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: 1950s

King Diamond once sang,

“Now if you breaking the seals

And disturbing the peace

Then you’re startin’ up a curse

Bringin’ evil disease

Don’t touch, never ever steal

Unless you’re in for the kill

Or you’ll be hit by the curse of the Pharaohs

Yes you’ll be hit and the curse is on you”

Maybe King wasn’t singing about off-brand mummy movies, but man, I love movies unconnected to the Universal Monster Mummy yet totally want to be in the same universe.

I am Sam and I am now obsessed with mummy movies.

Lee “Roll ‘Em” Sholem had so many credits, from Superman and Tarzan movies and shows to directing Criswell’s TV series and the movies Tobor the Great, Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki, Hell Ship Mutiny and probably a few thousand other things. Literally. There are so many urban legends about his work, like how Phyllis Coates got knocked out on a Adventures of Superman episode and he revived her and shot all her scenes for the day before her face swelled up. Or how he kept bringing the same attractive blonde to be the new Jane in the Tarzan movies, only to keep getting turned down by producer Sol Lesser, only for that girl to end up being Marilyn Monroe. Who cares if these stories are true. What matters is that they are great stories.

But hey — we’re here for mummies.

Welcome to Egypt. Cradle of civilization. Also home of mummies. A bunch of scientists are digging where they shouldn’t, which means that Captain Storm (Mark Dana) has to save them and maybe even pull a John Ashley with one of the smart guy’s wives, Sylvia (Diane Brewster, Miss Canfield on Leave It to Beaver). Or maybe he can get with local Simira (Ziva Rodann, who played Nefertiti on Batman and Venus de Viasa in Macumba Love).

How wild is it that this mummy — spoiler warning! — is really someone transformed into a mummy? And it drinks blood! It also lives without an arm, which is the best kind of mummy.

Shot in six days, one in Death Valley, this is the kind of movie that also has a cat monster and then kind of forgets it. I mean, it’s an hour long. Some people reviewing it expect it to make out with them or something. Perhaps you’ve never seen a 1950s generic mummy movie before and were expecting a Criterion-level epic. I mean, it has the tomb of Pharaoh Ra-Antef to find, the disintegrating marriage of Sylvia and Robert Quentin (George N. Neise), and a possession film lurking inside the bandages of a mummy movie.

I mean, the poster says, “A blood-lusting mummy that kills for a cat-goddess!”

That’s good enough.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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?”

You can watch this on Tubi.

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.

You can watch this on YouTube.

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

The Wicker Man is a classic, a film I watch several times a year and one that I get something new out of with each viewing. There’s a reason why I’ve never seen the sequel, but I finally powered my way through it and somehow, it’s even worse but strangely better than I thought it would be. Then again, in Ecclesiastes 7:15, the very idea of such conundrums is brought to light: “All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.”

Directed and written by Robin Hardy — yes, the very same man who made the original — this is about “Cowboys for Christ” Betty Boothy (Brittania Nicol) and her boyfriend Steve Thompson (Henry Garrett) bringing their born-again evangelical Christian music to the godless in first Glasgow and then Tressock, where a nuclear power plant has made everyone infertile.

The couple are barely there for a moment when Steve neglects their promise rings and swims nude, then makes love to Lolly (Honeysuckle Weeks), a village girl who reveals that most of the town worships the ancient god Sulis.

As the town prepares for May Day, a detective named Orlando (Alessandro Conetta) is investigating the cult, which is run by town elder Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish). Our protagonists agree to be the Lady and Laddie of the May Day Parade, which means that Steve is chased by the entire village and torn apart by naked men while the music sounds like a remix of “Can You Read My Mind” from Superman while Beth attempts to escape. She ends up stuffed in a case, Lolly has Steve’s child and the village is saved.

While Christopher Lee was to play Morrison, he was injured on a film set. He does, however, appear in a flashback to a mentor of Morrison, who Hardy said was Lord Summerisle. Lee disagrees with this and said that the characters are unrelated. Joan Collins was to play his wife, which is dream casting, but when the younger McTavish was cast, so was Jacqueline Leonard as Delia Morrison. The cook Daisy, however, is the same Daisy from the first movie, also played by Lesley Mackie.

The title was changed several times — The Riding of the Laddie, May Day, and Cowboys for Christ, which is the name of the book that it came from — but ended up with The Wicker Tree, hoping viewers would connect the two movies. Before he died, Hardy was still trying to make one more movie in this cycle, The Wrath of the Gods.

It’s almost like this movie was trying to be a sequel to the Nicholas Cage film instead of Hardy’s own film, with a bombastic score, near digital direct to video looking cinematography and characters that are more stupid than misguided. I really can’t believe I watched this the whole way through. I’d say that it felt like an Italian ripoff of the first, like the Patrick Still Lives to Patrick, but then it would be a good movie. This is anything but.

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: Universal Horror

The fifth entry in Universal’s original Mummy franchise, this is a direct sequel to The Mummy’s Ghost, as Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.) and his beloved Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine ) remain in the swamp, even if the swamp has moved from Massachusetts to Louisiana — even if the accents don’t always sound right.

The Southern Engineering Company — one of those TVA or New Deal kind of public works projects — wants to drain the swamp, but the locals are afraid of even going there. Sure, they’re poor, but would you want to deal with a mummy, much less two?

Scripps Museum sends Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr. Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe) to investigate, just as a worker is killed with all the handmarks — literally of Kharis. But never trust science, as Zandaab is really a priest of the pharaohs and is working with Ragheb (Martin Kosleck) to fully return the Egyptian royalty to life within the mucky confines of this deep southern bog.

Thus follows brewing the tea leaves and killing a monk as Kharis rises, filled with power anew. Ananka also rises, being found by a bulldozer and washing herself clean. She’s found by beloved local Cajun Joe (Kurt Katch) and, of course, taken to the local bar before Kharis busts in and starts killing people. She’s found by Halsey and Betty Walsh (Kay Harding) and are shocked how much she knows about Ancient Egypt. Me, I was shocked finding out how much English she could speak.

Of course, it ends as it always does, with evil scientists pushing their luck and the Mummy being dead all over again.

Directed by Leslie Goodwins, this had a huge list of writers attached, including Bernard Schubert, Leon Abrams, Dwight V. Babcock, Ted Richmond and Oliver Drake, who would go on to make another mummy movie, many years later and somehow with an even lower budget, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals which, outside of the Las Vegas setting, feels like it could be the lost sequel for this film.

Universal had one left — Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy — but Joe Dante in Famous Monsters Vol. 4 No. 3 wrote that this was one of the most disappointing horror films the studio would release, packed with footage from The Mummy and The Mummy’s Hand instead of new scenes. Between the stock footage and stunt men stand-ins for the occasionally drunk Chaney Jr., The Mummy is played by at least three people, including Boris Karloff and Tom Tyler.

I kind of love this, as the swamp is a fun place, and if we follow the timeline of these movies, with The Mummy’s Tomb being set in 1970, The Mummy’s Ghost two years later and this twenty five years after all that, this should be 1997. It does not feel like 1997 at all.

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: Viewer’s choice

He doesn’t need it, but I find myself very protective of Bruno Mattei.

Sure, his movies are objectively not good, but he’s always entertained me. I find myself just so amused by the fact that he would blatantly steal not just concepts but whole movies and even footage that I can’t dislike his movies. In fact, I find myself getting angry at anyone who doesn’t find him just as funny as me. How can people have no sense of joy?

Anyways, I don’t have many of his films left as first-time watches — the ones that remain are La provinciale a lezione di sesso and Orient Escape, which are not on Letterboxd and Armida, il dramma di una sposa; Sesso Perverso, Mondo Violento; Uno storico pasticcio and the sequel to this movie. All of those movies have been seen by under a hundred people on Letterboxd combined, so needlessly to say I’ve been on the hunt for all of them.

This film — Secrets of a Woman — is an aberration in that its a softcore sex movie made in 2005, an era where actual pornography is available without needing to look for it. Yet here’s Bruno Mattei, 74 years old and making shot on video adult cinema for someone, anyone who wants it.

American sexologist Nicole Wilson (Kathy Novak, who is in exactly this one movie and nothing else) has traveled to the Far East with her assistant and translator Jane Dimao (Yvette Yzon, who stars in most of Mattei’s movies from the mid 2000s video era, including Island of the Living Dead, Zombies: The Beginning and The Jail: The Women’s Hell). She’s been invited by Professor George Woo (Robert Davis) to study the sexual fantasies of Asian women.

Writer Antonio Tentori worked with plenty of Italian genre masters in the twilight — literally, the guy wrote Dracula 3D — of their careers. He wrote Cat In the Brain and Demonia for Fulci, Frankenstein 2000 for D’Amato and most of the Philippines-shot Mattei movies before writing movies like Catacomba, Nightmare Symphony, Flesh Contagium and Come una crisalide.

The investigation of these fantasies allows for Mattei to seemingly take scenes directly from other movies. I apologize — I forgot to use his name for this film — Pierre Le Blanc directed this. Or remixed it, really. I have no idea where these scenes come from but they’re often different quality and even film stocks, which for the non-one handed watchers in the audience can be very disconcerting. Also, since this is a mid 2000s movie, some of the music seemingly is straight up ballad pop punk stuff instead of being what you’d expect. Well, I’d say library music, but I’ve also seen films where Mattei goes Godfrey Ho and just starts grabbing music from other films as if to dare lawyers to send him a cease and desist. Sadly, he never plays progressive rock deep cuts and early synth artists like Godfrey.

So yeah, this is not a good movie at all. It’ll remind you of Cinemax After Dark stuff you watched if you grew up in the 80s and 90s before the era of easily obtainable nudity. But you know, I’ll also defend it like I would that kid who has big thick taped up glasses and is on the spectrum. Such is the way I feel of Bruno. Or Vincent Dawn. Or David Hunt.

I could — and will — go on.