Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1967)

The last thing I expected to happen whilst watching the 1967 film The Revenge of Dr. X is that I'd quickly begin asking myself some of life's deepest, most philosophical questions. You know, stuff like "Would it be better to be dead than to have to watch this movie?" and that sort of thing.

Mind you, it didn't start that way. In fact, when I read the synopsis on the cardboard Chilling Classics sleeve, I was immediately looking forward to it as it sounded like it might be "fun."

A NASA scientist is ordered to take a vacation due to showing signs of stress whiule working on his latest missile project. Traveling to Japan, the scientist decides to indulge in his botany hobby and begins experimenting on a Venus Flytrap he brought along on the trip. Using radical techniques and falling into madness, the scientist eventually creates a plant creature that feeds on flesh and blood, which then sets off to find food in the form of the people of a nearby community.

See? "Fun," right? And technically, the description is totally accurate. But descriptions and descriptions realized can often be leagues apart, and in the case of The Revenge of Dr. X, there are leagues and leagues and leagues separating the two. I think I knew this the moment the title screen appeared, when I immediately had what was a decidedly sinking feeling:

On the bright side (???) of things, the opening credits are actually for another film entirely: a 1969 Philippine film called The Mad Doctor of Blood Island. None of the actors in the credits are in the movie that follows. In fact, the film I watched has such a convoluted shit-show of a history that it took a while to figure out exactly which film I watched. It's sometimes called Venus Flytrap, it's sometimes called Body of the Prey, sometimes The Devil's Garden. The release year might be 1967 or perhaps 1970. It's purported to be based on a lost Ed Wood story, and whether that's true or not the very idea that it might be ought to give you a clue about the nature of this thing.

Of course, none of that would matter a lick if this movie was enjoyable to watch and not a turgid plod. I could easily get over the lack of any revenge or any doctors X if it wasn't about 3 minutes of good stuff trapped within 94 minutes of dullness so dull that again, left me wondering if I'd be better off dead than trying to get through it.

The soundtrack, if such a term even applies, is library stock music trash. One moment it's Bach's Toccata and Fugue (you know, the classic Dracula's castle organ shit), then we get ten minutes of xylophone madness followed by some of the worst stereotypical "Japanese" music imaginable followed by a toddler day care marching band. It's all over the place, and the place is hell.

But the stock footage isn't restricted to your ear holes! There is plenty for your eyes to feast on, including NASA mission control and the same footage of a rocket blasting off that MTV started with and used forever. Hey man, don't get me wrong--stock footage can be cheeky fun! And this is, for about five seconds.

I was rather surprised to find that our leading man James Craig had a lengthy career and massive filmography (dating back to the 1930s) because as Dr. X Bragan he delivers one of the worst performances I can recall. He's boorish, shouting virtually every line and often facing away from the camera completely. The "madness" he supposedly descends into doesn't feel any different than his days in the office at NASA. Maybe I'm missing the point and it's a brilliant performance showing that stress is stress and it's all the same, no matter if you're talking about rockets in Florida or plants in Japan. Yeah, that must be it! At any rate, the most positive things I can say about him are 1) he kind of looks like the guy at the office you think looks like a Silly Putty Clark Gable, and 2) his voice sorta reminded me of Charles Napier, whom I love.

A fucking hour into this padded-as-no one's-business crap we get the world's saddest attempt at a Frankenstein lab scene,  complete with a "lightning" storm, an open roof, a body-hoisting, and the best thing about it, a couple of bzzt bzzt machines.

Bragan has been trying to prove that all human life originated with plants, and to do this he splices a Venus Flytrap with some deep sea plant that is only a deep sea plant so the movie can work in a scene with some topless ladydivers. Say what you will about Bragan's ideas/methods/everything, he does create a plant creature that we finally get to see after the hour mark comes and goes, taking all of our joy and hopes and dreams with it. The plant monster has giant Venus Flytraps for hands and feet, and it kind of waves its arms around sometimes and makes weird noises. 

This movie, whatever it's called, was distributed by Japan's Toei Company, so a dude standing there in a bad costume waving his arms around sometimes isn't completely unexpected. But even so, it's bottom of the bottomest-barrel stuff. I will say that the plant creature accounts for about two minutes and fifty seconds' worth of the three minutes of fun in this disaster. The other ten seconds belongs to one of the shots near the very end, which is a goat standing on what is supposed to be the edge of a volcano.

As you can tell from all the screencaps, especially the color of the sky in that last one, this movie lingers in the depths of public domain heck, which is how it ended up one of the worst offerings in the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection. (Honestly, typing out her full name gives me more happiness than this film did.) I'd say it's theeeee worst offering in there, but hey, I've still got like 15 movies to go. Chin up, kids, this could very well just be the worst Chilling Classics Cthursday so far!