Busan Midnight Movie: The Giant Gila Monster (3/20/21)

This week on the Busan Midnight Movie: The Giant Gila Monster! A giant gila monster attacks residents of a small town.

Another deep cut from the PD Project. I mistakenly described the film then as featuring “Giant radioactive monsters and incompetent rear-projection for the win!” The mistake is that the titular gila monster is not the product of radiation, just a result of gila monsters growing large.

No, that’s really the whole story of where the giant gila monster comes from: gila monsters can get big, so here’s one that got really big. There’s no mystery as to why or how and none of the characters wonder either.

The same depth of drama applies to every part of this film. What happens in this movie? Not a whole lot. You could say the disappearance of a young couple at the start is the inciting incident since it leads to the boy’s father tasking the sheriff with finding his son (and casting aspersion upon our hero). However, that father doesn’t return until the very end of the film (where he doesn’t seem too torn up about the likely death of his son) and our hero isn’t drawn into the mystery of where his friends have gone or what’s causing all the car accidents in the area.

In short, it’s a profoundly incurious film that begs you to be interested. But at least it has several interludes of pointless singing.

Wrap Up:

The Good: Elderly teens. This is a film from back when you had people on their third mortgages playing “the kids” and it’s just kind of funny to see suit-bound men with receding hairlines get called “kid.”

The monster. They use an actual lizard shot in close-up and have it interact with models when it needs to smash things. Unfortunately the models aren’t very impressive and the lizard doesn’t so much smash them as have to be coaxed through them.

The Bad: Very little. This would be the place to bring up the songs of Don Sullivan and make fun of the movie for featuring them, but they’re just generic examples of the music of the time. The movie’s so profoundly unambitious that it doesn’t get much wrong, but that’s only because it strives to do so little. The best films of this kind have some bonkers decision on screen—anything from an over-the-top monster to a clear display of the director’s reach exceeding their grasp—and this just has nothing.

Production note: As I say in the episode, I was originally going to show Yongary, Monster From the Deep. It’s a Korean kaiju film and it’s well past time that I feature a Korean film on the Busan Midnight Movie. When I did the copyright test of uploading all this month’s movies to YouTube to see what got flagged, Yongary came up as owned by MGM. Except for the Gamera movies, I’m not aware of any other kaiju films in the public domain so I reached for Gila Monster as a replacement. Coincidentally, this is the same thing Mystery Science Theater 3000 did when they released a box set of their show with Godzilla vs. Megalon: they didn’t have the rights for that and had to pull the sets immediately. When they reissued it, they replaced Godzilla with The Giant Gila Monster

The Giant Gila Monster

Zorro’s Black Whip (Episode 3)

Busan Midnight Movie: Gappa, the Triphibian Monster (3/13/21)

This week on the Busan Midnight Movie: Gappa, The Triphibian Monster, aka Monster from a Prehistoric Planet! Explorers searching for exotic animals to populate a publishing magnate’s theme park discover Gappa, a heretofore unknown prehistoric beast! Only Gappa is freshly hatched and its parents are not happy to see it taken away.

This is a movie I wrote about briefly almost 13 years ago when I was doing the PD Project, the precursor to the Misery Mill. Back then I noted,

The movie can be pretty shocking though. A female scientist is asked why she isn't at home making babies and the film has Japanese people in blackface. There is some craziness going on here.

What a difference time makes! I’m much less sanguine about the blackface now, so actively uncomfortable that I debated whether to use the movie or not. Honestly, in a few years’ time, I probably would drop it from the schedule even if I had already announced it.

Here’s what I wrote about this movie and then cut from the episode’s script:

Tonight's feature is Gappa, the Triphibian Monster and let's address the pigeon-faced beast in the room: blackface. The immediate defense of it would be "consider the context," and certainly context matters. This is a Japanese film so it does not have the same cultural associations with blackface that people from the United States would have. Still, they chose to use skin tone to differentiate the islanders from the Japanese characters, as though the shirts vs skins dichotomy of the costumes wasn't enough. The filmmakers wanted to use that idea of "blackness" as "other" and that's why the islanders look the way they do. Even if you're okay with that idea, the film has Americans playing Americans instead of Japanese people done up as mimes. That suggests that it's not that the filmmakers couldn't hire black people for the roles, it's that they didn't or wouldn't.

And context works both ways. We should not only consider the context of when the film was made but also the context of when the film is being shown: right now. Even though I'm pointing up the problematic aspects of this film, I'm still choosing to show it, still implicitly saying to my audience, "eh, you can look past this." And there are a couple reasons for that. One is laziness: I wanted to do kaiju movies all month long and, unless I wanted to do Gamera movies every week, this was what was available. I just have to hope that by announcing, "this is here and it's not okay" I'm at least mitigating some of the harm done by choosing to show this, but I have to acknowledge that I still chose to show it.

But the other reason I chose to show it is specifically to have this discussion. In the community of midnight-movie aficionados, part of the pleasure we take from these old films is that "they don't make them like this anymore," but that phrase does a lot of work. Of course it means there is a pleasure in seeing ways of telling stories that we don't use anymore. For instance, part of the appeal of old westerns is the amazing stunt work on horseback. The Western is a good example, though, because when some people say "they don't make them like that anymore," they're talking about the kind of politics that used to be portrayed on screen and lamenting their absence. The racial and gender politics in this movie--and we haven't even said a word about that "shut up, quit your job, make babies" exchange--are what that part of the audience wants. What they miss from these old films IS the overt racism, misogyny, and every other kind of hierarchy and bigotry that used to be not only the norm on screen, but violently enforced off of it. Whenever we showcase these films without highlighting and calling out those elements, we leave a space for that subset to thrive and, even worse, start spreading and normalizing the even worse aspects of their ideology.

There is a lot to recommend this film: the cinematography is fantastic, the landscapes look amazing, and, when the monsters finally arrive in this second half, they look great. Plus all the city-smashy stuff is a lot of fun. But it's no fun if we're telling our friends and neighbors to ignore problematic aspects of a film and certainly no fun for them to have to wonder, whenever things like overt racism pops up in a film and we DON'T say anything about it, if that's not what we're actually tuning in for.

So, with that unexpectedly heavy aside finished, let's return to the second half of Gappa, the Triphibian Monster.

That was cut due to time because the whole thing is as long as the entirety of the content I write for other episodes. However, it was something I wanted to say and to share. One of the things I think about when doing this midnight movie stuff is that you have to engage with the text somehow. I could say that post-MST3k it’s no longer enough to just show the movie, but the reality is these movies are readily available. What makes the experience of watching them with the framing device of a host better than just watching the movie itself? The host has to add something to the experience.

When you have a movie with problematic content like this, that kind of engagement is doubly important. As Stewart Lee notes, you’re cultivating an audience, drawing the boundaries around who is and is not included in the experience. If you let moments of explicit racism, sexism, homophobia, or a whole host of other things go unremarked, you’re telling your audience that people who take issue with those things aren’t welcome, that you don’t want them.

At the end of the day, I want, not just in my audience but in the broader community I’m a part of, to spend time with the people who would stand up and call those things out.

Wrap Up:

The Good: amazing print. The version I watched for the PD Project so long ago was a pan-and-scan 4:3 crop that was dramatically faded. This print is so good you might think you're watching a good movie.

The monster design. The improved print also lets us enjoy the high-quality monster design. The Gappas look like kaiju versions of gargoyles and that’s a twist I hadn’t seen before. Also, when I watched this for the PD Project, I described one of the monsters as something “choking on a starfish,” but in the improved print it’s clear the monster is carrying an octopus to feed its baby. Great detail!

The Bad: really? After all that?

Additionally: Pretty boring. Despite the beautiful cinematography, there’s not much action on screen, not even much activity with the monsters until the second half. On top of that, the characters are whisper-thin. Some reviews on IMDB describe this as a satire of kaiju films, but it feels much more like an unambitious pastiche, like the characters are just there to fill out a checklist rather than provide any story or interest of their own.

Production note: I was so happy to find clips of the Gappa giving the side-eye for the trailer. Being able to juxtapose those shots with the examples of blackface and misogyny in the film was a lot of fun for me.

Gappa, the Triphibian Monster

Zorro’s Black Whip (Episode 2)

306. Extra Terrestrial Visitors

306. Extra Terrestrial Visitors aka Los nuevos extraterrestres (1983)
Director: Juan Piquer Simón
Writers: Joaquín Grau and Juan Piquer Simón
From: Sci-Fi Invastion (only 4 remain!)

A meteor carrying alien eggs crashes on Earth. Two aliens emerge—one befriends a young boy while the other starts killing everyone it meets.

So it’s Pod People. You ever see that episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000? “It stinks!” That’s this movie. And for that reason it holds a special place in my heart.

Even though I’m on the border of being a Millennial (the start time keeps sliding backwards. I think the official definition now is, “Have you been fucked over by the Baby Boomers’?”), I do remember a time before the Internet. When I was growing up in Northern Indiana, I lived in a neighborhood that didn’t have access to cable. Even if we had had access, we wouldn’t have had access to Comedy Central, the then home of Mystery Science Theater 3000. All we had was over-the-air TV and Entertainment Weekly talking about all this brilliant television that we couldn’t see.

Then came the Mystery Science Theater Hour, a syndicated version of MST3k that broke each episode into two one-hour parts (hence the name). That show was picked up by one of our local networks, but it didn’t air until, I think, 3 AM on Saturday night. On top of that, the network only seemed to show four episodes (so two complete MST3k episodes) over and over. One was Cave Dwellers (“Miles and miles O’Keefe!”) and the other was Pod People. I still remember and constantly go back to the jokes “Little wing-ed potatoes” and “Trumpy! You can do stupid things!” In other words, my introduction to MST3k, a show that’s been pretty important to me in terms of introducing me to paracinema, horror hosts, camp culture, and copyright theory, began with a weird little kid raising a gross puppet that hatched from an egg. What can I say about it?

“It stinks!”

The movie opens with an explosion in space that drives a meteor to Earth. It crashes and is eventually found by one of a trio of poachers looking for rare birds eggs. Upon finding the stash of alien eggs, the egg poacher, curiously, just starts smashing all of them. An alien emerges and kills him. His partners are now left stranded in the woods with a bad storm coming in.

Meanwhile, a band is recording an album. The lead singer is a dick. They all leave to go camping for the weekend, but a groupie the singer had been schmoozing with earlier invites herself along. The singer can’t tell her no because she’s related to one of the label execs. Her coming, though, really pisses off the singer’s girlfriend.

While stopping to cook some food over a fire, the groupie gets offended and bullied to the point that she runs away. She finds the two poachers who threaten her, leading her to run and fall off a cliff. The alien comes by and marks her. Her friends find her, take her back to the RV, and start looking for help.

They arrive at a cabin where a family, the third part of the movie is living. It’s a man, his sister, and her son. The man used to work with the poachers and the son collects animals—including one of the alien eggs! The band arrives, takes shelter hoping the phone will start working the next day, and the groupie dies. Meanwhile, the kid’s egg has hatched and he starts raising the alien as his friend Trumpy.

Things proceed. Two people leave the house to try to call for help, end up at a ranger station where they find the corpse of one of the poachers, and get attacked by the alien themselves. Back at the house, the alien somehow arrives before the survivor of the ranger station attack and kills another of the people. The kid thinks Trumpy did it, then realizes there’s a second monster. Folks find Trumpy, kid prevents them from killing it, asshole singer sees both aliens together with the kid and realizes they’re not a threat. Uncle opens fire, killing the evil alien but getting killed in the process, and the singer takes the kid home, lying so Trumpy can live on. THE END.

The movie was supposed to be a generic alien invasion monster movie, but then ET happened so they had to rewrite the script to insert Trumpy and the lovable kid. It was a mistake. One of the most memorable riffs is, “Trumpy! You can do stupid things!” for a reason. I don’t know what the movie would have been if it was just the straight-up monster thriller, but shoehorning the ET angle in just kills any kind of tension and makes a lot of things strange. I already mentioned the alien somehow getting to the cabin on foot before the people at the ranger station can drive back, but there’s also the disappearance of the poachers. One is just found dead in the ranger station, but we don’t see him die. The other is just no longer in the film.

I don’t have much to say about the movie beyond its MST3k connection. That’s a classic episode and I recommend watching that. The uncut version of the movie though begs you to give it a pass no matter how catchy the song.

294. The Skydivers

294. The Skydivers (1963)
Director: Coleman Francis
Writer: Coleman Francis
From: Cult Cinema

The drama of a couple running a skydiving company facing business and romantic challenges.

I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this and they sum up the movie pretty nicely with, “Seems like they forgot to have things happen.” To highlight how little happens in the movie, the running time of the original version is 72 minutes and they cut it down further for the MST3k version without losing anything.

The story, such as it is, is about Harry and Beth, a married couple running a skydiving service. They own a small airfield, fly jumpers up, and occasionally jump with them. They’ve just fired Frankie for drinking on the job and Harry has been having an affair with Frankie’s girlfriend, Suzy. Beth tells Harry to call it off and he gets into a fight with Frankie over Suzy. Harry decides to end the affair.

Meanwhile, Harry has gotten a letter from his Korean War buddy, Joe. Joe’s leaving the service and looking for a job so Harry and Beth decide to hire him. About fifteen-twenty minutes later in the movie, Joe arrives and starts working for them. There’s some chemistry between him and Beth. Well, not really, but the characters say something almost happens between them so there ya go. Then they decide to just be friends because Beth loves Harry.

Someone dies while jumping and the FAA shuts the airfield down until they finish their investigation. Then they finish the investigation and the airfield opens back up.

Suzy sees Harry in town, but he rebuffs her so she conspires with Frankie to kill him. They plan to put acid in his parachute. After a bit of film passes, they do exactly that. There’s a big jump, Harry dies, and the cops chase Frankie and Suzy, shooting and killing them both. The final sequence is Joe offering to stick around and help Beth run the airfield, but she says it was something she had with Harry and doesn’t want to continue it. He leaves and she gives the place one last look. THE END

Coleman Francis presents a whole lotta dull gray nothing. As I said, I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 which is interesting for the story Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank) had for how the various Coleman Francis movies ended up on MST3k. I’m half-remembering this from the MST3k Episode Guide, but I think he said he’d always been advocating for them to be on the show because he found them hilariously dull and inept, but the rest of the team couldn’t stand them because absolutely nothing happens. A lot. Unfortunately they came up short one season and Coleman Francis was given the limelight.

There’s literally nothing to say about this movie. There isn’t even really a plot. Sure, you have characters that vaguely want something, but there’s no effort made to achieve those goals, events don’t conspire against the characters, and, in the end, their actions don’t matter. Harry, arguably the main character even though he’s absent for large swathes of the movie, dies. The putative hero, Joe, doesn’t capture or stop the murderers. The murderous plot itself isn’t conceived or acted upon until late in the movie anyway so it’s literally about nothing for most of its running time. This is the type of movie you can only watch with the help of Mike and the bots. I recommend the episode; I don’t recommend the movie.

263. The Sidehackers

263. The Sidehackers aka Five the Hard Way (1969)
Director: Gus Trikonis
Writers: Tony Huston from a story by Larry Billman
From: Cult Cinema

A man seeks revenge against the people who assaulted and murdered his girlfriend.

As featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode 202, which maybe tells you everything you need to know about the film. Curiously, the movie is significant because it’s the one that forced MST3k to change the way they previewed and selected movies for broadcast. Before they watched The Sidehackers, they would typically only watch the first few minutes of a movie before deciding whether or not to riff it. After The Sidehackers, they watched every movie all the way through before selecting them. Excited to hear what it’s about? No, you’re not, cause it’s about nothing.

The movie opens with an actual sidehacking race. For reference, as the movie explains, sidehacking is form of motorcycle racing where a small platform is welded onto the side of the bike. A second rider then uses his body and the bars holding the platform on to help the bike make tighter turns. Interesting enough as a niche form of racing, but if it’s going to be the plot of a movie you’re going to have to either focus on the drama of the people doing the sport and trying to make a living or the work of people trying to get the sport taken seriously.

Which is why this movie runs away from sidehacking as a plot point as quickly as it can.

Our hero is Rommel, a sidehacker and motorcycle mechanic. He’s in love with Rita and the two are planning to get married and move to a ranch in the country. One day, a member of touring motorcycle exhibition brings a bike in for repair. The boss, J.C. comes as well and starts asking about sidehacking. He takes a liking to Rommel, goes to a race that weekend, and then hangs out with Rommel that evening. While they get along, it becomes clear that J.C. is more than a bit unhinged and potentially violent. He invites Rommel to join his exhibition team, but Rommel declines.

Later, J.C.’s girlfriend Paisley hits on Rommel. He turns her down as well so she tells J.C. that Rommel raped her. J.C. and his team then find Rommel and Rita in their house, beat Rommel, and rape and kill Rita.

By the way, if you’re wondering why MST3k changed their selection procedure after this movie, that’s why. The show completely cuts the assault and make reference to it only by having Crow say, "For those of you playing along at home, Rita is dead." I watched the MST3k version, by the way.

So the movie is now about Rommel seeking revenge. He eventually gathers a team which gets infiltrated by a member of J.C.’s crew. Rommel susses out the traitor, though, and goes to confront J.C. All of J.C.’s crew gets killed, two members of Rommel’s escapes, and then J.C. and Rommel fight each other. Rommel seems to have defeated J.C. as the police approach, but J.C. pulls a gun and shoots Rommel in the back, killing him. THE END.

Now, some of you may be asking what any of this has to do with motorcycle racing. That’s the wrong question. Instead, you shouldn’t think about this movie long enough to wonder about it at all. Just let it pass through your consciousness as though it never existed because, in all the ways that count, it doesn’t.

There’s something very strange about a movie that purports to be about a unique activity that then runs as quickly away from that activity as it can. I’d say the movie could just be about motorcycle racing in general, but it really can’t. The movie’s not interested in the racing element at all. The plot is Rommel being a good mechanic and then turning down J.C.’s offer to join his team. The story is about a person having to deal with a sociopath falling into their life. Why add the sidehacking angle?

All of this side-steps the issue of assault at the core of the movie. Paisley uses a false rape accusation to get J.C. to attack Rommel and Rita, which leads to J.C. actually assaulting Rita, which then leads to the rest of the plot. Also, J.C. kills Paisley at the end so you can maybe read that as some sort of comeuppance, but she was flirting with Rommel in the first place because J.C. was abusive and she was trying to get away. Rommel, by the way, brushes her off, implying that her abuse is her own fault.

It’s just a lot to unpack and, ultimately, none of it is worth the effort. This is a boring little exploitation flick that tries to differentiate itself form the teen sport flicks of the time by having a grim core and nihilistic conclusion. None of that is clever, though. Instead, it’s cheap and manipulative. On top of all that, it’s boring. This is another movie that’s not even worth getting mad at. If you can find the MST3k version, check that out. It has some good riffs and the host segments are pretty solid. As for the movie itself, skip it.

248. The Wild Rebels

248. The Wild Rebels (1967)
Director: William Grefé
Writer: William Grefé
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: Mystery Science Theater 3000

A race car driver joins a bank-robbing motorcycle gang at the request of the police to help take the gang down.

I saw that there was an MST3k version of this movie and you bet your ass I watched that instead. This flick is pure MST fare: overly loquacious thugs, a plot that adamantly refuses to move, and a hero that’s a doughy white guy who does nothing. In fact, I think I just summed up the movie. I’m going to get drunk.

Okay, the “plot.” We open on stock car superstar Rod Tillman wrecking his car in a race. He’s so mad about the wreck that he decides to quit racing entirely and auctions off all his equipment. Shades of Burnout, although this movie does more than just have the whiny driver have everything handed to him. Rod catches a ride to a bar with just the bag on his back and his trusty guitar. Is he going to sing later? Do you believe in a just and loving God? Well you’re wrong because of course he sings later and it’s awful.

At the bar, the “Satan’s Angels” biker gang recognizes Rod and asks him to visit their “pad” to hear a “proposition.” While these are the exact words they use, everything they say sounds like there’s a non-zero chance they’re inviting him to participate in a three-way. Rod leaves with Linda, the woman in the gang, while the three other gang members, Banjo, Jeeter, and Fats, hang back to beat up some college boys at the bar for having danced with Linda. (This is how you know they’re bad. Because the swastikas all over their jackets weren’t enough of a clue. Let’s not be presumptuous though. Let’s reserve judgment until the third fawning New York Times profile on the group.)

Back at the gang’s shack, Linda and Rod are making out in front of a giant Nazi flag.

Jesus fuck… Give me a minute… Okay.

He calls a stop to it just before the gang arrive. Turns out they’re bank robbers and want Rod to drive the getaway car for them. He refuses, leaves, and is immediately arrested by the cops. They convince him to flip and work as the getaway driver so they can successfully arrest the gang. Apparently they know the gang is involved in all sorts of crimes, but can’t prove any of it because the gang is too smart.

Sure.

Anyway, Rod agrees. The gang keeps him in the dark about the details, but the cops are constantly watching. Tensions rise when Banjo catches Rod making out with Linda leading to a minor fight that doesn’t go anywhere. They steal some guns from a pawn shop and then get ready for the bank robbery itself. The cops follow them, but the gang manages to give them the slip. Since the cops don’t know which bank is going to be robbed, they’re left trying to follow Rod who gives them the slip pretty easily.

At the bank, Rod flashes his brights at some passing cops who stop to talk to him. He tells them there’s a bank robbery going on, but Banjo sees the whole thing. The cops get shot and Rod has to drive the gang away. Cops start following them, they get cornered at a lighthouse, cops shoot Banjo and Fats, and Rod tries to run up the stairs to escape. Jeeter follows, corners Rod, but is then shot in the back by Linda. Cops come in, arrest Linda, and walk away with Rod. THE END.

That’s right, the hero of the piece flashes his brights and that’s it. That’s the extent of his heroic action. Linda kills Jeeter, the leader of the gang, for no explicable reason. Also, there’s no explanation for why the cops don’t arrest them after the gun heist. That’s armed robbery and they have the stolen guns in their possession. Isn’t that enough for an arrest? Then again, what do you expect from a police force that can’t pin any crimes to the swastika-wearing biker gang that doesn’t wear masks during robberies? Yeah, right, forgot, the gang’s too smart. Brutally stupid.

Watching the MST3k version was so much more fun. This was a season 2 episode so still pretty early in the show’s run. Joel has a small chin beard, like an inverse soul patch, and the host segments largely focus on Gypsy’s emotional state. A solid enough episode, though.

As for the movie itself, catch the MST3k version or just skip it. It’s not terrible, but very little happens and it’s pretty cheaply made. One of the jokes they make constantly in the episode is how bright everything is. Despite most of the movie taking place at night, everything is shot in the middle of the day. We’re not talking day-for-night, we’re talking daylight with a motorcycle’s headlights on to indicate that it’s dark out. Hilariously bad on that level. Otherwise, pretty dull.

200. Horrors of Spider Island

200. Horrors of Spider Island aka Body in the Web aka Ein Toter hing im Netz (1960)
Director: Fritz Böttger
Writers: Fritz Böttger, Eldon Howard, and Albert G. Miller
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org

A group of dancers flying to Singapore crashes in the ocean and washes up on a deserted island. Their boss gets bitten by a giant spider and transforms into a murderous monster. Will they survive long enough to escape the island?

The 200th movie! Due to repeats on these sets, this is movie 251/400 which means I have only 149 movies left to go—74 and 1/2 more weeks of this. I’ll be doing this until January 26, 2019. Jesus, how is this my life? However, while it was random chance that Horrors of Spider Island came up as the 200th film, it’s kind of appropriate. I watched this more than nine years ago during the first iteration of the PD project, uploaded it then, and there’s an MST3k version of it. The whole purpose of getting these Mill Creek sets and watching all the movies in them was to find public domain films that I could add to the Internet Archive so they could be used—by me or others—in an MST3k-style midnight movie show. By sheer luck, this movie brings all those elements together in one package.

Naturally, it sucks. I mean, c’mon, irony rules o’er all and Murphy’s Law always applies. Despite this movie’s short runtime (just under 75 minutes) very little happens and there’s a lot of padding. We start with the would-be dancers sitting outside the promoter’s office waiting for a chance to audition. He arrives, they each take turns performing, and he accepts or rejects them according to some standard. The purpose of the scene is just for him to ogle the women and to give the audience the chance to do the same.

They fly to Singapore, but the plane crashes in a hilarious bit of stock footage intercut with screams. The survivors (it’s never clear how many, if any, of the women died) eventually find an island with a cabin containing the body of a scientist in a giant web. The promoter cleans the cabin out and they all settle in.

“Settling in,” by the way, means starting to snipe at each other and competing to attempt to seduce the promoter. He’s the only man on the island so what else are you going to do?

Not much, apparently because, on the first (second?) night, he takes a walk and gets bitten by a giant spider that’s been mutated by the uranium on the island. He turns into a weird-looking monster and runs away for the majority of the rest of the film.

The women strike languorous poses, argue with each other, and cavort in various swimming holes for a month before a ship arrives with two men. They find the girls, one falls in love with one immediately while the other keeps shifting his attention from girl to girl. The monster shows back up, kills some of the girls, the womanizing guy, and then the survivors drive him into quicksand where he drowns. Then they all get on the boat and leave. THE END.

It’s empty, silly, and dull, but at least it’s in the public domain. I think it’s telling that Mystery Science Theater 3000, which had its share of boring flicks, left this one alone until the tenth and (then) final season. The movie’s in the public domain so they could have used it at any time. That they waited so long to do it and that ShoutFactory, who’s currently distributing all the DVDs of the show, waited until seemingly the penultimate set of episodes to release it speaks to how empty the film is. I mean, there are a few hilariously bad shots early on, but that’s about it. You basically have an hour of nothing going on.

As I mentioned above, I uploaded a copy here years ago and you can read some reviews there. The one-star ones are usually the funniest. I don’t particularly recommend it outside of editing projects. You get some nice monster shots which could be fun for a video or a background mix for Halloween, but that’s about all.

192. Track of the Moon Beast

192. Track of the Moon Beast (1976)
Director: Richard Ashe
Writers: Bill Finger and Charles Sinclair
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org

In a twist on the werewolf legend, an archaeologist is struck by a meteorite which causes him to turn into a reptilian monster when the moon rises.

I’m going to keep it short because this one sucks (and the ones coming up aren’t much better). Paul is an archaeologist who starts flirting with a photographer. While they’re on a walk, an asteroid hits the moon causing a meteor shower of moon rocks. One hits Paul, embedding part of itself in his body. This causes him to start having reactions to the moon and moon-based material.

No, seriously. He visits a museum and a laser fires from a moon rock at his head.

After a night or two, he starts turning into a David Icke reptoid and killing people when the moon rises. So he’s a werewolf, but a lizard—a lizardwolf. That joke is not as dumb as this movie.

Paul’s feeling sick from the moon rock embedded in his head and goes to the doctor. They do x-rays, see the fragment, but tell him he’ll be able to live a normal live. Meanwhile, his friend, a native American called “Chief” because this is 1976, goes to the sheriff with “ancient tribal drawings” that look like they were previously hanging on the refrigerator to reward the clever four-year-old who drew them. The pictures depict someone touching something from the sky, turning into a lizardwolf, and then blowing up apropos of nothing. That’s not my interpretation, the movie has “Chief” say no one knows why he blew up.

The photographer has a picture of Paul that she shows to “Chief” that depicts something very strange. So strange that “Chief” goes to the developer to get it checked out, but is told that it’s part of the negative, that it’s really what happened. We don’t ever see the picture so I can’t say what was so odd.

That’s right, the movie—a film, part of a visual medium—builds a plot point around a picture—an image featured in a visual medium—and doesn’t show it to us.

Scientists come to examine Paul and find that the moon rock has dissolved and spread throughout his system. They witness him change and come to the conclusion that the process with advance until he blows up. He overhears this, decides he wants to die looking like a man, and runs away. He’s looking to commit suicide but the manhunt for him keeps getting in the way (*whomp whomp*). The photographer figures out where he’s going, runs after him, and gets stuck which allows her to witness his change.

He doesn’t attack her, but, even after seeing him turn into a monster, she keeps refusing to accept that he’s the monster and keeps getting in the cops’ way. Finally, “Chief” shows up with an arrowhead fashioned from the moon rock, shoot Paul thereby accelerating the process, and Paul blows up. THE END.

This was so stupid. I mean, it was just unrelentingly bad and boring. The acting is terrible, none of the characters’ choices make sense, and the movie is constantly making poor decisions. The picture is just one example. Twenty minutes in to a less than eighty minute movie, the movie pauses for a musical break. Paul, “Chief,” and the photographer are in the audience and Paul starts to feel sick. They take Paul home, prep him for bed, and have a few scenes of dialogue with him, none of which we hear because the movie won’t cut away from the band playing. How did you come to that decision?

On top of this, the monster costume sucks. It’s just a mask. He’s not a guy in makeup and it’s not particularly creative. He kind of looks like the Gorn from Star Trek, but not as good. On top of that, they have a transformation scene where they fade between the various states of transformation. Only, he’s not wearing makeup. In a werewolf movie, they’d fade between the various layers of makeup that were being applied. Here, they’re fading to a guy in a mask so they fade between some makeup stages and then several variations of the mask. It all looks like garbage.

Maybe unsurprisingly, this was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as episode 1007. At the moment, there’s no official free streaming source for the movie, but it’s available in Volume XXXVIII. The movie’s also in the public domain so I’ve added an MPEG version to archive.org here.

I’m not going to recommend the movie, though. The MST3k version might be solid (I haven’t watched my copy yet), but on its own the movie’s slow, dull, and pretty uninspired. There aren’t even that many monster attacks so it lacks tension even by its own standards. Although it is short, it felt like it ran a long time for me so I’d recommend giving it a pass.

175. Fugitive Alien

175. Fugitive Alien (1986)
Directors: Minoru Kanaya, Kiyosumi Kuzakawa
Writers: Keiichi Abe, Bunzô Wakatsuki, Yoshihisa Araki, Hiroyasu Yamamura, Hideyoshi Nagasaki, Toyohiro Andô
From: Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: Mystery Science Theater 3000

During an invasion of Earth, Ken, a Wolf Raider, accidentally kills one of his comrades and has to seek protection from the very humans he was attacking.

This is episode 0310 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 so I watched that version. Those familiar with the show will know, if not this episode, at least the style of “movie” that this is. Fugitive Alien is edited together from episodes of the Japanese TV series Star Wolf (which itself is based on the American novel trilogy of the same name so translation issues abound). The movie starts with Ken, a member of the evil Wolf Raiders of planet Varna attacking the Earth. Ken refuses to kill a child (coincidentally also named Ken) and, in the process of stopping his comrade and best friend from killing the kid, kills his friend.

Ken flees, is picked up in space by the Baccus III, an Earth ship, and, after some initial scrapes, joins the crew. Then it’s space adventures for all of them, starting with getting a job from a planet being threatened by the Varnan Wolf Raiders. While there, Ken gets arrested, breaks out, meets his former lover who’s the sister of the man he killed and has been sent to kill Ken, reconciles with her, then inadvertently kills her, too. TO BE CONTINUED. But not on this blog.

As I said, I watched the MST3k version and the episode itself is shorter than the uncut film so there are probably plot elements I’m missing. That said, it’d be difficult for this to be anything but plot. The key dramatic moments from several episodes are spliced together to make this movie so what I’m sure was a multi-episode arc of crewman Rocky being suspicious of Ken’s origins, attacking Ken, leaving the ship, and coming back is handled here in the span of about 5-10 minutes while other things are also going on.

It’s fine, a Saturday afternoon diversion. The effects are all right for mid-70’s TV, which is what this is despite the movie being released in the mid-80’s, but they’re not great. You have some nice kitbashing with the ships. They look like a mix between Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and aren’t too bad. Unfortunately, the visual effects surrounding them never rise to that level. As I said, though, it’s fine background noise, easily riffable as MST3k demonstrates, and is offensive neither morally nor aesthetically. You can find the MST3k version on Shout Factory TV or via Hulu if you have a subscription.

170. The Demons of Ludlow

170. The Demons of Ludlow (1983)
Director: Bill Rebane
Writers: William Arthur with additional dialogue by Alan Ross
From: Chilling

In celebration of Ludlow’s bicentennial, the family of the founder deliver a special piano to the town, only the piano carries with it a power that will fulfill a curse laid upon descendants of the town’s founders 200 years before.

The third film from director Bill Rebane to pop up in this series, the previous two being The Astral Factor and The Cold, this piece also demonstrates his mastery of the 80’s-afternoon-TV form. Think of him as a mid-budget Don Dohler.

The movie starts with 3 establishing shots: someone we don’t know walks through the snow to a house, a woman wearing a corset and heels is trying to decide what to wear, and a jug band plays down at the ol’ town hall where they’re celebrating the town’s bicentennial. With that you have a sense of the tenor and competence of the film—stuff’s going to happen and there’ll be (mostly) TV-safe titillation along the way.

The man is the town’s Reverend, the woman his wife, and they share a snarky exchange about how much she drinks and demonstrating a general discontentment in their marriage. Neither matters to the plot and neither element is brought up again, but the scene did allow this reviewer to clarify that, yes, she’s getting ready for the evening and is only wearing a corset and high heels. Super.

The town is Ludlow, celebrating it’s bicentennial, and the family of the late great-grandson of the founder, also named Ludlow, has sent an antique piano to commemorate the event. Most people are impressed by the gift, a few say there’s something creepy about it, and a young couple decides to sneak off to fool around while the piano’s played.

Ghosts show up and kill them, natch, but everyone in town thinks they’ve just run off together.

Meanwhile, a reporter who spent her childhood in the town has returned out of pure curiosity and is investigating old tales her grandfather told her, including tales of the piano.

Anyway, haunted piano, ancient curse, yadda yadda. There aren’t any characters here and nothing really surprising. The Reverend and the Reporter (coming this fall to ABC) are the only ones who are suspicious of the piano and its connections to the town’s history. People keep dying and the mayor refuses the Reverend’s demands that they bring in outside help. The movie becomes a bit of a cross between Jaws and Poltergeist at this point, although for no explicable reason. It’s never clear why the mayor is so resistant to calling the cops, and then ghosts cut his head off.

The Reverend digs up “the list” which details all the original settlers of the town and what crimes they committed against each other and ultimately against Ludlow himself. The Reporter, while talking to her colleague, says there were rumors that Ludlow was a vampire or witch, that something happened with children, and he was run out of town and forced back to England. What the Reverend reveals is that Ludlow played the piano a bunch, which annoyed everyone, so they cut off his hands. Plus his ten-year-old daughter got sick and died, so he blamed the town. Hence a centuries-long curse that’s finally coming to fruition!

This culminates in the Reverend and Reporter facing off against the piano, first trying to write the proper notes on it to dispel the curse and then just attacking it with an ax. Credit where due, the piano starts flying up and down a la Hausu, and then all the Puritan-era ghosts appear. They cut off the Reverend’s hands, the Reporter (suddenly in period dress) flees but finds herself unable to cross the town’s border, and then that stops when the Reverend’s hands are restored to Ludlow’s ghost. THE END.

As you’d expect from a Rebane film, it’s generically bad. It remains watchable and makes some budgetary choices that are unintentionally funny—the piano never sounds like a piano, instead always sounding like a bank of synths—but it also doesn’t demand any kind of attention. You could turn this movie on at any point and immediately be caught up because there are no details that need explaining. The set-up is obvious throughout. Even the echoes, intentional or otherwise, of Carnival of Souls amplify the feeling that this is a movie you’ve seen before.

So I’m in the middle on it. It’s fine enough if it comes on in the background, but I wouldn’t direct anyone to it. It has a few campy excesses, but not enough to make the movie riffable or enjoyable on an ironic level. While it’s not as boring as Alien Prey, it’s not as much fun as his follow-up, The Cold which managed the cheap movie mash-up style more effectively. If I were to recommend anything, it’d be that or the two episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 featuring his movies, 0421: Monster-A-Go-Go and 0810: The Giant Spider Invasion.

162. Manos: The Hands of Fate

162. Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Director: Harold P. Warren
Writer: Harold P. Warren
From: Pure Terror
Watch: archive.org, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (via Netflix), Rifftrax, Rifftrax Live

A family on vacation takes a wrong turn and ends up at the Valley Lodge, a home owned by the mysterious “Master” and seen over by his servant Torgo.

The movie that there’s very little to say about because its reputation exceeds anything that can be said. One of the contenders for worst movie ever made, it entered the public imagination due to being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its fourth season. Since then, it’s become a midnight movie staple and a cult sensation with various theater adaptations being produced.

There’s nothing to be said about the plot because nothing in the movie makes sense. The story of the film is that Warren, an insurance and fertilizer salesman, made the film on a bet, and the result is a train wreck that rivals The Room, Samurai Cop, Birdemic, and the films of Neil Breen for sheer incomprehensibility. I dreaded this movie coming up in the list because I didn’t want to watch it. I ended up going back to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, and that’s really what I want to talk about.

You don’t need me to tell you about the movie because you already know about it. What’s new, though, is the launch of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Season 11 today on Netflix. I chipped in to the Kickstarter campaign in the winter of 2015 so, as a backer, I got to see a preview of the first episode. So rather than talk about Manos, I’ll briefly mention my thoughts on the reboot and then be on my way.

I have thoughts about the relaunch itself, what they’re aiming to do with the property, and these Kickstarter campaign in general, but that feels like a longer essay about the marketing of nostalgia, returning to the well to try to squeeze out a little more from the fans, and the corrupting effects of branding in general. Though I don’t feel like I’m ready to write that essay yet. It would take some more time than I have right now and my thinking may change as I get to sit down and watch more of the new season.

As for the reboot itself, it’s good, I liked it. The show looks fantastic, I can clearly hear the voice of head writer Elliott Kalen in the riffs (which is to the good since I’m a fan of his sense of humor), and it’s obvious the show is incorporating elements of Cinematic Titanic both in terms of using the entire space of the screen during the riffs and in what’s being done with the films at the end of every episode. That means they’re expanding the idea of what can be done with riffing and learning from how post-MST3k projects engaged with the form. I laughed at a lot of the jokes, thought the cast rose to the occasion, and was really happy with this overall.

There are choices I take issue with. The biggest is that each episode is nearly or exactly 90 minutes long. One of the advantages of being produced for online distribution is you don’t have to edit—the work can be as long as it needs to be. Instead, it’s clear that the movie for the first episode has some significant chunks taken out of it which gives the show the abruptness of MST3k: The Movie. Furthermore, because the episodes are short, the host segments get cut short as well. The first host segment is a rap about monsters which runs as long as it needs to, but every other bit feels really quick and truncated. There is plenty of time for these gags, but the show isn’t using it.

On top of that, there are obvious commercial break moments including show bumpers. Granted, I think the bumpers they have are good and speak to the Saturday morning kid show tradition that MST3k ultimately draws from. Plus, there is the structural challenge of how to move from riffing to a comedy bit without the excuse of a commercial interruption already moving you, visually, into a new format. It’s an interesting stylistic choice that I think works, but only if you’re going to have this on broadcast TV. I think that’s why the bumps are there, so that this season can be sold in syndication if/when Netflix stops carrying it. That seems at once both lazy and greedy, like they’re preparing to be able to sell this in every format they can imagine right now instead of tailoring the show to whatever channel they’re trying to distribute it on.

I almost called the show the “product” there, which is another issue.

Kinga Forrester, the new Mad, is bringing the show back to license and market it in as many ways and on as may platforms as possible. I like that as an idea: we move from the trope of mad scientists doing experiments for nebulous purposes to a megalomaniac intent on revenge and world domination to a marketing person mad with power. The problem with that concept, though, is that’s exactly what Joel is doing. The whole Kickstarter campaign was about bringing MST3k back so they could keep making and selling new episodes. A lot of the messages he sent during production detailed how they were working on the branding angle and asking backers what kind of MST3k-related products we’d like to buy. Would you like a Crow plushie? What about an SOL-based video game? During the post-preview Q&A, he mentioned a comic book coming out from Dark Horse comics.

I don’t get the sense from the show that it has an ironic perspective that it’s making fun of the very thing that it is, that there’s a knowing wink to the fans that part of loving a show is loving the brand and picking up tons of ancillary products. Instead, it feels like it’s all in earnest, that all the effort is about getting as much money as possible from every angle possible. I don’t object to people getting paid, but when is it enough and how much is this show that’s been profoundly influential for me diminished by this effort?

Gee, I wonder what the “long” essay would have looked like.

Bottom line, the show’s good, I’m glad it’s back, and I’m enjoying what I’m seeing on screen. I just wonder why it came back and what they intend to do with it now that it’s here.

147. The Hellcats

147. The Hellcats (1968)
Director: Robert F. Slatzer
Writers: Tony Huston and Robert F. Slatzer from a story by James Gordon White
From: Cult Cinema

After a narcotics detective is murdered, his fiancée and brother infiltrate the motorcycle gang he was investigating to find the real killer.

This is an easy one to write up: nothing happens. See you next week.

Okay, while that’s a justified review, it’s not entirely accurate. We open at the funeral of the former head of the Hellcats motorcycle gang. Two narco cops are watching and wonder aloud how the gang members would feel if they knew their boss was ratting them out. Hiding behind a gravestone are two mafia types who take note of the cops’ presence. When Sheila, the acting head of the gang, shows up late for a drug handoff to the mafia boss, the decision’s made to kill the lead cop.

After the cop’s death, his brother comes home from the war to comfort the cop’s fiancée. They decide to pose as biker types and join the gang. And they do. Forty-ish minutes later, the fiancée rides with Sheila and Betty down to Mexico to pick up some heroin. Betty hides it behind the headlight of her bike, but gets thrown while riding back and dies. Sheila sends a random member of the gang to break into the impound yard to get the drugs from the bike while she goes to talk to the mafia boss. The fiancée follows her, claiming she wants to make sure she gets her cut, and the brother follows the two of them.

The mafia boss is getting ready to skip town, has all three of the meddling kids beaten up, and takes the brother and fiancée with him to dispose of in the harbor. Sheila has escaped and called the Hellcats to come to the harbor for a rumble. They show up, save the fiancée and brother, and beat up the mafia types. Cops show up, everyone gets arrested, and the brother and fiancée go their separate ways: she goes home, and he returns to the road having found a fascination with motorcycles. THE END and PS. I make it sound way more dramatic and action-packed than it is.

This is a 100% snoozer. It’s not particularly camp despite the Hellcats being a weird mixture of Hell’s Angels, beatniks, and hippies, and there’s not much violence or tension despite it being about violent criminals smuggling drugs from Mexico. The majority of the running time is spent watching the Hellcats drink and party while generic 60’s rock plays in the background. And it’s always the whole song. The movie regularly stops to play another song that is completely forgettable.

If you absolutely have to watch it, check out the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of it. This was the ninth episode of the second season and I honestly don’t know how they managed to riff it. There’s just a whole lot of nothing in this picture.

136. Bloodlust!

136. Bloodlust! (1961)
Director: Ralph Brooke
Writer: Ralph Brooke
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

A quartet of teenagers travel to what they think is a deserted island only to find themselves trapped by a maniac who hunts people for sport.

A review on IMDB refers to this as “A Cut-Rate Version of Most Dangerous Game,” and that about sums it up. The “teens” (each of them was in their late-20’s when they filmed this) rock up on the island, get captured, and twiddle their thumbs trying to figure out what’s going on, although they don’t put too much effort into that. They’re like the Scooby gang on Quaaludes. About halfway through they learn that their host is planning on hunting them and turning their corpses into trophies. They manage to evade him long enough for a henchman he abandoned earlier to arrive and kill him. Useless white heroes at their best.

I’m not going into detail about this movie because, well, there’s not a lot of detail to go into. The heroes don’t actually defeat the villain—one of his own henchmen does—and one of the girls ends up with a higher body count than anyone except the villain. That element’s kind of interesting, but not much is done with it. There is an unintentionally hilarious sequence shortly after the teens are brought into the murderer’s mansion where people keep bursting into the room to introduce themselves and their relation to the plot.

Another reason I’m not going into detail is I’ve seen this movie before, several times maybe. This is part of the Horror box set, so I watched it then, and it’s episode 0607 of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The episode is on Volume 1 if you want to watch it (there isn’t presently an official streaming copy online, although unofficial copies aren’t hard to find). That’s the version I watched this time around, and it’s fine. The riffs are all right and the host segments are super-short, almost absurd. Forrester’s mother visits (first appearance of Pearl), but that’s only in the opening and closing segment. Not a whole lot is done with it. There’s a short at the beginning, ”Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm” that’s probably funnier than anything in the movie.

The movie itself, though, is in the public domain and I uploaded this to archive.org here seven-and-a-half years ago next Friday! Strange coincidence. I’m trying to find some enthusiasm in talking about this, but I really can’t. It’s a boring flick. The one upside is that it stars Robert Reed, aka Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch, so there’s some fun to be had with that. It’s a simple, inoffensive little film that’s only barely over an hour. Grab your snarky friends and have a run at it.

007. The Big Fight and 008. The Creeping Terror

Jump to The Creeping Terror (1964)

007. The Big Fight (1972) aka Blood on the Sun, Lei Tai
Directors: Shing Yuan Sun, Ting Mei Sung
Writer: Shing Yuan Sun
From: Cult Cinema

During the WWII Japanese occupation of China, two occupation officials fear that guerrilla forces will find common cause with the local martial arts school and the two will unite against the Japanese forces. The officials propose a tournament to flush out and kill the warriors, but of course the fights are rigged. Our hero and the guerrillas must decide when to fight and when it's best to bide their time.

More Kung-Fu so soon and one I enjoyed much more than Chase Step By Step. I think there are fewer fight scenes in this one, but they carry more weight. There's certainly more character and story here and some real question about how things will shake out. The movie also feels more fun.

We open in the martial arts school where a scrappy youth is beaten down by Brother Wu. Is this the nefarious Brother Wu I've heard so much about in the Kung-Fu parodies of my youth? He's a scoundrel, the movie's villain, and appropriately wormy. It's nice to have a villain to hate.

We cut to our hero traveling across Japanese-occupied China smuggling salt to his girlfriend. Is it just to make food or for use in developing gun powder to help the rebellion? The guards running the checkpoints along his path have the same question but are quickly dispatched by him and what had seemed to be a small band of travelers. Turns out they're part of the rebellion and they've heard of him. He invites them back to his town to lay low for a bit and plot the expulsion of the Japanese.

There are minor skirmishes with Brother Wu, political maneuvering by the school and Wu's father—the town leader, ultimately leading to Wu and his father proposing the tournament plan to their Japanese overlords. The tournament will pit the great Japanese masters of the various fighting styles—including sumo—against any willing challengers. Of course, the fights are fixed and all the challengers are killed by the Japanese masters.

Our hero and the head of the martial arts school see it for the trap that it is and forbid any of their students from participating, but eventually their honor and the safety of their friends is so threatened that they must test their styles against the Japanese.

The whole thing works. The fight scenes are fun, the villains are sufficiently mustache-twirling, and the story isn't too bad. Sure, there's the scrappy kid who is useless and annoying and forces the hero's hand later, and the hero's girlfriend whose role in the movie is to get killed to inspire him to fight back. That's doubly disappointing because the leader of the guerrillas is a woman and it would have been really easy to make the girlfriend involved with the underground in the town. Just give her a little something to be a character as opposed to a button to activate heroic action. Despite those two issues, it was fun.

The movie also works on a bad film/camp level. The dubbing is bad to the point where I wonder if the dubbers were being sarcastic, you can make jokes about what's going on without diminishing the film, and it has a literal “Your mother!” moment. +2 movie.

I came away from this with the sense of the old sword & sandal films, although that might just be because it's a dub from the 70's. My copy was formatted for television and it really should be in wide-screen. The choreography is pretty okay and, on top of that, the movie has sequences of Kung-Fu versus guns. I want to see all of that.

There is no copyright notice on this movie and it shows up in Film Chest's Public Domain film list, so I've uploaded an MPEG of this to archive.org here.


008. The Creeping Terror (1964)
Director: Vic Savage
Writer: Robert Silliphant
From: Cult Cinema & Sci-Fi Invasion

A newly married couple witnesses a flying saucer crash. As they alert the authorities, one of the monsters on board escapes. While the military is busy investigating the saucer and the creature chained up inside, its fellow traveler is moving ever-closer to the town, claiming victims as it goes.

I have seen this movie a ridiculous number of times, mostly due to The It's Alive Show. They played the episode featuring this movie a lot, or maybe I just feel like they did because of their affection for the admittedly strange “Bobby!” exclamation in the movie.

This movie is such a slow, goofy spectacle. When I tell my students about my bad movie hobby, I reference this film and describe it as “hallucinogenically dull.” My jaw was on the ground watching this because nothing is done right. Nothing.

The movie features a narrator describing what characters are saying in the movie including during scenes where you hear the characters speak. The filmmakers had the actors' voices reading the lines but still muted them in favor of another voice telling you what you were watching and what the characters were saying. This is not the most strangely incompetent part of the movie, though. This is the classic picture where the monster, the hulking alien beast roaming the landscape, is a bunch of carpet remnants quilted together and being shaken by a guy underneath. The monster lurches on to its victims, some of who have to drag themselves through the doggy-door-style flap on the front to be effectively consumed. The actors involved should be praised for not constantly giggling in the face of this “horror.”

It is glorious.

I know I'm not giving the standard detailed run-down of the plot, but there's none to give. The editing and content of the film is so strange, so ad-hoc, that I wonder if things didn't just fall apart half-way/three-quarters through and they decided to see what kind of film they could make just with the material they had. This movie is so strange, put together in such an odd fashion that it feels like a documentary made by aliens. The Wikipedia entry for the movie has a brief description of what happened during production, but I want more. I want the Ed Wood of the making of this movie.

Even though it is dull, the movie is too weird not to recommend. Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured it as episode 606. It's available on MST3k Volume 1 or on YouTube. Unfortunately, the film itself is still under copyright and so I can't share my copy online.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. There are things I want to say about Black Friday, the War on Christmas, and how the multitude of kids no doubt blogging and tweeting and Facebooking what they got for Christmas speaks to a document-the-moment/miss-the-meaning culture we're in, but I can't be bothered. Instead, here's a Christmas tradition I've been maintaining: watching Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

There's the Cinematic Titanic version:


There's the Elvira version:


There's the MST3k version which initially introduced me to the movie:


And, of course, the original movie itself:


Take care of yourselves,
D-

Everything Is Festival-Streaming

I've loved Everything is Terrible since I lucked into a live performance of their third feature, Doggie Woggies, Poochie Woochies. Their annual festival (Everything Is Festival III: The Domination) is going on right now and various events are streaming. Right now I'm watching an Evening with Joel Hodgson and am very excited that these events are streaming. Enjoy!

EDIT: Really interesting talk where, I think for the first time, he explains what made him leave MST3k, but, more interesting, explains what lay at the core of his creative process to building puppets and also his sense of regret over how the follow-up to MST3k, X-Box/TV Wheel, didn't work out. I was checking the DAP for episodes of TV Wheel, because I remember watching it from there, but they no longer host it.

PD Project Horror Part 7

Hey, where have you been?

Ahem. Yes. After some delay I am back and so is the horror. Please, try not to cry. Here we go!

Disc 7

Bluebeard

John Carradine plays an artist who murders the women who sit for his paintings.

This is a PRC picture which means it should be awful, but it's not. It's actually pretty good. I'd go so far as to recommend it unironically, and I don't do that with many movies in this project.

The Corpse Vanishes

Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist who uses the vital fluids of young women to keep his wife alive and beautiful.

An interesting revision of the vampire story. I can't remember much about the movie though.

This was featured as episode 0105 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be downloaded via the Digital Archive Project or watched on YouTube (in 10 parts).

Doomed to Die

Boris Karloff returns for his final performance as the detective Mr. Wong. A shipping tycoon is found shot to death in his office after one of his ships catches fire and sinks.

Not as good at The Fatal Hour, this one drags a little bit. It's fun to note how often Wong has to break the law to solve the mystery. Ends with a disappointing revelation of guilt, but it's okay until then.

Night of the Living Dead

The dead walk! The classic film that redefined our idea of zombies. Fantastic.

Next time, Disc 8: Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney Jr., Max Shreck and none of them talking.

PD Project Horror Part 6

Halfway home. Ladies and gentlemen, the comic book film event of the summer: Italian Spiderman

Disc 6

The Brain that Wouldn't Die

A surgeon who's been working on reanimating dead flesh nearly kills his fiancee in a car accident, salvaging only her head. He starts looking for a woman to kill whose body he can give to his fiancee while his finacee's head rests in a pan, begging for death.

There's quite a lot wonderfully wrong with this picture and I can't, in good conscience, recommend watching it without the MST3K commentary. It's the first episode with Mike on the SOL and it's high-quality even if the movie's not.

This was featured as episode 0513 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be purchased on its own. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Brain That Wouldn't Die.

The Killer Shrews

A group of genetically-engineered giant shrews escape their cage and start menacing people stranded on a deserted island.

Here's a drinking game to suggest to people you want to see die of alcohol poisoning--drink whenever someone on screen drinks. You can even have them pick just one character, they'll still drink themselves to death. You'd think I'm unnecessarily focusing on the alcohol consumption in this movie, but there's really nothing else going on. They drink, get "menaced" by the killer shrews (really dogs with shag carpet draped across their back--clearly friendly dogs at that), drink, talk endlessly about the plot, drink, fall into a cliched and half-hearted love triangle and, oh, what else was there? Oh yeah, drink. Hilariously bad.

This was featured as episode 0407 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be purchased as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 7.

King of the Zombies

A plane crashes on an isolated Caribbean island leaving the pilot, an American special agent and his valet at the mercy of a strange German doctor.

If you hop over to the Archive.org page for this movie you'll see a summary of the film in thumbnails and you'll have a pretty good idea of the character of the piece. When I first watched the movie I thought it was the most racist thing I'd ever seen. Then I saw Michael Bay's Transformers. It's not that the film's particularly hateful, it's just the revelatory nature of all these pictures. They all express the latent cultural concepts without thinking about them. What's shocking is the utter disdain that greets Mantan Moreland's character throughout the film.

There are a lot of issues at play. He's playing a stereotypical role, but it's also the role Shaggy and Scooby play in Scooby-Doo. It's the nature of the comic relief in a horor-comedy like this. Things get more complicated in the fact that Moreland's clearly the star. This is an old black and white b-horror and has, of course, a useless white guy as the hero. Moreland has the most compelling scenes. He's funny. I'd go so far as to say it's a good flick--both for his performance and as a window into the culture. Just be ready to shout, "You Nazi bastard!" a lot. It makes things easier.

Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde

The silent picture starring John Barrymore based on the horror classic by Robert Louis Stevenson.

S'alright. It's very good actually. Barrymore's great, the story's great, the production's great, lots of funny moments (many lines unintentionally homoerotic), I just don't really like silent pictures. I'm impressed by them but I also like dialog. On the other hand, I have realized that I can put the DVD player on fast-forward and still get the same movie experience.

Next up, Disc 7 with something! And something else! As well as some third thing! Beware!

PD Project Horror Part 4

Before we begin, here's that pizza you ordered:

Disc 4

The Fatal Hour

Boris Karloff plays the Chinese detective Mr. Wong as he tries to solve the murder of an undercover cop who was infiltrating a smuggling ring.

Karloff=horror, even when he doesn't. I'm expecting to see a period piece starring an extra from Creature From the Black Lagoon pop up soon. It's the same logic isn't it? As for the film itself, a slightly-convoluted mystery. There's a series of murders and it's not clear until the end who did it and how. It's not bad. And even though Karloff is playing a "Chinese detective," he doesn't play the role as a cringe-inducing stereotype.

The Giant Gila Monster

A giant gila monster terrorizes a small town.

Giant radioactive monsters and incompetent rear-projection for the win!

This was featured as episode 0402 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be purchased as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 10.

Dead Men Walk

A man returns from the dead to wreak vengeance upon his twin, the man who condemned him.

A short, simple and relatively okay vampire-type picture. George Zucco plays both brothers so there's some fun with split-screen filming that generally works out okay.

The Mad Monster

A scientist, driven mad by his expulsion from the scientific community, develops a serum to turn his assistant into a murderous beast.

This is trying to be a werewolf story, but it can't get past its own incompetence. If you ever need an example of so-bad-it's-good, reach for this film. The mad scientist goes after each of his adversaries who all invite him into their homes and agree to do favors for him even after he berates them and calls them fools. One even comes around to the scientist's side, apologizes and promises to speak on his behalf before their colleagues, and then the scientist kills him anyway. And that doesn't even begin to talk about the brain-dead assistant who keeps getting turned into the monster without his knowledge. It's hilarious.

This was featured as episode 0103 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be downloaded via the Digital Archive Project or watched on YouTube (in 9 parts).

Saturday, Disc 5: 5 films, 2 silent, one with the least investigative investigators in film history and a man in a monkey suit! Yes!

PD Project Horror Part 3

Sorry about the late update. I got distracted by Son of Rambow (which is pretty good) and then the It's Alive Show featuring First Spaceship on Venus (which isn't). First Spaceship on Venus came up before in PD Project Sci-Fi Part 8. It doesn't improve with repeat viewings.

Onward to further misery!

Disc 3

Attack of the Giant Leeches

People start disappearing after a local drunk shoots a monster in a swamp.

There actually isn't a snarky description of this film that can top what it's really about. Drunks, yahoos and losers from a backwoods nowhere that, oddly enough has its own wildlife marshal, get seized and eaten by giant leeches. Yes, the monsters look like Glad bags come to life, yes, there's a dry, charmless white guy who doesn't do anything and yet is still the "hero," and yes, there is a point where the "hero" tells them not to destroy the monsters because it'll damage the local ecosystem. In short, this is a Roger Corman film through and through. Woo-hoo!

This was featured as episode 0406 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be purchased as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 6.

Beast of Yucca Flats

Tor Johnson is a Russian scientist defecting to the United States only to be attacked by KGB agents the moment his plane lands. He escapes them only to wander onto a nuclear test site where the radiation from a bomb turns him into "The Beast," a rampaging monster that kills indiscriminately.

Yikes. It has been years since I've seen this but just a peek at its Wiki page is enough to remind me not to return to it. Tor Johnson, were you ever in anything good?

This was featured as episode 0912 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be downloaded via the Digital Archive Project or watched on YouTube (in 10 parts).

This is supposedly PD, but I found records at copyright.gov saying it's still under copyright--Registration Number/Date: PA0000385906 / 1988-10-11

The Screaming Skull

A newlywed couple moves into the husband's home where his new wife starts being haunted by his previous wife.

Another Gaslight-type film done a little better than Nightmare Castle even though it doesn't have Barbara Steele. Ultimately kind of weird and boring, it's most notable for the promise of the trailer: if you die while watching the film, the producers will pay for your funeral. If I get cancer, this film's going on a loop just to spite those bastards!

This was featured as episode 0621 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and can be downloaded via the Digital Archive Project or watched on YouTube (in 12 parts).

Revolt of the Zombies

An ancient Cambodian method of hypnotism, a man stymied in both love and career, an army of zombies bent to the whim of a mind gone mad with jealousy and betrayal.

The movie is about a man abusing zombie powder for his own ends (as though you'd use it for anything else. "It's a floor wax!" "It's a dessert topping!"), but it takes forever to get there. The first half of the movie is spent establishing the man's devolution from a moral man to a madman intent on power. In other words, filler. The ending is an absolute cop-out, even after being foreshadowed. The movie enters so-bad-its-good territory with the rear-projection journey downriver though. That's worth the price of admission alone.

But I love the unintended messages of these films. Actual quotes: "It may mean the destruction of the white race!" "When dealing with these Orientals, you deal with fatalists. Death to them is a transition to a better life." There's this constant repetition within colonial narratives of "the end of civilization!" "the very survival of our race!" "a threat to our very way of life!" The unimaginable threat of "the other"--always cast as an utterly alien other--such that the use of machines of war and atrocities against them is justified. It must be, because otherwise the invaders, us, are patently bullies, monsters and fiends.

Fun with remixing: the ghostly eyes that appear throughout the film when the zombie power is being utilized are Bela Lugosi's from the film White Zombie, mentioned earlier.

The Terror

An officer from the French Army gets lost and follows a girl to a strange castle where he finds himself in the middle of a revenge plot from beyond the grave.

Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson in a Roger Corman film with additional direction by Francis Ford Coppola. S'alright I guess. It's a neat enough story with a twist I didn't expect, but man is it plodding.

Next time, Disc 4: 2 more Misties, 2 George Zucco films (one with 2 George Zuccos) and Boris Karloff. It... kills four or so hours.