|
When you think of Colossal Men, Giant Grasshoppers, One-Eyed Behemoths, teens grown too big for their britches, Joan Collins being taken down by an ant, goofy plots, and catch-as-catch-can special effects, etc,, etc., why then you're thinking of Bert I. Gordon, otherwise known as Mr. B.I.G. And we can't help but think of him, not only because he's paying a visit to this year's Monster Bash, but also because when we watch his off-the-wall aci-fi epics, we can't but help to have a...
By JOE WINTERS Giant monster movies, sword and sorcery sagas and psycho-thrillers have come…and stayed. And while Bert I. Gordon didn't invent any of these sub-genres, he knew when to get in on the action, and that’s very much what surviving and thriving in HORROR-WOOD is about. Not only producing, but directing and writing (either story or screenplay or both) on most of his pictures, and even creating special effects (early on with then-wife Flora) on many of these. Almost anyone who has seen a B. I. G. picture, whether in a theater, drive-in or on television has fond monster memories.
Bert Ira Gordon was Wisconsin-born in 1922. Interested in photography since boyhood, he made use of a sixteen-millimeter camera given him by his aunt and started filming and familiarizing himself with optical tricks. After college, he moved on to making TV commercials and industrial films, then on to series television editing and other production before breaking into movies. He served as cinematographer on Serpent Island (1954) directed by Tom Gries. This low-budget tale of treasure hunting, voodoo and a boa constrictor went right to television in 1955. That same year, Bert I. Gordon started living up to his initials by producing and directing King Dinosaur (Lippert, 1955). Four people (two men and two women) travel to a new earth-like planet where dinosaurs (in the form of stock footage from One Million B.C. and other rear-projected monsters) rule. The A-bomb is intended to put an end to all that and make the planet safe for us to colonize. Nothing really exciting but it made money and provided Gordon with a stepping stone to the next stepping stone.
The Cyclops (Allied Artists, 1957) is the story of three men and a woman who travel to the mountains of northern Mexico in search of her missing finance and find big monsters (oversized lizards, spider, rodent, hawk, etc.). The title creature turns out to be the woman’s beau, now disfigured and about 50 feet tall. A flaming spear in the guy’s one eye puts an end to his hostilities, but Bert Gordon had both eyes open and saw his course clearly. By this time, he was more involved in his films’ special effects, as well. While not in the league of Ray Harryhausen, Bert’s visuals still did the job. Released about a month before The Cyclops was Bert’s Beginning Of The End (Republic, 1957), his first foray into the world of giant insects, already established by other filmmakers with Them (Warner Bros., 1954).
Following the same formula, Gordon generates mystery and suspense before revealing the monsters about a half-hour into the picture. Radioactivity gets the blame again as giant locusts, or grasshoppers if you prefer, move on Chicago. Before our old friend the atom bomb has to be dropped on the Windy City, scientist Peter Graves lures the insects to a watery grave in Lake Michigan with a recording of the bugs’ mating call. Promoted as the screen’s first full-length science fiction thriller with real live creatures, the film indeed gave us the real things, rear projected to seemingly interact with humans in the now-established B. I. G. style. Variations included locusts placed on a photograph of the Wrigley Building, a trick that works until one of the bugs is seen setting foot on the sky!
In addition, these non-hopping, non-flying locusts, imported from Texas to California had to be all males in accordance with state law and so no hanky panky would result in baby bugs. The two hundred or so caged locusts became cannibalistic, and by the time of the Chicago scenes there were less than twenty left. Undaunted, Gordon and company pressed on. The box office returns on The Cyclops and Beginning Of The End brought Bert Gordon to the attention of Sam Arkoff and the gang at American International, where a four-picture deal kicked off that same year with one of B. I. G.’s biggest, The Amazing Colossal Man.
Colonel Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) is caught in a plutonium bomb blast (an effective scene that shows his hair and skin being burned off). The burns heal practically overnight, but Glenn is still a chrome dome, and worse, his body’s growing larger, and not in a way that dieting can curtail. Manning is losing his sense of reason, too, and before long he’s on a rampage in Las Vegas. A serum is developed to halt the growth, and in one of the film’s most memorable scenes, a huge hypodermic needle is plunged into Glenn’s ankle. The colossal Colonel promptly removes the needle and hurls it back to impale the administering doctor (how many times as a kid did you want to do that?). He picks up fiancée Carol (Cathy Downs) in one hand and moves on. When he finally sets her down, big Glenn is bazooka blown off Boulder Dam.
The effects varied in effectiveness, as they often did in Gordon’s films. The giant often appeared washed out or even transparent, but Glenn Langan did a good job in conveying the various stages of shock, frustration and sadness of someone who finds himself livin’ large with an expandable sarong for a wardrobe, a predicament that could only lead to madness. Did the colossal man plunge to his doom? The answer to that came the next year with War Of The Colossal Beast. Dean Parkin (The Cyclops) played the now virtually mindless Manning even worse for wear with the side of his face smashed up. Having somehow drifted unnoticed down the Colorado River to Mexico, the colossal man is snatching food trucks off the road and raiding them for snacks. While Glenn’s former fiancée is not on (or in) hand this time around, Glenn’s sister Joyce (Sally Fraser) does show up to resume the search.
The giant is subdued but escapes to imperil a busload of kids. Joyce talks him into setting the bus down. In a show of remorse, Glenn utters his only word, "Joyce," then (in the otherwise black & white film’s only color scene) grabs a handful of electrical wires and disintegrates, thus saving the taxpayers a big burial bill. Voiceover artist Paul Frees (Ludwig Von Drake, Boris Badenov, etc.) provided the growls and groans of the giant, and its fun to listen for Frees’ voices in several of Gordon’s films and many others. Shown on a double bill with War Of The Colossal Beast was Gordon’s Attack Of The Puppet People. In this one, a lonely but deranged doll maker (John Hoyt) has figured a scientific way to reduce people in size and place them in suspended animation, only bringing them out of it on special occasions.
Well, when he pulls that on John Agar, he’s asking for trouble, and by the film’s end, the doll maker is alone again, naturally. The movie also introduced us to Bert’s daughter Susan Gordon as a curious child who takes a liking to a shrunken cat. Susan was quite good actually, and would go on to appear in several of her Dad’s films. But first, it was time for another big bug bash, Earth Versus The Spider (American International, 1958). The title creature emerged from a cave near a small town to feast on some of the human inhabitants. DDT puts the spider down, but rock music at the school gym revives it. Explosives and an electrified web at the spider’s lair put a permanent end to the creepy crawly, impaled on the cave’s stalagmites. While perhaps not on a par with Jack Arnold’s earlier Tarantula (Universal, 1955), Gordon’s film has a sizeable portion of fans as well.
Bert Gordon was ready to conquer new worlds. The big bug era was mostly squashed out, and by 1960, thanks largely to producer/director William Castle, ghost thrillers were in. Producer/director Gordon recruited daughter Susan to play the innocent among some guilty characters in Tormented (Allied Artists, 1960). Composer Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) allows shapely, blackmailing mistress Vi (Juli Reding) to fall to her death from an abandoned lighthouse rendezvous. Now Tom’s free to marry nice gal Meg (Lugene Sanders) and become brother-in-law to little Sandy (Susan Gordon). The spirit of Vi won’t stay down, however, and soon Tom sees her disembodied hand and head and hears her call out for him until finally luring him to his own downfall. Bert’s visuals are again a mixed bag, with Vi’s superimposed talking head obviously replaced with a plastic one when Tom grabs it and wraps it in a cloth, only to see it all change to seaweed.
While most of the actors play characters that are either conniving or dimwitted, Susan Gordon again does a nice job, and with more screen time than before, as the little girl with a crush on Carlson in this, Bert Gordon’s final black and white film. Susan was on board again for Bert’s other 1960 release, The Boy And The Pirates (United Artists). The boy, played by Charles Herbert (from The Fly and 13 Ghosts), frees a genie from a bottle and is sent back in time to meet Blackbeard, the pirate (Murvyn Vye).
Returning to the realm of fantasy, Gordon gave what many consider his best, The Magic Sword (United Artists, 1962). Evil magician Lodac (Basil Rathbone in fine form) kidnaps a princess and proceeds to throw everything he’s got against her rescuer George (Gary Lockwood). Estelle Winwood is a delight as George’s guardian sorceress, and Maila Nurmi (better known as former TV horror show hostess Vampira) is unrecognizable as Lodac’s hag helper. A highlight is the two-headed dragon. As a behind-the- scenes story goes, the fire-breathing mechanical monster exploded, and the moment was not caught on film. Still, the movie is loaded with colorful action and fun and looks great again today on MGM Widescreen DVD.
Big people were back with Village Of The Giants (Embassy, 1965) wherein unruly Beau Bridges and pals and gals burst out of their clothes and bust up a town. They’re giants, thanks to a substance invented by a twelve-year-old genius played by then-Opie and future director Ronny Howard. The kids kept the important parts covered, while Gordon’s effects covered the movie, based on ideas from the late H. G. Wells. Normal sized cast members included former "Rifleman" child co-star Johnny Crawford and former Disney child star Tommy Kirk.
Older former stars were finding they could be stars again in psycho thrillers, and with giant people now behind him for good, Gordon jumped on the psycho thriller express with Picture Mommy Dead (Embassy, 1966). His top former star was Don Ameche, while Susan Gordon, then in her mid-teens, played Don’s daughter, a troubled heiress whose repressed memories hold the key to the murder of her mean-minded mom (played in flashback by Zsa Zsa Gabor). Someone is trying to drive Susan mad until the plan backfires and history repeats itself. Bert followed this with the soft-core comedy How To Succeed With Sex (Medford, 1970), and then, with the popularity of devil movies, did Necromancy (Cinerama, 1972), a modern-day witchcraft tale starring Orson Welles. Next up was The Mad Bomber (Cinemation, 1973) with former "Rifleman" Chuck Connors in the title role.
By 1976 we were thinking more about ecology, and Bert was thinking big again with Food Of The Gods (loosely based on H. G. Wells’ novel) and distributed by Sam Arkoff’s American International. Giant rats, giant wasps, and giant chickens are just a few of the things made big by gobbling a substance found bubbling out of the ground. The stars included Marjoe Gortner (Earthquake) as the football player (!) hero. Pamela Franklin (The Innocents and Legend Of Hell House) played the associate of greedy Ralph Meeker (Kiss Me Deadly). Ida Lupino really deserved better than being chewed up by a big rat (though she melted the year before in The Devil’s Rain).
Mr. BIG used the title of another H. G. Wells book for Empire Of The Ants (also released by A.I.P.) starring Joan Collins as a real estate seller out to bilk customers into buying island property. Unbeknownst to Joan, the island’s inhabitants include ants made big by radioactivity. As with the rat and chicken close-up attacks in the previous film, some puppetry was involved in the close-ups of ant attacks, though again in most scenes the ants appeared large due to the usual rear projection and split screens shots. Good luck trying to track down The Coming (1981), also known as Burned At The Stake, which concerns (according to the Psychotronic Encyclopedia) a teenage girl whose father from another life leaps the time barrier to enlist her aid in saving his daughter from being burned as a witch. A strange evil force and a slimy bloodthirsty parasite are involved as well.
A pair of teen sex comedies (Let’s Do It and The Big Bet) followed in 1982 and 1985. Then in 1990 Gordon gave us Satan’s Princess, with witchcraft, cops-and-robbers, hot babes, murder and more. If there is a formula or pattern to be applied to the work of Bert I. Gordon, it involves knowing what the public wants, then supplying it economically and usually with one or more seasoned pros in the cast. Gordon got along good with most of his stars, and he loves every facet of filmmaking, with the exception of setting the deal with those at times annoying, but necessary executives.
Are his films high art? No. Do they entertain? Yes, and from decade to decade these pictures have served up something to be savored by most any fan of science fiction, mystery and horror. Our thanks to you, Mr. BIG, for all your creatures, great and small, the stuff that monster memories are made of. Thanks, Joe. You summed it up perfectly... Bert I. Gordon's flicks were mostly lacking in state-of-the-art special effects and usually showed their threadbare budgets in the final cut. But they were both entertainly and memorable--there are few better-known icons of Fifties giant monster madness as The Amazing Colossal Man and most horror fans have fond memories of the grashoppers climbing up those post cards in Beginning Of The End, and so on. Those lucky enough to attend the Monster Bash this month will be able to meet both Bert and his lovely daughter, Susan, and get to know Mr. B.I.G. on a more personal level. For the rest of us, we'll always have his films. Article copyright © Joe Winters |
