Edgar G. Ulmer started his career working for the early German masters of Expressionism like Fritz Lang and F. W. Marnau. He set out on his own doing ethnic films in the Ukraine before coming to America and trying his hand here. His most notable film has to be the 1934 The Black Cat, which brought Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi together for the first time and remains a classic to this very day. Unfortunately for Ulmer, he fell in love with the wife of Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Pictures. He later married Shirley, but the result was he was barred from every major studio in Hollywood. He had a huge box office success in 1934 with Universal, but his affair in 1936 ended any chance he would get to ride that future. He was relegated to the independent studios where he had little money and a hard time getting good actors or distribution.
Now his films are pretty much cult classics and have inspired future big names like Joe Dante and Steven Spielberg. If you’ve seen any of his films, it’s from late night television edits or bad bootleg VHS copies you bought at horror conventions. Kino Classics has brought three of these films together in one collection of three discs that include many historical audio commentaries and a few nice features on the director. This is going to take you back to a different era in small-budget films. Edgar G. Ulmer knew how to use a small budget, and now you get to discover, or if you’re like me, rediscover these classics in HD for the first time.
The Man From Planet X (1951)
“I don’t know if she’s still alive or not. They’ve had her now for the past 24 hours. I’m equally uncertain as to the fate of her father, Professor Elliot. Both are probably dead. The odds are 100:1 I, too will be finished before another sun rises, but tonight I’m going to fight for my life, and there are larger issues, so perilously at stake, affecting all mankind. If I fail, this seems most likely, the consequences to humanity defy the imagination. As the only trained reporter who has been in a position to observe the terror from its inception, and as one of the few living humans who has actually met, face to face, the Man From Planet X.”
Astronomer Professor Elliot (Bond) and his daughter Enid (Field) have sequestered themselves on an island off the coast of Scotland. A new planet has been discovered. It’s moving into an intercept course with Earth, and this island will be the point where the two planets will come closest, so Elliot believes there will be something of value to observe here. Strange rays have been bouncing off the planet, and this is where those rays converge. John Lawrence (Clarke) has been invited to observe the results and arrives on the mainland only to be shunned when he mentions wanting to go there. It’s the fate of Renfield as he’s asked to be taken to Dracula’s castle. Of course, John can’t be turned away and arrives to encounter Enid, whom he knew when she was a child. He notes how she’s grown since that time. We know where this is going. Elliot is also being visited by a Dr. Mears (Schallert), who has some kind of a shady past, and it sounds like a prison term in his rearview mirror. He’s not to be trusted, of course.
While out for a drive together to town, Enid and John witness an alien craft out on the moors and encounter a strange “person” with a spacesuit and helmet on. These advanced beings apparently have a design weakness in their suits. The regulator for whatever gas they breathe keeps getting shut off, and it’s designed so it’s hard for the explorer to reach it and turn it back on. John helps him, hoping to show goodwill toward the space traveler. When this traveler is brought back to the observatory Dr. Mears uses the weakness to gain the powerful knowledge of the race and discovers he is the first of an invading force that will come to Earth when that close encounter between the planets occurs. Of course, he escapes and captures Enid, and John has just a few hours to rescue her before the authorities bomb the crap out of the ship. With such limited time, John has to act fast, so he naturally takes a couple of hours to write out the whole story by hand so it can survive him. That’s what leads us into this mess. The day is saved with the requisite seconds to spare, so he had time to write it out after all.
This is one of the more interesting of Ulmer’s films and has gained more than a small cult following, bringing the man himself to the Joe Dante Looney Tunes: Back In Action scene that brings back several cult favorite monsters from this era, most notably the mutant from This Island Earth. Ulmer also knew how to get a big bang out of little bucks, and this was filmed on the grand sets left over from the 1948 Victor Fleming film Joan Of Arc with Ingrid Bergman in the title role. So the film instantly gets some big-budget sets in which to play out the science fiction drama, one that has inspired many filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, who was inspired for elements of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind from this film.
The cast includes Robert Clarke, who would also become an investor in some of Ulmer’s films. Clarke can be found in the recently reviewed Hideous Sun Demon and become a notable figure in the 1950’s sci-fi movement. Margaret Field is a bit underused as daughter Enid, but you know her more for her own daughter, Sally Field, who was four when Mom made this film. We all know William Schallert from many roles including Kirk’s amusing foil in Star Trek: The Trouble With Tribbles and as the father to twin Patty Dukes on The Patty Duke Show. He was a prolific television actor, appearing in literally every show made from the 60’s through much of the 80’s and through 2014. The list includes Gunsmoke, Land Of The Giants, Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best, The Bionic Woman, Zorro, Have Gun Will Travel, The Wild Wild West, Get Smart, Hawaii Five-O, The Partridge Family, The Waltons, All In The Family, Lou Grant, Matlock, Quantum Leap and HBO’s True Blood. Don’t forget films like In The Heat Of The Night and one of my all-time favorites, The Incredible Shrinking Man. Raymond Bond was the lesser known actor here, appearing in mostly small and often uncredited roles.
The Man From Planet X was one of the very first alien invasion films, beating The Thing From Another World by just weeks. Because of Ulmer’s Universal blacklisting, his films never got the kind of studio backing or distribution that they should have received. He did extremely well in the niche he carved out for himself, but what if he’d been allowed to play in the big toy boxes? “Who knows? Perhaps the greatest curse ever to befall the world, or perhaps the greatest blessing.”
Beyond The Time Barrier (1960)
“I fear our future is done, Captain. We have returned to the cave where men first lived on earth. We have returned to our birthplace to die.”
Major William Allison, Robert Clarke once again, is a test pilot for the US Air Force, and he’s about to test the new Rocket X-80. He ends up encountering a time warp that plunges him into the far future … eh … 2024. There he encounters the citizens of The Citadel, who are an advanced race of humans who live underground. Decades of atomic tests have poisoned the surface world and caused great mutations. We meet these mutants, who are basically extras in bad bathing caps to look bald. They don’t even bother to smooth out the wrinkles on those things. The ruling class is led by The Supreme (no Diana Ross), played by Vladimir Sokoloff. His daughter is Princess Tirene, played by 18-year-old Darlene Tompkins. She has the power to read minds but can’t speak. She trusts the thoughts of Allison, and there’s a bit of another reason she’s keen to have him free of the paranoid security chief who thinks he should be thrown into a dark prison with the other captured mutants. These rulers are now sterile, but it’s thought she is not, so she needs a mate, and Allison might be the only fertile guy in this century. Allison also discovers there are folks like him who were brought here from different times in the past and are called the “scapes” because it is believed they somehow escaped the radiation plague. The truth is they weren’t here when it happened. The group includes Dr. Markova, played by Arianna Ulmer, yes, the daughter of our fearless director. We also have the group’s leader Dr. Bourman, played by John Van Dreelan, and General Karl Kruse, played by Stephen Bekassy. They convince Allison that they must escape and use his plane to return to the past where they can hopefully stop the plague from happening at all. They all have their own agendas, unfortunately, and Allison must make it out of there on his own during the big breakout scene. He returns to 1960, but as an old man with a dire warning.
The film’s plot is very much a riff on H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and there’s a very good reason for that. George Pal is about to release a film based on the Wells book, and Ulmer likes to beat these big-budget films to the box office. With a small budget, he does just that. All of those elements are here except for the intentional visit through time. We have the ruling class over the mutants and the dire dystopic future. Robert Clarke was a producer of this film that was shot pretty much at the same time with our next film on the list: The Amazing Transparent Man. Both films were being produced by a company they formed called Pacific International. Unfortunately, the business went bankrupt before the films could actually be released, and the films were sold off cheap, leaving Clarke about $50,000 in the hole, which is really more like half a million bucks today.
George Lucas must have been a clear fan of the film. If you notice the opening credits, you will be reminded of a certain obscure sci-fi franchise now in the hands of Disney. ‘Nuff said. See for yourself. Universal master makeup artist Jack Pierce was on board but made it a point for the rest of his life to clarify that he was not responsible for the mutants and those shower caps. He was strictly brought on board to do the old-man work on Robert Clarke for the film’s climax.
Young Darlene Tompkins was actually to become a television stunt woman, working on such hits as Starsky & Hutch.
The film sports another connection to both George Pal and H.G. Wells. The sound effects of the war machines in the Pal film War Of The Worlds is lifted here when we first see the above ground parts of the Citadel. Again Ulmer makes the most of little money. He filmed on the outskirts of a Texas Air Force base and got great shots of aircraft and another huge outdoor location for almost no cost. So it looks a lot like a big-budget film with little money being spent. Imagine what he could have done with a George Pal budget. “We’re going all the way.”
The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
“This is the principal of X-rays, but goes farther. The X-ray pierces only to the outer shell of the body to show what lies beneath. This ray neutralizes all tissues and bones structure in the body. This machine utilizes A-rays. Alpha Rays, Beta and Omega and Ultraviolet, combining them for best affect and filtering out qualities which would hinder our operations.”
In the weakest of the Ulmer films found here, we have a well-known crook, Joey Faust (Kennedy) broken out of prison by Laura Matson (Chapman) who gets him past the roadblocks with pretty much that old Jedi mind trick of “That’s not the man you’re looking for” routine. She takes him to an isolated cabin where he meets Major Paul Krenner (Griffith). The retired army man has something that might interest the crook. His captive scientist, Dr. Ulof (Triesault) shows him an experiment where the guinea pig is an actual guinea pig. The unsuspecting animal is strapped under a scope where it is bathed in mysterious rays that make it temporarily invisible. The idea is Faust will undergo the treatment and use the power to steal certain resources he needs to continue and perfect the process. Of course, there’s the idea of hooking up with Laura to double cross Kenner and use the power for themselves. The power struggle leads to their downfall and the cops busting up the ring.
Once again Ulmer looks to H.G. Wells for a story idea that pretty much follows the plot in The Invisible Man. The invisibility effects are actually pretty good, and the animated sequence of turning visible and invisible is actually pretty good for the time and a highlight to the film. Unfortunately the John Lewis script doesn’t have much to offer beyond the Wells elements and the clear connection of the name Faust being used for a guy making a deal with a “devil”. Kenner is also hiding the fact that eventually the process will kill the subject, driving the scared assistant into the arms of Faust. It’s a very short film, coming in at around 57 minutes.
Ivan Triesault has one of the best scenes in the film as the scientist forced to cooperate. He was a Nazi doctor who experimented on the denizens of the concentration camps. He eventually killed his own family without knowing who they were. He delivers an impressive monologue as he explains the story to Faust. It’s a pretty effective moment and is the only true highlight of a throwaway film. His daughter is being held hostage, so you are caught feeling some sympathy for a guy who was truly a real-life monster. He was mostly a television actor with a small role in 300 Spartans. Marguerite Chapman appeared in films like The Seven-Year Itch with Marylin Monroe and Charlie Chan At The Wax Museum. Douglas Kennedy appeared in over 100 Westerns on both television and the big screen. James Griffith also appeared in many television westerns as well as cult favorites like the Adam West Batman and Kolchak The Night Stalker.
Edgar G. Ulmer had the bad luck to fall in love with the wrong woman. It killed a promising career and leaves us here and now with a lot of questions about what might have been. There’s no way to guess those answers, but we still have some pretty cool films that Kino Lorber has now brought to us in HD for a whole new generation to enjoy. “I’m ready any time you are.”