Monthly Archives: November 2022

Mill Creek Nightmare Worlds month recap

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Every November, B&S About Movies tackles a Mill Creek 50 pack.

In 2018, we did Chilling Classics, then in 2019 we did the Pure Terror set.

2020 had the Sci-Fi Invasion set, as well as Savage Cinema and Explosive Cinema. 

In 2021, a team of writers finished the Drive-In Classics, Excellent Eighties, B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack and Gorehouse Greats sets.

In 2022, we finished Nightmare Worlds!

As a recap, here are the movies that make up this set. Click on any link to see the post or check out the list on Letterboxd.

  1. Contamination
  2. Alien Species
  3. Atomic Rulers of the World
  4. The Alpha Incident
  5. Attack from Space
  6. Beast of the Yellow Night
  7. Warriors of the Wasteland
  8. Werewolf Woman
  9. Cataclysm
  10. Counterblast
  11. All the Kind Strangers
  12. The Day the Sky Exploded
  13. Death Warmed Up
  14. Doomsday Machine
  15. Embryo
  16. End of the World
  17. Eternal Evil
  18. Evil Brain from Outer Space
  19. Shadow of Chinatown
  20. The Disappearance of Flight 412
  21. Idaho Transfer
  22. Good Against Evil
  23. House of the Dead
  24. Fury of the Wolfman
  25. House of the Living Dead
  26. The Lost City
  27. The Lost World
  28. This Is Not a Test
  29. Menace from Outer Space
  30. Maciste In Hell 
  31. Queen of Atlantis
  32. Night Fright
  33. How Awful About Allan
  34. Panic
  35. Piranha (1972)
  36. The Phantom Creeps
  37. Purple Death from Outer Space
  38. Prisoners of the Lost Universe
  39. Men with Steel Faces
  40. The Return of Dr. Mabuse
  41. Emergency Landing
  42. Ring of Terror
  43. Frozen Alive
  44. Star Odyssey
  45. Terror at Red Wolf Inn
  46. Hands of Steel
  47. Manster
  48. Invasion from Inner Earth
  49. Unknown World
  50. UFO Target Earth

Thanks to everyone who helped out, like Jennifer Upton, Sean Collier, Bill Van Ryn and Paul Andolina.

Want to be part of it next year? We’ll be asking.

MILL CREEK NIGHTMARE WORLDS: Men with Steel Faces (1940)

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Men with Steel Faces is an edited movie version of the serial Phantom Empire, which stars Gene Autry as — who else? — Gene Autry, a singing cowboy who also has a Radio Ranch where he broadcasts a show every day and also has a dude ranch for kids where Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Betsy Baxter (Betsy King Ross lead the Junior Thunder Riders.

All three of them are kidnapped by soldiers from the advanced underground empire of Murania — justified and ancient — who have laser guns, robots and an evil queen named Queen Tika. Meanwhile, Professor Beetson and his gang are trying to steal all of the riches of Murania and double meanwhile, there’s a rebellion looking to overthrow the evil empire.

This serial went on to inspire the NBC series Cliffhangers!, which had a sequence called The Secret Empire. There’s also the Fred Olen Ray movie The Phantom Empire which is directly inspired by this, as are the legends of the Shavers*, which you can learn more about in the movie Beyond Lemuria. Other movies that have an under the world army include The Lost City, which pretty much outright steals from this serial and The Mole People.

I love the idea of cowboys interacting with futuristic science fiction and celebrate any movie that makes it happen again, even poor ones like Cowboys vs. Aliens.

*The Shaver Mystery was created — or discovered — by factory worker Richard Shaver who was able to hear within the center of the Earth and wrote to the magazine Amazing Stories and suddenly, that entire pulp was all about creatures and civilizations that existed within the Earth that are quite a bit like Phantom Empire. Then again, this movie’s writer Wallace MacDonald got the idea for this story when he was getting gas at the dentist.

VCI 4K UHD RELEASE: Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on August 14, 2018. It’s back — with edits and new writing — because VCI has released the fiftieth anniversary 4K UHD release of this movie. You can get it on UHD, blu ray or DVD from MVD by clicking the line for each format.

Each edition has the following extras: a new introduction and Q&A with Alan Ormsby; a ninety-minute documentary Dreaming of Death: Bob Clark’s Horror Films; a commentary track with Alan Ormsby, Jane Daly and Anya Cronin; a Q&A filmed at. the Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival; an interview with Ken Goch; photo and poster gallery; two music videos by The Deadthings “Dead Girls Don’t Say No” and “Cemetery Mary;” liner notes by Patrick McCabe; the original trailer; radio spots and a slipcover for the initial release. 

The same Bob Clark that did Porky’s did A Christmas Story and also made Black Christmas and Deathdream. He even produced the film Moonrunners, which inspired TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard. He also made Turk 182! (if you had HBO back in the day, you saw it), Rhinestone and the Baby Geniuses series. Yep. Bob Clark pretty much did it all. And here’s one more completely great thing he created.

Alan (Alan Ormsby, who would go on to write Deathdream, Deranged, My Bodyguard and direct Popcorn) leads a group of actors who have all gone to an island together for a night of shenanigans. Sure, the island is a cemetery for criminals. And of course, he’s going to do a seance to raise the dead. And while the whole thing is a joke, Alan is genuinely upset that the dead aren’t walking the swamp.

They do find a corpse — Orville — and Alan uses it to continually harass his actors. And the ritual really did work, as the dead begin killing everyone off one by one.

The shift from comedy to drama to horror in this film is startling. The cast is amateur, but the terror feels real. The dread and doom at the end, as the zombies board a boat as the lights of Miami are in the background and atonal music plays are as perfect as film can be.

Clark shot this movie at the same time as Deathdream, using some of the same cast. A surprising moment in the film is that while there are two gay men — and they stereotypically lisp — they play an integral role in the film. That’s pretty incredible for 1972.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Shorts take two

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Here are some more shorts from the Another Hole In the Head Film Festival.

The Diamond (2022): No matter what, Stefan can’t make friends. Perhaps it’s because he tries too hard. Or maybe he’s dangerous to everyone around him. One day, he finds a diamond in the woods and yet can’t reach it. Later at the doctor’s office, he meets a miniature man and actually becomes friends with him. However, he must use him to get what he really wants, that diamond. Or maybe he can actually make a friend this time.

Director Vedran Rupic and writer Gustav Sundström have created a world where a man tries to wear fake herpes sores to try to win people over to the embrace of his friendship. And the end of this movie, the moral and the choir and the…look, don’t let me ruin it. This short is beyond perfect.

Kickstart My Heart (2022): Director and writer Kelsey Bollig survived a near-death experience to tell this story of, well, a near-death experience. Lilly (Emma Pasarow) must survive three levels of living hell to return from the near-dead which ends up looking like scenes from horror movies and Mortal Kombat, which I can totally endorse.

You have to love when someone tells an incredibly personal story and does it with fight scenes involving ninjas and demons. More people should follow the model that this film has set, but then again, this is so original and well-done, they’ll find themselves wanting in comparison.

Meat Friend (2022): When Billie (Marnie McKendry) — sorry, I mean children — microwaves raw hamburger meat, it needs no old top hat to come to life. Instead, Meat Friend (Steve Johanson, who co-wrote this with director Izzy Lee) is alive and real and wants to teach her some valuable life lessons rooted in hatred and violence, no matter what her mother (Megan Duffy) does.

“More beef! Less cheese!” goes the refrain and the faithful demand the reanimation of the meat homunculus.

This was an absolute blast of strange and exactly what I needed during the fest, something that started odd and didn’t let up.

Izzy Lee has also directed the Lovecraft film Innsmouth, the “For a Good Time, Call…” segment in Shevenge and several shorts like Consider the Titantic, Disco Graveyard and Memento Mori. You can learn more about this movie — the kind of magic that has a pile of sentient 80% lean ground beef do rails of coke — right here.

Prom Car ’91 (2022): Let me fast forward this review and just say that this short is more than 100% everything I look for in movies. It’s so well shot and creative that even though you may have seen its story told before, you’ve never seen it told so well.

Carrie (McKenna Marmolejo, who owns every second she’s on screeen) and Don (Max Jablow) plan to have sex for the first time in the back of Don’s dad’s minivan on prom night. They’re invisible kids in 1991 but are the kind of geeks that rule the world today. He writes Rush-like science fiction songs about her; she watches Shaw Brothers movies. But just as they prepare to change their lives with some underage sex, they watch prom queen get slashed by two of their teachers, Mr. Little (Yuri Lowenthal, the video game voice of Spider-Man) and Ms. Cox (Jayne McLendon).

I can’t even emphasize how perfect every moment of this short is. It’s so charming, so filled with absolute joy. It made my day so much better watching it and I’m still smiling about it.

Reel Trouble (2022): Arnaut Subotica (Sam Vanivray with director and co-writer — with Attiba Royster — Brian Asman as the voice) tried to make cartoons for Whitt Dabney (Kevin Allen) and the theft of his ideas and the way Dabney treated him caused him to make a cartoon that took a decade of his life. Then he committed suicide and the cursed film was kept from the public until the Internet released every bit of lost media from their prisons. Jason (Lyndon Hoffman-Lew) and Kyle (Baker Chase Powell) are trading videos — I see the snuck in WNUF Halloween Special blu ray — and this might just be one that they should have never watched.

This was an absolute joy to watch and felt like it could have been part of the true dark lore of Disney. It’s got just the right mix of humor and horror and knows when to switch into moments of sheer terror, even if they feature giant cartoon hands.

You can learn more about Brian Asman at his official site.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Una Pelicula de Zombies (2022)

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Una Pelicula de Zombies (A Zombie Movie) is NANO’s first film, a production created entirely with deepfake technology, which allows faces to be exchanged for others in a hyper-realistic way. For this movie, they’ve added Chilean comedians, actors and faces speaking and acting into a modern adaptation of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

With a cast including Botota Fox, Pedro Ruminot, Sergio Freire, Javiera Contador, Javiera Acevedo, Ricardo Meruane, Pancho Saavedra, Juan Andrés Salfate, Chelipe Cárdenas, Rodrigo Villegas, Miguelito, this was directed by Cristobal Ross who co-wrote it with Harry Films.

Remember when they colorized Night of the Living Dead? Remember the added scenes that took away from the original in the Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition that everyone but George Romero got in there? That’s what this movie feels like, complete with riffing over a movie that is legitimately a classic. I can appreciate the technology, but I’m not using deepfakery to put dick and fart jokes into La Gravedad del Púgil or Sangre Eterna.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

MILL CREEK NIGHTMARE WORLDS: The Disappearance of Flight 412 (1974)

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Oh man, 1970s TV movies and UFOs go together like blood and half-naked teenage camp counselors.

U.S. Air Force Colonel Pete Moore (Glenn Ford), the commander of the Whitney Air Force Base 458th Radar Test Group, has sent a crew made up of Captain Bishop (David Soul), Capt. Riggs (Robert F. Lyons), Lt. Ferguson (Stanley Bennett Clay) and Lt. Podryski (Greg Mullavey) out on flight 412, which the title tells us is of course going to, you got it, disappear. Well, the UFO doesn’t cause that, but government spooks sure do. And that means that Moore and Major Mike Dunning (Bradford Dillman) have to find out what happened.

Shot like a documentary, this movie has some major issues when it comes to accuracy. When the first scenes of the jets are shown, they’re U.S. Marine McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom II fighters. Later, Grumman F9F Panther fighter aircraft are shown, planes that didn’t fly after the 50s. Maybe that was the government doing that, adding disinformation to a movie that is supposed to give us the real info on aliens.

Director Jud Taylor mainly worked in TV and is known for TV movies like Revenge!, Weekend of Terror, Search for the Gods, Act of Love and the TV miniseries of The Old Man and the Sea. It was written by George Simpson (who mainly worked in sound for movies) and Neal R. Burger. They also wrote the 1990 TV movie Ghostboat together as well as the novel it was based on and the books Thin Air, Fair Warning, Severed Ties and Blackbone.

MILL CREEK NIGHTMARE WORLDS: Shadow of Chinatown (1936)

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Shadow of Chinatown is a 65-minute version of the 300-minute long serial of the same name. It’s all about San Francisco’s Chinatown is being destroyed by Victor Poten (Bela Lugosi) and The Dragon Lady (Luana Walters), hired by white businesses to decimate the new Chinese businessmen who are taking away their profits. Unlike most serials of the time, it’s intriguing to see a movie in which white people are attacking Asians instead of sinister Fu Manchu being a stereotypical bad guy.

Look, it’s a movie in which Bela Lugosi mesmerizes women into hating the Chinese as much as he does.

This was directed and written by Robert F. Hill, who had 116 directing credits in his career. After World War II, Universal sent him to Japan to open a movie studio where he warned that the locals would try to attack him if he started an American studio in their country. He needed to get a doctor’s permit to prove his wife needed care back home before Universal would let him give up. The next person who tried had that happen as Japanese filmmakers attacked him and used the studio Universal built for themselves.

DANGEROUS WOMEN DESCEND ON THE DRIVE-IN ASYLUM DOUBLE FEATURE…AGAIN!?!

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This Saturday, Bill and I will unlock the doors of the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature one more time at 8 PM EST on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube pages.

Get ready to learn that women are the deadliest of the species with two wild films.

Up first — Mary Mary Bloody Mary which is on Shudder and Tubi.

Each week, we show ads, discuss the movies and share a drink recipe. Here’s the cocktail for the first film:

Bloody John

  • 1 oz. cherry vodka
  • 1 oz. cherry schnapps
  • 2 oz. whiskey
  • .5 oz. lemon juice
  • .5 oz. cherry juice
  • 4 oz. red soda
  1. Pour all ingredients over ice.
  2. Stir and maybe don’t fall for women you’ve just met.

Our second movie is Marta which is also known as …After That, It Kills the Male and Devours It. We’ll share a link during the show for this film.

Marta or Pillar?

  • 2 oz. blueberry vodka
  • 6 oz. lemonade
  • .5 oz. simple syrup
  • Mint leaves
  • Frozen blueberries
  • Lemon slice
  1. Add simple syrup, mint leaves and blueberries to a cocktail shaker and muddle.
  2. Add ice, vodka and lemonade, then shake up. Add more blueberries and a lemon slice.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Kick Me (2022)

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Holy shit, this fucking movie blew my mind.

A hapless high school guidance counselor (Santiago Vasquez) is just trying to save everyone, most importantly a student who could care less named Luther (Ramon Armstrong). He’s made promises to everyone — his wife that he’ll attend their daughter’s recital and bring her a rabbit, other teachers that he’ll deal with Luther and to Luther, he claims that he will finally attend a martial arts class after bragging that he has thirty years of fighting experience — only to ruin everything. A gang wants the money that Luther has stolen from their leader’s mother, a gun battle breaks out in the dojo and soon Santiago has gone from Kansas City, Missouri to the dark side of Kansas City, Kansas where he will be stripped of his clothes, nearly his manhood and most certainly his sanity as he faces off with man-eating dogs, RV-driving senior citizen swingers, having to wear piss-covered women’s slippers, being dosed with several drugs, encountering occult rituals and a church balcony candle swordfight.

Director Gary Huggins co-wrote this movie with Betsy Gran (who plays Betsy in the movie) and it’s the kind of journey into the heart of all night darkness we haven’t seen in movies in some time. There’s some incredible camera work by Michael Wilson and Todd Norris that makes this film feel absolutely frantic. You may also feel some anxiety because so many animals are placed in harm’s way — the credits state no animals were harmed and all were loved — particularly Tripp, a three-legged chihuahua who stumbles his way through every moment of the movie and right into your heart.

When this is out of festivals and available on a wider basis, you need to seek it out. This is one of the best films I’ve seen in 2022.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL 2022: Hypnotica (2022)

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Director and writer A.T. Sharma has created a film in which a young therapist (Tim Torre) tries everything he can to save his patient (Adam Johnson, who is really great in this) including hypnotism. The problem is that that backfires and soon the issues that his patient is undergoing begins to slowly go even more unhinged than a man who is struggling to keep his business solvent and his family together.

Starting with “The following is based on actual case studies” and ending with a long quote about the Catholic Church trying to keep exorcism relevant — “There continue to be cases of demonic possession that goes mis-diagnosed as mental illness today. The Catholic Diocese states that there has been a recent increase in exorcisms in the United States and around the world. As faith is in decline, more people are opening themselves up to the reality of evil. Father Vincent Lampert (Diocese appointed exorcist)” — this film has some disquieting moments, including a grisly suicide scene that shocked me.

By the way, Lampert is the designated exorcist of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and part of the Pope Leo XIII Institute in Milwaukee, a training school for American clergy to learn how to perform an exorcism.

This is a little all over the place, but it’s got an interesting take on possession and how modern medicine attempts to stop it. I sometimes ponder how much of possession is just mental illness and how much of mental illness is possession.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.