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(1921–2002). American actor.
More importantly, I am increasingly
persuaded that Agar was operating in a cinematic realm where acting ability is
irrelevant, perhaps even counterproductive. It is not simply that the overall
context of the low-budget, poorly-written, hastily-filmed Z-movie virtually
ensures artistic failure regardless of the actors' efforts—I mean, can anyone sanely argue that The Mole
People (1956) would have been a classic if only they had cast Laurence
OLIVIER in the lead?—but also that in depictions
of humanity confronting the unknown and the alien, persuasive acting might
actually undermine the story's impact. I first noted the phenomenon while
contemplating the powerful fascination of This Island Earth (1955)
despite the complete ineptitude of stars Rex
REASON and Jeff MORROW, but
John Agar may function as a better example. Consider this paradox: by any
standards of cinematic achievement, The Creature from the Black Lagoon
(1953) is far superior to its sequel Revenge of the Creature (1955); and
yet, the Gill Man is more terrifying in the latter film, and not only because
he has abandoned his remote home in the Amazon to menace residents of Florida.
It is rather than, in the first film, the presence of capable actors like
Richard CARLSON, Richard
DENNING, and Whit BISSELL
helped to convey the reassurance that, whatever strange evil lurked beneath the
water, humanity would ultimately prevail. It is much harder to feel so
reassured when your major representative of beleaguered humanity is John Agar.
For several years, if you were in
the business of making terrible science fiction films, John Agar was your go-to
guy, so that he ended up appearing in more abominations than any man should be
forced to watch, let alone star in. He was probably at his best in Tarantula
(1955), and probably at his worst in The Brain from Planet Arous (1957),
but the difference between Agar's best and Agar's worst, frankly, is not
terribly large. Still, even if his films are generally forgotten, it is
important to realize that, by the late 1950s, Agar was considered one of the
genre's stars; as evidence, consider the long-overlooked television pilot Destination
Space (1959), which clearly gave Agar a supporting part who contributed
nothing to its story solely as a way to add his distinguished name to the
credits.
Nonetheless, given the sorts of
science fiction films he was being offered, it is little wonder that Agar
started telling his agent to only put him in westerns, where one hopes that he
at last found a little piece of mind, as he did seem to prefer that milieu .
But his ultimate reward for enduring the likes of The Attack of the Puppet
People (1958), Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962), and Zontar:
The Thing from Venus (1966) came when a new generation of filmmakers, part
of the tribe of people who had grown up loving such films in spite of solid
reasons to despise them, eagerly recruited him to bless their homages to these
now-reclassified classics with his esteemed presence. Strangely, no one to my knowledge
was extending similar invitations to Agar's ex-wife, Shirley Temple Black,
despite a film career that was in every respect much more
distinguished—still more proof that the often-execrable science
fiction films of the 1950s, and the often-execrable performers who appeared in
them, remain uniquely appealing, at least in certain demented circles.
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