EDITOR’S NOTE: The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 17, 1966 at 1 a.m. It was also on the show on August 19, 1967.

You may worry that you haven’t seen the first two Aztec Mummy films, but trust me, there are so many recaps here that you’ll get caught up really soon.

Somehow, Dr. Krupp has come back from a snakepit to become The Bat and lead a whole new gang. To get what he wants — that gold breastplate that has led him to battle Popoca, Dr. Eduardo Almada, Flor and Pinacate across this film series — he’s made a robot with a human brain that can deliver electronic shocks through its clawed hands.

If you learn anything from this film, maybe you shouldn’t. Aztecs never practiced mummification and used hieroglyphic writing, instead using cremation or simple burial, as well as pictographs. Maybe the filmmakers meant the Incans and the Mayans? Well, they buried Popoca as if he were an Egyptian style mummy, but one thinks that they based that knowledge on Universal horror movies and not any textbook.

You can watch this on YouTube and Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A Black Ribbon for Deborah was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 3, 1979 at 1:00 a.m. It also aired on October 4, 1980 and October 2, 1982.

Marcello Andrei directed this movie  wrote the script with Alvaro Fabrizio, Giuseppe Pulieri and Piero Regnoli — who wrote the original idea of a woman passing her child to someone else before they “all the usual bullshit: the witches, the sorcerer, the special effects.” It was released as The Torment in the UK.

Deborah (Marina Malfatti) wants a child of her own more than anything anyone could ever want. She’s told that only a miracle will make her pregnant. This fact has destroyed her marriage to Michel (Bradford Dillman). Deborah is also a powerful psychic, even if she doesn’t know it, and when she and her husband find a car crash with a dying pregnant woman named Mira (Delia Boccardo),  those skills are used to solve the mystery in this movie.

Marina Malfatti is rocking the short Mia Farrow hair here and is finally getting the chance to be the lead in a giallo after supporting Barbara Bouchet in The Red Queen Kills Seven Times and Edwige Fenech in All the Colors of the Dark. She’s also up front in The Red-Stained Lawn.

Sure, this is more supernatural than straight up giallo, but it aspires to f-giallo, as Deborah tries to be a mother in any way that she can, whether that’s doting on her dog Igor or giving toys to every kid she meets.

This also has some more American star power with Gig Young (in a role that Jose Ferrer was supposed to play) as a parapsychologist named Ofenbauer who is friends with Michel and debates him the difference between science and religion. There’s also a dinner party where he demonstrates his skills as a psychic but the feedback between Deborah and him is nearly a tragedy for everyone.

Soon, Deborah begins to feel that she is pregnant and starts to have a psychic proxy pregnancy, if you will and if that’s a thing, while also occasionally being hysterical and destroying all of her artwork. And as you can imagine, this is all heading toward a shock ending.

I love that Un Fioggo Nero per Deborah played on Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. What a strange lineup that show played over its decades of being on the air, going from American 1950s science fiction to Japanese monsters, Hammer horror and odd Italian psycho affairs like this. I can only imagine what the talk at the mill or school was the next day about this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dear Dead Delilah was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 12, 1977 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on March 1, 1980; February 14, 1981 and July 24, 1982.

Director and writer John Farris had three of his books made into movies: Because They’re Young, When Michael Calls and The Fury. 

In 1943, a pregnant Luddy Dublin (Patricia Carmichael) murdered her mother with an axe. When she gets out of jail years later, she’s walking through a college when she’s knocked over by Richard (Robert Gentry) as he plays football. His wife Ellen (Elizabeth Eis) is a nurse and invites her to heal at their plantation home where they live with her elderly aunt Delilah (Agnes Moorehead).

As you can imagine, rich people have wild problems. Ellen finds out that Luddy killed her mother and holds it over her head while everyone wants to get at Delilah’s money. Richard is also cheating on her with Grace Charles (Anne Meachum), Delilah’s brother Doctor Alonzo Charles (Dennis Patrick) is a heroin addict and oh yeah, people start getting killed, starting with family attorney Roy (Will Greer) as Luddy finds an axe in her bed and wanders outside where she finds his body, which makes it seem like she killed him. Morgan (Michael Ansara) and his girlfriend Buffy (Ruth Baker) are next and Delilah soon goes missing.

Grace decides to roll around in Delilah’s wheelchair and gets her head cut off with Richard revealing himself as the killer. Working with Ellen, they’ve found the rumored money buried on the property and are taking care of everyone else in the family, starting by overdosing Alonzo. They make love to celebrate and Richard killss her. He plans on making it seem like Luddy did it. But not everyone is as dead as they appear.

Shot in Nashville, Tennessee — which is the home of producer “Cowboy” Jack Clement, the writer of “Ballad of a Teenager Queen” and “Guess Things Happen That Way.” He also discovered and recorded Jerry Lee Lewis. This was the only movie that he produced and its a weird piece of psychobiddy exploitation.

It’s also a gory soap opera mixed with regional horror. There’s not much else like it, a dialogue heavy trip through the strange world of a wealthy family. Everyone is going for it with their performances and I ended up loving every minute of it.

This is one of the Nightmare Theater movies. That collection of movies also has Damiano Damiani’s The Witch, José Antonio Nieves Conde’s Marta, Raúl Artigot’s The Witches Mountain, José María Zabalza’s The Fury of the Wolfman, Mario Bava’s Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Peter Sadsy’s Doomwatch, Francisco Lara Polop’s Murder Mansion, Carlos Aured’s Horror Rises from the Tomb and The Mummy’s Revenge, Joe D’Amato’s Death Smiles on a Murderer, Claudio Guerí’s The Bell from Hell and Amando de Ossorio’s The Night of the Sorcerers. They all aired on Chiller Theater. I’m obsessed by each of them.