Witch Deflectors On Stun!

Set your Witch Deflectors on stun as we progress through two vintage movies with reincarnation and black magic at their core.

Witchcraft is a reasonably interesting black and white B-movie. Made in Britain, it has the reserve you normally associate with flicks of that era and that location. That restraint makes the movie more effective than it probably should be given the absolute nature of the story itself which is pretty shaky in several places. Atmosphere is key to a good horror movie and this one is at least good most of the time.

It "stars" Lon Chaney in what is called in some quarters his last actual acting role, but don't look for a lot of Lon as the producers keep him out of sight save for the beginning and end of the movie -- not a bad move really. The tale begins before the start of the movie itself, three centuries before when a woman named Vanessa Whitlock was accused of witchcraft but not burned, merely buried alive. Now centuries later with urban renewal on the move, her grave is opened and she wanders the Earth seeking vengeance against the descendants of the Lanier family which put her in the ground.

The witch herself is pretty ghastly, played very successfully by Yvette Rees and with virtually no dialogue; she shows up just enough to keep you mindful of her mission and some of the appearances are very effective. While she gambols through the shadows though, the members of the Laniers she seeks to kill fend off the threat with some meager effectiveness, but the ultimate victory is made by dint of physical courage if not smarts. I will say at least one person in this movie gets it, because when she learns of the threat she tries to leave immediately -- it doesn't go as planned but at least she tried.

By the end of the movie Witchcraft you are ready for it to be over, but while the trip is uneven it's by and large worth it.

Devils of Darkness is in glorious color, and truth told makes decent use of the vibrant hues. We meet a gypsy girl named Tania (played by the beautiful Carole Gray) on her wedding day, though she is destined to become the bride of a vampire named Sinistre (Hubert Noel). Centuries later our main story begins in the same village when British tourists led by a stalwart named Baxter (William Sylvester) run afoul of the locals and their dark customs and the same vampire.

The sole survivor of the group (Sylvester of course) returns to London to seek answers and is followed by the evil forces because he has taken a pendant deemed crucial to the vampire lord. Eventually we meet our main female lead, a sultry and gorgeous redhead (Tracey Reed) who becomes snared in the vampire's plans to get himself a new bride which unsurprisingly rankles the current undead spouse.

There is quite a lot of blather and some intriguing glimpses of what passed for mid-60's pop culture in this movie, but by and large and despite its tendency to not deliver on the anticipated, it ends up doing pretty much just that in the final analysis. 

These are two acceptable horror flicks, worth the time it takes to watch them, but just. The movie are diverting but rarely compelling though littered with solid acting. I have to give tepid recommendations, but hardly would one be a lesser individual if you gave them a miss.

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A Freezing Horror!

The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues is a professionally made movie with credible actors and sets and exactly one row boat.

The movie stars Kent Taylor as a sleuthing oceanographer who is investigating mysterious deaths in an amazingly accessible cove and discovers almost immediately a "sea serpent" guarding a bright light which he surmises is radium. He then follows a rather complicated but not necessarily complex web of intrigue involving another sea-going professor (Michael Whalen), his treasonous assistant (Phillip Pine), a femme fatale spy (Helene Stanton), and a sneaky secretary with a grudge (Vivi Janiss). Add in an FBI gumshoe (Rodney Bell) and a pretty daughter (Cathy Downs) good for the dating and you have the makings of a soap opera masquerading as a totally average science fiction flick.

The "sea serpent" created by the professor using radiation was actually the special effects creation of Paul Blaisdell and looks like what it is, a cheaper knock off of the superb Creature from the Black Lagoon. I hasten to point out that he doesn't look like the poster much at all, but rather like some Aztec statue come to life waddling around in the seaweed waiting for hapless scuba divers to swim by, which they all seem to do. What attracts these folks to this apparently random spot in the ocean is not really clear, but they all paddle out to it and in a few moments encounter the beast and some fatally.

What's really funny is that all seem to use the same boat. This movie makes the most use of a single row boat that I've ever seen, or am likely to see. By my memory count it passes for at least four different boats in the movie though its never changed in its appearance. It makes the trek out into the sea six times and the durable little bugger always makes it back despite being capsized twice.

The driving motivation of this movie is that the government wants to put a lid on unlicensed and dangerous radiation experiments which have yielded death rays. We get to see this theoretical "death ray" at work just once in the movie with some very nicely blended stock footage of an exploding ship which happens to float right over the top of it. While our hero is doing his duty he is also putting the moves on a most comely wench, the daughter of the slightly obsessed professor. Quite a bit of screen time is taken up with them ogling one another but little seems to come of it, at least as far as this story goes.

The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues is a harmless and smooth effort, but lacks much in the way of verve or punch.

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An Unspeakable Horror!

The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes! is an absolute train wreck of a movie, but like the proverbial train wreck it's a disaster you somehow weirdly cannot take your eyes off. The film making here is amazingly bad, with scene after scene clearly shot sans sound and sometimes random dialogue added later to latch the scene into the greater narrative (such as it is), The actors are both professional and seemingly amateur but all are desperately over the top chewing on overwritten lines which showcase the lack of experience of the script writer.

The scenario is a pretty simple one. An amorphous alien descends to Earth in a remote desert in the United States and begins to annoy a local farmer and his fragmented family by infecting the animals with irrational behavior. The birds, the pet dog, and a even a milk cow all go on rampages (of a sort) until finally the alien is able to grab the mind of the mute handyman called "Him" (Leonard Tarver) through out most of the movie but whose real name is revealed to be Carl. His shambling bulk is what passes for a threat in many moments of this movie as he seems fascinated with the teenage daughter of his benefactor and employer. The early scene where he climbs a tree to watch her swim tops out the creep meter despite the farmer's constant retort that "Him" is harmless.

Actually this movie feels more assembled than written, as if they shot a bunch of random scenes and then looked at them and attempted to derive a story from them. Given the microscopic budget this flick seems to have had that's not surprising.

This is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but what it is is weirdly fascinating in its bizzare tumbling along fashion. Paul Birch as the dad is at times thoughtful and at times royally dickish. His wife played by Lorna Thayer is an absolute shrew in the beginning but grows more sympathetic as the story unfolds and she learns to not be jealous of her pretty young daughter. The daughter played by Donna Cole is a pretty basic actress, delivering lines with limited skill but wandering in and out of scenes with harmless agility. Her boyfriend played by a very young Dick Sargent serves as a foil in the movie showing when needed and then disappearing when not. Chester Conklin, a vintage silent screen actor shows up as a friendly neighbor with cow troubles and adds a bit of color to a movie which seems relentless in its trudge to the end.

The "Beast" itself does not actually show up until the final moments but thanks to the skills of Paul Blaisdell brought in at the last moment for tiny money we do get an actual beastie, though a pretty pitiful one after all. The original notion was that the alien was "unseen", the first title of the movie, but while that's clever film making, it's also rather unsatisfying. Monster movies need monsters in the end, no matter how lame. 

The word that came to mind watching this movie was "hapless". It is a harmless diversion graced with an above average poster which fulfills its pledge of being a science fiction movie...barely. 

The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes shared a Midnite Movies Double Feature dvd with The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues. I'll have a look at that flick next time.

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The Earth Dies Yawning!

We've been having some snow days lately and to fill the hours I chanced upon some cheapo double bill "Midnite Movies" at a local Family Dollar Store and thought I'd give them a screening. I'll be reviewing these sometimes quite diverting time-killers throughout the week.

The first one I unwrapped and viewed was a vintage British effort title The Earth Dies Screaming. Despite being directed by the respected Terence Fischer this one dawdles, though it does so with no small amount of inept charm.

The premise is a pretty good one. We see lots of people collapse, seemingly die and we watch the requisite disasters which follow as trains wreck, planes crash, and cars careen into walls. Then we see an eerie quiet English village littered with inert human bodies, the victims we are to assume of some sort of gas attack. Among this comes a stranger who stalks through the town and gets himself a radio and heads to the local inn where he begins to test it out but gets no reception. He is joined swiftly by a man and woman who themselves know little of what is going on but seem a bit suspicious. Within minutes two more couples arrive, two headed back from a party and a young married couple who are expecting a child any moment.

This collection of humanity then proceeds to talk. Then they talk some more, but the talking is stopped when mysterious figures in space suits wander down the street. One of the women in the group who panics runs out to the figures but is struck down when one turns and reveals itself to be an alien perhaps even a robot.
The men shoot and shoot at the figures but they are unharmed and wander away. Then more talking as the group shacks up for the night keeping watch in some rather illogical ways. During the night the freshly dead woman awakes and wanders down and is killed again for her trouble.

The introduction of potential zombies gives this story a real shot in the arm as suddenly all the bodies which still litter the streets have become potential threats, but alas the movie makes no use of this possibility, though a few more "zombies" do show up from inside the inn. The threat of slow-moving zombies is in numbers and this movie never gets enough up and ambling to offer any significant threat.

The Earth Dies Screaming clocks in at just over an hour and frankly that's a good thing. The movie does outstay its welcome and the characters despite doing all sorts of stupid things remain sufficiently entertaining to get you through to the end. The finale is pretty contrived but that's to be expected.

This movie isn't really good, but it is diverting. And sometimes that's sufficient.

I watched The Earth Dies Screaming on this Midnite Movies Double Feature dvd. The second feature on it is a dreadful 1980's effort titled Chosen Survivors. It's a huge waste of time about a bunch of hapless losers trapped in an underground bunker during a supposed atomic attack who share their sanctuary with vampire bats. Just awful and not worth a full review.

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Mainlining Two - In Love!

In Love by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby is arguably the most successful of the the Mainline Comics they created during the brief but brilliant time the duo tried to make a go with their own conic book brand.

Simon and Kirby had given birth to the romance comic genre with the creation of the properly named Young Romance for Crestwood Publications.

Although some look to an even earlier Simon and Kirby comic book for Hillman Publications called My Date as the original. 

Seeking to strike out on their own at long last, they came up with In Love, a new title in the (at the time) very lucrative romance genre.

In Love ran for four issues in late 1954 and early 1955 before Mainline went under.

Charlton Comics were on the spot to snap up the unpublished material and put out two issues of their own in 1955.

The title was changed with the seventh issue to I Love You, but as you can see the alteration still retained the general shape and character of the original Simon and Kirby logo.

That remained the case for many years until with issue seventy-nine published in 1969 where they put a nifty oval around the title. Reminds of what DC had done some years before to Batman's chest symbol.

The logo was altered again in 1971.

And again in 1975.

And yet again only a few months later in 1976.

But the comic itself only lasted one more issue, the run coming to a close with the one hundred and twenty-first issue in 1976.

Of all the Mainline Comics, this title lasted the longest and remained true to its original genre, though doubtless the girls who bought the book during most of its long run knew little and cared less about the famous creators who kicked it all off so many decades before.

More Mainline next week.

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Captain Nice!

Jack Kirby really knocked himself out on this promotional poster for NBC's 1967 super-heroic spoof show Captain Nice. The art here promises so much more than the show can ever deliver alas. The show was a project by Buck Henry in the Get Smart tradition, but lasted only a single season.

There was one comic book featuring a photo of star William Daniels as Captain Nice. I think I might have a rubbish copy of this around here somewhere, but I'd be exceedingly hard-pressed to find it.

Here's a glimpse of the back over of that single comic.

Here is the splash page for the first story advertised on the cover, and you can go here to read the whole thing.

Here is the splash to the last story in the issue and you can go here to read all of it.

This is a glimpse of a novel which was produced to coincide with the show, showcasing the same photo of Daniels in all his Captain Nice glory.

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The Zodiac Thriller!

Above is an exceedingly cool Gold Key cover by George Wilson for a one-shot comic featuring the Gerry Anderson puppet adventure Fireball XL5. This cool 60's show is available again for relatively small money and I snapped up a copy which arrived on my doorstep yesterday.

In an effort to get fired up for watching this cool black and white classic space adventure series, I found this online presentation of the Gold Key comic at "The Secret Sanctum of Captain Video" (run by friend of the Dojo Britt Reid) by writer Paul S. Newman and artist Ray Bailey. One source identifies the artist though as Mel Crawford -- I can't tell. Give it a look. There's a ton of neat facts and even a glimpse of the vintage show itself.

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