THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9411230239
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Frank Roberts
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
In the Nov. 16 edition of The Daily Break, I wrote about a friend of mine, Gregory Walcott, the handsome leading man in a movie most critics agree is probably the worst ever made, ``Plan 9 From Outer Space.''
Eventually, the lemon turned into lemonade - the flukey, fakey film became a cult movie - and Greg, retired from acting for several years, is the subject of numerous interviews.
Directed by Ed Wood, the curious subject of a Tim Burton biography film in which Greg has a cameo, the movie has put the Walcott name back in the spotlight.
Writing that story, for some reason, inspired me to do something about some other horror and/or sci-fi films from the 1920s to the mid-1960s.
I checked some books on the subject to check the most-oft used words in the genres. Lazy guy that I am, I settled for movies using the words that are first in the titles.
It could take a year and a day to look for titles with those key words sitting somewhere in the middle.
There are 18 standout words: beast, black, blood, bride, cat, creature, curse, day, dead, devil, doctor, ghost, horror, house, invasion, invisible, lost, mad.
Moving along alphabetically, here is a beastly look.
``Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,'' ``Beast of Hollow Mountain,'' ``Beast of the Yellow Light, ``Beast of Yucca Flats,'' ``Beast That Killed Women,'' ``Beast With a Million Eyes,'' ``Beast With Five Fingers.''
And the winner is: ``Beast That Killed Women.'' I mean, how can you top this for plot structure? The story concerns a gorilla in a nudist camp. I'm not making that up - honest. My imagination does not stretch that far.
``Bride and the Beast'' - ah, two of the words - is also a winner. This one is about a poor schnook who marries a girl who was once - again, I repeat, I ain't making this up - who was once a gorilla.
``Gor-illa my dreams, I love you . . . ''
If you love dogs, you should know they do not fare as well in the flicks as cats.
Being a cat person I was interested in feline flicks such as ``Cat and the Canary'' ``Cat Creeps'' ``Catman of Paris'' ``Cat o' Nine Tails'' ``Cat People'' (a classic, really) ``Cat Women of the Moon.''
The latter is the big winner in this cat-egory. It tells of some dimwitted astronauts who land on the dark side of the moon and find a civilization of cats hidden in caves. A side plot has something to do with astronauts romancing moon maids. Didn't they used to sing with Vaughn Monroe? Incidentally, the lead astronaut is Sonny Tufts, who had the acting range of early Pinocchio.
Creatures had their day - ``Creature From the Black Lagoon,'' ``Creature From the Haunted Sea,'' ``Creature of the Walking Dead,'' ``Creatures the World Forgot'' (and for good reason), ``Creature Walks Among Us,'' ``Creature With the Atom Brain,'' ``Creature With the Blue Hand.''
There is no clearcut winner, but ``Creatures the World Forgot'' did have some visual interest - Julie Ege in a rather lowcut tyrannosaurus bikini.
As for coise (as they say in Brooklyn), there is, of course, ``Curse of Dracula'' and ``Curse of Frankenstein'' plus ``Curse of Nostradamus,'' ``Curse of the Cat People'' (another classic), ``Curse of the Crying Woman,'' ``Curse of the Demon,'' ``Curse of the Faceless Man,'' ``Curse of the Fly,'' ``Curse of the Living Corpse,'' ``Curse of the Living Mummy,'' ``Curse of the Mummy's Tomb'' (are we beginning to notice a pattern here?), ``Curse of the Stone Hand,'' ``Curse of the Undead,'' ``Curse of the Voodoo'' - and ``Curse of the Werewolf.''
That's a lot of curse-ing.
Lucky you, I'm out of space; unlucky you - I'm having such a good time with this, I'll have a go at it in next month's Nostalgia column. Be warned! ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Creature From the Black Lagoon'' was one of the numerous horror
flicks with ``creature'' in the title.
by CNB