(Spoilers.) Oh, baby! Baby you make me hot and bothered, the way you do the things you do... and Messiah of Evil, you do it good. We are on our knees, mouths agape, sweaty and quivering, in awe of what we see. Reputations are hard to live up to, but Messiah, you really do! You are an unstuffed D-Cup on a wonderfully lithe body or ten inches on a hairless and muscular one. Baby, your ten is a full ten of ten, and your cup runneth over! Whoever knew something so easy to get would be so good — Messiah is currently streetwalking on YouTube, and probably at your favorite streaming site as well. For a movie that so few have taken advantage of, Messiah gets around. But if you decide you want to enjoy Messiahof Evil as well, may we suggest you shop around: as always with web freebees, the quality of the transfer (not to mention the actual cut of the movie itself) can vary. And who wants sloppy seconds when you can get something pristine?
Trailer to
Messiah of Evil:
Way back on 22 May 2011, the beautiful former actress Anitra Ford — on the cover of the magazine below — wrote in her now long inactive blog, "Shot in 1971, [Messiah of Evil] was originally titled The Second Coming. Towards the end of the filming, investors pulled their money out, and the film was never finished. A Frenchman bought the unedited footage, edited it and released the movie under the title of Messiah of Evil'. [...]"
Interesting story, and it would explain why the movie was only released after the duo who wrote and directed it, William Huyk and Gloria Katz (25 Oct 1942 – 25 Nov 2018), had the enormous success of writing the '70s classic American Graffiti* (1973 / trailer): when someone suddenly becomes famous and successful, incomplete or forgotten non-viable projects of the past suddenly become commercially viable and worth digging up. (Party at Kitty and Stud's [1970 / trailer], anyone?) And while we doubt that it is due alone to the fact that a European bought and edited the footage, it is noticeable that the overall aura and tone of Messiah of Evil is far closer to the arty Euro-horrors of the time than the average linear and straightforward American horror movie.
*Huyk and Katz went on to script a little film known as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984 / trailer), and then solidified their standing as major players with internationally respected message movie, Howard the Duck (1986 / trailer). They also scribed the much maligned and now forgotten comedy Radioland Murders (1994 / trailer), a movie that would make a great double feature with Sam Rami's much maligned and now forgotten but truly visual comedy Crimewave (1985 / trailer).
The opening scene of Messiah of Evil is pretty much indicative of how the entire movie plays out. We see a terrified man (Walter Hill*) fleeing down a deserted street, apparently desperate to escape from something unknown, when he falls exhausted to the ground. A garden door opens, and there stands a young girl, and soon the man is in the yard, lying on his back, in an uncomfortable scene that plays out as if the apparently legally under-age girl is about to get it on with the adult man — but then she pulls out a straight razor and slits his throat. Everything about the prologue is slightly off: as "normal" as the nighttime location might be, the events transpire as if as if seen through a drug-induced haze or as if it is all a dream. It looks and feels "real" even as it conveys an odd otherworldliness. And this otherworldliness, this odd dreamlike sensation, infuses the movie from start to finish. The result is a horror movie like few others,** if only because the overriding aura of irreality not only engenders a continually rising sense of dread and discomfort but also makes the at-times elliptical and convoluted narrative work.
*Yes, that Walter Hill: the director of a wasted life faves such as The Driver (1978 / trailer), The Warriors (1979 / trailer), The Long Riders (1980 / trailer), Southern Comfort (1981 / trailer), Red Heat (1988 / trailer), and Last Man Standing (1996 / trailer). His brief appearance in Messiah of Evil is, to date, his only known appearance onscreen.
**The person we were watching Messiah of Evil with promptly brought up Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971 / trailer) as spiritually related, while we ourselves sensed a spiritual link to a much older cinematic oddity, Dementia(1955), a.k.a. Daughter of Horror, a wasted life's Short Film of the Month for July 2020.
The supernatural horror of the Messiah of Evil transpires in the fictional town of Point Dune, somewhere on the California coast. We learn early that the main narrator of the movie, Arletty Lange (Marianna Hill,* below not from the film), is an unreliable narrator: an inmate in an asylum, the surrealistic atmosphere that permeates the movie could well be a reflection of her own mental state. Did all that she tells us truly happen, or are the events nothing but discomforting figments of her imagination, her psychosis? (And if it did happen, how did she know what transpired where and when she was not present?)
*Ms. Hill is found in a number of intriguing movies, including the uncomfortable Schizoid (1980 / trailer), the a wasted life fave Blood Beach [1980 / trailer, with Lavelle Roby], the iconoclastic High Plains Drifter [1973 / trailer], the decidedly odd The Baby [1973 / trailer], and Black Zoo [1963 / trailer, with Michael Gough]). She eventually left Hollyweird for Great Britain, where she taught acting for years, and one assumes she must be retired by now. In a 2016 interview at the dead blogsspot Hill Place, and much like Anitra Ford on her dead blogspot, Ms. Hill seems incapable of expressing a bad thought about anybody...
Arletty recalls her trip to Point Dune in search of her artist father Joseph (iconic character actor Royal Dano [16 Nov 1922 – 15 May 1994]); but he has disappeared and no one knows anything about him. She takes up residence in her father's beachside house, amidst his oddly disquieting paintings of anonymously generic but priggish-looking men and women — later, many of the townspeople, in their almost retro-looking conservative clothing, call the paintings back to mind. She is soon joined by an unusual trio consisting of an almost sugar-daddy-like Thom (Michael Greer* [20 Apr 1943 – 14 Sept 2002]), who sports an impressively healthy-haired and ugly haircut that looks to be the one Trump modeled his own scraggily orange mop after, and his two playthings, the nymphet Toni (Joy Bang**) and coolly beautiful Laura (Anitra Ford of Dirty O'Neil [1974 / trailer], the trash classic Invasion of the Bee Girls [1973 / trailer], Andy Sidaris's Stacey [1973 / trailer] and Jack Hill's The Big Bird Cage [1972 / trailer, with Carol Speed). The way the three suddenly just move in with Arletty is yet another one of many asides throughout the movie that are, when objectively weighed, extremely peculiar, and that follow a dream logic in which odd behavior is presented as if normal.
* Michael Greer remains oddly unsung in LGBTQ film history, but he was one of the first openly gay actors in Hollywood to have a semi-successful career. He made his feature film debut in The Gay Deceivers (1969 / trailer), put on the makeup again for Fortune and Men's Eyes (1971 / clip) and appeared in, among others, the sexploitation flicks The Curious Female (1970 / German trailer) and Summer School Teachers (1974 / trailer, with Dick Miller).
** Saddled with a porn star name — real by first marriage — Ms. Bang had a short career that spanned from independent NYC projects like Events (1970 / trailer), Brand X (1970) and Norman Mailer's Maidstone (1970 / full film) to slightly more a wasted life-appropriate movies like Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971 / trailer, with William Campbell) and Night of the Cobra Woman (1972 / trailer). For whatever reason, soon after taking part in Play It Again, Sam (1972), Ms. Wener Bang gave up Hollyweird to become a nurse in the Midwest. Currently, she might be single... [BTW: Ever play the "Porn Star Name Game"? Take the name of your first pet and the name of the first street you remember living on — for most people, that would also be the street they grew up on — and combine them. That's your porn star name. In our case, we would be Shoo-Shoo King.)
The characters of the movie seem often driven less by motivation than capriciousness, and one seldom truly understands why they do the things they do — for example, when Laura leaves, her motivation (jealousy and boredom) is clear, but the way she literally walks open-eyed to her demise is almost unreal. Preceded by a bizarre and terrifying ride with rat-eating albino (Bennie Robinson), her long subsequent solitary walk and ultimate fate in the most mundane locations — a big food store — are all the things nightmares are made of. A great scene that illustrates how beneath the façade of the ordinary that one knows, the deadly can hide. This threat of the ordinary is intensified in the later, dreadful and suspenseful scene in which a bored Toni is watching a movie — bizarrely disjointed scenes supposedly taken from a western titled Gone with the West (1974 / full movie) — in the local cinema.
Messiah of Evil is well worth searching out and watching. True, it often does not really make sense and is definitely convoluted and illogical, but it nevertheless manages to truly impress with its surreal and arty and creepy atmosphere, and some scenes are truly indelible and chilling. Whether or not all that transpires is "real" or the fantasies of an unreliable narrator is almost immaterial; what matters is that the movie truly stands out as a one-of-a-kind horror movie, a truly individualistic and unique movie that might not terrify you but will slowly eat away at your nerves and infest you with growing dread and discomfort. You might say "WTF?" at the end — we sure did — but you will also definitely not feel like you've wasted your time. A great movie.
Another a.k.a. title of the movie appears to be Return of the Living Dead... but it's not the Return of the Living Dead that we all know (1985 / trailer).
Below, an advertisement of Messiah of Evil from December 1975, when it was part of a double feature at the Jackson, Mississippi, Showtown West Drive-in with the Italian giallo The Devil Has Seven Faces (1971)...
Allison Hayes (6 Mar 1930 – 27 Feb 1977) was an American film and television actress and model who could perhaps be described as a poor man's Jane Russell (21 Jun 1921 – 28 Feb 2011) — ironically, seeing that Russell was actually born to white trash and Hayes was decidedly middle class. Born Mary Jane Hayes in Charleston, West Virginia, her father William E. Hayes worked for the Navy and her mother, W.E. Hayes' his second wife Charlotte Gibson Hayes, appears to have been a homemaker. The family later moved to Washington, D.C, living at 4127 New Hampshire Avenue NW. She attended the Academy of the Holy Cross before entering public school, and graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School in 1948. As Miss District of Columbia, she represented D.C. in the 1949 Miss America pageant, which she did not win. She did a stint as a radio co-host, then worked on local television, and enrolled in the Catholic University (majoring in music), all the while working as a model (36-23-36).
In 1953, after doing a screen test for Warner's in NYC, she was approached by a Universal talent scout visiting D.C., which eventually led to her signing a seven-year contract at UI. Despite an auspicious beginning in a Douglas Sirk slab of costume melodrama (Part I) and a Tony Curtis musical (Part I) and swashbuckler (Part II), Allison Hayes quickly became a B-movie staple. On the big screen, she never managed to leave the realm of low-budget films and second features, but on the small screen she was busy as a guest star and working on soaps.
A lifelong health fanatic, she regularly took vitamins and supplements, which was to be her undoing: at the advice of Dr. Henry Bieler (2 Apr 1893 or '94 [dates vary] – 11 Oct 1975), "an American physician and germ-theory denialist" — the duck goes "Quack, quack, quack!" — she began taking calcium supplements made from the bones of horses. Unluckily, they were also contaminated with lead, and by the time she stopped taking them she could barely walk, was losing her hair, and was extremely ill. She later developed leukemia, from which she eventually died.
The beautiful and striking actress with an amazing figure would probably be forgotten today were it not for the trash classic, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958), in which she plays the titular character. Her death led the FDA to introduce (non-enforceable) regulations guaranteeing quality standards in supplements — but as late as 2003, two out of 15 products tested by the nongovernmental testing agency ConsumerLabstill had high levels of lead in them.
If it's on YouTube, it must be true —
The Legacy of Allison Hayes:
Allison Hayes, a true Babe of Yesteryear, had her career and life cut tragically short. And now, here is Part IV of a wasted life's typically meandering (as in: all over the place) career review of Allison Hayes...
"It's Mrs. Archer. She's on a rampage. We've got to warn the town." Dr. Isaac Cushing (Roy Gordon)
Released on 18 May 1958, working titles of this anti-classic included The Astounding Giant Woman. As more than one person has said, this is the movie that made Allison Hayes immortal — though, personally, here at a wasted life we would bet that the average Joe or Joan on the street won't know her name even if they know of the movie (and everyone knows of the movie, or at least of its poster and title).
McBastardhas the plot: "Attack of the 50 ft. Woman is a 50s' sci-fi kitsch classic about an emotionally troubled and alcoholic heiress named Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes), who has recently been released from the asylum following a mental breakdown. Not helping her road to recovery is the fact that her philandering husband Harry (William Hudson), who [sic] she has divorced once already, has a not-so-secret affair with local floozy Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers), and they spend their time together swapping spit and scheming of ways to steal Nancy's fortune. One night Nancy has an alien encounter on an isolated back road. No one else witnessed the encounter and Harry thinks she might have flipped her wig for good this time, and attempt [sic] to use it as an excuse to have her committed permanently. This plan proves not to be so easy when a second encounter with the giant-sized alien zaps her with a dose of extraterrestrial radiation causing her to grow into the titular 50-foot woman, sending her on a jealously fuelled rampage that won't end well for anyone involved in this biting love-triangle. [...]"
"I know where my husband is! He's with that woman!" Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes)
"Alas, the poster is more interesting than the film itself," grouses the 2,500 Movie Challenge, only to modify the statement: "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman isn't a total stinker; the acting is good, especially Allison Hayes as Nancy, and Yvette Vickers is very easy on the eyes. Also, the scene where Nancy drags Harry out to the desert to show him the spaceship has a fairly dramatic payoff. Sure, the special effects are hilariously weak, but that's to be expected (the film reportedly cost just $88,000 to produce). No, the main problem [...] is that it took too damn long for the 50-foot woman to attack! I'm not saying she should have been crushing buildings within the first 10 minutes. I just didn't think they'd wait until the last 10 to roll her out, and when she finally does make her appearance, the damage she causes is pretty minimal."
True, "The 'attack' doesn't last long but it's as much fun as everything else in this highly-entertaining tongue-in-cheek sci-fi flick. You can see through the giant people and the 50-foot woman's prop hand isn't very convincing, but it's all drenched in dramatic, attractive music by Ronald Stein (12 Apr 1930 — 15 Aug 1988), and the acting of the two ladies is very vivid if a trifle overwrought at times. Very fast paced. [Great Old Movies]"
Ronald Stein did the music to many a number of "good" movies, including Dementia 13 (1963), The Terror (1963), and Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) — and occasional pieces of artwork, like the piece Lessons of the Camp (1967) below.
The Cinema Sounds of Robert Stein:
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was written by Mark Hanna (1 Jan 1917 – 16 Oct 2003), who many might remember as a regular collaborator with Charles B. Griffith; among the movies the scripted as a team are Gunslinger (1956, see Part III), Not of This Earth (1956, see Dick Miller Part I), and The Undead (1957, see Part IV). He was also a co-scribe of Bert I Gordon's The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), one of the many giant-mutation films of the period that obviously and directly influenced this movie; his final feature film writing credit is on Jack Starret's Slaughter (1972 / trailer). The Amazing Colossal Man also features the guy playing Nancy's fickle husband Harry, William Hudson (24 Jan 1919 – 5 Apr 1974). William, like his twin brother Jonathan C. Hudson (24 Jan 1919 – 8 April 1996), of The Screaming Skull (1958 / trailer), was most active as a busy but uncredited background player; another "interesting" film in which William receives credit is The She Creature (1956 / trailer below).
Trailer to
The She Creature:
"It takes a while for [Nancy] to turn gigantic thanks to cosmic rays or whatever, but when she does, often represented by a large rubber hand swinging into view, it's as if the filmmakers have hit upon an incredibly potent female empowerment metaphor quite by accident. Poor special effects render Nancy's rampage risibly unconvincing, but Hayes' glacial, classical look, quite opposed to the booms of 'Harry!' on the soundtrack, impress despite themselves as she tears off roofs and hits power lines in superbly wacked out imagery. I can't accept that writer Mark Hanna thought he was scripting anything other than a gimmicky monster movie, but those final scenes are a heady mix of the hilarious and the sexually provocative. [Spinning Image]"
"Only once in a generation do we behold a classic such as this! The 'embiggened' adventures of Nancy Archer lack technical sophistication, but good direction and a very direct story — female revenge writ large — grab us every time. Let the absurdities pile up, because Allison Hayes cuts a mean fifty-foot figure in that white two-piece, and saucy Yvette Vickers really warms up the clientele down at Tony's place. It's a terrific piece of late-'50s exploitation anti-art. The fantastic Reynold Brown poster is a key expression of the monsterrific worldview. [Glenn Erickson at Trailers from Hell]"
Reynold Brown's famous poster was once ranked #8 on Premiere magazine's "The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever" list. Brown (18 Oct 1917 – 24 Aug 1991), who began his career doing newspaper cartoons, was teaching at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena when he met Misha Kallis, an art director at Universal Pictures and began doing movie posters. Depending on the source you read, he either quit the biz in 1976 because he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side, thus ending his commercial work, or he split the scene when the anti-hero raised their head in Hollywood and, "when he could no longer rationalize the subject matter he was asked to promote, he heroically walked away from his source of income." In any event, he became an in-demand painter of western art, a genre that only sells in one (divided and ready to fall) nation in the world.
As for Austrian-born director Nathan Juran (1 Sept 1907 – 23 Oct 2002), a former art director future television director, he began his directorial career with the gothic horror The Black Castle (1952 / full film); later genre highlights include The Deadly Mantis (1957 / trailer), The Brain from Planet Arous (1957 / trailer) and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973 / trailer). His most notable (rare) writing credit as far as a wasted life is concerned would be the script that he, as "Jerry Juran", supplied for the obscure English zombie horror Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961 / trailer below). His greatest fame, however, is his direction of three Ray Harryhausen (29 Jun 1920 – 7 May 2013) movies: First Men in the Moon (1964, see Harryhausen Pt III) 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957, see Harryhausen Pt II), and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1957, see Harryhausen Pt II).
Trailer to
Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961):
As for the rest of the relevant cast, Dr Issac Cushing is played by Roy Gordon (18 Oct 1884 – 23 Jul 1972), a man also primarily active as a supporting actor in a wide variety of credited and uncredited roles. His best credited roles are found in The Wasp Woman (1959) and Hands of Death (1962 / trailer).
In turn, Sherriff Dubbitt is personified by George Douglas (born George Lamar Hesselberg [7 Aug 1903 – 11 June 1983), the younger and forgotten brother of the more-famous Melvyn Douglas (of The Vampire Bat[1933]). Like Gordon and Hudson, George Douglas was normally background filler and uncredited; his earliest known credited role is in the ancient exploitation film Rebellious Daughters (1938 / full film). You can also find him in The Snow Creature (1954 / full film), a "fourth-rate Abominable Snowman film (the first and the worst)" directed by "Billy Wilder's talentless brother" W. Lee Wilder (22 Aug 1904 – 14 Feb 1982). Gordon retired in 1962.
Lastly, but most importantly, the woman who plays the lady of easy virtue stealing Nancy's man, Honey Parker: the great Yvette Vickers (26 Aug 1928 – Aug 2010), also found in Reform School Girl (1957 / trailer) and, of course, Attack of the Giant Leeches(1959).
That's her above, not from any movie but from her pictorial as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for July 1959, which was shot by Russ Meyers. Her demise, like that of Allison Hayes, was a tragic one: she lay dead and forgotten in her house for over a year before her mummified remains were found. Her last film role was in the decidedly low-rent Evil Spirits (1991 / trailer). Her parents, Charles Vedder and Iola Maria Vedder were musicians, and he even released an occasional single, like Arriba, released the year Yvette lay on Russ Meyer's couch. In 2007, Yvette released an LP honoring her parents...
Chuck Vedder and Band — Arriba:
Thirty-five years later, in 1993, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman finally got remade (full film), for HBO and starring Daryl Hannah. Other planned remakes include one long caught in development hell at the SyFy Network and, most recently (Feb 2024), one planned as a Tim Burton production. Riffs on the narrative are found in Fred Olan Ray's Attack of the 50 Foot Centerfold (1995 / trailer), the 3D & breast-heavy Roger Corman production Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012 / trailer) and Jim Weynorski's Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl (2022 / trailer). The last three cheapies all work a 50-foot female cat fight into their "plots".
Released July 1958. "Allison's next movie is interesting if for no other reason than it was the first motion picture with Hollywood actors filmed in Canada. The movie was created 40 years before subsidies from Telefilm Canada would begin to enable Canadian film makers to use American actors, and we know what has resulted to the U.S. Film Industry from that decision. The movie was unseen for 50 years [...]. [The House of Fradkin-stein]"
The Lost Film of Markdale:
In Talk's Cheap, Action's Expensive – The Films of Robert L. Lippert, Mark Thomas McGee writes: "This movie, which was filmed in and around the quiet Ontario village of Markdale, was the second-to-last feature directed by Sam Newfield (7 Dec 1899 – 10 Nov 1964). Newfield, with over 200 feature films to his credit, is often celebrated as the most prolific feature film director of the American sound era."
Among the Newfield films we here at a wasted life have seen: The Monster Maker (1944). In our review, we mention his true claim to fame: "Sam Newfield is hardly a name that rings a bell when talking about directors of years gone by, though one or two might remember him as the director of the Golden Turkey of Westerns, Terror in Tiny Town (1938 / full movie), famed for being the first, the last, and the only Western — if not movie — with a 98% midget cast." So you can pretty much figure that Wolf Dog is hardly a cinematic masterpiece.
Wolf Dog — the full film:
Also known as A Boy and His Dog, but definitely not to be confused with the much later movie, A Boy and His Dog (1975 / trailer). This one here was made and then virtually disappeared for a couple of decades. Since its reappearance, it has even gotten a Fan Page... admittedly, made by people from the town of Markdale, where nothing seems to normally happen. And although Markdale is anything but the west, the movie is usually described as a [then contemporary] western.
Jonathon Jackson has the plot: "[Jim] Davis (of Dracula vs Frankenstein [1971]) played the lead role of an ex-Marine/ex-con who establishes a ranch with his wife (Allison Hayes) and young son (Tony Brown) but clashes with a corrupt neighbour (Austin Willis, also found in Flick a.k.a. Dr Frankenstein on Campus [1970 / trailer below], as Clem Krivak) who wants Davis' land and cattle for himself. [...] The plot also involves two bank robbers who had been in prison with Davis' character and end up blackmailing him. Ultimately, all of the bad guys are punished for their crimes and the hero 'wolf dog' owned by Davis' son fights and kills the main villain's equally villainous attack dog."
Trailer to
Dr Frankenstein on Campus (1970):
Jeff Arnold's West, which says "OK, it's set in the 1950s but it could just have easily been 1870", points out that "Yep, it's one of those ruthless-rancher-wants-the-whole valley plots. And of course the ruthless rancher has henchmen with guns [...] and a tame sheriff (Edward Holmes). [...] It's all a bit family-friendly, and the scenes with the boy and his dog and pony verge on the cloying. But there is a final shoot-out to even things up and make it a bit more Western."
"This offbeat, low budget dark violent six-shooter revenge oater is worth a watch for cult movie fans as a precursor of more interesting films to come in the following decade. Proceed with caution."
The full movie —
A Lust to Kill (colorized):
Released August 1958 — a Western set in the old west; the movie with a minor sleaze factor is also known as A Time to Kill and Border Lust. Director Oliver Drake (28 May 1903 – 19 Aug 1991) spent most his life as a director of C-westerns: "A former cattle rancher, he turned to acting in and directing westerns in 1917, appearing with his trained horse. During the sound era he became a prolific writer and occasional producer/director [...] often for RKO, Monogram and Republic. Retired in 1974 to publish his autobiography Written, Produced and Directed by Oliver Drake."
"Keep talking. Your diggin' your grave with words." Cheney (Don Megawan)
Prior to retiring, his movies took a decidedly exploitative turn: as "Revilo Ekard" — his real name written backwards — he directed some true trash, namely: the "must-see study in inexplicable stupidity" that is The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969 / scene) and the inept sleaze that is the "rape western" Ride A Wild Stud (1969) and the "horny babe movie" Angelica: The Young Vixen (1974, French poster above); he also scripted the recently rediscovered No Tears for the Damned a.k.a. The Las Vegas Strangler (1968).
The full film –
The Las Vegas Strangler:
In A Lust to Kill, which already displays some lite-beer grindhouse tendencies, he left the scripting duties to Tom Hubbard (2 Apr 1919 – 4 Jun 1974), who also plays Deputy Kane Guthrie in the movie, and Samuel Roeca (24 Dec 1919 – 17 June 2005), who later came up with the story to The Night Visitor (1972 / trailer).
"I'll count to 10. If you haven't drawn, I'll spread whatever guts you got all over the floor." Cheney (Don Megawan)
Currently, Wikipediahas the best plot outline: "Cowboy Cheney Holland (Don Megowan [24 May 1922 – 26 June 1981] of The Creation of the Humanoids [1962 / trailer]) and his brother Luke rob of a load of rifles but later are abandoned by the rest of their gang. The pursuing lawmen, including their former friend Marshal Matt Gordon (Jim Davis of The Day Time Ended [1979 / trailer]), chase the brothers, eventually killing Luke and apprehending Cheney. With his girlfriend Sherri (Allison Hayes) on his side, Cheney Holland escapes and seeks to avenge his younger brother. While Holland chases his previous gang of criminals led by Isaac Stancil (Gerald Milton [12 Jan 1923 – 16 Apr 2005] of Twisted Justice [1990 / full film]), Holland is himself pursued by the stubborn Marshal Gordon. Holland eventually catches up with Stancil, killing him. Meanwhile, Gordon apprehends Sherry and uses her to lure Holland; the two meet in a dramatic showdown, and Holland is killed."
Over at Letterboxd, John Charles says: "This B-oater certainly doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it more than fulfills genre expectations and has a surprisingly mean edge at times. Jim Davis was never the most charismatic actor but remains a dependable hero, and hulking Don Megowan makes for an effective villain. Allison Hayes doesn't have much to do as the heroine, though it's amusing to see the former 50-Foot Woman looking positively short beside the 6' 6" Megowan. Judging from Davis' opening narration, this was originally going to be called 'A Time to Kill.' The eye-catching poster art has no relation at all to the movie it's promoting but would have made a great men's sweat magazine cover."
Regarding the poster, one of the few sites that has bothered to wrote about this movie, Once Upon a Time in a Western, as sometimes happens, misidentifies someone in their diss of the movie: "The movie poster promises us a tale of 'twisted men and tawdry women ... living in a tempest of distorted desire' and shows Allison Hayes, scantily clad in a bed. Truth: Allison is never that scantily clad in the film and the only thing dirty about this rather nondescript Western is the final scene, in which the good guy and bad guy duke it out to the finish in a mud-filled hog pen. [...] The best role here belongs to the vengeance-seeking Mowegan, who has an especially brutal encounter with gang leader Isaac Stancil. [...]"
Truth is, though Allison Hayes gets poster credit, she ain't the blonde cleavage on the bed on the poster. The scene is not in the movie, but the honor of being on the poster was bestowed to the up and coming but now forgotten blonde bombshell, Sandra Giles (July 24, 1932 – December 25, 2016), above and below from the film, who has a extremely minor role as Belle in the movie. Sandra Giles's last feature film roles that we could locate were as a prostitute in Black Gunn (1972 / trailer) and a checkout lady in Bert I Gordon's The Mad Bomber (1973 / fan-made trailer).
Over at imdb, dairymaid455546 notes: "Although this B-movie western covers all the clichés you would expect, there are a few unusual elements. The villain, played by Don Megowan, starts as a somewhat sympathetic character but gradually becomes more sadistic and violent. The supposed good guy, played by Jim Davis, kills a man with his bare hands by drowning him in a shallow pool of pig excrement and water! Allison Hayes has almost nothing to do here except she is very small compared to the hulking leading men (who are at least six foot tall). And there is a surprising bit of nudity by Toni Turner during a scene of the gang of thieves gamboling in a muddy pond and eating melon! Imagine going to see this twisted, low budget six-shooter revenge melodrama at the bijou in 1959!"
We don't know who did the artwork for the American poster, but the somewhat meatier German version — the blonde truly looks like a cheap, used-up hooker, or? — was done by the painter and graphic artist Heinz Bonné. Born on 26.05.1911 in Leipzig, after his studies at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts he opened his own studio in 1932. In 1935, he took over the management of the UFA studio in Leipzig, only to be drafted to the Wehrmacht in 1939, where he served until 1945. After the war he returned to Leipzig and did commercial work for DEFA and Sovexport-Film before moving to West Germany in 1949, where he continued doing film posters as well as commercial work. Heinz Bonné died on 3.12.1996 in Offenbach am Main. Many of his film posters can be found in the poster archive of the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main. [Source: Filmposter-Archive]
Released Oct 1958, Hong Kong Confidential was the fourth and last movie Edward L. Cahn released that year, as well as the second-to-last movie that Allison Hayes made with director Edward L. Cahn — the first being the previous year's anti-classic, Zombies of Mora Tau (1957, see Part IV), and the third being the following year's Pier 5, Havana (1959 – looked at further below).
As for the other female of the movie, Beverly Tyler (5 July 1927 – 23 Nov 2005), she quit the biz for motherhood & wifedom after this less than impressive spy flick — perhaps she figured that she didn't want to sink any deeper. This is not one of Cahn's better rush jobs.
The full movie:
Screenwriter Orville H. Hampton (21 May 1917 – 8 Aug 1997) went on to help script "better" movies, like The Alligator People (1959 / trailer), The Snake Woman (1961 / full film), the excellent message movie One Potato, Two Potato (1964 / trailer),*Riot on Sunset Strip (1967 / trailer), Detroit 9000 (1973, with uncredited Marylin Joi) and Friday Foster (1975 / trailer). *The screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, but lost out to the forgettable fluff that is Father Goose (1964 / trailer).
Great Old Movies has the plot: "Special Agent Casey Reed (Gene Barry [14 Jun 1919 – 9 Dec 2009] of Guyana: Cult of the Damned [1979 / trailer]) works in a nightclub in Hong Kong as a singer as his cover. He is told that the Russians have kidnapped the young son, Abdul, of Thamen's King Faid (Michael Barry, the auteur behind The Second Coming of Suzanne [1974 / title track]), to force his cooperation in a deal that is also important to the U.S. Reed is assigned to find the boy, and along the way pretends to be a crook who wants an alliance with Macao gold smuggler Elena Martine (Allison Hayes) and her associates, Chung (Philip Ahn [29 Mar 1905 – 28 Feb 1978] of Voodoo Heartbeat [1973 / trailer]) and Owen Howard (Noel Drayton [7 Oct 1913 – 7 Dec 1981]). Casey's pretty accompanist, Fay (Beverly Tyler) is brought to Macao via subterfuge to put pressure on Reed. Hong Kong Confidential has obtrusive narration that tells us what we're seeing, and is on the level of a cheap TV production, but it does boast a tense scene when Reed, still pretending to be a crook, is told to prove his loyalty by killing the British agent John Blanchard (Michael Pate [26 Feb 1920 – 1 Sep 2008] of The Tower of London [1962 / trailer] and The Curse of the Undead [1959 / trailer]); the climax is also suspenseful and the movie is fast-paced. The performances are okay, although Hayes, without much of a character to play, seems a trifle bored at times. Ed Kemmer also appears as an old flame of Fay's. When Barry goes into his song and dance routine it looks as if he's doing a parody! [...]"
Not from the movie —
Gene Barry sings Let Me Love You:
Over at Mystery File, Steve says, "The only reason I can suggest to you as to why you might want to see this poor excuse for an espionage thriller is the presence of Allison Hayes, she of the slinky pantsuit and the deliciously arched eyebrows. Unless, of course, you're a Gene Barry fan, in which you will not want to miss him doing a song and dance routine in his alter ego role as a nightclub performer."
Emil Newman's title track for
Hong Kong Confidential:
Where Danger Lives notices that "the sets are strictly from hunger, clearly trumped-up back-lot hand-me-downs", and adds: "Hong Kong Confidential is a small, fun, campy thing. It doesn't take itself very seriously and doesn't expect you to. One look at the poster and you'll know you're in for a fun ride — or at least that Gene Barry is a fan of the squatting position, and he holds his .38 like a steak knife."
Kendra Steiner even calls the movie "highly recommended": "Those who like hard-boiled cold-war spy films, especially those made on a super-low budget, should love this 1958 classic, which features Gene Barry as a US intelligence agent whose 'cover' is that of a mediocre lounge singer! Barry's character is intentionally smarmy and funny, and he contrasts well with the hard-boiled spy action, set in backlot versions of Hong Kong and Macao, with a lot of tight shots of characters standing in front of Asian-looking signs and sections of buildings, often only six or eight feet wide. And of course, an alley is an alley and a warehouse is a warehouse, whether it be in Macao or Atlanta. Put a few Asian details in a dark alley, have a few Asian characters, and voila, you've got a film set in the Orient! Like many 1950s spy/crime films, this features a hard-boiled Dragnet-esque narration telling you things you just observed on the screen (as well as events they can't afford to film). Still, they don't make films like this anymore [...]"
Not from the movie —
Gene Barry sings Just in Time:
Counterplot
(1959, dir. Kurt Neumann)
"A predictable minor B-film crime drama adequately directed by the workaholic German-born Kurt Neumann. Though written in a convoluted way by Richard Blake, it builds to a well-executed climax. [...] [Dennis Schwartz]"
The movie was released in October 1959. It is also the last directorial project of Kurt Neumann (5 Apr 1908 – 21 Aug 1958), who died both before the release of this lesser movie and his biggest hit, the original version of The Fly (1958 / trailer). In turn, it was his second and final directorial project with Allison Hayes, the first being the western Mohawk (1956, see Part II). Set in Puerto Rico, Counterplot was also filmed there on location. The script was supplied by Richard Blake (30 Dec 1905 – 24 Sept 1954), who wrote the original Invaders from Mars (1953 / trailer)
The full movie —
Counterplot:
Plot: "Counterplot is a standard murder melodrama in which a man mistakenly believes he has killed someone. Brock (Forrest "Hung" Tucker* of The Crawling Eye [1958 / trailer] and Cosmic Monsters [1958 / trailer]) flees to Puerto Rico from New York City, the scene of his supposed crime. A Puerto Rican boy (Jackie Wayne) who had befriended Brock years ago turns out to offer him a haven in this aftermath of the presumed murder. As time goes by, it is revealed that the murdered man's business partner (Richard Verney) was the one responsible for his death. Complicating matters is the fact that the dead man had taken out a hefty life insurance policy before he died. Brock's next challenge then, is to get evidence on the real killer. [Rare Movie Collector]"
*"Tucker knew he was different 'down there' and was not only frank about it, but even gave his penis a nickname, 'The Chief.' He also swam nude at George Cukor's Sunday afternoon pool parties, not for sex, but just to revel in showing off. As a voracious heterosexual male, he had a thing for young ladies and was married (to one of four wives) for virtually all his life. The first three were around twenty-one when he married them, but some were teens when they met. [Poseidon's Underwear]"
Image above not from the film.
Tucker's wife interviewed about...
Allison Hayes plays the lounge singer Connie Lane, the girlfriend of the accused man, while the duplicitous Spargo is played by the Puerto Rico comedian and actor, Miquel Angel Alvarez (25 Aug 1941 – 16 Jan 2011), also of Fiend of Dope Island (1961 / trailer). Everything, of course, culminates in a final shoot-out.
Image above not from the film.
The Legend of Forrest Tucker (1997):
Over at Mystery File, talking about the movie (not the penis), Steve says, "[...] I'd place it in the category of 'a whole lot better than it had any right to be.' Forrest Tucker and Allison Hayes make a great pair; at 6'4", he's one actor who towers way above her, even at 5'8" not counting the two-inch heels she seems to always be wearing. [...] Even better is the relationship between Brock and young Manuel. It's mostly a one-sided but a very real one, with Brock always quick on the temper and annoyed at him — but only momentarily. While apparently often in Broadway shows, this was Jackie Wayne's only film credit. Add in Gerald Milton's fast-talking performance, channeling Sidney Greenstreet for all he's worth, and you have a group of players who add up more 'plus points' together than the story itself."
Keeping an eye on the important things in the movie is Cinema Cats, which points out: "The first time that Connie returns to Verney's, the nightclub, there is a dog walking on the street outside. After this scene a cab pulls away from the club and the same dog is walking around the corner. As he does, a cat, which is sitting in the street, jumps onto the curb and starts chasing the dog. The dog beats a hasty retreat and the cat stops."
Aside from the dog and cat, "Counterplot has some good acting in it, especially from the dynamic Milton, and Allison Hayes [...] is warmer and more sympathetic than usual. Jackie Wayne is a talented and appealing child actor [...]. Forrest Tucker basically plays the same dull 'Forrest Tucker' character. Photographed by Karl Struss [Sunrise (1927)*], who did many films with director Neumann . Verdict: A melodrama that holds the attention but never quite catches fire. [Great Old Movies]"
Sunrise —
the full film:
*The American directorial debut of F.W. Murnau (28 Dec. 1888 – 11 Mar 1931), the narrative of Sunrise — a favorite movie here at a wasted life — does have its flaws but the movie itself remains a visual masterpiece. The sleazy, unconfirmable tale behind Murnau's death: "In 1931, seven days before the premiere of Murnau's film Tabu (trailer / full film), he allowed [sic] a fourteen year-old, exotic-looking, very handsome Filipino boy named Garcia Stevenson [his 'valet'], for a ride in his limo. And for some absolutely bizarre reason, he let the boy drive the Packard vehicle. Stevenson, driving too fast and swerving to avoid a truck, eventually crashed against an electric pole, killing the legendary film director. Garcia was not hurt, nor the other person in the car, but Murnau's head was cracked open on a roadside pole and [he] died in hospital shortly afterwards. He was 42 years old. It was reported later on, that while Garcia Stevenson was driving, Mr. Murnau was playing with the boy's genitals, and one report even went further by saying that the legendary director was actually performing fellatio on the boy, which distracted the latter, and eventually resulted in the tragic accident. [Pinoy Comics TV Movies]"
And now, a confirmable story: "In July 2015, Murnau's grave was broken into, the remains disturbed and the skull removed by persons unknown. Wax residue was reportedly found at the site, leading some to speculate that candles had been lit, perhaps with an occult or ceremonial significance. As this disturbance was not an isolated incident, the cemetery managers were considering sealing the grave. The skull has not been recovered since. [Wikipedia]" What most news reports fail to mention is that the slabs of Murnau's grave had long broken open due to age, so when it came to "considering sealing the grave", the cemetery managers had already been more than lethargic.
The photo above comes from a tasty, 5-page photo layout featuring Allison Hayes in the October 1958 issue of Gent magazine, one of the many imitation Playboy magazines to pop up in the late '50s; the photographer, Bill Crespinel, was the still photographer of Counterplot. As a print magazine, Gent, which went in a direction that led the magazine to become "The Home of the D-Cups" and "The #1 Big Tits Magazine". It ceased to exist sometime in the '90s and its website has long since lost its name and become a generic hardcore site.
Released either July 1959 (per AFI) October 1959 (per imdb), Pier 5, Havana (the working title of which was The Havana Story) is the third and final movie Allison Hayes was to make with director Edward L. Cahn (see: Mohawk [1955] in Part II and Counterplot [1958] directly above). The script was written by Joseph Hoffman (20 Feb 1909 – 25 May 1997), who way back in 1942 worked on two fun films, The Living Ghost (trailer) and Man with Two Lives (full film), and Robert E. Kent (31 Aug 1911 – 11 Dec 1984), who went on to write Twice-Told Tales (1963 / trailer) and Diary of a Madman (1963 / trailer).
Most reputable sites say that the movie was not shot on location, but over at Ha Ha, It's Burl, who gives away the plot twist by stating "Pier 5, Havana is more or less a budget version of The Third Man (1949 / trailer)", claims otherwise: "They nevertheless did get down to Cuba for some location work, and I even recognized some of the locations! Ha ha, I went to Havana in the 1990s and really enjoyed myself there." He also points out that Pier 5, Havana is "a picture shot [...] in that small window of time between when Castro took power and when Americans figured out that he was a Communist! Ha ha, so it was against the odds, in an era when anti-Communist sentiment was still pretty strong and capitalism venerated as a universal balm, that a funny little anti-Bastista, pro-Revolution mystery-actioner was produced, which we now know as Pier 5, Havana!"
The full movie:
Mike Grost, who thinks that "Pier 5, Havana (1959) is a [...] terrible movie: more a curiosity due to its political background, rather than having any interest as a thriller", points out why the movie bypassed all anti-Communist sentiment: "Battista fled Cuba on January 1, 1959; Castro entered Havana in triumph a week later. Pier 5, Havana was filmed in February 1959, and released in July. During this period, Castro was denying in public that he had anything to do with Communism; during his American tour in April 1959, he gave speeches denouncing Communism, for example."
The plot, from Great Old Movies: "Steve Daggett (Cameron Mitchell*) comes to Havana – right after Castro has taken over — to look for his missing friend, Hank Miller (Logan Field [12 Jun 1922 – 28 Aug 1997] of Blacula [1972 / trailer]). Hank is married to an ex-girlfriend of Steve's named Monica (Allison Hayes), who is now keeping company with a character named Fernando Ricardo (Eduardo Noriega [25 Sept 1916 – 14 Aug 2007] of The Beast of Hollow Mountain [1956 / trailer] and Guyana: Crime of the Century [1979 / trailer]). Steve's trail leads to Schluss (Otti Waldis [20 May 1901 – 25 Mar 1974] of Unknown World [1951 / fan trailer] and The Phantom of Soho [1964 / trailer]), whose warehouse is inexplicably stocking guns. Steve contacts Lt. Garcia (Michael Granger [14 May 1922 or '23 (sources vary) – 22 Oct 1981] of Creature with the Atom Brain [1955 / trailer and Anatomy of a Psycho [1961 / full film]), but he has nothing to pin on Schluss. Then Garcia tells Steve they have found Hank Miller's body — or have they? Steve discovers that there's a plot afoot to put Batista back in power, and to bomb Havana. The performances are all solid in this cheap melodrama, which is more like an expanded television episode than a movie."
* The hammy actor that was Cameron Mitchell (4 Nov 1918 – 6 Jul 1994) is one of the greats of cult and "bad" film; outside of his TV work, he developed an innate ability to chose terrible but cheesily fun film projects. If in doubt, check out — to select but a very few disasterpieces — Space Mutiny (1988, with Cissy Cameron), the cut-together anti-classic Night Train to Terror (1985), Juan Piquer Simón's Supersonic Man (1979 / trailer), Nightmare in Wax (1969), Island of the Doomed (1967 / full film) and, to choose a standout classic, Mario Bava's seminal Blood and Black Lace (1964 / trailer) and....
"It's a fairly standard mystery. Edward L. Cahn [...] was a director who shot fast and in a workmanlike style. (Pier 5 Havana was one of seven films that he directed in 1959 alone.) Cameron Mitchell is surprisingly but effectively subdued as the two-fisted hero and he provides the hard-boiled narration as well. As always, Allison Hayes is an effective femme fatale. Pier 5, Havana is a fast-paced B-movie with some good performances and some interesting footage of Havana right after the revolution. [Through a Shattered Lens]"
"More plot-heavy than Cahn's other B-movies for United Artists, Pier 5 is less a political thriller than a private-eye movie with Mitchell's air freight owner narrating in classic style. Cam and Cahn made three films together in less than two years (also Three Came to Kill [1960 / full film] and Inside the Mafia [1959 / trailer]), and it appears as though Cahn was a good influence on his star, who had a tendency to ham it up when not directed with a firm hand. Hayes does nice work as a woman torn between the husband she likes and the man she loves (Daggett). [Johnny LaRue]"
Coming next month: Allison Hayes, Part VI (1960-65)
* Huyk and Katz went on to script a little film known as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984 / trailer), and then solidified their standing as major players with internationally respected message movie, Howard the Duck (1986 / trailer). They also scribed the much maligned and now forgotten comedy Radioland Murders (1994 / trailer), a movie that would make a great double feature with Sam Rami's much maligned and now forgotten but truly visual comedy Crimewave (1985 / trailer). 
* Yes, that Walter Hill: the director of a wasted life faves such as The Driver (1978 / trailer), The Warriors (1979 / trailer), The Long Riders (1980 / trailer), Southern Comfort (1981 / trailer), Red Heat (1988 / trailer), and Last Man Standing (1996 / trailer). His brief appearance in Messiah of Evil is, to date, his only known appearance onscreen. 
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