Author Archives: bandsaboutmovies

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: From Hell It Came (1957)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: From Hell It Came was first on Chiller Theater on Sunday, October 20, 1963 at 11:10 PM. It also aired on April 11, 1964; January 16 and June 26, 1965 and July 9, 1966.

Sure, Paul Blaisdell created the effects for The She-Creature, Invasion of the Saucer Men, Not of This Earth and It! The Terror from Beyond Space, but this is the only movie in which he made a tree person.

Yes, this film is about the prince of a South Seas island wrongly executed by a witch doctor who hated the fact that the prince became friends with Americans. Well, those foreigners pay him back by irradiating the island and reanimating the royal victim, who has been buried inside a tree. Now he is known as Tabonga, an angry tree stump that demands bloody retribution.

This movie is one of the many reasons why quicksand concerned me as a child, as the tree man throws his unfaithful widow into the sinking muck and then tosses the witch doctor down a hill. He can only be stopped by white men and their guns, which hasn’t really changed for so many since this was made sixty some years ago.

Written by Richard Bernstein (Terrified!) and Jack Milner, this was directed by Jack’s brother Dan, who worked as an editor on the Bozo the Clown TV show (he also made The Fighting Coward and The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues).

Look, it’s not great, but the tree man reveal is better than most entire movies. It has that going for it at least.

You can watch this on Tubi.

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 2: House of Forbidden Secrets (2013)

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2: A Horror Film Directed by Todd Sheets

When I talked to Todd Sheets a few months ago, this movie came up and how much he wanted it to be a tribute to Lucio Fulci.

“When I made House of Secrets, it was made it as a tribute to him. I got to work with Fabio Frizzi who did so many of those great soundtracks. That turned out to be a fantastic time. I just wanted him to do the theme song and he said, “Send me the script and send me the rough cut.”

And then I didn’t hear anything back.

I’m like, “Oh, God, he hates that. He’s not gonna do it.”

All of a sudden I hear back. He says, “Okay, I’m gonna do the whole movie for that same cost.”

He said that Fulci would be so proud of this movie and well, it was my homage to the Maestro and my big comeback after my heart attack and everything.

I almost died and that was my comeback movie. And I wanted it to be special. So I wanted Fabio to do the theme song and it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. He was fantastic.”

Jacon Hunt (Antwoine Steele) has had some bad luck in life but now it looks like things are looking up. After all, he has a new job doing security at ShadowView Manor. The bad news? His first night is the anniversary of a great tragedy.

Working for building manager Cane (George Hardy, a welcome face even when he tightens his belt), Jacon and maintenance man Jackson (Bryan David) walk through the building, meeting the residents, who include Cassie (Nicole Santorella) and Hanna (Michaela Paxton Tarbell). These young psychics have been hired by Dorothy Fremont (Iris Runyon) to reach her husband from beyond the grave. As you can imagine, on this evening of such great terror, the spirits of those killed in a brothel massacre many decades ago come back, including Madame Greta (Dyanne Thorne!) and an insane priest named Elias Solomon (Lew Temple).

You know what happens when real Enochian Keys are used during the seance? The dead come to our world and want to kill the living. As always, Sheets moves fast and isn’t afraid to get gory. And look out for First Jason Ari Lehman as a guy working in the building and Allan Kayser from Mama’s Family and Night of the Creeps.

The only thing that took this down was that it ends with a Lloyd Kaufman cameo that isn’t just pointless, it destroyed the end of the film. After all that gore and so many great moments, I hate that this ends with such a goofy and inane moment.

You can watch this on Tubi.

2023 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 2: Critters 3 (1991)

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2. THEY WERE IN THAT?: One with a then unknown actor who is now very known.

Did you see Critters 2: The Main Course?

Charlie MacFadden (Don Keith Opper) from that movie is looking for the last of the Critters and meets a family that includes Annie (Aimee Brooks), Clifford (John Calvin) and Johnny (Christian Cousins).  Charlie warns them all about the Critters — they think he’s a maniac — and the eggs from one of the creatures hitches a ride to their new home, a rundown Los Angeles apartment complex run by Frank (Geoffrey Blake) and his stepson Josh, who is played by Leonardo DiCaprio in his first movie role as what he described as “your average, no-depth, standard kid with blond hair.”

Before you know it, Critters are all over the place, space bounty hunter Ug (Terrence Mann) is back to fight them — well, for a little, and he leads into an ending which goes right into the fourth movie, which was shot at the same time — and the humans barely make it out alive.

The real stars are the Chiodo Brothers, as always making magic from these little hairy aliens. Critters 3 was directed by Kristine Peterson, who was second unit on Tremors and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure before directing this and Deadly Dreams, Body Chemistry, The Redemption: Kickboxer 5 and Slaves to the Underground. The script was written by David J. Schow, who also wrote Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and The Crow.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2023: Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)

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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: Sequel

Directed by David Price — the son of studio boss Frank Price — and written by A. L. Katz and Gilbert Adler (they both also worked on Bordello of Blood), Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice is anything but, as it’s the first of what would be nine sequels. Two of them were reboots.

Hemingford, Nebraska isn’t Gatlin but it’s close enough. Two days after the events of Children of the Corn, the people of this town adopt the orphans of Gatlin and one of them, Micah (Ryan Bollman), starts talking to He Who Walks Behind the Rows and yes, the sequel is ready.

John Garrett (Terence Knox) is in town reporting on the children and his son Danny (Terence Knox) has come along for the ride. John’s career is bad, but not as bad as his life, as he’s going through a divorce and Danny hates him for it, so he fits right into all these creepy children.

After some lighting wipes out some reporters John knew from back when life was better, he gets down to business and starts sleeping with bed-and-breakfast owner Angela Casual (Rosaline Allen) and no, I won’t go for the easy joke and say that she lives up to her name. Danny might, because he’s mad that his dad is getting it on so quickly, but he also meets the creeptastic Lacey Hellerstat (Christie Clark) who drops some knowledge on him about her hometown.

While all that drama is happening, Micah and his child gang get to work dropping houses on people and using voodoo dolls to kill people while they’re in church. They even throw an old woman and her mechanized wheelchair through a window. I am a strange person, I realize this, but I laughed like a lunatic during this.

Somewhere in all of this, there’s a Native American professor named Dr. Frank Red Bear (Ned Romero) who throws some exposition on this sequel fire and claims that this has happened before but good news, there’s a prophecy that there’s a good spirit and not a bad spirit. Or maybe it’s people selling bad corn which has a green gas that comes out of it.

Dr. Frank Red Bear gets some great dialogue.

Dr. Frank Red Bear: Koyaanisqatsi. It means life out of balance. My ancestors would have told you that man should be at one with the earth, the skies, and water. But the white man has never understood this. He only knows how to take. And after a while, there’s nothing left to take. So, everything’s out of balance. And we all fall down.

John Garrett: Wait a minute… so that’s what happened here in Gatlin?

Dr. Frank Red Bear: No… what happened in Gatlin was, those kids went ape-shit and killed everyone.

As if they’re been challenged to go as hard as they can, the children lock every adult in a building and set it on fire, killing almost every character in the movie before kidnapping Angela and Lacey, taking them into the cornfields and trying to get Danny to sacrifice them.

Now, as you sit there, you may ask yourself, “Do I want to watch a child get pulled into a harvester, but not before he has a demon face?”

Of course you do. This movie delivers.

He Who Walks Behind the Rows is now a good spirit by the end as Dr. Frank heals from being dead after shot with an arrow as his ghost paints some rocks.

The director claims that a local Christian group protested the movie and left a dead rodent for him as a warning, so they made their own church for the movie.

You can blame former New World exec Larry Kuppin for this. After there hadn’t been a sequel for years, he picked up the filming rights and formed Trans Atlantic Entertainment. This studio existed just to make sequels to several New World Pictures films, including this movie, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, Hellraiser III and Avenging Angel. They also announced sequels to Wanted Dead or Alive and Crimes of Passion which didn’t get made.

Trans Atlantic also produced Female Perversions, Death Ring, The Vineyard, Rage and Honor II, Plughead Rewired: Circuitry Man II, Tollbooth, Cirio Santiago’s Vulcan, ’68, I Shot a Man In Vegas and The Tale of Tillie’s Dragon.

In fact, the same crew shot this and Hellraiser III back to back to save money.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Mothra (1961)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Mothra was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 16, 1965 at 11:20 PM. It also was on September 30, 1967.

Godzilla may be the most popular kaiju there is, but at least when it comes to Toho’s stable, Mothra is number two, appearing in thirteen of Godzilla’s movies and her own trilogy in the Heisei era.

She got her start when producer Tomoyuki Tanaka hired author Shin’ichirō Nakamura to write an original kaiju story. Working with Takehiko Fukunaga and Zenei Hotta, their story The Glowing Fairies and Mothra was serialized in Weekly Asahi Extra magazine. To play the fairies, the idol singing group The Peanuts were hired, bringing a new audience to kaiju movies.

They are just two of the many odd inhabitants of Infant Island, a place whose juice can heal radiation sickness, vampire plants nearly eat trespassers and gigantic lavra can grow into fantastic moth creatures.

Let me say this again. One of the main plot points of this movie involves singing miniature women called the Shobijin who can speak directly to giant monsters.

Much like so many kaiju films, a shady businessman kidnaps them and attempts to make money off them. That plan has failed every time it’s been tried, dating all the way back to King Kong. So they call out to be rescued, singing to the egg god of their island which hatches to become a gigantic silk-spinning worm that cocoons itself until it becomes a gigantic butterfly, saving the women and taking them home.

Columbia Pictures had the rights to this movie in America and they went full William Castle selling it. They came up with a press book that told theater owners to put up signs on construction sites saying “Mothra was here” and to hire cute girls and make them walk around with signs that read “Mothra, the world’s most fantastic love story!”

They even wanted theaters to have radioactive material and geiger counters for audiences to play with. Anything to sell a monster movie, I guess.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Beast from Haunted Cave first played on Chiller Theater on the second week of the show when it still aired on Sundays. It was on the September 22, 1963 show at 11:10 PM. It also played on the show on Saturday, April 4, 1964 at 4 PM.

Filmed at the same time as Ski Troop Attack and released on a double bill with The Wasp Woman, this Monte Hellman movie would mark the first of his many projects with Roger Corman.

Hellman would say, “What interested me about it was that it really wasn’t a monster movie. Roger liked Key Largo very much. I think that was one of his favorite movies. He kept making Key Largo just different versions of it. In this case he added a monster to it.

As for the titular beast, Hellman would say, “They literally spent two dollars at the dime store. It was mostly angel hair and paper mache monster.” The crew nicknamed the beast Humphrass. It was created and operated by Chris Robinson, who would go on to play the lead in William Grefé’s Stanley.

Basically, a gang gets together and tries to steal some gold, but ends up waking this monster and, well, bad things happen.

Linné Ahlstrand, who plays the doomed barmaid Natalie, was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month for July 1958 and Richard Sinatra, who plays Marty, was a cousin of Ol’ Blue Eyes. It’s things like that that sell a movie, you know.

There was a sequel planned — that’s why this ends like it does — but it never happened. However, Corman would pretty much make the movie all over again in 1961 and call it Creature from Haunted Sea.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Attack of the Crab Monsters was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 21,  1963 at 3 p.m. It also was played on August 21, 1965 and August 31, 1968.

Directed by Roger Corman, this played double features with his film Not of This Earth.

A group of scientists and sailors land on a remote Pacific Ocean island as a search party for a previous expedition that disappeared without a trace. Just like the New X-Men and Krakoa, huh? While they’re there, the scientists plan on studying the impact of nuclear tests from the Bikini Atoll on the island’s ecosystem.

Charles B. Griffith, who wrote this, said he was kind of conned into it: “Roger came to me and said, “I want to make a picture called Attack of the Giant Crabs” and I asked, “Does it have to be atomic radiation?” He responded, “Yes.” He said it was an experiment. “I want suspense or action in every scene. No kind of scene without suspense or action.” His trick was saying it was an experiment, which it wasn’t. He just didn’t want to bother cutting out the other scenes, which he would do.”

Corman, ever the one to make it seem nice, said “I talked to Chuck Griffith about this. Chuck and I worked out a general storyline before he went to work on the script. I told him, “I don’t want any scene in this picture that doesn’t either end with a shock or the suspicion that a shocking event is about to take place.” And that’s how the finished script read.”

Will Dr. Karl Weigand (Leslie Bradley), geologist James Carson,(Richard H. Cutting) and biologists Jules Deveroux (Mel Welles), Martha Hunter (Pamela Duncan) and Dale Drewer (Richard Garland) survive? I know who doesn’t. A sailor named Tate, played by Griffith, who also directed some of the action moments.

Not only does this have giant crabs, they’re also telepathic giant crabs. Guy N. Smith must have seen this movie before he wrote Night of the Crabs, Killer Crabs, The Origin of the Crabs, Crabs on the Rampage, Crabs’ Moon, Crabs: The Human Sacrifice, Crabs’ Fury, Crabs’ Armada, Crabs: Unleashed, Killer Crabs: The Return, Crabs Omnibus and The Charnel Caves: A Crabs Novel.

You can watch this on Tubi.

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 1: Splice (2005)

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1: A French Canadian Horror Film.

Vincenzo Natali made Cube and he proved that he was more than just one film. Actually, he keeps on doing that. But man, Splice has creatures and moments that upset me and I thought I’d seen it all.

Genetic engineers Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody, as creepy as he was when he tried to be rasta) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) are creating hybrid creatures by splicing animal and human DNA. Employed by N.E.R.D. (Nucleic Exchange Research and Development), their assignment is to create new proteins for the next wave of prescription drugs. What they create are Fred and Ginger, two Cronenbergian creatures that are going to mate and then create a wonderful new form of life.

One problem. N.E.R.D. owners Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) and William Barlow(David Hewlett) want them to start dissecting Fred and Ginger and get on with making drugs.

Elsa wants a child and through Dren, the creature that they create — she even gets her DNA into it — is that baby. Or something. It refuses to die, constantly evolving to become something new each time it seems that its life is in danger. Yet it’s more animal than human, unwilling to learn that a cat is something you keep and not kill with your stinger tail. Of course, once Clive cuts it off her in a horrifying scene, the humans are even worse than a creature that only has the instincts that it was given, much less the sociopathic tendencies of Elsa’s family tree.

This movie also has one of the most upsettingly awesome sex scenes I’ve ever seen, one that somehow gets interspecies mating and incest into one frothy mix of torment.

I’m glad that Natali, who also wrote this with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, was able to keep this movie from getting sequel after sequel. And I had no idea Dren was played by an actual human, Abigail Chu as a child and Delphine Chanéac as an adult, because there’s an uncanny valley about the way she appears. She really does look unlike any other life form. Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero designed eleven different versions of her and there is some digital art there, as her eyes — those are really the eyes of the actress — have been spaced further apart.

2022 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 1: Nomads (1986)

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1. DIRECTOR’S FIRST FILM: Starting off with an easy one for you. Make it especially cool by choosing a director not particularly known for making psychotronic stuff.

This movie is ridiculous.

Jean-Charles Pommier is a French anthropologist played by Pierce Brosnan, who is Irish and yet attempts a French accent that makes him sound at times like Rocco Siffredi. He starts the movie off by dying, which is a bold choice, and ends up possessing the doctor who tried to save his life, Dr. Eileen Flax (Lesley-Anne Down). Both of these actors are TOO GOOD FOR THIS MOVIE™ which makes it even better because they’re slumming it and I demand that in all my movies.

I can explain why Brosnan is a French scientist as his role was meant for Gérard Depardieu.

As for Lesly Anne-Downe, she can speak for herself.

She told Fangoria that director John McTiernan — this was his first movie and while critics hated it, Arnold Schwarzenegger loved how tense the atmosphere was and hired him to direct Predator — “was exceptionally hostile toward me. He didn’t want me anywhere near that film. He wanted to go more Hitchcockian and have some blonde, Yankee whatever.” While she could concede that some of the movie was very good, she also said “…some of it was plainly fuckking stupid. I believe, had he gone for more of a supernatural or ghostly situation, and not so much “Here are these people who do this”, it would have been a better film. But making it all a reality didn’t work. He should have made it a straight-up supernatural horror film, and then it would have been good.” She also decided to go all in and state that McTiernan was having an affair with Anna-Maria Monticelli.

Anyways…

Dr. Flax has to relive the last week of Pommier’s life. After studying the religious beliefs and spiritual rituals of non-Western cultures, Pommier and his wife Niki (Anna Maria Monticelli) have settled down in Los Angeles where he plans on teaching at UCLA.

As soon as they get there, a gang of punks — movie punks at that — show up in a black van and pray at the shrine in his garage they made to a murderer. Far from being upset, Pommier grows obsessed with the gang, which he soon learns is all Einwetok. You know, demonic Inuit trickster gods that are kind of like vampires — they don’t show up in photographs — and are drawn to places where violence has ruined lives.

Oh man, these Nomads. They’re led by Number One, who is played by Adam Ant. There’s another that randomly shows up in your house and dances until you get upset and that’s Dancing Mary played by Mary Woronov. At this point, I realized that I have never wanted to be in a gang more. There’s also Razors (Frank Doubleday), Silver Ring (Josie Cotton, who sang “Johnny Are You Queer?”) and Ponytail (Hector Mercado), who gets launched off a roof by Pommier.

Now that Dr. Flax is the doctor, she gets to wake up in bed with his wife, which is a neat exploitation trick, and deal with the Nomads. They leave the city behind and one motorcycle follows them on a dirt road. Flax tells Niki to not look, no matter what, because Pommier’s dead spirit has become one of the gang and now he has a cool earring and steampunk goggles and what wife wants to see that?

You have to love a movie that has a tagline like “If you’ve never been frightened by anything, you’ll be frightened by this!” What balls! I mean, Frances Bay, Happy Gilmore‘s grandmother, shows up as a scary nun! Noir and horror queen Nina Foch (The Return of the Vampire, Cry of the Werewolf) is a real estate agent! That’s chilling, kids! Ohh! Read that as if my words were said by Count Floyd and try to comprehend a movie that goes for surrealistic punk rock vampires against Remington Steele and wonder, “Is this Italian?” Well, no. It’d be so much better if it were, but still, there’s something absolutely and wonderfully baffling about this movie.

It’s also the only movie I’ve seen scored by the team of Bill Conti and Ted Nugent.

Physical media forever but you can also find this on Tubi.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2023: Bikini Beach (1963)

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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: Boris Karloff

William Asher knew comedy pretty well, what with working on Our Miss Brooks and directing so many episodes of I Love Lucy and his wife Elizabeth Mongomery’s sitcom Bewitched. Critic Wheeler Winston said that Asher made all the Beach Party movies — Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and this movie — “to create a fantasy world to replace his own troubled childhood.” He had moved from Hollywood to New York City when his parents divorced and he was abused by his alcoholic mother. Of this era and these movies, the director said, “The whole thing was a dream, of course. But it was a nice dream.”

Asher claimed that this movie was written for The Beatles, who got too big after Ed Sullivan, so they changed the story.

Rich white old man Harvey Huntington Honeywagon III (Keenan Wynn) is closing down the beach because he’s got money and he hates teenagers. He also has a trained ape named Clyde who is played by animal human acting machine Janos Prohaska, who was also the Horta, the Mugato and Yarnek on Star Trek.

Beyond the love story between Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) and Frankie (Frankie Avalon), there’s also British rock star and drag racer Peter Royce “The Potato Bug” Bentley (also Frankie Avalon) who plans on stealing away Dee Dee. The way Frankie acts, she’s all for it.

Ah, the cast in this. There’s Don Rickles as The Pit Stop owner Big Drag, singer Donna Lauren, Little Stevie Wonder — yes, that Stevie Wonder — as well as Timothy Carey (he plays South Dakota Slim in this and Beach Blanket Bingo), Martha Hyer as Vivian Clements, Harvey Lembeck returning as Eric Von Zipper, a pre-Blood Island John Ashley as Johnny, Jody McCrea as Deadhead, Candy Johnson the Watusi girl (who inspired the song “I Want Candy”), Meredith MacRae as Animal, Playboy Playmate of the Month for June 1960 Delores Wells as Sniffles, the band The Pyramids, Alberta Nelson and, oh yes, Boris Karloff as an art dealer. He’s playing the role that Peter Lorre was to take on in this movie, but sadly Lorre died of a stroke. Vincent Price read his eulogy.

Karloff’s role is based on Vincent Price’s commercials for “The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art,” which was sold at Sears. Seeing as how this was an American-International Picture,  nearly everyone would assume that the art dealer would be Price. When he reveals himself as Karloff, it’s a joke on a joke and explains why he says, “”I must tell Vincent Price about this place.”

Drag racer “TV” Tommy Ivo, (given that nickname because he was a Mouseketter with Funicello; he’s in this racing the four-engine “Showboat”), West Coast Go-Kart Champion Von Demming and Don “The Snake” Prudhomme all show up to drive in this movie and the cars in this are just as big of stars, including Dean Jeffries’ “Manta Ray,” the Greer, Black and Prudhomme fuel dragster “Freida” and Larry Stellings’ “Britannica.”

I have a strange weakness for the AIP Beach Party movies. I realize the world was falling apart at the time — it always is — but they give me a fake nostaglia for a place I have never been and that never existed in the first place. Yet it feels like a place where I want to be, even if real life me hates the beach.