Directed by Bruno Hernández and Damián Romay and written by Philip Lawrence, I am shocked that this entire film was not created by artificial intelligence. The last part of the movie has many twists and turns that you honestly lose track of who you can trust, who is right, who is the villain and if we should even care about Rex, who often acts like the worst person in the world and one who you really could see sleeping with a girl who says no. Then again, the scene where Darla blackmails Amelia only to collapse because she’s pregnant? That’s why I watch Tubi Originals.

No human being acts like anyone in this movie. Everybody hates everyone, everyone is horrible, everyone is at their highest level of drama at all times, people made shady business deals and then scream at each other, all while a strange old man that owes something to someone is involved in everyone’s dirty laundry.

It’s a lot like where I grew up.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Stephanie (Vanessa Simmons) and Irvine Douglas (Jerome Ro Brooks) have been raising their developmentally challenged son Gerald (Perry Madison) with the help of their nanny Gloria. However, she has decided to move back in with her mother and this places their round the clock care needs in question. Luckily — well, you’ll see — Irvine and Gerald soon meet Olivia Stockton (Tationna Bosier), who is working in a coffee shop. Gerald seems to like her and her resume looks good.

Maybe you should do a background check.

As Olivia deals with David, who suffers from asphasia, which is a brain damage-related injury that causes speech issues, she starts taking over the house. After all, Stephanie is busy. And doesn’t Irvine look like a strong man to marry?

Meanwhile, her brother David (Maurice G. Smith) has been cleaning up her crimes since childhood and Detective Tonya (Jennifer Freeman) has been after him ever since. After all, he and his sister killed and covered up the murder of her best friend Amber Stevens. He’s still wearing her friendship bracelet to this day.

Directed and written by Bobby and Renee S. Warren Peoples (he’s directed 65 movies, she’s got 59), this movie sets up all the things that you want from the bad nanny genre. Does she make out with the dad? Does the developmentally challenge child finally stand up to her? Does the mom try and stop her? It does all that and has David, who only says the words “Tee tee water,” which is his “I am Groot.” He uses it throughout the movie to convey so many different things.

Tee tee water. Yeah, explain that to me.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 22, 1963 at 3:00 p.m. It also aired on July 11, 1964 and February 20, 1965.

Janet Smith (Gloria Talbott) and her fiancee George Hastings (John Agar) arrive at the English manor house that she will inherit the next day. They’re met by her guardian Dr. Lomas (Arthur Shields), housekeeper Mrs. Merchant (Martha Wentworth), groundskeeper Jacob (John Dierkes) and Maggie (Molly McCard), who is Janet’s personal maid. They’re worried that she’s getting married so quickly, as she’s inheriting a sizeable sum of money, as well as another inheritance: she’s the daughter of Dr. Jekyll who was a werewolf, which is something new on me.

That night, Lomas hypnotizes Janet. Before bed, Maggie warns her that this is the night that her father rises from the tomb. When she sleeps, she dreams that she’s killed a woman. She wakes up to blood all over herself and a werewolf in her mirror. Ah, but is she just seeing things because of Lomas? Or has she really become a lycanthrope?

Shot in a house on 6th Street in Los Angeles, near Hancock Park, you can occasionally see late 50s cars through the windows, despite this being set in the past. After playing double features with The Cyclops, this was sold to TV by Allied Artists as part of their 22-film Sci-Fi for the 60s package which includes Terror In the Haunted House, House On Haunted Hill, Not of This Earth, The Hypnotic Eye, The Brain from Planet Arous, The Atomic Submarine, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Bat, Caltiki the Immortal Monster, The Cyclops, The Cosmic Man, The Disembodied, Frankenstein 1970, World Without End, War of the Satellites, From Hell It Came, The Giant Behemoth, The Indestructable Man, Spy In the Sky and Queen of Outer Space. Obviously, Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater purchased this package of films.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Trog was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 18, 1978 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on April 10, 1982.

Trog makes me sad. Beyond the fact that it feels a lot like King Kong or Son of Kong—a doomed monster from our past that just can’t survive in today’s horrible modern world—it’s also depressing at times to watch Joan Crawford act her heart out in a film where no one else can come close to her power.

That’s not to say this is a bad film. It’s delightful and well-directed by genre vet Freddie Francis (Tales from the Crypt and plenty of other wonderful Amicus portmanteau films). It’s also quick-moving and enjoyable.

But it’s still sad.

A troglodyte (TROG!) is found alive in the caves of England. Dr. Brockton (Crawford) has had some success communicating with him and sees him as the missing link. However, her neighbors do not like her having a monster in her house, mainly after it kills a dog when it steals his ball.

Local businessman Sam Murdock (Michael Gough, who appeared in many Hammer films and as Alfred in the 1980s and 1990s Batman films) worries that the creature will negatively impact local businesses. But he really has an issue with a woman being in charge.

Meanwhile, Trog undergoes multiple surgeries, which enable him to learn to communicate. In a trippy sequence, we see into his mind, which is filled with memories of the Ice Age and dinosaurs.

The court upholds Dr. Brockton’s goal of teaching Trog, so Murdock sneaks in and lets him loose. He kills several people, including the businessman, before taking a little girl and retreating to his cave. Dr. Brockton can communicate with Trog, and the girl goes free. Meanwhile, soldiers open fire on our titular caveperson, and he falls to his death, impaled on a stalagmite.

As Dr. Brockton leaves in tears, a reporter tries to interview her. She has no comment as she wanders away.

See? Depressing.

Due to the film’s low budget, Crawford used her own clothes. And it shows. She’s a beacon of fashion in a grimy town. She stands out like no one else. And speaking of suits, the one for Trog was left over from 2001: A Space Odyssey!

This was Crawford’s final film, but I don’t believe the TV show Feud: Bette and Joan. She’d continue to act afterward, appearing in an episode of TV’s The Sixth Sense called Dear Joan: We’re Going to Scare You to Death. If you’ve ever listened to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, that’s where the sample on the song “A Daisy Chain for Satan Comes From.”

PS: I would know none of this were it not for Bill from Groovy Doom.

I’m glad I watched Trog. But the sad ending — and thinking of Joan changing in her car during the breaks in filming — make me a little misty-eyed. That said, it’s one of John Waters’ favorite films, so there’s that.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cosmic Man was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 26, 1963 at 3:00 p.m. It also aired on August 7, 1965.

USAF Col. Matthews (Paul Langton) and Dr. Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett), an astrophysist at the nearby Pacific Institute of Technology (PIT), are called as a UAP flies over Oak Ridge, CA at 180,000 miles an hour and coming to rest in Stone Canyon, floating off the ground. That night, a creature from inside the ship goes to the lab of Sorenson and Dr. Richie (Walter Maslow) to solve some problems that have puzzled them for months. They see whatever it is as friendly, but Matthews sees it as an enemy.

Kathy Grant (Angela Greene) is a widow whose fighter pilot husband died in the Korean War. She runs a lodge near the canyon while caring for her wheelchair-bound terminally ill son Ken (Scotty Morrow). A stranger (John Carradine) arrives and she thinks he’s a scientist. He’s the alien, of course, and begins to learn how play chess from the young boy.

Known as the Cosmic Man, the alien appears to the scientist and military. He tells them that as mankind is about to go into space, they must learn to stop being prejudiced or they will never be able to live with other races. He says that he will leave in the morning, so the military guys start shooting him. He walks away like it’s no big deal. The humans in this movie are the worst, trying to kill the Cosmic Man even when he heals Ken and helps him walk again.

At the end, the UAP flies away and Sorenson says, “He’ll be back.” I hope not. We treated him like a jerk. I also hope Sorenson realizes that Kathy is an attractive woman in her late thirties, in the full bloom of sexual power, and stops spending all night in the lab and more in the lodge. Both she and Ken need a daddy, after all.

Director Herbert S. Greene only made one other movie, Outlaw Queen, which has Andrea King from The Beast with Five Fingers as a Greek immigrant who starts her own casino in the Wild West. If you think to yourself, “Who could write a movie like that?” the answer is Edward D. Wood Jr.