Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes

1955 sci-fi horror movie

Rating: 4/20 (Libby: 4/20; Fred: 6/20; Josh: 7/20)

Plot: A really dysfunctional family of three living on ranch with a mute ranch-hand have their unhappy lives disrupted by an alien.

The most interesting thing about this movie for me was Chester Conklin who plays Ben, an elderly neighbor. His performance stood out in a mostly boring movie because he acts like he's only seen silent films with every expression and gesture exaggerated. I was entertained and looked him up. Turns out he was in over 300 movies from 1913 to 1966 including a role in The Great Dictator where he's shaved by Chaplin to Brahms' Hungarian Dance. This movie hammers home the family-sticking-together theme, hammers so hard that it's painful. For the first half of the movie, they really are as dysfunctional as a family can be, so much that it's actually a little uncomfortable. The mother, played by Lorna Thayer, is an especially abrasive character. Paul Birch plays the dad, stoically. He can't make his ranch work, probably because he spends all day driving around, but he sure becomes an expert on this alien invasion really quickly. I think the makers of this--director David Kramarsky was allowed to direct nothing else while screenwriter Tom Filer only had one other movie [The Space Children] to his name--decided that they were running out of time and had to rush things along at the end. Something like that must have happened with the title of this thing, too.

MGM executives: Hey, guys. We need a title for that science fiction movie. We need to start advertising that sucker.
Kramarsky: Hmm. What should we call this thing?
Filer: Don't look at me! This is the only thing I've ever written.
MGM executives: Hurry, fellas, or we're not going to let you make anymore movies.
Filer: Umm. Uhh. The Beast! Call it The Beast!
Kramarsky: Yeah, that's good. It's got three eyes, too. Let's go with The Beast with Three Eyes!
MGM executives: The Beast with Three Eyes? That ain't gonna sell. We need more eyes!
Filer: How about a hundred?
MGM executives: Ehh.
Kramarsky: A thousand?
MGM executives: Hmm. That's better.
Filer and Kramarsky: A million! The Beast with a Million Eyes!
MGM executives: Fellas, we've got a hit on our hands!

They make you wait for that titular beast. Wait, wait, and wait some more. When you finally get to see the thing, you're disappointed that it's a monster with two eyes with one eye superimposed over it. They show it for about thirty seconds, presumably because it's too ridiculous to show for longer. The best effect, by far, is during a couple bird attack scenes when fake birds (I hope) are thrown at a car by somebody off camera. The monster or the brainwashed birds (or dog or cow--those are the "eyes," I guess) aren't nearly as creepy as the mute who doesn't have a name until they decide to give him one at the end of the movie along with a back story. This is a movie that manages to make very little sense but still seems derivative, and that combination is no easy feat. And this is a strong contender for worst dialogue to end a film ever [Spoiler Alert!]:

[Characters see and almost shoot an eagle.]
Wife: Allan, wait. Have you ever seen an eagle around here before.
Husband: No, what's that have to do with it?
Wife: Let it go. Don't kill it, Allan. I wonder where it came from. And, Allan, there's something else. What killed the creature in the ship?
Husband: Where did the eagle come from? Why do men have souls?
Wife: If I could answer that, I'd be more than human. I'd be. . .
Husband: Yes.
[End of movie]

What?

Humanoids from the Deep

1980 horror movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Damn science! Once again, scientists dick around and accidentally create rampaging monsters. In this case, it's fish men who go around slicing up men with their deadly claws and violating women with their hideous reproductive organs. I guess they should have all listened to the Native American.

This is also, as you can tell from the poster called Monster. But that's not nearly clever enough for a movie made by people who can afford three monster costumes, the amount that is shown on screen at the same time. Yes, this is a cheap production as you'd expect something from Roger Corman to be. But it made up for its cheapness with the half-man/half-fish rape scenes. I mean, you never saw Jaws rape anybody unless you saw that titular beast as the phallic symbol that he was and saw the whole movie as some sort of rape allegory. I kind of liked how the monsters looked in this thing. They had these enormous heads and elongated arms, the latter which I imagine made groping teenagers a lot easier. This movie also has a fantastic ending, one that only sort of looks like it might have been stolen from another (more famous) movie that came out the previous year. And there was a random ventriloquist dummy in this thing as well as a splinters joke that I'm definitely going to be using if I ever get my hands on a ventriloquist dummy. This isn't the worst of these low-budget sci-fi horror hybrids, and the climactic scene where the monsters unleash their fury at a carnival that for whatever reason wasn't cancelled has its moments. And those monsters really do look kind of cool in a very ridiculous way. But this just feels like something we've all seen several times before.

Blood Bath

1966 horror movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An artist who may or may not be a vampire kills attractive women and then dips their bodies in hot wax.

This one recalls the superior and more comedic (blackly) Bucket of Blood with its sculpting techniques and beatniks. Blood Bath, a movie that unfortunately isn't as interesting as the above poster makes it look, has an interesting history which explains why it's kind of a mess. Corman produced this movie and wanted Jack Hill of Spider Baby and The Wasp Woman fame to use footage of a movie Corman released in Europe but not in the U.S. He wasn't completely happy, so another director (Stephanie Rothman) came along and added a few scenes and changed the story around a little. So it's no wonder that this is disjointed and confusing. And it's too bad that it's slightly incomprehensible because the movie has so much style. There's great atmosphere early in the film with greasy atmosphere and impossible architectures and creepy bells, great black and white shots that look like they could have been in The Third Man or something. Later, there's a cool desert "He was mad!" scene and a nice shot of floating high heels in a swimming pool. The climactic scene, the only thing that even approaches horror, is effectively and efficiently dark and creepy. There's some cool movie artwork and even a little satire with some beatniks discussing the application of quantum physics to painting. This doesn't really overcome its convoluted production history or problems, but it is interesting enough to take a peek at.

Note: Like A Bucket of Blood, this has a very misleading title. There's sort of a bath, but no blood. And remember, you're not quite getting the cleavage or "the shrieking of mutilated victims caged in a black pit of horror" promised on the poster.

The Masque of the Red Death

1964 Poe movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A mean prince parties pretty freakin' hard while keeping people safe from the plague.

Ah, Vincent Price. It's been far too long, old friend. This is one of 7 or 8 Corman-directed Poe adaptations. This actually combines a couple--the short story that shares the same title and the more obscure "Hop-Frog" which has the alternate title of "The Eight Chained Ourangoutangs"--which allowed Corman to not only have Vincent Price using words like "Garrote them" or "One of [the daggers] is impregnated with a poison that kills in. . .five seconds" like no other actor can but also include a little person and Patrick Magee in a gorilla suit. The little person is played by Skip Martin who gets a chance to do some gymnastics and dance with Esmeralda, a character who is supposed to be another dwarf but who I think was a child dubbed with a grown woman's voice. Magee, when not in the gorilla suit, gets to speak to women about the "anatomy of terror" which is really close to the pick-up line I used when I met my wife. Of course, nobody can compete with the great Vincent Price even though he has difficulty saying "squirrels" correctly. His Prince Prospero character's got a nice pad with colorful rooms, a variety of animal heads on the wall, more interesting decor, a pendulum on a clock that moves way too slowly. Prospero makes his friends act like animals, a scene that ends with one lady in a yellow dress really getting into things with some gnarly flapping. There are also great party games like the aforementioned poison dagger game which inspires one couple--maybe the woman in the yellow dress and her date--to start voraciously making out upon. Like these other Corman productions, there's some nice period style, from the atmospheric opener to a nifty parade of plagues at the end. Speaking of that opener, I don't think cinematographers shoot through tree branches enough anymore. Samurai movies and old horror movies both feature shots through tree branches. There's also one of those obligatory trippy hallucination sequences all veiled in blue mist with Hazel Court's silent screams and an erotic bird attack. Bonus awesome moment: guy in the dungeon who goes "Waaaa!" Cool little period horror movie here, one that will definitely appeal to fans of Satan or plagues.

Women in Cages

1971 women's prison movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Pretty much the same as all the other women's prison movies.

So here's the deal: The most popular blog post of all time here at shane-movies is my write-up for The Little Mermaid. And it's not even close. So I tried to figure out why that's the case in order to figure out ways to generate more blog traffic.

At first I thought it was just an angry reader who just couldn't stay away and kept reading the The Little Mermaid post because he is worried his blood pressure might be too low. Then, I investigated further.

The words "horny teenage mermaid" appear right near the beginning of the post. And I could picture bloated sweathogs drooling in front of their computer monitors as they Googled "horny teenage mermaid" with their pants half-unzipped. It was easy for me to picture because I'm one of those guys. The words "sexual awakening of a young girl," "hot sea witch," and "Buddy Hackett" probably brought people to that post, too. And any combination of the words mermaid, vagina, sex, and saucy. Or, for the ladies, "nondescript prince."

Naturally, I started thinking about how I could, like a Pied Piper of movie bloggers, lead unsuspecting perverts to my little blog since it's been a dream of mine to hit the 10 1/2 reader mark. I don't discriminate, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a lot like the Christian church or the Statue of Liberty and will take anybody I can get with open arms. Maybe some bloggers out there don't want poor, tired, or huddled masses dirtying up their comments, but I'll gladly take 'em! And I don't want to limit that just to perverts either though I suspect three of my readers probably could safely be labeled "perverts" or at the very least derelicts.

So here it is. Here's the flute this Pied Piper is using to trick the masses into finding my blog. It's been 4 1/2 years, people, and I just can't be happy with 4 1/2 readers anymore. The Hunger Games + women's prison movies + nudity + "horny teenage mermaid" + Buddy Hackett? I don't see how this plan can fail. I thought about throwing in words like "naughty nurse action," "juicy sorority party," "throbbing," "waxy nips," spandex jumping jacks," "Duchess of Spain sunbathing," "MILF drinking a milkshake," "polka-dotted panties," "hot pudding wrestlers," "x-rated aquarium," "Kim Kardashian," "studly fireman," "naked shuffleboard," "salami treat," or "elderly spanking," but I figured that would be considered cheap.

And new readers? You can bet that all of the entries are just as good as this one!

Oh, Women in Cages. It's not very good, a lesser entry in the women's prison genre. Pam Grier plays a sadistic guard this time, and she doesn't wear the uniform as well as the prisoner garb she did in The Big Bird Cage. We get into blaxploitation motifs when she starts mentioning her life in Harlem. Smack at age 10 and working the streets at 12. It explains why she enjoys strapping half-naked women to large wheels or employing crotch burning though. "Crotch burning" is probably a word combination that will draw a certain crowd here, right? The story's not all that engaging, but you do get your obligatory shower scene, your obligatory catfights, and your obligatory torture sequences. Andres Centenara makes a very brief appearance but isn't on the screen enough to matter. This is a hastily-put-together production that is way too serious to be much fun. Corman produced. And here's the real poster which, as much as it might surprise you, isn't really a very honest depiction:

The Big Bird Cage

1972 women's prison movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Horny Terry is arrested for a crime she did not commit and sent to a prison labor camp for women. Meanwhile, some people who want to raise money to start a revolution get the idea to bust out a bunch of the women at the camp for their cause. The result? Mud wrestling!

How about that tagline--"Women so hot with desire they melt the chains that enslave them!"

So what are you really looking for in a women's prison movie? Sexy women? This has a few of those--Pam Grier at her toughest and the stunning Anitra Ford, a future Price Is Right gal. Nudity? It's got that, too, and not just with the aforementioned blaxploitation superstar or a woman Bob Barker would probably later sleep with. You get a shower scene or two, a genre favorite. You also get a really tall woman covering herself in lard and attacking another woman in a river with floating coconuts. Gritty and brutal prison life depictions? The titular bird cage is a giant rickety mill that gives the producers of this (yes, Corman's involved) an excuse to show sweaty and scantily-clad women climbing stairs and engaging in hard work. Perverse torture scenes? Check, including a great scene where Ford is chained and hung from her hair. How about action? Hell, yes! One only needs to point to the handful of scenes featuring mud wrestling, but there's also a terrific scene where Pam Grier and her boyfriend Django have a chicken vs. knife fight. And does this have the great acting you would expect from a feature like this? Why, yes it does. Sid Haig shows comic versatility as a revolutionary although it's not one of the most politically correct performances you're likely to see. Grier's just a presence. My favorite performance of them all is Andres Centenara as the cruel Warden Zappa. Love how he screams all of his lines with a chunky accent and kicks small animals. The best thing about this movie, other than all the nudity, is its tone. This isn't a movie that the actors or director Jack Hill is taking too seriously. I think it's hilarious how the amateur revoluntaries talk:

Guy: Me and the boys have been talking about the revolution.
Other guy: Yeah, like how to get it started and stuff.

The comic tone, the cool setting, and the gals-in-chains thrills make this a near masterpiece of the genre.

Battletruck (aka Warlords of the Twenty-First Century)

1982 Mad Max rip-off

Rating: 6/20

Plot: Some dudes got the titular vehicle and wants to use it to push everybody else around. A guy with a motorcycle and John Ratzenberger are not about to let that happen!

If this was the movie advertised on the colorful sci-fi-rific poster up there, it would really be something. Unfortunately, this one is just boring, both as a legitimate post-apocalyptic road warrior movie or as a B-movie/unintentional comedy. With the latter, you know it's obviously produced very cheaply and quite possibly sans script, but it's not quite inept enough to be worth the time of a bad movie aficionado. As the former? The colorful moments are few and far between, and the characters are some of the least engaging you're likely to meet. This is definitely a case where the bland title Battletruck fits a lot better than the bitchin' mayhem that could have been Warlords or the Twenty-First Century. The hero's humdrum, so boring that it's impossible to believe he can ever do anything heroic. The leading lady is homely, and the bad guy is more dull than he is evil. The battletruck itself is a monstrosity that is nearly as intimidating as Spielberg's 18-wheel antagonist in Duel. I did like this little creation of John Ratzenberger's, something that looks like it could have come straight from The Cars That Ate Paris:

That little slug bug turned out to be nearly invincible! Roger Corman, of course, produced this movie. It's not one I would recommend. My favorite thing about it is that everytime a character dies, they sound like they're trying to create the new Wilhelm Scream or something.

Deathsport

1978 futuristic action masterpiece

Rating: 4/20 (Mark: 4/20)

Plot: Some evil people kidnap a couple "guides" and prep them for. . .wait for it. . .the titular Deatsport! That's an arena-style competition involving glass swords, motorcycles, and inexplicable explosions.

Corman needed another "death" movie and this is what happened. David Carradine is the Carradine in this one, and I'm willing to bet it's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him. Not that he would remember a thing since he was apparently stoned throughout the filming. This movie isn't good for the right reasons, but it does have just the right ineptitude to provide a few laughs. The action scenes are repetitive, and my brother and I speculated that this might have the record for most things exploding in one movie. Most of those are random explosions, by the way, as these motorcycle death machines (destructocycles, natch) seem to blow up at the slightest touch. A climactic sword fight scene is also repetitive and dull with choreography that doesn't even show the swords, presumably because they are made out of glass and would shatter if they actually connected. Richard Lynch is a lame bad guy with an even lamer script, and he's got something wrong with his neck that perhaps distracted me from discovering the smaller bits of genius hidden within Deathsport. You also get some bug-eyed cannibals that look like they waltzed straight out of Killers from Space. My favorite scene, by far, was one with a naked Claudia Jennings in a disco torture chamber. I could just imagine this conversation taking place between the directors:

Director 1: Hey, I was watching what we shot yesterday.
Director 2: Yeah? What did you think?
Director 1: I hate to tell you this, but Deathsport is really going to suck.
Director 2: Oh, man. That's a shame because we've already shot fourteen hours of motorcycles with silver cardboard boxes taped to them driving around the desert. And this is really going to hurt David Carradine because he's really putting his soul into this performance.
Director 1: What are we going to do now?
Director 2: Well, I do have some Christmas lights.
Director 1: You do? Fantastic! Let's go see if Claudia Jennings will take off her clothes!
Director 2: Bingo! You took the words right from my mouth, Director 1!

To continue the thread of decapitation, this movie does have a rather exciting one. And the lovely Claudia Jennings, it seems, was also decapitated in an automobile accident. Apparently, it ended her acting career.

Also recommended for fans of The Help.

Rock 'n' Roll High School

1979 high school musical

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Thanks to rock 'n' roll, the students at Vince Lombardi High School have no interest in obeying the rules or getting an education. After yet another principal has a nervous breakdown, the school board hires Ms. Togar to clean things up and make the school a place of learning. Her agenda conflicts with student Riff Randell, a big fan of punk rockers The Ramones.

This punksploitative teenage comedy's got less laughs than Fast Times at Ridgemont's High, but at least it's got Clint Howard and The Ramones. The Ramones, by the way, display some terrific acting chops. Dee Dee Ramone was so bad that his lines were reduced to "Alright! The pizza's here!" but I can't imagine he's much worse than Joey Ramone who mumbles unintelligibly during his scenes. They get their chance to perform a ton of songs though, so if you're a fan, this is worth checking out. A couple of the songs work like music videos, especially during their first appearance when they show up in their "tour bus," a convertible in which they sit like only punk rockers could. There's also quite a bit of concert footage, and you've got to love a band with a lead singer who needs subtitles for the lyrics. Despite the solid analogy comparing punk rock haters to Nazis with the calling of Principal Togar's plan the "Final Solution," this is really like cartoon punk, almost like Disney decided to make a punk rock movie. Other than The Ramones, the characters aren't especially memorable, and the humor falls completely flat in this low-budget flick. Roger Corman produced.

The Intruder

1962 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: William Shatner arrives in a small southern town where school integration has just become the law. People of the town don't like it much, but most have decided that there's not much they can do about it. Until The Shat comes along, that is. He pontificates the crowds into a lather, inciting violent acts and threatening behavior against the blacks.

If this movie was better known (it was the only movie Roger Corman made that lost money according to the dvd box), Shatner's villain is the kind of character that could have ruined his career. Just seeing Captain Kirk admire a burning cross or riding (sans white hood) in a convertible with three Ku-Klux-Klan guys made him despicable enough, but he's so slimy in other scenes that have nothing to do with racism, too. I wish I could type with confidence that the character and the actions he ignites in this dumpy town with these dumpy people are exaggerated, but it's an unfortunate and embarrassing part of our American history. At times, it's almost like a Cliff Notes version of the segregation/integration issue, but it's still a ballsy movie, especially for the early 60s. I imagine that if the same exact movie came out today, and I wouldn't be as impressed, but there's just something cool about a movie coming out at this time where the clear line between the good guys and bad guys pretty much separates the white characters from the black ones respectively. Even the white characters who end up doing right things are flawed enough to make them less than heroic. The score's powerful with its driving horns, and there's an intense denouement that, if not entirely satisfying nevertheless works very well, leaving things as open-ended as they probably were at the time. Good movie.

The Wasp Woman

1959 Roger Corman sci-fi monster movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Janice Starlin, the owner and face of a cosmetics company, worries about declining profits and her waning beauty. Lucky for her, she meets Dr. Zinthrop at exactly the right time. He's discovered a fountain of youth only its not a fountain at all but a "powerful royal jelly" extracted from wasp jism or something. It works on rats, then on cats, and finally on Janice Starlin. Starlin becomes obsessed with her refound beauty. But are there side effects she doesn't know about? Like turning into a wasp woman and biting people? Oh, snap!

This starts really strong with what seems like a poorly-shot documentary on beekeepers. Yeah, this thing hits you with a barrage of cheapness from shot one and doesn't let up. You get one of those wonderful character-wrestling-with-something-stuffed scenes (a cat, in this instance) that I've grown to love, the same art work hanging on walls in two different settings (an office and an apartment), and one of the goofiest monster costumes you'll ever see. There's a lot of pseudo-technical jibber-jabber that confounded. Most confounding, however, were a pair of scenes where I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. In one [SPOILER ALERT], the scientist, right after he's been attacked by a stuffed cat, staggers off a sidewalk and gets struck by a car. Why does getting attacked by a cat make a person forget to look both ways before crossing a street? The other scene is when the scientist is showing off his creation to Susan Cabot's character. He injects a rat, puts it in a cage, and then talks for a while so that the audience can't see the rat. When the camera shows the rat again, it's a little bit smaller. Later, it's even smaller. I couldn't figure out what that meant. Does the royal jelly injection lead to youth or dimunitiveness? There are a handful of scenes that make this kind of fun, but a completely maddening soundtrack that makes it almost painful in chunks. It would also be painful to anybody bothered by poor editing and storytelling, of course. And anybody who, like me, is left with a desire to have a sexual encounter with the wasp woman, a desire you know will lead to numerous sleepless nights. Susan Cabot made for an attractive wasp woman. Still, I wouldn't have been able to control my own royal jelly if Sebastian Cabot had starred as the wasp woman.

Bucket of Blood

1959 delightful beatnik black comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Walter Paisley, an awkward loser, longs to be artsy-fartsy like the beatnik clientele of the Yellow Door Cafe where he works as a busboy. He buys himself some clay, sculpts a gray blob, and stabs his cat. When he's able to turn that feline tragedy into his first artistic masterpiece, he becomes a sensation around the Yellow Door, and the patrons begin to demand more.

More twisted fun from Roger Corman, this one, with its accidental kittycide and grotesque sculptures, also works as a biting satire of the art world. The production's cheap and, I'm guessing, quick, but they made the most of their limited time and monies. The beatnik stuff really dates this, but almost in a good way. I really liked the cool beatnik poet character Maxwell Brock (played by Julian Burton who was in The Masque of Red Death with Vincent Price), over-the-top and every bit of pretentious as he reads poems about ringing rubber bells and beating cotton gongs or saying profound things like "Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art." Paisley's sculptures, any which would look great in my living room, are really cool. I'd describe them, but it'd spoil things. Bucket of Blood is well-paced thriller and purposely funny, some of the darkest funny you might ever see. And the fact that it accidentally has something to say about creation and the art world along the way makes it even more worth the time. Oh, and ironically, I'm not sure there's any blood in this movie at all. And I don't remember seeing a bucket either.

Gas-s-s-s or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It

1971 hippie fest

Rating: 11/20 (Mark: 13/20; Amy: 12/20)

Plot: A bunch of (probably smelly) people fight for survival after a poisonous gas kills everybody over the age of 25.

An anarchic mess of a movie with a psychedelic clash of ideas, like acid-baked concert poster mash-ups, and a sloppy soundtrack, Gas-s-s-s is one of those movies that I really wanted to like but couldn't. It's packed with ideas and all kinds of things to look at. But like a lot of movies like this (I type that knowing that there really aren't a lot of movies like this), it actually suffers from having way too many ideas and things to look at. The humor's goofily dated, and there's just not anything for the typical viewer (and I consider myself 100% typical) to grasp on to. It was like I'd been put on a roller coaster that was falling apart and told that I couldn't hold on to the rail thing or I'd have to start the ride over again. The guy next to me liked the ride a little more than I did, but at least I didn't drink and vomit up an extra-large cherry Slushie and something called a "jumbo dog" like the guy behind me. This is a product of the rebellious early-70s, probably more interesting as a counter-culture relic than as a cult classic. It's probably a must for Roger Corman or Bud Cort fans though. Speaking of the latter--as I continue in my quest to see every Roger Corman movie (bet you didn't even know that was even a quest!), I continue to be amazed by the guy's versatility. And even if his movies aren't always good, they are almost always interesting and worth watching. Gas-s-s-s is, too, but its potential is unfortunately wasted by a half-assed pseudo-absurdist script and no-budget aesthetics. It's also a movie I'll never discuss with anybody because a) nobody has seen it and b) I don't want to try pronouncing the title. Gas-s-s-s. I'm afraid I'd accidentally put an extra couple s's in there.

Teenage Caveman

1958 Corman clunker

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A twenty-something-year-old teenage caveman with a stylish haircut breaks his tribes rules by venturing beyond the river, meeting dangerous creatures and putting his people at risk. Oh, snap!

Teenage Caveman is a crappy movie, made with a budget of ten dollars and fourteen cents and a director who apparently had a time frame of four and a half days. Most people, I reckon, are going to be offended because Robert Vaughn as the "teenage" caveman has better hair than them. I didn't realize cavemen used hair products. Corman makes an attempt to give this some depth. There's all this talk about the three gifts to man that had me scratching my head, and there's a pretty nifty twist ending that, if you decide to see this, I might have ruined for you just by telling you there's a twist ending. There's also a classic Corman monster, one that rivals the muppet from Creature from the Haunted Sea. Heck, given the amount of footage that seems lifted straight from other crappy movies, Corman might actually have used the same monster. This probably isn't a B-movie I'd recommend to B-movie aficionados.

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

1963 science fiction horror film

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A scientist experiments with eye drops that temporarily give the owner of the eyeballs x-ray vision. Of course, there are some negative consequences. Otherwise, there wouldn't even be a movie.

Pretty typical sci-fi B-flick stuff but with some of that Roger Corman magic, a bit of visual flair and some wild ideas. This couldn't be more obvious thematically, but I can forgive that because the movie's fun, from the opening shot of a disembodied eyeball to the final chilling shot of the titular (come on!) character hanging with some religious folk. Ray Milland is good in the lead role. I really liked the costume he wore when he started working for a carnival, a colorful get-up that includes a scarf with an eye drawn on it worn over his actual eyes. I recognized Harold J. Stone who I recently saw as a detective in The Wrong Man. The biggest surprise, however, is seeing Don Rickles as a carnival barker. When you make over three hundred movies, you're bound to develop a good eye, and Corman shows off his in a few scenes of this movie, one with an injured girl and a well-placed scarf and another with Rickles looking through a window. The weirdo effects used to give the audience Dr. Xaviar's perspective looks a little dopey and don't make complete sense, but it's effective in giving his story a different flavor. I also like an effect where the camera zoomed through Milland's head after he used the eye drops for the first time. This has a good score, especially the song at the opening, and that ending really is pretty shocking. My wife was in the room and had to turn her head.

Creature from the Haunted Sea

1961 monster and gangster comedy (I guess)

Rating: 5/20

Plot: "The most astounding adventure ever afflicted upon man." At least that's what the narrator told me. American gangster Renzo, for reasons that I never completely understood, finds himself on a boat with his posse and a handful of Cubans and the Cuban National Treasury. He decides to unload the Cubans one-by-one and blame it on a sea creature that, according to legend, roams the waters. He doesn't realize that a very real muppet is roaming the waters and helping him in his task.

Another Corman picture, one in which Roger really takes the piss. There was no way they worked on this for more than a week, probably while they were still writing the script. I knew I was in for something goofy while watching the animated credits during which a ridiculously harmlesss sea thing runs comically across the screen. But I still didn't realize this was even a comedy until it just got to the point where it was too ludicrous not to be one. The gangsters meet the Cubans in a rainforest after they drive to the destination in a convertible, a limo, and a Volkswagon bus. For about five minutes, I couldn't figure out what was going on because I couldn't understand what anybody was saying thanks to bad sound and thick accents. I did catch a character say, "Do you understand?" which made me answer back "No, not at all." I really need to stop talking to the movies I watch. Then some things happen and a Volkswagon bug comes along and there's a chase scene through the jungle that makes that chase scene in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull look like high art. I was still clueless, but then they ended up on the boat and everything calmed down a little bit. I had to pause the movie to take a breath. Dopiness abounds in this one. Nothing about the plot really makes that much sense. You have a CIA agent (also the narrator) working undercover with the gangsters, but he never seems to be invited to their meetings. He listens at the door, narrates that he can't understand anything that they're saying, and then is seen listening at the door anyway for several subsequent scenes anyway. He also says, "But my real name is XK150," at one point which is interesting because I almost named one of my children that. Another enlightening bit of narration: "It was dusk; I could tell because the sun was going down." None of the other characters make sense either. Renzo is pretty much a low-budget Bogart, something like a Humphrey clone that went horribly wrong and was discarded in a dumpster outside the laboratory but Corman came along and decided to use him anyway. Speaking of Bogie, there's a gang member called Happy Jack Manahan who is supposed to perpetually smile because of muscle spasms from too many Bogart pictures. I don't even know what that means, but I do know the character doesn't even smile that much in the movie. The most nonsensical character, and the character who represented the moment when Corman's tongue actually penetrated his cheek and wiggled freely in the air, was a guy whose dialogue was mostly animal imitations including "the mating call of the Himalayan Yak." The characters forget each other's names, run into each other, and butcher their lines, all things that would make an ordinary director yell "Cut!" But Corman is no ordinary director! The excellent Fred Katz (Little Shop of Horrors) provides some interesting music that at times clashes with what you see on the screen. And I haven't even talked about the frightening monster yet!



Hell yeah! I would have expected this thing to steal my cookies rather than feel in danger because of it, and I don't know how the actors kept from laughing. Maybe that's why most of the creature's appearances involved it sneaking up on the characters so that they wouldn't see him and start laughing. There were some great underwater scenes with this thing, a lot of them blocked by large fish that would swim in front of the camera. 5/20 might be a little high for this film; however, it is a comedy that made me laugh. Maybe my grade is even a little harsh. Regardless, this deepens my appreciation for the great Roger Corman.

Dementia 13

1963 horror mystery film

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Louise and her husband John are boating. He informs her that according to the will, his death would mean that she wouldn't get any money. Then he conveniently dies. Louise ties on an anchor and hurls his body into the lake. She then writes a letter from John to his mother explaining that he won't be able to visit on the anniversary of his little sister's funeral. She then travels to Ireland to visit the Haloran castle and find out what she can about her husband's family. It turns out that they're really weird.

I was really confused during most of Dementia 13. There's a whole lot going on, the characters' actions don't make a lot of sense, and there are two actresses who look exactly the same. This one has a lot in common with Psycho. It's nowhere near as good though it does have a lot of individual scenes, some stylistic touches, and two pretty blond women who look exactly the same that make it worth watching. It's also worth watching for anybody wanting to see what Francis Ford Coppola was up to before he started doing stuff that made him Francis Ford Coppola. The ax murderin' scenes are very well done although I think it accidentally gives away the murderer too soon. A scene at the beginning where the husband is dumped from the boat and sinks followed by his still functioning radio is also a nice scene. I'm not sure they'll be easy to find, but I'm going to try to find Dementias 1-12 to watch.

The Terror

1963 terrorble movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: French officer Andre Duvalier wanders lost on a beach. He spots cleavage and tries to chase it down. "Come back here, cleavage!" he screams. Then a bird attacks him. He eventually loses the woman and finds himself in an old lady's house with (Warning: Here comes some terror!) THE SAME BIRD THAT ATTACKED HIM. She tells him of a castle with the Baron So-and-So in it, and he decides to go there to look for the woman. Then, there's all kinds of terror. And then there's even more terror!

It's really not hard to believe that this was written and shot in just four days using the same set as the just-finished The Raven. Actually, it is hard to believe that this was written at all. It's almost completely incomprehensible, almost more the story of Jack Nicholson drowning in a gigantic cauldron of plotless sludge than anything else. It's also hard to believe that it took not only Roger Corman but four other directors (including Coppola and Bogdanovich) to complete this mess. But perhaps that's why it's the mess that it is. This lacks the atmosphere of the Poe movies, and although Nicholson is pretty good (and fun to watch as he's starting to discover his voice), Karloff looks bored and confused in his scenes. The shocking finale, involving a bunch of water and a character who slowly turns into what I believe is chocolate pudding, is a laugher, but it's not worth sitting through the rest of the boring seventy-some minutes to get to it. The lesson we can take from The Terror? I think it's that you have to write the movie before you shoot it.

The Little Shop of Horrors

1960 black comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Poor clumsy Seymour is about to lose his job at a little shop of flowers owned by Gravis Mushnick. That wouldn't be good because he's got to take care of his mother and Audrey, the woman he loves, works there. In his spare time at home, he is nurturing a flower of his own that he brings into the shop with the hope that Mushnick won't get rid of him. Mushnick's intrigued because a customer who comes in to devour flowers tells him it's intriguing, and Seymour gets a week to see what he can do with the plant. Seymour soon learns that the only way to make the plant, which he names Audrey Junior, grow is to feed it humans. Oh, snap!

This was notoriously shot in just two days. That's evident, but not necessarily in a bad way. The participants look like they're having fun, and the production, although cheap and dirty, has a free and lackadaisical quality that makes it fun for the audience. The central idea is about as weird as it gets, but the dialogue is filled with some really bizarre bits of black, absurdist humor. At times, the dialogue almost seems like something from a Marx Brothers movie. The acting's as bad as you'd expect from actors who are only given a single take, but again, that sort of adds to the fun. Jack Nicholson has a small, and really utterly pointless, role as masochistic dental patient Wilbur Force that's also fun to watch and arguably better than anything he's done in the last ten years. It's not hard to see how somebody could watch this and not think, "Man, this would be really great as a musical!" The movie's also got a nice message although you really feel sorry for Seymour at the end. Another thing I like (and another Marx-ish [not Marxist] touch) are the odd character names: Burson Fouch, Siddie Shiva, Hortense Feutchwanger, Frank Stoolie, Dr. Foebus Farb.