What doesn't kill you makes you stronger Volume 1

This delicious Crown International release teases us with the potency and potential of star Peter Carpenter before he shockingly and suddenly vanished not only from the Hollywood scene, but from the very face of the earth. Here, Peter (who also produced) plays an unscrupulous doctor bedding two beautiful sisters, matching wits with a blackmailer & battling the supernatural forces which lurk in the gothic shadows of a sinister house where a murder has occurred. Released as a double feature with Bloodlust!.

I gave Bloodlust! an extra star for being a Crown International release & for incorporating an exclamation point formally into it's title. Bloodlust! is the umpteenth telling of the classic Richard Connell short story The Most Dangerous Game. In this version, Wilton Graff plays a sadistic pervert who satisfies his Bloodlust! stalking and murdering teenagers as if they were jungle animals. Co-star Robert Reed later gained fame for his role as the father of The Brady Bunch and also a modicum of infamy when his homosexuality & HIV status were revealed at he time of his death in 1992. Bloodlust! was initially filmed in the late 1950s but sat on the shelf until it was double billed with The Devil's Hand in 1961.

The Devil's Hand was produced in 1959 by Rex 'The Brain That Would Not Die' Carlton but sat on the shelf until 1961 when Crown International distributed it as a double feature with Bloodlust!. Also known as The Naked Goddess. The Devil's Hand is about a man drawn into the world of Satanism & human sacrifice when he buys a mysterious voodoo doll from Frank; The High Unholy Executioner of the Gamba Cult. Yes, it's trash but you know you want it.

Exploitation film-maker Al Adamson who loaded drive-in theatres down with titles like Psycho-A-Go-Go and Blood of Ghastly Horror churned out The Blood of Dracula's Castle for distributer Crown International. A pair of gentrified vampires living in a rental castle find their undead lives disrupted when the new owners serve them with an eviction notice. John Carradine co-stars as their cruel man servant who drains the busty ladies kept chained to the cellar walls of their hot young blood. 60s sex-pot Jayne Mansfield was initially set to star in this version of Count Dreckula but died in a horrific car accident. Paula Raymond also suffered a horrific car wreck which caused half her face to be ripped away later assumed the role.

A slightly unstable woman played by Trish Van Dervere arrives in the town of Blackford to the delight of every teenage boy in a five mile radius but also manages to stir up some powerful supernatural forces. It seems her new house is possessed by the spirit of her devil worshipping aunt and the satanic driver of a hearse which prowls the roads at night. This rather tasty treat from Crown International may not be as satisfying as The Amityville Horror or The Changeling or The Car but it's everything -including-the-kitchen-sink screenplay should hold the interest of those who adore horror movie clichés.

A diabolical scientist experimenting on human guinea pigs accidentally creates a test group of bloodthirsty murdering maniacs. As interesting as that sound, this Crown International science fiction thriller fails to deliver the goods or the exploitation goodness one should expect from this sort of thing. It's unforgivably BORING!

Crown International helped finance The Crater Lake Monster but midway into production slashed the budget which seriously inhibited stop-motion animator David Allen from putting the dinosaur he and director William 'Night Train to Terror' Stromberg hoped to put on the screen. The resulting film about a plesiosaurus awakened by a meteor impact failed to impress audiences and critics although it manages occasionally to charm.

I adore BAD movies. And you'd be hard pressed to find a worse movie than The Creeping Terror. Even the decades later homemade sequels that hoped some of it's stink would rub off can't hold a candle to the putrid mess that is The Creeping Terror. This Blob rip off from Crown International is Grade Z science fiction of the magnitude that would give Ed a Woody.

A psychotic goon viciously strangles every scantily clad woman he can get his sadistic hands on all-the-while confessing his sins to a late-night talk radio therapist he longs to murder. Slasher movies don't come any more nihilistic than Don't Answer the Phone. As a pure exploitation film it gets the job done as the heads of Crown International surely knew when they agreed to distribute it.

This William 'The Incredible Melting Man' Sachs film attained some small credit as a cult item when the star (80) Dorothy Stratten was shotgun murdered by her jilted lover shortly after it's release. Canadian Stratten played Galaxina; a robotic adventurer patterned closely after Barbarella. In recent years, Crown International has expressed interest in rebooting Galaxina as a weekly television series.