Birth of Japan was produced by Toho as their celebratory thousandth film. At the time, it was the most expensive Japanese film ever made. Based on the legends of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, and the origins of Shinto, it was released in America as The Three Treasures and in the rest of the world as Age of the Gods. That said, those versions are 70 minutes shorter.

Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki and written by Toshio Yasumi and Ryuzo Kikushima, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, this stars Toshiro Mifune as Prince Yamato Takeru and Susanoo. That second name is essential, as most of this film is about the battle between Susanoo and the legendary dragon Orochi. In fact, this film is a series of legends told by an old woman to her village, such as the story of how marriage was invented.

I wonder what American audiences thought of this, a movie undubbed with subtitles, a film in which the hero dies only to be transformed into a bird that causes a volcano to kill all of his enemies, and where women drown themselves to please the gods.

While I watched this as a kaiju movie — and yes, it has giant monsters — this is an epic movie. From Japan’s creation to the symbols of the emperor, this is a very symbolic story. 

Toho would later remake this as Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Angry Red Planet was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, April 10, 1965 at 11:20 p.m.; Saturday, May 7, 1966 at 11:20 p.m.; Saturday, May 27, 1967 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, June 22, 1968 at 11:20 p.m.

Directed by Ib Melchior, who wrote this with Sidney W. Pink, The Angry Red Planet starts with Dr. Iris Ryan (Naura Hayden) and Col. Tom O’Bannion (Gerald Mohr) barely making it back from Mars. He has a growth on his arm, and she’s struggling to find a cure. Chief Warrant Officer Jacobs (Jack Kruschen) and Professor Theodore Gettell (Les Tremayne) didn’t make it back. But what do you expect from a planet with gelatinous globs that devour people and giant rat spiders?

Mars sends back a warning. “We of Mars have been observing human development on Earth for many thousands of years and have determined that humanity’s technology has far outpaced progress in cultural advancement.” Stay on Earth, humans.

The budget was bad, so this was shot in CineMagic. It created a red glow in the Mars scenes, making the actors look like cartoons, which helped the effects seem higher budget. It’s basically a monochrome red film.

I learned of this movie thanks to The Misfits‘ Walk Among Us. That rat-bat-spider-crab thing on the cover was awesome.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Terror In the Midnight Sun was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 2, 1968 at 11:20 p.m.; Saturday, July 26, 1969 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, May 30, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. as Invasion of the Animal People. 

Known internationally as Terror In the Midnight Sun and in its native Sweden as Space Invasion of Lapland, this movie was brought to the U.S. by Jerry Warren, who cut 25 minutes from its running time — including a nude shower scene with lead actress Barbara Wilson — as well as shooting a new beginning featuring narrator John Carradine. Of course, when he sold the film to syndication later, a whole bunch of new material had to be shot to pad out the film’s running time. That new footage features several doctors discussing the mental problems of the lead character. Warren also shot a new UFO abduction scene. Never let it be said that the maker of The Wild World of Batwoman didn’t keep up on trends.

However, in Fred Olen Ray’s book The New Poverty Row, he did reveal “I’d shoot one day on this stuff and throw it together…I was in the business to make money. I never, ever tried in any way to compete, or to make something worthwhile. I only did enough to get by, so they would buy it, so it would play, and so I’d get a few dollars. It’s not very fair to the public, I guess, but that was my attitude…You didn’t have to go all out and make a really good picture.”

Diane Wilson and scientist Erik Engstrom just want to fall in love, but all the mutilated reindeer keep getting in the way. That’s because three humanoid aliens have a gigantic and hairy fanged beast that they’re commanding to tear up houses and eat Santa’s steeds. Yes, this movie is years ahead of modern paranormal theories that place Bigfoot in the employ of grey extraterrestrials.

Virgil W. Vogel, the director of this movie, also was behind The Mole People. He was an editor on Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet the Invisible Man and Touch of Evil, too. Most of his career was spent directing for television, which he did all the way up to his death in 1996.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Man and the Monster was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 22, 1968, at 1:00 a.m. It’s the Mexican horror movie El hombre y el monstruo.

If I’ve learned anything from watching Mexican films, it’s that you should never make a deal with el diablo.

If you’re like Samuel Magno (Enrique Rambal, The Exterminating Angel), you finally get your dream of being a concert pianist to come true. Then every time you play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, you turn into a monster.

Directed by Rafael Baledón, who acted from 1938 to 1994 as well as directing La Muñeca Perversa, Muñecas Peligrosas and Orlak, El Infierno de Frankenstein, this is 78-minutes of Mexican gothic horror, with the curse only stopped by the protagonist’s demanding mother.

It’s literally Faust, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Werewolf all in one movie, with special effects on par with El Baron del Terror. If you aren’t rushing to find this movie right now, what’s wrong with you?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Incredible Petrified World was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 22, 1966, at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 8, 1970, at 11:30 p.m.12, 1967 at 1:00 a.m.

Jerry Warren sat on this movie for two years before playing it with Teenage Zombies. Shot in Colossal Cave in Tucson, Arizona, the monster costume looked so bad that Warren didn’t use it. Let’s think about that for a minute. An effect so bad that Jerry Warren wouldn’t use it.

Professor Millard Wyman (John Carradine) has sent Paul Whitmore (Allen Windsor), Craig Randall (Robert Clarke), Lauri Talbott (Sheila Noonan) and Dale Marshall (Phyllis Coates) to the bottom of the ocean, but their vehicle becomes lost. They swim — in scuba suits at crushing depths — into a cave where only Matheny (George Skaff), an old sailor, is still alive.

Professor Wyman’s brother, Jim (Joe Maierhauser), has luckily built another vehicle, because Matheny is looking at the ladies like a man who has been in a cave for more than a decade and suddenly has a gypsy girl from” Beast from the Haunted Cave” and Lois Lane right within staring distance. Before he can say, “You know, I killed a man,” a volcano goes live, he dies under some rocks, and all the white scientists celebrate their good fortune above the surface, and no one gets the bends.

Warren sold this with “A Nightmare of Terror in the Center of the Earth with Forgotten Men, Monsters, Earthquakes and Boiling Volcanoes!” I mean, yes, it has those things, but it’s…maybe not as exciting as the ads make it sound. The petrified world is the movie itself.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Living Coffin was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 17, 1966, at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, December 7, 1968, at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 28, 1971, at 1:00 a.m.

The Screaming Death was directed by Fernando Méndez, who also made El Vampiro, The Black Pit of Dr. M and Ladrón de Cadáveres. It was written by Ramón Obón, the screenwriter of the first Mil Mascaras movies, as well as the director and writer of Cien Gritos de Terror.

The American version — The Living Coffin — was remixed for U.S. audiences by K. Gordon Murray, who did a lot of that and really didn’t ever bother consulting the source material.

Gastón (Gastón Santos, a former bullfighter who played himself in many of his movies) and his sidekick Coyote Loco (Pedro de Aguillón) arrive in a town haunted by La Llorona, the crying woman. Maria (María Duval) believes that the red idol that Gastón is carrying was carved by her deceased aunt Clotilde. And the locals think that that woman is, in fact, the crying woman killing the townsfolk.

The film looks great and mixes Gothic horror with Western action, but never really gets going. However, it’s an excellent idea, and I’ll keep looking out for the perfect horror in the West.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A Bucket of Blood was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 8, 1965, at 1:00 a.m.

A Bucket of Blood aspires to art as much as it does junk. Written by Charles B. Griffith, whose name you can associate with films as disparate as Smokey Bites the Dust, Barbarella and Death Race 2000, it’s a tale of trying to figure out how to create art when all you can do is repeat words and images. Maybe that’s what art really is.

Roger Corman himself directed this one, which was shot in five days for $50,000. But hey, AIP wanted a horror film and had sets left over from Diary of a High School Bride. The same set would also be used for The Little Shop of Horrors.

We start by hearing the beat poetry of Maxwell H. Brock (Julian Burton, The Masque of the Red Death) at The Yellow Door cafe. People only know when to clap when they’re told, as the people he decries as sheep really live up to it. But it’s art, baby.

Busboy Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) yearns to be part of this hip crowd and wants to win the heart of Carla (Barboura Morris, The Trip), a friendly hostess at the club. As he fails to make her a sculpture, his landlady’s cat Frankie (Myrtle Vail plays the snooping older woman; she’s actually Griffith’s grandmother) gets stuck in the wall. He tries to cut it out of the wall, but ends up killing the cat. So he does what any of us would: he covers it in clay, sticks a knife in it and calls it art.

The next morning, Walter’s boss Leonard (Antony Carbone, Creature from the Haunted Sea) makes fun of the morbid art, but Carla loves it. So it goes up on display, where the Beatniks all fall in love with it. One of those crazy cats named Naolia gives him some heroin to remember her by, but Walter has no idea what it is.

As he’s followed home by undercover cop and total fink Lou Raby (Bert Convy!), he’s told he’s going to be arrested for possession. He panics and hits Lou with a frying pan, giving him another piece of art called “Murdered Man” for everyone to fall in love with. But the secret’s soon to get out, as Leonard sees fur sticking out of his “Dead Cat” piece.

Walter is now the king of the artistic set, except for Alice (Judy Bamber, Dragstrip Girl), a model who is pretty much disliked by everyone. Walter asks her to be in his model and she agrees, only to be strangled and turned into his next art object. The results so impress Brock that he throws a party for Walter, who drunkenly beheads someone directly after and shows the results to his boss.

This has to end like all wax-related films. Walter finally feels enough self-worth to propose to Carla, who rejects him and soon learns that the sculptures are really human bodies covered in wax. Everyone chases him home, where he makes his last piece of art from himself — the “Hanged Man.”

Dick Miller said of the film — in the book Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers — “The story was good; the acting was good; the humor in it was good; the timing was right; everything about it was right. But they didn’t have any money for production values … and it suffered.”

Miller would go on to play a character named Walter Paisley in the films Hollywood Boulevard, The Howling, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Chopping Mall, Night of the Creeps, Shake, Rattle and Rock!, Rebel Highway, The Adventures of Biffle and Shoosterror and Schmo Boat.

The movie was remade in 1995 as part of the Roger Corman Presents series on Showtime. While never available on DVD, it was released as The Death Artist on VHS. It adds perhaps the one thing missing from the original: Paul Bartel. He and Mink Stole play a rich couple looking for new artists. Walter is played by Anthony Michael Hall, Carla by Justine Bateman, Shadoe Stevens is Maxwell and Sam Lloyd is Leonard. Taking place in a cappuccino bar, it also features Will Ferrell and David Cross in some of their first roles.

You can watch this on Tubi.