Add
Private Notes
New score by Jeremy Newton! It may not have the polish of later films, but Nosferatu possesses a foggy darkness despite its sun-drenched images. Its frank gruesome quality is a stark contrast to the scratchy clean horror of Universal's horror films of the thirties or forties, and the completely unromantic treatment of the Count fits well with modern cynicism. Max Schreck's Orlock is one of the most familiar images in film history, or for that matter in the history of images.
Spider Baby aka The Maddest Story Ever Told aka The Liver Eaters aka Cannibal Orgy, tells the story of how the ironically-named Merrye family manages to cure itself of a horrible family disease. All the Merrye clan suffer from an extremely rare condition called the Merrye Syndrome. As we learn in the movie's introduction, victims of the Merrye Syndrome suffer from progressive age regression that may progress beyond the pre-natal level, reverting to a pre-human condition of savagery and cannibalism. Merrye Christmas! Get it? I don't know why I even bother with you sometimes.
If you're leaning back in your armchair thinking "I think I've seen this film before" you're probably right. The Last Man On Earth is based on the novel I Am Legend, and I Am Legend was also adapted as The Omega Man which starred Charlton Heston. The Last Man On Earth was going to be produced by Hammer films but they passed the script on to Robert Lippert, their American associate from American International Pictures - I'll be showing a lot of films from American International Pictures during this season. He decided to produce the film in Rome, where people were lying around in the streets for free, rather than America where they'd have to pay them to do it.
This week we have a rare film for you, the 1942 relic The Mad Monster, starring George Zucco and Glenn Strange and...that pretty much tells you all you need to know. There's a monster in it, he's mad. George Zucco is the mad scientist and Glenn Strange is the mad monster. Though, if I was treated like Glenn Strange, I wouldn't be just mad, I'd be absolutely livid!
There's a couple of things I should point out at the start. First of all, the most astute of you will know that a league is a unit of distance, not depth. So when they say The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues, it should really be The Phantom From 10,000 Fathoms. But if it was from 10,000 fathoms it would be from roughly eleven miles deep in the ocean, or more than the depth of the Marianas Trench, which is substantially more than the twenty feet of water we see it in. Which brings me to my second point. If we can actually see it, then it's not a phantom. It's actually more like The Creature From The Black Lagoon's hillbilly cousin. So in short, it's not a 'Phantom' and it's not from '10,000 Leagues', but in every other way the title is completely accurate. It's definitely 'From'.
Here's a couple of good reasons why Evil Brain From Outer Space makes no sense at all. It's actually three films cut into one. First is Supergiant: The Space Mutant Appears, then Supergiant Continues: The Devil's Incarnation, and finally Supergiant Continues: The Poison Moth Kingdom. So here's a simple guide to work out which film is which: When the evil brain-bat-thing appears on screen, it's Space Mutant Appears. If it's the scary hag woman, it's The Devil's Incarnation. If the gentlemen in the skintight black suits show up, it's the late show at The Midnight Shift...I mean, Poison Moth Kingdom, which would be a great name for a band. Let's go through it quickly once more. Space Mutant, Devil's Incarnation, Poison Moth Kingdom. All clear? Good.
Scared To Death is an interesting film for two reasons. The first and most obvious one, is that it's Bela Lugosi's only colour horror film. Secondly, it's the first film to be narrated by a dead character. Not just that, a psychic dead character that can remember scenes to which she wasn't present. How about that! I mean, a dead person narrating is avant garde enough, but a dead narrator with clairvoyance? Wow! Billy Wilder tried the same trick in Sunset Boulevard three years later, but even he wasn't daring enough to give his main character clairvoyance, whether they were alive or dead. Christy Cabanne, the director of Scared To Death, was obviously onto something - or on something.
This is another one of those hybrid films I should have warned you about. It's originally a Spanish horror film that's been whisked over to America and 're-purposed' by Ray Danton, who has directed far more interesting horror films such as Deathmaster and Psychic Killer, neither of which are available to non-profit community-based television presenters like myself. The original Spanish director, Julio Salvador, was responsible for such cinematic enemas as Hello, Glen Ward House Dick and the completely redundant They Killed A Corpse, as well as writing Love Brides Of The Blood Mummy. So you see, he was just as good at making films as he was at naming them.
Director Donald Petrie found his skills at depicting several personalities would come in handy later on when he directed Sybil with Sally Field, Sally Field and Sally Field. David Janssen is more used to being the persecuted than the persecutee as Doctor Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. No, not Mister Kimble from Green Acres...he was the original Richard Kimble before Harrison Ford. Yes, it was a television series before it became a movie. No, not like M*A*S*H, the other way around. Like the Mod Squad...no, neither did I. Where was I? That's right, David Janssen had been on both pointy ends of the law, as Richard Kimble in The Fugitive and as Harry O in, um...don't worry, it'll come to me. Anyway, so he's used to playing a lawman, or being locked up...but enough of his private life. Of course, I shouldn't go much further without mentioning the two great character actors in Moon Of The Wolf, so I won't. In fact, I'll stop right here...
I bet you're clambering to know why this is Coppola's first 'official' film. Before this he directed two softcore porn films, The Bellboy And The Showgirl and This Time For Sure, also known as Wide Open Spaces until the actresses complained. Anyway, he left both of those off his CV. He also directed one-fifth of The Terror, along with Roger Corman, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, and a struggling young actor by the name of Jack Nicholson. Of course, Francis and I had worked together on the temple scene from Apocalypse Now. That's when he asked me to call him what his creditors called him: Mister Bucko. I remember his words to this day. "Nigel, you should eat more, you're all skin and, well, bone, really. Have some of my famous Spaghetti Bolognese!" To cut a long story short, I ate his spaghetti bolognese, and that's how I wound-up as an art installation at the Guggenheim for five months.
Remember at the beginning of the show I said this was more of a montage than a movie? No? Do you remember Australia's first Prime Minister? Well, anyway, most of the film, the bits with the men in them, is from a pretty good Russian film called Planet Of Storms made in 1964. Because Russia wasn't a signatory to the Berne copyright convention, Roger Corman got his hands on the film cheaply and made it into two films - Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet and Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women. Unfortunately the one time they were on a double-bill together, the patrons couldn't enter the cinema because the marque blocked the entrance.
Saxon has been a mainstay of genre cinema since Enter The Dragon, Cannibal Apocalypse, Hands Of Steel, Battle Beyond The Stars, and of course the classic miniseries Great Heroes Of The Bible. He is less fondly remembered for the notorious episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, when he is framed for the torture killing of Phyllis by Ted Baxter. Saxon was in great demand for post-apocalyptic films, because when he's not working in the film industry, he actually lives as a warlord in his private fortress with his company of leather-clad minions. In L.A. that's just considered a lifestyle choice. So Terry Marcel signed up John Saxon knowing all the costuming, the fortress, the minions and the torture instruments would all be provided free. Almost free. Saxon usually required a small stipend in the form of a comely wench or gunpowder, but you'll see how that works out.
Producer Joseph E. Levine's masterpiece. The more astute of you may have realised by now the Martians are devoid of their usual weaponry: Tripods, death rays, etc. They must have all been in the shop when they kidnapped Santa. In fact, as Martians go, they're sort of puny and whiny, not so much warriors as bureaucrats, really. That's why they've held off invading Earth, they know they'd be in awash of liability claims. And we can see some not-so-subtle propaganda here. The socialistic Martians have lost the ability to have fun, so they need Santa to show them a good time, like the capitalist whore he is.
The stars of Creepers have been in some of the all-time greats of genre cinema. It's what I call a Two-Clicks-Away film. If you look up the film on the IMDB, it's just Two-Clicks-Away from some of the greatest films of all time. For example, Jennifer Connelly won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, and many people assume her first film was Labyrinth with Jim Henson and David Bowie, but she was actually selected for Labyrinth by Henson because of her performance in Creepers. Connelly was also in the genre classics Dark City, Hulk, The Rocketeer and Requiem For A Dream - I'm so glad they didn't use her final scene from that film for the Oscars. Her first film was Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America. If you click on Dario Argento, you get not only Deep Red, Suspiria and Do You Like Hitchcock, but also one of my all-time favourite westerns, Once Upon A Time In The West, with Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone.
Like many classics of modern cinema, Bad Taste was banned in Queensland, until the censorship board was disbanded in the 1990s in a unique ruling that had declared itself obscene. Out of all the low-budget films we've screened, Bad Taste is the one that demonstrates that all you need is some film equipment, your friends and family, and about 280 free weekends. In fact, the filming went on for so long...how long? It went on for so long that Craig Smith the actor (in the Pia Zadora sense of the word) got married and divorced during the filming. He disappears for a while because his Christian wife didn't like him working on Sundays.
This is one strange hacked-together film, you get the feeling that the bond company had to come in on this one, I'm not surprised - there's very few credits on it, who would want to be associated with this film? The acting of all involved is terribly stilted and the plot jumps around all over, it all makes very little sense. As I said before it looks like the bond company had to come in because it seems like there was a lot of footage that wasn't shot that needed to be, and all the music was very ill-fitting library music - cheap, I guess. Very, very odd.
Only seventy-four minutes long, but seems much more, a dreary, sanitised Exorcist-style plot is trotted out in typical seventies TV movie style. That means no violence and very little action as a group of satanists plot to stop their chosen disciple from falling in love with any man who will stand in the way of her union with the god Astoroth. Too much chocolate box romance and too little horror sinks this one. Not suprisingly, this pilot movie didn't launch a series. I guess the producers realised that there wasn't much they could do with the format of a priest and a lovesick man mooning around the country looking for his lost love and throwing in the odd exorcism every week.
The first thing I should say about The Human Monster is that it was the first film to receive a 'H' certificate for Horror in England. Up till then they were all rated 'O' for 'Orror. By the way, The Human Monster is the American title. The original title is The Dark Eyes Of London from the Edgar Wallace novel of the same name. But we'll get back to Edgar later. It was directed by Walter Summers who had suffered the indignity of having his films afflicted with American re-titles throughout his career. His last film, At The Villa Rose, became House Of Mystery in the colonies, whilst Traitor Spy transformed into The Torso Murder Mystery, and McGlusky The Sea Rover became Hell's Cargo.
I know I'm prone to saying this, but in this case it's absolutely true. Tonight we have a true classic of cinema. No, I'm not kidding. Look, just to show you how serious I am, it's a silent film and in black-and-white, so don't adjust your sets, though you may want to turn the sound off and add your own soundtrack - no Pink Floyd though. And do remember to turn it up when I come back in the intermission. So, now I'm proud, no, privileged to introduce to you one of the most influential horror films of all time.
There's murders taking place at a Southern California drive in, and the cops are investigating, but who is responsible? Is it Germy, the former carnival geek who now does the cleaning up around there? He is pretty spun, and his former friends were chickens from the carnival he worked at, so he's a likely candidate. So is the drive-in's manager, who is a bitter man who is overworked and underpaid and dresses like he's the devil or something. Or is it the local voyeur, who is on parole (or probation) and doesn't want his neighbors to know he's a pervert? At any rate, we have some rather unrealistic decapitations and even a sword through a neck that also looks rather unrealistic, and it's always young couples just on the verge of getting it on. The cops even go undercover, one dressed in drag, to find our killer but to no avail. Is the mystery ever solved?
Brooding Boris plays Doctor Victor Sartorius, an ailing doctor working in Morocco. He teams up with Mona Goya as Lady Yvonne Clifford, in a plot to poison her husband, Sir Charles Clifford so he can collect the 20,000 pounds necessary to save his experiments and his funding. Roger Clifford, the son of Sir Charles has also been marked for death. The only one who can stop the murder plot of Sartorius is Nurse Eve Rowe, played by the beautiful Joan Wyndham. This is one of the few Karloff genre movies from the thirties that is often overlooked and rarely discussed, and there are reasons for this.
When a number of hikers are found torn apart in a national park, the police and park rangers alike are left baffled. Slowly their darkest nightmares are revealed as surmounting evidence points to the existence of a terrifying beast, known only in folk-lore. With the rangers trapped in the park, they're forced to make their escape on foot, through the forest. Along for the ride is an obsessed Yowie hunter with a secret agenda. Only then does the true nature of the beast reveal itself.
House On Haunted Hill is the only film to be made with the quaint cinematic process known as Emergo. Now, Emergo was an early prototype of a truly holographic 3D movie process that wouldn't require the audience to wear silly glasses. Emergo was a simple motion path generator consisting basically of a...skeleton...on a wire. There's a point in the film when the skeleton would be pushed out from the top of the screen along a wire above the heads of the audience. They stopped it when kids kept shooting at the skeleton with BB guns and, in some neighbourhoods, Uzis.
We start off at the cafe with the sax wailing and Maxwell shooting the audience with words of wisdom. It's a great opener to our story. Dick Miller is great as Walter Paisley who makes you root for our down trodden busboy. Plus, who knew landladies were so controlling back then? Sheesh, a guy can't even bring a dame over! Add great support especially from Julian Burton who's Mr. Brock really lives it up as the ultimate beat poet and has a terrific time doing it! He kind of reminds me of a Beatnikesque Oliver Reed. Leonard De Santis provides laughs as the stuck up cafe owner who learns to stop belittling Walter if he knows what's good for him. All in all, Bucket of Blood is a whole lot of fun.
From Seymour's alcoholic mother to the cop so hard that even the death of his son is met with a shrug, the whole film is full of darkly comic touches that drew some nice laughs from me. This comic approach helps the film because really it is a silly plot and the fact that the script was tongue-in-cheek meant it was easier to swallow, if you pardon the choice of words. As a horror it doesn't really work but it does have a schlocky property that Corman films tend to have – not high quality but low-budget b-movie fun. The cast match the material and all buy into the joke, watching them also shows that the cast in the musical are really pretty much just impersonate the actors here.
Roger Corman has had an extremely long and prosperous career in the b-movie industry. Ever since 1954, Corman has been cranking out dozens of b-movies, and has paved the way for many actors and directors, including the likes of Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola and Ron Howard. It still seems as if old age hasn't caught up to Roger yet, as he is still quite active in low budget film-making. Now, having paid my sincere respect to the b-movie king, let's take a look at Creature From The Haunted Sea, which was Roger's thirty-second time in the director's chair. This low budget film actually turns out to be a parody of horror thrillers mixing gangsters, revolutionaries, a sailor who communicates in animal noises, and a sea creature that may or may not be fake.
A photographer is kidnapped by kids who want him to pretend to be their father. They have already kidnapped a mother, so they need a matched set. The kids aren't psychotic or overtly evil. It's like The Waltons. They dress in rustic clothes. Send a scout named Gilbert, an eight year old who is really about twelve, to lure innocent adults to their lair. There are so many holes in the story, that it just falls apart.
Night Of The Living Dead was originally written as a horror comedy called Monster Flick which, at the time, was about alien invaders who befriend a group of teenagers, and could possibly be mistaken for Teenagers From Outer Space, so they returned to the writing board and added the living dead which Romero called ghouls, after the television executives he had as clients. Then he was inspired by I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, and came up with the more apocalyptic scenario we're watching tonight. I Am Legend, of course, was adapted as The Last Man On Earth, which was the first film I screened, thus the Cycle Of Life and the Public Domain revolves.
I know what you're thinking, there just aren't enough great British horror films of the 1930s concerning clairvoyants, right? Well, prepare to be enlightened, as the diminutive but very visible Claude Rains plays a con-artist clairvoyant who gains the power to actually predict the future, yet is unable to prevent it from happening. The Clairvoyant also happens to be the alternate title to tonight's atmospheric classic, The Evil Mind, but you knew I was going to say that, too...
First of all, we’ve got two men among our survivors of the apocalypse, but only one woman. Second, one of those men is married to the woman, but we’ve seen reason to believe that she would honestly prefer to be with the other one at this point. Finally, the two men have also established that their philosophies of life are more or less mutually antithetical. What do you suppose all this might mean for the remainder of the film? You got it! it's a virtual non-stop three-way argument consuming nearly the whole of the remaining running time.
Earth is under attack from aliens wearing berets, like French mimes. Okay, so we're being invaded by a bunch of cheese-eating street performers, except these ones don't surrender so easily, who fly around in a spaceship that looks like giant bees in a scrum. Luckily for Earth, there exists a giant flying fire-breathing turtle named Gamera, who also hates performance art. Poor thing, he must get quite dizzy from all that spinning around, but doesn’t seem to affect him more than the freezing vacuum of space. And if you're wondering how he produces all that methane, he has four stomachs...
A mad scientist, adultery, ghosts, strange experiments, a dead butler in the bathtub, and a spooky castle. Exciting? You'd think so. Fear will grip your spine when you come to the sick realisation that you're about to sit through another one of those, "I'm going to drive my crazy wife crazy so I can get her money" movies. Console yourself with the fact that Barbara Steele is playing dual roles in this one. Lots of those Italian horror fans who worry about stuff like finding these movies, well, they think she's 'da bomb'. Kids still say that, right? I'm all about watching bombs, so pop the top on another bottle of Absinthe, pack your pipe and prepare for the worst, as we visit...Nightmare Castle!
Imagine what would happen if a group of twelve-year-olds decided to make their own version of the old Universal monster movies during the 1970s. If you can picture that, then you have a pretty good idea of what The Werewolf Versus The Vampire Woman is like, both conceptually and technically. Consider yourself warned.
Once upon a time, Roger Corman had horror film legend Boris Karloff for two days and didn't have to vacate a set over a weekend. So, he made a feature film! Actually, he made a mess, wasted Karloff, gave young Jack Nicholson an opportunity to turn in his worst screen performance ever, and puzzled movie audiences for decades.
Killer Shrews gives meaning to the phrase Low Budget. The giant shrews are played by dogs in drag when they are not being represented by clumsy puppets, and one could not be blamed for turning up their nose at this movie. If there is a saving grace, it's the short running time. Yes, there's lots of boring talk, but there's also enough monster action to satisfy fans of such schlocky goodness.
Mary goes to Salt Lake City where she has accepted a job as church organist. Where ever she goes, she sees a death-like figure who seems to be pursuing her. She also finds herself being strangely drawn to a deserted dark carnival. The director and lead ghoul Herk Harvey never made another film, making it even more of a cult item.
Director starring . Aliens in jump suits want to use Earth as a breeding ground for Gargons, which are yabbies that grow to ginogorous proportions! But the young rebel alien Derek hates this idea and runs away, so Thor is in hot pursuit with a disintegration ray. Thor goes about doing this by asking people to do things for him, asking them a lot of questions, then blasting them.
'Welcome To The Wooorld Of Tomorrow!' as corporate executive Miles Creighton is cryogenically frozen for ten years until a liver transplant is accepted as a suitable method as reviving him. Unfortunately, according to his priest the mind and body have been reanimated but the soul...well the soul is gone...forever!
From The Devil Bat onwards, Lugosi’s roles became demeaning self-parodies, until the final indignity of his posthumous appearance in Plan Nine From Outer Space. As it stands, The Devil Bat is a grim forewarning of the rest of Bela’s career. The plot is ridiculous, the so-called special effects somewhat less than special, the acting is universally terrible, and the direction mediocre. Which is not to say The Devil Bat is extremely enjoyable to watch, especially with a few friends late at night.
If the plot isn't enough of a hoot, this movie is shot with a dangerous excess of 1970s style. Besides the obvious fashion victims wearing sheepskin vests, Dracula has outfitted his mansion with a mod control room, missing only lava lamps. And speaking of lamps, half of this movie is shot from behind various lighting fixtures.
From the poor black and white photography, horrendous dubbing, low-grade production values, completely idiotic characters, stock footage padding, Z grade monster effects and sheer schlock factor, this movie is seemingly loaded with all the proper ingredients for a true cinematic train wreck. Yet, for some truly inexplicable reason, I find it not only watchable but strangely, and dare I say disturbingly, enthralling as it unfolds.
This week I present for your enlightenment a message film from the Corman Brothers, with the grammatically challenging title of Beast From Haunted Cave. Made in 1959, its message is Crime Does Not Pay. Not the most original of messages and one that, in our bizarre, through-the-looking-glass world, is not easy to take seriously. In films at least, thieves planning robberies usually fail to take something important into account. This time they have neglected to consider the possibility of being hunted down by a large camera-shy monster. How careless! Like all vigilantes, Beast's sense of right and wrong is not as well-developed as it ought to be, and like all vigilantes, causes much collateral damage.
This week's offering from the wild and crazy world of low-budget, past-their-commercial-use-by-date horror films, is Bluebeard, made in 1944 by people with talent. Indeed, there's not much wrong with this variation on the old legend of Bluebeard, the serial killer of his own wives, that a decent budget couldn't have fixed. It has a skilled director already experienced in doing good work on modest budgets, and the lead is an actor of considerable ability, well known to devotees of cheap horror and science-fiction films. He has played a Mad Scientist and Mad Doctor, and this time he's a Mad Artist.
When I inform you I'm screening an Old Dark House film for you tonight, you know what to expect. Concealed doors, secret passages, people abducted in the few seconds when no-one is looking, dead bodies behind secret doors, servants who may or may not be malevolent and a scoundrel at large, moving freely about the house. Tonight's film doesn't miss a single cliche, despite the fact it isn't THE Old Dark House film, but AN Old Dark House film. This one is called The Bat, was made in 1959 and stars Agnes Moorehead and Vincent Price.
It is my great pleasure to screen for you the eerie horror film White Zombie, made in 1932 and starring our favourite Hungarian ham, Bela Lugosi. This film is better than most of the titles to be found in the Public Domain and I'm confident you'll feel watching White Zombie was time well spent. But I must hasten to point out, these zombies are not the flesh-eating variety. Since Night Of The Living Dead in 1968, their official job description now includes an insatiable appetite for brains, and in some recent films have even become champion sprinters!
"My Vengeance Needs Blood!" You know you're in for a special treat when a movie starts with a quote from the Marquis De Sade. Bloody Pit Of Horror begins with a flashback of a red-hooded criminal being strapped into one of his own iron maidens, or rather a cardboard maiden which looks like it was constructed for a school play. Then his body and soul are locked up inside a coffin-shaped painted plywood prop, complete with a really cool wax seal. What I love about these wax seals is that they last for hundreds of years, but instantly fall apart as soon as some clumsy photographer brushes against it.
You know, sometimes, when you're on a boat, fishing and frolicking with your best friend and your best gal, and your best friend's best gal, and your best friend's drunken sea captain's best bottle of whiskey, the idea of jumping ship to explore that strangely deserted island that no-one has ever heard of and isn’t on the charts just seems too darn good an idea to let pass. And if anyone ever did think about the logical reasons why not to go, then we would of course be seventy minutes short of time. Let’s think for a moment about what Ralph Brooke, writer, director, producer, might have done better with this seventy minutes...
How's your astronomy? Planet Paira, as you know, occupies the same orbit on the same elliptical plane as Earth, but on the opposite side of the sun, which makes it impossible to see from Earth, so don't try to find it with your telescope. I did, and look at what happened. When an envoy of starfish-like aliens arrive from said planet to warn mankind about a runaway planetoid that is on a collision course with Earth, fearing that their own planet will be destroyed as well, it's up to humble Japanese scientists to attempt to prove that nuclear bombs are good for us.
This is the first film version of The Phantom Of The Opera, starring that Man With A Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney Senior. Have no fear of oppressive over-orchestration and cacophonous caterwauling, for this was made in 1925, when the absence of sound technology protected all cinema-goers from such a disagreeable experience.
You may think the Reign Of Terror was the most perilous time to be living in Paris, but I'm starting to believe 1890 to 1914 was far more dangerous. There were so many Mad Artists doing nasty things during that time, I wonder why they never thought of forming a Trade Union? Svengali is played by John Barrymore, one of the most prominent film stars of the day and this is one of his best performances. Yes, it's true, John Barrymore is the grandfather of Drew Barrymore, whose acting frightens us for entirely the wrong reasons. But I hasten to point out that John Barrymore passed away in 1942, over thirty years before Drew was born, so those of you who demand a written apology from him will have to wait in vain.
I am more than confident you will enjoy Robot Monster. It's made with such breath-taking incompetence that the end result provides more laughs than a Marx Brothers comedy, and If the dinosaur sequences appear to be well-done, it's because you're watching stock footage lifted from the 1940 version of One Million Years BC. Robot Monster was made in 1953 on a tiny budget of $20,000, the first science fiction film ever made in 3-D. Unfortunately, the 3-D prints are very hard to find nowadays, and I can only show you the 2-D version. Not to worry. Rest assured, you will be entertained, and I predict certain lines of dialogue will leave you dumb-founded.
Filmed in just five days, The Wasp Woman stars the lovely Susan Cabot as proto-yuppie Janice Starling, CEO and the public face of a large cosmetics company she herself has built up from nothing. The Wasp Woman may be read as Roger Corman's sincerely-felt protest at how society undervalues women over the age of forty, then as now. Others have seen The Wasp Woman as evidence of Roger Corman's sincerely held belief that a shameless rip-off of The Fly, a big money-earner for 20th Century Fox the previous year, would earn similar profits for him. Either or both are possible. Roger was known to have a social conscience and, although he didn't work for major Hollywood studios, he was also known to fully endorse their core motto: If It Sells, Copy It.
Did you know the President Of The United States Of America is a stupid redneck with a sub-human sociopath murderous flesh-eating creature as his speechwriter? Thankfully, George W. Bush is no longer in power, and now the truth can finally be revealed. Tonight we turn to the dog-eat-dog world of American politics and occultism to find out what really happens when good journalism goes bad, in the 1973 documentary Werewolf Of Washington.
This is clearly a Poverty Row picture in a lot of ways, and it's not just the limited number of locations. Filmed at night on Universal's European village set, the interior of Lionel Atwill's house is from The Old Dark House and nothing much really happens to advance the main plot. A large chunk of the movie is taken up with hunting down Karl, and the doctor's plan is not explained in a very comprehensible way. His discovery comes not as the result of Melvyn's investigation, but more by chance. Still, this is far better than some of the films I present. The movie is moody and atmospheric, and it works hard to give everything a rational underpinning, plus it gives you an excuse to stare at Fay Wray for an hour or so, which can't be a bad thing.
If this seems like the worst possible premise for a low budget western/horror hybrid film, you'll be astonished to hear it was half of a 1966 double feature along with Billy The Kid Versus Dracula. These were the last two films by William 'One Shot' Beaudine, who directed such screen dogs as Rin-Tin-Tin, Lassie and Jean Parker in a career that stretched from silent films to colour television. Beaudine was dubbed 'One Shot' not because he did everything in one take, but because the quick and cheap approach made it look that way. Tonight's film, shot in a mere eight days, is no exception.
This week's exciting presentation is a swampy classic from 1959 ripped straight from the dripping fundaments of Roger Corman's basement. At last, a film for men in rubber raincoats, made by men in rubber raincoats! I am extremely proud...no, that's not the word. Ah! I'm extremely hesitant to present for your enjoyment Attack Of The Giant Leeches. No doubt you're thinking with a title like that it's a parable subtly highlighting how the power elite live off trusting poor people, directed by some genuine left-winger like Ken Loach. Well, it's not. It's actually more like Madame Bovary with a monster.
It's an atmospheric supernatural thriller based on a traditional recipe handed down from my old pumpkin-headed friend, the late great Edgar Allan Poe, but the resulting dish is a rather cheesy story about revenge from beyond the grave - much like every other Italian horror movie from the sixties. Nevertheless, it has all the right ingredients. Blood, guts, Barbara Steele in a bath tub, murders, the undead, Barbara Steele in a sheet, severed crawling hands, plague, beautiful landscape photography and Barbara Steele. All lovingly half-baked into Terror-Creatures From The Grave.
The admirers of the novels of my old friend H.G. Wells have yet to forgive Mister Gordon for twice-murdering the same book, first as Village Of The Giants in 1965, and then again in 1976 under it's original title The Food Of The Gods. Although it's far from being Herbert's best work, it certainly didn't deserve that fate! Hopefully you'll be able to put aside the righteous indignation and craving for revenge, and calmly watch Tormented, which is a ghost story. Yes, I too was taken aback by that revelation. When I discovered there was a Bert I. Gordon film with absolutely no giants of any kind, well, I haven't been so surprised since the night I found an alien mind parasite in my dustbin - but that's another story.
The plot is paced quickly enough that we rarely notice its jagged edges don't quite fit together. Tania's notion of creating a monster to not only vindicate her father's theories but also to clean up his mess makes for a nice twist on an old story. If the monster is rather too obviously composed of mortician's wax, a glass eye and rubber gloves, it's at least a novel concept for the Frankenstein Monster. And I should mention the suspiciously modern-looking hats the men wear and their amazingly fake sideburns. Nothing says '19th Century' like strange facial hair and obvious spirit gum.
I bring you tidings of comfort and joy, for tonight I present a good film, which like Christmas, only happens once a year. It was effectively remade in 3-D as House Of Wax with Vincent Price in 1953 and...that's where they should have stopped, really. The 2005 House Of Wax had more in common with Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and it's only real redeeming feature is the demise of Paris Hilton. Really, a spike through the brain shouldn't have killed her, she wasn't using it, after all.
I have to admit, compared to many of the films I've presented, this one isn’t so bad. For instance, the film is only eighty-three minutes long, and the filmmakers put some work into it, supplying us with a large number of suspects and making sure that everybody is acting suspiciously at all times. The only practical way to figure out who the werewolf is, is by simply waiting until everyone but the villain has been killed off. Let's hope this is what happens during the exciting conclusion of Werewolf In A Girl's Dormitory!
It strikes me that Planet Outlaws is like a male fantasy come to life. Just think of it - Buck gets to take a nice five-hundred-year-long sleep-in. With my busy schedule, I'm ecstatic if I can get twenty minutes nap on the weekend. Then, when he wakes up, Buck is the smartest, most dynamic guy around. In reality he'd be treated like something that's escaped from the zoo. And finally, everyone needs Buck to go on exciting missions, fight the bad guys, test exotic equipment and crash rocket ships. Out of the half-dozen flights Buck makes, he only lands successfully once.
You might be asking yourself how anyone could possibly make an unbearably boring movie about zombies in Cambodia, amongst the majestic ruins of Angkor Wat. It’s an awfully tall order, but the Halperins found a way. Here's how. This time the zombies are merely a figure of speech, and the film doesn’t really take place in Cambodia so much as in front of obviously enlarged picture postcards! I haven't felt so cheated since I shoplifted U2's last album.
Killers From Space may well be the first alien abduction movie. UFOs were on people's minds in 1954, and yet abductions were not the UFO headlines of the time. They were contactees like George Adamski, who met a peaceful long-haired blonde male alien from Venus out in the desert in 1952. His claim made the headlines less than two years after the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still. Killers From Space wants very badly to be a Martian Manchurian Candidate and, with somebody like Jack Arnold in the director’s chair, there’s a good chance that that’s exactly what it would have been. But instead, Killers From Space got stuck with W. Lee Wilder’s virtuoso tedium and half-assedness.
The story is lame, the acting is terrible, the dubbing is worse, and there are more minor characters than a Charles Dickens novel. One of the major problems with War Of The Planets is the huge number of throw-away characters who shuffle anonymously across the screen to their inevitable doom. The one character that dominates the film is the seemingly indestructible Captain Alex, played by John Richardson. You may remember him being far more sophisticated and articulate playing Tumak in One Million Years BC. As with many Italian films from this era, everyone in this movie is actually speaking English, but their accents were so thick that the dialogue was re-dubbed by voice actors so it would be understandable. This practice was so common, when Mad Max was re-dubbed for American audiences a lot of people thought it was an Italian production.
Imagine waking-up in an English hospital after having eye surgery to discover the world's population had been ravaged by unstoppable flesh-eating monsters! And if that's not a bad enough way to start the day, there lurks a terror from beyond at the bottom of the garden path. No doubt some of you out there with shorter memories are thinking "Good lord, Nigel's going to screen 28 Days Later!" Well, you'd be half-right...the "Good lord, Nigel's going to screen" half. Director Danny Boyle told me he was inspired to make 28 Days Later in 2002 after watching this week's gold-class presentation. So get your green thumb out of your arse as we don our gardening gloves and grab the popcorn sprinkled with weed-killer, sit back and relax as we absorb by osmosis the 1962 science fiction flick-tease The Day Of The Triffids!
Steven Lisberger is the same hack who brought us Tron which, although very pretty, was bad science and worse fiction. Given Tron’s eventual popularity, you’d think it would have launched Mister Lisberger’s film-making career. It didn't. In a Hollywood career that spans three decades, Mister Lisberger has only ever made four films, the fourth and final nail in his coffin I present for you tonight. I'm talking about Slipstream, a post-apocalyptic science fiction film released in 1989, which has a remarkable cast featuring Mark Hamill, Bob Peck, Bill Paxton, Robbie Coltrane, the gorgeous Kitty Aldridge and even Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and F. Murray Abraham in small roles. Yet Slipstream is virtually a forgotten film. How can such a recent, well-financed film, featuring a significant cast, just fall off the face of the cinematic earth?
I'm submitting Eegah for your judgment, but I already suspect you'll return a verdict of guilty and demand the cat-o-nine-tails for all! The severity of this crime against humanity is not diminished by the presence of Indulgent Parent Syndrome. Eegah stars Arch Hall Junior and was directed by Arch Hall Senior under a non-de-blame. When he created this vehicle for the talents of his son, he overlooked one vital piece of information: Arch Hall Junior had no talents whatsoever. Nor did Arch Senior learn his lesson from this film - he kept trying to foist Arch Junior onto an unwilling world.
This superhero send-up produced and directed by my old friend Bill Winckler, features three of cult cinema's - ahem - biggest stars. Big, busty Chastity Knott must use her amazing new abilities as a super-stacked costumed crime fighter to stop villainous bikini-bar owner Al Purplewood and his sexy, murderous strippers, played with relish by Haji, Mimma Mariucci, and Sheri Dawn Thomas. Kitten Natividad, Raven De La Croix, and Haji all hail from the production house of director Russ Meyer, in such classics as Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (1965), Motor Psycho (1965), Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-Vixens (1979), and Up! (1976) - definitely not to be confused with the recent Pixar production.
A rather bland and cosmologically incorrect title that could have been applied to any one of scores of science fiction films of the era, it was made in Britain in 1967 and is adapted from a 1964 novel entitled The Gods Hate Kansas. As well they might, for those wacky gods hate a lot of their own creations - but I wonder what they think of plagiarists? This is so obviously a rip-off...I mean unacknowledged remake of the 1955 classic Quatermass II as to be worthy of Roger Corman. In short, this film is about as original as Disney's The Lion King.
I present for your enjoyment, for the first time on Australian television - be it terrestrial, cable, hand-woven, or digital - Night Of The Living Dead: Reanimated, compiled and produced by my good friend Mike Schneider. It's a kick-in-the-arts, you might say - if you've taken enough barbiturates - told through a variety of fine arts and animation techniques. Traditional animation, CGI, stop-motion, oil painting, watercolor, ink, even sock puppets, Furbies, Lego and Barbie dolls - all synced up to the original audio track. This is certainly the most imaginative idea I've ever seen when it comes to re-creating Night Of The Living Dead - or any film for that matter.
The curiosity from the nether regions of the Public Domain that I'm presenting for your entertainment this week is The Corpse Vanishes, an above-average film from the poverty row studio Monogram, made in 1942 and starring my favourite Hungarian ham, Bela Lugosi, who plays a mad botanist whose wife needs regular injections of the precious bodily fluids of young ladies to stay young and healthy - somewhat like the needs of Ingrid Pitt in Countess Dracula.
Three renegade scientists have genetically engineered a half-man half-fish abomination, but they're not resting on their laurels, either. They've just reanimated Frankenstein's long-dead monster, too! The horror begins when the amphibious beast claims its first victims, killing a few bikini babes who only wanted to use his beach to take some cheesecake photos. With a cast of dozens including porn star Ron Jeremy, Russ Meyer's bosom buddy Raven De La Croix, The Munster's Butch Patrick, Star Trek author David Gerrold, and Troma CEO Lloyd Kaufman!
It might help to endure the movie if you turn it into a drinking game, and count the number of science fiction cliches: The alien planet populated by creatures who look just like us; Meteor storms the instant the astronauts venture outside their spaceship; The tractor beam; The love triangle; Attacked by aggressive aliens; The alien monster who carries the pretty young lady away (despite being a completely different species), just to name too many. Well, are we all sitting comfortably? Then take your protein pill and put your helmet on as we prepare to blast off for The Phantom Planet!
Made in 1966 for about forty thousand dollars, filmed in Italy and set in contemporary Transylvania, The She-Beast is an early work from promising young English director Michael Reeves - who wrote it under the name Michael Byron - and it features the very lovely and talented Barbara Steele. Two good reasons to watch the film and overlook its low budget and dubbing problems. Its only real fault is that a role that I would have been perfect for went to...someone else.
I believe you'll be pleased with this week's offering, which is the 1920 version of Robert Louis Stevenson's much-filmed story The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll And Mister Hyde, starring my good friend John Barrymore. This is the best of many versions made during the silent era, and most of the talkie adaptations. In my own humble, subjective (yet always accurate) opinion, only the 1931 version starring Frederic March is better than this one. If you haven't seen that version you should seek it out, but not before you see this one. To walk away before the end would be unforgivable, a terrible insult to John Barrymore, and he wasn't one to endure badly behaved audiences.
If you're looking for a serious movie, you may find yourself wanting to bitch-slap me for subjecting you to The Vampire Happening, so all you armchair critics out there should know right now this is not a serious horror drama, but a light-hearted comedy. The reviews I read were extremely misleading, making it sound like some sort of Euro-Trash sexploitation title. Well, it’s not. The Vampire Happening is a sexy horror comedy. It’s also very much a period piece, which is a polite way to say it hasn’t aged very well.
I'm honoured to have your company again, although this week's film might make you think otherwise. The Russian film Planet Of Storms (1962) is a high-quality science fiction film with state-of-the-art special effects. Unfortunately, the American rights were purchased by Roger Corman, who promptly violated it three times to make Queen Of Blood (1966), Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women (1968) and this week's pastiche, Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet (1965). How could the ethical man who made The Intruder (1962) and The Masque Of The Red Death (1964) do such a damnable act? Well, I happen to know that while he was very busy making other films, his evil robot double negotiated with these Russians.
The Wild Women Of Wongo was made by a cast and crew of unknowns who stayed that way. It was filmed in Florida and set on a tropical island circa 8,000 BC. The occupants are tragically primitive in some ways, yet surprisingly modern in others, which is a generous way of saying 'anachronisms abound'. What passes for a plot in this movie is a silly social engineering experiment conducted by Mother Nature and Father Time. Many people regard these two entities as being very wise, but according to the evidence in this film of this film, they are both idiots, unfit to be guiding our precious lives or having anything to do with the creation of screenplays. At least the Wild Women themselves are very watchable. Not for their great acting abilities or for providing profound insights into the human condition, but for reasons that will soon become apparent.
Actually it was made in 1959 but common sense prevailed for the next three years. The story-line concerns a Mad Scientist, one of thousands to be found across world cinema. That's surely more than there are in the real world. At least in reality, Mad Scientists make it easy for us to spot them by helpfully identifying themselves as Creationists. But tonight's madman of science is doing the wrong type of creating. You guessed it! He's trying to play God, so it can hardly be called a spoiler when I tell you he's going to be punished for his presumption. This movie has the same message as the Tower Of Babel story: Stay in your place or God will smack you hard!
Classic low budget horror about a family getting lost and stumbling upon a hidden, underground, devil-worshipping cult led by the fearsome Master and his servant Torgo.
A mute alien with the appearance of a black human is chased by outer-space bounty hunters through the streets of Harlem.
The aptly-named Nick Dread is burned at the stake for being nice to witches, and is immediately sent to Hell where he makes a bargain with the prince of darkness.
My old sparring partner Chris Lee discovers a frozen Missing Link and brings it back to Europe aboard the Trans-Siberian express. Unfortunately, the monster thaws out to find himself classified as baggage, which only makes him very, very angry. Most horrifying of all, no-one - and I mean absolutely no-one - gets a refund on their return ticket!
The label said the film takes place in the future year of 1985, when scientists discover an ancient alien artefact buried deep beneath the earth, and decide to send a team of astronauts to the source. That sounds a lot like 2001: A Space Odyssey to me and, to confirm my suspicions, it's based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem, who gave us the most famous of all Soviet science fiction stories, Solaris, so it must be...long.
The acting might be flat and the special effects are rather cheap, but what it does have is lots of stock footage of jets being scrambled and high-tech radio cars with gigantic aerials - they’re a lot of fun, especially if you turn it into a drinking game like I do.
There's no denying that Larry's films are marred - or made distinctive - by his inexperience and inability to figure out where to put a camera or when to cut away to another angle. Yet somehow, forty years later, here we are watching them over again - like aircraft accident footage - trying to work out what went wrong.
Horror Hotel was known under the more atmospheric title City Of The Dead in its native England, but the USA changed its title to avoid confusion with Detroit and also removed two minutes of footage. Still, any excuse to discuss this excellent exercise in atmosphere is good enough for me. It may not be a masterpiece, but it's definitely worth discovering.
The special effects were so convincing to twenties audiences, Arthur Conan Doyle showed a test reel to Harry Houdini and The Society Of American Magicians. Next day the New York Times ran a front page article about the monsters stating, "If they were fakes, they were masterpieces!"
A rather engaging body-count movie that was ahead of its time!
This week's snowbound presentation is an icy classic from 1977 scraped off the floor of the glamorous Made-For-Television market, in which a Yeti drops in on a Colorado ski village during a winter carnival and decides to have some fun at the expense of the local yokels.
prepare to be haunted for a hundred minutes by Dominique, also known as Dominique Is Dead - which should becomes pretty obvious before long - and you might want to pump up the volume a bit and turn down the colour - there's a lot of whispering and more harsh lighting than a high school rock eisteddfod.
I hope you're dressed for the occasion, with some dense clothing for dense swamp populated by some very dense people in...Voodoo Dawn!
A mutated monster terrorises campers in the woods of 1950's Wisconsin.
Can our intrepid heroes unlock the secrets of the mysterious "rock from outer space" before its otherworldly power threatens not only the fate of the entire universe, but Professor Jackson's wedding plans?
A mad scientist named Arana is creating giant spiders and dwarfs in his lab on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico. He wants to create a master race of superwomen by injecting his female subjects with spider venom.
It is the future. 1987. Great scientific advances have allowed mankind to achieve that which previously only existed in speculative fiction - space travel.
Scientific experiments accidentally revive an executed criminal and make him impervious to harm, prompting him to seek revenge on his former partners.
Evidence of the disappearance of local children sends Dr Edwards and Rosemary on a rescue attempt through caves and the terror that lies within.
Starring Ian McCulloch and Louise Marleau, Alien Contamination exposes the secrets between Mars and a global coffee company.
A science fiction movie unlike any other, yet reminiscent of every science fiction film you've ever seen.
A small plane off the south coast of America is low on fuel and blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crash land on an island.
A mysterious plant found on the surface of the moon wreaks havoc on the Jackson Lunar Base when its spores change the base's crew into leafy, undead creatures.
ean Barker became the unwilling host to an alien bio-armor known as the Guyver. time : 2013-04-19T12:30:00Z
THE DAY THE SKY EXPLODED (1958) by Paolo Heusch starring Paul Hubschmid & Eddie Arent. Talent may be a universal language but no-one on this film could speak a word of it. Even so, it makes a serious attempt to tell a story and, let's face it, it's more coherent and less laughable than recent disaster films with giant budgets hundreds of times larger. Despite that lack of funds, it actually looks quite lush in some scenes, including the primary control room and the huge underground tunnels housing the evacuees who inevitably run riot. There's a good reason for this - not the riot, I mean the photography. Mario Bava was to become known as the King of Italian Horror, and I devoted an entire chapter of my book THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN VAMPIRE to this master cinematographer. Till then, TOODLES!
