The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
THE MUMMY’S TOMB (Universal, 1942), directed by Harold Young, the third installment in the Mummy series, the second to feature Kharis and the first starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the living creature under wraps. A sequel to THE MUMMY’S HAND…
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
Fairly good sequel of “Creature From the Black Lagoon” has the Rita II traveling back to the Amazon Basin to capture the Gill Man who survived in the earlier film from his would-be-captors or executioners. Getting the Gill Man trapped…
Millenials and The Movies
Movie Reality Check Reality can be very cruel sometimes. About four weeks ago I visited a drive-in theatre in Spencer Indiana. The drive-in was beautifully laid out, great projection and best of all a fun and well appointed concession stand….
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
One must pity the Wolf Man. Marked not only with the pentagram, but marked to never have a sequel that was all his own. A real shame, considering that even the likes of the Mummy got ‘four’ sequels. Universal begins…
The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)
After seeming to have been killed at the end of each prior installment (with no explanation in this or the prior sequel how he survived), the Gill Man is now residing in the Everglades of Florida. Wealthy scientist Jeff Morrow…
The Black Room (1935)
The Black Room: 7 out of 10: In the Tim Burton film “Ed Wood” Martin Landau’s Bela Lugosi complains about his rival Boris Karloff continuing to work even though he played Frankenstein which required only grunting under heavy make-up as…
The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
There are a lot of reasons why this 1940 sequel is better than the original INVISIBLE MAN. In the first movie, the Invisible Man was a dilettante, a haughty scientist who shot himself up with the invisibility drug “for kicks.”…
Trans-Atlantic Tunnel (1935)
THE TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL is a sci-fi film set in the near future. The story is about a joint American-British effort to build this tunnel. Additionally, the toll this takes on the men (in particular the chief engineer) and the behind…
Tower of London (1939)
Not really a horror film, but a uniquely sinister and highly compelling history lesson, this late 1930’s Universal production brings together a marvelous cast and tells a rather loose interpretation of William Shakespeare’s famous play “Richard III”. It’s once again…
Raiders from Beneath the Sea (1964)
RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA is a resolute B-movie, shot on zero budget and with little in the way of action, incident, atmosphere or indeed decent plotting to recommend it. The storyline sees a gang of criminals deciding to come…
Unknown Island (1948)
This minor little prehistoric monster flick used to be shown on local TV quite often back in sixties when I was a kid. It was the first monster flick I saw in colour on TV. I enjoyed it back then…
The Lost Continent (1968)
One of my favorite rainy weekend movies, The Lost Continent also is one of the best ripe Hammer films of the Sixties. A freighter is blown off course and finds itself in a fog-shrouded part of the ocean where the…
The Last Dinosaur (1977)
The Last Dinosaur is a film that is meant to be fun and exciting. It succeeds at doing both. Maston is a big game hunter who hunts big game(go figure). Owning a company he is planning on going on an…
The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
The Valley of Gwangi is a film that, through cult enjoyment of its quality, has managed to overcome the problems that made it “forgotten” in motion pictures to enjoy its present status as a fantasy classic. Originally written by King…
It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)
In the 1950s and 60s, there were practically zillions of giant radioactive monster films. Giant shrews, ants, spiders, dinosaurs and whatnot scared audiences and were immensely popular throughout the world. For example, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) clearly led…
Conquest of Space (1955)
Classic sci-fi film from producer George Pal about astronauts on board a space station known as The Wheel. The Wheel’s crew is made up entirely of men. There’s no obligatory female crew member for all the men to make passes…
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)
Ray Harryhausen should have received top billing in this film, since his superb stop-action animation is the real star here. None of this nonsense about wise and benevolent aliens a la “The Day the Earth Stood Still”! Here, the aliens…
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Along with “invasion of the body snatchers”(1956) “forbidden planet”(1956) and “the fly” (1958),the best movie sci-fi offered in the fifties. Richard Matheson’s remarkable novel was adapted by himself,thus the movie is an accurate rendition.Differences are kept to the minimum,and are…
It Came from Outer Space (1953)
Does every SF movie made in the 1950s have to be an analog of McCarthyism? This is nothing more than a good SF movie made with a certain elan by Jack Arnold on a low budget. The desert, alas, is…
Garden of Love (2003)
This film is further evidence that Olaf Ittenbach is the current king of splatter and gore. There are directors who make scarier and more accomplished films than Ittenbach but no one currently orchestrates squashed skulls, severed limbs and general acts…