The thing that couldn’t die

Wait, this is a horror movie?

1958

This farm family who appear to live not far from LA so they aren’t all that country, but this car is a water witch. If that meant she could ride a summon up a fifty foot tall wave and ride on top and command then that would be cool. Instead it means she walks around with a Y shaped stick and it will lead her to under ground water-not as cool. This time it leads her to a decapitated talking head that once belonged to a conquistador -what the heck? Only now the head is looking for it’s body, but it can control these yokels to do it’s evil bidding- kill this person, carry me there, find my body, blow my nose. There is nothing else going on at this farm so these people follow this old, lumpy, mumbling head. “Must obey the silly head!”. Eventually even the water witch is controlled by the head and she uses her powers to find the body that is connected to the head and the foot bone is connected to the ankle bone and the ankle bone is connected to the wait I think there was a movie going on.  Oh, yeah they dig up the body, but it’s in a coffin so they carry the coffin inside and my doesn’t it look lovely like a coffee table of the dead. Oh wait hey bring that head over here and put it with the body and bomp it fits and the conquistador lives. Well a hammy actor pretends to be a conquistador anyways, he makes Lost in space’s Dr. Smith’s theatrics seem low key by comparison. The lumpy conquistador will rule the entire farm and then the world! The people standing around pull out a cross and bloop old conquistadoofus goes down like a sack of ancient potatoes and he turns into a skeleton. Take that, poor excuse for an ancient evil! Roll the credits.

The negatives-This film is ultra low budget despite being done by big name universal-they were cutting costs on films a lot in 1958 and were glad to do a film like this with not much costs. The acting ranges from okay to cringe worthy.

The positives-I first saw this in the late 1990’s and kind of liked despite it’s shortcomings. I like a horror on an isolated farm and I like the conquistador as the villain.

Apparently this film actually did fairly well when it came out because it was lucky enough to be paired up with Hammer’s The Horror of Dracula over here in the states. The original working title was “The water witch”, I think they chose a better title for the finished product.

 

 

 

 

Aw, man decapitated head for dinner again?

 

Yes, my face fell in the oatmeal again.

Have rocket, will travel

1959

So the three stooges (Moe, Larry and Curly Joe) are maintenance guys on the land owned by the base that is doing rocket research. The rocket project is struggling as we see one launch attempt result in the rocket ending up not in space but rather near the stooges shack just a few miles from it’s launch point. The female scientist and her boyfriend are in danger of losing the project if they can’t show results oh woe is us. So the stooges step in and screw everything up. Well, sort of eventually they go Venus (which looks a lot like California) and meet a talking Unicorn, run from a giant spider, battle an intelligent yet mean robot and fight their evil doubles. Wow it was like plots for several bad 50’s sci-fi films shoved into 15 minutes or so. The stooges (the real ones not those nasty fake ones or at least I think so) make it back to earth and get a parade. Then there’s a tacked on celebration party with more stooginess going on and finally the movie ends.

The bad- If you enjoyed the Stooges shorts with Curly Howard or Shemp you may be in for a let down of sorts. This line up of the stooges were going for the younger kids so it’s far more mild than their efforts from the late 1930’s – early 1950’s. Also they were older so they do less slapstick. The plot here seems thrown out there just to catch on to the sci-fi crazy of the 50’s. There are some laughs, but it’s few and far between.

The good-Curly Joe is no Curly Howard or Shemp, but he was an improvement over Joe Besser. Also this film marked a return of sorts for the stooges. After being fired a few years earlier the stooges had gotten popular again via their old shorts being put on tv and a new generation of fans got to see them. So they were re-signed to do films, Curly Joe was hired and boom the stooges were back. This wasn’t their best of the films from this line-up as I’d go with Three Stooges go around the world in a daze for that honor. However this film does deserve credit for keeping the stooges going a while longer.

 

Monster Fighting 101: The Creature from the Black Lagoon

So it you run into this big old fishy guy here are some tips.

1-Distance as in keeps yours from his. He’s a strong dude and can rip flesh with those claws.
2-He’s a fish dude so don’t think you can out swim him. If you go in the water after him (for some ungodly reason) you better have a weapon and a helper or two. He’s is in his natural element there.
3-He can be on land and can be strong for a while, but only for limited periods. So use that to your advantage if you run into him on land. Keep your distance and try to observe if he’s gasping or not for being out of the water too long. If he is it may be time to strike if you have a good weapon and/or some help.
4-Knock out powder that some crazy old sea captain uses to konk out fish apparently works on the creature if you use large amounts. So pick up a big canister of fish zonker or whatever the next time you are Trader Joes or whatever store you go to.
5-Being alone when the creature is around is a big no-no. Travel in groups and be prepared to shove the other person in front of you and say “take them first” when the creature comes.
6-If a woman in a soaked evening dress is laying on the beach it’s not a gift from the heavens. So don’t go checking on her close because the creature will pop up and either toss you nose first into a tree or just crush your skull like a peanut shell.
7-A gun with a good range and a strong flashlight or something even brighter seem to work best for bringing this dude down if he’s out in the water.
8-Oh and don’t change him into an air breather because he really hates that.

There you go, hope those helped.

She Demons

1958

A few people are washed ashore on an island after a ship misadventure, but not of them are named the skipper or Gillidan. The most boring leading man maybe ever is a square headed guy named Fred and he is one of these survivors. There is also a spoiled blond haired woman named Jerrie (Irish McCalla who was TV’s Sheena). Also there’s Fred’s friend Sammy Ching (fans of older films may recognize him as Victor Sen Yung who played Charlie Chan’s Number Two Son) , sorry Sammy but given that you aren’t the leading man or leading lady I have a feeling you won’t last long and he doesn’t. Eventually these people wander upon scantily clad dancing girls and Nazis out here on a seemingly deserted island. What are the chances? In a 1950’s B movie? The chances are actually pretty decent. Anyways some of the girls dance, but some of them get whipped – smacka smacka smack smack. Our castaways/heroes try to help the girls that got whipped, but they get noticed by the soldiers. Fred eventually ends up in a fight with an overweight Nazi where the object of the encounter seems to be to smash every item in the room. The two combatants also manage to somehow change hair styles and body shapes during the fight – how peculiar. Later Jerrie is taken in by the head baddie sour face who gives her a new dress-oh how beautiful. Mr. Sour explains (in a cringingly bad German accent) that Hogan and his buddies will never escape- oh wait actually he said he’s taking some gland stuff from the young women to try and help restore his wife’s beauty. What a noble guy but then he hits on Jerrie- the scum! Apparently the island’s volcano gets mad over this as it explodes around this time kaplooooooieee! The Nazi leader’s wife tells Fred and Jerrie how to get off the island (yay) but then she shows how creepy she looks (aaaaieee). The heroes live and evildoers die, isn’t that always the way? Roll the credits.

This movie gets slagged on pretty hard, but don’t into that without seeing it for yourself. Yes, the acting is laughable and the plot is ridiculous but it’s a fun bad movie. A good bad movie keeps you glued because of a combination of being, crazy and hopefully decent pacing and this one does all of that.

Hammer time

Since I’ve reviewed two Hammer films and done a list so far I will go ahead and proclaim that I am doing a Hammer films theme week as long power holds out as we have just survived 14 inches of snow and are due to get another round tonight. So I hope to review two more Hammer films this week. Right now I’m thinking that it will be the Gorgon and Dracula – Prince of darkness. Plus I may knock out one more Hammer related topic today if possible. So prepare for more horror, monsters, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and more.

1950’s movie spaceships

One of my favorite decades for sci-fi. Most movie spaceships either seemed to be rockets or saucers. It seemed like we were sending up the rockets and invaders were in saucers.

I was a teenage movie maker

 

Don Glut might be most known for having written the novelization of The empire strikes back. However years before that actually from 1953 to 1969 he made a lot of home movies. Most were horror and science fiction films and all were fairly short. So this two disc collection includes a documentary about his films plus it includes all 41 movies. The documentary is quite good as it explores what motivated Glut to make these films, hos he did his special effects and other behind the scenes information. You can tell how he had a real love for film and the characters and themes he focused on. He obviously was a big fan of dinosaurs, super heroes and classic monsters so those were normally the main characters he focused on.  You can see his knowledge skill put to use in the films themselves and you can see his confidence and technique grow over the years. His early films were frequently short and he was just a kid. Most of these were very short and the early monster films frequently involved Halloween make-up and costumes and were filmed in someone’s else. The later films saw handmade costumes with more details, outside filming locations and sometimes even miniatures showed up too. Glut even had the chance to pull in known people into his film like super collector and gorilla suit wearer Bob Burns played Superman and Glenn Strange played the Frankenstein monster for Glut although in a mask rather than the make-up he wore when he did the character for Universal. As a kid it was great to see Dracula, Captain America and dinosaurs in films, but years ago if you wanted to see more of these you had to use your own imagination or create your own drawings, stories or whatever. Don Glut had a camera and stuck with creating these films, pulling his friends in to play roles and trying to get better at it which he did. Any fans of sci-fi, fantasy  and or horror films or just film makers in general will finally to enjoy in this set. I bought it the week it came some years ago and watch it frequently.

Mecha G’s Monster of the month

“Grrroooaawrrrrr! I’ll grind your miserable souls into dust. Beware, I’ll…” Oh, hey there it’s me Mecha G and it’s time again for my monster of the month. For December it is the She-Demons from the 1958 film of the same name (to be reviewed at this site at some point in the near future). Once beautiful woman are turned by Nazis into flesh starved beasts on a remote island jungle. Oh but those madmen shall pay oh they shall. Time to get back to my full time job. “Here I come, tiny humans. Get ready for hot raging death! Try some of my finger missiles!”

 

Ray guns rock!

My short post the other day on sci-fi weapons and some cleaning around my house had me thinking about rayguns from 30’s through the 50’s shows and movies. They were mostly used by aliens or by us earthers in the future. They were normally large, bulky, metallic and frequently really cool. That’s why olders of today spend time and money trying to make models of old style ray guns. I still have to follow up on my old dried up marker rockets, but now I hope to make a ray gun out of junk as well. There are tons of how to’s and pictures around on various sites done by people with far more skill than myself. However I will draw my vast knowledge of having seen way too many ray guns over the years and try to put one together at some point. If I get hold together and it doesn’t look too rotten I’ll of course post pictures of it here. A lot of people make steampunk guns too which is great. Although growing up I liked the Verne and Wells era sci-fi I spent far more time wanting to be Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers so ray guns for me please.

Devil girl from Mars

1954

Who’s in this?

Hazel Court plays a model here. She was a model and then was in films such as the classic Curse of Frankenstein, Dr. Blood’s Coffin, The man who could cheat death, The Raven and more. She sadly died in 2008.

Patricia Laffan as Nyah (Devil Girl) from Mars. She spent about two decades in film and tv. Perhaps most known for Quo Vadis.

Adrienne Corri plays Doris the barmaid. Likely most known for being the victim in the rape scene in Clockwork Orange. She did quite a bit of tv and films, but her last credit is listed as being over 20 years ago.

Hugh McDermott as Michael Carter a smug poop eating reporter with a face you want to punch. Scottish born actor who spent four decades in various films and shows. Was still acting when he passed awat at the age of 65 in 1972.

Excuse me but I traveled here from Mars and appear to have forgotten my pants.

What’s this about?

This girl works at this quiet little tavern/Inn and then her misunderstood boyfriend shows up although everyone else thinks he’s a no good  bum. She tries to keep his secret that he is running from the law. This old scientist and the most annoying male reporter ever looking for a metorite crash site or a drink or both. The goofhead reporter starts flirting with a model staying there blah, blah, blah I’m a reporter and a lunk head blah, blah, blah. Oh, wait a minute isn’t there supposed to be a devil girl you know from Mars in this movie? I hear all the best devil girls from there. Finally something that looks like a glowing bumpy doorknob comes to land. Well, I’ll be a flyin’ saucer oh, hold on this is England so I say good chap that looks like one of those floating items that we put under our teacups. Out of the spaceship thinamabob comes an alien dressed in a leather outfit complete with mini-skirt and cap plus she has a cape, So obvious she is way cooler than anyone at the inn. To make what can seem like a long movie short Mars needs dudes to repopulate the planet. So the younger guys here have the chance to go be with a bunch of alien woman likely also all in leather mini-skirts so they say-no. What? Oh, my we are appaled by such and offer and turn up our noses at it. Oh, well the devil girl shows off her laser gun and her robot buddy who looks like an old toaster or an old coffe maker or something else old. Eventually the people in the house find out about the innkeeper’s daughter being an escaped convict so they tie him up. Yet eventually he gets free and agrees to go to Mars to repopulate the planet. It’s a ll trick and he blows up the ship and himself plus the devil girl in the leather mini skirt and her bit old lunky robot ooops I mean her rather large mechanical contraption, old sot.

The negatives-The first 20 minutes or so are very slow. This is based on a play and you can tell. It’s feels stiff at times. Hugh McDermott annoyed the beejeezus out of me.

The positives-The basic story is crazy enough to be interesting. Glad they went with black and white it likely helped not just the effects but the landscape as well. Love the scene where Patricia Laffen is slowly making her way over the hill towards the inn. Patricia Laffen tries hard with a part that easily could have been a serious disaster.

Overall a likable enough although odd little film.

Oh look a giant old style remote control.