“Venus... Venus... the planet named after the Goddess of Love.”

A lot of old B Movies I’ve been watching certainly deserve a fair amount of ribbing for bad effects, acting or storytelling, but most of the time it’s of a good natured sort. I don’t usually “hate them” hate them, because with the best cheesy B Movies, there’s at least one or two elements of quality and/or effort involved.

The next film flat out pissed me off. So much so that I almost decided to throw in the towel and quit this entire reviewing project. It was THAT BAD. So instead of doing that, I figured I could try and briefly explain why 1968’s Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women almost did me in.

Story
First, some context. The bulk of the footage is from a 1962 Soviet film called Planeta Bur which features a group of cosmonauts and their robot landing on Venus and fending off various monsters as they explore it. It was dubbed with some new footage of Basil Rathbone dropped in to make 1965’s Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, and then the new footage was replaced with newer footage of Mamie Van Doren as Venusian leader Moana and a group of bored looking clamshell clad women standing around on a rocky shoreline and all new dubbing.

So basically, this movie is thrice recycled. Which is a bad sign. The plot jammed together from this awful collision is something about American astronauts (with suspiciously red stars on their rockets) trying to rescue a downed exploratory rocket on Venus and as they wander around, one of them thinks he hears a woman singing and frequently gets distracted. The search party eventually shoots down the Venusian women’s pterodactyl god Terah (I wish I was making that up) and after some surprisingly boring gyrating, the women conjure up several natural disasters for the astronauts.

It’s godawful.

Visuals/Effects
So the new shots were directed by Peter Bogdanovich (as Derek Thomas) as one of his early gigs and they look like they were filmed in a day or so. The women are attractive, certainly, but all have that zoned-out, bored look, and they really don’t do much of anything. The original Russian footage is actually of a much higher budget and quality than the new stuff, and includes all manner of costumes, a pretty good robot that gets called “John” and moments that are genuinely interesting.

Writing
Henry Ney is the writer given the unfortunate task of trying to make this mashup make sense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. It’s obvious that it’s made from two different piles of footage and the things that tie the two together are so stretched that its painful. As a writer, I really feel for the guy, especially since this is the only thing he’s credited for on IMDB.

Sound
Original music by Keith Benjamin and its par for the course. The dubbing is also standard for the Russian parts of the film, but the new footage is completely dubbed over with the excuse that the women are all telepathic. I realize this is probably a workaround for the constant sound of waves crashing against rocks, but it’s still really lazy.

Conclusion
I think what really cheeses me off about this movie is the fact that it was so shamelessly hacked up, repurposed by a new crew that did a bad job of it and still had the gall to call it “their’s.” It’s like a storytelling smash and grab, and it really pisses me off. Sure, showing a Russian Sci-Fi film in the U.S. in 1968 wouldn’t have worked either, but to be totally honest, the original movie looks so much more interesting and better than this bastardized version. And I don’t just feel bad for the original Soviet moviemakers. I feel bad for the American crew and actresses that were hired to try and make this version work. It’s not a matter of stealing ideas, since I think the rights were bought fair & square, but the whole shameless laziness of the whole thing is shameful. But that’s not all. It is painfully clear that the source material is superior and that this edit does nothing but lower it.

Don’t See Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. Just don’t. It’s not worth it. I really want to make it a point to track down Planeta Bur, actually, and while I haven’t seen the Basil Rathbone version, it can’t possibly be as bad as this.

I am not joking or exaggerating when I say it’s terrible. It’s nigh unwatchable. It is mind crushingly boring. It made me out-hate Napoleon Dynamite, which I never thought possible. This is now officially the worst movie I have seen.

Fuck this movie.

“Men! Every time you search for an answer, you always come up with women.”

Alright, so everybody knows not to piss off wasps, right? They’re like surly bees that don’t make honey for us. Splicing wasp genetic material with human genetic material is recipe for… well, I’m not really sure. I guess you’d get something like 1959’s The Wasp Woman, and it looks nothing like the poster for it.

Story
There’s an expository prologue showing the kindly but clearly mad scientist Dr. Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark, who was in quite a few of the Universal Horror movies from the 30s & 40s) getting fired from a honeybee farm for conducting experiments on wasps, which is a pretty justified firing. Anyway, he eventually finds his way to a cosmetics company run by Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) that’s suffering from decreased sales for the simple reason that Starlin continues to be the “face” of the company despite her advancing age. The doc gives her one hell of a sales pitch that deserves a new paragraph. Mark and Cabot both give very good performances, all things considered.

By mixing wasp royal jelly with some enzymes and other science-y stuff, he’s concocted a serum that can reverse the effects of aging dramatically (and turn a guinea pig into a mouse somehow). Janice starts taking the serum with slow results. Unsatisfied, she breaks into the doc’s lab one night and takes a big hit of the stuff and the next morning, all that makeup on her to make her look older is gone. Her employees, Mary Dennison (Barboura Morris), Bill Lane (Anthony “Fred” Eisley) and a couple others start to get suspicious, Janice takes bigger doses despite the increased risk, and Dr. Zinthrop gets put in the hospital by randomly stepping off a curb into traffic (really). All of this leads to the inevitable conclusion of Janice turning into a bloodthirsty were-wasp at night and eating people late in the movie.

Visuals/Effects
Roger Corman is an insanely prolific director and producer who’s been responsible for a staggering number of movies. Look him up on IMDB and you’re bound to see a familiar title or three. Of course, with that kind of volume, there’s bound to be some bad ones, and he was the producer of Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (which almost made me ragequit this project) and I’m not sure I can forgive that one yet. Still, the movie is decent enough on a visual level regarding the normal scenes. The prologue was shot by Jack Hill (uncredited) for a later release. It’s when it comes to special effects that the movie shows its true budget. Any footage involving wasps is actually footage of honeybees, and the wasp woman costume at the end is… well… a mask and two monster hands in bad lighting.
Writing
Story by Kinta Zertuche and screenplay by Leo Gordon, and there was some promise to be had. You have a faded beauty turning to mad science in order to preserve her good looks and things result in tragedy. You have a scientist who is clearly off his rocker but is actually a misunderstood good guy. You’ve got a ravenous were-wasp. But the pacing of the plot is the movie’s downfall. There are large stretches of time where not much of interest happens and the big reveal at the end is fairly brief, doesn’t make much sense, and is shot in pretty dim lighting. I understand that the wasp mask wasn’t great, but for a monster movie, the big payoff is being able to clearly see the monster. Sadly, it takes quite a while for the Wasp Woman (DUN DUN DUN) to show herself.

Sound
Original music by Fred Katz, and it’s par for the course.

Conclusion
As far as B movies go, The Wasp Woman isn’t atrocious. There are some great crazy moments, the lead actors are both quite good and the ending, while brief, is the shot in the arm the rest of the movie needed. It’s quite riffable. Bad, but not un-enjoyable. And yes, I’m ending this review with a double negative.

“The werewolf is neither man nor wolf, but a Satanic creature with the worst qualities of both.”

The end of our journey into Universal’s classic werewolf movies jumps back to the 1930s. 1935 to be specific, with the very first Hollywood werewolf movie, Werewolf Of London (sounds familiar, yeah? Where do you think Warren Zevon got inspired from?). As far as werewolves go, its much different from the classic Lon Chaney one, but is that a bad thing? Well, the box office seemed to think so, since the movie didn’t do well.

Story
What it boils down to is the search for a rare flower, the mariphasa in Nepal. Botanist Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) enters a forbidden, remote valley and finds bit, but is attacked by a werewolf almost immediately. He manages to fight it off, but is bitten in the process. Glendon returns to England with the plant but can’t seem to get it to bloom (it only does so under the full moon). At a party he meets the mysterious Dr. Yogami (Swedish actor Warner Oland who is best known for playing Asian Detective Charlie Chan) who knows an awful lot about the flower and lycanthropy. The flower is apparently able to stave off (but not cure) “werewolfery” during the full moon. Glendon’s obsession with the plant strains things with his wife Lisa (the very attractive Valerie Hobson) and she turns to an old friend Paul Ames (Lester Matthews) for help.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Stuart Walker, cinematography by Charles J. Stumar. Visually, there are a lot of ambitious and impressive shots in this film, particularly during the werewolf scenes. The werewolf makeup by Jack Pierce is radically different from the later Larry Talbot version, with most of Dr. Glendon’s face visible and a passable similarity to some versions of Mr. Hyde. Regardless, I rather like some of the werewolf’s “going out clothes” with the scarf and flat cap. It’s a distinct look.

Writing
Story by Robert Harris, Screenplay by John Colton & the uncredited Harvey Gates, Robert Harris and Edmund Pearson. The movie was compared to Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (and part of the reason it didn’t light up the box office). There’s also some weird word choices, like calling lycanthropy “lycanthrophobia.” Still, it is very much a werewolf movie, just from a time before those things were codified.

Sound
The original music by Karl Hajos works fine but isn’t up to par with the more iconic Universal soundtracks.

Conclusion
Werewolf of London is actually a very impressive and well made movie. I don’t mean to knock the Larry Talbot version because I love watching Chaney as the Wolf Man, but its unfortunate that a gem like this was so thoroughly overshadowed. Thankfully sets like the Universal Horror Legacy Collection corrects this. Wholeheartedly recommended.

“I’d say it was highly unusual. A man being attacked by a werewolf in a London park.”

1946 brought in a different wolf-themed horror movie from Universal. Instead of the familiar faces of Lon Chaney Jr. or Bela Lugosi, She-Wolf of London is completely unrelated to any of the other Universal Horror films and doesn’t figure into loosely connected continuity of them. Is this a good thing? Maybe. The film does tease the idea of a female werewolf, and Jack Pierce did do the makeup for the film, so this might be another forgotten gem.

Story
Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart) is an heiress with a problem. While on the one hand she’s engaged to marry Barry Lanfield (Don Porter), the park near her London home becomes the site for a series of grisly murders. Phyllis fears the Allenby Curse running through her blood is to blame for her becoming a werewolf and stalking the night. Her aunt living with her, Martha Winthrop (Sara Haden) tries to keep her in bed and feeds into her werewolf delusions by denying them all the time (thanks, reverse psychology!). Meanwhile, Martha’s daughter, the less wealthy Carol Winthrop (Jan Wiley) is told not to see her own fiancée and seems to also disappear into the night.

Scotland Yard sends detectives into the park to investigate and the populace are murmuring rumors about werewolves.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jean Yarbrough, the visual style is competent but nothing particularly interesting. There are long stretches of not a whole lot happening and to be honest, there are none of the visual or makeup effects you would expect from a monster movie.

Writing
Dwight V. Babcock on Story and George Bricker on Screenplay credits. The plot I listed above is not a bad idea on paper, but the execution did not deliver. While the acting isn’t bad, the characters are pretty flat and its obvious who the villain is from very early on. There’s also a “twist” that is the equivalent of monster movie blue balls that I’ll spoil only because the movie isn’t very good. There is no werewolf, its all just a scheme to drive Phyllis out of her mind so that someone else can inherit her money. That’s it. Again, sounds good on paper, but when the execution is uninspired and you end up with a non-werewolf movie in a Wolf Man boxed set, that lowers my esteem of the movie pretty low.

Sound
An uncredited William Lava on score. The music is fine in that standard 40’s style.

Conclusion
Well, its only 61 minutes, so She-Wolf of London has that going for it. Other than that, this is really not recommended. It doesn’t have werewolves, it doesn’t have good characters or memorable dialogue and its really boring most of the time. Kind of interesting but largely predictable, this is sadly one of the lesser Universal Horror films.

“He is not insane. He simply wants to die.”

1943 ushered in what’s best called the Universal Monster Mashups. Universal had the rights to their big three horror franchises, so it was only a matter of time before they started crossing over with each other. Last year two of those mashups were watched (out of sequence, I might add) but here’s the one that started this ersatz trilogy: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (which would be followed by House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula in that order).

Story
So, Lon Chaney Jr. reprises his role as Larry Talbot/the Wolf Man, but there’s a bit of a problem, since he’s kind of dead at the beginning of the movie. The movie quickly works around that and he’s up and running again, checking himself into a psych ward seeking either a cure or a way to stay permanently dead. Normal science doesn’t do jack for him, so with gypsy woman Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya again) in tow, he heads to obscure central/eastern European-ish Vasaria to find the notes of the late Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein (the protagonist from Ghost of Frankenstein). Talbot finds the doctor’s daughter Elsa (Ilona Massey), now the baroness of the estate and a scientist herself. A scientist, Dr. Frank Mannering (Patric Knowles as a completely different character than in The Wolf Man) chases after Talbot, trying to help him, but growing obsessed with bringing the recently thawed/revived Frankenstein Monster (this time Bela Lugosi) back to full strength.

All of this secretive activity doesn’t sit well with the citizens of Vasaria (including a particularly bloodthirsty innkeeper) and the Mayor (Universal Horror vet Lionel Atwill) has a difficult time restraining the torches and pitchforks crowd (which includes Dwight Frye among their number).

Whew. Got all that?

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Roy William Neill With George Robinson as Director of Photography, Jack Pierce’s effects continue to be solid and the werewolf transformations are incredibly impressive. Easily the best scene in the film is the first, where two grave robbers open Talbot’s tomb and accidentally revive him.

Writing
Curt Siodmak once again, and despite the fact that the continuity of the series turns into a complex snarl worthy of any fanboy obsession (you should browse Wookieepedia sometime if you don’t believe me), the fact that Siodmak was able to take two completely unrelated franchises and slap them together with any sense of coherence at all is an achievement. And it still hits all the expected notes of mad science, an angry mob and the Monster & Wolf Man fighting, while adding some new twists.

Sound
Original Music by Hans J. Salter (uncredited) is the standard 40s horror sound that I’ve grown quite accustomed to.

Conclusion
Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man isn’t exactly great and probably marks the downward turn for Universal’s horror series, but its still a lot of fun watching the very first monster mash. Lugosi’s Monster isn’t that great (partly due to script cuts that removed the Monster’s blindness and partly due to the fact he was sixty years old at this point) but it succeeds in giving you exactly what it says it will.

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

Ah, here we go. Wouldn’t be an Octoverride without some classic Universal Studios pictures. Last year we had Dracula and Frankenstein, this year we’ve got werewolves, starting with 1941’s The Wolf Man.

Story
Upon hearing of the death of his brother, Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns home to Wales (according to the commentary) after a long absence. So long he’s got an American accent. He reconnects with his father Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains) and the two share a moment about astronomy. The Larry does a little peeping tom action on a room above an antique store in the village and introduces himself to Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers). She’s engaged to Frank Andrews (Patric Knowles) but that doesn’t stop Larry. They all go out to a gypsy carnival in town, but Gwen’s friend Jenny Williams (Fay Helm) has her fortune read by Bela (Bela Lugosi) and is attacked by a wolf on the way home. Larry beats the wolf to death with a silver headed cane, but is too late to save Jenny and is bitten in the process. As Larry begins to suffer the symptoms of the curse of lycanthropy, the gypsy woman Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) tries to help him deal with the affliction.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by George Waggner with Joseph A. Valentine as director of photography, the movie is tightly paced and really well shot. The real visual star is of course the werewolf makeup effects done by the temperamental Hollywood genius Jack Pierce (who also did the makeup for Frankenstein’s Monster and a bunch of other Universal monsters throughout the 30s into the 40s).

Writing
Written by the very prolific Curt Siodmak (he was responsible for many of the Universal horror scripts from the 40s and showed up in last year’s Octoverride), a lot of the lore and mythology of the modern werewolf was solidified or outright invented (like the vulnerability to silver) by Siodmak for this movie. Bluntly, this is THE werewolf movie that all others follow, whether they’re aware of it or not.

Sound
Original music by (uncredited) Charles Previn, Hans J. Salter & Frank Skinner, the score is sweeping, menacing and really good. So good that cues were taken from it for later, lesser Universal movies.

Conclusion
The Wolf Man is top shelf Universal horror and the film responsible for vaulting werewolves into the pop culture gestalt as part of the Big Three of monsters (Dracula & Frankenstein’s Monster being the other two). This is required viewing for horror buffs, werewolf buffs and effects fans.

“You crazy, wonderful zombie!”

And speaking of weird Canadian horror influenced movies, 2006 brought the world Fido, a touching story set in the 1950s about a boy and his zombie. This is gonna be a fun month.

Story
Well, we’re in an alternate 1950s, one where the zombie apocalypse has taken place but humanity endures in fortified, walled cities. Trouble is, anyone who dies can rise as a zombie unless special funerary precautions, such as burying the head in a separate coffin, are taken.

However, there’s a silver lining to this. The zombies are the slow, shambling kind, and they can be fitted with special control collars and trained to do menial labor. What could go wrong?

Characters
Timmy Robinson: K’Sun Ray is our main character, a cheerful lad who’s family gets a zombie

Bill Robinson: Dylan Baker (from the Spider-Man movies and Trick ‘R Treat) is the straight-laced patriarch of the Robinson family who’s kind of a jerk and obsessed with not rising as a zombie when he dies.

Helen Robinson: Carrie-Anne Moss (from The Matrix) is Bill’s wife and not exactly happy with the marriage.

Fido: Billy Connolly is awesome (and barely recognizable under the makeup) as the title character. He really conveys a lot of emotion with nothing but growls, groans and expressions.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Andrew Currie and DP Jan Kiesser the visual look of the movie is pretty much “Leave It To Beaver” meets the Zombie Apocalypse with a little dose of the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the Fallout video games. Makeup effects on the zombies are all quite good too.

Writing
Written by Robert Chomiak, Andrew Currie & Dennis Heaton and story by Dennis Heaton. It’s not as uproariously funny as Zombieland or Shaun Of The Dead, but there’s a more restrained level of satire going on here. There’s plenty of social commentary here, but the bulk of the story is also character driven, so it’s a generally solid storyline.

Sound
Original music by Don MacDonald, the music really plays up the dichotomy of the 50’s iconography and zombie presence.

Conclusion
Fido is a really fun indie zombie comedy with strong performances and a great satirical bent to it. Maybe not the best movie on the Octoverride, but by no means is it bad. It was recommended to me, and here I go passing the savings on to you. Recommended.

“All right. We're gonna do this the scanner way. I'm gonna suck your brain dry!”

David Cronenberg has a reputation for being a mad Canadian filmmaker who makes weird stuff. Stuff like the remake of The Fly or today’s entry, Scanners from 1981. This one’s all about a tiny segment of the world population with the ability to read and affect minds. And, yes, its weird.

Story
So we’re in Canada in a near-future 1980s and a vagrant named Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) has an outburst of psychic energy and is taken into custody. A government scientist, Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) informs him that he’s a “scanner;” someone who can mentally merge nervous systems with other people in order to read their minds, make them do stuff or overload them.

Overloading is something a rogue scanner named Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside, with hair!) can do. He’s a scanner supremacist who has an underground army of scanners that hate normals. Revok is our Villain and has that famous scene where he pops the head of a government sanctioned scanner.

Cameron undergoes some training and is sent out to hunt Revok and things go badly for a while. However, Cameron does meet up with another scanner, Kim Oberst (Jennifer O’Neill) who also has a habit of surviving Revok’s attacks.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by David Cronenberg and Mark Irwin as director of photography, the film has a very 80s feel to the look. Effects are sparse but pretty well done, especially the famous head popping scene and some of the later scanner fights. Pacing is a little hit and miss with a lot of scenes where not much happens, but its nothing too detrimental. The whole movie has an air of uncertainty and weirdness that works in its favor.

Writing
David Gronenberg wrote the script, and its full of a lot interesting ideas. The whole concept and nature of the scanners themselves is really interesting, what with their odd origins and the fact that its really not a comfortable thing being a scanner. The script does stretch the willing suspension of disbelief when they talk about scanning a computer, but that’s really only for one scene and leads up to a cool explosion, so I’m willing to let that slide.

Sound
Howard "Lord Of The Rings" Shore on score duty, the soundtrack is full of 80s science fiction-y sounds and odd touches that add to the unsettled vibe of the movie.

Conclusion
Scanners is a really cool movie with a lot of creepy, gory and darkly comedic touches that keep things interesting and the ending was pretty impressive. Recommended.

“Let this remind you why you once feared the dark…”

Hellboy was awesome. More Hellboy should continue to be awesome, yes? 2008 seemed to think so, because that’s when we got a sequel. It promised more “fairy tale adventure” than “Lovecraftian action flick,” but when that’s filtered through the mind of Guillermo del Toro, you’re definitely not going to get the sanitized, Victorian notion of fairies. It's time for Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

Story
So Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) are conducting business as usual with the B.P.R.D. They stumble across a scheme of the elven prince Nuada (Luke Goss) to activate a mythical force of invulnerable clock punk golems called the Golden Army. Unfortunately for Nuada, his twin sister Nuala (Anna Walton) steals an item vital to that scheme and runs off.

Now, Hellboy is chafing under the policy of staying under the radar and his boss Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) calls up to Washington DC for another agent. That agent turns out to be Dr. Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) a German ghost in a pressure suit and a stuffy, by-the-book attitude that naturally chafes with Hellboy in suitably amusing ways. (man, no wonder you non-comics fans don't find this stuff accessible).

Nuala runs into Abe, Nuada’s henchman Mr. Wink (Brian Steele) runs into Hellboy and things build to a head where the Golden Army is confronted, Hellboy has a close encounter with the Angel of Death (Doug Jones again) and things get…interesting.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Guillermo del Toro and Guillermo Navarro on cinematography, so we continue with Double Guillermos again. The movie looks great and there are a couple of really nice set pieces that fill out the action quota nicely. Of particular note are the Troll market, the fight with the Earth Elemental, the Tooth Fairies and the fight with the Golden Army. Del Toro continues to use practical effects with computer graphics to supplement things.

Writing
Hellboy created by Mike Mignola and adapted by Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola. The story builds on the previous movie in some interesting ways. The franchise is clearly building toward something…apocalyptic, but until a third movie gets made, that’s a big question mark.

There’s also a strong theme of the death of magic and wonder in the world. Nuada even tells Hellboy as much during one of their confrontations.

Sound
Original score by Danny Elfman this time. The music works well for the movie and Elfman’s signature oddness is a perfect fit for a franchise about a demon that fights for the good guys, smokes cigars and says “Aw crap” a lot.

Conclusion
Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a fine sequel. It embraces the mystical and mythical elements of the premise and expands the world in some very ambitious ways while keeping the humor and general eldritch feel of the series.

“Look, Sammy, I'm not a very good shot but the Samaritan here uses really big bullets.”

Greetings, boils and ghouls. So glad to see you’ve survived another year to return this October to Castle RMWC. This year’s event promises to feature all manner of new and horrifying sights for you to lay your eyes on. I hope you can survive the experience.

Let’s start with something big, shall we? A confluence of monstrous, demonic and eldritch forces. Oh, and there’s Nazis. Here’s 2004’s Hellboy.

Story
Back in WWII, a secret Nazi project attempted to make contact with…things that exist outside the purview of our reality in an attempt to get a leg up in the war. Things that words like “gibbous” and “squamous” apply to. The Allies put a stop to it, but something still came through the portal. That something was a little red baby that was taken in by a guy named Dr. Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm (played in the modern day by John Hurt)

Fast forward to the modern day and there are countless rumors circulating of a secret government department that deals with all manner of monsters and abominations. Agent John Meyers (Rupert Evans) is transferred to this secretive Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.) where he meets the staff, including telepathic fish-man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones & voiced by David Hyde Pierce) and our hero, a big red stogie chomping demon with a giant stone right hand who goes by the name of Hellboy (Ron Perlman under a hell of a lot of makeup). Hellboy ages differently than humans, so by the modern day, he’s only just into his twenties and kind of has the personality of a High School senior. He’s even pining after his ex girlfriend, the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) who once worked for the Bureau but quit. It also doesn’t help that Hellboy isn’t exactly keen on staying in the shadows, much to the chagrin of the high ranking Agent Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor).

Myers’ job is simple: babysit Hellboy and kind of steer him in a direction that is more…responsible. Of course, this wouldn’t be a comic book movie without villains to smash in the face, which is provided by the resurrection of the guy who brought Hellboy into the world: Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden). Now, the Mad Monk’s gone through some…changes since he teamed up with the Nazis back in WWII and is trying to summon those same eldritch horrors with the help of the still young and beautiful Ilsa Haupstein (Biddy Hodson) and the crazy awesome clockwork powered, gas mask wearing Nazi ninja Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (Ladislav Beran) and the recently released demon Sammael, the “hound of resurrection.”

You bet your ass its going to be a bumpy ride.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Guillermo del Toro and cinematography by Guillermo Navarro. Double Guillermos, all the way. The movie has an energetic pace and some really slick visuals thanks to del Toro’s commitment to using as many practical effects as possible. CGI is kept to a minimum and the action scenes where Hellboy and Sammael trade blows are a hell of a lot of fun. Color is also used well, with the bulk of the movie taking place at night, so the cool nocturnal tones are contrasted nicely with our hero’s bright red skin.

Writing
Original comic book by Mike Mignola and adapted for the screen by Guillermo del Toro and Peter Briggs. Mignola also worked with del Toro extensively on the adaptation. The result is an adaptation that is respectful to the source material, but also unafraid to go off onto its own direction. Storywise, it is a bit standard issue with the plot points (gang of misfits have to save the world from unspeakable evil), but the real charm comes from the characters NOT being standard issue. The hero is a devil who saws his horns off and carries a crucifix, his best buddy is a telepathic fish man, his girlfriend can make fire and the bad guy is Rasputin himself trying to summon a Lovecraftian Horror. It’s a great comic book adaptation, and it’s a great urban fantasy.

Sound
The original score by Marco Beltrami is moody, atmospheric and creepy, soaring to big action cues at appropriate times. Then its supplemented by some good songs by Tom Waits, Al Green and Pete Yorn.

Conclusion
Hellboy is a great way to kick off this year’s Octoverride, because Halloween isn’t just about being scary. It’s about being creepy and weird and mysterious and often hilarious. Last year I think I called the Octoverride a “Cavalcade of Weird” and I’m sticking to it.

“You better not let the other guns know you have a favorite.”

Matthew Vaughan is really a director on the rise and a name to watch and he’s proving himself to be quite flexible. Consider this: He has directed three films so far: The crime thriller Layer Cake (2004), the fantasy Stardust (2007) and superhero film Kick-Ass (2010) (and he was the producer of Snatch. and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). Today we’re looking at Layer Cake, his directorial debut.

Story
So we’re in London and have Mr. XXXX (Daniel Craig) as our anti-hero and narrator. He sees himself as a professional businessman who’s business is cocaine (and other drugs). Now, he’s got a system worked out that has so far let him make a lot of money and stay under the radar, and he plans on getting out of the game. Unfortunately, one of his biggest customers, the mobster Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) has two last jobs for him. The first involves finding the coked out daughter of Jimmy’s crime boss friend Eddie Temple (longtime veteran Michael Gambon who’s been Dumbledore in the more recent Harry Potter films). The second involves finding a buyer for a large number of pills smuggled into England by a scummy drug dealer called the Duke (Jamie Foreman). Of course neither of these jobs go as planned and things just spiral out of control for Mr. XXXX and his associates.

The cast in this is incredible. Craig is a charismatic and dominant central figure, but the secondary characters really help flesh out the seedy underbelly of London here. XXXX’s associates, in particular Morty (George Harris) and Gene (Colm “Engineer O’Brien” Meaney), are quite badass, but there’s a hell of a lot of characters and they’ve all got something about them that makes them stand out. Oh, and there’s also Sienna Miller as XXXX’s love interest Tammy, but despite having secondary billing on the DVD case, is only in the film for all of four scenes. But she does look fine in those scenes.

Visuals/Effects
Director: Matthew Vaughan. Director of Photography: Ben Davis. Visually the movie is great. Scenes are great, there’s great use of color and the film has a lot of energy and tension that carry you through. Action scenes aren’t common, so when violence actually does occur it’s often quick and incredibly brutal, like the beating in the diner shot from the victim’s point of view. Powerful stuff. The movie also handles transitions incredibly well too.

Writing
Screenplay by J.J. Connolly and based on his own novel of the same name. The script is incredibly impressive. Characters are well defined, have arcs, frequently likable (or at least interesting) and the pacing is spot on. Twists come out of nowhere but they all make sense in retrospect and by the end of the movie, all loose ends are accounted for.

Sound
Original music by Ilan Eshkeri and Lisa Gerrard, which is good, and it’s also got a very good soundtrack featuring stuff from the likes of Joe Cocker, The Rolling Stones, The Cult and even Duran Duran.

Conclusion
I was thoroughly impressed. I mean, really, really impressed. Every fault I had with Snatch. (and I had quite a few) is absent in Layer Cake. In fact, that’s kind of how I want to describe this movie to people who’ve never heard of it. “It’s like Snatch, only with character development and substance.” Extremely recommended and a contender for my “Best Surprises” list.

“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it's usually something unusual.”

Well here we are, sitting on the cusp of a new dawn here at Castle RMWC. New format, new ‘tude and, uh, a new review. Not having seen 1981’s Stripes was another disconnect between me and the 80s comedy gestalt that I’m slowly patching gaps for, and really, it’s quite strange that it took so long for me to finally watch it. After all, it’s got Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in. That’s half of the Ghostbusters right there! Well, a few months ago I sat down with the Extended cut DVD to see what the fuss was about.

Story
Well, John Winger (Bill Murray), a slacker cab driver in New York gets fired, dumped and evicted on the same day. He decides to join the army to solve all three of these problems and talks his best friend, Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) into joining too. Amazingly they get accepted and shipped off to boot camp and join a ragtag bunch of misfits that also include Ox (John Candy) and some other guys with quirky personalities. Winger constantly pisses off their hardass drill sergeant, Hulk (Warren Oates). Hulka gets put in the hospital during an accident in a live fire test, the squad manages to pass and get assigned to a mission in Europe to protect a top secret EM50 Urban Fighting Vehicle under the command of the incredibly incompetent Captain Stillman (John Larroquette).

It’s an RV.

Winger & Ziskey of course steal the RV to hang out with their MP girlfriends Stella (P.J. Soles) and Louise (Sean Young from Blade Runner). Through a complex series of misfortunes the rest of the platoon gets captured in Czechoslovakia (back when it was Czechoslovakia) and it’s up to the gang in the RV (and a recovered Hulka running around behind enemy lines by himself) to rescue the squad, which is really one of those plots that sneaks up on you when you actually sit down and think about it.

The cast is solid across the board with Murray & Ramis bouncing off each other excellently. Ramis playing the straight man and Murray playing the funny man. Oates’ Sgt. Hulka is another standout character for the hamminess being thrown out there.

Visuals
Ivan Reitman (both Ghostbusters films) directed and Director of Photography Bill Butler. The movie looks fine, no problems. The extended cut definitely feels overly long in a few places (like the entire first AWOL sequence that has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the movie), but it makes up for it with an incredibly amusing climax with the EM50 storming the Iron Curtain and cutting loose. There’s also boobies. Mud Wrestling boobies.

Writing
Script by Len Blum, Daniel Goldberg & Harold Ramis. The story isn’t deep, but it does allow Bill Murray to cut loose and do his thing, which is exactly the point of a Bill Murray film.

Sound
Original music by Elmer Bernstein, which is always a good and welcome thing in a movie.

Conclusion
Stripes is good. I liked it. Maybe not going to rise to the top of my list of 80s comedies, but it’s definitely a solid and satisfying effort. Recommended.

"Someone just put deadly snake in room. Wake me when it come near bed."

1976's Murder By Death is a goofy, straightforward farce of some of the more notable detective characters from the 30s & 40s. Hardboiled private eye Sam Diamond (Peter Falk) and his assistant (Eileen Brennan), boozy socialites Dick & Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie smith), Chinese sleuth Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers), gluttonous Belgian Milo Perrier (James Coco) and his assistant Marcel (a young James Cromwell), and English governess Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester from RMWC favorite The Bride Of Frankenstein) are all invited to a remote mansion for a dinner party hosted by blind butler Bensonmum (masterfully played by Alec Guinness) and hosted by the always eccentric Lionel Twain/Truman Capote (yes, THAT Truman Capote). Twain's challenge to them is to solve a dastardly murder mystery that he has come up with and he'll reward them with a hefty sum.
Beyond that, the plot just spirals further and further into absurdity and rapid fire dialogue that works well. Not all the jokes work (some end up being pretty juvenile considering the source material) but the cast is great and the jokes that DO work outnumber the duds considerably.

Directed by Robert Moore, there isn't a whole lot of fancy camera work, byt it serves the story well and allows the actors to run with their material. The script by Neil Simon is sharp, but by the end does get a little too bitter in its invective towards the characters being mocked. Additionally, you kind of have to know about (at least in broad strokes) who characters like Sam Spade, Nick & Nora Charles, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and Charlie Chan are for all of the jokes to work.

Still, the movie is a breezy, easygoing affair with a great cast and a lot of witty banter, which are all good things. Recommended.

“There's absolutely no reason yet to fear the worst. Until now, we only know that the plane caught fire and we've lost radio contact.”

This next piece of schlock is truly something else. A German film made in 1960 and released in the States in ‘62, it’s called Ein Toter hing im Netz (A Corpse Hangs in the Web) AKA Body in the Web, AKA Girls of Spider Island, AKA Horrors of Spider Island. With that many titles, you know it has to be good!

Plot
So there’s this “nightclub” owner is flying out to Singapore with a bunch of female dancers for a gig when suddenly their plane goes down in the South Pacific and the survivors (the guy and his nubile dancers) manage to make it to a remote island. There they find a cabin and the corpse of a scientist who was looking for uranium on the isle dead in a giant fake web. Then the guy wanders off one night and gets bit by a spider puppet, kills it but is then transformed into a man-spider-monster that kills one girl then just kind of wanders around the island for a month while the girls go skinny dipping and have catfights and occasionally try to signal a ship. So I guess it’s kind of like Gilligan's Island, only sexy.

Then a small boat with two guys who work for the dead guy from the cabin arrive and discover the jackpot. And then the monster guy comes back.

Characters
Gary Webster: Alexander D’Arcy plays the club owner and defacto leader of the castaways and then he gets turned into a monster. With two monster hands and a really vaguely spider-like face that looks more like the Wolf Man. And he’s shirtless. He’s not a very good monster, since in the span of a month he only succeeds in killing three people. But since this is an awful monster movie, then our awful monster is the badass.

Georgia: Helga Franck plays Gary’s assistant & the defacto leader when he goes missing. She’s is actually not useless throughout the movie.

Babs: Barbara Valentin plays the blonde who’s more or less the “face” of the girls, being front & center for most group scenes.

Ann: Helga Neuner plays the shy girl of the group who falls for one of the new guys that show up.

Joe & Bobby: Harald Maresch & Rainer Brandt (credited as “Temple Foster” & “Allen Turner” in the dubbed Americanized version) are the professor’s assistants who finally return to the island. Bobby’s the promiscuous one who goes through the girls like tissues. Joe is the more sensitive one who forges a reasonably chaste connection with Ann and has a strange fondness for wearing neckerchiefs without a shirt. Guess which one gets killed?

And there’s a whole bunch of other women, but aside from the loose-moraled former stripper, don’t get much characterization. And there’s a guy in the office who looks a lot like Dr. Strangelove.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Fritz Böttger (or “Jamie Nolan” in the US version), the movie knows exactly the demographic it’s catering to. Young males. We get plenty of shots of the ladies dressing down to their skivvies for any reason at all. Now, since this was the 60s, you don’t actually see anything, er, obviously titillating, but this film is also quite shameless about showing off the talent. And there’s an extended catfight sequence that serves no ulterior purpose other than to have two women wrestling with each other and grunting. Clearly there’s no subtext there.

The spider puppet is awful (a spider with finger-like claws?) but is kind of endearing. Man-Spider Gary is considerably less endearing.

Writing
Written by Fritz Böttger, Eldon Howard & Albert G. Miller, the story is absolutely ridiculous in that special way that truly terrible movies are. But if you’ve read any of the above, you’ve clearly picked up on that.

Sound
Original music by Karl Bette & Willy Mattes and the soundtrack is a light, jazzy, easy listening kind of sound that is not at all conducive to creating any kind of mood that doesn’t have “softcore” in it’s description.

Conclusion
Horrors of Spider Island is one for the books. Essentialy a nudie flick without any recognizable nudity and a monster flick with a monster that kills people offscreen and wears a terrible “costume.” This movie has everything a B movie connoisseur could possibly want. So bad it’s good.

“And for your own sake I don’t think you want to overhear some of the things that happen.”

This next one’s bad. Real bad. So bad I don’t even really want to do a full review, but I’ll try. Here’s 1961’s Cold War “thriller” Rocket Attack U.S.A. an incredibly uninteresting piece of scare propaganda.

Plot
So the Soviets launched Sputnik and America fears it may be a spy satellite sent up to gather rocket data in preparation for nuclear war or something. A spy is sent to Moscow to rendezvous with a deep cover agent and they try to sabotage the Russian missile program, fail horribly, get killed and apparently provoke the Commie bastards into launching missiles at New York.

And it ends with a message saying ALL OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF AMERICA HAD INVESTED IN A MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM!

Seriously, that’s pretty much it.

Characters
John Manston: John McKay plays our CIA agent sent to Moscow. He ends up staying in the deep cover agent’s closet for a while and sets out to sabotage the missile silos.

Tannah: Monica Davis plays the deep cover agent who’s literally in bed with a Soviet general and getting all sorts of good…intel. Sadly, not a very good actress.

And that’s about it for main characters. These two get introduced a quarter of the way into the film and get killed off with a quarter of the film left to go. Then there’s some newscaster guy in New York and a whole bunch of incidental people around for only one scene here or there. Since selecting a badass is traditional at this point, I guess I’ll pick the blind guy nonchalantly walking down a New York street with air-raid sirens blaring who unconvincingly reaches out and says “help me” to some random guy who runs past him.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Barry Mahon, the movie is a visual mess with sloppy editing and the rushed, low budget nature really shows (the missile silo is guarded by one easily dispatched guard).

Writing
There is no actual writing credit for the film, but IMDB lists Barry Mahon as the most likely candidate. Probably just as well the writer is anonymous since the story is a complete mess of scenes that just sort of happen and we get characters and plots introduced out of thin air that disappear just as quickly. It is quite bad.

Sound
No score or anything, though there is one scene in a Moscow restaurant/nightclub that has a band & dancer.

Conclusion
Rocket Attack U.S.A. is bad. Very bad. Not even entertaining bad. It’s boring and the lesson I learned is that better trained spies could prevent a need for a missile defense system. Ugh, though what do you expect from something made by “Exploit Films”? Dreadfully bad and to be avoided. Even the MST3K version is barely watchable.

“I've never seen so many trying to cover so much with so little.”

Movie trends are an interesting thing to consider. (For about five minutes. Once every twelve years) You’ll have a period of time where a genre will be incredibly popular for a span of time, then fade. Science Fiction & Fantasy bounce back quickly from slumps, but other genres just shrivel up. If they’re lucky like film noir, they’ll spawn periodic revivals and remixes (like Chinatown and Blade Runner) or like westerns there’ll be a trickle of them as various bankable directors give it a shot. The unlucky ones dry up and blow away like tumbleweeds. Like the Teen Beach Movie genre!

Which segues into today’s little exercise in badness, 1967’s Catalina Caper, one of the last Beach Movies made.

Goddamnit.

Plot
Well, we’re on/around Santa Catalina Island in sunny Southern California, and some fat guy sneaks into an art gallery and with ridiculous ease steals an ancient scroll. The next morning, two teenage students (our heroes) arrive on the island with the stated goal of finding chicks. Looks like the two plots are setting a collision course for 84 minutes of wackiness in this Catalina caper (DUN DUN DUN)!

Characters
Don Pringle: Tommy Kirk (who starred in several beach movies and was also, get this, the kid Travis in Old Yeller) plays our hero. Not much to the character aside from he’s from someplace like Arizona and this is the first time he’s seen a body of water as big as the Pacific.

Charlie Moss: Brian Cutler plays Don’s blonde buddy. He’s a native of Catalina Island and pretty much has three girls surrounding him at all times.

Katrina Corelli: Ulla Strömstedt plays Don’s love interest. An attractive girl traveling to the Island to see her jerk boyfriend Angelo (Lyle Waggoner) who is of course working for the bad guys. She’s a hottie, but has a kind of creepy monologue when first introduced. On the island, she seems to have the uncanny ability to turn every guy’s head when she walks by, which I guess makes her the film’s badass.

Tina Moss: Venita Wolf plays a friend of Charlie’s that also takes a liking to Don.

Arthur & Anne Duval: Del Moore & Sue Casey play a couple of “gentleman thieves” (well, more or less). They arranged for the theft of the Magoffin, but then decide they don’t want to hand it over to their client for…some reason.

Larry: Jim Begg plays the chubby henchmen of the Duvals. He actually does the stealing in the beginning and aside from wearing a stupid hat loves him some baseball.

Tad Duval: Peter Duryea plays the Duvals teenage son who is curiously oblivious to their shady careers.

Lakopolous: Lee Deane plays our, for lack of a better term, Villain. He’s bald and has henchmen in scuba gear.

Fingers O’Toole: Robert Donner plays a tall, gangly Monsieur Hulot-like character spying on the Duvals. (see, this project taught me useful film connections!). Turns out he’s an undercover investigator trying to find the missing Magoffin, but is so ridiculously clumsy that he takes a pratfall in every scene he’s in.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Lee Sholem, there’s really no substance to this movie. It’s competently shot and aside from a few physical gags and an underwater fight scene, pretty much all that the movie has going for it are bikini clad women, which all things considered, isn’t so bad.

Writing
Original story by Sam Pierce and screenplay by Clyde Ware. The initial idea of the heist plot on a warm, touristy island isn’t a bad one, but it gets relegated to sublot status hard and we get Don & Charlie hanging around with chicks for the most part.

Sound
Original music by Jerry Long which is a standard 60s kind of soundtrack. There’s also a number of on-screen musical numbers from The Cascades performing “There‘s A New World” Carol Connors singing “Book of Love” and Little Richard (who looks a little…“medicated”) singing the “timeless” classic “Scuba Party.” Then there’s the movie’s theme song “Never Steal Anything Wet” sung by Mary Wells over the beginning and end credits.

Conclusion
There’s no real substance to Catalina Caper. None. It’s light and fluffy and pretty much mindless. Not unwatchable but certainly not a good bad movie either.

“I could sure go for a charbroiled hamburger sammich and some french-fried potatoes.”

So, who’s up for a little “white man’s burden”? Well, too bad, because you’re going to get some anyway. Today’s low budget entry from 1948, Jungle Goddess stars future Superman George Reeves and is chock full of racism and offensiveness both intentional AND unintentional.

Plot
So we’ve got two ex-army air force pilots chillin’ in Africa after WWII. One is the womanizing, hard-drinking captain (like a good many actual pilots) and the other is a clean-cut, not-drunk, polite co-pilot (and very unlike the pilots I’ve drunk with). They run a small passenger plane but get word that some rich girl got lost somewhere in Africa when her plane went down right before the War. Hoping to cash in on the reward for finding out what happened to her, they go into the jungle, cause an incident when one of them shoots an African tribesman and are taken before their “goddess” who is, not surprisingly in the least, the missing woman. And there’s some bullshit about how she’s worshipped by the tribe and how if they found out she wasn’t actually a real deity they’d be (understandably) royally pissed. Can they make it back to their plane in time??? Yeah, this one’s…not at all deep.

Characters
Mike Patton: George Reeves plays our hero, the second banana of the duo. Nice enough guy, just quite patronizing. Finds Uranium near the village and wants to come back with an expedition which I’m sure wouldn’t piss off the natives one bit.

Bob Simpson: Ralph Byrd (who played Dick Tracy a bunch of times) plays the mustachioed pilot. Certainly drinks like a pilot. When they land in the jungle he shoots a native who happens to stumble upon them. Generally a sleazy, paranoid jerk.

Greta Vanderhorn: Wanda McKay plays the missing daughter of a South African rich guy. Called “Mata Greta” by the tribe because she’s blonde and white and bowed down to worship her immediately upon seeing her, which sounds farfetched to say the least.

Wanama: Armida plays Greta’s servant who is learning English from her. A nice enough girl that Bob shamelessly tries to seduce but not too bright. Nor is she African by any stretch of the imagination, with the actress being born in Mexico. (there’s also a villager played by a Filipino actor)

Oolonga the Witch Doctor: Smoki Whitfeld plays the tribe’s witch doctor who, oddly enough doesn’t think the white woman in their midst actually IS a goddess. And he’s somehow the antagonist. He’s the badass of the film out of sheer spite.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Lewis D. Collins (who had a long directing career), this movie would wear it’s budget on it’s sleeves, if it could afford them. The sets are obviously fake, there’s a lot of stock footage used, and the models for the airplanes don’t synch up with each other from scene to scene. There are animals on set, but a good number of them are not native to jungle areas and the whole thing just looks and feels cheap. This was definitely one of the many, many low budget b films cranked out by the studios in the 40s regardless of quality, only this one feels like it was much lower quality than most.

Writing
“Idea” by William Stevens (who was also the producer) and written by Jo Pagano. The story is virtually non-existent. Characters are ill-developed, Bob turns into a backstabbing villain for no reason whatsoever and you can tell that the script was pounded out as soon as possible without any care going into it. The plot itself feels like it might factor in as a subplot to some Adventure Serial, but to carry a whole movie by itself? It doesn’t work.

Sound
Original Music by Irving Getz and an original song, “There’s No One In My Heart But You” by Irving Bibo. That song gets used in the very first scene in a cantina/nightclub, which seems like an odd place to put the one and only musical number.

Conclusion
Jungle Goddess is the kind of movie that was cranked out as a means to keep the actors and crew employed until the next film came along through the studio pipeline. This looks like it was cranked out as soon as possible and nearly as quickly forgotten. It’s boring, it’s quite racist, and everyone looks like they’re phoning it in. However, considering it was 1948, it does feature a large cast of black actors, which, considering the general “whiteness” of movies at that time, at least provided them with a paying gig. An offensive, degrading gig, but a gig nonetheless. Not at all recommended.


Shockingly, there are not a lot of clips for this movie online. Suffice it to say that this is little clip is more than enough.

“Is there any intelligence in that head of yours?”

Sports Films! Yeah, that’s a genre that isn’t overwhelmed by clichés. But today’s entry in the bad movie canon avoids a lot of sports clichés in favor of crime and biker movie clichés.So…I guess this is Sportsploitation then. Here’s 1969’s Five The Hard Way, AKA The Sidehackers. A movie so bad they named it twice.

Goddamnit.

Plot
So apparently side-hacking is/was a real thing, as the opening credits hammers home. Apparently you take a motorcycle and add a little sidecar platform with a few handrails to hold onto and then drive around a dirt track at high with a guy dangling on the side for dear life.

Anyway, after winning such a race, our hero and his fiancée spend five minutes or so frolicking through an idyllic hillscape in the most saccharine way imaginable. Sort of like the meadow scene in Attack of the Clones only more convincing. The Villain shows up, gets some maintenance on his bikes, asks the hero to ride with him and gets turned down. The villain’s girl hits on our hero, then gets rejected and falsely accuses Hero of doing naughty things, which then prompts the villain and his crew to beat the shit out of our hero and rape and murder his fiancée.

…Um. Remember when this was about the sport of side hacking?

Anyway, our hero decides to go on a murderous revenge spree to avenge his dead lover which culminates in a big shootout with the villain’s gang.

Spoiler….And then everybody dies. No, really.

You know, maybe this isn’t the best way to advertise a new sport.

Characters
Rommel: Ross Hagen plays a gravely voiced anti-hero with a shady past. Now he runs a small bike repair shop and side hacks on the weekends. Then he gets really mad (for good reason) and decides to kill the bad guy, but he tells the gang “no guns” which…well…I guess this Rommel isn’t a magnificent son of a bitch who’s book I should read.

Rita: Diane McBain plays Rommel’s ill-fated girl. Nice enough for a two-dimensional love interest.

Luke: Dick Merrifeld plays Rommel’s buddy/teammate. Luke’s a happily married family man and tries to dissuade Rommel from his murderous course of action. Being the only sensible character in the movie makes him the film’s badass.

J.C.: Michael Pataki plays the Villain with a great deal of scene chewing. He comes to Rommel’s shop to get his bikes maintained and then takes an interest in side hacking. Wears ugly medallions has tremendous mood swings and beats his girlfriend. He’s a complete ASSHOLE.

Paisley: Claire Polan plays JC’s abused and not very smart girlfriend that falls for Rommel, gets rejected and accuses Rommel of assaulting her, which causes the whole ugly snowball of the plot to roll down the hill. Kind of hard to feel sympathy for her.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Gus Trikonis. We get some scenes of side hacking that aren’t very interesting and this happens twice during the film. And only twice. They side hack twice in the entire movie. Which is about side hacking. And one is the opening credits. Then there’s the infamous “meadow scene” that is nothing but padding. It’s a fairly ugly film.

Writing
Larry Billman on story and Tony Huston as writer and I can say very little in their defense. Let’s see. There’s, uhhhh, tertiary characters with memorable nicknames like Nero, Crapout and Cooch/Gooch (varies depending on who’s talking). Yeah. I’ll settle with that.

Sound
Original music by Mike Curb, Guy Hemric & Jerry Styner. The song, “Five the Hard Way” plays over the credits. I have no idea what is the “five” in question or why it can’t take “the easy way.”

Conclusion
The Sidehackers/Five The Hard Way is pretty damn awful. It’s a bleak downer of a film where nothing good happens to anybody, and there isn’t a whole lot for the audience to do for the running time. Not exactly the most thrilling endorsement for the obscure motorsport of side hacking.


No trailer, just a clip of really, really bad dialogue to give you a taste of the hurting.

“You can't be arbitrary about imposing your will when these people's lives are at stake, don't you realize that?”

Dateline 1950. The Space Race was in its infancy and rocket-propelled B Movies were getting their start. Rocketship X-M was rushed through production to beat Destination Moon as the “FIRST!” of a new breed of space-based ADVENTURE! films. If this sounds like a bad movie, you’re right.

Plot
So we’ve got a crew of five scientists preparing for the launch of the Rocketship Expedition Moon, or RXM (DUN DUN DUN!) for short. They hold a press conference, then board the rocket with the Moon as their destination and then things go horribly wrong. Through a rather complicated mishap with the fuel, they go way, WAY off course and end up in orbit around Mars. Deciding to land on Mars since they were in the neighborhood (because clearly they have enough fuel for THAT), they encounter the ruins of a civilization, get attacked by primitive locals before returning to the ship.

Then the survivors get back to Earth but they all die because somebody screwed up the math for the fuel supplies and they crash and die. No. Really.

Characters
Colonel Floyd Graham: Lloyd Bridges is the ship’s pilot and not really a scientist at all. He tells lots of very boring stories that are only tangentially related to what’s happening and hits on the one female member of the crew constantly.

Dr. Lisa Van Horn: Danish actress Osa Massen plays the lone female on the crew, and she’s described as a kind of “ice queen” that turns down paramours left and right. Obviously, she and Graham get together at some point.

Dr. Karl Eckstrom: John Emery plays the mission commander and most of what goes wrong is his fault. He’s arbitrary about imposing his will, completely browbeats Dr. Van Horn’s calculations (while his own turn out to be fatally wrong) and he’s pretty condescending about his own figures. Kind of an ass.

Major William Corrigan: Noah Beery Jr. plays the ship’s engineer and he’s from Texas! He won’t hesitate to stress the fact that he’s from Texas and that Texas is wonderful, Texas is large and Texas is the greatest state there is. Look, I realize people like this exist, but this is the best they could do for comic relief. Texas-sized comic relief! From Texas!

Harry Chamberlain: Hugh O’Brian plays an astronomer who serves as the ship’s navigator. He’s my pick for the badass of the film since he doesn’t talk much aside from some fatalistic grumblings and largely keeps to himself.

Dr. Ralph Fleming: Morris Ankrum plays the guy in Mission Control. His job is to look concerned all the time and be worried when the Rocket goes off course.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Kurt Neumann, the visuals are…quite low budget. We get some meteor shower stuff, some sight gags with random objects floating in not-quite-zero-gravity. Visually, there’s not much going for this movie since the props, sets, locations and so on were all dictated by the low budget. The movie is also quite proud of its effects of having a coat and some other small items "floating in weightlessness."

Writing
Written by Kurt Neumann and (uncredited) Dalton Trumbo with “additional dialogue” by Orville Hampton. The writing is the real culprit for badness here. Dialogue isn’t good, characters are poorly developed, the science is atrocious (though space science was still pretty new) and the whole sequence of events is pretty damn contrived. I understand that they wanted to stress how dangerous space travel could be, but the rocket should’ve been named Murphy’s Law for the amount of things that went wrong on the journey. And then the movie has the neurotic stones to have Eckstrom, a man of science say that they were forced off course by supernatural intervention. Yes, supernatural intervention brought them to Mars so they could find the shattered remains of a once-great civilization brought low by nuclear war and then after reestablishing contact with Earth on the trip home, the rocket crashes into Nova Scotia and everybody dies. That’s not ADVENTURE! That’s just bad melodrama.

Sound
Original score by Ferde Grofé, the guy who composed “On The Trail” (which appears in a bunch of movies that aren't this one) among other orchestral pieces. He worked on a few movie scores and this was one of them. Well, can’t fault the score for not being quality.

Conclusion
Rocketship X-M is one maudlin piece of cinema. Characters are badly realized and make insanely bad decisions to suit the plot, dialogue is bleh, and the whole plot is so grimly melodramatic about getting to the message that nukes are bad (because they wrecked Mars) that it sucks any possible fun out of the experience. Talk about schlock.

“We're scientists! Is the mayor here?”

You know what we haven’t had in a while? A low budget B Movie filmed in Mexico! 1957’s The Black Scorpion (filmed in English) doesn’t have robots or mummies, but it does have stop motion effects by the guy that did King Kong.

Yay?

Plot
So seismic activity causes a volcano to sprout up overnight in Mexico and two geologists are sent to investigate. Why the rest of the scientific community doesn’t care, I don’t know. Anyway, they find some ruined buildings, a dead cop and an abandoned baby and take the kid to the nearby town of San Lorenzo. The villagers think some kind of demon is at work, but being men of Science, our heroes don’t believe it. Then the MUCH more plausible culprits are revealed: Giant, Prehistoric, Nigh-Invulnerable Scorpions awoken from their ancient, uh…slumber, I guess. Anyway, things go wonky and we get a giant scorpion tearing up Mexico City and knocking down helicopters by the end.

Characters
Dr. Hank Scott: Richard Denning plays our American Scientist Hero (Ahh, the Fifties). For all intents and purposes, he is your standard 50s Scientist Hero, complete with a tacked on love interest.

Dr. Arturo Ramos: Carlos Rivas plays the Mexican scientist buddy of Hank’s. Despite being more familiar with local everything and also having a doctorate, he is relegated to sidekick duty. (Ahh, the Fifties).

Teresa Alvarez: Mara Corday plays a rancher in San Lorenzo that meets our Scientist heroes. She’s competent enough, but kind of gets shoe-horned in as Hank’s love interest and sticks around even when the movie leaves San Lorenzo.

Major Cosio: Arturo Martinez plays the military officer who tries to bring the scorpions down with no success.

Dr. Velasco: Carlos Muzquiz plays a renowned entomologist (not etymologist) that our heroes consult with at a few points. They talk about scorpions. And tequila. No joke.

Juanito: Mario Navarro plays the annoying kid who tags along and tries to help but only causes more unnecessary trouble. You know the kind: Where the kid has no real business being there but tags along for a bit, then gets told not to follow the heroes into the dangerous underground caverns but stows away anyway, then proceeds to wander off to be threatened by a monster causing the heroes to go and rescue him in a blatantly annoying attempt to stretch out the tension of the scene even though you know in practical terms the little rascal would’ve been compost a while ago and are kind of rooting for him to bite it? Yeah, that kid.

The Scorpions: Formed in 1965 in Hannover, Germany, they are probably best known for their hit “Rock You Like A Hurricane”--- Oh. Wrong scorpions. Um… These are giant and (presumably) black arthropods that like killing everything they come across and there is one in particular that is larger, stronger and more aggressive that is the “alpha.” The Alpha Scorpion is our badass for the film.

Top of the world, ma!

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Edward Ludwig and stop motion effects supervised by Willis O’Brien. The normal, non-effects shots are all standard B Movie fare with not a whole lot of interesting scenes. The stuff O’Brien pulled off, considering the low budget, is actually pretty good. Well, sort of. The close ups of the scorpions consist of just zooming in on a terrible model of a “scorpion’s” face with drool coming out that they use a bunch of times. However, the actual stop motion critters are actually pretty kickass and there are some cool set pieces, like two guys getting attacked in the desert, a Lionel train (no really) getting derailed by a mob of scorpions, and the fight in Mexico City. And it’s not just scorpions: there’s a spider and some worms too!

Writing
Story by Paul Yawitz and written by Robert Blees and David Duncan, and it is pretty damn bland. Nobody and nothing is memorable and the actors are completely outshined by low-budget effects.

Sound
Original music by Paul Sawtell which is your standard Monster Movie fare and it’s fine for the bombastic action sequences. Then there’s the sound effects that make the scorpions growl and chirp and make other sounds that I’m pretty sure actual scorpions are incapable of making.

Conclusion
Well, The Black Scorpion is a pretty bad movie across the board that manages to do one, and only one, thing right: Giant Stop Motion Scorpions from the guy who basically pioneered the craft. Even late in his career, Willis O’Brien pulled off some great effects scenes with a tiny budget. The rest of the movie is kind of crap, but those scorpions, man. Those scorpions.