The Directors: Jack Arnold. Monster on the Campus (1958)

Back at the beginning of the 2000's, AMC had a Saturday night section of programming called American Pop, where they would show old movies as well as clips from an old 60's, Ed Sullivan-like variety show called Hullabaloo. Each month, they would usually pick a theme and run with it. One month, they picked the theme of 1950's teenage exploitation films and Monster on the Campus was one of the films it showed. I knew nothing about this film when I first sat down and watched it, just that, judging from the trailer they showed, it looked like a fun, if silly, monster movie. I was even more surprised to see that it was directed by Jack Arnold, since I didn't think it looked like something he would do. This film is kind of the end of two eras: not only was it Arnold's last science fiction film but it was also the last in Universal's cycle of 1950's monster flicks.

Dr. Donald Blake, a professor of biology at Dunsfield University, receives a perfectly preserved coelacanth for study. However, the day that it arrives, the dog of the student who delivered it drinks some bloody water dripping from the thawing fish and suddenly turns vicious, forcing Blake to lock him in the kennel. Shortly afterward, Blake cuts his hand on the teeth of the primitive fish and accidentally dips the cut in the water. After he becomes ill and passes out, a nurse drives him back to his house and is killed by an unknown person. The police and Blake try to figure out who killed her, and Blake discovers that the coelacanth has bizarre properties, which could explain what happened to the dog... and expose Blake himself as the monster who killed the nurse.

By the late 1950's, the cycle of monster movies that had been popular throughout the decade was beginning to peter out (it would be pretty much over by the mid-1960's). Suffice to say, this movie was very low budget because of that and you can tell. The special effects and makeup designs aren't terrible but they are below most of the quality standards for Universal. Jack Arnold does work his magic, however, and manages to turn in an entertaining monster movie despite the lack of resources and silly premise. But inevitably, when compared to his past sci-fi flicks, this movie doesn't even compare and it's kind of sad that this was his last science fiction film.

Our lead, Dr. Donald Blake, is played by Arthur Franz. As with most scientists and doctors in Arnold's films, Blake is not a mad scientist but rather an inquisitive man interested in evolution. He's absolutely obsessed with the coelacanth that's been delivered to him as well as figuring out what caused the dog Sampson to go crazy for a brief period of time. When the possibility of a half-human throwback roaming the campus is presented, he's eager to prove that it exists and disprove old theories. Even though he often neglects her due to his work, he does clearly love his fiance, Madeline, and he's good enough to resist the advances of the school nurse. Eventually, he discovers that the coelacanth's blood can cause a reversion of the evolution process due to its being preserved with gamma radiation and that also leads him to discover that he is in reality the creature that killed the nurse after he became contaminated with the blood. Franz's performance may not be the absolute best but he does seem like he's trying. The only really problematic part is how dense Blake is about him being the monster. Even though he loses consciousness twice and wakes near each murder site with his clothes torn, it doesn't occur until very late in the game that he himself is the monster. Even most people who are werewolves in movies figure it out after the first transformation!

There's not much to Joanna Moore's role as Madeline Howard, Blake's fiance. She honestly doesn't know if she believes his theory about there being a prehistoric monster roaming around and even does suggest that he may be overworked. But other than her obvious caring for Blake, she doesn't do much and is the typical bland woman in these types of movies, ending up being carried off by the monster and screaming at him. Judson Pratt plays Lieutenant Mike Stevens, the head of the murder case. I don't know why but I just like this guy, even though his investigation doesn't turn up anything useful and his theories about the murder end up being completely wrong. I guess I like him because he does come across as a good cop determined to figure out what's going on, even if he has the completely wrong idea. There's also Troy Donahue as Jimmy, the student who delivers the coelacanth to Blake and whose dog becomes affected by the blood, as well as Nancy Walters as his girlfriend, Sylvia. Honestly, neither of these kids are that interesting, especially Donahue, whose performance is really monotone and bland. The other actors are okay but nothing special, with Helen Westcott as Molly Riordan, the nurse who tries to make a pass at Blake and is ultimately killed by his monster half; Alexander Lockwood as Prof. Gilbert Howard, head of the institute and Madeline's father; the ever reliable Whit Bissell as Dr. Oliver Cole, the campus' physician who's ever the skeptic; and Ross Elliott from Tarantula as a bodyguard signed to protect Blake.

There are actually three monsters in this movie. As I said, the first is Sampson, the German shepherd who becomes a throwback to an ancient species of wolf after drinking the coelacanth blood. What's weird about him is that, other than becoming extremely ferocious, the only thing that happens to him is that his canines become very long. After what Blake discovers about the coelacanth, you would think that Sampson would have actually turned into an ancient wolf. The second monster is a dragonfly that absorbs some of the coelacanth blood when it lands on it and shows back up after growing two feet across. The model they use for the giant dragonfly is not very convincing and you can clearly see the wires that are holding it up. Still, it is a bit more in line with the properties of the blood, unlike the dog's transformation.

Finally, there's the half-human, half-ape anthropoid that Blake becomes when he's contaminated with the blood. The first two times he changes, we don't see what the monster looks like. Also, both times are accidental; the first happens when he cuts his hand and puts it in the water surrounding the coelacanth and the second happens after he kills the dragonfly. Some of the dragonfly's contaminated blood accidentally drips into his pipe and he transforms when he later smokes it. After that, he discovers that the colecanth was preserved using gamma rays, which, through an arbitrary theory I can't even begin to comment on, cause whomever or whatever ingests the blood to devolve into a primitive form. It's not until Blake describes how someone could have become infected by cutting themselves on the coelacanth's scales or teeth that it hits him that he could be the monster. Franz does a great bit of acting when the realization hits him and he becomes momentarily calmed when he suggests it couldn't happen twice accidentally. That's when he looks at his pipe and remembers a foul smell coming from it right before blacking out the second time and realizes it's the smell of the coelacanth's blood. That's when he goes to Prof. Howard's summer cabin to try an experiment by injecting himself with the coelacanth blood and seeing if he changes. Needless to say, he does and this is when we finally get to see what the real monster looks like.

The monster is a bizarre looking half-man, half-ape creature played by stuntman Eddie Parker. His face is rather silly looking to be honest but I can't help but like watching this weird creature fumble around the cabin and run around attacking people. Some of the noises he makes are hilarious and sound like retarded speech, whereas most of it is yelling. When he first transforms, he curiously picks up an axe and starts swinging it around like a little kid who discovered something new. He also seems to still have feelings for Madeline because just when he's about to kill her, he stops when he sees her pretty face and instead tries to carry her off. He does brutally kill a forest ranger who tries to save her by hitting him right in the face with the axe. He's ultimately killed by the police and that's when everybody realizes that not only that there really was a monster but that it was Blake all along. To show Blake transforming into as well as back from the monster, they use the good old Wolf Man technique of lap dissolves, which always makes me smile just because it's so classic.

The clearest sign that this was a low budget, last minute cash-in on a dying trend is the music. There is not one bit of new music composed for this movie. It's all music from previous movies. Most notably, the music for the opening and ending credits are the same from Tarantula, as well as most of the music from that movie overall being used. You can also hear some music from The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Monolith Monsters, and even some music from horror films as far back as the 1940's. While it's all good music and used very well, it does make it even clearer that this was a really cheap movie.

All in all, Monster on the Campus is a fun, silly monster movie but it's hardly a classic. Most of the characters and actors are a bit bland, there's no original music, and the special effects, while not horrible, are awfully dated. There's no other way to view it other than as a movie that came near the end of the road for a beloved cycle of movies and was more than likely outdated even by that time. As I've said before, Jack Arnold kept on directing after this movie but never again returned to science fiction. While he himself never explained why, one can guess that, after The Incredible Shrinking Man, he probably had nothing else to give in that genre. Or since Monster on the Campus was when Universal decided to stop making sci-fi movies, he could never find another studio that was interested and he just stopped trying. Either way, it was the end of a really great era for monster movies, as well as that of a man who made sci-fi a great genre.

The Directors: Jack Arnold. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

For many, this is Jack Arnold's best movie and it probably is. It is the film where everything he'd been working on came to a head and crystalized to a clear point. The book Monster Madness was where I first came upon this film. At first, I was a bit disappointed since there really isn't a monster in the movie but as I read the plot, I realized that this could be a very frightening scenario. I later saw some clips of the movie on an AMC documentary about 1950's sci-fi and was really intrigued by what I was seeing. I finally saw the movie when I bought a DVD collection of Universal's 50's sci-fi flicks when I was twenty. While this movie isn't my personal favorite of Arnold's (again, that's Creature from the Black Lagoon), I do think this has to be his crowning achievement in his filmmaking career.

The story of this film is interesting because it has different phases and sections. It begins with the main character, Robert Scott Carey, enjoying a vacation with his wife Louise. While sunbathing on a small boat in the middle of the ocean, Carey comes into contact with a strange cloud (Louise was below deck at the time, so she wasn't affected). Six months pass without incident but one morning, Carey notices that his clothes don't seem to fit. He visits a doctor, who dismisses his initial fears that he's getting smaller but one night when he kisses his wife and sees that he's not taller than her anymore, he realizes that he's shrinking. Eventually, he becomes too small to drive, has to quit his job, and, desperate for money, has to let the press know about his condition. When he's just three feet tall, the doctors find an antidote to what's causing him to shrink but he's stuck at three feet. He meets up with a small woman who works as a sideshow attraction and she inspires him to accept his fate at being stuck at that height. That's when the antidote stops working and he begins shrinking again, eventually becoming small enough to be seen as food by his pet cat and becomes trapped in the cellar by the cat. Now, with his family believing that he was killed by the cat, he must try to survive in the cellar, as he continues to shrink.

My synopses of movies usually aren't that long and detailed but I felt I had to write that in order to get across the various "chapters" of the film's story. It's an interesting idea when you think about it. At that time, sci-fi movies were all about animals turning into giant monsters after being exposed to radiation so Richard Matheson came up with the idea of it having the opposite effect on humans! (The radiation itself doesn't cause him to shrink, actually. It's the combination of it along with some pesticides he accidentally got sprayed with.) I also find it frightening because of how gradual the man's shrinking is. First his clothes simply seem not to fit, then he notices people he used to be taller than are now of equal height with him, his wedding ring slips off his finger, etc. He eventually becomes like a dwarf and later is small enough to be menaced both by his cat and a spider. When something like this is a slow-burn that builds and builds instead of it being instant, I feel that it's much scarier because you become apprehensive about what's going to happen next.

Grant Williams plays the title character, Robert Scott Carey. This had to be a real challenge for him as an actor because he has so many different ranges of emotions he had to go through in this film. He starts out enjoying his vacation with his loving wife but his world is turned upside down when he begins shrinking. I've felt that the only flaw in his performance is when he discovers that he's shrinking. While he is scared, he's just not as freaked out as I think I would be if that was happening to me. I'm not saying he should be on the floor, kicking his heels but I do think he should play it a bit more scared instead of being a little monotone about it. Other than that, his performance is great throughout. When he's down to just three feet tall, he becomes angry with all the attention given to him by the media and he feels like a freak. He takes it out on his poor wife and while he does apologize, he does realize he's losing her. When he meets the young dwarf woman who works at a circus, she gives him the confidence to accept his being stuck at three feet and for a brief period, he's content. But that doesn't last long when he starts shrinking again.

By the time he's small enough to live inside a dollhouse, he's become very tyrannical towards Louise, yelling at her when she rattles the inside of the dollhouse by simply walking. He also becomes paranoid of her leaving him, asking her where she's going and if she'll be right back. That's when their cat gets into the house and begins chasing him, wanting to make a meal out of him. He ends up trapped in the basement and becomes determined to survive, to conquer this strange new world. At one point, he laughs in hysterics, which then turns to frustrated sobbing when he can't get out through the grating of the basement window. He's a prisoner, as he himself narrates, as he's done throughout the entire film. That's another layer of his performance. He tells us what he was going through emotionally during the entirety of the film, adding to what we were already seeing. His feelings are so complex that I guess we needed this narration to fully understand what was going on, especially the ending, which I'll comment on shortly.

The only other important character in the film is Scott's wife, Louise, played by Randy Stuart. She's a very loving and devoted wife, despite what begins happening to her husband and how he lashes out at her. She's determined to stick with him, no matter what happens. The key moment is when she tells Scott that as long as he has his wedding ring, he still has her. As soon as she gets through saying that, the ring slips off his finger: not so subtle foreshadowing of what will eventually happen. When she believes that Scott has been killed by the cat, she mourns him and becomes very depressed, feeling like he needed her and she wasn't there. She's convinced by Scott's brother to leave the house forever and forget what's happened. It's ironic because when she and Charlie, the brother, go downstairs so she can get one last thing, Scott is literally right under their noses but they can't hear him because he's so small. After that, Louise leaves the house and we never see her again. She never found out that Scott was still alive. (Richard Matheson did write a screenplay for a sequel where Louise begins shrinking but the movie was never made.)

Even though she's only in the movie for a very brief period, I did like Clarie, the dwarfed woman played by April Kent. She's the one who's sympathetic to Scott's problem and does give him some hope for the future. She encourages him to continue writing his book chronicling his shrinking and she says that it's well done. In the original novel, their relationship became romantic but in the movie, it's treated as simply a friendship. It's too bad Scott started shrinking again. If he had stayed at three feet, maybe he could have had a happy life with her.

The very visual design of this movie is quite an accomplishment. It's obvious that they just built ordinary objects and furniture larger than normal to make Williams look small but after a while, you spend so much time with him that you forget about it and totally buy it. The most impressive production design is when Scott becomes trapped in the basement and has to use everything at his disposal to survive: nails and threading needles become weapons, a matchbox becomes a shelter, drops of water from a radiator become a fountain for him, pieces of cheese and cake become a buffet, a match becomes a torch, etc. It's all very well done and totally believable. There are some scenes where the effects are a bit obvious, like an actor being in front of a screen to make something look smaller or gigantic but, on the other hand, there are some scenes, like when the three foot Scott is walking among normal sized people, where I have no clue how they did it. They had to have used a real dwarf for the shots where you can't see Williams' face. That's all I can think of.

While there are no monsters in this movie per se, the family cat and a spider do become monstrous to Scott when he becomes the size of an insect. The aforementioned cat, which had been portrayed as a loving pet with a sweet meow, becomes a very threatening creature when he attacks Scott in the dollhouse, snarling really loud as he does so. The facial expressions that the cat gives as he menaces Scott are quite alarming, even more so when you realize this used to be a cat that loved him. And when Scott becomes trapped in the basement, he has a hungry spider as an enemy. The spider is menacing whenever it appears, always accompanied by a threatening music theme. At one point, it chases Scott into his matchbox shelter and frantically tries to get inside to eat him. Scott realizes that he has to kill the spider because its web is around a piece of cake that he needs for nourishment. The final battle between the two of them is exciting. Scott's initial plan to hook the spider to a thread tied to a pair of scissors and send them both falling off the box when he pushes them goes awry when the thread gets snagged on the way down. The spider is particularly threatening here because it starts growling and roaring as it attacks. You can't help but think of Arnold's Tarantula when you watch this section. Scott eventually kills the spider when it's on top of him by stabbing it with a nail.

The ending of this film is not your typical ending. It's not sad or tragic or even happy but just ambiguous. After killing the spider, Scott is so weak that he collapses and when he wakes up, he's now small enough to slip through the window grating he couldn't get through earlier. According to a soliloquy in his narration which closes the film, he realizes that no longer how tiny he gets, he'll still matter in the scope of the universe and accepts his fate. He's now curious about what lies ahead of him in this vast new world. And with that, the film ends. I had to sum up what I believe the ending means because I'm sure some people would watch the movie and wonder about the ending. From what I can gather, that's what the ending is supposed to mean.

The music for this movie, by the usual team of Irving Getz, Hans Salter, and Herman Stein, is also well done. It starts with an interesting, trumpet solo for the opening credits and ranges from shocking, to sympathetic, and full of wonder. The theme for the spider is very threatening, as it should be. (That theme was reused for Monster on the Campus when the aforementioned monster is finally seen in all of his glory.) My favorite piece of the score is at the end, when he journeys into the vast new universe before him and the music is not somber but full of wonder at the adventure that lies before him.

Undoubtedly, The Incredible Shrinking Man has to be Jack Arnold's greatest work. The acting, writing, and effects are all so well done that it's quite remarkable. It's also a shame because after this film, it seemed like Arnold felt he had done the best he could do with the genre and his last sci-fi flick, while enjoyable, was very typical and didn't come close to being this profound.

The Directors: Jack Arnold. Tarantula (1955)

The trailer for this movie was one of many that I saw on that classic video compilation, Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies. The trailer for Earth vs. The Spider (which was just called The Spider in the trailer) was also on that compilation and of the two, I took to Tarantula more simply because it looked cooler and the tarantula wasn't constantly screeching like the giant spider in that other trailer. I finally saw the movie when I was twelve when I bought many classic monster movies on VHS. When I watched it, I did enjoy it but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. While I do consider this film to be one of the best giant bug movies that was made in the 1950's, it's obvious that Jack Arnold wasn't content with just doing that type of film.

A horribly deformed man is found dead outside the small desert town of Desert Rock and when he's brought in, he's identified as Eric Jacobs, a scientist working with Prof. Gerald Deemer in a house outside of town. He seems to have died from acromegaly but Dr. Matt Hastings, the town's local physician, isn't so sure because of how quickly he became deformed. Unbeknown to him and the rest of the townspeople, Deemer and his assistants have been working on a powerful nutrient to end the world's food shortage problem and have tested it on several lab animals, causing them to grow to enormous sizes. When Deemer's other assistant, who has also become afflicted with acromegaly, goes crazy and attacks him, an enormous tarantula is set free from the lab and begins stalking the countryside, eventually growing to be as big as a house. The tarantula begins eating livestock and humans, and now Hastings must find a way to help destroy the monster before it destroys the town.

This movie doesn't start at all as you would expect it to. When the Universal-International logo comes up, you hear a slightly sped up version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon main title and then you see the desert. The deformed Eric Jacobs then appears and eventually dies in the hot sun. Until the title Tarantula came up, I thought I'd gotten the wrong movie and thought it was like The Creature Walks Among Us! Like I said, I don't think Arnold was satisfied with just doing a typical giant bug movie. The first half of the movie involves Dr. Hastings and the local sheriff trying to solve the mystery of how Jacobs' acromegaly came up so quickly and what Deemer is working on at his laboratory. Hastings then becomes involved Stephanie "Steve" Clayton, a lab student who's aiming to work with the professor and he learns through her more of what Deemer is doing. There's also a subplot with Deemer having been injected with the nutrient by Paul, his other deformed assistant, while he was unconscious and slowly begins to develop acromegaly as well. With all of this, if it weren't for the constant glimpses of the ever-growing tarantula, you'd forget that it was even part of the movie. The tarantula doesn't even begin to make an impact on the plot until the second half of the film, when it grows big enough to kill livestock and people. Even then, it's kind of superfluous to the overall story. The main plot is about Deemer's experiments and the tarantula is just one part of it that's gotten out of hand. The main characters don't even see it until the movie's almost over.

If you're thinking that I was complaining about the film, you're wrong. I was just noting how odd it was for a giant bug movie to render the actual monster secondary to the plot. I actually think that's kind of smart, to be honest. Since the movie's called Tarantula, you know you're going to see a giant spider but the movie slowly builds up to when you finally see it in all its glory and by that point, you're ready for it and it doesn't disappoint. You might think the movie might be boring since you don't see the tarantula actually cause destruction until fairly late in the movie but Arnold's direction is good enough to keep you interested the whole time.

John Agar returns from Revenge of the Creature to play the lead in this film, Dr. Matt Hastings. As I said in my review of that film, I don't think Agar was the best actor in the world but in this movie, he's actually quite good. As Hastings, he's a charming, likable physician who's dedicated to his work and is determined to solve something that he knows doesn't add up. He does seem to become a bit distracted with courting Steve, the lovely assistant to Prof. Deemer, but he's always on call whenever he's needed. He's also good enough to warn the sheriff when he discovers that there's a giant spider loose in the countryside and tells him to get the state police as well. It's also his idea to get the local air force to drop napalm on the tarantula, which ultimately kills it.

Stephanie "Steve" Clayton, the assistant to Prof. Deemer, is played by the incredibly beautiful Mara Corday. She's different than most women in sci-fi movies around this time because she's an educated science student who's come out to the professor's lab to earn her master's degree. There's even a bit of commentary on the women rights issue that was going at that time, with Hastings jokingly saying, "I knew it. Give women the vote and what do you get? Lady scientists." There's also a statement made because her nickname is a man's name. Other than that, there's not much to say about Steve. She's kind and very curious about the professor's work but by the end of the movie, she is running and screaming from the tarantula, albeit briefly.

The most interesting character in the film, and the best acting job by far, is Prof. Deemer, played by Leo G. Carroll, who also appeared in many Alfred Hitchcock movies. Deemer is a mysterious person, charming but has an aura about him that makes people realize there's something he doesn't want them to know. Although he's conducting dangerous experiments, he's not a mad scientist at all. He intends to help people by finding an end to world hunger. He's well aware of how dangerous his experiments have become but he hides it from the authorities so he can eventually overcome the problem. Unfortunately for him, one of his crazed, acromegaly-stricken assistants injects him with the nutrient, causing him to slowly develop the disease as well. He eventually confesses to Hastings and Steve that the isotope he used to bond the nutrient caused the acromegaly in his assistants when they injected themselves (and is what caused the animals, including the tarantula, to grow to enormous size). Deemer eventually becomes horrifically deformed by the disease but is killed by the tarantula.

Good old Nestor Paiva plays Sheriff Jack Andrews, who enlists Hastings to help him when Jacobs' deformed body is discovered at the beginning of the movie. He's not quite as jokey and is a bit more serious than Lucas in Creature from the Black Lagoon but he does have a sense of humor about him. Even though he asks Hastings to help him, he doesn't like all the inferences he makes toward Deemer lying about what happened and becomes more than a little peeved when Hastings performs an autopsy on Jacobs' body and finds that it was simply acromegaly. However, he's good enough not to hold a grudge and enlists his help again when livestock and people start turning up dead. The only other noteworthy cast member is Ross Elliot as Joe Burch, the high-strung head of the local newspaper. He's not too happy when the sheriff forgets to tell him about Jacobs' death, although he doesn't come across as an asshole. He's actually kind of funny, especially when he hears Hastings suggest that there's a giant spider roaming the countryside (until he sees it for himself, of course). And as he did in Revenge of the Creature the same year, Clint Eastwood has an early, uncredited role as the leader of the jet squadron that ultimately brings the tarantula down. He's wearing a pilot mask so you can't see his face but trust me, it's him.

After dealing with water environments for his two Creature movies, Arnold decided to go back to the desert setting he'd used in It Came from Outer Space. I find the desert used in this movie to be much more spectacular and well-photographed than the one in that film. The atmosphere may not be quite as creepy as that film but there are some great moments. In one scene, Hastings and Steve are enjoying the scenery by a large rock formation when a rockslide suddenly occurs. After they leave, it's revealed that the slide was caused by the tarantula but later, Hastings come back to find out what caused it. As brief as that scene is, the music does help give it an air of mystery as he searches for something strange around the formation. Before that when he and Steve are driving away, he tells her that there are many times in the desert where rocks just move for no reason. (I can vouch for that. I've been in the wilderness in areas where things just move for no reason.) There's another great moment at night when this rancher's horses are in their corral when they suddenly sense the tarantula and become panicked when it appears on a nearby hill.

The special effects used to create the tarantula are actually very well done. Even though it's obvious how it was done, with a real tarantula being matted into the shots to make it look gigantic, it's done with skill and there are only a few instances where you can see a mistake. They also use some well designed models for closeups of the tarantula's face and they even have it let out a loud growl when it attacks. (Honestly, even though I think Them! is a better film overall, I think the actual monster here is pulled off much better than the giant ants in that film.) My favorite scene involving the tarantula is near the end of the film where it slowly approaches the Deemer house and Steve continues working in her bedroom, unaware of what's going on. The music starts off simple enough and builds and builds as the tarantula gets closer to the house, becoming very frantic when its head appears right outside the window. Steve doesn't see it until it's practically on top of the house and it tears it to pieces. Steve manages to get out but Deemer, who's become hideously deformed by this point, is devoured by the tarantula and you actually see its huge fang get him. I also have to mention the makeup effects used to create the acromegaly deformities. They're quite impressive, especially the way Deemer looks before he gets killed. The same guy plays both Eric Jacobs and Paul Lund when they appear deformed at the beginning of the film, which made me think it was the same character the first couple of times I saw the movie. Like Deemer, really good makeup jobs on both of those.

The music by Herman Stein also adds a lot to the movie. I'm not sure how much of it was composed specifically for this movie and how much of it is previously recorded but either way, it all fits together very well. The opening credits music is one of my favorites as well as the ending music (both of which were used again for Arnold's final monster flick, Monster on the Campus), and the music used for the action scenes, including the attacks by the tarantula, all work very well. I already described how suspenseful and tense the music made that scene with the tarantula getting closer and closer to Deemer's house. I'll even say it: this music in this movie is some of my favorites ever used in a 50's sci-fi movie. Very skillfully composed and orchestrated.

From what I can gather, the general opinion on Tarantula is split: some like it, others don't. While it may be one of the most unusual 1950's monster movies and not Arnold's best film, I do think it's one of his finest. The acting is good, the effects are well done, the setting is utilized very well, and the music, especially, is superb. If you like these kinds of movies and haven't seen this one, I'd advise checking it out; just be prepared for a not so typical monster movie.

The Directors: Jack Arnold. It Came from Outer Space (1953)

Funny thing about this movie. Back when I was a little kid and reading those Crestwood House books about classic monster movies, I would read the list of books on the back of each. It Came from Outer Space was listed right below The Deadly Mantis and I thought that was all one movie: The Deadly Mantis: It Came from Outer Space. It took me a while to figure out that those were two separate movies. (Again, I was a moron when I was a kid.) Another ironic thing about this movie was that it was the first sci-fi movie Jack Arnold directed and yet it was the last one I ever saw: as late as when I was twenty-two. I'd heard a lot about it and read up on it, so I was intrigued. While it's not my favorite of Arnold's movies, I do think it's worthy of being regarded as a science fiction classic.

One quiet night in a small desert town called Sand Rock, Arizona, a mysterious object violent crashes in the near an old mine in the desert. John Putnam, an amateur astronomer, and his girlfriend go to investigate the crater and when John walks down into the center of it, he comes across an enormous spaceship. However, the ship is buried by a rock-slide and John's story is ridiculed by the townspeople, including the sheriff. But his story gains credibility when strange things begin happening in and around the town, including bizarre creatures appearing briefly in the night and people disappearing only to return acting strange and distant. John, being a firm believer, comes in contact with the aliens who tell him to warn the townspeople to stay away while they repair their spaceship. But the hotheaded sheriff's inability to wait may end up dooming the town.

This movie wastes no time in establishing a mood. When you see the familiar Universal-International logo, you're immediately hit by the eerie, theramin-heavy score and the first thing you see is the spaceship flying through the night sky, coming straight at the camera and exploding, revealing the title It Came from Outer Space. As this was Universal's first 3-D film, that must have been a jolting way to start it off. It's not even the actual scene, just a way to introduce the 3-D. The movie also starts right then and there, with no other credits. It's only at the end of the film that you get the credits you expect in a 50's film. That's commonplace nowadays but being a movie from the 50's, that really surprised me about this flick.

One thing this movie does incredibly well is creating an eerie atmosphere. The desert setting is used very well, with many camera pans across it that give you the feeling that something's out there (and, of course, we know something's out there). In one scene, John Putnam describes how, even though the desert looks barren and dead, it's really alive, waiting to swallow you up. In another scene where he joins an electrician who's listening to strange sounds in the telephone wires, John is told that when you work in the desert for very long, you hear and see strange things, like the wind whistling to you and such. Both of these scenes contribute to the atmosphere of the location. The desert has always been a strange place, according to them, but it's now even creepier because we know there's something roaming around out there that shouldn't be there.

The aliens themselves and the effects that come with them are also effectively created. We get many looks at the aliens as they really are: they basically look like walking masses of flesh with one enormous eye in the center. They do have arms, although you can't see them in the DVD release because of the aspect ratio. In addition to their looks, they have rather ghostly properties. They're apparently able to glide around, sometimes fast enough to get in front of moving cars, and when they abduct people, they surround them in mist. They're able to take the form of the people they kidnap, which looks particularly bizarre in one moment when you see the mist one alien creates form into a human hand. However, as would be repeated in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the aliens are not very good at seeming normal when they take human form, talking in robotic, echoing voices and seeming emotionally attached. Another precursor to Body Snatchers is when two women who have romantic attachments to two impersonated men notice how odd their lovers are acting and know something's wrong.

The most unusual effects in the film are the POV shots from the aliens that we often see. It looks downright bizarre, like a pulsating form of tunnel-vision with bubble-like characteristics on either side. (Apparently, this technique was created by blowing a specialized type of bubble around the camera lens.) The aliens also leave glowing, phosphorus-like trails that eventually fade out. So, all in all, the aliens in this film are very bizarre and downright creepy for sure.

The lead character, John Putnam, is played Richard Carlson, who, of course, would also star in Creature from the Black Lagoon the following year. Putnam is portrayed a curious amateur astronomer whose need to discover new and unusual things is piqued to the maximum when the spaceship crashes. Of course, no one believes him when he says he saw a spaceship in the crater, even a scientist whom he studied with. That's when we find out that Putnam has always been treated as an outsider by most of the townspeople because of his radical ideas and this alien business doesn't help his reputation with them. There's also a lot of friction between him and the sheriff, who is very protective of Putnam's girlfriend Ellen, and he doesn't want Putnam to drag her down with him in this alien craziness. But Putnam is undeterred. He knows what he saw and wants desperately to find out what the aliens are and what they want. He eventually does come into contact with them and even though they're wary, they trust him enough to tell him to warn the townspeople to stay away while they repair their ship. He also convinces the aliens to show him their true form and when the eventually do, he's horrified by their hideous look. Now he knows why the aliens won't show themselves and he's determined to not only help them get away but also to save the town from the destruction the aliens will cause if they're attacked.

Putnam is also good enough to enter the mineshaft where the aliens are hiding and try to warn them of the mob that's now coming for them. At first, the aliens feel that they have been betrayed and decide to destroy the town with a powerful weapon they possess. Putnam reasons with them and tells them that if they'll release the people they've taken prisoner, it'll show the mob that they mean no harm. The aliens do so and with that, the mob is stalled, the aliens are able to repair their ship, and leave just as swiftly as they came. The movie ends with Putnamsaying that they're not gone for good; it just wasn't time for mankind and their race to meet. To the very end, Putnam knows that the aliens never meant any harm.

Ellen Fields, Putnam's girlfriend, is played by the lovely Barbara Rush. Even though she, like many of the townspeople, doesn't necessarily believe Putnam when he says that he saw a spaceship in the crater, she does stick by him. She's even a lot braver than most women in these types of movies because when Putnam first goes down into the crater, she tries to follow him but he immediately nixes the idea. She also risks losing her job as a schoolteacher by running around with Putnam, looking for aliens. Eventually, she's captured by the aliens and is imitated by one of them (while wearing a rather sexy dress, I might add). That particular alien actually tries to trick Putnam into falling to his death in a pit in the mine when the aliens believe that he has sent a mob after them. Putnam is forced to kill that alien and she, along with the one imitating Frank, one of the telephone line repairmen, are the only two characters in the film who are killed. The real Ellen is eventually released by the aliens along with the other captured townspeople and rejoins her lover.

Charles Drake plays Sheriff Matt Warren. As previously stated, he's one of the many townspeople who thinks Putnam is crazy when he says he saw an alien spacecraft and doesn't like Ellen being involved with him. Warren does say that he used to know Ellen really well but it's never made clear if they ever had a relationship. Either way, he's very protective over her and doesn't want her to be ridiculed as well. But when strange things start happening that he can't explain, Warren has to face facts that there are aliens roaming around the desert. Unlike Putnam, he doesn't trust the aliens at all and fears that they may be lying, that they're actually planning some sort of attack. Their kidnapping Ellen further complicates things and Warren finally snaps, leading a mob to raid the mine the aliens are hiding in. Even though the mob does kill one of the aliens, they let them leave when their ship is finally repaired.

One thing that's unique about this movie is that the aliens are not evil creatures who've come to conquer the Earth. In fact, they never intended to land here in the first place. Their ship has been damaged, forcing them to make an emergency crash-landing and use their powers of imitation to get the necessary parts to repair it. They know full well that humans would be horrified by the way they look and would undoubtedly try to destroy them. Even Putnam, who is sympathetic to them, is revolted when one of the aliens shows itself to him. After that scene, Putnam has a conversation with Warren that drives home the main theme of the movie: tolerance. Whenever we come across something that we don't understand, we react with fear and destroy it. Putnam points to a spider crawling across the ground and asks Warren why he fears. Then he asks what he would do if it came too close to him. Warren proves Putnam's point by going over and stomping it. He tells him that's why the aliens are doing everything to stay away from the townspeople while they repair their ship. Later when Putnam confronts the aliens in the mine, one alien that has turned itself into him decides to destroy the town because he feels they've been betrayed. He says, "All we needed was time!" and apparently, these fearful humans couldn't even give them that. However, Putnam manages to make the aliens understand that they need to prove that they mean no harm and that's when they set their captives free. The aliens needed to trust one human as much as they needed him to trust them.

This was based on a story by the legendary Ray Bradbury and even though Harry Essex is credited with writing the screenplay, Bradbury's original treatment was actually kept with little changes here and there, while Essex took the credit. He has said that it was always his intent to write a story where the aliens weren't evil but he did give the studio a choice by writing an outline with evil aliens as well as what the final film became. Needless to say, Universal decided to go the more interesting route. Whether or not this was also Bradbury's intent, one who knows film history can't help but derive Cold War paranoia and xenophobia from the movie's story as well. Of course, as I said, three years later Invasion of the Body Snatchers would take the concept and really hammer it home.

The film's eerie music score was composed Herman Stein, Irving Getz, and Henry Mancini, who did many scores for sci-fi movies at that time. As Dimitri Tiomkin had done in The Thing from Another World as well as Bernard Herrmann in The Day The Earth Stood Still, the composers for this movie made extensive use of the theramin, mainly to signal the aliens' presence, even when you don't get the POV shots. There's also a lot of music in this film that you would hear in future Universal sci-fi flicks, like the threatening music that plays when the alien reveals itself to Putnam, the music that plays when the aliens finally leave at the end, and what plays over the ending credits. I'm not sure if any of that music was originally composed for this movie but this is the earliest film I can think of hearing it.

It Came from Outer Space may not have quite the amount of fame and critical acclaim as Creature from the Black Lagoon or The Incredible Shrinking Man but there's no denying that it's an effectively simple sci-fi movie. The characters are likable, the atmosphere is eerie and moody, the alien effects are quite chilling, and there's a great message of tolerance in the movie as well. Not my absolute favorite that Jack Arnold did (that would be Creature from the Black Lagoon) but I think it was definitely good enough for him to establish himself as a great sci-fi director.

The Directors: Jack Arnold. Introduction

Here's my first entry in a series I'm going to call The Directors, where I look through the filmography of a filmmaker I greatly admire. Here's how this series works: I will review many films in a director's track record but, with few exceptions, I usually won't talk about every single, solitary film the person has ever made. This could be because either every single film the person has made isn't available to the public; some of the films are part of a franchise and I've already discussed it; some of the films don't stand out and are rather forgettable; or simply because I just don't like those particular films. That may disappoint some of you but, hey, it's my blog so deal with it! (I hope you know that last part was sarcasm.)

Anyway, let's talk about our first subject in the series: Jack Arnold. While you may not recognize the guy's name, if you're a fan of 1950's sci-fi, you should know his films. He practically invented the genre the way it was during that time period, with classics like It Came from Outer Space, his most well known film, Creature from the Black Lagoon and its first sequel, Revenge of the Creature (which I've already reviewed), Tarantula, one of the best giant bug movies of the time, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, which many consider to be his best film. He was a science fiction fan when he was growing up and his love of the genre comes through in his films. He also tended to inject his films with subtle social commentary, some of which was unheard of at the time (like the subtle environmental message in Creature from the Black Lagoon). Interestingly, Arnold's technique of inserting the commentary into these sci-fi flicks was easy to do because, according to the man himself, William Alland, the producer of many science fiction movies at Universal in the 1950's, was only interested in special effects and whether the movie would sell. (Alland, at the same time, said he liked Arnold because he "never got original ideas"!)

Even before his groundbreaking science fiction, Arnold was already an up-and-coming filmmaker; his first film, the documentary With These Hands, was nominated for an Oscar in 1951 for Best Documentary. in 1959, he directed The Mouse That Roared, one of the earliest films to feature Peter Sellers as well as one of the first to make him popular (Sellers, not surprisingly, played multiple roles in the film). Arnold was also a prolific TV director, helming episodes of such popular shows like Perry Mason, Peter Gunn, Gilligan's Island, and The Brady Bunch. His entire filmography in general is interesting. Besides his sci-fi films, he did a teen exploitation film High School Confidential; No Name on the Bullet, a Western with Audie Murphy; a soft-core sex romp, Sex Play; and even some blaxploitation flicks in the 70's (one of which has a title so outrageous that I don't think I can write it!).

As with most people, I first came to know Arnold when I saw Creature from the Black Lagoon and as I watched more 50's sci-fi flicks, I kept seeing his name pop up. After researching about him, that's when I discovered what an influential and, sadly, vastly underrated director he was. For some reason, after he made Monster on the Campus and The Space Children (both in 1958), he never returned to the genre he excelled in. He never said why. His last feature film was The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West in 1976 and he continued working in television until he retired in the early 80's (he was offered a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon around 1982 by John Landis but the film was never made). He died in 1992 from arteriosclerosis at the age of 75.

My main interest in Jack Arnold is his science fiction from the 1950's and that's what we'll discuss here. Since I've already reviewed the two Creature from the Black Lagoon movies he directed, we'll go through It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and finish up with Monster on the Campus. If you know who Jack Arnold is, I hope you enjoy my personal feelings toward his best films or if you're just getting to know the guy, I hope this will inspire you to find these movies if you've never seen them before. Either way, hope you enjoy this first entry in my Directors series.

The King of Queens (1998-2007)

The thing with me and the sitcoms that I like is that I was never a fan of them during their original runs. The Cosby Show not withstanding (because I wasn't alive for most of its original run), I love shows like Home Improvement and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air now but when they were originally being produced, I was either too clueless, stubborn, or preoccupied to actually sit down and watch them. The same goes for The King of Queens, a show that I consider to be the end of an era in terms of 1990's sitcoms. As with most of these shows, my mom started out as a fan of it and I slowly but surely started watching it and became a fan myself. When I said I view it as the end of an era, what I mean by that is that it when it ended in 2007, it was the last of those shows started in the 90's that had that certain vibe to it (although most of it took place in the 2000's). After that, sitcoms were never the same to me.

The King of Queens is about IPS deliveryman Doug Heffernan and the life he lives with his tough-talking wife Carrie and her crazy father Arthur in Queens. Most of the show's episodes deal with Doug trying to get what he whats, usually at the expense of his friends and wife's feelings, as well as him having to deal with his wife's temper and generally bad attitude or his father-in-law's nuttiness. I actually didn't see the pilot episode for a very long time and it's interesting to see how the show evolved from there. You find out that the reason Arthur has to live with Doug and Carrie is because, being the maniac that he is, he accidentally burnt his own house down and Carrie didn't have the heart to take him to put him in a retirement home. Also, Carrie's sister was prominent in this episode and the several of the ones afterward but then just disappeared and was never seen or even really mentioned again. Odd. Also, Carrie didn't seem quite as mean or as tough with Doug in the pilot as she would eventually become.

The interesting about this show is that the three main characters, while likable, can sometimes be downright horrible people if you think about it. Take Doug (Kevin James), for instance. He's your quintessential man's man, a fun-loving guy who loves sports, action movies, and food. While he does clearly love his wife and care about his friends (and Arthur, to some degree), he can be a very selfish, spoiled baby at times. The lengths he will go to in order to get what he wants or stop something he doesn't like is downright scary sometimes. There was one episode where he didn't like the idea of Carrie trying to open up their "world" by becoming chummy with people she works with and actually went out of his way to repulse them so he wouldn't have to be friends with them. Another time, he took a lewd picture at a friend's wedding and let his cousin Danny take the fall for it. The worst thing he did was in the first part of the series finale where Carrie finally got the apartment in Manhattan that she always wanted but he was determined to stay in Queens no matter what, even if it means spoiling his wife's dreams (which, it turns out, he'd actually done at the beginning of their married lives).Despite all his negative traits, though, Doug is a pretty good guy. He's almost never attracted to other women and even the infrequent times that he is, you just know he would never cheat; he generally does love Carrie and sometimes does go out of his way to make her happy; and usually has enough sense to know when something has gone too far.

Carrie (Leah Remini), on the other hand, is much more prickly and difficult to like. You can't blame her, though, because in later episodes, you find out that Arthur wasn't the best father to her while she was growing up. But still, she does sometimes go a bit too far in her mean attitude towards Doug and other people. Some of the things she won't allow Doug to do are extreme and the reasons she gets mad at him or bans him from certain places and people can seem like borderline mental illness. In one episode, you find out that she's not happy unless the people around her are miserable, which is pretty screwed up. In one episode, she tried to end a good relationship between her friend Holly and another man because Holly's life being awful made her feel better. Still, she is good enough to realize that she has some serious issues and does try to figure out why she does what she does. And honestly, there are times where you can't blame her for getting mad at Doug or her father or other people.

Arthur (Jerry Stiller) is, honestly, the main character in the show who can be very grating for me. He's the one whom you wonder has some sort of mental disease, according to the stuff you see him do as well as what Doug and Carrie mention him having done. He yells a lot, makes childish demands, often causes trouble for Doug and Carrie's relationship, and not only messed up Carrie's childhood as I said but you find out that he hid her acceptance letter for college from her because he wouldn't have had anyone to make money for him. That's a loathsomely selfish act. He also cooks up schemes to get rich and doesn't care if they threaten Doug and Carrie's very livelihood and loves to pick on Doug's friend, Spence. But, as with Doug and Carrie, some good qualities do shine through. My favorite was when he dragged Spence into a scam that involved them pretending to be father and son. Arthur was extremely harsh to Spence but when the latter broke and was clearly hurt by it, Arthur felt bad. Another time, he and Carrie had a heated fight in which she called him a lousy father. Arthur, feeling guilty, tried, albeit in his own crazy way, to set things right.

Out of all of Doug and Carrie's friend, Deacon (Victor Williams) is by far my favorite. He seems like a laid back, easygoing guy you'd just want to hang out with. While he and his wife do experience marriage problems, he always has time to hang out with Doug. He does do the jerky act of cheating on his wife (it's not in a sexual way, though) but feels bad about it and tries to make things right between them. I do wish he would have stood up to Doug a little more and not let him drag him into some crazy situations. I also like Spence (Patton Oswalt). He's a likable geek who has a pretty rough life, with dead end jobs and being stuck with his crazy mother. (What is it with this show and insane parents?) He's done something deplorable every now and again but not to the point where you hate him. I just can't help but like geeks like him who get picked on because that was me throughout elementary school and junior high. Then there Danny (Gary Valentine, Kevin James' real life brother), Doug's cousin who becomes Spence's roommate. Doug actually despises him at the beginning of the show but grows to like him when they become coworkers. (While that does seem mean of Doug, I can relate to that because I've had some relatives and people who wanted to be close to me but they annoyed me so much that I tried to get away from them.) A running joke throughout the show is that people think he and Spence are a gay couple and even though you know they aren't, they often act like they are. Not much else to say about Danny other than he seems like a likable guy overall, if a bit annoying.

Holly (Nicole Sullivan), a young woman who works as a dog-walker and takes Arthur for walks often, is both sweet and annoying at the same time. On the one hand, she is a genuinely nice person. On the other hand, though, her insecurity and lack of skills to get a boyfriend can get irritating. Sometimes when she talks about the odd ways she goes about getting a boyfriend, you can't help but want to knock some sense into her. One friend of Doug's who didn't last long was his friend Richie (Larry Romano). Richie was your typical ladies' man with a Brooklyn accent and always referred to Doug as "Moose." While I didn't mind him, he was a bit of stereotype. I did think he was funny, though, especially in the flashback episode where it's revealed how Doug and Carrie met. You also had former Hulk-actor Lou Ferrigno, playing himself as the Heffernans' neighbor. He was often the brunt of a lot of jokes because of his having played the hulk, which he found really annoying, but he was a gentle giant. Kelly (Merrin Dungey), Deacon's wife, doesn't have much to do but from what you can hear, she and Deacon's relationship has sometimes been so bad that she's whacked him with a frying pan! One guy whom I'm glad only appeared in a few episodes was Ray, from Everybody Loves Raymond. I have never liked that show and I've never particularly cared for Ray Romano either. Every time he appeared in this show, he seemed to cause trouble for Doug and his voice and attitude always rubbed me the wrong way. Screw him.

One thing that's interesting about The King of Queens, which I never thought about until someone mentioned it to me, is that the conflict of each episode often isn't resolved by the end. The characters are often left either in a stagnant position or to wallow in more misery. I have mixed feelings about this concept. I do like it because, besides being unusual for a sitcom, it makes it more realistic. In real life, problems aren't solved just like that. They can take weeks or years and sometimes, are never resolved. In that case, this show's decision to have most problems not solved by the end of the thirty minutes lends reality to it. But on the other hand, it can sometimes be frustrating. When it comes to dire problems, I often want to know what happened afterward, if everybody came to terms with each other about what happened, and so on. So, it's a toss-up for me.

As per usual with my television reviews, here are some of my favorite episodes.

Hungry Man: Carrie's boss is hosting a cocktail party and Doug skips lunch to make it there. Unfortunately, there's no food whatsoever at the party and poor Doug goes to great lengths to find food, embarrassing Carrie in the process. I love this episode because Doug's attempts to get food are hilarious. He tries to eat a bunch of little finger foods and tic-tacs but nothing works. The best part is when, in desperation, he swallows some raw eggs and he later gets sick. Carrie tells him that if he throws up, she'll leave him but he can't help it. He tries to get to the bathroom but someone beats him to it; he tries to go out a back door but it's locked, etc. It's hilarious. There's also a funny moment where he has to change clothes in the elevator but unfortunately, opens right to the guy's apartment so everyone gets a glimpse of him in his underwear.

Art House: Arthur almost gets Doug fired and after a bitter fight, Doug forces him to move out. Arthur ends up getting his own place and it looks like he's going to be well off... of course, everything isn't as it seems. My favorite part of this episode comes at the ending. With Arthur gone, Doug reclaims his basement and moves everything back down there. But then, Arthur arrives, having no money to pay the rent for the apartment, and wants to move back in. Doug loses it and begins screaming at the top of his lungs, saying Arthur may as well just take everything from him. Arthur is hurt and walks out of the house and down the street, with no place to live now. But, you see Doug run after him and brings him back home. I like that moment because it's proof that, despite his selfish, childish way of acting sometimes, Doug does have a big heart.

Queasy Rider: Doug buys a motorcycle, even after Carrie forbids him from doing so. To get back at him, Carrie starts smoking, claiming that they should each do something that makes them feel more alive. The scenes of Doug riding the motorcycle are hilarious. He constantly crashes when he tries to park it in the garage, he gets rained on, and he has to endure giving Arthur rides to his job. The best part is when he sells the bike but tries to retain his dignity with Carrie by saying he was worried about their relationship. Carrie, feeling guilty, buys it back from him and that's when he has to confess that he now hates the bike. I like when he says it was partly her fault because of this insulting buzzer noise she made in front of his friends when she turned him down for a bike, adding, "I especially don't like it when you do it during sex!"

Assaulted Nuts: Doug fools around with a staple-gun at work and ends up stapling himself right in the balls. Unfortunately for him, he had a fight with Carrie earlier, saying he doesn't fool around at work and to keep his dignity, he has to endure signing an important waver while keeping his painful situation a secret. This is just every guy's worst nightmare and watching Doug have to go through it is really funny. The best parts are when Arthur demands Doug let him see it in the middle of the hospital and when, during the meeting with the person signing the forms for him and Carrie, she keeps stapling things together and he yells, "For God's sake, get a paperclip!"

Get Away: Doug, Carrie, Deacon, and Kelly go on a trip for the weekend but Doug and Carrie discover that Deacon and Kelly's sex life is much more active than theirs, which leads to problems. This episode is funny due to the amount of times Deacon and Kelly have sex, which is indicated whenever you hear Let's Get It On playing. Poor Doug and Carrie have to endure this again and again, wondering if they just don't have it anymore. By the end of the episode, the situation is switched: Doug and Carrie are about to do it big time whereas Deacon gets tossed out of his room after accidentally insulting Kelly.

Dire Strayts: This is the only episode featuring Ray Romano that I like. Doug invites Ray and Debra to have dinner with him and Carrie but ends up unintentionally insulting her when he tells her to "tone it down" since she's never met Debra before. After a tense dinner, Doug and Ray try desperately to see a ballgame but when the TV reception is poor, Doug tries to go up into the attic to fix. Ray boosts him up through a hole in ceiling of the bedroom closet but Doug ends up stuck and Ray throws out his back in the process. Just the image of Doug's legs hanging out of the closet ceiling is funny. Also, Carrie sees a rat near Doug and since he's not able to get away, he panics in a funny manner. This best parts are when Richie and his fire brigade come to get Doug out and he has to deal with Richie's teasing.

Fair Game: Doug discovers that Carrie has a bad habit of cheating at board games. I like this episode because it ends up addressing one of the issues between Carrie and her father. After Carrie cheats at board games again even though she said she was sorry, she admits that something comes over her when they're in the heat of the game. It turns out, when Arthur played board games with Carrie when she was a child, he would mock her whenever she lost, leading to her hatred of losing. I don't know why I like that, seeing as how it makes Arthur look like a horrible person, but I can't help but enjoy this episode.

Paint Misbehavin': Carrie makes the mistake of telling Doug that she does find Deacon attractive, which gets Doug jealous. He, Carrie, Deacon, and Kelly then go paintballing along with Danny, Spence, Richie, and Doug's sister to celebrate Deacon's birthday but things get personal really fast. Honestly, I like this episode for one hilarious moment during the paintball battle. There's this hardened war expert with them that does a roll to avoid shots but when Doug tries to imitate the roll, let's just say his physique doesn't allow him to pull it off. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. There's also a great moment near the end when Carrie tells Doug that if he shoots her, he's not getting sex ever again, to which Doug screams, "You can't do that!"

Inner Tube: Doug lies to Carrie about having to work late so he can play mud football and not have to go to a seminar of hers. Doug gets a bad cold from the experience and has to stay in bed the next time. In his fevered mind, Doug dreams of himself and his friends being in various TV shows. I just love the various TV shows that Doug dreams being part of, as well as how the style and filming techniques change from one to another. My favorite part is the Honeymooners section, where Doug does a great imitation of Jackie Gleason and Deacon is quite adept at mimicking Art Carney. I also like the Young and the Restless section just because it's interesting to see these characters filmed in that soap opera way.

Pregnant Pause Parts 1 & 2: In this two-part episode, Carrie discovers that she's pregnant and after Doug finds out, he offers to take much of the burden off her.. which about runs him ragged. There are plenty of funny parts in the second part with Doug having to work extra jobs and getting exhausted from it. The best is when he has to drive a limousine for a bunch of rowdy teenagers and when he sees a couple of them taking off their pants, he screams, "PANTS ON!" However, the episode has a tragic ending when Carrie has a miscarriage. The scene between the two of them when she tells Doug is very touching and heartbreaking. Leah Remini really pulls it off well there.

Sight Gag: Doug decides to get Carrie laser eye surgery as a birthday present so she won't have to wear glasses but she ends up nearly blind from the operation. This is hilarious. Arthur insists on Doug not helping Carrie when she can't see, which leads to some really funny fights. The best part is when Carrie discovers that Doug decided to be a cheap skate and got her an unprofessional surgeon who took a coupon(!) for the surgery. She tries to punch him but since she can't see, he easily dodges it. It's a funny fight.

As you can tell, I really like The King of Queens. There are better sitcoms but I love the characters in this show as well as Kevin James' likable charisma, the storylines, and genuine hilarity. I honestly wish more sitcoms nowadays would be like this because I feel it's a lost art. At least we'll have this and other great sitcoms in syndication to keep us entertained for years to come.

Stuff I Grew Up With: Whose Line is it Anyway? (1998-2004)

Few TV shows have ever caused me to absolutely keel over laughing than Whose Line is it Anyway? This was an Americanized version of an English improv show, hosted by Drew Carey, and featuring performers like Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Brad Sherwood, Chip Esten, among others. I have watched a few episodes of the English show and I do think it's pretty funny as well but since this is the version I know best, this is the one I prefer. My mom discovered it long before I did. One night, I remember hearing her laughing like crazy in the living room and when I went to investigate, she let me in on what was so funny. I began watching it with her, slowly learning how the show was played, what the rules were, etc. Eventually, Mom stopped watching it on a regular basis but I continued on, watching it for many, many years, following it from ABC to ABC Family. I am convinced that this is one of the most criminally underrated and hilarious shows ever.

The show went like this: Drew Carey hosted and there would be four performers. At a certain point in the early seasons, the three regular performers were Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles, with the fourth person either being Brad Sherwood, Greg Proops, Chip Esten, Jeff Davis, or Kathy Greenwood (it was always random who would be on the show). Drew would choose improvisational games for them to play that were written on his cards and would sometimes get suggestions from the audiences. The show's hilarity came from the fact that there were really no rules to this show and the cast members could do whatever they wanted in the games, sometimes pulling poor, unsuspecting audience members into the games. This would sometimes result in things getting out of control and it was always funny as hell. Sometimes, the performers made it clear that they hated certain games and that would result in hilarious backlash from them against Drew; other times, the games were so hard and the suggestions the individual performers would get were sometimes so weird that it would be funny to watch them try to pull it off (and they would show their mastery of the art by doing so more often than not).

At first, I had mixed feelings about Drew Carey as the host. He would often make really bad jokes that caused you to roll your eyes and he seemed to think he was being funny when he wasn't. He also tended to beat a funny line to death by repeating it over and over and it could get annoying. At a certain point in the series, the last game of each show would involve him joining the cast (there would be an arbitrary winner who would get to sit it out) and he proved that he wasn't the best improver. However, as I watched the show more often, I began to really warm up to Drew. He seemed like a nice guy (I've heard he really is) and you could always tell that he was having a blast. The best thing about him was his hilarious, high-pitched laugh he would bust out whenever things got really crazy and it often did. It was an infectious laugh and often made you laugh just from listening to it. But I think the thing I loved the most about Drew was his laid back way of hosting. No offense to Clive Anderson, the host of the UK version, but whereas he seemed a bit more stringent in hosting, Drew's presence made it feel like they were all a bunch of buddies getting together to have a good time and that's what I like.

Wayne Brady became a regular performer of the show by the second season (this had to be one of the first things he was ever involved with). His biggest skill was singing and dancing, at which he was incredibly skilled. In many of the singing games featuring him, they would throw different music styles at him or make him sing while imitating a famous artist and no matter how crazy it would get, he would always master it. It was remarkable. As an actual improver, though, he wasn't the best. He wasn't horrible, but he was nowhere near the level of Colin and Ryan, who were veterans since they were on the UK version. I sensed that the writers of the show knew he wasn't the best because his suggestions were never that difficult to pull off; however, Wayne always made the most of it and he would sometimes do something hilarious, even if it wasn't always intentional. He also seemed to be enjoying himself (which is more than I can say for him as the host of Let's Make a Deal).

Colin Mochrie was my favorite of the show. He was just so hilarious and really skilled at improv. He was  the one who often had everybody else dying of laughter at the end of each game while he finished it. His skill at holding in laughter, even when something very funny was going on, was one I wished I had because I've often laughed at the worst possible moments. What made him so funny was not just that he said outrageous things but he would often say it with a sweet, soft-spoken demeanor or sometimes come out of nowhere, acting all crazy. Another endearing thing about him was that he knew when he'd just said something that either wouldn't make it to air or would get a lot of people angry at him and his reaction was often as funny as what he said. He often was the butt of jokes, which either stemmed from the fact that he's bald or Canadian. However, you couldn't help but go, "Awe!" at him when he acted hurt and his friend Ryan would comfort him. He could give as much as he could get and those that made fun of him often wished they hadn't. It's a shame that this guy has never had his own show because it would be awesome.

Ryan Stiles was one half of a very funny comedy duo, the other person being Colin. Whenever they acted in a scene together, Ryan often acted as the straight-man to Colin's madness but Ryan could be capable of some really crazy (and often raunchy) stuff himself. He seemed to get the most bizarre suggestions from the show's writers, even more so than Colin. I'm guessing they were trying to see if they could stump him but they never did. Ryan hated the game "Hoedown" more than anybody else and almost always ended it by either insulting Drew, the staff, or the game itself. (The uncensored outtakes of him singing hoedowns on the DVDs are priceless.) There was one hoedown where he was either completely drained of ideas or just refused to do it because Drew had to come up behind him and sing for him. Ryan was almost never the arbitrary winner of the show and had to endure the hoedown, which was often the last game of each show. Still, he always came out on top.

Like Colin, Brad Sherwood often said really outrageous, politically incorrect things on the show. He was the one whose stuff was often so dirty that they couldn't air it (as seen on the outtakes) or if they did, things would get awkward. Still, he was definitely one of the funniest non-regulars and blended in well with scenes involving Colin and Ryan or acting as Wayne's singing partner. Greg Proops was also a very funny non-regular. What I liked about him was that he seemed much more intelligent and cultured than everyone else, which made the crazy stuff he would do even more funny. He was the best at foreign accents as well, especially German, and his acting in games was superb. Jeff Davis was really good at both singing and improv; he was very skilled at impressions and foreign accents and always seemed to have the most confidence of everyone. Chip Esten was it his best when he was singing; as an improver, his skills were fairly lacking. The humor from his performances came because he sometimes blew his suggestion. But, he always seemed like a nice guy and I really liked his level-headed attitude towards all the craziness around him.

There were some women improvers on the show as well, though most of them didn't last very long. Denny Siegel was always my favorite woman improver because she could be as wacky as the men most of the time (although her lack of skills in the game Scene To Rap often made me cringe). She was really good at a game called Hey You, Down There, which acted as a 1950's instructional film and she was the narrator while Colin and Ryan were the ones acting out the task. The woman who appeared most frequently was Kathy Greenwood, whom I couldn't stand. I don't know why she was chosen to appear so often because she had no improv skills, often barely participated in the games, and sometimes, barely said a word the entire show. I knew a woman who was a big fan of the show as well and Kathy was her favorite, something I was never able to understand. The worst woman improver by far was Karen Murayama, who only appeared in a few episodes, thankfully. She was absolutely awful, especially at guessing games. She was so bad at figuring out a person's quirky that you often wondered if she was stupid. (One time, Brad was supposed to be an Amish guy and she thought he was Sean Connery. What?!) Drew pretty much said she was stupid when he said, "Don't ever go on Celebrity Jeopardy." The best, however, was Josie Lawrence, a veteran of the UK version who appeared in a couple of episodes. I wish she'd stuck around because she was really funny with her British sense of humor and sophistication.

There were celebrity appearances on the show, either as a fellow cast member or appearing for only a few games. Robin Williams' episode was freaking hilarious. Also good were Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Griffin, and Stephen Colbert (long before he became well-known for his political satire show). Other celebrities who appeared were Jerry Springer, David Hasselhoff, Richard Simmons (God, wait till I talk about that show), Florence Henderson, Sid Caesar, and Hugh Hefner, among others.

Drew often awarded points at the end of each game, although he always stated that Whose Line was, "The show where everything's made up and the points don't matter." His descriptions of how useless the points were often got a chuckle out of me. (There was one episode, however, where he decided to actually keep score, although that was forgotten by the end of it.) There was also banter between him and the cast members between games, which only added to the laid back fun of the show. The show also had its fair show of inside jokes, usually caused when somebody flubbed a line or said something really outrageous. These included an episode where Drew referred to Africa as a country and the cast would not let him forget it for the rest of show; Colin discovering that Wayne is actually really ticklish and tickling him throughout the episode; Colin randomly saying, "Meow" in a sexy way and it was repeated throughout the episode; Chip blowing a game where he was supposed to be singing Mel Gibson and the Wrestler but somehow got it mixed up with professor, among others. Even the credits were funny because after the first season, Drew had some random cast members read the credits in a weird quirk.

There are so many memorable moments from this show that if I were to try to list them all, this post would go on for pages and pages. What I'll now do is go through my favorites and talk about some of my favorite moments from those games.

Scenes from a Hat: Probably my favorite game, this one involved Drew pulling suggestions written by the audience out of a hat and the performers having to act out whatever situation was described.

Robin Williams: Probably the funniest one by far was the one on the episode with Robin Williams. It started out simple enough with them acting like bad superheroes but it started getting funny when the suggestion was, Bad Topics for an Interpretive Dance. Ryan said, "Diarrhea flows like a river." Robin did him one better by saying, "Impotence is a horrifying thing," starting out in a small position and gradually standing up. Next was, If Entertainers Worked Funerals. Robin came out and said, "Alright, start the truck Johnny," and acted like he attached the corpse to a car battery. He then yelled, "Wow, look at him move! Isn't that incredible, ladies and gentlemen? With just six volts, you can make your relatives dance again!" Ryan and Colin came up doing various funny things; Ryan acted like he stuck his head in the corpse's mouth; Colin acted like he twisted the corpse into a shape and said, "A dog,"; and Ryan acted like he stuck his hand up the corpse's back-end and said, "Harry and I would like thank you all for coming by, wouldn't we, Harry?" One that, for some reason gets me to laugh is, Frivolous things to ask for when a genie grants you three wishes, and Colin simply comes up and says, "Uh, two Cokes and some chips." Next was, Inappropriate Anecdotes to tell on a talk show and Ryan came up, pointed at his wedding ring, and said, "Okay, long story short, this is the stone I passed." So damn funny!

I Didn't Mean to Cook Your Dog: One suggestion one time was, Songs about life's embarrassing moments. Colin came up and sang, "Hey, I didn't mean to cook your dog, but hey those things just happen. I was just standing there and his little toes, they started tappin'. So I cut his throat, (something about a goat), and then I put him on the barbecue..." Before he could go on Ryan, as he often did, took off the stage, as if to say, "Okay, that's enough."

If Actors Were Completely Honest During Their Acceptance Speeches: During that suggestion, Colin came up and said something that was outrageous, half of it was bleeped but I think you'll know what he said: "Man, I can tell you how man BLEEP I've had my BLEEP up just to get this." Wayne and Chip looked absolutely horrified. Wayne came up and said, "It's been an honor working with Colin Mochrie all these years." I bet it was.

Bad Times for a Woman's Water to Break: Yeah. The funniest parts during this one came from Colin and Ryan naturally, who first acted like they were riding horse's when Colin's water broke and then acted like they were going down the wedding aisle. Even funnier was the next suggestion was, When a Deep, Passionate Kiss is Complete Out of Line, and the two of them repeated that aisle moment, then acted like they were going to kiss. Hilarious.

Read a Book, People: This came during the suggestion, Outtakes from the Hillbilly Shakespeare Festival (or something similar). Wayne came up and said in a redneck accent, "Hear ye, the two revenuers from Verona approacheth." No one reacted and Wayne, keeping his accent, said, "Read a book, people!" Everybody broke up laughing and Drew's laugh was hilarious.

Things You Can Say About your Boat, but not you Girlfriend: Colin came up and yelled, "She's takin' on water!"

Song Styles: Wayne Brady (and Brad or Chip if they were on that particular episode) would come sing songs either to an audience member or by himself. Every now and then, the other three performers would provide back up for him. This was often a game where I didn't pay much attention but there were instances that were hilarious.

Village People Polka: This was an instance where Wayne was joined by everyone else, including the audience member (a sanitation worker named Howard), singing in the style of the Village People (they all wore hats to match the various members). It started out typical enough, with the song being played in the style of YMCA, but then about halfway through, something went wrong with the keyboard and the music started going really fast. Everybody started moving and singing fast to keep up with it (Colin's face was hilarious; he was like, "Help!") and Wayne even sang, "How'd this song get so damn fast?" Finally, they had to cut it prematurely and that's when Drew said, "I didn't know the Village People did polkas." Even funnier was that Drew pointed out that Wayne spelled Howard as H-O-R-W-A-R-D and Wayne said, "It's hard to spell at 210 beats per minute." However, Wayne spelled it wrong before the music went crazy so he couldn't use that as a defense.

Singing Strip-O-Gram: Drew brought down this elderly woman who was a lunch lady and he revealed to Wayne that he sing to her as a singing strip-o-gram. Everybody immediately burst out laughing and this is the only time you could hear Colin unable to control himself and laugh out loud. Poor Wayne was so embarrassed but he went through with it, unbuttoning his shirt and unbuckling his belt as he sang. The best part was the last verse that he couldn't finish. He sang, "You get to have a little spaghetti and two great meatballs..." Wayne lost it right then and Drew had to take his glasses off because he was laughing so hard. After it was over, you could hear Wayne tell the lady that he was sorry! He sat back down and he said, "I feel so dirty!" Drew said, "You feel dirty? How about poor Leigh, the lunch lady?"

Weird Newscasters: The performers act out a news show. Colin is the usually anchor but Brad is if he's on the episode, Wayne does sports, and Ryan does the weather. The co-anchor, sportscaster, and weatherman have an odd quirk they have to act out. A lot of the fun comes whenever Colin is the anchor; he gives himself and the rest of the guys weird names and comes up with hilarious news stories. Some of my favorite names he gave himself were: Ti-Toe through-to-tulips, Horse-Ye-Rode-In-On, Keith My-Pasthy-White-Butt, Thore Just Thinking About It, and Oswald That Ends Wald. He gave his co-anchors names like Smiley Dick (Chip), Dwayne Da-Bathtub (Ryan), Reggae Jackson (Wayne), Ruby Squealer (Wayne), and my favorite, Gunther Do-Something-Amusing (Ryan: his face was hilarious when he heard that name). There was one time where Brad was the anchor and Colin was the co-anchor and Brad gave him the name, Baldy Flap-Scalp (lol!).

Colin's best top stories to me were: a man who was swallowed whole by a whale escaped today by running all the way to the end until he was pooped out; when talking about a human cannonball who was shot out of a cannon along with his donkey, Colin said, "It took the doctors six hours to remove Linguini's head from his ass"; he talked about how Rudolph the Reindeer was killed when he was flying over Barcelona and was hit by a flock of birds and a 747. He said that eyewitnesses reported, "That the reindeer in Spain was hit mainly by the plane." He also once talked about how Hugh Hefner prevented a bunch of friars from planting flowers on his property and said that someone commented that, "Only Hugh can prevent florist friars."

Some of the best quirks were when Wayne had to be an old vaudeville star whose plastic surgery collapses. The faces that guy made were downright terrifying. Ryan once had to be a Bigfoot caught on camera and desperate to escape being filmed. The noises he made and the way he ran off just break me up. One of the funniest was we had to be Frankenstein's monster looking for a mate and he pulled this poor guy out of the audience, took him behind the green screen, made a bunch of passion noises, and they both came out looking like they had been really hammered. It was hilarious. Wayne had to be Jerry Lewis one time but he clearly didn't know what he was doing and blundered his gag, which made it even funnier. Colin once was the co-anchor and he panicked at the slightest thing. When Wayne acted as the Spanish Crocodile Hunter, he accidentally sent a wad of spit flying and Colin acted like it was in his hair. Colin also once acted as a nudist and when he went to get out of his seat, he said, "These damn seats are vinyl!" He then acted like it was stuck to his butt and when he got it loose, he put his foot on the stool with his knee up. Brad acted like he was trying to block his privates and he about cracked up.

Party Quirks: One performer would act like the host of a party and the other three would have bizarre characters they'd have to act out, with the host having to guess who they are. This game had some of the craziest moments to ever happen in the entire show.

Ryan Breaks the Light: Ryan's quirk was that he had to be Carol Channing whose head keeps getting stuck to things. He headed head-first right to Drew's desk, which has a neon light on the front, and he accidentally smashed the light. Everything came to a screeching half as everybody tried to compose themselves: Drew, after realizing Ryan wasn't hurt, laughed so hard his face turned red and Wayne had to turn his back to the camera so nobody would see him laughing. The amazing thing was Ryan, being the trooper he is, insisted they go on with the game and stayed in character until Kathy Greenwood finally guessed who he was. I had the utmost respect for him after that.

The Melissa Incident: Wayne had to be footage from King Kong vs. Godzilla and grabbed this woman out of the audience. What he didn't realize was he'd pulled her skirt up and everyone in the audience as well as everybody in the country watching the show could see her underwear. He let her go immediately but he felt horrible and Drew was rolling. Chip as the host was great because he was trying to get things back under control. All in all, I felt so bad for that poor woman but I myself about passed out, I was laughing so hard.

Colin Gets Too Hot: Colin's quirk was that he was convinced that everybody wasn't the sex they claimed they were and was trying to find out for sure. Colin proved nothing would stop him in carrying out his quirk: he started grabbing everybody's crotch! Soon, all the other cast members were trying to get away from him, especially Ryan, who had to be shooting studly photographs for the cover of romance novels, and had to try to look sexy while covering his crotch. Colin also did grab Kathy's breast at one point. This isn't the best episode to use to introduce to a newcomer to the show because they'll think it's the gayest show ever.

Merchant Seaman: Colin's quirk was that he was an angry sperm looking for an egg. He was the last one left and Brad (I don't know if he'd figured out or not) asked him, "Were you in the marines because you look like a merchant seaman." I about died at that point. Colin's face was really funny.

Brad Goes Too Far: Brad was hosting the party and when Colin came in, his quirk was that he was a performing seal. He was doing the body movements of a seal as well as the barking. That's when Brad said, "I'd like you to meet BLEEP." I found what was bleeped out what Stephen Hawkings. Everybody in the audience groaned at Brad and Colin had a look of sheer horror on his face. It passed but I'm sure Brad received a real guilt trip from the censors afterward.

Show Stopping Number: Ryan and Colin would act out a scene, joined eventually by Wayne, and whenever Drew pushed the buzzer, they'd have to make up a song using the last line they said. Naturally, Drew would wait until they said something stupid and then hit the buzzer.

Without a Hole, Where Would You Be?: The scene was Colin and Ryan were working at a Swiss cheese factory, having to poke holes in the cheese, and Wayne came in at the Hole-In-Things Fairy. When Colin asked him why he puts holes in things, Wayne said, :"Because without a hole, where would you be?' Drew hit the buzzer and after Wayne gave a shocked look to him, he sang, "Without a hole, where would you be? No place to <nnnh!> and no place for the pee." He went on but when it was finished, everybody was laughing and poor Wayne walked back to his seat and totally face-palmed.

Hey, Buster, Hire My Friend!: The scene was Ryan and Colin were working in an office and Ryan had just been fired. Colin said he was going to go up to the boss and say, "Hey, buster, hire my friend!" Drew hit the buzzer and Colin sang, "Hey, buster, hire my friend or I'll put my foot right up your end!" And then, out of nowhere, he started making weird noises, going, "Whirr, whirr, whirr, aba zeeky no goy ah!" Ryan stopped him and asked, "What the hell happened there?" It was so out of left flield!

Improbable Mission: Colin and Ryan are secret agents carrying out a mundane task, and Greg or Wayne gives them their instructions.

The Cat!: This was one of the funniest moments ever. Colin and Ryan had to wash the burnoose for the Emir of Groovefunkistan. From the get-go, it was obvious that neither of them knew what a burnoose was. It was funny enough when they acted like they put the burnoose into the bathtub to wash and Ryan had to fart in the tub to agitate but it got really crazy when Colin said, "It's taking too long. The Snackafark of Emir will be here!" Ryan tried to keep acting but he started laughing and Colin yelled, "The cat!", which he'd suggested earlier as a way to clean the burnoose. That tipped Ryan over and everybody was dying at that moment. Colin then said they needed some fabric softener, "Saying, well you can't have static cling! The burnoose will stick to his..." everybody broke up again and he just said, "thing!" He then yelled, "The cat!" again and Ryan had to turn his back so nobody could see him dying of laughter.

And that's only a small sample of the many hilarious moments on Whose Line is it Anyway? There are so many more games and moments I could mention but I think I've spoiled enough already. If you've never seen this show before, by all means watch it on ABC Family or watch clips on YouTube. Few shows are just plain and simple fun as this one was. Drew once asked if any of us have this much fun where we work and I'm sure few of us could say yes. It's a shame that the show had to end and even though Drew eventually created a new show called Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza, it doesn't match Whose Line to me. A show that honestly funny just doesn't come around that often.