Editor Ira is here today to talk about film and politics:

Last week we featured a round based on the films of B-movie director Bert I. Gordon, who turned 100 years old on Saturday. Now I'd like to tell you about the time Bert I. Gordon helped to bring down a sitting U.S. president.

First, you're going to need some context. Even if you don't know him by name, you're almost certainly familiar with some aspect of Bert I. Gordon's legacy. He made movies in a number of genres, from kiddie adventures to police procedurals to occult horror to sex comedies, but he'll always be best known for his work in sci-fi. That's because Bert I. Gordon didn't make just any sci-fi movies – he cornered the market on a very specific niche of films wherein ordinarily small things grew to be very big, or occasionally vice versa.

Gordon was neither the first nor the best filmmaker to explore these themes or employ the era's not especially convincing special effects technology to this end (Georges Méliès was shrinking people on film back in 1901, while Gordon Douglas's "Them!" and Jack Arnold's "The Incredible Shrinking Man" are generally regarded as the pinnacles of the "Giant Creature" and "Tiny Human" subgenres, respectively). He was, however, inarguably the most prolific director in the genre. From 1955 through 1977, Gordon directed no less than 10 feature films that centered on humans or animals of an extremely altered size. (The number goes higher if you count ancillary characters like the tiny genie in Gordon's "The Boy and the Pirates," but I'm a purist.) That signature style, along with his serendipitous initials, earned him the nickname "Mr. BIG."

As much as I love and cherish Bert I. Gordon's entire catalog, I can't claim he was ever a great director. What I can say is that he figured out his angle early on and he stuck with it as long as it kept working for him. His special effects work traded heavily on split screens, matte backgrounds, and rear-projection to create the illusion of an oversized or undersized creature sharing the screen with the cast. These weren't especially advanced effects even for the era, but Gordon employed them with such glee that they make his movies stand out amongst the swath of low-budget directors pulling the same tricks.

The movies themselves are a strange menagerie that saw a parade of boring human protagonists doing battle against giant lizards, spiders, rodents, and insects. His most celebrated film might be 1957's "The Amazing Colossal Man," in which an Army officer grows 60 feet tall and goes on a rampage in Las Vegas after being exposed to nuclear tests. His most notorious might be 1955's "King Dinosaur," with its ample stock footage of "dinosaur" fights (actually iguanas) and a plot that kicks off with an extra planet just showing up in our solar system one day for reasons that are never remotely explained.

My personal favorite is "Beginning of the End," in which scientist Peter Graves becomes a hero by saving Chicago from a swarm of giant locusts that he created in the first place. (That one also includes my single favorite BIG special effect in a scene where Gordon just films grasshoppers strolling across a poster of a skyscraper.)

While Gordon's approach didn't win him many fans in critical circles, his knack for creating memorable visuals on a shoestring budget made his movies profitable on the drive-in circuit and later on late-night horror movie broadcasts. He detoured into more straightforward horror thrillers through much of the '60s and '70s, directing the likes of Don Ameche, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and even Orson Welles. He did make a couple of giant creature throwbacks in the mid-'70s (“The Food of the Gods” and “Empire of the Ants”) that threw in extra gore and the star power of Marjoe Gortner and Joan Collins.

He saw a resurgence of interest in the 1990s thanks to "Mystery Science Theater 3000," which lovingly mocked eight of Gordon's movies over its initial run. Gordon had more or less retired by that point, but he did return in 2014 at the age of 92 to direct "Secrets of a Psychopath," a pretty bad movie about serial killer siblings that's nonetheless impressive work from a nonagenarian B-movie legend.

So happy centennial birthday to a director who marched to the beat of his own disreputable drummer and built a body of work that's won him a legion of fans if not any actual awards. And that's all there is to kno-

What's that? Oh yeah, the bit about how Bert I. Gordon helped take down a president! Well, on the night of the Watergate break-in, the burglars' lookout was a man named Alfred Baldwin. He was posted up in the lobby of the motor lodge across the street, but managed not to spot the undercover officers converging on the Watergate hotel because he was distracted by a movie on the lobby TV. That movie? 1958's "Attack of the Puppet People," a Bert I. Gordon film in which lonely dollmaker John Hoyt invents a shrink ray in order to miniaturize people he likes so they can never leave him. I can't blame Baldwin for getting sucked in – Hoyt's lead performance is genuinely sad and unnerving, single-handedly making "Puppet People" maybe the most nuanced film in the early BIG canon. And thus did Bert I. Gordon indirectly topple the first domino in the chain reaction that brought down Richard M. Nixon.

And that's all there is to know this week!