REVIEW: THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS
REVIEW: MICHAEL A. HOEY [ 1966 ] 84'
REVIEW: STANDARD CLUB OF CALIFORNIA PRODUCTIONS INC.
CAST: MAMIE VAN DOREN, ANTHONY EISLEY,
CAST: BILLY GRAY, BOBBY VAN
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: ACID-SPEWING MAN-EATING WALKING TREES . . . YOU BE THE JUDGE

This review is part of the B-MOVIE BEACH PARTY MEGA ROUNDTABLE

"A nightmare comes alive. . . Terrifying acid-bleeding monsters multiply by the millions. . . Ready to cremate the human race!! Beware of the Night Crawlers. . . Their clutches will disentegrate you! All New in Terrifying Color!"

So tauts the poster art for the film at hand.

I walked into THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS knowing as little about the production as I imagine is possible. Murray Leinster, a prolific author of science fiction and horror stories, provided the initial inspiration for the project with his novel MONSTER FROM EARTH'S END [1959]. I've never read the book, though I intend to when given the opportunity, but the essentials of the plot seem to be an amalgamation of those from the seminal 1951 science fiction opus THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, H. P. Lovecraft's wonderfully crafted story AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS [1936], and John Wyndham's excellent disaster novel DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS [1951]. The basics of the story are that an expedition to the pole discovers ancient plant life and unwittingly brings it to Gow Island, where it takes root and begins offing bits of the populace. Michael Hoey, son of Dennis Hoey of Universal's Sherlock Holmes films of the 1940's and a fledgling in the film community himself, rather liked the story and used it to write a screenplay entitled THE NIGHT CRAWLERS - Hoey considered the title of the story to be too exploitative for the film, resulting in the change - and optioned the film rights to it from Leinster for roughly $4,000.

After an amount of script peddling and time, producer George Edwards contacted Hoey and offered up to him the opportunity not only to have his film made but to have Hoey direct it as well. He agreed and his payment for the project, script and all, amounted to roughly $10,000 - most of which ended up going to pay Leinster, the director's guild, and his agent. The real producer of the film - Jack Broder - and Hoey clashed from the get go when, during a rehearsal, Jack announced that the title for the film was being changed from THE NIGHT CRAWLERS to the entirely laughable THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS. Broder was producing another film using the same sets as NIGHT MONSTERS with which he was also taking considerable liberties - that film, written and directed by Arthur Pierce under the title THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, had been rechristened WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET by Broder in spite of the fact that the story was fairly straight science fiction and had nothing to do with women on the prehistoric planet. As such, it was obvious from the start that Broder was more interested in making a few bucks on the films he was producing than in them having any semblance of quality about them - this was certainly not an uncommon attitude among producers of the time and is still the attitude of many (MANY) of them today.

The director and Hoey would clash again over the film's titular beasties. Jon Hall - a former actor who was working the special effects production for the film - had been given the duty of designing the terrifying monsters on which the movie depended so much. Hoey's intentions were to make the creatures similar to the appearance of the flora already present on the island to keep them from being too obvious and keep up the suspension of disbelief with viewers of the film. Broder had other plans and decided that, with a title like THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS, the monsters needed to look the part. Hall turned in three ridiculous looking creations, only one of which was designed to move (via the aid of an actor inside of it). Hoey was understandably unhappy with this turn of events and, after initially refusing to use the props, eventually opted to shoot the creatures in very low light to keep them from looking as awful as there was potential for - Broder allegedly brightened a number of these shots so that the monsters are more visible.

Hoey wrapped up filming on the project with the film itself only totaling 78 minutes - Broder had the intention of selling the film to television, where the market for such things was quickly growing, and needed it to have a running time of 90 minutes. To make up for this he brought in the director of WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET to produce new scenes for the film. Jon Hall was also put in charge of shooting new monster footage for the film. The end result was the inclusion of several entirely unnecessary comic relief bits and a ridiculous conclusion that has stock footage of the Blue Angels dropping napalm on an, ehem, *army* of the tree monsters. The vast majority of the information espoused in the previous few paragraphs came from an interview with director Michael Hoey by the indispensable Tom Weaver and, since credit is most certainly due, that interview can be found reprinted at THE ASTOUNDING B-MONSTER - it's a good read and I recommend it in conjunction with this review.

Admittedly, these off-screen shenanagins are rather interesting and I always consider it to be a real shame when a director's vision - whatever it may be - is trampled upon by the producers of a project, but in the strange case of THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS one has to consider a couple of simple questions in regards to the history of the production. Did producer Jack Broder's post-shoot contributions to the film hurt the end product? More importantly, were the portions written and directed by Michael Hoey (i.e. the majority of the film) really any good? I'll come back to these two questions later in the review.

The film begins with opening credits in orange over a painting of the sun rising / setting over the Arctic. The theme that plays behind the credits is quite good - above the norm, even, for low budgeted 60's science fiction fare - and is provided by Gordan Zahler. I couldn't find much about Zahler aside from that he contributed scores for the awful THE HUMAN DUPLICATORS the previous year as well as for several POPEYE cartoons from 1960. He also had some part in the behind-the-scenes work on such 'classics' as THE PHANTOM PLANET [1961], PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE [1959], and the stateside release of the Toho production I BOMBED PEARL HARBOR [1960]. At any rate, his opening theme is quite well written but really can't save the film from immediately entering schlock territory at the moment the title card fades in - I find it difficult to believe that any audience at the time of this film's initial release could take the film seriously from this point on. It's a pity, really, as the title card fades in at the 7 second mark in the film - not a promising start.

We start the action proper with - as is the case with many of these films - narration. The narrator lets us know about how mysterious Antarctica is before teaching us about the first explorers of the pole and bringing us up to date with mention of the latest project - a scientific expedition named Operation Deep Freeze. It seems the purpose of the expedition was to hunt for specimens of animal and plant life and transport them back to the United States for study - as luck would have it the whole lot of them, specimens in tow, are headed back to the States via Gow Island. Stock shots of a cargo plane fade in to the first scene that can definitely be attributed to Jack Broder. In gruelingly real time we are treated to the pilot of the plane eating a cheese sandwich, waking up his co-pilot, joking around with the doofus of a cook, and making lewd remarks about the three women living on Gow Island. In the end, the doofus cook is sent back into the cargo hold of the plane to make sure nothing was dislodged during a rather suspicious bump. Mention is made here of the plant specimens being brought back from an area of hot springs in Antarctica and how they look like ". . . under-nourished cactus . . ." Apparently Broder wanted the audience to be well aware that the plants were going to be a problem early on, thus eliminating the chance for any real suspense to build around them as the film progresses.

At this point there comes a welcome fade and, through the glory of stock footage, we are introduced to beautiful Gow Island. After a chipper bit of music we are dragged into yet another of Broder's contributions to the finished film - the awful weather balloon sequence. Thrill as meteorologist Bob Spaulding gets disgruntled over an idiotic naval officer who can't seem to properly inflate weather balloons in real time. The idiotic naval officer runs off with one of the halfway inflated balloons for reasons unexplained, giving the scientist of the film - Dr. Arthur Beecham (as played by Walter Sande, a veteran of hundreds of projects from 1937 to 1971 but best known to me as Sgt. Mack Finlay in the original inimitable INVADERS FROM MARS [1953].) - a chance to exposit about a party from the night before. We learn that Spaulding's time on the island is up and that he's rather looking forward to leaving the stock footage and sound stage paradise of Gow Island well behind him. That's all well and good, I guess, but it really does nothing to advance the film - in reality the movie has been standing relatively still since the opening narration came to a conclusion some four minutes previously. From here we are catapulted towards yet more comic relief as Ens. Rutherford Chandler (Bobby Van) feeds his rat of a dog from a paper bag. This delightful spectacle is interrupted by the appearance of nurse Diane (Kaye Elhardt) and scientist Marie (Pamela Mason), who take advantage of Chandler's alcohol-induced forgetfulness and convince him that he had. . . relations? . . with the two of them the previous evening.

Charming. . . just charming.

Note the difference between the Broder ordered shot (left) and the Hoey directed shot (right). The set to the left is incredibly sparse, the lighting amateur, and no attempt has been made at making the set believable. The set to the right is more complexly filled with many various points of interest, the lighting three-dimensional, and the shadows from nonexistent trees that appear in the upper left of the frame help to create the illusion that the scene was filmed in the real world. Please note that I'm not saying either of these are spectacular, but it's obvious that Hoey has at least tried.

The previous 6 to 7 minutes of expository scenes pass with all the enjoyability of having one's teeth pulled but, finally, we're entered into the film as directed by Michael Hoey. It's relatively easy to spot the difference in shooting styles from Broder filmed sequence to Hoey filmed sequence, as Hoey was working with the excellent cinematographer Stanley Cortez - who had worked previously on Orson Welle's THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS [1949] and Charles Laughton's NIGHT OF THE HUNTER [1955]. Here the scene is literally drenched in stylish lighting that casts unnerving shadows on the walls and baths much of the scene in a deep blood red. It's really quite beautiful, particularly considering that all it's only a brief scene taking place in the radar tower on the island, where the blip from the cargo plane from the first scene has been picked up. The plane is headed in for refueling and the commanding officer of the base (the unfortunately named Lt. Charles Brown (Anthony Eisley) who is consistently referred to by his comrades as Charlie), knowing that bad weather is afoot, makes the necessary preparations to ensure that the plane is back in the air as quickly as possible. This leads into another uncomfortable Broder scene in which Nora Hall (Mamie Van Doren) is confronted with a rather uncomfortable marriage proposal by the tenacious Mr. Spaulding.

This segues, gratefully, into Michael Hoey territory once more, as Dr. Beecham heads to Lt. Brown's office for a chat. Brown is busy making more preparations for the ten men on the plane and, after ensuring that they'll all have a nice hot meal upon arrival, asks Beecham to fill him in on the nature of Operation Deep Freeze and the business with the recently discovered warm area of Antarctica. The good doctor expounds and it becomes clear that this was supposed to be our first real introduction to both the nature of Operation Deep Freeze and the prehistoric vegetation it was sent to investigate. The only sense of foreboding comes from Dr. Beecham, who portends future events by stating, ". . . and if you think that plane is going to get away from here without me having a look at those samples, you're crazy." Back on the cargo plane, Broder is fast at work again. In comparatively little time (and with comparatively little comic relief) for a Broder ordered scene, something happens (!!!). The doofus cook from before has been stricken mad by something and has an ugly burn on his face - before long he's opened the door to the plane and out both he and an unfortunate officer trying to save him are plummeting to their deaths. Back in Hoey land, the radar officer in the incredibly atmospheric radar room is worried by a loss of communications with the plane and promptly lets his superior officer know - this leads to an alert being ordered and the whole island springs into action in preparation for a potentially dangerous situation.

Stock footage and new stuff comes together once more in not-so-perfect harmony to depict the crash-landing of the cargo plane (which in shots of it headed towards the runway is clearly not the same plane we've been seeing for the rest of the film). Fire trucks rush to the scene to keep any unruly situation from developing and Brown and Chandler go aboard to make sure no one was hurt - the set of the interior of the downed plane is another triumph of atmosphere by Cortez, who baths the scene quite effectively in cold blue light and deep shadows. The only survivor, the only person left on the plane in fact, is the pilot. He is taken, in a state of shock, to the base infirmary. Spaulding, while talking with Brown and Beecham in the cafeteria, expresses his opinion that the pilot killed the rest of the crew and reiterates the fact that he's tired of being on the island. Brown smart talks him out of the scene and settles down to a bit more professional conversation with Beecham, where we discover that the cargo of the plane - apparently a number of penguins and several specimens of a weird plant - is being unloaded and placed in the warehouse. While supervising the unloading of the plane, Dr. Beecham discovers a strange acidic substance that seems to be eating through the hull of the plane - the Doctor rushes off to have it analyzed and, on his way out of the plane, discovers that one of the penguins that was on the invoice is missing. Back inside, Chandler and Brown discover 8 bullet holes and we're informed that the plane landed with its cargo door open - meaning someone was either trying to push something out of the plane or escape from something inside. This is, all told, an effective little series of events that suitably piques a viewer's interest while subtly building suspense - it's a pity it's all put to waste by the earlier exposition and the ridiculous in-plane sequences ordered up by Broder.

Speaking of Broder, it's time for more movie ad libs as THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS whisks us away to the United States proper where a group of horrendous 'talents' spew out terribly written lines of dialogue that do absolutely nothing to advance the film. The scene is blessedly short, at least, and through the glory of still more stock footage we are taken, once more, to the ever-changing Gow Island (more often than not it looks more like Arizona Island or Nevada Island). In the island warehouse the strange tree specimens - their appearance obscured by the bales they were being transported in - are getting a once over by Dr. Beecham. He's worried about their condition, it seems, and lets known his plan to plant the trees in the warm soil around the island's hot springs. Meanwhile, Brown is still understandably concerned with what happened aboard the plane before it landed and orders a guard duty be brought up to keep watch over the potential crime scene. Back in the infirmary Diane is getting the jitters - Nora gives her permission to head to the cafeteria and get a cup of coffee. Spaulding takes this opportunity to wander in and express his concerns about Nora staying on the island and about her being left alone with the man he thinks killed the crew of the plane. There's no escaping that this conversation is awkward - awkwardly written, awkwardly introduced, and awkwardly performed - and comes off as a sequel of sorts to the conversation between the two other at first glance. A somewhat closer examination reveals this scene to more than likely be the inspiration of the previous scene, as both Mamie Van Doren and Edward Faulkner perform considerably better under the guiding hand of Michael Hoey than they did in the scene's previous incarnation. Once more, however, any effect that the scene may have had is trumped by the fact that we've heard a good 85% of the dialogue contained in it before.

A quick transition into and out of a stock footage shot of the sun going down near an island lets us know that it's night time - Diane is sitting alone in the infirmary with the pilot of the plane. Thinking she's heard something outside, Diane gets up and opens the infirmary door to look out into the hallway - nothing. She quietly shuts the door and, as soon as she looks back into the room, realizes that something is amiss - the pilot is up and about and he wastes no time in dispensing with the nurse in a non-lethal fashion. Back in the hallway Brown and Nora are headed back from somewhere - the two duck into his office and almost start making out but manage to restrain themselves. Nora heads back to the infirmary, immediately discovers her friend lying unconscious on the floor, and calls for Lt. Brown. Nora's brief interlude with the Lieutenant has given the pilot just the time he needs to quietly escape the infirmary, it seems, as it isn't long before he's attacking the guard on duty at the plane. Now, such attacks in B-grade films aren't often realistically portrayed, but in this case the pilot walks clear into the guard's field of vision and, because the guard is looking a few degrees left of him, manages to catch the guard completely unawares. The military man gets the better of the psychotic pilot in the end, however, and lays him out with one well placed screen-punch to the chin.

This guard is a manly man and a manly man is he. . .

Back in the infirmary are Brown, another soldier, Diane (awake again), and Nora - one of the warehouse men rushes in to let Brown know that there was something in the warehouse that came at him. Brown rushes off, joined by the warehouse man, Chandler, and Dr. Beecham, to see what's going on - once the lights are turned on there's nothing to be found (Unless, that is, you count the ridiculous looking tree-monsters sitting amidst the wrecked crates and burlap sacs). Tree monsters aside, Brown and Chandler discover more of the weird acid from the plane on the floor of the warehouse - the Doctor confirms that they are the same. Adding to the mystery is the fact that all of the penguins that had been in the warehouse have mysteriously vanished. The pilot has, in the meantime, been returned quite safely to the infirmary and given a strong sedative to keep him asleep - Spaulding wastes no time in making a jackass of himself by rushing into the room, declaring the man dangerous, and trying to start a fist fight with him as he lies asleep on the bed. Bravo! What starts instead is a beautifully one sided battle royale between Lt. Brown and the consistently annoying Spaulding in which the latter has himself and his festive sweater plastered all over the hallway. Brown gives the infinitely amusing order to keep Spaulding out of the infirmary and that he be shot (!!!) if he attempts another entry. This is exactly the kind of ridiculously absurd order that Nora has been waiting for and she rushes out of the infirmary and into the arms of her beloved Charlie Brown.

Outside of the compound, Chandler's rat of a dog is barking it's itty bitty head off. Chandler demands that the dog let him know what's the matter and the dog promptly responds by running off into the forest that we didn't know existed until this scene. His doofy military officer owner rushes out into the woods to catch him and, after several false starts, finally decides to pick the dog up and carry it out of harm's way. In Dr, Beecham's laboratory a full analysis is underway on the substance found in the plane and warehouse. Here it is confirmed that it is both organic in nature and highly acidic. Diane makes her way out of the infirmary and into the arms of the supposedly charismatic Chandler, who's cropped up outside the building again. After a kiss the two settle down for talking and cigarettes and, unexpectedly, Diane bumps into some of the acid - it's somehow made its way onto the building itself - and burns her shoulder. Back at the plane the same manly guard as from the earlier scene with the escaped pilot is caught of guard by something so horrible, so terrifying, that the camera can't possibly show it. In hindsight I'm relatively surprised that Broder didn't order Jon Hall to film a few extra shots to beef up the night monsters angle of the title. This attack occurs at pretty much exactly the halfway point of the film (minute 43 of 84) and is relatively well done given the obvious constraints of both time and budget - it concludes with a crash cut to a stock shot of a wave crashing on the island's shore.

The next morning the base is up and at 'em and hunting for the missing guard - in the meantime Dr. Beecham and the head officers are at the island hot springs planting the Antarctic trees. Michael Hoey sets up this scene quite well as the poorly constructed trees are often hidden (at least partially) by the cast and are, honestly, put up in such a way that they don't look terribly menacing at all even though we're well aware by this point (thanks in large part to the gratuitous scenes added to the beginning of the film) that they are the menace that everyone is wondering about. The Doctor's co-doctor, Marie, wanders off into the surrounding forest after discussing the nature of the trees - "They're living fossils. . ." - with Brown and happens upon the disfigured body of an unknown person. An autopsy shows that whoever he is, he was butchered beyond recognition by the same acidic substance that was discovered in the plane, the warehouse, and on the infirmary building. To make matters more interesting, the clothing the body was wearing is the kind worn in very cold weather - the Doctor postulates that he must be one of the missing scientists from the plane and that he must have fallen out of the open cargo door while the plane was over the island. Back in the infirmary proper a military doctor is attempting to bring the pilot of the plane out of his state of shock when he notices his heartbeat - "That's the heartbeat of a man in mortal terror."

Brown puts two men on duty in the radar room for the night (what he expects them to be able to see with their radars is quite beyond me) and the engineers rig up lights all around the compound to keep any one who wanders out at night a bit safer. Nora heads outside and is met up with by Spaulding - it seems he's come to his senses a bit after the pelting he got from Brown and wants to talk to the Lieutenant about an idea he has to protect the base and its occupants. His plan is simple - there isn't much that's alive that can't be burned, so he's mixed up twelve Molotov cocktails. Brown isn't interested and storms off infuriated with both Spaulding and Nora but still manages to sarcastically demand a weather report from the former. After everyone has conveniently headed either inside or off screen Marie exits the compound and starts hunting for Chandler's dog - who, himself, has discovered a very important plot point: furry man-eating walking tree droppings (actually little furry man-eating walking treelets, but I prefer the term 'droppings' due to how they are spread about)! Brown and the chief engineer head out to check out the lights that have been put up just in time to hear Marie screaming as she's dragged off by one of the trees. To Hoey's credit, this scene is fairly well done (even if the idea of someone wandering off alone in spite of knowing that there's something dangerous about is hideously cliched) - it's filmed with incredibly little light present and, in this case, the less you see the better. Brown and his crew head out into the woods and, embarrassingly, make use of Spaulding and his Molotov cocktails right away - they don't find anything but a scrap of clothing left over from Marie. Back at the radar room something fishy has shown up that's making the island's resident birds fly about when they're not supposed to - Brown orders the two men to keep an eye on whatever it is and heads off to think in the cafeteria.

Be it love or shear stupidity, Chandler too has decided to go wandering about the forest by himself in search of his dog and, in no time at all, he's fallen into the clutches of the evil plant beasty as well. Where the idea of someone wandering about alone in the woods was ridiculous enough the first go around, here it's shear absurdity - the filming of the attack itself is quite atmospheric however. You never see more than a shadowy outline of the monster with eerie blue light radiating from the trees behind it - so the scene itself is still effective (idiotic but effective). It does present us with one of the film's biggest issues however - that being that the monsters that are doing all of the killing aren't terribly dangerous unless you walk directly into them. In spite of this a number of people throughout the course of the film do just that. It doesn't take long for Brown, the engineer, and the Doctor to show up at the scene - there's nothing to be seen but Chandler's rifle and flashlight. Brown and the engineer head off but the doctor notices something strange on the forest floor and takes a few moments to pick it up to take back to the lab for study. Without warning the lights begin flickering all over the compound, including those so recently strung up to protect those living there - it seems something has made a mess of the generator room (A borrowing from THE THING. . . whether this was Hoey's invention or Leinster's is unknown to me, but it's conceptual origin is pretty obvious either way).

The next morning Brown, looking rather drunk (though I think the idea is that he's distraught about the loss of his bestest buddy the night before), appoints a new executive officer and orders up something he calls "flare beacons", a few bonfires, and a lot more Molotov cocktails before heading off to the mess hall. He finds both the Doctor and Spaulding there - the former announces that someone should head out to the bird nests that were disturbed the night before and Spaulding, making up a bit more for what a jerk he's been up until now, happily accepts the challenge. After Spaulding is out of the picture the Doctor produces a jar with the furry man-eating walking tree dropping he found the night before crawling around inside of it - he postulates that, while it may not have anything to do with the deaths on the island or in the plane, "this may be a new problem. . ." Spaulding and a random officer manage to reach the entirely unconvincing set that's doubling for the part of the island covered with birds (it's remarkably crap-free for a seagull nesting site) only to discover - gasp! - a few dead birds. Back in soldier land, lots of strapping young lads fill bottles with gasoline and toss around big oil cans as Brown and the engineer watch on. Nora drives up - or, more aptly, pretends to park a jeep in front of an obviously faked backdrop - with coffee in tow and Brown can't be happier to see her. He proposes to her. . . sort of. . . I guess. . . which leads into a ridiculous conversation about love and the future that still manages to be relatively painless if only because of its relative brevity. Nora confesses her love for Brown, who responds adoringly with, "Gimme some time, baby," and the scene fades out.

Without much a do it's night again. Soldiers wander around outside the compound amidst the "flare beacons" while the Doctor, Spaulding, a radar officer, and Brown chat about important stuff. Considering the number of "paths of destruction" leading to and from the bird nesting site, Spaulding is convinced that there are a number of the unknown monsters - possibly as many as a dozen. Brown doesn't like the sound of that at all, but before anyone can come up with anything useful to do screaming erupts from the mess hall. We cut to it just in time to see a random officer stomping something unseen on the floor and then idiotically picking it up - it hurts him, expectedly, and he staggers to the ground in pain. It looks like the furry man-eating walking tree droppings are invading, as there are two of them in the mess. Spaulding and the radar officer catch the one that wasn't squished by the random officer - who's hand is smoking from the attack (more correctly, smoke is billowing out of his shirt to make it look like his hand is smoking) - with a couple of amazingly clean plates that are lying about. Brown orders the Doctor to come up with a way to keep the pesky things out of the compound - he'll try - and Nora announces that she'll need some stuff from he infirmary before she can move the random officer. Spaulding rushes off to get the stuff she needs only to discover that the pilot of the plane is not where he's supposed to be - in fact, Spaulding is so engrossed by the sight of the empty bed that he fails to notice the man in the light blue hospital garb standing a couple of feet to his right. The pilot attacks Spaulding, then he attacks Brown, the Brown lays him out with yet another well placed screen-punch to the chin - the pilot appears to have been born with an off switch as a birth mark.

The scene fades out and Broder strikes again with still more footage of idiotic actors on the mainland making observations that serve absolutely no purpose in the film. It is here that Broder deemed it necessary to inform the audience that the trees from Antarctica are, without any reservations, the cause of the woes of Gow Island - something that most if not all of the audience should have been well aware of from the start of things. Funnily enough, however, is the fact that none of the rest of the cast of the film has come to such a conclusion - this revelation is not made to the rest of the cast until the final scene of Hoey's film. Back on Gow Island, Brown and the Doctor are talking about the furry man-eating walking tree droppings (named crawlers) and how to stop them and repeating essentially the same information that was gleaned from the previous Broder scene. The Doctor believes that a fuel line could keep the creatures at bay - apparently gasoline kills the little ones outright. Brown is worried about a landing party that's supposed to be coming so a random officer is sent to the beach to tell Spaulding to rig up a warning for them - what kind of a warning, how it works, and what purpose its supposed to serve is not made clear. Meanwhile yet another random officer is running about the woods by himself and, yet again, he's attacked. This time it's a bit more graphic, however, as the poor bastard's left arm is torn quite cleanly off by one of the killer trees. Spaulding and a few others head out after the screams and we learn that, apparently, the man was out by himself because he was cutting up shark steaks. Yeah. Right. Uh huh. Whatever. Just moments earlier this guy was loafing around in the woods for absolutely no reason, whistling to himself and relaxed, and now I'm supposed to believe he was cutting up a shark to eat? ? ?

Even Broder can't be deemed responsible for that crap. As a final injustice, Brown announces that the man's death was no one's fault (in reaction to Spaulding feeling terrible about it). I can't do anything but disagree. At this point in the film three people have wandered off by themselves and gotten killed. All three of their reasons are absolute drivel and all three should have known better - particularly Marie. I dare say that, of all the reasons this film conjures for forcing people to wander about and get killed by surprisingly stationary walking trees, this one is, by far, the worst.

Back at the compound everyone has been moved to the warehouse (just in case there are more furry man-eating walking tree droppings crawling about) - Brown, the Doctor, Spaulding, and Nora sit around talking about the unknown and the navy and whether or not science can stop the monsters that no one, at this point, has seen. The Doctor has an idea, though - he wants all of them to head out to see the nesting site and the hot springs the next morning. When asked what he expects to find he simply says, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Yeah, we would, Doc. Broder already ruined it for us.

But alas, the Doctor's plan will have to wait, as the pilot of the plane has crashed out a window of the warehouse and escaped into the forest. Why this man, who's been nothing but 50% hindrance and 50% punching bag, is important enough to warrant a full fledged search-of-the-jungle-at-night is beyond me, but he does. So there. It's not such a full-fledged search after all, though, as only the Doctor and Brown are in pursuit - the crazy pilot leads both of them right into the nesting site. Back at the warehouse Spaulding has put some of his Molotov cocktails into a jeep and is on his way, along with Nora, to catch up with the Doctor and Brown, even though there's no way he could know where, exactly, on the island they have gotten to. Oh well. In the meanwhile, the Doctor and Brown have made it to the nesting site - there they find exactly what the Doctor expected. You guessed it - a killer walking omnivorous acid-spewing tree monster! The doctor goes up to fiddle with it, then comes back - good thing too, as moments later the crazy pilot guy goes running straight for it and, expectedly, dies. Brown shoots at the tree to no avail and then, suddenly, Spaulding! He and Nora are standing on the crappy set doubling as a cliff face - a single Molotov cocktail is enough to engulf the beastie in flames (and, quite hysterically, make it lose its fanciful leaf hat). The Doctor lets everyone know what he suspects about the trees - that they're omnivorous and can walk and all that - before the other three appear and are blasted out of existence by Molotov cocktails and gunfire. One can only imagine the glee with which Michael Hoey must have ordered the fiery destruction of these few props.

This is where I suspect Michael Hoey's film ended. From here on out it's all Broder and his cronies to blame. We're whisked back to the United States mainland where it is announced that Gow Island has reported all the monsters are moving inland towards the central hub of operations for the island. It's a pickle, to be sure, but nothing that endless stock footage of the Blue Angels mismatched with jets on training exercises and test footage of napalm attacks can't handle. The new footage of the beasties filmed by Jon Hall is absolutely horrendous - you, too, will thrill as an army of decorated toilet paper rolls wander around what looks to be a desert before being obliterated by stock footage. None of the main cast of the film is present here, save for the Doctor, and all other cast members are simulated by cutting back to reaction shots from earlier in the film. The Blue Angels triumph and the words THE END fade in over stock footage of them flying through the sky trailing red, white, and blue streamers behind them.

Wow.

You will, no doubt, remember the two important questions about the film that I raised prior to reviewing it proper. Firstly, do the scenes ordered up by Jack Broder and completed by Arther Pierce and Jon Hall detract from the end product as a whole? Having viewed the film not once but three times for the sake of this review I can say that the answer to that can only be a resounding yes. I can only think of the painful opening exposition present in FROM HELL IT CAME [1957] - you know, the scene after the execution of Kimo that has the Doctor and the other Doctor talking about drums, atom bombs, medicine in the United States, women, and, most importantly, booze - when these additional dialogue scenes come about. These scenes are incredibly poorly conceived from start to finish and tend to be more or less disconnected from the rest of the proceedings - in several instances they also repeat information provided by Hoey directed scenes that come later (the most embarassing example of this is when all the officers back in the mainland US are talking about the killer trees even though no one on the island, save for the dead, has discovered that they are the problem). The cast, which is generally proficient (even Mamie Van Doren) throughout the rest of the film, reverts to bits of wood under the woeful guidance of Pierce and Broder. The additional special effects photography done by Jon Hall is some of the worst to ever grace a motion picture screen - as is attested to by the last image of this review - and is really quite inexcusable. The ending of the film, again supervised by Broder, is a five minute long continuity gaff ripe with mismatched stock footage and cannibalized reaction shots from earlier scenes.

And what of director Michael Hoey - was the material he completed made of any better stuff than Broder's? The answer to that is a yes, but with reservations. While the Hoey provided scenes are certainly of higher quality than those ordained by the producer, the fact that Hoey was a novice film-maker at best at the time definitely shines through. Many a dialogue scene is underwritten and poorly handled - many of these scenes, while better performed, prove to be only mildly less aggravating than similar sequences that were added in post-production. Indeed, it is Hoey who is singularly responsible for the comic-relief character Chandler as well as the absurdity of people walking out into the woods - alone - time and time again. It's pretty obvious from the end result that, regardless of any talent Hoey might have had, time and budgetary constraints definitely took a toll on the entire production.

That's not to say that there is no good at all to be found within the confines of THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS. First off and most readily noticeable is the work of Stanley Cortez - his keen use of shadows and varying hues of red and blue throughout the film really help to keep much of the production from looking as frugal as it was. His work shines, in particular, during the scenes in which the downed cargo plane is investigated and during the final shot of the thankfully fatal attack on Ens. Rutherford Chandler. Also of note is just how well handled, in retrospect, the majority of the monster sequences of the film are - the disappointingly designed tree-stump monsters designed by Jon Hall are used to surprisingly good effect throughout the body of the film (the ending withstanding as a notably embarassing exception), even if they never come across as being very scary. The utter ridiculousness of the design of the creatures is masked well through (very) low lighting and the fact that they only appear in all their glory in the final act. Unfortunately there's just not enough good to go around and the film never manages to creep its way out of the realm of C and D grade entertainment.

As mentioned earlier, this film was one of two produced simultaneously by Jack Broder - having recently seen the other as roasted by the original cast and crew of MST3K I can say without a doubt that THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS is the better of the pair. Sadly, that's all the praise I can really heap upon it. All told it's a boring little film with very few redeeming qualities and I doubt I'll ever be pulling it out of the library to watch again - even die-hard Mamie Van Doren fans would do well to steer clear. Rumors persist that Image Entertainment may be preparing to release the title to DVD at some point in the future - given their recent DVD release of THE WOMANEATER [1958] those rumors may not be too far off. The killer-tree subgenre of horror and science fiction films is woefully replete of anything but a handful of offerings (FROM HELL IT CAME [1957], THE WOMANEATER [1958], and a few other more recent slipshod attempts) and this film is a good example of why - until a company does release it to DVD it will continue to exist in relative obscurity. . . right where it belongs.