Sci-Fi Films of the 1940s
Sci-fi feature movies almost died out in the 1940s. Most years, especially the years of the second world war, produced nothing at all, beyond an occasional naturalistic explanation for a monster. No space movies (aside from one adaptation of the Flash Gordon serial) appeared at all.
An obvious culprit would be the second world war. Indeed, the lull in science fiction films began in 1938, just as Germany began annexing its neighbors. But the lull carried on for years after the war in the Pacific ended in 1945, in fact, in 1947, no feature films that could be called science fiction by any stretch appeared at all. And, all during the Korean war, which began in 1950, sci-fi film was exploding. So, there being a major war doesn’t provide an explanation — it’s some subtler cultural thing.
Color filming had been developed in the late 1930s, but was very expensive throughout the 1940s, and remained expensive through the ’50s and ’60s. Color was regarded as a flashy extravagance by many filmmakers, who had perfected techniques of shades and fine textures in black and white. However, fantasy films must have seemed like an appropriate genre for color; a couple of films in this list are in color.
Science fiction filmmaking wasn’t at all gone: it had been relegated to serial films, which were mostly attended by young people. This is an interesting phenomenon, but I can only speculate as to reasons for it. Maybe the advances in science and engineering in the ’40s for military purposes put the adult public off. Or maybe the juvenile nature of the sci-fi serials itself prejudiced the adult public against sci-fi stories. Hard to say.
Monsters were the fantasy and sci-fi schlock of the ’40s. At a business level, of course, it is immaterial whether the monster was created scientifically (as an invisible man or Frankenstein’s monster, or a disembodied brain) or supernaturally (as vampires, werewolves, or re-animated mummies) — the point is that they’re recognizable as something to be scared of. In the ’40s these particular monsters are hashed, re-hashed, served as entrées or side dishes or garnishes. Several movies had ‘Monster’ in their title. But even among the monster movies, little was new: most of these monsters made film débuts in the ’30s or earlier.
In the wake of King Kong, as in the ’30s, many ’40s horror films involved gorillas somehow, often as subjects of a scientist’s evil experiments. I’ll skip those — none of them is very good anyway.
Another theme recurrent in horror films of the ’40s was that of a scientist or doctor infusing body parts (brain, blood, etc.) of one person or animal into a person’s body, thereby creating a monster composite of the two. This wasn’t a new idea in the ’40s, but for whatever reason, it’s what the studios thought they could sell. It is only barely sci-fi, and it bores me, so those are out of the list, too.
| ++ | must-see |
| + | good but flawed |
| OK | watchable |
| − | poor, some redeeming features |
| −− | sad, historical interest only |
Dr. Cyclops
1940 Paramount (copyright says 1939)
− mad-scientist with shrink-ray
color
| produced | Dale Van Every, Merian C. Cooper |
| directed | Ernest B. Schoedsack |
| screen play | Tom Kilpatrick |
| dir. phot | Henry Sharp |
| based on | novelette by Henry Kuttner |
| Albert Dekker | as Dr. Alexander Thorkel |
| Janice Logan | as Dr. Mary Robinson |
| Thomas Coley | as Bill Stockton |
| Charles Halton | as Dr. Rupert Bullfinch |
| Victor Kilian | as Steve Baker |
| Frank Yaconelli | as Pedro Cruz |
| Paul Fix | as Dr. Mendoza |
| Frank Reicher | as Prof. Kendall |
Thorkel skeletonizes a guy straight off with his gadget, thereby indicating the depths of his depravity. He’s an excellent mad scientist… he speaks very well, and can be quite polite and reasonable, before he kills someone. I would like to have his suit. He talks to his cat, who is always very angry.
Thorkel’s problem is that his eyes are going, and he needs help identifying things. This gets worked in to him being called “Cyclops” — lamely.
Radium has something to do with it. Seems he’s mining it somehow. He has a gadget for that, and a ray machine.
He miniaturizes a horse. There is an almost good scene mixing a perspective of his gigantic face, and a big hand prop to catch people with.
People shrinking had been done before, however. See The Devil Doll.
They’re in the Amazon jungle. There are painted backdrops of Andean places, and some attempts to make natives look Inca. Some very pretty jungle animals make appearances.
The colors are gorgeous throughout.
Douglas DC-2 airliner sign reads “Pan-American-Grace Airways, Inc.”
The lady has to be helped a lot, but she thinks them out of a couple of problems.
The dialog is very much family adventure stuff, even though deaths are depicted. The script is solidly on the young adult level. Only the most predictable character development occurs.
The wind-up is nothing surprising. It’s followed by a couple of lame gags, a flash of an obligatory romance scene, and end. I felt like they weren’t really trying.
Overall, it’s pretty to look at, and could be called light entertainment. It’s not very scary, though.
“You must stop at once, destroy your slides, burn your notes!”
“In our very hands, we have the cosmic force of creation itself!”
One Million B.C.
1940 Hal Roach Studios
+ cavemen-n-dinosaurs
B&W
| directed | Hal Roach Hal Roach Jr. |
| produced | Hal Roach |
| wrote | Mickell Novack, George Baker, Joseph Frickert |
| cinematography | Norbert Brodine |
| Victor Mature | as Tumak |
| Carole Landis | as Loana |
| Lon Chaney, Jr. | the tribe leader |
The action starts with hikers who find some inscriptions, which are then interpreted by an anthropologist as a story from cave man times. The rest of the film is that cave man story.
Prehistoric mammals: mastodon
Dinosaurs: triceratops, allosaurus, dimetrodon, and others.
The pity is that the animals, depicted here with humans, were extinct for many millions of years before anything resembling a human had appeared. It would have done just as well to portray relatively recent animals. The very people who might be most interested in the animals were the ones who knew very well that most of the encounters were historically impossible. Any paleontologist could have helped them out here. OK, they didn’t care, and couldn’t spell paleontologist anyway.
The filmmakers employed several special effects to represent animals. The most common was to superimpose humans over film of costumed animals, so the animals looked much bigger with respect to the actors than they really were. (The animals include crocodiles, iguanas, monitor lizards, and a bear.) They employed stop-action for an allosaurus. This sounds bad, but consider that in re-makes of this very film, guys in rubber suits played the animals, to worse effect.
The dinosaurs growl very much like annoyed tigers.
Most of the scenes have to do with human interactions, though.
The cave men’s hairstyles, especially Victor Mature’s, would become common 35 years later!
This film spawned numerous re-makes and derivatives, whose scientific accuracy was never improved, and which often took footage directly from it. It was re-made in 1966 as One Million Years B.C., with a bustier actress, and with Ray Harryhausen operating the dinosaurs. It wasn’t until the 1980s that a much better cave-man movie appeared, which made a more honest scientific attempt to reconstruct life in those times, Quest for Fire.
Man-Made Monster
1941 Universal Pictures
OK scary science
B&W
| directed | George Waggner |
| produced | Joseph West |
| screenplay | Joseph West |
| based on | The Electric Man, by H.J. Essex, Sid Schwartz, and Len Golos |
| Lionel Atwill | as Dr. Paul Rigas |
| Lon Chaney, Jr. | as Dan McCormick |
| Anne Nagel | as June Lawrence |
| Frank Albertson | as Mark Adams |
| Samuel S. Hinds | as Dr. John Lawrence |
In an initial accident, McCormick shows he has an “immunity to electricity”, which is strengthened by evil scientist Rigas, and so McCormick becomes a mindless servant of the evil guy and starts killing people.
We get a mad scientist’s lab, full of sparky electrical things. Besides the sparks, the main special effect is that of McCormick’s body flashing like a neon light.
Dr. Rigas expounds upon his “theory of electrobiology”:
“I believe that electricity is life — that can be motivated and controlled by electrical impulse — supplied by the radioactivities of the electron — that eventually, a race of superior men could be developed, men whose only wants… are electricity.”
He gags a bit on all that, but the flight goggles he wears make it seem almost sciency.
He subscribes to a world view in which most people are “non-entities”, and ought to be improved by science.
The beautiful niece June is played strongly, and has opinions about things, but remains a romance object. A Chinese-American servant politely waits on the scientists.
The production values are good, and the acting is quite good — it’s watchable. The science is blithering nonsense — sci-fi heavy on the fiction side.
Unknown Island
1948 Albert Jay Cohen Productions
− another dino island movie
color
| directed | Jack Bernhard |
| produced | Albert Jay Cohen |
| story | Robert T. Shannon |
| screenplay | Robert T. Shannon, Jack Harvey |
| production mgr. | R.E. Abel |
| art director | Jerome Pycha. Jr. |
| special effects | Ellis Burman |
| set decorations | Robert Priestley |
| music | Ralph Stanley |
| Virginia Grey | as Carole Lane |
| Philip Reed | as Ted Osborne |
| Richard Denning | as John Fairbanks |
| Barton MacLane | as Capt. Tarnowski |
| Richard Wessel | as 1st Mate Sanderson |
| Daniel White | as Crewman Edwards |
| Philip Nazir | as Crewman Golab |
Places: start in Singapore, head for uncharted South Pacific island.
Everybody lights up on going into the bar, and at camp.
A scientific explanation is provided: the aviator believes the island is the tip of a continent. This is contrasted to volcanic islands and atolls, which come and go quickly. They don’t go into any detail, but clearly somebody had wondered how ancient creatures would remain isolated like that.
The paleontologist’s rich fiancée will finance the venture. She’s a smart, sultry, skinny redhead who is often the voice of reason, as well as the object of strife among the men.
The script is largely a sophomoric study in what it is to be a man. There’s the pilot-cum-paleontologist who wants to be famous, and there’s the coward who is hard and pretty, and there’s the lusty loudmouth lush captain who’s in it for the girl and a trophy, and then there’s the mutinous crew. Which will crack? Which will get the girl?
The crew gets mutinous before they get anywhere near the island, and before anything happens. Cuz they know where they’re going. “If we die, we must see the blood of our masters.” The captain and 1st mate by themselves subdue at least ten crewmen, by sheer moral superiority.
The guys start picking one another off way before the dinos have at them, and continue until only a couple are left. Then, of course, what’s the girl to do but choose?
They see a brontosaurus before they even land. Soon they run into fin-backed lizards, numerous bipedal dinosaurs with horns on their noses (called “ceratosaurs”), and a giant ape-man.
Oh, man, one of the last scenes has the giant ape tackle a tyrannosaurus thing, in a clumsy King Kong rip-off. It takes some imagination to ignore that the creatures are just two guys in rubber suits.
Is anything good about this? It’s a late-40s period-piece — the acting itself isn’t the worst of that period; for what it’s worth, the characters are well played. The writing for the woman character is strong, something that was to become rare in the films of coming decades. (On the other hand, she did get top billing, so maybe this is her show.) It’s also an early color film, which is put to good use on her hair and outfits.
“I’m prepared to pay any price you name.”
— the worldly rich socialite
“I’m only interested in the scientific aspects of the discovery.”
— the wannabe famous scientist
Krakatit
(Krakatoa)
1948 Československy Státní Film
++ ultimate-weapon tragedy
B&W
Czech
| directed | Otakar Vávra |
| from novel by | Karel Čapek |
| screenplay | Jaroslav and Otakar Vávra |
| camera | Václav Hanuš |
| music | Jiří Srnka |
| conductor | Otakar Pařík |
| gypsy music | Daniel Olan |
| Karel Höger | as engineer Prokop |
| Florence Marly | as Princess Willemína |
| František Smolík | as Dr. Tomeš |
| Eduard Linkers | as Carson |
| Jaroslav Průcha | as postman |
| Jiří Plachý | as d’Hémon |
| Vlasta Fabiánová | as girl with a veil/with terrorists |
| Nataša Tánská | as Anči |
| K. Dostál | as professor |
| Bedřich Vrbský | as Baron Rohn |
| Jiřina Petrovická | as nurse |
| Miroslav Homola | as engineer Jiří Tomeš |
| F. Vnouček | as Rosso |
| Bohuš Hradil | as Holz |
| Jaroslav Zrotal | as doctor |
| V. Boček | |
| Z. Rogoz | |
| M. Kopřivová | |
| J. Hodr | |
| F. Marek | |
| A. Jirsa |
This one is engineering, and social, sci-fi.
Engineer Prokop has developed an explosive, which he calls krakatit. It is detonated by electrical signals.
The story evolves as layered flashbacks in Prokop’s delirium and amnesia, and sometimes hallucinations. Overall, the film is very surreal and disjointed, although some scenes are gorgeous and naturalistic. People do strange things, disappear; a face dissolves...
(Confession: I missed a lot of the dialog. I rented a German overdub version, and much of it went too fast for me. I’ll try to find an English overdub.)
Everybody loves krakatit, and they want Prokop to deliver it to them. Some rich people want to blow their enemies up. Others want revolution and mayhem.
Now, this was after WWII, so the screenwriters knew about the A-bomb. What is the relation of krakatit to the nuclear weapons? There is a short discussion of atomic energy. (But I didn’t catch much of it, despite watching it three times.)
Prokop can read a person’s personality by holding their hand.
The filming is quite exquisite. The acting is very good throughout. It’s very engaging.
There is an impressive sex scene (all suggested, of course — but very steamy).
“Life is also an explosive.”