THE CRAWLING EYE 1958

Creepy 1950's British Sci-Fi Horror With Forrest Tucker and Janet Munro Battling Huge Alien Crawling Eyeballs and Re-Animated Corpses Atop a Swiss Mountaintop !!

AKA The Trollenberg Terror

"The Nightmare of the Slithering Eye That Unleashed Agonizing Horror on a Screaming World !"

     Based upon a BBC television serial from 1956 titled the THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (and the British title of the movie), THE CRAWLING EYE combines a creepy & shock filled script by Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster (HORROR OF DRACULA & CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN), mixes a bit of Gothic horror along sci-fi and outlandish alien monsters (rendered with some endearingly hokey special effects) into a wonderfully entertaining little "B" film. It might be criticized for tossing too many things into the pot, but they all help keep the story moving along and provide some nice little horror shocks along the way.

    Beginning with a prologue that has three mountain climbers meeting with unexpected fog bank that climaxes with one of them being mysteriously decapitated, we then rush forward to the opening credits (via a train hurtling out of a tunnel) and are introduced to train passenger Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker). On the train Brooks meets up with sisters Anne & Sarah Pilgrim (the above mentioned Janet Munro along with Jennifer Jayne). The Pilgrim Sisters preform as a mind reading act and inexplicably get off the train at Trollenberg along with Brooks as Anne has had some sort of vision and demands they stop.
    Brooks has shown up in Trollenberg to investigate some strange deaths on the mountain. Although it's mentioned that he's from the U.N., Tucker's characters exact role is never fully explained. But hey, every good sci-fi movie needs a proto scientist guy to take charge and boss everybody around. Upon arriving at the local hotel the group is met by a reporter (Lawrence Sanders from 1960's THE TELL-TALE HEART), plus the hotel owner Klein and barman Hans.

    At a nearby mountaintop laboratory Prof. Crevett (Warren Mitchell HELP ! 1965) has been studying a mysterious cloud which moves about the mountain. Crevett has summoned Brooks because previously they both encountered this same weirdness high up in the Andes. In order to get some back story into the plot Brook's is skeptical meaning that the Prof. has to explain everything to him (and us). Meanwhile Dewhurst, a geologist is planning a trip up the mountain to investigate the strange deaths. Accompanied by a guide named Brett (Andrew Faulds THE DEVILS 1969), they stop at a hut for the night the pair encounter a thick fog which Brent disappears into and the next day Dewhurst is discovered decapitated and Brent has vanished.

   It seems that aliens (in the form of wonderful giant crawling eyeballs that were so ingrained in many young viewers minds) have taken up residence in the higher mountaintops as a pretext to (guess what !) conquering the world. Mixed into the plot are the aliens trick of being able to re-animate freshly killed victims and send them off on assigned killing sprees - as in the mysteriously re-appeared Brett and the intended victim being the ESP prone nightgown clad Anne Pilgrim. As mentioned before THE CRAWLING EYE throws many things into the mix, which although maybe seeming to be somewhat random (with some of them left rather unexplained) they all do contribute to the story and help keep the plot moving along as the monsters themselves are not reveled until the climax.

  Thanks to some horror overtones in the Jimmy Sangster script and that combined with some atmospherically moody B&W cinematography by Monty Berman (who also shot the wonderfully grim Burke & Hare vehicle THE FLESH AND THE THE FIENDS from 1960 and 1959's JACK THE RIPPER) add to the creepiness level. The huge eyeball monsters with their failing tentacles are a combination of puppets and stop motion animation and although obviously hampered by the budget look pretty impressive (especially in close-up). The model work is painfully obvious at certain points with the mountaintop paintings falling a bit short (most pointedly in shots with the "cloud" stuck on them) and the set bound production seems a bit cramped (with some stock footage of Switzerland stuck in), but none of these really take away from the movie (as anyone who watches this kind of stuff should know). The monsters themselves are wisely kept hidden until the climax (for which the cloud serves as a handy purpose) and director Quentin Lawrence (who also directed the BBC original - which I would love to see) keeps the plot moving at good clip until the final mountaintop showdown.

   Forrest Tucker is probably familar to most people from F TROOP, but he was a solid dependable actor who had worked in Hollywood since the early 40's. He was most effective in a long run of westerns he did in 1950's and as a friend of John Wayne he appeared in THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA (1949) and CHISUM from 1970. He also was in Hammer's THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (1957) and in 1958's giant insect opus THE COSMIC MONSTERS (which was from the same English producers as THE CRAWLING EYE). Janet Munro was best known for Disney's DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE (1959) and THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (1960). Sadly she would battle alcohol problems and die in 1972 at the age of 38.
   The Image DVD is a nice anamorphic transfer from a British print (and can be had for dirt cheap), plus comes complete with a nifty British Board of Censors "X" rating insert ("This is to Certify that The Trollenberg Terror has been Passed for Exhibition when no child under 16 is present. Signed P.W. Harris President" - Thank you very much !).

   

 
 

Some Groovy Music Courtesy of Vamp Star

 

    A bunch of you might know Rob Gray from over at his Hellbilly Hollywood blog. Rob was one the first people to support my blog and and has turned me on to bunches of cool music & movies. It seems like he's always got something going on and one of his projects is his band Vamp Star & they've just released their 3rd (!!) album FASCINATION.
   The music itself is sort  hard to classify (in a VERY GOOD way) and they describe themselves over on their Facebook page as "an experimental band who blends disco, hard rock, world music, and 70s style B-movie music".  As per the album title its a "fascinating" listen, as swirling about here is everything they describe, although on this release the 70's exploitation soundtrack feel really comes to the fore front. Plus there's a fun sense of humor running throughout, along with an obvious love, knowledge & appreciation of 70's drive-in/horror movie history (complete with a very cool homage to Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE). Part of the fun here is actually listening and picking out all the little things lurking around.
   It set up as sort of concept album (but don't let this deter you - as this isn't some bloated butt numb a thon) and tells the story of  former disco singer Captain Groovy and his downward spiral in to the sleazy underbelly of the 1970's. Fun stuff for sure and here's Rob to fill us in with a little more background & stuff.

There's bunches of movie references in FASCINATION. Did you watch anything specifically before recording or was this just a lifetime of B movie knowledge put to work ?

Rob -  A little bit of both really. The 1970s as a whole is really the driving force for much of what I do. From my music to my novels, there are always elements of the 70s there. And of 70s pop-culture, it's really the movies that have influenced me the most. So that kind of slips into all that I do whether I mean it to or not.  I knew when I started Fascination that at least half of it would be set in the 70s. So I just wanted to use pop culture references of the time, stuff that would seem relevant then. 

This seems like the kind of project where there might have been other material written that didn't end up on the final album. Did you have a difficult time getting the album down to its finished length.

Rob - Not at all. Fascination was extremely planned out. I approached it much like I would a novel. It started with an outline of the story and plot points each song needed to hit. From there I took the plot points, or time periods for the Captain, and turned them into lyrics. So the story, album structure, and all the lyrics were written before a single note was recorded. But when writing the lyrics, I kind of had an idea of how I wanted each song to sound; or at very least what genre it would be in. When it finally came time to start actually writing the music, I had a strong idea of where I wanted each song to go. So Ali came in and we recorded one or two of the songs per session. I'd be like "I want it to sound like this" and he would work his magic on the guitar. 

Without mentioning any names is Captain Groove based any anybody real,  just a conglomeration of various personalities or is it entirely a work of fiction ?

Rob- . I think you summed it up with a conglomeration of various personalities. In writing, I kind of live by the motto "Write what you know". Though highly fictionalized, this has served me well in most of my novels. There are always little bits of reality and dramatized versions of real events in my stories. And band life and the mistakes that so many musicians make is something I know really well. So when it came to writing an album about a serial killer, I just filled in the "why" of it all with a concept I knew well. 

As far as the clown element goes, the Captain isn't based on Gacy or anything like that. He wasn't really a serial killer clown. More so a serial killer magician. The clown part of the story  was to show that the Captain was willing to do anything to keep even an ounce of fame. Even becoming a TV clown, and from there a birthday party clown. 

On your live dates are you playing the entire album in order ? It seems like as the songs do stand alone, but is pretty cool they way they flow together and tell a story.

Rob- That is something I've been thinking about a lot. I do think it would be really cool to that at least once. But the logistics would be difficult. Several of the songs on the album weren't written with the intention of playing live. They were written for the sake of the concept. And said songs have more parts than we have members. Having synthetic instruments like drums and keys on a backing track is fine, it's something we have always done, but we agreed to never have guitars or vocals anything but live. We had to do some of that in the early days of VS and it was kinda crappy. 

The Captain's story ends kind of opened ended. Can we expect an 80's sequel to continue his story ?

Rob - The time frame of it all isn't overly clear in the lyrics themselves. That part of the story, as well as some little extra plot points, will be filled in with the liner notes of the CD itself. Sorry digital folks. But the story actually starts in the 70s with the first few tracks. Catch You on the Flip Side takes place on NYE 1979. It moves through the 80s in Clown Clown Clownin' Around and the last few tracks take place in the early 90s.

As for a sequel, this will be spoilery so don't read this if you haven't heard the album yet,

But originally,  the ending line "then it all just fades to black" was going to end with a gunshot, then the album would end. But somewhere along the way I scraped that. I don't remember why.  But no, the Captain dies at the end. So I think the story is over. But if I did continue it, it wouldn't be a follow up. It would have to be a side story or prequel. 

Thanks Rob and good luck with this and hope to hear more Vamp Star.

Vamp Star's blog is here and plus they have a Facebook presence as well. Check them out !