John Agar

An American International Pictures western directed by Edward L. Cahn, the prolific B-movie workhorse who also made It! The Terror from Beyond Space. John Agar plays a young cowboy tracking the gunman who killed his twin brother, teaming up with a hard-drinking ex-convict gunfighter (Mike Connors, still billing himself as "Touch" Connors) and an Indian woman called Yellow Hawk. Marla English, AIP's resident noir-vixen of the mid-fifties, plays the saloon girl caught between them. Shot fast and cheap like everything on the AIP slate, but the vengeance plot has a grim little edge to it. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western

A 1953 independent drama produced and directed by Hal R. Makelim. John Agar stars as Ray Compton, the son of self-made industrial tycoon J.R. Compton (Edward Arnold, in one of his final roles). Raised on his father's ruthless creed that a man must be hard to succeed, Ray returns home torn between the ruthless empire he's expected to inherit and his conscience — a conflict that comes to a head over his father's treatment of workers and the woman Ray loves. A modest, earnest postwar drama about power and principle, the film is in the public domain.

Drama

A 1966 American made-for-television horror science fiction film directed by Larry Buchanan and starring John Agar. A low-budget 16mm color remake of Roger Corman's It Conquered the World (1956), the film follows Dr. Keith Ritchie, a NASA scientist who secretly communicates with an alien from Venus named Zontar. Believing Zontar will solve humanity's problems, Ritchie enables the creature's arrival on Earth via a fallen laser satellite. But the three-eyed, bat-winged, skeletal creature has a hidden agenda: it causes global power outages and takes control of people's minds using flying "injecto-pods" that sprout from its wings. Only after his wife is killed does Ritchie realize Zontar has come as a conqueror, not a savior. Filmed around White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas on a budget of $22,000.

Horror · Sci-Fi