May 24th, 2015 - The Devil's Partner (1958)

Devil's Partner had a little more teeth than I expected from a 1958 "pact with the devil" film. I mean, it's maybe a hard-PG by today's standards, but still - there's implied goat sacrifices and writing contracts in blood. So I was pleasantly surprised by that. Also a surprise? The movie being a notch or two above average. My last 50 Tales of Terror jam (Curse of the Headless Horseman) was effing terrible, so I was feeling a little down on the set. While Devil's Partner isn't a must see by any means, it's a decent enough watch if you're looking for some 50's style horror fun.

Our film starts with a guy named Pete Jensen - a Grizzly Adams-looking dude in an old, rundown shack. He's getting set for a little goat slaughter, which you see only in silhouette. He writes out a contract in blood, and draws a hexagon in blood on the floor. (A replacement for the pentagram, which either wasn't known or wasn't accepted by the public at the time. But the hexagon still must have been kind of exotic, as one character (the cop, even!) describes it as being "like a square, but with six sides." Ha!) Anyways, the cops find his body (we don't see this), bury him, and a few days later his "nephew" Nick shows up in town. Nick is "saddened" to learn that his uncle is not only dead, but was also particularly disliked in town for being a crotchety old man. But it's pretty obvious from the get go that Nick is just Pete reincarnated. They don't really even try to hide it.

May 18th, 2015 - Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972)

I think this is my first proper headless horseman flick. Not just of this movie-a-day marathon - ever. I never saw the Depp one, and honestly, I think my most vibrant memory of the character is from an old Scooby-Doo episode (I think he's running with Scrappy and Scooby Dum in that one). Anyways, Curse of the Headless Horseman is not only a terrible introduction to the character, it's also a terrible movie, period. And oddly enough, it feels like a Scooby Doo episode at times - just with annoying drug addled hippies instead of... whatever Mystery Inc. was. Which sounds like it could be cool. But it's not.

It's about this doctor guy who inherits a ranch from his uncle. But there's a catch - if he can't turn it around and make it profitable in six months, the ownership of the property will go back to Solomon, the hilariously creepy caretaker. What is never mentioned (but you end up inferring) is that this isn't the kind of ranch where you raise cattle or anything - it's a tourist trap where they do annoying old-west style stage shows/recreations of gunfights or whatever. The doctor and his group of hippie friends clean the place up - you never see them do it but you assume that's the case, since that's what would normally happen in a narrative like this - and open it up for business.

May 2nd, 2015 - The Phantom Creeps (1939)

I had a passing familiarity with The Phantom Creeps based on its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000 - it was presented as a series of shorts in the earlier seasons of the show. (And I guess it *was* originally a 12 part serial, but here it's stitched together as one film.) I remember certain things - the freaky robot, the fake spiders - but didn't really have an appreciation for Bela Lugosi at the time. So I was glad to get the chance to see it as an uncut film, courtesy of the 50 Tales of Terror budget set. And honestly, it's kind of fun. Lugosi is pretty classic as mad scientist (hard to believe, I know) Dr. Alex Zorka. He gets a lot of power-mad dialogue and just seems really committed to the role. Don't get me wrong - The Phantom Creeps is no classic - it's pretty cheesy and kind of feels like fluff, but it passes the time okay.

The element Zorka has discovered can do just about anything - from making a death ray to incision-free surgery - although he seems most proud of the fact that it can put anyone in a state of suspended animation. He does this by putting a little cracker on a person (coated with the element), and then has a spider thing - the titular creep, which is attracted by the element - crawl to it. So you get a lot of comically fake spiders the size of tennis balls crawling around, which is nice. When the spider gets to the wafer.... BOOM! A little smoke and the person goes into a coma. It sounds pretty stupid... and it is. But that gives you a general idea of the science in The Phantom Creeps, and you just have to roll with it.

May 1st - Crimes at the Dark House (1940)

Crimes at the Dark House is another film from the 50 Tales of Terror budget set featuring the one and only Tod Slaughter. And much like The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, it's an above average story elevated even further by Slaughter's over the top performance. The man just knows how to be a good bad guy, and luckily the filmmakers of the era knew it. It's not all that common to see the villain as the main character, but it's par for the course when he's around.

Our story starts with the scoundrel Slaughter sneaking into a tent and brutally murdering Sir Percival Glyde. It's certainly not a gory death, but conceptually it's pretty nasty - he hammers a spike into his ear while he's sleeping. (Despite seeing him strangle a kid in Hawke, the level of violence still surprised me here.) Anyways, Slaughter (his character doesn't have a name) finds a letter addressed to Glyde, saying that it's finally time for him to come home. His last relative has passed away, and the family fortune/estate has been passed onto him. Slaughter figures it's been long enough that he could pass as Sir Percival Glyde, and gives it a go. His impostering works on most people, and all he has to do is murder a couple of people who aren't buying his act. Easy enough, right?

April 29th, 2015 - The Ghost Walks (1935)

The Ghost Walks is another film from the 50 Tales of Terror budget set where a group of people are trapped in an old house during a storm, only to find that there is a murderer in their midst. I swear I've seen at least three other similarly-plotted films from this set recently - "people trapped during a storm and then murdered" must have been the 30's equivalent of our superhero movies, I guess. There are a couple of interesting little quirks here and there in The Ghost Walks, but overall it feels very been there, done that.

The film centers on a famous play producer and his goofy assistant. They are being driven out in the woods by the (awesomely named) playwright Prescott Ames - the idea being that he is looking for a nice secluded place to read the producer his new play. But then a storm hits and their car gets stuck. The trio is forced to take refuge in a nearby house, whose residents are familiar with Ames - we don't know how or why, but something fishy is going on.

April 28th, 2015 - The She Beast (1966)

The She Beast was a really nice surprise. I have learned not to expect a lot from films on the 50 Tales of Terror budget set, but every once and a while you get a little gem that makes it worthwhile. And honestly, with the possible exception of The Sadist, this is the best I've come across in the 30+ I've seen thus far (Disc 9 and counting). It's a good mix of legitimately bothersome horror and off-kilter/almost campy comedy, most of which I assume was intentional.

After a pretty cheap looking credit sequence (see above - at first I swore they just used a crumpled paper bag for the back-drop), we are told we are in Transylvania. You know what that means! (If you said "witches," you and The She Beast are on the same wavelength.) We flash back 200 years ago, to an incident where a witch killed a child and was tracked back to her cave by angry townsfolk. And this is one nasty looking witch, with a really melty-looking face... really, she's more like a troll. Anyways, they capture her and slowly kill her with an iron spike to the chest and then dipping her in and out of the the town lake on some catapult looking thing until she drowns. It's rather barbarous, and pretty disturbing right off the bat - along with the gross face, she just screams like a banshee.

April 13th, 2015 - The Midnight Shadow (1939)

Midnight Shadow is not a very good movie, but it is interesting from a historical perspective. When I first saw the label "Sack Mark of Merit," I laughed (because it's funny). But later I found out Sack Amusement was a company that made and distributed "race pictures" - featuring almost all black actors and screened at primarily black movie theaters. Which had to be an interesting business to be a part of in the late 30s in the USA. I mean, race relations being what they were (shitty), this has to be an early example of black actors not being relegated to roles that were broad, offensive stereotypes. Midnight Shadow has an all black cast playing wealthy businessmen, detectives, and others in positions of authority, which is just radically different than many others I've seen from this era. I honestly didn't even know that there were movie companies that catered to black audiences back then. So thanks for teaching me something today, Midnight Shadow.

Not knowing this going in, I was surprised to see an all black cast. And then there is this crawl at the beginning, which is just easier to quote than explain:

April 3rd, 2015 - The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936)

You know, I think I really like this Tod Slaughter fellow. I knew nothing about him before seeing A Face at the Window a couple of weeks ago, but I have to say I really love his style. He's great at playing the over-the-top villain - he's got the look and the mannerisms down, and just has a magnetic screen presence. It's undoubtedly corny by today's standards, but it's hard for me not to love such a mustache-twirlingly evil villain. (Note: he does not have a mustache in this one. But I will be doing my best to track down a film where he does, indeed, twirl his mustache. It has to be out there.)

The Crimes of Stephen Hawke has a really odd framing device - the opening shot is zoomed in on a radio microphone, and we are "treated" to a several minute bit from the musical-comedy duo Flotsam and Jetsam. (They read the newspaper, comically, and to music. It's not that good.) Then the host interviews a guy who sells cat food. (?) I don't know why this is there - I didn't think movies from the 30s needed padding, but whatever. Anyways, about 6-7 minutes into the film the radio host introduces the actor Tod Slaughter, who talks about being a deviant in his other movies, but also his newest film, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke. Then the actual movie starts.

March 29th, 2015 - Devil Bat (1940)

How you feel about two things will basically determine whether you enjoy The Devil Bat or not. They are (1) Bela Lugosi, and (2) big stupid bat puppets. I happen to be a big fan of both, so found The Devil Bat quite enjoyable.

Lugoisi stars as Dr. Carruthers, a scientist developing chemicals for a cosmetics company (perfumes, lotions, and the like). Unbeknownst to his employers, he performs "weird, terrifying experiments in his hidden laboratory." The experiments are mostly bat-based. Through glandular manipulation via electric shock, he can make a bat as large as a giant bird! Not only that, but he's trained the giant bat to kill whatever is wearing a particular scent he has created. You see, Dr. Carruthers is very bitter that the owners of the company (the Heath family) have made millions off of his hard work - he was offered a percentage of the company early on, but took a cash payout instead. So he gets his revenge by getting members of the Heath family to try out his new "shaving lotion" - which happens to contain the deadly scent that drives the giant bat into a murderous frenzy.

March 26th, 2015 - Evil Brain From Outer Space (1965)

The Evil Brain from Outer Space is more of a science fiction film than horror.  But it's inclusion on the budget set 50 Tales of Terror makes it okay for my purposes. In spite of my insistence on going through all of the set, I'll skip ones that are obviously not horror (i.e Hands of Steel: "The industrialist hopes to continue his profitable, but environmentally unsafe practices, by sending his cyborg assassin to kill [a meddling ecologist]). But the description here includes: "the monstrous brain unleashes a horde of monsters upon the planet to spread disease and destruction..." So I was hoping it would be somewhat horrific. But not a lot of luck there - while there are some scary ideas/concepts in theory, the overall tone of the film seems to be more aimed towards entertaining children rather than thrilling adults.

Much like many MST3K episodes from Japan, Evil Brain seems to be patched together from episodes of a television show or something. Much of what passes for the plot is explained in a voiceover, and plot lines are introduced and then dropped shortly thereafter. My favorite? There are two kids that just seemingly vanish from the film, and later there are two random kids at the end that you have never been introduced to. Presumably this was taken care of over the course of the television series, but in the film version, it's just like they are trying to replace the kids without us noticing.

March 22nd, 2015 - The Rogue's Tavern (1936)

Just about as far on the opposite side of the spectrum from Martyrs as possible is The Rogue's Tavern. It's another 1930s "group of people in a house on a stormy night being murdered one by one" mystery from the 50 Tales of Terror budget set. And despite it's somewhat gloomy premise, it's still more of a comedy that anything else. There are some pretty serious flaws (mostly a *lot* of dead air), but it's pretty short and the comedy mostly works.

Wallace Ford (the annoying magician from One Frightened Night) stars as Jimmy Kelly, a detective desperate to get married to his (also detective) girlfriend Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper). Why they are in such a hurry is never made clear. A clerk at the first place they try tells them they have to leave the state to do it fast, but he can get a justice of the peace to meet them at a hotel/tavern just across the border. Meanwhile, a group of shady folks ("rogues," you might say) are meeting at the same hotel. They have all been called there by anonymous telegrams, but why? It's clear they have some shady background together, but just what is a mystery. When the rogues start to be killed one by one, it's up to Jimmy and Marjorie to get to the bottom of the mystery before it's too late!

March 6th, 2015 - The Island Monster (1954)

Shame on you, The Island Monster. If you have "Monster" in the title, as well as Boris Karloff as the star, you should probably at least attempt to be a horror movie. I was fooled last year by the Karloff-less Devil Monster (also on the 50 Tales of Terror budget set), and now this. I'll still count it, since it's on the set, but man. If this I was watching a really boring movie a day, this would qualify for sure though. What an uninteresting drag of a film.

The Island Monster is about a family man/narcotics officer named Mario Andreani (Renato Vicario) who is assigned to stop a drug-running operation on an island off the coast of Italy. So at least the "Island" part is accurate. He goes kind of undercover, and gets involved with a beautiful local singer, who is in on the drug business. (But she has a heart of gold, you see, because she wants to get out. Of course she does.) Karloff appears as a local philanthropist early in the film, but things are not as they seem... Andreani's annoying wife and annoying kid show up to visit him (thanks for ruining his cover!), and the smugglers kidnap the annoying kid. At least the family has a dog, so they aren't entirely hateable. As you can probably tell, The Island Monster is really more of a crime film than anything, and not a very good one at that.

February 19th, 2015 - One Frightened Night (1935)

My birthday movie! I was thinking about watching something I knew I would (probably) like, or something I really wanted to see. But since the ultimate plan was to watch the MST3k Pumaman, I decided to just take it easy and make it short. And One Frightened Night certainly had that going for it, at least. 65 minutes I think?

And honestly, that's being unnecessarily harsh - it isn't a bad movie by any means. It's just tough for a 1935 screwball murder mystery to resonate much with me 80 years later. (But in an "interesting" coincidence that I just now realized, it's from 1935 and I turned 35 today! Crazy!)

One Frightened Night is about a cantankerous old rich man that gathers a bunch of his "friends" on a dark and stormy night. I say "friends" because he seems to be really mean to them. But at least it's usually in an amusing way. Apparently, a new inheritance tax will come into law at midnight, and he wants to get rid of his fortune before then. Since he cannot track down his only living relative (a granddaughter from his estranged daughter), he promises to give each of his six (or so) friends one million dollars! So I guess it's okay that he's kind of a dick. Everybody is obviously pretty stoked, but then who should show up at the door - his missing granddaughter! The friends' joy turns to disappointment. Then a few minutes later a second woman shows up, also claiming to be the granddaughter! Then *someone* murders the first granddaughter! Everyone is a suspect... who is the killer? Who is the real granddaughter? Tune in to find out!

February 10th, 2015 (Trip Day 4) - Sound of Horror (1966)

Trip Day 4.

February 3rd, 2015 - Man With Two Lives (1942)

Man With Two Lives is another one from the Mill Creek Budget Pack "50 Tales of Terror." And like other recent entries from that set, it's a film that's more from a non-horror genre with just a bit of horror sprinkled into the mix. ("Terror" would be a strong word, but there is enough here to make Mill Creek vaguely justified in adding it to the set.) Our genre here? Mob/Crime Thriller, with a little bit of body-switching.

The story centers on Phillip Bennett (Edward Norris), a young man who seemingly has it all - he's from a wealthy family, is engaged to be married, and is leading a pretty happy life. Then one night, he's killed in a car accident. Luckily, his well-connected dad's best friend is a doctor/mad-scientist type (the good kind), who happens to be experimenting with bringing the dead back to life. Double luckily, his body was completely unharmed in the crash, as he died of shock and not, you know, the crash (?). Unluckily for Phillip, a notorious crime-boss killer named Panino (who we learn is "driven by a pathological need to kill") happened to be getting executed at the EXACT same time Phillip is being reanimated. Double unluckily, Panino's soul ends up in Phil's body! So Phil/Panino tries to get back into the old mob business, while trying to fool Phil's family into thinking he's still good old Phil. Good times!

February 1st, 2015 - Scared to Death (1947)

Even with the presence of Bela Lugosi, Scared to Death was pretty difficult to sit through. It's the first time I've ever had such a short runtime (65 minutes) feel so damned long. When I pop in a disc from the 50 Tales of Terror box set, I don't necessarily expect a screwball comedy... and unlike A Walking Nightmare from a week or so ago, Scared to Death was *not* a pleasant surprise. It just sucked.

Scared to Death opens in a morgue, where a couple of morticians bemoan their task, because "one hates to perform an autopsy on such a beautiful woman." As opposed to all of the ugly people they love opening up. The police want to know the cause of death ASAP... guess how she died? "Lucky" for us, the corpse can talk to the audience, and we spend the movie watching the events that led to her death.

January 20th, 2015 - A Walking Nightmare (1942)

I was not expecting a lighthearted screwball-esque comedy when I popped in A Walking Nightmare, but sometimes the budget set can surprise you. There are *some* horror elements here (as the title would imply), but it's far more of a comedy/mystery than a horror film. But the good news? It's pretty enjoyable. If you were on a steady diet of wisecracking private investigator films, I'd imagine A Walking Nightmare would be pretty middle of the road. But for me, the fun, fast talking approach was a nice change of pace.

The film opens with newspaper headlines (naturally), telling us of the disappearance of prominent banker Walter Craig. The Craig family is rife with in-fighting, as Walter's current wife and his daughter from his first marriage do not get along. There are a couple of other interesting characters in the Craig household, including an old lady obsessed with cults and the supernatural, and a very Lurch-ish creepy butler. Eventually, they decide to call upon former police investigator Nick Trayne (James Dunn) - "the best in the business" - to see if he can get to the bottom of the Walter's disappearance. Trayne hits it off with Billie Hilton (Joan Woodbury) - a woman who works for Walter, and they pair up and begin their search. But Walter mysteriously appears in the house on the very night Trayne shows up! The catch? He has a traumatic brain injury, and is more or less in a coma. (And he will be for a year... although how the doctor diagnoses that is a mystery.) Trayne and Billie must work together to find out who put Walter into his current state!

January 14th, 2015 - The Sadist (1963)

I was not expecting The Sadist to be so damned bleak. I'm not sure when the first really nihilistic American horror was produced, but when I read the description on the 50 Tales of Terror Box and saw the date (1963), I assumed it would be horror, but probably on the corny side. True, we're in post-Psycho territory by this point, but I didn't think that there were that many films that were this rough from the era. The Sadist feels ahead of its time in terms of its depiction of a horrifying hostage situation. It never really even tries to be fun - it's just a really messed up guy holding people hostage and threatening to kill them for 90 minutes. It's certainly not torture porn - but is psychological torture porn a thing? And any rate, I was pretty impressed and surprised with the film. For a movie over 50 years old with a pretty thin story, it is taut, well-made, and plenty disturbing.

January 11th, 2015 - The Ape Man (1943)

It's hard not to feel a little bad for Bela Lugosi in The Ape Man. And not bad for the character (a scientist who is turned into a man-ape), but for Lugosi the actor. He's responsible for some of (if not the) most iconic performances in horror film history, and here he is in The Ape Man - walking around slightly hunched over with a bad teen-wolf-meets-Abe-Lincoln beard, and tussling with a guy in a gorilla suit. Although looking over his credits, you've got to wonder how close to the bottom The Ape Man actually is.

Lugosi plays Dr. James Brewster, whose experiments have "unfortunately been successful" according to his partner Dr. Randall. Why you would want to create a procedure which would turn a man into a half-ape is questionable - why you would then try it out on yourself is beyond me. But that's 40's movie science, I guess. Anyways, Brewster has been reported missing (it's front page news), when in fact he is just hiding in his secret laboratory thanks to his new ape deformity. Brewster's sister Agatha, who also happens to be a ghost hunter (?), comes from overseas and the urging of Randall to learn the horrible truth about Dr. Brewster... He looks like this!

January 6th, 2015 - Crypt of the Living Dead (1973)

I was a little nervous about Crypt of the Living Dead. I haven't been having lots of luck with the 50 Tales of Terror budget set, and the description of the film on the sleeve didn't sound terribly interesting. (It turns out it's not accurate either, but still. It also says it's in color and it is not.) But I dug it. It's pretty much saved by one performance (Frank Brana - more on him later), but outside of that the story is okay and there is an eerie enough atmosphere to make it watchable.

The story: an archeologist studying "paganism, demonism, and the occult" has made his way to a remote island, where he is checking out a tomb said to belong to Hannah, an ancient vampire queen who was buried 700 years ago. He gets down there and is attacked and pushed under her tomb, which the attackers knock down, crushing him to death. His engineer son Chris (Andrew Prine) comes to the island to bury his father, and meets Peter (Mark Damon) - I don't know what his deal is... and Peter's sister Mary (Patty Shepard) - a school teacher and eventual romantic interest for Chris. Incidentally, in the first scene we saw Peter as one of the two evildoers who killed Chris's father... so despite him appearing to be helpful, we know he's up to no good.