Here's the next 8 movies in the set. Not too many good ones in this batch and the quality of the video is all over the place. Some of the movies look like they started as VHS copies and probably were. That's our pals at Mill Creek Entertainment. Of course I shouldn't complain I know what sort of crap to expect from these low-budget sets. I just like the cheapness and the convience of getting a big bunch of movies packed into a small space. Occasionally there are some ok movies to watch in these movie packs. This box just doesn't yield up as many of the better ones for some reason.
Disc 3 Side A
First stinker on deck, The Nightmare Never Ends, from 1980, which also has been released under the title Cataclysm. It was also cut down to about 30 minutes and used as a segment in the 1985 anthology movie Night Train To Terror. That's a right piece of crap too. TNNE scores a 3 on the IMDb but I wouldn't give it that good a score. Richard Moll plays a writer who writes a book on the death of God. His wife thinks he's going to roast in the firey pits of hell, but he just doesn't believe it. I personally would enjoy seeing that. Richard's wife is disturbed at a hypnotism show, in a trance she sees a scene of some women killed at a Nazi dinner party during WWII. Later that night the hynotist is murdered and 666 burned into his chest. Weird, huh. Some old Nazi hunter claims a 20 something guy at a disco is the same guy he saw kill people during the war. No one believes him, even after he is murdered. Cameron Mitchell, a local cop, investigates. He questions the smug 20 something guy but doesn't get anywhere. We see he's a minion of the devil who likes to murder people. He's got hairy hooved legs. There's a guy who fights against the devil's minions but he's pretty ineffectual and he gets killed. It tries to be arty and creepy and there's almost a good story there but it just isn't that well made. The music stinks too. Certainly not worth watching again.
More evil Nazi's in Counterblast but not the supernatural kind. It's a 1948 British movie about an escaped Nazi scientist. He kills an Austrian scientist and takes his identity. He fools everyone and hides in England. The movie was released under an other name to fool people into paying for something free on tv. While the movie was in syndication at many tv stations around the country, some producer bought the theater rights and changed the name to Devil's Plot. That's the movie business, rife with scum. Speaking of scum, our scientist continues to work on his secret germ-warfare so that when the Nazi's rise again he'll he ready to help out. Things don't go very well for him. Things fall apart quickly, and after failing to follow orders of his secret Nazi masters, he's on the run. He hides out on a ship only to be gassed when they fumigate the ship to kill the rats aboard. Haha. It's not too bad a movie but one that I wouldn't watch very often. Unfortunately I know I have this movie in another box set. That's double the chance of accidentally watching it again. If only there were some way to leave myself a message not to do it.
Disc 3 Side B
We start the B side with All The Kind Strangers, a 1974 made for tv movie about a group of orphans who live in a house out in the country. Mom died giving birth to the youngest of her seven children and daddy fell off the roof after drinking some of his own moonshine. The kids have been alone in the house for 5 years, mostly under the control of eldest son John Savage. He wants to keep the family together like their father wanted. He's going to do it at any cost. Stacy Keach picks one of the kids up on the road and drops him off at the house. The kids force him to stay so he can be their new dad. They have already got Samantha Eggar trapped in the kitchen. They have dogs that keep the adults in line. It's a bit interesting but I just couldn't buy that a grown man couldn't get out of the situation as poorly as Stacy does. Mind you these are some pretty fucked up kids. It comes out that John killed the other kidnapped dads when they said they didn't want to stay. He drives all their cars into the river. Robbie Benson plays one of the kids and that reminds me how little I like his annoying smirk. Not an enjoyable movie for the most part, one I don't need to watch again.
A bit better than the average in this box is the 1956 Italian movie The Day The Sky Exploded. Hell, it's better than most Italian movies I've seen. It gets 4.1 on the IMDb and that's pretty fair. It's very much like the low budget American science fiction movies of the 50's. A rocket from the Earth knocks a huge astroid out of orit and it's headed straight for us. Glancing off the moon it breaks into a thousand pieces. There's havoc on the ground as the USA and USSR work together to send a fleet of nukes into space to blow up the oncoming danger. The effects aren't that great but they get the job done. They use some stock footage of rocket launches to pad out the 79 minute running time.
Disc 4 Side A
Maybe that's the tape that Death Warmed Up came from. I don't know. It sure looks like a transfered tape all the colors are off and it's very fuzzy. It's a 1984 New Zealand horror film starring Michael Hurst. He was Iolaus on the Hercules, The Legendary Journeys series with Kevin Sorbo. That series was produced in New Zealand by Sam Raimi and Rob Tappert, of the Spiderman movie series. Michael is the son of a scientist working on brains. Another brain guy drugs and hynotizes Michael into killing his parents. He's just a dick of a scientist and didn't like the competition. Michael gets stuck in a crazy person place and six years later is cured and released. He returns to the island where it all happened with his new girlfriend and another couple. The guy who made Michael kill his parents is still fucking people up. He helps one guy so much that his brain explodes. It's kind of poorly done and that's about what the whole movie is like. There's a bit of gore, some nudity and some New Zealand country side. Even if the transfer was great, nothing would look as good as any episode of Hercules. Not a fun movie and one I won't return to anytime soon.
Poor Grant Williams, he's one of the leads in The Doomsday Machine, and he's a pretty shitty guy. He was the shrinking man in that famous 1957 movie and the geologist who fights the giant growing rocks in The Monolith Monsters. They're better parts and he's better in those movies. Sadly that's the peak of his career and he died at 52. TDM was started in 1967 and when the money ran out they stopped. Someone finished the movie and it got released in 1972. Grant, three guys and three gals are sent into space. When they get up there the Chinese destroy the world with a really bad bomb. It burns up the surface of the Earth and our 7 people are all that are left. They are headed for Venus and on the way Grant has a harder and harder time getting with the program. He goes crazy and atacks one of the women and forces her into the air lock. She accidentally hits the button that opens the door. Oops. That was a pretty darn stupid scene, no matter how dramatic that is supposed to be, and the airlock button was a little push button on the wall that someone could easily hit with their elbow. It's the stuff like that, the lack of detail and sloppy writing, that keeps me from thinking anything good about this movie. Don't watch it. Watch something better, anything.
Disc 4 Side B
I don't think I have too many movies with Rock Hudson, he was never a favorite of mine. I think I have one of Rock and Doris Day's comedies from the 1960's. Embryo, from 1977, has Rock as a science guy. He developes a formula that grows the fetus rapidly. He first made a dog grow up quickly. Then he obtains a human fetus from a dying woman and in a few weeks he's got Barbara Carrera in the house. He gives her an excellerated learning course that ends with them in the sack. She becomes pregnant and starts to age quickly. Barbara is really a smart person with lots of book learning but she's got no moral sense and soon there are deaths. The thing ends badly for everyone pretty much. Not a bad movie just one that isn't very interesting. Lot of talking and dull science stuff. Not something I would need to watch anymore.
Christopher Lee is in the dull End Of The World. It's produced by low-budget film maker Charles Band with an assist from brother Richard. They made a ton of crappy to not so crappy SF and Horror films over the years. Lee is a priest who's got trouble at the convent. Turns out he's been taken over by an alien. He's part of a group of aliens that wants to keep the Earth from spreading it's disease's around the galaxy. Filthy Humans! It's got Scott Kirk and Sue Lyon as a scientist and his wife who recieve a radio signal. It lures them to the aliens and they are coerced into helping them. Dean Jagger, Lew Ayers and MacDonald Carey all have some small parts. It's pretty dull at times and what little effects there are are none to special. They do blow up the earth but it looks pretty poor. It scores a 2.6 on the IMDb and that's about where it should be. This movie, like a high number of movies in the box set, has some noise in the background of the soundtrack. Kind of annoying. Luckily I won't need to see it again.
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