Face Of Another

THE FACE OF ANOTHER-1966-This is an interesting sometimes disturbing psychological drama, often advertised as a horror film.



A man is horribly burned in an accident. Although his head is wrapped entirely in bandages he tries to continue to lead his life without much success until a plastic surgeon creates a special mask for him to wear. Though it seems a neat trick the man develops serious identity problems cumulating in his plan to seduce his own wife while in disguise. There’s a lot of talk but direction and acting holds it together. It’s based on a novel by Kobo Abe (who also wrote the screenplay and has a cameo in a bar scene).



Director Hiroshi Teshigahara had previously made the classic WOMAN IN THE DUNES (also based on a Abe novel) but worked only sporadically in film after this, devoting most of his time to painting.



Lead actor Tatsuya Nakadai was in Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO and SANJURO and later in KAGEMUSHA and RAN as well as KWAIDAN and many other famous Japanese films. FACE also features actor Eiji Okada who was in the international films HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR and THE UGLY DUCKING (with Marlon Brando) as well as WOMAN IN THE DUNES.


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Tor's Last Stand!

Can your heart stand it???





THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS-1959-Much like THE CREEPING UNKNOWN, this movie pushes the envelope on “so bad it’s good” entertainment. It’s not really a movie. It’s more like a bunch of scenes edited together with the bulk of the story provided by an off screen, nameless narrator (in this case it’s the director Coleman Francis). The sort of story involves Russian scientist Dr. Javorsky (lovable old Tor Johnson in his last film role) “noted scientist” who carries a briefcase containing “secret data” about a “Russian moon shot”. Javorsky and some US agents arrive by plane in Yucca Flats. Almost immediately foreign agents attack them. When the US agents are all killed Javorsky somehow manages to escape into the desert just as a A-Bomb is exploded and he is “reduced to nothing”. Actually he becomes a scar-faced ogre with a large cane that sleeps in a cave. He kills a couple of people and terrorizes two little boys (the director’s real kids). A lot of time is spent with the sheriff and his deputy chasing the wrong man! They track him by plane and then take pot shots at him with a rifle!



Tor say: "Pretty girl".



The narrator reminds us of things that have already happen and says weird stuff like “flag on the moon…how did it get there?” In the end the Doctor-Monster fights the two lawmen and gets shot. He’s left to die in the sand while a rabbit licks his face! According to associate producer Tony Cardoza (who plays one of the US agents) the rabbit scene was unplanned. He just hopped in while they were filming! Cardoza had previously been an associate producer of Ed Wood’s NIGHT OF THE GHOULS so you can see where he was coming from.



And you don’t have much of a movie when the highlight is an improvising rabbit!



There’s also an unrelated pre-credit scene of a topless woman taking a bath who winds up being brutally strangled. It makes no sense at all and has nothing to do with the rest of the story!



Director Coleman Francis made two other train wrecks, I mean movies: THE SKYDIVERS and RED ZONE CUBA (aka NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNDO FINE). At least the latter had a brief appearance by John Carridine who also sings the title theme! Francis made un-credited acting appearances in movies like BLONDIE’S REWARD, THIS ISLAND EARTH, TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, Ray Dennis Steckler’s THE LEMON GLOVE KIDS MEET THE MONSTERS and Russ Meyer’s BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, his last in 1970. He died in 1973.



Big Tor left us two years earlier.



Look for another Ed Wood alumni Conrad Brooks in a small role.






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It's Creeping Alight!

I love movies. All movies! Low budget horror, film noir, silents, westerns. I watch them all...except for the movies they make today. I admit I don't know much about them. I don't see movies in theaters much.It's expensive, noisy and you have to sit though 20-30 minutes of previews and commercials! Commercials in a movie theater! Who'd of thought it? And I used to complain when ushers came around collecting money for The Will Rogers Foundation!



It seems the media plus these "eminent doctors, sociologists and other assorted eggheads" might have a field day blaming movies on the troubles of the world today. The Korean movie OLDBOY took some heat in part for the murderous actions of Cho Seung-Hui at Virginia Tech. It was only a matter of time. Heavy metal music, a violent video game or a movie. That's their answer. It scares them I guess because no one really knows what set Cho off besides the fact that he was insane. They do a lot of talking about it after the fact. It's all bullshit. Movies don't kill people. It's just excuse....





Anyway, back to the movies!













THE CREEPING TERROR-1964-This unbelievable mess is the product of a guy who usually worked as a film editor on big budget Hollywood films and TV shows. At least I have read something to that effect. I remain unconvinced.



You won’t believe the alien “terror” of the title usually referred to by bad movie fans as “The Carpet Monster”. It’s rubbery, lumbering and so laughable it seems impossible that the director was being serious but apparently he was! But what else could you expect from a guy who lost the film’s dialogue track! So instead a narrator pops in once in while to tell us what the heck is going on and how the characters feel and why they are doing what they are doing. Some characters do talk occasionally but most of that is dubbed in. The giant monster (who has weird dubbed in roar) arrives in a very small space ship and somehow gets out and munches the local populace. Several “victims” seem to be actually pushing themselves into the monster’s maw. It attacks people in a park, at the local lovers lane and in the strangest scene it crashes a bizarre dance party. One victim defends himself with a guitar and there’s a bit of gore.











The star our featured epic!




TERROR falls into a kind of “gray area” of bad films that includes THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL and mostly everything Jerry Warren ever made. They are very bad but not really that entertaining yet should be seen at least once to be believed!



The director, Arthur “AJ” Nelson plays the lead (under the name Vic Savage), a local deputy just back from his honeymoon. Norman Boone who later on changed his first name to Brendan and co-starred in the short-lived TV show GARRISON’S GORILLAS plays his partner.



A fat fisherman/victim is played by Jack King who was also in the adults only features ONE MILLION YEARS AC/DC (written by Ed Wood) and MRS STONE’S THING (co-starring Ed Wood)! William Thourlby plays a government agent. He was in other movies (including THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE) and later wrote the best seller “Passport To Power”!



Co-scripter Robert Silliphant wrote Ray Dennis Steckler’s THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES! I’m told do-it all Nelson passed away several years ago without ever making another film. He reminds me of another “one film wonder” mystery man Tom Graeff, who made TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE in 1959 and dropped off the face of the Earth!


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Beware:Manos!

Anyway, here's my super long review of perhaps the worst movie ever made!



MANOS-HANDS OF FATE-This notorious cult film (which gained a new audience when the late lamented MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 used it in an episode) is a virtual handbook on how to make a movie wrong! Budget constrictions are one thing but in MANOS the budget seems nearly non-existent! Everything in this movie is executed badly. The acting, direction, pacing, lighting, photography, editing fail in every frame. Long shots and close-ups of the same scene are repeated one after each other with the same exact dialogue! In one scene you can see the director’s clapboard for a second!



Michael, a middle age dimwit, his wife, their daughter and pet poodle are on vacation. They drive endlessly trying to get to the ‘valley lodge”. The scenic landscape around El Paso, Texas breezes before our eyes while strange ‘60’s ‘mood musik” plays in the background and characters speak to each other in overdubbed voices. The police pull the car over and Michael manages to talk his way out of a parking ticket for a damaged rear light. And then WHAMMO! The car once again drones endlessly onward! Soon we are introduced to a hip teenage couple boozing and making out in a dune buggy who conveniently tell us there’s “nothing” up the road where Michael has just driven. The road becomes a maze. The family drives in circles. The teenage couple is warned to move on by the same cops who harassed Michael earlier.



Eventually, the family happens upon a shack where they (and we too) meet the unforgettable Torgo, a dirty, bearded mumbler in Panama hat and rags who carries a staff with a claw on top of it and has the biggest thighs ever seen! I mean, this guy is packing melons down there! And if that’s not enough he has a dizzying alcoholic like shuffle that’s preceded by a minimal piece of music on a loop that always announces his entrance. He speaks in riddles. The trio can’t stay. They can stay but “The Master” won’t like it. He likes the wife but not the daughter. “The Master” isn’t here but is “always with us”. Despite the pleas of his wife, Michael (a real dullard it would appear) insists everything is cool to stay the night, suggesting they ignore the portrait of The Master that hangs menacingly over the fireplace inside the tumbledown shack (he looks like a bizarre cross between Adolph Hitler & Frank Zappa!).



Their poodle runs away and is devoured by wolves (?). The daughter disappears but is eventually found in the company of The Master’s large black hound. Torgo makes his move on the wife and after her rejection (much to our relief) he goes out behind the shack somewhere and we meet The Master and his wives. For some reason they are asleep (vampires?) and this gives Torgo the opportunity to yell at and fondle one of the wives (one suspects he does more when the camera is not around). Meanwhile, after discovering the creepy crew out back, Michael finally decides it’s time to leave…but wouldn’t ya know it? The car won’t start. He goes out into the desert to find a phone (?) leaving his wife alone. She takes off her dress as Torgo peeps through the window. He also finds time to clout Michael on the head (probably his least vulnerable body part) and tie him to a tree.







Finally The Master (who looks like John Cleese doing a bad Hitler impersonation) awakes! So do the girls. They bicker over Michael’s wife and daughter and say things like “the woman yes, the daughter no” when the question of killing them arises. The Master prays to “the great god” Manos and goes after Torgo to chastise him for his transgressions. “You must die!” he declares. An all out catfight in the dirt erupts between the wives! When one “Mrs. Manos” finds the unconscious Michael tied to the tree she begins to kiss him but ends up slapping him!!



In the meantime, The Master of this disaster commands that his first wife and Torgo must perish. “Well done, my wives”, he says when wife number one is tied to a stake. She taunts him about his power growing weaker but it doesn’t help her cause. A gaggle of the wives roughs up Torgo and he has his hand burned off in a hilarious scene. Exit: Torgo….






Mike and family high tail it to the desert with The Master and his menagerie in hot pursuit. The cops hear some shots from Michael’s gun but decide it’s too dark to investigate and instead pick on the horny teens again. After some running in the dark and listening to his wife’s constant whining that she’s tired and can’t go on, Michael comes to the conclusion that they would all be better off going back to the shack!



There they find The Master and his hellhound. Michael fires his gun point blank to no avail. Fade to black….



But wait! It ain’t over ‘til it’s over! Enter two bee-hived bimbos on their way to a weekend “blast”. Surprise! They follow the same “valley lodge” sign and once again we are treated to scenic glimpses of El Paso while that weird mood music plays! And the horny hot rod couple is still at it! The two “blasters” come upon a strange shack and the audience is shown The Master fast asleep as are his wives and their 2 newest members: Michael’s wife and child!



As for dad, he stands in for Torgo and says: “I’m Michael. I take care of the place while The Master is away”.



An out of place “cocktail bar” type love song plays while the credits and cast are shown…



MANOS is bad but on another level it’s a little disturbing. What exactly is going on here? What’s not said in a movie is something that can be as intriguing as what is said. Not much is said in MANOS once the very thin plot is established and that may be due the director’s incompetence…. but I wonder….



Director/producer/writer/star Hal P. Warren was a fertilizer salesmen from El Paso, Texas who one day caught the film bug. He concocted MANOS and bad movie viewing has never been the same. I once read an interview with someone associated with the production that claimed that after an initial viewing Warren wondered if he should re-dub it as a comedy!



John Reynolds who played Torgo died soon after production was completed of a drug overdose (or suicide depending...). There were also rumors that many of the other cast members were victims of suicide but this can’t really be established. Well, every movie has it’s “folklore”!






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Kongo and Cats

KONGO-MGM-1932-Don’t miss this whacked, pre-code remake of the Chaney/Browning silent film WEST OF ZANZIBAR! Walter Huston is Deadlegs Flint, the ruthless crippled white “god” who uses superstition and violence to rule over his jungle domain. Flint lives for only one thing. The day he can have his revenge on the man (C. Henry Gordon) who stole his wife and maimed him.



As part of his plan he degrades the girl (Virginia Gregg in a great performance) he believes is his enemy’s daughter. Her savior turns out to be a doctor turned drug addict (Conrad Nagel)! You can probably guess what happens.



KONGO is full of racist dialogue, manic acting and strange situations that are alluded to more than shown. Lupe Velez, Forrester Harvey and Mitchell Lewis play the lost souls under Flint’s thrall. Look for Ming The Merciless himself Charles Middleton in a small un-billed role.



Director William Cowen creates some wild scenes involving jungle ritual burning. He directed a Hollywood version of Oliver Twist the next year!



And believe it or not Huston is even more twisted than Chaney was!



Screenwriter Leon Gordon worked on FREAKS for Tod Browning the same year!


















CAT GIRL-Anglo Amalgamated-1957 -This is a pretty neglected CAT PEOPLE inspired English production featuring the underrated Barbara Shelley as a newly married woman who goes back to her childhood home to inherit her weird uncle’s estate. Unk has a pet leopard and a roomful of stuffed felines. However, he warns her that part of his inheritance is his curse.

It’s never actually explained how the curse came about or why exactly her family is cursed but it seems that she kinda does a mind meld with the pet leopard and she can make it kill people. She starts with her philandering husband. A psychiatrist (who she’s in love with) tries to convince her it’s all in her mind. In one scene while she’s confined to a rubber room she imagines herself to be a cat that looks like a human size mouse from "Zoobilee Zoo" or something! She then goes after the shrink’s wife. Shelley is great in the title role but the rest of the cast is pretty bland.

Director Alfred Shaughnessy later wrote THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW. American screenwriter Lou Rusoff wrote THE SHE CREATURE, DAY THE WORLD ENDED, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD and other AIP movies. Thanks for reading!

Nobody Doesn't Like Christopher Lee!

The cable station that I really like a lot is TCM. They show tons of movies from all different eras. Good movies, bad movies, silents, you name it. The guy who hosts most of them, I think Robert Osborne is his name, usually has his facts right too. (Not always but usually...)



One Halloween TCM showed two unusual horror movies. Actually they showed them starting at around 2 am on Nov. 1st but what can ya do? On Halloween they showed stuff like POLTERGEIST but anyway these two movies they showed were quite interesting...







The first was HORROR CASTLE from 1963, a full color Italian production which concerned a newlywed couple's vacation in the husband's ancestral home. The wife Mary (Rossana Podesta from Robert Wise's HELEN OF TROY) is convinced that the long dead "Punisher", an Inquisition like torturer is back and killing innocent villagers. Her all too suspiciously acting husband tells her it's all a dream. A local doctor thinks otherwise and an old FBI agent (?) hangs around the castle too. Meanwhile, the scarred manservant Erich (a dour looking Christopher Lee) lurks in the halls. The real murderer turns out to be the sadistic skull faced father of the groom who was deformed by The Nazis after participating in the failed assassination of Hitler!



This movie is ok but it kind of goes no where after it's revealed that "The Punisher" is in fact flesh and blood and not a ghost or hallucination.

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine use to show stills from this movie all the time and it did occasionally play on TV in a cut version but the print TCM showed was a nice newly restored version despite the fact that it retains the original English dubbing (someone else is doing Lee's voice) and credits where prolific director Antonio Margheriti is listed as Anthony Dawson.

Lee made THE WHIP AND THE BODY (called WHAT in the US) for Mario Bava the same year. The next year he would make another film that TCM showed...


CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD (1964)-is another Italian production that features Mr. Lee as Count Drago, the sullen owner of a creepy castle who also happens to be be a taxidermist! (You know where this is leading...) He invites a medieval performing troupe to do their show for him. Several deaths follow. You can guess the rest as any good horror fan will tell you taxidermy and old castles with innocent victims in them do not mix! One performer is accidentally hanged and another gets an arrow shot in the eye.

Donald Sutherland is also featured as a stupid military policeman! (He's pretty funny and also plays the role of an old hag although someone else dubs the voice!) The standout plot twist is that the dwarf member of the troupe saves the day (although he doesn't get the girl) which was quite unusual in '60's horror when dwarfs were still portrayed as evil or fools.

1964 was a busy year for Chris Lee who also starred in THE VAMPIRE'S CRYPT, THE DEVIL SHIP PIRATES and THE GORGON.

He and Sutherland were re-united the next year in Hammer Films' DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS. Future director Michael Reeves was an un-credited assistant director and writer.




Mr. Lee Today

The Black Cat

THE BLACK CAT-1968-Cool Japanese ghost story! Two women are raped and killed by roving samurai. They come back to take revenge as cat ghosts (called “Bakeneko”) that drink blood. A successful warrior is sent to destroy them but comes to realize that “the ghost vampires” are actually his mother and wife! Excellent eerie work from director Kaneto Shindo.


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Nam Fu

ATTACK FORCE 'NAM-Similar to Chuck Norris' POW series, David Carradine is Col. Cooper who leads a group of GIs back to Vietnam to rescue POWs right before the Paris Peace Accord is signed. Mako plays a camp leader who takes Cooper prisoner but then wants a deal where Cooper will take him to Hanoi as his prisoner but he's really after some hidden gold.

It's cheaply made but has lots of action and also features Steve Jones as an army Lieutenant.

The DVD version I saw had a picture of Carradine from the original Kung-Fu series on the front and they back had credits for another movie!

Carradine and Mako were in Kung-Fu reunion TV movie the same year.

ATTACK FORCE played in theaters as BEHIND ENEMY LINES.

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Happy Easter Triple Play!

PEEPING TOM-1960-A quiet German guy (Carl Boehm) works with a film crew and takes photographs and his own films in his spare time. Unfortunately most of the films are POV shots of him killing women with a tripod like dagger. Other films in his collection show his scientist father used him as an experiment. A female tenant (Anna Massey) befriends him but her blind mother is suspicious.

This is a great unique thriller from director Michael Powell. It also features Moira Sheara (also in Powell’s THE RED SHOES), Esmond Knight and Pamela Green.







SISTERS!-1973-This cult film is Brian DePalma’s first horror outing. It was downhill from there!

Margot Kidder plays French Canadian model separated from her Siamese twin sister who seems to be a psychotic killer. After appearing on a game show called “Peeping Tom” she spends the night with a contestant (while her weird looking husband hangs around outside). The contestant winds up stabbed to death. A local reporter (Jennifer Salt) witnesses the murder but can’t get the police to believe her. The whole thing is very predictable and some of the dialogue is pretty dumb. Also Kidder talks with a French accent that eventually becomes quite annoying.

DePalma hadn’t yet mastered the “ripping off” of Hitchcock but he used other sources (like Thomas Tryon’s THE OTHER and maybe DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT). Also with Charles Durning, William Finley, Barnard Hughes, Dolph Sweet and Olympia Dukakis. DePalma made PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE next.


ONE MILLION B.C.-1940-This Hal Roach produced prehistoric story tells the tale of two cave tribes, Except for some opening intro scenes there is no distinguishable dialogue. The cave tribes’ minimal speech is mostly grunts and hand gestures. QUEST FOR FIRE used the same device 40 years later.

Victor Mature stars as the egotistical Tumak who is banished from his tribe by his father/leader (Lon Chaney Jr.) who rules with an iron hand. Tumak wanders around and eventually meets Loana (Carole Landis) and The Shell Tribe who are less aggressive and like to share things. They fall in love and he takes her back to his people. The special effects are very good and the scenes of real lizards fighting each other in miniature sets were re-used in countless later low budget movies.

The opening sequence features former silent screen star Conrad Nagel relating the story to some travelers but after we meet the prehistoric folk the story never goes back to him.

Lead caveman Victor Mature was one of the worst actors ever to become a star. And he never denied it. Here he was still a contract player but he’d attain stardom six years later in John Ford’s MY DARLIN’ CELMENTINE.

Co-star Carole Landis should have become a star to but languished in B-movies most of her career and committed suicide at age 29 in 1948.

As the head of Tumak’s tribe Lon Chaney Jr. really throws himself into the role. He’d caused a stir just a year before with his poignant portrayal of Lenny, doomed rabbit loving strongman in the movie version of John Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN. A year later his life would be forever changed with the lead in a little horror movie called THE WOLF MAN!

Both Hal Roach Sr. & Jr. are the credited directors. Is this the only time and father and son co-directed a film?

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After The Trip...

PSYCH-OUT-1968-A year after THE TRIP Jack Nicolson re-teamed with Bruce Dern and Susan Strasberg to star in this psychedelic peace and love drug movie for director Richard Rush (made between HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS (also with Nicolson) and THE SAVAGE SEVEN).

Strasberg is Jenny a deaf runaway looking for her brother (Bruce Dern) in Haigt-Ashbury. She gets help from level headed hippie Stoney (Nicolson) and his two pals (Adam Roarke; also in the aforementioned two Rush movies and Max Julien, 5 years before THE MACK) who are also in a rock band.

While looking for her brother (nicknamed The Seeker) they ran afoul of a gang led by John “Bud” Cardos and Gary Kent (they were also part of the crew) and have a fight in a junkyard. Dean Stockwell is the philosophical stoner with a headband. Director Henry Jaglom is a gallery owner who freaks out and imagines his hand is rotting. Nicolson is pretty funny but Strasberg’s bad trip on STP is the highlight. TV producer Garry Marshall is a cop in the opening scene and Sky Saxon, The Seeds and The Strawberry Alarm Clock perform.

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Back After A Hiatus

SLITHER-2006-In this stupid comedy gore movie Michael Rooker is a bald red neck who turns into a slimy ALIEN/THE THING like creature with tentacles. He terrorizes a hick town and he turns one woman into a giant egg and she gives birth to a million slimy DEADLY SPAWN like slugs. They jump down residents throats and up their asses like in NIGHT OF THE CREEPS and then some of the dead come back to life as zombies.

It has some good SFX but it seems to rip off something from nearly every 80’s horror film especially Brian Yuzna’s SOCIETY. Gregg Henry is the foul mouthed asshole mayor. Nathan Fillion (from the short lived FIREFLY TV show) and Elizabeth Banks (Betty Brant in SPIDER-MAN) are the stars.

Writer/director James Gunn wrote both SCOOBY-DOO movies and did work for Troma which explains Lloyd Kaufman’s cameo as a drunk. Made in Canada.



THE BLACKBIRD-1926-In the Limehouse district of London, a daring thief The Blackbird (the great Lon Chaney) pulls a series of robberies.

When not plotting crimes he disguises himself as The Bishop, the misshapen proprietor of a rescue mission. Another thief West End Bertie (Owen Moore) becomes his rival not only for some stolen diamonds but also for the affections of dance hall singer Fifi Lorraine (Renee Adoree) in this MGM production directed by Tod Browning.

Chaney livens up the somewhat mundane story with his two characterizations but on the whole it’s the weakest (and least successful) of the Chaney/Browning collaborations (at least that I’ve seen. LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is a lost film!).

The same year Chaney made another film for director Browning THE ROAD TO MANDALAY as well as the highly successful TELL IT TO THE MARINES.

Co-star Moore was a popular leading man (and singer) in his day who’s career dropped off when talkies emerged. He died of a heart attack in 1939 at 52. Lead actress Adoree came from the French stage. She’d become a star the year before in THE BIG PARADE opposite John Gilbert. She co-starred with Chaney in a later film MR.WU. Sadly like many other silent stars she died young (age 37) of tuberculosis.

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