I'm Ravin'

THE RAVEN-1935-Judge Thatcher's daughter is near death after a car crash. He (Samuel S. Hinds) implores the famous but retired Dr. Vollin (Bela Lugosi) to perform life saving surgery on the “root nerves at the base of the brain”. The Edgar Allen Poe loving doctor (“It's more than a hobby”) finally agrees and the operation is a success. A month later the organ playing doc is obsessed with his patient Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) who doesn't respond to his come-ons as she is engaged to a doctor named Jerry (Lester Matthews). The judge has his suspicions and tells Vollin to steer clear of his daughter. Vollin couldn't care less and tells the judge he wants his daughter and will get her. Later a wanted criminal named Bateman (Boris Karloff) who “shot his way out of San Quentin” and later killed a guy with a blowtorch wants Vollin to give him a new face. Vollin does but gives him a deformed face and blackmails him into doing his bidding if he wants a real face. Vollin invites The Judge and Jean and Jerry and some others to his place. Bateman is his disfigured but sympathetic butler. Jean wins Bateman's heart when she apologizes to him after initially being frightened by him. The Judge still insists Vollin is mad despite everyone else's flip attitude. 

The nutty doctor has a recreation of Poe's “The Pit and The Pendulum” in his basement and makes Bateman strap the judge on the pendulum. A crazy climax ensues with Bateman saving the day but dying and Vollin crushed to death. Bela says “Death is my talisman", “I'm the sanest man who ever lived” and “I like to torture” and is very insane in the leading role. It's usually said that this is kind of “Bela's movie” where he has the biggest stand out role and it's true in a way. But Karloff snags the more sympathetic role and intimately becomes 'the hero”. It was a big year for Boris (billed as “Karloff”) as he also made THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE BLACK ROOM. Bela wasn't exactly sitting on his hands either making MARK OF THE VAMPIRE for Tod Browning, starring in THE RETURN OF CHANDU and THE MYSTERY OF THE MARY CELESTE. Director Louis Freidlander (later known as Lew Landers) would direct both horror stars separately years later: Lugosi in THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE and Karloff in THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU.

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I've Been Invisible too!

THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE-1944-Psycho murderer Robert Griffin (Jon Hall) escapes from an insane asylum in South Africa and goes to England. He visits his old friends Jasper (Lester Matthews) and Irene (Gale Sondergaard) who abandoned him in the jungle on their diamond expedition. He's come to collect his share of the booty but Irene (who's pretty evil) has other plans. She drugs Griffin and throws him in the woods. He falls into a river but is rescued by a comic drunk (Leon Errol). They hire a lawyer (Ian Wolfe) to help them but he chickens out. While walking in the rain, Griffin comes to the door of Dr, Durea (John Carradine) who's experimenting with invisible animals. He convinces Griff to become the world's first invisible man. Even the doctor is surprised when it works (“I've out stripped the immortals of science”). Griffin goes for revenge against Jasper and Irene. Foster (Alan Curtis), a reporter who just happens to be wooing the couple's daughter Julie (Evelyn Ankers) investigates. After terrifying the the family Griffin decides he wants to be visible again but the cure is a complete blood transfusion. He goes to Durea for help but when the doc tries to double cross him, he uses the doc's blood. Now visible Griff takes over Jasper's whole household and sets his sights on Julie. In the finale Griff turns invisible unexpectedly and tries to use Foster's blood for a transfusion but Durea's faithful dog spells his end. Despite a bad double for Durea in his final scene, REVENGE is set up nicely by veteran director Ford Beebe and it's a change to have the invisible guy actually being a villain not just an innocent man driven crazy by the formula. It's also full of many un-billed character actors including Billy Bevan, Shelton Knaggs, Mildred Dunnock and a few others. This is usually considered the last of the original Universal “Invisible Man” series but seven years later the studio would dust the character off to meet Abbott & Costello! At the onset of filming Edgar Barrier played the role of Jasper but dropped out after 4 days.

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Jan's Head

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE-1962-On the operating table an old doctor (Bruce Brighton) pronounces his patient dead, but Bill (Herb “soon to be Jason” Evers), another doctor who happens to be his son takes over and revives the patient. 

While dad is proud of his arrogant son's accomplishment he still feels trepidation toward his actions (“The operating table is no place for experiments”). While debating this and Bill's ambition to do major limb transplants in the future (using his “secret compound”) their nurse Jan (Virginia Leith) enters. She also happens to be Bill's fiancee. Before they can have a romantic weekend Bill gets a mysterious urgent call from his “country place” where he does his experimenting. 

With Jan in tow Bill drives like a maniac to the place but wrecks his car. He is somehow thrown from the car and unharmed but Jan isn't so lucky. She's decapitated in the fiery crash. Fortunately Bill retrieves the head, wraps it in his jacket and runs to the country place. With the help of his German assistant Kurt (Leslie Daniel) who has a deformed arm, Jan's head is placed in a pan with a lot of tubes and wires and is brought back to life! Meanwhile something hideous is locked in another room in the lab. Bill goes out looking for Jan's new body. He goes to a gin joint and tries to pick up a dancer. He sizes her up and she seems to fit the bill but he's deterred by another weird talking dancer. The two rivals wind up fighting on the floor. Meanwhile Jan's head develops some kind of psychic link with the thing in the closet (“Together we will reek our revenge”). Kurt debates with the head while Bill still looks for the perfect body which he believes he finds in Doris (Adele Lamont), a hot but scarred model who poses for “a bunch of neurotics”. Bill really shows his deceitful side when he convinces Doris to go to the country place so her face can be healed. Jan plots with the thing and eventually Kurt's good arm is torn off. Somehow Kurt now with only a bloody stump crawls up the lab stairs to the living quarters but when he gets there he crawls back down to the lab and dies! Bill drugs Doris and plans to put Jan's head on her body but Jan makes the thing break out of the closet and attack Bill. Their fight is kind of doofy, involving a door and the ugly monster biting a chunk out of Bill's arm and then examining the bloody piece he bit off. The monster is a huge guy with a deformed face (obviously a mask). He carries Doris away (God only knows what happened when she woke up!) and Jan and Bill burn to death. 

 This exploitation sickie was directed and co-written by Joseph Green who owned his own small film distribution company. It's too bad he waited 24 years to make his next and last film (THE PERILS OF P.K.). He seemed to know how to pack a lot of sleaze, gore and fun into one movie! 

Jason Evers' egotistic oily doctor though supposedly only concerned with science by his semi-sinister grin when ogling a woman's body seems like he can't wait to bring her home and cut her up. While Virginia Leith's severed head role of Jan is pretty intense it's been said she was so disgusted by the role she gave up acting altogether (she's made her screen debut in Kubrick's first film FEAR AND DESIRE) though she made sporadic TV appearances later on (and is still with us at the time of this writing). Co-producer Rex Carlston later produced a couple of Al Adamson movies but committed suicide in 1968. For some reason Sammy Petrillo (who with Duke Mitchell met a Brooklyn gorilla some years before) appears as a photographer in one scene. 

BRAIN was filmed (around Tarrytown, NY) in 1959 but due to financial troubles wasn't released until 1962. 

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Drac vs. Mods

DRACULA AD-1972-A group of Mods perform a black mass in an abandoned church. Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame)), their leader mixes his blood with the dried blood of Count Dracula and brings him back to (un-dead) life. His first victim is played by Caroline Munro. Van Helsing's grandson (Peter Cushing) has a daughter Jessica (Stephanie Beacham) Drac wants. He kidnaps her but granddad tracks them down and he and Drac have a showdown where Van Helsing uses a silver dagger, holy water and a shovel to beat the king of vampires and reduce his body to ooze. 

This, the seventh Dracula Hammer film and the sixth to star Lee in the title role was directed by Alan Gibson who would also direct the last of the series THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA the next year. Screenwriter Don Houghton also penned SATANIC RITES, SHATTER and THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES and many episodes of Doctor Who. For years DRACULA AD has been much maligned by critics and fans. There's really nothing to it but in retrospect it's an enjoyable time capsule.

In America DRACULA AD played on a double bill with CRESCENDO (also directed by Gibson).

http://moviemeltdown.blogspot.com/2017/01/hammer.html 

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BTK

BTK-2008-A guy named Dennis (Kane Hodder) who calls himself a “compliance officer” is thought to be a nice guy though it's obvious he's nuts. He's actually a serial killer who wants to make a name for himself. It uses the case of a real life killer who used the same initials (it stands for Bind. Torture. Kill) but that's just an excuse to show an excess of violence, torture and gore. “Ain't Nobody's Business” by Mississippi John Hurt is heard over the end credits. 

Director/screenwriter Michael Feifer had made CHICAGO MASSACRE: RICHARD SPECK and exploited other real life murderers and their crimes with ED GEIN: THE BUTCHER OF PLAINFIELD, BUNDY: AN AMERICAN ICON and THE BOSTON STRANGLER:THE UNTOLD STORY.

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Casper!

Does anyone remember the original Harvey Films production of the cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost? I didn't watch it much as a kid (when it was shown on TV in the '60's) but BOO MOON (made in 1953) is pretty unforgettable! Casper is really tired of people being scared of him so he goes to the moon after looking through a telescope and seeing the friendly face of "the man in the moon". He flies through space but is disappointed when he can't find the man. Casper falls falls asleep and is captured by some moon people. They kind of resemble the lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels! Their king named Luna calls poor Casper a monster and has him locked in a cage until some frightening looking "tree men" attack. Somehow the moon people use flaming arrows to destroy their enemies until the trees shoot water at them putting out their fire. When the wood rascals start kidnapping everyone (including the king) Casper joins the fray and destroys the monsters. Casper wins the admiration of the moon people and gets a special medal.

The end makes it seem like he'd stay on the moon where he's now a hero but it wasn't to be. He'd be back on the Earth by the next cartoon.

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Forgotten Cosmo

COSMO JONES THE CRIME SMASHER-1943-In this low budget Monogram crime drama with comic overtones, amateur criminologist Cosmo Jones (Frank Graham, mainly a voice actor and announcer), a nerdy umbrella toting guy teams up with an African-American janitor (Mantan Moreland) to help vindicate a cop named Flanagan (Richard Cromwell) accused of killing a bystander. Flanagan's captain is played by Edgar Kennedy and his girlfriend is Gale Storm. Jones can impersonate many voices and there's a gang war and the kidnapping of a rich woman but the story isn't very good and Moreland is wasted (though he helps catch the thugs). 

Director James Tinling made CHARLIE CHAN IN SHANGHAI and MR. MOTO'S GAMBLE plus a whole bunch of forgotten low budget features and later went into TV. Despite having a very successful career star Frank Graham committed suicide in 1950.

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