Synopsis: At a California dude ranch, owner Flavia McIntyre (Peggy Converse) and her ranch hands watch as niece Jessica (Carolyn Kearney) searches with a divining rod for water on the property. Three of the ranch guests, Gordon (William Reynolds), Linda (Andra Martin) and Hank (Jeffrey Stone) arrive on horseback and watch as Jessica walks around with the divining rod. Gordon expresses the opinion that water witching is just a lot of superstition, but Flavia vouches for Jessica’s ability; she can even find lost objects, having once found one of her own missing rings.
Jessica is briefly nettled by the appearance of the three skeptics but continues her search. Near a large tree she indicates that she has found water, but just as quickly declares that there is something evil below the tree and no one should dig there.
Ignoring her protests, Flavia’s hired hands Boyd and Mike begin to dig a well, but soon hit a strange object instead: a chest with words carved into it that indicate it dates from 1579. Believing it might be a significant archeological find — and perhaps might even have been left by Francis Drake’s expedition — Gordon goes into town to fetch Dr. Julian Ash (Forrest Lewis) who can help verify what they have found.
But Boyd, convinced the chest is filled with treasure, decides to open it. He convinces the strong but simple-minded Mike to break the lock. But when Mike opens it, he finds not treasure, but a human head that stares into his eyes and mouths words we can’t hear. This, we learn, is the head of Gideon Drew, a devil worshipper executed by the Francis Drake expedition. Now freed from the chest, the head uses its hypnotic power to force a reunion with Drew’s body, which is buried nearby….
Comments: Tonight we have two films that are making their debut on Horror Incorporated. Both were B-pictures from the double-bill era, though they were released 20 years apart.
The Thing that Couldn’t Die was paired in cinemas with Hammer’s The Horror of Dracula, and it didn’t have much of a reputation even before it got the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment in the 1990s. MST3K fans enjoy kicking around movies featured on the show by giving them one-star ratings on IMDB (they seem to believe this makes the jokes funnier, for some reason), and this has a lot to do with why the movie currently scores a lowly 3.8.
The MST3K bludgeoning set aside, this isn’t a great movie; it’s slow and talky for the first couple of reels. But things liven up considerably when we get to the buried treasure chest containing the severed head of Gideon Drew, a 16th-century Satan worshipper. The scenes of Drew’s head staring balefully at its victims, mouthing silent instructions, is pretty creepy, as is a scene where a hypnotized Linda places the head in a hatbox and places it on a closet shelf for its next victim. The juxtaposition of gothic elements with ordinary midcentury vacation cabins is surprisingly effective. And there’s a surreal bit near the end where the body gets up out of its casket and walks around. The movie ends somewhat abruptly, unfortunately, and the monster disposed of all too easily; but it does have its moments.
William Reynolds was one of the demobilized soldiers terrorized by a mysterious snake woman in Cult of the Cobra; his performance in that 1955 thriller made me wonder why he didn’t have more of a career (Arbogast, in his review of that film, compared Reynolds to a young Johnny Depp, and I can kinda see it) so it’s nice to see him get a shot at a starting role. But any screen presence he had in Cult of the Cobra has drained away here, and he’s quite forgettable. In his defense none of the characters in the film are very well-drawn.
Overall, this one has second-feature written all over it, but it’s worth a watch if you happen upon it.
The Missing Guest
Synopsis: Newspaper reporter “Scoop” Hanlon (Paul Kelly) has been in the doghouse with his editor, and as a result he’s been stuck writing for the women’s page, where he must endure the taunts and jibes of his (entirely male) colleagues. He gets a chance at redemption when he’s offered a chance to pen a feature story: his boss wants him to spend a night in the notorious Blue Room at the Baldrich mansion on Long Island.
The room has been closed up since the murder of family patriarch Samuel Kirkland in the Blue Room 20 years ago — a murder that was never solved, since the room was locked from the inside. The family, according to the editor, is hosting a big celebration at the house tonight. If Scoop agrees to crash the party and find a way to spend the night in the Blue Room, he’ll get a fat bonus and will be placed back on regular assignment.
As it happens, the gathering that night at the Baldrich mansion is a costume party. A man in a ghost costume appears at the door; this turns out to be young Larry Deardon (William Lundigan), who scoffs at all the talk of supernatural events and asks young Stephanie Kirkland (Constance Moore) to dance. While dancing he broaches the topic of marriage, but she turns him down.
Outside the house, Hanlon is trying to find a way into the party, and is dismayed when he learns that all of the invited guests have already arrived. He is at a loss of how to get into the party when a car unexpectedly crashes into the front gate of the Baldrich mansion. The driver is knocked out.
Soon, Hanlon is brought in on the pretext that he is the driver who was injured in the crash. Stephanie finds his wallet that has fallen to the floor: it indicates that he is “Ronald Ranger, Psychic Researcher”. After a swig of brandy, he is revived and it is agreed that he should stay the night to recuperate.
But when he sees a ghost — or someone dressed like a ghost — in the window of the guest room, he takes its picture. This draws the attention of butler Edwards, who seizes his camera and discovers it has a name plate identifying it as property of Scoop’s newspaper, the Daily Blade. That gets him thrown out of the house.
Later that night, Larry declares that he will spend the night in the Blue Room in order to show everyone else there’s nothing to the old superstition.
The next morning, Scoop is found to have spent the night in the guest room — he bribed the family chauffeur to get in, he says — but comes under suspicion of murder when it’s revealed that Larry has vanished from the Blue Room — which, just like 20 years ago, was locked from the inside….
Comments: Universal’s second go at the Blue Room chestnut is a more lighthearted affair than 1932’s Secret of the Blue Room, but isn’t quite as silly as Murder in the Blue Room five years later. It’s a pretty weak entry as it suffers from an uncertainty in tone (the tip-off here can be found in the movie’s tagline, “Ghostly! Giggly! Grand!”), with the down-on-his-luck reporter pressed into service as protagonist, even though the stock reporter protagonists with nicknames like “Scoop” or “Flash” had largely disappeared from the movies by this time.
The reporter and his comically demanding editor aren’t the only cliches trotted out for us in this one. We also get the old dark house and the red-herring butler and the beautiful heiress to the family fortune who just happens to have a weakness for down-on-his luck reporters. The whole movie is a fire sale of movie cliches, chucked into Universal’s blender and pureed within an inch of its life.
Horror as a genre had fallen out of favor by the time The Missing Guest was in production, and as you might expect the spooky stuff is just there for atmosphere; at heart this is just a standard murder mystery and not a very interesting one at that.
Paul Kelly’s character isn’t quite as hapless as the ones we’ve seen in Night of Terror or The Return of Dr. X but we’ve nevertheless seen his type a million times before: Scoop is cynical, streetwise, a bit rough around the edges but still a regular Joe who can see through the pompous affectations of the rich and powerful. Kelly plays him fairly well, clowning around until he’s called upon to be the smart, resourceful leading man.
I rather liked Constance Moore in this one; she’s best-remembered today for playing Wilma Deering in the 1939 Buck Rogers serial. To be honest, I can’t recall if I’ve seen it or not; these old serials never seemed to stick with me, and I tend to get Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon confused (they are, after all, both Universal serials, and both Buster Crabbe).
William Lundigan had a durable career in both films and TV, and starred in the TV series Men Into Space (1959), which ran for a single season. It is difficult to find today, but is remembered as a fairly realistic drama about the early days of space flight. He appeared as a guest star in television dramas into the 1970s.
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