EDITOR’S NOTE: Burn, Witch, Burn! was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 5, 1966 at 11:20 p.m.; Saturday, June 28, 1969 at 11:30 p.m.; Saturday, October 31, 1970 at 1 a.m.; Saturday, July 17, 1971 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, May 13, 1972 at 1.m.

Based upon the 1943 Fritz Leiber novel Conjure Wife, this movie was called Day of the Eagle in the UK before getting a title that sounded more like a horror movie for American audiences. The book had already been adapted once before as Weird Woman in 1944 and then one more time afterward in 1979 as Witches’ Brew.

The American version also has an opening in complete blackness where the voice of Paul Frees reads a spell intended to protect the audience from the evil within the film. Filmgoers also were given a special pack of salt and the words to an ancient incantation. Man, going to the movies used to be awesome. American-International Pictures knew how to sell an occult movie!

Written by a combination of Charles Beaumont (The Masque of the Red Death, several great Twilight Zone episodes), Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, Duel) and George Baxt (Shadow of the Cat, The City of the Dead), this is the story of Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde, Klytus from Flash Gordon), a man who discovers that all of his career success is due to the magic skills of his wife. As soon as he demands that she burns all of her magical ephemera, everything in his life goes wrong

By the end of the movie, his rational view of the world must confront the fact that magic truly exists. It also posits that women are the magic workers of the world and that men just stumble through, a view I can completely agree with.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Little Shop of Horrors was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 23, 1964 at 11:10 p.m.; Saturday, August 14,1965 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, March 9, 1968 at 11:10 p.m. and Saturday, January 17, 1970 at 1:00 a.m.

Drected by Roger Corman, written by Charles B. Griffith and made under the name The Passionate People Eater, this movie was made in two days for $28,000 on the same sets as A Bucket of Blood. Playing double features with Black Sunday and Last Woman On Earth, it became a cult film and that continued once it aired repeatedly on TV.

Gravis Mushnick (Mel Welles) and his two employees, Audrey Fulquard (Jackie Joseph) and Seymour Krelboined (Jonathan Haze), run a flower shop that seen better days. When Seymour screws up an order for dentist Dr. Phoebus Farb (John Shaner), he’s fired until he shows his new plant, which he claims he grew from a seed that he was given by a Japanese gardener over on Central Avenue. He names it Audrey 2 and before you know it, it lives on human blood and then people. Yet it brings people into the store and becomes famous. Gravis calls Seymour son now.

Of course, Gravis eventually sees Seymour feeding a dead homeless man — it was an accident, but still — to Audrey 2 and then Dr. Farb, who he killed in self defense. But the crimes are getting worst and the police — named Fink and Stoolie — and the Society of Silent Flower Observers of Southern California wants to give Seymour an award. All he wants is the original Audrey, but the plant hypnotizes him and makes him continue bringing him food.

The movie was actually written at a coffee house. Corman said, “We ended up at a place where Sally Kellerman (before she became a star) was working as a waitress, and as Chuck and I vied with each other, trying to top each other’s sardonic or subversive ideas, appealing to Sally as a referee, she sat down at the table with us, and the three of us worked out the rest of the story together.”

This is also an early Jack Nicholson movie — the actor said that “I went in to the shoot knowing I had to be very quirky because Roger originally hadn’t wanted me. In other words, I couldn’t play it straight. So I just did a lot of weird shit that I thought would make it funny.” — and as you know, went on to become even bigger when it was made into a musical and remade in 1986. There was even a cartoon, Little Shop, that was on Fox Kids and had Corman as a consultant. As for this one, Corman was so sure it wouldn’t do well that he never got a copyright and let it go into public domain.

Dick Miller really did eat that flower.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night of the Demon was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 11, 1966 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, March 18, 1967 at 1 a.m.

Night of the Demon was a movie that scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. That iconic shot of the demon from the end was always in books about horror and issues of Famous Monsters. I’d always hide my eyes from it while still being fascinated.

Little did I know that the issue of the demon being in the film was a major point of argument between producer Hal E. Chester versus director Jacques Tourneur (I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People) and writer Charles Bennett (The 39 Steps) on the other. Chester ended up jamming in the special effects monster over the objections of the writer, the director, and lead actor Dana Andrews.

Even worse, 12 minutes were removed from the British version of this film and it was renamed to Curse of the Demon. Tourneur later said, “The scenes where you see the demon were shot without me…the audience should never have been completely certain of having seen the demon.” Bennett, also about the changes to the script, said “If Chester walked up my driveway right now, I’d shoot him dead.”

Based on the M.R. James story “Casting the Runes,” the story begins with Dr. Julian Karswell being visited late in the night by a rival who begs him to remove the curse he’s placed. After learning that the patchment he gave the man was destroyed, Karswell rushes the man from his house just as a giant demon materializes in the trees, a shocking effect even today. The professor tries to escape but his car crashes into powerlines and he’s electrocuted.

Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews, Airport 1975) arrives in England to attend the convention where the dead professor had intended to expose Karswell and his Satanic cult. Holden believes that there’s no such thing as the supernatural while the dead professor’s niece (Peggy Cummins, Gun Crazy) believes the opposite.

Later, when a windstorm destroys a party, Karswell takes the blame and Holden mocks him. The older man grows angry and predicts Holden’s death within three days. Soon, the same parchment of protection is found by our hero and he slowly becomes convinced that the demon is on his trail as well.

The end of the film, where the demon changes his target from Holden to Karswell, is harrowing. As he runs up the train tracks, the demon manifests itself and chases the magician. When his corpse is discovered, the police believe that it was a train dragging him, not the demon.

Holden goes to inspect the body, but the professor’s niece tells him that that sometimes, “it’s better not to know.” He walks away with her.

In the movie The ‘Burbs, Ray finds a book called The Theory and Practice of Demonology in the basement of the Klopeks. Its author? None other than the villain of this film, Julian Karswell. It’s also mentioned in “Science Fiction Double Feature” in the Rocky Horror Picture Show: “Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes, but passing them used lots of skills.”

According to BrightMidNight on the Sinister Screen, “This movie is a true Satanic classic because it exposes the devil worshiper for what he is. Anytime you have to rely on someone or something else to help you to be a success in life, you’re diminishing your own self-worth. People who do this are basically saying, “I’m not good enough to get these things on my own; I need some kind of outside force.””

They go on to say: “Satanists viewing this movie should understand that YOU are in charge of your own destiny — and no one else. Asking some devil or some imaginary demon for favors only causes problems in the end. Satanism strives on individualism. The Satanist is his or her own God. There is no need to ask other entities for help.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

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.

Mark Polonia also made Empire of the Apes, so it stands to wonder why he waited so long to make a cash-in on the Amityville series. I mean, this is the man who also made Sharkenstein, Bigfoot vs. Zombies and multiple Camp Blood movies. Just so you know what you’re getting into — these are shot on video films intended for DVD distribution to maniacs like me in Walmart (or today, on Amazon Prime).

For the eleventh overall Amityville movie, a young woman and her friends — on their way back from helping with hurricane relief efforts in Florida, keeping it topical — stop in the town of Amityville to check in on a sick grandmother.

That’s when they run into an ancient witch and her spells, which turn one of them into a spider. This is more about a curse on the townsfolk than 112 Ocean Avenue. But hey — Eric Roberts turns up as The Dark Lord. What does Roberts do, show up in rural Pennsylvania and put out a beacon to tell directors that he’s available for work?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Swamp of the Lost Monsters was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 20 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, January 2 at 1 a.m.

A small Mexican village is dealing with not just the death of a man, but the fact that his body has disappeared too. Now, his brother and a cowboy detective friend (Gaston Santos, who played the same role of a cowboy against the unknown in The Living Coffin, Los Diablos del Terror, La Flecha Envenenada and El Potro Salvaje) head out to battle the gang that killed the man and now want his insurance money.

There’s one complication: a man-fish who is just swimming around town.

Seriously, I would have never watched this movie if it wasn’t for the look of this humanoid fishy man. He’s amazing and every moment he’s on screen elevates this movie from typical sagebrush adventure to the realm of absurdity.

Also known as Swamp of Lost Souls, it was directed by Rafael Baledon, who also brought us Orlak, el Infierno de Frankenstein.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Before I Hang was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 4, 1966 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday June 14, 1969 at 11:30 p.m.

Another in the series of mad scientist movies starring Boris Karloff for Columbia, this was directed by Nick Grinde and written by Robert Hardy Andrews.

Karloff is Dr. John Garth and he’s on trial for mercy killing a friend, predating the right to die controversy by decades. He had been trying to invent a cure for aging but it was too late to give it to the patient. He asks the judge to allow him to live as he’s close to this medication, but he is due to be hung in three weeks. Yet with support from the warden (Ben Taggart) and Dr. Ralph Howard (Edward Van Sloan), he is able to take the blood of an executed murderer and turn it into a serum that reverses the effects of aging just in time to be saved from the gallows.

If you’re wondering, “Will that killer’s blood make Dr. Garth a killer?” you don’t have to wait all that long to find out. He kills Dr. Howard and a fellow prisoner, which looks like he was the hero, and he’s soon released to live with his daughter Martha (Evelyn Keyes).

Dr. Garth then tries to convince each of his elderly friends to let him help them escape the ravages of age. When they refuse, his evil blood takes over and he kills them. Convinced that he could even kill Martha, he runs back to the prison and is killed trying to get back inside, in effect killing himself to protect his friends and daughter.

There are nearly five similar movies in a year starring Karloff as a scientist driven to murder. I’d watch them all and more.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Not of This Earth was on Chiller Theater on Sunday, January 19, 1964 at 11:10 p.m.; Saturday, February 6, 1965 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, September 16, 1967 at 1:00 a.m.

At 67 minutes, this movie was made to be shown with Attack of the Crab Monsters. Its stars Paul Birch as Mr. Johnson, a man quite literally not of this Earth because he’s an alien from Davanna with blank eyes that can burn right into your brain. If you start to like him, remember that he starts the movie by removing the blood of a teenage girl with some tubes that he keeps in his attache case.

Davanna is dying from the end of a nuclear war which has turned everyone’s blood to dust. Now, as he waits in Los Angeles, Mr. Johnson is attempting to solve the issues with his peoples’ blood. He has a houseboy named Jeremy (Jonathan Haze) and hires away nurse Nadine Storey (Beverly Garland) from a man he has hypnotized, Dr. F.W. Rochelle (William Roerick).

The police are wondering who the vampire killer is, but Mr. Johnson is just trying to stay alive. And look out anyone — like Dick Miller as a vacuum salesman — who comes to his home. Soon, another alien (Anna Lee Carroll) shows up but her blood becomes laced with rabies. She’s not the last as even though Johnson perishes in a car crash — a police siren is too much for his alien hearing — another alien that looks just like him shows up at his grave.

Director Roger Corman and Charles B. Griffith (who wrote the screenplay with Mark Hanna) worked together quite a lot. Griffith said of the story, “It started all this X-ray eye business. Most of Roger’s themes got established right in the beginning. Whatever worked, he’d come and take again, and a lot of things got used over and over. During the production of Not of This Earth, I was married to a nurse, and she helped me do a lot of medical research. I remember how we cured cancer in that script. Somehow the film was a mess when it was finished.”

Birch had no fun making this, as he had to wear the painful contacts all day as Corman wanted to shoot whenever with no prep. The actor was so upset he left before filming was done, so in some shots, that’s not him. Luckily, he has on a hat and sunglasses often, so he was easy to fake Shemp in this by Lyle Latell. Before he left the set, he said, “”I am an actor, and I don’t need this stuff… To hell with it all! Goodbye!”

This has been remade twice, once by Jim Wynorski with Traci Lords as Nadine in 1988 — Wynorski made Roger Corman a bet that he could remake the 1957 film with the same budget and schedule thirty years later — and in 1995, directed by Terence H. Winkless and part of the Roger Corman Presents series.

If you watched this on TV in the 1960s (or any time), there are three more minutes that were added by Herbert L. Strock right after the credits. A voice intones “You are about to adventure into the dimension of The Impossible! To enter this realm you must set your mind free from earthly fetters that bind it! If the events you are about to witness are unbelievable, it is only because your imagination is chained! Sit back, relax and believe.. so that you may cross the brink of time and space.. into that land you sometimes visit in your dreams!” If you’re wondering if a scene or two are repeated, they are so that the movie fit into TV schedules. There were also three scenes that were extended in some theatrical prints: the scene in which Johnson speaks with the courier, him chasing Nadine and when Harry chases him.

You can watch this on YouTube.