Mike Brady But Not Vincent Price

“Don’t ask any questions. Just do exactly what I tell you to do.”

“What do you want me to do?

“I said no questions!”

Those were lines from a cheesy horror flick Steven and I watched on Sunday. OK, the last line wasn’t in the movie; I said it. I thought it was witty, or do I flatter myself?

I asked Steven to pick out a monster movie. When he read the description for Blood Lust (1959) on the DVD box for this one, I had my doubts. A group of teenagers find themselves on an island owned by a bad man. He used to import exotic animals to hunt, but he got bored with that and started to hunt people. In other words, no monsters per se.

Hunting people has got to be one of the hoariest fictional cliches going. I first encountered it in a short story I was forced to read in seventh grade called “The Deadliest Game.” I think it was here that my lifelong aversion to short stories began.

In seventh grade I took most things at face value. Now I ask questions like, how is a man with no gun more dangerous than, say, a lion? Men have no natural defenses. They have no instincts and natural wiles for hiding in the forest. They don’t even blend in particularly well. It seems to me a man would be a pathetically easy target for somebody who used to hunt big game.

And yet the hunted almost always win in these stories (now I’ve given away the ending, and I left off the Spoiler Alert. My bad).

The DVD box (50 Horror Classics) (they use both terms loosely) lists for each title the most well known actor in the cast as the star. In this case, it is Robert Reed.

“You know, Mike Brady,” Steven had to tell me (I don’t have to explain Mike Brady to my younger readers, do I?).

As the opening credits roll we find out Reed is not the star but a featured player. I think he actually did have the biggest part, as the main teenager. I must say it was kind of odd to see Mr. Brady as a teenager. Of course movie teenagers are usually in their 20s at least (hello, 30-something Steve McQueen in The Blob). That doesn’t bother me. It was the wise father voice in somebody who wasn’t supposed to be old enough to drink that I found disconcerting. I got over it, though, and settled in to enjoy the movie.

It starts out with four teenagers on a pleasure boat in the ocean. One couple is fishing and the other is skeet shooting. They can’t figure out what scared the fish. Oh yeah, they’re deadly game.

Apparently they are on vacation and have hired this drunkard to drive them around in his boat. they spot an island they’ve never seen before. When the boat guy passes out, they decide to row ashore and explore till he sobers up and can drive them home.

Excuse me, what? I guess this guy has been piloting them around all week and they are not perturbed by his dipsomania (how’s that for a $4 word?). As they row away in the row boat (Mike Brady can pilot the boat close enough to the island to go ashore in a row boat, but he can’t get them back to the mainland) (seriously, this is what he tells the others), the pilot wakes up and yells after them to not go to the island, you fools. Then he passes out again.

I’m afraid I started to lose track of the movie at this point, but they soon meet Bad Island Guy and his many henchmen. I think the folks that made the movie really really wanted Vincent Price for the part and the actor they got tries his best to oblige. Sometimes this kind of thing works (notably in Mrs. Santa Claus, where the guy playing the villain channels Tim Curry). This time not so much.

Eventually our teenage adventurers find out what going on and the hunt begins. At first it seems that Bad Island Guy gives his prey a sporting chance: limited crossbow arrows for himself, a gun and chance to find ammo for the hunted. I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying he turns out to be a dirty double-crosser.

The girls get to be a little brave and clever, although the day ends up being saved by… well, you didn’t think I was going to give that away, did you? There are some decidedly creepy moments along the way as well as a few twists and turns. Perhaps I would have seen them coming if I would have been paying more attention. Which is a pretty good argument for watching these silly flicks as casually as I do.