The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent

The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent
A Missing on Blu Review
1958 – 66 Min.
Starring Abby Dalton, June Kenney, Susan Cabot, Richard Devon
Cinematography by Monroe P. Askins
Written by Lawrence L. Goldman
Directed by Roger Corman

An epic adventure seen through the wrong end of a telescope, Roger Corman’s bargain-basement monster fest boasts a title worthy of a DeMille roadshow; The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, a marquee-busting moniker that was inevitably shortened to The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent. Produced in ten days, it surpassed the budget of any Corman film to date, yet it would be overshadowed by its own poster art, a Reynold Brown painting promising thrills that would never be delivered. It was far from the first movie poster to lure starry-eyed ticket buyers, but it remains one of the more comical examples.

Corman was similarly fooled: according to the then 31-year-old director he took on the project thanks to a couple of industrious filmmakers armed with a simple script, extravagant artwork, and a guarantee to produce all the special effects for “$20,000 and a piece of the picture.” Once Corman laid eyes on the result, he confessed he felt like a “victim.”

Written by Lawrence L. Goldman (1957’s Kronos, the story of a sky-scraping alien robot), Viking Women was produced in the summer of 1957 but not released until January of 1958. A compulsive filmmaker, Corman put eight movies into theaters in 1957, beginning with the immemorial Attack of the Crab Monsters. But he devoted most of that year to sock hops and juvenile delinquents; Rock All Night and Carnival Rock were JD films with musical interludes; Susan Cabot top-lined Sorority Girl, a collegiate soap opera, and Teenage Doll starred squeaky-clean June Kenney vs. a female motorcycle gang in a feminist twist on The Wild One.

With eight films already under his belt by August, Corman, went to work in late summer on the American-International version of a Norse legend, a change of pace that would have given most directors whiplash but Corman charged through this typically skin-of-his-teeth production—a shoot made even more frantic by the unrealistic scope of the film and its low, low budget.

Aside from the occasional cave dwelling, this was not a movie of interiors but sunny California tourist stops: the director made use of some fairly convincing locales like Bronson Canyon, the Iverson Ranch, and a bona fide ocean in which to drown his leading ladies (the undertow threatened to claim more than one of his actors).

Those leading ladies may have been substandard Viking material but they were formidable Hollywood starlets, the cream of the crop of AIP’s leggy glamour girls; Abby Dalton, Cabot, Betsy Jones-Moreland, and Kenney. Dalton is Desir, a good-hearted den mother; Cabot is Enger, the one non-blonde in the group, a clue to her sinister agenda; Moreland is Thyra, an insecure wallflower trapped in an Amazonian body; and Kenney, the dream date of many a drive-in Romeo, is Asmild. Their mission is formidable too; rescue the lost men of Stannjold who have vanished in a desperate search for food for the village. With the help of Jonathan Haze (The Little Shop of Horrors‘s Seymour Krelboined) as Ottar, they set sail for a lonely isle that looks like it could have been within walking distance from “Stannjole,” and probably was.

The rescue mission is doomed from the start; their boat is immediately dismantled by a sea serpent—the sight of which confirms Corman’s opinion of the special effects. That dragon dominated Reynold Brown’s poster but on screen it’s a kissing cousin to a genuine product of Scandinavia; Denmark’s notorious Reptilicus, a wobbly sock puppet that deserved every popcorn box thrown its way. Having survived their own sock puppet, the Viking women wash ashore in Grimault, a craggy beachhead ruled by a fur-wearing Viking villain named Stark—he’s played Richard Devon, AIP’s go-to bad guy. Battles ensue, the evil Cabot gets her comeuppance, and Stark ends up as an after-dinner mint for the sea serpent.

Though threadbare, Viking Women is not negligible in Corman’s career—there are elements in Viking Women that suggest more polished work to come, specifically Corman’s series of Poe films; matte paintings—albeit primitive—that transform Cabrillo Beach into a mountain range, and a keen use of the proscenium arch  that would make the Cinemascope vistas of House of Usher and Pit and the Pendulum the equal of Reynold Brown’s posters—more’s the pity that Corman’s compact saga remains in home video jail, released only on a substandard DVD double-bill with Teenage Caveman on a limited release series called the Samuel Z. Arkoff Cult Collection.

That out-of-print collection gathered together other AIP no-shows like Earth vs. the Spider with War of the Colossal Beast, and How to Make a Monster with Blood of Dracula. Still missing in action is I Was a Teenage Werewolf, the ne plus ultra of AIP drive-in films and the last word on the horrors of high school (at least until Carrie). It was released on VHS by RCA/Columbia and then, simply vanished.

Would any of these films benefit from a 4K upgrade? Well, Teenage Werewolf was photographed by Joseph LaShelle, the man behind the camera for Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Apartment, River of No Return (ravishing color and Cinemascope), and Oscar winner for Laura. A teen werewolf may not have the same allure as Gene Tierney but it’s indisputably a part of Hollywood history, like it or not. That includes The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.