Has the moon lost its appeal?

Expecting a werewolf movie? Think again:

Dead Men Walk (1943)

Grade: C+

Moody vampire flick stars George Zucco as twin brothers, Drs. Lloyd and Elwyn Clayton. Naturally, there's one good one and one bad one, but Zucco makes it easy to tell which is which: Lloyd wears glasses, and is right as rain; Elwyn goes without, and is evil as eggs. You know how these things go.

After a brief opening narration (with the requisite heavy-handed references to vampirism), the movie begins with Elwyn's funeral, where we soon learn that he dabbled heavily in the occult...and that Lloyd was responsible for his death. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, we're also introduced to Lloyd's niece, Gayle, and her fiance, Dr. David Bently. If you like doctors, this is the movie for you!


(From the neck down, she's nothin' but Tribbles. Enjoy yr honeymoon.)

It's no spoiler to reveal that Elwyn has, in fact, done what Peter Loew could only dream of doing (dude!), and is taking nibbles out of local yokels. Revenge is on Elwyn's mind, and soon he turns his attention to Gayle...though for once, we have protagonists who (once prompted) take intelligent countermeasures.


(No dinner for you, sir -- Jesus has dibs on this one.)

From here the plot is more or less by-the-numbers, and so nothing in Dead Men Walk will surprise anyone who's seen their share of evil-twin movies (let alone vampire movies). It's even got a hunchback assistant and everything! The ending is easy to predict, but disappointingly pat when it arrives.

Still, we admired the film's restraint, atmosphere, and willingness to take its time. Dead Men Walk is a refreshingly competent movie, too, with solid performances throughout, cinematography that's easy to watch, and a score that doesn't offend the ears.

It also doesn't hurt that it's short.


("So...is everyone in this town a character actor?")

The open question: how much credit does a movie deserve for, well, not failing? Have we watched so many B-pictures that we're bedazzled by the basics, and marvel at mediocrity? Does the absence of glaring flaws in Dead Men Walk denote the presence of something admirable?

Well, not as such. But once the fundamentals are in place, brevity and atmosphere go a long way in our book. And isn't it nice to look at pretty things, anyway?


("Look at me, friends, look at me! Aren't I pretty? Don't I have a pretty smile?")

Drop in...I'll flatten you.

The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

Grade: C/C-

Despite the rickety start, this engaging little romp is almost impossible to dislike. Of course the premise is threadbare, the acting often terrible, and the eponymous monster is unmistakably a regular ol' gila monster shot in close-up.


(This little fella looks sorta like one of P.'s distant relatives.)

But the movie is just so relentlessly good-natured and pleasant, we couldn't help but be won over. Everybody's nice to each other (with one notable exception) and there's hardly a bad apple in sight. Heck, the town sheriff even gets along with the local kids, and makes an effort not to ruin their fun!


(The two male leads share a tender moment.)

Our main protagonist is one of those kids, and quite a busy fellow he is! A mechanic by day and engineering student by night, he also finds spare time to help the sheriff, woo his French girlfriend, care for his polio-stricken little sister, and build the perfect hot-rod.

Oh, and he likes to sing, too. That's his true passion.


(Our hero singing "The Mushroom Song". Is it a banjo? Is it a ukulele?)

In fact, The Giant Gila Monster is very nearly a movie about music. One of the secondary characters is a famous DJ, several key scenes involve music in some way, and the score -- which alternates between theremin schlock and "Yakety Sax" -- is prominent throughout. Plus half the cast seems ready to burst into song at a moment's notice.


(The town drunk reaches for a high note to match his high BAC.)

Don Sullivan is an engaging presence onscreen, with an easy, unselfconscious charisma that made us surprised to learn that he never really had much of a career. Too bad.

Perhaps the most telling sign of The Giant Gila Monster's charm is that, unlike so many other movies of its kind, we were actually rooting for the hero to make everything come out OK.

Of course, that was never really in doubt, since about five minutes in, we're dropped a pretty obvious hint about how things will end...


("Hello? Is this 1-800-NITRO-4-U?")

So gather round, steamboats and dreamboats, and give 74 minutes of your time to The Giant Gila Monster. It won't thrill you, and it certainly won't chill you, but it's got a pleasant spirit and decent miniature work. Heck, it may make you hearken back to a simpler time when people cared about each other, grown men could sing to little girls without creeping everybody out, and your local mechanic might well be the next big pop star.


("And then I said to that Kraut, no, you Heil Hitler!")

Worth a thousand birds

Thought we'd try something new here at the UR: pictures!

The Terror (1963)

Grade: D

Despite its star-studded cast and decent sense of atmosphere, this Roger Corman cheapie is turgid and uninvolving. Actually, the stars don't really help, since Jack Nicholson's performance as a wayward French soldier is easily the worst in the movie. Sleepwalking through the part with little sign of interest or spark, his line readings evoke a distracted guidance counselor, too busy thinking about his divorce to really pay attention to the student in front of him.

But hey, at least he gets to play fancy dress-up.


(One of Jack Nicholson's rare moments of facial expression in the movie. The print quality is sometimes pretty good...)


(...and sometimes pretty dire.)

The other actors, including Boris Karloff, deliver undistinguished but inoffensive performances. Technically speaking, the film is generally acceptable; the sets and props are good enough, the music wasn't quite as overbearing as the opening scenes made us fear, and most scenes are visually well-composed. Among The Terror's multiple directors was Francis Ford Coppola (sans his middle name), so perhaps he gets some of the credit for that.


(That's a big rug! What would that thing go for nowadays, fifty grand?)

But the plot! The plot! Ach unser Gott, the plot! Seldom has a movie managed to be both so obvious and so confusing. Initially we seemed on course for a cross between Ladyhawke and The Invisible Ghost, but matters gradually degenerated into a slurry of red herrings and murky motivations.


(A typical viewer's reaction when trying to make sense of the plot of The Terror.)

We don't mind a certain amount of ambiguity and unresolved threads in our movies, but The Terror is just a complete mess. For instance (without giving away too many spoilers), what on earth was the point of the cradle? Why introduce a plotline like that, only to drop it without subsequent references? We assume it was meant to throw the viewer off the scent, but the movie's "real" ending is hardly satisfying enough to justify such a tactic.

Or maybe they were just making it up as they went along.


(To quote Ice-T: "My eye! Bitch!" Still, an appealing alternative to watching The Terror again.)

New Year's resolution: the quick 'n' dirty solution

Short reviews offered up by inveterate procrastinators.

The Cold Room (1984)

Grade: C/C+

The Petulant Teenager's guide to surviving 1980s East Berlin: smoken der weed, getten der German-chick haircut, and treaten der Dad's girlfriend with open contempt. If you're thinking "Wait, that should be in the accusative case!", she does that too, mindmelding with her 1940s counterpart to reveal a hidden Nazi narrative in the eponymous chilly chamber. Unfortunately, Nancy Drew blood, but everyone who matters lives, except Yehudi and the Blowfish. Nice premise, mediocre protagonist.

Robot Monster (1953)

Objective Grade: F
Bubbly Grade: A

Awww, just go read this guy's review. Especially the part about how it's "easily the most relentlessly bleak and hopeless sci-fi movie of the 1950’s." Heck, they even kill off the kiddies!

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

Grade: B

We were blindsided by this off-the-wall Roger Corman spoof, in which Cubans, mobsters, and monsters collide with comic effect. It even has its very own song. LOL? IDK, but we enjoyed it.

Nightmare Castle (1965)

Grade: D-

Since we don't want to have sex with Barbara Steele, we were unmoved by this dull, predictable take on Gaslight.

The Screaming Skull (1958)

Grade: D-

Since we don't want to have sex with a screaming skull, we were unmoved by this dull, predictable take on Gaslight.


Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

Objective Grade: F
Adam's Apple Bonus Grade: C

In our attempts to write about this movie (which boasts an impressive roster of B-players, and a score that Ed Wood famously reused), we keep coming back to the...handsome...image of Tandra Quinn as Tarantella. The world is full of strange, strange things.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Grade: B+

"I was astonished to see her in Utah, for I had an appointment with her tonight in Kansas." Or vice versa.

Atom Age Vampire (1960)

Grade: F

"I don't wanna live no more! I gotta boot-fa-chay!"
"Hey, boot-fa-chay! You wanna come to my house, we give-a you nice fa-chay?"
"OK, we do-a dis."

(later)

"Hey, I wanna my sweet little boot-fa-chay!"
"You canna have her."
"But I gotta!"
"OK. Me anna this udda lady, we die now. Also, Hiroshima."
"Is OK."

The Umbrellahead Awards: The Nightmare Worlds Division

We've hit a milestone in our quest to watch every movie in our 250-movie box set from Mill Creek, as we recently finished off the Nightmare Worlds portion (which is also available as a standalone box set of the same name). Thus, we thought we ought to celebrate the occasion, and commemorate some of the wonderful, dire, memorable, and thoroughly forgettable moments we've enjoyed, thanks to our friends at Mill Creek.

Without further ado, our nominees!

---

Actual Best Movie Award:

Nominees:
Counterblast
Frozen Alive
Idaho Transfer
Prisoners of the Lost Universe
Terror at the Red Wolf Inn

Winner:
Terror at the Red Wolf Inn

Commentary:
There were several worthy candidates in this prestigious category, and were it not for the weak denouement, Idaho Transfer could easily have taken the honors. But of these five films, Terror at the Red Wolf Inn is the only one to maintain its tone, tension, and interest up until the very end. To quote a wise young woman, "All in all, I'd say it's...not bad." Or even, y'know, good.

---

Actual Worst Movie Award:

Nominees:
The Day the Sky Exploded
The Doomsday Machine
The End of the World
House of the Living Dead
UFO: Target Earth

Winner:
House of the Living Dead

Commentary:
Some very, very, VERY stiff competition in this category, but there was something just so uniquely offensive about the sheer laziness of House of the Living Dead. It proved to be a movie utterly without redeeming qualities, save perhaps for some nice location shooting in South Africa, and that just ain't enough. Our runner-up award would probably go to The End of the World, whose murky joylessness can scarcely be exaggerated.

---

So-Bad-It's-Good Award:

Nominees:
Alien Species
The Nightmare Never Ends
Panic
Star Odyssey
Warriors of the Wasteland

Winner:
The Nightmare Never Ends

Commentary:
Casual connoisseurs of bad cinema, or those with picky friends, might fare better with Alien Species or Warriors of the Wasteland. But for sheer unintentional laughs, you can't beat the one-two punch of Faith Clift's bad acting and Richard Moll's toupee. Appalling, astonishing stuff.

---

Ye Olde Filmes:

Nominees:
The Lost World
Maciste in Hell
The Mistress of Atlantis

Winner:
Maciste in Hell

Commentary:
Frolicking demons with pitchforks and sulfur
Sultry young succubi grooms would annul for
Overweight heroes fight devils with wings
These are a few of my favorite things.

---

Most Watchable Serial Edited Down To Feature Length:

Nominees:
The Lost City
The Phantom Creeps
Purple Death from Outer Space
Radio Ranch
Shadow of Chinatown

Winner:
Radio Ranch

Commentary:
Hard not to root for The Lost City here, but its sheer length (very little has been removed) and thoroughgoing racism take it out of the running. Radio Ranch is great fun, suitable for all ages and ethnicities, and doesn't seem to lose much at all in the editing process.

---

The Third-Act Letdown Award:

Nominees:All the Kind Strangers
The Disappearance of Flight 412
The Manster
Piranha, Piranha
The Return of Dr. Mabuse

Winner:
The Manster

Commentary:
Unlike our other candidates, The Manster genuinely impressed us in the first two-thirds of the movie, particularly Peter Dyneley's performance as Drunky Washupovich. Its mediocre finale may not be the worst of all these nominees, but it certainly constitutes the biggest disappointment.

---

Special Awards For Special Campers:

Watch It With Grandma Award:
It's hardly a horror movie, but Robot Pilot supplies old-timey laughs for the false-teeth set. Heck, even if Grandma's a midget, I think it'll still fly.

Watch It With Your Born-Again Sister's Kids Award:
Afraid the wee ones will be corrupted by the panty shots in Idaho Transfer? Then dish up some gee-whiz fun for your homeschooled nieces and nephews with Menace From Outer Space. Watch them thrill to the spacefaring adventures of Rocky Jones! Keep them blissfully unaware of the tawdry fates of several castmembers!

The Poochie Died On The Way Back To His Home Planet Award:
So what the hell happened to that second segment in House of the Dead, anyway?

The Casual Cruelty To Fat People Award:
Need some motivation to stay on that diet? Give Ring of Terror a spin, and feel the shame come pouring in.

The Casual Cruelty To Animals Award:
Somewhere in Purgatory, a bevy of indignant chickens await the makers of This Is Not A Test. They're sharpening their beaks even now.

The Cinematic Blueballs Award:
I don't think it took us that long to figure out that Good Against Evil was a failed TV pilot, but we at least hoped for some sort of resolution. No dice.

The WTF-Is-Going-On Award:
We owe it to Paul Naschy to watch another one of his films. He's an acclaimed horror star, but an incomprehensible disaster like Fury of the Wolf Man can hardly do him justice.

The Paul Bentzen Fan Club 2-For-1 Special:
Think what you want of The Alpha Incident and They. But love 'em or hate 'em, whenever he's onscreen, Paul Bentzen is the force that through the Spring Green fuse drives. We look forward to watching the rest of his oeuvre.

The Overrated Soundtrack Award:
Many have raved about Goblin's score to Contamination aka Alien Contamination; it didn't rub us the wrong way, but neither were we impressed. I guess we just don't get it, if there's an "it" to get.

The Not All Nudity Is Sexy Award:
In the number and explicitness of its sex scenes, Werewolf Woman exceeds the competition by a wide margin...but the movie is permeated with a creepy, dead-eyed mania that eradicates any potential for eroticism. Even the horniest, most desperate teenage boy would find it hard to be titillated by this one.

The Hear That Plot Twist A-Comin' (Because We Sure Can't See It) Award:
Oh, How Awful About Allan, you gave up your secret too easily. Or maybe we reached for it too soon. Either way, you were eventually exposed to the light, but we were ten steps ahead of you, caught in the crossfire of yawning and boredom. Speaking of which:

The Wore Out Your Welcome Award:
We genuinely enjoyed the first Starman movie we watched, Atomic Rulers of the World. By the third, Evil Brain from Outer Space, we just wanted him and his big package to get lost. (In fairness, Ken Utsui felt much the same.)

The Plutonium Ruby Laser Research Scholarship Award:
Nice to see some familiar faces from Zontar in Night Fright.

The "We Should've Just Watched The Nightmare Never Ends Again" Award:
Once you've seen a movie featuring the reincarnation of Satan himself, Eternal Evil's tamer premise just can't pack the same punch.

The Murky On-Screen And In Our Memories Too Award:
We don't really remember Beast Of The Yellow Night, except as a miasma of foggy shots, cryptic plot elements, and Tagalog. Maybe that's for the best?

The "Prom Night Dumpster Baby" Neglected Film Award:
K. saw Embryo before we started this project, and so we skipped it. Its fanny needs a blanket, and somebody to spank it. (EDIT: And now it's got one!)

AWOL Award (tie):
On the Nightmare Worlds portion of our 250-movie box set, Death Warmed Up was replaced by Fire Monster Vs. The Son Of Hercules, and Unknown World by The Cold Room. (Fortunately, both of those movies show up elsewhere in the box.)

Lost in the Woods: or, the peripatetic angora sweater

This afternoon we had a long telephone conversation earlier in the day, and asked the question: does the world really need another blog entry about the films of Edward D. Wood Jr.?

Well, here at the Umbrellahead Review, our answer is a resounding "Maybe!" Especially since, with one exception, we're mostly covering his lesser-known films today. So if your mind's in a muddle -- like a thick fog -- then clarity awaits:

Crossroad Avenger: The Tuscon Kid (1953)

Grade: C-

Glen or Glenda (1953)

Grade: C- (C+ without the added exploitation footage)

Jail Bait (1954)

Grade: F

Night of the Ghouls (1959)

Grade: B-

Crossroads of Laredo (1948, completed 1996)

Grade: F

Most people know Ed for his horror films, but he started out in Westerns, most of which seem to have Crossroads in the title. Of the two mentioned here, Crossroads Avenger is by far the more watchable, and gets bonus points for its unusual premise: the hero is an insurance investigator! Gee, I wonder why that pilot failed, eh? Otherwise it's mostly by-the-numbers, neither egregiously bad nor particularly good throughout its 20-odd minutes. We enjoyed Harvey B. Dunn as Zeke, the wheezy old prospector (or whatever he was supposed to be).

Crossroads of Laredo, on the other hand, is pretty much unwatchable. Originally filmed in 1948, the soundtrack was either lost or never recorded, and so it gathered dust for almost 50 years. When Ed's movies came back into fashion, the producer (Crawford John Thomas) wisely saw an opportunity, and so we have this "restoration", with voice-over narration and music added by Dolores Fuller and company, which comes as a bonus on the Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr. DVD.

It was a nice idea, but the problem is, there's just about nothing to the original footage, which just seems like a series of half-realized sketches that, as one IMDB reviewer put it, might have passed for a movie in 1918. There may be a way to wring a viable film out of it nevertheless, but Fuller's additions -- cheesy synthesized music, hopelessly banal commentary, and Elvis Presley Jr. -- don't exactly improve matters. The result is 23 minutes of sheer tedium, relieved only by our bittersweet reflections on canine longevity.

We don't really need to say anything about Glen or Glenda, do we? Except maybe that P. enjoyed it a lot more this time around...but it still drags like hell in the second half. Getting rid of the spliced-in exploitation footage would help (poor Béla!), but even without that, it's 10 minutes too long. Still, it's a hard movie not to like, and it's kind of sui generis anyway, or ne plus ultra, or some other expression in a foreign language that makes us sound pretentious.

Not so for Jail Bait, which is Ed's attempt at film noir (more or less), but fails disastrously in almost every respect: the thuddingly obvious plot, the threadbare acting, the obnoxious soundtrack...even the title (which refers to a gun, of all things) is a fraud! Pour a glass out for Herbert Rawlinson, who died the day after shooting was completed -- which is easy to believe: the poor guy sounds short of breath in every scene. He deserved a better end to his career than this piece of dreck.

By any objective standard, Night of the Ghouls is also dreck, but it's a million times more fun -- and since it doesn't feature Béla Lugosi at the end of his rope, it's the only "Kelton trilogy" movie whose bathos comes 100% guilt-free. Here, the fallen star is Kenne Duncan, who plays a mysterious psychic named...uh...Dr. Acula. Yeah. In his nefarious schemes, he's aided and abetted by a hideously disfigured Tor Johnson, among others.

As always in Ed's movies, the third act drags a bit, but the first 30 minutes or so offers the biggest laughs of any Wood film, hands-down: the séance sequence is downright mind-blowing. This is a must-see for anyone who likes to laugh at things. And you like to laugh at things, don't you?

Here comes the choo choo

Obligatory theme: train tracks!

---

The Return of Dr. Mabuse (Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse)

Grade: C

Well, it's murder on the sauerkraut express for this 1961 entry in the Dr. Mabuse "series." Fritz Lang directed the first three, over a period of nearly 40 years(!); this movie follows Lang's last effort, and is the first in a string of Mabuse films shot in the '60s. (The last [or is it?] appearance of the evil doctor is in the 1989 remake-ish Docteur M. -- looks like the actor who plays Mabuse in Return even has a part!)

Somewhat interesting history aside, the film wasn't all that impressive. It starts promisingly enough with a whole lot of those German-style shadows and a woman torched to death by a passing flamethrower (pretty gruesome stuff, that), but soon all the stock characters start showing up: police inspector on a personal mission, female reporter sticking her nose where it doesn't belong, handsome FBI guy who might possibly be a double agent (or some third guy named Bob), sinister warden with extra sinister facial hair -- even the brilliant-scientist-held-prisoner who happens to be the female lead's dad!

Perhaps that's all a bit uncharitable, because the film had us guessing right up to the end about the identity of the mysterious Mabuse. Perhaps we wouldn't be guessing if we had seen the previous films (though we later learned this Mabuse fellow is supposed to be a master of disguise, which kinda makes the question of who the actor is a moot point). Even if we had seen the Lang "originals", I still think the ending (back on the train tracks, even!) would have been a bit of a letdown. Ah, well -- the film has its charms, but not a real standout in our book.

---

Terror at the Red Wolf Inn (aka Terror House)

Grade: B

Much like Snowbeast, They, and (K's personal favorite) Idaho Transfer, this one has nuance and charm that put it (severed) head and shoulders above most of the uninspired box schlock we've had to muddle through.

Sweet, lonely, and a bit dense (but endearingly so), college student Regina hops a plane to the bucolic Red Wolf Inn after having "won" a trip from some mysterious letter. Along with the other guests -- a couple of sweetly airheaded young ladies ("Hi, I'm a model!" declares Pamela) -- Regina sits down with the inn's proprietors and their man-child of a grandson, Baby John, for a meal of epic proportions. And boy, do these folks know their meat.

As the models disappear one by one, it doesn't take long to figure out why the old folks don't want Regina near their meat locker -- but this turns out to be so much more than just another hack-em-to-bits cannibal flick. There's a thread of dark humor tinged (drenched, really) with the absurd, such that we could be walking along the beach -- dum-de-dum-de-dum -- and WHAM! the most bizarre romantic overture/sharkicide that we've seen to date.

Other bonuses include the music ("Pomp and Circumstance" rarely gets a chance shine outside of commencement ceremonies, and will be forever in our minds associated with delicious "filet") and the quality of the acting (Linda Gillen, as Regina, is particularly well-suited for her role). We wish we could have seen the "uncut" version, which apparently contains an additional 12 minutes of delicious, fleshy fun; however, if it's all you can get, the 78 minute version is still well worth watching.

(Almost forgot -- the train tracks show up during a late-in-the-film escape scene. . . we won't be jerks and spoil the rest.)