Mike Hammer Time!

 

 (imdb)

MY GUN IS QUICK-1957-Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) meets a redhead (Jan Chaney) in a hash joint and soon after she winds up dead. Her missing ring leads him on a hunt to find her killer. The mute sweeper Jean (Terence De Marney) tries to help but he's thrown out a window. He meets Nancy (Whitney Blake), a woman who was involved in a scandal in Europe, whose butler Louis (Richard Garland) threatened Red in the hash joint. Some jewels stolen by Col. Holiday (Donald Randolph) are part of it. So is a stripper named Maria (Gina Core'). He butts heads with police Captain Chambers (Booth Colman) but they work together. A trio of French gangsters led by the hook handed LeRouch (Peter Mamakos) are also after the cache and beat up Mike. Pamela Duncan is Hammer's intrepid secretary, Velda. 

This is a pretty good, neglected version with the usual Hammer twist ending. Garland and Duncan both starred in Corman's ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS the same year. Two directors are credited, Victor Saville and George White.

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Sign The Book

 

 (imdb)

THE UNDEAD-1957-After a sinister intro by The Devil (Richard Devon), a weird guy named Quintas Ratcliff (Val Dufour) returns from Tibet to confront his former teacher with his regression experiments. Quintas regresses hooker Diana (Pamela Duncan) to a past life in some medieval time when persecution of witches was trending. She finds herself a condemned witch named Elaine, locked in a dungeon awaiting execution. She escapes but is accidentally locked in a coffin (with a corpse played by Paul Blaisdell) by feeble gravedigger Smolen (Mel Welles). Meanwhile Pendragon (Richard Garland) searches for proof of Elaine's innocence. A woman named Livia (Allison Hayes) pretends to care but is really a witch with imp companion (Bobby Barty) who's after Pendragon's heart. 

(Metaphorically speaking…).

 After Smolen frees Elaine from the coffin she meets Maud (Dorothy Neumann), a kind of witch who hides Elaine and tells Pendragon. Maud then challenges Livia. Bruno VeSota plays a pub owner who's decapitated. When Quintas realizes he's changed the past he goes back to try and fix things up. Livia convinces Pendragon the only way to help Elaine is to make a pact with the devil but Qunitas now a knight who somehow the devil knows dissuades Pendragon from signing. But if Elaine doesn't die by dawn all her future lives will cease to be. Will she submit to the executioner's axe? And what of Quintas? Will he make it back to the present? Dick Miller appears in one scene as a leper. 

This is a great low budget AIP production directed of course by Roger Corman with a lot of flair and imagination. There's some nice SFX and spooky settings. Screenwriters Charles Griffin and Mark Hanna also collaborated on Corman's best sci-fi/horror film NOT OF THIS EARTH the same year. Corman also made ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS in '57, written by Griffin and and starring Garland and Duncan.

Thanks for reading!