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Shout! Factory’s upcoming ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll High School’ and ‘Suburbia’ releases detailed

March 28th, 2010 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: Cult, Roger Corman, Shout! Factory, The Ramones

From the Shout! Factory press release:

ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL
30TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY™ AND DVD
&
SUBURBIA COLLECTOR’S EDITION DVD
DVDs In Stores Nationwide May 4, 2010;
Rock’n’ Roll High School on Blu-ray May 11, 2010

Gabba gabba hey! Two hugely popular Roger Corman rock films that have long been out of print will hit the home-entertainment shelves this May 2010: the Rock ’N’ Roll High School 30th Anniversary Special Edition and Suburbia Collector’s Edition, the first two titles launching the highly anticipated Roger Corman’s Cult Classics home entertainment series from Shout! Factory. Rock’n’Roll High School 30th Anniversary Special Edition DVD and Suburbia Collector’s Edition DVD debut on May 4; the first-ever Blu-ray release of Rock’n’Roll High School is set for May 11. Newly remastered and available for the first time in Anamorphic widescreen (16:9), Rock ’N’ Roll High School Special Edition and Suburbia Collector’s Edition provide the outrageous candor of teenage angst and nostalgic reverie of a counterculture rock movement that captured the hearts of many generations. With explosive musical performances from the Ramones, T.S.O.L., The Vandals and D.I., and extensive bonus content including all-new interviews and commentary with cast and crew, rare behind-the-scenes footage and much more, these two definitive home entertainment releases from Shout’s Roger Corman’s Cult Classics line are a must-have for Roger Corman fans and film aficionados as well as anyone who remains young at heart. Blu-ray is priced to own at $26.97 SRP. Each DVD title is sold separately and has a suggested retail price of $19.93.

Executive produced by Corman and directed by Allan Arkush (Heroes), Rock ’N’ Roll High School boasts performances by the Ramones and stars P.J. Soles (Halloween) in the lead role of Riff Randell, Vince Van Patten (Hell Night), Clint Howard (Grand Theft Auto), Dey Young (Spaceballs), Mary Woronov (Death Race 2000), Dick Miller (Piranha) and Paul Bartel (Hollywood Boulevard).

Based on Arkush’s own high school fantasy, the 1979 cult film takes place at Vince Lombardi High School — the wildest, most rockin’ high school around! That is, until a thug of a principal, Miss Togar, comes along and tries to make the school a totalitarian state. With the help of the Ramones, the students of Vince Lombardi battle Miss Togar’s iron-fisted rule and take their battle to a truly rockin’ conclusion!

Rock ’N’ Roll High School quickly developed a devoted following after its release in 1979 and became a mainstay of the midnight movie cult circuit. As with films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, audience members began to dress up like the cast and the Ramones for screenings. Arkush, a self-described “unabashed rock ’n’ roll fanatic,” chose the Ramones to star as the film’s musical heroes, as he felt they epitomized pure rock ’n’ roll. As Arkush remembers, “We staged a live, marathon show at the Roxy Theatre that consisted of 22 hours of nonstop Ramones,” and the tireless quartet also wrote two songs for the film: “I Want You Around” and “Rock ’N’ Roll School.” The Ramones were fans of Corman as well. Johnny Ramone said in an interview at the time, “When we found out Roger Corman was behind the picture, we said, sure, we’ll do it because we knew he had a reputation and we knew he made good movies.”

ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL 30th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION
EXTENSIVE SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:
New Anamorphic Widescreen Transfer (1.85:1)
Special Introduction And “Thank You” From Director Allan Arkush
Audio Commentary With Director Allan Arkush, Producer Mike Finnell And
Screenwriter Richard Whitley
Audio Commentary With Roger Corman And Dey Young
New Audio Commentary With Director Allan Arkush, P.J. Soles And Clint
Howard
Back To School: A Retrospective Including All-New Interviews With Allan Arkush, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Dey Young, Marky Ramone And More . . .
Staying After Class: A Roundtable Interview With P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten And Dey Young
Interview With Roger Corman Conducted By Leonard Maltin
New Interview With Director Allan Arkush Including A Look At Rare, Behind-The-Scenes Stills From His Personal Collection
Audio Outtakes From The Roxy – Audio Recording Of The Ramones Shooting
The Final Scene
Original Radio Ads And TV Spots
Original Theatrical Trailer
Original Theatrical Trailer With Commentary By writer/director/actor Eli Roth Courtesy Of Trailers from Hell.
Additional Roger Corman Trailers
And more TBA!

Written and directed by Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World), featuring live performances by T.S.O.L., The Vandals and D.I., and starring Bill Coyne, Chris Pederson, Jennifer Clay and Christina Beck, 1984’s Suburbia deftly explores the punk rock generation and follows the unforgettable journey of two teenage boys who escape their unhappy home and join a group of runaways, punks who have banded together to form their own family. Dubbing themselves “The Rejected,” (aka T.R.), the teens have taken squatters’ rights in a filthy, abandoned house, and are bound together by tragedy and punk rock until they’re confronted by the “Citizens Against Crime,” a group of irascible adults from the suburbs who blame the punks for the ruin of their town. During the course of filming, the production used real kids for many parts in addition to professional actors (and includes the acting debut of Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea).

SUBURBIA COLLECTOR’S EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:
New Anamorphic Widescreen Transfer (1.85:1)
Audio Commentary With Director Penelope Spheeris
New Audio Commentary
Theatrical Trailers
And more….

Following the release of the Rock ’N’ Roll High School 30th Anniversary DVD and Suburbia Collector’s Edition DVD, Shout! Factory will continue to present Roger Corman’s Cult Classics home entertainment releases on a monthly basis. Upcoming highlights include Death Race 2000, Battletruck (aka Warlords Of The 21st Century), Deathsport, Forbidden World, Galaxy Of Terror, Attack Of The Crab Monster, Not Of This Earth (1957), Piranha and Humanoids From The Deep, among others.

These first Roger Corman’s Cult Classics titles are sounding better and better all the time! And what’s that? Where’s the disc art you say? Have a look:

Rock ‘N’ Roll High School (DVD / Blu-ray) and Suburbia (DVD) are both up for pre-order now at Amazon.com at a savings of 10% to 25% off retail.

The Madmen of Mandoras

March 22nd, 2010 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | 2 Comments »
Tags: Cult, Disembodied Head, Hitler, Horror, Nazis, Science Fiction, Thriller, Unintentional Comedy

a.k.a. They Saved Hitler’s Brain
rating:
company: San-S and Crown
International Pictures
year: 1963
runtime: 74′
country: United States
director: David Bradley
cast: Walter Stocker, Audrey Caire,
Carlos Rivas, John Holland,
Marshall Reed, Scott Peters,
Dani Lynn, Nestor Paiva,
Pediro Regas, Bill Freed
writers: Steve Bennett
and Peter Miles
cinematographer: Stanley Cortez
music: Peter Zinner (supervisor)
order this film from Amazon.com
(includes both the original and They
Saved Hitler’s Brain cuts of the film)

The plots of film Nazis over the decades have rarely been anything other than insidious, and that of the titular Madmen of the fictional Mandoras is as certifiable as the rest of them – perhaps more so. The picture begins with the abduction of one Professor John Coleman (John Holland), a government scientist who has devised a new and powerful antidote for the G-gas nerve agent, his hip young daughter Suzanne (Dani Lynn, Black Zoo) and her studly boyfriend David (Scott Peters, The Cape Canaveral Monsters). Hot on their trail are CID agent Phil Day (Walter Stocker) and his wife Kathy (Audrey Caire), eldest daughter of the Professor, who follow the tips of mysterious South American Teo (Carlos Rivas, The Black Scorpion) right into the fantasy Nazi stronghold of Mandoras.

Upon arriving, Phil and Kathy discover the positively minute country (comprised of a small town, a presidential palace, and lots of familiar California scenery) to be under Nazi control. Worse still, the police force (led by B-regular Nestor Paiva) and Presidential office seem complicit in their scheme to surround the Earth in deadly G-gas! Overseeing the effort to resurrect the Third Reich is the still-living head of Hitler himself, granted ever-lasting life by the latest in Nazi jar technology. But wherever there are Nazis there is an organized resistance, and the loyalties of the officials of Mandoras may not be so twisted as they seem . . .

The first thing I noticed about this film, better known in its longer-running television syndication variant They Saved Hitler’s Brain, was the quality of its photographic direction, which is far more proficient than small-time director David 12 to the Moon Bradley could ever have mustered. The bargain basement sets of The Madmen of Mandoras are positively alive with oblique shadows and back-lighting – it’s as fine an example of Chiaroscuro styling as can be seen in any film noir. A quick glance at the credits was revelatory. The director of photography was none other than Stanley Cortez, a hard working cinematographer who had fashioned minor miracles on such no-budget programmers as The Navy Vs. The Night Monsters and Dinosaurus! Beloved as those pictures are to the likes of me, history will rightly remember Cortez for his work on real classics like Night of the Hunter, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Three Faces of Eve. That such an accomplished individual could find himself working in the B-picture trenches was just one of the facts of postwar Hollywood life, though I’m certainly happy he was on board here.

Photography aside, The Madmen of Mandoras is a patently ludicrous affair that fails entirely as an offbeat sci-fi political thriller, though a cut here or there and a few livelier music cues could have made it more than passable as a comedy. The script. written by actor Peter Miles from an original story by one-off producer Steve Bennett, is silly stuff indeed. The Nazi menace is laughable, made up of a handful of soldiers and brass and a host of unseen cells worldwide, as is its twitchy leader, who comes with his own conveniently removable handle! Then there are the un-Nazis who are allied with them, like an over-the-top Texas tycoon and his beloved Aryan son.

The good guys fair about as well. CID agent Phil Day is something of a bumbling moron who more or less stumbles in and out of the film’s (purportedly) thrilling circumstances. The two women of the story come across as little more than human baggage, there to observe and snuggle with the guys once those detestable Nazis are dispensed with. The scripted dialogue never allows the characters to come across very seriously, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this case. At least some of the humor is seems intentional – Hitler (Bill Freed in his only screen performance) is a shrew of a man, easily dwarfed by his body doubles in a flashback sequence, and the inherent hilarity of seeing his bodiless noggin propped up in the backseat of car could not have escaped the creators.

Performance are surprisingly reasonable, particularly for a film with such a limited retake budget. The underrated Carlos Rivas pulls double duty as brothers Teo and Camino, while Nestor Paiva (Tarantula!, The Mole People, Creature From the Black Lagoon) adds another dubious ethnic role to his resume. Lead Walter Stocker combines the good looks of Robert Culp and newsman Brian Williams with the talent of neither, though perhaps credit is due for a straight face alone. Bill Freed provides the most memorable performance by circumstance alone. Who could possibly forget the screen’s only Hitler-in-a-can?

Crown International made a huge misstep in their advertising for this one, as no mention is made of Nazis or their disembodied Fuhrer in the ad art. The oversight was corrected come time to sell the picture to television, the title altered to reflect the film’s most outlandish selling point. The Madmen of Mandoras isn’t nearly so bad as its 2.1 rating at the IMDB suggests, and I enjoyed all three of my screenings. The climactic Hitler flambé is itself worth the price of admission and the sight of the Fuhrer’s head perched atop its tiered pedestal with a giant glowing swastika hovering overhead is pure schlock gold. Far more entertaining than it has any right to be, Madmen gets my recommendation.

order this film from Amazon.com
(includes both the original and They Saved Hitler’s Brain cuts of the film)

The Oracle

March 19th, 2010 | article by Denis Klotz | 3 Comments »
Tags: Cult, Ghosts, Horror, Independent, Roberta Findlay

company: Reeltime Corporation
year: 1985
runtime: 94′
country: USA
director: Roberta Findlay
cast: Caroline Capers Powers,
Roger Neil, Pam La Testa,
Victoria Dryden, Chris Maria De Koron
writer: R. Allen Leider
cinematography: Roberta Findlay

Poor Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers)! It’s not enough that she has to be married to super-moustached jerk Ray (Roger Neil), no, she also has to find a planchette that belonged to the old woman who lived in Jennifer’s and Ray’s new apartment before them, accidentally awakening her own mediumistic powers with it.

At first, it’s all fun and games and a ghost (or is it a demon?) scrawling “help me” on a piece of paper during a Christmas party, but all too soon our bedraggled heroine has nightmares and visions of the most disturbing kind. The ghost seems to have become quite obsessed with her and is enthusiastically trying his hand as an interior decorator (preferred style: destruction and Bava-green lighting). Ray, like every husband or boyfriend in every Findlay film, isn’t getting less jerky, either, and aggressively berates Jennifer, like you do with the woman you love when you fear she is losing her mind.

After some time, the ghost makes itself a little clearer. It looks as if he belongs to a certain Mr. Graham and is in dire need of Jen’s help in taking revenge on the people who murdered him. Ghostly Graham manages to send Jen a dream in which she can see the faces of his murderers quite well. Not surprisingly, attempts at informing Graham’s wife (Victoria Dryden) of the truth about her husband’s supposed suicide only bring the young woman’s own life in danger. Evil Lesbian hobby & professional killer Farkas (Pam La Testa; somewhere between the worst evil Lesbian clichés and utter perfection) ain’t someone to mess with.

And these are still not enough problems for Jennifer. Additionally, the ghost is growing a bit too protective of her and kills everyone trying to get between him and Jennifer in ridiculous and gory ways. I won’t blame anyone – ghost or not – for killing off Ray, though. Jennifer will certainly be better off without that guy.

Roberta Findlay, you’re my hero! The Oracle is the first film the great lady made in the final (horror) phase of her career, after she left the world of pornography – although not the porno facial hair – behind for something only slightly more reputable, and it is glorious.

There is only a small amount of Findlay’s patented semi-documentary shots of the scummier parts of New York – which would go on to take more and more room in her horror films - on display here. The Oracle places a much greater emphasis on rubber monsters, rubbery gore and Farkas and her artificially deepened voice (don’t ask why – it’s a Findlay film), yet I can’t rightly complain about the relative absence of dirty streets when the film shows us this stuff instead.

Findlay did learn the fine art of cheap but effective photography when she was working as (not always billed) camera operator/director of photography on the sexploitation films she made with her then-husband Michael (whom I suspect to be the source for the jerky husbands and boyfriends in her horror movies) in the 60s, so her films are usually much nicer to look at than their budget would suggest. (Although I have seen her films called “amateurishly photographed” in more than one review; obviously, there’s no accounting for taste).

What might be a problem to some viewers is the utter inability of anyone on screen to “act” in the more conventional sense of the word. Fortunately, there’s more important things to acting in cheap little numbers like this one, and most everyone on screen has that special something to endear her or him to me for evermore. The men have their porno moustaches, Farkas a silly potty-mouth and the charming butchness of terror, and Caroline Capers Powers is intensely good at going into full body hysterics like it is seldom displayed outside of Italian genre cinema.

Powers performance in the last thirty minutes alone would be more than enough to recommend The Oracle, yet there’s still more and more to love about it. How about lots and lots of multi-coloured goo? Bonus moustaches? A plot that starts out slow and boring yet gets as hysterical and jumpy as the main actress? A sex scene that is nearly as wooden and disturbing as the one in Don Dohler’sNightbeast? More (hysterical) running around than in a whole season of Rupert Davies-penned Doctor Who? Random classy-looking shots and moody lighting between the moments of shoddy insanity and bad effects? Some wonderful moments of serenity in a exceedingly badly secured New Yorker mental institution? A soundtrack that was composed by a monkey randomly pushing buttons and keys on a synthesizer? And best of all, a scene in which Ray’s head is ripped off by the hands of an angry ghost? The Oracle truly has it all, possibly even more.

I know that I’m usually putting a certain emphasis on the importance of filmmakers caring about the films they make, or at least not hating their audience with a burning passion. Roberta Findlay however is one of the great exceptions to this rule. The woman utterly loathed the horror genre and everything it stands for, and didn’t have especially warm feelings for the genre’s fans either, yet she still managed to make a handful of lovely films in it. I think her horror films are the products of someone trying to make films for the least respectable and least intelligent audience she could imagine, and just throwing everything that could possibly be of interest to that audience on screen (much like a monkey does with poo), in the hope that some of it would stick, even if none of it made any sense whatsoever.

It is this hateful and ignorant attitude to its own audience – and possibly filmmaking itself – that makes The Oracle such a fascinating experience for me. This movie is what happens when someone just doesn’t give a shit about what she is doing one way or the other, yet is still too talented not to produce something interesting. And this, dear readers, is what I call “movie magic”.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

The Devil’s Express

March 5th, 2010 | article by Denis Klotz | No Comments »
Tags: Action, Blaxploitation, Cult, Horror, Martial Arts, Warhawk Tanzania

a.k.a. Gang Wars
company: Mahler Films
year: 1976
runtime: 82′
country: United States
director: Barry Rosen
cast: Warhawk Tanzania, Wilfredo Roldan,
Larry Fleishman
writers: Niki Patton, CeOtis Robinson
and Barry Rosen
cinematography: Paul Glickman
not on home video in the USA

Luke (awesomely named Warhawk Tanzania) leads a successful martial arts dojo in New York. Among his pupils are as diverse people as the white cop Sam as well as Rodan (probably not related to the kaiju, played by Wilfredo Roldan), the drug-dealing thug leader of a street gang called the Black Spades.

Luke seems to have become quite successful in the growth of his own martial arts as well, at least he has earned the honor to travel to China to attain a new rank by getting his ass kicked by an elderly master. Luke seems to have some hope for instilling a bit of spiritual growth in Rodan, so he takes him on his Chinese adventure.

After a bit of fighting and losing, the New Yorker only needs to do some meditation in the woods to level up to level nine. He chooses Rodan to protect his body while he’s doing the silent soul-searching stuff. Unfortunately, Rodan is easily bored, and instead of protecting his friend, he’s all too soon roaming through the woods until he finds a cave full of century old corpses. Unknown to the freshly awakened Luke, he also steals an amulet one of the dead wears around his neck.

Both men don’t realize that their indiscretion has awakened the amulet’s owner, who is annoyed enough to possess some poor random Chinese guy and stow away on the same ship to New York the martial artists take, obviously with bad intentions in mind.

Back in New York, Rodan steers his gang into a war with a Chinese gang called the Red Dragons, while the demon, although seemingly pining for the return of his amulet, moves into the subway system and starts to kill people.

At first, the police think the gang war and the subway murders are somehow connected, but Sam – who is quite bright for a cop in a blaxploitation movie – soon realizes that there must be more to the latter than meets the eye. He also tries to get Luke’s help in containing the gang situation, but the martial artist is of course too much in love with his own machismo and the evils of The Man to be of any help.

Luke is only getting active when the demon finally kills Rodan. At first, he tries to avenge his friend on the Red Dragons, but when a random wise old man explains to him who really killed his friend, he decides to catch himself a demon.

There’s not much that could be sounding more grindhouse than a combination of blaxploitation, American martial arts and horror flick, promising a very special sort of dubious movie nirvana. Of course, “sounding good” was often as far as films made for the grindhouse circuit came to the word “good” at all, so I went into watching The Devil’s Express with some reservations regarding its quality. I was positively surprised.

Sure, Barry Rosen’s film isn’t exactly what one would call a good film, but it takes the elements of the three (four, if you add the surprise visits in cop movie territory) genres it plunders with enough enthusiasm and earnestness to win my heart.

It’s certainly a film with its share of problems. The acting – with the exception of the guy (possibly Larry Fleishman) who plays the Italian-American cop with excellent clichéd gusto and a schizophrenic bag lady – is rather wooden, but carries with it the sort of authenticity you get by casting semi-professional actors and amateurs. And I can hardly blame Warhawk Tanzania for not being as awesome as his name.

Compared to even the most mediocre martial arts movies from Hong Kong or Taiwan, the fighting (I wouldn’t really speak of fightchoreography in this case) isn’t much good either, but are there any US martial arts films with good, or even just competent, fights? At least the fights aren’t lackluster, because everybody on screen is really trying to get into it like Bruce Lee, just without the required training.

The movie’s plotting isn’t much to gush about either. The script doesn’t even seem to be able to decide who its protagonist is – Luke? Sam? both? – and therefore jumps merrily back and forth without developing much momentum.

Additionally, the film’s running time is padded out by random inserts of not exactly important scenes. However, in this film the padding is where the fun lies, since here “padding” doesn’t mean the usual travelogue footage or scenes and scenes of people explaining the plot to each other, but wondrous moments of exploitative art. Sudden bouts of grindhouse social realism (the things that just happen to land on camera when you film outside in a big city without a permit), an utterly random love montage between Luke and a nameless woman, a kung fu fighting waitress, or the rambly monologueing of a bag lady unite to become something quite special.

In these moments, The Devil’s Express isn’t so much a cheap shot at making money by haphazardly throwing a movie together, but a near-magical evocation of a particular place at a particular time. This is something you couldn’t get in a more carefully constructed picture that (understandably enough) would need to keep out all the randomness Rosen’s film (probably unconsciously) embraces. Of course, not too many low budget films of this type manage to incorporate as many of these moments of magic/unconscious art as this one does.

I also have to stress that some scenes belonging to the film’s main plot line are pretty great, too. The scenes in “China” are very creatively realized, and while you’d never believe them to take place in China, Rosen gives them a very different feel from the city scenes. I think it is the quality of the light that’s mainly accountable for that effect.

First and foremost, The Devil’s Express is an extremely fun movie. I can take a lot of delight in a film that goes out of its way to keep the promises of fun it makes, even if it is a little sloppy, a bit cheap and very silly, so I felt right at home with it.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

‘Max Headroom’ coming from Shout! Factory

March 1st, 2010 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | 1 Comment »
Tags: Cult, Matt Frewer, Max Headroom, Shout! Factory, Television

Shout! Factory is quickly becoming one of my favorite DVD companies, and this news only furthers that opinion. From the press release:

Shout! Factory and Warner Home Video, a division of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc., announced a multi-property alliance to bring the highly anticipated Warner Bros. television series Max Headroom and The Norm Show to the home entertainment marketplace. Under its multi-year agreement with Warner Home Video, Shout! Factory will be the exclusive media company to distribute Max Headroom and The Norm Show DVDs for home entertainment releases in the United States and Canada. The announcement was made today by Shout! Factory founding partners Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos; and Jeff Brown, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Non-theatrical Franchise Marketing.

Production has begun to develop a wide range of bonus content for Max Headroom: The Complete Series DVD box set, as well as re-transferring the episodes from the original elements to provide the highest picture quality.

“Max Headroom is a uniquely sought-after television property, boasting a large fan following and consumer interests. We have been pursing this property with Warner Bros. for years, and we’re thrilled that it’s finally coming to fruition,” state Shout! Factory founding partners. ”We’re pop culture fanatics at Shout!, and both of these shows are loved by fans of TV and are highly requested. We’ll do them justice with great extras and packaging.”

You can read the full press release on Shout! Factory’s agreement with Warner Brothers here: Shout! Factory and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc. Announce Content Deal

The Long Island Cannibal Massacre

October 30th, 2009 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: Awesome Titles, Cannibals, Cult, Horror, Monsters, Nathan Schiff

company: Happy Enterprises
year: 1980
runtime: 91′
country: United States
director: Nathan Schiff
cast: John Smihula, Fred Borges,
Michael Siegal, Paul Smihula,
Richard Stone, Nancy Canberg
Order this film from Amazon.com

A pair of murderous madmen (one wearing a pillow case and goggles) butcher Long Island locals for Jack (Fred Borges) so that he might feed his family, who are suffering from a bizarre cannibal leprosy. Inspector Cameron (John Smihula), having discovered the remains of a young woman on an isolated beach, works to track down the killers.

Nathan Schiff strikes again! This, his second Super 8mm feature, was produced shortly after WEASELS RIP MY FLESH and continues in that effort’s tradition of blending creature-feature homage with ridiculous no-budget gore effects. The scale is increased in some ways and pared down in others, in accordance with lessons learned during the making of WEASELS. You won’t find any tabletop trips to Venus or desk lamps standing in for rocketships here, but rest assured that the lengtheir and more focused narrative of THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE offers up plenty of inspired insanity all the same.

As with all his productions, Schiff wears his inspirations on his sleave. Inspector Cameron is a cop of the Dirty Harry variety, fed up with the system and itching for a chance to take his quest for justice offroad. A spate of gruesome homicides seem to be just what the doctor ordered, and Cameron is off the force and on his own in no time. But this inspector has more than just a chip on his shoulder, and his character arc takes some truly unexpected turns by the end of things.

The rest of the story, focusing on Jack and his hired serial killers, is a madcap mash-up of H. G. Lewis-esque ultra-violence and odes to the classic Roger Corman monster pictures of old. A scene halfway through, in which one of Jack’s family dies of starvation because he’s not strong enough to fight for food, is an almost verbatim replay of one from Corman’s THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED. The relationship between Jack and his hungry father echos that of Lee Van Cleef and the Venusian in IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, though the monster’s plans here are even more twisted as he goes about the countryside raping young women so that he might raise a race of cannibal children!

As the title (and any experience with Schiff’s other work) might suggest, there’s gore to be had in spades here. The film opens with a tour-de-force, Jack’s hired killers attacking a young woman with a lawnmower, and doesn’t let up much from there. The graphic imagery on display is gruesome, and the camera hovers lovingly over each of the gut-ripping and head-smashing setups – there’s no room for the squeamish here. The conclusion is the best of Schiff’s career, bringing the killers, Inspector Cameron, Jack and his chainsaw-wielding monster of a dad neatly together for a grue-strewn death battle of epic proportions.

From a purely technical standpoint, THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE is a big step up from Schiff’s previous film. Writing, photography, and editing are all improved, and the frequent action scenes are particularly well handled. This is still an amateur effort, to be sure, but there’s something undeniably infectious about the enthusiasm of a teenager who decided one day to shoot an 8mm feature film, and did.

Never intended for any sort of widespread consumption, Image Entertainment saw fit to release THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE along with WEASELS RIP MY FLESH and THEY DON’T CUT THE GRASS ANYMORE to home video in February of 2004. While not so feature-laden as those other two discs, Image’s DVD of MASSACRE is still impressive, especially for a film so obscure as this.

Image presents THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE in its original full-screen aspect ratio in an interlaced transfer. The footage still looks very rough at times, exhibiting scratches and speckles that have been inherent in the source since it was first edited together. But once one looks beyond the aesthetic limitations of a 29 year old feature shot on 8mm reversal film things don’t seem so bad. There has been a good deal of color correction work, and I doubt the image could be improved drastically beyond this without an extensive (and expensive) restoration effort behind it. The audio fares quite well, with dialogue and stock music cues carrying through quite nicely. Some alterations were made to the score along the way to account for unlicensed music, but the new tracks merge well with the rest.

Supplements include interviews with writer / producer / director Schiff as well as his chief cast members, Fred Borges and John Smihula. Smihula practically carries the film, playing a cop, a killer, a mutant, and Borges’ monster dad! Also included is a feature commentary track with Schiff that brings the production information available here into full-on overkill mode. Trailers for all three of the Image-released Schiff films are to be found as well, though there are no shorts made available here as they were with the other two DVDs.

The collected works of Nathan Schiff are certainly an acquired taste, and one I’ve railed against in the past. But as with everything else, opinions change. THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE is a grim sort of cornball insanity and I don’t mind saying that I enjoyed every minute of it – and what a title! Recommended.

Aventura al Centro de la Tierra

October 23rd, 2009 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | 3 Comments »
Tags: Alfredo B. Crevenna, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Cult, Horror, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne, Mexico, Monsters

a.k.a. Adventure at the Center of the Earth
Year: 1965   Company: Producciones Sotomayor   Country: Mexico   Runtime: 78′
Director: Alfredo B. Crevenna   Writer: Jose Maria Fernandez Unsain   Cinematography: Raul Martinez Solares
Music: Raul Lavista   Cast: Kitty de Hoyos, Javier Solis, Columbia Dominguez, Jose Elia Moreno, Carlos Cortes
Order this film from Amazon.com

A woman survives an accident during a tour of some caverns and recounts a terrifying story – that something inhuman killed her husband. Convinced that prehistoric animals must still exist beneath the surface of the Earth and believing the woman’s story to be evidence of just that, professor Diaz contracts a disparate band of adventurers to trek into the uncharted depths of the cavern system in which the man was killed . . .

Well this is certainly an odd one, though one should expect as much from production house Producciones Sotomayor – responsible for the delightfully bizarre musical comedy horror mash-up La Nave de los Monstruos five years earlier. As with that effort, an homage to the 50′s monster boom that had occurred in America a few years previously that referenced everything from Invasion of the Saucer Men to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Aventra al Centro de la Tierra has inspirations from all over.

The most notable of these inspirations is Jules Verne’s classic fantasy novel Voyage au centre de la Terre from 1864, from which Aventura takes its title. The barest of the basics of the plot are retained, with a scientist leading an expedition into the depths of the Earth and finding prehistoric animals there, but not without considerable tinkering. Several points also seem to be taken from the 20th Century Fox film version of the story, Journey to the Center of the Earth, from 1959 – notably the discovery of the ruins of a sunken ancient civilization (which remain unexplored here out of budgetary necessity).

While its title indicates adventure, Aventra al Centro de la Tierra is more a straight monster-driven science fiction / horror film than anything else with nods to classic Universal efforts and more recent Roger Corman pictures to be found throughout. Characterizations are typical for the genre – manly men, shrieking women, and a daft elderly professor to hold them all together. The cast is kept busy through a number of diversions, like death-defying climbs along precipitous cave walls and even a poorly-devised love triangle, but it’s obvious that most of the large exploration party is here as monster fodder.

And there are monsters a-plenty to be seen. On the low end are a few incidental creatures – some horribly unconvincing giant bats as well as some endearingly laughable floppy dinosaur puppets here seen alongside stock footage from One Million B.C. and Unknown Island. That staple of the genre, the googly-eyed giant spider, is here as well, only with no ray-gun toting figure of square-jawed masculinity to stop it.

The most satisfying of Aventra al Centro de la Tierra‘s monster assortment are a weird toothy cyclops (likely modeled after the one seen in La Nave de los Monstruos) that poses no end of pesky trouble as it mauls through the outer ranks of the research party and a more mysterious bat-person that seems derived, in personality and action at least, from the Gill-Man from The Creature From the Black Lagoon. While only fully revealed in the final twenty minutes, the bat-person is seen stalking hottie Kitty de Hoyos from the moment the expedition starts, eventually kidnapping her and dragging her back to his lair (a process that, oddly, involves the bat-person swimming with his victim through a previously unseen waterway). His demise likewise echos that of Gill-Man’s from the first Creature film, though there’s little in the way of ambiguity to this army-assisted bullet-heavy ending.

Aventra al Centro de la Tierra is a reasonably produced effort that makes the most of its vast cavern locales (the only sets to speak of are offices early on, and the film lingers on them only briefly) and sparse effects budget, cleverly (and sometimes not so cleverly) intermingling more expensive library effects footage with its own bargain basement variety. Even with apt direction from the prolific Alfredo B. Crevenna (La Loba) and a cast of bankable Mexican genre regulars, it’s the uncredited effects crew that’s really the star of the show. The suit work on display is in league with the similar work done by Paul Blaisdell in the States and the close-up creature make up for the bat person, which allows for a good range of emotion the less animated suit can’t provide, is pretty fantastic.

Thanks to the growth of the immigrant population in America and increasing demand for Spanish language entertainment, the number of obscure Mexican genre treasures available on home video here has grown drastically over the past five years or so. Aventra al Centro de la Tierra has been released to these shores by Xenon in a bare-bones and, unfortunately, subtitles-free edition that is blessedly inexpensive if one is able to avoid the ridiculously marked up Amazon retail price. Transfer quality is on par with similar low-rent releases – a full-frame combo job that’s slightly zoomed in but that still offers an excess of headroom at the top of the frame. The SD transfer looks to be from tape and is a bit soft, but is certainly watchable.

This is another little-known creature feature that I’m perfectly happy to have stumbled upon. While certainly nothing special Aventra al Centro de la Tierra is a fun and surprisingly graphic (for 1965) genre romp that will be a real treat for those monster fans un-daunted by the language barrier it poses. I say see it.

This review is part of the October Monster Mayhem roundtable:

Mardi Gras Massacre

October 23rd, 2009 | article by Denis Klotz | No Comments »
Tags: Cult, Horror, Jack Weis, New Orleans, Thriller

company: Omni Capital Releasing
year: 1978
runtime: 89′
country: USA
director: Jack Weis
cast: Bill Metzo, Gwen Arment,
Curt Dawson
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An overdressed man (Bill Metzo) comes into a bar in New Orleans. He asks the resident helpful prostitute Sherry (Gwen Arment) who among her colleagues there is the most evil. After being pointed in the direction of the evil gal of evilness, he introduces himself with the words “Hello….I understand….that you are the most…evil woman…here”. Having thusly won her trust (and delivered his big line of the movie), he takes her home, straps her to a massage table in the evil temple to the Aztec goddess of Evil part of his apartment and cuts her heart out.

He’ll do that intermittently for the rest of the movie with women of whose evilness he has made sure of by the mystical power of asking about it, because they are evil, the goddess is evil, and they’ll be happily evil together everafter. His final goal seems to be to kill three prostitutes at once on Fat Tuesday to bring the evil Aztec goddess of Evil back to (presumably evil) life.

When we are not watching him and his evil designs (of evil, etc), we have the dubious pleasure of witnessing the investigational efforts of the two cops (Curt Dawson & another guy) who are supposedly working on the case. In practice, they are sitting around in bars and drinking a lot and Dawson is romancing Shelly in a way that makes the romance plots of Don Dohler films look positively riveting. And that’s it for the plot.

I can recommend Mardi Gras Massacre only to the true scholars of horrible independent local filmmaking from the US. Less inquisitive/depraved minds will probably, nay certainly, be bored out of their minds with this one even before the cops make their first snail-like appearance.

And yet the movie looks so good on paper: a Blood Feast rip-off taking place in New Orleans on the eve of Mardi Gras! Whatever could go wrong? So it is too bad that MGM‘s director Jack Weis makes Herschell Gordon Lewis look like a genius filmmaker. There’s no shot too static for Weis, no actor too slow and boring, no interior too drab and brown. It is difficult to truly comprehend how little creativity a director can bring to the plate and still be called one, really. Speaking of a lack of enthusiasm for his work would be sounding much too positive here. I suppose “zombie-like” is a fair description of Weis’ directorial style.

Not even the gore effects are worthy of consideration, mostly because it is one single, improbable heart-cutting effect repeated ad nauseam.

And don’t go around thinking Weis will show you much more of New Orleans than darkened bar interiors (although I doubt that it is in truth more than one place filmed from slightly different angles) and a handful of naked women, the latter often dancing unenthusiastically. True, there are two musical montages (yes, one of them a love montage) and a “chase” (if you like to call it that) through a Mardi Gras procession, but the former are painfully disinterestedly filmed and the latter comes much too late in the course of the movie to matter anymore.

There’s a complete and utter apathy about anyone we see in front of the camera, too, except for Bill Metzo’s nameless killer. He isn’t exactly sprightly, mind you, yet I appreciate his brilliant failure to sound or act like a human being, his…awkward…pauses…after…every…single…word….he…….says and his near-permanent bug-eyeing. At least someone is putting a little effort in.

Then there’s the music, a neverending, throbbing mass of bad disco funk with only short breaks for pointless, wavering synthie throbbing. The music never fits anything we see on screen, and if I were a cynic, I’d say that Weis just dubbed a “Worst of Disco Funk” compilation onto the film’s soundtrack to keep himself awake while editing and forgot to replace it with something more appropriate later on.

But that’s not the worst of it. The worst, the terrible, unspeakable truth is that I somehow enjoyed watching this.

Mardi Gras Massacre has the warm and cozy rhythm only the truly great cinematic abominations have, combined with the curious thrill of watching a film in which every camera movement or an honest to god close-up are sensational moments of visual creativity that suddenly jolt the viewer awake.

There is something about a film that is structured like this one is – boring scene, utterly boring scene, boring scene, sudden idiotic line of dialogue, another boring scene, an even more boring scene, sudden excitement as a victim shows her dancing skills before she is sacrificed, another boring scene, more boring scenes, Shelly demonstrates her imaginary disco dancing prowess to the viewer’s shattering mind, more boring scenes, the end – that makes it hard for me to look away while it is running. When one’s taste has gone so far down the drain that one begins to think that Herschell Gordon Lewis wasn’t actually so bad in comparison to the director of the film one is watching out of one’s own free will, something like Mardi Gras Massacre develops a kind of hypnotic power much too perverse to be explained by a concept like “so bad that it’s good”.

Mardi Gras Massacre is so far beyond trivialities like this that I can’t help but think of poor, overused Nietzsche and one of his most overused little ditties. Enjoying its presence is what happens to you when you have stared into the abyss, the abyss has stared into you, and you have learned that, gee, you kinda like this abyss. At least nothing ever happens in it.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

Curse of the Living Corpse

September 18th, 2009 | article by Denis Klotz | No Comments »
Tags: Cult, Del Tenney, Gothic, Horror, Roy Scheider

Deal Productions [1964] 84′
country: United States
director: Del Tenney
cast: Roy Scheider, Margot Hartman,
Candace Hilligoss, Dino Narizzano

Rufus, the patriarch of the Sinclair family, is laid to rest in the family mausoleum. Nobody seems all that shaken by the old man’s death, in fact, it would be difficult not to diagnose the bereaved with a certain amount of happiness. If we can believe their tales, Rufus must have been something of a sadist and a madman, making the life of his wife Abigail (Helen Warren) and that of their children a living hell. Which is not something I’d recommend to people like Rufus who have an uncommon physical illness that makes them prone to seem quite dead when they are still most definitely not, awaking fears of being buried alive. He might have set down certain security measures against it in his will, but no one is actually willing to take them. As you might have guessed, the Sinclair family is about as pleasant as Rufus himself was, with the exception of cousin Robert (Dino Narizzano), the boyfriend of Benson’s daughter Deborah (Carnival of Souls‘ Candace Hilligoss in her completely forgettable other role). He’s the young, bland guy the gothic trappings require to survive everything on account of the power of pure, concentrated boringness.

The opening of the will by family lawyer Benson (Hugh Franklin) doesn’t go well, anyway, because the will also keeps the money out of the family’s hands for a whole year, to make sure Rufus is truly dead. Oh, and by the way, dear children, if you are not doing what I told you, I’ll come back from the dead and kill you all after a fashion based on your worst fears.

Obviously, it comes like it has to come – the old man’s coffin is soon empty and a disguised figure is slaughtering the charming family one by one. The family calls the local chapter of the keystone cops, but those aren’t of much help to anyone, so it’s either up to alcoholic son Philip (a young Roy Scheider) or the bland one to step up to the occasion.

And lo! It happened that AIP made a shedload of money with Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations and the early Gothics of Mario Bava. And Del Tenney said “I want some of that money too!”, and decided to make his own little Gothic picture on the grounds of his father-in-law’s highly photogenic property. But something strange and terrifying happened to Tenney. We are not sure if it was a sudden bout of artistic ambition or just a knock on the head with the rubber suit out of his The Horror of Party Beach, but in any case, Tenney suddenly developed the idea of making a cheap knock-off that was also trying to emulate the visual flair of the films (in a sense cheap knock-offs themselves) it stole its ideas from.

So the courageous viewer of Curse of the Living Corpse is confronted with things he won’t usually connect with Tenney’s handful of films – carefully constructed shots, rather thoughtful framing and effectively moody outside locations. It is really impressive to look at, and even though the sets used for inside shots are a little drab and perfunctory, Tenney (or is director of photography Richard Hilliard to praise?) for once films in a way developed to cover up these limitations.

Alas, while Tenney the director is showing actual artistic development from his earlier films, Tenney the scriptwriter isn’t able to rise to the occasion. The script’s weakest point is the terrible dialogue, obviously based on the way people in Corman’s Poe adaptations speak, but Tenney is neither Charles Beaumont nor Richard Matheson and decides to turn the dialogue up to a crescendo of unbelievable stiffness that is at times difficult to stomach. It is the way stupid people think cultured people of the 1890s used to sound, I suppose.

The dialogue’s weakness is quite a shame, too, because the basic character concepts that are lost among all the monologizing aren’t bad at all. As a matter of fact, they remind me of the giallo principle of packing your cast full of the most unpleasant people you could imagine (and aren’t all rich people unpleasant and of dubious morals, young grasshopper?), giving them more psycho-sexual hang-ups than necessary or in good taste and then killing them off in even more unpleasant ways. The slightly cruel streak as well as the violent-for-its-time murder scenes also give up a whiff of American proto-giallo (more than of proto-slasher), just less class-conscious and less willing to really go to the unpleasant places.

Pacing is of course also a problem. The film is money-savingly talky, something I am willing to tolerate, but also cursed with a bad sense of timing that usually puts the most annoying comic relief imaginable right after a scene that is atmospheric and immersive, as if something in Tenney just couldn’t abide the thought of his audience actually being interested in his film, or even thrilled by it.

Actingwise, Curse of the Living Corpse is better than one would expect of a film that affords its – obviously not costly - cast to speak dialogue this stiff with fake English accents. Sure, the accents are sometimes off, but very tolerable, and most everyone does her or his role with solidity. Scheider and his film wife (and Tenney’s real life wife) Margot Hartman are even rather good, obviously having fun with being less than pleasant human beings.

The three (oh yes, the humor is so painful it had to be divided between three people, or someone would have died from it) comic relief actors are of quite a different caliber, of course, even making me think wistfully of people like Johnny Walker (at least not, fortunately, of Jagdeep), but when has the odious comic relief ever been well acted, not to speak of funny?

All of this might make the film sound a lot worse than the experience watching it was for me, but I am a fan of Gothic and mock-Gothic horror and therefore easy to please in this regard. Your personal mileage will certainly depend on your love for Gothic tropes.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

Las Momias de Guanajuato

September 4th, 2009 | article by Denis Klotz | No Comments »
Tags: Action, Adventure, Blue Demon, Cult, El Santo, Horror, Lucha, Mummies

Peliculas Latinoamericanas S.A. [1972] 79′
country: Mexico
director: Federico Curiel
cast: Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras,
El Santo, Elsa Cardenas, Manuel Leal
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Of course, everybody knows about the famous mummies of Guanajuato. What fewer people know is that a small room next to said world-famous mummies houses a bunch of different mummies whose hands and faces seem to be the only mummified parts of their bodies. The rest of their bodies looks rather wrestler-like. That’s no wonder, as the diminutive tourist guide Pinguino (Jorge Pinguino) explains. You see, the largest of these mummies is a certain Satan (Manuel Leal) who once made a pact with the other Satan to become invincible in the ring. It didn’t turn out too well for him, as the Santo of 1871 (El Santo, obviously) did win his title from him. It is said that after a hundred years have passed, Satan (the wrestler, not the pitchfork guy) will return to take his vengeance on Santo (and every other masked wrestler available). Who the other semi-mummified guys are, we never learn.

Poor Pinguino witnesses the revival of Satan, and does the obvious and best thing – he tries to get a hold of his wrestler friends Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras and convince them to get rid of the mummy threat. However Pinguino is, even with the help of Lina (Elsa Cardenas), nightclub singer and fianceé of Mil Mascaras, unable to convince the increasingly skeptical luchadores of a single word he says.

That is something that will come and bite our wrestling heroes in the muscular asses when Satan, sometimes assisted by his henchmummies, starts a nightly killing spree. The evil one even goes so far as to ambush the exceedingly ambushable Blue and steal his mask and his pants to make the hapless man the police’s main suspect in the killings.

Since the mummies also turn out to be unwrestleable, it does not look good for our heroes. Until a Santo ex machina arrives, that is. Afterwards, they’re just not looking good and Santo finds his place next to Superman in the annals of dickishness.

Las Momias De Guanajuato is the first in a short, increasingly cheap series of films which put luchadores who aren’t El Santo against their natural enemy – the mummy. The first one in this case is really the best, thanks to the fact that while Santo might just be doing an extended cameo, good old Blue and fab and fashionable Mil Mascaras are much too lovable to be second choice (and further mummy films would steep as low as to feature Superzan).

It’s just too bad that nobody seems to have told this to the script writers, and so Mil and Blue are mostly stumbling through their own adventure with a nearly comical ineptness (they don’t even win a single fight outside the ring), while heroically keeping their game faces on. The masks were probably a godsend in this case.

Still, if one can ignore the indignity of Blue Demon losing his pants (and really, if you want to watch lucha films from this era, “indignity” shouldn’t even be in your dictionary), Guanajuato has a lot of fun things to recommend it. Blue and Mil are in good form and are losing their fights in fun enough ways – well, ignoring the various times when Blue gets knocked out from behind.

There’s just about a quarter of an hour of actual filler, consisting of some light touristy bits and two musical numbers and so little comical relief that blinking really means missing this time around. That’s next to nothing in lucha time and should be absolutely no problem for anyone seeking out a film like this. Even better, the rest of the film is surprisingly fast-paced with nary a scene that does not contain some interesting view into the private life of our masked hero friends or some mummeriffic dastardly deed.

The two ringside fighting sequences (the second of the two a quasi dream sequence in which Satan relives his traumatic defeat at the hands of the old Santo) are some of the more dynamic you’ll get to see in lucha films, with an audience that seems to be honestly enthusiastic and directed with exciting and fresh ideas like different camera angles and honest to god fast editing.

Even the organ heavy easy listening music has a strange and uncommon whiff of having been chosen with a discerning ear, that is to say, it does from time to time show an actual connection with the things happening on screen, something like a minor triumph if you ask me.

It’s perfectly reasonable to praise the film’s director Federico Curiel for the high entertainment value of the proceedings. Curiel directed more lucha and Mexican pulpy horror films in his life than most people have seen, among them personal favorites of mine like the Nostradamus series, La Venganza de las mujeres vampiro or Los campeones justicieros. Of course, he’s also responsible for Ssuperzam el invencible, one of the more terrible crimes against humanity committed by cinema. Still, what I wanted to say before I started to list film titles and gaze into the abyss that is Ssuperzam is that Curiel was perfectly able to make an exciting piece of pop/pulp cinema as long as he got at least a little money and something that could be called a film script in the broader sense.

With luck, Curiel would even remember some of the things about the use of shadow in horror sequences he must have learned while making black and white films and apply them to his colour work to give some scenes an actual sense of mood and style. More often, there is an uncontrolled, dynamic feel to Curiel’s work that is of course a product of the need to shoot his films fast and on the cheap for producers who couldn’t care less about quality.

But this friction between actual talent (that does not need to be high-minded or even consciously interested in producing anything of quality, mind you) and pure greed is often where the fun happens in pop & pulp cinema.

And Las Momias De Guanajuato is a lot of fun.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

Cult Camp Classics Vol. 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers

August 24th, 2009 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: Allied Artists, Atomic Bomb, Camp, Cult, Eugene Lourie, Giant monsters, Giants, Nathan Juran, Outer Space, Science Fiction, Warner Brothers

Warner Brothers [2007] $29.98
Single layer DVD5 x 3 / NTSC / Region 1
subtitles: English, French, and
English SDH available for all films
ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN
Allied Artists [1958] 66′
director: Nathan Juran
cast: Allison Hayes, William Hudson,
Yvette Vickers, Roy Gordon
QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE
Allied Artists [1958] 80′
director: Edward Bernds
cast: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming,
Laurie Mitchell, Lisa Davis
THE GIANT BEHEMOTH
Allied Artists [1958] 80′
director: Eugene Lourie
cast: Gene Evans, Andre Morell,
John Turner, Leigh Madison
Order this collection from Amazon.com

This is an excellent little collection that I took my sweet time catching up to [finally picking it up from a secondary seller at Amazon.com and getting it, new, for $12 less than retail] and the first dip by Warner Brothers into the vast collection of old Allied Artists properties they now own. With the DVD market in a downturn and Warner opting to offer its archive titles in expensive [$15 to $20 a piece] on-demand editions it seems that these sorts of collections from the company may be a thing of the past – a real shame, as the Cult Camp Classics label had real promise.

Volume 1 brings together a trio of wildly disparate but undeniably fun Allied Artists science fictioners from the late 50′s, all new to legitimate US DVD and all of which are available separately for $14.98 retail.

ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN is a fine tongue-in-cheek take on the popular giant-themed Bert I. Gordon efforts of the time [THE CYCLOPS, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, et al.] that I remember first seeing on a UHF station towards the end of the 80s. It concerns unfaithful husband Harry [William Hudson], his affair with greedy beauty Honey [Yvette Vickers] and the duo’s disdain for Harry’s needy but rich wife Nancy [Allison Hayes]. Harry and Honey devise a number of lame schemes to off Nancy after an encounter with an alien spacecraft sends her off the deep end, but wind up getting their just deserves when the encounter has the unlikely side effect of turning Nancy into a 50 foot giant . . .

Nathan [THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, 20,000,000 MILES TO EARTH] Juran directs under the pseudonym Nathan Hertz and does what he does best – taking sub-par premises and turning out entertaining drive-in diversions. ATTACK, like the previous year’s THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, is intentionally ludicrous from top to bottom and features effects that wouldn’t have passed muster with the king of the ineffective travelling matte, Bert I. Gordon himself. It’s all in good fun and over in barely an hour, making it prime material for a double [or triple, in this case] feature.

Warner Brothers presents ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN in a fine 16:9 enhanced progressive widescreen transfer, and I doubt this black and white cheapie has ever looked better. Detail is at the high end and contrast is spot on. I noticed no encoding issues though the 66 minute feature takes up less than 3 gigs on this single layer disc. The only extra is a commentary track from the always excellent Tom Weaver, here interviewing actress Yvette Vickers. The packaging lists a theatrical trailer, but it seems to have been forgotten in the finished encoding and is nowhere to be found in the vob structure.

Fashioned from a satirical source script that no one seemed to notice was satirical until it was too late and loaded with props and effects from previous ventures [like FORBIDDEN PLANET and WORLD WITHOUT END], QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE is easily the worst of this set but is no less fun for its numerous troubles. The story concerns a band of Earthmen, three astronauts and a scientist [the dependable Paul Birch, of WAR OF THE WORLDS and DAY THE WORLD ENDED fame], crash land on Venus and overthrow the evil feminist society that has developed their in the absence of men.

Director Edward Bernds [WORLD WITHOUT END, RETURN OF THE FLY] plays Charles Beaumont’s outright parodic script painfully straight for much of the picture with unintentionally hilarious results. The cast, headed by beauty Zsa Zsa Gabor, deliver the inane dialogue as well as can be expected but look to be having a good time with things [how could you not?]. I missed this one in my early childhood but caught it on TNT as part of their Rudy and Gogo New Year’s Eve Flaming Cheese Ball special at the nexus of 1995/1996. It was in good company with the likes of THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO and THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL – I had a blast.

Warner’s progressive and 16:9 enhanced transfer of QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE presents it in its original Cinemascope for the first time outside of theatrical exhibition, which only makes the paltriness of the production even more apparent [there are at least twice as many cuts in the pan-and-scanned edition, which at least adds some variety to the static dialogue takes]. Detail and contrast are strong, though the colors fluctuate from time to time due to negative damage. The unrestored image is certainly good enough for me, and I can’t imagine anyone footing the bill to improve upon it. Like ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, QUEEN is accompanied by a Tom Weaver commentary, with Laurie Mitchell [the disfigured queen of the title] the interview subject this go around. The commentary is fun and informative, though there are a few dead patches here and there – I suppose one can’t be blamed for having too little to say about a film like this. The promised theatrical trailer is present and accounted for here, allowing us another glimpse at just how much the film’s marketing depended on Zsa Zsa.

THE GIANT BEHEMOTH [or BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER, as it's called in the United Kingdom] was a co-production between Artists Alliance, Ltd. [THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X] and Diamond Pictures Corp originally intended as an X THE UNKNOWN / QUATERMASS styled science fiction thriller about a radioactive sea-blob. But the money lenders wanted a more bankable run-of-the-mill monster, and the rest is history. The story involves two scientists [Gene Evans and the great Andre Morell] investigating a fish kill and mysterious deaths that are eventually linked to the resurrection of the fictitious paleosaurus, a radiation-spewing dinosaur perturbed by atomic tests that soon makes a bee-line for London.

The biggest draw of BEHEMOTH is its sparse stop-motion effects work, directed by Willis O’Brien and animated by Pete Peterson [THE BLACK SCORPION], but it’s obvious that there wasn’t enough money around to produce much of it. What’s on display is quite good, though several shots are rather obviously optically enlarged and repeated throughout the climactic attack on London [we see the creature step on the same car at least three times]. The final script by Eugene Lourie and Daniel James has much in common with Lourie’s earlier THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, including the important plot point that the monster must be killed in one piece and the daffy professor who dies to see the thing. Still, BEHEMOTH is at the high end of the spectrum as far as generic creature features are concerned thanks to its excellent cast and Lourie’s solid direction. I’m constantly surprised by just how dark this film is compared to the earlier BEAST and some of the images of the destructive aftermath of the eponymous monster are quite graphic for a mainstream release from 1958.

Warner’s new DVD of THE GIANT BEHEMOTH is of the full-length cut of the film, including the ferry boat sequence omitted from an earlier VHS release here in the states. The unrestored progressive and 16:9 enhanced transfer is crisp and clean, with excellent contrast and minimal damage. Every flaw in the under-funded special effects is front and center, but that didn’t deter me in the least – BEHEMOTH looks great on digital, and it’s been a long time coming. Unfortunately the commentary track commissioned for the disc is anything but helpful – effects men Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett are woefully under-informed and have nothing of use to say beyond a few comments on the effects and the occasional condescending remark. It’s a real shame that Tom Weaver wasn’t approached again for this title, as this track is a complete bust. The promised theatrical trailer is present and accounted for and is in reasonably good shape, though it reveals nearly all of the stop motion monster effects.

There have been three other Cult Camp Classics collection released thus far, though it would probably be best if we not expect more [especially with Warner offering up obscure titles like FROM HELL IT CAME through their Warner Archive Collection]. I’ve not seen the others and don’t have the same attachment to the films contained in them, but this set is, with few exceptions, a real winner. Highly recommended!

Eegah

July 14th, 2009 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | 7 Comments »
Tags: Arch Hall Jr., Arch Hall Sr., Cavemen, Crap, Cult, Horror, Richard Kiel

Fairway International Pictures [1962] 90′
country: United States
director: Arch Hall Sr.
cast: Arch Hall Jr., Marilyn Manning,
cast: Richard Kiel, Arch Hall Sr.
Order this film from AMAZON.COM

“Kevin, what’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?” Such is the question most asked by those close to me about film, and one I least like hearing [just behind "what's your favorite"]. As someone who sees more movies than he does blue skies or sunlight, watching what I figure is an average of six for every review that makes it to this site, singling out any feature among the veritable truckloads of awfulness that pass through my optic nerves is not something I care to spend my precious time on. There’s content to be written, dammit, and DEVIL FETUS isn’t going to watch itself!

Sea God and Ghosts

July 6th, 2009 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: Comedy, Cult, Fantasy, Giant monsters, Kaiju, Kung Fu, Not on DVD, Taiwan

a.k.a LONG WANG SAN TAI ZI
?? [1977] 87′
drector: Sing Yan Gam / Fu-wen Chung
cast: Chia Ling, Hsing Hsi,
cast: Chang Chi-ping, Hsi Wei Chen

Here’s something you don’t see every day – a Taiwanese martial arts and giant monster fantasy from the late 70′s, made in much the same vein as Poon Lui’s earlier and super-obscure YOUNG FLYING HERO and DEVIL FIGHTER. The Hong Kong Movie Database suggests that the monster footage is recycled from the earlier fantasy effort TSU HONG WU from 1971, a fact I have no reason to dispute, and much of that same footage appears to have been culled for the later [and somewhat less obscure] FAIRY AND THE DEVIL as well.

Hand of Death

June 27th, 2009 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: Cult, Horror, John Agar, Nerve Gas, Not on DVD, Paula Raymond, Science Fiction

Associated Producers [1962] 60′
country: United States
director: GENE NELSON
cast: JOHN AGAR, PAULA RAYMOND,
cast: STEVE DUNNE, ROY GORDON

This is one film who’s reputation definitely precedes it. Unfortunately [for some at least], that reputation was built over several decades in which those interested in the film, lost to red tape and poor preservation, were limited to advertising materials and stills that had circulated in magazines like Famous Monsters. Distributor 20th Century Fox unearthed the only known surviving print [a cropped 16mm television copy] just prior to star John Agar’s death in 2002, hastily transferred it to video, and began airing it during the late night hours on their Fox Movie Channel. Bootleggers were swift to pick up the new cult property and, given Fox’s seeming reluctance to release it to home video proper, undoubtedly made a pretty penny for their troubles.

Any hopes that Fox might have a lost genre classic on their hands were quickly laid to rest when the TV print was put back in circulation. HAND OF DEATH was revealed to be little more than an ultra-cheap ultra-short par-for-the-course shock programmer – the sort of film that should have been floating around as a bargain-bin release for years, but that was precluded from such by the long ago death of its production company and the blight of legal entanglement. Unremarkable as it is, I was happy to see HAND OF DEATH finally get its nano-second in the limelight.

Yeti – Giant of the 20th Century

June 27th, 2009 | article by Kevin Pyrtle | No Comments »
Tags: Abominable Snowman, Antonella Interlenghi, Cult, Gianfranco Parolini, Giant monsters, Mimmo Craig, Not on DVD, Rip-off

a.k.a. Yeti – il Gigante del 20 Secolo
Stefano Film [1977] 118′ / 96′
country: Italy
director: GIANFRANCO PAROLINI [as Frank Kramer]
cast: ANTONELLA INTERLENGHI, MIMMO CRAIG,
cast: JIM SULLIVAN, TONY KENDALL, EDOARDO FAIETA

Oh Dino de Laurentiis, what hath ye wrought? Throughout 1976, the world was bombarded with pre-release advertising for his multi-million dollar remake of KING KONG – so much so that exploitation entrepreneurs couldn’t help but try and take advantage of it. The results were mostly boring and terrible affairs, as exemplified by the U.S / Korean co-production A*P*E [which beat the de Laurentiis production to theaters by nearly three months, and in 3-D no less]. Not to be upstaged, a small consortium of Italian producers / screenwriters concocted this bizarre yarn, which is the only true giant monster film ever to have been produced in the country as far as I am aware.

YETI begins with several shots of ice exploding, a glimpse of a boat in the Arctic, and a fly-over of Toronto, all while a musical derivation on the John Barry theme to KING KONG and [more oddly] Carl Orf’s “O Fortuna” blurps in the background. This can only mean one thing – that an absolutely gigantic yeti has been discovered by a greedy corporate head in the icy north of Canada. That greedy corporate head is Hunnicut [Faieta], and he tasks his ‘paleonthonologist’ [gotta love those English dubs!] buddy Wassermann with waking the beast up for reasons unknown. Wasserman, with the aid of a helicopter, a huge gas chamber, and an armory’s worth of flamethrowers, does just that while Hunnicut’s grandchildren – the mute Herbie [Sullivan] and hottie Jane [Interlenghi] – look on.