Have you seen Verotika and Death Rider? You should. I spent more time than usual explaining why I enjoyed two movies that no one else did. Keep making movies, Glenn.
You can get Verotika from MVD.
You can get Death Rider from Cleopatra Records.
You can listen to the show on Spotify.
The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, I Heart Radio, Amazon Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Attack of the Giant Leeches was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 5, 1964 at 1 a.m. and Saturday, July 3, 1965 at 1:00 a.m.
Gene Corman broke into the film industry before his brother Roger, working as an agent before becoming vice president of MCA, representing such clients as Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Richard Conte, Harry Belafonte and Ray Milland.
By the late 50’s, he moved to produce his own films before starting his own producing unit at MGM. and then becoming vice-president of 20th Century Fox Television.
This film is directed by Bernard L. Kowalski, who also created Night of the Blood Beast and Sssssss. It was written by Leo Gordon, who had hundreds of roles as an actor, as well as being the author of movies like The Wasp Woman, The Cry Baby Killer and Hot Car Girl.
Did you know that there are larger than human intelligent leeches that live in the Florida Everglades? Yep. There sure are.
Those leeches love nothing more than dragging human beings down into their underwater caves and slowly feeding off their blood.
Liz Walker (Yvette Vickers, who was Playboy‘s July 1959 Playmate of the Month in a centerfold that was photographed by Russ Meyer; she’s also the girl who starts all the trouble by cheating with the husband of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) is the first victim. Again, she plays a loose woman who is cheating on her husband, so she and her new man must pay.
Game warden Steve Benton (Ken Clark, who was Dick Malloy in the Agent 077 series of films), his girlfriend Nan Grayson and her doctor father are the heroes here and they deal with the leeches in the way that we all knew they would: they use dynamite to blow them up real good.
So yeah. Giant leeches. Wanton women. Dynamite. Cheap film making.
How cheap? Corman didn’t want to pay the grips the extra money for pushing the camera raft in the water, so at first, the director did it, then his brother and finally Corman himself. The cold water led to Corman getting pneumonia and ending up in the hospital. And yes, that is the same music from Night of the Blood Beast. The exact same music is also in Beast from the Haunted Cave.
This movie had some legs. In 1959, it played a double bill with A Bucket of Blood. Then, a year later, it ran alongside Corman’s brother’s film House of Usher. It was also remade in 2008 by Brett Kelly and written by Jeff O’Brien in a film that starred no one you’ve ever heard of.
You can watch this on Tubi with and without commentary from Mystery Science Theater. It’s in the public domain, so you can also grab it from the Internet Archive.
3. BLURRING THE LINES: Magical realism is the key for today’s witnessing.
Dora (Dora Postigo) has been raised by her father Diego (Hovik Keuchkerian) but has always heard that she looks nothing like him and everything like her mother Piral. Yet she has no memories and asks her father for his. She decides to seek out her mom and learn where she came from.
This brings her to a hospital where she meets her grandmother Maribel (Carmen Machi) and her lover Coco (Carmen Maura), who is married to the richest man in Capital City, whose coma is interrupted with a bullet and the blame is placed on Dora.
The journey that Dora takes is much like this film’s inspiration, The Wizard of Oz, only the scarecrow character, Muneco (Ayax Pedrosa), is a skinny drug abuser and Jose (Luis Bermejo) is a man in a grey suit driving a silver car. And there’s also a lion as well as a frightened man who goes by the name of Akin (Wekaforé Jibril).
I like the idea that when Dora hears music the world hears it with her, but there’s so much in this movie, too much, and it just seems to meander around when you want it to fly. At least Toto looks super cute and that’s a big part of this story, at least to me.
I know what director Paco León is going for and I wish he hit his lofty goal. But this just takes the ideas of the story and kind of seems like it takes forever to get somewhere, anywhere.
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: Philippines
Celso Ad. Castillo made Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara (Let’s Frighten Barbara to Death) before this, a film where Barbara gives up a lover to her sister Ruth and leaves the country, only for her sister to kill herself, which brings her back home. This film has a lot of the same cast members but instead of a story of possessed dolls and sisterly warfare, this has a Satanic cult come for the unborn child of Paolo (Dante Rivero) and Angela Cortez (Susan Roces, who won the FAMAS Best Actress award for this) and their already born child, Yvonne (Maritess Ardieta).
Lucas Santander (Eddie Garcia) may be in prison, but when he has an interview with Paolo, he’s the one asking most of the questions, getting inside his head and explaining how he can help him. Soon, the Antichrist is in Angela’s womb, as reported by cult member Blanca (Celia Rodriguez) and before you can say Rosemary’s Baby by way of The Omen, this goes so far that father tosses daughter off a roof to her demise.
By the end of the movie, Angela is screaming at God, saying “I can’t take your tests any more! I don’t care!” Her rejecting the Lord is a massive act of heresy in the Philippines, a country that is 78.8% Catholic. We never see if God saves her, only a square up reel that shows a Mass and says that Jesus will come. That said, this is a pretty great horror film, despite the language barrier that came up at times.
In 2008, the series Sineserye Presents: The Susan Roces Cinema Collection, remaking several of the actress’ films, including this.
You can watch this on YouTube.
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.
First, there was Amityville Toybox, in which a cursed toy monkey from the house on 112 Ocean Avenue caused chaos. That was followed by Amityville Clownhouse, which amped up the Satanic possession with, well, an evil clown. Now, the circle is complete as Amityville in the Hood goes to the inner city and shows just how deep the roots of the evil of Amityville go.
This is Dustin Ferguson’s third trip to Amityville and this time, he directed, wrote, stars and edited this movie. Heck, he even performs two songs as MC Dirty D, “The Amityville Rap” and “Slide Into My DM.”
You know how much I love continuity, so Peter Sommars (John Walker) is on hand again, a reporter who has been in everything from Amityville Clownhouse, Ouijageist, Tales from the Grave and Meathook Massacre 4 to Angry Asian Murder Hornets, Arcachnado, Zombi VIII: Urban Decay, Amityville Hex, Ebola Rex, Archnado 2: Flaming Spiders and the upcoming Axemas 3: Santa Insane, Axemas 4: The Axemas Legacy and Ghoul.
An Eastside gang is using the Amityville property to grow marijuana — yes, I know, this is the best idea ever — called Amityville Possession. I mean, when in doubt, name your strain after the best of the many movies, right? Well, those drugs get stolen and taken to the Westside streets of Compton as Amityville is in Los Angeles in this universe and whomever smokes that sticky icky pays for it with their soul.
Jennifer Nangle, who plays Malvolia the Queen of Screams, is in this briefly — too briefly — as a sex worker named Cheyenne who is in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I mean, do I have to sell it any more to you? I guess all that blood flowing out of the walls and ghosts and shotguns and cursed monkeys — look for a quick sprint through the last two films — all add up to the perfect planting soil. Or maybe they grew it hydroponically inside the red room?
Seeing as how this movie was not blessed with a tag line, let me give some:
Look, it’s basically an hour of your life. This week has been horrible and this is the first time that I laughed in some time, if only when thacymbal-playingng monkey started slapping his percussion together and the ghost of Mario Bava showed up in the lighting. This is my 38th trip to Amityville, not my last and not my worst.
Also: I completely believe that this movie is way better on drugs. I’m not telling you to be on drugs but…I’m kinda telling you to be on drugs.
Want to know way too much about Amityville? We got you covered with a deep dive into every single movie in the series. Check it out here. We also have a Letterboxd list because, well, of course we do.
Thanks to the incredible folks at Wild Eye, who knew we’d need to see it immediately as it was released.
You can watch this on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Castle of the Living Dead was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 5, 1972 at 1:00 a.m.
Castle of the Living Dead is a movie of mystery.
Who directed it?
Warren Kiefer, who couldn’t be directly credited for the film as the film required an Italian director?
Herbert Wise — Luciano Ricci, the film’s first assistant director — whose name was used to fulfill that needed native director credit?
Riccardo Freda, who left I Vampiri for Mario Bava to finish and also made Double Face and Tragic Ceremony?
Michael Reeves, the tragically lost too song director who made Witchfinder General? Depending on who is asked, Reeves either did minor second unit work, a polish on the script’s dwarf character, a complete takeover of the movie or nothing at all.
And did Mario Bava do effects?
So many mysteries!
This gothic horror movie stars Christopher Lee as Count Drago, a man who embalms humans and animals, making them part of his eternal theater thanks to a chemical formula that instantly kills and embalms anything that lives, arresting them at the very moment of death.
Beyond Lee, the cast includes Gaia Germani (Hercules In the Haunted World), Philippe Leroy (The Laughing Woman), Luciano Pigozzi (the Italian Peter Lorre), Luigi Bonos (Frankenstein 80) and Donald Sutherland in his first movie playing a witch, an old man and Sergeant Paul.
Co-writer Paul Maslansky would go on to produce tons of movies like Death Line, She Beast, Race with the Devil, Damnation Alley and Ski Patrol amongst so many others, as well as creating the original concept — and producing — all of the Police Academy movies.
You can watch this on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Black Cat was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 4, 1975 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, August 28, 1976 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, July 23 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, June 11, 1983 at 1:00 a.m.
Cat lady Henrietta Winslow (Cecilia Loftus) lives in what looks like a haunted house. But that’s where he family must go to hear the reading of her will. She plans on leaving half of her money to her niece Myrna (Gladys Cooper), the other half to her granddaughter Margaret (Claire Dodd) and the estate to her granddaughter Elaine (Anne Gwynne). Meanwhile, Myrna’s husband Montague (Basil Rathbone) has invited realtor Gil Smith (Broderick Crawford) and antiques dealer Mr. Penny (Hugh Herbert) to help him creak up the estate.
Smith saves Henrietta’s life by keeping her from poisoned milk — this has already been added to my poisoned milk Letterboxd list — but she’s later killed when she is cremated one of her murdered cats. Her money is not to be given to anyone until her faithful maid Abigail dies (Gale Sondergaard) and she tries to throw everyone out, but they won’t leave.
Meanwhile, Montague’s son Richard (Alan Ladd) catches his father with Margaret and threatens to tell Myrna, just in time for Abigail to be murdered. The killer is using secret tunnels in the house to pull off their scheme, but one of the surviving black cats solves the case by setting them on fire.
An attempt to cash in on the success of The Cat and the Canary, this was directed by Albert S. Rogell. The original script by Eric Taylor and Robert Neville was rewritten by Robert Lees and Frederic I. Rinaldo.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cat Girl was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 28, 1964 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, July 3, 1965 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 6, 1966 at 1:00 a.m.
An unofficial remake of Cat People, this Alfred Shaughnessy-directed (he wrote Upstairs Downstairs) film is all about Leonora Johnson (Barbara Shelley, perhaps Hammer’s best-known female actress with roles in Dracula, Prince of Darkness; The Gorgon; Rasputin, The Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit), who may have inherited a family curse — when angered, she transforms into a murderous cat — along with an ancestral estate and lots of money.
Somehow, Dr. Brian Marlowe is still Leonora’s psychologist, despite them dating years before. I have no idea how he’s able to serve in this role, which feels like a violation of ethics, nor stay married to his wife Dorothy when Leonora continually is either trying to sleep with him or transform into a wolf and kill her. Dorothy is either a saint or a moron, as she keeps forgiving and helping.
If you were at the drive-in in 1957, you probably could have caught this on a double bill with another American-International Pictures release, The Amazing Colossal Man. Shelly would also star in another cat-themed horror movie, The Shadow of the Cat.
You can watch this on Tubi.
This is the seventh Forgotten Gialli set from Vinegar Syndrome. ou can check out my articles on the others here:
This box set has the following movies:
Mystère (1983): 1983 is pretty late for the giallo, but hey — I’ve been trying to expand into the period before and after the major years for the genre.
Also known as Dagger Eyes and Murder Near Perfect, this film was written and directed by the Vanzina brothers, Carlo and Enrico. They loved the 1981 French thriller Diva, a film that moved away from the realist 1970s French cinema to the more colorful style of cinéma du look. Carlo also directed Nothing Underneath so he gets a forever pass from me.
Mystère is divided into chapters, starting with a prologue, then each section is one of the four days that follows, then an epilogue. The producers demanded this happy ending, while the brothers wanted something more cynical.
Mystère (Carole Bouquet, For Your Eyes Only and the face of Chanel No. 5 from 1986 to 1997) is a high class call girl in Rome who comes into the possession of a mysterious lighter when her friend Pamela (Janet Ågren, City of the Living Dead) and one of her customers are killed over it, as inside the lighter are images of a political assassination.
Unlike the normal giallo — or adjacent giallo or whatever this is — the hero, Inspector Colt, ends up killing the assassin (John Steiner, Shock) and his bosses and then leaves behind our heroine, who ends up tracking him down to Thailand and making up with him. He was good with nunchucks, maybe?
I mean, how many movies are you going to see that somehow take the spirit of the good parts of 1970’s giallo, mix in the Zapruder film, throw in some Eurospy and still end up looking like a super expensive perfume ad?
Also — thanks to BodyBoy on Letterboxd who called out that Mystère’s apartment looks like something straight out of Messiah of Evil.
Obsession: A Taste for Fear (1988): Pathos: Segreta Inquietudine, the original Italian title for this movie, means Passion: Secret Anxiety. That pretty much sums it up, as this giallo feels closer to one of those Cinemax After Dark films that mixes up murder with softcore sex. Well, this movie also has Lou Gramm’s “Midnight Blue” in it, which is a first for any giallo I’ve seen.
This is the only movie that writer/director Piccio Raffianini’s ever made, which is pretty astounding, because the guy obviously had talent.
Diane (Virginia Hay, The Road Warrior and also the blue skinned Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan from Farscape) is a photographer whose favorite model — and lover — Tegan (Teagan Clive, who was also The Alienator) shows up bound and dead, just like the adult photos that our heroine is famous for. Imagine — a Skinemax The Eyes of Laura Mars and you’re not far off.
Lieutenant Arnold (Dario Parisini) is on the case and suspects both Diane and her ex-husband, particularly after other people close to her are tied up and stabbed, as if they were doing some knifeplay and then gave their lives up.
Eva Grimaldi, who was in Demons 5 and Ratman, is in this. And look out! There’s Kid Creole, from Kid Creole and the Coconuts, probably the last dude I expected to see walk on to a giallo film*. What is happening?
I love the first club that shows up in this film, with little people dancing, muscular folks dancing, mirrors covered with coke, quick cuts and improbably synth Gershwin songs.
Obsession: A Taste for Fear is a completely deranged film, one that supposes a world where everyone wears sunglasses at night, where colors come straight out of the brainstem of Dario Argento, where softcore porn photographers are huge celebrities, cops shoot laser guns, hovering cars are a dime a dozen and no one bats an eye.
Imagine if Rinse Dream made a giallo and had the money to get legitimate recording artists to appear on the soundtrack. Now, do some lines. And then, you will have just some of the strangeness that is this movie, which demands to get a release from a boutique label so that maniacs other than just me can obsess over it.
*To be fair, Kid Creole is also in Cattive ragazze, which is at least an Italian movie with hints of giallo made at the same time.
Sweets from a Stranger (1987): Caramelle da uno sconosciut has the elements of a giallo — a masked and black-gloved killer is slicing sex workers with a razor and then killing them with a bolt gun — but it’s just about how the women decide to stop taking it and empower themselves, which may not have been what audiences were looking for.
It was directed and written by Franco Ferrini (Phenomena, Nothing Underneath, Dark Glasses), who worked on the script with Andrea Giuseppini and got the idea while writing Red Rings of Fear. It’s the only movie that he ever directed.
Stella (Mara Venier) and Nadine (Athina Cenci) are a high end call girl and an older experienced prostitute who learn of the death of Bruna, a mutual friend. They organize their fellow sex workers Lena (Barbara De Rossi, Vampire In Venice) and Angela (Marina Suma) with the goal of finding out who the killer is and stopping him while the police are fumbling in the dark.
Ferrini has spent a lot of time working with Argento — as has editor Franco Fraticelli — so the film looks good. The first kill is totally Bava with a woman being killed while surrounded by sculptures of angels. In fact, it’s nearly one of the scenes from Blood and Black Lace. Thanks for noticing, Giallo Files. Steal from the best, right?
Yet it’s also a serious movie that doesn’t exploit the woman and shows the reasons why someone would sell their body, as well as the abuse and trauma that often comes with this profession. It’s an intriguing way to use the giallo form to tell a story about real life. Of course, the first two girls are simply to get you in, using the exploitative nature of the giallo trappings to whet your appetite for more mayhem and then making you consider the actual people who are often only presented as victims.
You can get all three of these in this new box set from Vinegar Syndrome.
2. DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: Mad scientists never seem to follow the rules…
Jane Marvin used to be Joyce Webster and they’re both played by Beverly Garland. She has amnesia because of something that happened in her past, something that scientists plan on getting to the bottom of.
She used to be married to Paul Webster (Richard Crane), a man who disappeared on their train honeymoon and ran back to the Cypresses Plantation in Bayou Landing, Louisiana. She follows him there and gets treated horribly by Lavinia Hawthorne (Frieda Inescort), who runs the home. There’s no train until the morning, so she stays in a room that she must not leave. That night, Joyce watches a shadowed man play piano before running out of the house.
Dr. Mark Sinclair (George Macready) wants to tell her the truth before Lavinia reveals that she is Paul’s mother. He had been torn apart in a plane crash and Dr. Mark had used a special formula to regenerate his body parts. That medical miracle has since turned Paul into, well, an alligator person.
There’s also a swamp man named Manon (Lon Chaney Jr.) who has already rescued Joyce from a snake before trying to assault her. He busts into the doctor’s lab just as they blast Mark with cobalt radiation. As the two fight, the lab is decimated and explodes. Mark is now a straight up alligator with an actual reptile head and he looks amazing, like the Gorn but way cheaper. He runs hard into the swamp and, yes, dies in quicksand while his wife watches.
The scientists decide not to tell Jane that she was Joyce. I mean, how would you?
Directed by Roy Del Ruth and written by Orville H. Hampton Charles O’Neal and Robert M. Fresco, this has a great look thanks to cinematographer Karl Struss, who won four Oscars for his work over his career. This was the other feature for Return of the Fly, which was in CinemaScope and needed another horror movie in that format. It was an independent movie purchased by 20th Century Fox.
What’s really wild is that there was almost an Atari 2600 game for this movie. 20th Century Fox had commissioned it and when collectors found the ROMs, for years they thought they had the actual game. Instead, in 2002, the real Alligator People game was discovered and it was learned that the other game was Planet of the Apes.
The game is similar to Pac-Man, with Jane being a syringe. You must save her friends who have become Alligator People before they eat you.
You can watch this on YouTube.
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