Originally called Teenage Girl Gang or Teenage Killers, this movie is everything I want out of film. If you’ve ever heard the Ministry song “So What,” you’ve heard pretty much the best lines in the movie, most importantly “I shot a cop — SO WHAT!”

This was anonymously written by Ed Wood and was the most financial successful film that he was ever associated with. It was directed by William Morgan, who mainly worked as an editor.

Paula Parkins (Jean Moorhead, Playboy Playmate of the Month for October 1955) might be the rich daughter of a newspaper editor and a socialite, but she gets her kicks by getting her galpals together and dressing like men to rob gas stations and terrorize lover’s lanes. In fact, they go so far as to assault a young man after tying up his girl Shirley. Yes, that was also Ed Wood’s cross-dressing alter ego name, which features prominently in many of his films. And yes, that woman side is being tied up so that the male side can be abused.

These girl gangsters, however, are beyond forward-thinking. You could consider them actual riot-causing girls. In another Wood-written trick, they all have names that can easily be switched from female to male: Paula could be Paul, Geraldine is Gerald, Phyllis or Phil and Georgia can easily change her name to George.

After a makeout party with some male gangsters, the girls decimate a school and even desecrate the flag, totally anarchic behavior for 1956. The cops get called in and two of the girl gang are shot and killed before Paula kills a cop in cold blood.

Finally, after a car chase, Paula crashes through a window, killing the last member of her crew and winding up in the hospital herself, where she dies giving birth to her bastard child. Her parents are denied custody because they’re unfit parents and that child goes into the system, where probably she will turn out just as bad as her mother. So what!

I watched this movie for the first time when I was a teenager and it made me murderously happy and wished that Paula and her gang were real, in my school setting things on fire and ready to slap me around.

God bless you, Ed Wood.

Rhino released this as part of their Mamie Van Doren-hosted Teenage Theater line, along with Teenage Devil Dolls, Naked Youth, Wild Guitar and High School Caesar.

You can watch this on Tubi, The Internet Archive and Amazon Prime. The American Genre Film Archive has also released a bells and whistles packed blu ray complete with a new 4K scan from the original 35mm camera negative and commentary from Frank Henenlotter and Wood biographer Rudolph Grey. Plus, it also has a 2K scan of Anatomy of a Psycho. You can get it at Amazon or Diabolik DVD.

There are so many movies worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space.

This is a movie that should have had the budget of an epic, yet had the budget of your grocery store visit. Yet it doesn’t stop trying to be that movie, no matter what.

I blame the Medved brothers who named it the “worst film ever made” in their book The Golden Turkey Awards. Wood and his film were also posthumously awarded the Golden Turkey Awards for Worst Director Ever and Worst Film. Many of the people who think of this as a bad movie have never seen it.

If you’ve seen it on TV, you may laugh about seeing the boom mics and pieces of the other film equipment. Wood never intended for this to happen. Plan 9 was composed and shot for the 1.85:1 aspect ratio theatrical projection, the predominant widescreen format of its day. It was never intended to be seen in a 1.33:1 open matte aspect ratio or on a TV screen. Then again, Wood also incorporated stock footage as well as other film he’d shot of Lugosi in the 1:33:1 format, so everything looks cropped improperly.

The film begins with Criswell, one of Wood’s friends, playing the narrator, starting things off by saying, “Greetings my friends! We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives!” Jeron Criswell King — The Amazing Criswell — grew up in a troubled family in Indiana where he learned to sleep in a coffin.

At some point in the mid-50’s, Criswell began buying time on Los Angeles TV channel KLAC Channel 13, selling his Criswell Family Vitamins. At some point, he started filling out dead air on the show by proclaiming predictions for the future. Eventually, this made him something of a celebrity and even friends with Mae West (who sold him her old luxury cars for as little as five dollars), appearances on The Jack Paar Show and a writing career that included a weekly syndicated newspaper colum and three books, including From Now to the Year 2000, Your Next Ten Years and Forbidden Predictions. In these books, he predicted that a laser beam would destroy Denver, that cannibalism would become commonplace and that the world would end on August 18, 1999. Sadly, Criswell died 17 years before he could see if that prediction would come true. Supposedly, he claimed that JFK wouldn’t run for re-election because something would happen in November 1963 and friends like Maila Nurmi  — who are we to deny Vampira herself, may I ask you? — claimed he really as a psychic.

He also appeared in two other Wood-related films, Orgy of the Dead and Night of the Ghouls. In this film, he literally says “my friends” four times in under a minute and speaks in his typical televangelist style. I also adore that the judge from TV’s Divorce Court, Bob Shields, was Criswell’s announcer.

Man, I could talk about Criswell all day and how he predicted Mae West and Liberace’s brother would go to the moon with him or how his wife had a dog she was convinced was her cousin Thomas reincarnated or that Mae West actually recorded a song about him, but we gotta get back to this movie.

“Can your heart stand the shocking facts about graverobbers from outer space?”

After a funeral, a UFO causes a plane to nearly crash. That same UFO lands at a graveyard and causes the dead — Vampira! — to rise and kill the gravediggers. The old man, distraught at the loss of his wife, steps in front of a car and kills himself. And that’s how Bela Lugosi — at least Bela in stock footage and being played by Ed Wood’s chiropractor — shows up in this movie.

This is a term known as a fake Shemp, given because there were four shorts that the Stooges had to contracturally finish under their 1955 contract with Columbia (Rumpus in the Harem, Hot Stuff, Scheming Schemers and Commotion on the Ocean). Sadly, Shemp Howard died of an unexpected heart attack at age 60. So what did they do? Well, through a combination of Joe Palma standing with his back to the camera and stock footage, the films were completed.

This term was invented by Sam Raimi, who used it to describe the many ways that he and his friends — Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, Josh Becker, David Goodman and his brother Ted Raimi — would fill in for roles on the original Evil Dead for people who had long since left the production.

See — I get distracted easily! Back to the action!

Inspector Clay (Tor Johnson!) is on the case. Well, he is until he’s killed off by Vampira and not-Bela in zombie form, renanimated by Plan 9, the fiendlish plot of Eros (Dudley Manlove, the best name ever), who uses it to resurrect the recently dead by stimulating their pituitary and pineal glands.

Eros has come to Earth because  human weapons development will one day discover Solaronite, which can blow up sun particles and start an uncontrollable chain reaction that just might blow up the entire universe. Yeah — I wouldn’t trust humans with that weapon either. After all, we are as Eros says, stupid. “You see? You see? Your stupid minds. Stupid! Stupid!”

All it takes is a block of wood to knock out zombie Tor Johnson and save the day, rescuing the zombified Paula Trent and blowing the UFO — or is it a model kit or a hubcap or perhaps a paper plate — up real good.

Art by Mitch O’Connell. https://www.mitchoconnell.com

In true Ed Wood fashion, everyone and any one had a role in this movie. The Rev. Lynn Lemon, who plays an unnamed minister, was one of the Baptist producers of the film, while gravedigger J. Edward Reynolds was a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention in Beverly Hills and executive producer of this movie.

I love Plan 9 From Outerspace. Sure, that’s just a shower curtain getting reused over and over. Yes, one of the cops keeps pointing his gun at himself. And man, the story makes no sense and then makes even less by the end. But who cares? Are you not entertained? Can you forget it? And how many people know of this film that don’t know one other 1950’s science fiction movie?

Art by Mitch O’Connell. Available from https://www.outregallery.com/products/plan-9-from-outer-spaceYou have so many options if you want to watch this:

Tubi has the film available by itself, with Rifftrax and also a live Rifftrax version.

Amazon Prime has the movie in black and white, colorized, with Rifftrax and also has the documentary Unspeakable Horrors: The Plan 9 Conspiracy all about the true story of the film.

You can also download it at the Internet Archive.

NOTE: The UFO poster art for this article comes from Pittsburgh artist Jim Rugg.

Jay Roach has split his career between comedies — Austin Powers, Dinner for Schmucks, Meet the Parents — with politics — Recount, Game Change, Trumbo, All the Way — and even The Campaign and this film, two movies that try to straddle the line. (He made his directing debut with the 1990 Porkys/Animal House inspired comedy Zoo Radio.)

Working from a script by Charles Randolph (The Life of David Gale, The Interpreter, Love & Other Drugs, The Big Short), this time Roach tackles the #metoo movement from a place that the left side may not want to acknowledge: inside Fox News.

Concentrating on the stories of Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman)  and Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), Bombshell shows how each of their lives intersected with the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). The film blurs the lines between real life and movie magic by sometimes using real footage — particularly as Donald Trump clashes with Kelly.

While that media storm is blowing, Carlson is booted as co-anchor of the popular Fox and Friends show. She then meets with lawyers who tell her that she could file suit against Ailes, but would need other women to come forward.

Pospisil is a new hire who works for Carlson and then Bill O’Reilly (Kevin Dorff, who often appeared on Conan O’Brien’s shows) before he fires her. That night, she sleeps with Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon), who is a closeted lesbian who works for the channel. Neither of these characters — in the mass of real people whose real lives are on display — are based on anyone real, but instead serve as straw people, amalgams of the various anonymous testimonies against Ailes. It’s strange, when Pospisil easily falls in bed with Carr, despite constantly proclaiming her Christian upbringing. I realize this isn’t a documentary, but at this point, you should realize that the story is skewed.

Then again, are Kayla and Carr just the voices of the voiceless? As the composite characters made up of interviews the producers did with former staffers, as well as anonymous testimony, are they any less real for not being actual people?

Randolph told USA Today, “What happens inside of Roger’s office is based on the stories of three women we had access to. Her being ideologically fervent like a dedicated Republican, but a little sexually fluid and utterly morally sincere, that’s based more on women in my life.”

In a harrowing scene, Pospisil later is invited to Ailes’ office, where he continually makes her lift her skirt higher, despite seeming to show no real attention or care to who she is, what she’s doing or what she’s saying. Sex — and the power given by it — is just a casual transaction.

After Carlson supports the assault weapons ban on air, Ailes fires her, which allows her to launch her suit. All female staffers are asked to stand in lockstep with Fox, but Kelly refuses. Soon, twenty-two other women — and recorded conversations — push the cable news titan out of power.

So was Kelly a hero? Was her need to speak up heroic? Perhaps not so, according to As Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman, who wrote in New York Magazine: “Carlson’s lawsuit presented an opportunity. Kelly could bust up the boys’ club at Fox, put herself on the right side of a snowballing media story, and rid herself of a boss who was no longer supportive of her—all while maximizing her leverage in a contract negotiation.”

Carlson really did record every conversation with Ailes for an entire year, as she’d been planning to sue him for some time. The damning line, “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago” is 100% accurate, as is the $20 million she received.

Malcolm McDowell plays mogul Rupert Murdoch, and his sons, James and Lachlan, are played by Australia brothers Josh and Ben Lawson — who are much more attractive than the real-life Murdoch boys. However, the gay slur that Ailes levies against James and his post 9-11 breakdown over anthrax are both accurate, according to this Slate article.

Bombshell is packed with great actors in small roles, like Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) as Beth Ailes, Rob Delaney as a producer, Mark Duplass (The League) as Kelly’s husband, Allison Janney as Ailes’ legal consultant Susan Estrich, Katie Aselton (who was also on The League), Nazanin Boniadi as Rudi Bakhtiar (the first person who tried to sue Ailes), Liv Hewson (Santa Clarita Diet) as a staffer, Andy Buckley (David Wallace from The Office), P. J. Byrne as Neil Cavuto, Bree Condon as The Five host Kimberly Guilfoyle, Alice Eve as Fox and Friends host Ainsley Earhardt, Spencer Garrett as Sean Hannity, Ashley Greene (Ashley Cullen from the Twilight films) as Abby Huntsman, Tricia Helfer (Cylon Number Six!) as Alisyn Camerota, Marc Evan Jackson as Chris Wallace, Marc Evan Jackson as Fox anchor Chris Wallace, Mad About You’s Richard Kind as Rudy Giuliani, Mark Moses (Desperate Housewives) as Bill Shine, Jennifer Morrison (TV’s House) as Juliet Huddy, Ahna O’Reilly (The Help) as Julie Roginsky, Tony Plana as a kinda sorta recognizable Geraldo Rivera, Lisa Canning as Outnumbered host Harris Faulkner, Elisabeth Rohm (Angel, Law and Order) as Martha MacCallum, Stephen Root (an unheralded acting master, who is in everything from NewsRadio to King of the Hill, Office Space and even Monkey Shines) as Neil Mullen, Brooke Smith (Catherine in The Silence of the Lambs) as Irena Briganti., Holland Taylor (the mom from Two and a Half Men) as Ailes enabling assistant Faye, John Rothman as Martin Hyman, Alanna Ubach as Jeanine Pirro, Robin Weigert as Nancy Smith, Madeline Zima as Edie, and Anne Ramsay (Lisa Stemple from Mad About You) as Greta Van Susteren. Whew! Did I miss anybody? 

In January of this year, Kelly posted a 30-minute roundtable with her, Huddy, Bakhtiar, Brunt and former Fox News producer Julie Zann about this movie. It confirmed many details in the film, such as the spin that Ailes would request. The consensus was that the movie let him off easy and that the scene where Pospisil yells at Kelly for not speaking up was a victim-blaming scene written by a man. That said, she did admit that she could have done more.

There is no better companion film for The Thing with Two Heads than this, a movie that’s pretty much the same idea: Dr. Roger Girard (Bruce Dern!) is a scientist experimenting with head transplantation who finally gets the chance to do the experiment that everyone says shouldn’t happen. Hijinks, as they say, ensue.

Girard had a caretaker who was killed. That man’s son Danny (John Bloom, The Dark, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Brain of Blood) is a giant with great strength and the mild of a child. Manuel Cass is an escaped mental patient who is critically injured after killing Danny’s dad. So you know — why not transplant their heads on the same body? What can go wrong?

Larry Vincent, one of the first film riffers as horror host Seymour on Los Angeles’ Fright Night on KHJ-TV and Seymour’s Monster Rally on KTLA, shows up, as does Pat Priest (the second Marilyn Munster, of course), Casey Kasem (I really need to do a Letterboxd list on the films of Casey because, well, I’m a maniac) and stuntman Gary Kent (who the film Danger God was about).

Once, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Dern revealed he was not paid for acting in this movie. He was given a check for $1,700 that bounced and when he returned to the set for the next day of filming, it had already been shut down.

It certainly made money, as American International Pictures paired this with the Amicus movie Scream and Scream Again.

You can watch this for free on Tubi with and without commentary by Rifftrax.

This Universal movie serial — told in twelve parts — shares some similarities with the earlier serial The Vanishing Shadow, including the inventions of an invisibility belt and a remote-control robot.

That makes sense — at the time, Universal was all about recycling. This movie contains stock footage from The Invisible Ray and The Vanishing Shadow, as well as music from the Flash Gordon serials and Frankenstein movies, plus car chase footage that had been used in several other serials and newsreel footage taken from the Hindenburg disaster.

Eight years after his star turn in Dracula, Bela Lugosi’s career was in decline. He had been typecast as a horror star and was not seen as talented as his co-star — and possible rival — Boris Karloff.

This career downturn had many factors behind it. Universal changed management in 1936 and due to a British ban on horror films, they dropped the once popular films from their production schedule. Lugosi found himself consigned to Universal’s non-horror B-film unit — such as the team that made serials like this. And while the actor was busy with stage work, he had to borrow money from the Actors Fund  to pay the hospital bills for the birth of his son Bela George Lugosi in 1938.

However, that year brought Bela back. California theater owner Emil Umann revived Dracula and Frankenstein as a special double feature, a bill so successful that it played to sellout crowds and Lugosi himself came to host the movies. The actor would say, “I was dead, and he brought me back to life.” Universal took notice of the tremendous business and launched its own national re-release, as well as hiring Lugosi to star in new films.

The Phantom Creeps — yes, we’ll get back to this movie in a minute — was the last of the five serials that the actor would make, shot right after he returned from making Dead Eyes of London. It was released a week before his comeback vehicle, Son of Frankenstein.

Sadly, by 1948, the parts dwindled again and severe sciatica from Lugosi’s military service was treated with opiates, causing a downward spiral that the actor would never really emerge from. He appeared in movies like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster. After making that movie, he checked himself into rehab, one of the first celebrities to publically do so. According to Kitty Kelley’s His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, “Old Blue Eyes” helped with expenses, despite never meeting Lugosi before and visited him at the hospital.

The actor died of a heart attack in 1956, having just married his fifth wife. And yes, he was buried in his Dracula cape.

In this film, he plays Dr. Zorka, a man who loves to make weapons and refuses to sell them to anyone or any country. This upsets all manner of people, like Dr. Fred Mallory, his former partner, and government man Captain Bob West.

Dorothy Arnold, who plays love interest Jean Drew, was the first wife of baseball star Joe DiMaggio. Look for Edward Van Sloan, who always played the doctor battling the supernatural in Universal films. He’s Van Helsing in Dracula, Dr. Muller in The Mummy and Dr. Waldman in Frankenstein. In fact, that movie begins by him warning the audience that they can leave now if they’re too frightened. And Ed Wolff, the seven foot, four inch actor who played the robot, was also in Invaders from Mars and The Return of the Fly.

Speaking of the robot, you may have seen him in Rob Zombie’s work. The song “Meet the Creeper” is based on the movie and the robot often appears in the singer’s music videos and stage shows.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime or The Internet Archive. It’s also on Tubi with Rifftrax commentary.

William Castle is one of my heroes. While he isn’t a world-class director, he was a top of the line showman. His book Step Right Up!…I’m Going to Scare the Pants off America is required reading. You can also check out the great documentary Spine Tingler! The William Castle story to learn more.

One of his gimmicks that he used to sell his movies was called Emergo. As theaters played this movie, an elaborate pulley system released a plastic skeleton that would fly across the presumably horrified — or amused and even rancorous — audience.

This movie ended up being a huge success. Alfred Hitchcock — who Castle often imitated in movies like Homicidal — took and made his own low-budget horror film. You’ve probably seen it. It’s called Psycho.

It’s such a simple set up: Frederick Loren (the always awesome Vincent Price, whose line in this movie “It’s close to midnight” starts off the Michael Jackson song “Thriller,” a track on which he also appears) is an eccentric millionaire — is there any better kind? — who invites five people to a party for his fourth wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart, Spider Baby) in an allegedly haunted house.

If any of these people can survive one night, they get $10,000. They include test pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long, who was the professor on Nanny and the Professor), newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum, yes the sister of Robert), psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal in his next to last film; the actor Marshal died two years later from a heart attack while appearing in Chicago with Mae West in a production of her play Sextette. He had a heart attack on stage but finished the performance. The show, as they say, must go on…), Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig, probably best known for this movie) and Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook, Mr. Nicklas from Rosemary’s Baby).

The only thing that these strangers have is that they all need money. The Lorens also hate one another and are convinced that they are trying to kill one another. And for what it’s worth, Watson believes that the house is genuinely haunted by the ghosts of those murdered there, including his brother. There’s also a vat of acid in the basement that was used to kill the previous owner’s wife.

So is the house truly haunted? Is Annabelle trying to kill her husband Frederick? Who will survive? And how cool would it have been to have seen this movie in person with a giant skeleton bursting loose at the right moment?

House On Haunted Hill was filmed at the Ennis House in Los Feliz California, which was designed in 1924 by Frank Lloyd Wright. It also appears in the movie Blade Runner and was the mansion that Angel, Spike, and Drusilla lived in on the TV version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was also used on the soap opera show within a show Invitation to Love on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

This was remade in 1999 and that film also had a 2007 sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill.

You can get this movie as part of Shout! Factory‘s The Vincent Price Collection II on blu ray. Or you can watch it with or without Rifftrax commentary on Tubi. You can also watch it in black and white or in color on Amazon Prime. It’s also available on the Internet Archive.

One last bit of trivia: The theme song to this movie actually has lyrics! They are:

“There’s a house on Haunted Hill / Where ev’rything’s lonely and still / Lonely and still / And the ghost of a sigh / When we whispered good-bye / Lingers on / And each night gives a heart broken cry / There’s a house on Haunted Hill / Where love walked there’s a strange silent chill / Strange silent chill / There are mem’ries that yearn / For our hearts to return / And a promise we failed to fulfill / But we’ll never go back / No, we’ll never go back / To the house on Haunted Hill!”

Daniel Hall stars in this movie as Noam, a homeless amnesiac who has no idea if he’s been a good or bad person. His past is only a dream to him and when he gets close to it, he knows that it’s full of terrible things. Yet when his only friend is murdered, he sets out in search of the truth and to discover some form of justice. Now, he’s asking the hard questions. Now, he’s getting the truth he isn’t sure that he ever wanted to know.

Talk about the love of making film — the budget was so low for this movie that directors Stephen Gallacher and Jonathan Taylor Ashdown moved out of their homes and lived on set in a camper van.

It was co-written by Paul Butler, whose film Book of Monsters was recently released.

Think Memento on a smaller scale and you have an idea of what to expect. I’m interested to see what the creators come up with next, as this was a good effort.

Nothing Man is available on demand and on DVD from High Octane Pictures.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR team.

Jack Starrett may be best known for Blazing Saddles, but he was also in plenty of biker movies like The Born Losers, Hells Angels on Wheels, Angels from Hell and Hell’s Bloody Devils. He moved on to directing, making films like Run, Angel, Run; Nam’s Angels; Cleopatra Jones; Race With the Devil and Kiss My Grits. 

William Smith is an actor that’s been in oh, somewhere around three hundred films. Let me topline some of his roles: Conan’s dad in Conan the Barbarian, the captain in Maniac Cop, C.C. and Company, Grave of the Vampire, Hammer, Seven, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Terror In Beverly Hills, Uncle Sam and he shows up as Pharaoh in two of the Roller Blade Seven movies. He was also the father to Lorenzo Lamas’ character on the TV show Renegade. Smith also produced this film, one of only three movies he put his money behind (Prologue to Wounded Knee and Body Shop are the other two).

This might be autographical — Smith plays Hollywood action film star Rafe Stoker, who has sunk $130,000 of his own money into a movie but can’t get the cash to finish the film. The mob investor agrees to pay, as long as Smith ponies up some big collateral. Then, he hires Harvey and his bikers to sabotage the movie. Plus, the cops are also on Stroker’s case. He can’t win as he and his girl get gunned down by thugs after finishing the movie.

I can’t lie — I only watched this movie because Mary Woronov was in it. Also appearing are Tom Simcox (Grim Prarie Tales), Don Stroud (The Amityville Horror), Carmine Caridi (who was in second and third Godfather films; he was also the first person to be expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for bootlegging Oscar screeners), Clay Tanner (who played Satan in Rosemary’s Baby), former pro wrestler and bullfighter Don Sebastian (Super Fuzz, Mako: The Jaws of Death) and wah wah pedal innovator Charles Pitts (he’s also in Truck Turner).

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and The Internet Archive.