PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Tomb Of Torture 1963

Tomb Of Torture 1963 Director Antonio Boccaci, credited on the film as Anthony Kristye, wrote the original story, he co-wrote the screenplay with Giorgio Simonelli, who's credited as Johnny Seemonell. The films original title is Metempsyco. It was released in the US by Richard Gordon on a double bill with a German vampire film called Cave Of The Living Dead.

A doctor bring his daughter Anna to a village with a castle. That's her with her father, he used to live in the village 20 years ago. He's brought Anna to the castle to see if it can cure her of the odd dreams she's been having. In them she see's the violent death of Countess Irene. Irene used to live in the castle but disappeared 20 years ago. Anna also has ghostly visions of Irene now that she's in the village.

Irene's sister Countess Elizabeth lives in a house in the village and leaves the castle empty but for a deformed servant. When the movie opens we see the deformed servant kill two local girls down in a secret dungeon. There's a secret door inside the castle and a secret entrance behind a loose brick near the empty moat.

 

Raman was in love with Elizabeth until he met Irene. After Irene disappeared he left the area for 20 years but has recently returned. He's returned to search for Irene's body but Elizabeth thinks he's only after the supposed hidden treasure. Elizabeth is also seeing the image of Irene.

That's Anna and a reporter who's investigating the death of the two girls. They seem to fall in love between scenes and it's a lucky thing, he's there when things get dangerous.

It's a fairly decent movie, bit of murder, some torture, a mystery, a bit of sex, a ghost, guinea pigs pretending to be rats, it's got the lot. The music is a bit goofy. The script is a bit weak, there are times then it jumps ahead and misses telling us some bit of business that might have made the story clearer. In the end it was entertaining enough to be average and I would still watch it again someday.

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?

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The Zombie King 2013 Directed by Aidan Belizaire, written by Rebecca-Clare Evans, Jennifer Jones, George McCluskey and Lisa Strobl. All the writers but Lisa have fairly substantial roles in the film.

As the movie opens we meet a milkman, a mailman and a parking meter man trying to get away from some zombies. The movie cuts away from the guys trying to survive to Edward Furlong and his dying wife. The group of survives grows in number, dwindles, then falls into a church. None of them can understand what's happening, until the run into the local priest, drunk off his tits.

Turns out after Edward's wife died, he'd made a pact with a voodoo god called Kalfu to resurrect her. Corey Feldman plays Kalfu, he's fairly entertaining. The zombies are the result of the pact with Kalfu. The priest has a way to stop the pact from happening and that will end the zombies. The group of living go into battle to stop Edward and Kalfu.

I found it to be entertaining enough, the DVD cost a buck, though I wouldn't say it's above average. I might watch it again but who knows.

The Gaelic King 2017 Directed by Phillip Todd, written by Matthew Todd, Phillip Todd, Nathan Todd and John Walkinshaw. A mostly crowdfunded movie.

It's a fantasy version of the story of King Kenneth Alpin of Gael, circa 800 AD. Alpin's father is betrayed and killed by the King of the Picts while supposedly meeting for a peace treaty. Alpin escapes with his infant brother, ten year later he returns. He finds a village under siege by an evil in the woods that steals their children.

Turns out the monster is a demon witch that was freed from her tomb by the King of the Picts. He really is a dick. When Alpin's brother is taken Alpin and the local chatty druid are off on an adventure. They hook up with the daughter of the King Of The Picts, she's sorry all the murdering happened but her men still hate the Gaels. It's a shitty time, in the fictional or the real version.

Lucky for Alpin he's developed some magical powers and he's now powerful enough to kick that demon witch's ass. I wound up enjoying it more than I expected. It's another that I got for a dollar at the Dollar tree. I might watch it again.

Creature Features 4 Feature Films

Another 4 film package with big monsters munching people and causing havoc. Three are water based and one lava based. Hardly anyone in them I had heard of, and the production values aren't always so great. All four movies are crammed on a single disc.

Dead Sea 2014 Brandon Slagle is the writer and director. He's written a story about a lake dwelling monster that appears every 30 years to snack on the locals before getting back to sleepy bye-bye land. The locals are miserable creeps who force people into the lake as sacrifices so they can stay there. I've seen this plot over and over and it doesn't have anything new to add to the convo. The production is particularly weak on this one. Not worth the watch.

Robocroc 2013 Berkeley Anderson wrote the script and Arthur Sinclair directed. This time the monster is a crocodile that's been taken over by military nanobots that are quickly turning the croc into a robot fighting beast. Dee Wallace plays the hard ass bitch that runs the project. Corin Nemec plays the hero, a zoo keeper who takes care of the crocodile. I remember him fondly from Parker Lewis Can't Lose. He's done a few of these made for TV monster movies of one sort or another. Him and Dee are both OK here, I'm happy when he saves the day and I'm happy when she gets some payback for being such a murderous POS. Occasionally it's amusing but not enough to make me like it more than I did. The CGI is fair to poor, the general production values are low, the acting is average or below, nothing much new here. It's better than the first movie but it's doubtful that I would watch it again.

Supertanker 2011 Another TV movie, director Jeffrey Scott Lando wrote the script with Nate Atkins. Some moron has developed an anti-matter liquid from a meteor. It's unstable and the only safe place for it is in a containment field in a cold underground bunker in Alaska. When someone tries to move a tiny bit of it they find out unstable it is, a whole town in Canada is wiped out. Now there's a new plan to drop it into the Marianas Trench.

Velizar Binev is the captain of the supertanker that's been specially pimped out to carry the world's most deadly substance. If it was let lose it would destroy the whole earth in a short while. Everything about this project is really stupid. Callum Blue plays a containment expert, he and his team are called in to ride along with the substance on a supertanker. Ben Cross plays the evil company man. They're all characters you've seen.

The movie hasn't anything new but I got through to the end, carried along by Callum and Velizar, they stand out as the better than average actors on the shoot. Not enough to make me want to watch it again.

Dracano 2013 Keith Shaw, writing as Lindsay James, wrote the script and Kevin O'Neill directed. Corin Nemec gets to fight dragons in this tale. It's a bit better than the other films on the disc, it has a bit of sense of humor and I liked that. Troy Evans plays the General that heads the secret military operation that deals with the dragons that live in volcanoes. They are cocooned in eggs that only hatch when they are exposed to the air. In the network of underground lava flows the dragons float around the world. Occasionally an eruption creates a problem. Remember Mt St Helen's? Nuked to cover up the dragons. Who knew?

This time the cover up doesn't go so well. Corin is a park ranger on his day off, he encounters some people on his hike into the desert, they are all surprised there are dragons. There's plenty of running about and yelling. The CGI dragons aren't too bad in the back ground, up close they lack a bit. I enjoyed it more than the other three films and probably would watch it again sometime.

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Knocking On Death's Door 1999 Screenplay by Craig J Nevis and direction by Mitch Marcus. Produced by Roger Corman and shot at his studio near Galway Ireland. The movie is set in New England.

Newlywed students buy a haunted house to look for the ghosts rumored to be in the house. They're there to look for the ghosts. They soon find him. It's a much your typical haunted house story, a bit sexier than some, but really it all boils down to some poor sap getting murdered and he can't move on. David Carradine plays the local doctor, other than that there's nothing much special about the movie. It's part of a two movie DVD that came out in 2003.

The Doorway 2000 Michael B Druxman is the writer director. Also made at Roger's Irish studio and also set in the USA.

It's another haunted house story, this time there are 4 students looking for cheap housing. The jerky guy has made a deal to fix the place up for free rent and some cash. The other's aren't too happy with him once he's sprung this surprise. They aren't as unhappy as the demon that lives in the house. She's been murdered and walled up in the cellar. She's been stewing down thee for years and she's pretty nasty on top of being a mean angry demon. She gets busy and people start to die.

Roy Scheider is their professor, he goes to the house to help with the problem. It's pretty typical stuff and below average in interest to me. I might never get around to re-watching these two films but I'll have that DVD anyway.

Valley Of The Zombies 1946

Valley Of The Zombies is a 1946 horror film directed by Philip Ford. Dorrell McGowan and Stuart E McGowan wrote the screenplay from Royal K Cole and Sherman L Lowe's original story. It was on a double bill with The Catman Of Paris. I found a vaguely watchable copy on YouTube and watched it.

Blood stolen from a hospital lab leads to murder. Turns out a guy who has a strange condition needs it to stay alive and he'll kill to get his blood. A doctor and a nurse help the police capture the murderer. It's pleasant enough, about average, but no zombies. The closest thing is the ability of the murderer to hypnotize people into doing his dirty work. I was glad to have seen it and I might want to see it again someday.

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Frankenstein Vs The Mummy is a 2015 horror movie, it's written and directed in Damien Leone.

Victor Frankenstein is paying the janitor for a fresh brain. The janitor kills a hobo and tries to bargain up the $5K he's supposed to get from Victor. They have a fight and the janitor's brain winds up in the creature Victor's is making in a dirty old basement.

By day Victor is a professor at the university where Professor Walton has just returned from a dig in Egypt with the mummy of a pharaoh. Best not ask yourself any of those embarrassing questions you might be having. There are no answers here. Victor's creature comes alive and so does the mummy. In the end they will battle it out.

It's endlessly talky, there's a bit of action, and a good bit of gore. Nothing exceptional, nothing to bring it to average and it's way too long at 114 mins. Just another Frankenstein movie, same as the next movie, neither as good as the original.

The Frankenstein Theory came out in 2013 and director Andrew Weiner wrote the screenplay with Vlady Pildysh.

What if Mary Shelley's book was really a fictional account of a real event, what if the creature really existed? That's the theory that Professor Jonathan Venkenheim believes. He takes a film crew to the Yukon in northern Canada. They meet a guy who has supposedly survived an encounter with the creature. They hire a guide and with very little stuff they head into the wilderness.

They camp in a yurt left by some trappers. At night 1 of the 3 snowmobiles is wrecked and another stolen. One of the guys goes for help and doesn't come back. They find him dead, others follow quickly, pretty standard picked off by the monster stuff. After the guide is killed, it's only the professor and the lady director. We don't know what happened to the professor, there's just some noise off camera, then the monster runs off into the woods carrying the lady director.

Good reminder not to go after the Frankenstein monster without a gang with guns, only the guide had a rifle. In the end he was useless and he'd killed 12 polar bears. Well below average story wise, nice Alaska scenery for a while. Not much to make me want to return to either of these again.

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Army Of The Dead is a 2008 zombie film of little originality. Joseph Conti directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Ciccolini and Tom Woosley. A professor and some students take an archeology trip to the Baja Peninsula.

According to the movie, four centuries ago Coronado sent 1000 men to find El Dorado, they disappeared. Well, the professor thinks he knows where the city is and he's secretly made a deal with some scumbags to steal the gold. His students are clueless about his plan. The prof finds the city and of course releases the curse. It animates the 1000 lost skeletal conquistadors. They are totally bent on slaughtering the professor and his minions. 

Sadly the CGI is only fair, it's about the same for the rest of the movie. The actors are adequate but the script isn't that interesting. You've certainly heard it all before in any number of the other 'trapped by some evil force that's killing everyone' movie. There's nothing much exciting about the location, I've seen the desert before, and better photographed too. I wouldn't need to see it again, that's for sure.

Subferatu is a 2020 everything but the kitchen sink comedy that blends time travel, Nazis, vampires, submarines and Gilligan's Island. It's written and directed by Patrick Penta. I found it over at Amazon Prime, same as the previous movie.

A small pleasure craft is out for a 3 hour tour when a big storm comes up. Their ship is floundering when they are rescued by a submarine commander in the Nazi navy. There's only a small crew on board the sub and they don't realize the survivors came from the future. The ship was in the Bermuda Triangle and the skipper's name is Captain Gavin McCloud. That's him in the red shirt.

The Commander tells the Captain that it's the day after Hitler killed himself. The Commander wants to surrender his sub but only if he can sail it into New York harbor. The Captain doesn't know if he traveled back in time, or the sub came forward, but he knows it's going to be somewhat of an issue to show up in the harbor. On top of that possible trouble, there's a vampire on the sub.

It's definitely goofy, it made me laugh out loud 3 or 4 times and I snickered once in a while. It's pretty self aware, the Captain talks to the audience from the start, and while the jokes are not all top raters there are a lot of them. It's a cornucopia of genre movie references, so keep an eye, and and ear, open. The actors, the film was made in Seattle, are mostly OK, the characters are pretty broad so they have a lot of wiggle room in their roles. I wasn't sold from the start but the general goofiness won me over and I had a good laugh. Sadly it's not out on DVD, I might buy a copy if it was cheap enough.

Universal Cult Horror Collection

Universal Cult Horror Collection is a 5 movie pack of 1930s and 1940s horror films. They're from TCM and Universal Home Entertainment. Each movie gets a separate single layer DVDr. The files on the first two movies are just under 3 GB each. They could easily have had the set reduced to 3 double layer discs but that might have meant they couldn't charge the nearly 50 smackaroonies the set cost. They're short movies, ranging between 61 and 66 minutes, and they look alright. There isn't anything special by way of extras, some behind-the-scenes stills, posters and lobbycards, TCM Database info, that sort of thing. I didn't really care enough to look at the extras. You can't find these movies anywhere else but Turner Classic Movies on cable. I don't have cable so there you go. My only real complaint is the cover to the DVD case is really poor and uninteresting. The back cover has mostly yellow text on black, the letter's are really small and hard to read. Reminds me that many product designers are below average.

House Of Horrors 1946 Dwight V Babcock wrote the original story, George Bricker wrote the screenplay, Jean Yarbrough did the directing. Dwight wrote the original stories and screenplays to several horror films: The Mummy's Curse, House Of Dracula, She-Wolf Of London, The Devil's Mask and The Brute Man. I've seen a few of the films that George penned: Sh! The Octopus, Mr Moto In Danger Island, The Devil Bat, House OF Dracula, She-Wolf Of London and The Brute Man. Jean started directing shorts in 1936, his first feature was Sauce For The Gander in 1940. He followed that with over 60 films. I've seen a few of them: The Devil Bat, King Of The Zombies, The Gang's All Here, She-Wolf Of London, The Brute Man, The Creeper, Jack And The Beanstalk and Lost In Alaska. You can see they worked together on a few films. That was common under the old studio system. I have a fondness for these old horror films, they're often more entertaining than their modern counterparts.

Martin Kosleck is a sculpture who's belittled by art critic Alan Napier. He looses a much needed sale. Martin finds Rondo Hatton struggling out of the river and brings him to his home.

Rondo is really The Creeper, a big man with a deformed face, who murdered some people, then ran away. He was thought to have died in the river. Martin doesn't realize who Rondo is at first, he just wants to have a grotesque model for his next big, important sculpture. Rondo played The Creeper in two other films, The Pearl Of Death in 1944 and The Brute Man in 1946. The character has nothing to do with the film The Creeper, that's a totally different monster.

Rondo sneaks out one night and kills Alan. Martin doesn't realize it was Rondo at first but once he does, he suggests another critic who needs killing in his eyes. Soon the power goes to Martin's head and that's his downfall.

There's the usual bit of romance between Robert Lowery and Virginia Grey. Bill Goodman plays the cop on the look out for The Creeper. It's a good solid film with a nice quick pace and a good sense of humor. Well worth the look for me.

Murders In The Zoo 1933 Philip Wylie and Seton I Miller wrote the screenplay and A Edward Sutherland was the director. Philip might be best known for his novels When Worlds Collide and After World Collide. I've read them and seen the movie several times. Seton wrote quite a number of films, some stand out a bit, The Sea Hawk, The Black Swan and Here Comes Mr Jordan. Eddie started in the silent era and directed about 50 movies. You might been familiar with Fireman, Save My Child or Tillie's Punctured Romance. I know I've seen The Flying Deuces with Laurel and Hardy, Beyond Tomorrow with C Aubrey Smith, The Invisible Woman with Virginia Bruce, and Having Wonderful Crime with Pat O'Brien, George Murphy and Carole Landis. The later film is based on a Craig Rice novel with her lawyer detective John J Malone. He's renamed Mike J Malone here. Who knows why.

Lionel Atwill is an animal hunter and scientist. He's very jealous of his wife, Kathleen Burke, as the movie opens he's sewn a man's lips together for kissing her. The man is abandoned in the jungle with no weapons or food. Lionel is collecting animals for a zoo, he brings a bunch back for private zoo.

Charles Ruggles is the zoo's new press agent, he's a nervous Nellie of a guy. That's him on the right, the others are Kathleen Scott and John Lodge. Lionel discovers his wife is having an affair with John and kills him with snake venom. Kathleen has the proof but Lionel catches her at the zoo and tosses her in to the alligators. That closes down the zoo and attracts the police.

Randolph Scott plays the zoo's animal doctor and Gail Patrick plays his assistant' They team up and solve the mystery and save the zoo from closing down permanently. The baddie gets his and things end as well as they could.

 

Pretty entertaining, they pack a lot of story in a 66 minute movie. Lionel is as creepy as he can be and Randolph is young and handsome. There are some laughs and some thrills. I thought it was worth seeing. Some nice posters too.

The Mad Doctor Of Market Street 1942 Al Martin wrote the screenplay and Joseph H Lewis directed. Joseph directed a good bit of TV at the end of his career, before that he directed 40 other films. I'd seen a few, The Big Combo, Gun Crazy, The Falcon In San Francisco, Pride Of The Bowery, That Gang Of Mine, Boys Of The City, and The Invisible Ghost. 

Lionel Atwill is a mad scientist, he kills a test subject with his new suspended animation formula, now he's on the run. He sets sail on a ship that sinks and leaves him and a handful of survivors on an island inhabited by some natives.

Lionel saves a tribal matriarch and takes over the tribe. He fails to live up to their expectations by being much too clever. It wasn't as good as the previous two films, more about average. It was nice to see Lionel get his in the end. He was a real dick. I'd watch that again.

The Mad Ghoul 1943 James P Hogan directed this film, Hanns Kräly wrote the original story, Brenda Weisberg and Paul Gangelin wrote the screenplay.

This time George Zucco is the mad scientist. He's cooked up an ancient Mayan formula that will turn men into easily to control zombies. George works at the local university where David Bruce is a medical student. David's pretty girlfriend is Evelyn Ankers, George has his eye on her for his own. He uses his formula on David and controls him while Evelyn is on a musical concert tour.

George has David kill people, the formula needs human hearts to make it, and that sure attracts the attention of the police. Things look pretty bleak for Evelyn but she gets a hand and it all works out as best it can. A little better than the previous film. I'd watch it again.

The Strange Case Of Doctor Rx 1942 William Nigh is the director and Clarence Upton Young wrote the screenplay. I've seen a handful of William's 120 films, The Ghost And The Guest, The Ape, Mr Wong In Chinatown, The Mystery Of Mr Wong and  The Fatal Hour. He started directing in 1914 and hung up his monocle in 1948.

Dr Rx is a murderer, he's been killing criminals that escaped justice. He's got a gorilla. Edmund MacDonald and Shemp Howard are the cops who ask their PI pal Patric Knowles to lend a hand. Mantan Moreland is Patric's butler and assistant. I always think a movie is made better by Mantan's presence. They get on the case and track down the murderous Dr Rx. It was fun and I had a laugh or two. Worth the watch to me, as I thought the whole set was, it's just too pricey at nearly 10 smackaroonies a movie. Too bad more people aren't into classic movies, the DVDs might be cheaper and more common.

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The Girl In The Photos turned out to be a crappy 2015 slasher film with little of interest other than it was the last film Wes Craven produced and it's got Kal Penn in it. He plays a jerky photographer who leads his entourage to their doom in a small town. Claudia Lee plays a woman working in a store in the town. One day she comes into find a picture of a tortured woman on the store bulletin board. The police put it down to a prank but it's some scumbag who likes killing and making  statements with bodies. It's not much fun and I wouldn't need to see it again.

Pyewacket is a 2017 horror film about a stupid young high school student who pals around with people who preform rituals for their own selfish gain. She gets pissed at her mother for moving them to a house in the country. Mom is depressed from the loss of her husband and she can't stand being in the old house anymore. I can understand that but the daughter, a selfish cunt, can't. She preforms a ritual to wish death on her mom. Of course it releases Pyewacket, a demon spirit who comes creeping around. Regretting her choice the daughter tries to reverse the curse but that goes south and Pyewacket tricks her into burning her mom alive. The police just don't seem to believe her demon story. What a useless person. Glad she's off the streets. Not a good thing to watch, kind of below average and hardly anyone is likeable. Never going to see that one again.