Reviews

Call me a big softy or a melon head but it's hard for me to not like the B-Movies of my youth that I watched eagerly on shows like Chiller Theater,Jeeper's Creepers and Strange Tales Of Science Fiction. This one played in heavy rotation with Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman and The Amazing Colossal Man. Part of the reason why this had such a strong juvenile appeal is that many kids were studying the Spaniards in the new world in school and this sparked a wild romantic fancy. This was long before shows on the Discovery Channel and Nat Geo were around to dispel myths about murderous soldiers from another era. Another good reason is that director Richard Cunha knew how to stretch a budget and keep things moving and absurd and interesting enough to keep ten year olds glued to their seats. A geologist and a Archaelogist and his hot daughter go hunting in Devils Crag to find traces of El Giant Diablo a sadistic Conquistador of great size. Strange things have been happening in the area like cattle mutilation and a fatal beating of one of the town folk. Now this is weird because the first time we see the comatose giant rise out of the ground is during a lightening storm so either the electricity brought him back to life or he did the murders and then covered himself up with mud and leaves before taking a snooze but it just makes a film like this more fun. The Title monster never utters a word and makes scary faces underneath veteran Jack Pierces make up which was pretty scary in kids terms at the time. Not a film to analyze too much but to just relax and enjoy it's wacky glory.If you like films like Attack Of The Killer Shrews and The Brain From Planet Arous you'll like this one as well.

Haunted High is an unremarkable exercise in hack work that got 2 stars only because of the all too brief "zombie frog" sequence. M.C. Gainey as a released spirit of a evil cult leader comes across as a poor man's Stacey Keach spouting off pre death puns so bad that Freddy Kreuger wouldn't touch them. The CGI isn't as bad as say Piranhaconda but it isn't any better than an old episode of Goosebumps either and Goosebumps is scarier. The bare bones plot of teens and teachers locked in school with demonic forces is purely a Chinese menu type of affair. Take one tired cliché from collum A and 3 bad scenarios from collum B. As for kills the majority of them take place off screen followed by a gush of blood on the nearby wall. Shawn C. Phillips is the most believable person in the cast so that says something right there. Danny Trejo is the stereotyped Hispanic love sick janitor but his good guy roles aren't nearly as convincing as his bad as roles and this is nowhere as entertaining as Machete. Rent that instead. The bottom line is as long as there are masochists that stay home on Saturday nights to watch this crapola and as long as there are sponsors willing to jump on board SyFy is gonna keep churning out the cinematic equivalent to Montezuma's Revenge.If you must watch it do what I did and fast forward through about half.

This is Brad Sykes second film using the the then only affordable 3D camera lens for the home market. It was intended for use with a now outdated system that worked only on tube sets and were marketed at video stores with the movies for a ridiculous price. Now you can get all of the movies that the company put out as double features on Bluray 3D for less than ten dollars and they aren't even worth that. I'm pretty positive that any one reading this that can read and comprehend Film Making For Dummies can raise up 50 bucks(More if you give the actors lunch)and make a much better film that this. Hell, if you made a 60 minute film of fat hairy guys puking up fake vomit you would have a better film than this. So go get a 3D camera and make something better than this.

Evil Unleashed:The Mummy is easily the best of the 3D features produced by Sterling(Boy,is that a joke)Entertainment but that's like saying Plan 9 From Outer Space was the most accomplished out of all of Ed Wood's films. If you're a 3D enthusiast and you're yearning for something outside of the family style and main stream titles offered on Bluray 3D this might be what you are looking for. Just make sure you have a few beers on hand to give it a boost.Produced a few years ago for the very small home video 3D market prior to the 3D TV sets. You had to view these with bulky glasses that gave a very strong flicker effect.The 3D itself was decent for a primitive form that was actually created by a lens that you could adapt on to any home camcorder. Inside the lens were crossed mirrors that split the image into overlapping pictures that were then put back together with a depth illusion by the glasses. This movie has been converted from those previous images into a much better 3D process that eliminates any ghosting or heavy flicker but you still have the cheesy movie to contend with. Most of the actors are there for eye candy because they certainly can't act and they appear to be killing time while waiting for their next porn assignment which in the case of the males actors is most likely gay porn. Probably the only reason they did a mummy story was because the prop and sets were available from another flick and they got a deal on them because believe me the other films in the series have practically no sets at all and are all shot in the woods with very few props. The story is pretty basic. A crazy professor resurrects an evil Egeyptian princess with the help of his moronic students. THe mummy appears as a nice looking woman,dances,gets naked and then turns into a cloth wrapped mummy and rips out the hearts of whomever she's dancing in front of.Repeat this formula until the last five minutes of the film when the mummy does a Kung Fu fight with older Egyptian gods on the side of good. The Kung Fu fight is pretty funny.This has been reissued as a double bill with an earlier film the Zombie Chronicles . In this the 3D is a lot less polished and the film is so bad it looks like it was made on a weekend by folks too poor to attend film school. The story if you can call it that is about a free lance journalist who picks up an obnoxious hitch hiker who begins to tell her retarded ghost stories about the woods they are in.The twist ending will be figured out by your six year old long before it's revealed. This film is merely product for the 3D market and exists for no other reason.OK. You've been warned.

I know some of the people involved in this and they are all truly nice people and I was glad to do them the favor by appearing in a cameo role as The Doom Sayer at the beginning of the picture much like Criswell did at the opening of the Three Ed Wood Films he did. It was fun. I brought my own costume and improvised the opening in about five minutes. We shot another improv where I appear as a girls father and her horny date shows up and starts to talk about anal sex. It was stupid and sort of funny but SOme older woman who was there started to object in the middle of the scene so that was that. It didn't even appear as a special feature. The rest of the film well...It's pretty effin bad. Pretty much an excuse to show off some lovely young things and waste your time and money. If you care to rub one out to some very soft core erotica then be my guest just don't do it to my part. You have been warned. Dukey Flyswatter

Man, I stumbled on to this off of a torrent out of the clear blue sky whilst searching for something else. Bam the description hit me square in the face like a brick burrito. A Mexican Horror Anthology? I had no knowledge of such a creature and had to do so just for the unique experience. It's not a really good film,partially because it's budget is too low and the stories are strechted out a little too long but it was thoroughly entertaining and the stories were a little off kilter. THe first episode has no dialogue except for a few lines at the very end. A young woman having hallucinations is being hunted by a witch with a sharp knife. THe 2nd story is about two friends escaping a fever ridden village after buryiing a loved one. The last tale is a comic one and is loosely based on Premature Burial.All in all a good B effort from a very quirky film. Duke

Ghost Stories is a reasonably entertaining ultra low budget series that was shot on tape and aired late at night in syndication. I'm usually pretty savvy on such things but it escaped my radar without so much as a blip and being infirmed in 1997 I had a lot of TV time on my hands. Other than the dead on narration of your unseen host Rip Torn the tales of specters and precognition are presented by no name thespians whose performances range from adequate to ridiculously bad. I'm now on disc 3 of the 5 disc series of 44 episodes so it's not so bad as to be disinteresting but it's certainly not Twilight Zone or One Step Beyond. All the stories are pretty straight forward no cutting up like Tales From The Crypt or Monsters and they usually contain some vague morality like the guy whose conscious leaves his body to betray him to the police or the writer who cheats on his wife with a ghost to get his passion back. For the few bucks I paid for it on Amazon I'm satisfied just don't go for it expecting House On Haunted Hill (Either Version).

So Glad I finally caught this on the DVD double bill with Creation Of The Humanoids . I saw the trailer for this at a grindhouse in the seventies after the release of Star Wars. Obviously some cheap distributor dusted it off the shelf and reissued it with a Star Wars like title to pair up with another sci-fi. I remember the audience howling at the preview especially when the astronuts start hacking up the a.liens which are nothing more than plastic tubes filled with strawberry Jello. Ever since I've been trying to find it. As Space operas go it's not the best and it's not the worst. It's certainly a time capsule of everything sixties .AnTonio Marghetti seemed to be the go to guy for these psychedelic mash ups of James Bond and George Jetson starting in 1960 with Space Men and ending in the early seventies(I think) with The SNow Devils AKA The Blue Devils. My favorite in the series is Wild Wild Planet with it's four armed assassins and biosphere of blood. Most of these would grace the late night air waves when the insomniacs and users of contraband were up and wanting something different. If you like em cheap and Campy you could do worse, As for really boring cinema try The Dead Talk,The Incredible Petrified World, Treasure Of El Cortez, Or That Man From Harlem.

As first features go this is dynamite and a great piece of cinema history representing commercial flops that refuse to die and slowly gain staunch cult popularity. Fortunately The Sundance Channel has picked this up and hopefully it's reputation will grow. It's really the first feature about the ugly side of the music business and with a thinking mans vile of sci-fi brew tinged with British black humor it's point is probably easier to convey than it was back then since we have seen so many media manufactured teen stars selling everything from, happy meals and fashions to virginity. Patti Smith covered the melody to the song Set Me Free on her Easter album but she changed most of the words to make it seem more contemporary. It's pure horror show gold. If you're looking for action look elsewhere but if you want the closest thing to the Anti version of Hard Days Night dive in. Control the little people.

I remember seeing this as a kid on local TV and being somewhat put out by the fact that you never got a clear look at the infected natives (probably for good reasons) and that the killer fungus monster at the finale was obviously tons of soap suds mixed in with a little dry ice fog. Oddly enough it stuck with me and soon I was putting shampoo in my hair and screaming "The fungus,the fungus!" Still,the leads all do a good straight faced job and the script doesn't contain the amount of Ed Wood style howlers you'd expect it to.As far as I know this is also the last horror film to present calypso singer Sir Lancelot who had appeared in the Val Lewton Films I walked with a Zombie and Curse Of The Cat People. The song "You Got To Suffer To Be Born Again is a mix of genius and absurdity. Highly recommended to anyone who likes old B movies.

Back in the days when movies began their run on Wednesday I got a free pass to a theater and used it on this because the ad showed a racy picture of Roz Kelly and I think she was standing on a giant pork snout. The rest I blocked out of my mind as this was the worst no budget Paul Morrisey type flick I ever had to misfortune to see then and maybe since. If you're thinking if this could possibly be some lost gem for future MST3K type fodder you'd be wrong. THis is no plan 9 just an out of focus talky obnoxious comedy drama about a wall street nerd in love with a crass village hippie.I talked to the guy who gave me the pass a few days later and he said that it didn't even make it until the weekend before they pulled because of the complaints and the other chains did the same. I sometimes wonder if I would still feel the same way about this film if I saw it again but then again at one point I considered piercing my privates as well.

Most of the cast seems glad to be working if not half snockered in yet another tale of misguided radioactivity that didn't have much extra going for it other than a wide screen format. A world weary scientist finds a common fresh water turtle on the beach where with the use of his new fangled death ray mutates it into a large snapping turtle and then into a man in a hilarious rubber suit that has to be weighted down to keep the actor from floating belly up to the surface.It's a fast 78 minutes and with all of it's cheapness and faux pas it's hard not to like.It's not as good as Creature From The Black Lagoon but not nearly as bad as it's DVD co-feature The Beast With A Million Eyes.

If you've seen this offbeat entry in the stable of Hammer's early remakes of the classic horror's then you've either encountered this rarity on ebay or caught it on TV or the cinema ages ago.

I was fortunate enough to copy a friend's video cassette that was offered briefly in the U.S. in the early nineties only on EP speed and mastered from a fading,reddish,16mm pan and scan T.V. version that had the word "Hell" bleeped out twice.

Seeing as how the studio had done well with adult color versions of Dracula,Frankenstein and The Mummy it would seem like a natural for them to tackle The Robert Louis Stephenson story with their usual teaming of Lee and Cushing and with the appropriate amount of blood and thunder, Alas,they opted for an ambitious and riskier approach to go for more sexual innuendo ,Freudian subtext and underplayed classiness.All of these things are good when they work but unfortunately the pace is very leaden and the horror aspects of the story have been made extremely tame in order to get away with the psycho sexual aspects which must have been titillating for 1960 but not so much anymore. The best part of The Movie is watching Christopher Lee make the most of a very juicy supporting role as a likable womanizer with a gambling problem who seduces Jekyll's neglected wife and constantly puts the touch on the Doc for money. Lee wisely sets aside his Shakespearean tendencies and gives a a very believable non-hammy characterization.It would have been nice to have Cushing pop up as Jekyll's medical compatriate but sadly,no.

Paul Massey has the far more difficult dual role but really can't pull it off opposite a pro like Lee and the film suffers for it. Part of the fault must lie with the script and the usually talented direction of Terrance Fisher. Massey is better in the under realized but tortured role of the boorish Dr. Jekyll, who is not as philanthropic in this version. As the bratty and somehwat naive Mr Hyde Massey is Handsome but vaguely sounds like Winnie The Pooh and is far to easily foiled in his attempts at evil until the final 20 minutes.

The concept of Hyde using the transformation to finally allow Jekyll to get some action with wifey Dawn Adams and to revenge himself for the adultery of best friend Lee was novel but without the suspense or the colorful violence of the previous Hammer vehicles this one will disappoint many fans of the genre. If you are a fan of the studio and want to see a lost curio by all means go for it. It's not a bad film jut slow and misguided and if you have an eye for the ladies then relax and enjoy the scenery because it's adorned with lot's of feminine eye candy. Look for Oliver Reed in a small part as a pimp in the first twenty minutes or so. At this point I don't think it's been offered to DVD.

The sole purpose for making this film in India must have been the cheap labor because most of the film is shot on fakey cave interiors and the exterior shots are no more exotic than Red Rock Canyon in Nevada. Too bad they didn't make it in Hong Kong at least they could have gotten some of the folks who worked on the Shaw Borthers old 1982 shock and schlocker Centipede Horror to show them how it was done. In that film they actually use real centipedes and it's as gross as Hell. In this film they use old school puppetry and while I'm sick and tired of crappy cartoony CGI monsters this foam latex critter can't even pass the Roger Corman level of New World Pictures monsters. Hell it can't even entertain as much as the no budget ping pong and hotdog monsters from The Horror Of Party Beach. The best thing you can say about it is that some of the actors are trying hard and that it's nowhere as awful as anything I've seen from Asylum pictures who gave us I AM Omega, Beast Of Bray Road,Transmorphers and Snakes On A Train.

Dukey

With the exception of a few A titles Sci-fi was mostly considered kids stuff especially in the 50's. The studios had such low expectations that even a gem like Forbidden Planet was used as a premium for cornflakes boxtops.

That being the case it was profitable to crank out as many as possible as cheap as possible with as much action as the budget would allow and that was the only criteria. It worked because kids hungry for any kind of monster and teens needing a good background for the drive-in flocked to these B pictures so much that you could expect one to open a couple of weeks or so.

It's not like anybody got suckered into these things as well.I don't know how many previews I saw at the drive-in or matinée even if the monster looked fake or stinky in the trailer I still wanted to go see it. For the most part I had a good time and I still love these B creature Features from the fifties. This one in particular is highly re-watchable.

Unfortunately I can't say much for their current counterparts it seems like the bad bug movies of today are mostly just bad and not fun like these were. Recently I watched Ice Spider,Lord Of The Spiders and Scorpius Giganticus on the sci-fi channel and they all blew so bad I could barely finish them.

The special effects here are bad but they're fun because they're bad plus they fit right in with the naiveté and unsophistication of the times and Bert I Gordon didn't skimp on them either. Once the monster showed up you got tons of bad special effects right up until the climax . Today we know so much more about effects and budgeting and story structure and science and credible actions that it seem a shame that so many sci-flicks are blatantly disregarding this without giving us the fun of old school. It's a lose lose situation.

Currently this is on DVD with War Of The Colossal Beast and I recommend it highly as a cheap disc worthy of a rainy night filled with cherry Cokes and Sloppy Joes

When you consider that this was the 9th film that Corman produced and directed for AIP in 1957 it's a miracle he didn't have a heart attack on the set and have it turn out as entertaining and semi coherent as it is.

Ncholson and Arkoff who were marketing masters basically took the hype from the anticipation of post production Kirk Douglas epic The Vikings and threw in some babes and a monster and beat the big studio release to the punch by almost four months.

It's 0bviously Corman's biggest production until that date with extras and horses and matte paintings and you can tell his energy is mainly concerned with just getting it done on time rather than adding his signature quirkiness that you would find in Attack Of The Crab Monsters,Day The World Ended or Bucket Of Blood. COmpared to it's co-feature The Amazing She Monster the proceeding are intricate and lavish.

Like most low budget drive-in flicks from AIP you just go with the flow and enjoy the goofs and the good looking dames. ANything else and your just fooling yourself into thinking you're a real film critic. ;-)

And if you're wondering what the above means it's an old school Hollywood term that means you can get a lot of mileage from something. If The producers only knew how much mileage this get it wouldn't have slipped so easily into the public domain. At any rate this and it's co-feature The Giant Gila Monster were both made back to back for a little under a hundred thousand dollars ( I think ) and by the time they were re-released and then sold to Chiller TV the two had grossed about a million dollars.Not too shabby for drive-in trash.

It's speculated that one of the reasons that Shrews and Gila Monster did so well was the relative uniqueness of the two critters. We had already tons of insects and giant people but people were just beginning to show interest in exotic animals from shows like Wild Kingdom and the like.

Seeing as how Gila Monsters were cantankerous and poisonous the Director decided to use the non lethal Mexican Beaded Lizard as a stand in and seeing as how giant shrews were in short supply they used Coon Hounds and Dalmations dressed in woolly coats with long rubber tails. Look closely and you can see spots on some of the legs.

One reason that Shrews is so much fun today is watching character actor James Best who would later go onto fame as the sheriff in Dukes Of Hazzard trying to keep his dignity alongside the wackiness.He has since said that this is the film he is least proud of.

The dog costumes are so bad that they are a joy to watch and I would gladly watch this a dozen more times than another bad CGI reptile or insect movie on the Sci-Fi CHannel.

Love it or hate it the film has a lot of spunk and it is memorable. Some have called it "one Of The Worst." I've seen practically every B horror and monster flick from the fifties and for this era I have to disagree. Try sitting through The Incredible Petrifed World or THe Cosmic Man and Killer Shrews will seem like Speed.

In the last couple of years the film has been colorized and has even shown up on Animal Planet for a Halloween Special where they compare real shrew behavior to the movie inaccuracies.

Like macaroni and cheese it ain't sophisticated but it's still comfort food.

It's hard to think of a funnier film made in 1957 than this Sam Katzman Sci-Fi special.

Despite it's total disregard for any kind of credulity it's hard to imagine that this film actually made money and it did. I believe YouTube has the trailer and it's featured on the recent DVD "Icons Of Horror Collection: Sam Katzman" along with other treats like Zombies Of Mora Tau, The Werewolf and Creature With The Atom Brain. The Goofy Gander of destruction is featured more than a few times in the coming attractions so who would want to go after seeing The title turkey? Kids I guess. When I saw it on Creature Features I didn't care too much. It wasn't The Beast From 20,000th Fathoms but it was a monster and any monster was OK with me.

As others have pointed out there is so much cheesy goodness it's hard not to enjoy unless you just don't get these films or you're a total cynic. As for me I laugh out loud every time the the Claw flares the nostrils in his beak.

I recommend watching this with Blood Freak. This is a pro Christian/Anti Drug film about an Elvis Type drifter who eats a drug laced poultry and becomes a Chicken headed monster. I kid you not.

Lensed by the same director of the bigger budgeted Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers and meant to be a companion for the lower half of the bill The Werewolf surprised everybody by being a taut face value chiller with more character emphasis than usual for this type of subject.

As other reviewers have stated the performances,locale,direction and lighting are much better should be for a story about kooky scientists turning a luckless schmoe into a hirsute mutant but it also has a film noir element that mixes in quite nicely amidst the western pines of Big Bear lake.

Unlike some other viewers I didn't have a problem with the make up. It was meant to scare kids and it did. A year later you can see similarities in the design for Michael Landon's beastly side in I Was A Teenage Werewolf.

After the late sixties this exhausted it's run on local Chiller theaters and became very hard to find until now.

For a reasonable price you can get a gorgeous widescreen DVD transfer of The Werewolf along with other B movie faves The Giant Claw,Zombies Of Mora Tau and Creature With The Atom Brain.

The name of the set is Icons Of Horror Sam Katzman. It comes with some great extras but one of them produced by the same Three Stooges dept. at Columbia has enough vile Asian stereotypes to make A Fu-Man-Chu movie look P.C.

Take a trip back to matinée-ville with this and enjoy.

People wonder why Fox went for lizards and spiders when pioneer effects wiz WIllis O Brien offered to head the monster side of things. The main reason was simple, 1959's Journey To The Center Of The Earth starring Pat Boone and James Mason. Lost World was to be a follow up considering the films huge success and award winning effects despite the fact that monitor lizards and tegus were used in this as well. COnsidering what O Brien was going to do it would have taken a year extra for the effects and more money than the Caimen(not crocodile )would work for. Ultimately the studios decided to strike while the iron was hot and go for a large but not prestigious film filled with enough carnage to keep the kids happy and have them see it again once the flick went into support on a double feature. Surely,The O brien film would have been spectacular but this film is still very enjoyable on a level because everything about it is so wrong. It's very campy but also sexist and racist on a consistently level and the animal cruelty holds a strange fascination and power that eclipses into looniness when Claude Raines holds up a common house gecko and says "It's a baby T. Rex." The color scheme is extremely good from the hot pink palm trees to the lime green tarantulas. Personally, aside from the superior dinosaur effects I prefer this To Jurussic park as there are no annoying kids or schmaltzy message about family. It's tacky but good tacky.

Larry Buchannan makes Ed Wood look like Preston Sturges but to his credit he conned his way into making more films and having them bought and seen on late night than Wood ever dreamt of.

If you've seen Zontar The Thing From Venus or Curse Of THe Swamp Creature you've basically seen the monster in one form or another since they're all culled from the same suit. One has a top fin,one doesn't,one is just a mask and hands and another is a full suit. Although the creature here is supposed to be a dinosaur man you don't get the feeling that it's supposed to be twenty feet tall until the mad farmer tells you it's twenty feet tall.

As others have stated this is solely a flick for those that are into cinematic badness and seeing every monster movie possible no matter what.The flashback scenes of torture with the chasing and the whistle wake ups are indeed a hilarious highlight.

The nominal star of the picture,Tommy Kirk is devoid of his child star perkiness which coasted him through the mousketeer and beach party days and plays his part with aa annoying monotone that clearly shows the depression and alcoholism setting in for good.

There are about ten minutes of good chuckles in the film but it's really not worth watching without the bots or drunken pals to riff on it unless you're really bored.

Be warned,that if you absolutely have to see the monster in action,it doesn't show up until the final three minutes and then it's kaput!

If you gotta see one Larry Buchannan picture go with The Eye Creatures or Goodbye Norma Jean. He died just recently at the beginning of 2007

I just can't agree with the nay sayers on this title. I watch an average of 40 horror films a month so for my taste I can instantly spot something that rises above the crap. True, there are many mysteries and perhaps because of that holes in the movie. The how's and Why's of the situation are never explained but then again a real life victim that is kidnapped,tortured and condition seldom gets a pat answer. The acting is convincing as is the gore and while the story is simple it's never boring.I think some people might have a problem with it's raw non Hollywood feel.SOme may link this to the current trend of "Torture Porn" but this is a far cry from the slick and premeditated madness of Saw or Hostel. THis is actually closer to the seventies horror survival films like Alive,Man In THe WIlderness,I spit on Your Grave and The Town That Dreaded Sundown. With such awful films like the remake of The Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers,The Boogey Man,Hide And Seek and Hostel 2 I am continually perplexed to hear people trash a film like this so indiscriminately. What is your cup of tea,Final Destination 3?