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The Screaming Skull (1958)
Screaming Numbskull
The Screaming Skull is a little dufus of a movie quickly designed to cash in on the William Castle type of gimmick Shurlock that was doing so well at the time. Believe it or not there was a time when kids of about the age of six were really creeped out by things as simple as skulls so the idea of a screaming one really sent tykes into the theater to pee in their seats when things got rolling in the last fifteen minutes.The Weakest point of the film and there are many is the fact that the skull sounds more like a peacock than anything else. A babe with a good set of pipes and a little reverb would have added much to the minimal chill factor.This film probably got made because the director could get the mansion for beans before the new tenants moved in.Despite the bashing this is receiving here it does have some fun moments sprinkled amidst the leisure and there isn't a serious collector of horror films I know that doesn't have this in his/her collection.So there.
The Werewolf of Washington (1973)
Avoid it like Rabies
I've seen some pretty lame horror comedies but this is one rancid hair ball. Your ten year old comes home with funnier jokes than this. So bad it makes you angry at the waste. Dean Stockwell has never looked more ill at ease or has been more miscast that he is in this miserable attempt at satire.It's so noncommittal about it's style of comedy that it takes about ten minutes into the film before you can figure out it is indeed a comedy.I know some of you may be thinking how could it not be with at title like The Were Wolf Of Washington? Well around the same time Dick Clark produced a TV special called The Werewolf Of Woodstock and it was definitely not intended to be comedy though it was so awful it induced howls of another kind.This is so bad it's just bad.Two thumbs up...the keester.
Night of the Blood Beast (1958)
Gulity Pleasure from B movie Hell
If you analyzed all of the elements and faults of this picture it would seem that there would be absolutely no reason for enjoying it but still I go back to it as late night comfort food again and again.It just has a bottom of the barrel we got no money but screw it sincerity to it that I have to admire and if you took away all the stale acting,looney dialogue and dire effects you can find a pretty good and original concept or two for a teen flick of it's time one of it's notions would crop up twenty some years or more for ALIEN.Pretty cool.If this movie had a script by Charles Griffith,Beverly Garland as one of the Femmes and had a much better critter than the left over Monster from Teen Age Cave Man than this would be more of a minor Corman classic like Not Of This Earth .Roger Corman executive produces for the company that his brother Gene briefly tried to maintain.Bernard Kowalski keeps it grim and moving faster than he did in Attack Of THe Giant Leeches. Give it a break. I bet the people slamming it even enjoyed it a little.
Die Nackte und der Satan (1959)
Hans quick, Der Shnitchengruben!!!
I've seen too many examples of prime Euro-Sleaze to not notice a notch or two above the rest and this creeper fits that description .This offbeat mad scientist film has a similar story to the far more famous and campier The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Both were made in the very same year,though The Head made it to American screens a year earlier while the producer of the other flick haggled with AIP for a better distribution deal.Both films would be great to play on a double bill as both are sexually charged but the tones are on opposite sides of the spectrum.Though the dubbing is as poor a usual foreign efforts it's apparent that The head is much more concerned with being a professional movie with a taste for the gutter as opposed to The Brain that wouldn't Die which is trash hoping to be accepted.The acting for the most part is much better and the effects of the transplant while just as unreasonable in theory are handled with superior care than in the drive-in romp from the states.Now don't get me wrong,it is a cheesy B movie but it's nicely adult and takes care to keep a consistent mood of artiness and Angst.Where as The Brain That Wouldn't Die became famous for it's early gore scenes,the Head is far more focused on arousal.It's obvious that a minute or two was snipped from the German version. At least once in the strip club and then again as Irina admires her new body.This film being longer than the other by a good eighteen minutes means it gives it time to be a bit more complicated plot wise than just man removes head,man gets head new body and during the last two minutes we get a whole new piece of information that allows for a less traditional ending.The Brain That Wouldn't Die is tons mores fun but this makes for a good rainy night entry for that trash-aholic film lover.
La sfida dei giganti (1965)
Who stole My Loin Cloth?
MILD SPOILERS.
The other reviewer remarked that this film copies Hercules and the Huanted World. I can see where he got that impression because ten minutes of this movie was lifted from Hercules And The Haunted World. I believe that the fight with the giant rubber Iguanna came from Hercules and the Captive Women and the Volcano scene looks very familiar as well.That aside this entry in the beefcake sweepstakes is fairly is easy to take largely to do to Reg parks charisma and the smarminess of the chief villain who impersonates our hero and gives him a bad name.The Oracle is a hottie but the rest of the female cast is not as spicy or saucy as the toga babes of past efforts.Not bad if you're bored.
Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965)
I am a hero make me a sandwich
Joseph E. Levine and B movie maven Albert band get together to produce a TV pilot that never got off the ground because the tykes were beginning to bore by this time but for revisiting a campy genre this one is painless and fills the void.The plot is well...minimal so who cares? The main points here are in their highest form. It's short and sweet,beefy and is never at a loss for action. It's also mercifully done in English. The Sea Critter is a Carlo Rombaldi creation (E.T.) worthy of A.I.P. creature constructor Paul Blaisdel's envy.In short it's wacky and original if not very menacing.The major fault I would say that in comparison to many other sword and sandal epics this one is not too babe-a-licious.We only get one semi hot princess and the obligatory harem dances and snake charmers are conspicuously absent.Guess they weren't aiming the series towards the dads. At 47 minutes it's a sweaty trip to fun land.
Il mostro dell'isola (1954)
My speech Impediment suddenly got worse!
The first time I saw this I was a kid and it took me several minutes before the outrage settled in that I was listening to a dubbed in Karloff impersonator because the American distributor was too cheap to hire the old boy back for a proper dubbing by the time this hit the States some four years later. Although Karloff's movie work during the fifties was sparse and mostly lacking in real quality he was very much in demand having been rediscovered by whole new generation who were watching his thirties and forties films on T.V.'s syndicated Shock Theater". Karloff was also doing books,radio programs,Quiz shows,Broadway,revivals of Arsenic and Old Lace,albums full of fairy tales and several great TV dramas including Joseph COnrad's Heart Of Darkness for Playhouse 90. So if a stinker like this came along it probably had something good in it for him like a decent pay and a vacation as others pointed out but even though the market Karloff's style of horror was down at the time he was hardly unwanted or wanting for cash. A few years later Corman would hire him and he would work steady until the day he died. He even sang the Peppermint Twist on a Halloween segment of the sixties rock show Shindig. But what of Island Monster? Well it looks nice and seedy and the Femme Fetale is pretty juicy but the script is talky and nothing really happens in the way of real action. It just sort of plods along like ketchup in December waiting drop on a rancid fry.Karloff still escapes with dignity intact but the star of the show is the trained dog who is there to remind you that you can go along way by being cutesy pootsey.
Torture Ship (1939)
Caveat Emptor! A great cast and a great mistake
Recently got one of those Mill Creek 50 pack of horror and mystery PD movies (Tales Of Terror) because there were about 25 of these programmers I had not yet seen.I was already aware from experience that the quality on most of these is less than desirable but some can't be had anywhere else or were not worth paying ten bucks for alone.In this case I was taken royally as this print is missing the first 8 minutes or so leaving one to guess the rest. Fortunately the plot is simple and you can pick it up easily but you'll still be burning at the Faux Pas. Don't know if Alpha's print of this is the same way but in any case this is one to avoid.
The Shuttered Room (1967)
Lovecraft Lite but full blooded second feature
This is great B movie entertainment that I saw in a drive-in as the opening feature to The Good,The Bad and The Ugly.We took two cars.All the adults were in one car and all the kids were in the car next door.Man were we spooked!It has a few plot defects as most horror films do but the very worst I can say about it is that Gig Young's Karate fight looked really phony.So did Diana Riggs as Emma Peel but she was much hotter so we'll overlook it.Basically it has little to do with the Lovecraftian mythos with the exception of catching the dread and the rural fear of things unknown but it does comes close to being kind of a marriage between Straw Dogs and Beast In The Cellar.The script is surprisingly literate for a time when these were cranked out without much thought. Much of the film belongs to Oliver Reed's Brando like antics,the creepy cinematography and the weird noises "The Creature" makes.This one needs to resurface on DVD. Perhaps it will now that Stuart Gordon is thinking of doing a Remake.