SEE: Giant Grasshoppers climbing a photo of a Chicago Skyscraper. BE AMAZED AT 50 Foot Tall People and Six Inch Small People. THRILL: to Teenagers trapped on a Giant Spider web that looked like hemp rope. Welcome to the World of Bert I. Gordon. Consisting of back screen projection, rudimentary matte work and some superimposing. He would become a recognized master of these techniques. Some of his work were rips off of even his own work, but anyone going to the movies in the 1950’s knew what to expect in one of his films and it was just “Cheap Thrills” on a “D Plus” movie budget. His first film was entitled “King Dinosaur” and was made in 1955. The film had a cast of four and stock footage of anyone else he needed in the film and that included a Mastodon. Which was taken from the 1940 production of “One Million B.C.” that Ray Harryhausen remade in 1967 as “One Million Years B.C.”. Oh, the budget for this epic was $15,000. His second film came out two years later and was Produced by Bert I. Gordon, Directed by Bert I. Gordon and did I mention written by Bert I. Gordon. The film was “The Cyclops” and in a featured part was Lon Chaney, Jr. Test pilot Bruce Barton is missing and his girlfriend Susan Winter organizes a search in the Jungles of Mexico. Only to encounter giant animals mutated from large radium deposits. They also encounter a one eyed 50 foot giant who turns out to be Barton grown to giant size and with facial disfiguration from his plane’s crash. A make concept the ever fugal Gordon would reuse one year later along with actor Duncan Parkin. “The Cyclops” came out in July 1957 and just three months later in October impressed with giant men created by radiation. Bert I. Gordon released through American International Pictures one of his biggest successes “The Amazing Colossal Man”. At least on the surface this was a reworking of “The Cyclops”, but actually claimed to be based upon Homer Eon Flint’s 1928 short novel “The Nth Man”. I looked for information on this work to find out how a story published in 1928 would be used for a movie about a man exposed to a plutonium blast in 1957. I could not find anything about the work. Although Amazon has 15 related pages of his stories, or publications with them. It should be noted that Homer Eon Flint supposedly died in 1924 four years before the work was published and according to his wife. His death was a result of a failed bank robbery attempt where the only witness to prove this was the gangster that hired him. In Marvel “Two-In-One Comic” #58, December 1979, Thomas Lightner became “The Nth Man”. A character described as “a living interdimensional vortex like a Black Hole. The Nth Man absorbs all nearby matter and energy into himself”. Knowing the story of how Glenn Langan became “The Amazing Colossal Man”. I think this comic tells us what the idea of Flint’s work might have been. I remember watching a popular Los Angeles Children’s Program on KTLA called “Popeye and Friends” with Tom Hattan. American International Pictures as a way to promote Gordon’s latest film had a representative of the Publicity Department traveling across country with props used for the film. They included the miniatures of the top of the then famous Las Vegas Casino’s that Glenn Langan as Lt. Col. Glenn Manning was to rip off and throw at the astonished spectators. All of these props were constructed in the garage of Special Effects and Horror Costume Designer Paul Blaisdell. Also in 1957 Peter Graves would have to deal with those giant Grasshoppers climbing those photos, one way to save money, or Chicago Skyscraper’s in “The Beginning of the End”. You can see a pattern in read projection and split screens emerging in Bert I. Gordon films and even as fake as they looked the youth of America loved the corn. 1958 saw not actor Glenn Langan, but Dunkin Parkin is the sequel to “The Amazing Colossal Man” entitled “The War of the Colossal Beast”. The ads screamed: SEE THE COLOSSAL BEAST DESTROYED IN COLOR! The gimmick here was that the movie was filmed as most at the time in Glorious Black and White. The Colossal Beast finally regains his memory that he is really Lt. Col. Glenn Manning. Knowing how ugly his face looks, that “Cyclops” make-up again, from falling into the waters at Hoover Dam at the end of the previous movie. He puts down the bus load of high school kids at the Griffith Park Observatory and turns toward the conveniently placed electrical wires. As he touches the wires electrocuting himself the film turns color and the audience gets that promised: SEE THE COLOSSAL BEAST DESTROYED IN COLOR. When you go up you must come down. Enter John Agar ex-husband of Shirley Temple as Bob Westley for a Bert I. Gordon movie that originally was entitled: “I Was a Teenage Doll.” A planned title to get in on all the Teen movies like “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein” that were just starting to come out and would stay for a couple of more years. The film became “Attack of the Puppet People” and Gordon used spilt screens and large props to miniaturize his actors. A technique used in 1935’s James Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein”, Tod Browning’s 1936 “Devil Doll”, Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1940’s “Dr. Cyclops” and more recently in the 1957 classic adaptation of a Richard Matheson story “The Incredible Shrinking Man”. The fun part was “Attack of the Puppet People” was on the same bill as “War of the Colossal Beast” and the American International Pictures PR department had fun with the possibilities. I have three more examples of the work of Bert I. Gordon I want to discuss starting with the strange, for his line of films, “The Boy and the Pirates”. This was a weird film that at times was comic and aimed at small children and others bloody as hell. A boy and a girl get trapped upon Blackbeard’s pirate ship. To save money the girl was played by Bert I. Gordon’s daughter Susan. What really makes the film interesting was that the boy was played by Charles Herbert Saperstein who for obvious reasons dropped his last name for marquee purposes. I could write a whole story on Charles Herbert who was in such films as: 1957’s “The Gunfight at the O.L. Corral” 1957’s “The Monster That Challenged the World” 1958’s “The Colossus of New York” 1958’s “The Fly” and of course 1960’s original “13 Ghosts” among others between 1954 and 1968. The answer to the black and white picture I posted of the women with the deformed face is that she’s the “Old Hag” in 1962’s “The Magic Sword” aka: “St. George and the Dragon” aka: “St. George and the Seven Curses” aka: The Seven Curses of Lodac” and the picture of Bert I. Gordon tied to this article is with Basil Rathbone and Estelle Winwood on the movie’s set. The character of the poor love sick George was played by John Gary Yurosek better known as Gary Lockwood six years before he played the short lived Dr. Frank Poole in the classic 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. This story was the first “big budget” Bert I. Gordon had and he used every penny available to him to tell of the quest to rescue the fair Princess Helen. George fell in love wither her image he views in his foster mother absent minded sorceress Sybil’s magic pool. The beautiful Frenchwomen Mignonette that George meets and turns into that old hag was played by Maila Nurmi better known to 1950’s television fans as “Vampira”. The film had a very budget conscious dragon that Lodac loved to feed his hostage Princesses to when their parents couldn’t come up with the cash. There were Giants, Dwarfs and a group of Knights brought to life by George’s Magic Sword to help him on his quest. The movie actually was aimed at pre-teens and teens as was most of Gordon’s film, but this time in Widescreen and Color. The film had two strong acting names going back to the 1930’s. Basil Rathbone was over the top as Lodac the evil Sorcerer. Estelle Winwood as Sybil had appeared in London Stage Plays before World War 2 and can be seen in movies such as Walt Disney’s 1959’s “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” with an unknown Sean Connery, 1961’s “The Misfits” with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe and Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” in 1968. The third and last film I want to mention is 1965’s “Village of the Giants”, or the popular “Beach Party” movies by AIP, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon meet H.G. Wells. The story “Food of the Gods” was in public domain. The “Tag Line” for this movie was: “Teen-Agers Zoom to Supersize and Terrorize a Town”. However, this very low-budgeted film had only one thing going for it that did attract some Teen viewers and that were the two main Teen Male Leads. The first was Walt Disney alumnus Tommy Kirk who starred in the original “The Shaggy Dog” and both “The Absent Minded Professor” and “The Son of Flubber”, but will always being associated with playing the young boy who has to kill his beloved dog in “Old Yeller”. Two years after this movie was made Kirk would actually take the place of Frankie Avalon opposite ex-Disney Mouseketeer Annette in “Pajama Party”. The other male lead was Johnny Crawford who also was one of the original Mousketeer’s, was known to teens as Mark McCain the son of Chuck Connors from 1958 to 1963 on “The Rifleman” television show two years before this movie came out. Playing the third male lead was Lloyd Vernet “Beau” Bridges the Third aka: Beau Bridges in his third film appearance and his first starring (?) role. Basically one of the Teens younger brother nicknamed “Genius”, of course and can you say “Ronny Howard”, the way Ron Howard was billed, creates “Goo” in his laboratory that turns anything into Giants. The result is the teens eat the Goo and have a Beach Party and scare the locals. Note: The actual film billing has Ron Howard as seventh. Over the next 25 years Bert I. Gordon would make ten more films. Most notably was 1977’s “Empire of the Ants,” again based upon an H.G. Wells story in public domain, starring Joan Collins who seemed to really be having fun with her own image. Bottom line is these films were good old fashion entertainment, gave you every penny of the budget on the screen and knew what they where 92 year old Bert I. Gordon just did another book signing in the Los Angeles area a few months back.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 13:03:56 +0000