All Horror's Eve

So after a full month of OctoBoo, how did we celebrate All Horror's Eve? With a double-bill of cheesy horror classics: Dr. Cyclops/Cult of the Cobra.

Cult of the Cobra (1955) starts in the mysterious Orient, as a group of six soldiers checking out a bazaar. The gang includes David Jansenn and Marshall Thompson (Daktari, Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion). A snake charmer (Leonard Strong, the Craw from Get Smart) offers to let them see a "Lamian" ritual never before seen by outsiders. "Lamians" believe that some humans can turn into deadly cobras. But if they are caught, they will be killed. The ritual involves a girl in a snake body suit doing some interpretative dance. Of course, one of the guys takes a flash photo and they have to fight their way out. And high priest Ed Platt puts a curse on them.

On the way out, he grabs a basket with a cobra in it (he's pretty drunk) - the basket the girl came out of. The other guys escape and find him snake-bit by the side of the road. And they see a cloaked figure running away. They get him to a hospital, and he seems ok, but someone left a window open - and he is dead of snake venom in the morning.

Back in his stateside apartment, Thompson hears a scream from next door. He finds exotic Faith Domergue frightened by an intruder. He calms her down, and gets a date from her. That goes well, but she puts him off when he tries (pretty aggressively) to kiss her.

While he is wooing Domergue, his buddies are being picked off one by one, in not necessarily snake-oriented ways. Will Thompson figure out who is doing the killing (Domergue, who is a Lamian) before he gets it? Or will love change her mind?

This clearly gets a lot from Cat People. Both have beautiful, exotic, mysterious women who can ambiguously change into beasts. They share the ambiguity - they both avoid showing the beast or the transformation, both to create mystery and to lower the budget. But Faith Domergue (This Island Earth) is truly beautiful and uses it well here. This was fun.

Dr. Cyclops (1940) was, too. Mad scientist Albert Dekker has summoned three scientists (and an uninvited mule rental agent) to his laboratory deep in the Amazonian jungle. When they get there, he explains that his eyes are going bad, and needs them to check a sample under the microscope. They look, and identify it as iron contamination. So he thanks them for their help and sends them away.

Short movie, huh?

Of course not. They refuse to leave until he tells them what his research is all about, and he refuses to tell them. When they start to get a clue, he shows them - he is shrinking living creatures to a 10th of their size. And he shrinks them, and then decides to hunt them down. Their only chance will be to smash his glasses (the old Polyphemus trick).

Part of the charm of this is the special effects, which are really quite good. But Dekker's mad scientist is equally great. He's a bald, round-faced man with coke-bottle-bottom glasses, wearing a very shabby chic tobacco linen tropical suit, usually with the lapels turned up. I don't know, I just like the look. Also, it's an early Technicolor film. 

But I have to admit, we slept through a lot of it. We got exactly one trick or treater - down from our usual 5 or 6. Darn pandemic.

For Dia de los Muertos, we watched Coco, already blogged. The season is now over, but there's plenty more horror to come. Stay cool, ghouls.