3 Signs that a "Classic Film" was made by Mole People

Why the Mole People and their faithful servants have such a difficult time with concentration can only be speculated -- Perhaps they are so enraged and envious of our sight that their minds simply reel with unadulterated and uncontrollable hatred, thus blinding them to their furtive duties? But regardless of why they seem to lack some much need discipline and concentration, the fact remains that any classic film with a meandering -- or in some cases, non-existent -- plot is, more likely than not, a production of the Mole People.Although every film ever made by the previously mentioned Ed Wood and Coleman Francis fall into this category, so too can John Hayes' Hollywood After Dark (1961) be easily connected to the dreaded Mole People via its half-convoluted/half-non-existent plot. Staring absolutely no one and also, for some reason, Rue McClanahan, Hayes' "film" ostensibly tells the story of a scrap-yard dealer named Tony (Jack Vorno) who hopes to save an upstart actress named Sandy (played by McClanahan) from succumbing to the evils of Hollywood and becoming a stripper down at the local burlesque house.  Now, at first glance it sounds like the film does have a plot. But upon closer inspection, one quickly realizes that the "plot" outlined in the previous paragraph is blatantly ignored within the film in favor of showing some of the most bizarre and (by today's standards) tame stripping ever caught on film. In fact, out of the film's 71 minute run-time, no less than 20 minutes (or roughly 1/3 of the entire film) is dedicated to mere striptease, while the 2/3s of Hayes' film not dedicated to blatant T&A are instead dedicated to one of the most ridiculous and unrealistic heist schemes ever caught on film.Filmed without dialogue (hint! Remember sign #1!), Tony and his coconspirators wait for the armored car to deliver money to a lighthouse -- a lighthouse! Not a bank or a safe but a lighthouse! -- before Tony heads into the ocean waters below and then waits while his cohorts tie up the two guards and lighthouse-keeper, and then throw the stolen money down to a waiting Tony who swims away with the money because the Mole People evidently phoned in their research when they wrote the script for this film.  So, just to recap: 'Hollywood After Dark' is a half-porn/half-convoluted heist film with a bland romantic subplot between Tony and Sandy thrown into the mix, with the scenes shifting between the three "plots" without much order or purposefully arrangement to their sequence. A bizarre mixture of "meandering" and "non-existent", most Mole People productions don't typically mingle the two 'plot modes' together like this, but then few servants of the Mole People are as dedicated to creating awful films as John Hayes' is.  The art of acting is a difficult and nuanced one. Although certain scenes might call for explosive temper-tantrums or bombastic speeches, typically an actor or actress must use restraint and subtlety in their performance, trusting the director to externalize their emotions through use of editing, lighting, and other techniques that add layers to the actors' performances.However, the dreaded Mole People don't seem to understand this at all. Being blind, they don't comprehend the suggestiveness of a spotlight, or the powers of a lens-filter, or any of the other lighting/camera tricks that directors and cinematographers use to add depth to their actors' performances. Because of this, the Mole People believe that acting and acting alone conveys the emotion of a scene, which means that the human servants performing in Mole People productions find themselves reduced to two distinct and blunt modes of acting in order to please their masters' bizarre auditory tastes: "stiff" and "ham".One of the best examples of this idiosyncratic acting can be found in one of Edward D. Wood Jr.'s less memorable films, 'The Sinister Urge' (1960). Wood, who wasn't just a faithful servant of the Mole People but more likely than not their own personal savior, created some of the most abysmal films in Hollywood history with the aid of the Mole People, though 'The Sinister Urge' is, perhaps, the most obviously connected to his chthonic masters.The film focuses on the exploits of Lt. Carson (Kenne Duncan) and Sgt. Stone (Duke Moore), two detectives trying to solve the murders of several young women whose only connection to one another is that each were "actresses" connected to a "smut ring" headed by the scheming Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine).Actors Duncan and Moore are textbook examples of the "stiff" style of acting that Mole People insist upon when shooting conventional scenes, the actors' recitation of Wood's clumsy dialogue being utterly mechanical and emotionless, their movements stiff and limited to either sitting or staring blankly at something. They seem to act more like puppets on strings made of adamantine than actual people because the Mole People, not understanding subtlety, believe that this is how human beings behave, more or less, on a day to day basis.On the opposite end of the spectrum we have Jean Fontaine, whose "ham" acting consists of injecting a fiery passion into sentences that don't need them, and whose emotional spectrum appears to be as unregulated and sporadic as a manic-depressant off of their medication. Again, the Mole People's lack of understanding basic human emotion leads them to believe that "ham" and "passionate" acting are one in the same, and that by shrieking one's lines in an over-the-top, hysterical manner, one accurately portrays the "human passion" that the Mole People have heard so much about, and yet understand so little about.It isn't uncommon for the Mole People and their dreadful servants to put these two categories of actors in the same film. Due to their inability to use the more nuanced tricks of good directors, the Mole People try to compensate for this by mixing and mingling their two sets of actors in hopes that their combined forces will somehow produce at least one scene or sequence that possesses the proper and normal range of human emotion. But it never works out that way. Instead, all it does is serve as a distinct warning that the "classic" film you are seeing was casted and staged by those blind and hideous Mole People beneath the earth.Knowing that the evil Mole People are blind, it should come as no surprise then that their productions tend to have inconsistent, idiosyncratic, or even a complete lack of lip-synched dialogue in their films. Bear in mind, however, that this rule does not apply to foreign films that are then dubbed into English since any "dubbed" film is bound to have certain inconsistencies in lip-synching due to the differences in language. However, if a film was shot in English (or an English-speaking country), and the film's lip-synching is either completely off, or even non-existent then, dear reader, you have stumbled upon a production of those dreaded and evil Mole People.The films of Coleman Francis, one of the Mole People's most devout human-servants, are a perfect example of this rule, in particular his film 'The Beast of Yucca Flats' (1961). The film (if it can be called that) possesses almost no dialogue, with only the intervention of an unseen narrator who is evidently suffering from some sort of brain fever providing us with most of the film's "deep, philosophical" discourse: "Flag on the moon. How did it get there?", "Touch a button. Things happen." "Boys from the city. Not yet caught by the whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs."On the few occasions that dialogue is spoken by someone on screen who isn't suffering from aneurism, the actors conveniently turn their heads away from the camera, or cup their hands over their mouths to prevent their lips from being seen. While some might argue that this tactic was a cheap and incompetent way to save on effort in post-production, the rest of us know the truth: That the tactic is used because the Mole People, being blind, could never edit their human-servant's films into a passable cinema experience if they had to lip-synch the film's dialogue -- ergo, dialogue is tossed out or avoided as much as possible by the Mole People's human-servants when making their Masters' films in hopes of distancing their blind masters' from the film's production.View the list »
Read this article and make careful note of the signs outlined in it, or else, you might find yourself a victim of the dreaded Mole People!

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Deep in the darkest abysms of the earth, the dreaded and much malign Mole People conspire with a small but effective group of traitorous human directors in hopes of producing some of the most reprehensible and awful films ever conceived by bitter, diseased minds.

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Time and time again I have discussed the dangerous and heinous activities of the Mole People, and their motives for creating terrible cinema. Partly it's out of envy of us -- the Above Dwellers -- who, unlike the Mole People, possess sight, and thus can actually enjoy cinemas and movies while the blind, slobbering Mole People can only see darkness and hate. Partly also, however, their machinations are far more sinister, and their ultimate hope is to create a film so diabolically terrible that it destroys the senses and renders the human race imbecile so that the dreaded Mole People can finally rise out of the corpse-fed earth to take over the surface.

But regardless of their motives, one thing is clear: All of the insanely awful and terrible films that have ever been produced since the twentieth century -- be it in Hollywood or not -- were made with the help and aid of those blind and dreaded beasts beneath the earth, the Mole People.

However, it isn't always that easy to spot a Mole Man production. After all, humans are imperfect, and as such, are more than capable of making terrible films on their own, without the influence of those feared and blind dwellers of the deep. Therefore, one must look for certain signs, certain hints that separate terrible "human" productions and terrible "mole men" productions. Here, gentle reader, are 3 ways to identify whether or not the awful film you have seen was produced by those dreaded Mole People, and information on how to combat the blind and evil menace that runs amok in Hollywood.

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  • Knowing that the evil Mole People are blind, it should come as no surprise then that their productions tend to have inconsistent, idiosyncratic, or even a complete lack of lip-synched dialogue in their films. Bear in mind, however, that this rule does not apply to foreign films that are then dubbed into English since any "dubbed" film is bound to have certain inconsistencies in lip-synching due to the differences in language. However, if a film was shot in English (or an English-speaking country), and the film's lip-synching is either completely off, or even non-existent then, dear reader, you have stumbled upon a production of those dreaded and evil Mole People.The films of Coleman Francis, one of the Mole People's most devout human-servants, are a perfect example of this rule, in particular his film 'The Beast of Yucca Flats' (1961). The film (if it can be called that) possesses almost no dialogue, with only the intervention of an unseen narrator who is evidently suffering from some sort of brain fever providing us with most of the film's "deep, philosophical" discourse: "Flag on the moon. How did it get there?", "Touch a button. Things happen." "Boys from the city. Not yet caught by the whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs."On the few occasions that dialogue is spoken by someone on screen who isn't suffering from aneurism, the actors conveniently turn their heads away from the camera, or cup their hands over their mouths to prevent their lips from being seen. While some might argue that this tactic was a cheap and incompetent way to save on effort in post-production, the rest of us know the truth: That the tactic is used because the Mole People, being blind, could never edit their human-servant's films into a passable cinema experience if they had to lip-synch the film's dialogue -- ergo, dialogue is tossed out or avoided as much as possible by the Mole People's human-servants when making their Masters' films in hopes of distancing their blind masters' from the film's production.
  • The art of acting is a difficult and nuanced one. Although certain scenes might call for explosive temper-tantrums or bombastic speeches, typically an actor or actress must use restraint and subtlety in their performance, trusting the director to externalize their emotions through use of editing, lighting, and other techniques that add layers to the actors' performances.However, the dreaded Mole People don't seem to understand this at all. Being blind, they don't comprehend the suggestiveness of a spotlight, or the powers of a lens-filter, or any of the other lighting/camera tricks that directors and cinematographers use to add depth to their actors' performances. Because of this, the Mole People believe that acting and acting alone conveys the emotion of a scene, which means that the human servants performing in Mole People productions find themselves reduced to two distinct and blunt modes of acting in order to please their masters' bizarre auditory tastes: "stiff" and "ham".One of the best examples of this idiosyncratic acting can be found in one of Edward D. Wood Jr.'s less memorable films, 'The Sinister Urge' (1960). Wood, who wasn't just a faithful servant of the Mole People but more likely than not their own personal savior, created some of the most abysmal films in Hollywood history with the aid of the Mole People, though 'The Sinister Urge' is, perhaps, the most obviously connected to his chthonic masters.The film focuses on the exploits of Lt. Carson (Kenne Duncan) and Sgt. Stone (Duke Moore), two detectives trying to solve the murders of several young women whose only connection to one another is that each were "actresses" connected to a "smut ring" headed by the scheming Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine).Actors Duncan and Moore are textbook examples of the "stiff" style of acting that Mole People insist upon when shooting conventional scenes, the actors' recitation of Wood's clumsy dialogue being utterly mechanical and emotionless, their movements stiff and limited to either sitting or staring blankly at something. They seem to act more like puppets on strings made of adamantine than actual people because the Mole People, not understanding subtlety, believe that this is how human beings behave, more or less, on a day to day basis.On the opposite end of the spectrum we have Jean Fontaine, whose "ham" acting consists of injecting a fiery passion into sentences that don't need them, and whose emotional spectrum appears to be as unregulated and sporadic as a manic-depressant off of their medication. Again, the Mole People's lack of understanding basic human emotion leads them to believe that "ham" and "passionate" acting are one in the same, and that by shrieking one's lines in an over-the-top, hysterical manner, one accurately portrays the "human passion" that the Mole People have heard so much about, and yet understand so little about.It isn't uncommon for the Mole People and their dreadful servants to put these two categories of actors in the same film. Due to their inability to use the more nuanced tricks of good directors, the Mole People try to compensate for this by mixing and mingling their two sets of actors in hopes that their combined forces will somehow produce at least one scene or sequence that possesses the proper and normal range of human emotion. But it never works out that way. Instead, all it does is serve as a distinct warning that the "classic" film you are seeing was casted and staged by those blind and hideous Mole People beneath the earth.
  • Why the Mole People and their faithful servants have such a difficult time with concentration can only be speculated -- Perhaps they are so enraged and envious of our sight that their minds simply reel with unadulterated and uncontrollable hatred, thus blinding them to their furtive duties? But regardless of why they seem to lack some much need discipline and concentration, the fact remains that any classic film with a meandering -- or in some cases, non-existent -- plot is, more likely than not, a production of the Mole People.Although every film ever made by the previously mentioned Ed Wood and Coleman Francis fall into this category, so too can John Hayes' Hollywood After Dark (1961) be easily connected to the dreaded Mole People via its half-convoluted/half-non-existent plot. Staring absolutely no one and also, for some reason, Rue McClanahan, Hayes' "film" ostensibly tells the story of a scrap-yard dealer named Tony (Jack Vorno) who hopes to save an upstart actress named Sandy (played by McClanahan) from succumbing to the evils of Hollywood and becoming a stripper down at the local burlesque house.  Now, at first glance it sounds like the film does have a plot. But upon closer inspection, one quickly realizes that the "plot" outlined in the previous paragraph is blatantly ignored within the film in favor of showing some of the most bizarre and (by today's standards) tame stripping ever caught on film. In fact, out of the film's 71 minute run-time, no less than 20 minutes (or roughly 1/3 of the entire film) is dedicated to mere striptease, while the 2/3s of Hayes' film not dedicated to blatant T&A are instead dedicated to one of the most ridiculous and unrealistic heist schemes ever caught on film.Filmed without dialogue (hint! Remember sign #1!), Tony and his coconspirators wait for the armored car to deliver money to a lighthouse -- a lighthouse! Not a bank or a safe but a lighthouse! -- before Tony heads into the ocean waters below and then waits while his cohorts tie up the two guards and lighthouse-keeper, and then throw the stolen money down to a waiting Tony who swims away with the money because the Mole People evidently phoned in their research when they wrote the script for this film.  So, just to recap: 'Hollywood After Dark' is a half-porn/half-convoluted heist film with a bland romantic subplot between Tony and Sandy thrown into the mix, with the scenes shifting between the three "plots" without much order or purposefully arrangement to their sequence. A bizarre mixture of "meandering" and "non-existent", most Mole People productions don't typically mingle the two 'plot modes' together like this, but then few servants of the Mole People are as dedicated to creating awful films as John Hayes' is.  
  • Thankfully, defeating the Mole People and their traitorous human servants is far easier and accomplishable than one would fear. Though complete and total aversion of awful films seems like the most obvious way to avoid the malign influence of the Mole People, it is not a realistic method, because the only true way to avoid all awful films would mean (A) avoiding all movies (which means missing out on human-made classics like 'Casablanca' (1942), 'Touch of Evil' (1958), 'Easy Rider' (1969) and countless others, or (B) having all of your friends see a movie first so that they can assure you themselves of its non-Mole Man content (which would be selfish and decidedly unfair to your friends).No, truly the best, or rather most realistic way to defeat the Mole People and their bizarre machinations is through sheer mockery. By viewing the Mole People's terrible films' through an ironic lens and actively enjoying them because of their awfulness (rather than in spite of), we can defeat the Mole People at their own game, and derive pleasure from films that were created by those blind and slobbering horrors with the purpose of torturing us. Though it might not defeat the Mole People for good, it will at least buy us some time until the inevitable war takes place between us and those shadow-stalkers in the cold earth beneath our feet.If you are interested in actively defeating the Mole People or perhaps would prefer to watch a human-made classic instead, then go ahead and find the nearest Blockbuster near your home so you can rent these films and start watching them almost immediately. Or, if you prefer that movies came to you instead, set up a Netflix account and start your ordering as soon as possible.
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, Boston Classic Movies Examiner

Daniel DiMattei is a graduate of Keene State College, and holds a BA in Film Production. When he is not busy watching and reviewing movies, he is participating in writing, animation, and other creative endeavors. He can be reached d.dimattei@gmail.com for those with any film related questions or...

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