Ed Wood In Japan?

 

 (imdb)

VENUS FLYTRAP (aka BODY OF THE PREY)-1967/1970-Dr. Bragan (James Craig) an overworked NASA scientist with an interest in botany is convinced by his Japanese colleague to take a vacation in Japan. While driving in the back woods he has car trouble. A greasy snake handler offers to fix his car. Looking at the handler's snake collection he notices a Venus flytrap and goes into the surrounding swamp to get one of his own. Later he goes to Japan and meets his assistant's friend, Atsuko Rome (Noriko Hanamura) who takes him to her father's remote resort near an active volcano. There he experiments with the flytrap and Atsuko assists him. He's kind of grouchy and doesn't like the feeble caretaker and his dog. He wants to cross a Venus flytrap with a local Japanese plant, trying to prove man is decedent from plants. Like Dr. Frankenstein he uses lightening to achieve this. He's very rude to his assistant. He creates a plant thing with flytrap hands that needs blood instead of water to live. Eventually it grows bigger and starts walking around terrorizing the local village. When he sees that it's killed he decides to destroy it. He lures it to the volcano with the promise of a baby goat. They both fall into the active lava but the goat survives. 

Many stories abound about the creation of this movie. It's based on a screenplay Ed Wood Jr. wrote in the 1950's but director Norman Earl Thomson heavily re-wrote it. It's director's credit is sometimes even given to VENUS FLYTRAP's editor Kenneth G. Crane who directed the slightly similar Japan-US co-production THE MANSTER in 1960. Also known as THE REVENGE OF DR. X, some prints list the credits for the Philippines lensed horror film THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND!

Quotes from the doctor:

"I refuse the word impossible".

 "A plant as human as the human element itself".

"I will destroy my creation. My work of genius".

Thanks for reading!

(flashbak.com)

Mr. BIG is 100!

 It was director Bert I. Gordon's 100 birthday a couple of days ago. Let's celebrate!

EARTH VS. THE SPIDER-1958-A small town has a spider problem. Two teenagers Mike (Gene Persson) & Carol (June Kenny) searching for the girl's father (Merritt Stone) stumble into a cave where a giant spider is nesting. They escape and warn the sheriff (Gene Roth) who scoffs. A school professor Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer) convinces the sheriff the threat might be real. A whole group goes out to the cave. They find Carol's dad's corpse and the giant spider. They think they kill it with DDT and Kingman convinces the sheriff to bring it back to the school to be studied. It's locked away in the gym but Hugo the janitor (Hank Patterson) allows bass playing Sam's (Skip Young) rocking combo to rehearse there and their swinging rock & roll brings the creature back to life! It wrecks the town endangering everyone including Kingman's wife (Sally Fraser) and their kid. Stupidly Mike and Carol go back to the cave to look for her lost bracelet. Unfortunately the spider heads back there. They get lost and the town plans to dynamite the cave. 

Mike's dad Mr. Simpson (Hal Torey) owns a movie theater that's showing THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN & ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE both directed by SPIDER's director Mr. BIG himself Bert I. Gordon. There's also a scene of a teenager reading “Famous Monsters Of Filmland” number 1! 

The strange part of this story (forgetting that there's a normal sized spider blown up to look gigantic on the screen) is that Kemmer's character of Kingman is really responsible for all the the destruction and death. Co-screenwriter Lazlo Gorog also penned THE MOLE PEOPLE. George Worthington Yates, the other screenwriter scripted several other Mr. BIG movies and THEM!

Thnaks for reading and thanks to Mr. BIG. Hope you had a nice day!

Shut Up

 

SILENCIO-2018-This science fiction mystery involves a weird stone from outer space, a scientist (John Noble) with Alzheimer's, a turtle and flashbacks. It's partially in English and partially in Spanish but a totally stupid incoherent disaster from Mexican director Lorena Villarreal.

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Transmissions From Planet Haas

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BAIT-1954-The devil disguised as Sir Cedric Hardwick introduces this tale of two gold prospectors Marko (director Hugo Haas) and Ray (John Agar) looking for a lost goldmine. Peggy (Cleo Moore) an unwed mother who works at a grocery comes between them. The religiously bent Marko thinks Peggy was sent by the devil. The duo find the mine and both get gold fever. While Ray stays behind, Marko romances Peggy and winds up marrying her. Dumbly, he takes her to the mine to live with him and Ray but he has his reasons. 

Pretty low grade even for Hugo Haas, king of the senseless low budget morality tale. Bruno Ve Sota is also in it.

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Hammer Again

 

THE LOST CONTINENT-1968-This begins with a funeral at sea with very unusual mourners then a flashback. On a ship full of fools, the grouchy, weird captain Lansen (Eric Porte; later in THE HANDS OF THE RIPPER) is running illegal explosives that are dangerous when wet. Most of passengers are on the run or have done something illegal including Miss Eva Peters (Hildegard Knef), Harry Tyler (Tony Beckley), Dr. Webster (Nigel Stock) and his daughter Unity (Suzanna Leigh; THE DEADLY BEES one year earlier) and Ricardi (Ben Carruthers).When the first mate leads a mutiny, the idiot passengers decide to stay aboard the volatile vessel and help the bossy unappreciative Lansen. When the ship can't be saved the losers abandon it. They drift at sea, bicker and eventually fight with several deaths occurring. They wind up in a foggy killer seaweed infested area of old abandoned ships. Later they're attacked by some very strange inhabitants, descendants from Spanish galleons and other lost seafarers. They are ruled by a pompous teenager called "El Supremo". Later a giant turtle and scorpion show up. 

Semi-imaginative story hampered by unlikable characters and sub-par SFX. One of Hammer Studios least known films, it was written and directed by head honcho Michael Carreras from a novel by Dennis Wheatley.

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Devil?

 

BLACK TORMENT-1964-Sir Richard Fordyke (John Turner) and his new bride Elizabeth (Heather Sears) return to his ancestral home where his first wife committed suicide. He's given a rather cold greeting as a young girl has been raped and murdered and her dying words were Richard's name. His father is wheelchair bound by a stroke and can only communicate in sign language which Richard doesn't know. Fortunately his caregiver Diane (Ann Lynn) knows it. She also happens to be Richard's dead wife's sister. Other suspicious acting friends are his accountant Seymour (Peter Arne) and his footman Harris (Norman Bird). After another girl is killed Col. Wentworth (Raymond Huntley; also in Hammer's THE MUMMY) explains to Richard that although he was 100 miles away villagers swear they saw him riding through the village being chased by his deceased wife who was yelling "murderer". A dead girl's fiancee calls Richard the devil and things happen to Richard, leading many to believe he is some kind of demon. After it seems Elizabeth has killed her husband, the culprits are revealed. Patrick Troughton is a stable master. 

Director Robert Hartford-Davis later made CORRUPTION and INCENSE FOR THE DAMMED. After that he came to the US and made BLACK GUNN and THE TAKE. Heather Sears had co-starred with Herbert Lom in the unsuccessful remake of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, produced by Hammer in 1962.

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Not Really A Vampire

 

 (imdb)

BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE-1958-Transylvania 1874-Some yokels put a stake in a corpse. While burying the body a gravedigger is murdered. Then a limping guy with a deformed face gets a doctor to do a heart transplant on a dead man. When the doctor wants more money and threatens blackmail he's killed. Cut to Dr. Jean Pierre (Vincent Ball) convicted of malpractice and murder and sentenced to life in prison. He's sent to a hell hole led by the mysterious Callistratus. His cell mate Kurt (William Devlin) befriends him and tells him there's no escape. While they are working Pierre says a fallen man is too sick to work but when the boss passes by he gets up and starts working again. Later he meets Callistatus (Donald Wolfit), the dead man at the beginning. He puts Pierre to work in his lab, doing research on blood. The deformed killer is Callistatus' henchman Karl (Victor Maddern). It turns out the mad doctor had Pierre railroaded into his prison with help from a corrupt official. When Pierre's and Karl's escape plan fails, Callistatrus says Pierre was killed much to the sadness of Pierre's fiance Madeline (Barbara Shelly) who later goes undercover and poses as a housekeeper. They eventually find out Callistatrus's secret: he's a mad scientist trying to find a cure for a blood disease he acquired when he got a new heart! Karl turns on his master because he's sweet on Madeline and despite being shot several times helps bring down his nutty boss. 

The producers of this overlooked little horror film really give it a Hammer vibe, even hiring Jimmy Sangster to write the screenplay (he'd also write the screenplays for HORROR OF DRACULA and REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN the same year). Henry Cass was the director.

 (imdb)

Thanks for reading!