Adventure!

 

 (imdb)

ADVENTURE IN THE CENTER OF THE EARTH-1965-This made in Mexico adventure starts off with a family group taking a tour of some caves. A woman Julia (Carmen Molina) and her fiance sneak off for some hanky panky. They fall down a hole. Just when it seems like they will be rescued the man is killed by a monster but we only see its claw. It leaves a footprint that later gets Prof. Diaz (Jose Elias Moreno) very excited. He thinks it's a great discovery and wants to hear what the woman has to say. Unfortunately she's in shock. They try to get through to her but fail. The professor decides to check out the cave himself. He assembles a group to explore. Once they set up camp one of them croons a song. Later a female photographer is attacked by a one eyed creature. Still later a winged creature with fangs kills most of the party and kidnaps one woman. 

This low budget production, directed by Alfredo B. Crevenna (who earlier made a bunch of movies featuring Santo) is pretty entertaining.

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Godzilla Follow Up

RODAN-1956-After a “cheery” intro about the H-bomb, a narrator named Shigeru Kawamura (Kenji Sahara) tells us what's happening in the mines of Kyushu. After his future brother in law Goro (Rinsaku Ogata) has a fight, he talks about the uneasiness of the miners on that day and how mine #8 was deeper than any of the others. After a flood in the tunnel, they find one miner “hacked to pieces”. Goro is the other missing miner who's found and blamed for the death. A police officer and two miners investigate and are killed. Goro's sister (and Shigeru's main squeeze) Kiyo (Yumi Shirakawa) doesn't have it easy as everyone thinks her brother is a murderer. A giant insect invades a village. Rodan shows up with his mate and although they destroy several cities and kill many people their deaths are quite poignant. 

Keye Luke provides the dubbed voice of Shigeru and other well known voices are provided by Paul Frees, Art Gilmore and George Takei. Following up his success with GODZILLA, director Ishiro Honda shot this in color with most of the “Big G's” personal behind him.

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Fly Like A Serpent...

Never one to waste a good idea twice basement budget movie studio PRC thought sufficent time had passed to re-make THE DEVIL BAT which starred Bela Lugosi in 1940. They put a little twist in the story just in case anyone thought it might sound familiar and re-titled it THE FLYING SERPENT (1946).

Dr. Andrew Forbes (George Zucco) is a crazy archeologist who has discovered an Aztec treasure and wants to keep it all to himself. To ensure his greedy tendencies he even has the legendary Mexican flying monster Quetzalcoatl guarding the treasure and dispatching locals who get in his way. Instead of using a skin lotion like Bela's mad doctor did, Forbes plants a feather on or near his intended victims. Two big city radio reporters (Ralph Lewis and Eddie Acuff) investigate the murders with the help of Forbes' step-daughter (Hope Kramer) and eventually Forbes is destroyed by his own creation.

THE FLYING SERPENT is an ok hour's deversion. No one played rationally insane villains better than George Zucco. He really seems demented in several scenes! He had an unusual career appearing in big Hollywood productions (SUDAN, JOAN OF ARK; was Moriarty in THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES) but seemed to make his mark as an evil scientist or eccentric doctor in Poverty Row productions like THE BLACK RAVEN, SCARED TO DEATH, FOG ISLAND and DEAD MEN WALK. His strangest credit though is in THE RETURN OF THE APE MAN in 1944. Although his name is in the credits he appears nowhere in the film! Also unexplained is how his character of Dr. Forbes got a hold of a mythological flying reptile!

None of TFS's other leads seemed to go on to much else but Western actor and low budget film regular Henry Hall is the local sheriff, an early victim.

To say Director Sam Newfield (here billed as Sherman Scott) was a fast worker is putting it mildly. THE FLYING SERPENT was one of 15 movies he directed in 1946!

Not letting any plot idea lay dormant too long this story was revised and re-made two years later as a Charlie Chan mystery called THE FEATHERED SERPENT! (Roland Winters was Chan)

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