Happy 50th Birthday To Some Very Classic (Cult and Otherwise) Movies

Turner Classics Movie has been featuring a lot lately on Hollywood in 1939--arguably the greatest year ever for quality films in Hollywood.

A 70th year anniversary, though, sounds a little forced--like they didn't possess the patience to wait for 2014 in order to do a proper 75th anniversary of Hollywood's greatest films (Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Hunchback of Notre Dame... the list is impressive. Look it up).


Fifty years, to me, sounds like a better, more natural anniversary to celebrate...and 1959 had some very decent films to laud: The 39 Steps, Ben-Hur, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Rio Bravo, Pork Chop Hill, and, of course, Some Like It Hot.

This was also the era of some great B-movie science fiction and horror--the kind of stuff one might see on Saturday afternoons after the cartoons were over, and the sort of movies that enjoy various levels of cult status today.

Here are five movies enjoying their fiftieth birthday. Some age better than others, but all are worthy of celebrating fifty years from now.



First up is the Ib Melchior classic The Angry Red Planet. It's probably best remembered for its attempt at special effects using what was called CineMagic which tried to pass animation (pre-computer!) off as live-action.

The story is set within a frame (making it easier to edit it down for time for TV broadcasts) in which the only two survivors of the first manned mission to Mars returns. As scientists work on treating the survivors, we get the story of the mission's exploration of the Red Planet, complete with giant amoebas, carnivorous plants, and the "rat-bat-spider."

As the planetary explorers are chased off the planet, they receive a warning from a three-eyed alien to never return to Mars.



The use of color was an interesting gamble on Melchior's part. While on board the spaceship, everything is pretty much cast in a blue light which makes the red glow of the ship's porthole all the more menacing. What was a swing-but-a-miss, though, was the red cell shading of everything (the "Cinemagic") outside the ship on the Martian surface. It's an effect that quickly becomes annoying as it's hard to make out some of the details, and seems to serve only to disguise some of the poorer special effects.

Still... for a B-movie afternoon--you could find worse ways to spend your time.

Who could forget the William Castle's The House on Haunted Hill starring the irreplaceable Vincent Price?

Forget the remakes. Nothing beats the original as Price, playing eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren, invites five guests (delivered in a hearse!) to a special party in honor of his fourth wife. Every guest who survives the night in his mansion (after the doors are locked and the lights cut) receives a wopping $10,000. T

here's some pretty clever stuff going on here as hysteria slowly consumes the guests and panic sets in. Vincent Price is pulling on more strings than just a skelleton on a pulley. The film is particularly notable because of producer-director William Castle's use of gimmicks when promoting his films. In this case, the gimmick was the magic of "Emergo" in which a skeleton on a series of pulleys and lines flew over audiences' heads at a crucial plot point.

While the effect is lost on home viewing, the movie itself is well worth a watch.


What's the most famous B-movie disaster in history?

The most ridiculed and beloved movie of all time?

If your answer is anything other than Plan 9 From Outer Space, then back to the kiddie matinees for you.

This ultra-low-budget movie has inspired more articles and books than I can conveniently count, and anything I say here is not going to do the movie justice.

Whether or not you can enjoy a movie for its badness, it's still a significant film if for no other reason than its cult popularity.

Bad acting.

Laughable special effects.

Bizarre script that seems to have no concept of how terrible it is.

All played very straight.

The plot? Aliens invade Earth by animating the recently dead into walking corpses. It was Bela Lugosi's last film. He died during production and was replaced by another man taller than Lugosi who spent his screen time covering his face with a cape. Unconvincingly. It was also the film debut of Tor Johnson.

You will love it or hate it, but everyong should watch it at least once.


Speaking of low-budget... remember the dogs dressed in animal skins in The Killer Shrews?

This was a popular movie on the Saturday afternoon circuit.

While delivering supplies to a scientist living on a remote island, things go awry as the research to reduce world hunger by reducing the size of people has the unexpected side effect of producing giant, poisonous shrews which then terrorize everyone on the island. As B-movies go, this one wasn't terrible if you could get past the cheap effects (seeing a theme here?) with the shrews themselves. There was some honest-to-goodness suspense at work. The Killer Shrews is also an early example of what would eventually become the "survival horror" genre.

Put this back to back with Attack of the Mushroom People (1963), you've got a fun afternoon of island horror.


Last, but far from least, is one of the few SFnal movies of the year 1959 that actually had pretty decent effects--and a decent budget. Journey To the Center of the Earth starring the incomparable James Mason and a very young Pat Boone (based on the ever-popular Jules Verne novel) has some pretty clever moments of action, adventure, humor, and sensuwunda.

Following a 300 year -old trail, Mason and Boone (along with others including Gertrude the duck) delve into the bowels of the Earth to discover dinosaurs, strange landscapes, giant mushrooms, a subterranean ocean, and the remains of Atlantis. It's a fun movie with some great cinematography.

I think of all the movies I've discussed, this one is probably the one I'd recommend the most (followed closely by Haunted Hill).


1959 produced some fun movies that eventually turned into cult classics.

For the most part, the special effects were primitive--even by 1959 standards--but they were often just the victims of low budgets and technological limitations. That some special effects were even tried in the first place is probably something to be applauded.


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