Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.

  X the Unknown (1956)   The greatest SF Hero of all time is not nearly well known enough in the USA. Professor Bernard Quatermass, always called Quartermass, was created by SF Writer Nigel Kneale for the TV miniseries/serial, “ The Quatermass Experiment” (1953) which became a franchise on TV, film, and other media. Quatermass, armed with nothing but his Intelligence and Humanism, saved the Earth from Alien Invasion over and over.   Quatermass was a huge influence on “Doctor Who” (TV series first aired in 1963) and over the decades Quatermass was played by almost as many Actors as the Doctor. “Doctor Who’s” Producers actually wanted to hire Kneale, but he was a notoriously grumpy man and not only turned them down, but publicly called the show stupid. (I’m a huge “Doctor Who” fan, I don’t think it’s stupid, but I must admit, the Doctor has some Special Powers and Technologies, so he didn’t have to work as hard as Quatermass to save the World during most of his adve...

  X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)   Roger Corman Directed his first film in 1955 when he was a mere lad of 29 and, in fact, Directed three films that same year. Then four films the year after. And eight the year after that. He’d wouldn’t really start to slow down until after 1964 and even slowing down, switching to Producing more than Directing, he still Directed all the way up to 1990, and didn’t retire completely until 2021, only three years before his death.   Corman’s films were almost always profitable but also almost never respected, despite a generally high-level of craftmanship and unusual imagination for quick, cheap, B-movie, fair. He worked with a reliable stable of talent both in-front and behind that camera, trained a remarkably large number of Hollywood’s soon-to-be Greats, but was utterly dismissed by the Critical community until his first Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, “The House of Usher” (1960, also his first color film), but even after that, ...

  Willard (1971)   Rats are prominently featured in more Horror films than I could list, but few films are actually about Rats, because we look at Rats in close-up, we see small, vulnerable, Mammals. Rats are a scary idea, swarming and skittering in the shadows, but really more a Prop than a Subject.   The key thing to remember this about Rats is that intelligent and live communally. Yes, they are Disease Carriers, but in that they are really secondary players in the worst harms we associate with them (the near-Apocalyptic Black Death of the 14 th c. was spread by Fleas on Rats, not Rats bites). A Rat in a trash can is filthy, but a Rat in a movie is clean, well-treated, and well-fed and when low-budget Filmmakers turn their cameras on them we generally see the latter, so we see the Rats that make great pets. As for the former, we fear them because they are always nearby, but the Rats know we are their Monster more than they are ours.   This film’s title...