John Carradine, Tor Johnson and Allison Hayes star in Boris Petroff’s 1957 glandular horror film. A belated call-back to the mad scientist films of the 40’s, it’s cheap and derivative, but campy fun. 3/10

The Unearthly. 1957, USA. Produced & directed by Boris Petroff. Written by Jane Mann, John D.F. Black. Starring: John Carradine, Myron Healey, Allison Hayes, Tor Johnson, Sally Todd, Arthur Batanides, Marilyn Buferd. IMDb: 3.3/10. Letterboxd: 2.6/5. Rotten Tomatoes: N/A. Metacritic: N/A.

John Carradine uses his remote psychiatric clinic as a front for secret experiments into eternal life. Carradine has created a new, 17th gland, which he hopes will arrest ageing — but his experiments on human subjects have not been “entirely successful”. Allison Hayes is the damsel in distress as one of the patients/guinea pigs, and Myron Healey is the mysterious hero infiltrating Carradine’s house of horrors. Ed Wood favourite Tor Johnson is on hand as dim-witted henchman. After a good deal of pseudo-medical babble, a few surgery scenes, some romantic subplots and much sneaking in and out of bedrooms at night, things come to a head as Healey reveals himself as an undecover police officer, and a dead test subject comes back to life to haunt Carradine — and the final scene reveals a gruesome secret in the mad doctor’s basement.

Background & Analysis

The Unearthly from 1957 was released by the short-lived studio AB-PT, and is best known for its roster of famous B-movie horror stars. As a movie, it’s not much to write home about, rehashing old 1940’s mad scientist tropes without bringing anything new to the table. The film has sometimes been compared to H.G. Wells‘ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, and there are fleeting similarities, but it plays more like a remake of the 1956 movie The Black Sleep (review), in which, incidentally, John Carradine has a small role. Even in the 1940’s, The Unearthly would have been viewed as derivative, and in 1957 it is downright anachronistic.

AB-PT was the result of a 1953 merger between ABC and Paramount Theatres, and the company produced four films in 1957, before it called it quits. The Unearthly was produced and directed by “Brooke L. Peters”, a pseudonym of Boris Petroff, and written by John D.F. Black and Jane Mann. The latter was Petroff’s wife. The Unearthly was released in June, 1957, as the bottom of a bill that also included Beginning of the End (review), directed by another low-budget specialist, Bert I. Gordon. There has been some speculation as to why two giant companies like ABC and Paramount Theatres would start a film production unit only to churn out ultra-cheap schlock by some of Hollywood’s most anonymous low-budget specialists. Film historian Bill Warren suspects that it was all some sort of bureaucratic shenanigans.

This is the first film I’ve encountered by Boris Petroff that isn’t built around stock footage, and the consequences are both good and bad. The upside is that unlike, say, Two Lost Worlds (1951, review), The Unearthly has a coherent plot. The downside is that the plot is rather boring. Even by 1957, we had seen this story play out a million times. Even the final shock reveal is old hat.

The dialogue is banal and the action predictable, but the movie does move along at a decent pace. The film could have been a tad more enjoyable with a little more refined cinematography and direction. As it is, the lighting by cinematographer W. Merle Connell is uniformly flat and the direction static. However, it does feel like Petroff did make an effort, with limited budget and know-how.

John Carradine gives it his all, as usual, chewing scenery until he’s frothing at the mouth, and manages to give his mad scientist some nuance, even if he is actively thwarted by the material. The rest of the cast is OK. Myron Healey makes for a bland, if competent, hero, but the actor, usually playing western heavies, feels a bit out of his element. Allison Hayes is not at her best here, giving a distant and disinterested impression. Marilyn Buferd as Carradine’s assistant/mistress is stiff, and feels as if she would have required more direction. Sally Todd as the blonde bombshell “inmate” gives a sprightly performance, and brings much needed energy into the proceedings. Tor Johnson is Tor Johnson.

The makeup is surprisingly good for a film of this calibre — it was done by low-budget specialist Harry Thomas, who was a competent make-up man, even if his track record is of widely varied quality. There’s a good deal of suggested gore, including a protracted surgery scene, but very little visible blood or ick. Apart from the makeup, there are no special or visual effects to speak of, apart from a pulsating gland, probably operated with a tube system hidden under John Carradine’s hand.

There is not much to analyse as far as The Unearthly goes. It’s an old-fashioned “glandular horror” film, of which there were made thirteen on the dozen in the 40’s. It is more competent than Ed Wood’s movies of the same ilk, but lacks Wood’s childishly clumsy passion and whimsy. It’s probably Petroff’s most famous film, owing to the legendary cast. The Unearthly is a bad movie, but perfectly watchable as a campy romp if you have an hour to kill and like to observe Carradine and Johnson in action.

Release & Reception

The Unearthly was released in June, 1957, and according to Joe Dante at Trailers from Hell, the double bill of Beginning of the End and The Unearthly “made a lot of money” for distributor Republic Pictures. It recieved mostly negative press in the trade journals. Harrison’s Reports called it a “feeble and trite effort” that offered “little that hasn’t been done much better in countless other films of its type”. Motion Picture Daily reported it as a “mediocre horror story”.

The Unearthly’s later fame largely stems from it being featured on the riffing show MST3K in 1991, and like many of the films featured on the program, it has a low IMDb audience rating, 3.3/10. Conversely, on Letteboxd, largely inhabited by a generation that didn’t watch MST3K, it has a slightly-above-average rating of 2.6/5. AllMovie gives it 1/5 stars, and TV Guide calls it a “A dull, slow-moving, but satisfyingly campy mad-scientist-operates-on-humans picture”.

We know of at least one person who must have seen this film back in the day, and that is Woody Allen, as he references the final twist reveal in his 1972 movie Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) — in which John Carradine also makes a cameo.

Cast & Crew

I have done a long exposé on the elusive producer/director Boris Petroff in my article on Two Lost Worlds, so head over there for his interesting story — partly based on my interview with his daughter, Gloria Petroff, later Adler. In short, Petroff was a Russian-born dancer who came to the US after the 1917 revolution and had a successful career as a dancer, teacher and choreographer. In the early 30’s he directed the extravagant pre-movie live shows at the Paramount Theatre in New York, and it was at this time he became movie star and stage diva Mae West’s personal “style guide”, and moved into her penthouse apartment. The two were a fixture at the social scene, and there were rumours of romantic entanglement, which Gloria says her father always vehemently denied.

Petroff directed a musical comedy called Hats Off in 1936, the same year he married Jane Mann, who co-wrote the scripts for three of his films. So little has been known about Petroff, that there was long an assumption that Jane Mann was a pseudonym of Ed Wood — probably because of the involvement of Tor Johnson in The Unearthly. Petroff has no film credits between 1936 and 1951, when he produced the cut-and-paste movie Two Lost Worlds. How and why this respected choreographer became involved with bottom-of-the-bill low-budget movies is a mystery that Gloria couldn’t shine any light on either, but between 1951 and 1963, Petroff produced and/or directed seven low-budget films for various independent companies, as well as a dance documentary. His movies include the science fiction films Two Lost Worlds (1951), Red Snow (1952) and The Unearthly (1957).

18 at the time, Gloria Petroff is on screen for a couple of seconds in intro of The Unearthly, as one of Carradine’s victims being harrassed by Tor Johnson. Gloria told me she was supposed to have a proper role in the movie, but was recovering from smallpox, and was unable to work for much of the shoot. However, she did have a large supporting role in Two Lost Worlds (1951).

John Carradine, of course, is a legend among legends — all in all, he appeared in close to 70 horror films and nearly 40 science fiction movies, and according to his own words, over 500 films altogether, making him one of the most prolific actors of the sound era. For more on Carradine, read, for example, my review of The Black Sleep (1956).

The Unearthly gave character actor Myron Healey a rare romantic lead — he was generally used to playing henchmen and heavies in westerns and adventure films and TV shows. However, science fiction tended to reward him with meatier roles. His career spanned from the early 40’s to the mid-90’s, during which time he appeared in over 300 productions. Other leads came in the SF/jungle serial Panther Girl of the Kongo (1955), and the feature films Varan the Unbelievable (1962) and The Incredible Melting Man (1977). He also appeared in minor roles in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) and Pulse (1988).

Allison Hayes is known to fans of old SF as the titular menace of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958, review). A fixture in B-movies and TV shows in the late 50’s and early 60’s, her later career was marred by severe illness due to lead poisoning from a calcium supplement she was taking. More on Hayes in a later post.

Model and actress Marilyn Buferd was crowned Miss America in 1946. She made half of her around 20 movies in Italy and France, working with her Italian movie producer husband Franco Barbaro. She appeared in The Unearthly (1957) and Queen of Outer Space (1958, review), her last movie.

Eighties kids may recognise in character actor Arthur Batanides a young Mr. Kirkland from thePolice Academy movie franchise. Trekkies will have seen him in the Star Trek episode “That Which Survives” (1969). He also appeared in The Leech Woman (1960). Cheesecake modelSally Todd was Playmate of the Month in February 1957, adding yet more reason for male viewers to see The Unearthly (1957). She also appeared in Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958, review).Tor Johnson, of course, is a legend in his own right — Swedish show wrestler and actor, best known for his appearence in several ofEd Wood’s films. For more on Johnson, read my review of, for example, The Black Sleep (1956).

Janne Wass

The Unearthly. 1957, USA. Directed by Boris Petroff. Written by Jane Mann, John D.F. Black. Starring: John Carradine, Myron Healey, Allison Hayes, Tor Johnson, Sally Todd, Arthur Batanides, Marilyn Buferd, Roy Gordon. Music: Henry Vars. Cinematography: W. Merle Connell. Editorial supervision: Richard Currier. Art direction: Charles D. Hall. Makeup: Harry Thomas. Sound: Philip Mitchell. Produced by Boris Petroff for AB-PT Pictures Corp.