September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre, September 19 and 20, 2025. Two big nights with four feature films each night include:

• Friday, September 19: Mark of the Devil, The Sentinel, The Devil’s Rain and Devil Times Five
• September 20: The Omega Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Grindhouse Releasing 4K restoration drive-in premiere of S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth and Eaten Alive

Admission is $15 per person each night (children 12 and under – accompanied by an adult guardian – are admitted free). Overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $20 a person per night. Advance online tickets (highly recommended) for both movies and camping here: https://www.riversidedrivein.com/shop/

Charlton Heston is such a complex person. He’s the patron saint of apocalyptic movies, appearing in Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and this movie. He was also in so many religious movies, including The Ten Commandments as Moses, as well as Ben-Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

He could march with Martin Luther King. Jr. in 1963, while being the President of the NRA from 1998 to 2003, saying that the government could only take away his guns if they took them from his cold, dead hands. He was a liberal from 1955 to 1961 and endorsed liberal candidates until 1972. However, he also served as President of the Screen Actors’ Guild from 1965 to 1971, a position that clashed with the liberal views of Ed Asner. After the death of the Kennedys, he worked to push gun control laws. But by 1972, he rejected the liberalism of George McGovern and supported Nixon. But at one stage in his life, the Democratic Party asked him to run for the Senate against George Murphy.

By the 1980s, he would say,  “I didn’t change. The Democratic Party changed.” He also had a huge speech, “Fighting the Cultural War,” in which he said. “The Constitution was handed down to guide us by a bunch of wise old dead white guys who invented our country! Now, some flinch when I say that. Why! It’s true … they were white guys! So were most of the guys who died in Lincoln’s name opposing slavery in the 1860s. So why should I be ashamed of white guys? Why is “Hispanic Pride” or “Black Pride” a good thing, while “White Pride” conjures shaven heads and white hoods? Why was the Million Man March on Washington celebrated by many as a sign of progress, while the Promise Keepers March on Washington was greeted with suspicion and ridicule? I’ll tell you why: Cultural warfare!”

He was complicated. Unlike many today, he was non-binary and not in sexuality. In the way he saw things, but by the end, he could also be frustrating.

Speaking of the end…

The Omega Man is the second movie — after The Last Man On Earth — based on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. Unlike the book, humanity has died off because of biological warfare, not a plague. U.S. Army Col. Robert Neville, M.D. (Heston) is one of the few survivors, figuring out a vaccine to the plague, which turns humans into vampire-like monsters. The Family, as they are called, is led by former anchorman Jonathan Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) and is at war with Neville.

Neville soon learns that others, like Lisa (Rosalind Cash) and Dutch (Paul Koslo), have survived. He’s able to give Lisa’s brother, Richie (Eric Laneuville), the vaccine, and the young man wants to save the lives of The Family, too. Instead, they kill him, which leads to a mutually exclusive battle of destruction, made even more horrible for the hero because Lisa, the woman he loves, has fallen victim to the plague and sells him out.

Director Boris Sagal died while filming another end-of-the-world movie, the TV miniseries World War 3, walking into the blades of a helicopter by accident. This was written by the husband-and-wife writing team of John and Joyce H. Corrington.

This has one of the first interracial kisses in cinema (but not the first). Rosalind Cash said to Heston, “It’s a spooky feeling to screw Moses.” He discussed this on Whoopi Goldberg’s TV show, and she was finishing the interview by saying that she wished that society could get past interracial relationships being an issue. He agreed and then gave her a huge kiss.

You know who wasn’t happy about this film? Or really didn’t care? Richard Matheson, who said, “The Omega Man was so removed from my book that it didn’t even bother me.” He said of The Last Man On Earth, “I was disappointed in The Last Man on Earth, even though they more or less followed my story. I think Vincent Price, whom I love in every one of his pictures that I wrote, was miscast. I also felt the direction was kind of poor.” Before the Will Smith remake, I Am Legend, started filming, he said, “I don’t know why Hollywood is fascinated by my book when they never care to film it as I wrote it.”

Supposedly, the scene in which Heston’s character watches Woodstock inspired Joel Hodgson to create Mystery Science Theater 3000. I want to think that that is true.

This movie is Dr. Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill) informing the United States Senate Committee on Space Sciences about an alien invasion, not of creatures, but of a virus. After a satellite crashes in Piedmont, New Mexico, everyone dies. Only two people have survived: 69-year-old alcoholic Peter Jackson (George Mitchell) and six-month-old infant Manuel Rios (Robert Soto).

Directed by Robert Wise and written by Nelson Gidding, this is based on the Michael Crichton book. The Infectious Diseases Society of America magazine, Clinical Infectious Diseases, said that this movie is the “most significant, scientifically accurate, and prototypic of all films” of the killer virus genre.

You may not find that exciting, because it’s so close to the very dense book. I remember my mom telling me about this as a kid, because the ads for it upset me so much that she had to explain to me what it was about or I would have never gone to sleep.

The Arrow Video release of this movie has a 4K restoration from the original camera negative by Arrow Films, audio commentary by critic Bryan Reesman, an appreciation by critic Kim Newman, archive featurettes including a making of and A Portrait of Michael Crichton; highlights from the annotated and illustrated shooting script by Nelson Gidding; a theatrical trailer, TV spots and radio spots; an image gallery; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring writing by Peter Tonguette and select archive material and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Corey Brickley. You can order The Andromeda Strain from MVD.

Returning from a ten-year prison sentence, gang leader Gunji (Koji Tsuruta) learns that his territory is now owned by a former enemy who only appears to be a legitimate business. Instead of staying, he and his crew head off to Okinawa.

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, this finds a proud yakuza learning that his men are now gambling addicts working minimum wage jobs, a far cry from the lawless world he was once part of. Now, there are corporate gangs, big-time operations that have no time for rough individualists like Gunji, who, like the cowboys of the West, are doomed to not fade away but to go out of this world in a violent hail of bullets.

The Radiance Films Blu-ray release of this movie has extras including audio commentary by yakuza film expert Nathan Stuart; an interview with Fukasaku biographer Olivier Hadouchi; a visual essay on Okinawa on screen by film historian and author Aaron Gerow; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Bastian Meiresonne and an archival review of the film. It’s a limited Edition of 3,000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, leaving the packaging free of certificates and markings. You can order the film from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Abominable Dr. Phibes was on the CBS Late Movie on February 22, 1974 and December 30, 1975.

Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey claimed that the main character in this Vincent Price film was based on him. Well, his name is Dr. Anton Phibes and he’s an organist, researcher, medical doctor, biblical scholar and ex-vaudevillian who has created a clockwork band of robot musicians to play old standards at his whim. Seeing as how nearly all of these things match up with LaVey, I can kind of see his point.

Director Robert Fuest started by designing sets. While working on the TV show The Avengers, he got excited about directing and ended up working on seven episodes of the original series and two of The New Avengers. Soon, he’d be working in film more and more, starting with 1967’s Just Like a Woman. Between the two Phibes films, And Soon the Darkness, The Final Programme and The Devil’s Rain!, he became known for dark-humored fantasy and inventive sets, several of which he designed himself.

This movie is one I can’t be quiet about. It’s one of the strangest and most delightful films I’ve ever seen.

Dr. Anton Phibes died in Switzerland, racing back home upon hearing the news that his beloved bridge Victoria (an uncredited Caroline Munro) had died during surgery. The truth is that Phibes has survived, scarred beyond belief and unable to speak, but alive. He uses all of the skills that he’s mastered to rebuild his face and approximate a human voice. Also, he may or may not be insane.

Phibes believes that the doctors who operated on his wife were incompetent and, therefore, must pay for their insolence. So he does what anyone else would do: visit the Biblical ten plagues of Egypt on every single one of them.

Phibes is, of course, played by Vincent Price. No one else could handle this role. Or this movie. There’s hardly any dialogue for the first ten minutes of the movie. Instead, there are long musical numbers of Phibes and his clockwork band playing old standards. In fact, Phibes doesn’t speak for the first 32 minutes of the movie. Anyone who asks questions like “Why?” and says things like “This movie makes no sense” will be dealt with accordingly.

After the first few murders, Inspector Trout gets on the case. He becomes Phibes’ main antagonist for this and the following film, trying to prove that all of these murders — the doctors and nurse who had been on the team of Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten!) — are connected. Phibes then stays one step ahead of the police, murdering everyone with bees, snow, a unicorn statue, locusts and rats, sometimes even right next to where the cops have staked him out.

Dr. Phibes is assisted by the lovely Vulnavia. We’re never informed that she’s a robot, but in my opinion, she totally is. Both she and the doctor are the most fashion-forward of all revenge killers I’ve seen outside of Meiko Kaji and Christina Lindberg.

Writer William Goldstein wrote Vulnavia as another clockwork robot with a wind-up key in her neck. Fuest thought that Phibes demanded a more mobile assistant, so he made her human, yet one with a blank face and mechanical body movements. I still like to think that she’s a machine, particularly because she returns in the next film after her demise here. Also, Fuest rewrote nearly the entire script.

After killing off everyone else — sorry Terry-Thomas! — Phibes kidnaps Dr. Vesalius’ son and implants a key inside his heart that will unlock the boy. However, if the doctor doesn’t finish the surgery on his son in six minutes — the same amount of time he had spent trying to save Phibes’ wife — acid will rain down and kill both he and his boy.

Against all odds, Vesalius is successful. Vulnavia, in the middle of destroying Phibes’ clockwork orchestra, is sprayed by the acid and killed while the doctor himself replaces his blood with a special fluid and lies down to eternal sleep with his wife, happy that he has had his revenge.

If you’re interested, the ten plagues Phibes unleashes are:

1. Blood: He drains all of Dr. Longstreet’s blood

2. Frogs: He uses a mechanical frog mask to kill Dr. Hargreaves at a costume party

3. Bats: A more cinematic plague than lice from the Biblical plagues, Phibes uses these airborne rodents to kill Dr. Dunwoody

4. Rats: Again, better than flies, rats overwhelm Dr. Kitaj and cause his plane to crash

5. Pestilence: This one is a leap, but the unicorn head that kills Dr. Whitcombe qualifies

6: Boils: Professor Thornton is stung to death by bees

7. Hail: Dr. Hedgepath is frozen by an ice machine

8. Locusts: The nurse is devoured by them thanks to an ingenious trap

9. Darkness: Phibes joins his wife in eternal rest during a solar eclipse

10. Death of the firstborn: Phibes kidnaps the son of Dr. Vesalius

I love that this movie appears lost in time. While set in the 1920s, many of the songs weren’t released until the 1940s. Also, despite the era the film is set in, Phibes has working robots and high technology.

There’s nothing quite like this movie. I encourage you to take the rest of the day off and savor it.

How does Phibes live up to being a Satanic film? In my opinion, Phibes embodies one of the nine Satanic statements to its utmost: Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. The men and woman whose negligence led to the loss of Phibes’ wife were never punished. Phibes had to become their judge, jury and yes, destroyer.

On the other hand — or hoof, as it were — Phibes is the exact antithesis of the ninth Satanic sin, Lack of Aesthetics, which states that “an eye for beauty, for balance, is an essential Satanic tool and must be applied for greatest magical effectiveness. It’s not what’s supposed to be pleasing—it’s what is. Aesthetics is a personal thing, reflective of one’s own nature, but there are universally pleasing and harmonious configurations that should not be denied.” So much of what makes this film is that Phibes’ musical art is just as essential as his demented nature and abilities. Music is the core of his soul, not just revenge.

Another point of view comes from Draconis Blackthorne of the Sinister Screen: “This is an aesthetically-beauteous film, replete with Satanic architecture as well as ideology. Those who know will recognize these subtle and sometimes rather blatant displays. Obviously, to those familiar with the life of our founder, there are several parallels between Dr. Anton Phibes’s character and that of Dr. Anton LaVey – they even share the same first name and certain propensities.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lola was on the CBS Late Movie on December 13, 1972 and August 9, 1973.

Also released as Twinky and London Affair, Lola has the kind of story that only a movie made in 1970 could have.

Scott Wardman (Charles Bronson) falls in love — or something — with Sybil Londonderry (Susan George), who also goes by Twinky and Lola. The problem is that he’s 38 and she’s 16. He seemingly knows the age of consent and any guy that can instantly tell you that is a creep.

Then Scott gets busted for being married to a child and forced to leave England. He says, “I make one uncool move with a nutty 16-year-old kid, and suddenly my whole world is turned upside down.” Now this pornographic author has to go back to the United States.

If you think this couldn’t happen, well…

Norman Thaddeus Vane wrote this, and it’s based on his own marriage to 16-year-old model Sarah Caldwell, whom he married when he was also 38. In an interview with the astounding Hidden Films, the writer — and later director — would claim, “There was a reason I wound up marrying Sarah Caldwell (who was 16 at the time and later cast in Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter which Vane scripted; Vane later based the script for Lola on this scandalous marriage). I was a good-looking kid on King’s Road in Chelsea. I had a sports car, I had money, and I had a beautiful flat.”

Vane also pretty much explains the plot of this film in that interview: “I met her at a party. She was stunningly beautiful. I had a small flat on King’s Road in Chelsea, and she used to come over secretly on the way back from school, and we used to fuck. And she told her parents that she was seeing me — I was probably about 38 or something—and they were angry. Her father was head of the East India Trading Company. The only way we could see each other was if we got married, and in Scotland, you could get married at 16. So we eloped there. I had been sleeping with a Scottish girl from Glasgow. You had to spend three days in residence in Scotland before you got married, so I asked her if we could use her family’s address, and she said yes. Sarah called her parents and said, “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but I got married today!” The newspapers wrote columns about her; it was like a front-page story for months afterwards. They called me “The Cad of the Year.”

This entire interview is wild and I urge you to read it, as he claims that director Richard Donner immediately slept with Susan George, that the movie was financed by an Italian baron and Bronson superfan who later committed suicide over Britt Ekland, that Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland wanted to play the teenage girl and that Bronson couldn’t be controlled by Donner and he ruined the movie.

Lola is fascinating because why would Scott and Lola ever get together — well, sex — or stay together? There’s nothing that suggests that they have a single thing in common other than her schoolgirl crush on him, and well, yeah, she’s Susan George in 1970, I get that. Yet Bronson comes off as, well, Charles Bronson, a man who speaks little and is quick to violence. Maybe that’s how I see him, as I’ve watched so many of his action movies, but when you visit the posters and VHS covers for this, you’ll know that I wasn’t the only one who saw Bronson just as a force of violent nature.

Lola ends up getting an apartment for the couple while Scott is in jail over a misunderstanding, then she doesn’t realize that he has a job as a writer and needs to be left alone while he’s working. As a jerk of a writer myself, I get it. She also acts like a kid because she is one. Finally, after running away and coming back, she goes back to England for good.

This is not the last movie that Vane would make that references his life. The Black Room is about how he cheated on his wife in his own black room with Penthouse centerfolds that he met while working at that publication. It remains to be discovered if any of those women were vampires. Vane also made the absolutely baffling Club Life, a movie that I want everyone to watch.

I wonder if Susan George met with her agent and said, “Can I do something not so scuzzy for my next movie, like sleep with a guy twice my age?” And the agent said, “Susa,n baby, have I got a movie for you. It’s classy. It’s called Straw Dogs.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by actress Kao Pao-shu, this finds Feng Fei Fei (Lily Ho) facing a challenge. She wants revenge on the three men who killed her sister and almost ended her nephew. Getting that bloody payment isn’t the hardest thing in the world for her, as she’s the fiercest swordsperson in perhaps all of the martial world.

The problem is that one of the killers appears to be Chin Lien Pai, the man to whom she has been promised. All the fighting skills in the world can’t get past family obligations and love.

I love that this had a female director. After this, she started her own company with her husband, making this the only film she would direct for Shaw Brothers.

This wasn’t dubbed when it was released in the U.S., instead appearing with subtitles, which wasn’t usually the way these movies came out here. I wish they’d given it a better title.

The 88 Films release of Lady With a Sword has awesome new art by R.P. “Kung Fu Bob” O’Brien, as well as commentary by David West and a stills gallery. You can get it from MVD.