Mad Monsters

THE VULTURE (1966)
PROTEUS (1995)

"Half man, half beastbird ... swooping on his human prey ... drinking blood ... mutilating flesh!" Diane Clare carried off by THE VULTURE.

THE VULTURE manages to pull in so many disparate elements, it is amazing it still fails to generate any interest: genres such as rural murder mystery, cutting-edge science fiction and family curses from beyond the grave are all mashed into banality. The titular character in this Anglo-Canadian travesty rivals the moth creature from THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR as the most ridiculous monster in British horror; glimpsed only as a pair of legs and talons, this is only fleetingly fleshed out in the climax with wings and the balding head of delusional Professor Koniglich (Akim Tamiroff). This man/bird beast appeared on screen three years after the publication of Stan Lee and Steve Dirko's The Amazing Spider-Man #2 (May 1963), which featured the first appearance of Spidey super villain Adrian Toomes aka a very similar-looking Vulture.

Set in Tolferro, Cornwall, the film begins with school teacher Ellen West (Annette Carell) taking a shortcut through a cemetery, who witnesses a bird creature fly out of the coffin of 17th century sorcerer Francis Real. Local legends state that Real cursed the Stroud family line for burying him alive and murdering his vulture, which was also contained in the casket together with a number of gold coins. While modern heir Brian Stroud (Broderick Crawford) dismisses the supernatural punishment, his niece Trudy (Diane Clare) and her American scientist husband Eric (Robert Hutton) are more open-minded. And with good reason: advanced transmutative technology has been used to teleport into the grave, molecules becoming mixed with the remains of the sorcerer's beloved pet.

Years before Mega Shark or Sharktopus, PROTEUS provided 

video rental stores with its own fish-based mutation.

In this war between science and superstition Koniglich is obviously the villain from the start, with his Germanic accent and black cape. Furthermore, the stilted drawing-room chatter, static performances and fixed camera would be more at home on stage. THE VULTURE is also strangely out of time, having more in common with 1940s Poverty Row terrors, and creature features of the 1950s. The final film of veteran writer/director Lawrence Huntington - though his THE OBLONG BOX treatment would surface in 1969 - Huntingdon's only other genre venture was in 1941 with TOWER OF TERROR, about a mad lighthouse keeper.

Basically THE THING on an oil rig, PROTEUS is a dreary monster movie helmed by special effects technician Bob Keen. The screenplay was written by film critic and author John Brosnan, who adapts his 1983 novel Slimer. We open in Hong Kong harbour, where Triads expel six Heroin smugglers. Alex (Craig Fairbrass) is actually working undercover, but when the group's yacht explodes, they seek refuge in what is seemingly an abandoned offshore drilling facility. The rig is actually a research complex which has combined human and shark DNA, resulting in a creature that can imitate and absorb its victims. The practical monster effects are laughably rubbery (when Proteus attacks in the finale, it is a kind of Jaws on legs), with the cast more akin to daytime TV than a horror movie (and certainly not looking like drug smugglers). Following on from THE VULTURE's cliches, Dr Shelley (Nigel Pegram) is a German-accented mad scientist, and Pinhead himself Doug Bradley appears late on as company boss Brinkstone, suffering a particularly ignominious end with a tentacle down the throat.