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: Gothic horror

There’s nothing like a gothic horror film that has a woman in a diaphanous white gown walking through a dark mansion carrying a candelabra. I watched like a hundred of them last year — check the Letterboxd — so when I had to answer this challenge for Unsung Horrors, I had to hunt for something new.

I’m so glad I watched this.

Belial (Lon Chaney Jr.) has goat horns, is an expert at black magic and leads a coven of followers. Andre (John Carradine) is bedridden. They’re brothers and they’ve been fighting one another forever over the money their family has. And yet, they share no scenes in this movie.

Andre keeps warning everyone that his brother is demonic and no one listens, even when his son Paul (Tom Drake) is turned into a werewolf and his daughter Valerie (Dolores Faith) becomes one of Belial’s many nearly nude dancing witches.

Originally known as Night of the Beast or The Widderburn Horror, but released as Blood of the Man Devil, it made it to TV under the title House of the Black Death. Directors Harold Daniels and Reginald LeBorg shot the original footage, but producers wanted to pad it out and make it sexier. That’s when they called Jerry Warren, who hired Katherine Victor to play Lila, the leader of the witches.

So look, this movie is a mess, but it’s filled with fog, witches making oaths to the left hand path, bellydancing, more fog, more witches and lots more half-nude dancing. It’s a cheap movie, not that well-made, but that’s exactly what draws me in, because I wonder what it was like for people to be attacked by this burst of surrealist tomfoolery.

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: The Sweetest Taboo

In the book The Sweetest Taboo An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills In Film, author Erica Shultz says that this movie doesn’t just have dead children, but “100 of them being smashed in a hydraulic press so their blood can be used to awaken a demon.”

So if you’re charged with writing about a movie with kid kills, this would be the one to go for.

Lam Ngai Kai also made Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, so you know that he has no problem with blowing your mind and making you kind of excited with all the non-stop gore.

Based on Ni Kuang’s series of novels Dr. Yuen — Ni Kuang also narrates this and make an appearance — this has Dr. Yuen Chen-hsieh (Chin Siu-ho) rescuing a girl named Bachu (Chui Sau-lai) from being sacrificed by the Worm Tribe. However, he has Seven Curses which she heals him from for one year, but they cause his legs to bleed and when all seven curses happen, he will die. So he goes back to Thailand to battle the cult of worms and their leader Sorcerer Aquala (Elvis Tsui) one more time.

He’s joined by reporter Tsui Hung (Maggie Cheung), Black Dragon (Dick Wei) and his friend Wisely (Chow-Yun Fat) on this adventure. In the books this comes from, Wisely is the hero and Dr. Yuen the sidekick, but there’s so much happening in this movie that you don’t have to concern yourself with that.

Imagine a movie that starts with Dr. Yuen in the middle of a SWAT assault then turns into an Indiana Jones movie, but if Indiana Jones had karate, tons of nudity, skeleton fights, way over the top gore and even a flying monster baby. Also a giant stone god, an Alien end boss, a coven of devil worshippers, lighting out of Bava and Chow Yun-Fat blowing a demon up real good twice with a rocket launcher.

I don’t know that there’s another movie that’s quite as strange or as good as this. Writing about it makes me want to watch it all over again.

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: 1970s

Director Simon Wincer also made Quigley Down Under, D.A.R.Y.L., Harlequin, The Phantom and, amazingly, Free Willy. This is where he gets started, making producer Antony I. Ginnane’s follow-up to Patrick, working with writers Chris and Everett De Roche.

Angela (Sigrid Thornton) is a hairdresser who dreams of getting away from her controlling mother. Modeling seems to be the ticket, thanks to her friend Madeline (Chantal Contouri), which means that she gets into a whole different world, having to pose topless for an ad. Her mother discovers this new career and throws her out, so she goes to live with Linsey (Hugh Keays-Byrne), another model, and has to fight off the advances of her ex-boyfriend, ice cream salesman Daryl (Vincent Gil) and Elmer (Robert Bruner), the rich owner of the modeling agency who tries to assault her twice. One of them is the person who sent her a severed pig head and they’re both kind of scaring her.

Well, by the end — spoiler warning — Elmer has been lit on fire and Madeline has hit Daryl with a Mr Whippy Van (an ice cream company from Australia). The American but gets rid of the fact that Elmer and Madeline are married, which adds another layer, as Daryl is confused by the mention of the pig’s head in her bed and totally shocked when he gets flattened. Madeline tells her that she has to go to Los Angeles.

Released in the U.S. as The Day After Halloween and on video as The Night After Halloween. It has nothing to do with Haddonfield, as you’d imagine, and is closer to a fashion giallo than a slasher. It also has a Brian May disco score and even a scene where a trip to the discoteque has a drag artist who loves Elvis. Some say that nothing happens in this movie, but you know, some people digmovies like that.

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: Black & White

What were American audiences thinking when they got this Czechoslovakian movie dubbed into English, once Ikarie XB-1 and now Voyage to the End of the Universe?

I hoped they loved it.

2163: The 40-person multinational crew of the starship Ikarie XB-1 has spent 28 months at light speed — 15 years of human time — to get to the Green Planet, a mysterious body that humans may be able to live on. To get there, they have to deal with an ancient ship packed with nukes, a radioactive dark star and the crew slowly falling to pieces. Like Dark Star. Or even 2001.

American-International cut twenty-six minutes of this (including a scene where a UFO carries dead capitalists), changed the White Planet to the Green Planet and gave it the new name. But the worst change is that at the end of the original, the crew sees that the planet is populated. In this one, they land and see stock footage of the Statue of Liberty, giving it a gimmick ending.

Director Jindřich Polák used the same props from this film for his next project, a 1963 TV series entitled Klaun Ferdinand a raketa. His career went between science fiction and children-friendly movies, along with some crime movies. He based this on the Stanisław Lem book The Magellanic Cloud and co-wrote it with Pavel Jurácek.

I really enjoyed this, as it seems to get across what it would be like to be a space traveler. The claustrophobia, the worry, the food not being digestible — it gets all the small parts that others forget about correct.

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: Hail Satan

Teresita (Imma de Santis) may be a Catholic schoolgirl, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t be obsessed by a statue of a man in a dark suit, a man (José Lifante) that soon begins to follow her through her dreams. Her father (Luis Prendes) decides that she needs the help of psychologist Dr. Liza Greene (Maria del Puy), who tries to work with her but starts to lose control as Teresita becomes more violent, all while Dr. Greene’s secret lover Dr. Jack Morris (Jack Taylor) begins to abuse her.

That said, nothing will prepare you for how deranged Teresita becomes. She sneaks into a child’s hospital room and turns off his oxygen, kills her mother (Alicia Altabella) by shoving her off a balcony, murders the butler’s dog and then watches as he has a heart attack.

Of course Dr. Greene should adopt her.

There is no exorcism or religion in this. Just possession and people trying to deal with their lives because everyone in this treats one another horribly. And then, hands come out of the walls and grab young girls.

Also: How strange is it that this movie has a Tall Man in it who constantly appears well-dressed and surrounded by fog? You may known the actor who played him as the photographer in Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.

I want to know how Dr. Greene is a psychologist when we see her experimenting with electric eels and how a doctor could suddenly adopt one of their patients. I know it’s a movie, much less a Spanish ripoff, but man, these are the things that I worry about. Another question is why does Teresita have such weird stuffed animals that look like piranha?

By the end, the demon has transferred to the healer, who is frothing at the mouth and holding scissors. We don’t get any resolution, but for a film that is about a young girl and a woman unable to connect to others emotionally (and sexually, if we are to believe the things that Morris says to our doctor protagonist), ending with the idea that they’re about to use scissors on Teresita’s father makes it seem like the demon has helped at least one of them work through their problems. And look, even after being burned, those weird stuffed fish have come back.

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: Mexico

Rivas (Fernando Fernández) is unhappy with his life and has been offered by death the chance to live less years but have the remaining ones be more successful. When the reaper comes for him as Tasia (Miroslava), she decides to stay a few days before ending his existence in the hopes that she can learn what it’s like to be human.

Obviously, this is a Mexican take on Death Takes a Holiday, as Tasia says in one scene, “And even if they say around there that Death takes holidays, it’s a lie. This is the first time. I’ve never worked in the movies!”

The best part is a scene where Tasia dances with skeletons to Camille Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre.” It’s both weird and gorgeous in equal measure.

Rivas has told his family that Tasia is a relative from far away and not the person about to end the life of their father. He’s wasted so much of his life and now that the days are growing shorter, he wonders how he can keep Death around, even if she must become part of the family.

Miroslava is a tragic figure and its ironic that she is Death in this movie. Even how she died was up for debate, as the accepted record is that she overdosed on sleeping pills, holding a portrait of her lost love bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín. Others said that she had an image of Mexican comedian Cantinflas and an even wilder theory is that she died in a plane crash with a married businessman and her body was taken to her bed to look like a suicide.

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: Karen Black

Donald G. Jackson made The Demon Lover while working in a Detroit car factory before heading out to Hollywood to make movies like I Like to Hurt People and Hell Comes to Frogtown. He met up with Scott Shaw and together, they invented something they called zen filmmaking, which is all about making movies with no screenplay, just an idea.

Together, they made several end of the world rollerblade movies — Roller Blade, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force, The Roller Blade Seven, The Legend of the Rollerblade Seven and Return of the Roller Blade Seven — and this is in the middle of them. And oh yeah, Rollergator.

Hawk Goodman (Shaw) has been sent on a mission by Father Donaldo (Jackson) to rescue Sister Sparrow Goodman from Saint Offender (Joe Estevez) and the Pharaoh (William Smith), a man who rules over the dead world of the future time. Inside the Wheelzone, most travel by rollerblade or skateboard. Yet Hawk has embraced the two wheel Harley.

To learn all he will face, Hawk must trip out with Tarot (Karen Black), learn to skate and then take his samurai sword and join up with Kabuki (Claudia Scholz), the banjo playing Axxx Man (Joe Coolness) and Stella Speed (Allison Coleman, who would later in life be a producer and director of reality shows like America’s Next Top Model). They will battle rollerblade ninjas, the Black Knight (you guessed it, Frank Stallone), the metal-clad Kabuki Devil (Don Stroud) and so many more enemies.

This footage from The Rollerblade Seven was combined with footage from the sequel, Return of the Roller Blade Seven, and played as Legend of the Roller Blade Seven on USA Up All Night. And yes, that’s Rhonda Shear as Officer Daryl Skates. Not to mention Jill Kelly as Deserette and several half nude women as O’ffenderettes and wheelzone warriors.

I often advise taking drugs during movies but this one may need you to be sober. There’s one scene where Hawk keeps pulling out of the same parking lot eight times in a row. Even if you’re totally clean, you’re going to be high by the end.

“You’re going into the wheel zone? There is so much danger!”

“So much danger?”

“So much danger!”

“So much danger?”

“So much danger!”

You know how in old 1980s adult films they’d try a plot and you’d wonder when the sex would happen? This is that without any sex to get in the way. It’s just swords, martial arts, religion, butts, skating, parking lots, punks, face paint, some more butts and repeated dialogue. But yeah, William Smith in a wheelchair being evil, mushrooms with Karen Black and the neglected Stallone and Estevez brothers.

I want action figures of every character in this movie.

You can watch this on YouTube with all of the nudity…

An edited version…

And the unseen scenes.

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: 1980s

Ad un passo dall’aurora (One Step Away from Dawn) is based on the book Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler and is about a rich surgeon, married to a beautiful woman, who seeks new and more erotic experiences outside of his marriage and wait, this is the same story as Eyes Wide Shut, except instead of Stanley Kubrick directing, it has Mark B. Light. Of course, that’s Mario Bianchi, the man who helmed Kill the Poker Player, the “Lucio Fulci Presents” films Sodoma’s Ghost and The Murder Secret and Satan’s Baby Doll, After this movie, he’d spend most of the next decade making adult films as Nicholas Moore, Tony Yanker and Martin White, including the scenes that would make up the 2001 compilation movie John Holmes vs. Ilona Staller.

That said, even though so much of Bianchi’s career was in actual dirty movies and this is a movie about sex, this is somewhat chaste. I mean, yes, it has a female masturbation scene, but the orgy that is at the center of the story feels like a sex party from a TV movie.

Riccardo Varchi (Gerardo Amato) is a cardiologist who becomes obsessed with a sex worker named Lù (Tinì Cansino, who I am as well already obsessed over as she was Arabella: Black Angel) and attends the aforementioned orgy, where he’s soon blackmailed.

This is not the only Italian film inspired by the same story. 1982’s Il cavaliere, la morte e il diavolo (The Knight, Death and the Devil), directed by Beppe Cino (La Casa del Buon Ritorno), is also an adaption and adds a punk girl to the tale.

I love that Stanley Kubrick probably watched this to get ready to make his movie. He probably did more takes of one scene that Bianchi did in this entire movie.

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: Animal attacks

1975 was the kind of time that we worried about insect attacks and meteors. This movie gives us both. It also gives us Alan Hale Jr. as the law in this town, Sheriff Jones. It also has Leslie Parrish in it, who was Miss Color TV early in her career and used as a human test pattern for early television to see how it displayed skin tones. She plays Ev, whose husband (Robert Easton) is sleeping with a waitress named Helga (Christiane Schmidtmer) instead of going to revival meetings. Yes, that is the same actress who plays the sexually charged piano teacher in Hot Bubblegum, one of the many Menahem Golan movies that have this particular fetish.

There’s a reporter, Davey (Kevin Brodie, who is in this with his dad Steve, we’ll get to him) and his girl Terry (Dianne Lee Hart) who spend most of the film running from giant spiders. And oh yes, brave scientists  Dr. Vance (there’s Steve Brodie) and Dr. Jenny Langer (Della Street! That’s Barbara Hale! Her husband Bill Williams is in this and man, I just found out that her son is William Katt) who figure out that the meteors have caused small black holes that bring spiders out of them because, sure, of course, and they get a neutron weapon because those are just everywhere and also the Skipper as sheriff has the power to call down B-52 bombing runs.

Richard L. Huff and Robert Easton wrote this but had one page complete just before filming. Director Bill Rebane locked Easton in a cabin, telling him he had to write ten pages a day or he would not be fed. He did not go to jail. The movie got made.

There are so many stories about this movie, like how one of the spiders was covered with gunpowder and wouldn’t blow up while the cameras were on, but as soon as they stopped filming, it blew up so good it sent crew members to the hospital. Or that one of the spiders was stolen by thieves and sold as scrap metal after it was restored in 2013.

As for the spiders, they are legs and a body on VW bugs. This is how movies get made.

This played enough on the CBS Late Movie that I was positive that I would be either killed by a killer bee or a giant spider by the bicentennial.

You can watch this on Tubi.