Not So Fantastic

THE FANTASTIC FOUR-1994-Scientists Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) and Victor Von Doom (Robert Culp's son Joseph) are conducting an experiment involving a passing comet but the experiment goes awry and Victor seems to die. Years later Reed and his big former college buddy Ben Grimm (Michael Bailey Smith) decide to test a new type of spacecraft just as the comet is going by again. They take along the sister/brother duo of Sue (Rebecca Staab) and Johnny (Jay Underwood)) Storm who's mom runs the boarding house Reed lives in. The mission goes haywire due mostly in part because a decrepit guy called The Jeweler (Ian Trigger) steals a diamond from the ship. After being bombarded with cosmic rays the group find they have acquired amazing powers. Reed can stretch his body (a really terrible special effect), Sue can become invisible, Johnny can emit flames and Ben turns into the brick like coated The Thing (stuntman Carl Ciarfallo). They also discover that Victor is still alive, now resides in a suit of armor and calls himself Dr. Doom bent on getting revenge on Reed (who he blames for his disfigured face) and his pals. He also wants the stolen jewel but The Jeweler has other plans: he wants it as a gift for "his queen", a captured blind sculptress named Alicia Masters (Kat Green). Needless to say the bad guys are stopped. Ben saves Alicia, Reed disposes of Doom and The Human Torch stops the comet from striking Earth (this scene looks suspiciously like the ending of the first 1941 Superman cartoon by The Fleischer Brothers!).

This low budget adaptation of the famous Marvel comic has nothing going for it. Everything is sub-par: the acting, the special effects, the sound, the direction, you name it. The Thing isn't bad and Doc Doom is ok except you can't understand most of his dialogue....

It seem German producer Bernd Eichinger somehow acquired the movie rights but couldn't get anyone interested in an adaptation. When he realized his option would run out unless he made a movie of it, Eichinger contacted Roger Corman who agreed to help produce the film using mainly TV actors and a music video director named Oley Sassone (though he had made a few other movies before this including BLOODFIST 3  with Don "The Dragon" Wilson). Needless to say it was never released but has been available as a bootleg for years.

Eichinger's stunt must have paid off because he produced the big budget Hollywood version (with not much of a better story line) in 2005!

Warning! At the time of this writing a new "re-boot" is in post production!

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Gory Junk

HEADCRUSHER-1999-In this low budget horror atrocity a mobster kills his cheating wife and her soldier lover. With the help of some underlings he hangs the woman and crushes the head of the man. 20 years later some stupid racist construction workers are digging around and unearth something. Suddenly someone or something is running around crushing people's heads. Meanwhile a female police detective investigates and the daughter of the first construction worker tries to find some answers with the help of some friends (bad move). The killer (he resembles the killer in 1981's THE PROWLER)  was used as an experiment in Vietnam. It's probably the only slasher movie I've seen where a pro wrestling  "sleeper hold"  comes into play at the climax.

Crap like this always makes me wonder about the mental state of the director, this time Richardo Islas but perhaps he's just an incompetent boob trying to win a place among "gore hounds" wrapping bad acting, stupid dialogue, disposable characters, clumbsy sex scenes and substandard direction around extreme violence.

Also called BROKEN SKULL. Thanks for reading!

Arch Halls

THE CHOPPERS-1961-A group of juvenile delinquents strip cars for kicks in this seldom seen low budget teenage crime drama. The leader of the group is spoiled rich kid Cruiser (Arch Hall Jr. in his film debut), assisted by Torch (future director Robert Paget), Snooper (Larry Buchanan regular Burr Middleton), Ben (Chuck Barnes; later OJ Simpson's agent) and Flip (Russ Holman from MA BARKER'S KILLER BROOD). Parts of it are narrated by a reporter named Jim Bradford (producer/writer Arch Hall Sr. in an un-billed role) concerned because  "our greatest national resource is in danger".The gang uses a truck full of chickens and a guitar case full of tools to disguise their operation.

They do business with junk man Moose (Bruno VeSota who had a cameo role in NIGHT TIDE the same year) and harmonica playing Cowboy (Britt Wood who also sings a song). Insurance investigator Tom Hart (Tom Brown) tracks them down with the help of his blonde secretary Liz (Marianne Gaba; also in MISSILE TO THE MOON) and police Lt. Fleming (William Shaw). Cruiser uses a two way radio (while lounging in his cool hot rod) to warn his gang when "the bandits" are closing in.

Arch performs "Monkey In My Headband" and another of his compositions "Konga  Joe" plays on the radio. No matter what anyone says, these songs are cooool! Eventually their car stripping leads to a massive shootout in a junk yard where, after two cops are killed  Cruiser wants to give up but Torch refuses. The cops resort to using a bulldozer to get the gang. After his arrest Cruiser  dejectedly says: "We had a ball. A real ball".

There's a lot of jive talk and it's fairly violent for the time. It was the last movie directed by Leigh Jason who's career started in the late '20's. By the time of THE CHOPPERS he's been working mostly in TV.

Next up for the father and son Hall team would be EEGAH!

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Zombie Wrestling

"Zombie killings hard"-Roddy Piper




PRO WRESTLERS VS. ZOMBIES-2013-The title kind of says it all. Pro wrestler "The Franchise" Shane Douglas (playing himself) accidentally kills an opponent in a match. The dead wrestler's brother (Ashton Amherst) creates a zombie army to kill Douglas and his friends including other real life wrestlers Rowdy Roddy Piper, Facade, Matt Hardy and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Instead of using the usual zombie killing weapons like shotguns and machetes many of the living dead are dispatched with wrestling moves. There's some gory scenes but not as many as I would have expected in this type of craziness. It's mostly the wrestlers fighting the zombies with most of them getting killed. Later Douglas has to fight and kill family members (including his young nephew) who have been "zombified". The acting ranges from ok to pretty bad.
Another pro wrestler Kurt Angle (also the only American to win an Olympic gold medal in wrestling) appears as himself and is turned into a zombie for one fight.

At one point Piper says "This is fucking ridiculous".

The director Cody Knotts (who appears briefly as himself) got initial funding through Kickstarter.

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Karloff & Lugosi

BLACK FRIDAY-This is the last of the Universal Pictures "team up" of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It's more a crime revenge drama with horror overtones. Dr. Ernest Sovac (Karloff) faces death by electric chair. Before he goes he gives his notebook to a news reporter (James Craig) and we learn through flashbacks how Sovac became a murderer.

When his good friend Prof. George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges) is involved in a near fatal car accident, Sovac uses a secret, illegal brain transplant to save him. Unfortunately, Sovac uses the brain of a violent gangster Red Cannon (also Ridges). Everything goes well but when Sovac learns that Cannon stashed away half a million dollars he's anxious to get his hands on it so he can "continue my research. He takes Kingsley to NYC hoping familiar surrounding will jog his memory (they even stay in Cannon's old hotel room). The two go to a nightclub where Cannon's former lover Sunny (Anne Nagel) sings. They also run across Cannon's old gang members now led by Marley (Bela Lugosi). They are also looking for the hidden loot. Eventually, the Cannon persona gets out of control starts killing in revenge but reverts back to Kingsley just in time before the police arrive. He and Sovac return to their sleepy town and seem to live fairly normally till a siren brings the Cannon personality back. He attacks Sovac's daughter (Anne Gwynne) and Sovac is forced to shoot him (he reverts back to Kingsley and dies).

BLACK FRIDAY is often ran down by detractors as not being a horror film but the real thing wrong with it seems to be that while Lugosi does get second billing, he's hardy in it at all (and badly miscast). He doesn't even have any scenes with Karloff! It's said Karloff (who smokes a lot!) was originally cast in the Kingsley role with Lugosi as his friend Sovac but his version of the Red Cannon gangster wasn't effective enough so Karloff was given the Sovac role and character actor Sidney Ridges replaced Karloff and he makes the most of the role giving quite a performance first as the timid bookish Kingsley and then as the ruthless revenge bound killer Cannon. (Some Jack P. Pierce make-up helps though). Lugosi was given the only other male role of any substance, that of Cannon's former second in command.

Director Arthur Lubin would make BUCK PRIVATES with Abbott and Costello the next year and go on to make many of the team's most famous movies (and many of the FRANCIS THE TALKING MULE series) Co-screenwriter Curt Siodmak would write the similar theme novel "Donovan's Brain" in 1942 and would work on many of the Universal horror film s of the '40's.

BLACK FRIDAY is fairly well done if improbable little story of which the only real failing is Lugosi wasted in a minor role.

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End of The World (the first time)

FIVE-1951-This low budget post apocalyptic drama was produced, written and directed by Arch Obler, creator of the radio (and later TV) program LIGHTS OUT.

It concerns the last 5 survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Michael (William Phipps), a poet/philosopher who really doesn't seem to miss mankind, Roseanne (Susan Douglas), a pregnant woman who wants to go to the city to find her husband, Charles (Charles Lampkin), an optimistic African American, Mr. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), a brain addled banker and eventual troublemaker (and bigot) Eric (James Anderson), a European spared because he was on Mt. Everest. Eric (who kind of talks like Paul Burich's alien character in NOT OF THIS EARTH) wants to go to the city on the pretense that there will be more survivors and presents the theory the little group is actually immune to the bomb's radioactivity but he's really only interested in plunder. After the banker dies and Eric reveals himself to be a racist Michael delivers Roseanne's baby. Despite Michael's care and protection Roseanne still clings to the hope that her husband is alive. Stupidly, she agrees to accompany Eric to the city in hopes of finding her husband right before Eric kills Charles. All they find are empty streets, abandoned cars and skeleton remains (including Roseanne's husband). Eric gets radiation poisoning and somehow Roseanne and Michael meet up again but her baby dies. After they bury the baby, Roseanne joins Michael in planting crops (which Eric had deliberately destroyed). The final scene of the couple standing together could signify a new beginning and maybe the end....

FIVE was the first atomic bomb survival and despite the minimal budget the acting pulls this one through despite Eric's weird accent. Actor Anderson would play with more success another bigoted role eleven years later in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Obler made the first feature length 3-D movie BWANA DEVIL next and later made THE TWONKY and THE BUBBLE.

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Hell's Bell

BELL FROM HELL-1973-Weird psychological drama from Spain about a guy named Juan (Renaud Verley; also in Visconti's THE DAMNED) who returns home after being released from an insane asylum. He wants revenge on his aunt (Viveca Lindflors) and her daughters who he believes had him committed because they wanted his inheritance. Before that however he works for a short time at a slaughterhouse where it seems to hint that John is planning something horrible for his relatives (before he leaves he says "I've learned enough"). He does some strange things like after he saves a girl from being raped by some hunters he pretends to be in a body cast and makes one of the hunters (Alfredo Mayo) hold his penis while he pisses. Later he pretends to pull out his own eyes and makes the hunter's wife faint. Some of Juan's actions do seem to infer that he may not have been crazy when he was committed and only became that way after his incarceration.

The finale involves a large bell tower which director Claudio Guerin Hill fell to his death from on the last day of shooting! This was too slow going. dark and confused for me though lots of people seem to view it as a classic. Christina von Blanc who was in Franco's A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD is featured as one of the daughters.

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