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The Unearthly
A mad doctor uses patients at his isolated psychiatric institute as subjects in his attempts to create longevity by surgically installing an artificial gland in their skulls.
Release : | 1957 |
Rating : | 3.2 |
Studio : | AB-PT Pictures Corp., |
Crew : | Art Direction, Set Decoration, |
Cast : | John Carradine Myron Healey Allison Hayes Marilyn Buferd Tor Johnson |
Genre : | Horror Science Fiction |
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Reviews
How sad is this?
good back-story, and good acting
As Good As It Gets
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Mini Review: 'The Unearthly' (1957) - I watched this the other night and it was pretty good ! I wasn't expecting much since the IMDb only gave it 2.7 stars. Allison Hayes and John Carradine were both fun to watch. Tor 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' Johnson is also along for the ride and did well as a sympathetic type 'Monster'. The story is mostly predictable yet I really didn't care, the acting and B-film makeup made up for it. There was a slight twist in the plot that was fun. When will those mad scientists ever learn ! If you like 50s Drive-in type horror films this is one to see and enjoy. I give it a 6 out of 10 for its genre as fun drive-in B-movie fare.
Mad doctor uses patients at his isolated psychiatric institute as subjects in his attempts to create longevity by surgically installing an artificial gland in their skulls, with disastrous results.This film has a suspiciously low rating on IMDb, which I suspect can only be caused by one of two things (or both): its being shown on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" or its being associated with Ed Wood. Since the latter is not likely to impact it, I suspect it is the former.And that is just too bad. Despite the lampooning, this is a decent film with good effects (the gland), a better than average plot and decent acting. We have John Carradine, a legendary actor and Carradine family patriarch. And he is surrounded by actresses who had been Miss America, a Playboy Playmate (around the same time the film came out) and more...The script? From a man who went on to write some of the best episodes of "Star Trek". Certainly this cannot be as bad as it is made out to be. Another examination may be in order.
John Carradine is one of those actors from a bygone era that seemed to look at acting as an actual job rather than something to do every now and then while living in multiple homes and living life of luxury. No, he seemed to go from one movie to another taking parts in really good films and really, really bad films. That being said, he has been in more than a couple of films that were featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and this was one of them. Not an entirely bad film, Red Zone Cuba was a much worse film that was featured on the show, this film is a bit slow paced even for a film that has a run time of just over an hour. Basically, just your typical mad scientist film that features a mad scientist, strange monsters and Tor Johnson as a sidekick named Lobo! Yes, Tor appeared as a sidekick named Lobo in like two other films other than this one, but while those two Lobo's were the same character, this one is a totally different Lobo...the distinction is apparently this one speaks. So, it has its moments and the film is upgraded a bit by John Carridine's performance, but overall, just seems like it needed a bit more going on.The story has a mansion that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, but near the end of the film seems to be right in the middle of the city housing special patients who seem to think they are there for some sort of mental health treatment. Unfortunately for them, the good doctor who resides in the house plans on using them for his experiments to prolong man's life to an eternity using a special gland that he apparently created or something. A man caught outside the mansion and who the doctor believes is an murder on the run ends up being recruited to be a part of the experiments, but this man seems to know something is not right and tries to uncover the truth.This made for a pretty good episode of MST3K as most films featuring Tor Johnson do. This film had not one, but two shorts which is a bit puzzling seeing as how the film ran 72 minutes which might merit the inclusion of one short, but not really two. Makes me wonder what they edited out of this one. A lot of the riffs in this one were geared to Tor Johnson's Lobo character and John Carridine's mansion that is just about the only place you see during the duration of this film.So, not a horrible film, but just kind of slow. I would not really want to see the film in its entirety as I cannot imagine it really adding anything to this film. What I did see seemed pretty cut and dry as it was a mad scientist using people as guinea pigs for his crazy experiments. You get to see people misshaped by his experiments and I like how they treat the one girl as if she is dead. It's like, "Oh my, she is now unattractive, let's just leave her here to rot because her life is now over." So if you want to see a film featuring strange experiments, a mad doctor and Tor as Lobo this film fits the bill! Along with like at least two other films...
Although made in 1957, THE UNEARTHLY is one of those throwbacks to the kinds of cheap horror pictures cranked out by minor studios in the 1940's that often starred Bela Lugosi, or George Zucco, or as in this film, John Carradine as a mad scientist. This film, with John Carradine as a mad scientist trying to create immortal beings must of seemed old and shopworn to 1957 audiences. The film is talky and plodding. Scenes are dull. The last ten minutes the film picks up speed and we get a chance to see the botched results of Carradines experiments and some fine make up work by Harry Thomas. Its the only thing from preventing me from calling this a total disaster. Oh! I almost forgot, Allison Hayes is sexy.