Reptilicus, a giant monster film about a prehistoric reptile, is a Danish-American co-production, produced by American International Pictures and Saga Studios, and is—upon close examination—two distinctly different films helmed by two different directors. An English version was shot by Sidney W. Pink (who had more success developing colour 3D films, producing The Angry Red Planet and discovering Dustin Hoffman) and a Danish version directed by Poul Bang, whose surname is more dramatic than the film.

The bizarre filming arrangement of filming both versions of the film with the same cast (with the exception of actress Bodil Miller, who couldn’t speak a word of English) has precedent, of course, with the likes of Dracula having English and Spanish language versions filmed consecutively and even Laurel and Hardy filming in two languages – however, you would be very wrong to give Reptilicus the same credit.

Head of AIP, Samuel Z. Arkoff, politely informed Pink after an early screening that audiences would never be able to take the heavy Scandinavian accents seriously and requested the film be re-dubbed with American accents. It took  Danish-American screenwriter, Ib Melchior (scriptwriter on the far better Robinson Crusoe on Mars), a lot of post-production work before the film was finally released in America in 1962. Pink was angry at the changes and wound up in a legal dispute with AIP. After Pink and others viewed the English-language version, the lawsuit was dropped.

The most incredible aspect of this is that the actors’ voices could in any way deemed to be the decisive factor in the film being a success. It is, without question, one of the lousiest attempts to strike fear in an audience’s heart ever attempted. Danish miners dig up a section of a giant reptile’s tail from the frozen grounds in Lapland, where they are drilling. The section is flown to the Danish Aquarium in Copenhagen, where it is preserved in a cold room for scientific study.

Alas, the room is left open and the section begins to thaw, only for scientists to find that it is starting to regenerate. Professor Martens, who is in charge of the Aquarium, dubs the reptilian species “Reptilicus” (upon a reporter’s suggestion) and compares its regenerative abilities to that of other animals like earthworms and starfish. Once fully regenerated from the tail section, Reptilicus goes on an unstoppable rampage from the Danish countryside, where he has been breakfasting on cows, to the panic-stricken streets of Copenhagen (including one of its famous landmarks, Langebro Bridge). A giant earthworm or a starfish would’ve been a cleverer option.

The beast itself is a giant dragon-like serpent with webbed wings, near-impenetrable armour-plated skin and, as the scientists had already learned, had the ability to regenerate itself from any segment. Attempts were made to have Reptilicus performing an aerial assault on Copenhagen but this was deemed ‘unrealistic’ (!) and was cut from the US version. However, the American cut did feature an effect showing Reptilicus shooting a wax crayon-looking neon-green acid slime from his mouth; it is unclear how this was held as being acceptable to human eyes. Reptilicus was magically brought to life by using a marionette, operated by someone looking in the opposite direction (presumably).

None of this really prepares you for the fact that the monster actually looks like one of those door draught-excluders made in the style of a snake and that when he savagely feasts upon innocent Danes, the flailing bodies are extremely crudely-drawn cartoon animations. The flying sequence mercifully occurs at night, hiding much of the ‘horror’.

In an attempt to hide the monster, it is rarely seen in its entirety, usually appearing semi-hidden behind buildings and objects. Sadly, this adds to the unintentional hilarity, as the scale of Reptilicus changes wildly throughout the film to compensate for this.

The film has something of a cult following in Denmark and now, since its release on DVD, in many other territories, indeed the film works better as an advert for Copenhagen’s marketing board than as a monster movie. Such was the groundswell of affection, Pink himself considered a remake around the time of Godzilla‘s awful revamp in 2001 but sadly he died before this reached fruition. The film spawned a shortly-lived comic-book (pulled due to legal wrangles), a novel (!) and is often held up as an example of truly jaw-dropping monster film making – not in the film-maker’s desired way – and clips were used in episodes of The Monkees and an episode of South Park.

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Is is said that over 900,000 people turned out as extras for the filming of Reptilicus and the army navy and airforce all gave permission for their personnel and equipment to be used. As 900,000 people was the entire population of the capital at the time, it is difficult to know whether this could possibly have been the case. Several daring (idiotic) members of the public allowed themselves to be terrorised by the creature to such an extent that they are seen to throw themselves off a Copenhagen bridge.

For all these reasons and more, Reptilicus is a required watch for all lovers of horror, monsters and psychotronic-type fare. Amazingly, the Monarch Books novelization by ‘Dean Owen’ sexed up the story and so Sidney Pink tried to sue AIP for defamation of character. Pink’s legal case failed.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Read the full story of Reptilicus in Jack Stevenson’s book Land of a Thousand Balconies. Available from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a 1971 British film directed by Roy Ward Baker based on the short story Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was made by British studio Hammer Film Productions and was their second loose adaptation of Stevenson’s scenario after their 1960 production The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll.

The film is notable for showing Jekyll transform into a female Hyde; it also incorporates aspects of the historical Jack the Ripper and Burke and Hare cases into the plot. The two characters were played by the film’s stars, Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick. Caroline Munro was offered the part of Sister Hyde but refused because it required some nudity.

Professor Jekyll, an earnest scientist, obsessively works day and night haunted by the fear that one lifetime will not be enough to complete his research; sidetracked from his objective he becomes consumed with developing an immortality serum. Once convinced his findings are complete, he consumes the potion only to discover that he is to become two as he turns into half Jekyll and half Hyde. Desperate to cover up his new found identity he calls her his sister, but things take a turn for the worse when he realises that he needs female hormones if he is to maintain his existence. Before long he is battling with his alter ego Mrs Hyde, as a number of young girls begin to go missing in
the streets of London…

The BBFC requested cuts to remove the inter-cutting of a murder and a rabbit gutting, and to edit a bedroom murder and the stabbing of Professor Robertson. The bedroom murder was shortened though Hammer re-edited the stabbing of the doctor to comprise flash shots of earlier killings. Despite initial BBFC objections the film was then passed, and all later releases feature this same edited print.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Amazon.co.uk

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“The last of Hammer’s Victorian horrors, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde takes elements of the film which began the cycle fiftenn years earlier, The Curse of Frankenstein, and moulds them with the pop culture of a more liberated age to achieve one of the company’s most accomplished and enjoyable films of the decade and points towards the direction the company should have taken in order to survive.” Jonathan Sothcott, Ten Years of Terror

“This is a great film, in need of major re-appraisal. Full of in-jokes and knowing winks to the audience, it’s everything a low-budget horror should be.” British Horror Films

“Roy Ward Baker does an excellent directing job, allotting for the right amount of sensuality and violence without going overboard, keeping it a classy affair. The low budget reveals an obvious restriction of sets, but Baker is able to convey a hearty vision of 19th century London.”  George R Reis, DVD Drive-In

Italian Locandina

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Post by Will Holland

Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) is a British horror film starring Michael Gough. It was directed by Arthur Crabtree at tiny Merton Park Studios for American exploitation producer Herman Cohen, who concocted the lurid screenplay with Aben Kandel.

It was the first film in what film critic David Pirie dubbed production company Anglo-Amalgamated’s “Sadian trilogy” (the other two being Circus of Horrors and Peeping Tom), with an emphasis on sadism, cruelty and violence (with sexual undertones), in contrast to the supernatural horror of the Hammer films of the same era

The Black Museum – Scotland Yard’s not-for-public-eyes collection of criminal, sometimes  macabre,  crime-related paraphernalia, from ransom letters to hangman’s nooses to ingenious murder weapons. If it didn’t exist, you’d have to make a film about it. Well, it does exist but director Crabtree (more famous as a cinematographer but with a modest filmography including Fiend Without a Face) opted to make the film anyway.

Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough) is an ambitious but frustrated crime writer (with a newspaper column too, a surprisingly sympathetic reflection of writers’ finances) who harbours a deep-set contempt of the police. He has curated a black museum of his own and goes one step further by enacting his own crimes of increasing depravity, via his assistant, Rick (Graham Curnow), which in turn fuels his writing. Elsewhere at British cinemas, George Cole starred in the riotous romp Don’t Panic, Chaps!

This startlingly mean-spirited and graphic celluloid gem is a real curveball in British cinema and horror cinema worldwide. A co-production between Britain’s Anglo-Amalgamated (best known for a dozen Carry On films but also responsible, not only for Peeping Tom and Circus of Horrors but Konga and many Edgar Wallace mysteries) and America’s AIP, the cinema-going public held their collective breaths as they prepared for the wonder of ‘Hypno-Vista’. Once they had coped with the combination of Eastmancolor and CinemaScope, they reeled with incredulity at the film’s subtext hidden beneath its outwardly glossy veneer.

The wonderful Michael Gough, a mainstay of British horror in such films as Trog and Horror Hospital but with many mainstream successes later in life, which you can check for in your own time, is in utterly uncompromising form here, with lengthy dialogues and an almost condescending sneer towards the camera. He was virtually alone in his exploits, with only Shirley Anne Field (also in Peeping Tom), who plays Rick’s's girlfriend, worthy of mention.

The film is probably best-known for the very first passage of play, which sees an innocent-looking pair of binoculars gouging out a poor girl’s eyes, as hidden prongs spring forth. Pacing is a problem for many with this film, with long scenes of dialogue, delivered, at the very worst, ‘interestingly’ by all but here is a failure to engage with what is a most peculiar film. The nearest point of reference is really a Mr Herschell Gordon Lewis’s redoubtable film of 1963, Blood Feast,  with its stilted delivery and gruesome set-pieces. Yet, what we have here is a resolutely British film. It reeks of tea and biscuits, of gin, of cricket. It’s H.G. Lewis with a posh accent. It’s H.G. Lewis with manners.

Though very obviously, ‘of-the -time’, it’s a film which has confidence in itself, with almost gloating sequences of really ‘not that much’ happening, leading to oddly heartless deaths and mutilation. Gough’s raison d’être is revealed so quickly in the plot that ‘spoilers’ don’t come into it, which makes the resolution of events that much more…well, weird. Hardly a feel-good movie, it’s really quite staggering how the film sustains itself, but that it does and that the closing scene is so remarkable is a revelation…how audiences felt on leaving the cinema at the time is quite a thought.

Despite the lack of nudity, the film stinks of sex, whether it be repressed or withheld by the censor, something is struggling to get out here. It led to the previously disclosed duo of films but neither truly progressed or extrapolated this, despite Peeping Tom‘s notoriety. An admittedly stilted performance, partly actor-driven but forgiveable,  pre-empted the next ten years across the Atlantic so innocuously that it now rarely gets mentioned; a disgrace. This is maybe far from lean but it’s certainly mean and without conscience. Elsewhere, Bobby Darin sings ‘Beyond the Sea’. Enjoy.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia.

Buy Horrors of the Black Museum on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

‘Children 25c’

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Queen of Blood (aka Planet of Blood) is a 1966 US horror/science fiction film released by American International Pictures. The director and scriptwriter, Curtis Harrington, crafted this B-movie with footage from the Russian sci-fi films Mechte Navstrechu and Nebo Zovyot.

Stephanie Rothman (The Velvet Vampire) was associate producer. It was released as part of a double-bill with the AIP movie Blood Bath. The film stars John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Judi Meredith (The Night Walker), Dennis Hopper (Night Tide), Florence Marly, Robert Boon, Don Eitner and features a cameo appearance by horror personality Forrest J Ackerman.

Harrington felt Alien (1979) must have got some inspiration from Queen of Blood, saying “Ridley’s film is like a greatly enhanced, expensive and elaborate version of Queen of Blood.”

Basil Rathbone was paid $1,500 to act for a day and a half on this film, and $1,500 for half a day on Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965), which was another film based on Russian footage. Rathbone ended up working overtime and missed a meal. The Screen Actors Guild demanded overtime pay plus a fine for the meal violation but producer George Edwards revealed footage showing that the delay was because Rathbone did not know his lines and insisted on skipping lunch.

1990: Dr. Farraday (Rathbone), of the International Institute of Space Technology, announces that an ambassador from a far away planet is due to arrive on Earth. Time passes on and yet there’s no arrival of the ambassador. The space institute has tracked the missing spaceship on Mars and a team of astronauts are sent to the red planet to rescue the ambassador. The would-be rescuers recover only one green-skinned survivor – a female (Marly) with an insatiably vampire-like appetite.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

“All in all, it’s passable entertainment at best, and I’m sure folks were fine with it at the time, but doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from other 60s sci-fi/horror that I’ve seen, nor does it hold up the way Planet of the Vampires did.” Horror Movie a Day

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“Given the films origins it will come as a surprise that it’s actually pretty good.  With some talented actors including Basil Rathbone, John Saxon, and a very young Dennis Hopper, the film overcomes its low-budget origins and ends up being an entertaining film.” DVD Talk

“Events unfurl languidly, taking time to develop the characters and create a creepy atmosphere ripe with menace and mystery. Harrington’s cinematographer Vilis Lapenieks bathes proceedings in an otherworldly sheen and the film, despite its low budget, at times looks rather beautiful. The scenes onboard the scientists’ ship are beautifully lit and prove quite striking. The impressive special effects footage from the other films is effortlessly inserted into the story and enhances proceedings effectively rather than jar them.” Behind the Couch

Blood of Dracula is U.S. horror film - also released as Blood is My Heritage – starring Sandra Harrison, Louise Lewis, Gail Ganley and Jerry Blaine, released by American International Pictures (AIP) in November 1957. Virtually a remake of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, it was produced and co-written by Herman Cohen and directed by Herbert L. Strock.

Six weeks after the death of her mother, Nancy Perkins’ father (Thomas B. Henry) marries Doris (Jeanne Dean), and decides to enrol his daughter (Sandra Harrison) into a boarding school, the Sherwood School for Girls.

Nancy is immediately harassed by her dormmates that night, and Myra (Gail Ganley), their leader, tells Nancy about their secret club, “The Birds of Paradise,” and introduces her to Eddie (Don Devlin), a young groundsman whom the “Birds” take turns dating. Myra is the assistant for Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), the school’s chemistry teacher, who is writing a thesis about her belief that there is a “terrible power,” “strong enough to destroy the world – buried within each of us.”

During chemistry class, Myra and her friend Nola (Heather Ames) deliberately switch a chemical in order to burn Nancy, causing her to react violently. Intrigued, Branding later talks with Nancy and gains her confidence. She then asks Nancy if she may hypnotize her and Nancy agrees. Branding places an amulet from antiquity around her neck, telling Nancy that it came from the Carpathian Mountain region and is capable of healing, as well as destroying – and has the ability to release frightening powers. As Nancy gazes at the amulet, Branding hypnotizes her and instructs her to always obey her…

Wikipedia | IMDb

“Low-budget chiller … in which a new student at a girl’s prep school turns into a murderous vampire after falling under the hypnotic spell of the school’s feminist science teacher … Stylized violence, hokey menace and sexual innuendo,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (1957)

“Blood of Dracula has nothing to do with Dracula, but rather taints the vampire legend into the fate of a cranky teenage girl. The film basically takes the same route as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, but never lives up to that effort, especially with Harrison’s monster turns kept to a bare minimum. But her wild bat make-up is memorable, looking closer to ‘Nosferatu’ with big hair than anything else, and an impromptu musical number, ‘Puppy Love’ is a hoot.” DVD Verdict

The Amazing Colossal Man is a 1957 black-and-white science fiction film, directed by Bert I. Gordon, produced by Gordon, Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson and starring Glenn Langan. The film revolves around a 60 foot mutant man produced as the result of an atomic accident. Distributed by American International Pictures (AIP) at the top of a program double-bill with The Cat Girl, the film was followed by a sequel, War of the Colossal Beast, which appeared in 1958. During the 1960′s the title was syndicated to television by American International Television.

Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan from Dragonwyck) is an officer in the U.S. Army who suffers serious burns to over 90% of his body (and hair loss) following an inadvertent exposure to plutonium radiation from a bomb blast. He miraculously survives the explosion and his burns completely heal, but the radiation causes him to abnormally grow into a 60-foot-tall giant. At this size, his heart is unable to supply sufficient blood to his brain and he gradually goes insane.

Army doctors attempt to halt and reverse his growth with a formula, but after getting injected with the cure, he grabs the needle and spears one of the doctors with it, killing him on the spot. He then escapes from confinement, “kidnaps” his girlfriend, Carol Forrest (played by Cathy Downs – The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues, The She-Creature), and wreaks havoc in Las Vegas before being cornered by the Army at the Boulder Dam. With the dam as his equivalent of King Kong’s Empire State Building, the girl is released but what fate does the big chap face?

Jim Nicholson of American International Pictures had the rights to a 1920s novel, The Nth Man about a man who was ten miles high. Nicholson thought it could be adapted to cash in on the success of The Incredible Shrinking Man (released six months earlier in 1957) and originally announced Roger Corman as director. Charles B. Griffith (Bucket of Blood, It Conquered the World) was hired to adapt the novel and he turned it into a comedy. Then Corman dropped out and Bert I. Gordon (Empire of the Ants, Earth Vs The Spider) was hired. Gordon worked on the script with Griffith but the collaboration only last a day before Griffith quit. Griffith’s regular writing partner Mark Hanna (Not of this Earth) stepped in instead.

One of an almost endless stream of nuclear-related shrinking/growing/mutating movies affecting Man and beast alike in the post War paranoia of America. The creakiness of the special effects is a tad distracting (the humongous gent is merely projected behind the other actors) and indeed, only Langan gives anything like an acceptable performance, though Downs looks the part at least. At only 80 minutes long, it survives best as a document of the mind-set of the age than a good creature feature though it’s perfect Sunday afternoon viewing.

Daz Lawrence

The Phantom Planet is a 1961 science fiction film directed by William Marshall and starring Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, Tony Dexter, Francis X. Bushman, Dolores Faith and includes an early role by Richard Kiel (Jaws in two James Bond movies). American International Pictures (AIP) released it as a double feature with Assignment Outer Space.

In the future world of 1980 the United States Air Force‘s Space Exploration Wing has bases on the moon and is on the eve of a mission to Mars. When one of their Pegasus spacecraft with two crew members aboard mysteriously disappears, pilot Captain Frank Chapman and his navigator Lt. Ray Makonnen are sent to search for them in their own craft.

During their search their ship receives minor damage from a meteor shower that both men go outside to repair. However, a small bullet sized particle pierces Chapman’s suit that sends him into unconsciousness. Makonnen is able to repair Chapman’s suit but as he opens the door to push Chapman inside he is fatally struck by a similar particle. Makonnen’s last act before he is propelled into deep space is to close the door with Chapman safely inside the ship. Chapman awakes to find Makonnen gone and unable to communicate with the lunar base. He leaves a diary message of the preceding events concluding that he is going to land on an asteroid.

Exiting his ship, he passes out and sees small humans about six inches in size approaching him. Once the visor of his helmet is opened, Chapman is able to breath but due to the planet’s unusual atmosphere, he is also shrunk to six inches in size. He is placed on trial for attacking Herron, one of the small people. Sesom, the leader of Rheton, the name of the planetoid that Chapman has landed on, explains that though he will have all the rights of an inhabitant of Rheton, he can never leave and his ship has been sent back into space whilst he slept.

Chapman meets two beautiful women Liara and the mute Zetha who welcome him and answer his many questions. The stranded astronaut decides to help the inhabitants of the planet battle an invading race of monsters known as the Solarites who come from a planet orbiting the sun.

Wikipedia | IMDb

” … the tragic Solarite creature costume is right up my alley (it resembles something that might have turned up in a third-season episode of “The Outer Limits”), and I got a kick out of the bizarre notion of the space monsters zipping around the solar system in hollowed-out meteors fitted with heat rays and rocket engines. There’s just enough good stuff here to make The Phantom Planet merelymostly a waste of time.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“It might help to endure the movie if you turn it into a drinking game, and count the number of science fiction cliches: The alien planet populated by creatures who look just like us; Meteor storms turning up out of the black just when the astronauts venture outside their spaceship; The tractor beam; The love triangle; Attacked by aggressive aliens; The alien monster fixated on the pretty young lady despite being a completely different species, just to name too many.”  HorrorNews.net

House of Usher (also known as The Fall of the House of Usher) is a 1960 American International Pictures horror film starring Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, and Mark Damon. The film was directed by Roger Corman and its screenplay written by Richard Matheson from the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. The film was the first of eight Corman/Poe feature films. The film was important in the history of American International Pictures which up until then had specialised in making low budget black and white films to go out on double bills. In 2005, the film was listed with the United States National Film Registry as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) travels to the House of Usher, a desolate mansion surrounded by a murky swamp, to meet his fiancée Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). Madeline’s brother Roderick (Vincent Price) opposes Philip’s intentions, telling the young man that the Usher family is afflicted by a cursed bloodline which has driven all their ancestors to madness. Roderick foresees the family evils being propagated into future generations with a marriage to Madeline and vehemently discourages the union. Philip becomes increasingly desperate to take Madeline away; she agrees to leave with him, desperate to get away from her brother.

During a heated argument with her brother, Madeline suddenly dies and is laid to rest in the family crypt beneath the house. As Philip is preparing to leave following the entombment, the butler, Bristol (Harry Ellerbe), lets slip that Madeline suffered from catalepsy, a condition which can make its sufferers appear dead. Philip rips open Madeline’s coffin and finds it empty…

Wikipedia | IMDb 

Arrow Video Blu-ray Disc Special Features:

• Limited Edition SteelBookTM packaging
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with director and producer Roger Corman
• Interview with director and former Corman apprentice Joe Dante
• Through the Pale Door: A Specially-commissioned video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns examining Corman s film in relation to Poe s story
• Archival interview with Vincent Price
• Original Trailer
• Collector s booklet featuring new writing on the film by author and critic Tim Lucas and an extract from Vincent Price s long out of print autobiography, illustrated with original archive stills and posters

Buy House of Usher on Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk

‘Roger Corman never made any other of his Edgar Allan Poe films with the same successful balance of mood and design that he achieved here. What Corman did was to undercut the floridness of Hammer Gothic with the moody intellectual angst of Ingmar Bergman – Corman was a great admirer of Bergman and you can see Bergman’s influence on his work, particularly in The Masque of the Red Death. It resulted in a form that achieved a level of moodily gloom-laden and thunderously overwrought melodrama. Corman accomplishes some nicely subtle effects at times but mostly House of Usher succeeds on its own level of torturous angst – the climax with Vincent Price and the crazed Myrna Fahey fighting as the house burns around them and the house’s final descent to be swallowed up in the tarn is superlative.’ Moria

‘Visually the film is a flurry of rich colour and lighting, with velvet reds and purples being juxtaposed to the grey, crumbling walls and windows. Corman often puts dream sequences into his films and House of Usher is no different with possibly his scariest sequence involving paintings of the family that come to life and have a horribly eerie sound to them. Like most objects in the house, they house an evil in them from the past, often portrayed with Ligeti like vocals in the soundtrack reminiscent (or foreshadowing) the sounds of the stargate sequence from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Adam Scovell, Celluloid Wicker Man

‘ … a masterwork of gothic horror, one of the best such films ever made in America. As mentioned, most of this is due to Price’s masterful performance and Corman’s ability to squeeze the most from a small budget. While not flashy or innovative, his direction is sure-handed in establishing mood and creating atmosphere, letting Price and Matheson’s fine, intelligent script do the rest. There are some nice visuals here to be sure; one scene — the crazed Madeline is caught in a flash of lightning, bloody fingers raised like claws before her face, then lowering them to reveal her maddened gaze — is positively Bava-esque.’ Brian Lindsey, Eccentric Cinema

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Buy Crab Monsters, Cave Men and Candy Stripe Nurses book from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Paul Blaisdell was an American artist, sculptor and actor, best known for his creations for some of the early Science Fiction creature features made by Roger Corman. Despite the meagre budgets he was confined to, he is responsible for some of the most recognisable monsters of the late 50′s.

Blaisdell, born in 1927, began his career in Newport, Rhode Island as an enthusiastic artist with little recognition, making his way financially by repairing typewriters. His fascination for drawing monsters in particular did not lead to offers that prevented a stint in the army, though on his return to civilian life, he began to get his work published in the many lurid pulp magazines of the time, including the likes of Spaceways and Other Worlds. These paintings found at least one admirer of note, the redoubtable horror enthusiast and publisher, Forrest J. Ackerman, who offered to become his agent. This meeting of great minds was to lead to his true calling.

Elsewhere in America, prolific film-maker, Roger Corman had stretched himself to the limit whilst making the film, The Beast With A Million Eyes, running out of funds at the somewhat critical point of constructing the ocular-heavy monster. Approaching Ackerman for inspiration, he was first offered Ray Harryhausen as a port of call but his remaining $200 was nowhere near the going rate. Last chance saloon came in the form of Blaisdell whose acceptably low fees and imaginative creations appealed to Corman’s outlandish ideals.

Whilst only possessing two eyes (Corman superimposed eyes over the top) the resulting beast, nicknamed “Little Hercules”, is an 18 inch marionette, designed to be a slave of the actual many-eyed threat. Complete with tiny raygun and shackles, despite him being largely obscured by Corman’s whirling effects, it was enough to convince Corman that Blaisdell had the talent and necessarily low cost of being his comrade-in-arms.

The film that followed, The Day The World Ended, required rather more input, necessitating Blaisdell to not only design the creature but to bring it to life onscreen. Requiring a hideous, radioactive mutant from the dizzy far-off year of 1970 (this time christened Marty), Blaisdell constructed a monster from foam rubber and cast his own body so that the suit could be built around himself., a pair of long-johns donned accordingly. Two obvious issues arose from this; the first, that Blaisdell was only 5’7″, not the towering mutant imagined – fortunately, the head added a significant lift. Secondly, the nature of the foam rubber meant that during the rain-filled climax of the film, the suit’s interior swelled up enormously, coming close to drowning the actor inside; pre-velcro, he was literally glued in. Regardless, the film is one of the better efforts of the era and the innovation of the artist encasing himself in his own creation was deemed a huge success.

It Conquered The World is undoubtedly one of Corman’s most enjoyable sci-fi romps and features an iconic if ludicrous invader from beyond. Suffering the usual significant issues on-set due to money and time (as well as forgetting to bring the required lights!), Corman had ditched the intended glimpses of the cave-dwelling monster and dragged it kicking and screaming — perhaps not kicking, thinking about it — into the bring Los Angeles sunshine. Hidden within the rubber teepee-like alien, “Beulah”, the good Mrs Blaisdell insisted her husband don an army helmet to protect during a scene where is is charged by a bayonet-wielding army character. Just as well as the foam rubber provided little defense and would most likely have killed him in the most ignominious of circumstances had he not taken her advice. Ingeniously, Blaisdell had created a bicycle-chain/air pump system to operate Beulah’s limbs from inside but an onset ‘incident’ snapped the cables, leaving a slightly foppish-looking triangular imp thrashing around onscreen, Corman disallowing time for the appropriate repairs.

“Cuddles”, the She-Creature of Corman’s 1956 effort, broke new ground, seeing Blaisdell make a whole plaster cast of his own body and sculpting his design on top, only assisted by his wife in their garage. Not stinting on the scaly breasts, the creature is comfortably the most interesting and memorable aspect of the film and has become iconic even among monster/sci-fi fans who haven’t seen the film. The suit reappears in the last film Blaisdell worked on, Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow.

Further designs appeared in Attack of the Crab Monsters (just the one crab, this was Corman, after all) and Not of This Earth, but it his effects for the films It! The Terror From Beyond Space and Invasion of the Saucer Men, for which Blaisdell is best known. The stomping lizard-man of It! was designed to fit the diminutive artist but was actually intended for the large-chinned actor, Ray Corrigan, who was not at all happy with his lot. The mask’s mouth had to be opened so that he could breathe and his more importantly get his chin to fit.  Disguising the chin by painting it red and adapting it as the monster’s tongue, teeth were added to obscure the bodge job; lit-up eyes abandoned so he could see where he was stomping. Some scenes even see the actor adjusting the head so he could cope.

The huge latex and styrofoam heads of the invaders of Saucer Men fame, appeared comedic even by this standard of Corman’s career. The horror and drama rather ended up as a teen movie, though the creatures are now instantly evocative of everything that is science fiction from the 50′s.

Though his designs were also used in films such as War of the Colossal Beast, Attack of the Puppet People, Earth vs. the Spider (a.k.a., The Spider) and How to Make a Monster, Blaisdell fell out of fashion as quickly as he’d arrived, the rise of Hammer and sleazier American films putting an end to the quaint, otherworldly monsters of the 50′s. His influence however can be seen in the likes of Stan Winston and Rick Baker, who paid tribute to him with the work on the film Invaders From Mars.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Excellent in-depth analysis and pics here: www.tor.com

I Was a Teenage Werewolf is a 1957 horror film starring Michael Landon as a troubled teenager and Whit Bissell as the primary adult and Yvonne Lime as his girlfriend, Arlene. It was co-written and produced by cult film producer Herman Cohen, directed by Gene Fowler Jr and was one of the most successful films released by American International Pictures (AIP). It was originally released as a double feature with Invasion of the Saucer Men.

Poor Tony Rivers (a rare film role for Michael Landon, best remembered for never-ending TV series like Bonanza, Highway to Heaven and the execrable Little House on the Prairie); it seems the whole world is against him – classmates, his dad, the cops – such is the life of a small town teenager in 50′s America. Kindly, if starchy, Detective Donovan suggests a chat with local shrink, Dr Brandon (Whit Bissell, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Soylent Green) to help tame his anger issues. A thoroughly unconvincing Halloween party at a ‘haunted house’ sees him attacking one of his friends, perfectly understandable given the rendition of his new ‘crazy record’, “Eeny Meany-Miney-Moe” that he has just ‘treated’ his friends to.

Realising himself that he is genuinely out of control, he visits Dr Brandon, who is full of patience and advice but decides hypnotherapy is exactly what will do the trick and if that’s not enough, a serum he has happened upon which will revert Tony to his primal state, stripping away the layers of conditioned control and urban sensibilities. Inevitably, an attack is reported upon one of Tony’s group of friends and the police swoop in to investigate, taking care to take note of the local janitor, Pepe (rent-a-Russian Vladimir Sokoloff, from The Magnificent Seven and countless other films), who rattles on about fanged beasts, wolves and the Devil’s own brood, having originally come from the Carpathian Mountains. Further visits to the doc are similarly unhelpful, indeed Rivers is revealed to be a baseball jacket-wearing werewolf, attacking and killing a teacher in the gym and a police dog. Tony seeks the doc’s help in desperation, though ditching the distinctive jacket might have been a better idea, whilst the police and his daffy girlfriend, Arlene do their best to protect the local citizens whilst saving the tragic jock.

There are few horror titles which are as evocative as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, immediately a klaxon announcing bad make-up, bad acting, drippy 50′s pop culture trappings and throw-away chaff. In actual fact, it is a well-made, well-shot drama which, though having the worst song and accompanying dance routine in the history of cinema, is a more successful commentary on teenage life than many alien invasion/nuclear bug films were at decrying The Bomb. Landon, almost squeaky in his youth (he was actually 21 years-old) plays the role of every-man perfectly well, whilst his generic group of friends and sundry adults prove to be a more believable agitate than a parade of well-known names.

The name of Samuel Z. Arkoff at the beginning of a film should always make your heart swell with excitement and that is indeed the case here, despite the resistance he met bringing to the screen a middle class teenager who was actually a monster, a shocking notion at the time. American International Pictures used the film as a launch pad for several ‘teenage beast’ flicks, including I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and How to Make a Monster but it was Werewolf which made upwards of $2 million from an initial outlay of approximately $82,000.

Whilst the werewolf make-up looks somewhat hokey on stills, it is perfectly serviceable in the film, Landon’s incredibly wide-eyed, twitching alter-ego a real treat and quite sensibly avoids any transformation sequences. The make-up came courtesy of Phillip Scheer. whose work can also be seen in Attack of the Puppet People and Black Zoo.  The surprisingly jazzy title theme is by Paul Dunlap who wrote for scores of 1950′s and 60′s no-budget genre films but always under the veil of being a true ‘artiste’.

The 1950′s attire, lexicon (“This party’s really percolating”!) and more especially the title have ensured that it lives on vicariously through The Cramps song of the same title, copycat ‘I Was a Teenage’ (Mummy/Serial Killer/Zombie ad infinitum) titles and television comedy sketches, often lampooning the absurdity but rather missing the fact it’s a pretty good film.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

You were warned…

Image gallery:

Yongary: Monster from the Deep , original title: Yonggary or Yongary (Hangul: 대괴수 용가리; RR: Taekoesu Yongary; lit. Great Monster Yongary) is a 1967 South Korean Kaiju monster film directed by prominent genre-film director Kim Ki-duk. It stars Oh Yeong-il and Nam Jeong-im. It was released in 1969 in the USA by American International Pictures (AIP). The film is now considered to be in the public domain.

In 1999, a reimagining of the film was produced, released in Korea simply as Yonggary and released in the United States as Reptilian.

Plot:

In the Middle East, a bomb is set off that creates massive earthquakes. Meanwhile in South Korea, a young couple is about to get married and the tension builds when South Korea sends a manned space capsule to investigate the bomb site. The earthquake makes its way to South Korea, caused by a giant monster named Yongary (inspired by a mythical creature in Korean lore). Yongary attacks Seoul and makes his way to the oil refineries where he consumes the oil…

Review Quotes:

‘What’s surprising about Yongary is how much effort seems to have gone into it, at least technically speaking. The budget was obviously agonizingly low, and the movie features some of the worst matte shots of all time, but there’s an enormous amount of miniature scenery getting smashed, and the monster suit itself is at least as good as what Toho was serving up in the late 1960’s. Such a shame, then, that the people responsible for this film didn’t feel the need to put commensurate effort into the acting, direction, or screenplay.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

‘Unfortunately, the effects as a whole were one of the weaker points of the movie. Yonggary’s fire breath was produced by a blow torch within one of the heads used for the monster’s effect, and the nozzle could clearly be seen during some of the scenes when he’s blasting fire. The sets were decent and looked realistic enough when it came to Yonggary destroying them, but when it came to actors interacting with the rubble, it wasn’t hard to tell that they were pieces of styrofoam or (in the case of bricks) cardboard boxes.’ Kaiju Classics

‘Yongary was obviously meant as a replay (some MIGHT say “rip-off”) of the Godzilla films. This is most notable in the destruction scenes where Yongary walks through a building VERY similar to Japan’s Diet Building which Godzilla walked though in the 1954 original and which King Kong climbed atop of in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). The special effects in Yongary are passable, but are not up to the standard set by Toho’s effects wizard, Eiji Tsuburaya. In particular, the scenes of the monster shooting fire features an obvious metal pipe protruding from the costume’s mouth. Actually, a Japanese cameraman was recruited by the Koreans to help make this film look as much like the Japanese monster films as possible.’ Joe Cascio, DVD Drive-In

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to Just Screenshots and Robby’s Super 8 for some of the images above

Don’t Look in the Basement (1972), also known as The Snake Pit and The Forgotten, is a Texas-shot horror film written and directed by S.F. Brownrigg. It stars Rosie Holotik, Anne MacAdams, Gene Ross, Hugh Feagin, Camilla Carr, William Bill McGhee, and Rhea MacAdams.

When a pretty nurse called Charlotte Beale arrives at a privately run sanitorium to begin her new job, she discovers to her dismay that the patients, many of them violent, are allowed to mix indiscriminately with the staff. As she tries to settle into her challenging new role a succession of disturbing events take place, leading the increasingly fragile young woman closer and closer to a complete mental breakdown.

Despite having made four excellent horror films in the early 1970s, Sherald ‘S.F.’ Brownrigg has received only small-scale attention from genre fans, perhaps because his work generally lacks the extravagant gore offered by America’s better-known auteurs of the period. A persistently downbeat approach may also have barred him from wider appreciation. None of his movies have much in the way of overt humour, except for what’s to be had from observing his sleazier characters, and due to the talent of his skilful repertory cast there are few of the usual cheap laughs at the expense of bad actors. Instead he offers compassionate characterisation, a strong sense of place, and a melancholic moodiness that may be his most significant contribution to the grindhouse/drive-in circuit where his movies routinely played.

Brownrigg’s earliest work in the industry was as sound-man for low-budget directors like Irvin Berwick and fellow Texan Larry Buchanan. This, plus his wartime experience as a cameraman on Army training films, prepared the way for Don’t Look in the Basement, his first directorial venture. Initially called The Forgotten (you can see why that title had to go), it was shot in just twelve days in 1972 and looks to have been made on half the usual shoestring. The only location is a grim, sparsely furnished three-storey concrete building (actually the dorm block of a Texas religious college) standing on a dismal plot of land, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The plot concerns frightful goings-on at a privately run insane asylum presided over by Dr. Stephens (Michael Harvey), a ‘progressive’ psychiatrist who “doesn’t believe in the doctor/patient relationship.” It isn’t long before one of the patients is demonstrating his lack of faith in the doctor/patient relationship – by whacking Stephens in the head with an axe. Coincidentally, new nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) arrives the next day, to be greeted by Dr. Masters (Anne MacAdams), an imposing older woman who informs her of Stephens’s violent death and seems very anxious to be rid of her.

For the first thirty minutes we are treated to a procession of grotesques as the script puts the inmates of this miserable bedlam through their paces. There’s a paranoid soldier (Hugh Feagin) awaiting enemy attack, a deranged woman (Camilla Carr) mothering a baby doll, a guilt-ridden ex-judge (Gene Ross) obsessed with his past hypocrisies, a hulking lobotomised black man called Sam (William Bill McGhee) reduced to a state of childish passivity, and a weird old lady called Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams) who, according to Masters, “has a number of interesting worlds.” She also has some of the best lines, particularly her habit of quoting from The Fairies, by 19th century poet William Allingham (whence the old lady’s name): “Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting, For fear of little men.” Off with the faeries she may be, but she’s the only patient who really grasps what’s going on, gurgling cryptic warnings to the asylum’s nervous new arrival.

It isn’t long before Nurse Beale starts to suspect that all is not as it should be: for instance, Dr. Masters’ understanding of professional protocol seems crude at best. “I’m the doctor and you’re the nurse, and what I do decides what you will do!” she yells. Violence escalates, paranoia takes hold, and Nurse Beale really starts to crack when Mrs Callingham is found bleeding from the mouth with her tongue cut out.

The film showcases the talents of Brownrigg’s cast, many of whom would go on to appear in the rest of his films (Ross, Weenick, Fulton, Feagin and Carr were already known to Brownrigg, having appeared in his friend and mentor Larry Buchanan’s A Bullet for Pretty Boy in 1970). Annabelle Weenick, who assisted behind the camera, also excels in front of it (working under the name of Anne MacAdams). She gives the role of ‘Dr. Masters’ a dauntingly hard edge, reminiscent of late period Bette Davis or Shelley Winters. Of the male cast, Gene Ross is particularly compelling in this, his first of four great Brownrigg roles. Ross is always convincingly villainous, bringing to the screen a seamy, insinuating menace the equal of better known Southern actors like M. Emmet Walsh, whom he also resembles physically.

The climax has Nurse Beale rescued and set free by Sam, and the chief culprit (see if you can guess) savagely murdered by the remaining inmates. Sam returns to the bloodbath upstairs to commit a violent act of his own, and the film ends with this abused innocent, alone and drenched in blood, finally comprehending his bleak reality. It’s typical of ‘the S.F. Brownrigg experience’ that despite the abundant gore we are left with feelings more of sadness than of horror. Compassionate without being sentimental, Brownrigg films skew towards territory not immediately associated with drive-in exploitation movies, and it’s this, his concern for the feelings of his characters, that distinguishes him from, say, the grand-guignol black humour of H.G. Lewis or the seething nihilism of Andy Milligan. Don’t Look in the Basement is rough around the edges and  somewhat limited in sophistication, but it’s an engagingly sombre little movie well worth seeing, as are the other three horror movies (Poor White Trash Part 2; Don’t Open the Door; Keep My Grave Open) by this sorely neglected director.

After a small scale release in Texas cinemas under its original title The Forgotten, the film was picked up for nationwide distribution in 1973 by Hallmark Releasing, who tried the film out as The Snake Pit before hitting on a new title that would resonate throughout the horror genre for years to come. Don’t Look in the Basement (taking a cue from the place where Nurse Beale finds the bloody corpse of Dr. Stephens) initiated the persistent trend for ‘Don’t’ titles which gave us Don’t Open the Window (actually Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue), Don’t Open the Door (Brownrigg’s third film), Don’t Go in the House, Don’t Answer the Phone!, and eventually, Edgar Wright’s comic trailer for a non-existent movie called Don’t, as seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse (2007).

Brownrigg’s film was also the beneficiary of the first ever recycling of Last House on the Left‘s famous ad’ campaign, with posters proclaiming “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it’s only a movie… only a movie… only a movie…” This promotional artwork also claimed that Don’t Look in the Basement came “from the makers of Last House on the Left” when in fact the only connection between the two films was Hallmark, the distribution company.

Note: alternative English-language titles are rumoured to include Death Ward #13 and Don’t Go in the Basement, although these are currently hard to verify with visual materials.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

How to Make a Monster is a 1958 American horror film released by American International Pictures (AIP). The film is a follow-up to both I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. Like Teenage Frankenstein, a black & white film that switched to color for the final moments, How to Make a Monster was filmed in black & white, with the entire last reel filmed in colour.

Pete Dumond, Chief Make-up Artist for 25 years at “American International Studios,” is pink-slipped by the new management from the East, Jeffrey Clayton and John Nixon, who plan to make musicals and comedies instead of the horror pictures for which Pete has created his remarkable monster make-ups and made the studio famous. In retaliaton, Pete vows to use the very monsters these men have rejected to destroy them. By mixing a numbing ingredient into his foundation cream and persuading the young actors that their careers are through unless they place themselves in his power, he hypnotizes both Larry Drake and Tony Mantell, who are playing the characters Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein in the picture Werewolf Meets Frankenstein currently shooting on the lot.

In recent years, the title has been used several times: for a song on Rob Zombie’s 1998 debut solo album, Hellbilly Deluxe; for a TV movie in 2001; for the name of the 2004 album by The Cramps; for a documentary on special make-up effects applications in 2005; and for an 8-minute short film in 2011.

“How to Make a Monster owes its superiority to the prototypical I Was a Teenage Werewolf to a combination of speed and wit on the one hand, and the engaging, well-drawn character of Pete Drummond on the other. In marked contrast to most AIP movies of the time, How to Make a Monster zips right along, aided by the fact that its premise allows it to incorporate action scenes from Teenage Frankenstein vs. the Teenage Werewolf whenever the main plot starts to bog down. And the comedic elements are surprisingly funny for 1958, relying more on sly jabs at the foolishness and absurdity of the movie business than on the juvenile slapstick more typical of late-50’s B-movies.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“Unfortunately, the novelty of the film-within-a-film angle is not enough to carry the picture. The movie is more of a murder melodrama than an honest to goodness monster flick, and the details of the investigation grow tiresome. That’s not to say there aren’t some enjoyable scenes.” Exclamation Mark

Wikipedia | IMDb

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is a 1965 American International Pictures (AIP) comedy film directed by Norman Taurog and starring Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Susan Hart (The Slime People) and Jack Mullaney and featuring Fred Clark (Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb). It is a parody of the then-popular spy film trend, particularly the 1964 James Bond hit Goldfinger, utilizing actors from AIP’s beach party and Edgar Allan Poe films.

There is a dungeon scene, complete with The Pit and Pendulum from Roger Corman’s 1961 movie, allowing Price to ham up his previous horror roles and the mad doctor’s assistant is named Igor.

Despite its low production values, the film has achieved a certain cult status for the appearance of Price and other AIP Beach Party film alumni, its in-jokes and unabashed sexism, the claymation title sequence designed by Art Clokey, and a title song performed by The Supremes (which name drops Frankenstein’s Monster and Mr. Hyde). Vincent Price returned for the 1966 sequel, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, directed by iconic Italian horror maestro Mario Bava.

Plot:

Price plays the titular mad scientist who, with the questionable assistance of his resurrected flunky Mullaney, builds a gang of attractive female robots clad in shiny gold bikinis. The sexbots are then dispatched to seduce and rob wealthy men. (Goldfoot’s name reflects his and his robots’ choice in footwear.) Avalon and Hickman play the bumbling heroes who attempt to thwart Goldfoot’s scheme. The film’s climax is an extended chase through the streets of San Francisco.

Wikipedia | IMDb

The People That Time Forgot is a 1977 British fantasy/adventure monster film based on the novel The People That Time Forgot and Out of Time’s Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was produced by Amicus Productions and directed by Kevin Connor (Motel Hell). Like Connor’s other two Burroughs-derived films, The Land That Time Forgot and At the Earth’s Core, the film was distributed in the United States by American International Pictures (AIP). It stars Patrick Wayne and Doug McClure (Humanoids from the Deep, The House Where Evil Dwells).

Plot teaser:

Major Ben McBride (Wayne) organises a mission to the Antarctic wastes to search for his friend Bowen Tyler (McClure) who has been missing for several years. A British naval survey ship takes McBride’s party: the paleontologist Norfolk (Thorley Walters), gunner Hogan (Shane Rimmer, Warlords of Atlantis) and photographer Lady Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Cunningham (Sarah Douglas) fly to Caprona in an amphibious aircraft, but are attacked by a pterodactyl and forced down.

They find themselves in a world populated by primitive warriors and terrifying prehistoric creatures, all of whom they must evade in order to get back safely to their ship. They meet a cave-girl, Ajor (Dana Gillespie), who leads them to the land of a race of samurai-like warriors called the Nargas…

Reviews:

As with the other AIP-Burroughs flicks, the budget just wasn’t there for state of the art effects or production design. The monsters are all unconvincing puppets with the exception of the pterodactyl, which comes off rather well despite barely ever flapping its wings. (It’s very adept at riding those Capronan air currents, apparently.) Model work is spotty, too; shots involving miniatures of the airplane range from very good to laughable. But location filming in the Canary Islands helps a great deal, providing a suitably primeval looking world for the characters to explore. (Thus People isn’t hamstrung by cheesy interior sets like At the Earth’s Core.) And the cast is game, not just going through the motions.” Brian Lindsey, Eccentric Cinema

” … sports a fine cast and well drawn characters that help enliven the action. There are less monsters on display here which should be a given considering the title. One of the creatures is borrowed from At the Earth’s Core (1976). Most of them are trotted out during the conclusion as the heroes are being “chased” by the volcano.” Cool Ass Cinema

“The effects are still more endearing than actually special but that’s a big part of the charm and a reason why these movies still have their fans. The script by Patrick Tilley is exactly what it should be and the direction from Kevin Connor keeps everything moving along nicely in between moments that put the main characters in peril or take time to show one of the many stop-motion creatures. This is no SFX extravaganza, but I sat there with a big smile on my face while watching a bunch of people try to use a dinosaur to tow an aircraft along the ground…” Kevin Matthews, FlickFeast

” … duplicates the damning structural flaw that so damaged its predecessor— putting the exciting part of the movie first, and ending with the dull part. It still comes out very slightly ahead of The Land that Time Forgot, in that the changeover from excitement to boredom happens significantly later in the film, but it still isn’t anywhere near as good as its best moments suggest it could have been.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to Cool Ass Cinema for some images (click on review link for lots more!)

Albert Kallis was a professional artist who designed many film posters for American International Pictures (AIP) releases in the 1950s. Kallis’ striking designs elevated the selling of exploitation movies to a new art form in itself. Indeed, AIP’s Sam Arkoff and James H. Nicholson would often have a poster designed first to pre-sell a movie to theatre owners before it even went into production.

Below are just some of the lurid posters that this prolific artist created; they are representative of a time when movies could be sold to a potential audience eager for thrills by just an single image alone whilst going on to become key examples of American pop culture iconography in themselves.

Some of the artwork above was worked on by Reynold Brown or may have been his work supervised by Albert Kallis. If anyone knows more information please comment below. In 1958, Kallis also co-founded the IHOP (International House of Pancakes) restaurant chain.

We are indebted to Monster Brains for inspiring this posting and for some of the images above.

Madhouse is a 1973 British horror film directed by Jim Clark for Amicus Productions in association with Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American International Pictures. It stars Vincent Price, Natasha Pyne, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri and Linda Hayden.

Vincent Price plays Paul Toombes, a long-in-the-tooth actor who has made a particularly successful career as Dr Death, a recurring villain in a series of wildly popular horror films. He has been aided and abetted in this franchise by Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing), who has served as the writer of his films. At the height of his career and a fifth film in the bag, a party is thrown where he announces his intention to marry his fiancée, Ellen. It’s at this juncture that blustering film director, Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry) informs him that she was quite a star on the porn scene. As she flees in tears, Toombes follows but finds his beloved future wife has been brutally beheaded (is there any other way?) and there is some doubt as to the role Toombes played in the act – regardless, he is despatched to an asylum for twelve years, returning refreshed and ready to return as Dr Death again in a new British-made television series based on the character.

His fame has not eluded him and his is stalked by young Elizabeth Peters (Linda Hayden) on the ship to England and then at Herbert’s pile in the countryside, desperate to become his leading lady. Sadly, she meets her end via a garden fork and once again, there is a cloud of doubt as to whether it was Death/Toombes or someone masquerading as either who committed the crime. Lurking in the bowels of Chateau Flay is his Herbert’s wife, Faye (Faye Flay!) played by Adrienne Corri (A Clockwork Orange, Vampire Circus), who is now bewigged, horribly burned but scatters memories of her times on Toombes’ like confetti.

The madness progresses and filming is stilted and punctuated by regular deaths, arguments and wistful reflections of Toombes’ greatest film moments, courtesy of film clips shoehorned into the plot. The finger points squarely at the beleaguered actor but there are herrings for all in abundance and the breathless and slightly wonky ending will leave you guessing to the last moments.

The draw here is, of course, the pairing of Price and Cushing. That AIP and Amicus fluffed their role in proceedings is not particularly surprising – the Americans flex their muscle by squeezing in as many clips of their works as they can credibly manage (The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, Haunted Palace, House of Usher, Scream and Scream Again and Masque of the Red Death are all on-show, also giving Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff – both dead – a brief run-out) whilst the British contingent somewhat haphazardly manage to conspire to make the most obvious and foolproof plot as ragged and endlessly revolving as possible.

Is it over-written? Well, it’s partly based on Angus Hall’s novel, Devilday (1969), though you’d scarcely guess, Death replacing ‘Dis’ and Price’s angry, confused dedicated actor slightly at odds with Hall’s fat, guilty sex-pest.. The rarely seen again Ken Levison and Greg Morrison are credited with the screenplay but even Robert Quarry’s name is thrown into the mix, his journeyman career at least being apt (he plays up the role further by appearing as his own Count Yorga at one of the regular party scenes – Cushing finally donning some fangs in similar get-up).

Lovely Linda Hayden is surprisingly underused, as is Cushing – conversely, the bit-too-silly sub-plot of Faye in the cellar and the stilted nature of the film, clogged up with some ineffective wandering about and even talk show host Michael Parkinson cropping up to interview the famous star, make for an unbalanced film, coming at both the end of Amicus’ reign as one of Britain’s guiding lights of horror (it still isn’t as disappointing or frustrating as The Monster Club, their death rattle) and AIP’s run of horror successes, leading them to parody their own output with Vampira/Old Dracula and Abby.

Other titles considered for the film were The Return of Dr. Death and The Revenge of Dr. Death. It is possible that neither title was used because the producers did not want the film to appear to be a sequel to some other film, as well as another, unrelated, film called Dr. Death, Seeker of Souls had been released by another company (Freedom Arts Pictures Corporation) not long before. A shame as both titles would have been more fun than Madhouse, a rather too literal accusatory finger point at Toombes.

Although in his interview with Parkinson, reference is made to the actor having once played The Invisible Man (in The Invisible Man Returns), the history of the actor, though endlessly flashed on-screen through some slightly interminable ruses, still falls rather flat – with the actors clearly nearer the end than the beginning of their careers, a more joyous, celebratory tone would have served better. At times it becomes a bit, well, depressing. Director Jim Clark never helmed a film again, stepping into the editor’s office and doing a cracking job on the Oscar winners like The Killing Fields and James Bond films like The World is Not Enough.

There are two particular highlights, however – Price’s stunning and iconic skull make-up by regular Hammer artist George Blacker is superb and still raises a shiver of delight 40 years on. Equally stunning is Douglas Gamley’s score, as thunderous as ever, the timpani player no doubt in need of a lie down afterwards. Gamley is one of the great under-sung voices of British horror, a force of nature who could grab you by the throat and lead you through a film and leave you battered but overjoyed. Listen out for Vincent himself singing at the film’s conclusion.

As feared, the film under performed badly at the box-office, AIP essentially washing their hands of horror ever after. It has struggled for positive reappraisal in recent years but Price’s aged ham performance and Cushing in unpredictable form, it’s difficult to be too hard-hearted about it.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Offline reading:

The Amicus Anthology – Bruce G. Hallenbeck (Hemlock Books)

Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures – Mark Thomas McGee (McFarland)

Vincent Price: The Art of Fear – Denis Meikle (Reynolds & Hearn)

‘We defy you to stare into this face’

The Masque of the Red Death is a 1964 British horror film directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price, Hazel Court and Jane Asher. The screenplay, written by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell, was based upon the 1842 short story of the same name by American author Edgar Allan Poe,and incorporates a sub-plot based on another Poe tale, Hop-Frog. Another sub-plot is drawn from Torture by Hope by Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.

Plot teaser:

Satan-worshiper Prince Prospero invites several dozen of the local nobility to his castle for protection against an oncoming plague, the Red Death. Prospero orders his guests to attend a masked ball and, amidst a general atmosphere of debauchery and depravity, notices the entry of a mysterious hooded stranger dressed all in red. Believing the figure to be his master, Satan, Prospero is horrified at the revelation of his true identity…

Roger Corman later said he always felt The Masque of the Red Death and Fall of the House of Usher were the two best Poe stories. After the success of The House of Usher (1960) he strongly considered making Masque as the follow up. However he was reluctant to make it because it had several elements similar to The Seventh Seal (1956) and Corman was worried people would say he was pilfering from Ingmar Bergman.

AIP had a co-production deal with Anglo-Amalgamated in England, so Sam Arkoff and James H. Nicholson suggested to Corman that the film be made there. This meant the film could qualify for the Eady levy and increase the budget – normally an AIP film was done in three weeks, but Masque was shot in five weeks. (Although Corman felt that five weeks in England was the equivalent to four weeks in the US because English crews worked slower.)

Corman later expressed dissatisfaction with the final masque sequence, which he described as “the greatest flaw” in the film, feeling he did not have enough time to shoot it. He filmed it in one day which he said would have been enough time in Hollywood but that English crews were too slow.

British censors removed a scene where Hazel Court’s character imagines a series of demonic figures attacking her while she lies on a slab. Corman recalled years later:

“From the standpoint of nudity, there was nothing. I think she was nude under a diaphanous gown. She played the consummation with the devil, but it was essentially on her face; it was a pure acting exercise. Hazel fully clothed, all by herself, purely by acting incurred the wrath of the censor. It was a different age; they probably felt that was showing too much. Today, you could show that on six o’clock television, and nobody would worry.”

The movie was not as successful as other Poe pictures, which Sam Arkoff attributed to it being “too arty farty” and not scary enough, nonetheless Corman says the movie is one of his favourites.

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Reviews:

“It’s hard to imagine a film like this being made today. Modern directors would be afraid of going so over the top, of risking such overt and unapologetic pretension, but The Masque of the Red Death more than gets away with it, it turns it into a virtue. Some stories need to be told in a big way. More than a simple account of one man’s fall from grace, this is a mythic tale, a morality play as relevant now as it would have been in medieval times. Corman has gifted it with an intensity rarely matched elsewhere in cinema.” Eye for Film

“The settings, characters and dark themes all combine to create a Gothic, surrealistic world suitable to the Red Death’s machinations, and, of course, the pervading sense of horror and foreboding characteristic of a Gothic film.  It is therefore unsurprising that The Masque of the Red Death is considered one of Roger Corman’s greatest directorial accomplishments and the high point of the Poe Cycle. It is a brilliant film, both visually and thematically, and one that every classic horror fan would do well to watch.” Classic-Horror

“Atmospheric, opulent and deeply troubling, The Masque of the Red Death, while taking a few small liberties with the original source material to pad out the running time, does succeed in creating an uncanny and macabre atmosphere and tone that is unmistakably Poe through and through.” Behind the Couch

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WH

Les Baxter (March 14, 1922 – January 15, 1996) was an American musician and composer. Although he is best know as a practitioner of exotica music, he also scored several films, many of which were horror.

Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer. At the age of 23 he joined Mel Tormé’s Mel-Tones, singing on Artie Shaw records such as “What Is This Thing Called Love?”.

By 1950 he had moved to Capitol and had progressed to conducting and arrangement, including one of Nat King Cole’s big early hits, “Mona Lisa”. From here, he branched out into his own strange world, firstly scoring a travelogue called, Tanga Tiki and then a series of concept albums: Le Sacre du Sauvage, Festival of the Gnomes, Ports of Pleasure, and Brazil Now. These thickly-layered, atmospheric works featuring bird song, abstract wailing and all manner of jungle and tribal sounds became part of the exotica movement, the archly-kitsch imagined sounds of far-flung lands and would soon inspire similar minds; Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman and Esquivel.

Sadly, much of his work up to this point was over-shadowed by back-biting and malicious rumour. It was alleged on several occasions that Baxter was actually the front for a ghost-writer, the actual composers of several works suspected to be Albert Harris, Pete Rugolo and Nelson Riddle, most famously Frank Sinatra’s band leader. The evidence for this was Baxter’s extremely slow composition and supposed inability to read music, both claims which have since been largely disproved. Regardless, Baxter shrugged off the criticisms and after further, often ‘challenging’ exotica works, cinema beckoned.

Having already composed the familiar’ whistle’ theme for TV’s Lassie, Baxter’s first work of note and a rarity in respect of the reasonable budget, was the Vincent Price-starring, Master of the World. This association with Price and more especially of the Gothic was to become a cornerstone of his career but one sadly that more often than not went uncredited. The speed at which AIP demanded new scores and the lowly resources afforded him and his orchestra meant that he was lucky to receive a credit for his work, luckier still if he was happy with the results of scores his name was attached to.

Baxter scored many of the Poe cycle of films, which have since become critically acclaimed but at the time were seen as fodder by many. Amongst well over a hundred scores he composed there are a handful of particularly interesting ones, unusual in that he was required to re-score a film which already had a soundtrack, for the American market. These included famous Mario Bava works such as Black Sunday (1960), Black Sabbath (1963) and Baron Blood (1972), peplum – Goliath and the Barbarians, and comedies – Beach Party.

In terms of the slew of Italian films he worked on, there is simply no justification for the so-called need for an alternative score. Composers such as accomplished as Stelvio Cipriani (Tragic Ceremony; Tentacles, a theme recycled possibly more than any other in film history, Piranha II), Roberto Nicolosi (Black Sunday) and Angelo Francesco Lavagnino (Castle of the Living Dead; Queens of Evil) were amongst those whose works were presumably considered ‘too exotic’ for the American palate. In fact, it was naturally conservative AIP who insisted that the films were given a new score for the American market. Their explanation, according to the composer Bronislau Kaper (Them!) was that they found Italian scores, “stupid, arrogant, monotonous and tasteless”.

The fun didn’t end there. Samuel Z. Arkoff’s notorious cost-cutting extended to the regular recycling of not only individual cues but entire tracts of music – the score to Samson and the Slave Queen is nearly all taken from Goliath and the Barbarians, not that Baxter got double the money. Similarly, The Premature Burial (1962) features cues heard in some of his previous scores. It is worth noting that although Baxter was one of the most high profile composers to be put in this position, others, such as Herman Stein (Tarantula, This Island Earth) also had their music re-used or went uncredited.

For Mario Bava’s 1960 classic, Black Sunday, so much money was invested by AIP (over $100,000, more than the film’s shooting budget) that they felt obliged to make it their own, despite it coming to them already successful and fully-formed. Ironically, having dispensed with Nicolosi’s subtle, unobtrusive score, they replaced it with something not only extremely similar but something which, if anything, attempted to overshadow Bava’s visuals. At least with 1963’s, Black Sabbath, a distinctly different score took the place of Nicolosi’s work, a somewhat blander, mainstream effort compared to the shifting and free-form original. The extremely distinctive Cipriani score to 1972’s Baron Blood, was given one of the more extreme make-overs and for once actually adds something new, something less intrusive and, well, scarier.

This bizarre practise continued to an even more ludicrous instance for Cry of the Banshee (1970) with AIP insisting on separate scores for both the British and US versions of the film. There are several explanations for this, however daft; firstly, Baxter had by this stage become part of the furniture at AIP and could apparently do no wrong; secondly, the original composer, Wilfred Josephs, was known only for his work in television, not the familiar big-hitter the Americans demanded; finally, the cuts to the US version were so sweeping that the film made little sense with only minute cues remaining. Regardless, it is one of Baxter’s most revered works, though the original is fun for its faux-Elizabethan sound.

After the mid-70’s, work began to dry up on both sides of the Atlantic as Italy’s industry concentrated on home-grown scores and America entered the realms of enormous blockbusters. There was still opportunity there (some work on Frogs in 1972, the score to The Beast Within, a decade later) but both exotica and his film themes had had their time (though he did compose themes for Sea World, amongst other tourist attractions) and it would be after his death that Baxter began to be reappraised in a much more positive light.

Selected filmography:

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1904. The novel is one of his lesser known works.

The Food of the Gods is divided into three “books”: “Book I: The Discovery of the Food”; “Book II: The Food in the Village”; and “Book III: The Harvest of the Food.”

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Book I introduces Mr. Bensington, a research chemist specialising in “the More Toxic Alkaloids,” and Professor Redwood, who after studying reaction times takes an interest in “Growth.” After a year of research and experiment, he finds a way to make what he calls in his initial enthusiasm “the Food of the Gods,” but later more soberly dubs Herakleophorbia IV. Their first experimental success is with chickens that grow to about six times normal size.

Unfortunately Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, the slovenly couple hired to feed and monitor the chickens, allow Herakleophorbia IV to enter the local food chain, and the other creatures that get the food grow to six or seven times their normal size: not only plants, but also wasps, earwigs, and rats. The chickens escape, over-running a nearby town.

As debate ensues about the substance, popularly known as “Boomfood,” children are being given the substance and grow to enormous size: Redwood’s son, Cossar’s three sons, and Mrs. Skinner’s grandson, Caddles. These massive offspring eventually reach about 40 feet in height. At first the giants are tolerated, but as they grow more and more restrictions are imposed.

With time most of the English population comes to resent the young giants as well as changes to flora, fauna, and the organisation of society that become more extensive with each passing year. Bensington is nearly lynched by an angry mob.

Book II offers an account of the development of Mrs. Skinner’s grandson, Albert Edward Caddles. Wells takes the occasion to satirise the conservative rural gentry (Lady Wondershoot) and Church of England clergy (the Vicar of Cheasing Eyebright) in describing life in a little village.

Book III recounts how British society has learned to cope with occasional outbreaks of giant pests (mosquitoes, spiders, rats, etc.), but the coming to maturity of the giant children brings a reactionary politician, Caterham, into power. Caterham has been promoting a program to destroy the Food of the Gods and hinting that he will suppress the giants, and now begins to execute his plan.

By coincidence, it is just at this moment that Caddles rebels against spending his life working in a chalk pit. In London he is surrounded by thousands of tiny people and confused by everything he sees. He demands to know what it’s all for and where he fits in; after refusing to return to his chalk pit, Caddles is shot and killed by the police.

The conclusion of the novel features a romance between the young giant Redwood and an unnamed princess. Their love blossoms just as Caterham, who has at last attained a position of power, launches an effort to suppress the giants. But after two days of fighting, the giants, who have taken refuge in an enormous pit, have held their own. Their bombardment of London with shells containing large quantities of Herakleophorbia IV forces Caterham to call a truce. The British leader is satirised as a demagogue, a “vote-monster” for whom nothing but “gatherings, and caucuses, and votes – above all votes” are real.

Caterham employs Redwood père as an envoy to send a proposed settlement whose terms would demand that the giants live apart somewhere and forgo the right to reproduce.

The novel concludes with the world on the verge of a long struggle between the “little people” and the Children of the Food…

Perhaps inevitably, it is mostly through the movies that the story is best known. The Food of the Gods was released by American International Pictures (AIP) in 1976, written, produced, and directed by Bert I. Gordon. Based on a portion of the book, it reduced the tale to an ‘Ecology Strikes Back’ scenario, common in science fiction movies at the time.

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Earlier, Bert I. Gordon had written, produced, and directed Village of the Giants (1965), also very loosely based on the book. The substance, called simply “Goo”, is developed by an 11-year-old Ron Howard. This is consumed by a gang of teenaged troublemakers (led by Beau Bridges) who become giants and take over the town, turning the tables on the knee-high adults. They are eventually defeated by other teens (led by Tommy Kirk). With the substance scientifically created and the giants coming into conflict with the little people, it actually was closer to the book than the later effort – though not by much.

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In 1989, Gnaw: Food of the Gods, Part 2 was released, written by Richard Bennett and directed by Damian Lee. Dealing with a pack of giant lab rats wreaking havoc on a college campus, it was even further removed from the book than Gordon’s attempts.

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The Food of the Gods was first adapted for the comics in January 1961, for Classics Illustrated No. 160, with a painted cover (see above) by Gerald McCann, script by Alfred Sundel and interior artwork by Tony Tallarico. The giant wasps were shown in only two panels and the rats weren’t shown at all.

A more dynamic and dramatic version, “told in the mighty Marvel manner,” was found in Marvel Classics Comics No. 22 (1977). Writer Doug Moench improved on the Classics Illustrated script while Sonny Trinidad produced striking artwork.

“Deadly Muffins” in Secrets of Sinister House No. 13 (DC Comics, 1973) is an uncredited version of the story written by John Albano and drawn by Alfredo Alcala.

Wikipedia