If nothing else, you can always rely on Richard E. Cunha. You know pretty much what you’re going to get him and his four genre films (Giant from the Unknown (1957), She Demons (1957), Missile to the Moon (1958) and Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958)) and you can set your expectations appropriately low, though more often than not he often fails to meet them even then. One might feel like cutting him a little slack with this, his first film as director after almost a decade as a cinematographer, but Giant from the Unknown is as dreary as most of his other offerings.
The good people of Pine Ridge in the mountains of California are becoming increasingly concerned about a series of strange animal mutilations in nearby Devil’s Crag. But this isn’t the work of aliens – that was piece of modern mythology still a few years in the future. At first, no-one knows who or what is causing it, but who/whatever they’re also responsible for the death of local man, Harold Banks (named after the film’s uncredited special effects man apparently). Sheriff Parker (veteran western star Bob Steele) runs Native American, “Indian Joe” (Billy Dix) out of town when he tries to suggest that a tribal curse is at the bottom of things, though Parker is no more convinced by geologist Wayne Brooks (Edward Kemmer) who apparently recently argued with Banks about access to his land. Brooks teams up with visiting archaeologist Dr Cleveland (Morris Ankrum), partly because he’s a former student who admires his work, but mainly, it seems, because he’s got the hots for his daughter Janet (Sally Fraser). Cleveland is searching for the remains of a lost expedition of Spanish Conquistadores led by one Vargas, known to his men as the “Diablo Giant”, that vanished in Devil’s Crag 500 years ago. Eventually, after much uninteresting filler, they find a stash of Spanish artifacts in a rock formation that seems to have the ability to place bodies in suspended animation (Brooks earlier found and revived a lizard preserved in the rocks for hundreds of years) and before you know it. Vargas is up and about and for no particularly good reason is starting to murder innocent bystanders.
Vargas is played by Buddy Baer, a former professional boxer and while he was a very tall man, standing at 6′ 6½”, to call him a giant would be stretching things a fair bit. So inevitably when he turns up, he’s an imposing enough presence but given the title of the film, something of a disappointment. And it takes an awful long time to get to his first appearance too. Inevitably, there’s a lot of chit-chat entanglement that no-one really cares about and an awful lot of mediocre performances but while Cunha was never the most dynamic of directors, he does pull off one fairly decent moment in the resurrection of Vargas. But sadly, one decent scene does not a good film make.
The script by Frank Hart Taussig and Ralph Brooke (neither of who wrote much of note) does at least pay lip service to fleshing out its characters, but it fails dismally as they can’t really make them particularly interesting. Performances are mostly par for the low budget course – no-one particularly embarrasses themselves without ever really standing out (though Gary Crutcher as the not-related-to-the-Peanuts-character Charlie Brown is a bit feeble), though Bob Steele‘s constantly suspicious and tightly wound sheriff (“that man has a badge instead of a brain”) gets more screen time than he really deserves. Billy Dix, a regular in Cunha‘s films, and very clearly Caucasian, turns up as the terrible, pidgin English spouting stereotype Indian Joe, who might have been better served if he’d been allowed to team up with Vargas to exact revenge on the white interlopers on his people’s lands (and been played by an actual native American of course…)
Filmed in the same area as Fred F. Sears’ The Werewolf (1956) (around Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Valley in northern California), it looks fairly decent (Cunha, who shot the film, was a better cinematographer than he was a director) and Cunha makes good use of a sudden snow flurry near the end of the film. He’s let down by terrible special effects (the make-up by Universal veteran Jack Pierce notwithstanding) that renders Varga’s climactic death fall laughable because of a dreadful optical effect. Pierce‘s reputation for creating some of Universal’s most iconic monsters was well-known and recognised enough at the time for him to earn a special “Buddy Baer in makeup created by…” credit.
Cunha shot Giant from the Unknown (not only is he not a giant, but we know exactly where he comes from…) for Screencraft Enterprises, a short-lived company that had shot the short film The Man Who Shot the Devil in 1955 (directed by Morris Ankrum) and just one other feature. That would be She Demons, the film that distributors Astor Pictures insisted that Cunha shot to make up a double bill. It would prove to be a livelier affair but no better made (in fact it actually looks considerably shoddier).
Crew
Directed by: Richard E. Cunha; © MCMLVII [1957] by Screencraft Enterprises; A Screencraft Enterprises production. Released by Astor Pictures Corporation; Produced by: Arthur A. Jacobs; Associate Producer: Marc Frederic; Story and Screenplay by: Frank Hart Taussig, Ralph Brooke; Cinematography: Dick Cunha [real name: Richard E. Cunha]; Edited by: Screencraft; Music by: Albert Glasser; Wardrobe: Marge Corso [real name: Marjorie Corso], Grace Kuhn; [And Buddy Baer in] Makeup Created by: Jack Pierce; Special Effects: Harold Banks
Cast
Edward Kemmer [Wayne Brooks]; Sally Fraser [Janet Cleveland]; Bob Steele [Sheriff Parker]; Morris Ankrum [Professor Frederick Cleveland]; Oliver Blake [cafe owner]; Joline Brand [Ann Brown]; Billy Dix [Indian Joe]; Gary Crutcher [Charlie Brown]; Ned Davenport, Ewing Miles [townspeople]; Buddy Baer [Vargas, the giant]
The EOFFTV Review 