Beast from Haunted Cave

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

** (out of 4)

Slow-moving but mildly entertaining horror film from director Monte Hellman has a group of thieves stealing some gold and deciding to hide out in the snowy mountains. Their plan seems to be working at first but soon they come across a giant spider deep within the cave.

This here was an early Roger Corman production and like a lot of the films from this era you soon realize that they were working with very little money, which means that there's going to be a lot of talking and very little action. One of the Corman's most known sayings was how when you're monster looks bad it's best to keep it hidden. That pretty much happens in BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE as the spider is rarely seen outside of a part here or a part there. The bad costume finally shows up at the very end but at that point it's too late to turn the film off.

I thought the cast were decent for what they were asked to do, which was basically hit their marks and say their lines. The cast were at least interesting enough to keep you glued to the movie and to stick with it longer than you probably would have otherwise. The spider creature design is obviously very cheap but there's some mild charm that you can take from it.

Hellman would go onto make much better cult movies but this one here was mildly entertaining as long as you don't take it too serious.

The 50's are often fondly remembered by those growing up in them as a Golden age of SciFi & Horror movies. As a child of the 60's & 70's, I give grudging assertion to maybe a quarter of what came out. While this one pales in comparison to "The Thing" or "Them!," it certainly has it's own special quality. I first stumbled across it one quiet summer evening at my Uncle Billy's house in New Orleans. I caught it just after the opening credits, and thought I'd landed on "Peter Gunn" or one of the other B&W crime tales flooding the airwaves in '68. Silly me. I recently bought a DVD player and have begun amassing a collection. As as was my desire when I bought my first VCR, I am collecting these rare old gems. I got this one on a double-feature disk with "The Brain that Wouldn't Die!" Cool!

Plot wise, the film does a lot of character building in a short time, mainly by sticking with the basics: Scowling guy is the villain; he has two dorky henchmen (one of them a would-be Sid Melton); the girl is a tarnished angel-type; and our hero is a square-jawed manly man. I half expected his name to be Lance Manion (although Gil is pretty snazzy).

The locals of the town our villains flee to after a robbery are also cookie-cutters, the exception being the plump little barmaid the Sid Melton-ite bonds with. She shows some depth, and provides the ominous prophecy duties. The hottie bar-girl seemed to have been added as an after-thought(and she runs circles around fallen angel in the looks department). The villains decide to rob the town while they're there. The Beast pops up after the antagonists arrive in town. From barwench's tale, we learn that it is a local legend that no one ever proved existed, although some folk have disappeared over the years. The scenes of it acquiring victims are really creepy, and some of my older relatives have asserted this was a really scary flick back then. It's physical appearance leaves something to be desired, but this is a jaded child of the media talking. It's minimalism fits in fairly well with the production. I believe the intent was to portray it as a spider-monster, and the scene of it feeding on the hottie barmaid are really gruesome. The plot lurches a few times as it heads towards the final confrontation. Amazingly, square-jaw and fallen angel willingly go to the cave (the former laughingly mentioning the presence of the monster while the latter smiles admiringly at his virile countenance), soon followed by the ostensibly jealous scowler and henchman #2. Scowler, of course, is looking to off square-jaw (out of jealousy and common sense. It seems he has some connection to the local authorities). The monster appears, bad guys die, but not before Scowler sets the beast ablaze. The End. The wintry setting of the film adds to the isolated atmosphere, and with better production values and some dinero, a decent remake is possible (are you listening Charles Band?). If you get a chance, check it out. The DVD has the original theatrical trailer. too cool.

On paper, this simply couldn't go wrong! The long-feature debut of brilliant director/producer Monte Hellman ("Two-Lane Backtop", "Cockfighter"), owing its existence to legendary producer Roger Corman, and fully belonging in one of my favorite cinematic hypes of all time: cheap 50's monstrous B-movies! Evidently, a whole lot went wrong… From sheer boring dialogs over irrelevant sub plots and onwards to a largely absent and – above all – uninspired titular monster design. The "beast" looks like a vague shape covered in cobwebs and that's just plain lame; even according to zero-budget 50's horror standards. The basic plot definitely holds potential, and for the first 20 minutes or so, I felt convinced I was watching a undiscovered gem of the genre. But the, incomprehensibly, the plot somehow stopped evolving and became an unendurably boring ordeal to struggle through. A quartet of gangsters carefully planned a risky gold heist near a skiing resort. Whilst the drunken love interest already embarks on a skiing trip with the instructor, the other three break into a bank before joining the others. During their perfect alibi, however, the assembly encounters (eventually) a hairy and aggressive monster living in the mountain caves. "Beast from Haunted Cave" is a nearly insufferably dull film, and that's all the more painful to acknowledge due to the promising intro. The heist concept is ingenious, the characters are intriguing (the girl is a manic depressive drunk and one of the robbers is a womanizer) and the ski-resort setting is quite effective (cashing in on the contemporary Abominable Snowman paranoia). The rudimentary plot ingredients for a charming 50's monster-mayhem flick are well present, but I'm extremely reluctant to announce this movie is an utter failure. Disappointing to the nth degree

In the great scheme of all things cinematic this is certainly not a great movie, but it is in many ways an intriguing one. Made in 1959, it is billed as and pretends to be another example of the '50s creature-features, but it largely eschews the standard formatting of those films for a deeper, character-driven narrative, more in common with subsequent films of the sixties and beyond. In that sense, it is slightly ahead of its time.

In fact, the horror elements take a back seat for much of the film, which plays more as a drama of tensions between a band of criminals and the skiing guide they have hired as part of their cover story. From this point of view, the film's real strengths come to light. The characters are written as though they could be actual people and not just devices to move the plot along, as some earlier films of the genre tended to portray their casts. The photography is very good, and there is a superb performance by Sheila Noonan as a troubled moll, one that virtually carries the movie and makes it much more interesting whenever she is on screen.

While the characterization is good for a B-movie, the writing is somewhat uneven. There are some quite deep philosophical insights offered up by the characters, such as the benefits of city life versus country living. If the writer wanted to take these musings in a more serious direction, perhaps this could have been Beast From Plato's Cave. But we can't read too much into a film where the guide's sister - Kay Jennings in a neat little performance - tries to sweet-talk a handsome stranger with the line "Did I tell you I knitted this sweater?" to which he replies "Is knitting your scene?" Some find the ending quite disturbing and scary for a film of its time. Others may find it somewhat flimsy and rushed. Either way, this film still has enough going for it to rate as a must-see for the serious fans of the genre.

It's not a beast from *a* haunted cave, it's from a cave called Haunted. Or not. I think they need an indefinite article in there. Either way, this is a low-budget, low-effects, low-costume thriller about a gang robbing a lodge and then escaping via cross-country skiing. There's a menacing leader, the sensitive guy, the dopey guy, and the 'secretary.' And the guide who's smarter than any of them know! Plus a formidable Native American housekeeper. But the real star of the show is the monster, which looks quite tame (and humorous) by modern standards. Roger Corman was the producer, and Monte Hellman made his directing debut, so you know expense was spared all over the place. I did like some of the dialog, particularly from Sheila Noonan as the moll. This is probably best viewed as an unserious example of wacky monster movies of the 1950s.