This 1962 American independent horror film is literally an auteur production: it was written, produced and directed by Herk Harvey, as well as featuring him in the role of the spectral figure that haunts its heroine.

While teaching and directing plays at the University of Kansas, Harvey started working for the Centron Corporation as a film director, writer, and producer on industrial films and commercials. He was lauded for his special effects techniques and ability to work under budget.

After the success of low budget films by Elmer Rhoden Jr. and fellow industrial filmmaker in nearby Kansas City, Harvey secured $33,000 in funding to make his lone film, although he attempted to film several others. Because the company that distributed the film went bankrupt, it wasn’t seen much in initial release but soon gained an audience at drive-ins and via late night showings.

For the rest of his life, Harvey continued creating industrial films and acting, even appearing in the harrowing made-for-TV movie, The Day After. Luckily, he did live to see people recognize this film as a classic. He died weeks after the soundstage at the University of Kansas was renamed the Herk Harvey Sound Stage.

Mary Henry gets involved in a drag race with her car going off the bridge. The police drag the waters for three hours before she rises, unsure how she could have survived.

Our heroine movs to Utah, a place where can’t connect to anyone and can only get organ music on the radio. Her journey to her new home is marked by appearances by “The Man” (Harvey), a spectral figure that comes and goes, and an abandoned pavilion on the Great Salt Lake that begs for her to visit it in the twilight.

Mary begins to disappear from the world, becoming invisible and unheard by everyone around her, as if she weren’t there. And on her first day at her new job as a church organist, when she begins to play an eerie tune, The Man and a group of corpses begin to dance until the minister begins to scream, “Profane! Sacrilege!” Truly, diabolus in musica — those demonic tritones are afoot.

Every attempt to escape the town is stopped by The Man and his dead people, including them taking over an entire bus. Finally, Mary makes her way back to the pavilion, where she watches them dance and notices that a ghoul version of herself is with The Man. She runs, but they catch her. The minister, a doctor and the police try to find Mary, but as they follow her footprints in the sand — is this when God was carrying her? — they end with no trace. Back in Kansas, her car is finally found beneath the water with her dead body still inside.

The US release of Carnival of Souls failed to include the copyright on the prints, automatically placing them in the public domain. That’s how numerous TV stations would show different prints of this movie, cut however they wished to fit its timeslot. Again, it wasn’t until the late 1980’s that this film would be recognized as the arty horror that it is, a precursor to the work of artists like David Lynch and George Romero, who specifically said that it inspired him to make Night of the Living Dead.

In turn, this is a movie inspired by the silent films of the past, with parts where Mary is in one of her altered mental states being tinted cyan while all the scenes of reality appear in black and white. Later, the tinted scenes become distorted in both sound and picture. There’s also an original organ score by composer Gene Moore that makes this movie feel trapped in cinema’s past.

The Church of Satan’s leader Anton LaVey spoke glowingly of this movie: “Carnival of Souls is another richly evocative film that has been completely lost until recently. Producer/director Herk Harvey did industrial films and this was his brilliant excursion into the world of nightmares.”

You can watch this for free on Tubi.

Nicholas Merriweather, who wrote this, is Arch Hall Sr. He wanted to make his son, Arch Hall Jr., into a star. Before that, he was a legitimate cowboy and even had a Native American name: Waa-toe-gala Oak-Shilla, which means Wild Boy. In fact, when he died, he was buried in a full Sioux ceremony led by Lakota Sioux spiritual leader Frank Fools Crow. Before that, he was a pilot and stuntman who finally started his own studio, Fairway Productions, making movies like Eegah, The Corpse Grinders and The Sadist.

Arch Hall Jr. was a pilot after his short Hollywood life. He also used the name Nicolas Merriweather as a writer.

Wild Guitar was directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who also made The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies and who rivals Joe D’Amato for alternate names, such as Sven Christian, Michel J. Rogers, Henri-Pierre Duval, Pierre Duvall, Sven Hellstrom, Ricardo Malatoté, Harry Nixon, Michael J. Rogers, Wolfgang Schmidt, Cindy Lou Steckler, R.D. Steckler, Ray Steckler, Cindy Lou Sutters and, of course, Cash Flagg. He also plays one of the bad guys, Steak.

The world of Wild Guitar seems on the surface like our own but no, it is not. It is a world that Bud Eagle (Hall Jr.) is seen as the next big star and is manipulated by big Hollywood boss Mike McCauley (William Watters, but that’s Hall Sr. being the heel to his boy) on the surface, but you’re seeing a universe that has been created by lunatics who think that their creation is normal when no, it is not. It is a mirror world that we stare into and worry that we will never properly leave. And yet we love this movie for that, as it is never boring. Bud misses his brother, who he writes letters to, and loves Vickie (Nancy Czar), a former figure skater that he’s met like once. I want this world to be the one I live in, a place where the giant headed Arch Hall Jr. can be the hottest star in the galaxy.

This does feel like part of a cinematic universe, as posters and props from Eegah are everywhere and the song “Vickie” was also in that movie. There are also posters for The Choppers and Wild Ones On Wheels.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Clément (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is the rich son of an industrialist who has come to join a far right terrorist group. Despite being married to a former actress named Anne (Romy Schneider) and having anything he wants, he blows up the home of a socialist politician, killing the man and having to hide in a windmill owned by his old friend Paul, who is a socialist.

Once Clément learns that he was railroaded by his friends, he goes for revenge while his wife and Paul fall in love. He’s gone to South America where he works with what’s left of the Third Reich before coming back and challenging his one-time friend to a duel.

Directed by Alain Cavalier and written along with Jean-Paul Rappeneau, this looks gorgeous and presents a woman torn between two men who both love her but are on the opposite sides of outlook.

The Radiance Films blu ray of Le Combat Dans L’ile has a 2K Restoration from the original camera negative, a 1962 interview with Cavalier, a 1983 interview with Jean-Louis Trintignant, an analysis of the movie by critic Philippe Roger, short films by the firector, behind the scenes photos, a trailer, a reversible sleeve, a limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Ben Sachs and scholar and author of Late-Colonial French Cinema, Mani Sharpe. This is limited to 3000 copies and comes in Radiance’s trademark packaging,  presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of logos and markings. You can get it from MVD.

Directed by Yuzo Kawashima and written by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba), this is the story of the Maeda family. They live in a small apartment and are always ready to hide just how much money they have, all so they can continue the plans of their father figure, ex-naval officer Tokizo (Yunosuke Ito).

Tomoko (Yūko Hamada) is sleeping with a rich author, but is always asking for more money, always for the family. Minoru (Manamitsu Kawabata) works at a music talent agency and is stealing money. As for where it all goes, Tokizo is investing in a new Japanese military while Minoru keeps spending it all on Yukie (Ayako Wakao) who is going to figure all of this out because she’s the accountant at the same company. But the joke is on them, because Yukie has been sleeping with more than one man, all so she can have her own hotel.

Now the author can evict them, the family can sell everything they’ve bought and another scam will have to be created. At least this isn’t the same poverty they dealt with at the end of the war. Somehow, this is all within an apartment.

The Radiance Films blu ray release of Elegant Beast has a new 4K restoration, an interview with film critic Toshiaki Sato, an appreciation by filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda, a visual essay by critic Tom Mes on post-war architecture in Japanese cinema and a trailer, all with a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Midori Suiren. You can get this from MVD.

Roberto Mauri isn’t talked about as often as he should be. There’s his oddball King of Kong Island, his Westerns like He Was Called Holy Ghost and his masterful Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Now, after this, I need to look up more of his movies.

Released in America on TV as Slaughter of the Vampires and then as a double feature with The Blood Beast Terror — renamed as The Vampire Beast Craves Blood — as Curse of the Blood Ghouls, this has the kind of tagline that definitely made me want to watch it: “Satan’s Horror Henchmen enslave beautiful women through weird ways of love transforming them into Blood Ghoul Vampires to satisfy an insatiable LUST.”

This stars Walter Brandi, who was also in The Vampire and the Ballerina and The Playgirls and the Vampire. He plays Wolfgang, who has just become married to Louise (Graziella Granata), and they are unaware that a vampire (Dieter Eppler) has entered the party they’re having. He soon seduces Louise and bites her, which means that Wolfgang must look for a cure, finally meeting Dr. Nietzche (Luigi Batzella).

Where Hammer has rich color, this is shot in black and white, but it’s a whole different type of beautiful filmmaking. The real castle adds quite the scenery and if this movie can’t have crimson blood, it can have bosoms barely held back by their costumes and that is always enough.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A small Japanese village of fishermen has decided to join together to kill the monstrous whale that has been ruining their catches. It becomes such a cause that the richest man in town (Takashi Shimura) offers his power, his land, his money and his daughter (Kyoko Enami) to whoever can kill the kaiju-size whale. This works well for Shaki (Kojiro Hondo), who has been planning on killing the whale after it ate his family. However, a man known only as  “I am–” (Shintaro Katsu) has come to town with the same urge to kill the demon whale.

Can a kaiju movie pretty much be Moby Dick? Yes, it can. This is the film. Yet it’s also more, as it’s based on a novel by Uno Koichiro (thanks Japan On Film).

Directed by Tokuzô Tanaka and written by Kaneto Shindô, this finds “I am–” fighting with everyone in town and even assaulting a woman in love with Shaki (Shiho Fujimara). Our hero raises that child as his own. Meanwhile, both “I am–” and the rich man’s daughter are nearly stoic, silent and near-emotionless figures despite their importance to the story. The old man sees his daughter as the biggest prize, but neither man wants or needs her. Our hero wants revenge and his enemy just wants something different, a new experience and something to challenge his will.

Daiei is such a strange company, one that could release Rashomon and also the Gamera, Zatoichi,  Yokai Monsters and Daimajin series of films. They even had their own baseball team, the Daiei Stars, which are known today as the Chiba Lotte Marines.

I’ve never seen anything like this movie, a moody look at fishing life that just so happens to feature a kaiju whale.

You can get this movie on blu ray from SRS or download it from the Internet Archive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was on Chiller Theater on January 12, 1974 and September 4, 1976 at 11:30 p.m. 

After a viewing of this movie at a very young age, I decided that I’d never have chaffing dishes in my house. That may never come true just because I doubt I’ll ever have the money to spend on such luxurious accouterments, but also because the moment where Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) serves her sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) her parakeet — and later a rat — on a silver platter, I was put off on silver serviceware for the rest of my days. This is not a meal fit for Ms. Crawford!

Robert Aldrich had the idea of bringing together two of America’s most enduring screen icons in one film where they’d bring their long-rumored rivalry to the story of two sisters who had been used up by show business.

Baby Jane was once a vaudeville star who held her family under her thumb, using her stardom to get whatever she wanted. That all changed once movies took over and she couldn’t adapt, so by 1935, her sister Blanche is the toast of Tinseltown while she’s a shell of her former self, her movies seen as failures. One night at a party, an accident leaves Blanche paralyzed from the waist down and it’s all blamed on a drunken Jane.

Flash to three decades later, as residuals from Blanche’s films are enough to keep the sisters in house and home, as the two former stars live in the shadows of their past glories. Jane has become a raging alcoholic, trapping her wheelchair-bound sister within their home, denying her even basic sustenance — hence the pet and vermin meal scenes described above.

Although Jane has gone far into middle age, she still wears the pancake make-up and outfits of her Baby past. She’s hired Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono) to play piano for her, preparing an entirely new show to take on the road. And to get there, she’s using her sister’s money.

Only madness and murder can follow, as well as the revelation that Blanche isn’t the innocent victim that she aspires to be. Both sisters have been forced into roles that they’ve played way beyond typecasting. As both sisters find themselves on a beach, with Blanche dehydrated and near-death, Jane’s plaintively sad question “You mean all this time we could have been friends?” cuts through this film, which ends before giving any resolution to the fate of either character.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was a cultural force, changing Hollywood so that older actresses didn’t have to fade into the role of the matron. It’d be followed by other so-called psycho-biddy films like Aldrich’s follow-up Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, as well as movies that also asked questions like What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, What’s the Matter with Helen? and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

The feud between the two actresses — which began years before this movie and would extend to their deaths — is so legendary that books and even an entire FX series was created to document it. From allegations that Crawford backed out of a publicity tour because she didn’t want to share the stage with Davis to Crawford accepting Anne Bancroft’s Best Actress statue for The Miracle Worker in a successful attempt to overshadow her enemy, this war was just like the movie — only 100% reality.

I mean — this is the movie where Bette Davis installed a free Coca-Cola machine on the set for the cast and crew for the sole reason of drawing the ire of Crawford, who was on the board of Pepsi.

There are also plenty of personal touches by both actresses. Davis did all of her own makeup, saying “What I had in mind no professional makeup man would have dared to put on me. I felt Jane never washed her face, just added another layer of makeup each day.” And Crawford, who was an avid collector of Margaret Keane’s “sad eyes” paintings, made sure that the paintings appeared in next door neighbor Mrs. Bates’ house, including the famous Big Eyes piece.

While Ingrid Bergman, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn, Jennifer Jones and Ginger Rogers were all rumored for Baby Jane and Tallulah Bankhead, Claudette Colbert, Olivia de Havilland and Marlene Dietrich were all in the running to play Blanche, only Davis and Crawford’s maniac energy — and downright hatred of one another — could make this film work as well as it does.

I truly believe that is Ms. Davis could have served Ms. Crawford a rat on a fancy tray, she would have done so. This is a film I’ve returned to time and time again, even if I’ve made sure to never eat a meal that has a silver cover on it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: How amazing is it that the Mexican Nostradamus vampire movies were on Chiller Theater? The Monster Demolisher was on the show on December 9, 1967 and August 23, 1969. Genie of Darkness was on the show on August 5, 1967. Blood of Nostradamus was on July 15, 1967 at 11:20 p.m. and December 11, 1971. Oddly, Chiller Theater never showed the first movie, The Curse of Nostradamus.

Nostradamus is not the fortune-telling mystic that scared you so badly in 1981’s The Man Who Saw Tomorrow. No, he’s an aristocratic vampire played by German Robles, who also played Count Karol de Lavud in the two El Vampiro films.

This was originally a 12 part serial that has been broken down into 4 films by American producer K. Gordon Murray: this one, known as Curse Of Nostradamus in English, plus The Monsters Demolisher, The Genie Of Darkness and Blood Of Nostradamus.

In the first movie, a professor has been re-elected to lead a society dedicated to the destruction of superstition, all so he can prove that werewolves and vampires aren’t real. However, he’s soon visited by a 400-year-old vampire, the son of Nostradamus the Alchemist. That leads us into the first film that was shown on Chiller Theater.

The Monsters Demolisher: After the first film, the professor finds that he must admit that the undead walk the Earth. He joins with a vampire hunter to stop Nostradamus, who is the son of one of the most powerful bloodsuckers of all time.

Nostradamus takes his evil even further by basically explaining to both of them how if they don’t stop him, he’ll make the world an even worse place. To prove his heart is in the wrong place, he also kidnaps several children and repeatedly places them in danger.

The vampire hunter Igor is played by Jack Taylor, whose career may have started in American television, but would take him all over the world. Of course, most of his roles have been in the kind of movies that only I would care about, like Mexican vampire movies, Jess Franco sleaze (Eugenie, Succubus, Count Dracula), Spanish horror (Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf, The Killer Is One of 13, The Ghost Galleon, The Vampires Night Orgy) and appearances as a priest in Conan the Barbarian, as Professor Arthur Brown in Pieces and as book collector Victor Fargas in The Ninth Gate.

Perhaps most famously in the United States, this movie ran out of sequence as an April Fool’s Selection on the USA Network’s Commander USA’s Groovie Movies. Seeing as how that episode aired on April 4th, I find it even more amusing.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Genie of Darkness: The real trouble with the villagers and professor who are supposed to be the heroes of the Nostradamus film series is that they’re boring as all get out. The only interesting one, Igor the vampire hunter, is unceremoniously dispatched early in this film. The rest just sit around and yammer away at what they should do instead of doing anything.

Meanwhile, the nattily dressed Nostradamus and his hunchback pal Leo are living it up. Well, maybe not so much Leo, whose witch mother Rebeca dares to question the villainous vampiro and gets set on fire for her troubles.

Director Federico Curiel would go on to work with Santo several times, as well as write one of the most out there of all early Mexican horror films — and trust me, that’s saying something — El Baron del Terror.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Blood of Nostradamus: After three films — The Curse of Nostradamus, The Monsters Demolisher and The Genie of Darkness — we have arrived at the end of our tale, where the society to eliminate superstition must rise up against what we’re to assume is the son of the seer Nostradamus (although this is disputed in this series, depending on where you come in).

The good guys are about as intelligent and effective as a bunch of cops in a giallo film, as they think that by removing the ashes of Nostradamus’ ancestors from his coffin that he will die at sunrise. He just laughs and tells them that are the ashes of someone else he killed. Yes, he sleeps surrounded by the sooty remains of those he has killed before. You go, Nostradamus. You go.

Somehow, the good morons manage to kill off the hunchback and get their hands on a sonic weapon, which does some damage to the vampire before the sword cane of Igor — remember that dude who died and it was kind of a shock? — poetically is used to stake Nostradamus while in bat form.

I don’t know if you should watch all four of these movies in one day, but then again, I’ve also watched around fifty Mexican horror movies in the last few weeks, so I may be muy macho when it comes to watching peliculas de terror.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Amphibian Man was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 3, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on May 29, 1971. I can’t even believe it. I wonder what people thought of this.

Based on the 1928 novel by Alexander Beliaev, Amphibian Man seems timeless even as its tech seems ancient. It feels like it comes from no set point of origin, as if it could be made today or fifty years ago.

At a seaside port in Argentina, the pearl fishermen all have told the story of an amphibian man who can live in the water. Ichthyander (Vladimir Korenev, voiced by Yuri Rodionov) was adopted by Professor Salvator (Nikolay Simonov), who had to save his life by replacing his lungs with the gills of a shark.

The dramatic thrust of this story occurs when Ichthyander falls in love with Guttiere (Anastasiya Vertinskaya, voiced by Nina Gulyaeva), the daughter of a fisherman and the wife of Pedro (Mikhail Kozakov), who uses the love between his wife and the undersea human to exploit him into getting him more pearls.

As a child, I was always told that Russia was a sad, cold place that had no access to art. How did this beautiful movie come to be? Had I been lied to? Perhaps.

In the January 2018 issue of Indie Cinema, the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water is taken to task, not just for allegedly taking its plot and visuals from the Dutch student film The Space Between Us, but for how close Guillermo del Toro’s film is to Amphibian Man. It’s set in the same year that the Russian film was made and, yes, much of the movie concerns the Russian element in America.

Directed by Vladimir Chebotaryov and Gennadiy Kazanskiy and written by Akiba Golburt, Aleksei Kapler and Aleksandr Ksenofontov, this is at once a retro future movie — whooshing doors are everywhere and the costume that Ichthyander looks like Alex Raymond or Rick Yager drew it — while it also has musical numbers, which makes it so charming that it nearly breaks my heart.

I mean, read this dialogue:

Gutiere: This must be love at first sight!

Ichtyandr: Is there any other kind of love?

Of course it has to end with its lovers separated by the waves and unrequited love.

Is there any other kind of love?

You can watch this on Tubi.