EDITOR’S NOTE: Casanova ’70 was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 13, 1969. Well, kind of. Chiller Theater temporarily became known as The Saturday Late Show and Bill Cardille hosted the first movie from a living room set. For the second feature,  Chilly Billy returned to the Laboratory set. The second movie was Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Woman. This didn’t last long but the movies shown were Crazy Desire, No Love for Johnnie, The Reluctant Spy, The 10th Victim and Dingaka before taking a week off for Halloween. The Saturday Late Show continued by showing Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; The Easy Life; Sins of Casanova; The Success; Red Culottes; Marriage, Italian-Style; Boccaccio ’70; The Naked Kiss and The Bigamist. On January 3, 1970, Chiller Theater stopped showing non-horror films and was back to normal. I’ve always thought that Count Floyd showing non-horror movies like Ingmar Burgman’s Whispers of the Wolf and trying to sell them as scary came from this time. Joe Flaherty was from Pittsburgh and was so complete with his Chiller Theater impression that Count Floyd was often joined by a sidekick known as The Pittsburgh Midget, played by Flaherty’s brother Paul Flaherty. He’s a nod to Stefan, the Castle Prankster, who was played by Stephen Michael Luncinski on Chiller Theater.

Directed by Mario Monicelli, this may be one of the few movies nominated for an Oscar that played Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. It’s all about NATO officer Andrea Rossi-Colombotti (Marcello Mastroianni), a lover who can only perform with women when he might get killed. His psychiatrist recommends that instead of sex, he seeks out the spiritual and emotional qualities in women. Of course, he’s in an Italian comedy, so that’s not happening.

He almost marries the religious Gigliola (Virna Lisi) but days before he says “I do,” a liontamer (Liana Orfei, who really did that in the circus before being in movies like Mill of the Stone Women) dares any man to kiss her while she’s surrounded by the deadly beasts. He can’t resist this and is alone again. She tries to stay with him because she’s his true love, but he can’t ruin her life with his sickness. By the end, she even marries him, even if he can’t be cured.

Then again, this movie has so many gorgeous actresses for him to nearly be killed over, including Rosemary Dexter (Marquis de Sade: Justine), Seyna Seyn (Flashman), Jolanda Modio (Face to Face), Margaret Lee (Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die), Moira Orfei (the queen of the Italian circus who was known as Moira of the Elephants), Beba Lončar (Some Girls Do), Michèle Mercier (Web of the Spider) and Marisa Mell (Marta) in her first Italian film.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Bamboo Saucer was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 24, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on November 25, 1972 and March 16, 1974.

Directed and written by Frank Telford, this starts when test pilot Fred Norwood (John Ericson) is chased by a UAP. The pilot following him says whatever he’s told to say by the air force. No one wants to admit that an alien craft could be following our armed forces.

He decides to use an old Mustang to track the UFO along with his friend Joe Vetry (William Mims). Vetry is soon abducted or disintegrated by some alien vehicle, which only makes Norwood more invested in finding out the truth.

He’s contacted by a deep cover government type named Hank Peters (Dan Duryea) who tells him that something that looks just like what he saw has crashed in China. The bodies of the aliens have been burned, but the UAP still exists. When he parachutes down to find it, he comes across a group of Russians with the same plan. They decide to work together and end up in a battle against the Chinese Army that they escape by flying the craft past Saturn.

Producer Jerry Fairbanks sent the script to the U.S. Department of Defense and made sure that the CIA was never mentioned and that the Air Force was never near China.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Magic Serpent was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 28, 1970 at 11:30 p.m.

The Oumi Kingdom is in shambles after General Daijo Yuki (Bin Amatsu) and his ninja Orochimaru (Ryūtarō Ōtomo) kill Lord Ogata (Shinichiro Hayashi) and his wife. Soldiers loyal to Ogata have succeeded in helping his son Ikazuchi-Maru to escape but Orochimaru transforms into a serpent and tries to kill him. Luckily, a giant eagle flies in and saves Ikazuchi-Maru.

Trained by Dojin Hiki (Nobuo Kaneko), Ikazuchi-Maru grows to become a ninja who specializes in toad magic. One evening, Hiki is attacked by Orochimaru and it’s revealed that the old man once taught the evil ninja and was also the eagle that saved our hero, who arrives too late — along with Tsunade (Tomoko Ogawa) — to save him. Now out for revenge, he goes after the ninja while Tsunade follows, given a spider pin by the spider woman who saved her.

Ikazuchi-Maru renames himself Jiraiya and becomes friends with Saki (Yumi Suzumura) and her little brother Shirota (Takao Iwamura), saving them from Daijo Yuki’s men. But oh, the twists and turns, as it turns out that while she loves our hero, Tsunade is also the daughter of Orochimaru! And there’s still a battle between the ninjas in their toad and serpent forms to follow.

Man, I absolutely loved this movie. It combines the martial arts movie with kaiju and has so many strange things about it. People hopefully loved it too, but I bet so many people who watched the American-International TV versions just thought it was dumb. Not me!

AIP also redubbed the monsters, so the Orochi-Maru Dragon sounds like Godzilla and Gaira from War of the Gargantuas, the Ikazuchi-Maru/Jiraiya Toad roars like Rodan, the giant eagle is Mothra and Sunate’s giant spider now sounds like a metallic monster and also has the voice of Kiyla from Ultraman. They also removed the opening and closing songs and replaced them with basic instrumentals. The toad also was used on the Toei series Kamen no ninja Aka-Kage.

You could almost see a lot of Star Wars in this movie. An evil magic fighter orphans a young boy who is destined to have great power who is saved by an old man and raised in the ways of the very same magic. He becomes friends with the daughter of that enemy — Leia is, after all, Darth Vader’s daughter — and he finally becomes strong enough in magic that he can fight back and the evil magic fighter becomes briefly good before his heroic sacrifice. Sure, we can all get behind that Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey, but sometimes, things get a little ripped off.

Speaking of that Hero’s Journey, this is based on a Japanese folktale, The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya, and was directed by Tetsuya Yamanouchi (Akakage, The Ninja Hunt) and written by Masaru Igami (Prince of Space, the main writer of Kamen Rider, Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot) and Mokuami Kawatake.

The title in Japan was Great Mystic Dragon Battle, which is super metal, and it has even better ones over the entire world, like Grand Duel in Magic, Ninja Apocalypse and Monsters of the Apocalypse. If you’ve ever seen the Taiwanese movie Young Flying Hero, that feels like a remake of this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Attack of the Robots was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 15, 1968 at 1 a.m. It was also on the show on December 18, 1971 and August 19, 1972.

You know, there are times when you get the Jess Franco who is obsessed with sex and times when you get the jazz-loving, Old Hollywood fan Jess Franco and this would be the latter.

This Eurospy affair stars Eddie Constantine as Al Pereira*, who is hunting down a series of bronze-skinned and horned-rim glasses-wearing killer robots commanded by Lady Cecilia Addington Courtney (Françoise Brion, probably the only person to be in movies like Le Divorce and Otto Preminger’s Rosebud, as well as a Franco film) who is using computers to destroy Europe.

So yeah, Jess shows up playing jazz piano, but don’t worry. Plenty of BDSM and mind control lurk right around the corner, instead of appearing full frontal and center. Perhaps the strangest thing about this movie is that it was shot in color and released in black and white. And that it’s nothing like the Franco movies that people dislike his movies harp on.

*Franco would return to the character in the films Les Ebranlées, Downtown; Botas Negras,Látigo de Cuero; Camino Solitario; Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies and Revenge of the Alligator Ladies.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Death Curse of Tartu was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, July 2, 1977 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on March 11, 1978.

If you didn’t have enough of teenagers in the Everglades screwing with forces they didn’t quite comprehend in Grefe’s Sting of Death — which was the other part of a double bill with this film — then good news! Four students on an archaeology assignment decide that it would be a great idea to have a shindig on the grave of Tartu, an ancient Native American medicine man.

Frank Weed, who played Sam in this, owned all of the animals that Tartu comes back from beyond within. He did not own the stock footage that was also used for some of these animals, nor his own voice, as he was dubbed for this movie.

Somehow, Tartu has the power set of your average mummy villain, except you know, he turns into animals. One of those animals is a “lake shark,” which I had to look up, and learned that true freshwater sharks can be found in fresh water in Asia and Australia, as well as bull sharks, which can swim in both salt and fresh water and are mostly found in tropical rivers. Actually, bull sharks have been found as far north as Illinois. Yet another reason why the Everglades are totally terrifying.

Why Tartu’s weakness is mud — when he makes his home in the Florida swamps — is beyond me. Man, who knows? This is kind of a nature film, you know, except for all the killing of teens after they dance. It’s got a great name, an awesome poster and really, isn’t that all it needs?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dimension 5 was first on Chiller Theater on July 21, 1973 at 1 a.m. It also was on the show on August 3, 1974; April 5, 1975; January 3, 1976 and May 13, 1978.

Directed by Franklin Adreon (who also directed the similar Cyborg 2087) and written by Arthur C. Pierce, Dimension 5 is about time-traveling secret agents Justin Power (Jeffrey Hunter) from Espionage, Inc and Ki Ti Tsu (France Nuyen). It was going to be a TV movie but ended up being released to theaters.

Together, the two agents battle an Asian crime ring, Dragon, led by crime lord Big Buddha (Harold Sakata), who will destroy Los Angeles if the U.S. doesn’t leave Vietnam. However, Power is able to preview time, which allows him to keep people safe from Dragon’s killers.

Kitty has her own reasons for wanting to battle Big Buddha, as he was the executioner during the Nanking Massacre who killed her parents. The bad guy plans on building a nuclear bomb in the U.S. by placing it inside owl-shaped incense burners and Christmas decorations.

Nuyen is great in this, but man, Jeffrey Hunter was sleeping or so it seemed. Maybe he could use that time travel to get a few extra hours of nap before coming back and being the superspy in this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: One Million Years BC was on USA Up All Night on December 6, 1996 and September 27, 1997. 

Don Chaffey also directed Pete’s Dragon and Jason and the Argonauts, as well as Persecution AKA The Graveyard. Shot in Lanzarote and Tenerife in the Canary Islands as well as Elstree Studios, the real star of this movie is the image of Racquel Welch wearing a bikini that predates so much of our world’s history.

A remake of the 1940 movie One Million B.C., this movie is only sixty million years or so off from humans and dinosaurs living together. Then again, Ray Harryhausen, who did the stop motion effects, said that he wasn’t making this movie for professors who probably don’t go to see these kinds of movies anyway.

It starts with these words: “This is a story of long, long ago, when the world was just beginning… A young world, a world early in the morning of time. A hard, unfriendly world. Creatures who sit and wait. Creatures who must kill to live. And man, superior to the creatures only in his cunning. There are not many men yet. Just a few tribes scattered across the wilderness. Never venturing far, unaware that other tribes exist even. Too busy with their own lives to be curious. Too frightened of the unknown to wander. Their laws are simple: the strong take everything.”

We first meet the Rock tribe and Chief Akhoba (Robert Brown), who has two sons at one another’s throats, Tumak (John Richardson) and Sakana (Percy Herbert). Actually, everyone fights everyone as Tumak even goes after his dad over the fair share of the meat of a warthog. He gets banished into the wild lands filled with prehistoric beasts and nearly dies before being saved — and saving — Loana (Welch) of the Shell tribe.

However, Tumak is always trouble and when he fights for his spear, he is kicked out of the Shell tribe. Loana follows him home, where his brother has replaced his father who is a broken man. This is a movie filled with battles between dinosaurs — a Triceratops versus a Ceratosaurus made me go crazy as a kid and those same miniatures are in The Valley of Gwangi — but adult me is more interested in Welch and Martine Beswick going hand to hand.

Then a volcano made of wallpaper paste, oatmeal, dry ice and red dye kills nearly the entire task and forces the Rock and Shell people to stop fighting and become one tribe.

I dig what Harryhausen was going for here, using real animals in some scenes, including a vulture, a python, a green iguana, the warthog mentioned above, a Loaghtan (a type of sheep) and a tarantula. He thought that if people saw some real animals, they may think that everything was an actual animal.