SEE TODAY’S STUNNING SCI-FI DOUBLE FEATURE RIGHT HERE FOLKS >>
1953/ Director: Arthur Hilton/ Writers: Al Zimbalist, Jack Rabin
Cast: Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory, Marie Windsor, William Phipps, Douglas Fowley, Carol Brewster, Susan Morrow, Suzanne Alexander
For this double feature I decided to write about two pretty good old time sci-fi flicks that are almost identical in their storylines. I even fear I am going to accidentally muddle the two together if I am not careful and wonder now if just one review for both films would suffice. But there are a couple differences that make these two moon mission films unique from one another. The theme is a familiar one for the 50’s and 60’s. A group of men, with maybe one female in the gang, are stranded somewhere, an island, lost civilization on the far side of a secret mountain or a planet like Venus or even the earth’s moon, and there they encounter an all female race of something similar to Amazons. The race may or may not be dying off and what men there are, if any, are kept as slaves and the occasional stud service. Some similar films would be Abbot and Costello Go To Mars (they actually went to Venus in the film) Invasion of the Star Creatures, The wild Women of Wongo, Mesa of Lost Women and quite a few others. The plots are usually the same and some recurring themes would be a young and cocky guy who is fast with the wisecracks who feels he has died and gone to heaven and hits on anything that breathes, a greedy opportunist who wants to pilfer the wealth the Amazon type women horde and a romance between the queen and the group leader. The virility of the male leader awakens feelings in the queen she has not felt in a long time and clouds her better judgment which usually dictates she execute all the outsiders. There is usually a power struggle as well within the female society between the old school led by the queen and a group of usurpers who are simply wanting for the right moment to strike, such as when the queen is weakened by her feelings of love for a big hunk of man. Both Cat-Women of the Moon and Missile to the Moon contains almost all of these essential ingredients and despite being cheese fare they are actually well made and enjoyable movies.
2007/Director: Pearry Reginald Teo/Writers: Keith Collea, Pearry Reginald Teo
Cast: Ling Bai, Alec Newman, Parry Shen, Faye Dunaway, Ethan Cohn
The Gene Generation with Chinese actress Bai Ling (or Ling Bai as it sometimes appears if you put the family name first) is one of those films that definitely falls into the category of it ‘could have been better’. The movie is not a waste of time and as the Café has evolved from its early posts I have taken a rather neutral position on most of the films I write about and I do not feel I actually recommend or pan films. I will leave that up to the reader to decide. While I cannot say I liked The Gene Generation all that much it seems to earn a post here not so much for the erratic storyline and touch and go production quality of the film itself but for the presence of lanky and luscious Bai Ling. Before talking about, and hopefully defending, the sometimes (actually usually) maligned Bai Ling I think I will say a word about my blogging process and why sometimes it is a drawback for me.
One problem I have is that I watch simply more movies than I can do decent posts on. I am not the type of person who wants to review every movie right after I watch it, like better reviewers do I suppose. I started the Necrofiles category which is a way to skim over four or so movies at a time with comments of a brief paragraph or two at most. I work as an ESL teacher in China and the job, as well as life here at times, is draining. I may have the time to write but not the mental energy. I think over the last year I have begun to develop a writing style I like a little. I like to create a post that draws information from different sources on the net, as well as my own personal opinion, and brings them together in one place with images I either find online or make myself in the form of vidcaps, some that are pretty decent. The first thing I do when I decide to write about a film is find articles I like and make them into PDFs for future reference, get cast and crew info from IMDB or a similar site and then start collecting images and then they are all brought together in a rough form and stored as a nearly complete draft that I may save for months sometimes before I get around to writing the article. I must have over a dozen drafts now that have are laid out with images and cast/crew info but no written article. During that time of course I am watching more movies of a Uranium nature as well as mainstream films and sometimes doing posts as well on something I just watched.
1967/Director: Michael Reeves/ Writers: Michael Reeves, Tom Baker
Cast: Boris Karloff, Cahterine Lacey, Elizabeth Ercy, Ian Ogilvy, Victor Henry, Sally Sheridan, Susan George
Michael Reeves was an aspiring and ambitious young British director who only directed three films before his untimely death at the age of twenty-five by barbiturate overdose. It has never been assumed his death was a suicide and that he simply took a little too much of the strong medications (often over prescribed in the 60’s) to alleviate his depression and anxiety. His first film is nothing too fancy and often people assume that The Sorcerers was his first project. He actually filmed the low budget Italian horror film Revenge of the Blood Beast (La Sorella di Satana) in 1965 which featured the British actress Barbara Steele who was working in Italy at the time. His last film is considered not only his best but one of the best British horror films of the period, The Witchfinder General. AIP insisted that the film feature Vincent Price and legend has it that Reeves was none too impressed with Price’s trademark overacting and the two were often in heated debate as to the proper interpretation of Price’s Matthew Hopkins character. At one point Price became so infuriated with Reeves’ criticisms that he pronounced “Young man I have made 84 films. What have you done?” to which Reeves replied “I have made two good ones”. In the end Price was to come around to Reeves’ point of view and was more than pleased with the finished product and the two became and the two would work together on The Oblong Box though Reeves’ directorial involvement was cut short due to his premature death.
MORE OF THE SORCERERS WITH BORIS KARLOFF, INCLUDING TRAILER, HERE >>
1968/Director: Ted V. Mikels/Writers: Ted V. Mikels, Wayne Rogers
Cast: Wendell Corey, John Carradine, Tom Pace, Joan Patrick, Tura Satana, Rafael Campos, Joe Hoover
I have to admit that I have been on a real super B-movie or Z-grade film roll for a long while. God knows I watch more of this stuff lately than I can keep up with as far as posting goes. I may soon be shifting gears for a couple posts and do some posts on some other films I have seen lately, like Mr. Majestyk with Charles Bronson, or the Getaway with Steve McQueen or a Japanese film like Woman of the Dunes or Onibaba. For a while comic book and music posts are on the back burner simply because they take a lot of work and I am not sure that that is what people come here for. It is also easy for me to do b-movie posts because I simply love these old B-movies and love writing about them and promoting them. And few Z-grade films have a more special place for me than Ted V. Mikels’ bewildering The Astro-Zombies (sometimes listed as simply Astro Zombies. The poster art says Astro Zombies or Astro-Zombies-with hyphen- while the opening credits say The Astro-Zombies). I picked this up long ago on VHS and saw it a couple times and really knew little about it other than who John Carradine and Tura Satana were. I will have to admit that this film is not fort everyone, but I love it. Yes, there is tons of padding and wasted opportunities. I feel Tura Satana is not used on screen enough and John Carradine is fun as yet another mad scientist but spends too much time tweaking equipment and babbling pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo to his mute and imbecilic henchman and not enough time really being insane and misguided.
But the film is ultimately good and unintentionally campy fun for the super cheese cognoscenti and the dialog is priceless. Whether or not the film was actually intended to be campy or not is a topic for debate I suppose. The dialog is all the more an oddity because the script was co-written by Wayne Rogers, Trapper John from TV’s M*A*S*H. Roger’s was also co-producer and a lot of the property used in the film belonged to him. The film is torn to shreds usually in sites online that I always thought were supposed to pander this stuff. It is a bad film and going into the movie with that knowledge will not make it any better. If you are not a fan of really bad cinema then steer clear. But if you are the type who love seeing greasy haired, stooped over henchmen torment tied up girls in bikinis for no explainable reason, or monsters that consist of phony looking rubber masks with no expression and all of it topped off with the zaniest dialog ever then you will enjoy the time wasted with this grimy jewel. Ted V. Mikels is still alive and working and I read on his website that is actually planning an Astro-Zombies “part III”, to follow the 2002 straight to DVD release Mark of the Astro-Zombies, which starred Tura Satana. This will not be the only film Mikels film to be featured here at the Café. Coming eventually: The Doll Squad (again with Tura Satana), Blood Orgy of the She Devils, and The Corpse Grinders. You have been informed, or warned depending on your personal tastes.
ENTER HERE TO SEE ASTRO ZOMBIES IN ITS ENTIRETY ALONG WITH TRAILER >>
1966/ Director: Alan Rafkin/Writers: James Fritzell, Everett Greenbaum
Cast: Don Knotts, Joan Staley, Liam Redmond, Dick Sargent, Skip Homeier, Reta Shaw, Bert Mustin
Sometimes we all have a certain movie in our lives that holds a special place. A link to fond memories and long forgotten times. When it comes down to it I am a sentimental sap. For me The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with the fidget king Don Knotts is one of those films. The 1966 Universal film had already been out for some time before I began catching it late night on old network TV. If you’re too young that means no cable or VCR. The image was adjusted by “rabbit ear” antennae that usually had strips of tin foil at the top to secure a slightly better image. The film, as I recall, played annually as part of a Halloween program and I had to stay up past midnight usually to catch it. No problem for me as I seem to be nocturnal by design. Knotts of course is best remembered for his role as the quirky and nervous though tough talking and big hearted Barney Fife from the Andy Griffith show. He won some Emmy’s for his performance on the show and after five successful seasons he went on to continue making “big pictures” after the successful The Amazing Mr. Limpit in 1964. The story here, from an interview with Knotts, seems to be that he was under the impression that The Andy Grittith show was to end after five seasons and Griffith seemed to be of the same idea. Knotts secured a contract with Universal only to find Griffith had decided to continue on with the show and offered Knotts to continue. Of course it was too late and he would return now and then to reprise his role as the shaky Barney. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is supposedly derived, at Knotts suggestion, from an episode of The Andy Griffith Show called the Haunted House where Barney and Gomer go to retrieve Opie’s lost ball on the grounds of a haunted house in Mayberry.
1963/Director: Robert Hutton/Writers: Blair Robertson, Vance Skarstedt
Cast: Robert Hutton, Les Tremayne, Robert Burton, Susan Hart, William Boyce, Judee Morton, John Close
Bad acting. terrible dialog, inane plot. These are the qualities that make 1963’s The Slime People the type of film that either gives the viewer a fun and rollicking evening of cheesy pleasure or causes him to lose what little faith he still clung to in the human race as a species worthy of dominating the planet. I, for better or worse, fall into the former category and have to admit I have been looking for a good copy of this online for a couple years now after having rented it on VHS ages ago and still recall how unbelievable the viewing experience was. First of all I should offer some defense of this movie to the rest of society before trying to pander it to the more selective and discerning Uranium Café film crowd. The movie was shot on a very low budget and the actors – with the exceptions of lead man and director Robert Hutton and B-Movie staples Les Tramanye and Robert Burton – were all basically unknowns, and thankfully remained unknowns afterwards except for tertiary supporting roles. It was Hutton’s only directing attempt in a long and essentially tormented acting career that in the end saw him shunned because of his extremely conservative political views and finally crippled from a broken back. The actors don’t seem to be taking anything too seriously here and that adds to the film’s enjoyment rather than diminishes it. Lastly the monster are not really too bad for your standard man in a suit fare. I have seen much worse and the modern man-in-a-suit monsters in John Gulager’s Feast trilogy don’t look much better. Like a lot of films from the period where budgets were limited the film relies heavily on dialog and scientific explanations to fill in time. Luckily the dialog here is not of the so bad it is unlistenable variety but rather of the so bad it is amusing and entertaining type.
1966/Director: Curtis Harrington/Writer: Curtis Harrington
Cast: John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Judi Meredith, Dennis Hopper, Florence Marly, Forrest J Ackerman
ALSO KNOWN AS:
Flight to a Far Planet
Planet of Blood
Planet of Terror
Planet of Vampires
Space Vampires
The Green Woman
At first I was a little disappointed when I read that some of the stylistic and stunning space scenes from Curtis Harrington’s 1966 Queen of Blood were taken from a couple Russian sci-fi films made a couple years earlier, one being Meshte Nastreshu (1963) and the other Nebo Zovyot (1960). I have never seen either film and understand they are pretty hard to locate in stores or online, though Nebo Zovyot was released in some sort of edited fashion by producer Roger Corman and then fledgling director Francis Ford Coppola. But I cannot find that version of the film either. Harrington as well was working for Corman as an upcoming director and writer when Queen of Blood was released and the copy/paste type technique of filmmaking, “borrowing” scenes from obscure, foreign films, was a common practice for films produced by Corman at AIP at the time. Other filmmakers, some mentioned here at the Café like Al Adamson, also used this technique in patching together film projects. Adamson often pieced together fragments and sections of his own films made over a period of years but sometimes, as with Horror of the Blood Monsters, did something similar as was done by Harrington and Corman with Queen Blood, and used footage from an unknown Filipino film. The difference is that Horror of the Blood Monsters looks like crap basically and Queen of Blood appears almost seamless in the way the films merge together. I admit that while watching it, before reading any reviews which is how I usually watch films and avoid sites like my own brimming over with spoilers, I noticed a few odd moments but never thought I was seeing more than one film. I think the film looks marvelous really and the sets have that stylized science fiction look and feel of the sci-fi pulp paperback covers of the period.
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