Made 51 years ago, and still viable now, is tonight's movie "Curse of the Faceless Man." Yeah, there are WTF moments, but at one hour and five minutes, you know, you're almost getting straight action, and no filler, and that's the key to what modern film makers haven't figgered out! All that action and eye candy don't add up to dog poop, if there ain't no substance!!! It's that simple!!! "Curse Of The Faceless Man" has substance! Smoke it!!
This is Mt. Vesuvius, by the way, getting ready to blow, cover Pompeii in lava, and create the faceless man!! The music to go along with it, will beat the crap out of you!!
We've said it before and we'll say it again, musically speaking, Gerald Fried is one of
THE main guys! His achievements are beyond imagination, and here you go again, just in case you missed it the first time, and this is just a sample of what Gerald has done the music for, 6 episodes of "Mission Impossible," 9 episodes of "Star-Trek," 2 episodes of "Lost In Space," 45 episodes of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," and 9 episodes of "Gilligan's Island!" Now if that ain't a whole lot of TV Pop history, I don't know what is!!!
Many, many years later, digging around Pompeii, this is the first guy to notice that Quintillus Aurelius seems to still be stirring about, a bit!!
The truck driver transporting Quintillus wasn't expecting him to be alive!!
The Hero of the film, Richard Anderson as Dr. Paul Mallon, can't figure out how the body got tossed so far from the truck! It never dawned on him that he could walk! You see, Quintillus Aurelius isn't a Mummy, but instead a man who got caught up in the lava when Vesuvius erupted!!!
Quintillus Aurelius is sending mental messages to the doctor's artist girlfriend Tina Enright played by Elaine Edwards !!
Actually, considering everything, Tina is dealing with it pretty good!!!
Probably what's more interesting than the movie itself, is the fact that the guy who created the faceless man's outfit was none other than the master of monkeys himself, Mr. Charles Gemora! Now, if you don't know it, Charlie had been wearing and designing Gorilla suits since the 1928 flick, "The Leopard Woman" where he played what else but, The Gorilla! Charlie was of Filipino descent, so his small 5'5" frame lent itself quite nicely to being inside a Gorilla suit! Just to name a few, there was Charley, Zozo, Jocko, the boxing gorilla, Erik, Sir Charles, Sultan, and even Plato the gorilla, not to mention all the unnamed gorilla roles! Because of the nature of the beast, Charlie worked with most of the all-time great comedians, like The Ritz Brothers, The Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, and Bob Hope & Bing Crosby! And that's not even all, Charlie, along with his daughter Diana were the designers of the Martian costumes in "War Of The Worlds," and he even played one of the Martians!!
Unfortunately Charles Gemora passed away just a couple of years after "Curse Of The Faceless Man" was made, way back in 1961, but it's never too late for us to toast his accomplishments one more time, so lift those glasses high, this one's for you Charlie, you set the Gorilla standard high, and to this day, I doubt it's ever been done better!!
