THE CREEPING TERROR (1964)

Movies that are labeled "the worst movie of all time" generally aren't as bad as all the hype would lead you to believe.  This movie is really bad but there are way duller and more inert movies that are completely forgettable.  This one is at least memorable for it's ridiculous monster which consists of a couple of guys under what appears to be a very shitty-looking carpet or maybe some old raggedy-ass quilt of some sort.  It has a sort-of insect-looking head and I think they were going for a monster caterpillar sort of thing.  The story is about a UFO that crashes which contains two identical stupid-looking monsters.  It's almost all told in a dull monotonous voice-over narration which is always a bad sign with these old creature feature flicks. In fact though there might be some exceptions to this rule I think there is a direct correlation between how shitty a movie from the 50's/60's is with how much time is spent using voice-over narration in it.  The worst example of this being THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS in my opinion. The high-point of this whole film here though is catching some up-skirt shots of various women as they are gulped down by our slow-moving monster that they could have easily ran away from.  Supposedly a real monster was built for this and stolen before shooting started so they threw this abomination together in a few minutes.  I'm sure it couldn't have looked any worse than this thing.  Check this out only if you're into bottom of the barrel junk cinema.
AKA THE CRAWLING TERROR

SCARED TO DEATH (1947)

This is more of an old-time murder mystery than a horror flick. It's also pretty dull and even comedic in parts and the mystery parts don't really make much sense in the end. The only thing that makes this worth watching at all is Bela Lugosi and his sidekick, the great midget actor Angelo Rossitto(who was in everything from FREAKS to MAD MAX 3). Basically any scenes without either of these two is really ponderous stuff. Unfortunately our little midget hero splits about halfway through the movie and is never mentioned again. It's also weird to see a cheap-o B-movie from the 40's that's in color(and I'm pretty sure this is Lugosi's only color film). There's also a weird-o in a blue mask who peeps through the window every once in a while and a totally nonsensical ending. Luckily this one is on a lot of cheap-ass horror compilations DVD's otherwise it's probably not worth the effort of seeking it out.

THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE (1958)

OK so there's this decapitated head of a Satanist in a box and he hypnotizes a retarded fellow to kill for him. Then the big guy is shot dead by the police so he gets a chick to carry him around. This movie drags along at a snails pace and really doesn't have much of a pay-off. Our monster(who's now just a goopy-faced guy with a reverberating voice) finally gets reunited with his body and then is quickly killed by a crucifix necklace that's placed on him. Only a couple of guys get killed in the whole movie(including our Satanist who gets his head chopped-off but that sorta doesn't count since he comes back).  There's also a lovely lady with super-natural-type abilities who doesn't do much but get freaked out about everything.  The monster attack music from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON shows up as well as other typical 50's sci-fi themes.  There's a ton of way more entertaining 50's monster classics that you should watch before this one.

APACHE BLOOD (1975)

I acquired this movie as part of a spaghetti-western box set I picked up a while back.  Why it's in this set I have no idea.  For one thing it's an American western and for another thing it's probably one of the worst westerns I've ever seen!  The whole movie is about this small group of cavalrymen who fight a small band of Indians.  That's it! They go back and forth killing each other one at a time until there's only two people left and then they fight it out.  I suppose there is a way of making this non-plotted mess slightly interesting but these filmmakers had no clue how to do that.  There's barely any dialogue and our Indian hero is named Shee Clit Soak.  Now I'll grant you that I'm just an ignorant white man but is Clit really an Indian name?  And Shee Clit Soak?  That's not even a good porn star name!!  Also that was supposed to be the original title of this film.  I can't imagine why they woulda changed that one.  I would definitely say avoid this one unless you need a good nap since besides the gunshots this is a pretty quiet film.

Spoiler alert!  Thanks to YouTube you can save your time and jump right to the nonsensical ending:

HARD TICKET TO HAWAII (1987)

                                               "One man's dream is another man's lunch"

Tons of topless beauties standing around in model poses and as an afterthought there's a story about diamond smuggling gangsters or something like that. As a bonus you also get a large puppety-looking killer snake on the loose, a transvestite spy character, sumo wrestlers and some awkward kung fu thrown in. Also gratuitous use of a grenade launcher and unnecessary violence towards a blow-up sex doll.  The boat from director Andy Sidaris' MALIBU EXPRESS shows up and this is supposed to be a sequel to that flick although you get no appearance from Sybil Danning's tits which is disappointing and only a fleeting reference to the events in the first movie.  There's also a horrific theme song which you get to hear in full as the director shows off the plane he rented in a long music video sequence.  Sidaris' movies although really stupid and filled with equally dumb characters who make bad jokes are all filmed really well with that slick direct to cable TV look and I can see why this guys movies became staples of late-night sleaze programming for a few years as they're really fun disposable garbage entertainment filled with former Playboy playmates.  Also the snake scenes are more enjoyable than anything in that shitty cgi-filled ANACONDA movie.  I especially enjoyed the old snake in the toilet gag.

ANITA: THE SHOCKING ACCOUNT OF A YOUNG NYMPHOMANIAC (1973)

This early 70's soft-core Swedish sexploitation flick is probably only of interest to fans of the sexy Christina Lindberg star of the great rape/revenge flick THEY CALL HER ONE EYE.  This pic came out a year before that eye-gouging epic and features Lindberg as a 17-year old schoolgirl who's also a nymphomaniac.  Just about every few minutes you get the lovely Christina naked either having really depressing sex with various dorks or giving out blow-jobs to filthy old men or doing a nice striptease in front of her family.  How can she be cured of this deviant behavior?  Apparently having an orgasm is her key to happiness and a fulfilling love life.  Not exactly the deepest or most psychiatric-ally accurate portrayal of human sexuality ever put on screen but still a pretty fun little dirty movie for the most part despite the sort of doomed downer vibe our naughty heroine gives off.  It's weird that many of the films of Sweden(even silly sex films) have that unintentionally gloomy feeling to them.  It must be something about living in such a chilly environment or maybe it was just a 70's thing. Check it out for the supreme boob display! AKA ANITA: SWEDISH NYMPHET

MALIBU EXPRESS (1985)

This movie could have just as easily been titled SYBIL DANNING'S BOOBS because this movie showcases her gargantuan tits in and out of dozens of different outfits and she looks amazing in every one. Probably the best I've ever seen her look in anything.   There's also a bunch of other chest-balloons on display thanks to a few Playboy Playmates who also appear.  This movie was directed by 80's breast aficionado Andy Sidaris. His films were the mainstay of USA's UP ALL NIGHT program back when cable was worth watching except of course, back then they always cut the explicitness right out of the films so it's nice to finally get to see these big booby epics the way god intended them to be seen thanks to the Sidaris box set that came out a while back.  This tale is about a private investigator so it all basically plays out like an episode of MAGNUM PI but with the addition of plenty of bare ass. This guy even has the standard PI mustache and gets laid constantly. Also his main squeeze is Ms. Danning, that lucky bastard! There's also a family of hillbillies that show up for comic relief, really bad kung-fu and a little blood when people start getting knocked of by a mysterious killer. One scene has a semi-rape thing going on and the girl ends up enjoying it in the end. This was the only part of the flick that seemed like it was straight out of the 70's. While this is nowhere near the awesome insanity of a typical Russ Meyers' boob-a-thon it's still a mildly amusing time-waster even if it does drag on longer than necessary and wraps everything up in a way too complex explanation for such a silly movie. The whole thing is about a sliver above being a porn flick with its simplistic plot being just an excuse for as much gratuitousness as you can cram into 100 minutes or so.   Probably only of interest to horny tit-obsessed guys or ladies who might have some lesbian leanings.

INSIDE (2007)

Part of the French new wave of extreme horror flicks, along with stuff like MARTYRS and HIGH TENSION,  this film is really just a showcase of extremely violent and gory set-pieces but it's also very enjoyable for what it is.  Unlike many gore for gore's sake-type films this one is set up well enough that you actually care about the main character who happens to be a pregnant woman.  Her natural vulnerability in that state is used well to garner sympathy from the audience and pull us, as the viewers, into the ordeal on display.  You can tell this isn't a modern American film because of the levels that the violence delves into.  It's just not the type of film that you will find playing at a multiplex in the U.S. anytime soon.  Comparing this to MARTYRS, as I have heard some people do, is kind of a joke, I mean this movie really doesn't have any deep or significant meaning at all and doesn't leave you with much to think about after it's over.  Sort of like an action movie with brutality thrown in.  Regardless of the fact that the plot is extremely simplistic I find all the gore-hound elements too hard to resist and would recommend this to anyone with a strong stomach although I imagine if you're pregnant or have ever had kids this would probably be a good one to skip.  

STRIPTEASER (1995)

"I don't know about anyone else but I've certainly got a hard-on!"

I could have sworn that I'd seen this movie before but it was the sorta similar STRIP FOR ACTION(which also starred Maria Ford and Nikki Fritz) and that tells you what kind of a generic tale you're in for.  What you get here is a fairly simplistic movie about a weird Lou Reed/Howard Stern-looking guy who holds a strip-club hostage for some reason.  I think it was something to do with him being a nutso-wackjob. Eventually everything leads to a big shootout ending and it's all pretty pointless.  Of course it's all really just an excuse to see some good-looking stripper action and a bunch of bouncy boobs.  While STRIP FOR ACTION was disappointing in the nakedness department this one delivers quite a bit of bare ass and lovely bouncy boob as pretty much all the ladies in the cast get fully nude for your viewing pleasure.  There's also one absurdly fake-looking set of rock-solid chest-balloons which show how far we've come in the bolt-on breast business since the mid-90's.  Leatherface from TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III shows up as a bartender.  Worth a watch if you like bottom of the barrel 90's made-for-video junk with boobs and people getting shot.  Also the whole movie is only a little over an hour long which is a big plus and you get some pretty memorable one-liners, like the one above, from our psycho gunman.

MOONRUNNERS (1975)

I was never really a huge fan of THE DUKES OF HAZARD but plenty of people in the 80's were and it was a pretty unavoidable phenomenon at the time.  This movie is basically the blueprint for the TV show and they're both based on a real-life moonshine runner named Jerry Rushing.  You even get two of the same character names from TV and narration and music by Waylon Jennings.  The difference is in this there's a little sex, a main character dies, our heroes are moonshine runners and the Boss Hogg character actually runs a whorehouse.    These are all big pluses in my book and I'd choose watching this movie again over that silly TV show any day.  I was lucky enough to catch this a few days ago at a theater that was serving genuine moonshine which I'm sure heightened the experience a bit.  I also have to add that the movie could have been trimmed a bit as it seems to go on a little long towards the end.  There were a few spots where it could have been wrapped up sooner but dragged on.  Besides this minor flaw I'd say check this out for some decent 70's moonshine-filled hicksploitation car-crashing goodness if that's your thing.  This movie was originally promoted as a sort-of sequel to 1958's THUNDER ROAD but it's not really.  It just also stars James Mitchum who was in the earlier film and it's also about moonshine running.

MARK OF THE DEVIL (1970)

There were a few really good witch hunting/burning flicks from the 60's and 70's stuff like THE CONQUEROR WORM with Vincent Price and Ken Russell's THE DEVILS and I guess you could throw THE WICKER MAN in there too, but out of all those this one is the one I've gone back to and re-watched the most.  I'm not exactly sure why I like this one over all the others except maybe just for the fact that it is so gratuitous in it's display of the insanity of religion.  You get a tongue ripped out of a poor innocent rape-victims mouth by the roots, water-torture, branding, stretching, fingers lopped off, various more torture and a little more rape all in the wonderful name of organized religion.  As a result this film appealed to me as a young gore-hound and I can still go back to it now and appreciate the message.  Udo Kier is, as always, really good as the sympathetic withchfinders helper and this movie also stars a guy named Herbert Fux which sounds very porno-star-ish. The soundtrack on this sounds really similar to the slow music from CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. There were a bunch of movies re-titled as sequels, all the way up to MARK OF THE DEVIL PART 5:RETURN OF THE BLIND DEAD which was just one of the blind dead movies, but unfortunately there never was an official sequel.  I like to think if there was a sequel our large breasted heroine would get some nasty revenge on Herbert Loms evil Christ-crusader/witch-raper but maybe that's too happy of an ending to such a realistic portrayal of the dark side of human behavior.

   

REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955)

I recall them airing this flick a few times back in the 80's on local TV as one of those special 3-D showings that you would get once or twice a year.  It was also colorized in that crappy early way they used to colorize black and white stuff for added cheesiness.  It is altogether a pretty pointless film, I mean THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON needs a sequel about as badly as a cow needs another pair of tits, but Hollywood being the greedy ass-hats that they are, and obviously were even back in 1955, this was thrown together a year after the original monster movie classic.  The creature, even though he was clearly killed at the end of the first film, is somehow alive again and taken to an aquarium where he's put on display.  Yeah, screw science and research and all that kind of thing, let's just charge people to see him swim around while we poke him with a stick, brilliant!  The movie isn't a complete waste though since you get Clint Eastwood's first film role(he appears for about a minute as a lab assistant) and you get an awesome little monkey wearing clothes doing tricks who also should have gotten way more screen time!  To top things off the end scene is just a replay from the first movie, where the monster dies again, to leave you with that completely ripped-off feeling as the movie closes.  Of course the creature would be back once more in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US but I don't recall anything very exciting from that one except that they completely changed the creature into a bulky, generic, air-breathing monster who wears clothes.

THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (1958)

This movie is best know to me, and most movie nerds around my age, as the movie that George Lucas borrowed from for his basic outline of STAR WARS.  While this movie does have some of the basic elements, a princess who's kingdom has been destroyed, an evil empire, sword-fights which are sorta like light-saber duels, two bumbling characters which you can see inspired C3PO and R2D2, it's also about as different from Lucas' film as GODZILLA is from JAWS and no one would ever call STAR WARS a remake of this.  This movie is also really long which is not something I appreciate in most films but you get some beautiful shots(it was Kurosawa's first film shot in widescreen and he makes amazing use of this with some large scale scenes involving tons of people) and as usual with this director there's an interesting enough group of characters to keep you involved in the story without tuning out.  Toshiro Mufune as always plays the bad-ass samurai hero who takes no shit which is great.  Overall this one doesn't stand up to, and is even sort of dull, when compared to something like THE SEVEN SAMURAI for all-out samurai action but it's still worth checking out if you dig the Japanese classics that Hollywood rummaged through to get ideas for years to come.