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| Lorna Thayer, Dona Cole and Paul Birch in the Roger Corman-produced BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES. |
Mondo Digital recently ran a review of Scorpion Releasing's BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES and included some much appreciated words for my "in-depth and rewarding" commentary. Not having yet received my contributor's copies of the disc, I was disappointed, however, to learn from their coverage that "There are some extremely long silent gaps here, though that may be due to the same factors involved in other MGM-connected audio commentaries over the past year or so (to put it tactfully)."
It's a personal rule for me, when doing commentaries, to avoid dead air as much as possible, though I do sometimes allow for silences where I want to focus the listener's attention on a particular passage of dialogue, music, or something else on the film's soundtrack. However, MGM (from whom this title was sublicensed) has their own concerns in these matters, which means that all commentaries now submitted to them must be vetted by their legal team. I have no control over this; my contract with MGM stipulates that they are not obliged to use "any or all" of the material I submit, so while I can certainly wish it were otherwise, it's not really my place to complain. However, some consumers have, and it is within my rights to make them feel better about their purchase by sharing here the material they won't find anywhere else.
One of these consumers, Mark S. Zimmer, gave his copy of the disc a close reading and responded with a list of eight spots where he noted significant gaps in my commentary. I have checked his findings against my original typescript, and the following breakdown will show you where, when, and what content was deleted from the track I submitted.
24m 58s: Anima animal turned loose against the mother... [over a minute gap] If we have any...
Missing: I haven’t gone back to compare the two, but doesn’t the setting of this film – and its use of the axe – remind you a bit of William Castle’s STRAIT-JACKET, made in 1964?
28m 13s: You've just taken an axe to the family dog... [45 seconds gap] I think Dona Cole pays her dues...
Nothing is missing here.
29m 45s: Force that has taken hold of their very lives...[1-minute gap] For a 1955 film...
Nothing is missing here.
34m 00s: Death of the American Dream...[1 1/4 minutes gap] Again there is the assertion...
Nothing is missing here.
36m 50s: Pet mule or a pet cow... [FOUR+ minute gap] I shouldn't interrupt myself...
Missing:
So were its ideas original or did they come second-hand? And if so, what were its antecedents?
One that I have already hinted at – and which I want to address first, during this chicken attack - is Daphne Du Maurier’s novella “The Birds.” It was first published in 1952, and was subsequently performed on radio by the shows LUX RADIO THEATER and ESCAPE in 1953 and 1954, respectively - and then as a TV adaptation on the CBS series DANGER in May 1955. So screenwriter Tom Filer had numerous opportunities to be acquainted with the story, if the similarities were not entirely coincidental. The similarities are actually extensive. Like this film, Du Maurier’s story is set on a ranch or farm, and it focuses on a man and his daughter, as well as a neighboring family and workman. In BEAST, the threat visiting the ranch is first perceived as an irrational attack of birds; as the story continues, we see them operating with intelligence, even performing kamikaze dives on transformers to disrupt people’s communications with the outside world.
What is most interesting about this connection is the extent to which Alfred Hitchcock’s later filming of THE BIRDS (in 1962) shares ideas in common with this film, rather than the Du Maurier story. For example, when the aerial buzzing of the Kelley home by the spacecraft breaks their glassware and sets all their picture frames askew, the home’s interior exactly resembles the look of Jessica Tandy’s home in the wake of its bird attack. In a few minutes from now, Allan is going to discover his neighbor Ben Webber’s dead body, in a scene that is very similar to the way Mitch / Rod Taylor would discover Annie / Suzanne Pleshette’s dead body in THE BIRDS. Allan’s daughter Sandy will eventually suffer a minor breakdown as a result of the attacks, withdrawing into herself and becoming almost catatonic – as Melanie Daniels / Tippi Hedren would in THE BIRDS. This film also builds to a “Love Conquers All” finale and, in Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS, the little girl played by Veronica Cartwright pleads with Mitch to let her take with them the love birds that Melanie gave to her as a gift. The love birds are a fascinating element because they are so ambiguous – in a sense, they seem to attract the fury of other birds, but as the film reaches its final fade, the birds seem to reach a very tentative state of truce as Mitch and Melanie, armed with the love birds, gingerly navigate a path through these settled furies, the minefield of her trauma, toward a loving relationship. The film is almost a poetic metaphor for what Hitchcock’s MARNIE would be about. If you think Hitchcock was somehow above being influenced by this level of filmmaking, look once again at PSYCHO and its promotional ballyhoo and the prior success of William Castle and his brand of horror exploitation.
On a related note, in 1961, author Fredric Brown published a novella called THE MIND THING, whose story resembles the alien possession plot we find here. I have read an unconfirmed reference on the internet that Alfred Hitchcock’s company had optioned THE MIND THING in the wake of PSYCHO’s success, but made THE BIRDS instead… if true, this data could provide us with a fascinating explanation for the unexplained bird attacks in that classic motion picture. I’ve heard THE BIRDS described as Hitchcock’s only science-fiction film, and this connection would make that description still more plausible.
Missing: As for the idea of an indescribable alien being finding shelter in a variety of human and animal forms, this can be traced back to John W. Campbell Jr.’s WHO GOES THERE? – first published in the August 1938 issue of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION and subsequently filmed in 1951 by producer Howard Hawks as THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, and more faithfully filmed by John Carpenter in 1982 as THE THING. The Hawks picture, directed by Christian Nyby, could have influenced Corman and his screenwriter, but only as a result of leading people back to the original Campbell story. Even before this well-known tale, Campbell had written “Brain Stealers from Mars” for THRILLING WONDER STORIES, in which alien beings, unknowingly living amongst Earth people disguised as their friends and neighbors, comment wryly on their activities. I should mention that, within a few years of this film, Corman would similarly produce a film called THE BRAIN EATERS (1958), another of his “invisible monster” movies, that was subsequently charged with plagiarism by Robert Heinlein, who saw it as a rewrite of his novel THE PUPPET MASTERS. The conflict was settled out of court.
44m 12s: Reckless paranoid actions of others... [1 & 1/2 minute gap] My friend and colleague Steve Bissette...
Missing: As I mentioned earlier, another of this film’s clear antecedents is Charles Finney’s novel THE BODY SNATCHERS, serialized over three installments in the pages of COLLIERS Magazine as this film was being scripted and sent into pre-production. Not only is it a valid predecessor due to its alien possession angle – which had also been an important part of William Cameron Menzies’ INVADERS FROM MARS, released in 1953 – but because, unlike the film version that would soon follow, the novel found closure in a “love conquers all” finale, which sends the aliens and their pods back into space, after a hard reconsideration of the value of Earth people. So THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES made full use of the finale that Don Siegel rejected in favor of a more political “wake up” statement. But Corman was still just getting started with this picture; had this film been made closer to 1963, around the time of his movie THE INTRUDER, I don’t think the “love conquers all” message would have sufficed for him any longer.
48m 30s: It's closing in, she tells her mother... [45 seconds] Carol doesn't want to leave Alan...
Nothing is missing here.
50m 47s: More content with what we've been given...[2 minute gap] The attack of the birds...
Missing at 52:07: Here we have another scene that strongly foretells Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS, but sadly the film couldn’t afford to do its script justice.
Finding out what was deleted from the track is illuminating to me, as it emphasizes concerns about commentators tracing connections between the distributor's property and other properties they may or may not own. So this is a line of thought that I and other commentators may wish to avoid when approaching future work. Of course, drawing such points of comparison not only enriches the viewing experience but tells us where a film fits into its genre historically; it is an important facet of critical thinking. It's also certainly within MGM's rights to prefer to avoid such discussions altogether. That said, I would like to submit the constructive criticism that it would be to my and many others' advantage if a Commentator's Guide existed to acquaint us film historians with a list of potentially sensitive topics best to avoid so that, in future, everyone might bring their best and most complete effort to the work at hand.
(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
