Saturday, 18 September 2021 18:50
Mole People
THE MOLE PEOPLE
US, 1956, 77 minutes, Black and white.
John Agar, Cynthia Patrick, Hugh Beaumont, Alan Napier.
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel.
The B Feature was a popular aspect of the double bills, especially in English-speaking countries. They were churned out by the American industry as well as by the British from the 1930s to the 1960s. The coming of television did not immediately halt their production or popularity but, at the beinning of the 1960s, with the big-budget widescreen films that were becoming more and more popular, there was little place for these films.
When the Americans began making telemovies in the late 1960s, these became the alternative to the B films.
However, there were still a number of film-makers who made genre pictures during the 1970s, often Z budget in production and imagination. Later, the successors of these films were the straight-to-video and straight-to-DVD films of the 1990s and into the 21st century.
In the United States, especially with the popular serials that took on themes of science and even space exploration, the 1950s saw a proliferation of short science fiction films, some of them now considered excellent examples of their type, others were just schlock.
One of the features of these films was the atomic age and many of the films were warnings about radiation dangers and the possibilities of mutations and monsters. Godzilla emerged from this period. Space also fascinated film-makers and audiences at this time. The first Sputnik was launched in 1957 and soon after the first astronauts went into space. The moon landing was in 1969. Many of the films (even Kubrick’s 1968 2001: a Space Odyssey) tried to imagine what space travel would be like. There was a huge spate of space films.
Unfortunately, special effects were quite limited at the time and many audiences would find these quite risible. However, taken in their time, they had their impact.
This was the period of Ed Wood and his Planet 9 from Outer Space but also the beginning of the career of Roger Corman and his many protégés who became top-class directors.
There had been a Hollywood tradition of horror since the 1930s which led to many spoofs. However, all kinds of horror made a comeback in the 1950s, not only in the shockers from the US but also from Hammer Studios in England. These films also continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s and influenced some of the poorer directors like Ted. V. Mikels with films like The Corpse Grinders. These films, along with the popularity of the blaxploitation films now show their age with their characteristic costumes and hair styles, the touch sometimes of the psychedelic and the grainy film stock.
The Mole People is one of many science fiction B-budget features of the mid-1950s. It was the first film directed by Virgil W. Vogel who had been an editor at Universal Studios and who was to make a Ma and Pa Kettle film and then work for thirty years in television. John Agar had been a star of the 1940s.
The film uses imagination in terms of archaeological investigations in Mesopotamia. A group of scientists investigating religious beliefs 5000 years BC, find a glacier and evidence of a civilisation. As they fall into the caverns, they discover people surviving from a disruption in the past, living under the mountains.
The film focuses on the strong personalities of the scientists, the dangers they experience and their coping in the underground caverns. It also focuses on the religious rituals preserved from the past, especially the vengeful high priest. A young woman is considered an alien in the community and she wants to escape. Needless to say, there are various aspects of horror, terror, the destruction of the civilisation and the priest and the final escape.
1.Popular B-budget material? The mid-1950s?
2.The black and white photography, the Mesopotamian settings, the mountains and the glacier, the underground city and its rooms? The special effects? The musical score?
3.The plausibility of this kind of exploration and excavation? Of civilisations underground? Of a civilisation being threatened by mutants?
4.The expedition, the personalities, their interactions, the dangers on the mountains? The caverns? The death of the older professor? Coping with the underground, the darkness? The encounter with the high priest and the civilisation? The use of the torch as a light and overpowering the people, who considered them Divine?
5.The background of the civilisation, the origins, the earthquakes, the underground caverns? The mutants and the Mole People and their threats to the civilisation?
6.The high priest, his vengeful attitude, the prince? Dealing with the newcomers?
7.Adad, her role amongst the people, her being out of place, her wanting to escape?
8.The build-up to the confrontation, the defeat of the Mole People? Getting out of the caverns, bringing Adad to safety?
9.Indication of the popular mentality for this kind of entertainment in the 50s?