George Worthing Yates Movies
George Worthing Yates enjoyed a career of a little over two decades in Hollywood as a screenwriter. He was the nephew of Herbert J. Yates, the president of Consolidated Film Laboratories and later the head of Republic Pictures, but Yates spent only a small part of his career at Republic. His actual screen credits seem to go back as far as the late 1920s, but the main body of his career starts nearer to the end of the 1930s with the Republic serial The Lone Ranger (1938), and over the next few years he worked in the western and action/adventure genres, also delving into satire of the latter with The Spanish Main (1945) at RKO. One of Yates's most interesting credits during this period was the story for Anthony Mann's The Tall Target (1951), an MGM thriller based on an actual historical incident from 1861 involving President-elect Lincoln. In 1953, Yates wrote the screenplay for Them! (1954), which marked his introduction to the science fiction genre. Over most of the next decade, he would be kept busy by producers at studios ranging from Columbia Pictures to Allied Artists and American International Pictures, writing science fiction thrillers such as Conquest of Space and Space Master X-7. Many of his best scripts incorporated elements of manhunt stories and other thriller subgenres. He worked on two of Ray Harryhausen's early features, It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955) and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), and also put in considerable time working for director Bert I. Gordon on stories built around size transformation, including The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) and its sequel, War of the Colossal Beast (1958), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), and Earth vs. the Spider (1958), although he finished out his work with Gordon on the latter's psychological thriller Tormented (1960). Yates' last screen credit was the story for King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). Although there was some considerable variation in the quality of Yates's scripts and stories -- Them! was a subgenre-defining work, whereas The Flame Barrier had a great idea at its core, bogged down by considerable padding -- many of his stories are fondly remembered by fans of science fiction. This work outside of the genre, apart from The Tall Target, is less distinctive. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
In this low-budget, campy horror film, a murderous pianist pays for his crime when body parts from the lover he pushed from a lighthouse come back to haunt him just before he is to marry a prominent socialite. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1958
This is one of the more off-beat entries into the Frankenstein sub-genre, in that it features the original Creature, Boris Karloff (who really hams it up) playing the disfigured grandson of the famed mad baron in a style that combines gothic horror with the awe and fear created by the newly dawned atomic age. The story begins in the title year and finds Victor the III living in the ancestral castle and strapped for the cash he needs to resurrect his grandfather's experiments. He needs a fortune because this time he wants to use atomic power to bring the monster to life. To scare up the needed cash, he lets a television crew come to his famous digs to shoot a show. He ends up getting a lot more than money from the cast and crew and eventually he succeeds in creating a brand-new Creature. Unfortunately, the monster proves to be as volatile as his predecessors, and tragedy for both master and creature ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Boris Karloff, Tom Duggan, (more)
- 1958
The X-117 satellite is launched to explore an area of deep space more than 200 miles above Earth, which is bounded by what is called "the flame barrier," a deadly zone of heat and radiation that can destroy any object that comes in contact with it. The satellite reaches orbit, but nine days after launch the X-117 suddenly disappears, and is presumed to have been destroyed. Six months later, in a remote part of Mexico, Carol Dahlmann (Kathleen Crowley) arrives to search for her husband, a scientist who believed the X-117 had survived and crashed in the jungle, and who led an expedition in search for the satellite -- he has been missing ever since. She hires two brothers, Dave (Arthur Franz) and Matt Hollister (Robert Brown), to accompany her into one of the most remote parts of the jungle on her search. They find all kinds of ominous signs on their journey, including animals that have died off without explanation, Indians who are in mortal fear of a "fire god," and dying men who turn up with horrible burns on their bodies. And when they finally reach Dahlmann's camp and locate the satellite, they find with it an impending threat to the safety of the entire world. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1958
A man driving along a lonely back road at night is suddenly startled by what he sees, and is promptly killed by something that crashes through his windshield. The next day, in the nearby town of River Falls, teenagers Carol Flynn (June Kenney) and Mike Simpson (Gene Persson) decide to go looking for her father, who didn't get home last night. They find his wrecked truck and enter a nearby cave to begin searching for him. There they find his blood-covered hat and other signs of human remains and, as they go deeper inside, suddenly get trapped in a huge web -- then they spot its maker, a spider the size of a small house. They manage to escape and alert the county sheriff (Gene Roth), who doesn't take them seriously but does heed the warning of Mr. Kingman (Ed Kemmer), the science teacher at the local high school, to bring a pest-control crew along with his deputies, and a tanker loaded with DDT. They encounter the creature, and, after losing one of their men, dispatch it with the insecticide. Kingman persuades the sheriff to bring the carcass into town so that he can arrange to have it studied, leaving it in storage at the high school recreation room, for lack of anywhere bigger to keep it. As it turns out, the creature isn't dead, just stunned. As the local rock & roll band rehearses, the giant spider comes to bloodthirsty consciousness, breaking out of the building and ravaging the town. Bullets won't hurt it -- as Kingman says, you could punch holes in it all day without hitting a vital spot -- and the town is soon cut off when the telephone lines are knocked down. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ed Kemmer, Gene Persson, (more)
Attack of the Puppet People is one of the few "mad scientist" opuses of the 1950s to be motivated by loneliness rather than megalomania. John Hoyt plays Franz, a seedy European doll-maker who harbors a crush on his secretary Sally (June Kenney). When Sally makes plans to marry Franz' top employee Bob (John Agar), strange things begin to happen. Before long, both Bob and Sally have been shrunken to doll-size by Franz, who keeps a retinue of living "puppet people" to avoid being left alone. Eventually, the little ones rebel against their addlepated but basically harmless keeper, though there's never any "attack" per se. Most of the acting is amateurish, with the exception of the always reliable John Hoyt; the special effects are somewhat better, but still nothing to write home about. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Agar
- 1958
War of the Colossal Beast picks up a year after the end of The Amazing Colossal Man -- Joyce Manning (Sally Fraser), sister to the first film's 70-foot-tall Colossal Man, Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan), believes that her brother is still alive, despite his fall off of Boulder Dam at the denouement of the first movie.Her hope is based on reports out of Mexico about a "very big man" attacking truckers and other passersby in a remote part of the country. As it turns out, Manning (played here by Dean Parkin, since Langan turned down the request to star in a sequel) is alive and hiding somewhere in the mountains, bigger than ever and suffering from serious brain damage, with a hideously deformed face that is covered in scar tissue and missing an eye. Every effort at communicating with the giant fails, and as things always transpire in movies of this sort (at least since the silent version of The Lost World), he breaks out of the place where he is being held and goes on a rampage. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sally Fraser, Dean Parkin, (more)
- 1958
This confusingly-titled science-fiction thriller is both an artifact of its time and a surprisingly forward-looking film, in terms of plot. On the one hand, its plot makes it a kind of 1950's B-movie antecedent to The Andromeda Strain -- on the other, it owes a lot to the popular police procedural films and television shows of the decade or so leading up to its production. The title refers to an advanced US satellite sent into orbit, in part to gather and return samples of material from space. The latter includes a microscopic organism believed to be the same existing on the planet Mars which, so one scientist, Dr. Charles Pommer (Paul Frees), believes, is responsible for that world's red coloration. Pommer, who is permitted to take the sample to his home laboratory, is brilliant and single-minded in his work; but his intellect and ambition, coupled with his unstable personality and chaotic personal life, leads to disaster. He discovers that the organism, which he christens "Blood Rust," can multiply incredibly fast in Earth's environment, and attach itself to (and ultimately consume any living host creature, including human beings. The alien organism proves his undoing, and he lives just long enough to warn project security chief John Hand (Bill Williams) of the danger -- but the warning comes too late to prevent Pommer's ex-wife (Lyn Thomas) from becoming an unwitting carrier of the organism. It's up to Hand and his assistant, Radigan (Robert Ellis), to find this woman -- whose identity they don't even know at first -- even as she tries (for purely personal reasons) to elude the authorities, not knowing of the danger she presents to herself and the world. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Williams, Lyn Thomas, (more)
Anyone who's seen the 1996 science-fiction lampoon Mars Attacks may have trouble watching Earth vs. the Flying Saucers with a straight face. Hugh Marlowe plays scientist Russell Marvin, who is on-hand when an alien spacecraft lands on earth. The saucermen at first insist that they've come in peace, but Marvin suspects otherwise. Sure enough, the visitors eventually declare their intention to take over the earth within the next 60 days, adding that the military's weapons are useless against them. The two-month window gives Marvin and his cohorts plenty of time to build-up superweapon, and thus stave off the seven-saucer invasion force. Special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen does a nice job laying waste to Washington DC in the film's memorable finale. The supporting cast of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers includes those two sci-fi flick stalwarts of the 1950s, Morris Ankrum and Thomas Browne Henry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hugh Marlowe, Joan Taylor, (more)
George Pal's now-quaint science fiction odyssey concerns a multi-national group on the first space flight to Mars. Pal pulls out all stops in the special effects department, creating "The Wheel" (a earth-orbiting circular space station), rocket launches into space, and a breathtaking near-collision with an asteroid. The film itself concerns the travails of the crew of the spaceship as they make their way to Mars. General Samuel T. Merritt (Walter Brooke) heads the team. Supporting him and along for the ride are his son, Captain Barney Merritt (Eric Fleming), Sergeant Mahony (Mickey Shaughnessy), Jackie Siegle (Phil Foster), and Imoto (Benson Fong). As the ship gets closer to their Martian quest, General Merritt cracks and tries to sabotage both the mission and the crew, babbling about the blasphemy of mankind trespassing upon God's domain. His son is forced to kill him and save the mission, whereupon the crew peacefully lands on the Martian surface and scouts out the terrain like a group of sightseers at Lourdes before returning to Earth. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, (more)
It Came From Beneath the Sea was the first of several fruitful collaborations between producer Charles H. Schneer and special-effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. "It" is a giant, six-tentacled octopus, which is galvanized into action by an H-bomb test. Worse still, the monster is highly radioactive, rendering useless the normal means of defense against it. Scientists Donald Curtis and Faith Domergue team with atomic-submarine commander Kenneth Tobey to halt the creature's progress before it begins to attack major coastal cities. Alas, the monster manages to reach San Francisco, wreaking havoc on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Ferry Building, and Market Street before Tobey figures out a way to destroy it. The stop-motion animation utilized by Harryhausen in It Came From Beneath Sea is convincingly frightening, but before long he'd top this achievement with such superb projects as Earth vs. Flying Saucers and Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, (more)
A little girl is found wandering in the desert, in a state of complete shock. When she finally revives, she can scream out only one word: "Them!" Any aficionado of 1950s horror films can readily tell you that "Them" are giant ants, a byproduct of the radiation attending the atomic bomb tests of the era. Extremely well organized, these deadly eight-to-twenty-foot mutations converge on the storm drains of Los Angeles in the finale. Forming a united front against the oncoming ant battalions are New Mexico police sergeant James Whitmore, FBI representative James Arness, and father-and-daughter entomologists Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon. Since the details of Them are fairly common knowledge today, the mystery-thriller structure of the film's first half tends to drag a bit. Things liven up considerably during the search-and-destroy final reels, as the audience is barraged with convincing special effects and miniature work-not to mention that eerie ant-induced sound effect, so often imitated by subsequent lesser films. Fess Parker appears in a starmaking cameo as a pilot driven to the booby hatch after witnessing the ants in action, while an uncredited Leonard Nimoy is seen pulling info out of IBM machine. Definitely the high point in the careers of director Gordon Douglas and scenarists Ted Sherdeman and George Worthing Yates, Them is also one of the handful of vintage science-fiction thrillers that holds up as well today as it did when first released. (Sidebar: Though filmed in black-and-white, Them is alleged to have been released with a Technicolor opening title, the word THEM! hurtling towards the audience in a vibrant red). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, (more)
- 1954
In this action war drama, set in the African desert during WW II, a civilian is hired to deliver tanks to the British soldiers at the front. Trouble ensues when he gets trapped at an oasis being used as a fuel dump by the Afrika Korps with a small band of men. Together, they keep the Germans at bay until help arrives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1954
Ricardo Montalban takes time out from mighty Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to star in the Sam Katzman quickie Saracen Blade. Montalban plays Pietro, a 13th-century intellectual who spends his evenings as a masked avenger. Pietro hopes to avenge the death of his father, and to this end will not rest until he has skewered the evil Count Siniscola (Michael Ansara) and the Count's son Enzio (Rick Jason). Somewhere in the middle of the film, Pietro finds himself in the Holy Land with the Crusades, as good an excuse as any to show off the physical charms of several Columbia starlets. Betta St. John co-stars as Pietro's beloved Iolanthe, while a blonde Carolyn Jones essays a rare unsympathetic role as Pietro's "wife-for-convenience" Elaine. The Saracen Blade was based on a novel by Frank Yerby. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ricardo Montalban, Rick Jason, (more)
- 1953
Paramount's Pine-Thomas production unit takes the plunge into the 3-D craze in Those Redheads from Seattle. The titular carrot-tops are played by Rhonda Fleming, Teresa Brewer and Cynthia and Kay Bell, as members of a singing-sister act. Arriving in the Yukon during the Gold Rush days in the company of their mother (Agnes Moorehead), the four heroines get work at the saloon owned by Johnny Kisco (Gene Barry). What plot there is concerns Kathy Edmond's (Fleming) search for her father's murderer, who may or may not be Kisco. Despite all the heady competition, the film is stolen by the diminutive Teresa Brewer, who sings practically everything except "Music Music Music." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rhonda Fleming, Gene Barry, (more)
- 1953
In late 1944, an American guerilla unit led by Capt. Matt Reardon (Edmond O'Brien) learns that a Japanese plane carrying Admiral Amara (Philip Ahn) has crashed in China, in warlord-held territory. Reardon and his men are placed under the command of Naval Intelligence officer Commander Bert Thompson (Barry Sullivan) and sent on a mission to ransom Amara -- who is not only the head of Japanese naval intelligence, but also one of the few ranking officers in the Japanese high command known to have questioned the wisdom of continuing the war -- treat his injuries, and bring him back into American hands. Apart from the instant dislike that Reardon takes to Thompson -- a staff officer with no jungle combat experience, who has spent most of the war working in diplomatic circles -- the mission is complicated by the large amount of emergency surgical gear, plus the doctor and his aides that Reardon has to get alive through the jungle, and this is made even worse by the fact that one of them is his surgical nurse, a woman (Jocelyn Brando). When Wu King (Leon Askin), the warlord with whom they're dealing, proves to be less than trustworthy, Reardon and Thompson have to come up with a way of getting past his larcenous nature and getting Amara out of China before the Japanese soldiers sent to rescue him arrive. In the end, the two officers discover that, though they may have gotten to this place by very different paths, they have the same goal -- and each is prepared to go as far as the other to see it through. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edmond O'Brien, Barry Sullivan, (more)
- 1952
Joan Crawford is appropriately cast as the title character in This Woman is Dangerous. Crawford plays master criminal Beth Austin, the lady friend of dangerous gangster Matt Jackson (David Brian). After being caught in the crossfire of a robbery engineered by Jackson, Beth recuperates in a hospital, hoping to keep her past a secret from the authorities. But the FBI wants Beth to lead them to Jackson, and to that end, her doctor Ben Halleck (Dennis Morgan) is strong-armed into inaugurating a romance with his gorgeous patient. Eventually, of course, Ben and Beth fall genuinely in love, thereby incurring the terrible wrath of the vengeful Jackson. And to think that Joan Crawford endures all this without a hair out of place on her lovely head! TV's future "Captain Midnight" Richard Webb co-stars as a diligent FBI agent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Crawford, Dennis Morgan, (more)
- 1951
- NR
The Tall Target is based on a true story: the attempted assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln, even before he was able to assume his duties in Washington. Dick Powell stars as New York detective John Kennedy, who learns of the assassination plot early on. When his superiors refuse to believe his wild tale, Kennedy quits the force and boards the Presidential train, hoping to prevent the killing on his own. The problem: who can he trust on board, and who can't be trusted? Ginny Beaufort (Paula Raymond), the sister of the would-be assassin, might be able to prevent the tragedy -- if she isn't in on the conspiracy, that is. The supporting cast includes Adolphe Menjou, Marshall Thompson, Will Geer, and, as a slave, a young Ruby Dee. The film's nail-biting climax is brilliantly handled by Anthony Mann, whose directorial expertise was becoming sharper with each successive film in the early 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, (more)
Paramount's immensely successful Pine-Thomas production unit once more struck box-office gold with The Last Outpost. Ronald Reagan stars as devil-may-care Confederate officer Vance Britton, who leads a band of guerillas on a series of sabotage raids. The Northern Army dispatches Vance's brother, Union officer Jeb Britton (Bruce Bennett), to put an end to Vance's activities. Both brothers are forced to work shoulder to shoulder when a Northern attempt to enlist the aid of the Apache tribe backfires, sparking an all-out Indian war. Rhonda Fleming, who seemed to spend her entire career in Technicolor adventure flicks, appears as the romantic bone of contention between the battling Brittons. Halfway down the cast list as Lieutenant Fenton is TV's future "Ward Cleaver," Hugh Beaumont. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ronald Reagan, Rhonda Fleming, (more)
- 1947
In the RKO swashbuckler Sinbad the Sailor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. nostalgically emulates his famous father. The first seven voyages of Sinbad have come and gone: now he is on an eighth mission, in search of the island where Alexander the Great allegedly hid his treasure. Participants in the proceedings are the incredibly gorgeous Maureen O'Hara as a feisty princess, Walter Slezak as a duplicitous green-skinned barber, George Tobias and Mike Mazurki as two of Sinbad's faithful seamen, and Anthony Quinn as the villain of villains, who meets a suitably fiery demise. If the plot seems well nigh impossible to follow at times, you can always wallow in the splendiferous Technicolor and the eye-popping stunt work of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (and, it must be admitted, his uncredited stunt double). Budgeted at nearly $3 million, Sinbad the Sailor was one of the few postwar RKO flicks to post a profit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Maureen O'Hara, (more)
- 1945
RKO Radio's first film in the three-color Technicolor process was the standard-issue swashbuckler The Spanish Main. Paul Henried is his usual stoic self as Laurent Van Horn, a Dutch sea captain shipwrecked on the coast of Cartagena, a Spanish-held island. Sentenced to be hanged, Van Horn and his crew escape from jail and take up piracy as revenge against Spain. Soon afterward, they capture a ship carrying Francisca (Maureen O'Hara), the fiance of Cartagena's corrupt governor Don Alvarado (Walter Slezak). Van Horn vengefully forces Francisca to marry him instead, which causes dissension at the Pirate colony of Tortuga. Naturally, Van Horn and Francisca eventually fall in love with each other, but the bad guys must be vanquished before a happy ending can be realized. Binnie Barnes steals the show as feisty female buccaneer Anne Bonney (who in real life looked less like Barnes and more like Walter Slezak!) The script is a cynical melange of pirate-movie cliches and the performances are generally routine, but The Spanish Main pleased the crowd in 1945, posting a profit of nearly $1.5 million and encouraging future Technicolor adventure films from RKO. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Henreid, Maureen O'Hara, (more)
- 1944
The Falcon in Mexico wastes no time getting started: within the first ten minutes, amateur sleuth Tom Lawrence (Tom Conway), aka The Falcon, gets mixed up with a damsel in distress, the murder of an art gallery owner, and a collection of valuable paintings attributed to a supposedly dead artist. Flying to Mexico, Lawrence gets in touch with Barbara (Martha MacVicar, later Vickers), the daughter of the allegedly deceased Humphrey Wade (Bryant Washburn). Before long, Lawrence has three more murders on his hands, not to mention an unknown assassin who's gunning for him. The film's most memorable performance is delivered by Nestor Paiva as a resourceful Mexican cabbie who's got a little more on the ball than is immediately apparent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Conway, Mona Maris, (more)
- 1944
This 91-minute Republic "special" stars Michael O'Shea as Matt Braddock, an aggressive Henry Kaiser-like shipbuilder operating in 1880s California Though his business innovations are brilliant, Braddock's pugnacious attitude loses him the support of the locals when he plans to build a big new shipyard in a small coastal community. Eventually he perseveres, bringing the story to a rousing conclusion. Along the way, however, there's a bit too much emphasis on the hot-and-cold romance between Braddock and the lovely Diana Kennedy (Anne Shirley). Tommy Bond, the former Butch in the "Our Gang" comedies, registers well in a sympathetic supporting role (Bond later noted that this was one of his favorite films). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael O'Shea, Anne Shirley, (more)
- 1941
Republic Pictures borrowed William Wright from Paramount but then reduced him to third billing below ace villains J. Edward Bromberg and Osa Massen in this busy espionage melodrama, in which a former Navy lieutenant is assigned to investigate a shipping magnate whose vessels seem to mysteriously end up in the hands of certain foreign powers. The alcoholic lieutenant, Chris Waring (Wright), at first refuses to use his playboy techniques to trap the magnate's wife, Valerie (Massen), but a chance meeting with the handsome lady changes his mind and the race is on. Watch for horror movie icon Dwight Frye as a radio operator. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1940
Hi-Yo Silver is a 69-minute abridgement of the 1938 Republic serial The Lone Ranger. Departing from the continuity established by the Lone Ranger radio program (which had been running since 1933), the film offers five leading man, any one of whom might be the legendary "masked rider of the plains". All five team up to combat the outlaw gang headed by the scurrilous Mr. Jeffries (Stanley Andrews), with the assistance of faithful Indian companion Tonto (Chief Thundercloud). As the quintet of heroes are killed off one by one, the identity of the Lone Ranger becomes more and more obvious. The five candidates are played by Lee Powell, Herman Brix (aka Bruce Bennett), Hal Taliaferro (aka Wally Wales), George Letz (aka George Montgomery) and Lane Chandler. The original Lone Ranger serial is no longer available for viewing thanks to a tangle of legalities and a paucity of watchable prints. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lee Powell
- 1939
The Mysterious Miss X would have the audience believe that the very American Michael Whalen and Chick Chandler are a pair of stranded British vaudevillians named Neville and Casey. Further straining the film's credibility is the notion of our heroes being mistaken for Scotland Yard detectives. Rising to the occasion, Neville and Casey attempt to solve a murder in a backwater Midwestern town. The clues all seem to point to heroine Julie (Mary Hart, aka Lynne Roberts), much to the dismay of Neville, who's developed a crush on the girl. When a second murder occurs, Julie is in the clear, and the "least obvious suspect" (whom the audience tagged in reel one) is captured. A few scattered laughs are provided by radio comedienne Mabel Todd as a well-meaning buttinsky. Mysterious Miss X was directed by former "Our Gang" helmsman Gus Meins. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Whalen, Chick Chandler, (more)
