Nothing quite says I love you sweetheart like "The Mole People." And you can thank director Virgil Vogel for that!!
"The Mole People" starts off with an introduction by USC English Professor Frank Baxter, who had quite a little career going, generally playing himself! To me, it sounds like Dr. Phil completely swiped Frank's style and speech technique!! The less than spectacular soundtrack was pieced together by music supervisor Joseph Gershenson using music composed by Heinz Roemheld, Hans J. Salter, and Herman Stein! 
We'll be the greatest partners, buddies, and pals, Hugh Beaumont as Dr. Jud Bellamin and John Agar as Dr. Roger Bentley carry the whole thing!!
It wasn't easy either, pretty dang difficult set to get to!!
Those dark caverns made for a great opportunity for some awesome lighting, and cinematographer Ellis Carter took full advantage of it!
So they had to go way up and then come back way down and ended up here!!
They're so tired, John is sleeping with his head on a rock, or at least he was til that big mole hand came out and got him!
Going down!! First floor, ladies lingerie!!!
If nothing else, this movie proves without a shadow of a doubt that the ancient Sumerians were a bunch of uptight pricks!!
The Sumerians want to kill John and Hugh, but because they have the power of light, they are able to convince them they were sent by The Gods!!
So they are free to roam around, but you can bet those sneaky Sumerians are spying on them and planning on stealing their weapon of mass destruction, the almighty flashlight!! Watch out guys!!!
John Agar reciting prose with background music played by Cynthia Patrick, as Adad, on her Sumerian Gibson Custom XG mandolin, is probably the romantic highlight of the film!
Then it's time for still yet another one of those wild and krazy ritualistic traditional Sumerian let's all get together, eat some mushrooms, and run around in circles until some one falls down, dance routines! Yeehah!!
Come on in, the sand's fine!!!Jack Kevan, who gets credit for the mole masks was up to his elbows in design and makeup over the years, having had something to do on all 3 of the "Creature" titles, "Monster On The Campus", "It Came From Outer Space", "Monster Of Piedras Blancas", "This Island Earth" and even a couple of Abbott and Costello films! Now that there's some "Monster" history!!!
4 comments:
"down, down..."
Professor Frank Baxter is remembered fondly by those of us who grew up in school with the "Bell Telephone" movies (Hemo the Magnificent, Our Mr. Sun, About Time) and the Encyclopedia Britannica films played year after year.
To many of us he was more of a father than our real dads.
Sad, but true.
I wondered if you might perhaps find this tune diverting:
http://sirhenryrawlinson.blogspot.com/2008/11/we-are-moles-part-1.html
Well, Thank-You Sir!! I sure encourage anyone who drops by to read this, to go check out the link to "The Moles!" Wouldn't it have been cool if that was the real theme to "The Mole People?" Well, close enuf!!
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