New York City Double Feature
Film comment by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
I came out of a double feature at the Film Forum in New York City listening to the conversation of the couple behind me. "Boy, I guess you really don't know how bad films were back then," the man said. I guess the comment really took me by surprise. This was an evening I had been looking forward to for months and which had surpassed all expectations. The evening started with a chapter from the serial BATMAN, continued with DELUGE, and concluded with F.P.1. Each was a film I'd wanted to see for years. The fact that they did not stand up well compared to THE ABYSS is hardly relevant. Each of these films is a missing piece of the puzzle of how science fiction films evolved. When they find a new fossil at Olduvai they don't get excited because it came from a really terrific ape. Of the great classic science fiction films that I have never seen, I expect them all to be at best mediocre by today's standards. Better than that is too much to hope for. I frankly never expect to see a great 1930s science fiction film that I have not already seen.
The BATMAN serial was not actually from the 1930s, but from 1943, and directed by Lambert Hillyer, who had previously directed atmospheric chillers such as THE INVISIBLE RAY and DRACULA'S DAUGHTER. Lewis Wilson was the screen's first Batman (succeeded by Robert Lowry and, of course, Adam West and Michael Keaton). I have seen Michael Keaton sticking his chin out of his stiff--probably plastic--costume, and he really looks like the comic character. In 1943 Columbia did not have the same materials. Wilson's Batman suit really does look like the long underwear it was probably made from. There are wrinkles on the legs and the arms. There is a pressed crease up the side of the legs. The cowl has the bat-ears but they are bent at the ends. The effect is like a jester's cap and brought howls of laughter from the audience. Robin had a full head of curly hair and a Halloween mask.
The only recognizable actor in the episode was J. Carrol Naish as the evil Japanese mad scientist Dr. Daka with a machine that turns men into zombies. When Daka turns on his weird electrical equipment the entire theatre vibrates, probably due to equipment left over from showing THE TINGLER earlier the same week. It wasn't as visually impressive as the 1989 BATMAN, but it was a lot more fun. This was Chapter Five of BATMAN, for the record.
Film number two was DELUGE, directed in 1933 by Felix Feist, then 23 years old. He directed the 1953 DONOVAN'S BRAIN and several episodes of television's VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. Here he was directing a screen version of the novel by S. Fowler Wright. It should be noted that DELUGE has long been thought to be a lost film and remains semi-lost. It has been just a couple of years since a copy turned up and it is dubbed in Italian. For this showing a man at the back of the theatre translated.
The film opens by reminding us that God promised not to destroy the world by flood again and then, after a buildup of nature going very sour, proceeds to show most of the world being destroyed just the same way again. We are told that the west coast has fallen into the ocean but never see it. We do see New York City struck down by tidal waves and we see buildings crumble. If the effects were believable they would be spectacular. However, even a contemporary reviewer complained that the effects were none too convincing. My audience apparently agreed and jeered. Now I like really credible effects. They are a virtue. But a reasonable attempt at effects is sufficient for me. They are, after all, just a device to carry the plot. When I go to a puppet show I do not complain that the puppets do not fool me into thinking they are real people. Weak effects are quite forgivable as far as I am concerned if the rest of the film captures my interest.
And DELUGE is a very interesting film, if not for anything intrinsic at least for where it fits historically. What is particularly interesting is how the film reminds one of films that came after, but not of films that came before. After the holocaust is over and there are just a handful of people left the story has definite parallels to NO BLADE OF GRASS and the excellent British television series THE SURVIVORS.
Before the holocaust we have been introduced to iron-jawed Martin (Sidney Blackmer), a family man who saves his family by moving them to a stone quarry but is somehow separated from them. And we meet Claire, an athletic swimmer. The storm washes Claire to the doorstep of two criminals. Claire becomes one vertex in a triangle that leads to the murder of one of the criminals. Roger Corman would use almost the same plot for the 1960 LAST WOMAN ON EARTH.
Claire escapes the killer Jephson only to be found by Martin, alone since the storm. The two of them try to survive together. However, in the mean time, a group of survivors has set up a small town. They have thrown out some undesirables and the criminals pick Jephson as their leader. He leads them on a raid against Martin and Claire. At this point the film has sort of degenerated into a bad Western plot. Surprisingly, things do *not* work out well for all concerned, and the film does at times touch on questions of whether bigamy is justifiable in a post-holocaust world. The story if crudely done, but that didn't stop much of it from being redone, often no better, by other filmmakers. A good film? No. But not a bad film either and definitely an important artifact.
Waiting for the film to start, I started talking to someone sitting next to me who had just finished seeing F.P.1. He assured me it really cornball with bad dialog. I think I'd like to thank him for lowering my expectations and making F.P.1 such a pleasant surprise when my turn came to see it. F.P.1 (1932) is an engineering film, sort of a forerunner to THE TUNNEL and its remake THE TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL, and later THINGS TO COME. Like the Tunnel films, F.P.1 concerns itself with engineering feats to aid transatlantic travel. Instead of being about a tunnel, it is about the building of a great floating airstrip and hotel to be built mid-Atlantic, the Floating Platform 1.
F.P.1 is really a German film refilmed in English to give it the trappings of a British film. It is the story of engineer Captain Drost, who designed the platform but could not sell it to anyone, and his friend pilot Major Ellissen, an enigmatic figure who arranges stunts to bring the platform to the attention of a shipyard, then competes with Drost for the attentions of heiress Clare Lennartz. Ellissen is played by a very dashing Conrad Veidt.
F.P.1 is a spectacular melodrama of a great engineering feat and what goes into building it. There is a subplot of a consortium dedicated to destroying the great platform for no readily apparent reason.
I am glad I went.
Mark R. Leeper
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