EDITOR’S NOTE: The Disembodied was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 26, 1964 at 111:10 p.m., Saturday, March 27, 1965 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, July 16, 1966 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, December 30, 1967 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, August 16, 1969 at 1:00 a.m.

Tom Maxwell (Paul Burke) is a man in search of excitement, which brings him to a tropical island where he meets Dr. Carl Mertz (John Wengraf) and his native wife Tonda (Allison Hayes). Tom’s friend Joe (Robert Christopher) is mauled by a lion and it’s hoped that the doctor can save him, but voodoo is what does it, taking the soul of servant Suba (Dean Fredericks) and putting him into the white man’s body. Only his wife Mara (Eugenia Paul) knows the truth and Tom’s too busy lusting after Tonda to know the difference.

She gets tired of trying to get Tom to kill the doctor and goes full voodoo on him, hanging dolls and stabbing them, dancing around the fire at night. She can get any man she wants and she knows it. Well, Allison Hayes is definitely the right actress to play her, after roles in The Undead, The Unearthly and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Director Walter Grauman mostly worked in TV, directing hundreds of episodes of episodic dramas, as well as TV movies like Daughter of the Mind, Crowhaven Farm and The Old Man Who Cried Wolf. This was written by Jack Townley and played double features with From Hell It Came.

It’s a little past an hour long, most of the people who should be black are white and it’s shot on a soundstage instead of in the jungle. That said, I have a weakness for movies like this.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Giant Claw was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 9, 1965 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, April 22, 1967 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, January 25, 1969 at 11:30 p.m.

Directed by Fred J. Sears (Don’t Knock the Rock, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Teen-Age Crime Wave), The Giant Claw is somehow inspired by matter and anti-matter, as well as la Carcagne, the mythical bird-like banshee from French-Canadian folklore. Yes, some heady material, but then this movie has one of the goofiest — and most awesome — monsters ever.

Producer Sam Katzman originally planned to utilize stop motion effects by Ray Harryhausen. This movie didn’t have the money for that, so he hired a Mexico City effects studio who sent him a marionette that, well, looks like a monstrous turkey. Seeing as how he spent fifty dollars on the monster, I think he got so much more than what he paid for.

No one in the movie knew what that creature looked like until they saw the movie. This really embarrassed lead actor Jeff Morrow, who was there to see the movie live in his hometown and every time the monster showed up, people laughed louder, until the actor ran home and started drinking. I mean, Morrow must have felt the same way when he was in Octaman.

Obviously, the poster artists never saw the special effects either. That said, the film is also quite aware of the UFO sightings of the day, which is what they think the monster is until scientists discover that it’s an evil bird from an antimatter universe.

This is a pretty nihilistic film for the time, as the evil bird kills people without a thought when it isn’t destroying every building it can.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: She Devil was on Chiller Theater on Sunday, March 22, 1964 at 11:10 p.m., Sunday, August 30, 1964 at 11:10 p.m., Saturday, February 3, 1973 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, March 9, 1974 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, January 11, 1975 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, March 13, 1976 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, March 28, 1978 at 11:30 p.m.

Based on the short story “The Adaptive Ultimate” by Stanley G. Weinbaum, She Devil played double features with Kronos.

Dr. Dan Scott (Jack Kelly) has created a serum that goes into the pineal gland — the part of the body that changes people for science fiction movies — and creates a way for the body to fight off any illness and injury. It’s worked in animals of all shapes and sizes, so Dr. Scott wants to give it to a human, something his mentor Dr. Richard Bach (Albert Dekker) keeps warning him about.

Kyla Zeelas (Mari Blanchard) is dying of tuberculosis when she’s given the unproven formula and before you know it, she’s beating up men, stealing dresses and changing her hair to blonde just by thinking about it. Scott is, by now, in love with her, even when she tries to sleep with a man named Barton Kendall (John Archer) at a party and then kills his wife Evelyn (Fay Baker). The doctors even try to drug her in her sleep to fix that pesky gland and she ends up running away.

After she marries Kendall, she starts to abuse him, even forcing him to shoot her. As he watches, she heals and he still tries to take her to the hospital, where she wrecks their car and kills him. When the doctors catch up to her, they finally gas her and do the surgery against her will, which seems like something that in 2024 could happen again. Kyra goes back to her old self, dying of a disease, but hey, maybe Scott has a chance with her now.

This movie was directed by Kurt Neumann (Rocketship X-M, The Fly), who wrote it with Carroll Young, It looks better than it should, as it was shot by Karl Struss and steals a car crash from Preminger’s Angel Face.

Gorgeous demon! They created an inhuman being who destroyed everything she touched! The woman they couldn’t kill! Man, what a tagline.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ghost Diver was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 12, 1964 at 11:10 p.m.

A diver by the name or Rico finds an ancient idol and soon loses it and his life to Manco (Nico Minardos), who sells it to TV hose Richard Bristol (James Craig). Soon, Bristol, his son Robin (Lowell Brown) and secretary Anne (Audrey Totter) have come to where the idol was found, looking for temple ruins with the dead diver’s daughter Pelu (Pira Louis, a Syrian swimming champion).

They have the idea that if they return the idol, it will point them to more treasure. They’re right, even if Manco keeps trying to kill them over and over again. Luckily, these white invaders outsmart everyone and Robin even ends up taking Pelu back to America.

This was directed and written by Richard Einfeld and Merrill G. White, who also produced it. I love that Chiller Theater sometimes showed movies like this before starting to show only horror.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lady of Vengeance was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 9, 1964 at 4:00 p.m. and Saturday, August 28, 1965 at 11:20 p.m.

Melissa Collins (Eileen Elton) has killed herself, which drives her guardian, newspaper publisher William T. Marshall (Dennis O’Keefe), insane with the need for revenge. She blames her death on a musician named Larry Shaw (Vernon Greeves), who ruined her life with all his cheating. So what does he do? He hires master criminal — and stamp collector — Karnak (Anton Diffring) to help him plan the perfect murder.

Luckily, Marshall has a loyal — and one in love, one assumes — secretary named Katie Whiteside (Ann Sears) who goes to the police to stop the madness.

Director Burt Balaban also made Murder, Inc., Mad Dog Coll and Stranger from Venus. He worked on several movies with writer Irve Tunick.

Made in England, this even has on location shooting at the H. R. Harmer Philatelic Organisation, which has been leading stamp auctioneer in London since 1940. There’s one great twist — spoiler warning — and that’s the fact that Karnak actually killed Melissa, not Shaw. It’s a fine noir, though, and can make a late night or Saturday afternoon move quickly.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Unknown Terror was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 16, 1963 at 3:00 p.m., Saturday, July 25, 1964 at 4:00 p.m., Saturday, January 12, 1974 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, April 3, 1976 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, August 5, 1978 at 1:00 a.m.

I wonder what’s wrong with the people in these movies. If you told me there was a Cave of the Dead teeming with parasitic fungi, I’d say, “No thank you.” As it is, I barely want to leave the house.

Jim Wheatley (Charles Gray) is one of those people who didn’t listen and went to the Caribbean to find this cave. Now, his sister Gina (Mala Powers) and her husband Dan (John Howard) have come to find him, only to also find Pete Morgan (Paul Richards), a man who saved her husband’s life once, giving him a permanent limp and oh yeah, they were all in a romantic triangle once. Along with Raoul Koom (Richard Gilden), all four search for the cave, inspired by the lyrics they heard in a song by calypso performer Sir Lancelot.

Again, if I hear someone sing a song with lyrics like, “He’s got to suffer to be born again,” I’m out.

In Raoul’s village, Dr. Ramsey (Gerald Milton) — an ugly American — has married local Concha (May Wynn), who he regularly beats into oblivion. He’s been gathering slimy and fuzzy fruit from the area to do research on slime mold — as you do — and Dan decides to spread around some American money — $200 worth — to anyone who knows where the cave is.

Concha knows a place where you can hear dead men screaming and shows the men. At the same time, a moss man chases Gina. Soon, everyone is trapped in the cave and it’s been flooded, all the work of one of Raoul’s henchmen, Lino (Duane Grey). The cave is filled with fungus that grows all over everywhere, which is some experiment that Ramsey is doing for some reason. Seriously, what are the motivations of anyone in this other than some aberrant manifest destiny to do things because they haven’t been done yet?

Dan breaks his back and ends up dying, which frees up Pete to save Gina and they swim away as the fungus destroys everyone else. At least Concha gets to blow her husband up real good.

Released as a double feature with Back from the Dead, this was sold into syndication in 1960, at which point it ran non-stop on American television.

Director Charles Marquis Warren was mainly known for his Westerns and he developed Rawhide and Gunsmoke for TV. The godson of F. Scott Fitzgerald, he also wrote for pulp magazines, won the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and five battle stars for his World War II service and directed and wrote the Elvis Western Charro! Many credit him as the creator of the television Western. Writer Kenneth Higgins also worked in TV and wrote the script for Ghosts On the Loose.

This was one of several B-features made by Regal Pictures, which was a company that 20th Century Fox used to shoot films in Cinemascope. That way, theater owners that paid for screens and projectors that used that format would have enough films to show their customers.

The monsters look good, the fungus looks like soap suds because it is, the natives see the cave as purgatory and white rich people intrude into their ancient ways and pay for it with their lives. This is what I call a nice rainy Saturday afternoon movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I Was a Teenage Frankenstein was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 6, 1965 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, April 15, 1967 at 11:20 p.m.

Five months after American-International Picture’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Herbert L. Strock (The Crawling Hand) directed this follow-up, which has British professor Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell, who was also the mad scientist in AIP’s first teenager as a monster movie) coming to America to assemble his monster from the bodies of teenagers who didn’t make it through Dead Man’s Curve.

He’s the kind of scientist who has no problem feeding former Lois Lane Phyllis Coates to alligators (AIP’s Herman Cohen kayfabe stated that the alligator had been used to dispose of the bodies of the victims of serial killer Joe Ball from a small town outside San Antonio, which I love) or cutting off the face of a boy on Lover’s Lane (Gary Conway, The Farmer) for his undead monster.

Herman Cohen and Herbert L. Strock were able to write and shoot this film and Blood of Dracula in 4 weeks. That’s because a Texas chain of drive-ins asked for two new movies from AIP if they could deliver by Thanksgiving.

How did AIP not follow this up with I Was a Teenage Dracula? Then again, both the teenage werewolf and teenage Frankenstein show up in How to Make a Monster.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cat Girl was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 28, 1964 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, July 3, 1965 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 6, 1966 at 1:00 a.m.

An unofficial remake of Cat People, this Alfred Shaughnessy-directed (he wrote Upstairs Downstairs) film is all about Leonora Johnson (Barbara Shelley, perhaps Hammer’s best-known female actress with roles in Dracula, Prince of Darkness; The Gorgon; Rasputin, The Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit), who may have inherited a family curse — when angered, she transforms into a murderous cat — along with an ancestral estate and lots of money.

Somehow, Dr. Brian Marlowe is still Leonora’s psychologist, despite them dating years before. I have no idea how he’s able to serve in this role, which feels like a violation of ethics, nor stay married to his wife Dorothy when Leonora continually is either trying to sleep with him or transform into a wolf and kill her. Dorothy is either a saint or a moron, as she keeps forgiving and helping.

If you were at the drive-in in 1957, you probably could have caught this on a double bill with another American-International Pictures release, The Amazing Colossal Man. Shelly would also star in another cat-themed horror movie, The Shadow of the Cat.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night of the Demon was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 11, 1966 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, March 18, 1967 at 1 a.m.

Night of the Demon was a movie that scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. That iconic shot of the demon from the end was always in books about horror and issues of Famous Monsters. I’d always hide my eyes from it while still being fascinated.

Little did I know that the issue of the demon being in the film was a major point of argument between producer Hal E. Chester versus director Jacques Tourneur (I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People) and writer Charles Bennett (The 39 Steps) on the other. Chester ended up jamming in the special effects monster over the objections of the writer, the director, and lead actor Dana Andrews.

Even worse, 12 minutes were removed from the British version of this film and it was renamed to Curse of the Demon. Tourneur later said, “The scenes where you see the demon were shot without me…the audience should never have been completely certain of having seen the demon.” Bennett, also about the changes to the script, said “If Chester walked up my driveway right now, I’d shoot him dead.”

Based on the M.R. James story “Casting the Runes,” the story begins with Dr. Julian Karswell being visited late in the night by a rival who begs him to remove the curse he’s placed. After learning that the patchment he gave the man was destroyed, Karswell rushes the man from his house just as a giant demon materializes in the trees, a shocking effect even today. The professor tries to escape but his car crashes into powerlines and he’s electrocuted.

Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews, Airport 1975) arrives in England to attend the convention where the dead professor had intended to expose Karswell and his Satanic cult. Holden believes that there’s no such thing as the supernatural while the dead professor’s niece (Peggy Cummins, Gun Crazy) believes the opposite.

Later, when a windstorm destroys a party, Karswell takes the blame and Holden mocks him. The older man grows angry and predicts Holden’s death within three days. Soon, the same parchment of protection is found by our hero and he slowly becomes convinced that the demon is on his trail as well.

The end of the film, where the demon changes his target from Holden to Karswell, is harrowing. As he runs up the train tracks, the demon manifests itself and chases the magician. When his corpse is discovered, the police believe that it was a train dragging him, not the demon.

Holden goes to inspect the body, but the professor’s niece tells him that that sometimes, “it’s better not to know.” He walks away with her.

In the movie The ‘Burbs, Ray finds a book called The Theory and Practice of Demonology in the basement of the Klopeks. Its author? None other than the villain of this film, Julian Karswell. It’s also mentioned in “Science Fiction Double Feature” in the Rocky Horror Picture Show: “Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes, but passing them used lots of skills.”

According to BrightMidNight on the Sinister Screen, “This movie is a true Satanic classic because it exposes the devil worshiper for what he is. Anytime you have to rely on someone or something else to help you to be a success in life, you’re diminishing your own self-worth. People who do this are basically saying, “I’m not good enough to get these things on my own; I need some kind of outside force.””

They go on to say: “Satanists viewing this movie should understand that YOU are in charge of your own destiny — and no one else. Asking some devil or some imaginary demon for favors only causes problems in the end. Satanism strives on individualism. The Satanist is his or her own God. There is no need to ask other entities for help.”

You can watch this on Tubi.