I'm back lookin' in The Classic Science Fiction Ultimate Collection for my sf fix and I put in The Mole People first. It's a 1956 movie that was directed by Virgil W. Vogel. This was the first movie by the guy that directed The Land Unknown. After that he directed tv episodes for the next 30 years.
John Agar leads some guys on an archaeology expedition to the Himalayan Mountains. That's John, Nester Paiva and Hugh Beaumont on the left and Cynthia Patrick on the right. She plays the romantic interest for John Agar. Hugh and the guys find an underground civilization of albinos, decendants of ancient Sumerians, that are afraid of their flashlights. Highly ridgid the underground dwellers keep their group at the same number by killing off the excess. Rather unattractive mutants are kept as slaves to work the mushroom farms. The guys meet Cynthia, who has regular skintones, and find out she's an outcast for not being pale enough. She's pretty and John takes a liking to her. No girl for Nester or Hugh. There's a king of the underground city and his high priest. The high priest hates the new comers, they have a magical flashlight that makes them more powerful than him, and he plots against them. First Nester is killed and then things go from bad to worse when the mutants revolt.
I love the high priest's hat of many points. That hat's one of the things that I remembered from seeing the movie as a kid. Nice though it is, it won't save him from the mistreated mutants and their sharp claws. John and Patricia and Hugh manage to escape and climb to the surface. There's an earthquake and she's crushed. It's a pretty stupid ending that has always bugged me. Guys yakking over on the IMDb message board for the movie said that in an interview with Cynthia, she said that the original ending has the trio walk off the mountain together. Some studio exec, thinking people would be upset over a white John Agar hooking up with a Sumerian gal, had them reshoot the ending so she's crushed. I could believe that, and it just makes it more stupid. Maybe that's one of the reason's it barely scores over 4 at the IMDb. Mostly it's not a bad movie, the mole guys are still pretty cool, I just don't care to watch it that often. I remembered little bits and pieces of this movie from seeing it as a kid. I didn't remember it's name but Sperhauk and Greg knew it right away. This was years ago about when we started buying vcr's and lots of these old movies were turning up at the rental stores. I remember more of the next movie, also from the same box set.
The Incredible Shrinking Man was a movie that impressed me when I was a kid. That's probably why so many scenes are still stuck in my head. It's one of the better movies in the TCSFUC box set and is a deserved SF classic. Jack Arnold directed it in 1957. It's one of many good sf movies he made in the 1950's. The screenplay is by Richard Matheson from his novel. Matheson is a pretty good writer, many of his books are worth reading, and he wrote many good screenplays, for movies and tv. In TISM Grant Williams gets covered with some sparkly bits of glitter when a mysterious fog rolls across him while he and his wife are at sea in their boat. Days later he notices he's getting smaller. He tells us what he's thinking in voice over narration. He keeps shrinking and shrinking and the doctors can't help him. What the heck was in that cloud? Grant gets so small he has to live in a doll house. He nearly gets eaten by the cat but luckily his wife arrives in the nick of time. On his second encounter with the cat he falls into the basement. His wife finds a bloody rag, sees the cat lick it's lips, and assumes the worst. Later a tv newcaster reports the incredible shrinking man died from an encounter with a house cat but Grant's still alive and now so small that a spider is bigger than he is. That spider has some cake and Grant needs it. They battle to the death. I remembered that spider fighting scene from when I was a kid. I'd hate to come home to man size spiders in my house. Eventually Grant is so small he becomes part of the cosmos or some such. Here's his last bit of narration before the end of the movie, it was added to the film by Jack Arnold.
I was continuing to shrink, to become... what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close - the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet - like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man's conception, not nature's. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!
Matheson wrote a sequel in which the wife shrank but it never got made. TISM is a pretty darn good movie but the sad story is keeping from putting it in frequent rotation. It's well worth a look.
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