B Movie Nation

Foundational Cinema

Month: November 2016

Cathy’s Curse (1977)

Also known as CATHY’S CURSE, this movie was apparently an attempted cash-in on the popularity of horror movies featuring telekinetic and/or possessed young girls in the 1970’s, such as THE EXORCIST and CARRIE. This is one strange flick, and the…

Mad at the World (1955)

This begins with Wolf-Pack gang members…no, wait it begins with a prologue spoken by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver saying…”When young people become angry and violent, it affects the whole community…your town and mine. Anger breeds anger, until finally it sweeps…

The Lost Planet (1953)

Hilarious paper mache space serial from the last wobbly days of Columbia’s serial production line, this provokes screaming gaping laughter from kids if they are lucky enough to see it. in fact you owe it to yourself and anyone you…

Teenage Doll (1957)

“Teenage Doll” (1957) is a film noir. So says critic John Grant. Having watched it, I fully agree. Film noir fans, 50s fans and fans of juvenile delinquent movies shouldn’t pass this one up. Director Roger Corman had the more…

Malamondo (1964)

When I saw this film I was overwhelmed with the visual richness, and impressed with the soundtrack enough to have purchased it at that time and I believe it has at least one track that is not on the re-released…

The White Huntress (1954)

After receiving some information from a dying explorer. Two brothers set off in the search of an elephant graveyard for its highly priced ivory, but along the way they stumble by a small band of English settlers planning to farm…

Supercharged Movie Going

I was sitting in the balcony of The Grand Theatre. The theatre held 600 moviegoers that night and had in a previous life been a balcony of a entertainment palace built in the early 1900’s. It was 1979, we were…

7 Man Army (1976)

This has to be one of the most unusual Kung Fu films I’ve ever seen. I bought it because Gordon Liu is in it, but unfortunately he plays a Japanese bad guy and is only in a few scenes. In…

Killer Fish (1979)

Entertaining B-movie fun from Italian director Antonio Margheriti, here going for an international approach with a leading American cast and location filming in Brazil and Rio De Janeiro. Otherwise it’s business as usual as Margheriti keeps things moving nicely along…

Robert Vaughn, Rest In Peace

Robert Francis Vaughn (November 22, 1932 – November 11, 2016) was an American actor noted for his stage, film and television work. His best-known TV roles include suave spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; wealthy…

Games (1967)

When Curtis Harrington passed away . Though his features were relatively few, he and his long-time producing partner George Edwards, produced a fine body of work. Unfortunately, Harrington was not only treated shabbily when he tried to get features financed…

Diary of the Dead (2007)

George A. Romero is one of those filmmakers who shouldn’t need an introduction. If you’re a horror fan at all, you should be intimately familiar with his Dead series by now, and if you’re a movie fan at all, you…

The Female Bunch (1971)

“The Female Bunch” was completed in Aug 1969 under shooting title “A Time to Run,” even more brutal and shocking than director Al Adamson’s breakout success, “Satan’s Sadists,” on Western locations in Utah and the Spahn Movie Ranch in Chatsworth,…

C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979)

C.H.O.M.P.S which starred Wesley Eure and Valerie Bertinelli has Eure as a young inventor working for Bertinelli’s father Conrad Bain at a security firm. After the latest of Eure’s systems fails, Eure loses his job, but Valerie has faith in…

Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979)

n 1978, A Mexican film crew (Mismovision) struck a deal with Mexico City Broadcasting (MCB): In the years that followed, they could use their characters in any way they saw fit. MCB producer Memo Vasqueze, who was responsible for bringing…

It Conquered the World (1956)

It Conquered the World seems to be trapped in a sort of sci-fi Twilight Zone. Though it has a sizable cult following that appreciates its quirky genius, there are many genre fans who dismiss it as b-grade schlock. Rarely mentioned…

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Unlike other sci-fi flicks from the 1950s, “Creature From The Black Lagoon” is not a film to laugh at. It’s better made. Just by the title we know there’s a monster lurking about. Yet, for the film’s first 24 minutes…

Battle Beyond The Sun (1959)

It seems that American-International (a studio that specialized in ultra-low-budget fare in the 60s) bought this film and utterly destroyed it–slicing a two hour plus film into a 64 minute film! Plus, much of this 64 minutes was new material…

It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)

Once again, the atomic bomb provides the justification for another giant monster, though, despite what has been inaccurately reported elsewhere, the octopus in the film has not been mutated by radiation. It’s simply a very large example of its kind…

Kronos (1957)

Made in 1957, this ultra weird science fiction movie “Kronos” is a product of the then unknown UFO phenom and the Soviet Union’s nuclear threat of the time. Before I describe this film, I have to tell you, seeing it…