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AIP/Corman
Double Feature
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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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Viking
Women
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5 |
Teenage
Caveman
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4 |
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4 |
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With
the ultimate fate of MGM's excellent Midnite
Movie line of DVDs still in question, Lionsgate
Home Entertainment has lately stepped into the
breach to offer low-priced double feature discs
of cult B-movies originally distributed by American
International Pictures (AIP). These DVDs four
at the time of this writing have been released
under the moniker Samuel Z. Arkoff Collection
Cult Classics. While it's great that these
films
are finally making it to DVD, their presentation
(so far) leaves a bit to be desired.
One of the new Lionsgate discs
pairs the Roger Corman cheapies Saga
of The Viking Women and the Great Sea Serpent
(1957) with the better known Teenage
Caveman (1958). Both were made during the
low budget auteur's most prolific period as a
director, when he was cranking out one Z-grade
genre pic after another, usually shot in a matter
of days for very little money. Although Teenage
Caveman boasts a 'name' star and a twist
ending that seems to have resonated in the annals
of sci-fi cinema, Viking
Women is actually the more entertaining
film
if only in a so-bad-it's-good sort of way.
The movie's
full onscreen title is The Saga of the Viking
Women and Their Voyage To the Waters of the Great
Sea Serpent... which is laughably pretentious
considering the actual content and threadbare
production. Statuesque Abby Dalton plays Desir,
headstrong leader of a group of lonely Nordic
gals who've been pining for three years over the
disappearance of their menfolk, presumed lost
at sea. They vote "in true Viking fashion"
by casting spears
to build their own ship
and sail into the unknown in search of the missing
men. Casting off in one of the chintziest dragon
boats to ever insult a movie audience, the ladies
soon discover they have a stowaway on board: Otar
(Jonathan Haze), 'the littlest Viking'. What he
lacks in stature he more than makes up for in
pluck; Otar hopes to win the heart of one of the
gals, who, though not betrothed, volunteered for
the voyage anyway.
If getting
caught in a fierce storm wasn't bad enough, Otar
and the Viking women spy a huge, monstrous sea
serpent (an όber-pathetic hand puppet)
swimming straight for them. The boat is capsized
and sucked into an underwater maelstrom (the "Vortex"),
though the crew somehow survives to wash up on
the shore of a strange country. They're promptly
captured by the Grimolts, a boorish race of ragtag
warriors led by the sardonic, badly dressed King
Stark (Richard Devon). After toying with them
awhile, Stark
who has parenting issues with his fey, mincing
heir, Prince Senya (Jay Sayer)
announces that the women will serve his soldiers
as sex slaves (actually, the sex part is implied;
this was made in the '50s, after all). Otar is
to join his fellow Norsemen in the mines... Ja,
the boyfriends of our heroines are still alive,
having been imprisoned by the Grimolts these past
three years.
Can the
girls escape their sordid fate at the hands of
such barbarians? Are their men doomed to die toiling
in Stark's mines? Will dark-haired Inger (Susan
Cabot), the group's only brunette, end up betraying
them all for her own selfish ends? (Blonde = Loyal
&
Virtuous, don'tcha know.) Will Prince Senya ever
come out of the closet? Will feisty Otar ever
stop getting his ass kicked by Stark's whip-happy
henchman, Zarko (Michael Forest of
Beast
from Haunted Cave)?
Are we gonna get to see that pitifully cheesy
sea monster again?
All these
questions are resolved,
one way or the other,
by the end of Viking Women's
brisk 66 minute running time. It's a silly but
enthusiastic movie, with none of the participants
seemingly deterred by the certain knowledge that
there was simply no way they were ever really
going to pull this off. Corman's content to serve
up the discount cheese while keeping things lively;
plenty of fights, escapes and chases propel the
thin plot. (Only those ubiquitous, interminable
walking scenes that Corman's so fond of
cynically used to pad short running times
slow down the story.) That 'Master of Bombast',
music composer Albert Glasser, cranks it up to
11 (didn't he always?) in an effort to add energy
and majesty to the scrawny production values.
The cast is fun to watch. Corman stock player
Jonathan Haze pretty much steals the movie as
the plucky, never-say-die Otar. (He gets a long,
energetic fight scene, all of which is done with
only two edits.) The domain of the Grimolts is
actually Bronson Canyon, just outside Los Angeles,
and I kept expecting to see Ro-Man
or any of the other monsters
and space aliens to have hung out there in
a gazillion different movies and TV shows
come strolling around one
of those familiar-looking boulders at any moment.
(As for Viking Women's
own monster, the briefly seen "great sea
serpent" makes Reptilicus
look positively awe-inspiring.)
Teenage
Caveman: Along with
some of the same cast members and yet another
overly-strident Glasser score, our second feature
also makes extensive use of Bronson Canyon locales.
(Not to mention long, drawn-out walking sequences.)
The then 26-year old Robert Vaughn (The
Bridge at Remagen) is our titular teenage
Cro-Magnon protagonist, and a decidedly clean-cut
one at that
he sports the exact same hairstyle as his Napoleon
Solo character from The Man from UNCLE.
A sensitive, intelligent youth, he questions the
meaning and worth of his tribe's age-old laws
and traditions, even though he knows such inquisitiveness
will likely bring him trouble. Which it does,
of course, especially when he defies the ancient
edict against crossing the river to explore the
lush jungle beyond. His logical argument that
the people need to secure new sources of food,
offered in abundance by the forbidden territory,
fails to sway the tribal elders, including his
own father. He's warned that the land across the
river is teeming with fearsome creatures and ruled
by the terrible "God Who Brings Death with
Its Touch". Even were he to survive such
an expedition, tribal law proscribes the death
penalty to any who venture there and return. Yet
the yearning of this 'boy' for new horizons and
hidden knowledge compels him to break the taboo
for the betterment of his clan
and his own sense of self.
Referred
to by Vaughn as the worst film he ever appeared
in (I wouldn't be so sure about that, Bob...),
Teenage Caveman plays
like an extremely low rent episode of The Twilight
Zone. The costumes, wigs and fake beards are
quite cheap-looking, the few special effects sequences
lifted from other films. (The same lizard-wrestling
'dinosaur' scene used by countless other '50s
flicks turns up once again; the monster suit used
for the God
Who Brings Death with Its Touch was featured
in a previous Corman pic.) Vaughn and the rest
of the actors gamely try to bring some dignity
to the proceedings, but
the impoverished
production values and tedious
script
which actually attempts
to make some meaningful points about the necessity
of questioning authority
sabotage them at every turn.
Corman, for one of the few times in his career,
has so little to work with in terms of money,
story and locales that even he can't get
any extra mileage out of the ingredients.
Both
Viking Women and
Teenage Caveman served
as 'experimental' subjects on the cult cable comedy
series Mystery Science Theater 3000, during
the show's third season. Quite honestly, the films
are significantly more enjoyable with Joel and
his robot sidekicks silhouetted in the corner
of the screen, hurling rapid-fire jokes flavored
with heaping helpings of scorn... Committed cheese
lovers, however, should still find things in the
original films to mildly amuse them, particularly
with Viking Women.
It's just too bad that, with this Lionsgate release,
the chances of the MST3K versions ever
making it to DVD are now pretty much slim and
none.
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While costing about the same (both retail and
online), this Lionsgate DVD falls short of any
MGM Midnite Movie double feature disc you'd
care to name. It's not a "flipper" (a
plus), but neither Viking
Women nor Teenage
Caveman are presented in their correct
aspect ratios
both transfers are fullframe. The open-matte Viking
Women is the least affected by this since
its intended AR is 1.66:1; picture-wise it looks
pretty good, with generally sharp detail and no
print damage to speak of. (The few outdoor night
scenes look overly dark but this could well be
symptomatic of poor day-for-night photography.)
Teenage Caveman definitely
gets the short end of the stick here. Shot at
2.35:1, the fullscreen cropping utterly destroys
Corman's widescreen framing... At times only half
of Vaughn's head is visible when he's addressing
another actor.
At least the mono audio tracks for both films
are adequate. There are no bonus features whatsoever,
not even trailers.
5/07/06
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