The Unearthly * (1957, John Carradine, Allison Hayes, Myron Healey, Sally Todd, Marilyn Buferd, Tor Johnson) – Classic Movie Review 3660

John Carradine is typecast yet again in one of his long gallery of mad doctor scientists in director Brooke L Peters [aka Boris Petroff]’s plodding and very silly 1957 Sci-Fi chiller. It says much that the characters were originally created by Edward D Wood Jr.

Professor Charles Conway is trying to find the special formula so that he can live forever, and is operating on his patients as his experimental subjects at his isolated psychiatric institute, installing the artificial ’17th gland’ in their skulls. Dr Conway works with his minion called Lobo (Tor Johnson) and his assistant Dr Sharon Gilchrist (Marilyn Buferd). The patients think they are being treated for depression, but they are going to be even more depressed when they find the predictably disastrous results are that, instead of discovering the fountain of youth, his subjects are turned into grotesque mutant zombies.

Conway ends up with depressed patient Grace Thomas and escaped convict Mark Houston (played by Allison Hayes and Myron Healey) in his power, until they fall for each other, catch on to his scheme, and try to stop him. Conway’s lumbering helper Lobo aids them in their subsequent flight.

Unimaginative, unoriginal and disappointing, it is not up to very much as a horror thriller nor even as campy entertainment. The script by Jane Mann and Geoffrey Dennis [aka John D F Black], based on an original story by Jane Mann, is threadbare and predictable.

Also in the cast are Sally Todd, Marilyn Buferd (Miss America 1946), Arthur Batanides, Harry Fleer, Roy Gordon, Guy Prescott and Paul MacWilliams.

It was shot in six days in May 1957. Despite its title, there are no extra-terrestrial elements. It was released in the US in a double bill with The Beginning of the End (1957)

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3660

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