What horror/sci-fi films have you been watching?

I watched a Lon Chaney, Jr. feature last night as well with...

MAN MADE MONSTER (1941) - Dan McCormick (Lon Chaney Jr.) is the lone survivor of a bus accident (done with a glorious miniature) where everyone was electrocuted. He ascribes his survival to being "Dynamo Dan, the Electric Man," a carnival sideshow guy who sticks his fingers in light sockets. This intrigues Dr. John Lawrence (Samuel S. Hinds) and Dr. Paul Rigas (Lionel Atwill) and Dan is invited to their estate/lab to conduct some experiments. Of course, Rigas is mad and, when Lawrence leaves for a convention, he makes the electricity flow all the way up to 11. The end result is McCormick becoming an electrical superman, who is under Rigas' thought control for some odd reason. Running just under an hour, this is an entertaining little Universal horror. Chaney is quite good as the loner lead, who is even more of a sad sack than his famous Lawrence Talbot, if you can can believe it. Atwill gives a particularly bug-eyed performance at times, but it works. Sadly, I guess the Production Code guys didn't want the public seeing a guy in the electric chair, so the finale (where Dan is zapped for a murder but becomes even stronger before breaking out of prison) is drained of any excitement as the off screen events happening are just relayed by reporters constantly running to phones.

Here's an excerpt from my two cents on CALLING DR. DEATH, taken from my Amazon review of the Inner Sanctum box set:

"...Not a lot actually happens onscreen, since so much is described in dialogue and interior voiceover monologues, just like a radio show. But the plot is very much like a Cornell Woolrich novel and the dark, expressionistic lighting is very much in the film noir mode, a full year before PHANTOM LADY (1944) emerged as the first true film noir production of a Woolrich novel, also from Universal."


This post has been edited by Brian Camp on Feb 2 2012, 10:03 AM

I agree that Chaney and Atwill are both very good in this. Universal's Jack Pierce, who designed the Frankenstein Monster, did Chaney's makeup.

JULIA'S EYES (2010) - After her breakthrough performance in Alejandro Amenabar's THE SEA INSIDE (2004), Belen Rueda has found a niche as Spain's go-to star for woman-in-distress thrillers. Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, who also produced Rueda's 2007 arthouse horror hit THE ORPHANAGE, JULIA'S EYES is an intriguing suspense outing that overstays its welcome a bit, but works thanks to Rueda's strong, committed performance. Here, Rueda plays two roles: astronomer Julia and, briefly, her twin sister Sara. Blind Sara commits suicide in the opening scene. Julia, afflicted with the same degenerative vision disorder but at a slower rate, isn't buying it and believes Sara was murdered by a mystery boyfriend she's heard about. It's difficult to summarize the plot without massive spoilers, but the film really hits its stride when Julia, who eventually does go blind and has surgery to restore her sight, regains her vision and finds herself face-to-face with a killer while pretending to still be blind. Director Guillem Morales knows how to stage a suspense set piece and makes an interesting decision to never show anyone's face but Rueda's during the section of the film where she's blind, but really drags things out a little longer than is needed. And of course it has multiple endings (you know the killer has to jump up again for one more attack after he's assumed dead) and could've been a lot tighter if it ran about 20 minutes shorter, but overall, it's an intense nailbiter with numerous nods to older classic thrillers like WAIT UNTIL DARK and the gialli of Dario Argento.

WEIRD WOMAN (1944)—Directed by Reginald LeBorg. Stars Lon Chaney Jr., Evelyn Ankers, Anne Gwynne, Lois Collier, Phil Brown, Ralph Morgan, Elizabeth Russell. Universal’s INNER SANCTUM series of B-movies never adapted any of the INNER SANCTUM radio plays or pulp stories, but screenwriters Brenda Weisberg (THE MUMMY’S GHOST) and Scott Darling (MR. WONG IN CHINATOWN) based the second movie on Fritz Leiber’s noted fantasy novel CONJURE WIFE. Norman Reed is a professor of ethnology at Monroe College, where the girls swoon over his dynamic personality. Reed is played by lumpy Lon Chaney Jr., so you’ll just have to take the movie’s word for Reed’s status as a charmer of ladies.

On a South Seas trip, the practical Reed meets Paula (Anne Gwynne, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN), a white woman reared by the high priestess of a jungle tribe. She believes in voodoo, witchcraft, death chants, and other primitive superstitions, but in the immortal words of Paula Abdul, opposites attract, and Paula and Norman are married. Reed’s old flame Ilona (Evelyn Ankers, THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN), jealous of his marriage, starts trouble by calling Paula a witch and pushing eager young student Margaret (lovely Lois Collier, COBRA WOMAN) into seducing him.

Reed exacerbates his problems by forcing Paula to give up her superstitious beliefs and destroying all her magic trinkets. Without Paula’s circle of immunity to protect Norman, his life really starts falling apart, including an accidental shooting of Margaret’s boyfriend David (Phil Brown, who would later be STAR WARS’ Uncle Owen) that leaves him on the hook for a manslaughter charge.

Gwynne and Ankers, who were good friends in real life, starred in many Universal horror and suspense pictures of the 1940s, but WEIRD WOMAN is surprisingly the only one in which they appeared together. Both are quite good, particularly Ankers, who rarely played bad girls. Unfortunately, the static screenplay gives them and everyone else very little to do but talk. Director Reginald LeBorg, who tried to spice up CALLING DR. DEATH’s chatty plot, has less to work with here, though his use of floating heads to illustrate an Ankers nightmare is inventive. DEAD MAN’S EYES, with Chaney and LeBorg again participating, was next in the INNER SANCTUM series. CONJURE WIFE was done more successfully as BURN, WITCH, BURN in 1962.

THE ZOMBIE WALKS (1968) - Scotland Yard's Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) gets wrapped up in a case that began with the corpse of Sir Oliver supposedly laughing from inside his coffin during his funeral. Soon everyone who was close to him starts getting offed and his brother Sir Cecil swears he sees his dead brother jaunting around the countryside in a skeleton costume. Higgins teams with reporter Peggy Brand (Siw Mattson) and his bumbling chief Sir Arthur (Hubert von Meyerinck) to unmask this villain who is killing folks with their poisoned Scorpion ring. This was my second Edgar Wallace krimi (after ROOM 13) and the first one in color. It is enjoyable for its 85 minutes and director Alfred Vohrer manages to get some spooky stuff going (the skeleton costume is pretty badass). The color scheme is really vibrant too. Sadly, the mystery is a bit of a letdown and features one of the dumbest reveals I've seen in a long time (it is predicated on a character not recognizing someone based on a flimsy altering of their appearance).

One of my favorite examples of this is THE COLOR OF NIGHT (yeah, let's try to disguise someone with a really pronounced overbite!), but my favorite is the (probably intentional, but still hilarious) bit in THEATER OF BLOOD when "chef" Vincent Price is feeding Robert Morley his two beloved poodles. The disguised Price stares Morley right in the face and emphatically rips a tiny fake goatee off his chin and Morley exclaims "You! It's you!" as if a tiny patch of chin hair was enough to hide that it was Vincent Price.

This post has been edited by Mark Tinta on Feb 7 2012, 11:21 AM

HA! I saw one even worse than this in the western-comedy FROM NOON TILL THREE. Charles Bronson returns to his love Jill Ireland after a year of being in prison. She doesn't recognize him because he is wearing glasses and a Lincoln beard. Even when he rips it off, she still refuses to believe he is the man she professes to love so much.

Well, not to go from movies to sports, but this is probably the greatest terrible disguise ever, and I'm sure Marty would agree.


Is that Bobby Valentine?!

Yes. Classic.

DOCTOR BLOODBATH (1987) aka BUTCHER KNIFE - So you thought Nick Millard's films like CRAZY FAT ETHEL (aka CRIMINALLY INSANE) or SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING were bad? Well, try this shot-on-video effort of his on for size. Abortionist Dr. Roger Thorn (Albert Eskinazi) decides all of his patients are bad and he goes to kill them. His cheating wife Claire (Irmgard Millard) ends up pregnant and asks him to help her get rid of the child. He kills her. The end. It doesn't get much worse than this, although I was strangely transfixed by seeing the actors from Millard's past looking older and him still using his same old house for the interiors. He is so cheap that he actually splices in footage from his older films and they don't match at all because they were shot on film. 57 minutes of pure WTF!?!

Here is a small clip to show the level of acting on display:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2BPSbHfvZw

Full review here:

http://originalvidjunkie.blogspot.com/2012...dbath-1987.html

This post has been edited by William S. Wilson on Feb 10 2012, 12:53 PM

DEAD MAN'S EYES (1944)—Directed by Reginald LeBorg. Stars Lon Chaney Jr., Acquanetta, Jean Parker, Paul Kelly, Thomas Gomez, Edward Fielding, Jonathan Hale, David Hoffman. Prolific horror star Lon Chaney Jr., who saw seven of his films released in 1944, played an artist in his third INNER SANCTUM mystery for Universal. Reginald LeBorg also returns for his third INNER SANCTUM, directing Chaney through more whispering narration and another sad-sack performance.

Writer Dwight Babcock’s (THE BRUTE MAN) great premise finds painter David Stuart (Chaney) accidentally pouring acid instead of eye wash into his peepers. Oops. While his fiancé Heather (Jean Parker) and his model Tanya (Acquanetta) passive-aggressively fight over who gets to take care of the simpering David in the first few days of his blindness, Heather’s wealthy father (Edward Fielding) offers to donate his eyes for a transplant, but only after he dies. Guess who becomes Homicide cop Drury’s (Thomas Gomez) prime suspect when Fielding is murdered?

Running just over an hour, this 12-day wonder is decent entertainment, though not especially original. In fact, the climax and revelation of the killer’s identity plays out almost identically to the way LeBorg did it in CALLING DR. DEATH, the first INNER SANCTUM movie, just a few months earlier. The director doesn’t bring anything fresh to the material, however, and is unable to work through the film’s worst pickles, such as Acquanetta’s pitiful performance and the laughable idea that David’s painting of Tanya, which would look perfect hanging on someone’s particle-board basement wall, is brilliant enough to push him to the top of the artist world.

Because the INNER SANCTUM pictures were so inexpensive, they made enough money for Universal to continue the series. However, it had to do so without LeBorg, who was paid a mere $1500 for DEAD MAN’S EYES and was tired of churning out the company’s programmers.

The way my damaged brain works, after seeing this I had to see Nick Millard's DEATH NURSE (1987) and DEATH NURSE 2 (1988). These two shot-on-video non-epics bring back Priscilla Alden, star of what is arguably Millard's best horror film CRIMINALLY INSANE (aka CRAZY FAT ETHEL). More mind numbing shenanigans at the (all too familiar) Millard house as death nurse Edith (Alden) runs a clinic with her psycho brother Gordon (Albert Eskinazi, as another crazy doc). They kill people every five minutes or so and Millard breaks it up with endless shots of Edith asleep on the couch having nightmares (old Millard footage). I think I'm going to start having nightmares like that too.

Full reviews here:
http://originalvidjunkie.blogspot.com/2012...e-1987-and.html

THE FROZEN GHOST (1945)—Directed by Harold Young. Stars Lon Chaney Jr., Evelyn Ankers, Milburn Stone, Douglass Dumbrille, Martin Kosleck, Tala Birell, Elena Verdugo. Universal’s fourth INNER SANCTUM mystery was supposed to its second, but script problems held up production. After shooting wrapped, it took Universal 364 days to release it—an eternity for a B-picture back then. The screenplay passed through the hands of five different writers (though HORROR ISLAND’s Maurice Tombragel didn’t get screen credit), but the finished film holds together well enough for quick entertainment.

Few actors trafficked in self-pity as often and as successfully as Lon Chaney Jr. did, and he pulls out all stops as stage mesmerist Gregor the Great. While performing on a radio show with his assistant and fiancé Maura (contract player Evelyn Ankers), Gregor handles a heckling drunk while silently wishing him dead. The man (played awkwardly by Arthur Hohl) keels over dead, and Gregor falls into a guilty funk, believing that he somehow killed the man with his mental powers.

Nobody, including his business partner George Keene (Milburn Stone, later Doc Adams for twenty years on GUNSMOKE) and homicide detective Brandt (Douglass Dumbrille), holds him responsible—the victim died of a natural heart attack—but that doesn’t ease Gregor’s mind. He breaks off his engagement to Maura, retires from the stage, and takes a job at a wax museum, where more mysterious deaths occur. Is Gregor really to blame?

The INNER SANCTUM movies have taken guff for their casting of palooka Chaney as a babe magnet. In addition to Maura, wax museum owner Valerie Monet (Tala Birell) and her niece Nina (Elena Verdugo) ache for Lon. Not everyone loves Gregor, however. Eccentric sculptor Rudy (Martin Kosleck) certainly doesn’t, and it’s questionable whether all of Gregor’s friends do.

THE FROZEN GHOST is one of the series’ best-looking films, thanks to the evocative sets built to represent the wax museum and the sometimes-creepy dummies that inhabit them. Director Harold Young (THE JUNGLE CAPTIVE, with which THE FROZEN GHOST was released on a double bill), the first man not named Reginald LeBorg to helm an INNER SANCTUM, handles the material pretty well, shooting the opening with Dutch angles and draping the spooky scenes in shadow. He also squeezes a terrific performance out of Dumbrille as a cop who spouts Shakespeare and the perpetually sinister Kosleck.

The ending, however, is a quick and disappointing wrap-up involving supernatural mumbo-jumbo that had not previously been part of the story. And there are no ghosts in THE FROZEN GHOST, frozen or otherwise. It is an improvement over the previous INNER SANCTUM, though, and the best since CALLING DR. DEATH. As always, David Hoffman’s head appears in a crystal ball to recite mystic warnings before the opening titles. He’s the Criswell of the Inner Sanctum.

You don't ache for Lon Chaney, Jr.? Riiiiight.

STRANGE CONFESSION (1945)—Directed by John Hoffman. Stars Lon Chaney Jr., Brenda Joyce, J. Carrol Naish, Lloyd Bridges, Milburn Stone, Addison Richards. Universal’s fifth INNER SANCTUM programmer is a remake of its THE MAN WHO RECLAIMED HIS HEAD, which, despite its awesome title, is not a horror film. Neither is STRANGE CONFESSION, though it was later re-released as THE MISSING HEAD!

Lon Chaney Jr., who starred in all six INNER SANCTUM films, is a wimp scientist named Jeff Carter, whose brilliant discoveries have made a mint for his boss at the pharmaceutical company, Roger Graham (J. Carrol Naish, returning from CALLING DR. DEATH). Though Jeff is regularly berated by his wife Mary (Brenda Joyce) and his friend Dave (Lloyd Bridges!) for not standing up for himself and allowing Graham to make the profit and take the credit for his work, he cares more about bettering humanity than his own bank account.

Ever the sneak, Graham plots with his assistant Stevens (Milburn Stone, returning from THE FROZEN GHOST) to send Jeff and Dave to South America to find an obscure mold Jeff needs for his latest experiment. While Jeff’s out of the country, Graham steals an early discarded version of Jeff’s formula and puts the moves on Mary. He then mass-produces the formula, which doesn’t work, to take advantage of an outbreak sweeping the area.

Jeff, who doesn’t know about any of this, later sends the successful formula to Graham, who refuses to take the unproven version off the market and lose sales. Because it doesn’t work, Jeff and Mary’s son dies of influenza. Graham, a real rat, is castigated in the press and his company damaged, which doesn’t stop him from inviting Mary to his house to seduce her.

All this is told through flashback, as a rattled Jeff appears at the home of a prominent attorney while carrying something hideous in a satchel. That’s the only element of mystery or suspense in M. Coates Webster’s loose adaptation of Jean Bart’s play, and it will be of little surprise to modern audiences what Chaney is toting around in that bag. The script is fine, and the direction by first-timer John Hoffman (THE LONE WOLF AND HIS LADY) is adequate, but STRANGE CONFESSION is little more than a time-waster.

Chaney is decent too, but it’s hard to see Jeff Carter as anything more than a chump, and you give up rooting for him once he’s shipped off to South America. Bridges (SEA HUNT) is very good as the film’s amiable comic relief. STRANGE CONFESSION was made back-to-back, more or less, with PILLOW OF DEATH, which turned out to be the final INNER SANCTUM feature. STRANGE CONFESSION also marks the final appearance of David Hoffman as the spooky/silly head that introduces the films from inside a crystal ball. I suspect Hoffman’s scenes were filmed simultaneously without knowing which films they would be cut into or even what they would be about.

MONSTROSITY (1987) - More Andy Milligan. After his girlfriend is murdered by some punks, Mark (David Homb) does the only natural thing to do - he and his two friends play Dr. Frankenstein and construct a monster to get revenge. They end up with Frankie (Hal Borske), a mixture of man and gorilla (!) who they give punk clothes and a red afro wig. Frankie does their bidding rather easily and offs the punks before the 1 hour mark. The rest has Frankie falling for punk rockette Jaimie (Carrie Anita) and the guys getting power hungry with their new creation. So how does Milligan fare in the 1980s? Well, his film definitely looks better than the 1970s efforts I've seen (THE GHASTLY ONES, BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS), but it still has the same flat direction. It wasn't until about a half hour into this that I realized it was supposed to be a comedy, a fact cleverly hidden by the awful acting on display. The special effects are a slight notch above Milligan's earlier efforts. Look for the same severed hand to be used twice. Also look for a police suspect photo book that shows the pages are empty with every turn and a crew member reflected in a mirror in the guys' garage/lab.

I'm watching ORCA (1977) on Netflix Instant. It's an HD print and looks really nice. I haven't seen this in probably 20 years, maybe longer. Looking at with older and more analytical eyes, this seems really butchered in post. Very choppy and rushed in spots, and the intermittently-used voiceover from Charlotte Rampling seems to be trying to fill in the blanks. The script was written by Sergio Donati and Luciano Vincenzoni, with an uncredited rewrite by Robert Towne, of all people. Maybe there was a language barrier or Towne just pocketed the money and didn't give care.

Robert Carradine's death scene is hilarious.

PILLOW OF DEATH (1945)—Directed by Wallace Fox. Stars Lon Chaney Jr., Brenda Joyce, Wilton Graff, J. Edward Bromberg. Universal wrapped up its INNER SANCTUM series of B-mysteries with one of the most laughable titles of all time. PILLOW OF DEATH sounds like something that would air on Count Floyd’s MONSTER HORROR CHILLER THEATER (in 3D, natch). Although it reteams Lon Chaney Jr. and Brenda Joyce from STRANGE CONFESSION, it plays differently than earlier INNER SANCTUMs. It dropped actor David Hoffman’s usual introduction as an ominous floating head inside a crystal ball, and the climax will come as a surprise to those familiar with Chaney’s sad-sack characters in the first five INNER SANCTUM programmers.

Attorney Wayne Fletcher (Chaney), who’s having an affair with his secretary Donna Kincaid (Joyce, who later played Jane in two Lex Barker Tarzans), is arrested for the suffocation murder of his wife Vivian. McCracken (Wilton Graff), the detective in charge of the investigation, lets Fletcher go on account of a lack of evidence, but Donna’s spinster aunt Belle (Clara Blandick) is convinced he’s the killer. Belle invites Vivian’s spiritualist, the flamboyant Julian Julian (J. Edward Bromberg), to perform a séance, where Vivian’s voice accuses her husband of murder.

Wayne remains haunted by Vivian, whose disembodied pleas to visit her at the family crypt results in the discovery of her empty casket. More asphyxiation murders occur (off-camera), presumably victims of the titular pillow being placed over their faces, and McCracken’s policy of “arrest first, ask questions later” results in Julian also being locked up temporarily and released.

Despite its campy title, PILLOW OF DEATH delivers a few innocent chills. The mystery element is interesting and allows writers Dwight V. Babcock (DEAD MAN’S EYES) and George Bricker (SH! THE OCTOPUS) to introduce a handful of colorful red herrings. Of course, as each potential killer is him- or herself killed, the mystery becomes easier to solve (the cast of characters is quite small). Director Wallace Fox handles the shoot efficiently, but without the visual flair Reginald LeBorg provided the first three INNER SANCTUM mysteries.

Though the series was successful for Universal, thanks to the low budgets producer Ben Pivar had to work with, PILLOW OF DEATH was the final INNER SANCTUM mystery. It began shooting just two weeks after Chaney and Joyce wrapped STRANGE CONFESSION and ended fourteen days late. The INNER SANCTUM radio program continued until 1952.

I'd rank the series:
1. CALLING DR. DEATH
2. DEAD MAN'S EYES
3. PILLOW OF DEATH
4. STRANGE CONFESSION
5. THE FROZEN GHOST
6. WEIRD WOMAN

Honestly, they're all very close, and you could barely slide a cigarette paper between the series' best and worst films.

DELIRIUM (1972) - Dr. Herbert Lyutak (Mickey Hargitay) is off his rocker as he picks up and kills a young girl in the film's opening minutes. The police are baffled by this murder, the latest in a series of strangulation deaths in the town. The only person offering any insight into the killings is police psychologist -- dramatic pause -- Dr. Herbert Lyutak! Unable to please his wife (Rita Calderoni) sexually, Herbert decides to give himself up by hinting to the police he knows when the killer will strike again. He shows up to attack a decoy but his plans get sabotaged when another women is murdered in the same vicinity. This is one seriously demented giallo from director Renato Polselli and really goes to extremes when doing the whole sex/death connection. The revelation of the mystery killer isn't going to surprise anyone since the cast is so small, but there are some standout scenes. Hargitay, the former Mr. Jayne Mansfield, is good in the lead role and gives the right emotions for mentally unstable man. What is really fascinating about the film is the Blue Underground DVD offers two versions to watch and they are very different. The shorter American version opens and closes with scenes set in Vietnam with Hargitay as a wounded soldier and Calderoni as a helicopter nurse. There is also an extra killing and a different denouement inside the lovely family S&M torture room.