THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964)

  This one was obviously influential on 68's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with it's hordes of undead roaming around after our sole survivor Vincent Price who's boarded-up inside his home during the night. Here, instead of flesh-eating zombies though, they are neck-biting vampires caused by a global airborne plague. This one gets extra credit for being the first version of the story that would go on to be filmed a few times as THE OMEGA MAN in '71, a big-budget CGI Hollywood piece of crap with Will Smith called I AM LEGEND(which was also the name of the original story) followed quickly by a shitty shot-on-video thing called I AM OMEGA(both in 2007). I would usually say stick with the original but the 70s version is the one I've honestly gone back to more often for a fun apocalyptic watch even if this one is in that semi-classic category..

 There is a slightly longer ending if you're not watching the AIP TV-cut which seems to be the most common out there on all the cheap-o public domain DVD sets. 

                                          Complete cut with baby ending!:

HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT (1959)

  So just about everything bad that happens to everyone in this movie can be blamed on 1 female character(Virginia Aldridge, who was in mostly T.V. stuff) and her terrible manipulative charms. It's a pretty simple plot about a nerd who gets taken advantage of and goes down the wrong path and since it's the 50s we have to learn that crime doesn't pay before it's all over. Besides the anti-crime message it has a pretty downer ending for the 50s. So for that I give it props and recommend this one for some gangsters vs. juvenile delinquent thrills.

 I own this in a DVD set of Roger Corman flicks. Corman was the executive producer who financed the production.

 Originally released on a double bill with T-BIRD GANG(another Corman deal).

The story here is apparently an adaption of Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING which came out 3 years earlier and I really need to watch one of these days.      

KIDNAP LOVER (1976)

  This is the other film directed by the guy who made AXE(Frederick R. Friedel) in the 70s(he would resume directing in the 2000s with 2 films, including one called BLOOD BROTHERS which is an attempt to combine his two 70s films into one cohesive narrative(I'm not sure how successful that is but I have my doubts)). This one starts out really good with a great gritty feel and some nasty shootings involving a crotch and an asshole before kind of meandering to a weird conclusion. It kind of seemed to me like a 70s version of BUFFALO '66 in some ways but with a tougher lead actor. While I wouldn't put this quite up there with AXE, which is one of my all-time favs, in terms of bizarreness it does have a certain artsy flair to it mixed with a sleazy grindhouse sensibility that I think fans of this decade's cinema would appreciate. AKA DATE WITH A KIDNAPPER and KIDNAPPED COED

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL (1949)

 There are so many different versions of this story put onto film that it's hard to say which one is my favorite. This one has 2 things going for it, one is that it's narrated by Vincent Price and hearing his voice is always awesome, second is that it's only 24 minutes long but still manages to hit all the plot points. It does seem that ol' Scrooge is transformed from a miserly prick into a Christmas-loving maniac really fast but it gets the message across either way. Check it out if you aren't a Christmas-hating commie.

 

THE ELECTRIC CHAIR (1976)

  I gotta think this thing was completed a few years before it got  released since they use the year 1972 in the film. What you get is a long drawn-out police-procedural/courtroom drama dealing with convicting the killers of a cheating couple who get snuffed while making out in the park. Directed by J.G. "Pat" Patterson, who started his acting career as The Mad Daddy horror host in North Carolina and whose only other directorial effort is the earlier, also crappy but at least gory, THE BODY SHOP, this one lacks the goriness and doesn't have much of anything very suspenseful to replace it with. There's one cool bit where a defendant goes apeshit and starts shooting up the courtroom but that's hardly worth the time wasted to get to it. 

                                At the Cinema III! I woulda definitely gone with JAWS here:

Paired up with a German LSD flick!: 

ICE CREAM MAN (1995)

  If you enjoy watching the very odd-looking Clint Howard act like a weird, messed-up, psychopathic ice-cream man then this is for you. If you can't deal with a horror film in which you don't care about anyone else in the whole movie then maybe not. Overall this is very boring and the gore quotient, outside of some body parts, including eyeballs, in some ice cream, is pretty low. This was the 90s though so it's not very surprising that this sucks ass. At one point you do get to see 2 cops knocked out by ice cream scoops and there are severed heads on giant cones, so that's something. I'd say skip it unless you have a Clint Howard (or Converse All-Star) fetish.

A sequel was talked about in 2014 but hasn't happened yet: