Coming soon to The Last Drive-In “Ida Lupino:The Iron Maiden – “Women’s Prison (1955) & Women in Chains (1972)

Who doesn’t love a good teeth grinding ‘Women in Prison’ movie! I know I can’t resist. And so I thought I’d pay a little tribute to two fabulous guilty pleasures of mine starring actress/director Ida Lupino!

The incredible Ida Lupino

I’ll go further in depth as to Ida Lupino’s extraordinary contributions to film and television when I do the full post!

The first film Women’s Prison 1955 is a taut Prison Film Noir piece starring the ineffable Ida Lupino who gives a stunning portrayal of a brutally sadistic prison warden Amelia van Zandt who holds sway over these chained women, slowly exposing herself to be a psychotic, as she institutes her savage brand of rehabilitation!

The film stars Jan Sterling as Brenda Martin

 Cleo Moore

Audrey Totter as Joan Burton

Phyllis Thaxter  (One of my favorite character actresses)as Helene Jensen a nice girl in prison on the verge of an irreversible nervous breakdown!

Juanita Moore as Polly Jones

Mae Clarke as Matron Saunders

and Lupino’s real life  husband Howard Duff as the sympathetic Dr. Crane and Warren Stevens as Glen Burton the man who can’t keep his mitts off his fellow inmate wife!

“Sensational scandal rocks women’s prison!

Women’s Prison (1955)

Then once again…now in that glorious made for tv color!!!!!!

Lupino reprises her role as the equally brutal Claire Tyson in THE ABC MOVIE OF THE WEEK !!!!!!!

The film stars 70s tv and drama staples Lois Nettleton , Jessica Walter, and Belinda Montgomery

Lois Nettleton plays parole officer Sally Porter who goes undercover to expose prison brutality at the hands of the vicious matron Clair Tyson! The film also stars Neile Adams, Hazel Medina, Kathy Cannon, BarBara Luna and the great Lucille Benson.

Women in Chains (1972) tv movie

Also coming here at the Drive-In Part 2 of Screaming Mimi and MonsterGirl Asks Film Scholar Aviva Briefel

A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! ABC Movie of the Week special promo

If you’re like me and remember fondly looking forward to the offerings of The ABC Movie of the Week, which was a feast of great 70s directors, writers, film stars and character actors. Stories of mystery, suspense and often the supernatural. Even a few ground breaking stories that featured taboo narratives for it’s day. Here’s a little taste of yesterday…!

ABC Movie of the Week featuring clips from

Run Simon Run 1970

Women In Chains 1972

Ida Lupino revising her role as yet another psychotic iron maiden warden of a women’s prison!

And No One Could Save Her 1973

The Longest Night 1972

Duel 1971


Snatched 1973

Howard Duff and Christopher George in 1973s Snatched

Divorce His Divorce Hers 1973

Happy Trailers MonsterGirl

Sure as my name is MonsterGirl, This is a Boris Karloff’s Thriller ” Rose’s Last Summer”

Yet another underrated Karloff Thriller episode in brief. Yes, I know, I”m long-winded, and if you had to wait for me to do the whole transcription for some of these wonderful shows and films, I’d never write anything. I am trying to be disciplined here. Less photo work, less rambling on, and more to the gist of the story!

But don’t get too comfy with my brevity, The long-winded MonsterGirl lurks around the corner to sweep you up with 2 part series and photo galleries that could fill an entire album. That’s just how I roll, and I truly hope most of you take me as I am…!

Rose’s Last Summer -release date October 11 1960

“They Called Me “Bad Girl” – Rose French

Karloff begins his opening soliloquy…

“Rose French. in the blur of memory…the face grows dim…but do you remember the name….20 years ago…Rose French, the remarkable Rose French. As a servant girl, or as a princess. She was a quicksilver star in celluloid heaven. If a woman could sell her soul to achieve such fame, what wouldn’t she do to get it back? Poor Rose, that was all she wanted, to relive the past. And those who loved her, Frank Clyde for instance could do nothing to stop her, but the comeback trail could lead to strange and sinister places. To a lonely garden. And to a night of terror!

It could even lead to the face of a painted doll…but the comeback trail is a journey without maps…as sure as my name is Boris Karloff…Poor Rose French and her last desperate summer…That’s the name of our story ROSE’S LAST SUMMER. Our principal players are Ms. Mary Astor, Mr. Lin McCarthy, and Miss Helen Quintal …

Let me assure you this is a THRILLER!”

Starring Mary Astor as Rose French/Mrs. Horace Goodfield/Helen Quintal. This teleplay would poetically mirror Astor’s personal journey as a Hollywood movie star whose life took a different direction, one mixed with alcohol and scandal.

Lin McCarthy as Frank Clyde, Jack Livesey as Haley Dalloway, Hardie Albright as Willet Goodfield, Dorothy Green as Ethel Goodfield

In the beginning scenes of Roses Last Summer we see a weary yet unrestrained drunk, an uninhibited woman who looks like she’s got a mad on at the world, stumbling outside a night crawlers bar. She’s having an argument with the bar owner who apparently has thrown her out of his establishment. After spouting a few barbs at the place, she takes off her shoe and throws it through the glass window with neon letters that spell BAR.

She then stumbles in front of a moving truck which strikes her down in the street. A crowd gathers around her unconscious body. Someone picks up a snapshot of her from her handbag and announces, that this is no ordinary lush, this is the once famous but now aged star of the silver screen Rose French. An intense and curious man in the throng of street faces begins looking suspiciously at poor Rose splayed out on the asphalt.

But this is just the beginning of the story.

Continue reading “Sure as my name is MonsterGirl, This is a Boris Karloff’s Thriller ” Rose’s Last Summer””

A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice (1969)

What Ever Happened To Aunt Alice? (1969)

From the wickedly penetrating mind of Robert Aldrich and his production company comes yet another Hag Cinema obscurity and a consummate Women in Peril movie starring impishly resplendent actress Ruth Gordon and the intensely razor-edged Geraldine Page, in this confrontational psychological thriller of matching wits.

Directed by Lee H. Katzin, ( Along Came A Spider 1970) and uncredited Bernard Girard  (Dead Heat on A Merry Go Round 1966, The Mad Room 1969, and several of the most powerful episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 1962-64 )

Based on the novel The Forbidden Garden by Ursula Curtiss, penned for the screen by Theodore Apstein.

The casting is perfect, with not only the two brilliant ladies mentioned above but includes the wonderful Mildred Dunnock, Rosemary Forsyth, Robert Fuller, and Joan Huntington.

Ruth Gordon performs the inquisitive and determined Aunt Alice Dimmock, who takes on the job of housekeeper for the iron widow Geraldine Page as Claire Marrable who maniacally tends to her garden. Alice goes undercover as the widow’s helper in order to find out what happened to a missing widowed friend, Edna Tilsney ( Mildred Dunnock).

Claire Marrable is a tightly wound, biting, and ruthless serial killer who is left only a stamp collection by her husband, thus resorting to stealing money from her housekeepers, killing them, and burying the bodies in her lovely garden.

All *kinds* of observable differences: The world of Ruth Gordon

“What makes her garden grow… wouldn’t you like to know!”

Happy Trailers MonsterGirl!

Screaming Mimi (1958) Part 1: Ripper vs Stripper…

Screaming Mimi 1958 starring Anita Ekberg


Anita Ekberg-Actress, Goddess and kitten lover!

Yolanda and her Great Dane known as “DEVIL” ouch!!!!!!!!!!

Screaming Mimi 1958 A psycho-sexual KINKY/ FILM NOIR, Starring the Swedish Love Goddess Anita Ekberg, Phil Carey, Gyspsy Rose Lee, Harry Townes, and features the music of The Red Norvo Trio

Screen Play by Robert Blees Based on the book by pulp writer,  Frederic Brown.

Frederic Brown- Mystery Pulp Novelist

Frank A.Tuttle is responsible for the ultra realism set direction (From Here To Eternity, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, Elmer Gantry ,The Caine Mutiny, Straight Jacket and Dead Heat on A Merry Go Round, Marooned and Thriller's Dark Legacy episode "˜61) Not to be confused with director Frank W. Tuttle This Gun For Hire 1942, A Cry in The Night 1956. The musical score is conducted by Mischa Bakaleinikoff.

This film to me falls under my definition of the noir canon. It's extremely stark use of counter black and white space. The distinctive style that uses prominent shadow and brightly contrasting whites. The crime theme, psycho-sexual component with several unsavory or damaged personality types. The coded gay characters, such as her step brother Weston and Gypsy Rose Lee's character “Joann ‘Gypsy’ Masters and younger lover, who waits tables at El Madhouse. The Identity crisis. These are all methods of the film noir canon, especially the beautiful black-and-white noir cinematography of Burnett Guffey, And a shower scene that predates Hitchcock’s Psycho 1960 by 2 years!

It is said that Dario Argento’s iconic Giallo film Bird With The Crystal Plumage 1970 is loosely based on Brown’s book. The Screaming Mimi is a mystery novel by pulp writer Fredric Brown. It was first published in 1949.

  • Describing a female individual who screams a lot.
  • A nickname for the Nebelwerfer, a piece of German World War II rocket artillery.

A Quick Overview:

Exotic dancer Virginia Wilson almost dies at the hands of an escaped maniac with a big knife. He attacks her while she is in the outside shower stall on her step-brothers property. Brother Charlie Watson sees what’s happening and shoots the killer dead in front of the traumatized Virginia. She is put into an institution under the care of Dr. Greenwood a psychiatrist who tries at first to administer therapy until he becomes obsessed with his beautiful patient.

He falls in obsessive/love with her and begins to takes over her life, having a Svengali like hold over her consciousness. After changing her name to Yolanda, she insists on continuing her career and winds up as the newest rage at the El Madhouse nightclub. The club’s sassy owner is portrayed by Gypsy Rose Lee who plays ‘Gypsy’. The traumatized Virginia is suspected of a series of murders with one common theme. There is an element of fetish as, each victim had purchased a contorted sculpture of a woman called the Screaming Mimi. This sculpture happens to have been created by her step-brother Charlie, you know, the one who was also responsible for shooting her attacker. Now enter the picture  handsome columnist Bill Sweeny who falls for Virginia/Yolanda, knowing that she is hiding a deep dark secret, and sets out to uncover the truth! And so the film goes, with all it’s fabulous cheap thrills and B-Movie appeal. And a Great Dane known as ‘Devil”….!

The Ocean crashes against the rocks, the foamy surf is narrated by satiny whispering flutes and French horn. A contorted statue of a highly stylized feminine form, overemphasizing her breasts and what Jung considered her anima, the inward subconscious primal essence, thrusts itself to the forefront of the screen! A bluesy jazz trail of horns bring the credits along. Directed by Gerd Oswald (The Outer Limits original series 1963, A Kiss Before Dying 1956 and Crime of Passion 1957) This is an interesting period in film making of the 50s that is fresh because Gerd Oswald allows the film’s direction to touch on several kinky items such as perversion, Fetish, bondage, homosexuality and a Lesbian subtext, amour fou and serial killers. The film creates several varying viewpoints, the Male Gaze, the female Gaze and the Collective Voyeur.

The waves break against shore, bringing with the tide, the figure of a beautiful blonde goddess, emerging from the water, as if being spit out of the primordial blue rapturous ocean's mouth. Running up the sands to greet her little terrier who stands waiting patiently then running along side his girl, up the stone stairway from the sandy beach, now in the lead.

The mood is blissful, hazy, and untroubled. He leads her to the outdoor wooden shower stall. She is glistening, washed by the recent swim, her gorgeous white teeth bare a maiden's smile. Her little dog in a pointer's stance, becomes rigid in the brush, sensing something or someone rustling in the bushes. He starts to bark at the unseen presence. She laughs and tells Rusty not to get so excited, that it's just a rabbit. But we can see far left of the screen a shadowing figure at first a black form, and then starting to emerge. As Rusty starts to confront the figure, the screen switches back to the girl. Off-screen the little dog cries out in distress, and her beautiful face begins to tighten.

The dark form, becomes a grimy, grubby, sweaty man, now straightening up from a crouch, a wildly disheveled fiend who stands up but makes no sound, apparently just having killed Rusty, now setting his burning stare upon naked Virginia with merely the beach worn wooden shower between her and her attacker. She screams in abject terror, framed by the shower, her black swimsuit, and lace panties hang over the edge, her underthings dangling there, letting us know that she is vulnerable. She is laid bare. He begins to move closer unaffected by her screams. In the foreground a shorter, older-looking gentleman is aroused by the screams, and walks out onto the front porch, realizing what is happening we see him run back into the house. As the attacker draws closer to Virginia, we see the back of his soiled shirt read HIGHLAND SANITARIUM. He is an escapee from the local lunatic asylum, and now he's wielding a large butcher’s knife about to strike out at the defenseless girl.

The Screen shot shows us a hairy hand puddled with blood as he holds the knife as close to her face. The screams still escaping her beautiful lips, her blonde hair still salt curled from the ocean.Is the blood from her little dog Rusty? He again thrusts the large blade toward her, but we are shielded by the wooden shower stall. She tries to push herself out of the stall. Pushing toward her attacker still screaming, oblivious to the blood stained knife, pushing pushing the door, trying to flee.

This shower scene actually predates Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho by 2 years!

Suddenly the other man on the porch Charles Weston, Virginia’s half-brother, comes out holding a rifle. He aims his gun, but the fiend manages to plunge the knife into Virginia’s chest. We see her face conform to the pain, a little weakened and stunned by the actual blow.

Out in broad daylight this horrific slaughter box on the beach, under the sun’s rays, burning the blood from red to burnt sienna, we can only imagine in this black and white film noir of twisted psychosexual regression and utter senseless barbarity. With her white creamy face, and her beautiful full lips, she sinks downward inside the wooden stall like a coffin. The musical direction is dire. The horns cry out for release.

We hear a gunshot, the shot is framed from the man’s knees down to the wooden planking of the floor, as he falls into a huddled lump of institutional denim and crazed sweat. As his back remains to us, stiff and lifeless, we see the bare feet of Virginia standing next to him. She comes out of the stall wrapped in a white robe. Clutching her head, her fingers grasping in between strands of her fear-soaked hair. The man in white approaches her. Realizing that she is holding the bloodied knife now, she drops it onto the floor, hands open and up in the air, staring down at the weapon. The man in white stands there still holding the rifle. She holds her hands up to her face and then collapses into shock.

Continue reading “Screaming Mimi (1958) Part 1: Ripper vs Stripper…”

A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! Dead Ringer 1964

Dead Ringer (1964) Starring Bette Davis & Bette Davis!

The twin sister of a callous wealthy woman murders her sister out of revenge and assumes the identity of the dead woman.

This Film Noir/ Thriller is directed by Davis’s co-star who played Jerry Durrance in Now Voyager (1942), debonair actor and director Paul Henreid (Casablanca 1942, Hollow Triumph 1942. Among over 35 titles Henreid directed one such is my favorite episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller’s The Terror in Teakwood.

Davis gives a command performance as both the wealthy and ruthless, Margaret DeLorca and modest and kindly club owner, twin Edith Phillips. The film also gives Karl Malden another chance to show off his superb acting skills as Sergeant Jim Hobbson the man who adores Edith and wants to marry her.

Also starring Philip Carey, Jean Hagen, Peter Lawford, and George Macready. Perhaps one of my favorite films of Bette Davis, and the hybrid Film Noir/Thriller as well, I plan on going in depth in the near future with a post called The Twisted Mirror which will cover psychological thrillers featuring female twin sisters.

“What Bette Davis does to Bette Davis and to Karl Malden and Peter Lawford in DEAD RINGER is just what “Baby Jane” people will adore!”

Happy Trailers MonsterGirl!

A trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! The Sentinel (1977)

The Sentinel 1977

This chilling 1970s horror film is directed by Michael Winner and based on the book by Jeffrey Konvitz, which I read when I was just a little MonsterGirl. A Scary and compelling read!

Sunday Nite Surreal: The Sentinel (1977) Even in Hell, Friendships often Blossom into Bliss!

The Sentinel stars Christina Raines, Ava Gardner, Chris Sarandon, Martin Balsam, John Carradine, Jose Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, Sylvia Miles, Deborah Raffin, Eli Wallach, Christopher Walken, Jerry Orbach, Beverly D’Angelo, and of course, Joy of all joys Burgess Meredith as Charles Chazen or more informally known as Old Scratch or The Devil!

Christina Raines plays Alison Parker, a top model, who rents a brownstone inhabited by very strange tenants. On the top floor lives a blind priest Father Halliran (John Carradine).

Has Alison been chosen to take over the dubious job of guarding the entrance to hell, which happens to be that lovely Brownstone in NYC? The location for the actual building was 10 Montague Terrace, Brooklyn Heights, I believe you can still see the ivy-covered Gothic building if you walk the promenade. The Sentinel is literally one of my top 10 favorite horror films of all time. I plan on including it in an upcoming Drive-In feature called Satan Slept Here: The Devil in Cinema: From The Devil and Daniel Webster to Rosemary’s Baby.

There are some authentically chilling scenes that will terrorize even the heartiest of filmgoers. The slow descent into Alison’s battle between life, sanity and the gates of hell opening are tautly drawn, and the presence of such terrific actors makes this such a memorable excursion into what makes for a good horror film. In particular, a perfect 70s horror film!

“There is danger everywhere…There is Evil…Evil…everywhere…Turn around Alison, look behind you, it’s HORROR…There is darkness…but watching, waiting, warding off Evil…There is hope…The Sentinel!”

Happy Trailers, MonsterGirl

A Trailer A Day Keeps the Boogeyman away! High School Hellcats 1958

High School Hellcats 1958

The Hellcats are a female gang with a bad attitude toward authority and like to terrorize everyone around them! Then Joyce moves into town. She wants to fit in so bad, she’ll do anything to belong. Suddenly it’s boys,drinking , dancing and a one way ticket to delinquency and depravity! Starring the dreamy Brett Halsey and Yvonne Fedderson.

“What must a good girl say to “belong”?

Happy Trailers-untamed MonsterGirl

A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! The Thing That Couldn’t Die 1958

A young woman with psychic abilities (Carolyn Kearney – Molly Bancroft in one of the most eerie and atmospheric of -Boris Karloff’s Thriller the episode The Incredible Doktor Markesan) discovers a centuries-old crate buried under a tree on her aunt’s ranch. In it thrives the living head of devil worshiper, Gideon Drew who was beheaded by Sir Francis Drake way back in the 16th century!

“Evil guided them to this cursed spot”

“Evil made them raise ‘The Thing’ from it’s grave!”

The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958)

Happy Trailers! MonsterGirl

Coming soon to the Drive In: Screaming Mimi (1958) Ripper vs Stripper!

Screaming Mimi 1958 An obscure Psycho/Sexual Film Noir  directed by Gerd Oswald and starring the gorgeous European love goddess Anita Ekberg as stripper Yolanda Lange. Based on the 1949 mystery novel by Frederic Brown called The Screaming Mimi a story about The Strip Tease Murder Case.