Some Day, My Prints Will Come (or, the miracle of photography as explained by Roger Corman in Attack of the Crab Monsters)

Suffering through 30 indoor cycling traininmg miles today with my trusty bike clamped into my trainer in front of the tv in the basement, I found myself also suffering through an hour or so of Roger Corman via Netflix.

The tail-end of yesterday's feature, The Fast and the Furious, starring Dorothy Malone and John Ireland, was tolerable given a plethora of very cool 1950s sportscars including numerous Jaguar XK120 dropheads, 356 Porsche Coupes, a Nash-Healey, few MG-TDs and perhaps an Aston Martin in there somewhere.

That cinematic extravaganza was followed by the first 50 minutes of the utterly excrebable Attack of the Crab Monsters, a Corman atrocity from 1957.

Picture if you will, a group of scientists who find themselves marooned on a mostly uninhabited island somewhere in the South Pacific. An island that is beset with giant, man-eating crabs, borne out of nuclear fallout and some typical horror movie instant genetic mutations.

Anyway, the chief scientist finds himself leading his fellow researchers on a trek into a cave, where they suddenly find themselves face to face with one of the grotesque paper mache crustaceans. When, to everyone's surprise (well, at least to my surprise), a nice Rolleiflex TLR equipped with flash materializes out of nowhere in the fearless, feckless scientist's hands. Of course, he shoots several quick snaps of the sinister monster, stopping to actually focus for at least one frame.

Jump ahead a scene or two. Our cast, still marooned on this island hundreds of miles from any civilization, are in a house built by a previous team of scientists for research purposes. No problem there. The lady lead, another scientist, a marine biologist of course (the better to have an excuse to show her in swimwear), is shuffling through some nice 3x5 prints made from the shots taken in the previous scene. They have nice borders and everything.

To maintain the proper degree of suspense, Old Roger (who directed this gem himself) keeps the camera (the cinema camera) focused on the verso of the prints. As we come closer, we can see the nicely inked stamp on the back of each print advertising the name and address of the photofinishing lab where they were printed.

Must have been nice to have overnight delivery on professional printing all the way out there marooned on that island.

I'll update this review when I finish the movie during my next indoor ride. Hopefully, the sun comes out tomorrow so I can hit the road rather the basement.

Produced for a budget of $70,000 and it shows.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050147/