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.
William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcistwas a publishing sensation. When the film, directed by William Friedken, was released on December 26, 1973, widespread reports of audiences fainting and screaming generated huge lines at the box office. I’ve always felt that the Vatican should make William Friedkin at least a saint, because no film has done so much for the Roman Catholic Church as The Exorcist. The concept of “suspension of disbelief” is essential to the enjoyment of a movie; as we watch, we have to be able to accept what transpires (no matter how outrageous or impossible) as reality. The Exorcistis a textbook example of a movie creating suspension of disbelief. I am an atheist but, for the running time of The Exorcist, I bought into all of it! “The power of Christ compels you!”—Max von Sydow’s soulful Father Merrin and Jason Miller’s troubled Father Karras are brought in to perform an exorcism in Georgetown, a wealthy neighborhood of Washington, D.C. A 12-year-old girl named Regan (Linda Blair) is possessed by a demon, maybe even the Devil himself. With superb make-up by Dick Smith (assisted by a young Rick Baker), the exorcism itself is as harrowing as any scene in movies and still has power to shock. The Exorcistis meant to be seen with a large audience and on a big screen.