PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Thing That Couldn't Die 1958

The Thing That Couldn't Die 1958 Written by David Duncan and directed by Will Cowan. The movie was used for an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is season 8. Some might know David from his SF 1957 novel Occam's Razor. I know I had a copy, I read it in the 70s but can't recall anything about it.

A young woman, Jessica Burns, dowses for water and finds a head in a box. Jessica lives with her aunt, played by Peggy Converse, on a dude ranch. Against Jessica's warning the box is brought to the house. William Reynolds is a guest, he things they should get the box appraised to see if there's any value.

The ranch's foreman, played by James Anderson, thinks there's treasure inside the box and he convinces the somewhat dim handyman, played by Charles Horvath, to break open the box. Inside is the animated head of a man executed for sorcery 400 years ago. The head is played by Robin Hughes, he takes over Mike and a guest played by Andra Martin.

The head gets the handyman to murder the foreman. William returns with the historian to find things have gotten out of hand. The police come after the foreman's body is found. They kill the handyman when he threatens them with a knife. Things get pretty dicey but the good guys find the head's body and use a magical amulet to destroy both.

While not one of the best movies in this collection, it scores a sad 4.1 on the IMDb, there's still some entertainment value here. There's a decent commentary by Tom Weaver with additional comments by C Courtney Joyner. The only other extra is a trailer.

Cult Of The Cobra 1955

Cult Of The Cobra 1955 Story by Jerry Davis, screenplay by Jerry Davis, Cecil Maiden and Richard Collins, directed by Francis D Lyon. Jerry wrote 8 other movies and a lot of popular TV shows in the 50s and 60s. Richard wrote a few movies, starting in the 30s, in the early 50s he started writing a lot of TV shows, some of which I watched. He's got an uncredited writing credit on Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Francis worked on some TV that I know I've seen, The Adventures Of Spin & Marty, Adventures In Paradise, Whispering Smith and Laramie.

 

The Second film in the Universal Horror Collection Volume 6. The Blu-ray has an interesting commentary with Tom Weaver, Steve Kronenberg, David Schecter ad Dr Robert J Kiss. There's also a trailer and a still gallery.

Left to right that's William Reynolds, Richard Long, David Janssen, Marshall Thompson and Jack Kelly. They're American soldiers who are ending their tour in an unnamed Middle Eastern city. They visit the bazaar, while watching the snake charmer one of the soldiers mentions he's heard of a cult of snake worshipers. The snake charmer says he can take them to a gathering for a hundred bucks. That's a good bit of money in the mid 40s.

They decide to go and the snake charmer warns them they must be in disguise. No one must know they are foreigners. If they are found out they will be killed by the cult. Of course one of the more stupid guys in the group, James Dobson, pulls out a camera during the snake lady's performance. The camera has a flash, everyone sees it when he snaps a shot. James grabs the snake woman's basket and bolts. The cult goes nuts, the snake charmer is stabbed to death, the priest curses the soldiers as they escape. A few blocks away from the temple they find their pal has been in a jeep accident. He dies in the hospital and the autopsy reveals he'd been poisoned by a snake. The other 5 are sent back to the US.

Little do they know as they settle into their new domestic lives that the cult has sent an assassin after them. That's Marshall, Kathleen Hughes and Richard. She dated both men before the war but now that they are back she's picked Richard.

Faith Domergue plays the cult's assassin. She moves into the apartment across the hall from Marshall. They strike up a bit of romance. Faith gets to revenging pretty quickly, she's efficient, David gets it first, bitten in his car, crash, dead. Things get pretty bad for everyone, especially Jack, he fell off the balcony of his apartment. Marshall doubts the curse theory, so do the police but we've seen the snake cam. They'll have to be pretty darn lucky to get out of this predicament.

It's a fairly good story and a decent cast. I like the way the film looks and there's a good level of jeopardy. I'd watch it again someday.

The Black Castle 1952

The Black Castle 1952 Story and Screenplay by Jerry Sackheim, directed by Nathan H Juran. The first film in the Universal Horror Collection Volume 6. Four films on 4 Blu-rays with commentaries and a few random extras.

Jerry's film before this one was The Strange Door, another odd and entertaining film. Can't say I recognize any of his previous dozen films and I don't think I've seen much of the TV he wrote in the 50s.

The Black Castle was Nathan's first film as a director, he'd been an art director on a couple of films in the 40s. He won an Oscar for How Green Was My Valley back in 1942 and a nomination for Razor's Edge in 1946. I know I haven't seen the latter but not sure on the former. I might have seen it on TV when I was a teen.

Nathan didn't win any Oscars for his film direction but he won the hearts and minds of young SF and Horror fans from the mid 50s on. In 1957 he directed The Deadly Mantis, 20 Million Miles To Earth and The Brain From Planet Arous. In 1958 he followed that with The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad and Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman. In the 60s there was Jack The Giant Killer and First Men On The Moon. There's some entertaining films there. I wish I had seen more of his crime and western films.

That's Stephen McNally, Richard Green, Rita Corday and Nancy Valentine. Richard plays Sir Ronald Burton, he's investigating the disappearance of his friends. They'd been to see Count von Bruno, played by Stephen, and disappeared. The Count has a grudge against the British after they sent African natives to attack him. He's killed Sir Ronald's pals and plans to put an end to Ronald's life.

Rita plays the Count's wife Countess Elga von Bruno and Sir Ronald plans to take her with him when he escapes the Count's clutches. John Hoyt and Michael Pate play the Count's pals and they are a scummy lot. No one will miss them when they wind up dead. Boris Karloff plays Dr Meissen, Lon Chaney Jr plays Gargon, the Count's servant.

There's plenty of scheming and running about with occasional fights and murders. I first saw the film in 2015 as part of a DVD set of Boris Karloff films. I thought it was good enough to upgrade to Blu-ray. The Shout Factory transfer is fine and there's a good commentary by Tom Weaver and a still gallery.

Friday Night Movies 875

Prisoners Of The Ghostland 2021 Written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, directed by Sion Sono.

Post apocalypse world after a nuclear waste accident. It's all stylized and noisy and colorful. The story is nothing more than Nick Cage being forced to rescue a woman for a warlord. There's plenty of staring into the middle distance and some fights. Nick gets one of his nuts blown off. Sucks to be him.

It was entertaining sometimes, dull sometimes, funny sometimes, annoying sometimes. Glad to have seen it but doubt I would pick one up.

Frankenstein's Daughter 1958 Written by H E Barrie, directed by Richard E Cunha. We watched the new Blu-ray from The Film Detective. It looks quite nice.

 

A sad old scientist works in his home lab with an assistant. Felix Maurice Locher plays the old scientist and Donald Murphy plays Oliver Frank, the assistant, who turns out to be a direct descendant of the original Dr Frankenstein. Dr Frank has a secret room off the lab and he's building his own creature. He's also experimenting with a serum that makes people ugly, he's given it to the old scientist's daughter. She escapes the house and after running about the street scaring people she returns home to pass out on her bed. She only has hazy memories of the night.

 

Sandra Knight plays the daughter and John Ashley plays her boyfriend. Wolfe Barzell plays the Igor character and Harry Wilson plays the monster. They call the monster a woman because they used a woman's brain. Sadly, the makeup man didn't know the creature was supposed to be female. There wasn't any more money to redo the make up but they did put some lipstick on the lips. Same say that Cunha saw the mask and cried. I don't blame him.

The creature gets out and terrorizes the town. The police come and things don't go well for several people. It's entertaining while being below average. I'm not sure I'll buy the FD disc, I might not want to see it that often. I'll put it on my Wishlist. Who knows.

Friday Night Movies 870

New York Ninja 2021 Originally written and directed by John Liu, 2021 writer and director Kurtis M Spieler.

John Liu shot his film in 1984 and after the distribution company went bankrupt it remained unedited and unreleased until Vinegar Syndrome finished it this year. Kurt M Spieler used the raw footage to assembled a movie, then had the dialog dubbed in by an interesting gang of actors: Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Michael Berryman, Cynthia Rothrock, Linnea Quigley, Vince Murdocco, Matt Mitler, Leon Isaac Kennedy and Ginger Lynn. I didn't know who Vince or Matt or Leon is but it doesn't matter. I didn't read it anywhere but I suspect that John shot his movie without sound. The common practice of Chinese film makers at the time. Maybe they still do.

It's a revenge story, John Liu plays the husband of a woman killed by street toughs during a kidnapping. The gang kidnap women on the streets to sell as sex slaves. The wife just happened to be there at the wrong time. John dresses up as a ninja and hunts down the gang. He attacks and there are plenty of fights. Sadly, they just aren't very good fights, some of the worst I've seen. They seem like slow motion training videos. John Liu is the martial arts choreographer and he's not doing that good a job. He's not doing so well on his acting either. Some of his mugging to the camera is laughable but not in a good way. John made most of his 2 dozen films between 1972 and 1982, I can't say I've seen any of them, they aren't the popular films that I recognize.

The revenge story is pretty standard fare, the villains are where the film takes a slight dip to wacky land. The menacing street thugs dress and act comically and all I could think of is how clumsy it all looked. The head baddie is so radioactive he can kill with his hands. Most of his murderin' effects weren't that good. There's a bunch of cops and reporters involved and they aren't much better at the old acting game than John was. It's nice that VS salvaged the film and released it, it's too bad it's just so poor. I don't imagine I'll be picking up this one.

Curse Of The Undead 1959 Written by Edward Dein and Mildred Dein, directed by Edward Dein. It's listed on the Kino Lorber DVD box as the first vampire western. I do like the poster.

A small town has had some young women die from what the local doctor, played by John Hoyt, thinks is a wasting disease. Soon John finds out what's killing the women, it's a vampire, played by Michael Pate. Michael plays a good villain. If you watched a lot of TV from that era you would have seen Michael as a guest star on many shows. I really liked two of his earliest films, The Black Castle and The Strange Door.

There's a local baddie who's trying to take over other people's land in the area through force, he's played by Bruce Gordon, another character actor that appeared on oodles of TV from the same time. Michael sets his eyes on the local widow rancher played by Kathleen Crowley. Lucky for her, she's got Preacher Dan on her side, he's played by Eric Fleming, and he can kick some vampire ass.

I enjoyed it, it's a nice looking film, it's got a nice mood. I liked the characters, the locations, sets and props worked well. The script mixed the two genres well without changing much of the mythology people expect from either. Someone mentioned the movie dragged a bit in the last third and I thought the same thing. It doesn't make me like it any less, glad I picked it up, I'll watch it again.

Jerry Warren Collection 4

I made my own 4th collection of Jerry Warren masterpieces, movies that weren't included in the 3 volume series that was issued by VCI. These are all films I found on YouTube for the most part. Some are chopped up foreign films and some are all shot in the US by Warren, except for the stock footage he tosses into everything. It's like his salt, add a bit of flavor, that sort of thing. I'd seen most of them in the past, might have even blogged about them. Now that I've burned them onto a disc I can put it away with the other 3 volumes and forget about them.

Face Of The Screaming Werewolf 1964 Jerry hacks two Mexican movies to death and tries to revive them for the American market by linking their scenes with the poorly written and directed scenes he'd done himself. Consistently Jerry shows that he has no talent as a filmmaker.

Lon Chaney Jr appeared as a werewolf in the 1960 Mexican horror movie La Casa del Terror, his scenes are mostly what survives Jerry clown style editing. The other movie is La Momia Azteca, a 1957 Mexican mummy movie. It was the first of a trilogy of mummy films from Cinematográfica Calderón SA. The other two are The Curse Of The Aztec Mummy and The Robert Vs The Aztec Mummy. They were shot back to back and all three were released in 1957. There's a good DVD set of all three original Mexican films with English subtitles and  decent prints. Jerry had already chopped LMA apart in 1963 and released it in the US with new footage he'd written and directed.

Not surprisingly the movie makes little sense at times. It gets pretty harshly savaged in reviews and rightly so. Jerry is one of those filmmakers that is needing a savage beating with the de-fleshed skull of Paul Naschy. A fantasy of mine.

Frankenstein Island 1981 Jerry Warren wrote and directed. It didn't do well and Jerry though he hadn't made a modern enough picture. He cut it for a TV version and added some explosions. Yeah, that will disguise what shit job you did Jerry.

Some balloonists crash land on an island at sea. The place is under control of the Frankenstein family. Granddaughter Sheila captures the group and plans to turn them into zombies of a sort. One of the group is a doctor and Sheila brainwashes him to helping her keep her 200 year old husband alive. John Carradine plays the long dead, but spiritually alive, Dr Frankenstein. He communicates through Sheila's husband and appears as a floating head in a few scenes. They use the same short shot and change the dialog from scene to scene.

Goofy dialog made me laugh but the film isn't much by way of a comedy, it's just second rate.

Invasion Of The Animal People 1959 I already did a big post about the film's different versions.

Teenage Zombies 1959 Written and directed by Jerry Warren. It was filmed in 1956 and the IMDb Trivia pages says it may have been released briefly in 1957. The title and some of the score was ripped off from Kronos.

Katherine Victor is a mad scientist who's got here very own island. She's got a deal with the local sheriff to send vagrants and hobos as subjects for her experimentation. Some teens stumble on her set up and bring her project to turn Americans into zombies to an end. It's typical of Warren's inability to write dialog and make movies. Another stinker from Jerry.

Terror Of The Blood Hunters 1962 Written and directed by Jerry Warren. One of the lot that I hadn't already seen.

A subversive writer is sent to prison on Devil's Island where he gets to paint the Commandant's daughter. She wants to help him escape and take her with him. They bring his pal from the ship that brought him to the island and trek through the jungle to freedom. Griffith Park in LA stands in for the jungle with the aid of some stock footage. Pretty ambitious a project for Jerry, it's a slight bit better than most of his films, but as usual it comes up below average.

The Incredible Petrified World 1959 Written by John W Steiner and directed by Jerry Warren. It was filmed and completed in 1957 but it took until 1959 and 1960 to get released.

John Carradine is a professor who sends 4 people into the ocean in a diving bell. It gets disconnected and disappears. The crew find themselves still alive in a subterranean cavern. They meet a shipwrecked sailor  who's been there for 14 years. A rescue mission is sent to look for the castaways and eventually they are rescued. It's a dull thing, not enough monsters or terror for my liking.

Jerry Warren Collection Volume 1

Jerry Warren started back in the 1940s, he acted in four films, all uncredited, before he directed and produced the 1956 Yeti film Man Beast. He directed 9 other films and 8 of them have been collected in three sets from VCI. If it was a box set it would be a box of stink. The films are part of the Kit Parker film library which VCI puts out. Jerry also bought and hacked up a handful of foreign films, like Terror In The Midnight Sun which he turned into Invasion Of The Animal People. He not a good film maker in anyway, at least from the three examples of his work here. I've seen several of his other films but there are films in the three volumes that I hadn't seen. Not a comforting thought.

Man Beast 1956 Screenplay by B Arthur Cassidy, directed by Jerry Warren. Besides the stuff that Jerry shot there's plenty added mountain climbing footage from an unfinished foreign film that Jerry says is "probably of Mexican origin". Jerry did actually shoot footage in the snow covered mountains a few miles away from LA, he also used the cave in Bronson Canyon. The costume for the Yeti was the ape costume from White Pongo. He had his actors climb the fence of a major studio lot to shoot scenes on their Himalayan set.

It's a story about a woman's search for her brother in the Himalayan Mountains. Asa Maynor plays the woman, she needs to find her brother before the altitude effects his medications and kills him. The brother went up the mountain to search for the Yeti. She misses him at his last camp but meets up with the guide that took him there.

The guide takes Asa's party into the mountains and there's nothing but mountain climbing and death ahead of them. Lucky for her, she manages to get away with her boyfriend. I had to laugh at the guide's reveal at the end of the film. He turns out to be the son of a human and a Yeti, his plan to assimilate the Yeti into society is joyously ludicrous. I got to the end, it does have a bit of entertainment value but it's well below average, Not surprisingly it has a good number of 10 votes on the IMDb, way more 1 votes though. I certainly liked it better than the botch job Jerry did with Invasion Of The Animal People. The original of that film was much more entertaining and might have made better box office just as it was. Why Jerry couldn't see that is a puzzle. From reading about Jerry I don't see a guy with a business plan. He just plowed ahead and did things, but lacked the ability to do them well. The actors he used from the Pasadena Playhouse were a mixed lot but most of them did well enough with the so-so script. I like a lot of these old 50s films and can forgive a lot of the bad film making so I might watch it again someday.

The Wild World Of Batwoman 1966 Jerry wrote the script and directed. He wanted to cash in on the current Batman craze from the TV show with Adam West. He lied to Katherine Victor, promising to make a good film, in color, with plenty of production values but he just couldn't get the money and didn't have the talent to do better. I first saw TWWOB onMST3K.

That's Katherine Victor with her Bat Girls. The casting director hired the Bat Girls from a strip club that got closed after a raid. Katherine had to make her own costume as Jerry refused to spend money for a costume designer. Steve Brodie, Steve Conte and Bruno VeSota have parts in the film but I didn't recognize any other names.

The story is pretty goofy, Batwoman fights crime with her Bat Girls. It's definitely meant to be a comedy but there weren't that many good jokes and the slapsticky stuff is weak. Since I'd seen it a few times from watching it on MST3K I was used to the film and got through it to the end. I might even watch it again.

Curse Of The Stone Hand 1964 Jerry cobbled this together from two Chilean movies that would have been better to see as they were. He added scenes with John Carradine and Katherine Victor. La Casa Está Vacía (The House is Empty) 1945 was directed by Carlos Schlieper and La Dama De La Muerte (The Lady of Death) 1946 was directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen. The later was based on the Robert Lewis Stevenson story The Suicide Club. You can see both films on YouTube but sadly with no subtitles. I haven't looked at the subtitle sites to see if there might be some available.

The framing story with John and Katherine ties the two stories together and makes them appear to have a connection to a particular house and the cursed stone hands within. The first story is about a gambler who's cursed by moving into the place, he looses heavily at a gambling club and is forced to sign a suicide pact. That's the end of him. The other story is about a different family who move into the house, the owner's son starts acting like a dick and uses hypnotism to try to control his brothers fiancee.

The actual footage shot in Chili is fairly entertaining and looked pretty good. The stuff Jerry shot is pretty useless. The movie got bad reviews and Leonard Maltin called it incoherent. I have a feeling that Jerry could have done better dubbing and selling the two Chilean films intact. How Jerry's mind works is beyond me. At least I got to see it. Sadly the 3 films in the set aren't available on YouTube, I guess Kit Parker doesn't want you to suffer from the pain of watching them.

Creepy Creature Double Feature Volume 1

Creepy Creature Double Feature Volume 1 is another VCI release from the Kit Parker film library. He's got a good number of films in that collection but these aren't some of the better ones. They're both passable as entertainment and there's two of them on one disc.

Monster From The Ocean Floor 1954 The first film produced by Roger Corman, screenplay by Bill Danch, directed by Wyott Ordung. Bill would go on to write a huge number of TV episodes and animated shorts. He wrote 20 episodes of the 1967 Spider-Man series and 58 episodes of the animated Sabrina The Teenage Witch series. Wyott only directed one other film, the 1956 Chuck Conners film Walk The Dark Street. He's responsible for penning that 50s SF classic Robot Monster. He didn't have a long career.

Lucky for us Monster From The Ocean Floor is a bit better than Robot Monster. Anne Kimbell plays a young woman vacationing in a tiny Mexican sea side village. While swimming she's nearly run down by marine biologist Stuart Wade and his mini submarine. An abalone diver disappears and Anne sees something huge in the sea. Stuart doesn't quite believe her, suspecting a large octopus or something like that. Little do the two of them know that the local legend of a sea monster is real. The local witch woman plots to sacrifice Anne to the thing they believe to be a god, she enlists the help of local fisherman Pablo, played by Wyott Ordung, to lure Anne to the monster. Eventually things are sorted out and there's a happy ending. Well, except for the few people who got eaten.

It's a fairly decent movie, well enough made for the little cash spent on it, sadly it fails on the monster. Film historian Tom Weaver interviews Roger Corman about the film and talks about the film in audio extras. That was as entertaining as the film in some ways. Glad to have a copy and be able to watch it again someday.

Serpent Island 1954 Produced by Bert I Gordon, written and directed by Tom Gries. Rosalind Hayes hires men to help her find some gold that her great-grandfather had hidden in Haiti. Sonny Tufts plays a marine engineer who's been living as a beach bum. He's the one who figures out that the gold isn't on Haiti but another island in the area. They find the gold but it turns out to be the property of a voodoo cult and guarded by a big ass boa constrictor.

The script is weak, the acting average or below, the film watchable but it's not as entertaining as MFTOF. I'd still watch it again but it's going to be a while before that happens.

Friday Night Movies 800

I'd seen Terror In The Midnight Sun back in 2010 and posted about it. I enjoyed it but hadn't watched it since. Last week I was in DreamHaven, owner Greg mentioned the movie and that there were two different American versions. I was pretty sure I hadn't seen either. I looked and they're not in My Watched Movie List, I don't mention it on my post either. Here's a bit of an explanation of the versions from the IMDb page for the movie. I've added links to the versions I could find online.

Was released in the USA as "Invasion of the Animal People". The film was shortened and scenes with John Carradine were added. Jerry Warren and Virgil W. Vogel are given co-director credit for the U.S. version

The film exists in three English language versions:

• (1) "Terror in the Midnight Sun" is the original Swedish version which was shot in English with a running time of 69 minutes.
• (2) "Invasion of the Animal People" is the title of the original U.S. theater release in which Jerry Warren removed approximately 24 minutes from the 69 minute original version. Scenes of John Carridine and others were shot and added to the remaining footage. The remaining footage was changed around, stock music cues and narration by Carridine were added. This U.S. theatre version ran only 55 minutes.
• (3)"Invasion of the Animal People" was the title retained for the version distributed to television by Medallion. Some of the cut Swedish footage was restored and Jerry Warren shot additional scenes to pad the running time up to 81 minutes, nearly 12 minutes longer than the original version.

Some prints of the original English language Swedish version under the title "Terror in the Midnight" are missing the racy shower scene. This footage was completely removed from the chopped up U.S. version titled "Invasion of the Animal People."

The version of TITMS in the title link above is the version missing the shower scene. The DVD I bought after our conversation has the #1 version, running 69 mins with shower scene, the one on YouTube is 71 minutes. Not sure why, especially since the shower scene, barely a minute plus, is missing. The DVD has a copy of Invasion Of The Animal People, the 3rd version listed above. I wasn't able to find a copy of that to post. TITMS looks pretty good but IOTAP doesn't look as nice, it's a bit fuzzier.

I enjoyed Terror In The Midnight Sun all over again. It's a well made movie with a fairly efficient story. The cast is good, the sets and props are well made, the locations are quite nice at times. The effects are fairly good and so is the monster, considering that it was the only SF film made in Sweden at the time. There might be too much skiing.

The script was by Arthur C Pierce, it was his 2nd feature film, he'd written a short film and an episode of The Silent Service. The Cosmic Man was his first film, I hadn't seen it, I found I'd downloaded a copy some time ago but hadn't ever got around to watching it, I'll be checking that out soon. Pierce followed TITMS with Beyond The Time Barrier and The Human Duplicators. He wrote several other low budget films that weren't always great but were usually interesting to watch.

Terror In The Midnight Sun was directed by Virgil W Vogel, his first three features were The Mole People, The Kettles On Old McDonald's Farm and The Land Unknown. I've seen all of those 3 or 4 times each. After he finished The Land Unknown Virgil started directing TV. After TITMS he only directed on more theatrical feature, The Sword Of Ali Baba, but he did direct several TV movies and lots of TV episodes.

Barbara Wilson plays an Olympic figure skater who is in Sweden. The fellow is Sten Gester, he plays a scientist who joins the fellow below on a trip to investigate a meteor that landed in Lapland.

That's the team there, military men transported them to Lapland. They encounter the big furry monster pretty often. The military men attack on first site but their pistols and rifles are ineffective.

There's plenty of action, mostly skiing but a good bit of monster screen time. The aliens make an appearance or two and eventually things are wrapped up fairly well. There's even time for a bit of romance. I liked the way it looked and would want to watch it again sometime.

I can't say that for the two versions Jerry Warren cobbled together out of his lack of imagination. His added footage is terrible, the writing is poor and everything else about it sucks. He takes a good film and ruins it, twice. He even chose a stupid title for his version. The short version is the worst of the two, at least the TV version has more of the interesting original footage added back.

If Jerry were alive he'd be right in line for a smash in the nut sack from the disinterred skull of Paul Naschy. I'd take a running start on this one, flailing my skull wielding arm like a windmill of bones. Luckily Jerry is dead, he won't have to stand up to the mighty power of Paul Naschy's testicle obliterating skull of vengeance. I'll have a chance to complain more about Jerry in the near future. I just picked up 3 volumes of Jerry's so called work from Kit Parker Films and VCI.

Kaidan Kasane-ga-fuchi 1957

Kaidan Kasane-ga-fuchi is the Japanese title of a 1957 ghost story. It's often called The Depths, The Ghost Of Kasane Swamp or The Ghost of Kasane. It's based on a story called Shinkei Kasanegafuchi by Encho Sanyutei, the screenplay is by Yasunori Kawauchi, the director is Nobuo Nakagawa.

It starts one snowy evening.

A blind masseur goes to collect a debt from a samurai. The samurai goes nuts, kills the guy and has his servant toss the body in the swamp. The ghost of the masseur comes back to haunt the samurai and he kills his wife and downs himself in the swamp.

Twenty years later the orphaned children of the masseur and the samurai have grown up and live in the same town. The son of the samurai is Shinkichi, he's a servant to a shop keeper, the daughter of the masseur is Rui, she's a samisen teacher. The daughter of the shop owner is Hisa, she's in love with Shinkichi, Rui is also in love with him. Omura is a samurai who wants to marry Rui but he's more thug than samurai, she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. He stirs up trouble among the trio and everything goes steadily to hell.

It's no Onibaba but it's fairly good. A lot of these Japanese supernatural stories seem to end poorly for most everyone. This isn't anything different. It's nice and moody and it looks pretty good. You can download a copy at this blog.