EDITOR’S NOTE: The Monster That Challenged the World was on Chiller Theater on Sunday, November 3, 1963 at 11:10 p.m.

Director Arnold Laven went from the mail room at Warner Brothers to producing The Rifleman and The Big Valley, as well as directing other movies. With a script by David Duncan and Pat Fielder (The Vampire, The Return of Dracula), this finds an earthquake opening the ocean floor and unleashing prehistoric giant mollusks. Only Lt. Cmdr. John “Twill” Twillinger (Tim Holt) can stop them, along with Gail MacKenzie (Audrey Dalton), her daughter Sandy (Mimi Gibson) and Dr. Jess Rogers (Hans Conried).

Shot in 16 days, this features an actual-size monster, which helps the movie. It’s based on fact: in 1955, freshwater shrimp appeared in a once-dry Mojave Desert lake. This has it all, and by all, I mean slime and giant eggs, as well as people being eaten by these huge monsters. Will the hero win the widow’s heart? Will a morgue doctor eat food over the dead body he’s doing an autopsy on? Will giant snails blow up real good?

You know it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Harry West (Norman Willis) finds gold in an idol worshipped by a tribe in Bantalay and hires treasure hunter Marilyn Blanchard (Marla English) to help get it out of the country. Instead, she murders him and gets Ted Bronson (Mike Connors) to help her get deeper into the jungle to recover the gold.

In that very place, Dr. Roland Gerard (Tom Conway) is trying to make a superbeing and using voodoo and science to keep the natives on his side, as well as his wife, Susan (Mary Ellen Kay), who wants to leave. As soon as the mad doctor meets Marilyn, he knows that he’s found the perfect woman to become his dream monster.

The original make-up for the Voodoo Woman was tossed at the last minute, so they just used the suit from The She-Creature. They got rid of the fins, claws and tail, then wrapped the costume up in a sarong, added a new skull mask and threw on a blonde wig.

Producer Alex Gordon attended the Burbank, California, premiere with his fiancée Ruth Gordon. She was so upset by this movie and how cheap it looked that she threw her ring at him. His brother explained to him the realities of working in Hollywood, and years later, she would write some of Gordon’s films like The Bounty Killer, Requiem for a Gunfighter and The Underwater City.

Larry Buchanan remade this as an AIP made-for-television film, Curse of the Swamp Creature. This meant that when people said how bad this was, they would have something that many think is even worse. Not me. I love them both.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Monolith Monsters was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 20, 1973 at 11:30 p.m.; Saturday, March 8, 1975 at 2:30 a.m.; Saturday, November 15, 1975 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, December 10, 1977 at 11:30 p.m.

A large meteorite crashes into the Southern California desert and explodes into hundreds of black fragments that, when exposed to water, end up growing. It also makes people petrified. What happens if you feed them after midnight?

Perhaps I’m not crazy. Both this movie and Gremlins were made at Universal and used the studio lot’s famed Courthouse Square as their on-screen town centers. They also feature William Schallert in an uncredited role.

Well, these black rocks are drawing silicon from everything, including a schoolgirl who took one on a field trip. You know what saves the day? Saline solution. You could defeat the monolith monsters and clean your contact lenses at the same time.

Playing on a double feature with Love Slaves of the Amazons, this is also the movie playing in the unhoused camp in They Live. Director John Sherwood also made The Creature Walks Among Us.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Vampire was on Chiller Theater on Saturday. December 28, 1968 at 1:00 a.m.

Directed by Paul Landres and written by Pat Fielder, who also collaborated on Return of Dracula, this film was also shown on TV as Mark of the Vampire. Dr. Paul Beecher (John Beel) gets his migraine meds screwed up with vampire pills. Yes, really, it’s his daughter Betsy’s (Lydia Reed) fault. His colleague, Dr. Campbell, had been trying to reverse the evolution of animals, and these pills are the result. In just a few hours, the doctor’s patients start to fear him, and some die, showing small holes in their necks.

So yes, according to this belief about scientific vampires, the doctor was “regressing animals’ minds to a primitive state, then reversing the process as a step toward advancing the intellect from its normal state.” He goes full vampire at one point and kills his college buddy, Dr. Will Beaumont (Dabbs Greer), and throws him in an incinerator. The cops listen to an audio recording of this and go to arrest him, but cops being cops, they shoot and kill him. Yes, you can shoot a vampire to death. A science vampire, at least, if this movie is to be believed.

It’s way better than you’d think, moddy and dark, a vampire addicted to pills, which is a very modern take on the monster that still resonates today.

Supposedly, this is where Roy Thomas got the idea for Morbius the Living Vampire.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Zombies of Mora Tau was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, August 26, 1967 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 8, 1970 at 11:30 p.m.

You have to feel for the deep-sea divers in this movie. Sure, they have to deal with their boss, wealthy businessman George Harrison, but now to get the diamonds out of the wreck of a ship that sank sixty years ago, they have to deal with not only a curse, but the ship’s undead zombie crew, who must remain there until the curse is removed or the diamonds are destroyed. This is getting into some Return of the Curse of the Creature’s Ghost-like shenanigans, right?

Somehow, fate has decreed that I have watched multiple Alison Hayes films lately. Between Gunslinger, The Unearthly, The Crawling Hand, and this movie, I have really come to enjoy seeing her show up. Marjorie Eaton — who was the physical actress who played Emperor Palpatine in the non-special editions — is also on hand.

The prologue to this movie says, ‘In the darkness of an ancient world — on a shore that time has forgotten – there is a twilight zone between life and death. Here dwell those nameless creatures who are condemned to prowl the land eternally — the Walking Dead.” That’s right, this movie used Twilight Zone two years before Rod Serling and 46 years before the comic book. And wow, zombies sure got different a decade or so later.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Curse of the Aztec Mummy was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 8, 1966, at 11:20 p.m.

K. Gordon Murray seems like the perfect person — if Jerry Warren wasn’t going to do it — to bring this movie to the U.S. as The Curse of the Aztec Mummy. None of the voices seem like they fit the characters — which if you know the world of Murray’s films — makes perfect sense.

The evil gangster Dr. Krupp escapes from the police and hypnotizes Flor into telling him where the mummy’s tomb is. But didn’t the tomb and the mummy himself get blown up real good in the last movie? Why should we let common sense get in the way of things when there’s a masked wrestler named The Angel showing up to help the forces of good?

You know what Krupp gets for his trouble? Popoca comes back, kills every one of his men and then throws the baddy into a pit of snakes. Watching that, Flor and her leading man say, “Let’s get married.” That seems to make sense after you’ve seen an undead version of your past life lover kill everyone and everything just. to get a gold breastplate back.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Pharaoh’s Curse was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 2, 1965, at 1 a.m., Saturday, May 6, 1967, at 11:20 p.m., and Saturday, April 6, 1968, at 1:00 a.m.

King Diamond once sang,

“Now, if you breaking the seals

And disturbing the peace

Then you’re startin’ up a curse

Bringin’ evil disease

Don’t touch, never ever steal

Unless you’re in for the kill

Or you’ll be hit by the curse of the Pharaohs

Yes, you’ll be hit and the curse is on you”

Maybe King wasn’t singing about off-brand mummy movies, but man, I love movies unconnected to the Universal Monster Mummy yet totally want to be in the same universe.

I am Sam and I am now obsessed with mummy movies.

Lee “Roll ‘Em” Sholem had so many credits, from Superman and Tarzan movies and shows to directing Criswell’s TV series and the movies Tobor the Great, Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki, Hell Ship Mutiny and probably a few thousand other things. Literally. There are so many urban legends about his work, like how Phyllis Coates got knocked out on an Adventures of Superman episode and he revived her and shot all her scenes for the day before her face swelled up. Or how he kept bringing the same attractive blonde to be the new Jane in the Tarzan movies, only to get turned down by producer Sol Lesser, only for that girl to end up being Marilyn Monroe. Who cares if these stories are true? What matters is that they are great stories.

But hey — we’re here for mummies.

Welcome to Egypt. Cradle of civilization. Also, the home of mummies. A bunch of scientists are digging where they shouldn’t, which means Captain Storm (Mark Dana) has to save them and maybe even pull a John Ashley with one of the wise guy’s wives, Sylvia (Diane Brewster, Miss Canfield on Leave It to Beaver). Or maybe he can get with local Simira (Ziva Rodann, who played Nefertiti on Batman and Venus de Viasa in Macumba Love).

How wild is it that this mummy — spoiler warning! — Is it really someone transformed into a mummy? And it drinks blood! It also lives without an arm, which is the best kind of mummy.

Shot in six days, one in Death Valley, this is the kind of movie that also has a cat monster and then sort of forgets it. I mean, it’s an hour long. Some people reviewing it expect it to make out with them or something. Perhaps you’ve never seen a 1950s generic mummy movie and were expecting a Criterion-level epic. I mean, it has the tomb of Pharaoh Ra-Antef to find, the disintegrating marriage of Sylvia and Robert Quentin (George N. Neise), and a possession film lurking inside the bandages of a mummy movie.

I mean, the poster says, “A blood-lusting mummy that kills for a cat-goddess!”

That’s good enough.

You can watch this on Tubi.

“Here in this face lies the key to your death

Touch it, see it

Here in this fist is the means to your end

Touch it, feel it

GREEN HELL!

You’ve come to this as no one could

I’ll bet you never knew you would

And don’t you run away from it I’ll bet you thought you really could

We’re gonna burn it up, it up

Like deviled hell but not afraid it up, it up

Time to face the facts of death it up, it up

Feel the ground to feel the searing up, it up

Your old world starts to shake apart it up, it up

Down upon your belly you must stay, get up

Get up and feel the torch of hell get up, get up

Hell is green and in it’s flames it up, it up

We’re gonna burn it up

GREEN HELL!”

Yet another movie I watched because of The Misfits.

Green Hell is an area of Africa where Dr. Quent Brady (Jim Davis) and Dan Morgan (Robert Griffith) have acted like dumb Cold War scientists and shot wasps into space, only to have them land in the jungle, get huge and start killing people, as Dr. Lorentz (Vladimir Sokoloff) and his daughter Lorna (Barbara Turner, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s mother) soon learn.

Why do old man scientists always take their daughters to the jungle?

After the death of Lorentz from a giant stinger, the guides Mahri (Eduardo Ciannelli) and Arobi (Joel Fluellen) take the team into Green Hell, which also has an active volcano. To stop them, as all American scientists usually do, they’ve brought bombs to blow them up real good.

Let me restate: This is all their fault and now they’re throwing bombs at a volcano, which just makes the wasps — which have killed so many people — even more enraged.

The volcano erupts and kills the wasps, which has Morgan exclaim, “Nature has a way of destroying its mistakes.”

You were the mistake! It was your fault! The wasps didn’t ask to get made huge!

In 1964, Remco made the Hamilton’s Invaders line of toys. These giant bug movies were big on TV, so they just made non-copyright friendly versions of all of them with Horrible Hamilton being the wasp from this movie. There was even a set that came with a volcano. Some of the monsters from this set ended up becoming a part of Remco’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea toy line, as these guys were big on recycling.

Speaking of recycling, some believe that this movie is 40% stock footage. Most of it comes from the 1939 movie Stanley and Livingstone, which is why Jim Davis wears the same costume as Spencer Tracy, but if you look at the gun he carries, it’s different.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As a kid, we only had Godzilla King of the Monsters! and as far as we knew, that was the definitive edition. We didn’t know that there was the Japanese original cut, the Luigi Cozzi-made Cozzilla or this French edition, which combines the American and Japanese cuts and dubs it all into French.

Made by Les Films du Verseau, this is a balancing act, as the Japanese version has so much terror missing from the safer American cut. What emerges as a little of each and in a world where we can choose to watch either the one we grew up with or the one true version, if you’re not viewing this as a curiosity or to test how much French you know, I’m not sure why you’re watching it. Being a completist? Doing a 24-hour marathon of giant monster movies?

I love that it exists, however, because it’s just another way to experience something that I love.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Back from the Dead was on Chiller Theater on Sunday, May 17, 1964 at 11:10 p.m.

Charles Marquis Warren directed this and the film it played double features with, The Unknown Terror, before creating Rawhide and adapting Gunsmoke to television. It was written by Catherine Turney and was based on her book The Other One.

Dick (Arthur Franz) and Mandy Anthony (Peggie Castle) are on vacation with her sister Kate Hazelton (Marsha Hunt) when Mandy passes out and loses the child in her womb. She also refers to Dick as Dickens and will only answer to Felicia, the name of the dead wife that Dick never told his second wife about losing.

She demands to be taken to her parents, Mr. Bradley (James Bell) and Mrs. Bradley (Helen Wallace). Dick tells Kate that the Bradley women were all evil. So evil that when Mr. Bradley says, “God will punish you for this,” Mrs. Bradley answers “You believe in your God. I’ll believe in mine.”

Felicia then tries to murder Kate, who only wakes up when she hears the voice of her sister, and then kills Copper the dog, who hated her and adored the new wife. Kate decides that she needs to know more and follows Nancy Cordell (Marianne Stewart) to the coven run by Maître Victor Renall (Otto Reichow), who was in love with Felicia and is angry that her mother did magic without him.

Dick’s friend John Mitchell (Don Haggerty) is able to save Kate through his love for her when she’s attacked by a spell created by Mrs. Bradley. He feels like he causes Felicia’s death, as she said that she would kill herself if he didn’t make love to her. She backed up and fell off a cliff, but now she’s in Mandy’s body and runs to Renall after her mother kills her father and Renall’s spell kills Mrs. Bradley.

You know who finally stops the devil cult leader? Nancy. She was in love with him and even in death, he loved Felicia. She shoots him and Mandy comes back to her body. Her sister tells Dick that her sister should never learn the truth, which is kind of not women staying together.

The sales guide for this movie had this advice: “Have a woman dressed as a zombi wander about the streets near the theatre bearing a sign with the picture’s title, such as: I am Back from the Dead. Come and see me at (name of theatre).”

I loved this, as you can imagine, because it’s so rich in its occult wackiness. In 1957 there were devil cults in the suburbs and people’s moms were in them. It’s also terrifying because I do not want my ex wife showing up in my wife’s body.

You can watch this on YouTube.