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By Robert Scucci
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One of my biggest gripes about modern film discussion is how older generations always say that the new stuff coming out is never as good as the alleged Golden Age they came up in. One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the falloff they’re talking about always seems to happen at the exact moment they stop digging deep. What’s even more amusing about this way of thinking is how conveniently everybody forgets that every single generation pumps out equal amounts of cinematic gold and crap, but we’re less inclined to remember lesser films like 1957’s The Unearthlywhich you can currently stream for free on Tubi.
Looking back at The Unearthly as a modern viewer, it’s not terrible. At least not as terrible as the complete absence of critical ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, coupled with an abysmal 11 percent Popcornmeter score across more than 250 reviews, would suggest. My statement still stands, though: this movie came out during the Golden Age of cinema and is all but universally considered a total clunker.
Personally, I find The Unearthly’s availability on streaming refreshing. It’s easy to look at the past through rose-colored glasses when we only preserve the bona fide classics. Thanks to the film’s accessibility, we can now explore a completely different flavor of low-budget sci-fi horror B-movies, and for that I’ll always continue to root for Tubi for being brave enough to stream this stuff for all of us to enjoy.
The Unearthly Isn’t Nearly As Terrible As Its Reputation Suggests
At its heart, The Unearthly is a sort of Frankenstein story about a mad scientist named Dr. Charles Conway (John Carradine), who spends all of his time focused on longevity research. With the help of his assistant, Dr. Sharon Gilchrist (Marilyn Bueferd), his dim-witted enforcer, Lobo (Tor Johnson), and his supplier, Dr. Loren Wright (Roy Gordon), Dr. Conway tests his wild theories about gland manipulation on people he believes are transients with no meaningful familial connections. But he’s so blinded by his dedication to unethical science that he’s not particularly good at covering his tracks.
It doesn’t help that Dr. Wright’s approach to abducting humans involves offering treatment for what actually ails them before referring them to Dr. Conway. Grace Thomas (Allison Hayes), for example, is seeking treatment for depression and melancholy, but Dr. Conway couldn’t care less about actually helping his patients. He just wants to play God with their bodies now that he’s made some forward progress with his most recent case, Harry Jedrow (Harry Fleer), who is technically still alive, but hardly what one would consider a conscious human being. To make matters worse, Jedrow’s sister is actively searching for her missing brother.
Of course, for this film to work, we need even more people to disrupt the dynamic, and we’re introduced to Danny Green (Arthur Batanides), who wants treatment for his anger management issues, and Natalie Andries (Sally Todd), who hopes to recover from her most recent nervous breakdown. Joining in on the fun is an escaped convict named Frank Scott (Myron Healey), who, after being properly outed by Conway, can either agree to subject himself to his experiments or turn himself over to the authorities.
With the whole cast of characters primed to discover the truth behind Dr. Conway’s practice, we’re now ready to watch disaster unfold. This involves people suspecting foul play, lots of whispered conversations behind closed doors, active but secret test subjects refusing to stick to the script, botched escape attempts, and plenty of unintended comedy from Lobo lumbering around the place letting everybody know that it’s “Time for go to bed.”
Not High Art, But A Serviceable Relic
If I had to compare The Unearthly to anything modern, I’d say it plays more like a standalone episode of an anthology series than a full feature-length film. Clocking in at just 73 minutes, the movie doesn’t even have enough time to wear out its welcome, but it certainly spends all of that time being as melodramatic as possible. We have a bunch of cocksure gentlemen trying to figure out the depths of Dr. Conway’s insanity, and a bunch of hysterical damsels in distress getting shackled up and experimented on.
The film’s ending also plays out like something you’d see in The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. The only difference is that the final reveal is supposed to be shocking and horrifying, but it’s delivered so flaccidly that it feels like an afterthought.
At the end of the day, nobody needs to watch The Unearthly because, in the decades before and since, there have been plenty of iterations of this kind of story, all of which vary in quality. It’s not terrible, though, and it’s worth a look if you want to see how low-budget sci-fi horror was made during this alleged Golden Era of cinema.
Or, who knows? The reason I have such an ongoing obsession with straight-to-video sci-fi thrillers from the late 80s and early ’90s is because there are so many hidden gems that never saw the light of day. The same can be said for any decade. While I don’t think I’ll be writing letters home about The Unearthlyit remains a fun blast from the past that doesn’t require much of a commitment to burn through on a rainy day, and it’s enough to keep me digging for some overlooked gold.
As of this writing, The Unearthly is streaming for free on Tubi.
