THE UNEARTHLY (1957)

  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. 

                               Known in Spanish as THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN:

and in Italian as THE HOUSE OF MONSTERS!

HORRORS OF THE RED PLANET (1965)

 If you thought that THE LORD OF THE RINGS was a movie with a lot of walking in it, wait until you get a load of this piece of crap! In the far-off futuristic year of 1975, four astronauts(the scientist, the leader/hero, the hothead younger guy and the gal) end up crash-landing on Mars and go for a long walk until they run into a Martian castle where some big-brained aliens hang out. John Carradine's disembodied head then appears, like in the WIZARD OF OZ(alternate title of this is THE WIZARD OF MARS), talks a bunch of gibberish and then maybe it was all a dream or some kinda wacky(but very boring) hallucination. AKA JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN. VHS title = ALIEN MASSACRE. 

 Footage from this were later on edited into HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS (1970) and DOOMSDAY MACHINE (1972) 

 One of the weirdest things about this movie is that the VHS tape I own has the Millennium Falcon from STAR WARS right there on the cover. A movie it couldn't be any more different then!

 Lon Chaney(Sr. or Jr.) does not appear in this film despite being credited on some video box covers.

                                                               Sci-fi drive-in hijinks!: 

                              In new Ultra-Depth!(whatever that means!):

THE MONSTER CLUB (1981)

 Remember that movie where there's a stripper who strips all of her skin and flesh off and ends up just a dancing skeleton? Well if you do, this is that movie. I recall first seeing this one on t.v. as a youth which probably wasn't too long after it originally was released. So I assume it wasn't much of a big hit or anything. Vincent Price and John Carradine, both sadly past their prime, star in what is an anthology deal with 3 horror tales. It's in the Amicus studios mold(produced by Amicus' Milton Subotsky and the last film directed by Amicus regular Roy Ward Baker) but came out a few years after they went out of business. The stories are a bit slow for the most part but the wraparound scenes in the actual "monster club" are goofy fun. You get Donald Pleasence as a vampire hunter and Britt Ekland as a wife of a vampire who is somehow not a vampire herself. How does that work exactly? The new wavey musical bits(including The Pretty Things who were somehow still together since the 60s!) really bring things to a halt but at least I know what a shadmock is now. 

 

VOODOO MAN (1944)

 Bela Lugosi stars as a hypnotizing, voodoo-practitioner who attempts to bring his dead wife back to life by performing zombifying rituals helped out by George Zucco and also John Carradine as one of his goofy henchmen.  You get some zombified ladies and Bela and Zucco doing their creepy shtick wearing what look like magician's robes. Pretty good for a quick(only 62 minutes long!) breezy watch if you like the creepy classics.

VAMPIRE MEN OF THE LOST PLANET (1970)

 Al Adamson is a director that more times than not lets me down. This attempt of his to make a sci-fi film with vampires in outer-space is no exception to that rule. Probably more commonly known as HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS this one recycles lots of footage footage from earlier films including that constantly reused scene of those two lizards(made-up to look like dinosaurs) fighting each other from 1940s ONE MILLION B.C. They get away with using old black and white footage because most of the movie is itself in black and white. Most of the scenes that take place on the alien vampire planet are tinted different colors, which the ads called "Spectrum X color!" You get lots of scenes of cavemen(because it's apparently a prehistoric planet) battling vampire cavemen and occasionally other monsters like the bat-demons and claw monsters. While that might sound exciting it's not exactly executed particularly well. The reason for this is probably because these bits were "borrowed" from a 5 year old Filipino film titled TAGANI. John Carradine doesn't do much but give advice every once in a while. My favorite parts are the opening sequences of folks on earth being overrun by bloodsuckers while the great Brother Theodore narrates. If only the rest of the movie could maintain that kinda insane energy level. Other aliases=  BLOOD CREATURES FROM THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, CREATURES OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, CREATURES OF THE RED PLANET, HORROR CREATURES OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, SPACE MISSION OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, SPACE MISSION TO THE LOST PLANET and THE FLESH CREATURES and probably more.





                                    An Al Adamson Drive-In Double Feature crapfest!:

More Adamson  drive-in goodness(badness?)!:

SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS (1977)

 This is a pretty dumb tale of a group of cheerleaders who run afoul of a gang of Satanists that include their school janitor. It starts out like a stupid teen sex comedy(strangely not all that much nakedness on display though) and eventually turns into a pretty light-hearted horror tale. At least as light-hearted as a movie with offscreen rape and onscreen devilish abduction can be. It is cool to see Lily Munster(Yvonne De Carlo) herself as one of the lady devil-worshippers even if she is a bit past her prime. John Carradine, as a dirty bum, also pops up. I think my favorite thing about this movie is the poster though the idea of melding these two cult genres together coulda been good if they just had some less irritating cheerleaders and turned up the sex and horror.




             This film has such a great poster but the VHS release went with this crappy image!:

BOXCAR BERTHA (1972)

 This seems to be one of those Martin Scorsese-directed films that doesn't get brought up much when people talk about his career. That's kind of a shame because, even though it's not my favorite of his filmography(TAXI DRIVER? MEAN STREETS?), it's still a pretty amazing film for being so early in his career. Made for producer Roger Corman's AIP studios to obviously cash-in on the success of  BONNIE AND CLYDE from a  couple of years earlier, this definitely has the Corman-feel to it throughout most of it's run time up until it pulls out all stops and gives us a super bloody ending scene which includes multiple gory shotgun wounds and even a crucifixion! This ending wallop foreshadows the one in TAXI DRIVER though things seem even bleaker here under the depression-era circumstances. Worth checking out instead of any of that more current junk Mr. Martin has put out. Also as a bonus you get to see Barbara Hershey very nude if that's your thing and in what I'm thinking is a rare occurrence David and his dad John Carradine get to act opposite each other in at least one scene.




                                        Known in Italy as AMERICA 1929:

and in Germany as THE FIST OF THE REBELS?: 

THE MUMMY'S GHOST (1944)

 I've been working my way through the classic Universal Mummy boxset and figured this would be pretty much the same as the last one, and while it is in many ways they at least spice things up a bit with the inclusion of John Carradine as our main villain here who controls Lon Chaney Jr. as the titular Mummy named Kharis who isn't really a ghost but just your standard reincarnated mummy-man. and a pretty wonky ending that I don't mean to spoil but it involves the mummy kinda winning in the end which is pretty rare in these. Of course the story deals with the mummy's quest for his soulmate, as it often does, which in this case is reincarnated into an Egyptian lady(Ramsay Ames) who doesn't really look very Egyptian to me but what do I know?. Things take a pretty nihilistic turn by the end which is pretty shocking for 1944 and makes this entry stand out. Chaney would be back for the next and final film in the Kharis saga, THE MUMMY'S CURSE, rushed out the same year.

RED ZONE CUBA (1966)

 This movie is just fucking terrible! I mean there's just nothing good to say about it. It's got sort of a film-noir feel to it but it has to be the most boring film-noir I've ever seen. It stars a big, goofy,  Curly from The Three Stooges-looking guy named Coleman Francis who's also the writer and director of this crap as an escaped con who ends up in Cuba as part of a Bay of Pigs-inspired invasion. The worst thing in this whole movie, besides the dumb plot, abrupt editing and horrible camera work, might be Coleman's acting style which is the most dreary, dull, lackadaisical thing you might ever witness. Every scene is like a chore to get through and the only way I made it through to the end was because I saw this on an episode of Mystery Science Theater, otherwise it would probably be impossible. John Carradine shows up for a hot second and then wisely disappears. Almost anything is a better choice than this.  Even Coleman's previous film THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, which is also very crappy, is a better watch than this. AKA NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNDO FINE

The only positive thing in this whole film is the awesome theme song sung by Mr. Carradine himself:

NOCTURNA (1979)

While I am a big fan of the 70's as a decade in general I am not a huge fan of disco. I'm especially not a fan of bland generic-sounding disco and that's unfortunately what a lot of this stuff sounds like to me. This film is filled with stupid scenes of disco dancing and terrible music. In addition to this terror it's also a horror/comedy-spoof, one of the most dreaded of all sub-genres! As in just about every other spoof-type film no laughter is evoked by anyone with half a brain, just a realization that you are wasting your time watching anything like this. The reason I watched this and the only reason to watch this at all is to see the great Brother Theodore who wasn't in nearly enough films and isn't really in enough of this one either. He does get to give a speech and utter the classic line "where there is death, there is hope" so that's a plus in a film without much else going on to recommend it. In addition to Theodore, John Carradine appears as Dracula in an embarrassing performance uttering lines like "If I'm dead why do I have to pee-pee?". Lily Munster(Yvonne DeCarlo) plays his wife so at least they got to cash-in on their past glories.

LEGACY OF BLOOD (1971)

 Like in many movies from the latter part of his career John Carradine only shows up for a little bit of this movie.  Just long enough to tell his nutty/incesty family that they have to spend a week together in his place to inherit his money.  So the plot is that old overused one of people stuck together in a house and someone's killing them off one by one.   This has been done way better before( in HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL for one) and this one is a real snoozer despite the fact that we get a head chopped off and a group of weirdos to watch.  There's also a stupid ending which kind of make's everything come off as a joke and makes the viewer feel like they just wasted their time which is pretty accurate.
 There are a few AKA's including WILL TO DIE and BLOOD LEGACY.
 There's another LEGACY OF BLOOD from the 70's(1978) directed by the legendarily awful Andy Milligan that seems to have a very similar plot to this about people gathering at a house to hear a will being read. At first I thought that one was some kinda remake of this but apparently it's a remake of his THE GHASTLY ONES(1968) which is another movie with the same setup.

Unfortunately I didn't get to watch this version( but I did catch this one on a VHS tape as part of Elvira's MOVIE MACABRE series so at least I got to see her boobs pop up every 15 minutes or so):

SHOCK WAVES (1977)

  Pretty decent underwater nazi-zombies flick starring John Carradine and Peter Cushing.  Carradine really only appears for the first third or so of the film and I always end up staring at his creepy arthritis-riddled hands whenever he's onscreen.  Cushing pops up later on with a German accent and looks very thin and skeleton-esque.
  The main drawback this film has is that it's rated PG and the fascist zombies prefer drowning and/or choking their victims to death instead of the more popular gut-munching which makes this flick totally gore-less so don't bother with it if that's all you're looking for.  The other minor quibble I have with the plot is how the first thing they do is show us the sole-survivor of the zombie attack so we know how it's all going to end up right from the opening.  Talk about destroying any sense of suspense.  Besides these things though I think the movie is off-kilter and different enough to at least give it a look if you're a horror fan.
  I always assumed, due to Cushing's involvement, that this was a British film but apparently it was filmed in Florida.  The director Ken Wiederhorn went on to do KING FRAT which is probably the stupidest ANIMAL HOUSE rip-off movie ever made so that's something to be proud of.

One of the working titles of this was DEATH CORPS but I guess since a poster exists it mighta been released as that also:

FEMALE JUNGLE (1955)

 If you ever wanted to see Jayne Mansfield make out with Lawrence Tierney this is the movie for you.  Mansfield is featured here in her first movie, Tierney, best known to Tarantino fans as Joe from RESERVOIR DOGS, plays a heavy drinking detective(meanwhile in real life he was a heavy drinking actor) and as a bonus you get John Carradine as a classy fellow who wears an ascot.  It's mainly for these three that this movie is worth checking out and they all do a pretty decent job but overall it's a pretty standard film-noir-ish murder mystery about a guy running around strangling gals.  Luckily it's only a little over an hour so you don't have to waste too much time with it.  I was also a little disappointed that this wasn't a women-in-prison picture since the title seems custom made for that kind of sleazy flick.

SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1972)

 I've owned this movie for years on a cheap-ass dollar DVD and just now managed to make it through the whole movie without falling asleep. I think maybe I should get a medal for this. If you haven't figured it out yet this movie is really slow going. On the surface it has a lot of things going for it. Some of the greatest horror and exploitation films ever came out of the the 70s and this one seems like it should fit into this category(for some reason though it was filmed in 1970 and not released until 1972?). Another positive is Mary Woronov who is in a ton of great Roger Corman flicks and is one of my personal favorite actresses. But even her greatness, along with John Carradine, who doesn't really do much here, don't really make this film worth seeking out. Also for a good half of the movie she seems to be reading her lines very stiffly for some reason. I will give the film credit for creating a really creepy atmospheric mood and if you watch it alone at 3am it does give you a bit of a spooky feeling thanks mostly to the whispering murderer here. There's also a couple of giallo-esque moments with a black-gloved killer who gets a couple of bloody kills in but it's all kind of spread out among a bunch of boring and confusing dialogue scenes.
 I've seen people give this movie credit for inspiring Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS which I guess is based on the phone calling killer's weirdness but it seems kind of stupid to say one was copied from the other since they both came out around the same time and even if this is true Clark made a way more entertaining film.  Check that one out for a real holiday slasher classic and only watch this if you're a cheap DVD buying gentleman like myself. AKA DEATH HOUSE

MONSTER (1979)

Generic forgettable title for a generic forgettable monster movie.  John Carradine shows up as a priest and pollution gets blamed for creating the giant, man-eating lake monster.  Besides garbage, people also blame sharks for the deaths!?  Yes, sharks in a little lake.  It just shows you the thought put into the script for this thing.  Some kids figure out it's a monster while all the adults are dumb.  Then Carradine burns a witch at the stake for some reason which seems like it belongs in another movie entirely and then some stuff blows up and it's all really drawn out and boring.  They have the nerve to put a "based on a true story" blurb before the movie.  I find it pretty unlikely that a big dinosaur/Loch-Ness monster-looking beast actually hangs out in South America munching on folks but maybe that's just me.  This might have been better if it was made back in the 50's when they wouldn't have been trying to emulate JAWS so much and failing so miserably.  A.K.A. MONSTROID(what the fuck is a monstroid???)


"An unholy horror!!":

BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE (1969)

Who knew there was a halfway decent Al Adamson movie? Not that this is anything great but it is watchable and sorta amusing in it's ridiculousness. You get a vampire couple who kinda remind me of Morticia and Gomez Addams, a giant humpback, named Mango, who keeps girls chained up in the basement, a homicidal kill-crazy lunatic and a moon-worshipping nutty butler played by John Carradine. All the ingredients of a good time. A young couple inherits the castle that this kooky crew inhabit and silliness ensues. The really silly part is how, after being chained up and held by the family, they manage to get out of their predicament and overcome all the odds stacked against them. If they only threw in a werewolf and maybe a bigfoot or caveman this thing would be perfection! Definitely the best thing I've seen from director Adamson yet.

Groovy tune for a groovy kidnapping!: