Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Movie review - "Beast from Haunted Cave" (1959) ** (re-watching)

Oh, frustrating. This could have been great. It's fine - but it could have been awesome.

The locations are splendid - Deadwood South Dakota. Scenes on the ski slopes. A fantastic creepy cave. In the cave people are captured and turned into cocoons like in Aliens. Everything in the cave is fun. Yes the monster is a little silly but who cares.

The film should have been about the monster. But really it's Key Largo time - with Frank Wolff, an excellent actor, looking silly in a moustache playing a gangster with a drunken moll, Sheila Noonan... who gets redemption falling for handsome ski instructor Michael Forrest.

There's far too much hanging around the ski lodge emoting. They introduce Forest's sister (who cooks for her brother all the time) but she disappears. Promising subplots like henchman Richard Sinatra going mad feel underdeveloped.

Oh I so wish they'd made this more of a monster film. The cave is great. The drama isn't so hot. Chuck Griffith wrote it, and there is some of his intelligence on display.

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