In true classic exploitation style this was marketed at the time like it was some nudie-cutie featuring romping nekked natives. In reality what you get is mostly just really dull newsreel footage and a blandly narrated documentary about a Kenyan tribe rising up against British colonial rule. It is mildly interesting in that it's basically the blueprint for what became mondo movies in the next decade.
One of the all-time great 50s monster movies. This time our giant monster, who hails from Venus, starts out very small before rapidly growing. Ray Harryhausen's amazing stop-motion creature, named The Ymir, is obviously the big highlight here. Like with all the great monsters you feel bad for the creature since he's kidnapped from his home planet and we're even told he's not really aggressive unless provoked, so what does everyone do? Provoke him at every opportunity of course! I do kinda also feel bad for that elephant though. Simple yet engaging classic.
This feels like the American version of one of those Mexican wrasslin' women movies, but since it came out a decade before those I guess this actually set the blueprint. Of course it's really a mobster movie with a whole bunch of wrestling scenes thrown in. Not exactly the sexiest spectacle but this was way before the days that porn became widespread so I guess you took whatever thrills you could get back then. This has a few aliases including THE BLONDE PICK-UP, PIN-DOWN GIRL and WRESTLING RACKET GIRLS. Another MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 watch and it's undoubtedly better that way.
John Carradine as a mad scientist attempting to reverse the aging process but really just creating a bunch of zombies and monsters that resemble the half-animal people in ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. The legendary Tor Johnson is his henchman that keeps his captive guests in line waiting to be his next subjects of medical-experimentation. One of these includes THE 50 FOOT WOMAN herself Alison Hayes! Clunky but fun 50s junk.
Originally released on a double-bill with that giant grasshopper movie THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
If you mixed INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS with MARS NEEDS WOMEN(which wouldn't actually be made for another 10 years) you pretty much get the plot for this schlocky 50s sci-fi flick. Just like INVASION it's all a thinly-veiled metaphor for the evils of communism, or possibly in this case how crappy marriages can get. If you read pretty much any review of this some cinema-critiquing snob will explain all that to you. While not up there with the heavyweight classics from this era it's still a fun old b-movie watch and one of the snazziest titles to boot!
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Mexican hero Abel Salazar stars in this tale of a pianist who sells his soul to the devil in order to be the best ivory-tickler ever! Unfortunately the side effect is him turning into a very hairy Wolfman-like monster. It took my a few attempts to get through this one since it is pretty slow-moving for a good chunk. Things do pick up once our monster cuts loose and starts his rampage. This includes snuffing a little girl(off-screen) and body slamming anyone foolish enough to tangle with him. Too bad Santo wasn't around to match lucha-libre skills. Makes a good double feature with that other Mexican horror classic with Salazar CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN.
The Commander USA version!:
One of my all-time favorite 50s monster on the loose flicks. The monster here is basically a beefier version of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON with an extra-ugly head(and since he's land-based is really closest to the villain of THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US). Unlike ol' classic Creech though this monster rips people's heads right off and walks around with them which was pretty wild stuff for 1959! While obviously not as iconic as the Universal monsters this guy will always hold a special place in my heart and should be loved by any self-respecting monster kid out there.
Also the fact that he adorned one of my favorite punk rock band's album cover gave him extra street cred in my book!:
Originally played with OKEFENOKEE which was some crime drama set in the swamp.
"Shock award winner!":
This movie starts out with a warning and a promise to a free burial if you happen to drop dead while watching! From there we get an exploitation movie homage to Alfred Hitchcock's REBECCA involving a woman(Peggy Webber, who mostly acted on TV shows) marrying a fellow(John Hudson, also predominately a TV guy) whose wife still haunts him as a skull that screams like a peacock, or does she? The mystery elements probably worked a lot better before there were a million movies with similar plots made through the years. Goofy throwback to a simpler era of exploitation thrills that I actually got to see play in a theater once many years ago. Sadly it was a shitty blurry DVD that the theater projected which didn't help my assessment of this film's qualities. This is a public domain feature so it's probably been presented by every dumb horror host ever and is able to be viewed in way better definition these days.
Jack Palance acts his ass off in the title role of a movie that asks the question of "what if Jack The Ripper was your upstairs tenant?" It's clearly very loosely based on the facts since I don't think they ever got this close to catching ol' saucy Jack in reality. There's no gore or anything since this was the 50s but it is a good gloomy period piece with solid performances. Aunt Bee from THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW herself(Frances Bavier) is Jack's landlord and has a few freak out scenes as she is wont to do.
This is technically a remake of 1944's THE LODGER though that one was more of a mystery and was itself a remake of a few earlier film adaptations of a 1913's book called THE LODGER starting off with Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG. There was also a 2009 THE LODGER movie.
The Three Stooges made 2 of their shorts in 3D since it was the 50s and that was the popular craze. This is the more horror-themed of the two(the other one PARDON MY BACKFIRE is sadly not about farts but about just being mechanics). You get a mad scientist attempting to put the brain of a beautiful gal inside the head of a gorilla. There's also a big ugly henchman, knives and other weapons thrown at the screen and lots of rampaging gorilla hijinks. One of my favorite shorts with Shemp and even when not in 3D good stupid fun.
This one is a very TWILIGHT ZONE-ish tale of a fellow who takes over at the local cemetary and believes he can cause people to die simply by placing black pins in their plots on a big board in the ol' graveyard office. He also summizes that by that logic he should also be able to bring them back to life by using white pins which almost turns this into a 50s zombie flick. Unfortunately there are a few semi-surprising reveals at the end, that I won't spoil, that thwarts that expectation. Not my fav 50s horror and it probably coulda been shortened a lot without losing any of it's impact but interesting enough for a one-time watch.
Boris Karloff returns one more time to the Frankenstein role. Instead of playing the monster though this time he's the last of the descendents of the original Frankenstein family of mad scientists. Of course he gets up to bulding a monster of his own with the help of some nuclear energy. The hulking creature starts out looking really cool with a skull head but then spends most of the rest of the movie all wrapped up like a mummy. There is a cool movie-within-a-movie opening scene, a sorta surprise ending and a weird disposal system for body parts that gives this film the classy distinction of being the first movie to feature the sound of a toilet flushing. I'm not exactly sure what was so futuristic about this movie that they had to make it set 12 years in the future except maybe having an atomic reactor in your laboratory. Clearly not up to the standards of any of the Universal classics this is still a decent watch for hardcore monster kids that have seen all the other Frank flicks.
This 50s monster b-movie is the first one produced by Roger Corman. It's never really been one of my favorites due to most of it being really slow and talky but it does have a goofy one-eyed squid (that I guess in the movie is supposed to be a giant amoeba). Unfortunately we only really get to see this monster briefly up until the very end when he battles a one-man submarine to the death.Corman would go on to produce and direct a zillion more goofy movies and director Wyatt Ordung wrote the legendarily trashy ROBOT MONSTER a year before this so he's OK in my book.
This is thought of as being the first of the "Blood Island" films and the co-director here, Eddie Romero, went on to direct all of those later films. This one sort-of plays out like a mash-up of FRANKENSTEIN and ISLAND OF LOST SOULS where we get a mad scientist(Francis Lederer) creating a pantherman who spends a good portion of the film getting treated like shit so he becomes a sympathetic character just like ol' Frankie. The monster, with his panther head and claws and wearing bandages like a mummy, strikes a fairly imposing figure for a 50s monster. The movie is nice enought to ring a buzzer for the squeamish to cover their eyes before we see a graphic surgery scene(actually a scalpel slicing into some pigskin) so that's something. Speaking of graphic displays the one downside to this, since it was filmed in the 50s, is that it never reaches the bloody heights of the later Blood Island movies but it's probably the best-looking of the bunch. AKA CREATURE FROM BOOOD ISLAND and THE GORY CREATURES
I've heard this referred to as the Japanese version of THE BLOB and while the H-Man(actually H-Men since there are more than one) does turn into a very Blob-like creature at points it's not really the most accurate description. It's also got a big gangster movie vibe going on with police searching for a missing criminal that takes up a lot of the runtime. Still it's a pretty interesting and unique 50s monster flick from the director of the original GODZILLA.
Well at least this is a short film. Promoted as a juvenile delinquent movie this is pretty much a straight up gangster flick about a guy going undercover into a criminal gang(who happen to ride around in a white T-bird) to find out who killed his dad(a security guard) during one of their earlier robberies. I viewed this after watching HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT(both produced by Roger Corman around the same time and I would guess they probably played together at drive-ins) and found it a bit inferior and a letdown from film.
