Photo Source: Clipart.com

What has happened to the 'B' movies of the 50s? In the 1950s, when you went to the movies you knew what to expect. That doesn't seem to be true anymore today. After all, if you waent to see a movie called Beach Blanket Bingo, you never thought for one instant that it was going to be Academy Award material. The title of the movie was sort of a warning device to let you know where the movie that you were going to see fit into the scheme of things. If you just wanted to get out of the house for a little diversion and didn't mind seeing a "B" movie, you might've went out to see Tarzan and the Slave Girl. You sort of knew what this movie was about and that it was going to be fun. You had all the information right in the title. Looking at most of the movie titles today, there is just no way of knowing what you are going to see without reading a review. One tip might be when the movie is a sequel. If you knew what the movie before it was like, the sequel will probably be pretty much the same only not quite as good, but there are exceptions to this rule. One that comes to my mind immediately is Highlander II: The Quickening. This was a sequel to the famous Highlander movie that was very popular.It had absolutely nothing to do with the original plot of the Highlander movies that were made before. As a matter of fact it took place in the future and if it didn't have the word Highlander in the title, nobody would've recognized the fact that it was a sequel. On top of all that, it was nowhere as good as the Highlander movies. In rare instances, such as this one, being a sequel was not a tip to what the movie was really about.

People today may not realize it, but there were actually some very good science fiction movies made in the early 1950s. I know that this may be hard to believe for some of you and you have to be thinking that these movies must have been laughable, but actually they weren't and some of them still hold up pretty well today. They may be only in black and white but the stories are so good that you can't help getting immersed in them. The first one that I am thinking about is Rocket Ship X-M. I think that science fiction fans today would still find this movie very interesting, even though it didn't have the effects that we are now used to. The plot is about a manned rocket ship headed toward the moon that is taken off course by a new fuel that turns out to be too powerful and the ship ends up going to Mars. On Mars a race of people are found that had been far more advanced than those on Earth, but due to atomic warfare have become like caveman and women. The ship heads back towards earth after losing several of the crew to attacks and they feel that they must alert the earth to what happened on Mars so that earth can avoid the same fate. I won't ruin the end for you. Another great one from the same period was The Day The Earth Stood Still. This movie was made in 1951 and is one of the great classics of the sci-fi genera. A saucer lands on Earth and the alien who comes out is shot by frightened soldiers. It turns out that when they remove his freightening helmet, he looks just like we do. A large very advanced robot is also on the craft and is out for revenge. Can the earth be saved, I guess you'll just have to get the movie and see.

Orson Welles
Photo Source:Photo is in Public Domain - Photographer Carl Van Vechten

Many other types of films came out in the 1950s. One that I thought was excellent, was called DOA or Dead On Arrival. and the actor who stared in it was named Edmund O'Brien.. He played a man that had been poisoned with a slow acting drug. He knew that he only had about 24 hours to live and decided to dedicate this time to finding his killer. One of the interesting things about this movie is the fact that it has landed up in the public domain. It seems that some of the film companies would forget to put the copyright notice on the film before they released it. I believe that this is what happened in this case, but I am not 100 percent sure. In 1958 Orson Welles appeared in a movie titled Touch Of Evil. As with all his work, this was a great movie. It takes place in a small Mexican border town and is replete with Police corruption. It is also about murder and kidnapping. You would be hard-pressed to find a better movie today. One of the problems you will encounter when you try and look up Orson Welles movies, is that he was involved in so many movies that it blows your mind. One has to remember that not only did this man act in movies, but he also directed movies. So many of his movies were really good, that is almost impossible to find one that wasn't. . Alfred Hitchcock was another person that was very involved with movies for a long time. He was a writer, a producer and a director. He even would make an occasional appearance in one of his films and he became known as the master of mystery. His works go back to the 1920s. He directed the famous film Rear Window, a very popular suspense film from 1955 staring James Stewart.

For those of you that think that there were no big color spectacles made yet, The Robe was produced with an all star cast. The film was bigger than life and features such big stars of the day as Richard Burton, Victor Mature, Michael Rennie and Jean Simmons. The movie won 2 Oscars and took place during the time period of Christ's crucifixion. This was a big movie folks, it was the 1950s equivalent of Gladiator and maybe even more popular at the time. For those of you that like epic movies, this was not the only one. There was also the sequel to this movie called Demetrius and the Gladiators, which came out in 1954 and may have been just as popular as The Robe. The story starts where The Robe left off. There were also other 1950 blockbusters such as the Ten Commandments, The Egyptian and Solomon And Sheba. I know that I am cheating here but the 1949 movie Samson and Delilah fits right in with the ones that I mentioned. So you see, the 1950s had their spectacular movied too and if you looked at any one of the ones I mentioned, you would be astounded at how modern they look. I know that I was even surprised when I decided to look at Samson and Delilah again. The movie looked like something that just rolled off of a Hollywood set.It is hard to realize that this movie is 58 years old. I guess that it holds true, if you make something really well and use the best technology available it just might be able to look good many years later.

John Wayne From The Searchers
Photo Source: Photo Is Believed To Be In The Public Domain

Well we've covered science-fiction, drama and epic movies from the 1950s, but we have yet to talk about Westerns. Westerns were a big thing in the 1950s, much bigger than they are today. You can't talk about westerns from that period without mentioning the name John Wayne. Some of the famous westerns that he made in the 50s were, Rio Grande, Big Jim McLain, Hondo and The Searchers. I guess of particular interest would be The Searches, because Wayne was convinced that he had a good chance of winning an Oscar for this movie and many people believe this is the greatest western he ever made. I don't want to leave out some other great Wayne movies from the 50s so here they are, Rio Bravo and the Horse Soldiers. Wayne certainly wasn't the only Western movie star in the 50s, there were plenty of them including Randolph Scott who stared in such movies as Buchanan Rides Alone, Decision At Sundown and the Bounty Hunter, just to mention a few of his movies. Another actor who performed in many westerns, who was not strictly famous for just his cowboy rolls was Glenn Ford. He made some really good Western movies and in my opinion was one of the best in these roles. Some of his 1950s westerns were The Man From The Alamo, The Americano and The Violent Men. Ford just seemed to have a knack for making his parts seem very believable. I guess if we going to talk about Westerns, we have to mention Roy Rogers and Jean Autry, the singing cowboys. They have no equivalent in the movies today, but many people enjoyed them.

Another catagory of movie that was popular in the 1950s was short comedy films that were shown between the double features.Yes they would double features my friends, when you went to the movies you saw at least two films and sometimes there were comedy shorts and cartoons wedged in between them.You never knew when you were going to see a Three Stooges feature, a Ritz Brothers special or a Tom and Jerry cartoon, among other things. If it was Saturday and the first showing, there might even be a Silly Race where a child might win something if a character with his number came in first.

As it turns out, contrary to what a lot of people think, there were some great movies released in the 1950s. They certainly weren't junk even though we see a lot of that campy junk made fun of in different places today. There were some great actors and actresses around in those days and also great directors and producers. It wasn't a technology oriented time in the history of the movies, there was nothing around like The 300, but what there was around was some very enjoyable and well made cinema.