CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Frankenstein’s Daughter was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 23, 1968 at 3:00 a.m.; Saturday, September 20 and Saturday December 20, 1969 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, June 6 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, December 26, 1970 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, September 25, 1971 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, September 16, 1972 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, November 4, 1972 at 1:00 a.m.

Richard E. Cunha also made Giant from the Unknown, She Demons, Missile to the Moon and this film, which was written by H.E. Barrie. His father was Sonny Cunha, who wrote “My Waikiki Mermaid,” the earliest known hapa haole song.

Trudy Morton (Sandra Knight) dreams of running wild in the streets as a monster. Her boyfriend, Johnny Bruder (John Ashley), thinks this is silly; her uncle, Carter Moron (Felix Locher), with whom she lives, has a lab assistant named Oliver Frank (Donald Murphy). Every night, he spikes her fruit punch with his new drug. Because yes, he’s the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein and the kindly Elsu (Wolfe Barzell) is his lab assistant.

For some reason, Trudy’s friend Suzie Lawler (Sally Todd) gets set up with Oliver. He acts like a jerk, then runs her over, smashing her head. So why a female monster, when the Frankensteins have always made — well, mostly — men? Oliveer says, “Now we’re aware the female mind is conditioned to a man’s world. It therefore takes orders, where the other ones didn’t.”

Also known as the She Monster of the Night and maybe even the Wild Witch of Frankenstein, this monster has the head of a woman and the body of a man, made from what’s left of Suzie. The director said that when he saw the makeup for the monster, he was so disappointed that he left the set and broke down in tears.

I didn’t think it was that bad, but as we all know, I have no taste.

You can watch this on Tubi.

2025 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 25: The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)

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25. ELECTRIC SLIP’n’SLIDE: Wriggle your way through a sloppy/goopy good time flick.

Directed by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, written by Kaufman and Gay Partington Terry, this finds Toxie (John Altamura voiced by Ron Fazio) getting a job at the Tromaville Center for the Blind with his girlfriend Claire (Phoebe Legere). But an evil company named Apocalypse Inc. blows up the center to destroy Tromaville and take it over. The Toxic Avenger defends the town, but then is tricked into going to Japan to find his father.

However, when he meets his father, Big Mac Junko (Jack Cooper), he learns that he’s a criminal and ends up having to kill him, all while Tromaville is being destroyed by a Dark Rider, who has a bomb on his back. However, sumo wrestling training makes our hero stronger; he defends his city and meets his real father, who was the victim of identity theft.

The original edit of this was four hours long! Come on! How is that possible? The other footage not in this is in The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie. This is nowhere as good as the original, but it does have 66 deaths and a man’s face turned into taiyaki.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: How to Make a Monster (1956)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: How to Make a Monster was on Chiller Theater on Saturday. March 13 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, December 25, 1965 at 11:20 p.m.

Directed by Herbert L. Strock and written by Herman Cohen, this is a sequel — sort of! — to both I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.

Pete Dumond (Robert H. Harris), the monster maker at American International Studios, has lost his job because monsters are out and rock and roll movies are in. To get revenge, he transforms young actors Tony Mantell (Gary Conway) into Teenage Frankenstein and Larry Drake (Gary Clarke) into the Teenage Werewolf, while becoming a caveman, all using special makeup that controls minds.

At the end of the movie, the monster museum is burnhed down. Many of Pete’s “children” were props originally created by Paul Blaisdell for The Cat Girl, It Conquered the World, Invasion of the Saucer Men and Attack of the Puppet People, all special effects that he allowed to be destroyed. The She-Creature mask was almost burned but survived the scene! Not so lucky was the cat mask, as Blaisdell had specifically asked AIP not to set it on fire. They didn’t listen and didn’t even film it being burned.

Ed Wood’s widow Kathy that this idea was stolen from him by AIP producer Sam Arkoff. In Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr., she said, “Eddie condemned Arkoff, he really hated him. Eddie gave them a script for approval, and they changed the characters a little bit around. Eddie had written it for Lugosi. It was about this old horror actor who couldn’t get work any more, so he took his vengeance out on the studio.”

This has an early mention of Horrors of the Black Museum and John Ashley is a singer!

You can watch this on Tubi.

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 24: Heard She Got Murdered (2023)

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24. A Horror Film Directed by Charles Roxburgh

At the end of Heard She Got Married, Mitch Owens (Matt Farley) has returned home from Nashville, and all his old friends have become enemies; the girls he once loved have married his friends. And to watch this — it’s streaming and doesn’t say that it’s a sequel, so some could be lost — you have to know that Mitch has lost it and done something horrible.

Unlike everyone else in the world, when people tell Mitch something, he believes it if it lives up to his dream of playing music. Just those moments when he is on stage and it works make it all worthwhile, even if he’s now a big fish in a small pond. But for a little while, he was the only person in Tritown to get away.

With Tara gone — which you need to see the last movie, and I don’t want to spoil it, but maybe she isn’t gone — Mitch starts to rebuild his life, starting a new band, even if people want to call them The Barricades. The promoter wants them to be beefy. The band might not be able to handle the nonstop creativity that Mitch needs. And the promoter cuts their sound, just as Detective Mayo (Jay Mayo) is convinced that Mitch couldn’t have done the crimes he’s been accused of. Promoters never want to pay and always look for ways out. Mitch might even have a new love interest (Theresa Peterson), or he’s always looking for ways to get his music played.

Every Moturn movie that Roxburgh and Farley make gets stuck in my head because they feel real. I’ve actually spoken with Matt, and his unbridled need to make things is real. I always wonder how much is true and how much is the movie; I don’t want to know, I just want to see everything they make.

I take it personally when people leave negative reviews of these. Seriously, it’s like someone talking shit on one of my friends’ bands.

There are teasers for three different sequels: Heard He Got Multiplied, Evil DJ and Sinister Siesta. I’m ready for all of them. The Moturn Cinematic Universe is a real thing. This ties in several of the films and feels like it goes full mad science, just like Magic Spot. Again: here for all of it.

You can watch this on Fawesome.

2025 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 24: Aliens (1986)

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24. IN YOUR DREAMS: Heavy on the dream sequence, Jack.

After a 57-year slumber, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is abruptly awakened by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Her dream of alien impregnation and birth is shattered as she finds herself back on LV-426, now a mining colony.

Along with Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Colonial Marines Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope), Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn), Bishop (Lance Henriksen), Forst (Ricco Ross), Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), Drake (Mark Rolston), Spunkmeyer (Daniel Kash), Crowe (Tip Tipping), Wierzbowski (Trevor Steedman), Dietrich (Cynthia Dale Scott), Ferro (Colette Hiller) and Apone (Al Matthews), she investigates what’s left. Despite Ripley’s warnings about the alien, no one listens. Newt (Carrie Hehn), a young girl, is the only survivor, and the bugs soon wipe out most of the Marines.

Ripley takes over and leads the survivors back to their ship. Sure, it’s simple, but it’s thrilling —a large-scale version of the first movie, now with big weapons and plenty of firepower. It’s hilarious that Fox thought a sequel would be a mistake and that the first movie wasn’t successful. I love this sentence: “Using Hollywood accounting methods, Fox had declared Alien a financial loss despite its earnings of over $100 million against a $9–$11 million budget.”

As for the next film, Cameron said, “I thought the decision to eliminate Newt, Hicks, and Bishop was dumb. I thought it was a huge slap in the face to the fans. I think it was a big mistake. Certainly, had we been involved, we would not have done that, because we felt we earned something with the audience for those characters.”

I walked out of the theater in minutes.

Aliens was a movie even more vital to me than the first movie. All of the promise hinted at in that movie is only increased and what emerges is a rollercoaster of a film, one in which quotable lines — “Get away from her, you bitch!” is excellent, but so is “What do you mean “they cut the power”? How could they cut the power, man?! They’re animals!” and ” Game over, man. Game over!” — and significant action moments come together in a way that only the 80s and Cameron could deliver. Sadly, no one was ever able to make this franchise work this hard again (outside of Kenner and Capcom).

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: Chimes at Midnight (1965)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast runs a month-long series of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Ingrid Pitt

Yes, we know Ingrid Pitt as the queen of the vampires, but she’s also in movies like Doctor Zhivago and The Wicker Man in uncredited roles; she’s better known for films like Sound of Horror, The Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula,  and The House That Dripped Blood.

As for Orson Welles, the mastermind behind this, his dedication to storytelling was evident from a young age. His passion for this story dates back to his student days at the Todd Seminary for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Despite facing budget constraints, he attempted to stage a three-and-a-half-hour remix of several of Shakespeare’s historical plays, The Winter‘s Tale, in which he played Richard III. This early struggle only fueled his determination to bring his visions to life.

In 1939, he planned Five Kings, a Mercury Theater play that would have 46 scenes and run for more than five hours. Instead of attending rehearsals or finishing the play, which combined Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, Welles and co-star Burgess Meredith got drunk. It played in a few cities but cost the Mercury Theater its contract with the Theater Guild.

By 1960, the play had evolved into Chimes At Midnight, a film directed by Hilton Edwards but truly a product of Welles’ artistic vision. He saw it as a rehearsal for a movie, a canvas on which he could experiment and bring his ideas to life. His focus was not on traditional aspects of filmmaking like learning lines or attending rehearsals, but on creating a unique cinematic experience.

Four years later, Welles worked with Spanish film producer Emiliano Piedra to produce the film, which he promised would be made at the same time as Treasure Island.

Welles had no intention of making that movie and did nothing about it.

He had $800,000 to make this movie, a cast of stars, and a schedule that didn’t allow all those actors to be in the same scene.

Welles remarked that this was his favorite movie, saying, “If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that’s the one I would offer up. I think it’s because, to me, it’s the least flawed; let me put it that way. It is the most successful for what I tried to do. I succeeded more completely in my view with that than with anything else.”

Sir John Falstaff (Welles) and Justice Shallow (Alan Webb) start the film walking in the snow, reflecting on the past and discussing how King Henry IV murdered Richard II and imprisoned the true ruler, Edmund Mortimer. As for Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), another potential ruler, he spends all of his time drinking and sleeping around, as Falstaff teaches him to live life to the fullest.

As Hal becomes King Henry V, he distances himself from Falstaff, who dies of a broken heart as the boy he led in crimes and schemes goes on to reject those lessons and become a noble king. 

Why did I pick this?

Jess Franco worked as an assistant director on the film and was heavily involved in the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence. He fought with Welles, so he isn’t in the credits. He told Horror Garage, “The production of Chimes at Midnight was a total mess, not because the film was too expensive, but because Orson lied about the budget and the film was ten times more expensive. You can imagine…what a disaster.”

Plus, it’s gorgeous. 

Is Welles Falstaff? Both men were always looking for money, outright lied to people and yet always were able to drink and eat. 

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Invasion of the Star Creatures was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 22, 1965 at 11:20 p.m.

Directed by character actor Bruno VeSota and written by Jonathan Haze, this has Privates Philbrick (Robert Ball) and Penn (Frank Ray Perilli) assigned to Fort Nicholson, which has a cave under the Earth — is this another Shaver Mystery film? — where they meet Kalar aliens Dr. Puna (Joanne Arnold, Playboy Playmate of the Month for May 1954) and Professor Tanga (Dolores Reed, sadly her third — after Hit and Run and Party Girl — role before she died of a drug overdose). Along with their vegetable men, they want to take over our planet, but because men are sexist pigs, they have learned how to stop them with a kiss. I kid!

Shot in Bronson Canyon, where all monsters and aliens find their homes, this was originally going to team up Haze (the star of The Little Shop of Horrors) with Dick Miller. It played double features with The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, which is a two-movie deal I love.

You can watch this on Tubi.

B & S About Movies podcast Episode 106: TV movies

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This week, let’s get into the forgotten TV movies. How about Poor Devil and The Phoenix? Also: lots of personal revelations.

You can watch Poor Devil on YouTube and The Phoenix on YouTube.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts, Podchaser and Google Podcasts

Important links:

Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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CHILLER THEATER MONTH: The Hand (1960)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Hand was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 20, 1965 at 1:00 a.m.

Once in Burma, three captured British soldiers were threatened with torture if they refused to divulge military information. Two refuse and have their hands chopped off. Years later, in London, hands are getting chopped off and the police have no clue.

Directed by Henry Cass and written by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton, this is kind of all over the place, but you know, it played at 1:00 a.m. on UHF channels usually. It feels like an Edgar Wallace story but even grosser, with hands being shipped in boxes to the cops.

This is more police story than horror movie. Oh well.

You can watch this on Tubi.

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 23: Grim (1985)

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23. An Experimental Horror Film That’s Not In English

Takashi Ito’s father wouldn’t allow him to seer kaiju films like all his friends. But he finally allowed him to see Daimajin and Gamera vs. Barugon; his elation “worried his parents.” He began to draw manga and went on to Kyushu Institute of Design; he almost quit before experimental filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto came to the school.

Grim was made after he graduated and uses long exposure photography and empty spaces to create a sense of fear. Ito said, “With this work, I developed/fleshed out the idea I had when making Ghost of peeling only the skin from various objects in the room, floating the skins in midair and then sticking them on different objects. This film was also shot entirely frame-by-frame with long-exposures. Along with Grim, its meaning is “as if to do forever.””

How frightening is just a hand? How scary is a change in music or color? Ito takes the most basic moments and gets the most horrifying energy from them, making you nearly afraid to watch.

You can watch this on YouTube.