PRO AND CONQUISTADOR

Out now from the folks at The Film Detective:

Giant From the Unknown--The title character of this 1958 shocker is Vargas, an enormous, hulking, centuries-old Spanish conquistador who comes back from the dead. Played by former prizefighter Buddy Baer in a grotesque make-up by Universal master Jack Pierce, Vargas terrorizes the folks around California's Big Bear Lake.

This late-show perennial was the first, and probably the best, of the low-budget features made around that time by a Hawaiian-born TV commercial director named Richard Cunha; others include Frankenstein's Daughter, She Demons and Missile to the Moon. It's not a great movie by a long shot, but it has some capable vets in the cast, notably Bob Steele as the prickly sheriff and the redoubtable Morris Ankrum as the archaeologist, and it uses the atmospheric locations well.

Many of us have a soft spot for this absurd little programmer, and this blu-ray release, referred to as a "Deluxe Edition," really is sort of deluxe. Along with a fine new transfer, the disc is packed with special features, including the jolly but obsessively detailed commentary of historian Tom Weaver, who tells us about everything from some rather sad, sordid background on Buddy Baer to a link between the film and the 1957 Kentucky Derby.

Weaver also frequently turns the chatter over to guests, ranging from Larry Blamire of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra to the late director Cunha himself, in pre-recorded interviews. There's a second commentary track featuring Gary Crutcher, the young actor whose character was whimsically named "Charlie Brown" in the film, and there are documentary shorts about Crutcher and Steele.

Admittedly a bit of overkill for a film on this scale, but fans will find it a giant deal.

GREEN CHEESY

Check out my "Friday Flicks" column, online at Phoenix Magazine, this week featuring my reviews of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood...

 ...and of the unsettling German horror film Luz, playing this weekend at Filmbar...

Your Humble Narrator really mooned it up last weekend, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11; The Wife made me a present of this boss new shirt...

...and my film historian pal Richard put on a fantastic lunar-themed movie night, starting with an 1898 Georges Melies short, The Astronomer's Dream, in which a rapacious moon descends and devours the Astronomer's telescope, among other things...

...as well as Excursion to the Moon, Segundo de Chomon's 1908 Pathe rip-off of the Melies Trip to the Moon...

...and 1935's lovely Fleischer cartoon Dancing on the Moon, in which newlyweds of various species take a pleasure cruise to the satellite...

...for just a dollar per couple (a tomcat gets separated from his new bride, alas). He also showed us a silent Hal Roach short, A Moony Mariner, with Billy Dooley pressed into service as an astronaut.

Then for the feature, we got Richard Cunha's hilarious 1958 saga Missile to the Moon (or Invasion de la Luna, as it's called in this Spanish-language lobby card)...

...featuring fabulous moon-maidens, as well as a terrifying giant spider...

...and rather Gumby-like rock men...

Ah, but I didn't stop there. No, on my own last weekend I watched a British double feature; first the likably inane 1969 lunar noir from Hammer, Moon Zero Two...

...and then the 1970 dinosaurs-and-caveman epic When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth...

...which is, after all, also a Moon movie; it's supposedly about the birth of the Moon.

So, here's my last moon-oriented posting (for a while):

Out on Blu-ray this month is Space: 1999, the two-season British TV series from 1975, produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson of Thunderbirds. The premise is that a terrible explosion in the title year has blasted the Moon out of Earth orbit and sent it sailing through space like a futuristic Flying Dutchman. The roughly three hundred inhabitants, led by Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Barry Morse, encounter strange alien worlds, always hoping they might be able to colonize one, always disappointed.

Released during lean times for sci-fi geeks—post-Star Trek, pre-Star Wars—Space: 1999 was eagerly anticipated. Revisiting the show now, my memory of it from back then was confirmed: It's dreadful. The production was first-rate, with near-state-of-the-art special effects for the time, cool spaceships and sets and costumes and attractive series regulars. The guest stars were big-name Brits, from Ian McShane to Brian Blessed to Leo McKern to Margaret Leighton to Billie Whitelaw to Roy Dotrice to Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, if you please, to name just a few. But the earnest humorlessness of the atmosphere was oppressive, and to say the pacing was glacial is to insult the promptness of glaciers.

In the second season, a sexy shape-shifting alien played by Catherine Schell was added, as were some attempts at jocular humor, and this obvious play at dumbing-down was somehow just embarrassing. But Space: 1999 did have one splendid feature, albeit in its first season only: The opening title sequence. There would be a blaring fanfare of bombastic music, and then a fast-cut montage of scenes from the episode to follow. If only the shows themselves could have captured some of the excitement of those openings.