Not only did Eiji Tsuburaya co-create Godzilla, he was the man who brought us Ultraman. His Tsuburaya Productions continues to own the rights to the various Ultra series that have spun off from the original show such as Ultraman Gaia, Ultraman Dyna, Ultraman 80 and The Ultraman.
Tsuburaya considered this series his best work, as it was about people, rather than vehicles and special effects. He was inspired by the word of Gerry Anderson and sadly, the public didn’t watch the show as much until the second show, Fight! MightyJack, added aliens and monsters.
How much did Tsuburaya love this show? The Mighty Jack team logo is the same logo for Tsuburaya Productions.
Mighty Jack is a team of special agents that was put together to fight the evil Q — hey, how weird is that? — that is using hot ice to create weapons to take over the world. How can ice that doesn’t melt destroy humanity? Is that any stranger than the real Q — or unreal Q — which has convinced people that long-dead political leaders are ready to come back and stand for values that are the exact opposite of any they held in their real life?
Might Jack is also the name of their incredible flying submarine. But all we’re getting over here is epsiode one and six of the TV show, edited by Sandy Frank Productions, and making no sense. These kinds of movies allowed me to see plenty of cool Japanese series in my youth but as an adult, I realize that I’m only getting a remixed version of something that is much better in its original form. So I can either explore it more or laugh at it and I’d rather choose to always learn more.
David Sloane (Dean Martin) is an confirmed bachelor. However, he’s worried about the marriage of his friend Harry Hunter (Eli Wallach), who is having an affair. So David decides to steal away his friend’s mistress, thinking that it’s his employee Carol (Stella Stevens, in a part originally intended for Marilyn Monroe; by doing this movie, Jerry Lewis refused to speak to Stevens for nearly twenty years).
Yet he has the wrong woman — it’s really Carol’s neighbor Muriel (Anne Jackson, who in real life was the wife of Wallach). You can just bet that hijinks ensue, especially when the mistresses begin to engage in collective bargaining agreements.
So yeah — these old Dean Martin sex comedies are beyond dated, but to me, they’re something akin to eating the junkiest of junk food on a snow day. They remind me of watching movies on old UHF channels in the 70s, lying under a blanket and wondering what it’d be like to be a grown-up. Hey little kid me — it stinks. Just watch Dean Martin movies and never grow up.
Fielder Cook, who directed this movie, also was behind the 1971 TV movie The Homecoming: A ChristmasStory, which let to the series The Waltons. It was written by Stanley Shapiro, who also wrote Pillow Talk and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
I Dream of Jeannie was created and produced by Sidney Sheldon* and it seems like for a long time, he was the only person that believed in it. He originally wanted the first season to film in color — it was one of only two shows on NBC at the time not in color, but special photographic effects employed to achieve Jeannie’s magic weren’t technologically advanced enough to be in a full range of colors yet — but NBC did not want to pay it.
It was $400 an episode.
The network and Screen Gems didn’t think the show would make it to a second season. But Sheldon saw that ABC’s Bewitched was a success and bet on the show.
He was right. It was in the top 30 shows for almost every year that it was on before becoming a syndication powerhouse.
In the pilot episode, “The Lady in the Bottle”, astronaut USAF Captain Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) lands his one-man capsule Stardust One on a deserted island in the South Pacific. While wandering the beach, Tony notices a strange bottle** that moves by itself. When he rubs it, smoke and a genie (Barbara Eden) pop out.
Tony’s first wish is to be able to understand her, then for a helicopter to rescue him. Jeannie, who has been trapped in the bottle for 2,000 years, falls in love with him and follows Tony back home where she soon breaks up his engagement with his commanding general’s daughter, Melissa. It seems like this was a storyline being set up for the long game, but Sheldon realized that this romantic triangle didn’t have much rope.
Tony keeps Jeannie in her bottle until he realizes she needs a life of her own, which is mostly her using her genie powers to try and make his life better. He worries that if anyone finds out that she exists that he won’t get to be part of NASA, but his worries lead him to being investigated by psychiatrist U.S. Air Force Colonel Dr. Alfred Bellows (Hayden Rorke) with the only person — at first — that knows his secret being Major Roger Healey (Bill Daly).
Unlike many of the sitcoms of the era, I Dream of Jeannie had multipart story arcs (which were created to serve as backgrounds for national contests). For example, nobody knew when Jeannie’s birthday was and the guessing game led to a contest, with the answer being April 1. There was also a four-episode event where Jeannie was locked in a safe on the moon and fans had to guess the combination to save her and another where Tony was replaced and had to be found. But there are also several long storylines, like Jeannie’s evil sister also named Jeannie, Jeannie’s ever-changing origin story which includes Eden’s first husband Michael Ansara as the Blue Djinn, Jeannie taking over the crown of her home country Basenji and so many more.
Supposedly, Hagman was so hard to work with that the producers seriously considered replacing him with Darren McGavin. They even wrote out a story with Tony losing Jeannie and McGavin finding her, but it never ended up happening. In her 2011 book Jeannie Out of the Bottle, Eden wrote, “Larry himself has made no secret about the fact he was taking drugs and drinking too much through many of the I Dream of Jeannie years and that he has regrets about how that impacted him.”
When there were two TV movies in the 80s, Hagman didn’t return. In I Dream of Jeannie… Fifteen Years Later his role was played by Wayne Rogers and as he’s on a space mission in I Still Dream of Jeannie, he’s simply written out and Hagman’s Dallas co-star Ken Kercheval took over as Jeannie’s master. There was also a cartoon called Jeannie that aired from 1973 to 1975 that had Julie McWhirter (who in addition to being the voice in so many cartoons is also the wife of Rick Dees) play Jeannie, “Curly” Joe Besser as Babu a genie in training and Mark Hamill as Corey Anders, a high school student.
Eden has also gone on the record as saying that she never connected with another actor in the same way as she did with Hagman. They’d reunite for the 1971 TV movie A Howling in the Woods.
Why did the show end? It was still near the top thirty after all. Well, Eden believes that there were enough episodes for syndication already and the ratings had gone down after Jeannie and Nelson got married in season 5. No one except for the network wanted that and it eliminated the romantic tension of the show.
I grew up watching this show multiple times a day, often paired with its one-time rival Bewitched. Just going back through these — the original 8 episodes with Paul Frees narration instead of the theme song are a revelation — has made the end of the year doldrums so much better.
You can get all 139 episodes on the Mill Creek I Dream of Jeannie The Complete Series blu ray set. You’ll get hours and hours of fun for a really great price at Deep Discount.
*Sheldon was inspired by the movie The Brass Bottle, which has Tony Randall’s character get a genie played by Burl Ives. Randall’s girlfriend was played by Eden.
**The bottle is actually a special Christmas 1964 Jim Beam liquor decanter containing “Beam’s Choice” bourbon whiskey. How weird is that?
Is Hayley Mills a giallo queen? Let’s examine the evidence: She’s in the Agatha Christie movies Endless Night and Appointment with Death, as well as the Sidney Hayers psychological thriller Deadly Strangers. Heck, That Darn Cat! has a lot of elements of confused identity and mishearing critical evidence. You know, if The Parent Trap was slightly askew, you could see its tale of twins who never knew the other existed uniting to ruin relationships as an Italian thriller.
The jury is out on Ms. Mills being a giallo star — maybe if she’d made a voyage to Italy at some point — but Twisted Nerve really feels like it could fit into the post-Bava pre-Argento world of detective movies that were coming out of that country.
Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett, who was also in Endless Night and The Family Way with Mills) is a rich young man with an invalid brother and a mother who has moved on to her new husband. So what else does he have to do than to become someone else, the mentally challenged Georgie, and start shoplifting toys and acting like a child? Especially if it gains the interest of Susan?
This movie pushes all the buttons, starting — instead of ending! — with a square up reel* that apologizes for suggesting that mentally retarded people are murderous. It then doubles down thanks to a scene where Martin sensually rubs his own chest while staring at a stack of male muscle magazines. And oh yeah — he’s obsessed with Susan enough to stage this charade yet when her neglected mother attempts to Mrs. Robinson him, he dispatches her with an axe. There’s also a shocking moment — for Susan — where Martin just casually disrobes in front of her and instead of her reacting with any arousal, she’s just confused and perhaps even upset as his alien nature makes seeing him in a sexual manner incredibly strange.
Yet even when he gets to touch her, it’s as if he can’t. Martin once had control over Georgie and thought it was all a ruse, but it looks like now he’s lost control.
I love that this movie has pretensions toward art. It quotes “Slaves” by George Sylvester Viereck — “No puppet master pulls the strings on high. Proportioning our parts, the tinsel and the paint. A twisted nerve, a ganglion gone awry predestinates the sinner and the saint.” — while also keeping one foot firmly in the world of exploitation. I mean, the tagline is “Cleaver. Cleaver. Chop. Chop. First the mom and then the pop. Then we’ll get the pretty girl. We’ll get her right between the curl.”
Even if you haven’t seen this movie, you may know its Bernard Herrmann score, which was whistled by Elle Driver as she attempted to kill The Bride in Kill Bill.
*”In view of the controversy already aroused, the producers of this film wish to re-emphasise what is already stated in the film, that there is no established scientific connection between mongolism and psychiatric or criminal behaviour.”
Take Noriaki Yuasa, the director of the original eight Gamera movies, and pair him with Kazuo Umezu, who created The Drifting Classroom, and have them make a movie that should be for kids but is the type of motion picture that destroys minds and reaps souls (and is filled with nightmarish visions and brutal murders).
Sayuri has returned to her family after years in an orphanage but trouble has followed her. Before she even arrives, a maid dies of a heart attack, her mother has amnesia from a car wreck and her sister won’t leave the attic, all while her father ignores them to study poisonous snakes and a fanged figure haunts her dreams.
Soon, our heroine is staying up in that attic with her scarred sister who tells her that she just wants to taste her hands and who breaks her dolls and oh yeah, rips a frog in half and throws it in her face. Yes, a kid-friendly movie.
And an amazing one at that.
The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is making its worldwide blu ray debut and home video premiere outside Japan thanks to Arrow. This release also has commentary by film historian David Kalat, an interview with manga and folklore scholar Zack Davisson, a trailer and an image gallery.
It’s also available on the ARROW player. Head over to ARROW to start your 30 day free trial (subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly). ARROW is available in the US, Canada and the UK on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices , Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
“The industry is in bad shape. The people in Hollywood don’t care about films. They’re only worried about lining their pockets.” — The Tinseltown wisdoms of Peter Carpenter
Courtesy of Amazon and IMDb.
These two, lost Peter Carpenter movies have dogged us long enough!
It’s time we complete the review quartet of Pete’s four films, which includes his two writing and producing Wiseauian vanity efforts: his debut, Blood Mania (1970) and Point of Terror (1971). How much do we love Blood Mania? Well, during our month-long, February 2021 Mill Creek Box Set tribute, B&S buddy Bill Van Ryn of Groovy Doom/Drive-In Asylumreviewed it for the ‘Creek’s Grindhouse Greats set, while our friend Eric Wrazen of Festival de la Bête Noire took a second crack at it for the set.
Courtesy of Bill Van Ryn, we know that Peter Carpenter had been selected by Russ Meyer for a small role in Vixen! after Carpenter’s then girlfriend included a photo with him as part of her audition materials. A role alongside Dyanne Thorne in 1970’s softcore drama Love Me Like I Do followed, and Carpenter’s later, one-two punch of his self-produced Crown International-starring vehicles of Blood Mania and Point of Terror, made with producer Chris Marconi, undoubtedly represented a bid for establishing Peter as a working actor—a Hollywood commodity, even. A career never manifested, and Carpenter disappeared. Despite rumors that he vanished because he died, he actually simply left the movie business, although he did pass away at the too-young age of 56—in Alhambra, Los Angeles County, on April 2, 1996, under his birth name: Joseph Nathaniel Carpenter, a former enlistee of the U.S. Air Force (thanks to Mike Perkins for that bio-postscript).
As Mike Justice of the Eerie Midnight Detective Agency site correctly pointed out: Peter didn’t do much in the way of acting in these films—but, in both, he did show a natural predilection for portraying a horny, muscular man who will stop at nothing to get laid. And I’ll have to add that quality carried to its zenith, with Pete as the red-jump suit clad n’ hip-swingin’ Tom Jones wannabe in Point of Terror.
So, how we ended up here, QWERTY’ing away in the B&S About Movies cubicles about these first two Peter Carpenter films is a tale of the coolness that is B&S About Movies. And this ain’t no trope of a tale we’re telling: B&S is a family of movie lovers who love film for film—a gaggle of crazy bastards and lazy sods who write for the love of film, money in our pockets for the efforts, be damned. (In fact, it’s how our newly-posted review of The Beast (1988) came together: reader feedback to our site. Ditto for our recent “Ancient Future Week” reviews of Future-Kill (1985) and Robo Warriors (1996): reader input.)
B&S reader and uber Peter Carpenter fan, Mike Perkins, a professional librarian, reached out to us upon discovering our review of Point of Terror with questions and some new, Pete-Intel. The Perk came to tell us he’s been working with B&S About Movies’ long-time friend and contributor Mike Justice to set the record straight on Peter Carpenter’s life and career.
It all began with Mike Justice asking the February 22, 2016, question in his article: Lost Actor: What Ever Happened to Peter Carpenter? on his site. So, Mike Perkins, the insane-uber Carpenter fan he is, started digging. And the two-Mikes’ investigations led to Mike Justice posting the follow up article: Lost Actor Found: Who Was Peter Carpenter? on March 7, 2021. Then Mike Perkins took it a step further by setting up a Flickr photo tribute page, finally convincing the IMDb to updated Peter Carpenter’s page, and setting up an all-new Find A Grave tribute page. Yeah, the Mighty Perk is working on that Peter Carpenter Wikipedia page, you know it!
Courtesy of Mike Justice.
The one thing we’re all in agreement on: Peter Carpenter was Tommy Wiseau before Tommy Wiseau was Tommy Wiseau making his The Room vanity project. And that Rudy Ray Moore was the blaxploitation version of Peter Carpenter—remembering Moore took the vanity route with Dolemite. And that we need a Peter Carpenter biographical dramedy, à la The Disaster Artist and My Name Is Dolemite. And that Jason Segel—as first suggested by The Great Protrubero, one of Mike Justice’s readers—should star.
Like I told Justice: If Netflix can bank roll Jack Black as the financial-scamming Jan “The Polka King” Lewen in a bioflick, then a Peter Carpenter film can be done.
Does anyone know how to reach James Franco and Seth Rogen? A Peter Carpenter movie—Point of Stardom—starring Jason Segel as Pete, must be done—if only to get Segel into a fringed, red-jump suit. And, in the way-back machine: Judge Reinhold.
Just think of it: A world where Peter Carpenter never left the business—and Peter, instead of Judge Reinhold—ended up as one of the (many) boyfriends of Elaine Benis on Seinfeld—or Carrie Heffernan’s gynecologist on The King of Queens (i.e., Judge, again). Why did you leave the business, Pete . . . the castings you missed . . . you could have been “the Close Talker” on Seinfeld! And yes, B&S readers: we’re accepting your casting suggestions for Dyanne Thorne and Russ Meyer in the comments section, below.
In fact, speaking of castings and Jack Black: If there’s ever a Paul Naschy biopic made, Jack Black is the man for the job. From Pennsylvania’s “Polka King” to Spain’s “Werewolf King”? Jack can do it!
And . . . Jack Black can be Russ Meyer to Jason Segel’s Peter Carpenter!!!
“Uh, the ‘rails,’ R.D. We talked about this. The rails. You’re friggin’ off them, again. Please get back to the movie,” Sam “The Boss Man” Panico, implores me.
Sorry, Sam . . . the Peter Carpenter love is, eventually, gonna getcha.
So, yeah. Bill Van Ryn. Eric Wrazen. Mike Justice. Mike Perkins. Sam “the Blender Master” Panico, and yours truly: We are family, and by golly, we’ll get the job done and solve The Case of Peter Carpenter. Get this: for the fun. We’re fracked up that way. And by hook or by crook, we will get that movie made, too.
Let’s roll Vixen! and Love Me Like I Do. To the aisle seats, Robin!
Peter Carpenter? In the bioflick Point of Stardom. A missed casting coup: Judd Reinhold as Peter Carpenter in Fast Times in Hollywood.
Vixen! — The Review
“The story of a girl who loves the joy of being alive.” — Now that’s how you pitch an X-rated movie
Yeah, you’re heard of this movie in the annals of X-rated films: it was the first film to be given the rating due to its sex scenes. Yes. It was a huge box office success ($8 million against $73,000) that not only inspired 20th Century Fox to green-light Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Doh!), it also triggered the “Golden Age of Porn” with the likes of the equally successful Behind the Green Door, Deep Throat, and The Devil in Miss Jones. Howard Avedis, who we just did week-long tribute on, dove into the golden showers with this take on the trend with The Teacher. And speaking of teachers: Earl Barton’s Russ Meyer-wannabe, the sleazy drive-in take-a-shower-after flick, Trip with the Teacher, was his lone attempt at some “golden age” sexploitation.
Erica Gavin* (later of Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; stellar in Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat for Roger Corman) is Vixen Palmer: an oversexed (big surprise), bored ne’er-do-well hottie stuck living in a Canadian mountain resort town with her naive, wilderness bush pilot husband (Larry Buchanan stock-player Garth Pillsbury, Mistress of the Apes).
While he’s off on assignments, flying tourists on fishing trips, the divine Ms. Palmer manipulates anyone and everyone to get her jollies: including an uptight, vacationing husband and wife flown by her husband, as well as a Canadian Mountie (cue Peter Carpenter to the set). Vix even dabbles in incest with her rough n’ tumble biker brother, Judd (because all Drive-In B-movie programmers must have a biker; played by Don Stroud lookalike Jon Evans). But Vix draws the line at interracial love: she won’t do the hoochie-mama with Judd’s black, riding buddy (Harrison Page, who carved a still-going, extensive U.S. TV career). Oh, and everyone has opinions on communism to go with their insights on the sexual revolution.
Sigh . . . sex and political dissertations with a side of racism: an exploitation Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup packed with M&M’s (or is that Skittles) if there ever was one.
When it comes to skin-flicks—and Meyer’s oeuvre, on whole—Vixen! is a solidly produced flick that’s well-directed with engaging cinematography. Courtesy of Erica Gavin going so over-the-top, along with Meyer working in messages on racism, communism, Vietnam, draft dodging, and the sexual revolution amid the nekked parts, this is not, not-an-entertaining flick. In fact, instead of flinching in repulsion, you actually laugh—with, not at—the film. How can you not chuckle, when Vixen and her brother lament on their special showers back when they were 12—as they have a nekked shower-sex reunion? (Note: Adult Film purveyor Shaun Costello also worked a Vietnam subtext into his early porn/proto-slasher, 1973’s Forced Entry; fellow adult industry warhorses John Howard and Justin Simonds later cross-pollinated the genres with the SOV-nasty, 1986’s Spine.)
Look, this ain’t no 2 1/2 hour Zack Snyder zombie romp with the always career-bitching Dave Bautista: it’s a 70-minute skin flick from the limits-pushing Russ Meyer. (It could be worse: this was sliced to 63-minutes in other parts of the world.) So what’s not to likely? Take a chance, you analog masochist, to get your fix of Peter Carpenter strippin’ off that Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman’s uniform. Your own heart-breaking sighs for Peter, may vary.
Ugh. No trailers to embed. So log onto You Tube to watch them HERE and HERE. The DVDs abound, even on Amazon. Online streams. Yes. On torrent sites: don’t do it.
Love Me Like I Do— The Review
“I thought I was safe as long as I kept my eyes wide open and my knees tied together.” — Another satisfied Peter Carpenter conquest
Writer and director Jean Van Hearn shot seven sexploitationer skinners between 1961 to 1973: Eternal Summer, Nymphs Anonymous, We, a Family, The House Near the Prado, The Hanging of Jake Ellis, Did Baby Shoot Her Sugar Daddy?, and this one—the only one starring Peter Carpenter. Oh, and Dyanne Thorne. Did we mention that Dyanne impressed Pete, here, so he cast Dyanne as his lead in his forth and final film, Point of Terror? We just did.
Courtesy of Temple of Shock in their review of Did Baby Shoot Sugar Daddy?
So . . . if you need films with soft-core kink titillations, trannies, way-too-many strippers, a world where women seduce men—while another man is dead, stuffed under a bed—all done at an Ed Woodian ineptness that makes a Doris Wishman joint look better that it should, then Van Hearn’s always-hard-to-plot-follow, seven-film oeuvre should be on your watch list.
Now, back to the Peter Carpenter love.
Sharon Sloane (Dyanne Thorne, in a bad wig) is a loyal, seemingly content suburban wife with a nice husband, Bill (Peter Carpenter, in his first leading man role), house and family—and she throws mod-swingin’ backyard parties. Well, things were content: Sharon just discovered—as a way to deal with the stress of his business ready to collapse in a takeover by his partner, Keith (the one and done Paul Flemming)—ol’ hubs cheats on her with the local, neighborhood nympho, Nanette (Maria De Aragon**, Blood Mania for Peter; the lead in 1972’s The Cremators). So, Sharon—while she attends to the woe-is-me problems of her horny-divorcee best friend (Lynne Gordon, her final film was Robert Redford’s The Hot Rock for Peter Yates)—does the only logical thing: she goes off the deep end. And so does everyone else.
Sharon pops off a couple o’ rounds at Bill’s squeeze, Nanette? Check.
Bill’s business partner, Keith, wants not only the business, but Sharon? Check.
Does Keith fail at goading Sharon into adultery, so he rapes her? Check.
Does she like it? Check.
Does Bill, the cheater, beat the hell out of Sharon for cheating? Check.
Divorce? Stressed out little ones? Check and double check.
Sharon and Keith run off to Las Vegas—and Sharon, the girl who won’t commit adultery—turns into the very nympho her ex, Bill, enjoys. Checky check check.
Just wow. If this is what the sexual revolution of the ’70s did for film . . . then we need Estus Pirkle to break out the bible to inspire Ron Ormond to get the cameras rolling to get our souls in check.
Look, if you’re a Peter Carpenter fan—and you were able to make it through the movie-where-nothing-happens stylings of Blood Mania, but enjoyed the mania where-everything-happens of Point of Terror—sans the musical numbers and slasher overtones of that later sex opus—then there’s something here for you to do on a Friday night.
Thanks to our bud, Mike Justice, while we do not have an online stream of the full movie to share (there’s a few torrent-to-porn uploads out there: don’t do it: unless you’re into virus alerts and site redirects), you can watch these two clips from the film HERE and HERE (but embedded, below). You want the DVD? Well, the DVDLady has multi-regional DVD-rs, if you absolutely must have it.
I’m excited! Let’s make this Peter Carpenter bioflick happen!
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.
* Did you know Erica Gavin has an official website? True story. Check it out at ericagavin.com. The link will take you into a deeper plot synopsis and backstory on Vixen!, as well as direct you to her insights on her other films.
** Maria De Aragon was under the Greedo make-up, hassling Han Solo at the Mos Eisley Spaceport in Star Wars? Is that urban legend?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: When Frederick Burdsall isn’t at work or watching movies while covered in cats, you can find Fred in the front seat of Knoebels’ Phoenix.
Way back when in a faraway place I like to refer to as “The Sixties” (It existed kids, trust me) my local movie theater would frequently show a Saturday Matinee geared to kids and it was here I was introduced to the wonders of Roger Corman, Vincent Price and numerous monsters that still thrill me today but there was one in particular that really got my 9-year-old juices going.
A few weeks before, the theater was showing a little film called The Mad Monster Party and as always, I was parked in a seat halfway up the aisle with my popcorn enjoying the spectacle. When the dust settled and it was time to go I was handed a clip-on button as I exited that simply said “The Green Slime are Coming”. Slimy and Green, huh? Yes, please.
Well, my friends, an entire freakin’ month went by before I saw it on the marquee…The Green Slime are here Saturday at noon. Setting a new record getting home I rushed into the house and did the most horrible thing I have ever done in my life…I VOLUNTEERED to do chores because the Green Slime are here Saturday and I have to be there. The things we do for our passions. Let’s take a look at this brilliant piece of monster movie fun.
An asteroid is on a collision course and it falls on Jack Rankin (Robert Horton from Wagon Train) to rush off to Gamma 3 to blast it out of the sky. The base is run by Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel, one of my mom’s favorite actors) who at one time was a close friend but they clashed over Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi, who played Fiona Volpe in the Bond film Thunderball) who conveniently is one of the doctors on the base. There is quite a bit of macho posturing before he is welcomed aboard.
Upon reaching the asteroid they encounter a greenish ooze which puts a damper on their project and forces them to hoof it back to the ship unaware that Dr. Halverson has some on the leg of his spacesuit. As the suits are decontaminated, it causes the slime to mutate and grow into a one-eyed, tentacled monstrosity that kills with electricity. ( I REALLY need a Green Slime Pop Vinyl figure…someone get on that.)
Nothing they do seems to harm it and if it bleeds, the blood becomes another monster….how do you kill it? After an attack on the infirmary, they decide to lure them to Block C and try to, at least, contain them but Dr. Halverson has all his research in there and the creatures are soon loose again. Deciding to evacuate, the doors won’t open because there are creatures all over the outside of the ship now and Elliott leads a team out to do battle in a last ditch effort to save their lives. How does it all turn out…Watch and enjoy The Green Slime and find out.
I can’t deny that there are times that I watch a favorite from my childhood and can’t believe how incredibly bad it really was…this is NOT one of them. I still get tears in my eyes when that psychedelic theme song by Richard Delvy starts up and I turn into a 9-year-old all over again and revel in the campiness of it all. I have a love for this movie that rivals the kind of love you have for family and friends and I hope I always will…..By the way…I STILL have the button.
As always, I’ll see you in the front seat of the Phoenix.
This Brazilian movie creates new versions of stories that appeared on the TV series Além, Muito Além do Além (Beyond, Much Beyond the Beyond): “O Acordo” (The Agreement), “A Procissão dos Mortos” (Procession of Dead), and “Pesadelo Macabro” (Macabre Nightmare).
In the first segment, “O Acordo” (The Agreement), a mother discovers that her daughter has an incurable disease, so she offers her soul to Satan himself. They ask her to bring them back a virgin. This segment was directed by Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias.
The second story is “A Procissão dos Mortos” (Procession of Dead), which was directed by Luiz Sérgio Person. A young boy’s father is the only person brave enough to face the ghosts that haunt the village.
Finally — and most spectacularly — “Pesadelo Macabro” (Macabre Nightmare) is about a young man who is afraid of being buried alive, which is exactly and to no surprise what happens. This leads to tons of scenes of women being whipped, lizards, bugs and, yes, a premature burial that all feel like they’re the exact kind of bad trip that schoolteachers warned you that those blue acid star temporary tattoos would give you if any drug dealer tried to give you free acid, which I don’t think has ever happened ever. This was directed by José Mojica Marins, who we all know as Coffin Joe, and it lives up to exactly the kind of mania you expect from this man. He was actually the host of the TV show these stories came from for 21 years and sadly, hardly any tapes of them survive.
Federico Curiel was a maniac and I mean that in the very best of ways. He wrote tons of great movies like El Baron del Terror, as well as directing stuff like the Nostradamus vampire movies, lucha films with Neutrón, Blue Demon and Santo, Westerns such as Super Colt 38 and so much more. He’s also the man who brought together so many luchadors for The Champions of Justice series.
Here, he delights us yet again with the tale of El Murcielago, a former wrestler who has become disfigured and obsessed with singer Marta Romano as he sits in his cave, wearing a jeweled robe, playing an organ and being generally awesome. He takes this beautiful girl and hides her away from the rest of the world to watch him fight and kill a series of other wrestlers until Blue Demon decides that he’s going to save the wrestling business.
The joy of lucha libre movies is that astounding things can just happen. Men can be disfigured and take over caves filled with henchman who listen as they regale them with dibble dabble keyboard musings and the rantings of a madman. Beautiful singers can be kidnapped and scream at every rat they ever see. And Blue Demon can show up and solve everything with wonderful violence.
There are also four musical numbers, which feels just about the right amount.
You can watch this on the amazing White Slaves of Chinatown channel on YouTube.
If you have an issue with seeing brains outside of skulls, perhaps this is a movie to avoid, as it seems like the main story thrust of this is to show brains as often as possible, but there’s also plenty of neon-hued labs, swinging go-go dance numbers, Blue Demon wrestling matches, future science that never really came true and Noé Murayama, the son of a Japanese dentist, as a mad scientist with female zombies in his employ.
Director Chano Urueta also made one of the most deranged movies I’ve ever delighted to see more than twenty times, El Baron del Terror. He worked on several of Blue Demon’s movies and the Los Leones del Ring series, which had Jorge Rivero as twin luchadors. He started making movies as far back as 1928 and his career lasted the whole way up until 1974. Ureta also acted in several movies and shows up in Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
The best thing about a 1968 lucha movie is that it combines so many things that you love into one big combo. To wit: Eurospy movies, evil — and good — women in miniskirts and high boots (and occasionally berets), Adam West Batman-inspired sets, a caveman wrestling and so much more.
For some reason, it was decided that Blue Demon should have some superpowers in this film, so he learns how to teleport. He also can run through walls which is a great power to have.
I love the solo Blue Demon movies because I’d rather see him as a hero with agency instead of the foil or second banana to Santo. He just seems to try harder than the competition.
It’s also available on the ARROW player. Head over to 
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