Five months after American-International Picture’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Herbert L. Strock (The Crawling Hand) directed this follow-up, which has British professor Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell, who was also the mad scientist in AIP’s first teenager as a monster movie) coming to America to assemble his monster from the bodies of teenagers who didn’t make it through Dead Man’s Curve.

He’s the kind of scientist who has no problem feeding former Lois Lane Phyllis Coates to alligators (AIP’s Herman Cohen kayfabe stated that the alligator had been used to dispose of the bodies of the victims of serial killer Joe Ball from a small town outside San Antonio, which I love) or cutting off the face of a boy on Lover’s Lane (Gary Conway, The Farmer) for his undead monster.

How did AIP not follow this up with I Was a Teenage Dracula?

Based on the 1933 Broadway play of the same name by Elizabeth A. McFadden, Double Door is a pre-Hays Code directed by Charles Vidor (Gilda, Blind Alley).

Victoria Van Brett (Mary Morris, who had a long stage career but this was her only film) rules her family, even destroying the relationships that her brother Rip (Kent Taylor, Brain of Blood many years after this) has until Anne Darrow (Evelyn Venable, the voice and the model for the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and one of the rumored inspirations for the Columbia Pictures logo) starts dating him. Just how horrible is Victoria? Well, she once locked her sister Caroline (Anne Revere, who would win the Best Supporting Oscar for National Velvet and be an outspoken critic of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which got her blacklisted) in a soundproof safe for a long period of time just for making her mad.

I mean, she also has one of the servants close the organ during “Here Comes the Bride” as Victoria and Rip are being married in her house, so there’s really no limit to the amount of mean that she has in store for everyone. That must be how she got the name “The Female Frankenstein of Fifth Avenue.”

Double Door has just been re-released by Kino Lorber, along with two audio commentaries. One is by Tom Weaver and the other by David Del Valle and Stan Shaffer. There are also trailers and subtitles. You can order it directly from Kino Lorber.

A roadie named Iggy has dug up the bodies of the long-dead rock and roll stars, using the hands of Hendrix, the guts of Buddy Holly, the legs of Keith Moon, the penis of Jim Morrison and the head of Elvis. Where are the Plaster Casters when you need them?

Speaking of Elvis, we covered this back in our list of Elvis Fantasy Flicks.

I wanted to love this movie, but it just feels forced. The fact that Jim Morrison’s penis gets substituted for Liberace’s, which is shortly in conflict with the brain of Elvis, taking over his body and then murdering the men he makes love to sounds like a movie I should love, but this has the stench of a Troma film about it, one that is so proud of being so bad it’s good when it should aim for its cult status on its own strengths.

UK adult actor and director Ben Dover is in this and yes, I’m kind of ashamed — no, I’m not — that I immediately recognized him.

You can watch this on Tubi.

An international co-production of the United States, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, Frankenstein’s Army puts zombie soldiers created by a descendant of the mad scientist against the Red Army at the end of World War II, all seen in found footage format.

Director Richard Raaphorst was frightened of Frankenstein’s Monster when he was young, so a movie filled with multiple creatures would have really freaked him out. While this movie has plenty of CGI, it also has more than enough practical FX and stunts. The look is great, a worn steampunk-esque world of rust, gore, meat and murder.

I’m not a fan at all of found footage and find it a silly gimmick outside of obvious masterworks like, well, Cannibal Holocaust is one of the few I can dredge up. The creature design in this, however, pushes this movie well beyond any concerns I have with the way that it was filmed. It’s a delight to take in all of these creatures. It looks like my high school notebooks come to life.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Alan Jones used to work at a grocery store until he got fired by a boss he hates. A boss who he just caught kissing to the coworker he’s in love with. And then, you know, a mad scientist named Dr. Finski (John Ferguson, who is horror host Count Gregore) kidnaps him and takes his eyeball before sending him back to the Civil War with a bunch of Frankenstein’s Monsters.

In order to get back to his own time, Alan must hunt down all of the monsters that have passed through the time hole. But then Virginia, a former slave and a medic for the Union, explains to the original monster how her life has been a lot like his, which means that suddenly the Confederacy is up against a whole bunch of undead stitched together monsters.

Of course, they get a monster of their own and there’s even a gigantic cat that starts tearing off arms and killing soldiers left and right.

So yeah — in case you haven’t guessed it yet I absoutely loved this.

And I don’t really want to tell you any more other than I wish the end of this film and the sequel that it sets up happened. How did Frankenstein get on the face of the $5 bill? You have to watch the movie!

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nick Vaught has worked in the entertainment industry for several years. Nick currently serves as an Associate Producer on the upcoming horror documentary In Search of Darkness: Part III. Nick also worked on the long-running CW series Supernatural. In 2019 he co-wrote the well-received episode “Don’t Go in the Woods.” In addition, Nick has written punch up jokes on multiple TV pilots and teamed with actor Jason Mewes to help write his biography.

Seemingly no movie genre lives and dies more than horror and in the mid 90’s, the horror genre was as dead as the asshole jock character that populates these movies.  Popular franchises such as Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street had run out of steam with both critics and fans alike. Let’s face it, sequels had killed our beloved franchises. The genre was in much need of an originality boost and that’s where ironically, Dimension Films came in. I say ironically because Dimension Films was part of the sequel-itis that was plaguing horror films. The Bob Weinstein-led subsidiary of Miramax was primarily known for its horror and sci-fi films. They scooped up the rights to Children of the Corn, Hellraiser and Halloween and began producing subpar (putting it mildly) sequels to the once-powerful franchises. 

Then, in 1995, they optioned a script by an unknown writer named Kevin Williamson. The script was called Scary Movie (before it was changed to Scream) and it was strong enough to attract the attention of horror master Wes Craven, who was in desperate need of a hit.  The script focused on a masked killer terrorizing a group of high school friends. The cast was comprised of a lot of up-and-coming actors: David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard; as well as tv stars, Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox. The biggest name in the cast was Drew Barrymore, who played “Casey Becker.” Barrymore was initially offered the role of “Sidney Prescott,” which would ultimately be played by Campbell. 

It didn’t take long after cameras began to roll for issues to begin to rise. Weinstein was incredibly unhappy with the first round of footage that came in; the footage of the opening scene with Barrymore. Editor Patrick Lussier scrambled to put together the scene in its entirety and get it to Weinstein, who was pleased enough with what he saw to spare Craven’s job.

After filming was completed, Dimension Films made an odd choice by giving the film a December 20th release date in 1996. Horror films simply weren’t released during the holidays; only blockbusters and feel-good comedies were. I suppose Weinstein was hoping for Scream to end up as counter programming Well, it didn’t work and Scream only made around $6 million in its opening weekend; it was dead, or so it seemed. Something almost unheard of happened the next weekend, the gross went up and up and up until the movie topped out at a whopping $103 million at the end of its run. How did this happen?

Word of mouth happened. The people that did see it on that opening weekend loved it and told others. The before mentioned opening scene became one of the most iconic opening scenes not only in horror history, but cinema history. Barrymore’s character finds herself alone in her parent’s house in the middle of nowhere making Jiffy Pop. She gets a call from what she assumes is a wrong number, but is actually a deranged killer with a cell phone and a penchant for horror movie trivia. The Jiffy Pop begins to rise as the tension does; a master stroke by Craven. Shockingly, Barrymore’s character is killed off and the movie never lets up after that. From that point, Scream focuses on Campbell’s “Sidney Prescott,” who gives a strong, grounded performance as the movie’s final girl.

Personally, I had only gotten into horror the year before and when I saw Scream for the first time it cemented my love of horror. Even though I was relatively new to the genre I had never seen anything like this. The filmmakers invited us to be part of the movie; we were watching ourselves onscreen. We were screaming the answers to “Ghostface’s” questions during Drew Barrymore’s scenes. We were yelling at Jamie Kennedy’s character “Randy” to turn around as he was saying the same thing to Jamie Lee Curtis’ character while he was watching Halloween. The characters were well aware that their situation mirrored that of a slasher movie; in fact, they would mock their predicament. The movie also introduces the rules of surviving a horror movie, some which hold true, but then subverts one of the biggest rules by taking Campbell’s virgin character, having her have sex and still outwitting the killers in the end. It was meta before the term would enter our cultural zeitgeist.

Metaness aside there was plenty else to like about the movie. For starters, the movie was a well-crafted whodunit with elaborate death scenes. There were several red herrings throughout the movie and while many in the audience may have guessed that the character of “Billy” was a killer, nobody in the audience could’ve guessed that there were two killers. I can still remember the audible gasps in the theater when Matthew Lillard’s “Stu,” the lovable, goofy sidekick was revealed as the second killer. The character of “Stu” was so popular that there’s still clamoring to bring him back, despite you know, him being a murderer.

Speaking of the lovable “Stu”, strong, three-dimensional supporting characters is another area where Scream excels. Most scary movies just throw a bunch of thinly written characters in the middle of the woods just for the sake of adding to the body count; you usually don’t even care whether they live or die. Scream gave us fully realized, grounded, characters that we had a vested interest in their fate. Rose McGowan’s death scene is a highlight of the movie, but we’re generally disappointed when her strong-willed, character bites the dust. 

And let us not forget the now iconic “Ghostface” mask. Every villain needs a killer look, pun intended. The Scream mask was instantly terrifying the first time we saw it and it gave the killers a sense of personality as well. I think it’s safe to say that people who haven’t even seen the movies know where the mask is from. 

Scream turned 25 years old on December 20th and not only are we still talking about it, but a new Scream movie is due to be released on January 14th of this year, which will give us a Scream movie in four straight decades. For many of us, Scream is a pinnacle entry in the horror genre and if you’re like me, it’s a major reason you have a diehard love for horror. Thanks to this franchise for keeping me screaming a quarter of a century later. 

The Last Frankenstein is a Japanese take on the Frankenstein legend, with Professor Sarusawa trying to make a super Adam and Eve who cannot be controlled by their emotions. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has a disease that causes them to commit suicide. Or maybe it’s just a death cult not unlike Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese doomsday cult and terrorist organization that unleashed sarin gas on the Tokyo subway a few years after this movie was made.

The key to all of this is the one-eyed Dr. Aryo, who has two bodies that he wants to bring to life.

Directed and written by Takeshi Kawamura, who originally had this as a stage play and continues to work in that milieu, this movie also has a psychic daughter, a family of abnormal humans, a hunchback who drives around collecting nude women, a beach vacation and, well, look — it’s absolutely as strange as it gets.

I love Japan because Frankenstein’s Monster can be a Toho monster like Frankenstein vs. Baragon and War of the Gargantuas. Or it can be an art movie like this one, one that straddles the line between Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and the gore-drenched excesses of modern Japanese gore films.

Also: the one-eyed scientist can only relate to the aborted pickled punks he keeps in his lab, hugging them when he gets sad.

Viktor Frankenstein (Robin Ward, the narrator of the 80s Twilight Zone) has been expelled from the old country for his experiments, so he heads to Canada to study mind control before campus radicals kick him off campus. So Viktor does what you and I would. He controls the mind of Tony (Ty Haller, One Minute Before Death), a karate expert, and beats those hippies to death.

At one point, Viktor’s love interest Susan takes him to see an acid rock concert with the band Lighthouse. The saxophonist is Howard Shore, who would score the films of Cronenberg.

Shot at the University of Toronto and made with Canadian Film Development Corporation money, this movie looks dated but hey it was made 52 years ago. It was written by David Cobb (who has an extra role in Rhinestone), William T. Marshall and director Gilbert W. Taylor, who other than a short doc called The Mississauga Movie and some production credits (Pinocchio’s Birthday Party and Klondike Fever) never did anything else.

Also: young Frankenstein is a never nude.

Three friends — Michael, Sarah and Danny — reconnect in a secluded mountain town after going through a long quarantine. Yet while they take a hike, the friends stumble upon something dark and terrible in the deep woods.

At just a bit over an hour, Old Strangers doesn’t eat up much of your time in its tale of odd things in the wood and friends being changed by what they find. Perhaps it’s the times that we’re surviving, but the idea of time away with people we’ve known before, only to have that taken away, seems like the worst of all horror. This movie does a decent job of showing just how bad that would be.

I really dug the space shots of this, as it pushes the film toward the otherworldly.

You can check this out on streaming from Gravitas Ventures. For more information, visit the movie’s official Facebook page.