An island of missed opportunities

Frankenstein Island (1981)
Starring: Robert Clarke, Steve Brodie, Robert Christopher, Tain Bodkin, Kathrine Victor, Cameron Mitchell, George Mitchell and John Carradine
Director: Jerry Warren
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Hot air balloonists crashland on an uncharted island where they discover primitive bikini babes descended from alien visitors, stranded pirates, Kung Fu zombies, and Shiela Frankenstein (Victor) continuing the experiments of her famous relative.


Despite a crazy mix of elements--any one of which could have brought some excitement to this film--"Frankenstein Island" is a crushing bore from beginning to end. The dull 'heroes' wander around not doing much of anything--even the Kung Fu fight versus the zombies who all look like they just walked out of a beatnik cafe is boring--and the villains aren't much more active or effective.

The biggest shame of the movie is how badly everything is executed. The writer/director was clearly going for a cross between a "Lost World" film and a "Mad Scientist on a Rampage" movie, but he was not competent enough to capture the feel of either genre, and he botches even the simplest elements. (Worst offense: He doesn't make full use of the bikini babes... one should have developed a romance/association with one of the heroes early on and then should have been following the around. At the very least, we would have had something nice to look at while struggling to stay awake.)

Another missed opportunity was the identity of Sheila Frankenstein's husband. When he was first brought up in an ominous way, I was hoping he would be revealed as as the Frankenstein Monster. Alas, this was not to be. Sheila's mysterious husband turns out to be one of the more boring elements of the film.

"Frankenstein Island" is not a place worth visiting.

'Project Vampire' is a failed project

Project Vampire (1993)
Starring: Brian Knudson, Mary-Louise Gemmill, and Myron Natwick
Director: Peter Flynn
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A mad scientist, Dr. Klaus (Natwick), is perfecting a longevity serum that turns those who use it into vampires. A brave intern from the univsersity hospital (Knudson), a kind-hearted nurse (Gemmill), and a Chinese genius (Cho) join forces to save themselves from the effects of the serum and to stop Klaus's convoluted schemes from coming to fruition.


At the center of "Project Vampire" is a neat idea--I like the notion of the vampire serum--but that idea is brutally strangled by a script so badly structured I doubt the writer/director has even heard the term "three-act structure", and then dumped in a shallow grave by a cast of actors who have almost certainly heard the phrase "don't quit your day job" many times. To make matters worse, the film is a mixture of a chase story and a race-against-time story, but both of these normally dramatic plot-types are made deadly dull by chase scenes that have all the excitement of my daily commute to work.

(In fairness, I may actually be being a bit harsh on the actors who star in this picture. Mary-Louise Gemmill and Myron Natwick both have extensive credits to their names, albeit as a voice actress and bit-player respectively--taking center stage may not be where their talent lies, or maybe they were let down by director Peter Flynn. Flynn has been a prop-maker for a host of high profile television series and movies but this was the one and only film he's directed.

In the end, "Project Vampire" is yet another badly executed low-budget film where a good idea falls victim to a shortage and/or misdirection of talent. (It's also the only film of recent vintage that features a Chinese character that brought to mind Lionel Twain's rant at Inspector Wang in "Murder By Death" about geniuses being unable to grasp the use of preposition, articles, and pronouns when speaking.)

The Complete Devil Bat

During the 1930s and 1940s, PRC specialized in cranking out low-budget quickie genre pictures. Among the best of their efforts was the Bela Lugosi vehicle "The Devil Bat." It was followed by a misguided sequel, and I cover them both in this article. They might make a nice pair of movies to show at a Halloween party.


The Devil Bat (aka "Killer Bats") (1942)
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Dave O'Brien, Suzanne Kaaren, and Donald Kerr
Director: Jean Yarborough
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Everyone loves the ever-smiling chemist Dr. Paul Carruthers (Lugosi), especially the investors in the cosmetics company he's been creating best-selling colognes and perfumes for. When the company owners make what they feel is a nice gesture to reward Carruthers' many years of service, he feels like he's been insulted and he decides to kill his bosses and their entire family. Revealing that he's as talented a mad scientist as he is a chemist, Carruthers transforms otherwise harmless bats into giant hunter-killers that hone in on a special cologne that he's given to his victims for "testing." Will Carruthers get away with his bloody schemes, or will a lazy tabloid reporter (O'Brien) and his photographer (Kerr) manage to stumble their way to the truth?


That's a long summary, but "The Devil Bat" is pretty convoluted. In fact, it's so convoluted that it's one of those films that you need to just watch without thinking too hard, particularly when it comes to Paul Carruthers, his killer bats, and his rambler house with its secret Mad Scientiest Lab and tower for convenient bat launches.

The film's got a decent cast (with Lugosi being particularly fun to watch) a story with plenty of humor (both intentional and unintentional), and a pace that is just fast enough to keep the viewers interested. It's by no means a masterpiece, and its low, low budget is painfully visible in some of the sets (although the bat effects are better than I expected), but it's a fun bit of viewing if you enjoy Bela Lugosi and the nonsense breed of plup fiction-style sci-fi/horror flicks that filled the B-feature slots at movie houses in the 30s and 40s.

By the way, I highly recommend getting the DVD version of the film that I've linked to below. Not because I recommend watching colorized classics, but because I think it's fascinating to compare a colorized version with the black-and-white version. Invariably, you will discover that colorizing saps a film of life rather than enhances it. (I used to think that it was only dramas that were ruined by colorization. Then I picked up the disc containing both the colorized version and original version of "My Man Godfrey." Actually, watching both versions close together changed my mind completely.)



Devil Bat's Daughter (1946)
Starring: Rosemary La Planche, Michael Hale, Nolan Leary, Monica Mars, Molly Lamont, and John James
Director: Frank Wisbar
Rating: Four of Five Stars

Nina (La Planche) driven to a mental breakdown when she learns her dead father was not only a murderer but may have also been a vampire, is placed in the care of manipulative psychiatrist Dr. Morris (Hale). When his wife (Lamont) is murdered, everyone--including Nina herself--believes she did it in a fit of madness... everyone except handsome Ted Masters, the dead woman's son who has fallen in love with Nina. He sets out to prove Nina's innocence and that his step-father is the killer.

Taken on its own, "Devil Bat's Daughter" is an okay little horror flick that suffers from stiff acting, clunky dialogue, and strange story continuity lapses (such as a continuing back-and-forth about whether the "Devil Bat" of the title--a local mad scientist who either came to a bad end at the fangs of his own monstrous creations but only after they killed half a dozen others, or who was put on trial for murder and presumably executed). The majority of the story elements are familiar elements of horror movies and thrillers of this vintage--a woman shocked into amnesia, a corrupt psychiatrist who may or may not be abusing his patients, and a bland hero whose only defining quality is that he is in love-at-first-sight with the imperiled heroine--there are a number of other factors that make this an unusual film and worth checking out.

The primary of these is the sympathetic portrayal of the "other woman" with whom the slimy psychiatrist is two-timing the wife he obviously only married for money. Rather than being a coldhearted and scheming bitch who is every bit the villain that he is, she is another victim of his manipulations, and she ultimately comes across as remorseful. Almost as important is the titular character, who, although little more than a conduit for melodrama, is also the pivot-point for enough plot substance that there are genuine questions in the minds of viewers that she might indeed be an unhinged, murdering somnambulist. This is all too rare in pictures of this production level and period, where plot misdirection and obfuscation usually feel halfhearted and are often painfully transparent. Screenwriter Griffin Jay and director Frank Wisbar truly rose above the standard for this kind of movie in this case.


Unfortunately, the film is less successful as a sequel to the original "Devil Bat" picture. While I admittedly might be a bit more of a stickler for continuity than many movie viewers, I still think anyone who saw "The Devil Bat" would wonder how/why the small town that was home to Paul Carruthers moved from the American Midwest to the East Coast, or why everyone from the town gossipers to the courts seem to have forgotten that Carruthers confessed to committing several premeditated murders using a trained bat before being killed by said bat in front of witnesses, or how Carruthers somehow transformed in everyone's mind from a well-respected local chemist and pillar of the community who secretly dabbling in bizarre experiments with growth acceleration through electrical glandular manipulation to a researcher who relocated to the town to work in peace and quiet on his mad science projects. The only details about Carruthers and his "devil bat" that remains consistent from the original film to this one is that he was the final victim of his own monster.

Why the creators of "Devil Bat's Daughter" chose to virtually ignore the story of the original film in favor of making Paul Carruthers the center of vampire legends and recasting him as a misunderstood genius instead of a raving madman is a mystery to me. Perhaps they were trying to convey that the entire town was shocked into a state of amnesia and dissasociation like Nina was over the revelations surrounding Paul Carruthers: Everyone in the small town of Heathville forgot who they were, where their town was located, and everything that really happened, and they filled in the blanks with details that seemed more logical to them than what had actually happened.

The film would have been much stronger if they'd remained consistent with the original, as Nina's madness and apparent homicidal mania could have been inherited from her crazy father; the writers could even have kept their goofy "ah-yup, dem townies shurly do believe that ole Doc Carruthers wuz a vampire, yup dey sure do" stuff as the trigger for her mental breakdown. Instead, they created a film that is undermined every time it invokes the original movie with distortions and revisions of that films most basic plot points and background elements.

And that's a shame, because their sloppy and arbitrary story telling manages to ruin what might otherwise have been a decent film.

Monsturd' is da shiznitz (or sumthin)

Monsturd (2003)
Starring: Paul Weiner, Beth West, Dan Burr, Dan West, Rick Popko, Hannah Stangel, and Brad Dosland
Director: Rick Popko and Dan West
Steve's Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Serial killer Jack Schmitt (Dosland) is shot to death by police in the sewers beneath a small town, but is reanimated as a living turd by bioengineered bacteria that had been dumped there by mad scientist Dr. Stern (Burr). Now, he's killing the residents as they Do Their Business in the bathroom, literally eating shit and growing bigger. If Agent Hannigan of the FBI (Beth West), Sheriff Duncan (Weiner) and his two dimwitted deputies (Dan West and Ppko) don't find a way to stop the monstrosity before the town's Annual Chili Cook-off, Butte County will end up as a very crappy place to live.

"Monsturd" is an amusing horror-comedy that spoofs monster movies ranging from the "science gone bad" films of the '50s and '60s (like "Island of Terror") to the "greed over public good" horror flicks from the '70s and '80s (of which "Jaws" is the most famous example).

Script-wise, this film does more with "Number Two" than I think any other tale in any medium has ever done before, which earns it some sort of place in history. It also manages its psuedo-science better than any number of monster movies that expect to be taken seriously, and it pulls off the costuming and effects involved in bringing a monster that's a walking, mansized turd to the screen with an effectiveness that is rarely seen in movies produced at this level.

I fully expected the "monsturd" of the title to stink like so many elaborate monsters do in low-budget horror flicks. But directors West and Popko clearly understand how to mount a production within their means, and they very effectively used lighting and camera angles to make their monster look even better. If science-gone-bad ever caused a dead serial killer to be reborn as a giant turd, I think he might actually look like the creature that West and Popko came up with. The terms "believable" and "realistic" can't quite be applied here, but the monster is very convincing (and appropriately gross).

"Monsturd" also benefits from a cast that's better than what I often see in films at this funding level. While there are no award-winning performances, everyone is competent and none of the gags are killed by bad delivery. Again, I have to congratulate the directors for matching their material to a cast capable of bringing it properly to life. (I particularly enjoyed Dan Burr as Dr. Stern. He made a great mad scientist, and his "turd-calls" while searching for the monsturd in the sewers were hilarious.)

The soundtrack is the final element that makes "Monsturd" the effective spoof that it is. It's composed in the style of a 1950s monster movie, very bombastic and dramatic... even when it's just someone walking down a hall. Fans of classic horror films will enjoy this movie for the music alone.

The film isn't perfect, however. If suffers from jumpy and erratic editing, and, despite the filmmakers' best efforts, the tight budget of the picture does still cripple it at times, despite the very clever efforts to hide the defects. (This is most evident in the scene where Schmitt is shot, and in the various office and interior sets.)

Still, "Monsturd" is a film that's hard not to like if you have a sense of humor and a tolerance for splatter of a different sort. Also, aspiring filmmakers should definitely check it out, and they should listen to the commentary track, as well as watch the being-the-scenes footage. It's very interesting and informative stuff, and it'll give insights into how this very effective low-budget comedy came to be, and it will give you some hints and tricks that you might want to model.





(One interesting surprising bit of trivia that's mentioned in passing on the commentary track is that few reviewers ever comment on the film's music. That's surprsing to me, because that was the very first thing I noticed about it.)

Classic Horror: The Best of the Invisible Man

The Invisible Man is an honored member of the Universal Pictures' pantheon of Terror Titans, even if only three of the five films featuring the concept/character were actual horror films, and only two of those were any good.

In this post, I offer reviews of the two true horror entries in the original Invisible Man film cycle. If you want to read reviews of the other two worthwhile entries in the series, click here to read my review of Invisible Agent (where the grandson of the original Invisible Man takes on the Nazis) and click here to read my review of "The Invisible Woman" (a comedy about a model turned invisible through the miracle of mad science).



The Invisible Man (1933)
Starring: Claude Rains, William Harrigan, Una O'Connor, Gloria Stuart, Forrester Harvey and Henry Travers
Director: James Whale
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Chemist Frank Griffin (Rains) develops a formula that turned him invisible. He goes on a homicidal rampage in rural Britain after it also drives him insane.


"The Invisible Man" is another true classic from the formative years of the horror genre. It's quite possibly the first horror comedy and it's black humor holds up nicely even today--arrogant scientists, simple country bumpkins and incompetent cops never go out of style!

The film's special effects also hold up surprisingly well, with simple techniques employed here that were used over and over until CGI came fully into its own but rarely used as well as they were here. (Yes, there are a few places where one can see the matting, but the "invisible action" here is depicted better than it is in many films made with much more sophisticated special effects technology.)

And finally, the film has a literate, finely honed script with loads of tension that effectively translates the mood of H.G. Wells' original novel to the screen. The characters seem well-rounded and believable, and this, even more than the special effects, make the movie such a pleasure to watch even now. The film even manages to capture the point about loss of identity resulting in loss of connection with the world around you and ultimately insanity (even if the movie attributes Griffin's madness first and foremost to the chemical concoction he's created.)

Lovers of classy horror and sci-fi films owe it to themselves to check this one out. The same is true if you have an appreciation for dark comedies.


The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
Starring: Vincent Price, Cedric Hardwicke, Nan Grey, Cecil Kellaway, John Sutton and Alan Napier
Director: Joe May
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A wrongly convicted man (Price) uses an invisibility serum to escape execution and find the murderer who framed him. But, even with the help of his loving fiance (Grey) and his loyal best friend (Sutton), can he track the killer before he is driven mad by the substance that renders him invisible?


"The Return of the Invisible Man" is a well-conceived sequel. It's got significant ties to the original, retains some of the same basic themes, but presents a completely different and unique story. Too often, sequels either shoehorn connections to the film into the story in an artificial manner or have so little to do with the original that one wonders why a connection was even drawn (well, aside from naked greedy attempts to ride on the coat-tails of another film's success).

A well-scripted mystery is added to the invisible man shenanigans... and although it's a bit slow in getting started, it is a gripping tale once it gets going. The mystery isn't terribly hard to solve for those who like playing along--there really is only one suspect and the film never launches any serious attempt to divert the audience's attention from that villain. However, plenty of suspense arises from watching the invisible man start to lose his mind even as he identifies his prey.

The great cast of the film is also to be credited with its success. Most noteworthy among the actors are Vincent Price lends his distinctive voice to the film's unseen protagonist, and Cecil Kellaway who appears in a rare dramatic role as the inscrutable Inspector Sampson of Scotland Yard.

The only complaint I have with the film are the invisibility effects. Whether due to a lack of budget or creativity on the part of the director and special effects crew, there is nothing here as impressive as the cinematic tricks used to sell the presence of an invisible character on screen as was found in the original "Invisible Man" nor in the "Invisible Woman", a comedy dating from the same year yet featuring far more impressive effects. (Nothing in "The Invisible Man Returns" comes close to the bicycle stunt in "The Invisible Man" or the stockings scene in "The Invisible Woman".)

However, the solid story and excellent cast make up for the shortcomings in the special effects department.

'Lady Frankenstein' mixes monster-making with sexual perversion

Lady Frankenstein (aka "Daughter of Frankenstein") (1972)
Starring: Sara Bey, Joseph Cotton, Paul Muller, Mickey Hargitay, and Paul Whiteman
Directors: Mel Welles and Aureliano Luppi
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Tania Frankenstein (Bey) proves psychopathy is an inherited trait when she continues and perfects her dead father's work in reanimation and monster-making... by creating her perfect mate and sex-toy, using the body of a hunky handyman, and the brain of her father's former assistant (Muller).

"Lady Frankenstein" is a fast-paced--once it gets started... it opens rather slow--decidedly sleazy twist on the typical Frankenstein film. Monsters are created, monsters run amok, and torch-wielding villagers burn the castle down, but the twist here is that Frankenstein (played with class above this movie's station by Joseph Cotton) dies at the end of the first act, leaving his twisted daughter in charge of the murder and mayhem. Boy, does she rise to the challenge.

This film is most remarkable for the most disturbing sex scene I've seen so far on film with Tania Frankenstein having an orgasm as her lover is being murdered under her. Twisted stuff, but in perfect keeping with the overall tone of the film. It is also remarkable for having just about the lamest-looking monster of any featured in a Frankenstein film. (Yes, even lamer than the non-monster in "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter"... what we have here looks like the Toxic Avenger's retarded country cousin.)

Decently acted, and featuring better music, camera work, and sets than many films of this kind, "Lady Frankenstein" might be worth a look if my comments above haven't warned you off.

'Re-Animator' is a gory trip into movie madness

Re-Animator (1985)
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale and Robert Sampson
Director: Stuart Gordon
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Dan's new roommate and fellow third-year med student, Herbert West (Combs) draws him into his bizarre (and successful) experiments with re-animating dead bodies.

"Re-Animator" is one of the craziest movies ever made, and it ranks up there with "Dead Alive" as one of the funniest creepy movies ever made. While it is nowhere near as gory as "Dead Alive" and the slapstick isn't quite as sharp, it features a cleverer script and a superior cast.

Jeffrey Combs is particularly excellent as Herbert West. We get the sense that he's a bit weird early in the film and highly strung; Combs performance puts the viewer in mind of Peter Cushing's Victor Frankenstein in the first couple of Hammer Frankenstein films... coldblooded, arrogant and probably sociopathic but not necessarily completely bonkers. When West calmly a bone saw through the chest of a zombie and then immediately sets about reanimating its recently deceased victim, it's clear not just from his actions but from Combs performance that he more than a little off. And when he later animates the severed head of an obnoxious rival (likewise brilliantly played by David Gale), it's clear that he is completely unhinged.

Speaking of the severed head, it gives rise to some of the most unnerving moments in the film, as well some of the funniest. I don't want to go into too much details, because I'd ruin the shock value. Suffice to say, it's something that needs to be seen.

Credit also needs to be go to Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton. While Combs and Gale are giving performances that seem like they just teleported in from a Hammer Films set in 1960, they play their characters mostly low-key. This, combined with the fact that their characters are nice and normal people, give the audience someone to identify with as the film unfolds and provide an island of calm in the middle of the evermore turbulent sea of madness that is this movie.


"Re-Animator" elevates Herbert West among the great movie mad doctors, even if, according to the very informative interview included on the Achor Bay edition of the film, he was actually a minor character in the script and through most of the filming. It wasn't until "Re-Animator" was crafted into a releasable movie that the emphasis shifted to Herbert. (Comments in the interviews on the DVD even make me wonder if the filmmakers knew they were making a comedy until late in the process....)

Whether intentional or accidental art, this is one of those movies that gets everything right, from the mood-setting prologue, through its score (which spoofs Bernard Hermann's famous music for "Psycho") to its chilling end. It's also feels as fresh as when it first released in 1985. This is one of those very rare horror movies that actually deserves the label "classic."

If you are inclined to add this film to your personal library, make sure you get the limited edition "unrated" version from Anchor Bay. The cut presented there may be shorter than the R-rated version, but the humor and shocks are more outrageous than its tamer and slightly bloated counterpart. The disc full of extras is also something that you'll find extremely interesting if you have any interest at all in the filmmaking process. (The same is true of the commentary tracks.)

Despite title, this movie is not a Godsend

Godsend (2004)

Starring: Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Robert De Niro, and Cameron Bright

Director: Nick Hamm

Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A couple (Kinnear and Romijn-Stamos) agree to have their dead son cloned by a enigmatic doctor (De Niro) with inscrutable motives. Eventually, they discover that something is horribly wrong with their second first child...

"Godsend" attempts at being a science fiction film and a thriller and it fails miserably at both. It's based on science so nonsensical that even the most openminded and willing to suspend disbelief viewer will be rolling their eyes, and the plot only gets worse when you toss in the spiritual/reincarnation/cosmic destiny component. Worse, the story is the worse kind of stupid, because there are far, far easier and more sensible ways for the story's bad guy to achieve his goals. (The rationale for the lame complications in the story might be "he's crazy", but that's the sort of cop-out that no remotely professional writer should ever have to fall back on. It's the only one that seems to apply here, however.)

Greg Kinnear gives one of the most over-the-top, hammish performances in the history of cinema, Cameron Bright is his usual Creepy Kid character, and Robert De Niro seems to just be there to collect a quick paycheck. Romijn-Stamos is okay, but she was better in "Lies and Alibies", which isn't saying much.

If you want to see a thriller that includes a cloning angle and a modern-day spin on the whole "tampering with things Man Was Not Mean to Know" spin to it, you're better off seeking out a copy of the 1976 sci-fi thriller "Embryo" with Rock Hudson. It's a superior movie on every level (and one I just realized I still have never written a review for. I'll have to rectify that in short order).






Trivia: Robert Di Niro was originally slated to play little more than a cameo, but once production started, it was decided to expand his character's role in the story. Maybe what we have here is the result of first draft efforts making their way into a final product.

'Kill Them and Eat Them': Low-budget horror with a classic feel

Kill Them and Eat Them (2005)
Starring: Sandy MacDonald, Richard Archer, Francoise Snobel, Lloyd Cameron, Hugh Gibson, and Wil van der Zyl
Director: Conall Pendergast
Steve's Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When a geneticist nicknamed "Dr. Gore" (MacDonald) goes renegade, two incompetent corporate security agents (Gibson and van der Zyl) track him down to stop his mad experiments. Unfortunately, Dr. Gore and his psychopathic assistant (Archer) have been turning homeless people into bizarre, flesh-eating mutants. Will our hapless heroes be able to save the day, or will they be the next test subjects for Dr. Gore?


"Kill Them and Eat Them" is a unique film that offers an interesting viewing experience. And when I say "unique" and "Interesting", I mean it in both good and bad ways.

On the one one hand, it is painfully amateurish, filmed with what must have been Camcorders and probably funded with whatever spare change the cast and crew could find between couch cushions in their homes. The acting is inconsistent by everyone who appears--each actor has a few decent scenes, but they are negated by ones where they are awful beyond description--and the story seems to unfold in a random and haphazard fashion. While some creativity went into designing the creatures, the extreme lack of funding for this film is also evident in them. When this movie is at its weakest, it is very, very bad. Strange, but bad.

On the other hand, there's a sort of wild, creative energy that runs through this whole production the likes of which I've rarely come across outside a few low-budget films from the 1930s and 1940s. When the actors are at their best, the lines they speak and their delivery of them reminds me of those old horror flicks as well. There's also a intentional sense of the absurd about the whole movie, and, to top it off, the climax is a monster slapfest the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Spanish horror flicks of the 1970s. During its high points, the film comes across like a homage to the old fashioned mad scientist movies.


The classical low-budget horror flick air about "Kill Them and Eat Them", plus the fact it's pretty funny (intentionally so) at times, went a long way to helping me forgive its many of its flaws.

(Flaws I can't forgive are the scenes with bad sound, and those that seem to be in the film for no reason other than to pad the run-time. I really wish low-budget filmmakers would stop thinking the microphone on the Camcorder is good enough when it comes to making a movie... and for crap's sake, filmmakers, if you think your movie is running short, WRITE SOME MORE SCENES. Don't pad it with shots of actors wandering through the woods, or repetitive and/or unnecessary establishing shots.)

While I would hardly describe this as a good movie, I don't regret spending time watching it. I think that Conall Pendergast shows a talent for screen-writing that many of this contemporaries do not. I think that if some more time and effort had gone into polishing the script, and if Pendergast had been a little more realistic in the sort of film he could make with the resources at his disposal (the monsters really did require a bit more money to look good... and the same can be said for the lab of the mad scientists, although Pendergast had a funny in-movie reference that took care of that, even if it came a bit too late) I think he might be able to turn out a funny movie. If he sticks with the script-writing, he might be pretty good some day.

'Fungicide': Great intentionally bad movie

Fungicide (2005)
Starring: Dave Bonavita, Wes Miller, Dave Wascavage, Mary Wascavage, and David Weldon
Director: Dave Wascavage
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When Silas Purcell (Weldon), a dorky mad scientist who still lives in his parents' basement, takes his latest project with him on vacation, the audience-expected accident happens, and soon the residents at a budget bed-and-breakfast place are fighting for their lives against a hoard of giant killer mushrooms!


It's not often that a movie described as "so bad its good" actually is so bad it's good, but that is the case with "Fungicide". It's an absolutely horrrible movie that looks like it was shot with a camcorder over a weekend, is performed by amateur actors (who, literally, are the director's family and friends, as well as the director himself), and features "manshrooms" and killer mushroom puppets that are only exceeded in their laughable-ness by the computer graphics effects.

However, the badness, coupled with the unadulturated glee displayed by the cast as they fight badly drawn CGI mushrooms and guys in dressed up in badly done mushroom costumes that shoot silly string at them as a defense, make this a movie that I watched with increasing glee and ausement myself.

Wascavage and his actors brought an energy to this film that is all-too-rarely seen in low-budget pictures. None of the actors had that lethargic quality that is so common among those who are working in front of a camera for the first time, and, while they had plenty of the "Look... I'm ACTING!" quality that is equally common in performers at this level, it is something that complemeented and enhanced the awful special effects and cheezy monster costumes. Wascavage and Friends clearly understood they weren't making the next big monster movie, and they are clearly having fun making the best movie within their reach, and making it intentionally goofy as they go.

The comedy, intentional goofiness, and the sense that the actors and director KNOW they are making a bad movie all combine to give the film its infectious enegy. It also helps that the script has some hilarious moments in it (the dream sequence with Silas spending a happy life with this killer mushroom "children" is truly one of the funniest bits I've seen in a amateurish production like this, ever. The handpuppet mushroom is so goofy that it in-and-of-itself is one of the niftiest and craziest things about this film.

And, to top it off, as silly as this movie is, the final showdown with the killer mushrooms actually managed to be a little scary, partly because I found that I had some invested in the very silly characters that are the films heroes--a reality TV star Major Wang (Miller), a retired pro-wrestler who is secretly suffering from a deadly yet potentially tragi-comic malady (Bonavita), an obnoxious realtor (Dave Wascavage), and the happy hippy who runs the B&B (Mary Wascavage)--and partly because David Weldon does such a fabulous job as Silas the Mad Scientist.

Murder and mayhem and malfunctioning zombies...oh my!

Death Warmed Up (1985)
Starring: Michael Hurst, Margaret Umbers, William Upjohn, Gary Day, and Norelle Scott
Director: David Blyth
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Evil Dr. Howell (Day) brainwashes young Michael (Hurst) to murder his parents, because they annoy him. Michael then spends several years in a mental institution, while Howell goes onto turning most of the residents of a small island into brain-surgically altered zombies that are controlled by sound waves (or, at the very least, beeper signals)... that is, when they're not malfunctioning and going on violent murder and rape sprees. Michael is eventually released from the loonie bin, and brings three friends to Howell's island, hoping to gain revenge. Mayhem, motorcycle chases in underground tunnels, zombie rampages, and the violent deaths of innocent friends ensue.


This movie makes absolutely no sense. I've had dreams that were more coherent than "Death Warmed Up".

In this movie, we have a mad doctor doing experiments on a massive scale, yet there's no indication where his funding is coming from, or why the authorities haven't taken notice. He's got an army of zombies with some sort of brain implants that malfunction every now and then... sometimes the malfunctioning zombies are killed, sometimes they're put in a storage locker (where disgruntled employees can release them when the plot calls for it). We've got zombies driving motorcycles in the tunnels near the mad doctor's sprawling facility, because that is a GREAT way to keep out intruders, I imagine.

And then we have our heroes. I'm not even going to start attempting to explain their actions (and lack thereof). I will wonder, though, why, if Michael came to the island in search of Dr. Howell, why did he drag three friends (two of them wholly ignorant about Michael's past) along... and why does he spend time romping on the beach with them?

The film is watchable if you approach it like a really stupid logic puzzle... or if you're throwing a Bad Movie Party and looking for something to round out the lineup. Otherwise, you're better off ignoring "Death Warmed Up."

Man in two minds because of mad science

The Man With the Screaming Brain (2005)
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Vladimir Kolev, Tamara Gorsky, Stacey Keach, Ted Raimi, and Antoinette Byron
Director: Bruce Cambell
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After Ugly American industrialist William Cole (Campbell) and his Bulgarian gangster driver (Kolev) are murdered by a sexy-but-psychopathic Gypsy woman (Gorsky), Cole is resurrected by Russian mad scientist Ivan Ivanovich (Keach) as a proof-of-concept for his revolutionary brain surgery technique. Unfortunately, Ivanovich's methods involve transplanting parts of brains into other brains, so Cole now has to contend with sharing his mind and body with a gangster. One thing they can both agree upon: They want revenge on the Gypsy who murdered them.


"The Man With the Screaming Brain" is part homage, part hilarious spoof of the "mad science" B-movies of the '50s and '60s. We've got greed, lust, mad science, brain transplants, a killer robot, more stereotypes and oddball plot-twists than you can count, and a truly bizarre tale of a failing marriage revitalized by tragedy and twists of fate. Oh, and we have Bruce Campbell speeding through a Bulgarian city on a pink Vespa!

While I think the storyline is a bit shakey--it's actually overburdened by a few too many gags and B-movie plot mainstays tossed in for the movie's own good--it holds together well enough and it should be great fun for fans of Bruce Campbell and the cheesy sort of sci-fi/horror movies it's spoofing. (Fans of contempary cultural reference comedy will be greatly amused by Ted Raimi's "Pavel" character... an up-and-coming mad scientist with a love of hip-hop who utters the line, 'Sounds like there is some shizzle going on down there my nizzle.')

'Demon Under Glass' is an undeservedlyobscure vampire thriller

Demon Under Glass (2002)
Starring: Jason Carter, Garrett Maggart, Jack Donner, and Ray Proscia
Director: Jon Cunningham
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A team of government doctors are charged with studying a captured vampire (Carter), but, slowly, the amorality of the project and the evil of the subject starts to erode the ethics of the physicians and the line between healers and monsters becomes increasingly blurred.


Finding a gem like "Demon Under Glass" is what makes wading through the huge heaps of crap that make up the direct-to-video/DVD releases. With very little violence and lots and lots of talking, this is one of the best and creepiest vampire movies I've seen. The more I think about it, the better it gets.

With a cast made up actors whose credits seem to be mostly character roles on television (you'll recognize just about every lead actor, but you probably won't know where from), who are working with a great script featuring a captivating story that unfolds at a slow, steady, exactly dead-on pace, this is a great horror film that I highly recommend to fans of the genre. Even more remarkable, the film manages to deal intelligently with some weighty moral and philosophical issues admidst the vampire and mad doctor antics, but it does so without turning the film into a boring lecture.

The only complaint I have is that a couple of the character names are a bit cutesy, such as the vampire's surname being "Molinar" and the head of the military security detail being named "Captain Stuebings". These do not subtract that much from the film, though.

Track down a copy of "Demon Under Glass"; I came across it in the "Bite Night" 12-movie collection, but I'm sure it can be found elsewhere or as a rental. I'm sure you won't regret it, because this is a film that will stay with you awhile.

Good idea, lousy execution in 'Castle of Evil'

Castle of Evil (1966)
Starring: Scott Brady, Virginia Mayo, David Brian, Lisa Gaye and William Thourlby
Director: Francis D. Lyon
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A mad scientist (Thourlby) invites his relatives to his remote estate where his robot double proceeds to stalk and kill them in order to avenge a disfiguring accident he suffered years before.


I don't usually give away story twists in my teaser summaries, but in the case of "Castle of Evil", it doesn't matter. Despite the rating of 4, I don't recommend that you waste your time with this movie.

Which is too bad, because the script for this film is actually pretty good. It's a great retro-fusion of the "dark old house" and "mad scientist" film genres that flourished in the 1930s and 1940s, and the featured actors all give respectable performances in their various parts.

Unfortunately, the writer and cast are let down by an incompetent director. The staging of every scene is flat and lifeless, no opportunity for padding is left untapped--except for the ending that is inexplicably sudden and abrupt--and all the bad choices sap every bit of life from the film, driving even the most friendly-minded viewer into a stupour of boredom.

I love the "mad scientist" and "dark old house" movies--as the countless reviews of films in those genres here attest to--and I really wanted to like "Castle of Evil". But, it's just too incompently done. That is a terrible shame, because there's an excellent script that went to waste here.

(THIS is the kind of movie that Hollywood big shots sould be remaking, not "Karate Kid" and other movies that were already good. They should show themselves to be REAL artists and filmmakers who, if they are so devoid of creativity that they can't make original films, should at the very least take misfires and give them second chances. Hey, this one is even long out-of-print, so there's another reason to remake it: Audiences can't get easily get the original version if they're so inclined.)

Double Feature: Tales of the Astro Zombies

Ted V. Mikels is one of those filmmakers who is spoken of in the most glowing of terms by creatives and B-movie fans alike. However, from what little exposure I've had to his work, I think he might be to those enthusiasts as Charles Band and Full Moon is to me: You either like his movies or your don't.

In the case of Mikels, I think I may be in the "don't" category. I've only seen two, but I was led to believe that "The Astro-Zombies" was among his best. Maybe I was misled--it could be a fellow reviewer was playing a cruel prank on me!--but my reaction was that if "The Astro-Zombies" is Mikels' best, then I don't get the appeal.

This is the first of two Ted Mikels Double Feature posts I'll be making--I have his "Grinder" movies sitting in my 'To Be Reviewed' stack, and I'll get to them some day. If you have an opinion on his work in general, or these two movies in particular, I'd love to hear it.


The Astro-Zombies (1968)
Starring: John Carradine, Tura Satana, Joan Patrick, Wendell Corey and Tom Pace
Director: Ted V. Mikels
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A disgraced NASA researcher (Carradine) trying to create the perfect astronaut using dead bodies, hi-tech, and radio waves uses the brain of a homicidal maniac for one of this creations... and it runs amok. A sinister Mexican spy ring gets wind of his creation and dispatch sultry psycho Satana (Satana) to secure it for their use as a super-soldier. Meanwhile, the Astro-Zombie is stalking the beautiful nurse that was the last person he saw while alive (Patrick).

"The Astro-Zombies" is one of those flicks that mix all sorts of genres into a wild B-movie stew. In this sense, it's a In this film, we get horror, we get action, we get spy vs. spy intrigue, we get blood and guts... we get everything but excitement.

Despite all the plots and subplots and characters crammed into this film, it is still very, very boring. If it had clocked in at a crisp 60 minutes, it might not have been so bad, but an additional 20 minutes are added to the running time through padding. We overlong and pointless scenes of Carradine's mad scientist puttering around his lab uttering techno-babble, we have long and pointless scenes of characters driving about, and we have lonmg stretches of badly delivered expository dialogue that's only slightly more boring than watching Carradine puttering around the lab set.

Aside from the padded, we can add that the film is universally badly acted--except perhaps the performances from John Carradine and Joan Patrick, but the characters they play are so archetypal and flat that all they're doing is delivering their lines competently--weakly directed, and full of illogical plot conveniences without which the story would fall apart.

There are a few moments in the film that let us see what might have been if it had been more competently mounted--such as the climactic confrontation between mad doctor, evil secret agent Mexican bitch and Chad Squarejaw of the FBI--but they are too few to save the movie from a very low 4 rating.



Mark of the Astro-Zombies (2002)
Starring: Sean Morelli, Robert Southerland, Tura Satana, Brinke Stevens, and Shanti
Director: Ted V. Mikels
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Evil aliens unleash machete-wielding Astro-Zombies upon unsuspecting shoppers at mini-malls as a prelude to their plan to invade Earth (I think). While the greatest scientific minds of the United States try to figure out where these murderers are coming from, an opportunistic psychopath (Satana) sets about conning intelligence agencies from around the world that she commands the unstoppable killers and that they can be theirs for the right price.

"Mark of the Astro-Zombies" is a kinda-sorta sequel to the 1968 "cult classic" from the same writer/director, although the connections make absolutely no sense. (Why do the alien Astro-Zombies look like the ones created by an Earthling in the first movie? Why did it take the twin sister of the evil Mexican femme fatale super agent in the first movie 35 years to mount her revenge? And just how and why did they keep John Carradine's head alive for all that time?)

The film further suffers from two major problems. First, it feels like director Ted V. Mikels took the approach "we shot the scene, so we gotta use it!", which leads to a number of redundant and repetative dialogue exchanges, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with the main thrust of the story and just serve to bore and annoy viewers. Second, it's script is so atrociously bad both in story organization and in dialogue that I sincerely hope it was ad-libbed from a loose outline and that said outline morphed as filming took place. The only thing that works in the script is the comedy... oh, wait. The comedy here is almost entirely unintention. NOTHING works in the script!

There are a few ideas here that made me give the film a very generous rating of 3. The notion of an uscrupulous and well-connected member of the intelligence community attempting to take advantage of a global crisis to con corrupt regimes like Iran, North Korea, China and Venezula out of piles of money is pretty cool. It's completely botched here due to a non-existent budget (if international spies can be fooled into thinking a guy in a Halloween mask is an industructable super-soldier, then it's not at all surprising that Saddam Hussein fooled them all into thinking he had nukes and chemical weapons) and sloppy writing.

Despite liking some of the ideas in the film, there is really nothing here to recommend it. The behind-the-scenes footage included on the DVD make it look like everyone had a good time making the movie--and I get that sense from watching the film unfold as well--but the end product is simply not worth the time you'll waste watching it.





Ted V. Mikels is about to start production on his second Astro Zombies sequel, "Astro Zombies M3: Cloned". He will be casting and interviewing potential crew on 1/19/2010, and cameras are slated to roll on 1/31/2010. You can read more about the project and watch a teaser trailer at his official website by clicking here. (You can also see pictures of Mikels and his cool moustache there.)

Hammer's excellent take on classic horror tale

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
Starring: Paul Massie, Dawn Addams, Christopher Lee and David Kossoff
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Massie) creates a method that draws out his darker side... actually transforming himself into another person, body and soul. While his hope was to fully understand all facets of a human being and thus learn about the "higher man", he instead discovers his wife (Addams) is cheating on him with his best friend (Lee). The new Henry Jekyll, Edward Hyde (also Massie) concocts a plan to set things right.


"The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll" is an excellent adaptation of the classic Stevenson novel. It throws in some unexpected twists, it highlights the dichotomy of Victiorian England's social attitudes and ideals, and it moves swiftly while still leaving enough time and space for character development.

The revenge scheme that Hyde comes up with and inacts, in addition to its aftermath is both suitably melodramatic for the nature of this period piece and so appallingly shocking that it will unnerve all but the most jaded modern viewers. I can barely imagine the shock and surprise of British audiences in 1960!

With Terence Fisher in the director's chair, it should be of no surprise that the film is beautifully photographed and full of lush sets. Fisher is also once again working with a great cast... and Paul Massie is due special praise for doing such an excellent job in playing both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; when Hyde first appeared, it took me a few moments to realize that the two characters were played by the same actor.

After being unavailable for purchase or rent for many years, this high point of Hammer Films' output is finally available in the "Icons of Horror: Hammer Films" collection. It's one of four undeservedly obscure horror movies included in the set (the others being the brilliant Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee vehicle "The Gorgon"; the psychological thriller "Scream of Fear"; and the mummy-tale-with-a-twist "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb") and it's a set that any lover of classic horror films would be delighted to own.

Almost 50 years after it first premiered, "The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll" still has the power to chill the audience. It's well worth a look, and it's release on DVD was long overdue.

If you're interested in reading the original tale, click here to visit the Classic Fiction Archive.

Carl Kolchak and things that stalk the night

Here are two fine made-for-TV-movies that are nearly 40 years old and still scarier than many big-screen horror movies that are released today. Their stories and the main character are timeless, meaning they are also as fresh today as they were back in the early 1970s.

The Night Stalker (1971)
Starring: Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland and Carol Lynley
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
Steve's Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When a bizarre series of murders hit Las Vegas, down-and-out crimebeat report Carl Kolchak (McGavin) thinks he might have found his ticket back to the Big Time newspaper business. As he pursues leads, however, he becomes increasingly convinced that the murderer is a vampire. Met with disbelief and scoffing from his editors and a desire to cover up the murders from Las Vegas police officials, Carl goes from crusading reporter to crusading vampire hunter.


"The Night Stalker" is an excellent movie, easily equal to many big-budget theatrical releases despite its humble television origins. The dialogue is snappy, the script and characters are all believable and well-crafted, and the mix of humor and suspense is perfectly balanced throughout.

McGavin gives a fabulous performance as Kolchak, going from a wise-cracking beat reporter (coming across almost as having been transported from the 1930s to the 1970s, yet never seeming out of place) with no goal other than to rehabilite his career, to a man who is willing to risk everything to stop a monster that no one but he seems willing to take on. The supporting cast is also universally excellent, as is the camera work. The only complaint I have is the score. It is downright annoying in its innapropriateness at times.



The Night Strangler
Starring: Darren McGavin, Jo Ann Pflug, Simon Oakland and John Carradine
Director: Dan Curtis
Steve's Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

This is another excellent adventure in humor and supernatural suspense, so well-crafted that you'd never imagine that it was originally a TV movie.

Darren McGavin gives another excellent preformance as Kolchak, who, after losing everything but his life as a result of the events in "The Night Stalker", has drifted westward to Seattle. He gets himself hired on with the city's top paper after promising to not make waves... but when he starts covering another series of violent crimes, a disturbing pattern emerges: Every 21 years since the mid-1800s, there have been a series of identical strangulation murders and what few eye witnesses there were have described the same killer. Kolchak again finds himself in the awful position of uncovering a truth that no-one wants to face or deal with. Once again, he is the only one able and willing to take action and stop the deaths.


"The Night Strangler" is one of those rare sequels that is actually better than the original. The dialogue and wit is sharper, McGavin's performace of Kolchac is even better than before, and the suspense in the story gives way to downright scary on several occasions.

(Trivia: Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson had planned a third "Night Stalker" film, in which Kolchak discovers the vampire he faced in "The Night Stalker" wasn't dead. The film never happened, but in its place was the "Night Stalker" televison series, one episode of which incorporated the story idea that would have been the movie.)

It's all downhill after a strong start for 'The Mad Monster'

The Mad Monster (1942)
Starring: George Zucco, Johnny Downs, Glenn Strange and Anne Nagel
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

After being mocked by his collegues and pilloried in the press for his outlandish theories, Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (Zucco) retreats to an isolated estate to continue his experiments. Unfortunately, Cameron's theories--that if he injects a serum created from wolf's blood into a human, that human will turn into a violent wolfman--were workable, and he he uses them to turn his simple-minded gardener (Strange) into a tool of revenge against those who destroyed his career.


"The Mad Monster" has one of the strongest openings of the many old-time mad scientist movies that I've seen. The complete and utter madness of Cameron is established effectively as he discusses his scientific discoveries in an increasingly heated fashion with four men who appear and dissapear from chairs around the table he is at. It's a scene that's well-written, well-staged, and well-acted.

Unfortunately, everything that follows is badly written, poorly staged (with the exception of where the wolfman kidnaps and kills a little girl (!)), and over-acted--even George Zucco who often hammed it up in films like, this is so far over the top that one can't help but groan at the performance. (Only Anne Nagel, who plays Cameron's daughter, doesn't embarrass herself... but that might be due to the fact that she her role really doesn't require much in the way of acting from her.)

The final blow to this movie is the wolfman make-up, as the creature looks more like a beatnik or a hippie than a menacing monster. Rediculous is too mild a term to describe what it looks like.

While "The Mad Monster" is worth seeing by fans of the "mad scientist on a rampage" horror subgenre for its opening scene, there really isn't enough here to make it worth seeking out on its own. However, it's included in a number of those low-cost DVD multi-packs, and if there are other movies in a set that interest you, then this makes for a nice bonus.