Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat 1934, Detour 1945) and starring Raymond Bond as Professor Elliot who accompanied by his daughter Enid (Margaret Field) sets up an Observatory on a remote Scottish island, to study a rogue planet that is heading toward Earth.
Robert Clarke plays John Lawrence a reporter who shows up, right after the spaceship from Planet X lands near the observatory. Also starring William Schallert as Dr. Mears Professor Elliot’s assistant who tries to communicate with the man from Planet X.
Is this adorable, rubbery astronaut in a silver-tubed space suit, good-natured or an enemy to the people of Earth? Your heart will pound, your pulse will throb…!
Prof. Elliot-“A face…a human face?”
Enid Elliot-“A ghastly caricature like something distorted by pressure… a horrible grotesque imitation looking right in my eyes!”
I actually had the rubber action figure of The Man From Planet X. In the 70s they had put out a series of replicas from various sci-fi movies. I also had the winged angel from Barbarella. Either Octaman or one of the Green Slime, I can’t quite recall the detail work, (sad to say, I’m getting to be an older MonsterGirl) Plus I had the Red Devil alien from Angry Red Planet!
Do any of you remember these action figures as well? I’d love to hear from you!
“Down This Street Raced Dead-End Violence… Down This One Stretched Excitement Taut As Silk!”
Kenneth Tobey doesn’t last too long in 3 Dark Streets!!
Directed by Arnold Laven, this noir is part police procedural. It stars gruff he-man Broderick Crawford ( the pre-Tony Soprano alpha male, bull in the china shop cop) as FBI Agent John ‘Rip’ Ripley. Likable and mild-mannered Kenneth Tobey plays his partner agent Zack Stewart, who is gunned down from the shadows while juggling three cases that might be interrelated. John Ripley continues to hunt down the relationship between all these cases and find his partner’s murderer!
Never say You Never Saw Nothin’!
One connection involves gangster Joe Walpo as Ripley finds his hideout through Joe’s glitz and glamorous girl friend Connie Anderson played by Martha Hyer. Joe gets gunned down, and cleared of Stewart’s killing. Connie won’t be receiving anymore shiny things in the mail anymore!
The Second link involves a car theft ring. Ripley uses Vince Angelino’s (Gene Reynolds) wife to turn on his fellow thugs when Vince finds out that they have roughed up his gentle and blind wife, Julie, played by the beautiful Marisa Pavan.
2 bit hustler and thug Matty Pavelich (Claude Akins) smacks around a nice blind girl, what a crumb!
The last and most disturbing case involves Kate Martell, the victim of an extortionist who says he’ll kidnap her little girl if she doesn’t fork over some cash. He calls using a creepy, threatening voice and sends her on wild goose chases, trying to break her down so she’ll pay the $10,0000 ransom.
Kate is played by the brassy Ruth Roman.There are a lot of dubious suspects surrounding her. The menacing uncle Max, played by Jay Adler, and the smarmy, drooling suiter Dave Milson, played by Max Showalter. How will this thriller play out in 3 dark streets!?
Starring again another likable actor Kent Smithwho plays Dr.Peter Graham a psychiatrist who works for the police department, living in a dark city anywhere U.S.A.
“We need good cops, even if you are a psychiatrist now.”
James Franciscus is a handsome young cab driver who works hard to support his expectant wife…
There’s a mysterious masher stalking women, ritualistically slicing their left cheek and stealing their purses as a trophy. Pretty gruesome for 1958 filmgoers. The mugger escapes undetected until his last victim is actually murdered! The film stars Nan Martin, a cop who goes undercover as a dime-a-dance girl, James Franciscus, and Stefan Schnabel. With bit parts by Beah Richards as a ‘maid’ (god forgive Hollywood and their ever present stereotyping) a young George Maharis as Nicholas Grecco, a possible slime ball. And the first time appearance of Renee Taylor as a cheap hussy who is physically abusive to her wormy husband.
The film uncovers a lot of unsavory characters in the dark underbelly of a city that is diseased in a way that might breed a handbag, cheek-slashing maniac! As Dr.Graham tries to draw conclusions about the sort of man who would attack these women, we meet a handful of offbeat characters along the way as the likable police psychiatrist and his woman cop girlfriend are on the track of ‘the mugger’ terrorizing the city.
Very gritty and realistic slice of psycho=sexual aggression run amok in the city and hidden secrets within a small struggling American family!
“They all had one thing in common… The terrifying night they met!”
Written for the screen by Collier Young ( Former husband to Ida Lupino and Joan Fontaine and written by Ida Lupino and directed by Don Siegel, starring Howard Duff, who plays detective Jack Farnham, an honest cop with a beautiful wife, Francey (Dorothy Malone), who loves him. His partner Cal Bruner,(Steve Cochran) is a little more dark and brooding and rough around the edges. He’s hungry for something better than suburban living with ‘pay on time’ furniture and a small backyard with a grill and a white fence.
Both detectives stumble onto the hot cash while staking out a robbery in which $300,000 was stolen. Of course, Farnham wants to turn it into Captain Michaels, played by the meditative Dean Jagger.
But Bruner has fallen hard for nightclub singer Lili Marlowe, played by the one and only Ida Lupino. She’s great as the unattainable woman who’s been burned once before and is now wearing asbestos lipstick. Cal is just too swarthy and smitten with Lili and soon, they go up in smoke!. Lily has very high expectations for herself and loves nice, shiny things. Cal wants to give her anything she wants but refuses to live like Farnham on a cop’s salary, playing a nice little suburban couple struggling to get by.
Farnum and Bruner’s relationship grows more strained as they each reflect their own personal idealism.
Number 36 refers to the locker where the money is hidden, while Farnham roils and ruminates over his dilemma.
Does he become a rat and turn in his partner, or should he do what’s expected and go to Captain Michaels with the missing money and the truth?
“These are the Night Faces…living on the edge of evil and violence…making their own.”
A man down on his luck falls in with a criminal. After a senseless murder, the two are lynched.
Directed by Cy Enfield and written for the screen by Joe Pagano, based on his novel The Condemned.
It stars Frank Lovejoyas Howard Tyler and Kathleen Ryan as Judy Tyler. Two ordinary people in this allegory about how a decent human being can be directed to do a desperate or violent act in order to survive and protect their own family. Taken over by a fanatical young con man, petty thief, and psychopath named Jerry Slocum, played by Lloyd Bridges. Slocum preys on the Tyler’s need for money, Slocum convinces Tyler to be involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes horribly wrong and ends in murder.
The narrative unfolds more deeply as a condemnation of sensationalist journalism that can incite a mob mentality which feeds off the lurid details, culminating in a destructive force, almost worse than the original crimes committed.
Richard Carlson plays Gil Stanton a newspaper man who eventually has a pang of conscience, although much too late!
The ending is quite potent, powerful and remains a stunning commentary. The imagery holds a very powerful message in the final moments of the film…
PS: it seems that both The Sound of Fury 1950 and Fury 1936 Fritz Lang’s film starring Spencer Tracy are based on the same true events -from TRIVIA IMDb:
Based upon the 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, son of the owner of Hart’s Department Store in San Jose, California. Two suspects were arrested and jailed, but a lynch mob broke into the jail, dragged out the suspects, and took them across the street to a city park, where they hanged them from a tree
I hope you get to see at least one of these lesser-known Noir/Thriller goodies!- Til next time!- Your EverLovin’ Joey
Released by Universal in 1943 Flesh and Fantasy is by brilliant director Julien Duvivier, and co-produced by CharlesBoyer, and still remains an obscure forgotten horror gem.
Fatalistic, philosophical, Impressionistic, and hauntingly romantic, it dabbles in destiny and the dynamism of fate’s meddling hand in our lives. Are we all free souls, or is life predetermined for us? Part social commentary with an edge of ironic charm, utilizing elements of the supernatural to drive the narrative.
The film revolves around 3 vignettes, the first written by Eliis St. Joseph, the second adapted from Oscar Wilde, and the third written by László Vadnay.
Turning out a collection of eerie stories told by Gentlemen at their club. The stories are framed by Robert Benchley as Doakes and David Hoffman as Davis.
The first stars Betty Field as Henrietta a dowdy woman who comes upon a mysterious mask during Mardis Gras and then goes to a party festooned with regalia, turbulence, and a romantic game of cat-and-mouse with the handsome Michael (Robert Cummings) A beautifully tragic tale of loneliness and the essence of what beauty is. The use of masks creates a nightmarish landscape of human disconnection.
The shop of mysterious masks.
The second vignette is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s, Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime, which stars Edward G. Robinson as Marshall Tyler, a lawyer who is told by a Fortune Teller Septimus Podgers (Thomas Mitchell) that he is going to kill someone. Also at the affair is Dame May Whitty as Lady Pamela Hardwick and C. Aubrey Smithas the Dean of Norwalk.
Playing out the obsessive victim, Tyler devolves ever increasingly into a world of malefic paranoia in that way that Robinson is so good at. He spirals into madness as he is surrounded by reflections and warning shadows, and an impending dread, that creates a sense of the film being a Horror/Noir hybrid. The use of shadow does invoke a bit of Jacques Tourneur’sstyle as well.
In the third installment, Charles Boyer plays an acrobat in the circus named Paul Gaspar, who has a premonition of fatal consequences surrounding his high-wire act. Gaspar has a dream one night before his performance that he falls to his death, and so he decides to take a cruise, where he meets the woman from his dream, Joan Stanley played by Barbara Stanwyck, who was the one person he could still hear screaming as he plunges to his death! This episode concludes the film with a dreamy and grim set of atmospherics.
Impressionism in Nightmares-Symbolism-and the fear of falling…
the woman in dreams, is she as unattainable in real life?
THE GREAT GASPAR: that drunken gentleman of the tightrope will walk 75ft. in the air without a net!
Flesh and Fantasy predate by two years another wonderfully suspenseful ensemble of ghostly stories, Dead of Night 1945 starring Michael Redgrave in the iconic short tale of the ventriloquist and his frightening dummy sidekick!
Never trust a guy who’s made of wood and lets you stick your hand up his shirt for no money!
There are thousands of wonderful obscurities in my collection, this is just one of them!
The Incredible Doktor Markesan played by Boris Karloff for one of Thriller’s most memorable episodes of the series!
A sign reads “NO TRESPASSING ~VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT~DokTor Konrad Markesan”
The Incredible DokTor Markesan aired Feb 26 1962 perhaps the most creepy of all the Thriller stories, originally appeared in Weird Tales Magazine and was taken from a story written by August Derleth and Mark Schorer, and adapted by Donald S Sanford and directed by Robert Florey. The rotting corpse makeup byJack Barron actually predates Romero’s 1968 Night Of The Living Dead, which I feel only made both effectively more creepy by the B&W film.
Mort Stevens’s score begins as gravely contemplative and daydreamy single notes on the piano beckon us into this episode, then begins the darker, deeper cello strings foreboding and ominous. As the piano resolves into more somber chords, the young Fred Bancroft and his new bride Molly drive up to the entrance of Oakmoor. What has happened to the broad green lawns and the servants in starched white uniforms? They proceed to enter the house, the door having been strangely left unlocked. Seemingly vacant, Oakmoor is crocheted in cobwebs, from years of neglect. There is no electricity. Fred lights a candelabra and the couple continue to search for Fred’s Uncle Konrad. As they start to ascend the staircase, suddenly a door creaks open, the music sways from ominous to severe, and a sallow, blank, expressionless, Konrad Markesan steps out of the shadows. Uncle Konrad stares up at them, ashen, emotionless, his right hand poised in a state of rigor, he stares off, silent. Fred trying to ingratiate himself awkwardly, remains smiling, excruciatingly strained in the midst of his Uncle’s peculiarly inhospitable behavior. Molly acutely more aware of his uncle’s bizarre presence stands there obviously horrified and uncomfortable while Fred still flounders to make a connection with his relative. Molly chirps out a “Hello” and from the moment Fred holds out his hand to shake his Uncle’s, Markesan turns away and says “Come with me” and proceeds to leave the grand hallway.
Release date -Nov. 17, 1961 Episode directed by Anton Leader, written by Rod Serling and starring Lois Nettleton as Norma and Betty Garde as Mrs. Bronson.
When the Earth falls out of orbit, two women try to cope with increasingly oppressive heat in a nearly abandoned city.
Charlton Heston plays Army doctor Robert Neville, a lone man living in post apocalyptic solitary urban confinement amidst a burned out Los Angeles, Foraging for supplies by day, and fending off a siege of mutated vampiric survivors by night.
Neville crusades to hold onto his humanity while struggling to create a cure for the plague that wiped out most of the human race.The film is pure 70s driven cautionary tale with a fantastic cast and some great nail biting scenes. One of my favorites from the decade!
Based on the novel ‘I Am Legend’ by Richard Matheson and directed by Boris Sagal (The man responsible for Rod Serling’s (TV series Pilot)"“ Night Gallery (1969) (segment “The Cemetery”) a favorite piece of television horror for me!
Anthony Zerbeplays Matthias the cult leader of the plague ridden remnants of civilization, who’s fanatical quest to conquer Neville and make him one of them is chilling.
The film also stars the wonderful Rosalind Cash as Lisa, Neville’s potential ‘Eve’ in the new garden of Eden he desperately tries to create, if he can perfect the anti-dote to the plague in time! Neville is framed as a Jesus figure at the end of the film.
Matheson’s story had been screened in the 1964 starring Vincent Price as Dr. Robert Morgan. The Last Man on Earth is powerfully evocative and unnerving, and holds up as a great bit of visual story telling even today.
Vincent Price in The Last Man On Earth based on Matheson’s I Am Legend
“Pray for the last man alive. Because he’s not alone.”
European Director/Provocateur Roger Vadim(And God Created Woman 1956, Barbarella 1968, Spirits of The Dead 1968, Pretty Maids All In A Row 1971) adapts Sheridan Le Fanu’s tale of sensuality, jealous Obsession, and Vampirism.
The Gorgeous Annette Vadim is ‘Carmilla’ Karnstein who is jealous of her cousin Leopoldo de Karnstein’s (Mel Ferrer) upcoming engagement to the beautiful Georgia Monteverdi (Elsa Martinelli).
Carmilla’s fixation manifests itself in the form of a female ancestor who is a vampire, which possesses her thus beginning a siege of terror at the family estate, culminating in a surreal and stunning bloodbath.
Stumbling onto the ancestral tomb! Is it real or imagined?
This is a beautiful cinematic horror film… a surreal journey that is at times told in dream-like sequences that are utter visual feasts for the Gothic soul. Blood and Roses has some of the most memorable imagery, and tastefully lensed eroticism, especially for ‘Lesbian Vampire’ aficionados. One of my favorite classic Euro horror films of the 1960s.
An ex-Nazi mad scientist uses radio-controlled atomic-powered zombies in his quest to help an exiled American gangster return to power.
Starring Richard Denning and is Directed by one of my faves Edward L Cahn(It!, The Terror From Outer Space -1958 Invisible Invaders 1959, and The Four Skulls of Jonathon Drake 1959) Story and Screenplay by the great Curt Siodmak (Black Friday 1940, The Wolfman 1941 and I Walk With A Zombie 1943)
SNAP… CRACKLE… POP!!!!!!
“A dead man walks the streets to stalk his prey! So terrifying only screams can describe it!”
Directed by Jack Clayton (Room at The Top 1959, Something Wicked This Way Comes 1983) and based on the Gothic novel set in Victorian England The Turn of The Screw by Henry James. Adapted for the screen by William Archibald and Truman Capote!
Starring the great refined lady of cinema Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddens, the sexually repressed governess to two impish children Miles and Flora played masterfully by Martin Stephens (Village of The Damned 1960) and Pamela Franklin (Legend of Hell House 1973, And Soon The Darkness 1970 plus too numerous films and television series appearances!)
Miss Giddens is hired by the children’s uncle (Michael Redgrave) to hold the reigns over them at their isolated estate, assisted by Mrs Grose, (Megs Jenkins) the kindly housekeeper.
Shortly after Miss Giddens takes charge, she is soon haunted by visitations from the spirits of the former governess Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop) and her lover, the sadistic valet Peter Quint (Peter Wyngarde)
Convinced that they are possessing the souls of the children. Giddens sets out to exorcise these ominous characters, but at what risk?
Is she truly seeing ghosts or is she spiraling into a world of utter madness?
An absolutely stunning chiller that is not only nihilistic in its atmospherics but darkly riveting til the very end!
“Apparitions? Evils? Corruptions?”
“A strange new experience in shock.”
Here is the song mash-up I did use my piece off the album Fools and Orphans called I Shudder For The Clouds Have Tempted Madness & scenes from The Innocents (1961)!
Nothing is creepier than ventriloquists and their faithful dummies. Here is directorRichard Attenborough’s taut thriller starring the ever brilliantAnthony Hopkins as Corky Withers and the voice of Fats his ruthless wooden pal, the sexyAnn -Margret and the always wonderfully drollBurgess Meredith. Based on the novel by William Goldman
A ventriloquist is at the mercy of his vicious dummy while he tries to renew a romance with his high school sweetheart.
