THE ORIGINAL DOUBLE FEATURE

THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD!

NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES w/

FEAST OF FLESH

SEE THE HORROR FEATURES FROM SOUTH OF THE BORDER THAT CHANGED THE WORLD! NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES with FEAST OF FLESH >>

VALDEZ IS COMING

1971/Director: Edwin Sherin/Writers: Roland Kibbee, David Rayfiel

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark, Frank Silvera, Jon Cypher, Richard Jordan, Barton Heyman, Hector Elizondo

I love a good western. I saw this at a cinema matinee actually when it first came out for like .35 cents if you can believe that. The film has the edgy violence a lot of action films had at the time and seems influenced not only by Sam Peckingpah but spaghetti western directors as well. In fact the film was shot in Spain using some of the same locales that Sergio Leone used for his westerns. Bob Valdez is played by Burt Lancaster and is a local constable who feels driven to collect a small amount of money to pay the widow of a man he was tricked into killing. The ruthless rancher Frank Tanner (Jon Cypher) will not hear of it and has Valdez essentially crucified. What tanner does not know is that the life weary and soft spoken Valdez was once a skilled tracker, marksman and Indian hunter and he is now pretty pissed off and is out to get even. Richard Jordan does good as the big mouth coward Davis and forgotten beauty Susan Clarke is Tanner’s wife Gay Erin who gets kidnapped by Valdez and is drug through the mountains and wilderness as Tanner’s posse pursue them and are picked off one by one with Valdez’s Sharps long rifle. All this over $100.

THE DEVIL DOLL

1964/Director: Lindsay Shonteff/Writers: Ronald Kinnoch, Frederick E. Smith

Cast: Bryant Haliday, William Sylvester, Yvonne Romain,     Sandra Dorne, Karel Stepanek, Francis De Wolff

Most ventriloquist movies, like Magic with Anthony Hopkins, have the dummy as the villain who drives the ventriloquist insane. In the not too bad Devil Doll the dummy is actually the victim and the ventriloquist the tormentor. The great Vorelli (Bryant Haliday) is not only a gifted ventriloquist but a master hypnotist as well who has earned some degree of success with a stage act. On top of all this he also dabbled in the black arts at one point in his life and learned how to transfer souls from a human body to his dummy, which he did n the case of his old assistant Hugo. A spat of murders is happening in London and American reporter Mark English (William Sylvester) soon suspects Vorelli though he always has an alibi. Vorelli becomes infatuated with rich girl Marianne Horn (Yvonne Romaine) and sets out to so some soul transferring with her but first needs to get rid of his clingy assistant and former lover Magda (Sandra Dorne). There are some spicy scenes of Dorn that revel more butt cheek than you were used to seeing in those times, especially from plump near middle aged gals. In the middle of this is the tormented dummy Hugo who has to do the bidding of Vorelli but has his revenge in the end of course. The movies is not great but, as I said, is not too bad. I saw the MST3K version and it was pretty funny. Not sure how it should stand up without the hilarious onrunning commentaries.

THE GRANNY

1995/Director: Luca Bercovici/Writers: Sam Bernard, Luca Bercovici

Cast: Stella Stevens, Shannon Whirry, Luca Bercovici, Brant von Hoffman

Granny stars former sex kitten Stella Stevens (The Nutty Professor) as an aging and rich woman whose family is hovering her like a bunch of vultures waiting to collect on her will. She is close to one of her granddaughters Kelly (Shannon Whirry) whom the rest of family ridicules and mocks. Kelly has tended compassionately to Granny in her last years and asks for and expects nothing in return. Which is good since that is what she gets later. Granny drinks an elixir of youth that was exposed to direct sunlight and thus goes bad. Rather than regaining her youth Granny turns into a demon that set abut exacting revenge on all her family members, including nice girl Kelly for some reason. The action and acting is pretty campy but this is a fun little piece of trash. The movie went to VHS pretty fast and there is ample nudity and violence to make up for the whacky script and direction. Everyone seems to playing it tongue in cheek.

WOMAN EATER

1958/Director: Charles Saunders/Writers: Brandon Fleming

Cast: George Coulouris, Robert MacKenzie, Norman Claridge, Marpessa Dawn, Jimmy Vaughn

Probably the horror sub-genre I have always had the hardest time with is the man-eating plant one. I had some of the same issues with this film but it is pretty good. The problem I have is the plant is usually immobile and some evil doctors has to continually lure victims to feed the plant. The doctor here is Dr. James Moran (George Colouris) who discovered a plant in South America that produces an elixir that will return the dead to life but the plant, naturally, must be fed a diet of beautiful girls to produce the proper serum which he finds in plentiful supply in a quit London suburb. The obligatory odd assistant is Tanga (Jimmy Vaughn) who plays bongo drums with a frenzied look on his face which hypnotizes the gals allowing the doctor to escort them to the tree of doom. Lots of complications after the doctors hires a new and attractive keeper he gets the hot for upsetting his former housekeeper and, we assume, lover. I wound up liking the film and my only complaint might be that the tree creature looks cool but in only on the screen for a total of about five minutes. Great to watch the socially inept and unattractive Dr. Moran pick up some female plant food in a pub with all the ease of a Casonova.

MOTHER OF TEARS (LA TERZA MADRE)

2007/Director: Dario Argento/Writers: Jace Anderson, Dario Argento

Cast: Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Adam James, Moran Atias, Udo Keir, Jun Ichikawa

Mother of tears is supposed to be the final part of a Dario Argento trilogy that began with Supirira and then continued with Inferno. I have Inferno but have never watched it and hope it succeeds in tying the films to together as I see no connection to Suspiria in this film yet. Aregento struggles to make a single coherent film and I have doubts about his pulling off a trilogy story that spans three decades. Asia Argento plays an American studying art restoration in Rome. She and her and her friend decide to forget the boss’s rules and they open an ancient urn and then figure reading some ancient inscriptions in the dark would be nice as well. Of course this moves the plot along as a ridiculously fast pace and w are treated to demons and a brutal death in less than ten minutes into the film. Soon Rome is plunged into a crime and suicide wave and Sarah (Asia Argento) must work alone to save the world from some sort of apocalyptic nightmare that I never quite understood. Udo Keir has a brief role as a priest and the deaths are fairly explicit. A woman tosses her baby over the railing of a bridge in one strange scene that rated a replay or two. The usual Argento confusion for the most part but filmed nicely with enough good moments to get a recommendation from me it but it is mostly for Argento fans.

All Necrofile selections are candidates for a more thorough article at a later point in time.

One of my more popular posts in terms of visits and comments has been my post on the Jimmy Page soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s film Lucifer Rising. The post contains the full soundtrack that I uploaded to a dependable site and it should be downloadable but may require a little patience and I think a full veriosn of Quicktime. If that is too much to figure out then the soundtrack is actually available on line with a little searching and here is a working Rapidshare link to get the full album. I just tested it and the link seems to be okay:

Jimmy Page’s Lucifer Rising Soundtrack at Rapidshare

I recently got a comment form reader Karl and was stunned to discover that he actually had a copy of the album and was kind enough to share some scans of the cover art and a little story of how he happen to acquire a copy. As legend has it there were only 666 copies of the blue vinyl version ever made it is a rare thing indeed. I really like this soundtrack and have listened to it in it s entirety several times. It is a very special thing to have had someone who owns a copy contact me and share he experience and now I will share it you as I posted his story below. Thanks Karl for the scans of the booklet and a picture of the actual blue vinyl itself with the label. I believe  that the album was to be played at 45 rpm and each side was about 11 minutes long. Some people online believe the existence of the album is myth and that the recordings were only recently salvaged from old tapes. I think we can put that belief to rest now.

MORE ABOUT KARL’S ACQUISITION OF JIMMY PAGES SOUNDTRACK TO LUCIFER RISING HERE >>

CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON

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.

MORE MOON MOVIES HERE >>

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (Les Yeux Sans Visage)

1960/Director: Georges Franju/Writers: Jean Redon, Pierre Boileau

Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob, François Guérin, Alexandre Rignault, Béatrice Altariba

I cannot say honestly that I have seen much French cinema. I went through a phase almost a couple decades ago where I watched a batch by the big names like Jean-Luc Goddard and Francois Truffaut but other than the Truffaut film The 400 Blows I can’t remember any of that stuff. I do now recall I saw Goddard’s Breathless and it was so much better than the remake with Richard Gere. I guess the only French filmmaker I may follow at all would be Jean Rollin. Well I had read about the film Yeux Sans Visage for a while and had had it on disk for months before I was in the mood one night for some Euro-fare. I did not expect too much going into the film other than maybe some nice black and white cinematography and loads of spacey acting. I am happy to report that I was surprised by this film and it deserves the praises it normally receives in reviews. The cinematography was great as was the score by Maurice Jarre and the acting was down to earth and believable. I mean, for a French film. I am not into the European ‘existential’ school of depressed method acting. For example like Catherine Deneuve in Polanksi’s Repulsion. Damn, I can’t finish that film no matter how hard I try. I guess depression is scary. I mean just watch Woody Allen’s Interiors. That’s some scary stuff!

MORE EYES WITHOUT A FACE HERE >>

The only movie from this assortment of posters I have actually seen is the Takashi Miike film Imprint which I reviewed way back in the early days of the Café. Technically it is not even really an actual Asian film as it was made for the English language Showtime series Masters of Horror. But I love the design and like Miike’s work in a general way and a poster showing a Japanese girl with pins jammed through her face is about as Asian as you can get. I love the artwork on these posters. Even on the cheesy schoolgirl vs. zombie stuff from Japan. It can truly be said that in Asian film the posters are typically much better than the actual movie. I am not a fan, for example, of the technically well made South Korean schoolgirl/ghost films that are so popular here in China with students. But the poster art is usually great and spooky. I just don’t see what is scary about a ghostly young girl or child staring through its hair at you but it sends people up the walls here. I have seen my fair share of modern Asian horror (Japanese horror in particular) and the reason I watch the stuff is I am lured in by the promising poster art. The Japanese and South Korean posters are simply nice looking pieces or art and make great desktop wallpapers. Just hope a day comes when most of the films can half way live up to the promises these eerie and haunting posters make.

SEE MORE CREEPY ASIAN POSTERS HERE >>

A while back I uploaded and posted the entire album for the obscure but great rock opera album Flash Fearless vs the Zorg Women Parts 5 & 6 which featured people like Alice Cooper, John Entwistle, Elkie Brooks and Jim Dandy. The album was a spoof of sorts of the old Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon comic strips with an overt sexual theme running through it. A Uranium Café reader, Keith Firman, was generous enough to take the time and energy to share the comic book that came with some releases of the album. The Chrysalis releases I had owned in a couple different version never had a comic book on in the inside. The scans were pretty good but some of the text is a little blurry as I had to resize the files a bit. Sorry. It was the best I could do. The panels where the text is super tiny actually are showing the song lyrics. Should not effect any story continuity.This thing is really hard to come across and I have not yet seen scans of it online. If you are not familiar with the album check it out free here at the Café and maybe the Rapidshare on the post link is still good if you want to download all of it. Again, thanks to Uraniumphile Keith for these. I do not get many comments here at the Café but what I lack in quantity I make up for in quality from my dedicated readers.

SEE THE ENTIRE FLASH FEARLESS COMIC BOOK HERE >>