CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill (1966)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 11, 1967 at 11:20 p.m.

Instead of having that who is your favorite Bond discussion, we should all talk about who our favorite remix remake ripoff Bond is or which movie is best. Man, Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill is a pretty good one, even if it has some of the most laddish louts I’ve seen in one of these.

Based on Kommisar X, a popular series of crime novels from Germany, Kommissar X is a private detective and FBI Special Agent named Joe Walker, who is played by Tony Kendall. He’s paired with New York City police captain Tom Rowland is played by Brad Harris).

This is just the first of seven movies in this series of films. In 1966 alone, this movie, Kommissar X – Drei gelbe Katzen (Three Yellow Cats AKA Death is Nimble, Death is Quick) and Kommissar X – In den Klauen des goldenen Drachen (So Darling, So Deadly) all were released, followed by Kommissar X – Drei grüne Hunde (Death Trip AKA Kill Me Gently) in 1967, Kommissar X – Drei blaue Panther (Three Blue Panthers AKA Kill Panther Kill) a year later, Kommissar X – Drei goldene Schlangen (Three Golden Serpents AKA Island of Lost Girls) in 1969 and finally, 1971’s Kommissar X jagt die roten Tiger (FBI: Operation Pakistan AKA Tiger Gang).

The two men meet and come together to figure out why a scientist named Bob Carroll was killed. It. turns out that a rich villain named Oberon (Nikola Popović) who was stealing gold from his partners by irradiating it and having Carroll fix that at the cost of his own life when he became sick.

With a theme song called “I Love You Joe Walker,” you know that he’s going to be one of those spies that swing.

I kind of wonder how every Eurospy villain has an army made up of women with go go boots. And somehow, Joe Walker can turn any of them to his side with just a kiss. One can only imagine if he can do that vertically, what he does when things get horizontal.

Director Gianfranco Parolini went from peplum to westerns to Eurospy with ease, making three of the movies in this series, as well as The Three Fantastic SupermenIf You Meet Sartana…Pray for Your Death, the three Sabata movies, God’s Gun and the fantastic Yeti Giant of the 20th Century. He wrote the script along with Giovanni Simonelli (Jungle RaidersThe Crimes of the Black CatThe Face With Two Left FeetA Cat In the Brain), based on the books by Paul Alfred Müller AKA Bert F. Island.

This movie is a total blast, made in the time when ironic and cynical films did not seem to exist.

2024 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 6: A Dog Called…Vengeance (1977)

6. MAN’S BEST FRIEND?: This canine is no pal of mine.

Directed by Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, who wrote it with Juan Antonio Porto and Alberto Vázquez Figueroa, this is the story of political prisoner and mathematician Aristides Ungria (Jason Miller, as good here as he was in The Exorcist). He’s been in jail for years when he gets the chance to escape. Earlier in the movie, we watch as an armed guard and his dog hunt down another prisoner and kill him. The same situation happens to Aristides, who kills the man and lets the dog live. Big mistake.

Yes, I realize, the dog is a tool of a corrupt system. But the dog is nature and a perfect predator and only knows that the man who raised him and commanded him, his alpha, is dead and that he has to kill the man who did this. So every time Aristides seems to get a chance to relax — or have sex with a woman named Muriel (Lea Massari) who helps him hide out — the dog shows up and destroys everything and everyone.

Even when he makes it back to the revolutionaries that he is a part of, there’s still danger. And still that dog, hunting and waiting and ready to kill. Miller looks quite frankly afraid for his life in every scene with the dog and he should be. It’s terrifying and this is coming from someone who had a one-eyed German Shepherd maul him as a child.

This dog is the same as a T-800, an unstoppable engine of fright and decimation. When the movie suddenly becomes told from his point of view, that’s the exact moment that my allegiance changed from the correct political side to the side of the animal. Any time you use a dog POV shot, you win me over, you know?

You can get this from Severin or watch it on Tubi.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Darkness (1993)

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: Vampires

There are so many vampire movies that you may almost think that everything has been said about bloodsuckers and you may be right. And then you watch Darkness and realize that no one has even scratched the surface of what can be done with vampires since this was made in 1993.

Made by Leif Jonker for $5,000 or so in Wichita, Kansas, this movie does more with its time and budget than pretty much any 90s horror film did with millions. Working with effects artist Gary Miller, who also plays the vampire hunter Tobe, it’s as if this movie wondered, “Can we blow things up and have so much blood that it feels like your TV screen is leaking?”

From the moment a terrified person runs into a convenience store and tries to explain that everyone is going to die until a conclusion that has numerous bodies festering with blood, pustules and grue before exploding in a plasma soaked storm, this is like when Slayer did Reign In Blood from start to finish live, as it never slows down by battering you with non-stop scenes of carnage. Jonker started this when he was 17 and when he came back to it years later, he had the kind of crew working with him that would sell their blood to make it happen.

Tobe meets up with some teens who use shotguns, chainsaws, Holy Water, drills whatever it takes to destroy Liven (Randall Aviks) and the plague that he has brought to this small town. I’ve read some reviews that say, “This has no story” and you know, what movie did these guys watch? This is lo-fi gloriousness on the grandest of scales, well, as grand as five grand can be.

When I thought about the plague that would end humanity as a teenager, it wasn’t me sitting in my house and people arguing about wearing a mask. It was bloody skeletons screaming in the sun, 7-11s filled with blood and hot metal girls in Iron Maiden shirts trying to kill me. I wanted the end times to feel like a Dio album cover or, well, Darkness.

This is metal as fuck! It made me so happy that I was cheering. I almost cried I loved it so much. Really, why did I take so long to watch this? It’s like a film crawled inside my head, ate most of my brain, used the blood and fluids inside my skull to fill a gravity bong, laced it with PCP and then made something for me to watch while I succumbed to the bloody abyss.

I HOPE YOU SUFFER OCTOBER FILM CHALLENGE: Amityville Witches (2020)

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.

The Belle Witches have to revisit their magical talents to deter the evil Dominique Marcom from trying to raise the demon Botis into the world.”

You may read the sell line from this and wonder — a movie with an alternate title of Witches of Amityville Academy — “Is this an Amityville movie?” And i”m wondering, “Are all movies Amityville movies?” Because at this point, I feel like I’m in a non-Faustian bargain. I feel compelled to watch all of these movies and really get no reward.

After receiving an acceptance letter from Dominique’s (Amanda Jade-Tyler, who is in Amityville Scarecrow 2) prestigious Amityville Academy for witches, Jessica (Sarah T. Cohen, who was in Hellkat and Medusa) soon learns that only the Belle Witches can save her from a demon. A demon named Bortis who is also known as Otis — I am not making that up — and is discussed in the Lesser Key of Solomon as a President and an Earl who initially appears as a viper before changing into a sword-toting, fanged and horned human who likes to talk about the past, present and future. He also rules 60 legions of demons.

The good witches of this movie all definitely shop at Ann Taylor Loft and Pottery Barn because they look late 40s attractive upper class — I’d say South Hills but yinz aren’t all from Pittsburgh — and they just like to chill and sip on tea and gossip. Sam (Kira Reed Lorsch, Chained Heat 2001: Slave Lovers and on Playboy’s Sexcetera before being an early internet adult adopter and creating Married Couple Live with her husband in the early 2000s), Ellena (Brittan Taylor, Space Girls in Beverly Hills) and Lucy (Donna Spangler, who was The Coal Miner’s Daughter in the wrestling group POWW and also played Hugs Higgins in the Andy Sidaris movie Guns, Mee-Shell in Dinosaur Valley Girls and Katanna in Space Girls in Beverly Hills) are those Belle Witches and they’re fabulous.

Director Rebecca Matthews (The Candy Witch, Pet Graveyard) and writer Tom Jolliffe (Jurassic Island) have done the impossible: they’ve made a non-Amityville Amityville movie that didn’t make me question why I do this. I’m all for a web series of the Belle Witches where they bemoan the closing of Chicco’s in their mall or battle a series of zombie Karens or just sit around and drink tea and talk about their husbands.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Blue Sunshine (1978)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Blue Sunshine was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 12, 1983 at 2:00 a.m.

You know why I’ve never done acid? This movie right here. After all, it has an “inspired by true events” square up in the end credits.

After a series of seemingly unconnected murders in Los Angeles, only one link keeps coming up — every single person took the same strain of LSD called Blue Sunshine.

Yep — the sins of the past decade are ready to come back and destroy the “Me” decade.

Zalman King — yes, the same man who got your mom all tingly after you went to bed with Showtime’s Red Shoe Diaries — plays Jerry Zipkin, a man accused of the murders who — in true giallo-style — must clear his name. That’s because he was at a party where the murders may have started, complete with a screaming Brion James and Billy Crystal’s brother singing Frank Sinatra songs before he starts throwing women into the fireplace.

If turns out that if you took Blue Sunshine, chances are that you’re about to lose all your hair, go crazy and start killing everyone in your path. Of course, no one knew this ten years ago when they were all dosing on it back in college. Chromosomal damage can be a real b, you know?

How can you not love a movie whose title is spoken by a parrot? One that has a climactic disco shootout? Or is so 1970’s that it ends up speaking for pretty much the entire decade?

Between the self-medicating Dr. David Blume, the hard-drinking and hair losing John O’Malley and Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard, Major Don West from Lost In Space) are all caught up in the grip of the bad trip. The effects pretty much sum up Flemming’s political campaign: “In the 1960s, Ed Flemming and his generation shook up the system. Now he’s working within it.” He has become the system. It’s as if the children in Manson’s famous quote — “These children that come at you with knives–they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.” — are even more dangerous when fully grown.

Goddard isn’t the only TV star that shows up, as Alice Ghostly (Esmerelda from Bewitched) makes an appearance.

Writer and director Jeff Lieberman would lend his strange style to other films like SquirmRemote Control, Just Before Dawn and the odd true crime TV show Love You to Death that starred John Waters as a Grim Reaper attending weddings of partners that would soon kill one another.

The director claims that two major TV networks expressed interest in purchasing the film as a “movie of the week.” The opportunity to get double the budget was appealing, but after seeing the edits that the movie would need to be able to play on network TV, Lieberman decided to produce this for theaters.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)

EDITOR’S NOTE: I Was a Teenage Frankenstein was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 6, 1965 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, April 15, 1967 at 11:20 p.m.

Five months after American-International Picture’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Herbert L. Strock (The Crawling Hand) directed this follow-up, which has British professor Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell, who was also the mad scientist in AIP’s first teenager as a monster movie) coming to America to assemble his monster from the bodies of teenagers who didn’t make it through Dead Man’s Curve.

He’s the kind of scientist who has no problem feeding former Lois Lane Phyllis Coates to alligators (AIP’s Herman Cohen kayfabe stated that the alligator had been used to dispose of the bodies of the victims of serial killer Joe Ball from a small town outside San Antonio, which I love) or cutting off the face of a boy on Lover’s Lane (Gary Conway, The Farmer) for his undead monster.

Herman Cohen and Herbert L. Strock were able to write and shoot this film and Blood of Dracula in 4 weeks. That’s because a Texas chain of drive-ins asked for two new movies from AIP if they could deliver by Thanksgiving.

How did AIP not follow this up with I Was a Teenage Dracula? Then again, both the teenage werewolf and teenage Frankenstein show up in How to Make a Monster.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Godzilla King of the Monsters! (1956)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Godzilla King of the Monsters was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 9, 1965 at 11:15 p.m., Saturday, October 31, 1965 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, December 9, 1967 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, February 15, 1969 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, April 4, 1970 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, September 4, 1971 at 1:00 a.m.

“We weren’t interested in politics, believe me. We only wanted to make a movie we could sell. At that time, the American public wouldn’t have gone for a movie with an all-Japanese cast. That’s why we did what we did. We didn’t really change the story. We just gave it an American point of view.” – Richard Kay

Godzilla came to America as a result of several business deals. The first was between Edmund Goldman and Toho. For $25,000, Goldman bought the rights to create a movie “narrated, dubbed in English and completed in accordance with the revisions, additions, and deletions,” with final approval by Toho.

He would sell his interest in the movie to Harold Ross and Richard Kay of Jewell Enterprises — who had the idea to dub the movie and hire Raymond Burr — and then Joseph E. Levine, the man who would bring Hercules and Sophia Loren to America — came on board to make the movie a blockbuster.

Director Terry Morse was paid $10,000 for re-writing and directing any scenes that would be made for the remixed version of Godzilla, the same fee that Burr would get for a day’s work (and lending his box office clout to the film).

This was a movie made under duress, mostly due to the budget. The new footage was filmed in just three days, with Burr working a 24-hour straight day — living up to his day of work, I guess — to shoot all of his scenes.

The rough edges — references to atomic bombs, nuclear tests and radioactive contamination — were cut. This was a movie about a giant monster now, not a nation using said big monster to deal with grief, fear and loss national identity.

Speaking of beating up actors, James Hong — Lo Pan! — and Sammee Tong (Bachelor Father) were locked in a room for five hours and recorded every single Japanese voice in this movie. They never saw the footage, only sitting with Morse at a table with a microphone.

For what it’s worth, original director Ishirō Honda found the changes pretty funny, saying  that he was “trying to imitate American monster movies” in the first place.

Burr plays Steve Martin, an American reporter injured in the wake of Godzilla’s attacks on Japan. For all the bad things you can say about editing this movie, his narration makes some scenes even stronger: “This is Tokyo. Once a city of six million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which up until a few days ago was entirely beyond the scope of Man’s imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world. There were once many people here who could’ve told of what they saw… now there are only a few. My name is Steve Martin. I’m a foreign correspondent for United World News. I was headed for an assignment in Cairo, when I stopped off in Tokyo for a social call, but it turned out to be a visit to the living hell of another world.”

It’s pretty astounding that this movie basically samples the entire original movie and inserts Burr into so many scenes, using newly lensed scenes with Asian-American actors and editing tricks to make it seem as if he was always there.

Until 2004, this was the version of the movie that was seen worldwide. In Italy, however, Luigi Cozzi made a remix of the remix called Cozilla. Needing more footage to pad its running time, he added in real footage of chaotic death from newsreals to put the dark edge back into the film or give it an “up-to-date and more violent look” in his own words. Whatever the intention, the original art was cut up and made to be something more palatable to American audiences at one point and now was made to fit the need for Italian audiences to always see something shocking.

FANTASTIC FEST 2024: The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee (2024)

Christopher Lee was a hero to me as a child. If you’ve read about his life, as all horror fans have, you’ll known that he was a soldier, spy, Nazi hunter and so much more before becoming an actor. What you may not know is how hard it was to get started, as he was too tall for so many roles.

This film, directed and written by Jon Spira (Elstree 1976), combines archival footage, puppetry, animation and interviews with tons of people to get the full story of Lee.

With Peter Serafinowicz (the live action version of The Tick and Darth Maul’s voice) providing Lee’s voice, you’ll learn how the actor became a horror icon, even if he was often mistaken for his close friends Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, as he jokes in this. Actually, the moments where he talks about Cushing waiting decades to be with his dead wife and just playing with toy soldiers and passing time made me tear up.

Everyone from Joe Dante and John Landis to Peter Jackson and Caroline Munro has a story to tell. Some may not like the puppet version of Lee, but it worked by the end of the film. And there’s something to learn for even the biggest fan of Lee, like how Errol Flynn gave him a fencing injury to how he witnessed one of France’s last public executions. I also loved his pride in getting a stuntman belt buckle during the filming of Airport ’77!

With a career as big as Lee’s and one that lasted so long, there will be some things missed. However, this hits so much, from working with Jess Franco and Mario Bava to him suggesting Dennis Wheatley to Hammer and singing in The Return Of Captain Invincible.

It even shows him menacing Chuck Norris in An Eye for an Eye!

This is recommended viewing.

2024 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 5: From Beyond (1986)

5. BROKEN BONES: Snap, crackle, “stop… is it sticking out?”

Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) has created the Resonator, which allows him to see beyond reality. You know, like the title. When Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) activates it, he sees all sorts of monsters floating around him, including one that bites him. Pretorious, instead of never turning it on again, goes wild and turns it up to 11. Crawford runs, Pretorious loses his head and Crawford is arrested for his murder by Detective Bubba Brownless (Ken Foree).

Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) treats him in a mental ward and discovers that his pineal gland has become enlarged. Interested by the machine, she, Crawford and Bubba go back to the lab and attempt to rebuild the machine. When they get it turned on, a nude and floating Pretorius appears, surrounded by monsters and slimy tentacles. Almost everyone barely makes it out alive.

Even after that, Katherine thinks the machine can help people who have schizophrenia and brain damage, so she turns it back on and Pretorius tries to drag her back into his new realm. Gigantic bees eat Bubba and Crawford has his pineal gland emerge from his forehead. Now, everyone thinks Katherine is insane and she’s saved from shock treatment by a brain and eye hungry Crawford, as the two escape and take a bomb back to the house.

The end of this movie upset me so much, as she launches herself out of a window to escape the blast and  her leg breaks into pieces before yelling, “They ate him!”

Shot in Italy at the Dinocitta Studios that were bought by Empire, this was made at the same time as Dolls, another movie by director Stuart Gordon. Between four effects teams and a nearly all Italian crew, they got a lot out of this movie’s low budget. I watched this so many times on cable, always covering my eyes, and even today it still has enough gross moments to make me question watching it.

I love that Barbara Crampton sold her leather BDSM outfit from this movie at a yard sale.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Hell Spa (1992)

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: 1990s

If Killer Workout and Death Spa weren’t enough for you, Hell Spa is a shot on video 1990s film (shot in 1992, released in 1992) that has the best line I’ve heard in a long time: “There’s someone out there and they stole my beans!”

A woman is stalked and killed, at which point we see a computer monitor that tells us that her children, Maggie (Betsy Ryan) and Marcia (Heidi Gross) have to also be murdered so that they’re aren’t any loose ends.

Mr. Ex (Ron Waldron) is such a strange character. He buys into mom and pop shops by giving people their fondest dreams, then begins to kill their customers and finally the owners, like a combination of Needful Things and Blockbuster to your favorite local video store in the actual 1990s that no one remembers, feeding nostalgia into a beast that destroyed the actual stores that kept interesting movies on the shelf. Mr. Ex is something like a vampire or Man In Black or demon and the movie never really explains his plan of buying auto parts stores and gyms. It’s an odd Satanic business plan, but it seems like he’s getting somewhere with it.

The Hell Spa is owned by Rona Benson (Deirdre West), an older woman who is losing ground to a corporate gym that destroys every small workout place in its way. Mr. Ex shows up and offers an interesting plan. He will save her beloved gym, make her look young again and she can sign people up at her gym for free and lose weight, as long as they sign up for life. Plan Ex, as it’s called, is on all the scales in the form of stickers, which seems kind of budget for someone who is either a monster from another dimension or some higher form of demon, but who am I to tell Mr. Ex how to do what he does.

Catherine Clark (Lisa Bawdon) is the editor of a local newspaper that no one likes other than to write letters telling her how bad the paper is. She learns about the spa when her friends, yes that would be Maggie and Marcia, go missing. There’s a whirlwind of plot, as Mr. Ex buys out one of her reporters, Doyle Shakespeare (Leonna Small), by giving her the mental illusion that her sick mother is better, all while Catherine falls for hunky but kind of dumb — or so he appears — computer guru Ken Brock (Raymond Storti). But then Mr. Ex takes those two pieces off the board and even cuts the finger off — he didn’t lose enough weight — of the owner of the print shop that the newspaper comes out of, Roque Jarvis (Augie Blunt), Catherine becomes in deep with the conspiracy that is swirling about her city.

Mike Bowler, who directed this, also was behind Things (not the Canadian one) and its sequel, as well as writing Fatal Images. The co-writer of this was Dennis Devine, who has been making movies since Fatal Images like Dead GirlsThings IIVamps In the City and so many more. In fact, if you liked the theme from Dead Girls, good news. You’re going to hear it again.

“God made a fatal error when he gave men free will,” says Mr. Ex at one point, just after he’s show Catherine that large computers from another time and place — their computing power would fit into your phone these days — are behind his empire. Then, he giallo kills the other writer by stabbing her right in the brain.

This just gets wild, as there’s an underground lair filled with computers, as if this has become a Halloween 3 cover movie, except that it’s really about how Walmarts and Dollar Generals stripmined small towns across America, putting up stores every two minutes, until anything unique or special has been torn away while taking what they need, whether that’s money or blood or souls.

Those are some big ideas for a microbudget shot on video horror movie — and maybe I’m filling in the holes with my own concepts as I savored this — but you have to love a bad guy who says things like “I am the dark in every man’s soul” before describing how he will use sin to unite the entire world.

Also: This movie is way longer than it should be, yet I wanted it to last like another hour. You might find that it drags, but I could live in the world of Hell Spa for some time.

In 2000, Bowler took footage from this and made Club Dead, which is almost the same movie but now it has Tommy Kirk as a cop. This is a move that I can’t help but applaud. He should have remade it with little bursts of footage every few years, like a Satanic small business Star Wars prequel.

You can watch this on YouTube.