Monster of the Day #3299

Updated on November 17, 2021 By Ken Begg 12 Comments

We started Saturday’s T-Fest (the 17th, I think) with Lon Chaney’s The Unknown. I don’t want to go into many plot details, because you should look the film up and watch it. Pre-code films would be surprisingly perverse, and Lon Chaney pre-codes could be exceedingly perverse. Great little movie, and it only lasted an hour.

I took a flyer and showed The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which I’d never seen (or really heard of). Why? It was a hardboiled crime/espionage film starring Adam West. Unsurprisingly, West proved incapable of heading such a film. Also the movie made no damn sense, to the extent that I just gave up on trying to follow it. Everyone loved the awful musical score, and the time-wasting song sequences with Buddy Greco at West’s nightclub (Greco even sings the exact same bad song twice) and a mild striptease act all the way through. Not a classic, but quite fun. It’s the kind of film that, when it was over, nobody could suggest who the girl who knew too much was.

Third movie was the Jules Verne-inspired Invention of Invention for Destruction, a 1958 Czech film that does an amazing job of making everything but the actors look like 3-D woodcut art. Sadly, the above beastie is only briefly seen, probably because it moved too much. It’s short enough not to overstay it’s welcome, and the whole thing is pretty damn neat.

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  • Beckoning Chasm

    Was the Czech one by Karl Zeman? I seem to recall he did a lot of Jules Verne stuff. Big influence on Terry Gilliam.

  • KeithB

    I don’t see how that little fork is going to help much.
    (And are melee weapons standard issue on space ships? Did the Apollo astronauts take alone giant cocktail forks?)

  • KeithB

    And I think Lyz gave a treatment to “The Unknown”.

  • The Rev.

    He’s underwater; the movie takes place primarily on and around an island.

    This was a really fun one. The visuals alone would have done a lot to carry the movie; an incredible amount of care went into it.

  • The Rev.

    She did indeed.

    Anyone who hasn’t seen it should really try and do so. Unsurprisingly Chaney is the highlight, but everything else around him is interesting, fascinating, and/or delightfully twisted. And like Ken says, it clicks along.

  • Gamera977

    Ramming Cthulhu with a yacht didn’t work so let’s try the pitchfork!!!…

  • Gamera977

    Is ‘The Unknown’ not in public domain? I looked on YouTube but didn’t see the full movie.

    And I’m getting ‘Invention for Destruction’ 1958 when I look up ‘Destruction 1958’. It seems to be the same film- it’s Czech in any case and directed by Karel Zeman.

  • Try DailyMotion. There’s a lot of stuff there that doesn’t make it to YouTube – possibly because even the Copyright Police don’t know it exists (it’s where I watch Doctor Who (when I miss the normal broadcast) and ST: Lower Decks).

  • The Unknown was one of the only films I’d already seen before T-Fest. Excellent flick. You got to hand it to Chaney, he knew his stuff.

    The Girl Who Knew Too Much was a little too dry for its own good. Not quite the worse movie I watched there in terms of entertainment value, but close. Not a bright moment in Adam West’s career. And considering some of his other films…

    Invention of Destruction was a beauty. Well worth seeking out.

  • Gamera977

    Thanks! Will give it a shot.

  • Ken_Begg

    Yes! There’s a great three movie set of his stuff by Criterion. Mr. Zeman’s work would return later in the Fest.

  • casey01

    It also pops up on TCM every now and then. I caught it there a few years back.