Then in 1951, a long flight from Alaska, “Botanists, physicists, including a pin-up girl” were at war with “Our superior in every way…a being from another world, as different from us as one pole from another.” The Thing from Another World revealed, “an intellectual super-carrot” from the crashed ice remains of a flying saucer. The North Pole base came under attack, dogs were mauled. Presiding Captain Patrick Hendry gathered the forces, arming his fellows with weapons, guns, gasoline and electricity.
In opposition to the vigilante mentality, scientist Dr. Carrington is committed to keeping a sane approach to the escalating violence. It is his goal to study the creature. He decides “science rather than the army” should lead. Even in the face of death, he is sure, “Knowledge is more important than life.” So it is a pivotal moment when he introduces himself to the Frankenstein-like monster in a dark Quonset hallway with, “You’re wiser than anything on Earth—” only to get clubbed to the slatted floor. Like the night crawling menace of Gow Island, the Thing is also a deadly plant creature that lives on blood.
Inspired by The Thing from Another World, director Michael Hoey bought the rights to The Monster from Earth’s End in 1961 “for a horrendous sum, like around $4,000.”14 Yet it took until 1966 to be filmed and Hoey sadly confirms the result, “By the time the film was completed, I would have been ashamed to talk to [the author] because of what happened.”15 In any case…
“When I bought the book, I thought, ‘Monster from Earth’s End…that’s too exploitative a title. I’d like another title.’ One day I’m driving down the street and I see a sign on some guy’s lawn, NIGHTCRAWLERS FOR SALE. Obviously he was talking about worms, but I thought, ‘Boy, that’s a great title for this project!’ So I called it The Nightcrawlers. But Jack Broder, who was the executive producer, retitled it The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, which is an abominable title. I remember the day when I was rehearsing and Broder walked in and announced what the new title was going to be. The entire cast was ready to walk out—they were furious that he would give it that title. Such an exploitative, dumb title.”
--Michael A. Hoey16
“The picture is one of the ugliest I have done…I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.”
--Letter from Vincent Van Gogh, 188817
A painted sunset or sunrise appears as an orange and blue canvas backdrop for the words, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, and actor names. “I have observed that a very simple flat frame in vivid orange lead would produce the desired effect in conjunction with blues of the background and the dark green of trees.”18 The picture fades in favor of a narration intoned over a bleak collection of stock footage ice, “Antarctica, the frozen continent at the bottom of the world. A continent as mysterious and unknown as the other planets of our solar system. Or a world in deep space a million light years away.” But the movie takes place on a tropical island. Gow Island resembles California or Vietnam.
Like the script of a paperback left out in the rain, the movie follows a warped version of the book. It seems clear that the film is directed more at a teenage Drive-In audience, especially with its mordant jokes about egg salad, balloons and girls. The sitcom atmosphere is quickly shattered though when death arrives whistling like a tea kettle in the night.
Antarctic trees crash land on Gow and begin to stalk. “It was a living fossil, with a basic structure remote from all experience. Its cellulose fibers were extraordinarily long. They were oriented like flax-fibers, from which linen is made.”19 The sight of it is so terrifying to the people in the movie that their reaction may seem strange. Their horrific tortured nightmare of the psyche comes across in today’s light as a walking, sprouting sleeping bag. This didn’t go unnoticed by the director though. In an interview with Tom Weaver, Michael Hoey describes the film as a battle between his vision and the budget, but more specifically a war with his ham-fisted producer Jack Broder.
Jack Broder had ultimate control over the final cut. After Hoey turned in his reels and went to San Francisco to begin shooting Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Broder added 12 minutes to the running time to market the film for television. 720 more seconds result in a lot of comic book scenes, Mamie Van Doren’s blueprint dress, a beach full of tree stumps crawling, but the most surreal touch is saved for the closing moments, in the napalmed jungle finale: “The picture ends with a stock shot with the four Blue Angels, with multi-colored streamers going out the back. No combat plane in its life ever did anything like that! It was footage from an air show. The logic that went into it was almost non-existent!”20
Next page: "How are we gonna shoot this?" "How ‘bout no lights?"
