X the UNKNOWN / Hammer - 1956 / Music by James Bernard

Tonight we have one of my favorite sci-fi movies from the fifties... Hammer also used blobs and melting people in THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and QUATERMASS 2, aka THE CREEPING UNKNOWN and ENEMY FROM SPACE. In this wild atomic nightmare, Dean Jagger plays the scientist Dr. Adam Royston. He's in charge of figuring out how to 'kill mud!'

And, who did the music for those two Quatermass movies?.. James Bernard, who else?! His strains are very identifiable. Its music that can send shivers up or down your spine!!

Eegah!! put together a nice sound piece, so, we might as well get on with the show!.. Clik a mouse to find out... HOW DO YOU KILL MUD?! As Dean works away in the lab, the radio plays classical music...

I'm really glad I missed this one at the theater as a kid even though the story was penned by my favourite writer, Jimmy Sangster. A few other gems he scripted are THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, HORROR OF DRACULA, THE CRAWLING EYE, JACK THE RIPPER, THE MUMMY... You get the picture!

In keeping with our 'Sadistic Bastard' week, I'm placing Jimmy squarely into that catagory! Here's why...

Remember, this is 1956!.. I was 8!! So, what's the first thing he does?!.. Right, he kills off a young boy who had a creepy encounter with X in the woods at night, and then became deathly ill!

Now, here's why Sangster's a sadistic bastard in this movie... Walking away are the parents of the boy, who has just died from radiation poisoning. The mother's grief is so genuine that the viewer is left stunned from the heart-felt performance. And, Roysten still has no answers.

Then, cut to this guy making a call to a nurse in another department in the hospital, to invite her over to his lab during her break for a little sexual rendezvous.

To remind you that a young child has just die a horrific death, the gurney is wheeled down the hall in front of the camera, actually nudging lover boy out of the way!

Nursie pays a visit and they get right down to business. Naturally, the viewer is immediately drawn in. Now, you're thinking about sex!!

Hey! What the?!!..

So, the flesh melts off the guy's face and nursie will end up in a mental hospital forever and a day!! That's a pretty damn sadistic series of events within 2 minutes!! But, again, that's one reason why Jimmy's my favourite writer!

Also, as a 2nd unit director, he must have directed some of those 'melting' or effects scenes.

Say goodbye to Spider and Haggis! Anthony Newley plays Spider!!

An awesome part of the film is where Edward Chapman goes down inside the giant hole where X dwells. Truly scary and disgusting!

The military drops a bomb into the cavern, then covers it over with concrete, that'll probably solve the problem!!

But, it doesn't, and, the guard at the power plant is barely able to sound the alarm before he melts.

Roysten and the guys watch as X devours it's atomic meal.

On the way back to it's lair, it causes severe damage to the countryside. X has to be stopped!!

They employ Roysten's equipment, so, Edward coaxes X out of it's hole with an after dinner mint!

Roysten's idea works, but, then, there's an another unexpected explosion, leaving the viewer with an uneasy, instead of satisfied feeling at the end. Jimmy wins again!!

DER MÖNCH MIT DER PEITSCHE - Martin Böttcher - "The College Girl Murders" (1967)

Let's go ahead and end this week of SB nonsense with something from the master, Edgar Wallace. I'd be willing to bet that Edgar wrote more stories about sadistic bastards than anyone, because that's just the way the guy worked! Tonight's bad guy has an alligator pit, and that makes for an automatic inclusion into the SB Club, so in order not to damage you any further with my dull diatribe, here's Edgar Wallace's "The College Girl Murders"!!!

The hot and cold image of a red conehead with a whip in a graveyard sets the tone for the whole film, just so you know it's not going to be anything close to a normal ride!

So let's see, a lethal gas bomb in a hymnal!

Now that's some very serious bad gas!!

I'm pretty sure that killing innocent girls in church with lethal gas is going to get you ranked up there in the top ten sadistic bastard category real fast!!

On the left we have the almighty Siegfried Schürenberg as the classic Sir John, and on the right we have Super Dungeon fave Joachim Fuchsberger as Inspector Higgins!! Somehow you have to figure out a way to see all of Joachim's movies! He was great in "Room 13" as Johnny Gray, and here as Inspector Higgins, he chews gum through each and every scene, and is brilliantly cool about it all the way!!

100%, that's one hundred percent Edgar Wallace! You got your eyeball peephole like what's behind the green door, and a boss with opulent taste, and aberrant weapons of sneaky attacks from guys sent out by the C.S. boss that he sneaks out of prison in the garbage to do his 'dirty' work!!

This might just be THE best still I've ever captured!! Wallpaper City!!! I just reset mine! I think it's time to bow down to cinematographer Karl Löb real quick! What vision!

There's a lot of crap going on in the world, so just let one fly! Primal therapy, it works, but just don't freak out your neighbors!!!

Most of the time Joachim is pretty laid back and calculating, but he can get tough when he needs to!!! I have no idea why he didn't get the Best Actor Academy Award for this film back in '67! There is no justice in the world!

One great shot after another, and one last thanx to killer director Alfred Vohrer!

The music from this incredible film is once more composed by the German master, Martin Böttcher, another one of those guys prolific beyond imagination, and the titles that he composed for just go on and on and on!! It seems like the German composers are always right on the money with that perfect blend of swing and tension, and this film is just one more fine sample of that, and what you can find on Netflix if you start digging around in the corners deep enuf, but don't get too excited, because there's only a couple of Edgar Wallace titles there, but until somebody brings out the 113 disc Edgar Wallace box set, we'll have to live with what we can get!!