Another candidate for the worst movie ever made. It comes from that dark hinterland of film inhabited by the likes of Phil Tucker, Ed Wood and Tom Graef, that no longer really exists any more. Although some of the people involved were professionals (the actor Jackie Coogan and one of the cinematographers, Karl Struss) it gives an overall impression of having been cobbled together by rank amateurs.
For all its manifold deficiencies, the one that most baffles me is the weird ineptitude of the screenplay. Other commentators have remarked on the impossible flashback structure, with nearly half the narrative being the recollections of a character who could not possibly have been witness to the events described, but there is another element of the screenplay that is also worth a comment.
Professor Masterson arrives on the mesa where Arana seeks to rope him into his plans to create a race of super women with spider juice. He refuses and is tortured into madness. He escapes but is locked up in an asylum. He escapes again and turns up in a cantina where he latches onto a financier and his fiancée who have been forced to land in this little town because their private plane has developed a fault. Masterson is totally ga-ga. A warden from the asylum turns up and joins them. One of Arana's spider women launches into a wild dance. Masterson shoots the spider women and forces the financier at gun point to take him to his plane. He decides he wants a plane trip and forces the pilot to take off even though the navigation equipment is still on the blink. They go off course and have to crash land - on the very mesa where Arana is up to no good!
After hanging about the campfire for a while and losing a couple of people to Arana's giant spider (including the servant, Wu, who is in Arana's employ), they are captured and taken to his secret laboratory. Masterson briefly recovers his sanity and cooks up a bomb. The hero and heroine escape, Masterson explodes his bomb and Arana is killed. But one of the spider women has survived!!
This brief synopsis pretty much covers all the action and fairly represents the complete inconsequentiality of this piffling little movie. It is a simple enough story, but has one amazing mistake. Why have Masterson go mad? Given the story he has to tell, it would be plausible for people to think he is mad and have him locked up, but if he were actually sane it would have been so much easier to plot the movie. As it is, the story stumbles forward through a series of accidents and coincidences. It is a pure luck that Masterson turns up at the cantina, that the spider woman is there, that he takes a shine to the financier and his fiancé, that Wu is employed by the financier, that Masterson decides he wants a plane ride, that they they go off course and that they happen to land on the mesa of lost women.
If Masterson had been sane it would all have been so much easier. Masterson is locked up because people think he is mad. Arana sends a spider women to the town where he is incarcerated in order to keep an eye on him. The financier lives locally and is a governor of the asylum, so Wu is inveigled into his service as back up to the spider woman. Masterson escapes with the intention of going back to deal with Arana. He overhears that the financier has a plane and latches on to him. He spots the spider woman and shoots her. He forces the financier to fly him to the mesa. There he explains himself and fills in his story by means of a flashback.
I hesitate to say that it makes so much more sense this way, because 'sense' is a word that hardly applies to this trivial, stupid little story. It should not have been told in the first place. But given that it was, why choose the most improbable and convoluted way to tell it? When it is as cheap and easy to get it right, how could anybody get it so badly wrong?
I am continually staggered by the monumental self-deception that enables someone to embark on a project in an area in which they have absolutely no facility. It is like a complete illiterate deciding to write a novel.
Many things in life are strange, but the cinema is stranger than most!
PS:
On re-reading this, I realise I have tried to rewrite one of the worst pictures ever made. How sad is that?
For all its manifold deficiencies, the one that most baffles me is the weird ineptitude of the screenplay. Other commentators have remarked on the impossible flashback structure, with nearly half the narrative being the recollections of a character who could not possibly have been witness to the events described, but there is another element of the screenplay that is also worth a comment.
Professor Masterson arrives on the mesa where Arana seeks to rope him into his plans to create a race of super women with spider juice. He refuses and is tortured into madness. He escapes but is locked up in an asylum. He escapes again and turns up in a cantina where he latches onto a financier and his fiancée who have been forced to land in this little town because their private plane has developed a fault. Masterson is totally ga-ga. A warden from the asylum turns up and joins them. One of Arana's spider women launches into a wild dance. Masterson shoots the spider women and forces the financier at gun point to take him to his plane. He decides he wants a plane trip and forces the pilot to take off even though the navigation equipment is still on the blink. They go off course and have to crash land - on the very mesa where Arana is up to no good!
After hanging about the campfire for a while and losing a couple of people to Arana's giant spider (including the servant, Wu, who is in Arana's employ), they are captured and taken to his secret laboratory. Masterson briefly recovers his sanity and cooks up a bomb. The hero and heroine escape, Masterson explodes his bomb and Arana is killed. But one of the spider women has survived!!
This brief synopsis pretty much covers all the action and fairly represents the complete inconsequentiality of this piffling little movie. It is a simple enough story, but has one amazing mistake. Why have Masterson go mad? Given the story he has to tell, it would be plausible for people to think he is mad and have him locked up, but if he were actually sane it would have been so much easier to plot the movie. As it is, the story stumbles forward through a series of accidents and coincidences. It is a pure luck that Masterson turns up at the cantina, that the spider woman is there, that he takes a shine to the financier and his fiancé, that Wu is employed by the financier, that Masterson decides he wants a plane ride, that they they go off course and that they happen to land on the mesa of lost women.
If Masterson had been sane it would all have been so much easier. Masterson is locked up because people think he is mad. Arana sends a spider women to the town where he is incarcerated in order to keep an eye on him. The financier lives locally and is a governor of the asylum, so Wu is inveigled into his service as back up to the spider woman. Masterson escapes with the intention of going back to deal with Arana. He overhears that the financier has a plane and latches on to him. He spots the spider woman and shoots her. He forces the financier to fly him to the mesa. There he explains himself and fills in his story by means of a flashback.
I hesitate to say that it makes so much more sense this way, because 'sense' is a word that hardly applies to this trivial, stupid little story. It should not have been told in the first place. But given that it was, why choose the most improbable and convoluted way to tell it? When it is as cheap and easy to get it right, how could anybody get it so badly wrong?
I am continually staggered by the monumental self-deception that enables someone to embark on a project in an area in which they have absolutely no facility. It is like a complete illiterate deciding to write a novel.
Many things in life are strange, but the cinema is stranger than most!
PS:
On re-reading this, I realise I have tried to rewrite one of the worst pictures ever made. How sad is that?