A leather-clad female alien named Nyah (Patricia Laffan), armed with a raygun and accompanied by a menacing robot, comes to Earth to collect Earth’s men for breeding. Wow heady stuff from the UK! Starring Hazel Court, Adrienne Corri, and Hugh McDermott.
Michael Carter: Mrs. Jamieson, may I introduce your latest guest? Miss Nyah. She comes from Mars. Mrs. Jamieson: Oh, well, that’ll mean another bed.
A consummate entry in the film noir canon Directed by John Farrow, starring two of my favorite actors the rugged Robert Mitchum, the sublime Claude Rains, and the very lovelyFaith Domergue as the movie’s femme fatale.
A young doctor falls in love with a fatal attraction, a disturbed young woman, who becomes involved in the death of her husband and has to flee with her to the Mexican border.
“She’s tempting in a penthouse and dangerous in a border town dive!”
A young woman with psychic abilities (Carolyn Kearney – Molly Bancroft in one of the most eerie and atmospheric of -Boris Karloff’sThriller the episodeThe 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!”
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.
This is one of my all time favorite Movie of the Week offerings from the 70s starring Kim Darby who inherits a family house with husband Jim Hutton and becomes taunted by little demons who live in the darkness and want her to stay with them forever! Directed by John Newland
“Something like this little ferocious animal grabbed at my dress”
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.
A bit of film noir by director Sidney Gilliat. Also known as Fortune is A Woman (UK) Starring Arlene Dahl, Jack Hawkins and Dennis Price, Ian Hunter and Christopher Lee!
An insurance investigator runs into an ex-girlfriend, who is still as beautiful as he remembered her but is now married. He soon finds himself involved in arson, blackmail and murder.
Starring Barbara Stanwyck ,Robert Taylor, Lloyd Bochner, Hayden Rorke and Marjorie Bennett
A woman (Barbara Stanwyck) is haunted by recurring nightmares, involving a dream lover played by Lloyd Bochner and her freakish looking blind late husband (Hayden Rorke) who supposedly died in a fire in his locked laboratory. A great chiller from William Castle the master showman!
This putrid endeavor by schlockmeister Larry Buchanan, doesn’t even apply to the “it’s so bad it’s good” category. It’s just purely awful. And so here at The Last Drive In it has earned the Barney Fife Takes a Great Big Axe and Pow Pow Pow! to this horrible bit of film schlocking.”
But what did I expect…When I couldn’t even make it past 20 minutes of Buchanan’s other unnecessary remake The Eye Creatures 1965 which was a re do of Invasion of The Saucer Men 1957 . Or his other schlocky “Story of a Witch Who Became Restless in Her Grave” The Naked Witch 1961.
This is director Larry Buchanan's ludicrous and at times offensive remake of Ed L Cahn's Voodoo Woman 1957.
Ed L Cahn’s Voodoo Woman
It’s truly an awful piece of junk, that actually made my brain hurt and my body ache to have to sit and watch it all the way through in order to distinguish it with the Pow Pow Pow Award.
It’s also sad that John Agar actually participated in this project or any other Buchanan project, not that he’s a great thespian of the stage and theater. Not that his film credits add up to an impressive career. His presence does lend that certain warmth, a familiar face amidst the B-movie debris. Unfortunately here, he doesn’t contribute any charisma, or plausibility to the plot at all. He appeared to be tagging along with the rest of the cast, as if he was just waiting around in between scene changes like a burned out accountant waiting to do their taxes. Was Buchanan blackmailing Agar? Why else would he do this film.
The film tone, I don’t mean atmosphere, I mean HUE, itself has a greenish coating over it as if director of photography Ralph K Johnson went crazy with a Roscolux #90: Dark Yellow Green lighting gel, which made the film green and murky rather than moody. Was it a queer arty attempt at Day for Night.
There are retro horror/sci fi films that have a certain charm because they took themselves seriously and didn’t realize that they were making fools of themselves. The narratives filled with an intense passion that couldn’t be pulled off, still giving it a kind of quirky likability. Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space for instance. Ed Wood’s films in general for that matter.
The Man Who Lived Again (1936) A forgotten British Gem from Gainsborough Pictures, was released on Sept. 11, 1936
it is also known as The Man Who Changed His Mind or by its US title Dr. Maniac Who Lived Again, or Dr. Maniac. Directed by Robert Stevenson.
Starring a chain-smoking Boris Karloff and pairing him with Anna Lee playing Dr. Clara Wyatt, Lee who would 10 years later co-star alongside him again as antagonists in the intensely riveting horror/noir film Bedlam(1946) Directed by Mark Robson and produced and scripted by the great man of shadow plays Val Lewton.
Anna Lee and Boris Karloff in Mark Robson’s/Val Lewton’s masterpiece Bedlam
Karloff plays Dr. Laurience a once brilliant and revered brain surgeon, turned renegade scientist, shunned by the scientific community, for his esoteric and profane ideas about the human brain. Dr. Laurience has created a way to transpose the mind of one person and place it into the body of another. In other words, Soul Transference. A very sacrilegious concept for his fellow scientists to support, without believing that Laurience is utterly insane. In this film, Karloff adheres more to the persona of the gruff Mad Scientist, rather than some of his other sympathetic roles as the misdirected man of science who meets with various obstructions and the unfortunate string of events. For instance, the kindly and altruistic Dr John Garth who is on death row for a mercy killing, in Before I Hang (1940)
The fabulous Musical Direction by Louis Levy and Art Direction by Vetchinksky has a charmingly nostalgic streak of that early 1930s milieu of the sinister.
Also starring is Cecil Parker as Dr. Gratton and Lyn Harding as Professor Holloway.
