BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE

pitiful victims of Beast from Haunted Cave

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE (1959). Directed by Monte Hellman. Produced by Roger Corman.

Handsome ski instructor Gil Jackson (Michael Forest) is unaware that a certain bunch who require his services are actually a gang that needs a place to hide out after stealing gold bars from an office. The head of the gang is Alex (Frank Wolff), who gets increasingly jealous over his girlfriend Gypsy's (Sheila Noonan) attention to Gil. The other thieves are nervous Marty (Richard Sinatra) and the nerdy Byron (Wally Campo). To cause a distraction during the robbery, Byron plants some charges in a nearby mine, inadvertently killing an old man. As the gang hide out in Gil's cabin with his Native housekeeper Small Dove (Kay Jennings), a bizarre, barely seen creature with snagging tentacles comes out of the mine ... 

Michael Forest

Beast from Haunted Cave might have been a more memorable picture if Roger Corman had not just produced but directed, as the film lacks the snappy tension of, say, Attack of the Crab Monsters (which also had a better premise). Charles Griffith's screenplay serves up some moderately interesting but half-baked characters, but it's the acting that makes them come alive, with each member of the cast giving more than the picture is worth. An amusing aspect is that Byron goes into the cave to see if he can save Small Dove after she is carried off by the tentacles, but hero Gil just sort of forgets about her as he tries to run off with Gypsy. Andrew M. Costikyan has contributed some moody and atmospheric photography of the cave and the woods, while Alexander Laszlo's score (Attack of the Giant Leeches) is typically strange but effective. 

Frank Wolff and Sheila Noonan

The squeals of the monster were lifted from Burt Gordon's Earth vs the Spider, and are the sounds of the giant spider. The monster in this, played by Chris Robinson, resembles a hulking, amorphous thingamajig covered in seaweed and webbing and with skinny, pincer-like appendages. It wraps its still-living victims in flimsy cocoons and apparently wants to suck their blood. An unintentionally hilarious scene has Gypsy telling Gil that the gang members are going to kill him, then adding that she intends to "stick around with him" (after he's dead, perhaps?) This movie might have been better if there was more of the monster and less of the gang. Michael Forest, a hunk with talent, appeared in many subsequent productions, as did Wolff. Noonan was also in The Incredible Petrified World but only had a few other credits. 

Verdict: With Corman at the helm this might have been more memorable. **1/4.

THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD

Clarke, Noonan, Coates, Windsor

THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD (1959). Produced and directed by Jerry Warren. Colorized.

Professor Millard Wyman (John Carradine of Female Jungle) has invented a diving bell through which he hopes to reach uncharted depths. Inside the bell on its first dive are Craig Randell (Robert Clark of The Man from Planet X), Paul (Allen Windsor), Lauri (Sheila Noonan), and no-nonsense reporter Dale (Phyllis Coates of Panther Girl of the Kongo), whose fiance has just told her to get lost. Something goes wrong with the bell and the foursome wind up stuck on the ocean bottom, but are able to swim out -- where they somehow find themselves inside empty caverns and discover a grizzled old man (Maurice Bernard) who has been stuck there for fourteen years! With chance of rescue unlikely, will they ever be able to reach the surface? 

Robert Clarke and Allen Windsor

Although Incredible Petrified World is almost universally excoriated, I find the premise intriguing and the film itself, aside from some tedious padded stretches, absorbing. True, this is not a grand adventure film with a big budget, but it has genuine suspense as you wonder how on earth the principals will get out of this depressing predicament. John W. Steiner's script presents characters with some dimension to them (with typical fifties attitudes), although it can't overcome the sheer illogic of the film. There doesn't appear to be an air lock in the diving bell, so it makes no sense that it wouldn't get flooded when the participants emerge. Exactly where in hell the caverns are in  relation to the bell and the surface is never made clear. Why don't they just swim to the surface? (One can only imagine that the diving bell is stuck in some crevice under the caverns, but this is never made clear.) The scene when Craig confesses his love to Lauri and says that they can be happy with each other -- stuck Lord knows where in endless caverns for the rest of eternity! -- hardly comes off as especially realistic. 

John Carradine (behind ladder) with the cast

The actors do the best they can with the material, with Carradine as professional and adept as ever as the professor. Windsor, Noonan, and Bernard had very few other credits, although Clarke and Coates had busy careers. Coates, almost as bitchy in this as her Lois Lane in The Adventures of Superman, makes a good impression in the movie, which she did as a favor to old boyfriend Jerry Warren; she never got paid for it! The film has atmosphere, due to the settings in Tucson Arizona's Colossal Cave, and the colorizing process works well. 

Verdict: Hardly for every taste, but not as awful as its reputation. ***.