Sharing a scene with the legendary Morris Ankrum in HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER.
Before he died, Mel Welles and I spent a lot of time on the MSN chat box laughing about how the international film critics had awarded him such prestigious honors during the last couple of years of his life for THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS [1960], which he had starred in so many years ago. He even received an award at the Cannes festival for his part in that little piece of cinemato- graphic history. Of course, considering the grade of cinema to which I have lent the vagaries of my intellectual abilities and debatable talents through the years, I suppose I should praise those years of learning from and watching Roger Corman, Herman Cohen and that group going about their money-making tasks. I gotta say t’was certainly a learning experience.
You worked on two of AIP’s horror films, the first being Bert I. Gordon’s WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST [1958]. Any particular recollections? Bert Gordon was nervous, shouted a lot, and was always on somebody’s ass about something. This movie was one of the worst things to ever come out of the AIP camp. Lord, they funded some
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colossally bad crap, pardon the unintended pun. Afraid I was just not a “groupie” of this time period or genre.
I played Lt. Somebody-or-other. As I remem- ber, the role didn’t seem earth-shakingly important enough to elicit any kind of later recall.
Next was Herman Cohen’s HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER [1958] in which you appeared briefly
onscreen as a lab technician. What do you remember about working on that film? Very little, I fear. I just recall it happened. Things were moving and changing so rapidly in my life in “Glitter Gulch” that it’s difficult to pin down any- thing in particular. I don’t think I ever took any of it very seriously. I don’t even remember how I came to make some of the plaster and wax heads for the flick. Seems to me Herman Cohen had seen some of my work at some point and asked me if I could do something particularly horrific for his movie and I just said “Sure”... and did so. I don’t really remember shooting any scenes other than the fire sequence in the end. In fact, I wondered
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