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.
Singer/Songwriter Jo Gabriel is MonsterGirl. Here I offer my song ” Mother May I?” off my 2005 album release through Kalinkaland Records (Germany). This is my tribute to all of us girl/boys, who refuse to define our gender and continue to dance to the wonderfully androgynous rhythm of life…!
I use a mixed film mash up this time to tell my story…
Here’s to all of us ‘wild childs’ be free and continue to dance to your own song….
Dedicated to my mother, Arleen Gottfried September 8, 1928 – September 19th 2011
Film Footage Credits
Special Nod to an extraordinary found gem : A short film by Rich Ragsdale called “The Sandman” (2007) based on ETA Hoffman http://www.knr-productions.com/ This is Rich Ragsdale’s Production Company!
Legend by Ridley Scott 1985 The Passion of Joan of Arc by Carl Theodor Dreyer 1928 1920 Cabinet of Dr Caligari starring Conrad Veidt Louise Brooks in 1929 Pandora’s Box by GW Pabst March of the Wooden Soldiers or Babes In Toyland 1934 Lord of The Flies 1963 based on William Golding’s novel Vintage Footage 1940s Alyce Bryce ” Jungle Drums”
From the short film ‘The Sandman’ by Rich Ragsdale…
A Cyborg or “Clicker” – “My circuits are unoffended”
In this post-nuclear holocaust society, there are underlying social ramifications for humans engaging ‘in rapport’ with cyborgs. The end of civilization is near and there are shadow groups like The Flesh and Blooders who want to keep the world pure. Is merging machine, artificial intelligence, the soul, memory, and our very species being moral and is it imperative?
How will man survive, with an inability to bare children, their race inevitably dying out, will the cyborgs be the next evolutionary process?
Creation of the Humanoids is a mind-blowing philosophical sci-fi experience with not-so-covert racial and class implications embedded in the narrative.
A Little Background Storyon a very smart, funny and gutsy guy:
Joe Bob Briggs, is a legendary television host, syndicated American writer, film critic, comic performer, actor, and all around patron saint of the lost art of the Drive In Movie Theater. He started out his career as a movie reviewer at Texas Monthly and The Dall Times Herald.
It was while working at the Herald that alias John Irving Bloom created his dynamic persona as Joe Bob Briggs, who’s satirical commentary on the ‘Exploitation’ movie genre gave birth to an unapologetic, unrelenting, proud male chauvinist, non conforming and rebellious redneck who holds a sentimental gestalt for Drive In movie theaters and their schlocky largesse , the relic of a time when the B movie was a sanctified art form as far as us horror movie freaks and geeks are concerned.
Joe Bob payed a humorous homage in his reviews to those by gone days of cult films and drive-in movies as he distinguished them from “indoor bullshit.”
From Wikipedia:
In addition to his usual parody of urbane, high-brow movie criticism, his columns characteristically include colorful tales of woman-troubles and high-spirited brushes with the law, tales which inevitably conclude with his rush to catch a movie at a local drive-in, usually with female companionship. The reviews typically end with a brief rating of the “high points” of the movie in question, including the types of action (represented by nouns naming objects used in fight scenes suffixed with –fu), the number of bodies, number of female breasts bared, the notional number of pints of blood spilled, and for appropriately untoward movies a “vomit meter”.A typical such concluding paragraph would be, “No dead bodies. One hundred seventeen breasts. Multiple aardvarking. Lap dancing. Cage dancing. Convenience-store dancing. Blindfold aardvarking. Blind-MAN aardvarking. Lesbo Fu. Pool cue-fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Tane McClure. Joe Bob says check it out.” “Aardvarking” is Brigg’s euphemism for sexual intercourse.
This is a little dialogue with one of Joe’s counting bits from the show featuring The Evil Dead 2:
Thanks to Intricate Idiot he caught my brain fart as I accidentally tagged the dialogue below as having come from Evil Dead 2 when of course it was from Phantasm 2. The Tall Man geez, MonsterGirl thanks them for that eagle eye correction!
“It has 3 Flying Silver Balls instead of the one in the original flick and a severed hand instead of a levitating severed finger, but otherwise it’s the same deal, The Tall Man is taking corpses down to his mortuary and turning them into killer midget monks again! So lets take a look at those drive in totals…We’ve got:
12 Dead Bodies, an exploding house, one four barreled squared off shot gun, dwarf tossing, 10 breasts. Course those are scissored out of the TNT version. Embalming needles plunged through various parts of various bodies, one motor vehicle chase with ‘crash and burn’, Ear lopping, forehead drilling, wrist hacking, bimbo flinging, grandma bashing, devil sex, crematorium fu, flame thrower fu”- Joe Bob
Although Joe Bob’s reviews covered Drive In movies, he eventually expanded his humorous tongue in cheek commentary to Video and DVD releases.
In July of 1985 Joe Bob debuted his one man show in Cleveland which was a mixture of story telling, comedy and music. Originally called An Evening With Joe Bob Briggs eventually it turned into Joe Bob Dead In Concert. He performed in over fifty venues over the course of two years.
What evolved from the stage show in 1986 was his television guest hosting of Drive In Theater, which was a late night B movie show on the cable network’s The Movie Channel. There he became so popular that he was signed to a long term contract. Joe Bob did the movie introductions also included The Mail Girl Honey Gregory. Drive In had become the network’s highest-rated show that ran for almost ten years, and was twice nominated for the industry’s Cable ACE Award. Joe Bob began appearing on numerous talk shows and became quite the late night celebrity. Joe joked that “calling her Honey probably pissed off the FemiNazi’s who wrote him letters and hated women being called honey,” so it was fun that, Honey was her real name.
I had a similar experience with a group of uptight grad students reading me the riot act for calling my redneck neighbor Bubba, who blew up his garage deep frying a turkey, until I informed them that Bubba was in fact his given name…geez people, take a Valium.
When the network changed their formatting in 1996, it wasn’t long before Joe Bob joined TNT where he began to host Monstervision, which he did for four years ending in July 2000 after once again the network changed it’s formatting.In the late nineties he spent two seasons as a commentator on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and he starred inFrank Henenlotter(Basketcase 1982) documentary Hershell Gordon LewisGodfather of Gore.
Recently, Joe Bob has appeared in several interviews on the cult movie web site Mondo VideoÂ
Joe Bob has stayed active as a writer, freelancing for such publications as The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Interview and Playboy. He was the regular humor columnist and theater critic at the National Review and has published 5 books of satire. Joe Bob Briggs’ movie reviews are collected in the now out-of-print books, Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In, and Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive-In. He has also penned, The Cosmic Wisdom of Joe Bob Briggs, Iron Joe Bob and A Guide to Western Civilization, or My Story.
Until 1998 Joe Bob had two syndicated columns in The New York Times. Joe Bob Goes to the Drive- In and Joe Bob’s America. Though he had retired from writing his reviews, it was the popular demand to hear his point of view, that got him to start up the “Drive-In column again in 2000 this time for United Press International.
He also began another column called “The Vegas Guy, which was Joe Bob’s weekly excursion to the casino world.
In 2003 he gave us the books Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed HistoryandProfoundly Erotic: Sexy Movies that Changed History.
Joe Bob has returned to TNT to host MonsterVision horror movie marathons. He appears live at various spooky conventions and does guest appearances to raise awareness for the need to bring back The Drive-In movie theater or just to spread the joy of the B movie schlock we all love.
Briggs has contributed audio commentaries to DVDs which include some favorites Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Warlock Moon,I Spit On Your Grave, and several Ray Dennis Steckler films including The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies.
Joe still actively runs his internet website, where you can follow his exploits around the country, read a collection of movie reviews. There’s Damn Good Writing, MonsterVision, Joe Bob writing as John Bloom, The Vegas Guy, Advice For The Hopeless, Book Reviews and Interviews and so much more! Like his very popular “If You’re Not a Catholic Please Shut Up!”
You can also purchase his out of print books from his website too!!!!
MonsterGirl- (Jo Gabriel)
“I used to watch Monstervision on TNT and became an instant fan of yours. I thought you were hilarious and pretty sexy too!"¦
I loved what you were doing for classic and B horror films, having grown up with Chiller Theater and that adorable claymation hand that pops up and starts articulating those decaying fleshy 6 fingers to the creepy 70s sound effects. I consider your presence as a part of my trajectory as MonsterGirl.”
The Question!
“As a savvy film guy who knows how to do a proper breast count , why do you think it always comes as a shock to most people that chicks actually love horror films?
There are gazillions of us intelligent estrogen flingers who know more critical theory about the classic horror and cult film genres than a lot of dudes with bad mullets.
What’s your sage opinion on this phenomena?”
– MonsterGirl (Jo Gabriel)
The Answer!
Joe Bob Briggs-
“Joey,
The horrorchick is a relatively recent phenomenon and public perception hasn’t caught up yet. Ad campaigns for classic horror films were always directed at males, under the theory that it was the guy who chose the movie on date night. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a female audience before, it just means that they came out of the closet in the nineties and there are still more male horror fans than female.”
Thank you big guy! Your Chick Fan with a breast count of two, Joey MonsterGirl!
PS as an ironic follow up to this post, just this week I took a screen capture of Google. It seems they think I am a young boy, in terms of my film and cultural tastes….Hhmm talk about your blind sample!
Of Circean poison and intoxicating things. When dealing with The Gods, the result is suffering.
The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk (air date December 18, 1961)
StarringJo Van Fleet as Mrs. Cissy Hawk, John Carradine as Jason Longfellow, Paul Newlanas Sheriff Tom’Ulysses’ Willetts, Hal Baylor as Pete Gogan, and Bruce Dern as Johnny Norton. Directed by John Brahm and adapted to the screen by Donald Sanford from a story by Margaret St Clair
“What beast-molding Drakaina [Kirke] shall he [Odysseus] not behold, mixing drugs with the meal, and beast-shaping doom? And they, hapless ones, bewailing their fate shall feed in the pig styes, crunching grape stones mixed with grass and oil cake. But him the drowsy root shall save from harm and the coming of Ktaros [Hermes].”
Here is yet another favorite episode in the Thriller canon that always brings a smile to my face, even having seen it a number of times over the years. One of the most memorable and striking attributes that most of Karloff’s macabre little theatrical plays possess is an uncannily vivid sense of place, despite them having been filmed on a sound stage at Universal Studios.
Not only is this particular episode so effective because of Jo Van Fleet’s performance as the modern-day witch but it’s also due to the presence of the ubiquitous John Carradine, whose facial expressions alone can be so accentuated by his acrobatic facial expressions that make him so uniquely entertaining to watch not to mention listening to his Shakespearean elucidations, hard-bitten insights, and crafty machinations.
Not unlike the great Burgess Meredith. These actors both, use their faces as their canvas.
It’s a very interesting idea to take mythology and place it in a southern Gothic rural setting, alongside the carnival which adds a layer of mystique.
There’s a great scene that utilizes theatrical anachronism wonderfully. Cissy Hawk carries the bowl, or ‘Circe’s cup’ the night she feeds the pigs grapes and turns Johnny back into a man for a while. An ancient rite on modern rural farm land.
Another thing that’s notable is her wand is a plastic back scratcher!
The mixture of the playful score, clarinet, flute, and the grunts and groans and deep bassy string swells in contradiction adds such a maniacally macabre touch to the episode.
