Jack The Giant Killer (1962)

Starring Kerwin Mathews, Judi Meredith, Torin Thatcher, Walter Burke, Don Beddoe
Directed by Nathan Juran
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young farmer comes to the rescue of a princess abducted by a giant, but after he dispatches the beast, finds she is under constant threat of capture by a powerful evil wizard.

It's hard not to think of this production as a retread of The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, utilizing that film's hero (Kerwin Mathews), it's villain (Torin Thatcher), it's director (Nathan Juran), and stop-motion creatures closely resembling Ray Harryhausen's from the Sinbad film.  Jim Danforth, Gene Warren, and Wah Chang, talented effects artists in their own right, provide the animation in this film, but the creature design and execution is clearly a notch below Harryhausen's excellent work.  Nevertheless, the film is not without its charms and an element of fun, and the wide variety of creature makeups for the human actors are beguiling and memorable.  Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter provide an entertaining music score, there are several likable characters, and it's well-paced with plenty of action.  Apparently, a musical version of the film also exists with characters breaking into song.

The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958)

Starring Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, Richard Eyer, Torin Thatcher, Alec Mango
Directed by Nathan Juran
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

The brave hero Sinbad battles fantastic creatures in order to save the princess he loves, who has been shrunk to a tiny size by an evil magician.

Ray Harryhausen's stop motion effects enliven this production, with the talented craftsman expertly animating a giant cyclops, a fearsome dragon, an immense two-headed roc, a dancing snake woman, and a sword-fighting skeleton.  It's also impressively mounted in other areas, with a classic Bernard Herrmann score, an engaging cast including Mathews' stalwart hero and Thatcher's sinister magician, poetic dialogue which brings a classical feel, and bright color photography by Wilkie Cooper, all befitting this memorable fantasy adventure.  The skeleton sequence is a favorite with Mathews battling Harryhausen's creation with Herrmann's bone-jangling accompaniment, but there are so many memorable images and sonics, from the eerie shrinking of the princess, to the bellowing cyclops.  Modern envisionings of the story would rightly employ a more ethnically diverse cast, but the picture still feels like a vivid imagining of an Arabian Nights classic.

The Deadly Mantis (1957)

Starring Craig Stevens, William Hopper, Alix Talton, Donald Randolph, Pat Conway
Directed by Nathan Juran
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A paleontologist discovers a giant praying mantis has been freed from suspended animation in the Arctic, and is now heading south, feeding on the humans it encounters.

This is a halfway decent "giant bug" movie from the many made during the 1950s, although it is more than a little derivative of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and is plagued a bit by overuse of a large amount of military stock footage.  Nevertheless the special effects are well-done and the mockup of the creature is certainly imposing and frightful, more than likely a cause of nightmares for children of the period.  While the film has a capable enough cast, including Hopper who was to be featured on TV screens the same year as investigator Paul Drake on the Perry Mason TV series, there's not really anything new and different for them to do.  Talton has some moments as a liberated female reporter, but is also saddled with a clunky romance with Stevens her character doesn't seem to be all that interested in.  It's still fun movie monster viewing, but I've seen the same story done far better before.

The Black Castle (1952)

Starring Richard Greene, Boris Karloff, Stephen McNally, Paula Corday, Lon Chaney Jr.
Directed by Nathan Juran
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

An English adventurer arranges to visit the castle of a sadistic count he suspects of murdering his closest friends, and falls for the count's innocent young wife. 

Following in the footsteps of The Strange Door, that film's screenwriter Jerry Sackheim presents another costume drama with horror elements, and like the prior film, succeeds best with the film's villain, Count Karl Von Bruno, portrayed by Stephen McNally.  McNally gives the eye-patched Count a memorable sinister characterization, but there's not much depth to Sackheim's story with a plot proceeding rather by-the-numbers in following similar adventures we've seen before.  Still, there are some exciting perils for Greene to face, including a savage black leopard and a pitful of crocodiles, and Irving Glassberg's photography and the fine supporting cast are worth checking out.  Karloff and Chaney only play minor roles, with Chaney playing a savage mute like those he would later bring to life in The Black Sleep and Indestructible Man.

The Brain From Planet Arous (1957)

Starring John Agar, Joyce Meadows, Robert Fuller, Thomas B. Henry, Kenneth Terrell
Directed by Nathan Hertz
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A criminal from a planet of super powerful brains travels to Earth, and takes over the body of a nuclear scientist and makes plans to conquer the world.

I love this movie, for although it's a low-budget drive-in feature with obvious wires in the special effects sequences, and lacks standout performances or any great depth in the story, it's a heck of a lot of fun.  The loopy story conceived by Ray Buffum, who also scripted similar low-budget efforts such as Teenage Monster and Island Of Lost Women, is elevated by professional actors like Agar, Meadows, and Thomas B. Henry, who don't do their careers any favors here, but help bring the film across with enough conviction to suspend our disbelief.  Director Nathan Juran (billed as Hertz here as he was in Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman) was per IMDB, a former art director for several films and later helmed a couple of Ray Harryhausen's best pictures, and makes the most of his budget here, mixing stock footage with a collapsing set to convey the villain's mental-powered destruction of an army installation, and conveying its possession of Agar's body with glowing eyes in an appropriately eerie effect.

20 Million Miles To Earth (1957)

Starring William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Frank Puglia, John Zaremba, Thomas B. Henry
Directed by Nathan Juran
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A spaceflight on a return trip from Venus crashes in the Italian sea, unleashing a creature from the planet that grows to a tremendous size on Earth.

We have here one of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen's finest films, with his detailed character animation for the Venusian creature, (dubbed the "Ymir" although never called that in the picture), among his very best work in my opinion.  The Italian setting also lends itself quite well to the exciting staging of the spaceship's waterbound crash, the Ymir's battle with an elephant in Rome's zoo, and the creature's final stand atop the famous Colosseum.  Avoiding the mistake other sci-fi filmmakers make in placing an overemphasis on the human characters and their subplots, the filmmakers wisely keep the monster front and center, and their cast largely relegated to the background.

Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman (1958)

Starring Allison Hayes, William Hudson, Yvette Vickers, Roy Gordon, George Douglas
Directed by Nathan Hertz
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A wealthy socialite, mentally suffering due to alcoholism and a philandering husband, encounters an alien being who infects her with radiation that makes her grow to a tremendous size.

Probably better known for its iconic movie poster in which a gigantic bikini-clad Allison Hayes menaces a city she towers above than for the actual content of the movie itself, this film has achieved a pretty trashy reputation over the years, which it doesn't completely deserve, despite poor special effects and a fairly thin storyline.  Don't get me wrong- a giant woman in her underwear wreaking havoc on a city is fairly trashy, but that actually makes up a pretty small portion of the movie, and the rest I found enjoyable, whether you take the plot seriously or not.  Hayes gives a sympathetic performance, Ronald Stein's music score is a good one, and if you do check it out, even if you find it to be a terrible movie, I think you'll still stay tuned to see what happens.

First Men In The Moon (1964)

Starring Edward Judd, Martha Hyer, Lionel Jeffries, Miles Malleson, Norman Bird
Directed by Nathan Juran
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

In Victorian England, an eccentric scientist discovers a means of overcoming gravity, and uses it to launch himself and his neighbor on a journey to the moon.

Screenwriters Nigel Kneale (noted for his British television serials including the Quatermass adventures) and Jan Read have cleverly adapted H.G. Wells original novel within the framework of a modern-day journey to the moon, where the astronauts make the shocking discovery that two men journeyed there more than 50 years prior.  The skilled stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen is behind the special effects, and although this movie does not utilize as much stop-motion as his other films, Harryhausen's talent is well on display.  The ending of the framing story, borrowing the closing from another H.G. Wells novel, is a little disappointing, as the filmmakers could have used the opportunity to launch into a fascinating second film, rather than wrapping things up, but all in all, this is a well-crafted adventure.