I was interested in our first feature, Project X, because it was directed by William Castle. He's one of my favorite directors. The screenplay was written by Edmund Morris and the story was adapted from a pair of novels, The Artificial Man and Psychogeist by L P Davis. i remember seeing books by L P Davis around but haven't read any.
It's a 1968 film about a secret agent set in the harsh future of 2118. Christopher George, on a covert mission to Sino-Asia, the evil superpower, has some problems. To avoid torture he's taken an anti-torture drug that's given him amnesia. The West has him back and he's been frozen until they figure out how to reverse the amnesia. Before he lost his memory Christopher had sent a message warning the West of a Sino-Asian threat. It order to trick his mind back to reality the scientists create a 1960's town and reprogram his brain to try to remember what the threat was. The military works with the scientists and Colonel in charge, Harold Gould, doesn't get along with them. Monte Markham is another secret agent working for the bad guys. He tries to interfere with the program.
Part of the mind control is depicted on the screen with a series of various effects shots like the ones above. There are some bits of animation by Hanna-Barbera. The Wikipedia says there is also a clip from an old Jonny Quest episode buried in there. The effects seem a bit old fashioned compared to the stuff available today but they do the trick for the film and it would have been something people wouldn't have seen before when it was new. Sadly it didn't do so well at the box office and it would be the the 2nd last film Castle directed, the last was the 1974 film Shanks. I enjoyed Project X well enough. I know it's not that great but I'll add a copy to my own library when it gets a bit cheaper.
Our second feature was The Magnetic Monster. There's a new Blu-ray out and we watched that. It's a 1953 SF film about a strange magnetic phenomenon that is causing trouble. Some crazy scientist invented it and it's getting bigger and bigger. At the rate it's growing it's only going to take a day before it will destroy the world. The scientists work hard to figure out the solution. It's written by Producer Ivan Tors and Director Curt Siodmak. Herbert L Strock actually directed a fair bit of the movie. He gets no credit for that but he does for being the editorial supervisor. Strock is mostly an editor and Tors hired him because of the amount of stock footage to be worked into the film.
Richard Carlson is Dr Jeffrey Stewart, one of the scientists at the OSI, and he comes to investigate some weird happenings at a department store along with his co-worker Dr Dan Forbes, played by King Donovan. Their investigation leads them to the magnetic monster and he's part of the team that figures out what to do with it.
That's the machine Richard uses to save the world. It's borrowed from the 1934 German SF thriller Gold. They use about 10 minutes of footage from the German film and they work it into The Magnetic Monster quite well. Richard even changes his clothes to match the workers in the German film.
The Magnetic Monster is the first episode in Ivan Tors' Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) trilogy. The second and third films are Riders To The Stars and Gog. They're worth checking out for the SF fan but they aren't the greatest films. TMM gets a 6 on the IMDb and that's about where I would put it.
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