PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Planet Of The Vampires 1965

Planet Of The Vampires 1965 Based on One Night Of 121 Hours, by Renato Pestriniero, screenplay by Alberto Bevilacqua, Callisto Cosulich, Mario Bava, Antonio Román and Rafael J Salvia, directed by Mario Bava. The English version of the film was written by Ib Melchior and Louis M Heyward.

Someone gave me the Kino Lorber Blu-ray of the movie. I've seen the movie 2 or 3 times already. It's one of the few Bava films I've seen more than twice. I was interested in the Tim Lucas commentary so I watched the movie with that on. It was interesting for the most part. He's got a lot of info. At some point I'll watch the movie once again.

Friday Night Movies 899

The Seventh Curse 1986 Based on Ni Kuang's Dr Yuen novels, screenplay by Wong Jing and Yuen Gai-chi, directed by Lam Ngai Kai. Chin Siu-ho plays Dr Yuen and Cho Yun-fat plays Wisely, a character featured in Ni's Wisely novels.

Dr Yuen has a blood curse and he asks Wisely about a cure. Dr Yuen goes back to Thailand to find the cure and battles the evil sorcerer Aquala. Maggie Cheung plays Tsui Hung, a rich girl playing reporter who gets them in trouble because she's a selfish and unthinking asshole. We were wishing bad things on her. Dick Wei plays Black Dragon, he helps Dr Yuen and Wisely fight Aquala.

There's plenty of martial arts action, lots of gun shooting, explosions, noise and chaos. There's a good bit of magical jiggery pokery, much gore, and some entertaining ghosts and monsters. Wong Jing might not always write a coherent script but he's not shy of throwing everything he can think of into a film. It's funny and deadly serious on top of that.

We watched the new 88 Films Blu-ray from England. Something one would need an all region Blu-ray player to watch in the US. Sadly, no US release so far. It looks great. I was happy to see it again, the last time was in 1996 and that was on VHS. I'll stick it on my want list and hope the price comes down a bit.

The Flesh Eaters 1964 Written by Arnold Drake and directed by Jack Curtis. The cinematography was done by Curtis using the name Carson Davidson. Arnold was a comic book writer who co-created Deadman and the Doom Patrol for DC and The Guardians Of The Galaxy for Marvel. The film was edited by Radley Metzger.

A group of people are flying to Provincetown, a storm causes them to land the sea plane near a tiny island. They find Martin Kosleck there and shelter with him. He's a marine biologist collecting specimens. So he says. There turns out to be a more sinister reason for his presence on the island.

We watched this film at Friday Night Movies night 31 back in 2005. I think I still feel about the film the same way as I did then. Not a great film but an entertaining film. You can watch it on YouTube, link in title.

Omicron 1963

Omicron 1963 Written and directed by Ugo Gregoretti.

A science fiction comedy about a superior alien life form taking over a human body, it's part of an alien invasion plan. Our bodies are so inferior he has a hard time adjusting and there are slapstick moments. Even when he adjusts to his new environment he's not that motivated to do well, he really just wants to go home. There are typical fish out of water gags and some of them are funny.

There's a whole bit of the movie tied up in worker relations and production efficiency. I'm not hip to Italian worker strife in the 60s but I do remember something from the past about how Italian workers were striking a lot.

A lot rides on the alien's report. Will the Earth be invaded. Hope so. You can see it on the Internet Archive with too many subtitles or download a nice copy from the guys at Rarelust. You might like it but at least you can say you've seen an Italian SF comedy.

Friday Night Movies 849

Gonks Go Beat 1965 From an original story by Robert Hartford-Davis and Peter Newbrook, screenplay by Jimmy Watson, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis. I'd seen a couple of Robert's other directing jobs, The Black Torment and The Sandwich Man. They were better than this film. A few of his other titles might have some merit. I downloaded a few from YouTube, someday i might have time to watch them. The DVD is part of The British Film series from Network. Gonks were a faddish toy from the era. Lulu sings the theme song Chocolate Ice.

The story is set some years in the future and the people of Earth are split into two groups. The folks of Beatland are hipsters who listen to an early form of rock n roll. The folks of Ballad Isle are pretty straight and listen to boring pop songs. They don't care for each other's music and there's tension on the planet as the annual musical contest comes up.

The Great Galaxian sends a representative to assess the situation and keep things from boiling over. He's supposed to bring the two sides together or he's going to be assigned to the planet Gonk. No one wants to go there.

Kenneth Conner plays the representative, he's a bit of a nervous Nelly and not very effective. He observes both sides and takes a meeting with Mr A&R, the man who runs the musical contest and is the contest's impartial judge. They come up with a Romeo and Juliet sort of plan to hook up a Beatland boy with a Ballad Isle girl. The couple preform a song at the end of the musical contest. It's the winner and everyone gets together and dances.

It's got a stupid story, poorly executed, with plenty of overacting, odd sets and the goofy turned up to eleven. Some of the 16 songs are hardly worth hearing. Of musical interest, the Beatland opening song features the Graham Bond Organization with Graham on vocals, sax and keyboards, Ginger Baker on drums, Jack Bruce on bass, Dick Heckstall-Smith on sax and John McLaughlin on guitar. All that talent and not much of a song.

The movie was a big flop but later developed a bit of a cult following. I hadn't ever heard of it until I ordered it from Network last week. I can't recommend it to anyone really, perhaps it's it's lucky there isn't a copy on the internet to look at. You can see some of the songs on YouTube.

The Outing 1987 Written by Warren Chaney and directed by Tom Daley. An American film that was released in the UK in April 1987 under the title The Lamp, it came out in September 1987 in the US under the title The Outing.

In an opening scene we see a monster murder the people on a ship. Only a little girl escapes, she takes a lamp and a bracelet with her. We jump to modern day and a nasty trio of scumbags comes to rob an old lady in her home. They kill the old lady with their bad acting and smash up her house looking for money they think is there. They find a box with the lamp and bracelet. The jinn in the lamp gets released and then slaughters the trio.

The cops send the effects from the house to a museum, though I can't fathom why. Alex is the teen daughter of the museum's archeologist, she decides to sneak into the place for a sleep over with her friends. Her horrible ex-boyfriend hears her plan, he sneaks in with a pal to get back at her and her new boyfriend. The friends pair off and the jinn starts killing.

First the guard goes, then a guy gets torn in two, some of the action seems to take place while the camera is looking in another direction. There's plenty of running about and yelling, often the sound goes from quiet to annoyingly loud. It doesn't take too long to kill most everyone off but the daughter. She gets rescued and destroys the lamp in the museum's incinerator.

It's got a few entertaining bits but it's got a tired story, awful characters and poor acting. Some of the monster bits weren't too bad but there's nothing outstanding. I wouldn't be picking one up for my collection. I'd only recommend it to the horror fan who wants to see it all.

Friday Night Movies 813

Dixie Dynamite 1976 Lee Frost directed and co-wrote the script with Wes Bishop. Wes also plays the gun happy deputy. 

Warren Oates is a guy in a small Georgia town, Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley are friends of his and daughters of a moonshiner. A local scumbag rich guy is secretly buying up the town and surrounding area because he knows there's gas under the ground. He's using his contacts to close up the stills and put the moonshiners out of biz. Then he buys up the loans for a tiny amount, compared to the value of the farm.

The girl's father is one of those poor saps and he's about to lose his farm. At the bar he gets in a fight and the local deputy kills him. The farm is sold and the girls turned out. They take to getting revenge on the scumbag behind it all. They blow up his trucks, his bank, his car and him. They even blow up the deputy. Happy ending.

It made me laugh, especially that deputy being blowed up real good. You can check it out on YouTube, link above. You might get a laff.

The Day Mars Invaded Earth 1962 Directed by Maury Dexter and written by Harry Spalding. Kent Taylor is a scientist on a project to send a robot to Mars. The robot fails shortly after landing but not before it sends a powerful signal to the Earth. Kent takes a bit of a vacation to visit his family. Marie Windsor plays his somewhat estranged wife, Betty Beall and Gregg Shank play his children.

The family members start seeing each other roaming around the estate where they're staying. The distant figures don't respond to a call and quickly move out of sight. Soon they're seeing themselves and wonder what the hell is going on. We learn a bit later that the probe on Mars worried the energy beings of the red planet and they've come to put a stop to the invasion from Earth.

It was fairly decent for a low budget picture from Robert L Lippert. I enjoyed it and added a copy from YouTube to my pile, I might want to watch it again someday. You can check it out at the link above.

 

Science Fiction Sunday 608

Monstrosity 1963 Four people worked on the script, Vy Russell, Sue Dwiggins, Dean Dillman Jr and an uncredited Jack Pollexfen, the director was Joseph V Mascelli and and uncredited Jack Pollexfen. It's too bad they didn't work a bit harder. The film is also known as The Atomic Brain. That's the title I saw it under when it ran as the film in an episode of MST3K. It's also in one of those 50 movie packs from Mill Creek. Here's a handy checklist of the many multi movie packs from Mill Creek.

A wicked old woman has devoted her fortune to keeping herself alive. She's got a mad scientist in the basement of her big old mansion. That's him in the baggy clothes. He's played by Frank Gerstle and he had a long career in films and TV. He's got over 200 credits on the IMDb. The other man is the old lady's dogsbody, he's played by Frank Fowler and he only has 5 credits on the IMDb. The scientist calls him a gigolo and he does figure to come out quite well when the old lady gets her young new body. The wicked rich bitch sets him straight, what young woman wants an old man for a lover, he's none to happy. The old lady is played by Marjorie Eaton, she appeared in over 50 TV shows and films in a career that started in 1946 and ended in 1984, she died the following year at 85 years old. In one of her last roles she played an Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back. Her film listing on the IMDb is quite interesting.

The poor undressed lady is a corpse the mad scientist had robbed from a grave, he's put the brain of an animal into her head and reanimated her. He's using atomic power, enough to blow the whole mansion to bits. In fact, he's rigged the machine to blow if they get caught. That will cover up the evidence.

That's another of his experiments in brain transfers. He's got a slave that kills there. The grave robbing is attracting the attention of the local news and the bodies aren't holding up too well after the transfers. The mad scientist wants to use live women as hosts for the old woman's brain. The old lady orders three foreign servants and takes her pick from the women that arrive. It soon becomes apparent that they are in danger so the women try escaping.

One woman is caught and has the brain of a cat put into her head. The scientist is happy with the transfer and plans to do the old lady next. Before that happens one bad thing after another happens and nearly everyone dies.

It's got an interesting plot at the core of the movie but the movie is strictly low budget and amateurish. It plods along at the best of times, the dialog is poor on top of that. People vote harshly on the IMDb, 30.4% of the votes are a 1 and 39.8% of the votes are a 2 or 3. It's a good reminder to keep an eye on the rich, they are some fuckin' ugly and untrustworthy people. You can see if you like it in the link in the title above.

Convict 762 1997 Screenplay by J Reifel, directed by Luca Bercovici. I had a disc with four movies on it and thought I only had watched two of them. I put this on and it seemed familiar. My Watched Movie List says I had seen it, back in 2003, and my comment was one word, Crap. I skimmed through it to see what it was about. A spaceship gets in trouble and has to land as a space prison to refuel. A short time before they arrive the prisoners had all killed themselves. Only Billy Drago and Frank Zagarino are alive. The captain and the crew, all women, make one mistake after another and they don't survive to well. It's not very good but I knew that going in. I went through it pretty quickly, speeding it up after watching the first third. I hope I don't forget and watch it again someday.

Cypher 2002 Written by Brian King and directed by Vincenzo Natali. Vincenzo is the director of Cube. Lot's of people liked it but I wasn't that keen on it. This was a good bit better. It's an odd story, sort of future is now with giant corps spying on one another. Jeremy Northam gets hired to be a spy at one corp, he's sent to infiltrate another corp and gets on there. Lucy Liu turns up as another spy of sorts, she helps him and leads him down one rabbit hole after another. It gets pretty complicated but you can mostly follow along. There's one double cross after another and plenty of danger. The corps kill agents when they don't have a use for them anymore. Or do they, who knows, not much is really explained. There's a fairly decent ending and some of the baddies get blown up, so that was OK. It's slightly above average for me. I'll keep the disc and might watch it again someday.

Science Fiction Sunday 607

Interplanetary 2008 Another evil corp with genetic research on it's evil mind plot. This time some saps have been sent to Mars, there they fall afoul of the corp's secret genetic lab which has produced some sort of monster. Everyone's dead there. It's a comedy by Chance Shirley, while it's better than average for one of these evil corp films, it's still only about average as a film. There were some good jokes in the lot of so-so jokes. It's pretty gory and there are some bare breasts. Sets, props and effects are fair to good and the monster doesn't look that bad. I wouldn't need to see it again. Another freebee from Amazon Prime, same as the film below.

Mission Stardust 1967 A 1967 Italian adaptation of the first Perry Rodan novel. I read it's not much like the book. It's directed by Primo Zeglio who co-wrote the screenplay with some other guys. The story has Rodan's new spaceship the Stardust run into some aliens on the moon. The aliens have superior tech but can't do much for one of their scientists. He's dying. He needs some Earthman help, an Earth doc figures out the problem and aims them at another Earth doctor who has a new cure. They have an adventure getting that done. There's a fairly decent alien spaceship and some other nice models but the effects let them down a bit. The props, sets and costumes are a bit better than you might expect. I liked it better than a lot of the Italian genre films I've seen but I wouldn't need to see it again. You can test drive it at the link in the title above. Maybe you'll get better mileage.

Creepy Creature Double Feature Volume 2

The second volume of Creepy Creature Double Feature has two more 60s horror films of a low budget nature. It's from VCI and it seems to be the end of the series. For films like these I don't mind that they are paired up, saves having two DVDs to store.

The Crawling Hand 1963 Story by Bill Idelson, Robert Malcolm Young and Joe Cranston, screenplay by Bill Idelson and Herbert L Strock, directed by Herbert L Strock. A lot of new film makers working on this and they all have some interesting credits in their later careers.

I recognized Bill Idelson's name from writing episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, he's written a whole bunch of other TV including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Flintstones, Get Smart, The Odd Couple and more. He wrote a couple of TV films but this is his only feature film.

Joe Cranston was mostly an actor, his only other writing credit is for The Corpse Grinders for Ted V Mikels. Joe's first acting credit was for Space Patrol in 1953, his last was My Three Sons in 1961. Joe's only directing credit is the 1988 movie Turnabout in which Bryan Cranston and Ernest Borgnine take on a Mexican drug lord bothering their small town near the border.

Robert Malcolm Young wrote mostly in TV, shows like It Takes A Thief, Then Came Bronson, Mod Squad, Night Gallery and The Streets Of San Francisco. His other two feature films were Trauma in 1962 and Escape From Witch Mountain in 1975.

Herbert L Strock directed a lot of TV in the 50s and 60s, working on shows like Science Fiction Theatre, Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, The Veil and Maverick. He directed some low budget SF films over the years, Gog, Battle Taxi, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, Blood OF Dracula and How To Make A Monster. He's uncredited on The Magnetic Monster and Riders To The Stars.

The men running the space program are having trouble with their second rocket, it's run out of oxygen and the astronaut is telling them to blow it. They do and bits of their man rain down on California. Rod Lauren finds a severed arm on the beach and takes it home. The arm is possessed by some alien force, it animates and kills Rod's landlady. Alan Hale Jr is the local police captain. His men find fingerprints and they turn out to belong to the astronaut. Peter Breck and Kent Taylor are questioned at the Space Program but they play it cagey and don't tell him what's going on with their astronaut. At this point they aren't sure of whats going on. Paul gets taken over by the alien force and attacks people. The arm is hurt and some cats bite it. Peter finds the arm and gathers it up, only for it to escape at the end of the film.

Despite the ending, there's no sequel. It's not a great film but I liked it despite it's weaknesses, somehow it's fairly compelling. They had the core of a good movie but didn't quite pull it off. Some of the yakking scenes are pretty clunky. It's an 89 min movie and there's a bit of filler. I enjoyed Alan Hale Jr and some of the other actors were fairly good. I've managed to sit through it several times over the years, it appeared in the first season of MST3K. I tend to have a soft spot for the 50s SF and horror genres. I think that's partially from growing up in the period.

The Slime People 1963 Screenplay by Blair Robertson and Joseph F Robertson (as Vance Skarstedt), directed by Robert Hutton. Blair didn't write much in her short career, an episode of Bonanza and two features, Agent For H.A.R.M. and The Phantom Gunslinger. She appeared in TSP as Mrs Castillo. After TSP Joseph wrote and directed Love Feast in 1969. It stars Ed Wood as a cross dressing erotic photographer. Joseph wrote and directed a couple of other mainstream films before writing and directing over 2 dozen porn films under the name Adelle Robbins. I know I've seen a few of them but don't remember them.

This is Robert Hutton's only director job and I can see why he didn't direct again. He also stars in this film about subterranean beings that invade the surface to takeover the world. There's too much boring talking and wandering about in the fog that was created by the slime people. Their costumes are pretty poor. Sadly they ate up half the $80K budget. Still, good costumes won't help a dull script much. I had to run this at 1.5 speed in some of the walking about scenes. It too was on MST3K. More fun to watch it there.

One fairly entertaining film and one less so, about average for some of these low budget movie sets. Maybe I'll watch them again some time in the future. Or will I?

Science Fiction Sunday 602

The Lost World 1960 Producer Irwin Allen directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Bennett. I'm no big fan of Irwin's work but I have seen a few of his disaster movies over the years. I liked his next film, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, well enough but most of his films don't turn out to be the films I collect. Sometimes I'll wind up with one when it turns up cheap in a compilation set.

I haven't seen the 1960 version of The Lost World in years and years. I noticed a DVD set while searching for something else and ordered it. It's a two disc set with a copy of the 1925 version as a bonus. The 1925 version runs 76 mins, there are two longer restored versions out there, one at 93 mins and the second at 110 mins. I've got a couple of public domain DVD compilations that have 64 min versions. The 76 min version has changing tints instead of a steady single color. The picture looks alright but it's not as nice as the Blu-ray of the 110 version. That version is about 36 bucks on Amazon right now and I'm not buying that.

Irwin's take on the movie puts the story in modern day. Professor Challenger returns from a trip to South America where he saw some dinosaurs on an isolated plateau in the jungle. He lost his proof, now he's looking to go back and get some more. The knuckleheads in the picture are the lot that goes with him on his return trip. Left to right it's Jay Novello, Fernando Lamas, Michael Rennie, Claude Rains, Vitina Marcus, Richard Haydn, Jill St John and David Hedison. Most of their characters adapt poorly to the situation, though not all of them get eaten. Jill St John's character brings a poodle along for the trip and it's one ugly poodle. Her character is made to be a moron, look how she dresses. She's all. "I'm all woman and I can handle myself", but when confronted with dinos she doesn't do so well. To bad they didn't eat the poodle. The script doesn't treat the characters very well at all, poor Jay Novello only has two traits, greedy or scared. It's harder to care for the characters when they aren't so likeable.

Fernando is a helicopter pilot, he takes them to the plateau where they land. Later that evening a dinosaur knocks the helicopter off the cliff. Now they're stranded. Luckily they find a local lady and kidnap her. She leads them to her tribe and they get captured. Eventually they escape but only after a conveniently close volcano starts to erupt. Why a tribe would live next to a volcano is a bit odd but people do lose all common sense when it comes to buying property.

It's got big sets, plenty of nice models, props and the like. They used some sets from the 1959 Journey To The Center Of The Earth. The dinosaurs are less entertaining, mostly lizards and alligators with bits pasted on them. Irwin wanted stop motion but didn't have the budget for it. He was so cheap he even used a bit of dino crashing through the woods 4 times in a short time period. It's kind of embarrassing and the movie suffers for it. I got through to the end and thought I wouldn't need to see this again for a while.

A World Away 2019 I got to the end of this film and thought I wouldn't want to see it again. I really didn't need to see it in the first place but it was free on Amazon Prime and most of the online reviews were positively pooping on it. Who wouldn't want to look at that sort of a train wreck. Director Mark Blanchard is mostly to blame, he wrote the thing with Patrick McEveety. Mark hires his three kids to play the leads, that's the three in the foreground of the poster, they're all rather uninteresting.

The story is about some aliens, the two in the right on the poster, who lose their magical power source, called The Source, on Earth. Their spacecraft is being chased by some other aliens. They are played as bumbling villains who might have appeared on the Power Rangers TV show, if they had been better acted. A young girl has The Source on a rope, around her neck. Her dad takes her and some friends for a plane ride only to crash in another dimension. That dimension has it's won version of Vasquez Rocks. They all survive and eventually meet up with the aliens. The girl returns the device and everyone gets teleported home. The girl is taken away by the aliens to be cured of her disease.

It's poorly made, there's not much money in the budget I'm guessing, but a better director could have worked with that and come out ahead. Not the case here, it's was tedious and tough to watch. Be warned.

Science Fiction Sunday 600

The Gamma People 1956 Directed by John Gilling,  screenplay written by John Gilling and John W Gossage. John directed 3 dozen movies in his nearly 30 year career, I've liked a few, The Reptile, The Mummy's Shroud, Blood Beast From Outer Space and The Pirates Of Blood River. Near the end he directed multiple episodes of The Saint, Department S and The Champions.

Leslie Phillips is a British journalist and he's traveling by train with fellow American journalist Paul Douglas to a music festival in Salzberg. That's Leslie on the left, Paul on the right and Eva Bartok in the middle. Leslie and Paul's coach is the last one in the train, the iron bar holding the cars together breaks, the uncoupled car rolls down the track as the train gets farther and farther ahead. Two boys switch the train to a track that takes the car into the Duchy of Gudavia, a fictional country, where they are arrested by the local police.

The country is under the iron fist of Count Boronski. He's a dictator with a gang of mind damaged zombies to keep the people in line. Anyone who disagrees with him winds up tossed off a cliff. He has the guy's released from the jail.

The Count experiments on the children with gamma rays, some become smarter, other's are not so lucky. The arrival of the journalists gives the locals a rebellious spark and there's a good bit of running about and yelling. You can find out how they get out of their predicament by watching the movie in the title link above.

I'd seen this back in 2011 and enjoyed it all over again. It moves at a nice pace and I liked the mix of humor and drama. I'll be glad to watch it again.

Frozen Alive 1964 Directed by Bernard Knowles and screenplay by Evelyn Frazer. I can't say I've seen many of Bernard's films but I have seen a lot of his TV work. He directed episodes of The Adventures Of Lancelot, The Buccaneers, Ivanhoe and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

I'd seen this back in 2005 and had forgotten the story. A scientist is experimenting on suspended animation at the World Health Organization Low Temperature Unit in the Berlin Division. His wife is a drunken shrew who's not happy being married to a scientist. Movie scientists seem to marry the wrong women fairly often.

All that family drama eats up much of the film's 67 mins. It moves slowly, dragging me along, slightly bored. The big excitement near the end happens when the wife accidentally shoots herself while hubby goes into suspended animation at the lab. The police stop by to see the scientist and he's in the fridge. Eventually, it's all sorted out. You can find the movie on YouTube, if you care, in the link in the title above. It's no wonder I forgot the story, it's just not that good. I'll hopefully be reminded, by my post, that I really don't need to see this one again.

The Cosmic Man 1959 Directed by Herbert S Greene, screenplay by Albert C Pierce. Arthur wrote the Terror In The Midnight Sun and a few other films I've seen, Women Of The Prehistoric Planet, The Navy VS the Night Monsters, Dimension 5 and Cyborg 2087. I think I've seen most of his movies. Herbert was mostly a second unit or assistant director, I only recognize a few of the titles on his IMDb page. He only directed one other feature, Outlaw Queen in 1957, which I haven't seen.

A strange glowing white ball arrives on Earth and comes to rest in Stone Canyon near Oak Ridge California. It's really Griffith Park and the Observatory stands in for the Pacific Institute of Technology.

Scientists join military men at the site, they differ some on their approach to the glowing globe. Their attempts to move or penetrate the sphere come to naught. John Carradine plays the visitor but you aren't supposed to know that right away. Sadly, it was kind of obvious. There's some drama and a bit of action but in the end it's hardly average. I still enjoyed it and I might even watch it again. You can see it on YouTube, see above.