Monsters and Madmen

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Following last year´s release of the sub-sub-B-movie "Equinox," Criterion returns to the low budget horror patch with its new "Monsters and Madmen" boxed set.

The two-disc set includes four films from producers Richard and Alex Gordon. The brothers were born in London where they nurtured an obsession with movies that they brought with them when they moved to New York in 1947. Intent on breaking into the movie biz, they each went their separate ways. Richard stayed in New York where he became a film importer and distributor, while Alex moved west where he earned his B-movie chops by writing the stories for the immortal Ed Wood films "Jail Bait" and "Bride of the Monster," and also helped to found American International Pictures where a youngster named Roger Corman was also known to lurk on occasion.

The brothers worked almost exclusively in the cheapie horror and science-fiction fields, and the "Monsters and Madmen" boxed set includes two examples from each genre. If the films anything in common (besides the Gordons´ participation) it´s that they´re all based on intriguing premises, though the execution does not always match the promise of the idea.

The horror side is filled by two Boris Karloff thriller chillers (or is it "chiller thrillers") from the late 1950s: "The Haunted Strangler" (1958) and "Corridors of Blood" (1959). From the science-fiction realm, we have two cold war classics: "First Man into Space" (1959) and "The Atomic Submarine" (1959).

"The Haunted Strangler"
Karloff plays author James Rankin who becomes obsessed with investigating the twenty year-old case of the Haymarket Strangler. Rankin is convinced that the wrong man was executed for the crime, and he decides to prove it no matter how steep the price. But even the brilliant Rankin can´t begin to fathom just how much it will really cost him. Karloff was 70 at the time of the film, but he remains a robust and commanding screen presence. He´s even asked to do his share of tasking physical performance. The film´s highlights are the surprise twist (no spoilers here) and the magic Karloff produces with a mere facial contortion, one that saved a tremendous amount of money on the film´s makeup budget. A little bit of grave robbing and even some robust female flesh spice up the proceedings.


"Corridors of Blood"
If reading the opening credit "And Christopher Lee as Resurrection Joe" causes your pulse to quicken a bit, this just might be the film for you. Karloff portrays Dr. Bolton, a brilliant surgeon in 1840s London, which an opening title card informs us was "before the discovery of Anesthesia." That sets up the premise pretty well, and it´s a chilling one. A trip to the surgeon isn´t fun today; in 1840s London, it meant unbearable pain. A surgeon´s skill was directly linked to the speed at which he could saw through bone, all while trying to ignore his patient´s blood-curdling screams.

Bolton dreams of making surgery painless, but his fellow surgeons mock him. "Pain and the knife are inseparable." Bolton plows on with his experiments anyway, and soon discovers a nitrous oxide mix that works. Unfortunately, his only test subject is himself, and repeated exposure to his strange brew leaves him about four cards shy of a flush. A As loopy as the laughing gas makes him, the kindly Dr. Bolton is ultimately undermined by his own humanitarian impulses. His charity work in the dirt poor Seven Dials section of London backfires on him when the very people he tries to help rope him into a gruesome plot to sell fresh corpses to the hospital. That´s where Resurrection Joe figures in, as you might guess.

It´s a pleasure to see a relatively young Lee, just getting his start as a Hammer horror icon, work alongside the veteran Karloff. Karloff also sparkles in a role where he finally gets to show his patrician side. Unfortunately, despite the sound premise and the presence of Karloff and Lee, the film never really amounts to much. Endless location shifts back and forth from the hospital or Bolton´s laboratory to Seven Dials slows the pace to a dull plod.

First Man Into Space
I have no idea if Stanley Kubrick ever saw this nifty piece of sci-fi paranoia, but several shots in the nifty opening space flight sequence bear a close resemblance to the closeups on Dave Bowman during the Stargate sequence in "2001." By 1959, Sputnik had already been launched, but man had not yet reached space: Yuri Gagarin would make in 1961, John Glenn in 1962. Scientists remained uncertain about the effects that factors such as zero gravity or exposure to space radiation would have on the human mind and body. Hotshot pilot Dan Prescott (Bill Edwards) shares none of those concerns; he just wants to be the first man in space. He gets his wish. Oh boy does he ever get it.

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