NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES

(LA TERRIFICANTE BESTIA HUMANA)

1969/Director: René Cardona/Writer: René Cardona, René Cardona Jr.

Cast: Armando Silvestre, Norma Lazareno, José Elías Moreno, Carlos López Moctezuma,  Agustín Martínez Solares

Also Known As:

Gomar: The Human Gorilla
Horror and Sex
Horror y sexo (racier version)

Before finally getting around to seeing Night of the Bloody Apes aka La Horripilante/Terricante Bestia Humana/The Horrible Man Beast, Horror y Sexo/Horror and Sex and Gomar: the Human Gorilla,  I was only aware of Rene Cardona’s work as the director of genre Mexican Wrestling films. Those type of films are built around the lucha libre culture of Mexico where wrestling is pretty serious business. Usually the wrestlers appear in some sort of mask though not all of the time. Cardona directed some of the better Santos films (redubbed and released in the States as Samson by K. Gordon Murray) and some Wrestling women films. In fact Night of the Bloody Apes is a loose remake of one of his earlier films Doctor of Doom (Las Luchadoras Contra el Médico Asesino) which is also known as Rock ‘N Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape.  Actually the ape creature in Doctor of Doom was called Gomar but I do not recall the creature being called that in Night of the Bloody Apes so I am not sure why the film is also called Gomar: The Human Gorilla. Seems Doctor of Doom would have also been known under that title. So anyway, if you have not gathered Night of the Bloody Apes is a horror film, but is also a wrestling film and the star wrestler is the cute and shapely luchadoras (female wrestler) Lucy who wears a bright red devil girl outfit and for some reasons when she appears in the ring looks twenty or thirty pounds heavier. Read the rest of this entry »

TODAY’S FEATURE: RUSS MEYER’S

FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!

SEE TURA SATANA KICK ASS IN FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL, KILL! HERE >>

DRACULA vs FRANKENSTEIN

1971/Director: Al Adamson/Writers: William Pugsley, Samuel M. Sherman

Cast: J. Carrol Naish, Lon Chaney Jr., Anthony Eisley, Regina Carrol, Zandor Vorkov, Angelo Rossitto, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Davis, John Bloom, Forrest J Ackerman

AKA (so you don’t buy or download this one twice)
Blood Freaks (working title)
Blood of Frankenstein
Satan’s Bloody Freaks
Teenage Dracula
The Blood Seekers
The Revenge of Dracula

Dracula vs Frankenstein is certainly one of Al Adamson’s more memorable offerings. Released by his and partner’s Sam Sherman’s Independent-International Pictures company in 1971 the movie is a “high point” for Adamson’s technique of joining together previous films projects and in some cases (as with the utterly bizarre Horror of the Blood Monster) inserting unrelated film footage from other  films entirely. With Dracula vs Frankentstein the effect is a little more cohesive than he is usually given credit for though the story and production are pretty shoddy in typical Adamson style. I am saying that as an Adamson/Sherman production it is one of the better projects. The movie is entertaining enough in a midnight movie way and is lots of fun for fans of bad movies though others would be well advised to stir clear of this debacle.

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JOHN PAUL JONES’ SOUNDTRACK TO

SCREAM FOR HELP

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PSYCHO A GO-GO

1965/Director: Al Adamson/Writers: Mark Eden, Chris Martino

Cast: Roy Morton, Tacey Robbins, Nadine Arlyn, John Armond, Joey Benson, Johnnie Decker, Kirk Duncan

Al Adamson is one of those filmmakers who divide the masses. In this case he divides not the masses of main stream movie goers from the purveyors of b-movies and fringe indie-films, but divides the very schlock movie crowd itself. Even lovers of “bad cinema” find Adamson’s work to be intolerable. Now before I continue I should make clear, as I have done before with films like The Creeping Terror, that while I put this film into my bad movies to avoid category I can still recommend it to the elect few. When I say avoid this film I am speaking here of course to the bulk of mankind who did not grow up in the shadow of a leaky nuclear power plant. There are of course those of the cognoscenti who spend a lot of time searching for these oddities in the back of small video/DVD stores or online in eclectic BT sites. I have to admit that I fall into this category of masochistic film viewers who wants to not avoid the works of people like Al Adamson but wants to see as many as I can. That being said, if you do not fall into this category you are well advised to steer clear of Psycho A Go-Go, and most certainly clear of this Double Feature’s second feature, Manos: The Hands of Fate.
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Saw a meme posted over at Gilligan’s Retrospace and it looked a little interesting. Let me first post the rules:

1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

So there you have it. I did not see anyone getting tagged and I usually do not do that anyway since the few people I stay in touch with are all tagged by the time a meme gets to me or I see it. If you like it do it. I am not going to tag anybody. The person who originated the meme is Darius Whiteplume over at Adventures in Nerdliness.

I certainly felt like cheating at first but I stuck to the rules and came up with this odd album cover. The  complete actual random hit I got at Wikipedia was Karashiki Sakuyo University, but I do not feel I am bending the rules much to turn the University word into the letter U as it is a common enough thing to do. The 4th picture I got at Flicker was some cute Japanese girl making a silly face and it certainly seemed  at first to match the Japanese name I got at Wikipedia but, again, I did not cheat and used the 3rd image. The last few words of the quote frustrated me as well and I almostdid the whole thing all over, but after I put it all together in Image Ready and added the papyrus font it looked like some New Age album with lush synths and drones and suddenly the quote even seemed to make a great title. The name could either be a band or solo performer. Some tunes to absorb in a lotus position with some mild herb tea and your magic crystals near by in their little medicine bag. Om.

This is my original small tribute (8 Nov 08) to actor/comedian Willie Best who I knew very little of until I did a post on the film The Monster Walks. I was really pissed off that he had no grave marker and my  humble post it seems launched the great folks at Celluloid Slammer into action and they took care of the problem in grand fashion. All credit goes to them but I am happy I was some small part.

There was a time when black actors in Hollywood actually had names like G. Howe Black and Stephin Fectchit. Especially prior to the 1960’s it would hard to point to a black actor who ever had a significant role in any motion picture. Among the actors who possessed genuine talent but never had the chance to show was Willie Best, who was billed under one of the most denigrating of all names in movie history. As unbelievable as it may sound he was cast for many years simply as Sleep ‘n Eat. While a talented actor and comedian, as well as musician and song writer, Best is sadly remembered for his myriad portrayals as lazy, simple minded and cowardly porters, servants and janitors. The lazily drawled line “yussuh”, expressed with drooped mouth and half awake eyes, can be traced back to many of Best’s characters. They are not necessarily by any stretch the roles Best would have wanted to portray, but as he stoically confessed in a 1934 interview, “ I often think about these roles I have to play. Most of them are pretty broad. Sometimes I tell the director and he cuts out the real bad parts… But what’s an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out.”

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