Short Anime Catch Up

QUEEN EMERALDAS-1999-This is a spinoff of the popular Capt. Harlock anime series featuring his pirate ally Emeraldas who's more a wandering do-gooder than an actual pirate. She helps Hiroshi, a young boy who has lost his faith in humanity. If it sounds a little like GALAXY 999 it's because it all takes place in the some universe created by manga artist Leiji Matsumoto and Emeraldas is the sister of GALAXY's lead female character Maetel. This is a 60 min. OVA in two parts and very enjoyable. 


SOL BIANCA-1990-Japanese anime involving a group of female space pilots, their stolen space ship and a young stowaway who wants to rescue his mother from the evil villian Battros. There's a lot of action and soul searching and it spawned a sequel and a TV series.




BIOHUNTER-1997-Another anime, very weird and violent, about a vampire like virus that turns victims into powerful monsters. Not for everyone I guess but I liked it...

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Skulls R Us

Before we leave the low budget realm of 1950's film making (it will be back! ) and the career of Edward L. Cahn let's take a look at the last HORROR film he ever made (this of course includes his last film, a version of Beauty and The Beast which is really a fantasy...). It's called The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake and it's a winner!


The Drake Family is under the curse of an ancient Ecuadorian tribe. In the 1800's Capt. Drake had a certain native village slaughtered. Since then every male in the Drake Family has died mysteriously on his 60th birthday and had his head cut off and stolen! Jonathan (Eduard Franz, later in Cahn's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) is the last of the line. After it's revealed at a funeral that his recently deceased brother has no head, a police lieutenent (Grant Richards, who usually played villians in director Cahn's films) investigates. He gets some help from Drake's daughter, Alison (Valerie French, who was in many TV shows in the '60's including The Prisoner episode "Living In Harmony") but soon we learn it is all the evil plot of Dr. Emil Zurich (Henry Daniell, former Dr. Moriarty to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes in the '40's), a specialist in shrunken heads. And he ought to know about heads. He's actually a tribal Indian with a white man's head sewn on his body!

But the real nightmare fuel here is Zurich's servant Zutai (Paul Wexler) a menacing long haired native who's mouth is sewn shut! He kind of looks like Frank Zappa combined with Todd Rundgren!

That's frightening!!

Oddly enough actor Wexler had a played a comic butler role in "The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters" a few years before......

Anyway it's Zutai who does all the dirty work. He paralayzes his victims with a long poison needle then severs the head with a bamboo knife! Naturally this ritual is kept off screen and mostly just talked about but Cahn really builds up the atmosphere with the weird scenario of chopped off heads, skulls and voodoo dolls. Rather gruesome even in 1960. It moves at a nice clip and is never boring!

Got to love the shunken head!

"Four Skulls" was written by Orville Hampton who wrote many of the films Cahn directed, plus westerns, crazy stuff like "Riot On The Sunset Strip" and TV shows like "Perry Mason" and "Hawaii 5-0". Even "The Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour" (Hey! A guy has to eat, ya know!). His last work was on "Fantasy Island" in 1983 although he lived till 1997.

Of course Alfred Hitchcock made a fairly gruesome and eerie black and white film that very same year called PSYCHO!

Don't overlook this little masterpiece. See it with someone you love (or someone who loves good low budget horror movies!!!).

Thanks for reading!

RIP Claude Chabrol....

Part 4-Invisible Zombies....

So time was running out! The fifties were almost over. Ed Cahn had proven himself as a master of the low budget genre yet he would save the best for last! He made 7 (!!) movies in 1959 but none more entertaining or influencial than INVISIBLE INVADERS!!! If this didn't influence George Romero than nothing did!

Somehow a scientist, Dr. Noymann (John Carradine) gets blown up after experimenting with atoms. Another doctor named Penner (Phillip Tonge, who died later in the year) gives the eulogy. A little later on he's visited by the reanimated corpse of the previous declared dead Dr. Noymann who's dead shell is in fact being inhabited by a race of aliens "far beyond our galaxy". They want the people of earth to surrender to them or else everybody and everything will be destroyed. They kill "thousands" with their acts of sabotage. But most frightening of all, the aliens inhabit the bodies of the dead and make them rise from their graves to reek havoc among the living (at this point actual newsreel footage is shown!). The government decides to do something about it. They send various groups to underground bunkers to work on a solution....

Our story focuses on one such group: Dr. Penner, his daughter Phyllis (future mom to TV's Patty Duke Jean Byron), her kind of boyfriend Dr. Lamont (Robert Hutton, who had already solitified his B-movie career with THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY and THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK) and tough as nails Air Force Major Jay (John Agar in his third movie for Cahn and in one of his best roles). When the dead get up and start walking you can't help but see how this had an impact on Romero and NIGHT OF THE LVING DEAD especially with a small group in an isolated area terrorized by the resurrected dead. They even have a closed circuit TV to watch what's going on (scenes from Cahn's aforementioned CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN are shown here). Dr.Lamont seems like a coward even though apparently he wants to help but eventually Phyllis falls for the Major. Like many of Ed Cahn's films a narrator fills us in on what's going on, giving the whole a thing a documentary like feel, much like the TV scenes in NOTLD!

INVISIBLE INVADERS is a low budget classic full of great dialogue and scary scenes. It might best be viewed with friends after a couple of beers but it's influence on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD can not be ignored.

Sadly this would be Ed Cahn's last venture into the realm of science fiction. In 1960, he would release one more horror movie (more on that in the future..) but for the next 2 years, until his death his output would consist mainly of crime dramas and westerns although his last film would be a modest, well done, color version of "The Beauty And The Beast". Cahn, originally from NYC, died in 1963.

I seem to have gone off stray with my original topic. I think my real reason for writing this was to shed light on the somewhat forgotten legacy of director Edward L. Cahn, a forerunner who has yet to get his due!

RIP-Kevin McCarthy...

Thanks for reading!

Part-3-Zombies Underwater...

Hey! It's been brought to my attention by my friend Tony that I over looked a movie that may have had a significant influence on George Romero. That would be THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, the first version of Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend" which was recently remade. I'll get around to that a little later. Right now here's part 3 of Ed Cahn!

Ok so Edward L. Cahn was only getting started! From 1955-59 he'd helm some of the best remembered low budget horror/sci-fi movies of the decade outside of Roger Corman like THE SHE-CREATURE, IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (ripped off by "Alien" 20 years later...but that's another story...), INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, VOODOO WOMAN(which featured the costume of The She Creature with a new head!) and CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN. He even found time to make other films on topics involving crime (two with Mamie Van Doren) juvenile delinquency and World War 2!!!



In 1957 Cahn unleashed THE ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU usually considered a very minor effort even by schlok movie fans, yet any movie that features a villain named George Harrison who's wife is played by B movie icon Allison Hayes can't be all bad...and it isn't!!

Somehere in Africa (?) an old woman (Marjorie Eaton, later in "Monstrosity") lives in a mansion near an underwater wreck where a crew of zombies (including her husband) guard a cache of diamonds. Treasure hunting Harrison (Joel Ashley) and his trashy wife (the ever buxom Miss Hayes) want the stash. They are accompanied by their ship's captain (nominal hero Gregg Palmer who also fought a killer tree in "From Hell It Came" the same year) and a doctor (ever present character vet Morris Ankrum). Thrown into the mix is the old lady's granddaughter (played by pretty Autumn Summer, who either never made another movie or changed her name!) wherein providing the usual love triangle of terror.

A scene in a masoleum like chamber and the underwater zombie attack scenes are rather effective despite the minuscle budget. I suppose this really didn't have much influence on Romero but it does have zombies and I just wanted to tell people about it!

As a side note: 1957 was a busy year for Allison Hayes too. She was in The Undead, The Disembodied and The Unearthly and in 1958 she would portray the lead in "The Attack of The Fifty Foot Women" and be propelled to B-movie cult-dom!!

But Edward Cahn wasn't done yet either! Although he would soon be winding down his "horror movie cycle" by 1959 he would make two doozys including the incredible:

INVISIBLE INVADERS

Thanks for reading!