biorngm Review - Superman and the Mole-Men 10 A condensed summary of events would include the actual creature sightings to be real, the reaction of the townsfolk to the creatures by hunting them, the revenge of the creatures when one of them is shot and hospitalized, the release of the wounded creature by Superman to the others and the walk back to the well for their return. The conclusion shows Superman, Lois Lane, Bill Corrigan and John Craig watching the derrick burn, set by the creatures, destroying access to the well simultaneously. The subtle differences between the this movie and the two-part episodes on television are just that, subtle, but a couple worth mentioning. The longer scenes missing from the television were those of the creatures first appearance walking around before and including looking at Pop, their watching Clark and Corrigan drive away heading to town, the escaping path from the dam encountering the individual sipping water from his bucket fleeing at the sight of the creature, the barbed wire fence met running from the dogs, Superman telling Lois not to call the story in to avoid panic away from the area and the Craig asking the Sheriff not to call the state police for help. This featured fifty-eight minute movie was released on November 23, 1951 and was met with rave reviews There was the Superman series on the radio and Superman comics, but this is the first time Superman was offered in the movie show houses across the country. The movie was made in 1951 and released originally only as a last resort "to recoup the production budget if the networks passed on the project" of bringing Superman to television. The actual movie was released to television in August 1953 and shown as two-part episodes #25 and #26 at the end of season one of the television series. There were some scenes appearing in this movie edited from the television episodes, none of which detracted from the episodes shown, it is fun to note the minor differences watching both the movie and the TV episodes. This movie is rated high not because it is the only one of its kind but for 1951 science fiction drama it was a good production with a number of experienced actors.

Smoreni Zmaj First Superman movie, and probably the first superhero movie at all, is complete crap. There are just two positive sides to it. Acting is relatively good and there is bunch of experienced faces for B production movie. Bunch of them you can see in A production movies which is rare. Second good thing is message that it sends against racism, guns and oil exploitation. Other than that this movie is total failure. Fact that it's made almost 70 years ago isn't valid excuse for any of its flaws. Screenplay is one of the very worst I have ever seen. Not only full of holes but extremely stupid as well. Costumes, effects and complete production are terrible. Light years below average even for B production of 50's. This is probably the lowest budgeted thing I ever saw. If you think I am exaggerating, feel free to watch Batman from 1943. Eight years older and still much better in every possible way. I do not recommend this even to hard core DC fans. Complete waste of time.

guisreis This was probably the first feature-length superhero film ever made. It has some serious flaws, that are not related to the unsophisticated visual effects of that time (which are not a problem; indeed, they are interesting to see).First of all, it had not a great story. Do not expect an interesting opponent like Lex Luthor or the Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone.Besides that, it is amazing how little was the time spent to show Superman. We see Clark Kent all the time, but the caped superhero, perhaps because of technical difficulties to show him flying, does not appear very much.The third serious flaw is just related to Clark Kent. George Reeves portrays him so proud that one cannot be convinced that the journalist was a disguise to avoid people knowing he was Superman.The film is historically significant, but it is certainly not good. When we see George Reeves as the man of steel, the importance of Christopher Reeve for the superhero becomes really flagrant.

Neil Welch I just got the UK 4-disc special edition of Superman 1 for about $5. The additional stuff includes the 1951 feature Superman and the Mole-Men. So I slapped it into the DVD player last night, and here are my findings.Some initial disappointment - I hadn't checked, and I think I had it mentally tagged as one of the Kirk Alyn serials. I'm not a huge fan of George Reeves as Superman, and I hadn't seen anything other than the odd clip of Kirk Alyn - but hey ho, never mind.This black and white production runs for less than an hour. It has the feel of a couple of episodes of one of Reeves' early TV series, a two-parter, put together for cinema release, although IMDb says it was filmed as a cinema release in advance of the first TV series. In any event, it's an odd choice for reasons I'll get to later. I'm of an age where I recall TV and movie productions which are limited to one or two locations and sets, so there were no major surprises here. Even so, for a low budget movie, this one is REALLY low budget.The story concerns the small town of Silsby - population 1,430 - which, puzzlingly, is also home to the world's deepest oil well (6 miles). The story opens with the well's foreman hurriedly taking steps to close the well down. This conflicts with the arrival of Metropolis reporters Kent and Lane to report on the well, at the behest of the oil company. As Clark is sniffing out the fact that the drill has emerged into a radioactive cavern 6 miles down, a couple of odd little guys (small in stature, big in head, black in jumpsuit, and bushy in eyebrow) emerge from the capped-off drillshaft, and start mooching round town with puzzled expressions on their faces.A deep breath now, here is the remaining plot of the picture. The little guys scare some kids, so Jeff Corey (playing the town's rampant xenophobe) incites some pals to kill these "creatures". Superman steps in (moderately ineffectually) and catches one of the little guys who has been shot and takes him to the local hospital. Corey's pals burn down the shack the other little fellow has hidden in and assume he is killed, but he escapes and legs it down the shaft. Corey incites a lynch mob (despite the sheriff arresting him) to hang the hospitalised Mole-Man. Superman stops them entering the hospital and takes the injured chappie to the shaft to return him to his fellows. A total of 4 Mole-Men emerge with a weapon of some sort which they fire at Jeff Corey (I call this an Aargh! gun because its sole effect seems to be to make Corey go "Aargh!") and Superman saves him. He immediately changes his ways because of amazement at Superman saving him after the way he has behaved, the Mole-men go back down the shaft. The end.Despite the film only being an hour long, there is an inordinate amount of creeping around, bewareing and pursuing - I have left out all the "Mole-Man 1 creeps from A to B, looking out to make sure no-one is following him" stuff. The Mole-Men are never engaged in any way whatsoever - they have no dialogue - they just turn up, get persecuted, and go back. They do look a little creepy, but they are hardly the bug-eyed monsters that the town's reaction implies.Reeves is quite a good Clark Kent - very much a hard-nosed reporter, much more so than Phyllis Coates' rather indifferent Lois Lane. But he is a terrible, terrible Superman. Not only does he not look the part (at least his hair is dyed black in this, which is an improvement from the rather light hair he sported in some of the TV episodes), the way he plays it is all wrong in my book. I'm sure he was told to "strike the pose" (which Superman does constantly), but someone should have told him that it should be fists on hips, not fists on ribs. And he plays Superman as a rather strict and touchy schoolteacher - he doesn't actually wag his finger in remonstration, but he may as well have done.And Superman does a huge amount of walking around (I say a huge amount - he isn't actually in it all that much), and a bit of running. He takes off and lands a couple of times, but isn't seen in flight at any point. Oh, some bullets bounce off him, and he uses telescopic vision as Clark, but with no accompanying visual effect. In fact, visual effects are conspicuous by their absence, and the few which are present aren't very good.I've tried to consider this effort by reference to the standards of the time: but even by those standards I think it's a pretty threadbare effort. Thankfully, production standards on the TV series were higher, and at least they took the trouble to come up with stories which had a bit more to them.Something of a disappointment - I shan't be watching it again.