Hacktober #29

For many, many years I wanted to see The Hideous Sun Demon. It was constantly pictured in magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland and I always thought -- as a kid -- that The Hideous Sun Demon looked kind of nifty. It took me decades and the invention of Youtube for me to finally catch up with this infamous shlock cheapie, and it's a real pile of dreck, let me tell you. Of course I enjoyed it. Mostly. It's pretty short. 

The Hideous Sun Demon himself isn't the worst monster to lope across a Drive-In screen, but he doesn't resemble a lizard or anything reptilian -- as advertised in the trailer -- so much as a confused Wolfman with a really bad skin disease. The wolfman comparison is apt because the Hideous Sun Demon (yes, I'm going to type "The Hideous Sun Demon" as many times as I'm able) is a reverse werewolf, at least as far as the changing form shtick goes. But the high concept here is that Dr. Gilbert McKenna -- "a man who loved with fierce, demanding passion", according to the aforementioned trailer -- is cursed to turn into The Hideous Sun Demon when the rays of the sun hit him. 

He isn't cursed in the literal sense, it's some kind of atomic horsehockey mishap that I don't feel like looking into right now, because this is the late 50's and things are very atomic, to quote the kid from The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T.  Someone screwed up and there was some sort of human folly and all that. Scientific hubris. Or maybe just some nutty lapse in judgement. Whatever.  Dr. Protagonist Fella becomes a big ol' mess of lizard scales when he goes outside into the sunlight. The reptilian scales look more like a lot of spray-painted potato chips glued onto a rubber mask, but, okay, they're scales if they say so. I didn't know The Hideous Sun Demon was supposed to be reptilian until I watched the trailer. I just thought he had a monster face.  He Sun Demons out a few times and I'm sure you can guess what happens in the end. 

One reason I am fond of The Hideous Sun Demon is that the (again, forementioned) trailer for this goofball rumpus is one of my favorites. It's wonderfully bad. It doesn't sell the movie a damned bit, because the actual movie provided so little in the way of decent footage to share with the teenagers of 1958 that any editor would have a hard time shining up this anti-diamond. Even the great Paul Frees can't get this thing over with his narration. Especially when he pronounced "Jeckyll and Hyde" as "Jee-kyll and Hyde". Ha ha. I still think of that all these years later. Jeekyll and Hyde. Ha ha. I'm smiling, you should see me. The trailer also features one of my favorite bits of text card hype: "PANIC IN THE STREETS! TERROR ON THE ROOFTOPS!" . I love that. My friend Ken Hart and I used to say it a lot back in the old days. We probably shouldn't have, but, y'know. Nerds. Also of note is seeing The Hideous Sun Demon clambering up a metal set of stairs with his Hideous Sun Demon pants all wet and dirty in the butt. It's embarrassing and someone should have noticed before they shot that scene. Tsk tsk. Oh, and there's also an obviously fake dummy scene in there. Those are always good.

You can watch the hideous trailer for The Hideous Sun Demon here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARjSwuX38a8

Have a fun Halloween, gang. If you didn't already have all the fun this past weekend. Have more fun, if that's the case. Everyone could use more fun these days.