Cheesy sci-fi films survive and endure among fans

Kirk Baird

Friday, April 28, 2000 | 9:05 a.m.

A boy finds something unusual, takes it home and watches it grow over time. Much later in life it begins to slowly take over his home, eventually devouring everything it comes in contact with.

If it sounds like a story right out of a '50s sci-fi movie, that's because it is.

The only difference, though, between this plot and an Ed Wood special is that there's no mad scientist behind this unstoppable force -- just Las Vegan Wayne Hatley, a freelance graphics artist. And the "beast" in this story isn't just an atomic-powered monster or a race of big-headed aliens or even a group of flesh-eating zombies. Rather it's all of them and many more, all in the form of 1950s and '60s sci-fi movie memorabilia.

Everything from posters, videos, T-shirts, movie stills and the odd toy, Hatley has them all. A lifelong fan of the sci-fi genre, the 52-year-old Hatley, who was raised in Los Angeles, grew up with the Saturday kiddie matinee where features such as "The Man From Planet X" "Attack of the Crab Monster" "The Deadly Mantis" and "The Amazing Colossal Man" were standard fare. They attracted kids of all ages with a mix of paint-by-numbers plots, hokey special effects and acting straight from a William Shatner thespian handbook.

"It's just a period of time I loved," Hatley said when asked why the affection for these less-than-Oscar-caliber films. "I was growing up."

It was an affinity his friends felt as well. They watched the films together, put together neighborhood sci-fi conventions and visited author Forrest J. Ackerman, who also lived in Los Angeles, on weekends during "open-house" meetings for fans of science fiction and horror. (Ackerman, who coined the phrase "sci-fi," created and published Famous Monsters of Filmland, the premier horror and science fiction magazine of that time.) He also encouraged Hatley and his friends when they created a sci-fi magazine of their own.

Then there were the posters. Hatley said that the movie studios would throw out many of the posters from films after the movies had completed their runs. He and his friends would root through the Dumpster and take the posters home. Then the posters were worth the paper they were printed on -- and sometimes less than that. Now, with this resurgent interest in the '50s sci-fi genre, some rare posters in mint condition -- such as "The Day The Earth Stood Still" -- can fetch up to $2,000.

But the price is based on demand, Hatley said.

"Some people out there think (the posters are) weird and wouldn't give you $2 for something worth $2,000," he said.

But what started as a few posters adorning the white walls of Hatley's at-home office has expanded to engulf the main hall as well. There are the full-size movie posters, small lobby cards, autographed photos and a closet full of much of the same.

Call it "The Thing that Lived in Wayne Hatley's Home." His wife, Susan, drew the line when it came to expanding into the living room and beyond.

"My collection is like the Blob," he said, jokingly alluding to the titular menace from the '50s cult film favorite. "It just keeps growing and expanding."

If Hatley seems unusual and even fanatic, he insists that isn't the case. He says there are many others just like him who collect and trade the 1950s and '60s sci-fi memorabilia with each other at various conventions and over the Internet. Many of them are Baby Boomers who have latched onto these films as a form of resurrecting the bygone days, a time when things seemed less complicated and science was still struggling to make sense of its surroundings. It was an age when anything seemed possible: The moon was still a mysterious, unexplored celestial orb; communism was the biggest threat to the United States; and "duck and cover" was more than a campy newsreel but a school-age rite of passage.

So what is it about these "bad" movies that makes them popular?

Leo Braudy, a professor at the University of Southern California who teaches a course in genre film (science fiction, horror, westerns, musicals, etc.), said that there are several reasons why "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," among many others, has an everlasting appeal.

There's the camp value, of course. With acting so broad and issues that are trivialized, there is a certain disparity between the monumental event and the triviality in which it's treated, he said.

There's also the "issue" factor. Many of these films stood as allegories for what was really bothering Americans: the Cold War, the devastating force of the atom, and gender equality in a society being stripped of its boundaries and limitations.

"These films on the surface seem trivial and silly," Braudy said, "but actually at the time they connected to these types of fear that people had."

And the fact these movies usually featured budgets less than half -- if not considerably less -- than their big-budget counterparts adds to the appeal. There's the obligatory scenes of stock footage (troops pulling out in jeeps, tanks mowing through fields, bombers soaring majestically through cottony clouds), the less-than-special effects (model rocket ships flying through the heavens visibly attached to wires, real-live insects terrorizing Hot Wheels cars and Lego-like houses) and sets that never transported people past the studio they were on.

"In some ways there's an unpretentiousness about them, especially when you compare them to the incredibly high-tech films we see now," Braudy said. "And part of that unpretentiousness is an invitation to use your imagination."

Consequently, films such as "It Came From Outer Space," and "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," although hardly considered highbrow fare, could convey more of a message than today's films because there was less distraction from elaborate special effects.

"We're so overwhelmed by the technical aspects of (today's films) that the story gets lost," he said.

And the story is key, said Ted Mikels, a local filmmaker who is responsible for 34 feature films, none of which were funded by a major studio.

"The big thing is to make (low-budget films) like a real movie," Mikels said. "It has to have a good plot, good story movement to keep interest from beginning to end, and a bang-up ending."

Mikels said that he tries to be "uniquely different." And with titles including "The Doll Squad," "Astro Zombies" "The Corpse Grinders" and its nearly completed sequel, "The Corpse Grinders 2," it's difficult to argue.

He also eschews sex and real violence for a sense of camp, meaning that it's both surreal and preposterous. "It's so futile you know it could not be real," he said. "(That's) what I'm after."

That doesn't mean that the formula always works. For example, in the early '60s, when he was presented with an opportunity to market Ed Wood's "Plan Nine From Outer Space" (considered by many to be the worst film ever made), Mikels passed.

"I just didn't think it was a movie. There was nothing I could do with it," he said.

And when the director/producer/co-writer/editor of such horror fare as "Blood Orgy of the She-Devils" says he couldn't make anything of it, that's saying a lot.

But there are many who can -- including Hatley, who is not only a fan of Wood but takes issue with those who put "Plan Nine" on their worst list.

"Try sitting through 'Mesa of Lost Women' sometime."

He also defends those films, if only because of who they inspired: movie makers John Landis, John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg, as well as prolific horror novelist Stephen King.

"There's nothing like a good 'bad' movie," Hatley said.

And with such films as "The Wasp Woman," "The Killer Shrews" "Fiend Without a Face" and "Teenagers From Outer Space," that may be an understatement.

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