Also known as Monstrosity, this is one of the first movies where decay is given as the reason for the diminished intelligence of zombies. It also features plenty of people better known for other things, like narrator Bradford Dillman, Commerical pitchman Frank Gerstle and Marjorie Eaton, who played the original Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back before the special edition re-imagining.
In just 72 minutes, we learn an old woman who gets her pick of three servants to insert her brain into, thus getting a young body that will extend her lifespan.
This is the last film of Judy Bamber, who is also in A Bucket of Blood and Dragstrip Girl. The budget was so low that she provided Xerxes the cat, who was her housecat.
Don’t have the box set? You can watch it on Tubi or download it from the Internet Archive.
This week, join Bill and me on Saturday at 8 PM East Coast time to meet filmmaker Bradley Steele Harding and composer Andrew Jones as they show their movie 13 Tracks to Frighten Agatha Black. You can find the show on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube pages and the movie on Tubi.
Every week, we show ads, discuss movies and have themed cocktails. Here’s the first one.
Hippie Vampire
1 oz. Watermelon Pucker
1 oz. vodka
.5 oz. Malibu rum
.5 oz. peach schnapps
5 oz. pink lemonade
.25 oz. strawberry simple syrup (or just simple syrup if you can’t find it; WalMart carries it)
Shake up everything in a shaker with ice.
Put on your skull half gloves and enjoy.
The second movie is The Severed Arm. You can find it on Tubi.
Here’s the next drink.
Cave In Cannibal
1 oz. amaretto
1 oz. high proof rum
1 oz. peach schnapps
.5 oz. Southern Comfort
2 oz. cranberry juice
.5 oz. orange juice
Add amaretto, rum, schnapps and Southern Comfort to a glass filled with ice.
Stir, then add cranberry juice. Stir and add orange juice.
The Mysterious Castle In the Carpathians(Tajesmstvi Hradu V Karpatech) 1981, Czechoslovakia, 97 min.: A unique and almost indescribable mix of Gothic fiction, steampunk gadgetry (designed by Czech animation wizard Jan Švankmajer), slapstick comedy and romantic opera, director Oldřich Lipský’s wonderfully bonkers delight has elements of The Fearless Vampire Killers, Terry Gilliam, Mel Brooks and “The Benny Hill Show.” Based on an 1892 Jules Verne novel The Carpathian Castle (which partially inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula), the film follows Count Teleke of Tölökö (Michal Dočolomanský) on the trail of the count’s lost lover, opera singer Salsa Verde (Evelyna Steimarová) – only to discover she’s been abducted by fiendish Baron Gorc of Gorceny (Miloš Kopecký), whose castle home is filled with the bizarre inventions of mad scientist Orfanik (Rudolf Hrušínský). Littered with puns, sight gags and non-sequiturs – “Later, in Werewolfston”, an invented dialect, a detached golden ear for eavesdropping, a staff topped by an enormous TV eyeball – Mysterious Castle was the third fantastical film from the team of director Lipský and writer Jiří Brdečka after their much-loved musical western spoof Lemonade Joe (1966) and their detective/horror satire Adela has Not Had Supper Yet (1977), both major Czech cult hits. (Note that actor Miloš Kopecký and Jiří Brdečka worked on the supernatural anthology Prague Nights, also released by the Národní filmový archív, Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company.) In Czech with English subtitles.
Benny’s Bathtub (Benny’s Badekar) – 1971, Fiasco Film (Denmark), 41 min. Dirs. Jannik Hastrup and Flemming Quist Møller: How can you not love a psychedelic animated kids’ film in which a young boy, bored with the dreary and gray Adult World, follows an enchanted tadpole through the drain in his bathtub – where he discovers a surreal and musical undersea world?? Populated by singing (and barely dressed) Mermaids, a funky hepcat Octopus and whiskey-drinking Skeleton Pirates, the underwater kingdom is the grooviest scene this side of Yellow Submarine, with helpings of Dr. Seuss, Sid & Marty Krofft and Harry Nilsson’s The Point thrown in. (Kids’ entertainment in the early 1970s was truly outtasite!) In addition to the candy-colored, kaleidoscopic visuals, the film is famed for its incredibly addictive soundtrack featuring Jazz heavyweights of Copenhagen circa 1970, with vocals sung by the cream of Danish 60s Pop and Rock including Peter Belli, Otto Brandenburg, Poul Dissing and Trille on tracks like “Octopus Song/ Blækspruttesangen” and “Seahorse Song/ Søhestesangen”. Considered something of a national treasure in Denmark (where it was selected for the country’s Cultural Canon alongside works by Carl Th. Dreyer, Isak Dinesen and Hans Christian Andersen), Benny’s Bathtub has been beautifully restored in 4K from the original camera negative and sound elements for its first-ever U.S. release. In Danish with English subtitles.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Exploitation-film historian A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey. Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he is a regular guest co-host on the streaming Drive-In Asylum Double Feature and contributes to the Drive-In Asylum fanzine. His upcoming essay “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover,” detailing bizarre and hilarious stories about midnight movies, grindhouses, and exploitation films, appears in Drive-In Asylum #25.
If ever they gave out awards to films with the most off-the-wall concepts, Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein would be at the top of the list. Taking a forgotten film version of the novel Frankenstein, co-writer/director Tim Kirk created something that can best be described as “meta layered upon meta.” But then again, Kirk has a history of being involved in bizarre projects. He was producer of Room 237, the nutty documentary purporting to unveil the hidden meaning in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, as well as producer/co-writer/director of pseudo-documentary Sex Madness Revealed with Patton Oswalt and Rob Zabrecky, and producer of the segment “Q is for Questionnaire” in ABCs of Death 2. Those projects don’t even hint at the lunacy of on display here. I had no clue what to expect.
The film opens on the static DVD menu screen purporting to be for the special edition of Terror of Frankenstein, a Swedish/Irish co-production from 1977, starring Per Oscarsson (The Girl Who Played with Fire), Nicholas Clay (Excalibur), and Leon Vitali (Eyes Wide Shut and Barry Lydon), adapted by Calvin and Yvonne Floyd, and directed by Calvin Floyd (In Search of Dracula). An unseen hand clicks on the menu to scroll through a gallery of a few nondescript photographs that appear to be from the movie’s premiere before turning on the director’s commentary and starting the film.
Up pops the blocky Independent-International logo (which would delight Sam Panico to no end) because Sam Sherman’s company released Terror of Frankenstein in the U.S. And then the commentary track begins. We hear legendary character actor Clu Gulagar (The Return of the Living Dead, Once Upon a Time In…Hollywood and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge) as “the director” and Zack Norman (Romancing the Stone, Cadillac Man and Chief Zabu) as “the writer.” They explain that Yvonne and Calvin Floyd listed in credits were their pseudonyms.
From the outset, it’s clear that there’s some tension between the two. Those expecting a Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Rifftrax version of the film will be surprised. It’s not. The film soon becomes its own original object. Although there is indeed droll humor sprinkled throughout the commentary—I laughed out loud a lot—there are tidbits dropped about “a trial,” “the execution,” and “those suitcases” to foreshadow that something sinister happened during filming. So what you get is a well-mounted, faithful, though somewhat sluggish, version of Frankenstein with a mysterious commentary track that sounds like an episode of the 1940’s radio show Inner Sanctum.
Getting to the revelation of the meta-plot is the fun here, as Gulager and Norman discuss the production, bicker, joke, weigh the virtues of method acting, and make inside-baseball remarks that are clues for the viewer. Eventually, Leon Vitali, one of the film’s actual stars (see the wonderful documentary, Filmworker, about Vitali’s life as Stanley Kubrick’s buddy and go-to guy), shows up in the last twenty minutes. All is then revealed in an existential ending that I can only describe as Ingmar Bergman meets the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature gang at the Monster-Mania Con. In other words, this is a film made by fans of exploitation films for a small group of select fans who would “get it.”
I enjoyed the experiment Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein. It’s the weirdest, most original thing that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s funny, intellectual, and completely bonkers in conception and execution. Gulagar, Norman, and Vitali understood the film’s universe perfectly, and the technical team did a fine job of mating their commentary to appropriate action in the film. Bless Tim Kirk and company’s twisted little black hearts. I felt like they made a movie just for me. Discerning cinephiles out there will love it.
The film is available with a subscription to Night Flight Plus. I hear you can also order a DVD by contacting the director from the film’s Facebook page.
November 3: The Iron-Fisted Monk: Rice Miller Luk (Sammo Hung) is just a simple man trying to live a quiet life, until one day the Manchu Bannermen bully their way through town, killing his uncle in the process. When a nearby Shaolin monk, San De (Chan Sing), easily defeats them and sees the fallen Luk, he offers him a chance to learn martial arts at the Shaolin Temple. However, Luk’s impatience with his training sees him return to his town to witness an even more ruthless organization of Manchus, led by a depraved official (Fung Hak-An) who has a nasty and violent habit of taking whatever (and whoever) he wants. Will Luk’s incomplete Shaolin teachings, combined with the skill set of San De, be enough to put an end to the Manchu stronghold plaguing their people? Predating The 36th Chamber of Shaolin‘s variation of the story of San De and Miller Luk by a year, and notorious for its uncensored version receiving a retroactive Category III rating in Hong Kong (the equivalent of the American NC-17), The Iron-Fisted Monk pulls no punches, literally or figuratively, explosively marking the beginning for one of the greatest martial arts film directors of all time!
November 6: Actor, director and magician Andy Nyman shares the titles that inspire his art and illusions: “Dear ARROW viewer. I’m delighted to share my choices with you. As I look again at my list I realize there is a common thread, they all illicit a gut reaction from me. For the most part it’s shock and astonishment, with the occasional nightmare – but in two cases unstoppable tears – I’ll let you work out which those movies are. You’re in for a treat.” Titles include Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Zombie Flesh Eaters, Ringu.
November 10: Beware busting a move! Shaking it can lead to snuffing it in this curated collection of foxtrotting flicks where getting down is likely to get you killed. Titles Include: Enter the Void, Showgirls, The Escapees.
Also: Growing Up With John Waters and Hockney on Photography and Other Matters.
November 17: ARROW are proud to showcase a collection of weird, wonderful and downright insane award-winning short films from director Brian Lonano. Led by the festival decimating Content: The Lo-Fi Man, Lonanorama also includes the utterly outrageous Gwilliam (winner of the ‘Most Effectively Offensive’ award at the Boston Underground Film Festival), gruesome comedy-horror Crow Hand!!!, a superhero story like no other in BFF Girls, the Halloween-themed nuttiness of Gwilliam’s Tips for Turning Tricks into Treats, chilling demon opus The Devil’s Asshole, and much, much more, even including some exclusive extras!
Brian Lonano & Blake Myers Selects: “It is really kind of ARROW to let me select 10 films from their amazing library to share with you. Many of these films have shaped me as a filmmaker. They are great examples of how to push boundaries and expand the language of cinema.” Brian Lonano: “I’ve chosen 10 films that I believe to be excellent examples of persistence of vision, wild unhinged storytelling and underdog outsider filmmaking.” Titles include Children of the Corn, The Boxer’s Omen, Basket Case.
November 20: Steven Kostanski Selects: “Choosing my favorites from Arrow’s weird catalogue of movies is a welcome nostalgia flashback to my video store days when I’d shove all sorts of sci-fi and horror nonsense into customers’ faces. After reviewing my list, it’s clear that my tastes have not changed in 15 years: I’m forcing Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 on people just as passionately as I was back then, and in these tumultuous times that gives me a certain level of comfort. Enjoy!” Titles include Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, Dead or Alive.
November 24: Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe: Part One: Cultural icon, anti-establishment statement, sadistic lord of carnival horror! With his iconic long fingernails, top hat and cape, Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) was the creation of Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins, who wrote, directed and starred in a series of outrageous movies from 1964 to 2008. An unholy undertaker in search of the perfect woman to propagate his bloodline, Zé do Caixão made his screen debut with the first Brazilian-produced horror film, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. Three years later, his quest would continue in This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, with Zé embarking on an even more brutal campaign of terror, aided and abetted by his hunchbacked assistant. The Strange World of Coffin Joe, meanwhile, is an anthology of three short horror films featuring a strange dollmaker, a necrophiliac balloon seller with a foot fetish, and a psychotic professor involved in sadistic rituals. Sex, perversion and sadism abound in The Awakening of the Beastas a psychiatrist experiments on four volunteers with Lsd in this surreal examination of 60s drug culture. Diverging from horror toward satirical black comedy, The End of Man sees a naked stranger emerge from the sea to perform miracles in a nearby town and become a modern messiah whose deeds will affect the whole world. Newly restored from the best available elements and packed with new and archival extras, Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe is a love letter to one of the great iconoclasts of horror, who forged his films in the face of military dictatorship and religious censorship to become Brazil’s national Boogeyman.
Found Footage: From terrifying and troubling events caught on camera by our heroes (or villains), to forbidden footage that when uncovered and viewed spells doom, to seldom-seen peeks at the unseen lives of everything from slime mould to the stars of Barbarella, Found Footage is a collection of the unearthed, the dangerous, the forbidden and the behind-the-scenes. Titles include The El Duce Tapes, Phantom, Kolobos.
Head over to ARROW to start watching now. Subscriptions are available for $6.99 monthly or $69.99 yearly.
ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Samsung TVs, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
With a slickly designed and user-friendly interface, and an unparalleled roster of quality content from westerns to giallo to Asian cinema, trailers, Midnight Movies, filmmaker picks and much, much more, ARROW is the place to go for the very best in on-demand entertainment.
Clayton (Craig Hill) has been working for three years to earn money only to learn that money from the Confederacy is no longer worth anything. He comes back home and soon his sister Mercedes (Christina Businari) is assaulted and killed by two of Mallek’s (Andrea Bosic) thugs. Clayton can’t even go to the sheriff for help, because he killed that man’s brother in self-defense. Mallek also wants the Civil War to keep on warring, so he has a plan to kill off the generals who are in the middle of peace talks.
I haven’t seen many of Paolo Bianchini’s films before. He also made The Devil’s Man, Superargo and the Faceless Giants, God Made Them… I Kill Them, Gattling Gun and Hey Amigo! A Toast to Your Death. He’s still making movies. Il profumo delle Zagare was released in 2022.
The writer was Carlos Sarabia, who only wrote this movie, and everything looks great thanks to cinematographer Ricardo Andreu, who also filmed Beyond Terror, Assignment Terror, The Price of Power and Labios rojos.
I love that there’s someone on IMDB that points out that everyone uses Colt Single Action Army revolvers that didn’t come out until 13 years after this movie was set. There’s that and the fact that it’s set in a desert while the actual peace talks between Grant and Lee took place in Virginia.
But come on! We’re here for revenge, not a history class.
Arrow Video’s Savage Guns box set has high definition 2K restorations of all four films from the original 35mm camera negatives, with El Puro newly restored by Arrow Films. Plus, you get brand new introductions to each film by journalist and critic Fabio Melelli, an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the films by author and critic Howard Hughes, a fold-out double-sided poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx and limited edition packaging with reversible sleeves featuring original artwork and a slipcover featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx.
I Want Him Dead has new commentary by critics Adrian J. Smith and David Flint, new interviews with director Paolo Bianchini and editor Eugenio Alabiso, a trailer and an image gallery.
This movie was made in 1976, released in 1978 in theaters as The Astral Factor but then released on VHS in 1984 as The Invisible Strangler missing the killer’s killer’s dialogue but gaining new music and some new scenes. Why? Who knows!
It’s pretty confusing because in The Invisible Strangler, the killer is invisible for the entire movie. All of these scenes were completely reshot with a different cast. There are a lot of plot holes, as you can imagine, that you can fill in with the full movie.
Roger Sands (Frank Ashmore) has been in a sanitarium after killing his mother. While there, he’s learned how to meditate and make himself invisible. He walks out and starts killing again.
The original material was directed by Arthur C. Pierce, who made Dimension 5, and the new scenes are by John Florea, who mostly directed a lot of TV. There’s also some scenes directed by Gene Fowler Jr., who worked often as an editor and also directed I Married A Monster from Outer Space. Pierce and Earle Lyon wrote the script.
I have no idea why more people aren’t talking about this movie. Sure, it’s shot like a lower tier TV movie, but then the murder scenes look like the covers of sleazy old black and white true crime magazines, the kind that felt dirtier than real porn. It also has an absolutely stacked cast, including Stefanie Powers as a cop’s wife who always talks about herself in the third person, Sue Lyon (Murder In the Blue World, Evel Knievel, Lolita), Leslie Parrish (The Giant Spider Invasion), trailer voice Percy Rodrigues, Marianna Hill (do I even need to go on?) and Elke Sommer, who amazingly plays an acoustic version of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” in this film.
What? How has no one brought this up in a single review and instead just talks about how boring it is? Did I watch the same movie as them? I mean, the killer’s mom was an actress who pretended that he didn’t exist which makes him turn into a killer invisible man. It’s not well made, but the ideas are there.
You can watch The Astral Factor in the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Classics set and on Tubi. You can watch The Invisible Strangler on YouTube.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m sorry, I know this already ran during Chiller Theater month, but I was hoping others would be writing. I hope you don’t mind reading this again.
Known as Space-Men in Italy, this was Antonio Margheriti’s first full directorial effort. How magical is it that at the same time that this was being filmed, Mario Bava was filming Black Sunday in the next sound stage over.
This takes place in 2116, as Interplanetary Chronicle of New York reporter Ray Peterson (Rik Van Nutter, Uncle Was a Vampire) is writing a story about the infra-radiation flux in Galaxy M12. The space station commander thinks that he’s in the way, which doesn’t help when they both fall for the station’s botanist Lucy (Gabriella Farinon, Blood and Roses).
Then the out of control Spaceship Alpha Two appears, headed straight to Earth with enough radiation to destroy it. Lives are lost, including Al, who is played by Archie Savage. He’s probably the first black man to play an astronaut on film, first in First Spaceship On Venus and then in this movie.
Peterson becomes a hero and uses Space Taxi B91 to fly out to the death ship and shut down its power. He’s rescued by the commander, gets the girl and all is well in the world of Italian science fiction.
Using the name Anthony Dawson, Margheriti would make more science fiction films, including Battle of the Worlds; Wild, Wild Planet; War of the Planets and, late in his career, Treasure Island In Outer Space.
Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Craig Edwards is an award-winning blogger as well as a self-proclaimed Media Guy and a consumer of pop culture for a lot of years. He also writes a great blog called Let’s Get Out of Here!
Famed low budget director Edgar G. Ulmer helms this science fiction flick which has apparently fallen into the public domain, which resulted in it being available on countless bargain VHS tapes and now in untold numbers of cheapie DVD sets, much like the very one we’re shining the spotlight on.
Former Army guy Krenner (James Griffith), plans to conquer the world with his soon-to-be army of invisible thugs and he is willing to do anything to make that happen. Krenner forces Dr. Ulof (Ivan Trisault) to work to perfect the invisibility machine Ulof invented. He keeps Ulof’s daughter, Maria (Carmel Daniel) as a hostage with the help of his henchman, Julian (Red Morgan). Ulof needs radioactive elements to improve the invisibility machine which are understandably rare and kept under guard in government facilities. Krenner busts Joey Faust (Douglas Kennedy) out of prison to steal the materials he needs. Faust pulls the robberies using the invisibility power – but chaffs working for the dictatorial Krenner. Soon everyone in the house, including Krenner’s girlfriend Laura (Marguerite Chapman) is working some kind of double cross or secret agenda; and it’s readily apparent that no one is particularly likable – so who’s going to be the treacherous victor?
While it’s obviously a very low budget talkfest, there’s just SOMETHING about Edgar G. Ulmer’s movies that interest me. Consequently, I like this little dud which is usually touted as one of the worst of all time. Ulmer only made two more movies before retiring; but his touch is still evident all over this. Sure, it’s low-budget; it’s static; it’s talky – but I’ve seen it now like three times, and I still enjoy it.
I can’t defend the movie – but to me this works – it’s not an epic of production values and amazing effects – though there are a few sprinkled in – but it works as the little sci-fi talkfest it is. If it sounds at all interesting it is worth a look and it’s certainly not hard to find.
Don’t have the set? You can watch it on Tubi.
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