Fresh and Exciting

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The acting in this movie is really good.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Monster Madness: Mutants, Space Invaders and Drive-Ins (2014) *** (out of 4)Director Jeff Herberger has made a handful of documentaries under the "Monster Madness" headline with each of them looking at a different genre or era. As you can guess from the title, this one here takes a look at the movies in the 1950s. The majority of the movies released during this period involved aliens, large bugs, radiation and as the decade went on these movies started to be shown in drive-ins.This is the second film in the series that I've seen. I had previously watched the one dealing with the 1930s and found it to be slightly entertaining but it didn't feature anything that we haven't seen in countless other documentaries. This one here is much better for a number of reasons but the biggest is that it does feature some archival interviews with the likes of Roger Corman, Robert Wise, Samuel Arkoff, Robert Clarke and others who were actually involved with the movies. Also interviewed are several authors and experts on the genre.If you're a fan of this era of cinema then you'll have a good time watching the old interviews and especially when you consider that these people aren't with us any longer. Another good thing is that the film offers you a great chance to relive some of the bigger titles from the genre like THE THING, THEM and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. There are plenty of clips from those movies as well as stuff like THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS.There's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but fans of the genre should enjoy watching the clips and interviews. Plus, going through this gives you a good starting point on what films to watch if you are new to the genre.