EDITOR’S NOTE: Goliath and the Vampires was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 5, 1968 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, August 29, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, June 23, 1973 at 11:30 p.m. It played as The Vampires.

Released in its native Italy as Maciste control il vampiro, American-International Pictures thought no one in the U.S. knew who Maciste was. He’s also been called Hercules, Samson, Atlas, Ulysses and Colossus with several of his films being part of the Sons of Hercules TV package.

The character first appeared in the 1914 silent film Cabiria, has been in more than fifty movies and has been played by Mark Forrest, Reg Park, Gordon Mitchell, Reg Lewis, Kirk Morris, Samson Burke, Alan Steel, Richard Lloyd, Renato Rossini and Frank Gordon. This time, the man carved from rock is played by Gordon Scott.

Even Jess Franco made two Maciste movies, Maciste contre la Reine des Amazones and Les exploits érotiques de Maciste dans l’Atlantid.

Directed by Giacomo Gentilomo (Hercules Against the Moon Men, Slave Girls of Sheba) and Sergio Corbucci (Django, The Great Silence and, yes, Super Fuzz) and a script by Corbucci and Duccio Tessari (one of the fathers of the Italian Western), this movie is totally incredible. Seriously, it slowly built into something that exploded my brain.

Nearly all of the men in Goliath’s village are killed and the women and children taken. He swears to kill everyone until learning that they are all under the spell of the vampiric monster Korbrak (Guido Celano). Yes, pirates who are controlled by a vampire demon who set villages on fire and killing the mother of a demigod as well as kidnapping his girlfriend!

Korbrak is turning all the people he has killed into faceless monsters that serve as his foot soldiers and when Goliath finally meets him face to face, he learns that they are twins. Well, not for long, as Korbrak’s face gets ripped off revealing a horrible visage. There’s also a scene where Goliath is trapped inside a giant bell, as well as everything in the realm of the vampires being colored with gels.

There are also good guys with blue skin and a rubber spider that is one of the best giant spiders you’ll see. This would be the best peplum ever made if it wasn’t for Hercules in the Haunted World but you know, Bava and Christopher Lee together is a tough customer.

Goliath is pretty much a blank slate as a hero but everything else in this movie is just plain weird and by weird, read that as perfect. Monstrous bone and body eating bad guys, even the heroes threatening to send a beautiful woman into a pit filled with monsters while she begs for her life, a sultan who has become the ruler because he sold his soul, people falling on spikes, children being menaced by flaming trees and so much blood. Like, this has all the gore — in 1961, mind you — that every other peplum film not named Conquest wishes that it had.

This movie demands to be seen.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Teenage Caveman was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 26, 1964 at 1:00 a.m.

Robert Vaughn thought that this was the worst movie ever made. Roger Corman wanted it to be called Prehistoric World. In England, they called it Out of the Darkness. Yes, Teenage Caveman is something.

The early humans live amongst the rocks and suffer, despite there being a lush grassland on the other side of the river. There’s also a terrifying monster of a god over there, so they keep happy in the dirt.

It turns out that the god is an old white haired-man who was all burned up. One of the young cavemen (Vaughn) makes him a peace offering while another attacks the man, killing him. The tagline of this movie gives it away — “Nuclear holocaust has destroyed the world as we know it – and now the future of humanity is in the hands of TEENAGE CAVEMAN!” — because this movie does Planet of the Apes without the apes or the budget. Just the end of all things and cavemen coming back after nuclear destruction.

Robert Vaughn, despite playing a teenage caveman, was 26 when this was made.

Beach Dickerson tops that by dying three times — he’s the boy who drowns in quicksand (and the guy playing drums at his funeral) as well as a bear and the caveman who gets speared by the old man.

And that monster costume? It also shows up in Night of the Blood Beast.

When this title was used for a series of made for cable movies on Cinemax, Larry Clark directed it. Yes, the director of Kids.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night Tide was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 4, 1965 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, February 20, 1971 at 11:30 p.m.

Written and directed by Curtis Harrington — one of the leaders of New Queer Cinema and also the director of Queen of Blood, What’s the Matter with Helen?, Who Slew Auntie Roo?, Ruby and so many more — this film was always one I wanted to see as it features Marjorie Cameron in a small role.

Harrington had also shot a documentary about her — The Wormwood Star — and I’ll forgive you if you have no idea who she is. Cameron was many things — an artist, poet, actress, and probably most essentially, an occultist. A follower of Crowley’s Thelema, she was married to rocket pioneer and nexus point of all things 20th century occult, Jack Parsons. In fact, Parsons believed that he had conjured Cameron to be the Whore of Babylon/Thelemite goddess Babalon as part of his Babalon Working rite, which he conducted alongside L. Rod Hubbard. No, really. It may have also opened our world to the aliens that have obsessed us since Kenneth Arnold reported a UFO in 1947.

After a suicide attempt and being institutionalized, Cameron gathered a group of magic practitioners around herself that she called The Children, whose sex magic rituals were to create a moonchild. She was now pregnant with what she referred to as the Wormwood Star, but that ended in miscarriage. Many of The Children soon left, as her proclamations of the future had grown increasingly apocalyptic.

Cameron’s orbit — much like her husband’s — unites both the worlds of art and the occult, straddling appearing in the films of Kenneth Anger, working with UFO expert and contactee George Van Tassel and appearing in Wallace Berman’s art journal Semina.

Why did I tell you all this? Because it fascinates me that she’s in Night Tide.

Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper!) is a young sailor on shore leave who meets Mora (Linda Lawson, who is also in William Castle’s Let’s Kill Uncle), a woman who makes her living appearing in a sideshow. They fall in love before he learns that her past boyfriends have drowned under mysterious circumstances. That may — or may not — be because Mora is a siren, a legendary creature who exists to lure men to their deaths. Adding to her suspicions is the mystery woman (Cameron) who calls to her and demands that she follow her destiny.

One evening, under a full moon, she invites him deep sea swimming, but cuts his hose, forcing him to surface so that she isn’t tempted to kill him. She then swims into the depths of the ocean, fulfilling the call of the mystery woman. And when he returns to the boardwalk, her dead body is still in the mermaid sideshow, now there for visitors to gawk at her dead eyes.

Despite a police confession as to who the killer is, the strange woman in black and her call to the sea is never explained.

Anton LaVey discussed this film in Blanche Barton’s The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey. “There’s a whole genre of films that are just little evocative low-budget gems that I certainly wouldn’t call schlock but that are also being revived as a consequence of more attention in those directions. Director Curtis Hanington’s first movie, Night Tide filmed around the Santa Monica Pier and Venice. California in the late ’50’s, is a psychologically intricate story about a young sailor (Dennis Hopper) who falls in love with a mermaid It’s just wonderful to see these precious works of art being finally given the attention they merit.” This also appears on the Church of Satan film list.

According to Spencer Kansa’s Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron, Anger introduced Cameron and LaVey, who was delighted to meet the actress, having been a fan of the film.

You can download this movie from the Internet Archive.

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 have a list of Bigfoot movies on Letterboxd.

I also have an Amityville list.

This movie put chocolate in my peanut butter.

In the woods of Amityville, scientists whose lab once occupied the very space that the house on 112 Ocean Avenue sat have somehow captured Bigfoot, conducting a series of experiments on him. He escapes and runs wild in the woods, all while a film crew is shooting their own Bigfoot movie, local birdwatchers seek an elusive species and protestors who want an end to Amityville movies all gather in one place to become victims.

This movie has almost everything that an Amityville movie should, which is a great name and a better poster, even if that looks like Kong exploding from the familiar windows of the De Feo home. It does not, however, have any taglines.

Directed by Shawn C. Phillips, who co-wrote it with Julie Anne Prescott and is on his ninth trip to Amityville, (he directed Amityville Shark House and Amityville Karen and acted in Amityville Webcam, Amityville Job Interview, Amityville Frankenstein, Amityville Thanksgiving, Amityville In the Hood and Amityville Hex) has put together yet another movie that has no ties to the original other than you’ve seen both movies.

He also plays Ian, the leader of the scientists who lose Bigfoot, leading one of them named Annie (Lauren Francesca, who was the Amityville Karen) to be assaulted by the creature, who she claims “Has the biggest dick I’ve ever had.” The Amityville Bigfoot which acts a lot more like the sasquatch in Night of the Demon than a friendly skunk ape. Is there such a thing as an amiable abominable snowman?

As for that movie in the woods, its director Claude (Brandon Krum) is having issues with his producer father Harv (Phillip Krum) and his main actress, Francesca (Ashleeann Cittell). And somehow, in the middle of all of this — Bigfoot sexual, fecal and urine assaults abound — Eric Roberts and Tuesday Knight appear. There’s also a scene where Bigfoot pushes a baby carriage with a dog inside it down a hill and this is played for comedy.

This wouldn’t be an Amityville movie without ten minutes at the end of videos sent in by people who paid to be in the movie, as well as news footage that pads out the running time. There’s also lots of ad libbed dialogue, people talking on and on when they never would in real life and so much screaming. Yet it looks a lot better than most Amityville or Bigfoot movies, so I guess that’s some faint praise.

You watch it on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: First Man Into Space was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 13, 1964 at 4:00 p.m.

U. S. Navy Commander Charles “Chuck” Prescott (Marshall Thompson) is worried if his brother Lt. Dan Milton Prescott (Bill Edwards) is the right man to be first into space. He doesn’t follow orders — he went to see his girlfriend instead of doing his post-flight report — and had some issues on his last flight. Now, as he flies an advanced jet into the upper reaches of Earth, he decides to go for it instead of landing.

As the crews examine the wreckage, they find it covered with stone that keeps it from being scanned by all forms of light. Soon, a creature is draining a nurse and cattle of their blood. That used to be Dan. Now, it’s a hulking monster that crashes through doors and stalks women. His brain needs blood because of how it was destroyed by a lack of oxygen and it’s only because of a high altitude chamber that he’s able to say, “I just had to be the first man into space,” before he dies.

Directed at the same time as The Haunted Strangler by Robert Day, this started as a potential AIP movie. When they rejected it, AIP’s Alex Gordon sent it to his brother Richard, who worked with writer Charles F. Vetter and John Croydon, taking parts of another script, Satellite of Blood by Wyott Ordung. This played double features with The Mysterians.

In the stock footage, when you see that jet taking off? That’s Chuck Yeager.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Indestructible Man was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, August 1, 1964 at 4:00 p.m., Saturday, July 30, 1966 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 12, 1967 at 11:20 p.m.

Charles “Butcher” Benton (Lon Chaney Jr.) is dead. He lived a life of crime and now, after being blasted by the electric chair, he’s ready for the ground. That’s when his body is sold to Dr. Bradshaw (Robert Shayne), who thinks that he can cure cancer by injecting chemicals and shocking dead bodies. It works, as Benton gets up and starts walking. It works too well, as now the felon can shrug off scalpels, bullets and even larger weapons.

His henchman and lawyer (Ross Elliot) got him killed so they could get his money and his dancer girl (Peggy Maley) is now dating the cop, Lt. Richard Chasen (Max Showalter), who caught her man. Benton uses the sewers to escape and keep killing, but the cops decide to shoot him with both a bazooka and a flamethrower, but it doesn’t stop him. What does is nearly the entire power grid of Los Angeles being applied directly to his body.

Directed by Jack Pollexfen (The Man from Planet X, Captive Women) and written by Vy Russell and Sue Dwiggins, the rare for the time female team of writers who also scripted Monstrosity. Lon Chaney Jr. plays most of his role with no dialogue, instead all through acting. Then again, he asked for no changes in the dialogue or script after lunch, because that’s when he started to drink.

This movie is also a travelogue of old Los Angeles with so many incredible locations. As for the sewer scenes, many of them come from He Walked By Night.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Son of Godzilla was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 23, 1974 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, August 16, 1975 at 11:30 p.m.

Toho’s A-list was all working on King Kong Escapes while Godzilla got what was left behind, just like what happened with Ebirah, Horror of the Deep. It’s the first movie where Godzilla’s son Minilla appears, a character created not for kids but for young Japanese women on dates who adore kawaii — or cute — versions of characters.

Minilla is discovered within his egg buried deep in the Earth, his crying disrupting a weather control system — well, that seems like a bad idea — that scientists are setting up on Monster Island, of all places. Some giant bugs called Kamacuras (Gimantis in America) try to eat the egg and Godzilla shows up to save the child and decimate those annoying insects.

Minilla grows to half our hero’s size and while he can only blow smoke rings, he’s still willing to fight a giant spider named Kumonga to save some humans, who respond to this kindness by freezing the island so that they can escape. Godzilla says, “Screw this,” and goes to sleep.

When this was released in Italy, it was titled Il Ritorno di Gorgo (The Return of Gorgo), which is an absolute slap to to the green face of Godzilla, seeing as how Gorgo is an absolute ripoff of the original film.