Yes, you go into a movie named Racing Fever expecting b-roll footage and sure, you get it, but this is also a William Gréfe movie, which means that you’re going to get South Florida drama, in this case, the story of professional hydroplane racer Pop Gunner who has one race left in him before he passes the torch to his son Lee. But there’s also the matter of his main competition, Gregg Stevenson, who just so happens to be aardvarking with Pops’ little girl Linda.
So yeah. Gregg is already married and has a kid, which seems to complicate matters, but Linda stay with him even when he gets wasted and hits Pops with his race boat. I never saw Miss Budweiser — seriously, if you grew up in the 70’s, Miss Budweiser was a big deal — hit a human being, but there you go.
This leads Gregg’s wife and daughter to go to Lee — the son — for some reason and the daughter and the son end up shacking up too and getting knocked up and of course, someone has to get shot because this is a Gréfe movie and wow, you thought Thanksgiving was complicated in your family.
There’s also a song in it, because the kids need to dance, man. And a downer ending, because the 60’s were a drag. Look — it has some songs, it has some hunks, it has a cute girl, it has death and plenty of pathos. It’s also the movie that probably played last at the drive-in, when people were sleeping things off or getting one last round off. The IMDB reviews of this eviscerate the film when they should realize that this is exactly the movie that it should be.
For years I searched for the worst movie ever made. I’ve dove deep. So deep, that time and experience have made me realize there is no single title that unequivocally holds that title. Crap is in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, The Creeping Terror (1964) is definitely in the running. It is bad in just about every way imaginable.
Is it the good kind of bad? The kind where you can slam back a few shots and laugh harder than at any Rob Schneider movie ever made? Yes. Yes, it is. For even more laughs, watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version. The segment where Mike plays the incredibly monotonous jazz music from the film’s dance hall scene on his sweet new sound system is one of the best things to come out of that show’s sixth season. I digress.
The Creeping Terror’s story concerns a newlywed law man named Martin played by the writer and director Vic Savage. On the way back from their honeymoon, Martin and his new bride Brett (Shannon O’Neil) stumble upon his Uncle – the town sheriff – investigating a crashed alien spacecraft that looks remarkably like a camper under a tarp. It isn’t long before the monsters inside (one actually) ravage the community and start eating people left and right. It especially likes the ladies, whose bodies are pulled in head first, leaving nothing but a pair of sexy legs sticking out.
They call a scientist named Dr. Bradford (William Thourlby) and the group attempts to capture the monster to no avail. We later find out that the animals were engineered as mobile laboratories to consume and analyze human beings and send the data back to their masters. The military comes in and blows it up with a grenade. Just after transmitting the data into space, the monsters’ craft explodes. Will the aliens launch a full-scale invasion? Who knows? Who cares?
Savage’s story is far more interesting than the movie he made as chronicled in the docudrama The Creep Behind the Camera (2014.) A womanizing, physically abusive con-man with mob ties, it’s never really clear whether Savage thought he was making a good movie or if the whole thing was just a hustle to fleece investors. Given that Mr. Savage disappeared after making the movie, the latter seems to be the most likely scenario.
Technically, the film is inept. The camera work is shoddy and screen direction is minimal. What we’re left with a disjointed series of shots of people looking the wrong way at something that isn’t there sewn together by a poorly dubbed narration that tries to cover up the fact that the soundtrack was either lost or never recorded in the first place. It makes Plan Nine from Outer Space look like a masterpiece by comparison.
The design of the creature is odd, to say the least. It’s basically a giant carpet with a head stuck on. It has flexible tubing resembling dreadlocks with eyeballs on the ends for hair (which jiggle when the monster creeps) and another pair of weirdly cute button eyes on its “face.” The remaining props and sets are no better. The inside of the spacecraft is clearly a power station. The army transport vehicle is a farmer’s truck with wood paneling on the rear and the newlywed’s shabbily furnished apartment is…Vic Savage’s shabbily furnished apartment.
It may sound like I’m recommending people not watch this film. Quite the contrary. The riveting fishing scene with Bobby and Grandpa is so hilariously bad, it must be seen to be believed. In it, a young boy wanders away from his extremely round-bodied be-spectacled Grandpa fishing by a river. After a little while, Grandpa – who is wearing pants pulled up to his nipples – wanders around aimlessly yelling “Bobby! Bobby!” hoarsely for a good long while before being eaten. All while Bobby obliviously chases lizards and plays with a stick nearby. Randomly, and when I least expected it, I once received a link to this scene as a text from a friend in Los Angeles at 3am with only the word “Bobby!” as descriptor. A scene that master riffer Crow T. Robot referred to as “a portrayal of deep, clinical depression.” No matter how many times I see this scene (even without the riffs,) it never fails to crack me up.
If you’re the kind of person who loves bad movies, then go for it. If not, it’s probably best to avoid this one. To jump straight to the Bobby scene, watch below. You’ll be glad you did.
Luigi Scattini’s directing career is all over the place, hitting all the various genres of the 60’s and 70’s. There’s comedy — War Italian Style, which unites silent film legend Buston Keaton with the Italian comedian duo of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia (more on them in a bit). There’s mondo — Sweden Heaven and Hell, narrated by Edmund Purdom and featuring Piero Umiliani’s “Mah Nà Mah Nà, which would be used by Benny Hill and The Muppets. And more mondo — the magicalWitchcraft ’70, as well as Questo Sporco Mondo Meraviglioso (This Dirty Wonderful World) and Sexy Magico. There’s Eurospy — the Richard Harrison-starring Ring Around the World. And plenty of sexual themed films like La Ragazza dalla Pelle di Luna (The Girl with the Moon Skin), La Ragazza Fuoristrada (The Off-Road Girl), The Body, La Notte dell’alta Marea (The Night of High Tide, which has Pam Grier) and Blue Nude. He’s also the father of Monica Scattini, the only actress I know who could be in both One from the Heart and Ruggero Deodato’s Concorde Affaire ’79.
Saying this is an uneven film is being generous to uneven films. The moronic antics of Franchi and Ingrassia, who play bellhops, play out around Mansfield lounging about and gradually getting undressed. Her husband at the time, Mickey Hargitay, also shows up.
Yes, a movie where Jayne is a doctor — of sexual relations — whose film of mating rituals around the world is an excuse to show mondo footage. These are the movies I fill my life with and bring to you.
Credit — or blame — goes to Massimo Pupillo, who would make Bloody Pit of Horror with Hargitay, and Amedeo Sollazzo, who worked with Franchi and Ingrassia throughout their long careers.
Directed by George Sherman and Giuliano Carnimeo — I’ve been diving deep into his films, including They Call Me Hallelujah, They Call Him Cemetery, his Sartana movies and The Case of the Bloody Iris — Panic Button is an example of the movies that Jayne Mansfield had to hunt down after her 20th Century Fox contract ended.
French entertainer Maurice Chevalier and Mansfield play actors who are picked to be in a new production of Romeo and Juliet. Eleanor “Woman of a Thousand Faces” Parker and Mike “Mannix” Connors also show up.
This tale of mobsters getting involved with Shakespeare was never really successful anywhere that it played. In the U.S., it was on double bills. And hey — it has one total review on Letterboxd other than this one.
Richard E. Cunha didn’t make many movies, but he sure made some insane ones. There’s She Demons with TV Sheena Irish McCalla, fanged women and Nazis taking over an island long after the war. Giant from the Unknown, featuring a monster named Vargas the Giant and effects by Universal’s Jack Pierce. Missile to the Moon, Frankenstein’s Daughter, Girl In Room 13…none of these movies are normal.
He teams with German director Gustav Gavrin, cowboy director Ray Nazarro and Albert Zugsmith (Sappho Darling, Violated!, The Cult) for this movie. That’s because production problems — financing, location and personnel issues — caused filming to stop several times and personnel changed along the way.
What we end up with is a tale of three robbers who steal a million and end up turning on one another. Actually, it soon becomes two, with Lylle Corbett (Cameron Mitchell) killing Dolph and Darlene (Jayne Mansfield) having to deal with it.
They end up on an island where everyone wants their money and everyone is ready to kill for it. You kind of have to love a movie that offs nearly everyone in the cast, closing with Mansfield drowning herself to take the last of the money.
Mansfield called the film: “The best role of my career.” She was four months pregnant with her daughter Mariska Hargitay when she made this. Her voice is dubbed in this by Carolyn De Fonseca, who would one day do Jayne’s voice from beyond the grave for The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield.
We’ve already discussed the lunacy of Jerry Warren and his movie The Wild World of Batwoman a while back. That’s not the only bonkers movie that he’d ever make. Let’s take this movie, which is really La Casa del Terror and La Momia Azteca mixed into a new movie, along with footage that Warren shot just for this new effort. You think Puffy invented the remix? Check in with Jerry.
Warren took his scissors to all of the comedy scenes of Tin-Tan from Casa del Terror, replacing them with the Lon Chaney Jr. footage from La Momia Azteca. This wasn’t anything new for him, as he’d already released Attack of the Mayan Mummy the previous year, replacing most of that movie with newly filmed American footage. And he’d use footage from that movie to make this!
He also took two Chilean movies — La Casa esta Vacia (The House is Empty) and La Dama de La Muerte (The Lady of Death) and made Curse of the Stone Hand.
I have no idea what drive-in fans thought, thinking they’d probably seen this movie before because they totally had. They just didn’t have IMDB to look it up.
A psychic named Ann Taylor — no relation to Ann Taylor or her Loft — goes back to her past life and leads a team of archaeologists to an Aztec pyramid with two mummified bodies, one being an Aztec warrior and the other a werewolf, who just so happens to be Lon Chaney Jr., who is white and not Mexico and no one ever brings that up.
The craziest thing then happens: the Aztec warrior escapes and kidnaps the psychic. They both get hit by a car and that’s it. They’re out of the movie, never to be seen again, because they’re dead. We’re only told this fact by a newspaper that spins on to the camera.
This is the Face of the Screaming Werewolf, after all. Not the Faces of the Screaming Warrior and the Aztec Mummy.
Meanwhile, Lon Chaney Jr. goes full lycan, kills the scientist who revived him and then is stopped by Tin-Tin, who shows up out of nowhere because he’d been edited out of the movie up until now. Yes, this nameless hero just shows up unannounced and murders the werewolf with a torch, just like he did in La Casa del Terror, but now without the benefit of a lick of context.
To top that all off, two cops then discuss how there was never a werewolf at all. Yes, somehow even in the world of a Jerry Warren film, the cops can watch the truth and distort it before your eyes.
Albert T. Viola — yes, the same man who wrote, directed, produced and starred in Preacherman— completed the American version of this film, known as A Fool’s World in Italy. There, it was directed by Roberto Bianchi Montero, who also made the mondos Africa Sexy, Orient By Night, Sexy Nudo, Sexy nel Mondo, Universo Proibito and Superspettacoli nel Mondo. He would go on to make So Sweet, So Dead.
Imagine a world “throbbing and pulsing with love, from the jungle orgies of primitive tribes to sin-filled evenings of the London sophisticate.” Now imagine those very same words coming out of the mouth of Boris Karloff.
Here are just some of the folks you will meet and sights you will see: a dwarf singer, bodybuilders, bedouin pimps, Japanese models for rent, Indian exorcists, people who can’t stop smoking, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lottery players, a clone of Valentino, high end rich dogs, a Boreno version of Romeo and Juliet, cults, nightclubs, Luna Park, London after hours and so much more.
You can get this — along with The Orientals — on blu ray from Severin.
After 1957’s The Aztec Mummy, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy and The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, it would take seven years for Popoca the Aztec Mummy — or some form of him — to return to menace Mexico. That said, U.S. producer Jerry Warren did release the original in the U.S. as Attack of the Mayan Mummy.
Popoca’s origins are much the same as Imhotep/Ardath Bey. He loved the wrong woman and paid for it, being mummified and now back alive, looking for his lost love. Except instead of Egypt, he was on the western side of the world. He was stopped with a crucifix — Mexico is incredibly Catholic — and being blown up real good with dynamite — Mexico is incredibly bloodthirsty.
An archaeologist leaves a secret codex with a professor just before he is killed by the Black Dragons. What would you do if you had such an important mythological relic? Well, I would do the same thing as this smart guy. I’d give it to Gloria Venus and Golden Rubi, the wrestling women of the movie’s title.
He isn’t ready for the Black Dragons to go another step further and kidnap the daughter of the archaeologist they murdered and have her steal the codex, though.
By the end of the movie, of course an Aztec mummy has been freed — we literally wouldn’t have a movie without this happening — and the gang, the mummy and our wrestling women must all have a battle royal.
There are really two Aztec mummies in this one: Xochitl, a female mummy, and her lover Tezomoc who can transform into a snake and a bat, which are totally new things when it comes to the mummified undead, at least to me. There are also evil female judo wrestlers because, well, that’s what was in the aqua that day.
The tagline for this movie was, “WEIRDOS! We dare you to see it!”
Accept the dare. Watch this on Tubi. It’s also on YouTube:
Franco and Ciccio — yes the same comic team who were in the Eurospy parodies Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, The Amazing Dr. G and the sequel to this one, 002 Operazione Luna, are back, doing what they do best.
They’re two simple-minded Italianos who get mistaken as KGB agents and hijinks ensue. Those crazy moments include a giant robot that can barely move around, a masked maid/secret agent who flashes message to the boys on her panties, an assassination scene where the X targets keep getting moved around, a microfilm hidden in a tooth that causes all manner of issues and spies from America, China and Russia all chasing the two around the French Riveria.
This would be your standard 60’s spy comedy if not for who directed it: none other than the man who would become the Godfather of Gore 16 years after making this movie, Lucio Fulci. Yes — he made a movie about spies and assassination and not one eyeball got blown out the back or front of someone’s skull.
Believe it or not, this was released by Allied Artists in the U.S. In fact, it would be the first time one of Fulci’s movies made it over here.
Mary Arden, who plays Nadja in this, was Peggy Peyton inBlood and Black Lace and would write the English dialogue of the film, as she found the translated dialogue too stilted.
The first of three Fantomas movies, this was an attempt to bring the French character into the world of James Bond. In this story, a journalist named Fandor and Commissioner Paul Juve try to bring in the noted supervillain Fantomas, who is always one step ahead of them.
Fantomas is the man of a thousand masks, able to be anyone and even use his makeup as a weapon. He’s upset that Fandor is writing about him, so he commits a crime looking like the writer. He does the same thing to Juve. And even with all the tools at their disposal, these two — joined by Juve’s girlfriend Helene Gurn — still can’t stop his crimewave.
Obviously, Kriminal, Satanik and Diabolik were all inspired by Fantomas, as was the supergroup that former Faith No More singer Mike Patton formed. If you’re into movie soundtracks — or awesome loudness — you should check them out.
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