1968 – Wtf-film: cult cinema and video reviews

Posts Tagged ‘1968’

The Green Slime

February 25th, 2011 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: 1968, Aliens, Cult, Horror, Japan, Kinji Fukasaku, Luciana Paluzzi, Monsters, Richard Jaeckel, Robert Horton, Science Fiction, Toei

a.k.a. Gamma Sango: Uchu Daisakusen (Gamma 3: Big Space Operation)
Year: 1968   Company: MGM / Ram Films / Southern Cross Feature Film Company / Toei Co. ltd
Runtime: 101′   Director: Kinji Fukasaku   Writers: Bill Finger, Ivan Reiner, Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair
Cinematography: Yoshikazu Yamasawa Music: Charles Fox, Toshiaki Tsushima
Cast: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Bud Widom, Ted Gunther, David Yorston
Robert Dunham, Gary Randolf, Jack Morris, Eugene Vince, Don Plante, Kathy Horan, Linda Miller
Disc company: Warner Archive Collection   Video: 2.35:1 progressive Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles: None   Disc: DVD-R   Release Date: 10/26/2010 Product link: Amazon.com

After the discovery of an impending asteroid impact of apocalyptic proportions, Commander Rankin (Horton) heads to Earth-orbiting space station Gamma III – home of his old flame (Paluzzi) and former friend (Jaeckel) – where he mounts an all or nothing anti-asteroid offensive. The mission is a success and the asteroid is destroyed, but a more insidious threat is lurking… Unbeknownst to Rankin and his crew a speck of primitive space-life is transferred from the renegade asteroid to the space station, where it spawns an army of tentacled monsters with a passion to kill, kill, kill!

The Green Slime is a delightful, dreadful, confounding paradox of late-’60s science fiction mayhem – an overly-ambitious and under-achieving opus that stands alone at both the top and bottom of its own singular heap. Produced by Ivan Reiner and Walter Manley in cooperation with Japan’s Toei Company The Green Slime is the narratively unrelated but thematically similar offshoot of Antonio Margheriti’s Gamma One series, a collection of space station-oriented sci-fi cheapies produced in Italy by Reiner and Manley in the middle-’60s and distributed, with the exception of 1966′s Planet on the Prowl, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Though a considerable ad campaign and wide domestic and international distribution granted it a moderate financial success The Green Slime was a critical failure, and its release marked the end of Reiner and Manley’s careers in film production.

The Green Slime – Trailer Show

February 23rd, 2011 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | 1 Comment »
Tags: 1968, Aliens, Cult, Horror, Kinji Fukasaku, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Robert Horton, Science Fiction, Space Station

I’m only working up one review for posting this week at Wtf-Film – I’ll give you three guesses as to what film I’ll be covering, and the first two don’t count. The Green Slime finally saw release on DVD on October 26th last year, when Warner issued it as part of their DVD-R-on-demand Archive Collection, and it’s taken me a while for me to catch up to it. I’ve finally snagged myself a copy, and since Warner couldn’t be bothered to include any supplements (a big reason I’m ambivalent about their Archive Collection releases) I’ll be posting some of my own.

First up is this collection of advertising material – original theatrical trailers for both the American and Japanese releases of the film and, my personal favorite, a 60 second radio spot that succeeds in making a G-rating sound creepy.

Genocide – War of the Insects (1968)

December 7th, 2010 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: 1968, Chico Lourant, Horror, Kathy Horan, Science Fiction, Shochiku, Thriller

I know I’m one of the few who honestly appreciates director Kazui Nihonmatsu’s (The X From Outer Space) obscure find-the-bomb killer bug thriller, the unflinchingly nihilistic Konchu Daisenso – better known under its international title Genocide or translation War of the Insects. The plot concerns an island hunt for a lost H-bomb that encounters a bizarre Commie project to train killer bugs and an even stranger effort by Holocaust survivor Kathy Horan (Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell) to destroy all humanity with them. Turns out everyone is screwed anyway, as the bugs have a doomsday plot all their own…

No poster could ever effectively demonstrate the overarching oddity of this one, penned by Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell alums Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku, though this Mexican lobby card based on a variety of producer Shochiku Company’s own ad art certainly tries. The artwork features giant bugs, explosions, a lecherous Caucasion and hottie Kathy Horan wielding a pistol while wearing a yellow bikini. The outlandish text translates as follows:

More Exciting than The Naked Jungle! More Terrifying than Dracula and the Thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock!
The World is in peril… Humanity is on the verge of extermination in a last war… the Final War!
Huge Insects Invade the Earth!

The central still features Chico Lourant (the Wester Island native in Gamera vs. Jiger) as an American bomber pilot tied down and tortured by communist spies as vindictive Holocaust survivor Kathy Horan looks on. It seems important to note that the giant insects promised by both this poster and Shochiku’s own trailer for the film never materialize, but the regularly-proportioned bees and wasps cause no end of mayhem all the same.

This is another Mexican lobby card I’m proud to have in my slowly growing collection, with ridiculous artwork and stunning colors. Size: approximately 13″ x 16″ Title: La Invasion Destructora (roughly The Invasion of Destruction) Company: Organizacion Apolo, S.A. and Centro Independiente de Peliculas, S.A.

The Living Skeleton (Kyuketsu Dokuro Sen)

June 12th, 2010 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: 1968, Ghosts, Horror, Shochiku

Reminiscent of those for Toho’s 1958 sci-fi / crime / horror opus The H-Man, the moody opening credits to Shochiku’s tale of ghostly revenge sets the tone perfectly for the strange film to follow. The score, in ways suspiciously evocative of John Barry’s work on the James Bond series, is by Noboru Nishiyama, who seems to have worked on little else. A full review of the film can be found here.

Night of the Living Dead

June 7th, 2010 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: 1968, Duane Jones, George Romero, Gore, Horror, Science Fiction, Zombies

rating:

company: Image Ten
and The Latent Image
year: 1968
runtime: 96′
director: George A. Romero
cast: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea,
Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman,
Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley,
Kyra Schon, S. William Hinzman
writers: John A. Russo
and George A. Romero
cinematography: George A. Romero
Order this film from Amazon.com

If you have yet to see Night of the Living Dead, I heartily recommend doing so – this review can wait. The film is readily available for viewing at the Internet Archive, Youtube and similar sites thanks to its unfortunate copyright status and I’ve linked to my favorite of the many, many home video releases, Dimension’s recent 40th anniversary DVD edition, in the information to the left. The screen grabs used in this review are sourced from that release.

Over four decades after its original release George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead still packs a nasty punch. Initially marketed as a weekend matinee (a slot geared towards youngsters and frequently populated by more generic horror fare) by distributor Walter Reade, its difficult to imagine the impact Night‘s gruesome spectacle must have had when new or to quantify the scope of its importance to cinema as a whole. This is the film the dragged its terrors out of the exotic far-flung locales and up from the secret basement laboratories of old and plopped them right into the lap of middle America. This is the one that brought horror home.