Superman and the Mole-Men (1951)

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

When underground beings explore the surface world from a deep oil well and inadvertantly cause a panic, only Superman can prevent a tragedy. Superman and the Mole-Men is packed with cartoony effects of the time, terrible acting and some of the dumbest humans i have ever seen in movie history, we don't even see him flying for god shakes the camera is like first person instead of 3rd one except one scene where he saves one of the mole men. Overall one of DC's absolute worst films and one huge waste of time and except an alright perfomance from George Reeves the film is just ridiculous. (2/10)

I just got the UK 4-disc special edition of Superman 1 for about $5. The additional stuff includes the 1951 feature Superman and the Mole-Men. So I slapped it into the DVD player last night, and here are my findings.Some initial disappointment - I hadn't checked, and I think I had it mentally tagged as one of the Kirk Alyn serials. I'm not a huge fan of George Reeves as Superman, and I hadn't seen anything other than the odd clip of Kirk Alyn - but hey ho, never mind.This black and white production runs for less than an hour. It has the feel of a couple of episodes of one of Reeves' early TV series, a two-parter, put together for cinema release, although IMDb says it was filmed as a cinema release in advance of the first TV series. In any event, it's an odd choice for reasons I'll get to later. I'm of an age where I recall TV and movie productions which are limited to one or two locations and sets, so there were no major surprises here. Even so, for a low budget movie, this one is REALLY low budget.The story concerns the small town of Silsby - population 1,430 - which, puzzlingly, is also home to the world's deepest oil well (6 miles). The story opens with the well's foreman hurriedly taking steps to close the well down. This conflicts with the arrival of Metropolis reporters Kent and Lane to report on the well, at the behest of the oil company. As Clark is sniffing out the fact that the drill has emerged into a radioactive cavern 6 miles down, a couple of odd little guys (small in stature, big in head, black in jumpsuit, and bushy in eyebrow) emerge from the capped-off drillshaft, and start mooching round town with puzzled expressions on their faces.A deep breath now, here is the remaining plot of the picture. The little guys scare some kids, so Jeff Corey (playing the town's rampant xenophobe) incites some pals to kill these "creatures". Superman steps in (moderately ineffectually) and catches one of the little guys who has been shot and takes him to the local hospital. Corey's pals burn down the shack the other little fellow has hidden in and assume he is killed, but he escapes and legs it down the shaft. Corey incites a lynch mob (despite the sheriff arresting him) to hang the hospitalised Mole-Man. Superman stops them entering the hospital and takes the injured chappie to the shaft to return him to his fellows. A total of 4 Mole-Men emerge with a weapon of some sort which they fire at Jeff Corey (I call this an Aargh! gun because its sole effect seems to be to make Corey go "Aargh!") and Superman saves him. He immediately changes his ways because of amazement at Superman saving him after the way he has behaved, the Mole-men go back down the shaft. The end.Despite the film only being an hour long, there is an inordinate amount of creeping around, bewareing and pursuing - I have left out all the "Mole-Man 1 creeps from A to B, looking out to make sure no-one is following him" stuff. The Mole-Men are never engaged in any way whatsoever - they have no dialogue - they just turn up, get persecuted, and go back. They do look a little creepy, but they are hardly the bug-eyed monsters that the town's reaction implies.Reeves is quite a good Clark Kent - very much a hard-nosed reporter, much more so than Phyllis Coates' rather indifferent Lois Lane. But he is a terrible, terrible Superman. Not only does he not look the part (at least his hair is dyed black in this, which is an improvement from the rather light hair he sported in some of the TV episodes), the way he plays it is all wrong in my book. I'm sure he was told to "strike the pose" (which Superman does constantly), but someone should have told him that it should be fists on hips, not fists on ribs. And he plays Superman as a rather strict and touchy schoolteacher - he doesn't actually wag his finger in remonstration, but he may as well have done.And Superman does a huge amount of walking around (I say a huge amount - he isn't actually in it all that much), and a bit of running. He takes off and lands a couple of times, but isn't seen in flight at any point. Oh, some bullets bounce off him, and he uses telescopic vision as Clark, but with no accompanying visual effect. In fact, visual effects are conspicuous by their absence, and the few which are present aren't very good.I've tried to consider this effort by reference to the standards of the time: but even by those standards I think it's a pretty threadbare effort. Thankfully, production standards on the TV series were higher, and at least they took the trouble to come up with stories which had a bit more to them.Something of a disappointment - I shan't be watching it again.

My father grew grew up watching George Reeves as Superman and when I was a little kid he had episodes on VHS and let me view them including this movie (passing them down in the family if you will), and I loved it.Clark Kent and Lois Lane get sent to a small town with and oil mine and from the mine emerge mole men radioactive and targeted by the town assumed to be deadly and it's up to Superman to stop this mayhem.It's just so wonderful and fun to view. The old style special effects and sound - the crew pulled off such a beauty with such little technology. George Reeves was my hero when I was a little kid, and I'm 16 now, it just goes to show how timeless and classic these adventures are.

It must have been several years after it was released, so don't know why it was at the movies. But as a kid I enjoyed it. I just found a VHS tape of Superman and the Mole Men at the flea market and decided to watch it again (it's been a lot of years). I wasn't expecting much, now knowing how the B movies were made at that time. But I was pleasantly surprised to find the movie very watchable and the acting by all outstanding. Usual acting in these type movies leaves a lot to be desired. Surprisingly, the writing wasn't bad either. Forget the fact that Superman went from sequence to sequence and could have kicked all their butts in the beginning, because then the story would have ended, right?! OK, the mole men costumes were hokey and not very scary (they didn't even scare me as a kid). However, making allowances for the probable low budget for background and costumes, it was a job well done by all. I recognized the sheriff right away as The Old Ranger from Death Valley Days and plenty of supporting roles in TV westerns. J. Farrell MacDonald played old Pop and was always a great supporting actor in more movies than I can count. Walter Reed and Jeff Corey were familiar faces as well from other movies. Did you recognize the old doctor as the captain of the ship that went to get King Kong? Did you recognize the little girl rolling the ball to the mole men as Lisbeth Searcy in Old Yeller? Some of the mole men were famous too. Jerry Maren has played Mayor McCheese for McDonalds, Little Oscar Mayer, was the Munchkin that handed Dorothy the lollipop, was on a Seifeld episode and a wealth of other work. Billy Curtis played an unforgettable part with Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, was one of the friends met by the star in Incredible Shrinking Man, he had a part in a movie I just luckily grabbed at a flea market titled My Gal Sal with Rita Hayworth, Wizard of Oz and plenty of other parts - great actor. John Brambury was also a Munchkin. Phillis Coates, who played Lois Lane in this movie, was without question wonderful in the part and George Reeves as Superman/Clark Kent WAS Superman. He did a great job of playing the strong man. Bottom line to all I've said is that this movie is worth watching because of the cast and writing in dealing with a pretty flimsy idea for a movie. But it was the 50's and anything was possible from intruders from outer space to mole men from inner space. It is definitely worth seeing, there isn't a bad actor in the group. Whomever put the cast together was very, very fortunate to get so many gifted actors into a B type film. Some already had a wealth of experience and some were about to obtain a wealth of experience - but all were gifted. So if you get a chance to see the film, forget the dopey costumes and just enjoy the excitement and acting. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, just a good, old fashioned movie to enjoy!