EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on August 31, 2017. If you want to know more about Night Train to Terror just read this.

Have you ever seen Night Train to Terror and wondered — what would one of that film’s portmanteau sequences be like if they were expanded to an entire movie? Good news! Well, maybe. Your wishes have come true.

The final story of Night Train, “The Case of Claire Hansen”, was really a film called The Nightmare Never Ends (alternatively known as Cataclysm and Satan’s Supper). It boasts three directors. Amazingly, it was written by Philip Yordan, who not only won the Academy Award for Broken Lance in 1954, but also provided a front for blacklisted Hollywood writers (he was Bernard Gordon’s front for The Day of the Triffids)!

This is my favorite of all kinds of movies — a film I discover at 5 AM when the rest of the world is asleep and wonder if it can really be true and if I am not still asleep. To say that this is a batshit insane film is to do a disservice to the phrase batshit insane. I feel ill-prepared to share its wonder with you, but I’m sure going to try.

There are two stories going on here:

Nobel Prize-winning author James Hansen (Richard Moll of TV’s Night Court and House) and his devoutly Catholic wife Claire (who is a surgeon, which totally comes into play later) decide to go to Vegas to both celebrate James’ new book and to get away from Claire’s nightmares. Wondering what James won the Nobel Prize for? He wrote a book that proved that God is dead. Now, he’s planning a TV special to tell the whole story to the whole world (he’s preaching the bad news!). Well, alright. And that Claire — seems that she’s been dreaming about volcanoes. They decide to go see a magician, who puts Claire into a trance in seconds.

That’s when we learn the real secret of what has been bothering Claire — Nazis! She dreams of a handsome young officer who kills a room of other officers and an all-female string orchestra. After the show, Claire invites him to dinner after he tells her that a demon is after her. He never makes it — he is killed and a 666 tattoo is left on his scalp.

Remember when I said there was a second story?

Mr. Weiss is super old and out of it, but totally recognizes a Nazi when he sees one. Pretty and rich Olivier is being interviewed during the intermission of the New York Ballet and he looks exactly like the Nazi officer who killed Weiss’ parents at Auschwitz (and he’s also the Nazi from Claire’s dream). Weiss is a Nazi hunter, believe it or not, and he calls in his neighbor Lieutenant Stern (Cameron Mitchell, who has been in more movies than there have been movies, but let’s call out Blood and Black Lace as one of the best of his films). They go to the ballet and follow Olivier to his extravagant mansion, all the while Stern tries to convince the old man that this cannot be the man who tormented his childhood. Weiss grabs his Luger and goes to kill Olivier, but an unseen demon kills him and leaves a 666 on his body.

Oh yeah, there’s also a priest named Papini who is a homeless man that tries to protect James and Claire, even telling her how to kill Olivier.

There are also numerous characters who show up and just die, like Stern’s partner and Claire’s nephew. Even better, there are numerous disco scenes, which feature some wonderfully horrid songs and Olivier seducing Claire’s nephew’s fiancee (so many degrees of separation) until he takes off his shoe to reveal a furry hoof!

As to not skip any exploitation genre — we’ve already had Nazis, tough cops, disco and the occult — Claire goes to visit a black spiritualist who unexpectedly goes off on a ramp, pushing the film toward blaxploitation!  “I am a black man–a (N WORD) in your country. You are a rich woman, I’m sure you have many powerful friends…but they couldn’t help you! You had to seek the help of a (N WORD)!” It’s so insane and doesn’t fit into the movie at all.

Neither does the scene where Papini is killed by Ishtar, Olivier’s assistant (who is only in this one scene). It’s the chance to add some skin to the film and even more blasphemy.

Seriously — this film has blasphemy in spades. If you’re in a metal band that needs samples about religion and the devil, you should totally give this a watch. You’re going to find tons of samples.

Every single actor in this film either reads their lines in monotone or screams them as loudly as possible — sometimes within the same sentence. The lone exceptions are Richard Moll, who is the best actor in here and Mitchell, who is the gruffest cop of all time.

Nearly everyone in this movie (and the related Night Train to Terror) was somehow also involved with another movie that destroyed my brain cells, Cry Wilderness — which was featured on the latest season of Mystery Science Theater. A Bigfoot meets E.T. epic of pure maniacal weirdness, it was also written by Yordan and was directed by Jay Schlossberg-Cohen, who created the wraparound story for Night Train to Terror. Seems that Visto International Inc., a small theatrical motion picture production and distribution company, produced these films in the early 80s magical era of cheaply made independent films. Plus, both films (or all three, if we can cross-over between Night Train, Nightmare and Wilderness) feature the acting skills, if you will, of Tony Giorgio, Maurice Grandmaison and Faith Clift.

Let me see if I can summarize the ending of this — after Oliver kills everyone else, Claire hits him with her car. She throws the body in the trunk and takes him to surgery, where she and her nephew’s girlfriend give him open heart surgery, complete with blood spraying and puking. Oh yeah, there’s also stabbing and slapping and screaming. And the bad guy wins!

Holy fuck — this is certainly a slice of cinematic goofball awesome that I won’t soon forget. Make no mistake — it’s a horrible film. But at the same time, it’s also a great one!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on March 28, 2021.

Despite playing college students, nearly everyone in this movie is pushing forty. If you can get past that, well, there’s a lot more wrong with this movie, but it’s just weird enough that it’s worth watching.

Medical student Lewis Moffitt (George E. Mather, who was 42 when this would made* and would go on to supervise the miniatures and optical effects for Star Wars) is afraid of the dark, ever since he saw a dead body when he was a little kid. Now that he’s in college — he must be a non-traditional freshman — the fraternity he’s trying to rush makes him steal a ring — a Ring of Terror? — from a dead man.

Clark Paylow, who directed this, was the second unit guy on so many beach movies and the production manager for The Conversation and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

*Actually, he was 35, as this was shot in 1955 and not released for several years after it was finished.

You can watch the Mystery Science Theater version of this movie on Tubi. You can also download the original cut of this movie on the Internet Archive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on February 6, 2020.

This Universal movie serial — told in twelve parts — shares some similarities with the earlier serial The Vanishing Shadow, including the inventions of an invisibility belt and a remote-control robot.

That makes sense — at the time, Universal was all about recycling. This movie contains stock footage from The Invisible Ray and The Vanishing Shadow, as well as music from the Flash Gordon serials and Frankenstein movies, plus car chase footage that had been used in several other serials and newsreel footage taken from the Hindenburg disaster.

Eight years after his star turn in Dracula, Bela Lugosi’s career was in decline. He had been typecast as a horror star and was not seen as talented as his co-star — and possible rival — Boris Karloff.

This career downturn had many factors behind it. Universal changed management in 1936 and due to a British ban on horror films, they dropped the once popular films from their production schedule. Lugosi found himself consigned to Universal’s non-horror B-film unit — such as the team that made serials like this. And while the actor was busy with stage work, he had to borrow money from the Actors Fund  to pay the hospital bills for the birth of his son Bela George Lugosi in 1938.

However, that year brought Bela back. California theater owner Emil Umann revived Dracula and Frankenstein as a special double feature, a bill so successful that it played to sellout crowds and Lugosi himself came to host the movies. The actor would say, “I was dead, and he brought me back to life.” Universal took notice of the tremendous business and launched its own national re-release, as well as hiring Lugosi to star in new films.

The Phantom Creeps — yes, we’ll get back to this movie in a minute — was the last of the five serials that the actor would make, shot right after he returned from making Dead Eyes of London. It was released a week before his comeback vehicle, Son of Frankenstein.

Sadly, by 1948, the parts dwindled again and severe sciatica from Lugosi’s military service was treated with opiates, causing a downward spiral that the actor would never really emerge from. He appeared in movies like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster. After making that movie, he checked himself into rehab, one of the first celebrities to publically do so. According to Kitty Kelley’s His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, “Old Blue Eyes” helped with expenses, despite never meeting Lugosi before and visited him at the hospital.

The actor died of a heart attack in 1956, having just married his fifth wife. And yes, he was buried in his Dracula cape.

In this film, he plays Dr. Zorka, a man who loves to make weapons and refuses to sell them to anyone or any country. This upsets all manner of people, like Dr. Fred Mallory, his former partner, and government man Captain Bob West.

Dorothy Arnold, who plays love interest Jean Drew, was the first wife of baseball star Joe DiMaggio. Look for Edward Van Sloan, who always played the doctor battling the supernatural in Universal films. He’s Van Helsing in Dracula, Dr. Muller in The Mummy and Dr. Waldman in Frankenstein. In fact, that movie begins by him warning the audience that they can leave now if they’re too frightened. And Ed Wolff, the seven foot, four inch actor who played the robot, was also in Invaders from Mars and The Return of the Fly.

Speaking of the robot, you may have seen him in Rob Zombie’s work. The song “Meet the Creeper” is based on the movie and the robot often appears in the singer’s music videos and stage shows.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime or The Internet Archive. It’s also on Tubiwith Rifftrax commentary.

Bernard Knowles shot five of Hitchcock’s early movies before becoming a director himself. He’s probably best known for The Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour, but he also directed this movie which concerns freezing chimpanzees and then thawing them out for space travel because hey, it’s 1964 and  we were spending apes to the moon.

World Health Organisation’s Low Temperature Unit doctors Dr. Frank Overton (Mark Stevens) and Dr. Helen Wieland (Marianne Koch, who was an internal medicine specialist after she finished her acting career) have not only frozen these monkees for months, they’ve also fallen in love. The problem? Frank is still married to Joan (Delphi Lawrence), a fashion journalist who is also schtupping crime reporter Tony Stein (Joachim Hansen).

Frank gets $25,000 for his work and offers to buy a house in the country for Joan where they can have children. She argues with him about Helen, basically shoving him into her embrace. As she goes off to argue with her other man, Helen and Frank go against God and freeze him, but not before Joan threatens them with a gun and later shoots herself.

That said, in his book The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema, Mark C. Glassy wrote that the science was pretty much correct: “The level of accuracy in the science throughout this film was refreshingly high, and I have nothing but praise for Elizabeth Frazer, the writer of the film. She did a marvelous job and certainly did her homework.”

Directed by Ford Beebe — who also made a Buck Rodgers serial — and Ray Taylor — who was the director of The Spider’s Web — is the first part of the serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe and Perils from the Planet Mongo completes the storyline. While most movie serials were made for children, the Flash Gordon series connected with adults and became these actual films. This is the third of the serials and was also adapted into three syndicated films called Space Soldiers, Space Soldiers’ Trip to Mars and Space Soldiers Conquer the Universe, given that title as there was a Flash Gordon TV series at the time and they didn’t want to take away from it. There’s also another version released in the 70s called Space Soldiers Conquer the Universe.

The Purple Death is killing people, leaving behind a purple spot on the victims’ foreheads. Flash Gordon discovers that Ming the Merciless is behind the plague when he finds one of Ming’s spaceships spreading “Death Dust.” Our hero goes off to save every one of us along with Dale Arden, Dr. Alexis Zarkov and Prince Barin.

Taking sets and ideas from Buck Rodgers as well as footage from the German movie White Hell of Pitz Palu, this is still a great looking movie even eighty years later. As a kid, I would stay awake until four in the morning on Sundays, as WTAE in Pittsburgh would show thirty minutes of these old serials. It was just when my grandfather would get home from the mill and I was always so excited to watch these with him, then sleep in his bed while he told me about seeing then in the theater. A magical memory I’ll forever cherish.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally was on the site on December 20, 2019. It has been updated since that first post.

This is Alfonso Brescia trying to make a Star Wars movie following his movies War of the Planets, Battle of the Stars and War of the Robots. He also made Naked Girl Killed in the Park and Iron Warrior, so maybe we can cut him a little break. Oh yeah — he also made Beast In Space.

Reusing so many of the costumes and props from War of the Robots — and spraypainting cardboard swords to look like lightsabres.

This is the fourth and final film in Alfonso Brescia’s sci-fi series — War of the Planets AKA Year Zero War in Space, Battle of the Stars AKA Battle in Interstellar Space and War of the Robots AKA Reactor. Star Odyssey has plenty of alternate titles, like Seven Gold Men in Space, Space Odyssey, Metallica and Captive Planet.

In the year 2312, Earth is sold to Kress, an evil ruler who wants to turn humans into slaves. Professor Maury and his band of, dare we call them rebels, set out to win the planet back from Kress and his cyborgs.

Those good guys include a space hero called Hollywood, a swindler named Dirk Laramie who wears a Spider-Man t-shirt who is played by Gianni Garko, Norman the gymnast who does cartwheels all day long and robots named Tilk and Tilly who blew themselves up at one point and constantly have to put themselves back together.

There’s also a wrestling match in the middle of this movie for seemingly no reason. Also — while it claims that the actors are listed in alphabetical order, they are not. Star Odyssey lies. It just lies to you.

Is there an actor that can save any movie for you? There is one for me: John Saxon. I have sat through many a piece of absolute shit only because Saxon shows up to be the hero of the day, even if he’s usually the villain.

TV reporter Carrie Madison (Kay Lenz, The Initiation of Sarah, House) is trying to meet with mad scientist Dr. Hartmann when she literally runs into Dan Roebuck’s (Richard Hatch, TV’s Battlestar Galactica) truck. Once they find the scientist, his machine causes them all to disappear to the parallel world of Vonya, which is populated by cavemen and the warlord Kleel (John Saxon, of course) who has plenty of Earth technology.

Director Terry Marcel also was behind the films Hawk the Slayer and Jane and the Lost City, so obviously sword, sorcery and science fiction was his bread and butter. Too bad that his bread and butter tastes so bad.

If you want to see John Saxon out act everyone around him — sadly I wish this were higher praise — and a ragtag group of aliens fight cavemen, I guess you should watch this. I can recommend several much better movies in this genre, though.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on June 19, 2019.

Whatever you call it — Terror House, Terror at Red Wolf Inn or Folks at Red Wolf Inn — this 1972 horror comedy is one strange film. It makes a nice double or triple feature companion for a few other movies from the early 70’s like The Baby and Messiah of Evil. They’re horror, sure, but they also all feel like they’ve come from some other planet, somewhere beyond the walls of our normal plane of existence.

Regina (Linda Gillen) is a young college student with no money, friends or plans as the rest of her class leaves for spring break. That said — her luck is about to change, as she gets a letter informing her that she’s won a free vacation to the Red Wolf Inn.

She even has a plane ready for her and a handsome young man named Baby John Smith to pick her up when she arrives. Their ride to the inn is wild, as he races the police, but instead of reacting with fear, she enjoys the ride.

Once they arrive, Regina meets the owners of the inn, Henry (Arthur Space, who played veterinarian Doc Weaver on TV’s Lassie) and Evelyn (Mary Jackson, Sister Felice in Airport and Emily Baldwin on TV’s The Waltons), who are also Baby John’s grandparents. Plus, there are two other contest winners, Pamela (Janet Wood, Angels Hard as They Come) and Edwina (Margaret Avery, who years later woud be nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work as Shug Avery in The Color Purple; she’s also in the made for TV movie Something Evil that Steven Spielberg directed before Jaws).

That night, everyone sits down to an extravagant meal where they’re encouraged to indulge themselves. The next morning, Pamela has gone, but her dress has stayed behind.

Baby John and Regina’s feelings for one another are noticed by everyone in the house. This leads to my favorite scene in the movie, where they share a moment on the beach, flirting with one another before they embrace and kiss. Then, Baby John catches a small shark and loses his mind, smashing it over and over again before punching it, all the while screaming “Shark!” before confessing that he loves Regina. It’s incredibly disconcerting, like the way that beings from another dimension would act thinking that they were fitting in with humanity.

Before you know it, it’s time for another party, this time celebrating Edwina’s last night. After everyone goes to bed, the Smiths go to her room, knock her out with chloroform and then slices her to ribbons inside the refrigerated meat locker. After Regina worries that Edwina left without saying goodbye, she tries to run away, but even the police are members of the Smith family.

A prisoner inside the Red Wolf Inn, she soon discovers that she’s been eating human flesh the entire time there. She tries to run one more time, but is caught and finally admits that she’s in love with Baby John. Despite the fact that she believes that his grandparents want to kill and eat her, she thinks that they’ll come to accept her. There’s a test later that night where they try to get her to eat human flesh, now that she knows what she’s been devouring, but she runs away.

Baby John is smitten, but will he save the woman he’s fallen for? Will he eventually eat her too? Or is there an even stranger ending poised to blow your mind?

If you want to know every single thing there is to know about this film, I heartily recommend the zine Drive-in Asylum. In issue eight, there’s an interview with Linda Gillen that goes in-depth into every facet of the film and its production, as well as a great article by Terry Thome that dissects the film’s mixture of romance, horror and comedy. In fact, if you check out the Drive-In Asylum etsy store, you’ll find everything from signed VHS copies of the film, promotional photos and even a cookbook inspired by the film! I’m proud to say that I illustrated this unique souvenir of this film, which as a real honor (and I even have one signed by Linda).

BONUS: We spent two full episodes of our podcast discussing this movie with Bill from Drive-In Asylum, which will give you even more insight into the sheer craziness at the heart of this film.

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?

Known in Italy as La morte viene dallo spazio and in the UK as Death Comes From Outer Space, this was directed by Paolo Heusch (Werewolf In a Girl’s Dormitory) at least in screen credit, but according to many, this was actually the first movie directed by Mario Bava, who also worked as the cameraman, did the special effects and manipulated newsreel footage and backyard rockets into making crude special effects. It’s the first true Italian science fiction movie.

As for the science of this movie, it’s about a rocket launch causing a cluster of asteroids to join together and head toward the moon and Earth, causing global catastrophes along the way. One of the scientists trying to stop this is Herbert Weisser, who is played by Ivo Garrani, who would play a pivotal role as Prince Vajda in Black Sunday. Sandro Continenza, one of the writers, would go on to script several movies like Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World, the giallo Seven Murders for Scotland Yard, Eurospy movies like Two Mafiosi Against Goldfinger, Agent 077: From the Orient with Fury and Agent 077: Mission Bloody Mary, and The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. His co-writer, Marcello Coscia, also was behind Yeti Giant of the 20th Century, Red Rings of Fear and Three Fantastic Supermen.

Carlo Rustichelli, who did the score and would also work with Bava on The Whip and the Body and Blood and Black Lace, created the soundtrack with a ton of non-traditional music and non-music instruments, saying that he “went into the recording studio with a fire extinguisher, a blender and a vacuum cleaner, to do those special sound effects.”