Jerry Warren started back in the 1940s, he acted in four films, all uncredited, before he directed and produced the 1956 Yeti film Man Beast. He directed 9 other films and 8 of them have been collected in three sets from VCI. If it was a box set it would be a box of stink. The films are part of the Kit Parker film library which VCI puts out. Jerry also bought and hacked up a handful of foreign films, like Terror In The Midnight Sun which he turned into Invasion Of The Animal People. He not a good film maker in anyway, at least from the three examples of his work here. I've seen several of his other films but there are films in the three volumes that I hadn't seen. Not a comforting thought.
Man Beast 1956 Screenplay by B Arthur Cassidy, directed by Jerry Warren. Besides the stuff that Jerry shot there's plenty added mountain climbing footage from an unfinished foreign film that Jerry says is "probably of Mexican origin". Jerry did actually shoot footage in the snow covered mountains a few miles away from LA, he also used the cave in Bronson Canyon. The costume for the Yeti was the ape costume from White Pongo. He had his actors climb the fence of a major studio lot to shoot scenes on their Himalayan set.
It's a story about a woman's search for her brother in the Himalayan Mountains. Asa Maynor plays the woman, she needs to find her brother before the altitude effects his medications and kills him. The brother went up the mountain to search for the Yeti. She misses him at his last camp but meets up with the guide that took him there.
The guide takes Asa's party into the mountains and there's nothing but mountain climbing and death ahead of them. Lucky for her, she manages to get away with her boyfriend. I had to laugh at the guide's reveal at the end of the film. He turns out to be the son of a human and a Yeti, his plan to assimilate the Yeti into society is joyously ludicrous. I got to the end, it does have a bit of entertainment value but it's well below average, Not surprisingly it has a good number of 10 votes on the IMDb, way more 1 votes though. I certainly liked it better than the botch job Jerry did with Invasion Of The Animal People. The original of that film was much more entertaining and might have made better box office just as it was. Why Jerry couldn't see that is a puzzle. From reading about Jerry I don't see a guy with a business plan. He just plowed ahead and did things, but lacked the ability to do them well. The actors he used from the Pasadena Playhouse were a mixed lot but most of them did well enough with the so-so script. I like a lot of these old 50s films and can forgive a lot of the bad film making so I might watch it again someday.
The Wild World Of Batwoman 1966 Jerry wrote the script and directed. He wanted to cash in on the current Batman craze from the TV show with Adam West. He lied to Katherine Victor, promising to make a good film, in color, with plenty of production values but he just couldn't get the money and didn't have the talent to do better. I first saw TWWOB onMST3K.
That's Katherine Victor with her Bat Girls. The casting director hired the Bat Girls from a strip club that got closed after a raid. Katherine had to make her own costume as Jerry refused to spend money for a costume designer. Steve Brodie, Steve Conte and Bruno VeSota have parts in the film but I didn't recognize any other names.
The story is pretty goofy, Batwoman fights crime with her Bat Girls. It's definitely meant to be a comedy but there weren't that many good jokes and the slapsticky stuff is weak. Since I'd seen it a few times from watching it on MST3K I was used to the film and got through it to the end. I might even watch it again.
Curse Of The Stone Hand 1964 Jerry cobbled this together from two Chilean movies that would have been better to see as they were. He added scenes with John Carradine and Katherine Victor. La Casa Está Vacía (The House is Empty) 1945 was directed by Carlos Schlieper and La Dama De La Muerte (The Lady of Death) 1946 was directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen. The later was based on the Robert Lewis Stevenson story The Suicide Club. You can see both films on YouTube but sadly with no subtitles. I haven't looked at the subtitle sites to see if there might be some available.
The framing story with John and Katherine ties the two stories together and makes them appear to have a connection to a particular house and the cursed stone hands within. The first story is about a gambler who's cursed by moving into the place, he looses heavily at a gambling club and is forced to sign a suicide pact. That's the end of him. The other story is about a different family who move into the house, the owner's son starts acting like a dick and uses hypnotism to try to control his brothers fiancee.
The actual footage shot in Chili is fairly entertaining and looked pretty good. The stuff Jerry shot is pretty useless. The movie got bad reviews and Leonard Maltin called it incoherent. I have a feeling that Jerry could have done better dubbing and selling the two Chilean films intact. How Jerry's mind works is beyond me. At least I got to see it. Sadly the 3 films in the set aren't available on YouTube, I guess Kit Parker doesn't want you to suffer from the pain of watching them.
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