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5
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5 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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A
giant robot. Mechanical spiders. A gun that shoots
"Z-rays". An invisibility belt. All in the diabolical
hands of Dr. Alex Zorka, a mad scientist who dreams
of conquering the world. As played with great
enthusiasm by Bela Lugosi in the 1939 serial The
Phantom Creeps, one almost wishes he'd
pulled it off!
Before the advent of episodic TV programs, Hollywood
cranked out a plethora of multi-part adventure
serials to supplement their slate of motion pictures.
Weekly installments were shown in theaters before
the feature film. Crusading cowboys, spy ring-smashing
G-Men and science fiction heroes like Flash Gordon
were the mainstay of these 'mini-series'. Each
chapter was guaranteed to end with a thrilling
cliffhanger, designed to bring audiences back
the following week to find out what happened next.
I haven't seen very many of these serials (a couple
of Buck Rogers tales when I was kid; three or
four Commando Cody episodes on MST3K), but it
doesn't take much exposure to easily recognize
how contrived and formulaic they are. Most of
the chapters end with some kind of wreck, either
a crashing airplane or (most often) a car hurtling
over a cliff, off a bridge or down an embankment.
In each case it looks like certain death for the
good guys. But virtually without fail, the next
installment shows the hero bailing out in the
nick of time of whatever vehicle's about to get
smashed or blown up. Frankly, I don't understand
why audiences didn't become bored by this same
predictable routine being used over and over and
over again. With The Phantom
Creeps, fortunately, we've got the immortal
Lugosi and all those cool retro sci-fi gadgets
to keep us entertained and coming back for more.
Creeps
hits the ground running from the get-go. Dr. Zorka,
discoverer of a mysterious meteorite in Africa,
has learned to harness its incredible powers to
create devices with which he plans to take over
the world. With explosive mechanical spiders (???)
he can put any targeted person in a state of suspended
animation. A belt containing an element extracted
from the meteor renders him invisible when activated.
A 10-foot tall robot he calls the "Iron Man"
— operated by a control board worn on the forearm
— serves Zorka as an invincible bodyguard, protecting
him from his enemies. These come in two camps:
a foreign spy ring determined to snatch Zorka's
secrets if we won't sell them, and Captain Bob
West (Robert Kent), plainclothes agent of U.S.
military intelligence, who's tipped off to Zorka's
plan by the scientist's former colleague, the
ethical Dr. Mallory (Edwin Stanley). Over the
course of most of the episodes, each of the three
sides in this struggle take turns gaining possession
of the meteorite, which is stored in a special
protective box. It's basically a McGuffin to set
up all the chases and fistfights. Who's got the
box? If it's the spies, then West, his team, and
Zorka will be in a scramble to get their hands
on it. If Zorka has it (and unfortunately for
his world domination plan, he never seems to have
it for long), then the G-Men and the spies pull
out all the stops to grab the box. This rotating
plot line is recycled again and again. Throw in
a determined, pretty female reporter (Dorothy
Arnold) and, well... you get the picture.
After a while this repetitive
box-snatching becomes tiresome. There isn't much
suspense generated by the cliffhangers, particularly
those involving crashes, as you know exactly
how the protagonist (usually Capt. West) is going
to get out of it. One cliffhanger's an absolute
cheat, too — there's no way anyone could
have survived when a derailed passenger train
plunges down a ravine into a river. Yet all these
old-fashioned model effects are fun to watch,
even if most are stock footage lifted from other
films. It's also interesting to see Edward Van
Sloan, the stoic vampire hunter Van Helsing in
Universal's Dracula
(1931) and Dracula's
Daughter (1936), get to play a villain this
time out (as spy ring leader Jarvis). Familiar
music selections from classic Universal horror
pics of the '30s are used as a stock score for
Creeps (as they would
be for the studio's 1940s horror films), particularly
the instantly recognizable cue from Bride
Of Frankenstein.
The real
reason to sit through all 4 hours of this, of
course, is Bela Lugosi. Only he could get
away with such deliciously hammy line readings
("One by one my enemies will be disposed
of... until I am master of the universe!")
and get away with it. His Zorka is a true 'action!'
mad scientist, constantly getting into the thick
of things rather than lurking in the lab while
his henchman does the dirty work. Even though
the character is a complete megalomaniac and even
a bit of a sadist (he occasionally has a bit of
fun by threatening his servant Monk with the Iron
Man), Lugosi makes us feel sympathy for Zorka
when he portrays him as genuinely broken up by
the death of his wife. His exuberance for vengeance,
in contrast to the stale squareness Capt. West
and Co., will have you rooting for him to win.
And any guy who'd build such a cool robot certainly
deserves props from the audience! So I break down
my Film Rating for Phantom
Creeps thusly: a score of "2"
for the serial itself, a point for the Iron Man
(yep, I really dug the robot), and two points
for Lugosi being... well, Lugosi. (NOTE:
As recommended in EC's review of the Doctor
Who: The Key To Time box set, I feel the optimum
way to enjoy this particular
multi-part adventure is a chapter at a
time... You can even simulate the 1939 theater-going
experience by screening a chapter once a week
before watching a full-length movie.)
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Video, which specializes in public domain titles,
has packaged The Phantom Creeps
in two volumes, each sold separately. Volume One
contains chapters 1 through 6; Volume Two completes
the serial with chapters 7 through 12. Taken from
16mm dupes, don't expect great A/V quality here,
not even as good as the most mishandled titles among
Universal's Classic Monster Collection. (Many
of which really needed some work.) Picture
and sound quality varies significantly from chapter
to chapter, with all suffering from abundant print
damage. The beginning of Chapter 10 seems to be
missing the recap of the previous episode's final
scenes. It's highly doubtful that anyone will ever
do a restoration job on the original negatives —
even if they still exist — so these PD budget releases
are the way to go. I found these DVDs quite watchable,
especially considering the bargain bin price. No
extras are included with either of the discs but
the keepcase packaging is quite attractive. 1/21/03 |
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