Thanks to It Came From Hollywood for sending along these stills. I added two additional ones from MovieStillsDB to add some crab legs.

Them was the first movie to suggest the possibility that radiation could cause giant mutations…[Jack] Warner may have thought it was utter nonsense but audiences loved it, so much so that for the next six years Them set the pattern for dozens of science fiction films…Attack of the Crab Monsters was one of these films, and one of the few to radically vary the formula. (Roger Corman, The Best of the Cheap Acts, Mark Thomas McGee)

I saw Attack of the Crab Monsters when it became available for television in 1963, from Allied Artists through their Exploitables package of B movie sci fi and horror goodness. I was seven years old and watching on a cathode ray tube TV in my bedroom. That metal-encased TV probably bathed me in enough radiation to turn me into the Hulk, but no such luck. To make the flickering glow of this black and white Roger Corman classic even better, Zacherly was hosting the horror on WABC with his usual shenanigans as giant smart crabs, scissoring off and eating the heads of people to get smarter, and blasting their heat rays to whittle down the already sinking island, attempt to serve up the remaining frantic and terrified and dwindling survivors. The trumpet, strings, and brass score by Ronald Stein added to the terror and tension as the giant crabs figure out how to use dynamite too. So did the ominous stick run along a picket fence clicking sound made from their dainty crab feet.

The movie title was made first, the film followed second. But with such a catchy title (who doesn’t like giant crab legs?), Corman delivers the goods: giant crabs with human-like faces that gave me great nightmares at such a tender age. Of course, the budget allowed for one giant crab to be built. The fiberglass shell was man-handled the old fashioned way, and you do get a peek at Ed Nelson’s feet under the crab in one scene that got through the editing phase. Or maybe not: you know quick work and those tight budgets come first on B movies.

Charles B Griffith’s (It Conquered the World) script tuned-up the usual giant mutation gags by making the crabs more intelligent as they eat more people, specifically the brains. Pretty soon, ghostly voices of the dead are heard as the crabs shoot out their psychic vibes with the memories and voices of the headless.  This makes for quite the problem: unlike in other mutation movies of the 1950s, the monsters here are as smart as the people. Griffith sold Corman on doing underwater scenes after he watched The Silent World (1956). Corman agreed, but the giant crab (which cost $400 to build) didn’t. It was nearly impossible to submerge. By the time they finally got what they needed, the arms had cracked off and the eyes followed them. Allied Artists released the movie on a double bill with Not of This Earth.

Pamela Duncan (who starred in another one of my cheap favorites, The Undead), did not have fond memories of the shoot, having experienced trouble with the scuba equipment and Corman’s direction to swim alongside sharks in a tank at Marineland. A double filled in for her. The bottom line here is that Attack of the Crab Monsters is a fast-paced low budget gem that stands out for its novel scripting of the monsters, the deteriorating situation they are in, and the the down and dirty production that keeps the weirdness and terror moving to a solid — not ideal, as you will find out — climax. It definitely pairs well with the weirder and slower-paced The Undead, so think about that for your next movie party night. Bring the crab cakes and tropical drinks too for a perfect evening.

Sources for this article include Roger Corman, The Best of the Cheap Acts by Mark Thomas McGee, and Keep Watching the Skies by Bill Warren, and my love for this movie.

Thanks to our kindred spirit, It Came From Hollywood, for sending over these stills.

In the early days of talkies, Studios would shoot foreign-language versions of their films for the international market. These included French, Spanish, German, and Swedish. For the Latin American markets, the Spanish version of Drácula was directed by George Melford. He didn’t speak the language so communications went through co-director Enrique Tovar Avalos and interpreters. The lead blood sucker was  Carlos Villarías as Count Dracula and his victims were Lupita Tovar as Eva (aka Mina), Barry Norton as Juan Harker, and Pablo Álvarez Rubio as Renfield. On a side note, in 1937, Melford directed Jungle Menace, Columbia’s first serial, alongside Harold Frazer. (I presume he didn’t need an interpreter for that movie.)

The film opened in Havana in March 1931 and in Mexico City in April, weeks after the English version’s February release on Valentine’s Day. It was well received in its target markets but was essentially forgotten in the United States for decades. Universal didn’t preserve their print carefully and the movie was thought to be lost for decades.

In the 1970s a print was discovered in a New Jersey warehouse, but it was missing footage regarding Renfield’s seduction by Dracula’s brides and the Demeter voyage. A complete print was finally located at Cinemateca de Cuba in Havana in the late 1980s, and after considerable diplomatic effort during the Cold War, a copy made its way back to the Library of Congress. Universal finished the full restoration and released the movie on VHS in 1992, and the film had its American premiere at Universal’s 80th-anniversary celebration. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2015. Lupita Tovar, who lived to be 106 (she died in 2016), spent her later years as an ambassador for the film at screenings and conventions. The stills used in this article are from the 1992 relaunch.

The Spanish Dracula was filmed simultaneously with Tod Browning’s starring Bela Lugosi, using the same sets, costumes, and screenplay, but with a completely different cast and crew working at night, from around 8 PM to dawn, after Browning’s production wrapped for the day. This gave them access to the same Castle Dracula sets, the Carfax Abbey interiors, theater set, and the shipboard sequences without Universal having to rebuild them. Lupita Tovar gave many interviews over the years describing how exhausting the schedule was, and how they would sometimes pass the English-language cast in the hallways or commissary.

Universal had originally aimed to adapt Bram Stoker’s novel more directly and on a grander scale. Early treatments by Louis Bromfield and then Fritz Stephani envisioned sweeping sequences in Transylvania, the Demeter voyage shown in full, and elaborate setpieces. As the Depression deepened through 1930, Carl Laemmle Jr. and the studio insisted on a drastically cheaper approach, which meant falling back on the Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston stage play that had been a hit in London and on Broadway. The stage play was structurally tight and largely confined to a few interior sets, which is why so much of the finished film feels stage bound. The thrilling in-Transylvania meeting between Renfield and the count, within Dracula’s creepy broken-battlements of a castle, is over in twenty minutes, then a quick voyage and the rest takes place in England, unfolding in drawing rooms, bedrooms, the theater encounter, and Carfax Abbey. Garrett Fort did the final screenplay, working from Balderston’s stage adaptation rather than the novel.

While Lugosi’s voice and measured performance flies well over Villarías’ melodramatic and somewhat antic fluttering as a lively undead count after 500 years, the actual camerawork and pacing is considered by some better than Browning’s direction and Karl Freund’s lens. Melford and cinematographer George Robinson used more fluid camera movement, deeper focus, and more inventive framing. The camera glides through Dracula’s castle and swoops down stairways in ways the English version doesn’t. However, the Spanish crew was up a leg or two because Universal wasn’t as overbearing on them as it was with the English version. While Universal demanded cuts, script changes, and enforcement to the Production Code on Browning’s efforts, they left Melford mostly alone, so he kept dialog and connecting scenes, making the Spanish Dracula a longer movie with a bit more violent and erotic overtoning. They also watched the English dailies each evening before shooting so they could move faster and build on what had already been done during the day.

The Spanish version runs about 104 minutes versus 75 for the Browning film, which gives the story more room, develops supporting characters more fully, and includes scenes and plot beats omitted from the English cuts. Lupita Tovar’s Eva is considerably more sensual and overtly affected by Dracula’s influence. Her nightgowns are more revealing and her performance, after being bitten, is more unhinged than Helen Chandler’s restrained Mina.

The major weakness generally acknowledged is Carlos Villarías. He simply is not Bela Lugosi. Villarías was reportedly instructed to watch Lugosi’s performance and imitate his mannerisms, and the result is lacking in poise, command, and intensity. Lugosi’s hypnotic stillness and that unmistakable voice are what made the English version iconic (along with Dwight Frye’s stunning Renfield, I might add). The Spanish Dracula doesn’t match that presence of menace, even though it may be more fluid in its camerawork.

AI research was used for this article. Sources included the Library of Congress Blogs (Cary O’Dell), NPR, Wikipedia, Christina  Wehner, and Antonia Carlotta.

By Paul McVay, It Came From Hollywood

The following interview was conducted on January 20, 2009, and aired on the Drive-In of the Damned radio show a week later. It later appeared in Drive-In of the Damned Magazine (Issue #1/FEB 2018) which has long been OOP. This is the first time it has been shared online.

Of all the interesting people involved in the business of show that I have been fortunate enough to interview, either in print or on the radio, hands-down, the most interesting was Ted V. Mikels. Talking with this genre giant was akin to having an entire day of fun in just two and a half hours. He literally elevated your mood just by listening to him talk, and his personality immediately puts one at ease. The usual anxiety of how well an interview will go, especially one that will be broadcast, disappeared seconds into this discussion. After a two-and-a-half-hour talk that included the decision by both Ted and me to hang up and take a bathroom break mid-way through (this bit was excised for broadcast, but is definitely a piece of the recording I have gone back to listen to just because it still makes me laugh!), Ted and I kept in touch. He delighted me and my radio show audience once again on Halloween 2010 with a live phone-in that lasted over an hour. He was a true Showman even when he had nothing to show. You couldn’t ask for a better interview subject. Ted V. Mikels departed our realm on October 16, 2016.

Paul McVay– One of the best loved packaging of films was the triple bill of The Corpse Grinders, The Undertaker and His Pals and The Embalmer.  Can you share any stories about how that all came about? …

The Ted Mikels InterviewRead More »

It Came From Hollywood, where else?

The nightclub [shown in the movie] called The Haunted House was a real nightclub in Los Angeles, located at the famous corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Vine St. It was also featured in the 1967 film It’s a Bikini World and a TV special in which it was visited by Sonny & Cher. (Mst3k)

Girl in Gold Boots is a low‑budget (less than $50,000) crime‑drama musical about a small‑town waitress who follows a fast‑talking hustler to Los Angeles and gets pulled into the sleazy world of go‑go dancing, drugs, and petty crime. It’s one of Ted V. Mikels’ most infamous exploitation films and later became a fan favorite through its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Mikels was a jack of all trades when it came to cult movie-making. He often filled multiple crew roles on a single project: producer, writer, director, cinematographer, and editor. A New York Times obituary notes he typically employed small, inexperienced crews and little‑known actors working for minimal pay, likening him to figures like Ed Wood and Herschell Gordon Lewis in his relentless output of gory thrillers, sci‑fi cheapies, and action pictures. His corpus of work that included body‑part‑stealing zombies, a cat‑food company grinding corpses, an all‑female commando squad, a black magic witch queen, and stalking killers, fueled through scant resources and mixing it up with gore, camp, and cheesecake, make him a cult movie legend.

The movie’s afterlife has been interesting. Because the film fell into public domain circulation, it was widely available on VHS and later DVD compilations, which helped keep it in circulation among bad‑movie aficionados. It’s a so‑bad‑it’s‑good time capsule of the go‑go era, often noted as an example of Mikels’ peculiar charm: clumsy direction and writing, but full of bizarre yet interesting choices, oddball characters, earnest performances, and surprisingly memorable details like the “gold boots” stage leap and off‑kilter musical cues.

…

Girl in Gold Boots (1968) PressbookRead More »