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Fantasia Obscura: ‘Monster a Go-Go’

There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you do stupid things when you’re desperate…

Monster a Go-Go (1965)
Distributed by: B. I. & L. Releasing Co.
Directed by: Bill Rebane via Herschell Gordon Lewis (uncredited)

Filmmaking can be a tough business. To make a movie, you need to bring together many varied elements: A script. A cast of actors. Craftspeople to build the sets and lighting. Backers to finance the project.

Not every director can keep all of these elements in sync with each other on every film. Marylyn Monroe’s death stopped production on Something’s Got to Give. Alejandro Jodorowsky never got his version of Dune out of pre-pro. Channing Tatum playing Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine acknowledged the Gambit movie we never got. And there are plenty of other projects that were given up, never to see the light of day.

They were the lucky ones…

Please note that there will be spoilers for this spoiled rotten production…

We open immediately after the credits to footage of a helicopter in flight overlaid on by annoying narration from Rebane himself, promising us a fantastic tale as he sets up the plot: A space capsule, manned by Frank Douglas, sent up to track satellites of unknown origin, went out of communication as it achieved orbit.

A few days later, the capsule is tracked coming down somewhere in the Midwest, with Colonel Steve Connors (Phil Morton) heading the search and rescue op.

We watch Steve as he talks to the helicopter pilot doing an aerial search, and listen in as he gets updates from the pilot. We then watch from the car as we hear over the radio the pilot dying an agonizing death, then watch as Steve goes to the last location given him on the radio, finding the capsule and the pilot, neither of whom are in great shape.

And then we get a quick cut to the Douglass home, where his wife Ruth (June Tavis in her last role) is awaiting word on her husband’s fate. One of the scientists behind the project, Karl (Art Scott), and his wife Nora (Lois Brooks), offer her company as they await word about what happened to her husband. A phone call ends the vigil with word that they found the capsule, prompting the three to go out to the landing site.

At the scene, Dr. Logan (Barry Hopkins) shares his observations about the corpse of the pilot, which prompts him to pull an all-nighter to try and explain what’s going on. We cut from there to Dr. Logan’s cheap crappy set laboratory, where he tries to share his findings with other characters in the film, poorly. There’s too much double-talk that doesn’t make a lick of sense, which we could charitably assume was thanks to his not having slept all night. Not even Rebane’s inane narration can help him out here.

And what a night we get, as we quick cut to a scene of a party with lots of dancing and a little drama, during which a jealous man takes his girlfriend out of the scene when she enjoys dancing with someone else too much. Just as the two of them park by the side of the road for make-up nookie, they get attacked by a radioactive giant (Henry Hite) who kills the guy and leaves his date in shock, as a judgmental Rebane comments on the carnage.

We’re presuming at this point that the monster is an irradiated Douglas, which the scientists tracking him are always a step or two behind. At one point, he’s captured, and then escapes, or so we’re told in dialog between characters (!) as we cut between expository lab scenes, monster rampages where it attacks cute co-eds, and a number of diversions that really don’t make any sense.

Ultimately, we barrel stumble through to the end, where the creature is tracked to the bowels of Chicago. By this point, the only enthusiasm for this operation is found in how Rebane narrates the moment, with the authorities are hot on the tail of the radioactively hot monster…

Until they aren’t. The creature suddenly disappears during the chase, the Geiger counter falling silent as its pursuers try and corner it at a dead end. Their first question they have is, “What happened to Douglas?”

Then the authorities receive a telegram with some more puzzling news:

While everyone stands around puzzled as the film ends, there are questions raised, all of them asked through Rebane’s narration: “Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled?… But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?

We’re left with a few questions, too, with at the top of the list, “The fu- did I just watch…?

This film is a complete mess. There’s barely any continuity to speak of. We have characters popping in and out at random, plot points that don’t move the story or simply don’t move, full stop. Production values are so low, we get a scene with a telephone ringing where someone off-scene just went “Brrrrrring! Brrrrrring!” as the sound effect.

Normally, you could lay the blame for this on just about everyone in the movie. You could probably put most of it on Rebane, just for the horrible narration alone. No one acquits themselves well in front of the camera here, and it’s obvious the craft folks either didn’t know or care what to do when making a movie.

But this isn’t as simple as a badly made film. While Rebane and his crew were shooting the movie in 1961, the production ran out of money in the middle of the shoot. The project was then shelved, which is more common than you think, especially for shoestring productions like these. And it might well have stayed an unfinished and abandoned film, had another picture not had a distribution issue…

Herschell Gordon Lewis, the ‘Godfather of Gore’

In 1965 Herschell Gordon Lewis had just finished his own film, Moonshine Mountain, which needed to be packaged with a B-picture. The distributor could not bring Lewis’ film to drive-ins and other outlets that would have refused letting stand on their own, hence the need for a second feature.

Lewis found out about Rebane’s project, bought the rights to it, then spliced it together with a few added scenes and dialog. In some cases, when actors were brought back for pick-up shots, so many years had gone by that their characters identified themselves as siblings for whom they played before.

Because Lewis was only looking for an asset he could cobble together to get his hillbilly hellscape onto screens, there was no obvious care given to the film. Even if Rebane’s unused material by itself was Oscar-worthy, Lewis’ careless assemblage insured that this would be a complete mess.

As a result, the film elicits more pity than scorn. There’s no guarantee that if Rebane got to finish the film he started, that it would be in any way close to a good movie. Whatever the result, though, would likely be better than the final result, which would never have been seen had Lewis not been desperate for content. Which was why the movie was thrown into form with blasé abandon with no concern for anything other than he had something to make for a saleable double feature package.

Film making can be a tough business, especially when the business side is at its worst…

 

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