EDITOR’S NOTE: Casanova ’70 was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 13, 1969. Well, kind of. Chiller Theater temporarily became known as The Saturday Late Show and Bill Cardille hosted the first movie from a living room set. For the second feature,  Chilly Billy returned to the Laboratory set. The second movie was Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Woman. This didn’t last long but the movies shown were Crazy Desire, No Love for Johnnie, The Reluctant Spy, The 10th Victim and Dingaka before taking a week off for Halloween. The Saturday Late Show continued by showing Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; The Easy Life; Sins of Casanova; The Success; Red Culottes; Marriage, Italian-Style; Boccaccio ’70; The Naked Kiss and The Bigamist. On January 3, 1970, Chiller Theater stopped showing non-horror films and was back to normal. I’ve always thought that Count Floyd showing non-horror movies like Ingmar Burgman’s Whispers of the Wolf and trying to sell them as scary came from this time. Joe Flaherty was from Pittsburgh and was so complete with his Chiller Theater impression that Count Floyd was often joined by a sidekick known as The Pittsburgh Midget, played by Flaherty’s brother Paul Flaherty. He’s a nod to Stefan, the Castle Prankster, who was played by Stephen Michael Luncinski on Chiller Theater.

Directed by Mario Monicelli, this may be one of the few movies nominated for an Oscar that played Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. It’s all about NATO officer Andrea Rossi-Colombotti (Marcello Mastroianni), a lover who can only perform with women when he might get killed. His psychiatrist recommends that instead of sex, he seeks out the spiritual and emotional qualities in women. Of course, he’s in an Italian comedy, so that’s not happening.

He almost marries the religious Gigliola (Virna Lisi) but days before he says “I do,” a liontamer (Liana Orfei, who really did that in the circus before being in movies like Mill of the Stone Women) dares any man to kiss her while she’s surrounded by the deadly beasts. He can’t resist this and is alone again. She tries to stay with him because she’s his true love, but he can’t ruin her life with his sickness. By the end, she even marries him, even if he can’t be cured.

Then again, this movie has so many gorgeous actresses for him to nearly be killed over, including Rosemary Dexter (Marquis de Sade: Justine), Seyna Seyn (Flashman), Jolanda Modio (Face to Face), Margaret Lee (Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die), Moira Orfei (the queen of the Italian circus who was known as Moira of the Elephants), Beba Lončar (Some Girls Do), Michèle Mercier (Web of the Spider) and Marisa Mell (Marta) in her first Italian film.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dracula’s Daughter was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 26, 1966 at 1:00 a.m. It was on a total of nine times: January 21, 1967; July 12, 1969; December 2, 1972; April 6, 1974; May 17, 1975; December 18, 1976; July 8, 1978 and February 8, 1983.

Directed by Lambert Hillyer and written by Garrett Fort, the only cast member to return from the original film was Edward Van Sloan, now playing Von Helsing instead of Van Helsing. Supposedly based on a deleted chapter from the book, which was published as “Dracula’s Guest,” Dracula’s Daughter is much closer to Carmilla. Certainly early ads exploited the sapphic undertones of this movie with the line “Save the women of London from Dracula’s Daughter!”

David O. Selznick and MGM would get the rights to Bram Stoker’s books if Universal didn’t make this by October 1935, which meant. that it was rushed into filming with a script barely complete.

Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) is the daughter of Count Dracula and has the same vampiric curse. She believes that if she destroys his body, she will finally be free. That doesn’t work, so she tries psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Kruger). When that also doesn’t take hold, she kidnaps Dr. Garth’s assistant Janet (Marguerite Churchill) and takes her to Transylvania.

How does Van or Von Helsing come in? Well, he’s been arrested for killing Dracula and his defense is that since the man had been dead for half a millennia, it wasn’t murder. Instead of a lawyer, he hires Dr. Garth, one of his former students, to explain his point of view. Obviously, Von Helsing is not dealing with an actual court in our real world.

Doomed love is the theme of this movie, as Zaleska intends to transform Dr. Garth into a vampire to be with him forever. He has had an antagonistic relationship with Janet and now realizes he loves her. As for Sandor (Irving Pichel), the servant of Dracula’s daughter, he is growing angry as she has promised to make him a vampire and now just seems to give it away to the scientist.

There’s also a lot of hypnosis via ring and Lili (Nan Grey), an artist model, being painted by Zaleska before she gives in to her need to kill and drain her.

As for the MGM version that was never made, it was written by the writer of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein John L. Balderston. He was trying to wrap up some of the plot of the first movie, as Von Helsing would be looking to destroy Dracula’s brides and learn that there was a fourth grave that his daughter used. She would follow him back to London and pose as a countess. The story also implies that Dracula’s daughter enjoys torturing her male victims and they enjoy it as well. They also would show her dungeon filled with whips. The script couldn’t be made as the contract with Stoker’s estate didn’t allow him to use any characters that didn’t appear in the short story, so Van or Von Helsing was out.

This same script was sent to Universal and wasn’t used. There was another script by R. C. Sherriff that went through so many censors and was finally not filmed.

There’s a theory that so much of Sunset Boulevard was influenced by this movie. According to this article on The Last Drive-In, both Countess Zaleska and Norma Desmond have male servants who are obsessed and utterly devoted to them. Hedda Hopper is also in both movies.

It definitely had an impact on the books of Anne Rice. I kind of like how the Bright Lights Film Journal described the villain of this movie: “Gloria Holden in the title role almost singlehandedly redefined the ’20s movie vamp as an impressive Euro-butch dyke bloodsucker.” Holden hated that she was cast in this and her disdain for the role lends itself a coldness that is actually just right for her character.

Speaking of Sunset Boulevard, its male star, William Holden, was named for Gloria Holden. This article in Billboard explains: “William Holden, the lad just signed for the coveted lead in Golden Boy, used to be Bill Beadle. And here is how he obtained his new movie tag. On the Columbia lot is an assistant director and scout named Harold Winston. Not long ago he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. Winston was one of those who discovered the Golden Boy newcomer and who renamed him — in honor of his former spouse!”

How strange that the lead in Dracula’s Daughter is Gloria Holden and the leads in Sunset Boulevard and Gloria Swanson and William Holden.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Terror In the Crypt was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 7, 1967 at 1:00 a.m. It also appeared on November 21, 1970.

La cripta e l’incubo was released in the U.S. on TV by American-International Pictures and retitled Terror In the Crypt. The script was called La maledizione dei Karnstein and Ernesto Gastaldi said that he wrote it in a day. It’s based on Carmilla and is the third adaption of that book after Vampyr and Blood and Roses.

Antonio Margheriti was the intended director but was busy, so Camillo Mastrocinque, who usually made comedies, directed. He also directed An Angel for Satan. He was helped by co-writer and assistant director Tonino Valerii, who would direct some great Westerns like The Price of Power, Day of Anger and My Name Is Nobody as well as the giallo My Dear Killer.

Count Von Karnstein (Christopher Lee) claims that his family is cursed and the next victim is his daughter Laura (Adriana Ambesi).  She keeps dreaming of horrific scenes where she finds people with all of the blood drained out of their bodies.

That’s because Sira Von Karnstein, one of their ancestors, was killed for being a witch which has led to the family suffering for centuries. The maid conducts a ritual — with a hand of glory created from the body of a lynched and decapitated dwarf — that brings back Sira just in time for another girl to show up named Lyuba (Ursula Davis) and the murders — and an obsession between Laura and the young lady — to really begin.

This may start to feel like a cover version of some of your Italian gothic horror favorites — fog, skeletons, a woman being put to death and cursing everyone, white gowns barely covering gorgeous Italian women — but those are some pretty awesome things to bring back. I’m for all of it, including Christopher Lee as the hero.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Tingler was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 2, 1965 at 1 a.m. It also aired on March 11 and November 25, 1967 and May 9, 1970.

The third of five films that director William Castle and writer Robb White made together — the others are Macabre, House On Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts and Homicidal — this movie starts with Castle talking right to us, the audience: “I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say ‘certain members’ because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don’t be alarmed — you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don’t be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you’ve got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember this—a scream at the right time may save your life.”

Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) has learned that each one of us has a tingler, a parasite that is attached to our spine that feeds and grows stronger when we are afraid. The only way to stop this from killing us is to scream.

He is able to take a tingler from the body of Martha Higgins (Judith Evelyn), a deaf and mute woman who could not scream and the wife of a man — Oliver Higgins (Phillip Coolidge) — whose theater only shows silent movies. It turns out that Higgins killed his wife by fright and now the tingler gets loose in his theater. This is where the gimmick of this movie would come in, as special chairs would vibrate as Dr. Chapin asks for the lights to be shut out and everyone to scream for their lives.

Percepto was the gimmick for this movie. Castle attached electrical buzzers — war surplus airplane wing deicing motors — that buzzed the seats. When the big scene happens — during a scene from the silent movie Tol’able David — Price’s voice frightens everyone by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic. But scream! Scream for your lives! The tingler is loose in this theater!” In drive-ins, there was a different version of the movie with Castle’s voice saying that the tingler was loose in the drive-in.

In their excoriable book The Golden Turkey Awards, Harry and Michael Medved gave Percepto the award for “The Most Inane and Unwelcome ‘Technical Advance” in Hollywood History.” My hatred for them is incalculable.

Castle hedged his bets by adding red color to a black and white murder scene in the bath as well as placing professional fainters and a doctor and nurse that would revive them in certain theaters. The guy was the kind of lunatic that I wish was still making movies. He also experimented with rolling bean bags to brush against the legs of audience members, speakers mounted at different areas that would make noises when the tingler appeared and even having people physically tickle the legs of people in their seats.

This was also the first movie to reference LSD.

John Waters has mentioned this movie several times as one that he loves. He told NPR that when the tingler got loose, “Every kid went crazy. It was cinema mayhem.” He even played Castle on the TV show Feud: Bette and Joan and wrote an introduction for the 1992 re-issue of Castle’s autobiography, Step Right Up!: I’m Gonna Scare the Pants off America.

Everyone should read that book.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Manster was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 28, 1964 at 11:15 p.m. It also aired on June 24, 1967 and July 20, 1968.

Also known as Soto no Satsujinki or The Two-Headed Killer, The Manster was directed by Greg Breakstone, who was Beezy in the Andy Hardy movies. It was one of several movies that he made in Japan, where he stayed after World War II, including Geisha Girl and Oriental Evil. It was co-directed by  Kenneth G. Crane, the movie’s editor, and written by. William J. Sheldon.

Larry Stanford (Peter Dyneley) has been in Japan too long for his wife Linda (Jane Hylton), who wants him back in the U.S., but his last job is interviewing Dr. Robert Suzuki (Tetsu Nakamura), who works with his assistant Tara (Terri Zimmern) to slip him a mickey, the kind of libation that causes a monster to grow right out of his shoulder. By the end of the movie, Larry has become two totally different beings, one willing to toss women into volcanos.

The Manster isn’t great, but it sure is fun. I mean, when else would you get to see someone fight his evil side on the rim of an active volcano?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I Was a Teenage Werewolf was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 21, 1964 at 1:00 a.m. 

Herman Cohen started his climb up the show business ladder from the lowest rung, working as a gofer and usher at Detroit’s Dexter Theater at the tender age of 12. By 18, he’d be the manager. His career would take him from being the sales manager for Columbia’s Detroit region to their Hollywood publicity department and finally making his own films.

His greatest success came in the 1950’s with this film — which he wrote and produced for American International — which earned $2 million dollars on a $100,000 budget (approximately $18 million on a $900,000 budget when adjusted for today’s inflation). He was also behind the films Craze, Trog and Berserk!

Back in 1957, when this film was made, the idea of a teenager becoming a monster was shocking to audiences. Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff claimed that he received plenty of guff for exploiting this idea. In fact, this is the first of many I Was a Teenage movies, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

It’s also the first role for Michael Landon, who would go on to enjoy a long and fruitful Hollywood career with three landmark series on his resume: Bonanza, Little House on the Prarie and Highway to Heaven. When I was a kid, I was often afraid of the photo of the werewolf in this movie and my mother would say, “It’s just Michael Landon. You shouldn’t be afraid.” Also, as a youngster, if I ever went to another kid’s home and they were fans of Little House on the Prarie’s adventures of the Ingalls family, I’d instantly judge them as boring and want to go home.

Here he plays Tony Rivers, a troubled teenager to say the least. Unlike most 1950’s fare that portrays its protagonist as noble, we’re shown that Tony is a rough character right from the beginning. He doesn’t just rail against authority, he hates everyone. And he’s not all that forthright about it. In a fistfight with another classmate, he goes so far as to throw dirt in the man’s face and try to kill him with a shovel instead of just using his fists. His love of violence and hatred for his fellow man stands in dramatic contrast to his pretty boy looks.

Barney Phillips, who was also Sergeant Ed Jacobs on Dragnet, plays Detective Donovan, a cop who feels bad for Tony and tries to intervene on his behalf several times. After all, Tony grew up without a mom and his dad’s probably a drunk.

Yvonne Lime, who would move on from acting to becoming a noted philanthropist with her husband, plays his girlfriend Arlene. While her parents don’t seem to enjoy the cut of Tony’d jib, she’s in pure love with him, believing in him no matter what.

That said, the real horror starts at a haunted house party. After an extended dance sequence where Vic and his girl sing along to a record — amazingly, this is announced as a big deal and I can’t imagine attending a party where the highlight is some guy playing bongos and lipsynching to a 45 — Tony flips out and nearly kills the man for surprising him from behind. I mean, everyone was pranking one another to an inordinate degree and only Tony tried to outright murder Vic. Look — I hated Vic after a minute, so I get it, Tony. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have to spend time with him on an extended basis.

Don’t believe me? Just watch these antics and tell me you don’t wish you could go full lycanthrope and strike them all down.

However, Tony’s rage ends up knocking down his girlfriend, so he volunteers to meet with hypnotist Dr. Alfred Brandon. He’s played by Whit Bissell, who would play a psychologist in not only this film, but in its follow-up, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. He also had the same occupation in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

This being the 50’s, the doctor has to be a quack. He’s really only interested in experimenting on Tony, regressing him to his most primal state.

After another party at the haunted house — this is made a major point yet we never see a single ghost — Tony drives Arlene home and Frank, one of their friends, is mauled and killed. As the cops debate the autopsy, Pepi the janitor (Vladimir Sokoloff, a Russian actor playing a Carpathian, so this isn’t whitewashing as much as its Hollywood not really even knowing at this point what ethnicity is. In fact, Sokoloff would play 35 different nationalities in his career, including people from Greece, China, Spain, Mexico and so many more) tells them all the truth: these are the marks of a werewolf!

Tony feels like there’s something wrong with himself, but the principal is so happy with his progress that she’s recommending him to State College. One would assume that the marks on his permanent record have been removed.

As he leaves her office, he notices Theresa practicing her gymnastics. This drives his teenage hormones into overdrive and he responds by going full werewolf and killing her, which is about the best translation for toxic masculinity that 1957 can muster. Just seeing the comely form of Dawn Richard (Playboy Playmate of the Month for May 1957) as she stretches out is all it takes. That said — her sexuality had to be somewhat shocking for the puritanical Baby Boom era. Therefore, she had to be destroyed.

Tony’s recognized by his jacket and goes on the run. He calls Arlene for help and she can only listen, unable to reply. And a visit to Dr. Brandon only leads to the man using our protagonist and filming his transformation, at which point Tony kills everyone. The cops are forced to gun him down — silver bullets are unnecessary when you have good old fashioned American steel — and that’s all she wrote.

One of those cops — they opine that man shouldn’t mess in the affairs of God — is Guy Williams, who would soon be swashbuckling in Zorro and sailing through the galaxy in Lost In Space.

Less than four months after the release of this film, AIP would release two movies that are pretty much the same story: I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and Blood of Dracula, which is even more of a remake, just with a female lead and doctor. It’s such a paint by numbers recreation that there’s even another dance number thrown in, references to Carpathia, dialogue lifted nearly line by line and an observer who knows that it’s a vampire when no one else will believe them.

I watched this movie on the very same day I rewatched An American Werewolf In London and it’s stunning to see the different ways that they interpret not only being a werewolf, but the transformation itself. Instead of the pain that 1981’s Rick Baker effects depict, all we see here is a slow dissolve of Tony getting a furry face. But it works — for so often, this was how American audiences saw werewolves.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Terror from the Year 5000 was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 21, 1964 at 11:15 p.m. It also aired on April 9, 1966 and September 30, 1967.

Originally titled The Girl from 5000 A.D., this movie had a great tagline: “From Time Unborn … A Hideous She-Thing!”

Playing on American-International Pictures double features with The Screaming Skull or The Brain Eaters, Terror from the Year 5000 was shot in Dade County, Florida and presents a world where scientists attempt to communicate with the future by sending their fraternity keys through time and getting statues and coins in return. One of the scientists, Victor, grows insane attempting to communicate with the future and pays for it with his life. There’s also a mutant cat cadaver, in case you’re into that kind of thing.

The poster for this movie is, quite frankly, way more interesting than the movie it’s selling. Which, come to think of it, is how posters should work, right?

Dede Allen, who would one day edit The Hustler, Wonder Boys, Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon and Reds, started her editing career on this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Killer Shrews was on Chiller Theater on the first Halloween show hosted by Chilly Billy on October 31, 1964.

During World War II, Ray Kellogg was a US Navy Lieutenant as part of the O.S.S. Field Photographing Branch. That’s where he met John Ford and when Kellogg came back to the U.S., he headed off to 20th Century Fox, where he eventually became the head of the special effects division and helped invent CinemaScope.

He directed four films: The Giant Gila Monster; My Dog, Buddy; and The Green Berets, which he co-directed with John Wayne and Mervyn LeRoy.

But today…today we’re here to discuss the fourth of his films: The Killer Shrews.

James Best has the lead in this movie as Captain Thorne Sherman. Best is probably best known for playing Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard, but he was a classically trained actor. So was Sorrell Brooke, who played his partner-in-crime Boss Hogg. The two often delighted in improvising most of their scenes together. And while they were working with younger and even untrained actors, by all reports they treated everyone incredibly well.

In addition to acting, Best was also a painter of some renown, a writer, a black belt and even ran an acting school, counting Burt Reynolds, Gary Busey, Clint Eastwood (who posted the insurance bond on Best so he could be on Dukes as the actor had a history of heart attacks), Roger Miller, Glen Campbell, Regis Philbin, Lindsay Wagner (who was his family babysitter before he encouraged her to act) and Quentin Tarantino as his students. Here’s some trivia: he was also a cousin of the Everly Brothers.

So why did he do this regional horror film? “I did the original The Killer Shrews as a favor. I made a movie with Sammy Ford, who was friends with a special effects man, Ray Kellogg, who wanted to direct his own picture. And we looked at the original’s script, and he didn’t have hardly any money whatsoever, but I did him a favor by acting in it. Ken Curtis, of course, was producing it from the start. I like Ken, and he wanted me to do it, so I went down there to Texas where we shot this thing. I didn’t realize it was so cheap. I mean, it was really cheap. For me it was a blast, but it was so bad! I think it was voted the worst picture of the year at the time. And then it caught on as a drive-in cult film, and believe it or not, after so many years I noticed that it was playing all over the place.”

Sherman and his crew are delivering supplies to a remote island that’s manned by a group of research scientists led by Marlowe Cragis (Baruch Lumet, who was a Yiddish theater actor), research assistant Radford Baines (Gordon McLendon, a former pirate radio operator who went on to create one of the first mobile news units in American radio, as well as the first traffic reports, jingles, all-news radio station and “easy-listening” programming; he also produced this film, The Great Gila Monster and Escape to Victory), Marlow’s daughter Ann (Ingrid Goude, the Swedish daughter of a steel factory manager that had been Miss Sweden for 1956; her Universal Pictures contract wasn’t successful, although she was in the TV show Love That Bob and the Rowan and Martin movie Once Upon a Horse…), her about to be cucked fiancee Jerry (Ken Curtis, who was the lead singer for the Sons of the Pioneers on their big hit “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” before he was Festus on Gunsmoke) and the man who takes care of all of them, Mario.

They picked the wrong research lab to visit, because it turns out that the scientists have been experimenting on shrews to test a serum that will shrink humans to reduce world hunger. But the problem is that the drug makes shrews twice as big. You’d think they would have figured that out long before they started injecting shrews, but I’m no scientist.

Before long, the shrews show up — The Rats Are Coming! The Shrews Are Here! could be another title for this — and chew right through the walls of the lab, along with anyone that gets in their way. The humans confound these monsters by using oil drums as suits of armor and making it to the beach, just in time for Ann’s fiancee to get eaten alive when he stays behind. She and the manly hero celebrate with a kiss as they leave behind the island and the shrews to their fate.

The beauty — or horror — of this film is that the close-ups of the shrews are all hand puppets, while the long shots are coonhounds with giant rugs over them. This is the same effect technique that was used in the rat movie Deadly Eyes twenty-three years later.

A sequel, Return of the Killer Shrews, was produced in 2012, bringing back best after fifty-four years as Thorne while Bruce Davison (Willard himself!) taking over the role of Jerry. It also features Best’s Dukes co-stars John Schneider and Rick Hurst. There was also a parody remake in 2016.

You can watch this on Tubi. There’s also a Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, July 17, 1971 at 11:30 p.m.

Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater really gave you something of everything: Universal monsters, science fiction, strange movies from Spain and Italy, kaiju from Japan and even krimi from Germany.

Directed by Harald Reinl, Der Würger von Schloß Blackmoor is a Bryan Edgar Wallace adaptation. Not Edgar Wallace, but his son. He wrote books of his own, adapted his father’s stories for movies and even had some of his stories turned into films like this and The Phantom of Soho and The Dead Are Alive. There’s also a rumor that he was an uncredited contributor to the script of The Cat o’ Nine Tails.

The killer in this is strangling people on a British estate. However, not only does he do that, he then brands an M into the foreheads of those he murders and then decapitates them. Well, maybe he likes to make sure that they’re dead.

The masked killer shows up after a party during which Lucius Clark (Rudolf Fernau) announces that he will be knighted. The hooded strangler accuses him of stealing diamonds and killing Charles Manning, then claims that he will kill until he gets what he wants. He may also only have nine fingers and the police, Lucius and his niece Claridge (Karin Dor, who would play Helga Brandt in You Only Live Twice and is also in The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism and Los Monstruos del Terror) must solve the case before more are killed.