EDITOR’S NOTE: Day the World Ended was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 12, 1964 at 11:15 p.m. and Saturday, May 14, 1966 at 11:20 p.m.
Produced and directed by Roger Corman, this movie somehow had newsman Chet Huntley as its narrator and tells the story of the end of the world and the mutant monster that comes afterward.
U.S. Navy Commander Jim Maddison and his daughter Louise have somehow survived all the atomic bombs, a uranium miner named Rick, a gangster named Tony and his girl Ruby (Adele Jergens, who was an understudy of Gypsy Rose Lee).
Between the creature on the loose, Tony being a jerk and radioactive fallout, how will anyone make it to the end of this movie alive? Well, you will learn a new science fact in this movie: rain can wash away radiation.
Larry Buchanan remade this movie, using almost all the same dialogue, as In the Year 2889 in 1967.
A nine day wonder with a foam rubber monster, this got its name from future American-International Pictures boss James H. Nicholson before it was even filmed. It was Corman’s fourth film and played on a double bill with The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues.
4. FAMILY MATTERS: It takes a family to raise this village.
Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) has figured out how to get his patients to get rid of mental illness through changing their bodies by psychoplasmics. It sounds ridiculous but it works and its helping Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), a woman in a battle with her husband Frank (Art Hindle) over their daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds). Something weird is happening, though, as Frank keeps finding scratches all over his little girl, so Raglan intensifies his techniques to help Nola get custody. That’s when he discovers that eureka moment that some therapists believe is behind every psychosis. Nole was abused by her mother (Nuala Fitzgerald) and ignored by her father (Henry Beckman).
A past patient, Jan Hartog (Robert A. Silverman), tells Frank that the treatments have given him lymphoma. While learning more, he’s left his daughter with his wife’s mother, who is soon killed by something…small. And Candice watches the whole thing. After the same thing kills Nola’s father, Frank kills it, revealing an aesexual toothless man-child. Worse, even with Raglan’s institute closing, now Nola commands an army of these creatures.
David Cronenberg said, “The Brood is my version of Kramer vs. Kramer, but more realistic.” He was going through a divorce and even cast Hindle and Eggar as they looked like him and his ex-wife. Eggar went all out, even cleaning one of the strange children after it was born, saying “I just thought that when cats have their kittens or dogs have puppies (and I think at that time I had about 8 dogs), they lick them as soon as they’re born. Lick, lick, lick, lick, lick…”
As for the critics, Leonard Maltin said, “Eggar eats her own afterbirth while midget clones beat grandparents and lovely young schoolteachers to death with mallets. It’s a big, wide, wonderful world we live in!” and rated it an outright “BOMB.”” Roger Ebert said, ” “Are there really people who want to see reprehensible trash like this?” And Vaughn Palmer stated, “The people who made The Brood do not like people. They do not even appear to like themselves. They just like money.”
Man, what were those guys watching? While I know this is in no way a comfortable watch, it feels like it came from Cronenberg’s heart and soul. I mean, as much as any movie with killer genderless miniature people murdering a teacher in front of her class can be.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: Birth year
The Legend of the Tamal Moon informs a bunch of hippies that the longer they stay, the greater the chance that a Headless Horseman, searching forever for eight gunfighters, will appear to them all. But hey, Mark (Marland Proctor) inherited this place from his Uncle Callahan and has six months to make it profitable, so he gathers up all his pals and they decide to put on wild west shows because we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise. If he fails, Solomon the Caretaker (B.G. Fisher), who is at once the old man who warns everyone and kind of the Scooby-Doo villain, will get the ranch.
“It is beginning again. It is beginning again. It is beginning again. The story will be told but non-believers…are doomed.”
This is a film that teaches us that pizza is the nectar of the gods, a narrator that says things like “Remember childhood innocence and freedom? Remember it, for it is gone now,” a hippie girls freaking out very very badly on acid and the day for night having its own freakout along with her, a sexual assault soundtracked by a cover of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” improv theater, the blood drinking Baroness Isabelle Collin Dufresne who shows up with a Superman lunchbox and holy cow, that’s Factory Superstar Ultra Violet, that same hippie girl being attacked by the Headless Horseman who swings his own head at her which covers her in blood while she seemingly has an orgasm and, at the risk of making this more of a run-on sentence, an amazing twist to the ending.
Director John Kirkland would also make Pornography In Hollywood, while writer Kenn Riche only made this. It’s a mess, but a wonderful one, a movie that starts stupid, gets stupider and then gives you moments of artistic brilliance and you wonder, “How did we get here?”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.
I love the guys at Wild Eye. After reading our Letterboxd list of Amityville movies*, I got an email from them that said, “Have you seen Amityville Island yet?”
Look, when a movie has the tagline “For God’s sake, get out of the water!” you know I’m probably going to have to watch it. Throw in the fact that it was directed by Mark Polonia (along with Paul Alan Steele) and I knew I was going to be spinning this, probably while my wife was asleep so that she didn’t cast a gaze at me that said, “You really will watch anything if Amityville is in the title.”
Several girls are brought to a small island where they are subjected to genetic experiments that involve both humans and animals. Right away, we have a women in prison, a science gone wild story and a government conspiracy flick all at the same time, but to complete this buffet, we learn that one of the girls killed people inside the house on 112 Ocean Avenue.
Perhaps the finest movie to ever be made for $30,000 in Wellsboro, PA, Amityville Shark succeeds just because it exists. It’s packed with a CGI shark, CGI blood, stock footage, a possessed woman blasting a dude through his PC and lines like, “She’s from Amityville, what are you gonna do?” and “High quality dirtbags are getting harder and harder to find.”
Oh yeah — there’s also a zombie that shows up before the end of this movie.
Of course there is.
You know, if we put low budget filmmakers in charge of solving COVID-19, I bet their ingenuity and ability to work with no money would solve it in no time. Or maybe we’d have female prisoners fighting in basements while random dudes in officers yell into their landlines. Either way, this time, we can all win.
I hope Mark Polonia reads this and hears my request: Please make a movie where the apes from Empire of the Apes ride sharks.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Great Gila Monster was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 18, 1966 at 1 a.m.
Filmed near Dallas, Texas, this movie was produced by Dallas drive-in theater chain owner Gordon McLendon who wanted his own movies. This was shot back-to-back with The Killer Shrews. Unlike most regional drive-in films, both received national and even foreign distribution.
This movie is also a lie. That’s no Gila Monster. It’s a Mexican Beaded Lizard.
A young couple are pre-arrdvarking as they overlook a ravine when the giant Gila Monster appears and murders them. The rest of the movie is spent with their friends alternatively looking for them and running from the lizard.
If you ever wanted to see a small lizard play with a model train set and then bother some teens as a sock hop, then this is the movie for you.
Luckily, Chase Winstead is on hand, ready to drive nitro-filled hot rod dead center into the monster, blowing it, as they say, up real good.
Ray Kellogg, in addition to the previously mentioned The Killer Shrews, also co-directed The Green Berets. He got to direct this movie in exchange for creating the special effects. It was produced by Ken Curtis, who played Festus on Gunsmoke.
This movie features Don Sullivan (The Monster of Piedras Blancas), French Miss Universe 1957 contestant Lisa Simone (she’s also a Moon Girl in Missile to the Moon), former Sons of the Pioneers member Shug Fisher, Fred Graham (who falls to his death at the beginning of Vertigo) and local disc jockey Ken Knox, who helped pick the music for the movie.
You download it from the Internet Archive. There’s also a colorized version on Tubi. You can also watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version on Tubi.
“Well, kiddies, I’m afraid our designer hanger offer has expired. Would somebody please get Mr. De La Renta out of here? Next up on the home chopping network, it’s time for the Crypt Keeper’s fashion boo-tique. Today, we’re featuring my full line of Apres Vie death care products. We’ve got everything from face scream to mas-scare-a. Try some. It’s the best thing you can do for…dem-ise. Or maybe I could interest you in tonight’s special. It’s a tasteless tidbit about a traveling cemetery plot salesmen who’s about to make a grave mistake. I call it “Death of Some Salesmen.””
Judd Campbell (Ed Begley Jr.) is a con artist selling cemetery plots that end up being scams. He starts with Mrs. Jones (Yvonne De Carlo) before moving on to the Pa Brackett (Tim Curry). Well, the whole Brackett family is played by Tim Curry and Campbell soon learns that they love to kill off traveling salesmen, starting with the head that he finds in the microwave. They want him to marry their daughter, but can Campbell outsell these maniacs?
The main reason to watch this? Tim Curry. He’s great, as always.
This story is based on “Death of Some Salesmen!” from Haunt of Fear #15. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis. The daughter is not in this story but instead, it’s about an older couple who test out products on the bodies of the men selling them.
Have you seen Verotika and Death Rider? You should. I spent more time than usual explaining why I enjoyed two movies that no one else did. Keep making movies, Glenn.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Attack of the Giant Leeches was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 5, 1964 at 1 a.m. and Saturday, July 3, 1965 at 1:00 a.m.
Gene Corman broke into the film industry before his brother Roger, working as an agent before becoming vice president of MCA, representing such clients as Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Richard Conte, Harry Belafonte and Ray Milland.
By the late 50’s, he moved to produce his own films before starting his own producing unit at MGM. and then becoming vice-president of 20th Century Fox Television.
This film is directed by Bernard L. Kowalski, who also created Night of the Blood Beast and Sssssss. It was written by Leo Gordon, who had hundreds of roles as an actor, as well as being the author of movies like The Wasp Woman, The Cry Baby Killer and Hot Car Girl.
Did you know that there are larger than human intelligent leeches that live in the Florida Everglades? Yep. There sure are.
Those leeches love nothing more than dragging human beings down into their underwater caves and slowly feeding off their blood.
Liz Walker (Yvette Vickers, who was Playboy‘s July 1959 Playmate of the Month in a centerfold that was photographed by Russ Meyer; she’s also the girl who starts all the trouble by cheating with the husband of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) is the first victim. Again, she plays a loose woman who is cheating on her husband, so she and her new man must pay.
Game warden Steve Benton (Ken Clark, who was Dick Malloy in the Agent 077 series of films), his girlfriend Nan Grayson and her doctor father are the heroes here and they deal with the leeches in the way that we all knew they would: they use dynamite to blow them up real good.
So yeah. Giant leeches. Wanton women. Dynamite. Cheap film making.
How cheap? Corman didn’t want to pay the grips the extra money for pushing the camera raft in the water, so at first, the director did it, then his brother and finally Corman himself. The cold water led to Corman getting pneumonia and ending up in the hospital. And yes, that is the same music from Night of the Blood Beast. The exact same music is also in Beast from the Haunted Cave.
This movie had some legs. In 1959, it played a double bill with A Bucket of Blood. Then, a year later, it ran alongside Corman’s brother’s film House of Usher. It was also remade in 2008 by Brett Kelly and written by Jeff O’Brien in a film that starred no one you’ve ever heard of.
You can watch this on Tubi with and without commentary from Mystery Science Theater. It’s in the public domain, so you can also grab it from the Internet Archive.
3. BLURRING THE LINES: Magical realism is the key for today’s witnessing.
Dora (Dora Postigo) has been raised by her father Diego (Hovik Keuchkerian) but has always heard that she looks nothing like him and everything like her mother Piral. Yet she has no memories and asks her father for his. She decides to seek out her mom and learn where she came from.
This brings her to a hospital where she meets her grandmother Maribel (Carmen Machi) and her lover Coco (Carmen Maura), who is married to the richest man in Capital City, whose coma is interrupted with a bullet and the blame is placed on Dora.
The journey that Dora takes is much like this film’s inspiration, The Wizard of Oz, only the scarecrow character, Muneco (Ayax Pedrosa), is a skinny drug abuser and Jose (Luis Bermejo) is a man in a grey suit driving a silver car. And there’s also a lion as well as a frightened man who goes by the name of Akin (Wekaforé Jibril).
I like the idea that when Dora hears music the world hears it with her, but there’s so much in this movie, too much, and it just seems to meander around when you want it to fly. At least Toto looks super cute and that’s a big part of this story, at least to me.
I know what director Paco León is going for and I wish he hit his lofty goal. But this just takes the ideas of the story and kind of seems like it takes forever to get somewhere, anywhere.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: Philippines
Celso Ad. Castillo made Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara (Let’s Frighten Barbara to Death) before this, a film where Barbara gives up a lover to her sister Ruth and leaves the country, only for her sister to kill herself, which brings her back home. This film has a lot of the same cast members but instead of a story of possessed dolls and sisterly warfare, this has a Satanic cult come for the unborn child of Paolo (Dante Rivero) and Angela Cortez (Susan Roces, who won the FAMAS Best Actress award for this) and their already born child, Yvonne (Maritess Ardieta).
Lucas Santander (Eddie Garcia) may be in prison, but when he has an interview with Paolo, he’s the one asking most of the questions, getting inside his head and explaining how he can help him. Soon, the Antichrist is in Angela’s womb, as reported by cult member Blanca (Celia Rodriguez) and before you can say Rosemary’s Baby by way of The Omen, this goes so far that father tosses daughter off a roof to her demise.
By the end of the movie, Angela is screaming at God, saying “I can’t take your tests any more! I don’t care!” Her rejecting the Lord is a massive act of heresy in the Philippines, a country that is 78.8% Catholic. We never see if God saves her, only a square up reel that shows a Mass and says that Jesus will come. That said, this is a pretty great horror film, despite the language barrier that came up at times.
In 2008, the series Sineserye Presents: The Susan Roces Cinema Collection, remaking several of the actress’ films, including this.
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