The doctor will see you now
The Unearthly (1957): 7 out of 10: The Unearthly has acquired the sort of reputation usually reserved for films discovered beneath a pile of radioactive waste. Much of that reputation comes from its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a shortened and fairly chopped-up version became another target for professional ridicule.
Watching the complete film, however, produces a genuine surprise: The Unearthly is actually rather good for what it is.
John Carradine plays Dr. Charles Conway, a brilliant but ethically flexible scientist conducting experimental treatments at an isolated institution. His patients have been promised new lives, but Conway’s research has consequences that are considerably more disturbing than anything mentioned in the admission paperwork.
Into this strange household comes Mark Houston, played by Myron Healey, a mysterious new arrival who quickly begins questioning Conway’s methods. What follows is a compact mixture of science fiction, mystery, crime drama, and bargain-basement horror that manages to be smarter, livelier, and more entertaining than its reputation would suggest.
The Good
The greatest strength of The Unearthly is its cast.
John Carradine gives a pretty good John Carradine performance, and credit should be given where credit is due: the man showed up for work. Carradine appeared in plenty of inexpensive productions during his long career, sometimes giving the impression that his mind had already moved on to the next paycheck. Here, however, he remains engaged and delivers Conway’s grand scientific declarations with exactly the authority the role requires.
Myron Healey is even more surprising. Healey usually played heavies, henchmen, and assorted men who looked as though they might hit somebody with a blackjack. Here he gets to be the handsome male lead, and the man absolutely oozes charisma. His verbal sparring with Carradine is one of the movie’s highlights. Their scenes are entertaining, well-paced, and considerably better written than one expects from a film featuring Tor Johnson as a superhuman servant named Lobo.
Speaking of Tor Johnson, this may be the role he was born to play. Lobo possesses the strength of Hercules and the mind of a chicken, which is firmly within Johnson’s dramatic wheelhouse. He even gets actual dialogue. Not necessarily a great deal of dialogue, and nobody was about to confuse him with Laurence Olivier, but words come out of his mouth in complete sentences. It is practically a showcase.
The women also raise the production considerably above the usual cheap science-fiction programmer.
Former Miss America Marilyn Buferd plays Conway’s fellow doctor and neglected romantic admirer. Conway, naturally, has no time for love because he is a scientist, and apparently medical research cannot survive exposure to a dinner invitation.
Sally Todd plays the institution’s cheerful blonde patient, a woman who enjoys romance novels and brings a welcome lightness to the proceedings. Some viewers’ grandfathers may also remember Todd as a Playboy Playmate in 1957.
Then there is Allison Hayes, who plays Mark’s primary romantic interest and brings considerable screen presence to the role. Hayes was extremely attractive, and the film is not shy about recognizing this fact. Let us simply say that she brings all of her considerable qualifications to the production.
The other major surprise is the script.
Jane Mann wrote the original story, and while her screen credits were limited, she came up with a genuine little banger here. The screenplay was written by John D. F. Black, who later worked on some excellent television, including memorable episodes of Star Trek. His contribution can be felt most clearly in the sharp exchanges between Healey and Carradine.
The plot is clever, the dialogue is strong, and the movie builds toward a terrific final revelation. Discussing it would ruin one of the film’s greatest pleasures, but the ending is good enough to justify the journey.
The movie is also admirably compact. There is a little filler here and there, perhaps a minute at a time, but nobody walks through the woods for twenty minutes merely because the production still needs to reach feature length. The story keeps moving; the mystery develops steadily, and the film does not overstay its welcome.
The Bad
This is still an extremely inexpensive production. The institution appears to contain approximately five rooms, and the exterior of the building is represented by a matte painting. The movie looks cheap because it was cheap, and there was only so much that the filmmakers could accomplish with limited sets and a modest budget.
That does not automatically make the film bad. Plenty of excellent movies have been built around a handful of locations. Glengarry Glen Ross did not require a helicopter chase or an exploding volcano to hold an audience’s attention.
Still, The Unearthly occasionally feels less like an isolated medical facility and more like a small theatrical production in which everyone must wait backstage until one of the rooms becomes available.
The science is also wonderfully dubious. Conway’s experiments operate according to the traditional laws of B-movie medicine, in which a hypodermic needle, several glass bottles, and a determined expression can overcome any known limitation of biology.
The movie is intelligent enough to make its central ideas interesting, but nobody should use it as a replacement for medical school.
The Ugly
Arthur Batanides plays Danny Green, one of Conway’s other patients, and gives the sort of performance that can only be described as extremely enthusiastic.
Have you ever seen a method actor land a small role on Law & Order, realize this may be his big break, and decide that every facial expression must be visible from space? That is roughly what happens here.
Batanides takes everything to eleven. He does not simply deliver a line; he attacks it, wrestles it to the floor, and demands that it confess. In a film otherwise filled with surprisingly restrained performances, he occasionally appears to be acting in an entirely different production.
The movie’s reputation is also somewhat ugly because it is largely undeserved. The Unearthly is frequently remembered as nothing more than fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film certainly contains enough inexpensive sets, strange performances, questionable science, and Tor Johnson lumbering to attract mockery. Yet reducing it to those elements ignores how much of it works.
In Conclusion
The Unearthly is a surprisingly smart, compact, and entertaining B-movie.
It has a strong John Carradine performance, an unexpectedly charismatic Myron Healey, some very nice eye candy for the gentlemen, and Tor Johnson for the ladies. I like to think that my own personal fashion sense and general physical presentation are somewhat Tor Johnsonesque, so I feel particularly well represented.
More importantly, the film has a genuinely good story, sharp dialogue, decent action, and an excellent ending. It is inexpensive without being lazy and occasionally silly without being stupid.
This is not some forgotten masterpiece unfairly denied a place beside Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It is, however, considerably better than its reputation and far more enjoyable than many of the films usually trapped beneath the Mystery Science Theater microscope.
Sometimes the experiment works.
Mystery Science Theater 3000, Episode 320: The Unearthly Review
Mystery Science Theater 3000, Episode 320: The Unearthly: 7 out of 10:This experiment is an unusual case where the movie and the riffed episode earn the same score. The complete version of The Unearthly is a surprisingly entertaining little B-movie with a good cast, sharp dialogue, and a strong ending, while the MST3K episode is solid but slightly disappointing.
Usually Joel and the Bots elevate a film enough that their version becomes the obvious way to watch it. Here, I would recommend watching the original film first and then returning for the jokes.
The biggest problem is that the movie has been chopped up more than necessary. Scenes jump forward abruptly, conversations lose pieces, and the film occasionally feels as though somebody leaned on the fast-forward button. That is understandable when MST3K is cutting explicit material from an Italian softcore shark movie such as Devil Fish, but The Unearthly contains nothing particularly troublesome for 1993 television.
The episode also finds room for host segments and two educational shorts, which makes the missing footage feel less like necessity and more like convenience.
Those shorts, Posture Pals and Appreciating Our Parents, are fine without being especially memorable. The first appears to teach children that perfect posture can earn them a paper crown and a beating after school, while the second explains household chores to a boy who apparently believes his home is maintained by brownies, fairies, or unemployed house-elves.
The riffing is good, but neither short belongs in the top tier of MST3K educational trauma. The host segments are similarly underwhelming, including an opening invention exchange that is more cruel than funny.
Fortunately, the actual movie riffing is quite strong. Tor Johnson speaks, which naturally delights the robots, the tiny number of sets receives the abuse it deserves, and Arthur Batanides’ method-acting breakdown is properly dismantled.
One of the best lines observes that My Dinner with Andre had more set changes, and the bizarre final stretch gives Joel, Crow, and Servo plenty to work with. The episode proves once again that competent, entertaining movies can make excellent riffing material. Even when the jokes slow down, The Unearthly itself remains enjoyable enough to carry the experiment.
Ah my honeymoon… No seriously this looks like the wife and I.
