Back to watching stuff from the YouTube downloads that have been accumulating. I keep looking for that gem in the rough but today isn't going to be the day that I luck out.
First up Frankenstein Island, a 1981 John Carradine film that was written and directed by Jerry Warren. It was Jerry Warren's last film and his only effort in color, he directed 11 others between 1956 and 1966, and I've seen 4 others: The Wild World Of Batwoman (an MST3K selection), Face Of The Screaming Werewolf (US scenes), Teenage Zombies and The Incredible Petrified World. I like the lady in the poster above, the one on the left, she looks like she's just seen the film.
Some men get shipwrecked and wake up on an island. They find a group of young ladies in fur bikini's, some overacting sailors, and Mrs Frankenstein. John Carradine is her hubby but John's dead . He only appears in a few brief clips that are inserted into the film as messages from the grave or some such. It's pretty lame. A bedridden Dr Van Helsing is her hubby's assistant and he's helping Mrs F to carry on John's work. Katherine Victor plays Mrs Frankenstein, she was only in a few movies, 4 of which were for Jerry Warren. her first film was the low budget Mesa Of Lost Women. The bulk of her career was as a continuity coordinator for Disney on 1990s cartoons like Darkwing Duck and TaleSpin. She passed away in 2004 at age 81.
Cameron Mitchell has a small past as a sailor who's been experimented on. Steve Brody and Andrew Duggan have small parts too. The rest of the actors weren't familiar to me.
Jerry's script is pretty poor but it goes along with the rest of the poor production. At least the cave girls in bikini's scream well. The film meander's around, tossing in everything Jerry can think of, before finally dragging itself to an unsatisfying Fin. At 95 minutes it seemed longer.
I decided to watch 51 because it has Bruce Boxleitner. I like the guy from Babylon 5 and often check out his work. Sadly he's not always in the best productions. It was produced for the SyFy channel and it's somewhat below average for that network. Bruce leads a group of reporters into Area 51 and Hanger 18. He's not showing the secret alien prison on the base. Of course the shape shifting alien escapes just as the tour starts. It touches someone and immediately it looks just like that person, clothes and all. It kills all the people it encounters. There are other aliens, one particularly murderous, and another more friendly. The rest of the film is running about, watching people get killed. It's another film that isn't totally awful but it's something that I wouldn't need to see again. At least Bruce gets a paycheck. You can check it out in the link in the title but be warned that the film has annoying Spanish subtitles burned into the film.
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