The Hideous Sun Demon (1959)Produced and Directed by Robert Clarke
Starring:
Robert Clarke as Dr. Gilbert McKenna
Patricia Manningas Ann Lansing
Nan Peterson as Trudy Osborne
Let me say at the outset how much I loved this movie. This is only the second movie in my life that I felt immediately compelled to watch through a second time. I just had to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. The other film which I watched back to back, just to cement the experience, was Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919).
The two films, and the two film makers, certainly aren’t comparable with regard to influence or artistic vision. Weine was working in the solid framework of German Expressionism and was fully aware of the effects shadow-rich and brutally angular sets would have on an audience; and had the young, brilliant cream of German cinema working with him. He was a great artist in control, in other words, doing things on purpose; a perfect, surreal diamond cutter cutting a perfect, surreal diamond.
Clarke had a rubber lizard costume that made him sweat so badly in the California heat it soaked his pants. In several scenes it appears as though the hideous Sun Demon has pissed himself. He shot his film on weekends with a rented camera. Control? No. His film is a fragmented mix of styles, sometimes documentary flat, sometimes film noir shadowed, sometimes romantic with backlighting; All depending on the natural lightening available at the moment. Clarke caught moments of control on the fly, if at all, and skittered along on white flashes of inspiration, a blind and unrequited love of movies, instinct, and sheer power of will.
So is there a tie that binds? In what way do the artists and their work compare? What made both films worth a double dip?
Both films, for very different reasons, have a quality of jaw dropping unpredictability (Weine’s born of a unique vision, Clarke’s of a desperate struggle for project survival); and, most importantly, both films give me that feeling that the film maker was filming something very personal with much of himself at stake; and would have sold blood to finish it.
I wanted to watch The Hideous Sun Demon a second time also for the performance of Robert Clarke, who gave of himself in this film in ways that couldn’t have been healthy. Clarke, a true-blue B-movie actor that had the stones to shoot his meager arrow at the stars: Producer and Director – a true film auteur for good or ill. This film was Clarke’s baby, his legacy, from beginning to end, and his portrayal of Dr. Gilbert McKenna was, well “over the top” is a phrase so often used now that it has lost its meaning. Suffice to say Clarke dug deep, far deeper than was decent or probably advisable. At times his fellow actors, few of them with much experience in front of a camera, appear to actually take a step back from his self-flagellations; not at all sure this was in the script.
The film opens bluntly: A close up (one of the few close-ups in the film) of an alarm going off, ringing and flashing. Lettering on the alarm reads “Atomic Testing, Inc.” The next shot is an ambulance whisking someone out of the plant with all due haste. So, in the span of about 15 seconds we understand that we are in for a ‘radiation mutation” movie. Nice work, Mr. Clarke.
The next few scenes establish the atomic engine of the film. Dr. Gilbert (Gil) McKenna has been exposed to a great deal of radiation while working with some dangerous, new Isotopes. “This is a bad one,” says the ambulance driver, wheeling Gill into the hospital, “he’s been soaked in radiation” We see our hero for the first time, sweating and barley conscious in the gurney, his face sprinkled with glitter (a dusty glittering was a sure indication of exposure to radiation or fallout in sci-fi of the era).
Gill’s friends, Dr. Fredrick Buckell (Patrick Whyte) and Lab Assistant, Ann Lansing (Patricia Manning) speak with the attending physician, Dr. Stern (Robert Garry), about Dr. McKenna’s condition. The doctor seems puzzled and is hesitant about giving a prognosis. He asks Buckell and Russell for specifics.
Which are: Dr. McKenna has been working with a new and very dangerous radioactive isotope. Of course, all the usual precautions are taken, lead walls, radiation chambers, etc. Now, it is the lab’s practice to move all dangerous isotopes from the radiation chamber, where the isotope is manipulated by robotics hands, onto a toy train, “the kind children get at Christmas”, where it is then run along the tracks to the central part of the lab for research and experimentation (this is all explained with a straight face by Dr. Buckell and, even more surprising, greeted with a yes-yes of-course sort of nod from Dr. Stern). During the course of this evidently routine procedure, Dr. McKenna spilled the isotope onto the floor and was exposed to the radiation for about six minutes. It is revealed as well, and none to delicately, by Dr. Buckell that his dear colleague was more than likely hung over during the procedure, as he is most mornings. “He had a headache!” insists faithful Ann, clearly a bit more than a lab assistant.
So, to recap, we have a alcoholic nuclear scientist, badly hangover on the morning in question, spilling some lethal and completely unknown radioactive material which has been transferred through the facility by a toy, Lionel train (personally, I choose to imagine the kind able to make threads of smoke come from the stack). Further, staff at the lab are not able to clear the unconscious (blacked out?) scientist from this flood of radiation for a full five to six minutes because “it takes them that long to get into their radiation suits.” I’d say it’s time for a visit from the Atomic Energy Commission at the very least.
Well, that all seems quite alright, says Dr. Stern; but it does nothing to explain the abnormalities in the case. Most significantly, Dr. McKenna exhibits absolutely no ill effects, despite his incredibly and criminally long exposure to the deadly material. Also, victims of radiation exposure very seldom lose consciousness, as did Dr. McKenna. Very odd. Dr. Stern decides to keep Gill around for a few days for observation.
During McKenna’s convalescence, he is taken to the roof to relax, get a breath of fresh air, and take in some sun. Bad mistake. As McKenna basks under the sun, opening his hospital robe for good measure, he begins to look sweaty and uncomfortable. The sun, a large white ball, is seen in close up, then it’s back to McKenna, his hair now wringing wet and his face contorted. We see a fellow patient, an older woman with white hair and heavy makeup, reading a magazine near him. She looks up at McKenna and gives us the first reaction shot of the picture - long and theatrical - oddly effective for being so showy. “Your face!” howls the stately old woman, hands pawing the air. “Oh! Oh!”
The camera follows McKenna’s from the waist down, fleeing the roof (Clarke let his camera focus often on extremities, mostly legs and feet, when getting reactions to, or reactions from, McKenna). He runs into a room, and we first see a hand, changed into a reptilian claw/hand, and then McKenna sees his reflection in the mirror (as we do). It’s the face of a dragon or lizard and McKenna smashes the mirror. A nurse enters the room, calling his name (we watch her white stocking legs and white-shoed feet). She screams, her feet now running, and we fade to black.
The next scene gathers Dr. Stern, Dr. Buckell, and Ann back together again in Dr. Stern’s office. The doctor has cracked the case and completely understands what is happening to McKenna (without even so much as taking a blood sample). Stern comes on with some visual aids, a few old textbooks and a slideshow, and lays it all out. McKenna is suffering a reversal of evolution brought on by the combined effects of the radiation and exposure to sunlight; the sunlight being the “catalyst.” Yep, that’s right; a complete reversal of the evolutionary process.
Stern explains that every human fetus goes through millions of years of evolution during the nine-month gestation period when in the womb. That is: during the nine months womb-time, a human being is at various stages a one-celled creature, a fish, an amphibian, a reptile, and finally enters “the mammal state” and becomes a human. Stern points to pictures from a very old textbook meant to show similarities between a human fetus and the fetus of other animals, and we are treated to drawings of fish, human, chicken, and pig fetuses. Dr. Buckell sums up Dr. Stern’s rather frightening and uncomfortable ramblings: “You mean a human being could evolve backward thorough time, become some sort of prehistoric creature? That’s fantastic!”
“So, doctor,” says Stern meaningfully, “are the isotopes you are developing in your atomic laboratory.”
“Yes, I see,” says Buckell, for some reason completely chastised and shamefaced.
Having put the atomic egghead in his place, Dr. Stern moves on to the slideshow. Out go the lights and Stern clicks through various enlargements of insects, meant to Demonstrate the effects of exposure to various kinds of radiation. This then, is an ant after intense amounts of X-Ray – and we see a close-up of a . . well, the enlarged head of an ant. We also see what looks like a close up, nothing more or less, of a spider, and Stern intones, “this was a grasshopper.” We see Buckell and Ann recoil at these horrific images. “Well,” says Stern very satisfied with himself, “you get the idea.” Becknell gets the lights, and Stern swaggers over and sits on the corner of his desk, no longer discussing but telling what has happened:
What the radiation has done to the insects in those slides, it has done to the cells in McKenna’s body. The spilled isotope with the sun-catalyst chaser has mutated McKenna. “His whole appearance has changed into something . . . scaly – almost lizard-like.” From this day forward, McKenna must never be exposed to the Sun. How’s he taking it? asks Buckell. Stern doesn’t pull any punches. “Not well. He’s completely retreated into himself.” Stern goes on to imply that McKenna is very close to a problem that “goes beyond the physical.” You don’t mean something has gone wrong with his mind? wonders loyal Ann, eyes wide.
That, of course, is exactly what the kindly doctor means, sister. McKenna leaves the hospital and holes up in his house, which is a very sweet two-story five-bedroom colonial right on the California coast. What did they pay scientists back in the fifties, anyway? For the next several scenes, we see McKenna suffering the anguish of Heathcliff; he is forced to dine alone, get shitfaced alone, wonder the high cliffs of his property at night alone. Finally he can’t take the isolation anymore and one night jumps into his convertible sport coup and hits the bars. In one particularly seedy dump he spots a cheap piece of blonde singing at a piano that clearly intrigues him in a slumming kind of way, but a look of self-loathing and despair cross his features and he returns to his coup and drives home.
I found much of the camera work in this film interesting, and the long, unbroken shot where McKenna drives home is a good example. It isn’t anything special, really, just a very long shot of the road seen from the driver’s perspective (the camera was mounted on the hood of the car). Tires squeal at turns and engine revs, and the road just swirls by – no music at all. It goes on and on and finally fades to a grainy blackout. It is an odd choice for so long a shot, but somehow captures an isolated, drunken desperation almost perfectly. You can feel the wind and the smell of sea nearby, and an increasing sense of vertigo.
While McKenna stews, Dr. Buckell and Ann have summoned Dr. Jacob Hoffman, America’s foremost expert in the field of radiation poisoning; and he has agreed to visit and examine McKenna. Overjoyed, Ann decides to drive out and tell McKenna (who has disconnected his phone) the great news.
Things have been slipping for Dr. McKenna, though. Back in his increasingly messy and dark house (nice touch), we find the struggling doctor pouring over books in his library, taking notes, and his internal monologue reveals the fragmentation of his thinking: “Darwin never even scratched the surface. How could he? Evolution backwards. Half man. Half Lizard. And I’m the guinea pig to be locked up alone.” Huh? McKenna crumples up his notes and throws a pile of books on the floor. He dashes to the edge of the cliffs and stares far down at the waves crashing on the rocks below, working up the resolve for a jump (A full moon provides an astonishing amount of light for these shots). A woman’s scream shatters the moment, and a group of teenagers are seen frolicking on the beach far below in the moonlight. McKenna watches them for a moment and the momentum needed for suicide is lost. He returns home and decides to go bar-hopping again.
He winds up in the same dive, clearly hoping for a glimpse of the previously lusted for blonde. As the scene begins, Clarke is seen walking into a small bar, The Friendship Café, and the place just screams neighborhood seedy. A taco stand is next door with a crooked neon light, and the rest of the street looks well worn and desolate. I can only guess that the interior shots are of the same bar. No studio barroom set ever achieved this perfect level of cozy squalor. You can smell the spilled beer and something much more unpleasant near the restrooms. The wood paneling around the piano is marked with stains and thumbtacks. The sense of lives evaporating in dimness is absolutely complete, and it’s thrilling to imagine that the budget and time strapped director my have been giving “sophisticated nightclub” his best shot. My guess is the owner of the Friendship Café let Clarke film there for nothing.
The same well-traveled torch singer, Trudy (Nan Peterson), is indeed sitting behind the piano, wearing the same dress with the same nearly illegally plunging neckline. McKenna grabs himself a bourbon and water and has a seat near the piano (no stage or soft lighting here). Trudy sings her next number, the appropriately titled Strange Pursuit, and the two never break eye contact. Hell, they almost become lovers before the song is over.
Her set finished, Trudy comes and plops herself down next to McKenna without even bothering with an introduction. Soon, McKenna suggests a moonlight ride along the beach. At night? wonders Trudy momentarily, well, OK; but trouble looms when “George” (Peter Similuk) shows up and hovers over the table like a golem. It is never clearly established, but George acts more like a customer who has arranged for an evening than a boyfriend looking for candlelight romance. Whatever the case, he and McKenna get into a, well, you would have to call it a “fight” I suppose. The only time either participant seems in the slightest danger is when Clarke gets pushed backward and receives a nasty crack to the head from a lamp hanging over a bumper pool table (it rings like a bell and you can hear Clarke make an unscripted grunt). Other than that, it’s all flailing arms and a great deal of hopping around (I mean that literally. Clarke has an odd, bouncy style with his dukes, terribly dramatic but completely ineffectual). Somehow despite this hippity-hop style McKenna manages to knock George unconscious, and the two soon-to-be-lovers flee the bar.
After the inevitable beach clinch, where in time-honored tradition surf on rocks stand in for copulation, the two finally pass out in the sand (they have been doing nothing but drinking for hours prior to their tryst, with the alcoholic doctor producing a hidden flask from the armrest of his roadster when their bar supply runs out). McKenna wakes up with not only his customary hangover, which got him into this mess in the first place, but a terrible case of the lizard sweats into the bargain. He makes a made dash for home, leaving poor Trudy walking the sand in the unforgiving light of morning with crushed dreams (well, drunken hopes, anyway) and a thumb to make her way home.
McKenna’s wild ride home and transformation into the Sun Demon dovetails perfectly with Ann’s visit to deliver the great news about Dr. Hoffman’s arrival. Gill dashes into his basement, seeking the darkness of a root cellar. In a truly upsetting moment, Gill the Demon finds a rat scurrying from the cellar, which he snatches up and, getting a good grip with both claws, juices it like a lemon (this must have made ‘em squeal at the drive in). Goody-two-shoes Ann finds Gill in the cellar among the pickled eggs and canning jars, human again but cowering in a fetal position and given to explosive levels of insane whining about his incurable condition. He dissolves in her arms, finally agreeing to give Dr. Hoffman a chance.
Dr Hoffman (Fred La Porta), complete with heavy eyeglasses and even heavier Viennese accent, comes calling the next day and immediately checks Gills heart with a stethoscope. Dr. Buckell is present, smoking his pipe just to be on the safe side. Yes, decides Hoffman after his extensive examination, there is hope for a cure. “Oh, do you really mean it, Doctor? You can’t know what it would mean to me . . . I would do anything, anything, to get well!” Fine, fine, says Hoffman, explaining to Gill that after two or three days of preliminary observation it will be arranged to have him taken to a hospital for treatments. For those few days, though, Gill is told he must absolutely, under no circumstances, leave the house. Deal? Immediately Dr. Barfly’s resolve begins to evaporate like a snow flurry in August. “You mean,” he gulps, “even at night?” Even at night, insists Hoffman. “After last night, there is too much risk.” Hoffman’s tone is diplomatic but firm. Dr. Buckell is less diplomatic and decides to take his pipe out of his mouth and pound the nail right on the head. “No more wondering at night, my boy, and no more drinking.”
After going to bed, and with a good chance for a cure in sight at the cost of a couple of nights of house arrest, Gill manages to stay the course for thirty minutes or so before throwing his sweaty sheets aside and heading for the bars. For reasons only a desperate drunk who turns evolution backward when exposed to the sun could understand, he decides to take his drinks at the Friendship Inn, where Trudy works. Well, before Gill can get served a drink, George and a couple of very ugly friends give bar-boy an old school, out-in-the-alley beat down at Trudy’s request. Trudy stops the savaging just short of murder and, now sympathetic once Gill is helpless and bloody, takes him to her place.
Gill wakes up and, after fully regaining consciousness, seems pretty pleased with the situation. I mean, sure it’s broad daylight and he’s just gotten the sand kicked out of him by Trudy’s pimp/boyfriend/john, and yes, well, he has blown any chance for a cure to a condition that dooms him to life as iguana-man, but hey, as long as the curtains are kept closed, who can kick? Covered in scrapes and blood, wearing clothes that have been soaked through with sweat, he begins to put the moves on Trudy and it’s obvious she’s more than game. Truly, this is a pair that live for the moment.
There’s a knock at the door just as Trudy begins to melt, and it’s that goddamn George again (who in his own thuggish way has demonstrated more loyalty and just plain rational thinking that anyone in the picture). George escorts Gill outside at gunpoint into the bright sunlight. The two struggle, and we see by George’s reaction that he suddenly realizes he has bitten off a bit more than he can chew (Clarke clearly didn’t have the budget or expertise for any stages-of-transformation makeup and probably didn’t have the time for all that nonsense at any rate).
The Sun Demon beats the luckless George’s brains out on the roof of a car while, gazing on the action from a window, actress Nan Peterson gives a very memorable scream that seems as sudden and spasmodic as an epileptic fit. I have done my best to avoid the obvious comments about Ms. Peterson, but since the director has dressed her in nothing but deep necklines throughout the production, and has her hanging so far out the window in this scene she seems in danger of tumbling ass-over-breasts to the street below, I see no further reason to be polite. The woman is built to a degree that only a fool would ignore.
The Sun Demon races into the surrounding foothills, his mad, animal rush looking at times more like the awkward struggle of an actor in street shoes and huge, rubber claws on his hands (Clarke, wearing the heavy, rubber suit, could have used a boost as he begins his assent). In his race toward home, Gill has to cut through a group of children having a birthday party on what appears to be the grounds of a long abandoned greenhouse. A pet Collie attacks him, yet despite the dubbed in growls and barks, seems much more interested in romping around and playing (his tail is even wagging). No matter, Sun Demon strangles him vigorously and beats him to death with a handy hunk of stone. Seeing as how this Collie is a dead ringer for the then immensely popular canine star, Lassie, and the dog is beaten to death in front of a group of screeching children, one must applaud Clarke his choices.
Bursting into his house still as Sun Demon, Clarke scares the crap out of the insanely loyal Ann and the two doctors, who have all been waiting for his return. Once out of the sun, he becomes Gill again. The next scene has the doctors trying to comfort a guilt-racked McKenna, who has finally found some clean clothes. “You must try and calm yourself,” says Hoffman, obviously loosing patience. “Now, Gill,” adds Dr. Buckell, taking an oddly amoral, litigious stance, “we can prove it was self defense.”
Nothing will soothe McKenna, however, and his guilt quickly feels more like hysterical self pity. Throughout his picture Clarke has nurtured a particularly entertaining and edgy take on the part of Dr. McKenna, and in this scene all his thespian groundwork pays dividends as he enters the ozone-zone of acting. I have never witnessed the precise moment of a nervous breakdown, but if the unfortunate happens this scene will be my benchmark for comparison.
“You don’t seem to understand,” begins McKenna, sitting upright in preparation for a volcanic crescendo, giving himself some room to work. “No matter what we prove, it doesn’t alter the fact that I wanted to kill him. I’ve devoted my life to science. Do you see what’s happened? What good has it done me? What chance have I got to fight? Why should I be the one? Can you answer me that? Why me? Why should I be the one picked up for this? Please tell me why!” By the end of this disjointed and irrational series of questions, McKenna is pumping his clenched fists into his stomach; and his voice has risen to a glass-shattering shrillness that defies all the civil bounds of public safety. Ann comes running down the stairs and cradles McKenna’s head in her lap as he begins a loud blubbering that seems to have no end in sight.
Dr. Hoffman, who has beaten a very swift retreat to a corner of the room and appears to be one outburst away from making a break for it, motions Dr. Buckell over for a professional, albeit hasty, conference. “It’s paranoia!” he hisses urgently. “I am not a psychiatrist, but, huh . . “ he motions with a flick of the eyes at the huddled and loudly wailing McKenna, letting the scene speak for itself.
The cops arrive, and McKenna immediately chooses the absolute worst course of action, bolting from the house to his car; where he proceeds to run down an officer making his escape. The film now becomes a police procedural man hunt with Director Clarke managing some nifty bits of film making on the way to the final credits.
McKenna takes his final, sunless refuge in tin shed among an industrial wasteland of oil rigs and towers. Here he befriends a small girl, Suzy (Xandra Conkling), who uses the abandoned shed for a private playhouse. By this time, McKenna is no longer sane, his eyes large, dark, soulless circles. Clarke makes a very interesting choice here in that the scene between the filthy, bedraggled McKenna and the sweet, blond girl (pigtails and saddle shoes, no less) is played out completely absent of sentiment. As innocent child confronts Gill with gentle words and the offer for help, McKenna looks as though he might run or perhaps kill her if the toxic chemicals in his head shifted a bit. You would help me? He says, not smiling. The child assures him, sure she wants to help. Maybe he would like some cookies? McKenna simply stares at her, his eyes darkly haggard with doom. Don’t tell anyone I’m here, he says finally, and one feels relief when the girl is allowed to leave, off to fetch her new friend some cookies.
The radio and newspapers are instantaneously abuzz with warnings of the rampaging beast, or, as the headline of one hawked newspaper puts it without much finesse, “weird killer still at large.” Suzy’s mom (Donna King), who can’t seem to keep her child indoors during this very abrupt city-wide crisis as the radio advises, puts two-and-two together from little Suzy’s stories of her new hungry friend and calls the cops. Forced into the sunlight one last time, Gill becomes the Sun Demon (off-camera, of course) and, after a grueling chase through some of the most desolate acreage late fifties L.A. has to offer, is shot off an oil tank and falls splatting to his death.
By this time, McKenna’s long (nicely edited) fall to the concrete elicits a rather perfunctory scream from Ann, but really, all in attendance don’t seem to foresee any other outcome. After all, no one, not even Ann, calls out to him during McKenna’s long climb up the oil tank ladder or pleads with police not to kill him; indeed Ann seems extremely easy to comfort. The last words spoken come from Dr. Buckell, who puts a fatherly arm around Ann and politely suggests the best thing to do now is “hope he didn’t give his life in vain” (although it would be difficult to imagine how things could be otherwise. His death will, what, prevent other alcoholic, badly hangover nuclear scientists from spilling a radioactive isotope on the floor and being exposed to lethal radiation for six minutes?).
So, what makes this odd, enticing piece of B so entertaining? As I have mentioned, it is, if nothing else, completely unpredictable, a quality never to be underestimated. Also, there is the edgy histrionics of Robert Clarke that has, even after 40 years, the power to make all who see it thrillingly uncomfortable enough to hit the rewind button at least twice. But there is something else as well.
The makeup and lizard suit for the Sun Demon monster is awful damn good. Richard Cassarino is listed as the man responsible for suit design and makeup, and he certainly deserves a tip of the hat. Cassarino, whose film career seems all but limited to this project, also played several small rolls in the film, including the cop in the end that plugs the Demon.
Finally, I think that the film is greatly enhanced by the decisions forced on the director because of his extra-meager budget and working-class weekend shooting schedule (according to various sources the production cashed in for around $50,000; and Clarke shot only on the weekends because cast and crew either had day jobs or had school). His choices for location shooting seem to be limited to places he could set up fast and shoot for free. These include a fascinating tableau of desolate or abandoned lots of scrappy real estate, empty buildings cluttered with garbage and debris, back alleys and seedy apartment fronts, and extremely low rent swaths of 1959 Los Angeles and surroundings.
Clarke often films these outdoor scenes with loving, eye-of-God long shots as if to revel in the weedy, cracked harshness (my favorite being the high, long, unbroken shot of little Suzy, a blonde waif, running from her clean house, out into the street, and across at least 150 yards of hard scrapple, industrial wasteland littered with cracked sidewalks and oil rigs).
All in all, an L.A. that is distinctly not the magical place of dreams and MGM polish by a far damn cry. The confines of the budget also called for Clarke to do his own stunts. In the final scene, which has Clarke (as well as the energetic Cassarino playing the pursuing cop) climbing and struggling up a very, very high oil tank, the work is just plain terrifyingly dangerous. At one point, Cassarino is hanging, hanging by one hand, from a ladder’s rung at least four stories above ground, his feet scrambling for purchase. Goddammit – that’s film making, my friends!
You gotta love it!
More popcorn, quick! This baby is a double-feature all by itself. CHECK OUT THE TRAILER BELOW – Radiation Cinema
Robert Clarke as Dr. Gilbert McKenna
Patricia Manningas Ann Lansing
Nan Peterson as Trudy Osborne
Let me say at the outset how much I loved this movie. This is only the second movie in my life that I felt immediately compelled to watch through a second time. I just had to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. The other film which I watched back to back, just to cement the experience, was Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919).
The two films, and the two film makers, certainly aren’t comparable with regard to influence or artistic vision. Weine was working in the solid framework of German Expressionism and was fully aware of the effects shadow-rich and brutally angular sets would have on an audience; and had the young, brilliant cream of German cinema working with him. He was a great artist in control, in other words, doing things on purpose; a perfect, surreal diamond cutter cutting a perfect, surreal diamond.
Clarke had a rubber lizard costume that made him sweat so badly in the California heat it soaked his pants. In several scenes it appears as though the hideous Sun Demon has pissed himself. He shot his film on weekends with a rented camera. Control? No. His film is a fragmented mix of styles, sometimes documentary flat, sometimes film noir shadowed, sometimes romantic with backlighting; All depending on the natural lightening available at the moment. Clarke caught moments of control on the fly, if at all, and skittered along on white flashes of inspiration, a blind and unrequited love of movies, instinct, and sheer power of will.
So is there a tie that binds? In what way do the artists and their work compare? What made both films worth a double dip?
Both films, for very different reasons, have a quality of jaw dropping unpredictability (Weine’s born of a unique vision, Clarke’s of a desperate struggle for project survival); and, most importantly, both films give me that feeling that the film maker was filming something very personal with much of himself at stake; and would have sold blood to finish it.
I wanted to watch The Hideous Sun Demon a second time also for the performance of Robert Clarke, who gave of himself in this film in ways that couldn’t have been healthy. Clarke, a true-blue B-movie actor that had the stones to shoot his meager arrow at the stars: Producer and Director – a true film auteur for good or ill. This film was Clarke’s baby, his legacy, from beginning to end, and his portrayal of Dr. Gilbert McKenna was, well “over the top” is a phrase so often used now that it has lost its meaning. Suffice to say Clarke dug deep, far deeper than was decent or probably advisable. At times his fellow actors, few of them with much experience in front of a camera, appear to actually take a step back from his self-flagellations; not at all sure this was in the script.
The film opens bluntly: A close up (one of the few close-ups in the film) of an alarm going off, ringing and flashing. Lettering on the alarm reads “Atomic Testing, Inc.” The next shot is an ambulance whisking someone out of the plant with all due haste. So, in the span of about 15 seconds we understand that we are in for a ‘radiation mutation” movie. Nice work, Mr. Clarke.
The next few scenes establish the atomic engine of the film. Dr. Gilbert (Gil) McKenna has been exposed to a great deal of radiation while working with some dangerous, new Isotopes. “This is a bad one,” says the ambulance driver, wheeling Gill into the hospital, “he’s been soaked in radiation” We see our hero for the first time, sweating and barley conscious in the gurney, his face sprinkled with glitter (a dusty glittering was a sure indication of exposure to radiation or fallout in sci-fi of the era).
Gill’s friends, Dr. Fredrick Buckell (Patrick Whyte) and Lab Assistant, Ann Lansing (Patricia Manning) speak with the attending physician, Dr. Stern (Robert Garry), about Dr. McKenna’s condition. The doctor seems puzzled and is hesitant about giving a prognosis. He asks Buckell and Russell for specifics.
Which are: Dr. McKenna has been working with a new and very dangerous radioactive isotope. Of course, all the usual precautions are taken, lead walls, radiation chambers, etc. Now, it is the lab’s practice to move all dangerous isotopes from the radiation chamber, where the isotope is manipulated by robotics hands, onto a toy train, “the kind children get at Christmas”, where it is then run along the tracks to the central part of the lab for research and experimentation (this is all explained with a straight face by Dr. Buckell and, even more surprising, greeted with a yes-yes of-course sort of nod from Dr. Stern). During the course of this evidently routine procedure, Dr. McKenna spilled the isotope onto the floor and was exposed to the radiation for about six minutes. It is revealed as well, and none to delicately, by Dr. Buckell that his dear colleague was more than likely hung over during the procedure, as he is most mornings. “He had a headache!” insists faithful Ann, clearly a bit more than a lab assistant.
So, to recap, we have a alcoholic nuclear scientist, badly hangover on the morning in question, spilling some lethal and completely unknown radioactive material which has been transferred through the facility by a toy, Lionel train (personally, I choose to imagine the kind able to make threads of smoke come from the stack). Further, staff at the lab are not able to clear the unconscious (blacked out?) scientist from this flood of radiation for a full five to six minutes because “it takes them that long to get into their radiation suits.” I’d say it’s time for a visit from the Atomic Energy Commission at the very least.
Well, that all seems quite alright, says Dr. Stern; but it does nothing to explain the abnormalities in the case. Most significantly, Dr. McKenna exhibits absolutely no ill effects, despite his incredibly and criminally long exposure to the deadly material. Also, victims of radiation exposure very seldom lose consciousness, as did Dr. McKenna. Very odd. Dr. Stern decides to keep Gill around for a few days for observation.
During McKenna’s convalescence, he is taken to the roof to relax, get a breath of fresh air, and take in some sun. Bad mistake. As McKenna basks under the sun, opening his hospital robe for good measure, he begins to look sweaty and uncomfortable. The sun, a large white ball, is seen in close up, then it’s back to McKenna, his hair now wringing wet and his face contorted. We see a fellow patient, an older woman with white hair and heavy makeup, reading a magazine near him. She looks up at McKenna and gives us the first reaction shot of the picture - long and theatrical - oddly effective for being so showy. “Your face!” howls the stately old woman, hands pawing the air. “Oh! Oh!”
The camera follows McKenna’s from the waist down, fleeing the roof (Clarke let his camera focus often on extremities, mostly legs and feet, when getting reactions to, or reactions from, McKenna). He runs into a room, and we first see a hand, changed into a reptilian claw/hand, and then McKenna sees his reflection in the mirror (as we do). It’s the face of a dragon or lizard and McKenna smashes the mirror. A nurse enters the room, calling his name (we watch her white stocking legs and white-shoed feet). She screams, her feet now running, and we fade to black.
The next scene gathers Dr. Stern, Dr. Buckell, and Ann back together again in Dr. Stern’s office. The doctor has cracked the case and completely understands what is happening to McKenna (without even so much as taking a blood sample). Stern comes on with some visual aids, a few old textbooks and a slideshow, and lays it all out. McKenna is suffering a reversal of evolution brought on by the combined effects of the radiation and exposure to sunlight; the sunlight being the “catalyst.” Yep, that’s right; a complete reversal of the evolutionary process.
Stern explains that every human fetus goes through millions of years of evolution during the nine-month gestation period when in the womb. That is: during the nine months womb-time, a human being is at various stages a one-celled creature, a fish, an amphibian, a reptile, and finally enters “the mammal state” and becomes a human. Stern points to pictures from a very old textbook meant to show similarities between a human fetus and the fetus of other animals, and we are treated to drawings of fish, human, chicken, and pig fetuses. Dr. Buckell sums up Dr. Stern’s rather frightening and uncomfortable ramblings: “You mean a human being could evolve backward thorough time, become some sort of prehistoric creature? That’s fantastic!”
“So, doctor,” says Stern meaningfully, “are the isotopes you are developing in your atomic laboratory.”
“Yes, I see,” says Buckell, for some reason completely chastised and shamefaced.
Having put the atomic egghead in his place, Dr. Stern moves on to the slideshow. Out go the lights and Stern clicks through various enlargements of insects, meant to Demonstrate the effects of exposure to various kinds of radiation. This then, is an ant after intense amounts of X-Ray – and we see a close-up of a . . well, the enlarged head of an ant. We also see what looks like a close up, nothing more or less, of a spider, and Stern intones, “this was a grasshopper.” We see Buckell and Ann recoil at these horrific images. “Well,” says Stern very satisfied with himself, “you get the idea.” Becknell gets the lights, and Stern swaggers over and sits on the corner of his desk, no longer discussing but telling what has happened:
What the radiation has done to the insects in those slides, it has done to the cells in McKenna’s body. The spilled isotope with the sun-catalyst chaser has mutated McKenna. “His whole appearance has changed into something . . . scaly – almost lizard-like.” From this day forward, McKenna must never be exposed to the Sun. How’s he taking it? asks Buckell. Stern doesn’t pull any punches. “Not well. He’s completely retreated into himself.” Stern goes on to imply that McKenna is very close to a problem that “goes beyond the physical.” You don’t mean something has gone wrong with his mind? wonders loyal Ann, eyes wide.
That, of course, is exactly what the kindly doctor means, sister. McKenna leaves the hospital and holes up in his house, which is a very sweet two-story five-bedroom colonial right on the California coast. What did they pay scientists back in the fifties, anyway? For the next several scenes, we see McKenna suffering the anguish of Heathcliff; he is forced to dine alone, get shitfaced alone, wonder the high cliffs of his property at night alone. Finally he can’t take the isolation anymore and one night jumps into his convertible sport coup and hits the bars. In one particularly seedy dump he spots a cheap piece of blonde singing at a piano that clearly intrigues him in a slumming kind of way, but a look of self-loathing and despair cross his features and he returns to his coup and drives home.
I found much of the camera work in this film interesting, and the long, unbroken shot where McKenna drives home is a good example. It isn’t anything special, really, just a very long shot of the road seen from the driver’s perspective (the camera was mounted on the hood of the car). Tires squeal at turns and engine revs, and the road just swirls by – no music at all. It goes on and on and finally fades to a grainy blackout. It is an odd choice for so long a shot, but somehow captures an isolated, drunken desperation almost perfectly. You can feel the wind and the smell of sea nearby, and an increasing sense of vertigo.
While McKenna stews, Dr. Buckell and Ann have summoned Dr. Jacob Hoffman, America’s foremost expert in the field of radiation poisoning; and he has agreed to visit and examine McKenna. Overjoyed, Ann decides to drive out and tell McKenna (who has disconnected his phone) the great news.
Things have been slipping for Dr. McKenna, though. Back in his increasingly messy and dark house (nice touch), we find the struggling doctor pouring over books in his library, taking notes, and his internal monologue reveals the fragmentation of his thinking: “Darwin never even scratched the surface. How could he? Evolution backwards. Half man. Half Lizard. And I’m the guinea pig to be locked up alone.” Huh? McKenna crumples up his notes and throws a pile of books on the floor. He dashes to the edge of the cliffs and stares far down at the waves crashing on the rocks below, working up the resolve for a jump (A full moon provides an astonishing amount of light for these shots). A woman’s scream shatters the moment, and a group of teenagers are seen frolicking on the beach far below in the moonlight. McKenna watches them for a moment and the momentum needed for suicide is lost. He returns home and decides to go bar-hopping again.
He winds up in the same dive, clearly hoping for a glimpse of the previously lusted for blonde. As the scene begins, Clarke is seen walking into a small bar, The Friendship Café, and the place just screams neighborhood seedy. A taco stand is next door with a crooked neon light, and the rest of the street looks well worn and desolate. I can only guess that the interior shots are of the same bar. No studio barroom set ever achieved this perfect level of cozy squalor. You can smell the spilled beer and something much more unpleasant near the restrooms. The wood paneling around the piano is marked with stains and thumbtacks. The sense of lives evaporating in dimness is absolutely complete, and it’s thrilling to imagine that the budget and time strapped director my have been giving “sophisticated nightclub” his best shot. My guess is the owner of the Friendship Café let Clarke film there for nothing.
The same well-traveled torch singer, Trudy (Nan Peterson), is indeed sitting behind the piano, wearing the same dress with the same nearly illegally plunging neckline. McKenna grabs himself a bourbon and water and has a seat near the piano (no stage or soft lighting here). Trudy sings her next number, the appropriately titled Strange Pursuit, and the two never break eye contact. Hell, they almost become lovers before the song is over.
Her set finished, Trudy comes and plops herself down next to McKenna without even bothering with an introduction. Soon, McKenna suggests a moonlight ride along the beach. At night? wonders Trudy momentarily, well, OK; but trouble looms when “George” (Peter Similuk) shows up and hovers over the table like a golem. It is never clearly established, but George acts more like a customer who has arranged for an evening than a boyfriend looking for candlelight romance. Whatever the case, he and McKenna get into a, well, you would have to call it a “fight” I suppose. The only time either participant seems in the slightest danger is when Clarke gets pushed backward and receives a nasty crack to the head from a lamp hanging over a bumper pool table (it rings like a bell and you can hear Clarke make an unscripted grunt). Other than that, it’s all flailing arms and a great deal of hopping around (I mean that literally. Clarke has an odd, bouncy style with his dukes, terribly dramatic but completely ineffectual). Somehow despite this hippity-hop style McKenna manages to knock George unconscious, and the two soon-to-be-lovers flee the bar.
After the inevitable beach clinch, where in time-honored tradition surf on rocks stand in for copulation, the two finally pass out in the sand (they have been doing nothing but drinking for hours prior to their tryst, with the alcoholic doctor producing a hidden flask from the armrest of his roadster when their bar supply runs out). McKenna wakes up with not only his customary hangover, which got him into this mess in the first place, but a terrible case of the lizard sweats into the bargain. He makes a made dash for home, leaving poor Trudy walking the sand in the unforgiving light of morning with crushed dreams (well, drunken hopes, anyway) and a thumb to make her way home.
McKenna’s wild ride home and transformation into the Sun Demon dovetails perfectly with Ann’s visit to deliver the great news about Dr. Hoffman’s arrival. Gill dashes into his basement, seeking the darkness of a root cellar. In a truly upsetting moment, Gill the Demon finds a rat scurrying from the cellar, which he snatches up and, getting a good grip with both claws, juices it like a lemon (this must have made ‘em squeal at the drive in). Goody-two-shoes Ann finds Gill in the cellar among the pickled eggs and canning jars, human again but cowering in a fetal position and given to explosive levels of insane whining about his incurable condition. He dissolves in her arms, finally agreeing to give Dr. Hoffman a chance.
Dr Hoffman (Fred La Porta), complete with heavy eyeglasses and even heavier Viennese accent, comes calling the next day and immediately checks Gills heart with a stethoscope. Dr. Buckell is present, smoking his pipe just to be on the safe side. Yes, decides Hoffman after his extensive examination, there is hope for a cure. “Oh, do you really mean it, Doctor? You can’t know what it would mean to me . . . I would do anything, anything, to get well!” Fine, fine, says Hoffman, explaining to Gill that after two or three days of preliminary observation it will be arranged to have him taken to a hospital for treatments. For those few days, though, Gill is told he must absolutely, under no circumstances, leave the house. Deal? Immediately Dr. Barfly’s resolve begins to evaporate like a snow flurry in August. “You mean,” he gulps, “even at night?” Even at night, insists Hoffman. “After last night, there is too much risk.” Hoffman’s tone is diplomatic but firm. Dr. Buckell is less diplomatic and decides to take his pipe out of his mouth and pound the nail right on the head. “No more wondering at night, my boy, and no more drinking.”
After going to bed, and with a good chance for a cure in sight at the cost of a couple of nights of house arrest, Gill manages to stay the course for thirty minutes or so before throwing his sweaty sheets aside and heading for the bars. For reasons only a desperate drunk who turns evolution backward when exposed to the sun could understand, he decides to take his drinks at the Friendship Inn, where Trudy works. Well, before Gill can get served a drink, George and a couple of very ugly friends give bar-boy an old school, out-in-the-alley beat down at Trudy’s request. Trudy stops the savaging just short of murder and, now sympathetic once Gill is helpless and bloody, takes him to her place.
Gill wakes up and, after fully regaining consciousness, seems pretty pleased with the situation. I mean, sure it’s broad daylight and he’s just gotten the sand kicked out of him by Trudy’s pimp/boyfriend/john, and yes, well, he has blown any chance for a cure to a condition that dooms him to life as iguana-man, but hey, as long as the curtains are kept closed, who can kick? Covered in scrapes and blood, wearing clothes that have been soaked through with sweat, he begins to put the moves on Trudy and it’s obvious she’s more than game. Truly, this is a pair that live for the moment.
There’s a knock at the door just as Trudy begins to melt, and it’s that goddamn George again (who in his own thuggish way has demonstrated more loyalty and just plain rational thinking that anyone in the picture). George escorts Gill outside at gunpoint into the bright sunlight. The two struggle, and we see by George’s reaction that he suddenly realizes he has bitten off a bit more than he can chew (Clarke clearly didn’t have the budget or expertise for any stages-of-transformation makeup and probably didn’t have the time for all that nonsense at any rate).
The Sun Demon beats the luckless George’s brains out on the roof of a car while, gazing on the action from a window, actress Nan Peterson gives a very memorable scream that seems as sudden and spasmodic as an epileptic fit. I have done my best to avoid the obvious comments about Ms. Peterson, but since the director has dressed her in nothing but deep necklines throughout the production, and has her hanging so far out the window in this scene she seems in danger of tumbling ass-over-breasts to the street below, I see no further reason to be polite. The woman is built to a degree that only a fool would ignore.
The Sun Demon races into the surrounding foothills, his mad, animal rush looking at times more like the awkward struggle of an actor in street shoes and huge, rubber claws on his hands (Clarke, wearing the heavy, rubber suit, could have used a boost as he begins his assent). In his race toward home, Gill has to cut through a group of children having a birthday party on what appears to be the grounds of a long abandoned greenhouse. A pet Collie attacks him, yet despite the dubbed in growls and barks, seems much more interested in romping around and playing (his tail is even wagging). No matter, Sun Demon strangles him vigorously and beats him to death with a handy hunk of stone. Seeing as how this Collie is a dead ringer for the then immensely popular canine star, Lassie, and the dog is beaten to death in front of a group of screeching children, one must applaud Clarke his choices.
Bursting into his house still as Sun Demon, Clarke scares the crap out of the insanely loyal Ann and the two doctors, who have all been waiting for his return. Once out of the sun, he becomes Gill again. The next scene has the doctors trying to comfort a guilt-racked McKenna, who has finally found some clean clothes. “You must try and calm yourself,” says Hoffman, obviously loosing patience. “Now, Gill,” adds Dr. Buckell, taking an oddly amoral, litigious stance, “we can prove it was self defense.”
Nothing will soothe McKenna, however, and his guilt quickly feels more like hysterical self pity. Throughout his picture Clarke has nurtured a particularly entertaining and edgy take on the part of Dr. McKenna, and in this scene all his thespian groundwork pays dividends as he enters the ozone-zone of acting. I have never witnessed the precise moment of a nervous breakdown, but if the unfortunate happens this scene will be my benchmark for comparison.
“You don’t seem to understand,” begins McKenna, sitting upright in preparation for a volcanic crescendo, giving himself some room to work. “No matter what we prove, it doesn’t alter the fact that I wanted to kill him. I’ve devoted my life to science. Do you see what’s happened? What good has it done me? What chance have I got to fight? Why should I be the one? Can you answer me that? Why me? Why should I be the one picked up for this? Please tell me why!” By the end of this disjointed and irrational series of questions, McKenna is pumping his clenched fists into his stomach; and his voice has risen to a glass-shattering shrillness that defies all the civil bounds of public safety. Ann comes running down the stairs and cradles McKenna’s head in her lap as he begins a loud blubbering that seems to have no end in sight.
Dr. Hoffman, who has beaten a very swift retreat to a corner of the room and appears to be one outburst away from making a break for it, motions Dr. Buckell over for a professional, albeit hasty, conference. “It’s paranoia!” he hisses urgently. “I am not a psychiatrist, but, huh . . “ he motions with a flick of the eyes at the huddled and loudly wailing McKenna, letting the scene speak for itself.
The cops arrive, and McKenna immediately chooses the absolute worst course of action, bolting from the house to his car; where he proceeds to run down an officer making his escape. The film now becomes a police procedural man hunt with Director Clarke managing some nifty bits of film making on the way to the final credits.
McKenna takes his final, sunless refuge in tin shed among an industrial wasteland of oil rigs and towers. Here he befriends a small girl, Suzy (Xandra Conkling), who uses the abandoned shed for a private playhouse. By this time, McKenna is no longer sane, his eyes large, dark, soulless circles. Clarke makes a very interesting choice here in that the scene between the filthy, bedraggled McKenna and the sweet, blond girl (pigtails and saddle shoes, no less) is played out completely absent of sentiment. As innocent child confronts Gill with gentle words and the offer for help, McKenna looks as though he might run or perhaps kill her if the toxic chemicals in his head shifted a bit. You would help me? He says, not smiling. The child assures him, sure she wants to help. Maybe he would like some cookies? McKenna simply stares at her, his eyes darkly haggard with doom. Don’t tell anyone I’m here, he says finally, and one feels relief when the girl is allowed to leave, off to fetch her new friend some cookies.
The radio and newspapers are instantaneously abuzz with warnings of the rampaging beast, or, as the headline of one hawked newspaper puts it without much finesse, “weird killer still at large.” Suzy’s mom (Donna King), who can’t seem to keep her child indoors during this very abrupt city-wide crisis as the radio advises, puts two-and-two together from little Suzy’s stories of her new hungry friend and calls the cops. Forced into the sunlight one last time, Gill becomes the Sun Demon (off-camera, of course) and, after a grueling chase through some of the most desolate acreage late fifties L.A. has to offer, is shot off an oil tank and falls splatting to his death.
By this time, McKenna’s long (nicely edited) fall to the concrete elicits a rather perfunctory scream from Ann, but really, all in attendance don’t seem to foresee any other outcome. After all, no one, not even Ann, calls out to him during McKenna’s long climb up the oil tank ladder or pleads with police not to kill him; indeed Ann seems extremely easy to comfort. The last words spoken come from Dr. Buckell, who puts a fatherly arm around Ann and politely suggests the best thing to do now is “hope he didn’t give his life in vain” (although it would be difficult to imagine how things could be otherwise. His death will, what, prevent other alcoholic, badly hangover nuclear scientists from spilling a radioactive isotope on the floor and being exposed to lethal radiation for six minutes?).
So, what makes this odd, enticing piece of B so entertaining? As I have mentioned, it is, if nothing else, completely unpredictable, a quality never to be underestimated. Also, there is the edgy histrionics of Robert Clarke that has, even after 40 years, the power to make all who see it thrillingly uncomfortable enough to hit the rewind button at least twice. But there is something else as well.
The makeup and lizard suit for the Sun Demon monster is awful damn good. Richard Cassarino is listed as the man responsible for suit design and makeup, and he certainly deserves a tip of the hat. Cassarino, whose film career seems all but limited to this project, also played several small rolls in the film, including the cop in the end that plugs the Demon.
Finally, I think that the film is greatly enhanced by the decisions forced on the director because of his extra-meager budget and working-class weekend shooting schedule (according to various sources the production cashed in for around $50,000; and Clarke shot only on the weekends because cast and crew either had day jobs or had school). His choices for location shooting seem to be limited to places he could set up fast and shoot for free. These include a fascinating tableau of desolate or abandoned lots of scrappy real estate, empty buildings cluttered with garbage and debris, back alleys and seedy apartment fronts, and extremely low rent swaths of 1959 Los Angeles and surroundings.
Clarke often films these outdoor scenes with loving, eye-of-God long shots as if to revel in the weedy, cracked harshness (my favorite being the high, long, unbroken shot of little Suzy, a blonde waif, running from her clean house, out into the street, and across at least 150 yards of hard scrapple, industrial wasteland littered with cracked sidewalks and oil rigs).
All in all, an L.A. that is distinctly not the magical place of dreams and MGM polish by a far damn cry. The confines of the budget also called for Clarke to do his own stunts. In the final scene, which has Clarke (as well as the energetic Cassarino playing the pursuing cop) climbing and struggling up a very, very high oil tank, the work is just plain terrifyingly dangerous. At one point, Cassarino is hanging, hanging by one hand, from a ladder’s rung at least four stories above ground, his feet scrambling for purchase. Goddammit – that’s film making, my friends!
You gotta love it!
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Great review of "The Hideous Sun Demon," certainly deserving of at least one (belated) comment.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who grew up in an era when this kind of movie was commonly shown on local TV, I have seen most of the movies you review. But this one never seemed to make it to my area, though I've seen other Clarke epics like "Man from Planet X" and "Incredible Petrified World." Now I'm all charged up to get it for my home viewing. Thanks!
Anonymous: Thank You! I think this is Clarke's masterpiece. Thanks so much for commenting.
ReplyDeletedo you know of any atomic age films that were filmed in the Antelope Valley area of LA County? Im from there and have a soft spot for the vast wasteland that is my home and atomic age films.
ReplyDeleteLuck13: Offhand, no. Sorry.
ReplyDelete