The Time Machine (1960) Directed by George Pal

 

George Pal made a few iconic science fiction films and this is up there with version of War of the Worlds which also was from a book by HG Wells. It is the story of a man obsessed with time who arrives late for a dinner with friends at his own house in a terrible state. He is cut and exhausted but insists he tell the story of what happened to him. He has discovered a way to move through time, but not space, using a very cool looking victorian machine that is worth watching the movie just to see it. 

With this device he has travelled to the distant future where humans have been divided into two distinct species. One docile and dependent on the other aggressive and living underground. Our traveller meets a beautiful girl, don’t they always, and finds himself trapped in that time period when the aggressive race, the Morloks, drag his time machine into his layer behind doors he can’t get through. 

There is plenty of of adventure that follows but before all that we a treated to a few great moments of him moving through time, stopping a few decades later when he meets his best friend’ s adult son, who wasn’t born when he got into the device and then decades later still when a nuclear bomb goes off forcing him to jump into the far future. The passing of time is demonstrated by a women’s dress shop window at first and with stop motion, it shows time by the animation of the changes of the dresses in the window display. 

I don’t want to spoil the movie, old as it is, because its old enough that younger people might never even heard of it and its worth saving it surprises for them. The costumes and make up is great and the special effects have a few weak points but mostly still work today and have that look that War of the Worlds and his other Sci fi film When Worlds Collide have. Its distinctive and wonderful. The players are all good, I like the maid a lot and Rod Taylor is perfect as the scientist. 

A hit when released, it stands up by keeping the exposition to a minimum and the story moving always forward… well when it isn’t moving backward in time. 

Poster project: War of the Worlds (1953)

 

I decided on a look I thought fit the film and it's style. The stars are a photo I took in Colorado years ago with my brother and the earth is a 3D render I made in Cinema 4D years ago. I had a Mars 3D render and the martian probe ready for the poster but that was way too crowded and counter to my ideas  on what I wanted it to look like. The title is remade from the original post and I used Paramount logo from the 50s. The Martian war machine and hand were drawn in Affinity Designer. 

Island of Lost Souls (1932) directed by Erle C. Kenton

 

Ok enough of bad horror films this year. I had seen Island of Lost Souls, a film not easy to see for years in the 80s. Not sure how or where, there video release so maybe that was it. I had not seen it since and after watching the Criterion restoration it felt like the first time. The quality is excellent and my vague memories of the films were nothing to how it affected me this time. 

This film is horrifying in the best ways, the look, the makeup, the acting of Charles Laughton as one of the creepiest and evil villains you might ever see on screen. All of this done with no gore but with enough hints of what is happening to freak you out. It's hard to believe they got away with some of the elements in this movie - and they didn't after the Hates Codes came into effect a couple years later and the film was banned. Laughton's Dr Moreau, as in the book Island of Dr Moreau it's adapted from, is the epitome of inhumane. His plan to turn animals into humans under the guise of scientific advancement but really done under the perversion of sadistic cruelty is shocking even today. He creates a woman and tries to get a shipwrecked guy to knock her up just to see if she can be. That falls apart when the man's finance shows up to rescue him, and he decides maybe one of the less successful beast men he created should rape her and see she can carry that baby to term. His plan seems to be create in "lower animals" the one thing he will never have - humanity. 

The great performances don't end there. Bela Lugosi knocks it out of the park as the "giver of the law". He is barely recognizable under all the makeup but his intense eyes give him away. A small role that he runs away with, his final scenes as the animals turn on Moreau, led by him truly is scary as he traps the Doctor in own "house of pain. 

The panther woman (Lota) played by Kathleen Burke is not over the top and you feel for her as a person. She doesn't over play "cat" stereotypes, she isn't Catwoman in the Batman TV show, she sells her role completely to the audience. 

The rest of the cast is fine, not really standing out and to be honest there isn't room for more standouts with the previous three actors mentioned on the set. 

Makeup of the creatures on the island is really disturbing and believable. If you were not familiar with the book you would be confused and put off by what they might represent until what they actually are is revealed. At 70 minutes, you don't wait too long for answers and the pace of the film might be slow by today's standards but certainly isn't boring. 

One negative is the odd choice to not name Kathleen Burke in the opening titles but instead credit "The Panther Woman". She is only one of 2 women in the piece and the only one the island at first so her reveal as being one of Moreau's tortured creations is not a surprise. Moreau also talks about her in a way that takes any surprise out the castaway getting a kiss from her and coming to realization of what she really is. For me, this robbed the actress of some of the power in her performance. 

In summary... this is a fantastic, disturbing film that makes you think and will unnerve you in ways you didn't think an early 30s still could. I wish I could see it in a theatre!