Gorilla Love

 

 (imdb)

BRIDE OF THE GORILLA-1951-Somewhere along the Amazon, Klaas Van Gilder (Paul Cavanaugh) and his unhappy wife Dina (Barbara Payton) are having troubles. Their doctor Viet (Tom Conway) tries to help but foreman Barney Chavez (pre-Godzilla & Perry Mason Raymond Burr) lusts after Dina. After Barney is fired, he kills Van Gilder by having a snake bite him. With hubby out of the way, Barney and Dina plan to run away. Law officer Taro (Lon Chaney) investigates. After Barney is exonerated of the murder, he and Dina get married but Van Gilder's servant Al-Long (Gisela Werbisek) puts a curse on him and he turns into a gorilla. Woody Strode is a policeman.

 It's pretty bad with a lot of talk. One of 9 movies directed by Curt Siodmak, better known as a writer and novelist (Donovan's Brain). He and Chaney would work again on the TV series 13 Demon Street (and the movie made from it, THE DEVIL'S MESSENGER). Star Payton had several scandals connected to her and later had several brushes with the law. She died in 1967 at the age of 39.

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Even A Man Who Is Pure In Heart....

THE WOLFMAN-1941-In England Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns home to Castle Talbot after spending 18 years in America, upon the death of his older brother. His dad Sir John (Claude Rains) wants him to become one of the family again. Cheerful Larry no sooner gets settled when he's fooling around with a telescope and spies Gwen (Evelyn Ankers) in her antique shop. When he visits she tells him about werewolves and the sign of the pentagram.

Larry wants his fortune told so he, Gwen and her friend Jenny (Fay Helm) visit a gypsy camp. There Bela (Bela Lugosi) reads Jenny's fortune and it's not good. He sees a pentagram on her palm. While Larry romances Gwen Bela turns into a werewolf and kills Jenny. Larry kills the werewolf with his silver cane but is bitten in the process. He's helped home by Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) . Later the chief of police (Ralph Bellamy) and Doctor Lloyd (Warren William) find Jenny and Bela (not a wolf anymore). The next day Larry recovers and his wolf bite has disappeared. Larry overhears Maleva talking to the dead Bela and finds out he was her son. Later Gwen introduces Larry to her fiance Frank Andrews (Patrick Knowles), game keeper for the estate. Maleva gives Larry the low down on his curse and the gypsies pack up and leave as Larry turns into the title character. His first victim is a gravedigger. Next time he goes out prowling he gets his foot caught in a trap planted by the constable. He passes out but doesn't get caught because Maleva finds him and somehow gets him to change back to human. Larry goes to Gwen for help but when he sees the sign of the pentagram on her palm he freaks out. He confesses his fears to his dad but Sir John doesn't believe it. He straps his son to chair in a locked room while everyone is out hunting the wolf. He transforms and escapes. Gwen winds up in the foggy woods being pursued by hairy Larry. He attacks her but Sir John confronts him and in an ironic twist beats him to death with Larry's cane. Larry turns human and Maleva declares “Your suffering is over”.

 THE WOLF MAN kind of ushered in the second era of Universal horror films. Director George Waggner also did MAN MADE MONSTER with Chaney the same year. He later made THE CLIMAX with Karloff. This has a great cast and the foggy scenes where the wolf man prowls are excellent despite being all done in the studio. Screenwriter Curt Siodmak went on to write several more in the series. Waggner later went into TV. His last work was on the BATMAN TV in the '60's.

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More Invisibility

INVISIBLE AGENT-1942-Nazis want the indivisibility formula created by Frank Griffin, the original “Invisible Man” in this kind of sequel to THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS. Two enemy agents (Sir Cedric Hardwick and Peter Lorre) visit Griffin's grandson Frank (Jon Hall) whose working as a printer under an assumed name. They try to get the formula from him but he escapes and goes to the US for help. The government wants the formula too but he refuses until he learns of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He agrees to help but only if he is allowed to become the “invisible agent”. While parachuting into Berlin he becomes invisible and contacts German double agent Maria (Ilona Massey) who dines with the head of the secret police (J. Edward Bromberg) and there's lots of invisible comedy. For a while Frank puts on cold cream, sunglasses and a robe to become almost visible. Later he's kidnapped by Lorre (who's suppose to be Japanese; his outings as Mr. Moto got him in the mood). Once again Frank escapes their clutches and Lorre kills Hardwicke then commits hari-kari. Fortunately Maria can fly a plane and she and Frank stop bombers headed to destroy NYC! Keye Luke appears as a doctor in one scene. 

Released right after Pearl Harbor bombings this is one of the many propaganda like science fiction films released at the time. The SFX are good (they were nominated for an Academy Award) and director Edwin L. Marin doesn't go overboard with the comedy bits. Screenwriter Curt Siodmak (who also penned THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS) had fled Germany (first to England) in 1937. His depiction of the Nazis are evil but incompetent. 

Director Marin had previously made A CHRISTMAS CAROL and A STUDY IN SCARLET (both with Reginald Owen) and later many westerns. Lead actor Jon Hall returned to invisibility two years later in THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE, though playing a different character.

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Beast of The Amazon

CURUCU: BEAST OF THE AMAZON-1956-Rock Dean (John Bromfield), an American plantation owner in Brazil has all his native workers quit because they are afraid of a monster they say lives along the Amazon River. Dean reluctantly teams up with a female doctor Romar (Beverly Garland) who's looking for a potion the natives use to shrink heads to find out what's going on. The beast looks like a mutated version of Toucan Sam but with fangs. Later it turns out their guide (Tom Payne) is impersonating the monster because he's the leader of a group who want to stop “the white man” from invading. 

Filmed in parts of Brazil and Argentina this color production has lots of stock footage and bad SFX. It was written and directed by Curt Siodmak who'd seen better days when writing Universal horror movies (THE WOLFMAN, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN). 

Lead actor Bromfield had been in THE REVENGE OF THE CREATURE the year before and was later in the TV series SHERIFF OF COCHISE). Garland was in SWAMP WOMEN and IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, both for Roger Corman, the same year.

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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 and 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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Going Ape With Karloff!

Karloff is my main man. Here's his only horror movie for Monogram Pictures.




THE APE-Mongram-1940-Here’s Boris Karloff in his only Monogram horror flick. He plays Dr. Adrian, a seemingly kindly but hated doctor in the town of Red Creek. The town doesn’t like him because they believe he used patients as guinea pigs during “the epidemic”. They also believe his latest “experiment” to be a young crippled girl named Francis (Maris Wrixon) who Adrian calls his “make believe” daughter. His real daughter and her mother died during the aforementioned epidemic because Adrian lacked “the weapons to fight the disease that killed them”. However, now with a new gained knowledge he will make Francis walk! She also a real dweeb of a grease monkey boyfriend named Danny (Gene O’Donnell) who makes it clear he doesn’t trust the doctor. “I don’t like things I can’t understand”, he says. Anyway, the trouble starts when the circus comes to town. An ape handler is annoying his hairy charge. He says it killed his old man two years before. When the handler turns his back the ape strikes. His cigar falls in the hay, a fire erupts and the ape escapes. A posse is formed by the sheriff (Henry Hall) and the wounded handler is taken to Doc Adrian’s for treatment. In his mania to find a cure, he extracts some spinal fluid from the dying man. His gamble proves to be a boon. The new serum helps Francis. Unfortunately, in his exuberance the vial containing the vital serum is smashed. Bummer! 

However as luck (and Monogram movies) would have it the escaped ape bursts into the doc’s lab and amazingly the old man kills the attacking simian! This interval provides Adrian with the perfect front. He doesn’t tell anyone about the killings. Instead he puts on an ape suit (which he just happened to have?) and goes looking for victims. Actually Adrian as an ape only kills one guy, the town land owner, Mason (Philo McCullough) and he’s a creep no one in town likes (running right behind Adrian in The Red Creek dislike poll). He has a floozy girlfriend and spits hateful dialogue at his long-suffering wife. 

WIFE: I’ve got no place to go! MASON: You got the river! 

Meanwhile Francis is getting feeling back in her legs but is in a lot of pain. Danny the dope starts threatening the doc. Adding to Adrian’s distress is another doctor who comes to investigate suspicious needle marks on corpses Adrian wrote death certificates for. This guy (Selmer Jackson) looks like a victim to be but lo and behold he winds up congratulating the doctor on his success with the girl and invites him back to the foundation that threw him out years before! However, the visiting Doc isn’t told what the secret ingredient is. “I can’t go”, laments Adrian, who suffers another indignity while dressed as the killer ape. A rifle toting local brat shoots him!



The enterprising hick sheriff deduces that the real ape might hang around Adrian’s house because of the handler dying there so he has his posse staked out all over the place. Even so, Adrian needs just one more victim to complete his work so he dons the ersatz monkey suit again. But before he does, he must sense that the movie’s climax is near for he gives his notebook to his mute housekeeper Jane (Gertrude Hoffman) just in case anything goes wrong. Then in a fit of utter incomprehensible behavior he attacks a member of the posse guarding his house! Naturally he’s caught in the act and shot. However before he dies, he manages to crawl to his own doorstep where a crowd gathers and he is unmasked. Francis, seeing her savior exposed boldly rises from her wheelchair while the dying doctor looks on and with a moan utters his final words: “There you see?”. A strange final scene has boy and girl embracing as Francis reveals she and mother have burned the wheelchair. Doc Adrian and his hairy exploits seem forgotten. The End.

THE APE has all the elements of a standard Monogram movie. It’s cheap, ridiculous and entertaining. What makes it rise above their usual production is of course the presence of Karloff in the lead role. His portrayal of Adrian is a role he would essay many times over the rest of his career (notably in his so called “Mad Scientist Series” at Columbia). A good man is driven to extremes by unfortunate circumstances. His character only does bad things when he is forced to. He is never actually evil, although the film is set up so that the only person he does kill outright is no good anyway. For more on Karloff’s “non-evil” roles see Scott Allen Nollen’s excellent and highly recommended book Boris Karloff: A Critical Account of His Screen, Stage, Radio, Television, and Recording Work (Published by McFarland).

THE APE closed out Karloff’s contract with “the poverty row” film company. It began in 1938 when they acquired the rights to a then popular Charlie Chan inspired magazine detective, Mr. Wong. Karloff signed on to the series but for his last movie with them, they switched to horror instead of mystery. This is probably due to the fact that horror films were “on the rise” once more and Karloff had already made a couple of his “mad scientist” movies for Columbia. THE APE is certainly the silliest “monster” Karloff was to play. While burying his body in tons of make-up for such classic productions as THE MUMMY or FRANKENSTEIN, here all he needs do is don a ratty, old, fake monkey suit and the effect is often hilarious (even though all the ape stunts are done by Crash Corrigan).

Screenwriting goes to Curt (here billed a Kurt} Siodmak and Richard Carroll (who would later write the screen story for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY). Perhaps it wasn't exactly collaboration though. At times, the characters’ dialogue contradicts their actions and vice-versa. Throughout most of the film the town folk want to virtually tar and feather Doc Adrian but show great concern for his safety when they think the ape is on his premise.

Director William Nigh was a veteran of low budget cinema as his career went back to 1914! He directed all 5 of the Mr. Wong series with Karloff and later directed Lugosi in BLACK DRAGONS (1942). His work here is neither good nor bad. It’s just competent and fast. There are only two other performers in THE APE who have anything more to do than stand around, although one Maris Wrixon as Francis does nearly all her acting sitting down. She had small roles in DARK VICTORY (1939), THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX (1939), BRITISH INTELLIGENCE (also with Karloff) (1940), HIGH SIERRA and MEET JOHN DOE (both 1941) among others. She died in 1999.The only other role to standout is that of the sheriff played by Monogram vet Henry Hall. He was in THE MAD MONSTER (1942) as well as three with Lugosi: MURDER BY TELEVISION (1935), THE APE MAN (1943) and VOODOO MAN (1944). Several character actors appear in THE APE uncredited: George Cleveland (later Gramps on TV’s Lassie), Mary Field, I. Stanford Jolley, Jessie Arnold and of course the already mentioned Crash Corrigan who would go on to play the title monster in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE.

Producer Scott Dunlap directed 45 movies from 1919 through 1929. In the ‘30’s he became a producer and production executive at Monogram. He produced all of the Karloff/Wong films. Another mention should go to cinematographer Harry Neumann, who shot hundreds of low budget films including the Bowery Boys & Jungle Jim series, the 3-D lensed THE MAZE (1953) and Roger Corman’s THE WASP WOMAN (1960), his last. I’ve read that some considered this one of Karloff’s worst movies but don’t believe it. This is an entertaining little no brainer that hasn’t been viewed or reviewed as much as some other ‘trash” classics.

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TV Frankenstein

TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN-1958-This is the pilot for a series co-produced by Hammer Films and Columbia Pictures. German born actor Anton Diffring is Baron Frankenstein trying to create life in his laboratory. A dying artist (familiar TV actor Richard Bull) and his wife (Helen Wescott) want the Baron to help save his life but he refuses. When the artist dies Frankenstein steals his brain and uses it in his monster (stuntman-actor Don Megowan, in make-up resembling Universal's except he has no neck bolts).

When the monster awakes after his latest transplant he turns on the his creator and goes after his former wife. He dies by falling into an open grave after seeing his reflection. It's only 28 mins. long so it moves pretty fast but it's well done and an interesting look at an early TV horror tale. Ludwig Stossel and Peter Brocco are also in it. 

Hammer head honcho Michael Carrerras is listed as producer (TOF was made in between the first two Hammer Frankenstein movies). Director Curt Siodmak (who worked on several films in Universal's original Frankenstein series) does manage to give it a certain "classic" feel despite time and budget drawbacks. Siodmak also directed several episodes of the mysterious 13 DEMON STREET see:http://moviemeltdown.blogspot.com/2009/07/lon-is-messing-with-devil.html . It was written by Henry Kutter and his wife CL Moore, who later became successful Sci-Fi/fantasy authors. 

One story goes that the pilot never went anywhere because the two studios (I've also read Screen Gems not Columbia was the other studio) disagreed on the future of the series.

Thanks for reading (and Thanks again to my pal Tony for getting me this !)

"It will reach out with it's magnetic arms...."

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER-1953-A strange magnetic force grips LA. Two scientists (Richard Carlson and King Donovan) investigate and find that a dying scientist (Leonard Mudie) was experimenting with a new kind of element ("serranium"). Somehow the element can draw energy from the air and turn it into matter. It starts to grow and could send the Earth off it's rotation! The duo go to Canada to use their cyclotron but run into some opposition. Fans of bug eyed '50's drive in monster flicks might be disappointed as no creature is seen.

Some of the SFX are taken from a 1930's German film called GOLD. Produced by Ivan Tors and directed by Curt Siodmak (creator of THE WOLFMAN) and the two collaborated on the screenplay. Herbert Strock was the editor (and may have directed some scenes). Jean Byron is Carson's wife. Byron Foulger, Michael Fox, John Zaremba, Frank Gerstle, Billy "Whitey" Bennedict, Kathleen Freeman and Strother Martin all have roles. Carlson later was in THE MAZE, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Donovan was in THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS the same year.

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Sci-Fi '50's

RIDERS TO THE STARS-1954-Scientist Herbert Marshall needs a meteor from outer space. He and a group of scientists set out to find three men to fly rocket ships (with wings) into space to get one. William Lunigan (a busy TV actor at the time) is the scientist most qualified. He’s also Marshall’s son. He falls in love with Martha Hyer while being trained. Richard Carlson (who was in THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON the same year) co-stars and directs as well. I’ve read “film doctor” Herbert Strock directed some scenes un-credited. It’s an early serious science fiction tale (based on a story by Ivan Tors) and it’s in color! Curt Siodmak wrote the screenplay.

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Atom Brains

CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN-Columbia-1955- I’m really a fan of the ‘50’s low budget filmmaker Edward L. Cahn. He made lots of fun classic stuff in the decade of McCarthyism, drive-ins, TV dinners, the first wave of Rock & Roll and racial unrest. He started as an editor at Universal and became head of the department in 1926.

Five years later he directed his first movie, LAW AND ORDER, a western starring Walter Huston. He kept making movies like THE GAS HOUSE KIDS IN HOLLYWOOD (1947) and I CHEATED THE LAW (1949).

He showed a little of “things to come” in 1950 when he directed EXPERIMENT ALCATRAZ featuring soon to be Inspector Henderson Robert Shayne as a hardened criminal who uses a rehabilitation experiment on “The Rock” as an excuse to kill a rival.

Then in 1955 Cahn unleashed this little opus concerning an exiled gangster’s revenge on the people who crossed him. Simple, right?

Wrong! This gangster (Michael Granger) uses reanimated dead men to do his dirty work! They have pasty white faces and stitches (ala Frankenstein) around their foreheads where the gangster’s German scientist/creator/war criminal/pal (Gregory Gaye/Gay) has planted the title device. All the gangster has to do is talk into a microphone. Through a special TV screen he can see everything his undead henchmen are doing. He can project his voice through them too. And he and the scientist do everything. They even perform the operations that turn the corpses into zombies!


Richard Denning stars as Dr. Chet Walker, a police-scientist who figures out the plot (I guess he read the script) and notices that the dead guys leave radiation trances whenever they strike. This leads to an all out confrontation between the undead gang and a small group of soldiers and policemen. Close-ups in these scenes look as if they could have influenced George Romero on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD! Actually many of these scenes are used earlier in the film to depict the first all out creature attack! Flash forwards?! Shades of Al Adamson!

In the end, Denning’s police-man/ friend (S. John Launer, now a “creature”) kills the gangster and allows our hero to destroy the atomic machine which in turn causes the creatures to drop like flies (there’s only about eight of them anyway). All’s well that end’s well as a newspaper headline exclaims: “ Creatures With The Atom Brains Destroyed”.

The titanic story and screenplay are provided by the legendary Curt Siodmak who is best known, I guess for having written “ Donovan’s Brain”. He also worked on many of the classic Universal horror movies of the ‘40’s after leaving the Germany film industry in the early ‘30’s. He scripted Karloff’s “comeback” film, THE CLIMAX.

The executive producer was none other than the infamous Sam Katzman whose credits are too numerous to name here! For some reason, “Churn ‘Em Out” Sam is uncredited. Maybe he was too busy and forgot. He produced 10 other features in 1955.

Another note is that cinematographer Fred Jackson shot the amazing EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS the next year (which Katzman produced). Mischa Bakaleinikoff did music for tons of low budget movies. This score for CWTAB isn’t very memorable. In fact, I don’t remember much music at all except during the eerie opening credits when a resurrected victim comes closer and closer to the screen. The poster (available from The Nostalgia Factory) says “Based On Scientific Facts” And in actuality some of the dialogue (especially between Walker and an egghead scientist) is based on scientific fact and theory. So in an exploitation kind of way this tag line is true!

Interestingly enough, the actress who plays Denning’s screen wife, Angela Stevens was in several low budget features but had un-credited roles in two major movies: FROM HERE TO ENTERNITY (1953) and THE WILD ONE (1954). Little Jill Bennett who plays The Walkers’ young daughter Penny wound up in FULL IMPACT (1997), a direct to video action drama starring Gary Daniels. Rounding out the cast is Tristram Coffin, a familiar character actor in tons of films and movies (he’s in “The Duke Of Gluton” episode of The Abbott & Costello Show) as a DA and one of the first victims.

Which brings us to the star of our show Richard Denning, best known to TV audiences in the re-occurring role as the governor on HAWAII 5-0. He started out in the early thirties and eventually played in some classic low budget films like TARGET EARTH and THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (both 1954). He was later in Corman’s DAY THE WORLD ENDED (1956) and THE BLACK SCORPION (1957), which featured some wild Willis O’Brien stop motion animation. The same year as CWTAB Cahn also helmed BETRAYED WOMEN, a girls behind bars flick.

CREATURE is a fast, enjoyable little romp which while quite serious in tone never becomes too serious to be un-entertaining. And hey, Eddie C. wouldn’t rest on his laurels with this neglected opus. Hell, he still had THE SHE CREATURE, INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU, IT! THE TERROR FROM OUTER SPACE, INVISIBLE INVADERS and THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE yet to come! Plus a batch of JD and crime dramas (two with Mamie Van Doren)! This guy Cahn rules!

Side note: Punk rocker Roky Erickson did a song based on this movie. Here's a link to a You Tube tribute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVcK2BRvCgU

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Lon Is Messing With The Devil!

DEVIL’S MESSENGER-1961-Lon Chaney is the devil or the devil’s secretary who sits behind a desk in a short sleeve shirt and tie grinning fiendishly while consulting a Rolodex of damned souls. He takes a shine to Santanya (Karen Kadler; also in THE BEATNIKS and IT CONQUERED THE WORLD) a suicide victim who’s glad she’s dead.

Unfortunately evil Lon decides to send her back to the land of the living to take care of some business. What unfolds are three tales of the unknown. In the first a photographer (US actor John Crawford who was later in a lot of TV stuff produced by Irwin Allen) kills a woman and her image appears in a photograph he took after she died. The second features a scientist who becomes obsessed with a woman he sees frozen in a block of ice and third has a guy with bad dreams visiting a fortune teller who foretells his death at midnight.

THE DEVIL'S MESSENGER is actually three episodes of a Swedish TV show made several years earlier called 13 DEMON STREET. It was created and directed by Science Fiction author Curt Siodmak (“Donovan’s Brain”) but this version is credited to Herbert Strock, usually a film editor who directed a few films like HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. Strock may have directed “the hell’s waiting room” framing sequences although I believe Chaney was the host of the series too. Some of the dialogue is dubbed and some funny out of place close-ups occur. Strangely the stories (especially the third one) are very reminiscent of US based shows like THE TWILIGHT ZONE, ONE STEP BEYOND and THRILLER all of which came later!

By the middle ‘50’s Lon Chaney’s career had taken a serious dive despite credible performances in big studio productions like HIGH NOON, I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES and THE DEFIANT ONES. He appeared on TV in the short-lived LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1957) and was great as the successful junk dealer who goes back to school in THE GOLDEN JUNKMAN (an episode of TELEPHONE TIME in 1956). He starred as the silent resurrected killer in Jack Pollenfex’s THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN but mainly was wasted in other low budget films like THE BLACK SLEEP, Bert I. Gordon’s THE CYCLOPS and THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE. The last quality production he was in was probably Roger Corman’s THE HAUNTED PALACE (with Vincent Price) in 1963. After that it was mostly seldom seen junk like HOUSE OF BLACK DEATH (with John Carradine and 2 directors) and several Al Adamson movies. He was in Jack H. Harris’ deranged but fun SPIDER BABY (1968) which years after it’s release became kind of a cult film. Despite health problems Chaney (who’d dropped the “Jr.” years before) kept plugging away right up till his death, working on his autobiography, writing a horror script he hoped to produce and appearing in the obscure FIREBALL JUNGLE. His last role was that of another mute killer in Adamson’s FRANKEN-STEIN MEETS DRACULA. He died of throat cancer (the same disease killed his dad in 1930).

There was always some question as to how many episodes actually were made for Swedish TV or if in fact there were any other episodes at all but lo and behold a few years ago "Some-thing Weird Video" released a bunch of them on DVD....

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