Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
Tarantula! [Jack Arnold, 1955]
Scientist Leo G. Carroll’s experiments not only cause him to be terribly deformed, but result in a colossal tarantula being unleashed upon the world. The military end up dropping napalm on the huge spider!
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
The Amazing Colossal Man [Bert I. Gordon, 1957]
Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) is exposed to plutonium radiation after a bomb test and grows 60-feet tall. And worse, he goes crazy.
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
War of the Colossal Beast [Bert I. Gordon, 1958]
The sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man, although the character of Lt. Col. Glenn Manning is played by Dean Parkin. Luckily, Lt. Col. Manning’s face is now horribly disfigured, so nobody notices he’s a different actor.
“A colossal freak, Major, and he’s my brother!”
Joyce Manning (Sally Fraser), War of the Colossal Beast
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
Die, Monster, Die! [aka Monster of Terror, Daniel Haller, 1965]
Loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Color Out of Space,” a radioactive meteorite causes trouble.
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
The Mutations [aka The Freakmaker, Jack Cardiff, 1974]
A trashy effort from the celebrated cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Donald Pleasence is a mad scientist, whose experiments create mutant monsters. Julie Ege (on the operating table) supplies the glamor.
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
Doomwatch [Peter Sasdy, 1972]
An island’s population become deformed and violent from eating fish made toxic through chemical dumping. Based on the BBC-TV series.
“An ecological nightmare gone berserk!”
Doomwatchpublicity tagline
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
The Toxic Avenger [Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz, 1984]
A nerd falls into a drum of toxic waste and is transformed into the hideous hero of the title. A comedy tribute to bad taste, there have been sequels, a cartoon series, and an off-Broadway musical based on Toxie.
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
RoboCop [Paul Verhoeven, 1987]
This is what happens to a bad guy when a big vat of liquid clearly labeled TOXIC WASTE is dumped onto him.
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
Hell Comes to Frogtown [Donald G. Jackson, 1988]
Pictured is one of the mutant amphibians in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Atomic Mutations[ Book Contents]
The Mist [Frank Darabont, 2007]
From a novella by Stephen King, Darabont’s movie is filled with monsters like creepy big spider-like thing. Not something you want to see through the windshield of your car.
The Exorcist[William Friedkin, 1973] Regan (Linda Blair), a young girl possessed by Satan, has the upper hand during her exorcism by Father Merrin (Max von Sydow).
THE DEVIL’S WORK
“The Devil made me do it” is a marvelous excuse for all kinds of illicit behavior. This must be one of the reasons Satan remains such a popular subject in the cinema. Witches, warlocks, demons, and worse not only wage a constant battle with the forces of good, they also make very entertaining movies.
Actors love to play the Devil. Robert De Niro intriguingly underplays the role as the mysterious “Louis Cyphre” in Angel Heart[Alan Parker, 1987]. Cyphre hires seedy private eye Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) for an investigation that involves Voodoo and ultimately, his soul.
Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick[George Miller, 1987] and Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate[Taylor Hackford, 1997] both clearly enjoy themselves as Lucifer, giving grandstanding performances. Nicholson’s devil has his hands full with three bored, beautiful women who dabble in a bit of black magic themselves.
In The Devil’s Advocate, Keanu Reeves plays young, whiz-kid attorney Kevin Lomax, whose new job at a top law firm brings him under the spell of Al Pacino as Senior Partner “John Milton.” The Devil’s Advocateproves to both Kevin and to us that everything evil we ever thought about lawyers is true.
Ray Walston makes a weasly but potent Satan (although he calls himself “Applegate”), in an enjoyable musical comedy version of Faust entitled Damn Yankees[George Abbott, Stanley Donen, 1958]. Applegate calls forth from Hell the witch Lola (Gwen Verdon) to assist him in his quest for the soul of baseball player Joe Hardy (Tab Hunter).
The great Walter Huston makes a canny Mr. Scratch in All That Money Can Buy[William Dieterle, 1941], the film version of Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Sexy Simone Simon as Belle helps Mr. Scratch get the soul of simple farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) who enlists the great Daniel Webster (a terrific performance by Edward Arnold) to argue his case in front of a “jury of the damned.” A wonderful morality story, told as a very thick slice of Americana. The film is also notable for Bernard Herrmann’s lively score.
Christopher Lee plays a rare good-guy role in Hammer Films’ The Devil Rides Out[aka The Devil’s Bride, Terence Fisher, 1968], based on the occult thriller by Dennis Wheatley. A tale of devil worship in which Lee’s Duc de Richleau uses his knowledge of the dark arts to protect his friends from suave, satanic cult leader Mocata (played by the urbane Charles Gray) and his plans to sacrifice them on the altar of Satan. At a devil-worshipper’s orgy, we even get to see The Goat of Mendes himself!
Horror films based on bestselling books acquire a literary patina of respectability. And three bestsellers featuring Satan have given us three of the best devil movies. Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Babywas brilliantly adapted for the screen by Roman Polanski in 1968. A weird story of devil-worshippers in modern Manhattan conspiring to help Satan rape a young woman in their apartment building (the elegantly creepy Dakota on Central Park West in New York) and give him a son. The movie is full of wonderful performances from a great cast—Mia Farrow (as Rosemary Woodhouse), John Cassavetes (as her scheming actor husband), Ralph Bellamy, and Ruth Gordon all succeed in being funny and frightening in turns.