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

SEVERED TIES (1992) - Young scientist Harrison Harrison (Billy Morrisette) is working hard to recreate his deceased father's gene splicing experiments. Funded by his mother Helena (Elke Sommer) and her sleazy beau Dr. Hans Vaughn (Oliver Reed), Harrison spends his days in a basement lab trying to splice human DNA with that of a lizard in an effort to regrow limbs. When he conveniently loses his right arm, he injects himself with the fluid and grows a new scaly arm. Wait, isn't this the plot of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN? Anyway, after that things get really weird. He runs away from home and lives with some bums led by war vet Stripes (Garrett Morris) who live in the sewer system. When mom comes looking for his formula and steals it back, Harrison creates an army of severed lizard-arms to fight her. This was the third film produced by Fangoria Films (after CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT and MINDWARP) and might be the oddest of the trio. In fact, it is surprising not to see Frank Henenlotter's name on this as it is totally up his alley and the film's look even resembles that of the BASKET CASE sequels. The film is a bit too low budget to be a classic, but it does have some original ideas and good gore effects by KNB. Perhaps most surprising are the performances by Sommer and Reed. They could have totally phoned their respective roles in, but both give it their all. Originally titled ARMY (haha, get it?).

Edgar Allan Poe is in the top 5 of authors most adapted to film and I'd wager 90% of the resulting products are terrible. For some odd reason, a mini-renaissance went on with Poe's writings in the late 1980s as Roger Corman and Harry Allan Towers jumped on his work, despite no big screen impetus.

THE HOUSE OF USHER (1989) - Producer Harry Alan Towers is so cheap he didn't pay for THE FALL OF for the title! Ryan Usher (Rufus Swart) and his girlfriend Molly (Romy Windsor) head to his uncle's isolated estate after receiving a letter from him. Before arriving they crash their car when they see two ghost children on the road. Molly makes it to the home and is told Ryan has already been picked up and is being cared for. She then meets uncle Roderick (Oliver Reed), who assures her all is fine despite his reluctance to let her visit Ryan and the fact he won't let her leave. Yup, ol' Roderick is a perv and, after burying the still-alive Ryan, forces himself onto Molly to carry on the family line. Also, in a nod to THE OLD DARK HOUSE, a crazy brother named Walter (Donald Pleasence) lives up in the attic. As you can see, this barely has any connection to the Poe short story outside of a few events and character names. Filmed in South Africa, producer Towers at least got his monies worth with some nice looking sets. And leads Reed and Pleasence are total pros, although I suspect Reed enjoyed his moments feeling up the attractive Windsor (who was already accustomed to primordial beasts as she just survived HOWLING IV). Director Alan Birkinshaw can't be bothered with things like suspense or terror though. He does throw in a few gore scenes for good measure. Towers' two other Poe "adaptations" were MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1989; with Frank Stallone and Herbert Lom!) and BURIED ALIVE (1990).

I'm still on my poverty Poe productions as last night I revisited (yes, revisited)...

THE HAUNTING OF MORELLA (1990) - Morella (Nicole Eggert) is killed in the opening minutes for murder and witchcraft as her husband Gideon (David McCallum) looks on with their infant child. 17 years later, the child Lenora (Eggert again) is all grown up and soon to receive an sizable trust fund on her 18th birthday. But she is also the target of her teacher Coel (Lana Clarkson), who was Morella's accomplice back in the day, and hopes to put her old friend's soul in this new body. Loosely based on Poe's "Morella" short story, this feature runs only 82-minutes (the film ends at 78 minutes) but seems to go on a lot longer than that. Director Jim Wynorski gives the story what every critic of Poe thought it was missing - lots of topless women running around. To be fair, it succeeds on an exploitation level, but you'll never confuse this with a 1960s Corman Poe adaptation. And it is a nice looking production because this is back when Wynorski gave a damn. Eggert was "hot" off CHARLES IN CHARGE at the time so this must have seemed edgy for her. Regardless, she uses an obvious body double during her nude scenes. It is hilarious seeing her and Clarkson on screen as there is over a foot height differential, which leaves Eggert level with Clarkson's chest. Concorde staple Maria Ford has a smaller role as a servant. The film ends with the ridiculous onscreen words "I still live!"

GODZILLA: TOKYO S.O.S. (2003) - Pick up ten months after the events in GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA, the 27th entry in the Godzilla series opens with Japan getting a surprise visit from Mothra. The big bug is heading to visit Dr. Shinichi Chujo (Hiroshi Koizumi, reprising the role he played in MOTHRA 43 years earlier) and those annoying little twins tell him that Godzilla's bones inside the still-under-repair MechaGodzilla must be returned to the ocean. Mothra will protect Japan if Godzilla returns. Turns out visiting Chujo was the right move as his grandson, Yoshito Chujo (Noboru Kaneko), works on the ground crew of MechaGodzilla. Of course, we can't forget about the big green monster. With its wounds fully healed, Godzilla reemerges from the depths of the ocean and heads directly to Tokyo. S.O.S. indeed!

This is the only direct sequel in the Millennium series and I appreciate that. I also like that it carries over a series continuity by bringing Dr. Chujo back from the original MOTHRA (how interesting must that phone call from his agent have been?). The problem is that - outside of a new monster appearance - this is the exact same film as its predecessor. You have all of the same beats and the end is another bit of manufactured drama as a person must run out and manually fix MechaGodzilla so that it can stand up and fight. I would have been more entertained if they had continued the storyline pilot Akane Yashiro (Yumiko Shaku), but she gets shipped off by the 20-minute mark (literally - they send her overseas to learn how to fight) and we get a whole new crew of main characters. That said, the final battle is very impressive, probably the best I've seen in any of these 2000 and beyond Big G flicks. The film leads you to believe this is the end of Godzilla, but a coda shows a lab has preserved some of its DNA. This plot device wasn't used for the next year's GODZILLA: FINAL WARS, the final of the Toho series to date.

GODZILLA: FINAL WARS (2004) - The 28th entry in the Japanese Godzilla series served as both the 50th anniversary for the films and the finale (for now). Once again abandoning the previous films, this opens in a alternate technology advanced 2004. War and pollution has led monsters to attack various countries and the world unites in combating them with the Earth Defense Force (EDF). Leading the charge are a series of well trained mutants that have popped up in society and the opening confrontation with Godzilla ends with the big beast frozen in ice in the South Pole. Years later, a 12,000 year old monster (Gigan) is found and various monsters show up all over the world to wreck havoc. Just when it seems all hope is lost, some aliens comes down and zap away all the monsters. These extraterrestrials (called Xiliens) are our friends and want to warn us about a planet hurling toward Earth that will destroy us, so we need to set up the Space Nations. Yeah, they're bad guys and when M-Unit solider Shinichi Ozaki (Masahiro Matsuoka) uncovers their evilllll plans, he and a small team decide their only weapon to use is unleash Godzilla.

Sorry if that sounds like a bungled mess of a synopsis, but this is a bungled mess of a film. Debuting Godzilla helmer Ryuhei Kitamura (of VERSUS fame) closes out the series not with a thud, but a shaky, over edited thud complete with a guitar riff. Words can't adequately describe this mess of a film. It feels like Kitamura had a half finished script for his latest martial arts sci-fi actioner and threw it at his writers and said, "Just throw some monsters in there." Fans probably got excited when they read which beasts were going to be in the film, but it is definitely a case of "reads better on paper." The fights are shoddy and just a total mess (have I used that enough?). I guess the only clever thing I can credit him with is having the real Godzilla beat up the 1998 American Godzilla in a little battle. Even worse, Kitamura spends nearly 70 minutes of the 2 hour film Godzilla free. This is easily the worst Toho film I've ever seen and it even crawled up into my top 5 worst films of all-time for me. Toho has said they won't make a G-man film for 10 years after this. I'm not sure that will be enough time for people to forget this...wait for it...mess. I'll just willfully be blind and pretend GODZILLA: TOKYO S.O.S. ended the series.

The sets were redressed for use as the castle interior in Birkinshaw's MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. The house of Usher exterior was Knebworth House in England (Wayne Manor in Burton's BATMAN and D'Ampton Hall in LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM). The score is made up of recycled cues from Gary Chang's score for 52 PICK-UP and some music by George S. Clinton.

Besides MASQUE, Birkinshaw also directed the 1989 Towers adaptation of TEN LITTLE INDIANS for Cannon.

This is actually one of my favorites of the series, just after Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. I dunno why, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I agree that the focus on alien shenanigans could have been scaled back more than a little.

I've still got a few to catch up on, but right now my least favorite is 1991's Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah...man, that thing was interminable. Took me three sittings to get all the way through it...although that final attack on Tokyo was pretty spectacular. I'm sure it would have been better if I could have watched it with subtitles...the dubbing was polished, but the American dialects used were gawdawful. It was like they pulled in the roadshow of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas to do the vocal work.

And one character keeps referring to the big guy as "Godziller"!

This post has been edited by Craig Blamer on Aug 3 2012, 12:34 PM

I decided to re-watch this last night. The only thing I remembered about it was the guy (Don Frye) who looks like Mark Kistler, the drawing artist who has hosted several PBS kids programs. I'm not a big fan of hyperkinetic editing, especially stuff like the motorcycle chase where half the action is out of the frame, but I tolerated it pretty well on this occasion. About half-way through I started thinking about how the entire series has been all over map in consistency almost from the start. Just think...GODZILLA/GORJIRA.....GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER/GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN.....KING KONG VS. GODZILLA. That's a pretty big jump right there. I really don't know how to single out one Godzilla movie in 28 as being the worst. There's just too much uneven terrain to cover.

THE HAUNTING FEAR (1990) - Victoria Munroe (Brinke Stevens) is having nightmares that seem to be driving her husband Terry (Jay Richardson) nuts. Not because he fears for her well being, but because he wants her to die from her weak heart so that he can inherit her wealth and live high on the hog with his secretary Lisa (Delia Sheppard). Oh, and maybe pay off his gambling debt he owes to Italian mobster Visconti (the decidedly un-Italian Robert Quarry). Looking to speed up the process, Terry and Lisa decide to bury Victoria alive in order to scare her to death. Loosely based on Poe's "The Premature Burial" (hey, it has a premature burial), this Fred Olen Ray shocker is from his serviceable period with some decent FX, that same house he used in every other film (the brown one, not the white one) and nice photography by Gary Graver. This is probably the biggest role Stevens has ever had and she is fine as the stressed out wife. Her acting takes a slight turn for the worse when she is supposed to play psycho at the end. Jan-Michael Vincent, Karen Black, Hoke Howell, and Michael Berryman all got in one day of work in small roles. Vincent's role in the first half relies on him sitting in a parked car and staring at things. Ray obviously knew him well.

I'm not a big fan of GODZILLA: FINAL WARS and I certainly wouldn't waste any energy putting up an in-depth defense for it, but I don't think it's *that* bad. GODZILLA'S REVENGE is probably worse. But one of the five worst films Will's ever seen? I don't think it's even one of the five worst films he's seen in the last two weeks.

You're Fred...er...dead to me, Tinta.

Same thing.

I'd easily class GODZILLA vs. MEGALON as worse than FINAL WARS - not that WARS is at all good, but it had enough fan service to keep me happy (hey, it even stole part of GORATH!)

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975)—Directed by Kevin Connor. Stars Doug McClure, Susan Penhaligon, John McEnery, Anthony Ainley. A hit for AIP and Amicus, its British production company, this Edgar Rice Burroughs story was the first of four fantasy films teaming director Connor and American TV star McClure (nine years on THE VIRGINIAN). Marvel Comics accompanied the AIP U.S. release with a black-and-white comic magazine adaptation. Civilian survivors of a torpedoing take over the German U-boat that bombed them. Lost and low on fuel, the travelers—which include American sub expert Bowen Tyler (McClure), German captain Von Schoenvorts (McEnery), devious second-in-command Dietz (Ainley), and British beauty Lisa Clayton (Penhaligon)—end up at the lost Antarctic world of Caprona, bursting with warm climate, lush vegetation, cavemen, and dinosaurs. A perfect example of old-fashioned boys’ adventure, Connor and writers James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock (the noted science fiction author) populate the film with lots of action, bursting volcanoes, quicksand, some colorful special effects, humor, and a plucky, pretty girl (but no sex). The miniatures by Derek Meddings (SUPERMAN) are admirable; the prehistoric creatures, done with animatronics and puppetry, less so, but definitely charming in their own rubbery style. Connor adds elements of the then-popular disaster genre in his explosive finale. He returned to Caprona with Patrick Wayne in THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT two years later.



THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT (1977)—Directed by Kevin Connor. Stars Patrick Wayne, Doug McClure, Sarah Douglas, Thorley Walters, Dana Gillespie, Shane Rimmer, David Prowse, Milton Reid. Ben McBride (Wayne) leads a search party into the lost world of Caprona to find his friend Bowen Tyler (McClure), who was left behind in THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT. Less than ten minutes in, director Connor stages a pterodactyl attack on a biplane. Cool. The plane crashes, however, and McBride, liberated journalist Charlotte (Douglas), drunken mechanic Hogan (Rimmer), and dino expert Norfolk (Walters) explore on foot. PEOPLE’s setup is similar to that of BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, complete with a sexy primitive girl (the eye-popping Gillespie) who leads McBride to a third-act cameo by McClure, this movie’s Heston. The low-grade special effects, which came across as charming in LAND, are much less so this time around. The dinosaur puppets are stiffer (the pterodactyl-on-wires was never convincing in either film), and a rubber spider that menaces Douglas is ridiculous. I think one monster is being pushed around on wheels. The plot tosses aside much of what LAND established in favor of a new tribe called the Naga that believes in human sacrifice, and Tyler may just be next on the menu! Wayne lacks the warmth of McClure, though Douglas, Walters, and Rimmer are appealing to PEOPLE’s young fans. So are the hundreds of explosions.

FUTURE COP (1976)—Directed by Jud Taylor. Stars Michael Shannon, Ernest Borgnine, John Amos, John Larch, James Luisi. Robot police officers are a tried-and-true science fiction device, and Paramount’s ABC pilot movie may be the first time it appeared on network television (it aired nearly five months before ABC’s sitcom HOLMES AND YOYO premiered). Veteran street cop Joe Cleaver (Borgnine), who has been the partner of Bill Bundy (Amos, who left GOOD TIMES for this) for 23 years, is assigned to shepherd a rookie officer around the mean streets of Los Angeles. Affectionately called “fumblebutt” by Cleaver, Haven is attacked by gun-wielding car thieves, which is how Cleaver discovers the rookie is actually an android designed with the face of “James Arness, Paul Newman, and a young Lorne Greene.” Cleaver isn’t pleased that the police commissioner (Larch) has stuck him with a robot partner—though surprisingly quick to accept the existence of one—but he reluctantly agrees to help teach the kid about being a cop. The script by producer Anthony Wilson (LOST IN SPACE) is awful, but Borgnine transcends the material to bring a human element to Cleaver’s relationship with a machine, even though it isn’t on the page. Six one-hour episodes in the spring of 1977 were poorly received, but NBC tried to revive the series with a second pilot called COPS AND ROBIN in 1978. Science fiction authors Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova sued Paramount, claiming they had created the concept, and received a hearty settlement. LAW & ORDER creator Dick Wolf produced MANN & MACHINE for NBC in the 1990s, which partnered a human cop with a sexy female robot (played by Yancy Butler).

Gee, imagine that. Has Ellison made more from lawsuit settlements than his actual writing?

Gee, imagine that. Has Ellison made more from lawsuit settlements than his actual writing?

Hee heeee!

BURIED ALIVE (1990) - Janet (Karen Witter) is the new biology teacher at Ravenscroft, a school for troubled young girls (including former porn star Ginger Lynn Allen and debuting Nia Long) run by Gary (Robert Vaughn). This odd, isolated place seems to bring out the worst in Janet as she keeps having hallucinations about hordes of ants, a pulsating brick wall, and a arm that keeps grabbing her. Staff quack Dr. Schaeffer (Donald Pleasence) tells her she just might be seeing different layers of reality (!?!). To make matters worse, the student population keeps dwindling as girls are offed by some guy in a mask. You know you are in for some true class when the opening credits misspell Poe's name (as "Edgar Allen Poe"). Another of Towers' South African lensed Poe "adaptations," this has about as much to do with his short story "Buried Alive" as Fred Olen Ray's THE HAUNTING FEAR does. I'd probably rate this one above USHER just because director Gerard Kikoine (EDGE OF SANITY) manages to pull off some interesting camera moves. He isn't concerned with such trickery in terms of plot though as the villain is exactly who you think it is. Oddly enough, the T&A factor is limited to one scene and former X-rated queen Ginger Lynn does not get nude. Arnold Vosloo and Bill Butler have small supporting roles. John Carradine has 30 seconds of screen time and this was to be his last film. The end credits dedicate it to his memory. Poor John.

I saw BURIED ALIVE once and was very unimpressed. It took a while to get released, as Carradine died unexpectedly in Italy in November of 1988 and the the film wasn't released until 1990. According to a 1988 David Carradine interview cited on John Carradine's Wikipedia page, John "had just finished a film in South Africa" and decided to take a tour through Europe before heading back to the US. So yeah, he never made it home and probably died just a few days at the most after finishing his brief work in BURIED ALIVE. BURIED ALIVE is the last film he knowingly worked on, though he did appear in unused outtake footage as late as 1995 in JACK-O and probably something else as well. A sad, yet given his association with some of the worst grade-Z filmmakers, oddly fitting end to a long and wildly inconsistent career. Carradine always made the worst movies strangely watchable.

Here's what I wrote about it here somewhere:

BURIED ALIVE (1990)—Directed by Gerard Kikoine. Stars Karen Witter, Robert Vaughn, Donald Pleasence, John Carradine, Ginger Lynn Allen, Arnold Vosloo, Nia Long. Who’s the nutty bar in the rubber Ronald Reagan mask who’s killing girls at a spooky school for troubled girls? Is it oily headmaster Gary Julian, played by Robert Vaughn at his most Vaughnian (complete with ascot)? Loony M.D. Schaeffer, played by Donald Pleasence in a rotten toupee and rottener German accent? Or maybe it’s bitchy student Debbie (porn actress Ginger Lynn Allen) or cop Ken (a pre-MUMMY, pre-DARKMAN-sequel Arnold Vosloo)? Everyone acts as suspiciously as possible to keep the audience guessing, but who really cares about this dumb movie? Well, probably Karen Witter, the gorgeous PLAYBOY centerfold and actress essaying the lead role of Janet, the school’s new science teacher who arrives the morning after the first victim is beaten, dropped through a trapdoor in the school’s backyard, slid down a corrugated metal tube, and left to die behind a brick wall. A black cat roams around at random so producer Harry Alan Towers can promote the film as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation. Shot cheaply in South Africa with John Carradine in a lame two-minute cameo. It was reportedly his 502nd film, and he had to have his lines whispered to him before each take. BURIED ALIVE was his last film. He died in Italy a few weeks after shooting. Cannon released BURIED ALIVE directly to VHS.