In (Faint) Praise of Bert I. Gordon - By Philip Smolen

Articles & Profiles: In (Faint) Praise of Bert I. Gordon - By Philip Smolen
Posted on Monday, June 01, 2009 @ 00:29:17 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

I always wanted to thank Bert I. Gordon (aka Mr. BIG) for giving me one of the most pleasant nightmares I ever had. When I was in fourth grade I was suffering the daily terrors and torments of Sister Evalda (the ten ton nun). A horrible creature who hated and abused children, Sister Evalda (notice - only a couple of vowels away from EVIL!) took it upon herself to mistreat (sometimes physically) every child in her class all in the name of making good obedient Catholics for the church. As you can imagine, there was no place to hide from her.

Bert, however, gave me some respite. I had seen Earth vs. the Spider one Saturday on Chiller Theatre, and that night, I had a dream that my school was being attacked by Bert’s giant arachnid. While fleeing in terror with the rest of my classmates, I ran past ol’ ten ton herself waddling helplessly. She screamed at me to help her get away, but instead, I purposely tripped her. As I turned around to see how close the spider was to getting me, my mind presented me with the delicious image of my real life horror movie monster being devoured by Bert’s cinematic one. That image sustained me for the rest of fourth grade. Any time things got bad I would roll that image over and over again in my head and grin evilly. It was priceless. Thanks, Mr. BIG.

Has there ever been a more excoriated low budget film maker than Bert I. Gordon? He’s probably had more movies ripped apart on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 than anyone else. And looking at his films with an adult’s sensibilities, it’s easy to see why. Although there were exceptions, the acting in his movies was generally rudimentary. The scripts certainly were perfunctory at best especially the ones that he wrote. Bert’s effects were always obvious. You knew where the hard matte and split screen lines were. Whenever he showed his monsters interact with his cast, they were always washed out and pale. And he showed no subtlety or nuance with his direction. It was all about getting the shot in the can and moving the story forward. He even stooped to cross promoting his films in some of his other films! In other words, he was the epitome of a 1950’s exploitation film maker.

Exploiting a trend? Hell, he beat it to death. What’s that? There’s a big bug craze going on with the likes of Them and Tarantula burning up the box office? Well, Bert felt he could top that with the likes of Beginning of the End and Earth vs. the Spider. What that you say? The Incredible Shrinking Man is packing them in at the drive in? Bert piled on that trend with The Amazing Colossal Man and Attack of the Puppet People. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is box office king? Oh, really? Well then, Bert said, why not try my The Boy and the Pirates and The Magic Sword. Yes, Bert I Gordon’s movies were about as subtle as a poke in the eye.

But when you’re a little kid, you don’t want subtlety. In fact that’s the last thing you want or need in your entertainment. You have no patience for subtlety. You want a monster movie that’s simple and direct and you want it now. That’s what Bert delivered. Forget about a slow build up. He never tried to quietly build terror or mood in his films like a Jacque Tourner or even a Jack Arnold. Bert bludgeoned you for 75 minutes. The monster was usually introduced within 20 minutes and the last hour was spent trying to get rid of the beast. And that was all right for generations of monster movie goers. Bert’s strength was his directness. And as a kid, I (like thousands of other monster-loving kids) really appreciated it. He was plugged directly into kids’ psyches.

As Gary Westfahl says in his Biographical Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Film:

"The topic of small creatures becoming huge, trite and uninteresting to adults is more meaningful and evocative for children, a significant portion of his [Gordon’s] audience, who are tiny people living in a world of large, looming adults." - (See citations section #1 at the bottom for the reference info on this quote.)

So I think a retrospective of the first ten years of Bert’s film career is in order. Why only the first ten years? Because that was Bert’s most fertile period. He made as many films between 1955 and1965 (11) as he for the rest of his career (10). These first 11 films may not represent classic or iconic films, but to many of us graying boomers, they represent very fond memories of our creature feature craving past.

1. KING DINOSAUR (Lippert Pictures, US – 1955)

When a new planet enters our solar system (what? what did it do – make a wrong left turn at Proxima Centauri?) Earth quickly sends up an interstellar rocket ship (queue V-2 stock footage) with a crew of four to investigate. On board are a professor (Richard Gordon), a chemist (Wanda Curtis), a doctor (Bill Bryant) and a mineralogist (Patricia Gallagher) (hey, which one of these yobs is flying the ship?). Once they land on Planet Nova, they discover an earth-like planet that’s going through a prehistoric past similar to ours. They hear incessant roaring from a nearby island and investigate. There they run into a giant armadillo, a mammoth (scenes from 1940’s One Million BC) and several dinosaurs (lizards and alligators) including an iguana that’s called a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The lizard corners Bryant and Gallagher in a cave (a recurring theme from Bert) and they’re forced to wait there until the alligator fight to escape. Then they blow up the island with a handy dandy portable atomic bomb making Nova safe for future exploration! This was a very humble entry for Bert, so there’s not much here to recommend. Even as a boy, I was annoyed that they called the iguana a T-rex. At one point it briefly stands on its hind legs, but that didn’t fool anyone. The only cool monster in the film was the giant bug that the explorers run into. It buzzes incessantly and looks creepy. As with most of Bert’s films, there is little interplay between the actors and the creatures, but that never bothered me as a kid. King Dinosaur is slim pickings from Mr. BIG, but it did show that he had ambition.

Quotable Movie Line: “I’m glad to see you’re both all right. I bought the atomic bomb.”

2. Beginning of the End (Republic Pictures – 1957)

Beginning of the End seems to be Bert’s answer to Them. When photojournalist Audrey Aimes (Peggie Castle) comes to the small town of Ludlow, Illinois, she’s at first refused entry by National Guardsmen, but eventually she’s allowed to enter and document the total destruction of the town. Authorities are at a total loss to explain the devastation and disappearance of the entire town’s population. Audrey begins snooping around and finds scientist Ed Wainwright (Peter Graves) engaged in growing gigantic fruits and vegetables with radioactive nutrients. It isn’t long before the culprits are discovered. Locusts have fed on radioactive grain and grown to the size of armored personnel carriers. And now they’re on the move, threatening Chicago and the entire nation. It’s up to Ed to find a way of destroying the monsters before Chicago has to be nuked! Beginning of the End usually inspires one of two reactions from people. They either collapse in peels of laughter or get a crazed look in their eye and get all excited about it. The film is undeniably silly and boring in the early scenes. While there are many ridiculous scenes (including locusts crawling off the photo of the Wrigley building onto open sky), there’s also a crazed energy in all of the attack scenes. Bert was really trying with this one. Peter Graves turns in a good performance and Morris Ankrum is on hand to lend credible support as a sympathetic army general. The swarming locusts really do seem unstoppable at times and do present a (mostly) convincing menace. My favorite scene is when Graves fights off the locusts with his trusty Thompson machine gun while waiting for the signal to lure them to the lake. I remember reenacting this scene with several of my buddies time and time again. We had hours of fun pretending that the grasshoppers were actually invading New Jersey!

Quotable Movie Line: “We may be witnessing the beginning of an era that could mean the complete annihilation of man. The beginning of the end.”

3. THE CYCLOPS (RKO Pictures – 1957)

This was Bert’s first attempt to create a gigantic human menace. It was also the first time that he used prosthetic makeup in one of his films. Gloria Talbot stars as Susan who hires James Craig, Tom Drake and Lon Chaney Jr. to fly her into a remote area of Mexico to search for her lost fiancé. There they run into the usual assortment of Bert’s back projected creatures (a falcon, an iguana, a Gila monster, a spider and a rodent) before confronting Gloria’s ex who has become a 25 foot giant with a hugely distorted face and one glassy eye. He chases our heroes around and traps them in a cave (what again?), kills Chaney and then is attacked by a large snake, which allows Talbot and the others to escape. He’s eventually killed by Craig with a flaming spear (got any idea where Craig sticks it?). The Cyclops is one of Bert’s weaker efforts probably because he wrote the screenplay as well as produced and directed. Gloria Talbot’s character is one of the dumbest people on the planet. After being told by Craig that creatures living in that area grow because of the radiation in the soil, she still doesn’t get that her boyfriend (lost three years) is the Cyclops! Craig has to spell it out for her in an extraneous, poorly acted scene. Bert’s creatures are really transparent here. You can actually see through the mattes. On the plus side, Jack Young’s makeup on the Cyclops is suitably grotesque and Albert Glasser composes a good driving score. Overall though, The Cyclops is pretty tepid stuff from Bert.

Quotable Movie Line: “It means that there’s no limit to the potential size of the animal. It grows continuously. The secret limitless multiplicity of living cells in ordinary animals!”

4. THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (American International – 1957)

This is probably Bert’s most famous movie. Colonel Glen Manning (Glenn Langan) tries to help a downed pilot whose plane crashes at the site of the new plutonium bomb test. Before he can rescue the pilot, the bomb explodes and Colonel Manning is subjected to the full force of the explosion. But miraculously, he doesn’t die. Instead, he begins growing at a rate of eight to ten feet a day. Soon he’s 60 feet tall and a growing problem for the U.S. Army. Glenn’s fiancé (Cathy Foster) is at first relieved to see that Glenn survived the explosion, but is puzzled when a few days later the hospital tells her that they’ve never heard of him. She tracks him down to a secret hospital in Nevada and is understandably upset at his new condition. Glen rapidly loses his mind until by the end he becomes a monster and rampages through Las Vegas, destroying landmarks and generally making a nuisance out of himself until the army blows him off Boulder Dam. The Amazing Colossal Man was a hit for Bert and American International and it’s easy to see why. First and foremost there is Glen Langan’s performance. He generates a lot of sympathy as the soldier who can neither control nor reverse the massive changes going on in his body. Then there are Bert’s effects. This time instead of just mattes and split screens, he had some special props built as well. They add credibility (except for the giant hypodermic needle made by Paul Blaisdell – that’s just hilarious). Overall The Amazing Colossal Man is one of Bert’s most satisfying “giant” movies.

Quotable Movie Line: “I just don’t want to grow anymore. I don’t want to grow anymore!”

5. WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST (American International – 1958)

Following the success of The Amazing Colossal Man, Bert and American International followed it up quickly (less than a year later) with this cheap sequel. After falling off Boulder dam Glenn Manning (Dean Parkin this time) somehow survives the fall and floats down to Mexico (although his mind is gone and his face is horribly scarred). There he hides in the mountains and chases bread and vegetable trucks for his food. Glenn’s sister Joyce (Sally Fraser) hears the rumors and drives down along with a sympathetic army major (Roger Pace). Once they find Glenn, they tranquilize him with some doped up bread and bring him to Los Angeles. He breaks free of course and hides in Griffith Park before terrorizing a school bus and finally committing suicide by grabbing some high tension power lines. It’s strange. War of the Colossal Beast contains some better effects than any of Bert’s previous films, but in every other way it’s inferior. Starting with a pretty worthless script from George Worthing Yates, the film goes quickly downhill. First, the film runs for barely an hour and at least six minutes of the running time are scenes from The Amazing Colossal Man. Also there are no scenes of Glenn terrorizing the city of Los Angeles. He runs around the airport for a while and after that he just hides in some miniature trees waiting to be spotted by the army. But perhaps the greatest disappointment is that you have absolutely no sympathy for Glenn Manning. Here, he’s just a mindless monster. The first film made a point of showing you what he was going through. Here, he just wanders around roaring. This is a real letdown for Bert after the high of The Amazing Colossal Man.

Quotable Movie Line: “There’s no place in the civilized world for a creature that big!”

6. ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (American International – 1958)

Bob Westley (John Agar) starts a new job at the doll making factory of kindly Mr. Franz (the venerable John Hoyt). While there he meets Sally (June Kenny) and sparks fly. They go out to the drive in (to see The Amazing Colossal Man of course) and fall in love. They decide to get married and tell the kindly doll maker that they’ll be leaving his company. And that’s when things go down hill. You see Mr. Franz has a thing about being left alone. He won’t stand for it. So instead of murdering them (as most movie psychopaths do), he shrinks them down to doll size with his homemade shrinking machine. He stores them in vacuum tubes containing a special gas that keeps them in suspended animation. Then every so often, he takes out his collection of doll people (there are at least six) so they can keep him company! As you can imagine, Bob and Sally are none too happy with their plight and spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to get normal sized. Attack of the Puppet People is a Bert Gordon movie that you sit through mildly interested, but not really enjoying. The problem is that John Hoyt is so likable as Mr. Franz that he’s not a real villain, just misguided. He never harms any of his captives (say like in 1940’s Dr. Cyclops). So there’s no place for the story to go except to construct obstacles to getting the puppet people back to normal size. John Hoyt gives a fun performance as the likeable Franz. And Albert Glasser contributes another good score. Bert’s effects are used more judicially this time with a lot of split screens, rear projections and enlarged props (courtesy of Paul Blaisdell again). Attack of the Puppet People is a disappointing film, but not a total failure. I mean as a kid I always wished that Mr. Franz was real because then I would have asked him to shrink Sister Evalda for me!

Quotable Movie Line: “Please don’t leave me. I’ll be all alone!”

7. EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (American International – 1958)

When the father of pretty (and whiny) Carol Flynn (June Kenny) doesn’t come home for her birthday, she enlists the aid of sackless boyfriend Mike Simpson (Gene Persson) to retrace her father’s steps. They find his destroyed truck down a nearby embankment and enter a forbidden cave to continue their search. Unfortunately, they fall into a massive spider web and are attacked by a gigantic spider. Barely escaping with their lives, they high tail it back to town to try to warn the sheriff (Gene Roth). When he doesn’t believe their story, they turn to high school science teacher Mr. Kingman (Ed Kemmer) who does. He then convinces the sheriff to bring a posse to the cave to search. And just to be safe, they bring along a truck load of DDT! Once in the cave, the group is attacked by the giant arachnid. The spider is killed (or so it seems) and bought back to the high school gym to be studied (at the encouragement of the science teacher). Of course it wakes up, rampages through the town, and eventually heads back to the cave where Carol and Mike are looking for her father’s gift that she dropped. There it’s finally cornered and destroyed, but not before Mr. Kingman calls his insurance company to see if his personal policy covers being a dumb ass and allowing a town to be destroyed by a massive arachnid! Earth vs. the Spider was Bert’s last giant bug movie for almost 20 years and it was a good thing. You could just feel that he was running out of ideas here. There’s not even an explanation for the creature. It just exists. The town officials treat it as a big nuisance. The rampaging scenes are decent and there’s a good kinetic energy to them, but the actors here are let down by a bad script (old George Worthing Yates again). Along with his usual spilt screens and props, Bert uses slides of Carlsbad Caverns and superimposes his cast into the slides. It’s not particularly effective, but it was at least an attempt to do something different. Another major problem is that the spider changes size throughout the film. At first he’s as big as aircraft carrier. Next, he fits into the high school gym. Then when he escapes he’s gigantic. When you watch Earth vs. the Spider you get the feeling that Bert was painting himself in a corner. All of the clichés of the genre had been overused by him and there was no place else to go.

Quotable Movie Line: “Do you realize how easy it would be for them to overcome us? Then instead of being the hunter, we’d become the hunted. They’d be our masters. They’d feed on us.”

8. TORMENTED (ALLIED ARTISTS – 1960)

Pity poor jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson). He lives in a wonderful beach house, he’s engaged to pretty and rich Meg (Lugene Sanders) and he’s got a big concert coming up at Carnegie Hall. Just when everything is going his way, along comes his old flame, busty lounge singer Vi (Julie Redding) who threatens to disrupt Tom’s perfect life by exposing his unfaithful past. So Tom lures Vi to the old rickety haunted lighthouse on the island and does nothing when she leans against a weakened barricade and falls to her death. Tom feels no guilt so he goes about with his wedding plans. Dead Vi, however, has other plans. Soon her body parts are showing up at the worst possible times. There’s a hand here, a disembodied head there. What’s a guy to do but eventually murder a person or two and join his dead ex in the land of non-living. This was Bert’s first attempt at an adult ghost story but it’s pretty mediocre stuff. The main problem is that the screenplay (by George Worthing Yates) fails to make Vi a sympathetic character. In the few minutes she’s alive, she bitchy, clinging and conniving. Another problem is that Bert cast his daughter Susan Gordon as the little sister to Meg and far too much screen time is spent on how the little brat feels about her big sister’s wedding to Tom. Richard Carlson tries hard and there are nice cameos from Joe Turkel (as a sleazy blackmailer) and Gene Roth. Bert doesn’t do a lot of effects here, and they actually blend in better than in some of his earlier films. It’s obvious that Bert wanted to branch out, but Tormented doesn’t hold up as well as some of Bert’s giant monster on the loose movies.

Quotable Movie Line: “I’ll never let you marry Meg. You belong to me Tom. You belong to a ghost!”

9. THE BOY AND THE PIRATES (United Artists – 1960)

The Boy and the Pirates marked more firsts for Bert I. Gordon. He finally secured a deal with a major film company (United Artists) and he was able to make his first color film and his first real children’s movie. Charles Herbert (of The Fly and The Colossus of New York fame) stars as Jimmy, a pirate obsessed boy who toils under the modern yoke of school and parents. One day he finds an unusual bottle at the beach. The bottle contains a genie (of course) and the genie grants Jimmy the wish he always wanted – to be a pirate! The boy is whisked away to the days of swashbucklers and he finds himself on the ship of none other than that most ruthless pirate of all – Blackbeard! He spends the rest of the movie trying to avoid being killed and learning that he didn’t have such a bad life in Massachusetts after all. The Boy and the Pirates is the one Bert I. Gordon movie that I haven’t seen. It sounds like a fun premise and I would probably like it (especially if I was seven or eight). I don’t know if the film has ever been released on DVD, but I’ll keep an ever vigilant eye out for it. Comments anyone?

Quotable Movie Line: None

10. THE MAGIC SWORD (United Artists – 1962)

Here it is. This is Bert’s best film. Yes it suffers from some silly dialogue and too much slapstick comedy (audience pandering), but Bert came up with some great images that burned themselves into a lot of kids’ brains. Gary Lockwood plays George, a young English lad smitten by the beauty of the lovely princess Helene (Ann Helm). She’s captured by the evil warlock Lodac (a wonderfully fruity Basil Rathbone) and sentenced to be fed to his two-headed dragon. George, of course, will have none of that. He cons his sorceress mother Sybil (daffy Estelle Winwood) into giving him his birthday presents early. These include a special sword, a swift horse, an amazing suit of armor, and best of all – six brave knights who swear allegiance only to George. They set off to free Helene and destroy Lodac and his dragon. Bert really pulled out all the stops for this movie. He must have be paying attention to the grosses for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, because he serves up quite a lot of creatures including a giant ogre (Bert uses a little forced perspective here), an ugly succubus, a skin charring wheel of light, ghostly demons (here it’s ok that you can see through them), an acid swamp and of course the two headed fire-breathing dragon. It also helps that he has a lot of help from Rathbone and Winwood who seem to enjoy playing against each other. Bet’s direction has a lot more life in it as well. He seemed to be inspired from the beginning. The Magic Sword represents a high water mark for Bert I. Gordon. But I’ve always wondered if it irked him that he had to have the dragon built from scratch and wasn’t able to use one of his beloved giant lizards?

Quotable Movie Line: “Your father executed my sister for witchcraft when she was only 18 years old. I have waited until your daughter reached that age so that my dragon could relish the flesh of the princess.”

11. VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS (Embassy Pictures – 1965)

Wow! Was this movie ever considered fun? I mean even in the 1960s it seemed badly dated. This was Bert’s first filming of HG Wells’s novel The Food of the Gods (Bert would take a another crack at it in 1976). He really only takes the basic premise and runs with it. Four juvenile delinquents (including a young Beau Bridges and the ever scrumptious Joy Harmon) enter the sleepy California town of Hainesville looking for a good time. They discover a “totally square” town and a childhood genius named, coincidentally, Genius (played by a young Ron Howard). It seems that Genius has perfected a substance called “Goo” that if eaten, causes the subject to grow to huge proportions. Our four JDs steal the stuff, chow down, get tall and take over the town. It’s up to the good kids of Hainesville to set everything right, which of course they do with a minimum of trouble. Everything about this movie screams NO! Everything is played for laughs and it all falls flat. The film’s supposed to be very light-hearted and have a “with it” kind of feeling, but the performances and the situations are stale and smarmy. I mean cool kids on the straight and narrow versus JDs? Was that ever a must see on the screen? No one seems to know what to do in this movie especially Bert. He’s totally out of his element. He never did comedy (which requires a light touch) and his direction is too heavy handed. His effects this time are mostly just rear projected animals with his usual hard matte lines. What’s worse about his effects are that the enlarged animals are lame. I mean a dog, a cat, some ducks? It’s just another example of everything going wrong totally. Village of the Giants richly deserves its reputation as a cheesy stinker.

Quotable Movie Line: “For the first time in my life, I'm a big man, in more ways than one. You know how it is at our age honey, 'don't do this,' 'don't do that,' don't-don't-don't-don't-don't. It's like it's the only word they know how to say. 'Don't drink,' 'don't smoke,' 'don't drive too fast.' The only word they know how to use, well I'll tell you something, you see, in this town, the authority is all mine. And nobody is gonna say 'don't' to me for anything.”

After 1965 Bert’s career never regained its direction and drive. He tried many other genres (including horror, sexploitation, and crime) and even returned to gigantism in the seventies with The Food of the Gods and Empire of the Ants, but except for these two, his films only received sporadic release. His last film was Satan’s Princess in 1990. But though his films varied in quality from a high of The Magic Sword to a low of Village of the Giants, he gave millions of movie fans indelible images of giants and monsters that continue to dance through our heads and delight us even in adulthood. As for myself, I can never thank him enough for giving me that wonderful dream. His monster did more to repair the bruised psyche of a lone fourth grader than anything else.

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Citation:

1. Westfahl G. Biographical Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Film. Entry on Bert I. Gordon. http://www.sfsite.com/gary/gord01.htm. Accessed on May 26, 2009.

Selected References:

Johnson John. Cheap Tricks and Class Acts. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company Inc, 1996.

Schoell William. Creature Features – Nature Turned Nasty in the Movies. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company Inc, 2008.

Warren Bill. Keep Watching the Skies (Two Volume Set). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company Inc, 1982 and 1986.

Weaver Tom. Earth vs. the Sci-fi Filmmakers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company Inc, 2005.