Horror in Connecticut

THE CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE-1964-Somewhere in the 1800's, the Sinclair family gathers for the reading of the recently deceased father's will. The old boy had a fear of being buried alive and leaves intricate details on how to make sure he's dead. The will states that if the greedy ones do not follow his instructions they will all die in the way the fear the most (drowning, burning, smothering, etc.). Later a mysterious masked killer in hat and cape does away with them (it's easy to figure out who it is). This leaves some of the nervous relatives to cry that dad is still alive. Roy Scheider (in his film debut) plays the sarcastic drunken second son and CARNIVAL OF SOUL's Candace Hilligoss has a mostly wasted role until the climax. The highlight is a severed head served on a dinner plate.

CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE was shot in Connecticut by Del Tenney, the director behind the much more entertaining HORROR OF PARTY BEACH. But CURSE is a funny period piece with outrageous dialogue and some early gore. Much of it seems to be  a parody especially with the arrival of an inquisitive detective and his stupid policeman assistant.

Thanks for reading!

Cosmic Monster (s)

COSMIC MONSTERS-1958-In a rural section of England a group of scientists are working with magnetic fields to alternate the molecular structure of metal. They are lead by the rather brilliant but  pompous Dr. Laird (Alec Mango). His more level headed American assistant is Gil Graham (Forrest Tucker). They both get upset when a French woman Michele (Gaby Andre')  takes the place of an injured co-worker. "But a woman? This is
preposterous. This is highly skilled work!". 

She turns out to be pretty much a genius and the only one who seems to feel something could go wrong. The nearby town  doesn't like them because the experiments mess up their TV broadcasts. After a "freak storm" where they seem to lose control of the magnetic machine, the mysterious Mr. Smith (Martin Benson) appears.Then a tramp with a scarred face kills a woman. It seems the doctors' magnetic experiments have caused harmful cosmic rays to bombard the Earth making insects like grasshoppers and centipedes into monsters. "It's those insects. They've mutated and they're hungry!". 

A bug loving little girl finds a big egg and Michele gets stuck in a spider's web. There's one fairly gory scene (for the time) where the killer insects munch on a dead soldier. Laird goes crazy in the finale threatening the whole Earth and Mr. Smith's real identity is revealed. A PLAN 9 type UFO shows up to help out. This British production's original title was THE WORLD OF PLANET X but in the US it was referred to as THE COSMIC MONSTERS, yet the title card reads COSMIC MONSTER... 

Thanks for reading!