Beginning of the End (1957)
American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, or Am-Par, decided to create their own film studio to make low-budget movies that they could place into their theaters, signing a deal with Republic Pictures to make them. And after the success of Them!, who else but Burt I. Gordon to make more giant bug movies? Gordon did the effects by himself […]
Targets (1968)
Peter Bogdonovich may have debuted by fixing up a movie for Roger Corman called Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, but Targets was his first film. He directed, co-written and co-produced a movie that does not feel like the work of an inexperienced filmmaker. Maybe it was because he had been studying. As the film programmer for the […]
Lost Continent (1951)
Maj. Joe Nolan (Cesar Romero, the only Joker never to shave), Lt. Danny Wilson (Chick Chandler) and Sgt. William Tatlow (Sid Melton, Alf Monroe from Green Acres) and three scientists — Stanley Briggs (Whit Bissell, the undertaker in The Magnificent Seven), Robert Phillips (Hugh Beaumont from Leave It to Beaver) and Russian Michael Rostov (John Hoyt, Flesh […]
The Mask (1961)
When I was just getting really into psychotronic film, I was obsessed with the RE/Search book Incredibly Strange Films. It’s where I learned all about obsessions like Blast of Silence, Spider Baby, God Told Me To and the movies of Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, David F. Friedman, Ed Wood, Radley Metzger, Ray Dennis Steckler, Ted V. Mikels and […]
Invasion, U.S.A. (1952)
Invasion, U.S.A. was the second film from American Pictures Corporation, who had just made their first film, Captive Women. The company was made up of Albert Zugsmith (Girls Town, the bizarre The Chinese Room), Peter Miller, Aubrey Wisberg (who would write Hercules In New York) and Jack Pollexfen (Indestructible Man) with Joseph Justman as the producer. Their plan was to […]
Bloody Hell (2021)
Bloody Hell is an absolute blast. I have no fancy words to add, really — I’ll try — but I was absorbed by every twist and turn of this movie. From its description, “A man with a mysterious past flees the country to escape his own personal hell… only to arrive somewhere much, much, much […]
REPOST: The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This film and its Jess Franco-directed sequel The Girl from Rio, as well as the 2003 movie Sumaru, are all based on Sax Rohmer’s Sumuru, who leads the Order of Our Lady, a secret society that recruits beautiful women from around the world and teaches them how to seduce and exploit men, all with the […]
The Lost Empire (1984)
I’m always saying I’m not a fan of Jim Wynorski’s movies and then find myself realizing that yes, I like several of his films. The director may have flunked out of film school, but he turned an introduction to Roger Corman into a career and a chance to write scripts, starting with one of my […]
Calmos (1976)
Also known as Femmes Fatales, this Bertrand Blier-directed film presents a satire of both the rise of feminism in France and the traditional attitudes of Frenchmen. Paul (Jean-Pierre Marielle, The DaVinci Code) is a married gynecologist who has grown sick of looking at women’s bodies. As he runs from his office into the street, he meets Albert (Jean Rochefort, […]
Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989)
How weird is it when Bill Maher shows up in a movie and you don’t expect it? Like his roles in D.C. Cab or Pizza Man? Or when he shows up in the party scenes of Ratboy and House II? But would you ever expect him to play the Indiana Jones of a jungle adventure movie? The government is […]
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