After the frenzy of releasing six special effects-driven movies in two years, Bert I Gordon actually took a year off. In 1960 his work returned to the screen, via the kiddie movie (and his first color film) The Boy and the Pirates. We actually watched that on an Amazon Watch Party several months back. Lacking his trademark monsters, it wasn’t awful but I’d say forgettable would be a fair grade.
By sheer coincidence, the young female lead of that film was one Susan Gordon, the daughter of Bert I and Flora Gordon. Susan had previously appeared in his father’s Attack of the Puppet People, and in 1966 would star at the age of 17 in Bert’s psychothriller Picture Mommy Dead. That was about her last acting job, although it should be noted that she was talented enough as a child actress to get quite a few episodic TV gigs on shows ranging from Playhouse 90 to Alfred Hitchcock Presents to The Twilight Zone.
Ms. Gordon also starred in her father’s next film after Boy and the Pirates (also 1960), the ghost movie Tormented. This lacked any elements of Mr. BIG’s trademark theme of gigantism, but did take advantage of his background in traveling mattes for the ghost effects. Although Mr. Gordon would occasionally return to monster movies in the future, he never again hewed to one type of film as closely as he did his first seven features, all sci-fi films featuring giant monster effects.*
[*Well, OK, arguably Attack of the Puppet People doesn’t include giant monsters per se, but close enough for government work.]
