotaged by Arabs who are conducting illegal slaving in the unmapped territory. Granger saves himself when his plane explodes by using his loose clothing like a parachute. He is discovered by pygmies and accidentally wounds their chief with a poisoned spear. Granger saves the man's life and becomes friend to the entire tribe. As the pygmies' leading light, he teaches them science, helps them build a brick town, and even captures a lion and alters its brain. This is Eric, the talking lion, who is Granger's best sidekick.

In later episodes Granger defeats the invading Arabs, a race of flying demons called the Djinns, helps scientists who struggle to find the lost ruins of the Gelka (guarded by savages and gorillas), and fights the usual greedy white hunters bound to steal Eric away. He also encounters the queen of the giant ants, a woman raised by insects. The longer, ten-page format allowed Wellman to expand his story where many jungle characters had to make due with only five pages. The art was most likely drawn by Jack Binder in his usual serviceable but crude style.

Granger meets many beautiful woman, from rich debutantes to scientist's daughters, but they always leave, asking if they might meet again. The best of these was Kate Bond, who enters the hive of the ants, carrying a gun, which she is not reluctant to use on the queen herself. You have to remember these are pre-Code comics! Beautiful and deadly, she might have made a queen to Lee's king if the comic had continued.

What strikes me most about this strip is first off that Lee Granger is not a Tarzan wannabe. Only once does he use vines to swing down on foes. Usually he uses his superior understanding of science, making him more of a jungle Doc Savage than a Lord Greystoke. Secondly, Wellman's scenarios are usually not too typical of jungle stories, having a more fantastic element to them. I especially liked Issue #3 that has the feel of Robert E Howard's "Almuric" to it, with winged foes and sword fights (both that story and issue #3 appeared in May 1939 so it might have been Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pirates of Venus (Argosy, October 2, 1931) or Howard's "Wings in the Night" (Weird Tales, July 1932) that inspired him just as easily.

The source for the giant ants could have come from any number of pulps (which Manly knew, for he was in them) such as "The Master Ants" by Francis Flagg (Amazing Stories, May 1928), "The World of the Giant Ants" (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1928) by A Hyatt Verrill, or "The War of the Great Ants" by Jim Vanny (Wonder Stories, July 1930). And of course, the jungle ant classic, "Leiningen Versus the Ants" by Carl Stephenson (Esquire, December 1938).

Wherever Manly got his ideas, they were better than most of the jungle crowd. Only once does he stoop to overt racism in the strip, when he claims he must save the scientists because they are white. Such narrow-mindedness seems odd from the man who flew in the face of convention with his debut "When Planets Clashed" and wrote of space war from both sides of the conflict. His work as a whole speaks of a love for all humankind. It was this deep compassion that made stories like "Song of the Slaves" (Weird Tales, March/April 1940) memorable, or his work on the Civil War worthy of Pulitzer consideration. And it was this sense of honor that directed Manly to tell the truth on the stand in 1948. Manly was always, first and foremost, a gentleman.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)

Who's In It: Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jack the Giant Killer) and June Thorburn (Tom Thumb).

What It's About: A doctor (Mathews) goes to sea against the wishes of his fiancée (Thorburn) and winds up stranded on two fantastical islands where he learns important lessons about dreams and control.

How It Is: Jonathan Swift's novel is famous as a piece of social satire, so I wasn't sure how well it would translate into an adventure film. Having Ray Harryhausen on the visual effects convinced me to give it a shot though and I'm glad I did. Except for an impressive man vs. crocodile fight towards the end, most of the effects are about making Gulliver either huge or tiny in relation to the islanders he encounters, but there's a lot more to the film than just that. It works as an adventure film, but it works as social commentary, too.

The three worlds in the title refer to Gulliver's native England and the two major islands he visits: Lilliput (where he's much larger than everyone else) and Brobdingnag (where he's much tinier). In England, he has a serious argument with his fiancée Elizabeth. She just wants to get married and settle down at all costs, even if it means buying a dilapidated cottage and Gulliver's continuing to get paid for his medical services in livestock and produce. Gulliver has bigger dreams though. He wants to go to sea and earn his fortune so that he can Be Somebody. Only then will he feel prepared to marry Elizabeth and start his life.

What I like about the movie is that neither side is presented as absolutely correct. In fact, the islands Gulliver visits each teach him (and Elizabeth, who stows away on his ship) something about their desires. On Lilliput, Gulliver is treated as a god, but that doesn't prevent the people from trying to manipulate him into doing what they want. All that prestige and power he craved comes with a cost.

By the time he gets to Brobdingnag, he's sick of the responsibility and at first welcomes the way the giants there treat him and Elizabeth as sort of pets. But though the couple's needs are all taken care of, it's at the cost of their freedom. Lack of responsibility is both blessing and curse.

I mentioned in some of my Christmas Carol discussion that I've been thinking about control a lot lately. It's just something I'm mulling over in my personal life: how much control do we ever really have and how much should I try to maintain. The 3 Worlds of Gulliver adds some important thoughts to that conversation. Too much control/power/responsibility doesn't make you happy (not if we've learned anything from Spider-Man), but too little is just as bad. That's a theme I remember struggling with in another of my favorite movies, Finding Neverland, and it's about time I revisit that one too. There's a lot to be said for retaining a sense of childlike wonder about the world, but it shouldn't keep us from living up to our responsibilities. I don't know that I'll ever find the right balance, but until I do movies like Finding Neverland and 3 Worlds of Gulliver will continue to fascinate me and make me think.

And it doesn't hurt for them to have fights with giant crocodiles at the end either.

Rating: Four out of five enormous osteolaemi.

The Killer Shrews (1959)

Who's in it?: James Best (The Dukes of Hazzard); Ken Curtis (Gunsmoke)

What's it about?: A pair of sailors are forced to wait out a hurricane with some scientists on an island infested with giant, poisonous shrews.

How is it?: Rosco vs. Festus!

The Killer Shrews is twenty times better than it has a right to be. It was produced by the same people who made The Giant Gila Monster and was designed to run as a double feature with that movie. I like Giant Gila Monster a lot, but The Killer Shrews is even better, thanks mostly to James Best.

Best is so very excellent as Rosco P. Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazzard, but if that's all you know him from, you're missing out. He was in a ton of Westerns (both movies and TV shows) in the '50s and '60s, but I highly recommend him in Ride Lonesome, starring Randolph Scott, Pernell Roberts (Adam from Bonanza; Trapper John M.D.), Lee Van Cleef, and James Coburn. Young James Best drips with Southern charisma and he brings all of it to The Killer Shrews as Thorne Sherman, captain of a small boat hired to supply a group of scientists on an isolated island.

Sherman's boat arrives just ahead of a hurricane, so he and his mate make plans to stay overnight with the scientists until the storm blows past. Unfortunately, the scientists' experiments have gotten out of control and the island is now swarming with mutant shrews. It's a classic setup as the diverse group has to hole up in the scientists' compound and hope that the monsters don't dig through the adobe walls before morning. Like any good horror movie, the focus is on the characters, who have to survive not only the creatures, but also each other.

Ken Curtis (Festus from Gunsmoke) plays Jerry Farrell, a cowardly, drunken scientist who's engaged to the boss' daughter and feels threatened by Sherman. He's a classic archetype, but Curtis plays him especially well and he's hatable without being a cartoon. Farrell's feud and mutual distrust with Sherman drives the drama as much as the monsters (played as convincingly as possible by puppets and disguised dogs). Ingrid Goude plays the daughter and has real chemistry with Best.

Curtis was also one of the producers of the film (and Giant Gila Monster) along with Gordon McLendon, who also plays an especially detached, clinically-minded scientist. McLendon owned a chain of drive-in movie theaters and network of radio stations, so it was his money that paid for the two movies. It was also his radio connections that created the DJ subplot in Giant Gila Monster.

The reason I bring that up though is to point out that this wasn't Hollywood money. Killer Shrews is an independent film and it looks like it. But it has some great acting and drama that lift it above its budget and goofy concept. It's not quite on the same level as Night of the Living Dead, but it's up there.

Rating: Classic.

The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

Who's in it?: Don Sullivan (Teenage Zombies); Fred Graham (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon)

What's it about?: A giant lizard attacks people around a rural town.

How is it?: Groovy, Dad. It's way low budget, but director Ray Kellogg knew how to use his limited resources. He doesn't even try to put people and monster in the same shots together, but the editing is effective and creates the illusion that everyone's inhabiting the same space. The models that the monster appears with aren't half bad either.

Sullivan is really likable as teenager Chase Winstead. The character's perfection borders on ridiculous at times (he keeps his gang of friends under control while also holding down a job to support his widowed mother and buy leg braces for his crippled sister), but Sullivan is so affable that it's impossible to hate his character. And the more time the story spends with Chase, the more it reveals that he isn't actually perfect after all. He's a responsible kid, so he has the trust of Sheriff Jeff (Graham), but he doesn't always use that trust very well. He never outright betrays the lawman, but Chase is a kid and he makes mistakes like a kid. Just as the sheriff makes a mistake by relying so heavily on a teenager. It's a realistic depiction of a the relationship without letting either character devolve into stereotypes. It's refreshing and cool.

There's some drama about the wealthy businessman who controls the town and is upset enough when his son goes missing that he threatens the sheriff's job. That's not overdone though and otherwise, the little town looks as pleasant to live in as Mayberry. Except for the giant lizard, of course. (And props to the film for coming up with something besides "atomic accident" to explain the creature's mutation.)

Rating: Good.

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Who's in it?: Ken Clark (South Pacific); Yvette Vickers (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman); Jan Shepard (a couple of Elvis movies: King Creole and Paradise, Hawaiian Style); Michael Emmet (Night of the Blood Beast); Tyler McVey (Night of the Blood Beast); Bruno VeSota (Dementia)

What's it about?: Giant leeches. Attacking.

How is it?: Pretty uninspired for the most part. The main characters are a game warden (Clark), his girlfriend (Shepard), and her scientist father (McVey) who are investigating a report of strange animals attacking a poacher in the Everglades. The warden and scientist do most of the investigating; their girlfriend/daughter mostly makes sandwiches and takes daddy's side over a plan to dynamite the swamp  in order to destroy the unseen creatures. She's a horrible character not because she sides with her father, but because she's never allowed to express why she does. She comes across as nothing more than Daddy's Girl, so I lost all interest in whether or not Clark could repair his relationship with her.

As far as the two men go, though, their argument's one of the high points in the movie. It's not just a single conversation, but an ongoing discussion about ecology that goes through the whole story. Clark feels his main responsibility is to the environment; McVey is mostly concerned with saving human lives. Each man respects the other's opinion, but doesn't waver in his own convictions. I love stories that present both sides of a conflict equally well so that I have to think about which side I support.

A second thing to like about the movie is a subplot around a local business owner (VeSota), his wife (Vickers), and one of his customers/friends (Emmet). VeSota is a big, fat guy who wants to look tough in front of his pals, but sultry Vickers is bored with swamp life and resents her husband for keeping her there. She spends most of her time playing loud music in the bedroom in the back of VeSota's store and inspiring lust in his customers, especially Emmet. There's a steamy, Southern gothic feel to this part of the plot and it gets extra interesting when Vickers and Emmet go missing. The audience knows whether VeSota or the giant leeches are responsible, but the authorities (who mostly disbelieve the poacher's report) don't.

The last good thing I'll say about Attack of the Giant Leeches is about the completely ridiculous monster suits. They're classic in their badness, which makes them a lot of fun.

If I'm honest though, all of that is me grasping for something to like about the movie. It's mostly just people running around the swamp looking for monsters and occasionally being attacked by them. At only 62 minutes, it's still a little long.

Rating: Okay.