Jackie Gleason plays Chris Christie — or is it the other way around? — in prospective Voice of Baltimore horror flick.  (Ya gotta read the col- umn or you’ll never understand!)  Gleason is at upper left and lower right — or is that Christie?  …No, it’s definitely Gleason; the comedian at upper right and lower left is Christie.  [Composite Photos/VoB Staff]

CREATURE DOUBLE-FEATURES
AND TALES FROM THE CRYPT
SET STAGE FOR 2016 DEBATES

Nuclear fear of 1950s/’60s
spawned movie madness
featuring monsters, ghouls
and aliens from outer space

ALSO FILM AND TV CHARACTERS
WITH MANNERISMS REMINISCENT
OF TODAY’S TOP OFFICE SEEKERS

POD PEOPLE IN POTUS PROFILE?
 
By David Maril and Alan Z. Forman
 
“It’s only a movie, folks.  Remember… it’s only a movie.”

That was the disclaimer feature-film audiences, especially at drive-in theaters in the 1950s and ’60s, used to hear as assurance that the fear they were experiencing from the horror images on the big screen would end once the film projector stopped rolling and moviegoers went safely home.

That’s the way it was back then when theaters were swamped by countless numbers of films with frightening themes connected to science fiction and horror, including creatures from outer space, all sorts of strange mutants, and earth-born “monsters” as well.

Oftentimes the plot-lines involved otherworldly aliens living surreptitiously among us in disguise, plotting to take over the earth…  Like Donald Trump. Or Ted Cruz …or Hillary Clinton.

But where’s the disclaimer for the horror of the 2016 presidential race? including the prospect of a blowhard or a felon becoming America’s next President? or a candidate so unqualified as to make even the toughest cynic shudder?

Are the perfidious POTUS prospects, prevaricating Pod People in presidential profile?

The list of this fear-drenched 1950s/’60s movie genre includes such “classics” as “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” “The Wasp Woman,” “House On Haunted Hill” and “Night of the Ghouls” (all released in 1959); “The Giant Claw,” “Daughter of Dr. Jekyll” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957); “The Terror” (1963) and “Teenage Zombies” (1960), to mention just a few.

Moviegoers during this Cold War period were living through an atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Audiences could not resist an hour or more of screams and tension to take their mind off real-world concerns related to the threat of Communism and nuclear war.

Christopher Lloyd (right) and Bernie Sanders appeared together recently on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show, stunning viewers by how much they look alike, and becoming an Internet sensation as a result.  Perhaps the mad scientist’s aptly named “flux capacitor” could bring change to this year’s presidential campaign acrimony?

They didn’t have Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to horrify them, or Tina Fey in the persona of Sarah Palin to provide comic relief.

The films were scary, much like the bizarre presidential campaign of this election year. But they provided necessary relief, not unlike that which most Americans are looking for from the nasty campaign of 2016.

Humor also played a major part: Many of the 1950s/’60s horror entries were laughable and unintentionally funny. By contrast, in 1957’s “The Undead” the humor was fully intended and in some cases, inspired. One of the characters in the film regularly misquotes poetry; for example, a famous Mother Goose rhyme:

Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle; the ghost jumped over the tomb.

And the 1985 sci-fi blockbuster “Back to the Future,” which stars Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, has Lloyd expressing mock shock when he asks who the President is in 1984.

His incredulous response when told it’s Reagan, is classic: “The actor?” Lloyd intones, as if he thinks it’s too bizarre to be anything but a joke.

Lloyd looked a lot like current Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders in that film. The two actually met not long ago on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” along with Fox, and the physical similarities between Lloyd and Sanders went viral on the Internet.

On “Taxi” in the 1970s Lloyd played drugged-out cabbie Jim Ignatowski; and also Uncle Fester in “The Addams Family” (1991) and its sequel “Addams Family Values” (1993) — both spoofs of the horror genre — as well as Judge Doom in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988).

In “Back to the Future,” he portrays mad scientist Dr. Emmett Brown, who “invented” Marty McFly’s DeLorean automobile that transported him back in time to 1955, using what the character describes as a “flux capacitor” — i.e., something that brings about change, such as, in this case, time.

Perhaps a flux capacitor could be used on some of this year’s presidential candidates?

Back in the 1950s and ’60s the actors and actresses for the most part took second billing to the scary plots.

You qualify for a Ph.D. in movie trivia if you are familiar with such actors as Paul Langton, who appeared in “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957) after starring in “The Snow Creature” (1954); Paul Birch (“The Beast With a Million Eyes,” 1955); Sandra Harrison (“Blood of Dracula,” 1957); and Allison Hayes (“Attack of the 50-Foot Woman,” 1958).

Nancy Reagan co-starred with Lew Ayres in the 1953 horror film “Donovan’s Brain.”  The former First Lady is credited as Nancy Davis, her screen name before marrying the future President.

There were, however, a few big stars who either needed money badly or had too much time on their hands, who also appeared in some of these productions.

Charles Laughton and Vincent Price graced “The Strange Door” (1951) and Dean Jagger had the lead in “X the Unknown” (1956). John Carradine starred in “The Unearthly” (1957).

For whatever reason, Lew Ayres, a very distinguished actor who starred in the 1930 classic “All Quiet on the Western Front” and also played Dr. Kildare in a number of 1930s/’40s films, was featured in the lurid “Donovan’s Brain,” a 1953 horror entry that co-starred former First Lady Nancy Reagan (who died March 6th), credited under her screen name, Nancy Davis.

The greatest Sherlock Holmes actor of them all, Basil Rathbone, received top billing in “The Black Sleep”(1956) a black-and-white horror film that also starred horror-movie regulars Béla Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine, among others.

Rathbone also narrates the monster-laden film, which was released as the A-film of a double-feature with “The Creeping Unknown,” a 1955 British horror film titled “The Quatermass Xperiment,” starring Brian Donlevy, an Irish-American actor known for playing dangerous tough guys from the 1930s to the ’60s.

And Claude Rains starred in 1941’s “The Wolf Man,” with Ralph Bellamy and Béla Lugosi… featuring Lon Chaney Jr. as the title character, a werewolf named Lawrence (“Larry”) Talbot.

Chaney — whose real first name was Creighton, although he is generally credited by his father’s name, with “Jr.” appended — later turned in an excellent performance in the 1952 western, “High Noon,” which revived his fading career as well as that of star Gary Cooper, who won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role that year.

The many 1950s/’60s horror/disaster flicks even launched a number of new careers.

Michael Landon, who became famous for goody-two-shoes roles such as Little Joe Cartwright on TV’s “Bonanza,” was boosted by his horror film appearance as the star of “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” (1957).

Before James Arness spent two decades (1955-’75) as Matt Dillon, Dodge City’s most famous TV marshal, he splashed onto the silver screen as the monster in the 1954 horror movie, “Them,” which starred two-time Oscar nominee James Whitmore, along with Edmund Gwenn, who played Santa Claus in the 1947 Christmas comedy-drama, “Miracle on 34th Street.”

For Arness’s brother, Peter Graves, “Beginning of the End” (1957) helped him clear a pathway to TV’s “Mission Impossible,” although “Mr. Phelps” was already famous for playing the German spy, Price, in “Stalag 17” (1953).

Boris Karloff starred in a raft of horror films, beginning with “Frankenstein” in 1931, followed by “The Mummy” (1932) and continuing until his death in 1969.

And one of Jack Nicholson’s earliest roles was in the low-budget fright flick, “The Terror” (1963), produced and directed by iconic horror-film director Roger Corman and starring Boris Karloff, who hosted TV’s “Thriller” anthology series for two seasons on NBC (1960-’62).

However this era was not without a few classics.

Vincent Price starred in a number of films based on Edgar Allan Poe stories, the best-known of which was probably “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961).

And of course back in the day there was “Frankenstein,” with Boris Karloff, and “Dracula,” with Béla Lugosi (both 1931), followed by “The Mummy” (1932), also with Boris Karloff; and their many sequels extending well into the 1960s, ’70s and beyond.

Even in England the horror genre was extremely popular, with well-known British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee appearing in a number of “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” horror sequels.

The low-budget 1951 science fiction thriller “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” directed by the legendary Robert Wise, was one of the most significant antiwar films of all time: It starred Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe and Sam Jaffe.

And the 1978 remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was a big-budget blockbuster starring Donald Sutherland, along with Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum. The original well-made but low-budget version (1956) starred Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.  Both films featured the proverbial Pod People, as did a 1993 entry titled “Body Snatchers” that was loosely based on the 1955 novel of the same name.

Today, most of the mid-20th Century monster movies are considered little more than interesting relics of the past and amusing to watch. Check out Svengoolie (a/k/a actor Rich Koz), who hosts and spoofs the horror-film genre every Saturday night on MeTV; and TV horror hostesses Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (actress Cassandra Peterson), and Vampira.

Producers and directors don’t bother mass-producing these types of movies anymore. Audiences supposedly are too sophisticated to accept the plots and settings as real.

However the declaration of the demise of this film genre may have been a bit premature.

A 2010 remake of “The Wolf Man” featured Benicio del Toro in the title role, as well as Anthony Hopkins, both of them Oscar winners for their performances in other films.

And don’t bet against the public’s not accepting monster behavior as realism. Just take a look at the 2016 campaign for the presidency in both parties.

MORE HORRIFYING THAN THE SCARIEST HORROR MOVIES OF THE 1950s/’60s

Some of what we are observing on the TV screen, especially during so-called political debates, is even more unbelievable, and in some cases more horrifying, than the scariest horror movies of the 1950s and ’60s.

After watching a Republican debate, and seeing the leading candidates for President of the United States acting like a group of drunken boors on the verge of instigating a brawl, you have to figure there’s hope for bringing monster movies back.

So why not start with a horror film documenting this ghoulish, gory, 2016 presidential race?

We could call the movie “The Abominable Snow-Men,” in recognition of the snow-jobs perpetrated on the American public by most of the presidential candidates every time they speak.

This modern monster movie would retain the 1950s/’60s influence of isolation, fear and suspicion. However, intolerance, extremism and egomania would replace the phobias related to Communism and nuclear war.

To launch this monster flick and give it a good start, we would have unlimited access to deceased actors and actresses.

Here are some of Hollywood’s best that Voice of Baltimore would recommend casting to portray the presidential candidates, including those who are not still competing:

Numerous folks have noticed the similarity between Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, right, and character actor Pat Buttram, who played sidekick to both Gene Autry and Roy Rogers but is probably best known for his role as two-bit slickster “Mr. Haney” on the long-running television sitcom “Green Acres.”

VoB cannot take credit however for the choice of who should portray Ted Cruz. Numerous other people have already noticed the similarity between the Texas Senator’s voice and facial expressions and the 1960s/’70s “Green Acres” TV character “Mr. Haney,” portrayed by Pat Buttram, a character actor who in the late 1940s succeeded George “Gabby” Hayes and Smiley Burnette as sidekick to Gene Autry, “Radio’s Singing Cowboy” of the 1930s.

Buttram had gone to Hollywood earlier in the decade to become a sidekick to Roy Rogers, but since Roy already had two regulars, the future Mr. Haney was soon dropped and subsequently picked up by Autry.

There’s not much difference between Cruz and Mr. Haney. Both are two-bit slicksters — low-level politicians, actually — always trying to pull a fast one in their dealings with the public, using exaggerations and lies.

For the role of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, let’s dig back into the MGM vault and draft Wallace Beery, who was the world’s highest-paid actor in 1932. In over 250 movies, Beery played bullies and sloppy-looking tough guys, seldom caring about etiquette or diplomacy.

The crude business moguls he portrayed in “Dinner at Eight” (1933) and “Grand Hotel” (1932) — both starring the Barrymores, John and Lionel — would be perfect for the role of the blustering, insensitive and egotistical Trump. Plus Beery had the ability to portray glimpses of a human side, which Trump infrequently does, in some of his roles like “The Champ” (1931), which co-starred Jackie Cooper.

Despite being a monster movie, this script does call however for some comedy. With this in mind, Lou Costello, the rotund half of the Abbott & Costello comedy team, will do very well to play Marco Rubio.

Up until a few weeks ago, the short, paunchy comic would have been inappropriate for the role of the Florida Senator — who is short enough to wear elevator-shoes, but not paunchy. However in the last few debates, Rubio succumbed to trading childish insults and taunts with Trump, taking on the role of a clown, much like the film and stage persona of Costello.

GARY COOPER AS OHIO GOV. JOHN KASICH

Gary Cooper, resurrecting his terrific acting performance in “Meet John Doe” (1941) would be perfect as Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The John Doe underdog character’s “Be a Better Neighbor” grassroots movement ties in with Kasich’s positive message of bringing people together.

Over on the Democrats’ side, Claire Trevor would be an ideal Hillary Clinton — contrary to CBS’s vision of the former First Lady and Secretary of State portrayed by Téa Leoni as a younger, prettier Hillary, in the currently running political drama “Madam Secretary.”

The actress, who died at age 90 a few years back after spending seven decades portraying an endless number of sweet-talking heroines and mean and manipulative villains, has the range to capture all of the contradictory aspects of Hillary’s controversial and tiresome political career.

For Bernie Sanders, the Independent Socialist/Democrat challenging Hillary, let’s draft Charles Bickford as understudy to Christopher Lloyd. Like Sanders, Bickford was respected in non-leading roles and known for being tough to deal with because of a stubborn, single-minded philosophy.

Three times, Bickford was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Supporting actor — but like Sanders, never quite winning the prize. Also, similar to Sanders, he had a rough and honest-looking face, coupled with a gruff, earnest voice.

Other actors making co-starring appearances could include:

Grady Sutton may not have performed with the Marx Brothers — he’s best recognized for his role as one of W.C. Fields’ foils in “The Bank Dick” — but he sure did look a lot like the Bush Brothers.  In the 1940 comedy, his character, Og Oggilby, is dismissed by Fields, who stars as incompetent, drunken — and politically incorrect by 2016 standards — detective Egbert Sousé (humorously pro- nounced “sue-SAY”) with the observation that Og Oggilby “sounds like a bubble in the bathtub.”

Grady Sutton, a master at portray- ing browbeaten characters, such as the hapless foil of W.C. Fields in “The Bank Dick” (1940). Sutton would serve well as former Florida Governor and hapless Repub- lican candidate Jeb Bush, who looked and acted as if his heart was never in the race.  Sutton also looked a lot like Jeb, and Brother George as well.

Agnes Moorehead, who was superb when playing difficult, hard-edged powerful women, would make a decent Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and failed GOP presidential candidate. As would Barbara Stanwyck, the hard-nosed matriarch of TV’s Barkley clan in “The Big Valley.”

Elisha Cook Jr., with his look of sloppiness and distraction, could be effective as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

And in conclusion, going back to the comedy angle, how ‘bout Jackie Gleason as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie?

We’re open to suggestion as to who could play Ben Carson and Martin O’Malley — or if in fact anyone should?  Although Don Knotts, of “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Three’s Company” fame, who made a career of acting uncomfortable on TV (“The Steve Allen Show”’s “Man on the Street” nervous character) and in film — is certainly reminiscent of Dr. Carson’s mannerisms in interviews and debates.

And of course any guitar player could portray O’Malley.

In the end however, the realization that someone from this sorry collection of candidates is likely to become Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful nation, is horrifying.

And worst of all… This isn’t “only a movie” folks.

It isn’t “only a movie”!
 
davidmaril@voiceofbaltimore.org
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
“Inside Pitch” is a commentary/opinion column that appears regularly on Voice of Baltimore and has been written since 2013 by David Maril, who concludes his three-year run with this week’s entry.  Going forward, the column is being authored by additional commentators, along with VoB Staff.