Directed by Krsto Papic, who wrote the script with Ivo Bresan and Alexander Grin (who wrote Morgiana), The Rat Savior is the tale of writer Ivan Gajski (Ivica Vidovic). He’s been evicted from his apartment for failing to pay the rent, as he has no money as no publisher will buy his novel about a plague. He goes to sell his books in the streets and is eventually sent to a collapsed bank to spend the night. Inside, he discovers a rat-like opulence who feasts on cheese and plot to kill the professor father of his new love interest, Sonja (Mirjana Maurec).

The professor is the only other human who knows of these rats and believes that a rat savior exists, a rat who can look human and the one who will lead them to power over the humans. Ivan tries to do the right thing and goes to the mayor and learns that he’s done exactly the worst possible thing, because he’s the titular savior and even worse, a rat is now passing as Sonja and Ivan kills it. Or her, we’re really not sure.

There is a concoction that when splashed on the rat humans reveals them like sunglasses being worn by Roddy Piper. And that seems to put the rat people down for some time, but then again, an even worse dictator is in the wings, one that will lead Germany all over Europe soon enough and have way worse plans for humanity than these rat folk and their divine leader.

And if you get bitten by one of these rats, like vampires, you become one of them. But then again, they seem like the only ones who are happy and actually have something to eat.

Not my favorite human rat movie — Bruno Mattei’s Rats: The Night of Terror forever — but this is pretty wild.

The butler did do it.

Ella Venable (Catherine Lacey) has been murdered by Andrew the butler (Andrew Crawford) and her body buried on her estate, a plot concocted by him, Ella’s husband Walter (André Morell) and Clara the maid (Freda Jackson).

They didn’t count on Tabitha, Ella’s cat.

The only witness to the crime, she instinctively knows that Walter had her master killed. So this gang decides that they have to kill the cat and find the old will, the one that said that her husband would get none of her money.

Even after Tabitha gives Walter a heart attack, he brings in his family to find and kill the cat. Let me tell you, as the owner of a tabby, you have no idea what a cat can do once it sets its mind to doing it.

Directed by John Gilling (The Plague of the Zombies) and written by George Baxt (Burn, Witch, Burn), this is a Hammer movie that doesn’t have classic monsters in it. Well, it’s credited to BHP Productions, but it’s a Hammer, right? Cue people leaving comments telling me how wrong I am. But anyways, Barbara Shelley is quite cute in this and she and the cat are the only good people in a plot full of people willing to kill one another.

This movie is why I keep on writing.

Take King of Snake, also known as Da She Wang, a movie directed by Yu-Lung Hsu and starring Danny Lee — Infra-Man! — as Dr. Ling, an inventor who makes R19, a drug that can transform organic matter into gigantic things. Maybe that would be a good idea for fruit or vegetables.

But then a snake gets into it.

Yet in this version, remixed and remade by Godfrey Ho, there’s also a hardass government agent named Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby) who is tracking down some terrorists while the world explodes all around him as a gigantic snake named Moser and his human friend Tingting just try and be a snake and his little girl, except he gets too big and starts killing hundreds if not thousands of people.

As Ted Fast comes after his enemy Bob Solomon (Edowan Bersma), who wants to use the formula to grow giant food and take over the world’s need for groceries, he has only the losest of ties to the reality of the other movie, as always united through one conversation over the telephone.

There’s a moment at the end of this, as Moser lies dying — it breaks my heart just as much here as it does in King of Snake — Tingting loses her mind and starts shrieking at the military about killing her snake. Oh Tingting. Your snake just killed an entire city and some people will never recover from this and most of it is your fault.

As with all movies directed by Godfrey Ho, the soundtrack to this is so much of the reason to watch. There’s “Isadora,” “Catedral de Sal” and “The Night” by Azul y Negro; “Never Land” by Sisters of Mercy; “Sister Surprise” by Gary Numan; “Dance II” by the Duretti Column; “Phaedra,” “Kiew Mission,” “Logos (Part 1)” and “Rubycon (Part 1)” by Tangerine Dream; “Let It Rock” by Bon Jovi; “Better and Better” by A Flock of Seagulls; Richard Band’s Re-Animator soundtrack; “Heartbeat” by Chris and Cosey; “Rendez Vous V” by Jean Michel Jarre; “Agonized by Love” and “Lorretine” by Clan of Xymox; “Witches’ Multiplication Table” by Holger Czukay; “Part 1 (Alien)” by Don Preston and Michael Mantler; The Human Vapor soundtrack by Kunio Miyauchi; a song from Miyauchi Kunio’s Ultra Q soundtrack and part of the Starman score by Jack Nitzsche.

There are reviews of this that talk about how bad it is, how cheap it is and how they wasted time watching it. Anyone who wrote one of those is someone you never want to be friends with. They have a lack of vision, an inability to love life and just are robots sleepwalking through life.

Open your heart and let Moser inside.

You can watch this on YouTube.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

Island Claws was made in the post-Jaws era – a time when killer animal movies were all the rage – but features a storyline, characters, and giant creature right out of ‘50s sci-fi films like Tarantula or The Deadly Mantis. 

The movie opens with lots of lingering shots of hundreds of crabs wading in the ocean against a backdrop of sunshine and easy listening jazz. Right away, I was hooked. 

The island’s residents are absolutely the kind of people I’d like to drink with. We have the Irish Moody (Robert Lansing doing a decent accent), the young, handsome Pete (Steve Hanks), and a bunch of fishermen who basically hang out at Moody’s bar run by the lovely Rosie (Nita Talbot), 

Jan Raines (Jo McDonnel) is a young, plucky photojournalist, sent to the National Marine Biology Institute conducting experiments on crabs using growth hormones to help solve world hunger.  There she meets Pete and the two begin dating. 

Because Jan’s father Frank (Dick Callinan) is the owner of the adjacent nuclear power station that has recently experienced a significant spill, Moody is skeptical of Jan. Moody had a long-time friendship with Jan’s father as well, but Moody is not telling Pete that Frank was the one who killed Jan’s parents by drinking and driving. 

While all this is happening, people are now being attacked and killed by (normal-sized) crabs everywhere and Pete discovers a giant shell, foreshadowing what’s to come. One guy dies in a fire in his makeshift school bus home. Many residents attribute this to a boatload of Haitian immigrants who entered the country illegally. They take up pitchforks, but Moody calms them down. Then, the big crab shows up and all hell breaks loose. 

Robert Lansing really brings it home in this movie. Especially in the scene where he finds his beloved old dog at death’s door after having been attacked (offscreen) by the crabs. 

I love that an older actor like Lansing gets to ride the monster’s giant claw in this film like a horse. John Agar should have done that in Tarantula, but I don’t think that movie had the budget that this one did. 

Made on the old Salty the Seal sets in Key Biscayne, the giant crab, built by Glen Robinson, cost a million bucks to create. It really does look good for its time, although it didn’t function as expected, necessitating a lot of dark medium shots and close-ups. The eye movements are especially cool. 

First-time Director Hernan Cardenas, who never made another movie, does a pretty good job overall. It’s a bit of a slow burn, with a pace like a Made-for-TV-Movie of the same era but it doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. The Scorpion Releasing Blu-ray print is beautiful, but if you can’t track that down, you can watch an old grainy VHS rip on YouTube. 

And here’s that jazzy soundtrack I referred to in the opening paragraph for your listening pleasure: 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Doctor Faustus was on the CBS Late Movie on August 14 and December 28, 1972 and August 30, 1973.

The only film directed by Richard Burton or Nevill Coghill, the actor’s Oxford University mentor, this adaption of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe stars Burton as Doctor Faustus, Elizabeth Taylor as Helen of Troy and members of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.

It’s a stage play filmed in very stage play style, but yet you have to wonder what viewers who stumbled upon this in the middle of the night on the CBS Late Movie had to have felt like when they watched this. Shot on the sets at Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica Studios in Rome, this movie was shot by Gábor Pogány, who would go on to be the cinematographer of Colt 38 Special Squad, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii and Last Stop on the Night Train.

If celebrities as big as Burton and Taylor made a movie filled with this much occult energy in 2023, I have no idea how insane people would go. The cameras get gelled all over the corners, things get neon, skeletons appear and the idea that this is the sixth of thirteen movies that Liz and Dick would make together takes on numerological significance.

It’s an indulgent project just for Burton and if only he’d let go and gone wild in this instead of seemingly sleepwalking through the movie, but you know, you can’t have everything. Not when this looks so fantastic. It’s like Burton watched a few Bava movies late at night and was like, “I want that.” Imagine if he’d gone all the way and hired John Old and given him the money no one ever gave him before and they made something truly inspired — not that this isn’t — but something that shook the very foundations of our reality.

But hey — Liz painted silver and barely speaking and she was the biggest movie star there was at the time.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Omen III: The Final Conflict was on the CBS Late Movie on October 17, 1986.

Directed by Graham Baker (Alien Nation) and written by Andrew Birkin (Slade In Flame), this was released in Germany and Hungary as Barbara’s Baby, as if the third Omen movie wasn’t enough of a reason to get people into theaters.

It starts with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom killing himself, setting Damian Thorn (Sam Neill) up for his father’s old job and his final path toward taking over the world. Yet Father DeCarlo (Rossano Brazzi) has found the Daggers of Megiddo from the ruins of the Thorn Museum that burned back at the end of Omen II, While Damian romances reporter Kate Reynolds (Lisa Harrow) and tries to take over her son Peter (Barnaby Holm), the priest and six other holy men attempt to destroy him.

Oh yes — after the alignment of stars in the Cassiopeia constellation on March 24, 1981, a second Star of Bethlehem appears and Damien orders his followers to kill all boys born in England on the morning of March 24, 1981, as one of them may be Jesus Christ. One of the followers even kills her own son with an iron.

But man, the end of this movie? Jesus himself shows up to kick Damian’s ass. I can only imagine that some audiences found this inspiring, others found it over the top and a lot just stayed home. I kind of love this movie for just how wild it gets, but it’s so far removed from the other films in the series. I can’t wait to see the fourth.