They Came from Beyond Space is a 1967 British science fiction film directed by Freddie Francis (Torture Garden, The Vampire Happening), written by Milton Subotsky (At the Earth’s Core, The Monster Club) and based on the book The Gods Hate Kansas by Joseph Millard. It was produced by Amicus Productions after Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. and used many of the sets and props from the former film as a cost cutting measure. It stars Robert Hutton (The Slime People), Jennifer Jayne, Zia Mohyeddin, Bernard Kay (The Shuttered Room, Torture Garden, Witchfinder General), Michael Gough (Horrors of the Black Museum, Konga, Horror Hospital, Sleepy Hollow), Geoffrey Wallace, Maurice Good, Luanshya Greer, John Harvey and Diana King.

Partial Synopsis:

Several meteors fall in a field in Cornwall, England. Those who approach them are seemingly taken over, and barricade the area from intruders. A scientist is immune to the takeover due to a metal plate in his head. He enlists the assistance of a friend, who must melt down his silver cricket trophies to make a helmet to protect him. They discover that the takeover is benign, as the aliens just want to repair their rocket and return home…

Review:

They Came from Beyond Space is a curious minor effort that, although based on a novel seems to take most of its ideas from Hammer’s Quatermass II. As in that film (and the TV series it evolved from), we have an alien presence travelling to Earth in meteors and taking over the minds of scientists, quickly cutting off a village and turning it into a heavily guarded military compound where strange experiments are taking place. Only one (American) scientist – in this case Dr Curtis Temple (Robert Hutton) realises what is happening, and sets out to fight back against these alien invaders and their rather vague plans.

If this isn’t a particularly exciting film, it’s certainly not for the want to trying – a bombastic score thunders out continually as Hutton runs around looking intense, which certainly goes some way towards covering up the fact that very little actually happens. Hutton proves to be immune to alien takeover because he has a silver plate in his head, and so he teams with fellow scientist Farge (Zia Mohyeddin), who melts down his cricket trophies to make what looks like a colander, in a scene sure to reduce modern audiences to hysterics – with this helmet perched on his head, Farge looks more like a paranoid, tinfoil hat-wearing nutter than a serious scientist.

As with many Milton Subotsky screenplays, the dialogue is clunky and unconvincing, and as with many Freddie Francis films where he clearly didn’t give a damn, the direction is perfunctory, with some astonishingly stilted performances (it’s hard to see much difference between Jennifer Jayne as a normal human and a cold, mind-controlled alien). Yet despite all this, They Came from Beyond Space is never dull. It bounces along quite merrily, seemingly oblivious to its silliness, before reaching a pretty lame climax, and it may well have a degree of camp value these days.

And at least we can finally see the film as it was meant to be seen. Having somehow slipped into the grey area of public domain, for far too long the only versions of this film that could be seen were barely watchable washed-out prints. This new release is incredibly vivid – the opening titles are as loud as the soundtrack. If you’ve suffered through an inferior version in the past, this new edition will seem like a revelation. And if you are a fan of obscure British science fiction – a sub-genre of films that bear no resemblance to any other country’s sci-fi – they you owe it to yourself to check out this entertainingly disposable effort.

David Flint, Strange Things Are Happening

Wikipedia | IMDb | Thanks to Wrong Side of the Art! for poster image

Witchcraft – Magic: An Adventure in Demonology is a 1969 spoken word album, featuring the florid tones of horror legend Vincent Price as he discusses the world of witchcraft and the occult in all forms across four sides of vinyl, clocking in at an impressive (and exhaustive) 105 minutes.

While Price would crop up as narrator on albums by Alice Cooper and Michael Jackson (Thriller) in later years, this is his magnum opus – a book length study of witchcraft, produced by Roger Karshner and released by Capitol Records. Terry d’Oberoff is credited as both composer and director, while the impressive stereo sound effects were supplied by Douglas Leedy, a pioneer of late Sixties electronic experimentalism. There is no credit for the text, though it seems likely that this too is d’Oberoff.

The LP consists of Price telling tales of witchcraft and devil worship – not fictional horror stories, but factual (well, factual-ish) accounts of historical events and aspects of the occult, helpfully split into various chapters on the sleeve – ‘Hitler and Witchcraft’, ‘Women as Witches’, ‘The World of Spirits and Demons’ and so on. Price seems to have fun with the more lurid descriptions, his voice and (most likely) tongue in cheek attitude giving a gleefully macabre and somewhat leering tone to lines like “fornication with the Devil, child sacrifice, feasts of rotting human flesh” and “the tearing of her flesh with pincers, her body broken on the wheel, her fingernails ripped off, her feet thrust into a fire, whatever horrors the twisted mind of the hangman could devise” in the two part section entitled ‘Witch Tortures’.

A surprising amount of the album actually seems to be a ‘how to’ guide to witchcraft, with handy chapters on ‘How to invoke spirits, demons, unseen forces’, ‘how to make a pact with the Devil’ and ”Curses, Spells, Charms’. “Of course you should never resort to this… except in the case of the most dire necessity” says Price of selling your soul to Satan, giving a little chuckle as he does so, before going on to give full and frank instructions nevertheless. Oh those Satanic Sixties!

Price’s narration is occasionally interspersed with Macbeth-like witches cackling away in heavily treated manner. These are possibly the most over the top moments of the album, but they work as dramatic interludes.

The music by d’Oberoff is impressively creepy and discordant, as are the sound effects, which float from speaker to speaker in the way that only records from the early days of stereo did – even Price’s voice moves from left to right and back, adding a sense of displacement to the narration.

This is not easy listening, and neither is it the most approachable of audio books. But fans of Price and anyone interested in the occult will probably enjoy it. If nothing else, it’s a curious artefact from a time when public fascination with witchcraft, Satanism and black magic was at its peak.

Originally released as a double album with accompanying booklet, the album has been issued on a CD of dubious legality and can also be found online if you look hard enough.

Review by David Flint

Riziero “Riz” Ortolani was an Italian film composer. Born on 25 March 1926, he recently died in Rome, aged 87. In the early 1950s Ortolani began his musical career as a founder and member of a well-known Italian jazz band. His score for Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti‘s ‘shockcumentary’ Mondo Cane, whose main title-song was More earned him a Grammy and was also nominated for an Oscar as Best Song.

Director Quentin Tarantino featured Ortolani’s work in more recent productions such as Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) and Django Unchained (2012).

Ortolani scored all or parts of over 200 films, including horror, gialli, spaghetti westerns, Eurospy films, exploitation films and mondo films. Notable horror films and giallo thrillers scored by Ortolani include:

Horror Castle/The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963)

Castle of Blood (1964)

One on Top of the Other (Lucio Fulci, 1969)

So Sweet, So Perverse (1969)

Web of the Spider (1970)

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972)

Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)

The Dead Are Alive (1972)

Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes (1973)

Death Steps in the Dark (1976)

I Am Afraid (Io ho paura,1977)

Red Rings of Fear (1978)

Brutes and Savages (1978)

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

Zeder aka Revenge of the Dead (1983)

Killer Crocodile (1989)

Killer Crocodile 2 (1990)

Wikipedia | Thanks to Wrong Side of the Art! for some of the poster images above.

Chewits is the brand name of a British chewy, cuboid-shaped, soft taffy sweet manufactured by Cloetta since 1965. Chewits have been available in a variety of increasingly exotic flavours since their inception.

Chewits were first advertised on television in 1976. The original ads featured the ‘Monster Muncher’, a Godzilla-resembling mascot on the hunt for something chewy to eat. The first ad featuring the Muncher threatening New York was made by French Gold Abbott and created by John Clive and Ian Whapshot.

From then on the ‘Monster Muncher’ chomped and trampled  local and well-known international landmarks such as Barrow-in-Furness Bus Depot, a London block of flats, London Bridge, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Empire State Building. The ‘Monster Muncher’ could only be quelled by a pack of Chewits. The original adverts used claymation special effects, similar in style to those made famous in the movies of Ray Harryhausen. They also included a voiceover style reminiscent of a 1950s radio serial.

A subsequent advertisement, originally aired in 1995, plays on the over-the-top advertising style of the post-war era. To the tune of bright 1950s era orchestration, a salesy narrator exhorts viewers to try a variety of chewy consumer items in the essential guide to a chewier chew. The ad shows the ‘Monster Muncher’ sampling items such as Wellington boots, a rubber boat and a rubber plant in order to be ready for the chewiest of chews – Chewits.

In the late 1990s, Chewits experimented with ads showing multiple news casting dinosaur puppets. The catchphrase advice at the close of each ‘broadcast’ was to “do it before you chew it”.

With a change of ad agencies, the puppets were replaced by colourful 2D animations. The ‘Monster Muncher’ was re-introduced as ‘Chewie’ in two popular adverts from this time. In the first, which aired in 2000, Chewie roller skates on two buses through a busy city scene. The second shows Chewie waterskiing at a popular seaside resort.

In 2003, a new ad was aired showing a wide range of animals auditioning to be the new face of Chewits. The ad announced the return of the iconic dinosaur Chewie mascot, now dubbed ‘Chewie the Chewitsaurus’.

In 2009, the new Chewie the Chewitsaurus look, showing a contemporary, computer-game-style slick design, was introduced. It seems fair to observe that the Monster Muncher’s metamorphosis from the 1970s to the 21st century has not been a positive one.

A spin-off computer game, The Muncher, was released for the ZX Spectrum in 1988.

Wikipedia

Night, After Night, After Night is a low budget, British serial killer film released in 1969 by director Lindsay Shonteff, under the guise of Lewis J. Force. The amount of nudity and a central theme built around attitudes to sex across different elements of society meant the film was considered shocking at the time and though now the images are somewhat tame, the film still retains an unremittingly sleazy atmosphere and the swingin’ sixties of London looking anything but glamour-filled.

In relatively respectable Central and East London, women are being murdered in alarmingly similar circumstances and the constabulary’s finest, Inspector Bill Rowan (Gilbert Wynne later seen in Shonteff’s Permissive), deigns to take the odd hour off smoking, drinking and coitus to sort out the mess. A cop who is not so much hard-boiled as gently pickled, fond of grudges and swearing, quickly earmarks local lothario Pete Laver (Donald Sumpter in a magnificently-judged performance, all ‘birds’ and ‘banging’ and most head-spinningly “I thought, I’ll have me some of that”; later to top even this performance as the notorious Donald Neilson in The Black Panther) as the obvious culprit and will use fair means or foul to get his man.

However, it is quite clear that all may not be as it seems. Elsewhere, grizzled, old-school Judge Lomax (Jack May, whose voice resounds in the likes of radio soap The Archers and Count Duckula, and can physically be seen in the likes of Trog and Big Zapper) dispenses justice without any need to heed modern methods, flinging out extended prison sentences for all and sundry. Similarly disgusted by sex and deviance is his assistant, Powell (Peter Forbes-Robertson, also seen in Island of Terror and Scream… and Die!) who claims all the attacked girls are ‘asking for it’, whilst furtively visiting porno stores and collecting pictures of nude models.

The riddle doesn’t last for long, the killer being almost secondary to the film’s aim to shock and intrigue, the key point being when Rowan’s wife, Jenny, is murdered by the slayer, prompting the Inspector to increase his vendetta against a Laver who quickly drops his wide-boy sex machine bravado when he realises his defence against being charged isn’t exactly water-tight.

Meanwhile, another of the suspects is approaching mental meltdown and takes to sporting fashionably ladies clothes, an alarming wig and clawing at the pornographic paraphernalia stuck to the walls of his house, goggle-eyed and utterly unhinged. Has Rowan got his man or after all or is the real killer still at large?

Although, on the rare occasions it gets mentioned at all, Night, After Night, After Night is bundled into the serial killer pigeon-hole, this does a disservice to a film which has an unusual angle on British society of the late 1960′s and does none of the characters any favours in terms of ‘rooting for the good guy’, the whole lot of them being morally bankrupt in some respect or another. Sonteff, hiding behind a pseudonym on one of the few occasions he should have been proud to be involved, had previously helmed the likes of Devil Doll (1964) and Curse of the Voodoo (1965), neither remarkable and neither suggesting anything like the avalanche of sleaze, nudity and high-standard of acting seen in Night.

The killings largely take place off-camera, though the grot of the characters and squelch of the knife would leave the impression of gore and uncontained violence. The film played well in Soho, perhaps ironic given the graphic though entirely non-sensual glimpse at the world of strip joints and dodgy book stores. Both May and Sumpter revel in their roles, delivering brave and committed performances in a film which showed neither of them in a positive light. The film features a completely unsuitable, cod-lounge score from Douglas Gamley, which grates terribly, though in an odd way, this somehow ramps up the tension. Shonteff didn’t follow-up this effort with any further horror of note, leaving the way for Pete Walker to continue to delve into the ‘other’ Britain of repressed violence and cruelty.

Daz Lawrence

Some pics courtesy of http://moundsandcircles.blogspot.co.uk and www.attackfromplanetb.com

The Mire Beasts, tentacled octopoid monstrosities tucked away in Episode One (“The Executioners”) and Episode Two (“The Death of Time”) of the 1965 Doctor Who story The Chase, are among the least exposed, least celebrated monsters in the Who pantheon. Indeed The Chase marks their sole appearance in the series, and thanks to the (some would say) questionable quality of the story in which they reside, little has been written about them.

This is a shame, because, as the The Chase’s excellent 2010 DVD transfer reveals, they are remarkably eerie and impressive. Even aside from the sterling efforts of the Doctor Who Restoration Team, who worked wonders on the DVD transfer, it should be said that the inherent graininess of the image, resulting from a combination of low studio lighting, black and white recording, and deteriorated film elements, bestows upon the Mire Beasts a mystery and magic that bright studio lighting and crystal clear video technology would only dispel.

In Episode One of The Chase, the TARDIS lands in a vast desert wilderness. Two of the Doctor’s companions, Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) head off across the rolling dunes to explore. After a long climb up a steep gradient they find an ancient trap door hidden beneath the sand. Entering the shadowy space below they are menaced by a dimly seen tentacled creature. In Episode Two they are saved by a pair of fish-like humanoid creatures. They are Aridians; the time travellers have landed on the planet Aridius, which was once covered in giant oceans. When the twin suns of the planet began to grow in intensity the oceans boiled away and the amphibious Aridians were driven underground, where they now reside in vast catacombed cities …  Meanwhile, the Doctor (William Hartnell) and fellow companion Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) get lost in a sandstorm whilst looking for their friends. The next morning, when the storm abates, the dunes look completely different and the TARDIS is lost beneath the sands. In addition, the Doctor’s mortal enemies the Daleks have tracked him to Aridius; keen to possess the TARDIS, they force a group of Aridians to dig it from the sand. Fleeing the Daleks, the Doctor and Barbara are reunited with Vicki and Ian in the catacombs. The Daleks demand that the Aridians hand over the time travellers, but before this can be done the Mire Beasts kill the Aridian responsible for the handover. The Doctor and his friends manage to evade a Dalek sentry, re-enter the TARDIS and make their escape into the Time Vortex, with the Daleks in hot pursuit.

We discover, during Episode Two, that the Mire Beasts are giant carnivorous octopi who originally lived in the slime at the bottom of Aridius’s oceans. When the planet began to dry up they evolved into a land-based form and began to invade the Aridians’ underground cities. One supposes that they eat Aridians, which is fair enough considering that the whole planet seems devoid of any sort of ecosystem except for the two races. The fact that the drippy Aridians are so quickly persuaded to hand over the TARDIS crew to the Daleks reduces their claim to our sympathy, and one therefore cannot help but wish the Mire Beasts every success in their efforts to winkle these whey-faced ninnies from their underground bolt-holes and gobble them up.

Any creature with tentacles and an amorphous, hard-to-delineate body shape cannot fail to remind horror fans of the eldritch monstrosities roaming the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and the Mire Beasts are no exception. Indeed the Lovecraftian deity Cthulhu himself is described as having octopoid characteristics. Likewise, swamps or mires are natural locations for horror: one is reminded of Lovecraft’s The Statement of Randolph Carter, in which an occultist disappears while exploring an underground crypt in Big Cypress Swamp. Were the Mire Beasts involved? Lovecraft himself refused to be drawn on what lurked beneath Big Cypress Swamp and there’s nothing in The Chase to disprove the theory.

Swamps are horrific because of a tendency in human thinking to regard anything wet and slimy as disgusting and abject; hence the Mire Beasts not only seem repugnant because they are gelatinous invertebrates but because they are associated, via their name, with mud, slime and goo. The word ‘mire’ comes from the old Norse mýrr, relating to moss, and the word moss itself can sometimes refer, in Scottish and Northern English, to a bog or swamp, which suggests that Mire Beasts may perhaps have brought the word ‘mire’ to Earth with them, along with their octopoid genes, when they crash-landed in the Northern lands. As Criswell so wisely put it in Ed Wood Jr.’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, “Can you prove that it didn’t happen?” (While there is no indication in The Chase that the Mire Beasts have a civilisation or a language, this may simply be an oversight on the part of the other characters, who do not seek to communicate with them but simply scream and run like idiots.)

The Chase was the fourth story written for Doctor Who by Terry Nation. Location filming for the long shots of Ian and Vicki exploring the planet Aridius was undertaken at the seaside resort of Camber Sands, East Sussex in April 1965. The story was transmitted over six weeks between 22nd May and 26th June 1965, and viewing figures hovered between nine and ten million throughout. The story was originally made on 405-line studio video with filmed inserts, but after the original videotapes were wiped the only surviving version was a 16mm film recording negative produced by BBC Enterprises for overseas sale.

The charm of low budget stories like The Chase is that they resemble a sort of (accidental) surrealist theatre production; the cramped sets and painted backcloths bear only a nodding resemblance to reality and instead seem like the products of Expressionist stage design or the early cinema of Georges Méliès. Of course, being a horror-scifi fantasy about alien worlds and mysterious monsters means that Doctor Who has a special dispensation to jettison realism in favour of flights of imagination. If the viewer is young enough not to care about failed trompe l’oeil, or generous enough with their frame of reference to find the shortfall between ambition and achievement aesthetically enjoyable in itself, stories like The Chase – along with others such as The Web Planet (1965) and The Underwater Menace (1967) – are awash with strange visual pleasures. It’s perhaps a sign that the series producers understood this that later stories introduced a more deliberate vein of surrealism, in stories such as The Celestial Toymaker (1966) and The Mind Robber (1968), both of which revel in artificiality and oblique visual constructions.

Note the recurrence in the script of writer Terry Nation’s penchant for nominative determinism, this time with an amusingly incoherent twist: a desert planet called Aridius (but of course) turns out to have been once a rich ocean world, which rather begs the question of why the natives named the planet as they did. Perhaps ‘arid’ is Aridian for ‘wet’, which would suit both the original climate and the characters of the Aridians themselves…

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Related: Bog | swamps

The Region 2 DVD cover

The Target novelisation, written by John Peel (not the DJ) and published in 1989 (quite late in the day, owing to difficulty securing agreement with Terry Nation).

King Kong Escapes, (released in Japan as King Kong’s Counterattack (キングコングの逆襲 Kingu Kongu no Gyakushū), is a 1967 Kaiju film. A Japanese/American co-production from Toho and Rankin-Bass (Mad Monster Party). Directed by Ishiro Honda and featuring special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, the film starred both American actors – such as Rhodes Reason and Linda Miller – alongside Japanese actors – such as Akira Takarada, Mie Hama and Eisei Amamoto. The film was a loose adaptation of the Rankin-Bass Saturday morning cartoon series The King Kong Show and was the second and final Japanese-made film featuring the King Kong character.

Plot:

An evil genius named Dr. Hu creates Mechani-Kong, a robotic version of King Kong, to dig for a highly radioactive Element X, found only at the North Pole. Mechni-Kong enters an ice cave and begins to dig into a glacier, but the radiation destroys its brain circuits and the robot shuts down. Hu then sets his sights on getting the real Kong to finish the job. Hu is taken to task by a beautiful female overseer, Madame Piranha. Her country’s government (which is not named but may be North Korea) is financing the doctor’s schemes, and she frequently berates him for his failure to get results. Meanwhile, a submarine commanded by Carl Nelson arrives at Mondo Island where the legendary King Kong lives. Much like the original 1933 film, the giant ape gets into an intense fight with a dinosaur, a large serpent, and falls in love with a human. In this case, Lt. Susan Watson (Linda Miller).

Dr. Hu subsequently goes to Mondo Island, abducts Kong and brings him back to his base at the North Pole. Kong is hypnotized by a flashing light device and fitted with a radio earpiece. Hu commands Kong to retrieve the Element X from the cave. Problems with the earpiece ensue and Hu has to kidnap Susan Watson, the only person who can control Kong. After Watson and her fellow officers are captured by Hu, Madame Piranha unsuccessfully tries to seduce Nelson to bring him over to her side. Eventually Kong escapes and swims all the way to Japan where the climactic battle with Mechni-Kong transpires. Standing in for the Empire State Building from the original film is the Tokyo Tower where the two giants face off in the finale…

Buy King Kong Escapes on Blu-ray from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“The Japanese…are all thumbs when it comes to making monster movies like ‘King Kong Escapes.’ The Toho moviemakers are quite good in building miniature sets, but much of the process photography—matching the miniatures with the full-scale shots—is just bad…the plotting is hopelessly primitive…” Vincent Canby, New York Times, 1968

“It’s difficult to assign a single genre to “King Kong Escapes.” On the one hand, it has all the hallmarks of a kaiju film, with two giant beasts wreaking havoc in the heart of Tokyo. On the other, it adds to the mix elements of science fiction, adventure, and even James Bond spy films. It’s a formula that Toho used successfully in such films as “Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster,” but here the resulting tone often feels uneven. Yet as gloriously mad as it is, “King Kong Escapes” is a thoroughbred descendant of the “King Kong” movie legacy with all the proper provenance. It may be a little out there for purists, but if you’ve got a monkey on your back for all things Kong, it’s absolutely essential.” Ed Glaser, Neon Harbor

“Toho fans, monster kids and generally anyone with a playfully less serious side to their cinema watching will get a kick out of this fun Kong adventure. The Japanese version is essential for Kaiju fanatics, but for most, the dubbed edition works just fine.” Cool Ass Cinema

Wikipedia | IMDb

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The Daughters of Satan is a horror novel by Sandra Shulman. The novel was first published in 1968 by Paperback Library Inc under the title The Daughters of Astoroth, but is better known under this title,which it was first published as by New English Library in 1969.

This is one of the first of the legendary NEL pulp fiction novels that would become hugely popular throughout the 1970s as the publisher cashed in on youth cults like skinheads and bikers, and published numerous slim but salacious novels that ranged from horror to action to erotica.

Although Shulman was an American author, the novel is set in Snowdonia, Wales and London, and tells the story of a investigation into a finishing school, run by a Dr Ambrose Anstruther and a sinister German, after several of its pupils commit suicide. Professor Niall Tregellis, academic, ex-army man and occult expert, is sent to find out what is going on. What does he find? To quote the cover blurb:
“The Abbey of Light – England’s most exclusive finishing school – is just a front for a Satanist with terrible powers. Behind its doors unholy black magic ceremonies take place – girls become spiritually and sexually enslaved to their diabolical master.”

Rather ambitiously compared to Dennis Wheatley and Rosemary’s Baby by NEL, this is perhaps more accurately described as “complete tosh” by trashfiction.co.uk. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining enough for fans of pulp horror, and at 128 pages, is unlikely to swallow up a great deal of your time. It is unrelated to the 1972 film of the same name.

Shulman was a prolific author, who mostly wrote gothic romances but also dabbled in horror, non-fiction and even authored a few  Dark Shadows novels.

DF

The Vampire is a short story collection, first published in Britain in 1965 by Pan Books. It is an adaptation of a 1960 anthology, I vampiri tra Noi that was published in Italy.

The book is ‘presented’ by Roger Vadim, who’s involvement seems restricted to a page and a half foreword. His name, prominent on the cover, was obviously considered the main selling point – the Italian edition of the book appeared in the same year as his vampire film Blood and Roses. The actual editors are Ornella Volta and Valeria Riva, and the English edition is adapted by Margaret Crosland.

Although the book claims to both ‘unabridged’ and an ‘adaptation with some additional material’, this collection is in fact considerably shorter than the original Italian edition. The contents of the Italian version are as follows:

Confessione, John Haigh (Confession, 1949)
Lettera di un Uomo Onestissimo, anonymous (da Augustin Calmet, Dissertationes sur les Apparition des Esprits et sur les Vampires, 1749)
Vampiri d’Ungheria e Dintorni, Augustin Calmet (an extract from da Dissertationes sur les Apparition des Esprits et sur les Vampires, 1749)
Non Dura, François Marie Arouet Voltaire (da Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1784-1787)
Il Vampiro in Convento, Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli (da Lettres à une Illustre Morte Décédée en Pologne Depuis Peu de Temps, 1771)
I Vampiri al Lume della Scienza, Prospero Lambertini, Papa Benedetto XIV (da De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione, 1749)
Rapporto Medico sui Vampiri, Gerard Van Swieten (Remarques sur les Vampyrisme de Silesie de l’An 1755, 1755)
La Colpa È dei Preti, Prospero Lambertini, Papa Benedetto XIV (da Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli, La Vie du Pape Bénoît XIV, Prosper Lambertini, 1783)
La Fidanzata di Corinto, Wolfgang Goethe (Die Braut von Corinth, 1797)
Il Vampiro, John Polidori (The Vampyre, a Tale by the Right Honourable Lord Byron, 1819)
Vampirismo, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (ind. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffomann) (Vampirismus, 1828)
Il Vampiro per Bene, Charles Nodier (da De Quelques Phénomènes du Sommeil, 1831)
Berenice, Edgar Allan Poe (1835)
Il Vij, Nikolaj Vasil’evič Gogol’ (Vij, 1835)
La Macabra Amante, Théophile Gautier (La Morte Amoureuse, 1836)
La Bella Vampirizzata, Alexandre Dumas (La Belle Vampirisée, 1849)
La Famiglia del Vurdalak, Alekséj Konstantinovič Tolstòj (La Famille du Vurdalak, 1847)
Che Cos’Era?, Fitz James O’ Brien (What Was It?, 1859)
Lokis, Prosper Mérimée (Lokis, le Manuscrit du Professeur Wittenbach, 1869)
Il tuo Amico Vampiro, Isidore Ducasse, conte di Lautréamont (da Chants de Maldoror, 1868)
Carmilla, J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
Perché il Sangue È la Vita, Francis Marion Crawford (For the Blood Is the Life, 1880)
L’Horlà, Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla, 1887)
Un Vampiro, Luigi Capuana (1907)
Il Conte Magnus, M.R. James (Count Magnus, 1904)
La Signora Amworth, E.F. Benson (Mrs. Amworth, 1922)
Il Vampiro del Sussex, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, 1927)
Il Vampiro Passivo, Ghérasim Luca (da Le Vampire Passif, 1945)
Vampiro in Mezze Maniche, Thomas Narcejac, ps. di Pierre Ayraud (Le Vampire, 1950)
Sogno Rosso, Catherine Lucille Moore (Scarlet Dream, 1934)
Carnevale, Lawrence Durrell (da Balthazar, 1958)
Storia del Sesto Capitano di Polizia, anonimo (da Alf Laila Wa Laila [Le Mille e una Notte], XIII sec.)
Il Vampiro Ballerino, Aleksandr Nikolajevič Afanas’ev (ind. Afanasev) (da [Antiche Fiabe Russe], 1855-1864)
La Città Vampira, Paul Féval (La Ville Vampire, 1875)
L’Ebreo che Leggeva Storie di Vampiri, Guillaume Apollinaire (Le Juif Latin, 1910)
L’Uomo del Piano di Sopra, Ray Bradbury (The Man Upstairs, 1947)
Il Pivello, Edwin Charles Tubb (Fresh Guy, 1958)

Of these stories, only the ones listed in bold appear in The Vampire. However, there are several new additions, including an extract from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The contents of the British edition are as follows:

The Vampires of Hungary and Surrounding Countries, Augustin Calmet (da Dissertationes sur les Apparition des Esprits et sur les Vampires)
Carnival, Lawrence Durrell
Carmilla, J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The Beautiful Vampire, Théophile Gautier (La Morte Amoureuse)
Berenice, Edgar Allan Poe
Chriseis, Simon Raven (an extract from Doctors Wear Scarlet, 1960)
The Horla, Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla)
Mrs Amworth, E.F. Benson
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Cloak, Robert Bloch (1948)
Viy, Nicolai Gogol
Fresh Guy, E.C. Tubb
A Vampire, Luigi Capuana (Un Vampiro, 1907)
The Man Upstairs, Ray Bradbury
The Death of Dracula, Bram Stoker (an extract from Dracula, 1897)

The book also has three pages of notes about the stories.

As vampire anthologies go, this is an impressive selection, more thorough than most and weighing in at 316 pages. You rather do wish that the longer Italian edition – which seems as thorough as you could hope for in 1960 – had been completely translated, however.

The Vampire proved popular enough to be later reprinted, and also appears in a French edition in 1961, Histoires des Vampires.

DF

in lurid production-still colour…

and glorious black-and-white…

The creatures commonly referred to as ‘the Brains of Morphoton’ appeared in “The Velvet Web”, episode two of the 1964 Doctor Who story The Keys of Marinus starring William Hartnell as the Doctor. Unnamed in the story, they were featured only once in the classic series and have so far not been invited back in the revived version. The story was written by Terry Nation, who had recently penned the first ever Dalek story, and for the devious cerebellums of Morphoton he drew imagery from such classic horror films as Donovan’s Brain (1953) and Fiend Without a Face (1958).

In episode one, the TARDIS materialises on a small rocky island surrounded by a sea of acid on the planet Marinus. The Doctor and his grand-daughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford), accompanied by schoolteachers Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), enter an imposing black tower on the island where they meet an unscrupulous lawmaker, Arbitan (George Colouris). He prevails upon them to seek the five keys of the Conscience of Marinus, a giant supercomputer which, when working properly, governs the minds of the populace and prevents evil thoughts. The keys are scattered in hidden locations across Marinus and the TARDIS occupants must find them, a quest which leads them first to the city of Morphoton. In episode two (“The Velvet Web”), the time travellers are greeted by a race of men and women who seem to live a life of idle luxury. The food is abundant, the fruit juice flows freely, and the Doctor and his companions are assured that their every wish can be granted. It all seems too good to be true…

And of course, it is. During the night, the time travellers are placed even deeper under the influence of a mind-altering device that was activated on their arrival, clouding their minds to the truth of Morphoton. Barbara however, escapes hypnosis when the device placed on her forehead slips off. What follows the next morning is a well-directed and quite chilling scene in which Barbara wakes to find that the luxurious chamber of the night before is just a filthy ruin, the fine goblets merely chipped mugs. The sequence is filmed with a subjective camera for Barbara’s point of view, with the camera swapping back and forth between her perception and the Greco-Roman fantasy of the others.

Barbara runs away from her brainwashed friends and discovers that Morphoton is in fact governed by four monstrous disembodied brains with eyes protruding on elongated stalks. The creatures live inside huge bell jars and communicate through an electronic speaker system. “We are the Masters of this place. Our brains outgrew our bodies; it is our intelligence that has created this whole city but we need the help of the human body to feed us and to carry out our orders,” they explain. As you may have guessed from the shameless nominative determinism of Nation’s scripts, it turns out that the residents of Morphoton have been enslaved in their, er, sleep by a mesmeric device called a Mesmeron, which subjugates the will of the humanoids enabling the brain creatures to exploit them for their labour. “The human body is the most flexible instrument in the world, no mechanical device could reproduce its mobility and dexterity,” one declares, with a lipsmacking relish impressive for a creature with no lips. This paean to human bodily excellence is slightly undercut, however, as Barbara attacks the four jars with a spanner but succeeds in shattering just one; luckily the other brains scream, their eyestalks wilt, and all four of them die, so presumably they are a gestalt organism; kill one and you kill them all. (Either that, or Jacqueline Hill was asked not to shatter the bell jars in order to save money.)

The brains and their apparatus were designed by the BBC’s Raymond Cusick and made by Shawcraft Models, a company whom the BBC Props Department habitually hired to handle construction (Shawcraft built the first Daleks, along with other early monsters like the Zarbi).

Transmitted on 18 April 1964, “The Velvet Web” scored a huge audience of 9.4 million viewers, almost three million more than watched Stephen Moffat’s highly regarded David Tennant Doctor Who episode “Blink” (2007). It’s a little known fact that this makes the Brains of Morphoton officially more popular than the Weeping Angels.

The Brains of Morphoton may not have enjoyed a second appearance in Doctor Who – yet - but perhaps they are the same creatures encountered by Captain James T. Kirk in the 1968 Star Trek episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion”?

Other cousins of the Morphoton brains appear in The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) and The Curious Dr. Humpp (1968).

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Autopsy of a Ghost (Spanish title: Autopsia de un Fantasma) is a 1968 Mexican horror-comedy film, directed by Ismael Rodríguez and starring Basil Rathbone (cinema’s most famous Sherlock Holmes), John Carradine (Houses of both Frankenstein and Dracula) and Cameron Mitchell (Blood and Black Lace, The Toolbox Murders). The remaining cast were all Spanish speakers – the film is particularly notable as the final screen role for Rathbone.

Elizabethan dandy, Canuto Perez (Rathbone), roams the Earth in limbo, having committed suicide 400 years previously, doomed to potter about as a ghost in a lonely castle. For company he has his own skeleton, which has managed to separate itself from his person and interacts with him as an individual entity, usually being contrary, and a chuckling tarantula. Perez’s previous life had seen him carousing with ladies without much thought for their feelings and his suicide came as an escape from the Earthly punishment which faced him. A little overdue, Satan (Carradine) appears and offers him a way out – he has four days to make one of four women fall in love with him to such an extent that they would be willing to die for him. The catch is that he mustn’t venture beyond the four walls of the castle and must rely on the Devil to tempt the unlucky females into his lair. Cue much dressing up, a robot and a child who’s at least 30 years old.

The same year George Romero was re-writing the horror rule-book, Carradine and Rathbone had serious gas bills to pay and lowered themselves to appearing in Mexican farces, the horror and comedy of which would already have been outdated by their heydays in the 30′s and 40′s. The pair had already disgraced themselves (along with Lon Chaney Jr) in the previous year’s Hillbillys in a Haunted House but little could prepare them or the audiences, such as they were, for this jaw-dropping mess. It actually starts rather entertainingly, the jokes are passable, the sets are well decorated and it’s huge fun to see three such famous faces in such bizarre circumstances. Sadly, the joke wears thin extremely quickly, a particular shame as the running time is gargantuan for what it is – approaching the two-hour mark. Worse still, so excited are the film-makers, they forget to include our heroes for around half the film.

Carradine later asserted that Rathbone’s death, shortly after filming, could be attributed to the high altitude they filmed at. That, or presumably, he got to watch the film. It would seem that Rathbone and Carradine both read their lines in English and were dubbed, rather than learning phonetically; Mitchell, the show-off, spoke his, like the rest of the cast, in Spanish. Though the few supporters of the film would claim that Rathbone is having some fun in his twilight years, his scenes as Cyrano de Bergerac and reading Hamlet rather smack of ridicule at his expense.

Shot in colour on a budget seemingly stratospherically higher than standard Mexican films, the urge to pack as much in as possible makes it absolute torture to watch, a constant parade of ridiculous characters, none of whom are any real fun or offer anything of interest. Rightly buried, this will never see the light of day officially, there simply isn’t an audience that would appreciate it. You can watch it for free online (see below), though you may feel overcharged.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Big thanks to BasilRathbone.net for some of the pictures.

Highlights of the film:

Whole film online:

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies is a 1964 American monster movie written, produced and directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who also starred, billed under the pseudonym ”Cash Flagg”. Produced on a $38,000 budget, much of it takes place at The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California. The film was billed as the first “monster musical”, beating The Horror of Party Beach by a mere month in release date. The film was apparently to be titled The Incredibly Strange Creatures, or Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-up Zombie, but was changed in response to Columbia Pictures’ threat of a lawsuit over the name’s similarity to Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which was under production at the time.

Much of the movie was filmed in an old, long-empty Masonic temple in Glendale, California, owned by actor Rock Hudson. The nine-story building was a series of makeshift “sound stages” stacked floor after floor, some big enough to create the midway scenes indoors. This was the studio used that year for production of The Creeping Terror, another low-quality monster movie.

The film was originally released by Fairway-International Pictures, Arch Hall, Sr.’s studio, who put it on a lower half of a double bill with one of his own pictures. Dissatisfied, Steckler bought the distribution rights back from Hall, purchased the rights to the Coleman Francis picture, The Beast of Yucca Flats  and roadshowed the picture across the US. In order to get repeat customers, Steckler re-titled the film numerous times, with monickers such as The Incredibly Mixed-Up Zombie, Diabolical Dr. Voodoo and The Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary.

Plot:

Jerry (Steckler as “Flagg”), his girlfriend Angela (Sharon Walsh), and his buddy Harold (Atlas King) head out for a day at the carnival. In one venue, a dance number is performed by Marge (Carolyn Brandt, Steckler’s wife at the time), an alcoholic who drinks before and between shows, and her partner, Bill Ward, for a small audience. There Jerry sees stripper Carmelita (Erina Enyo) who hypnotizes him with her icy stare and he is compelled to see her act. Carmelita is the young sister of powerful fortune-teller Estrella (Brett O’Hara), and Estrella turns Jerry into a zombie by hypnotizing him with a spiraling wheel. He then goes on a rampage, killing Marge and fatally wounding Bill. Later, Jerry attempts to strangle his girlfriend Angela as well. It develops that Estrella, with her henchman Ortega (Jack Brady), has been busy turning various patrons into zombies, apparently by throwing acid on their faces…

Reviews:

“… this flick doesn’t just rebel against, or even disregard, standards of taste and art. In the universe inhabited by The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, such things as standards and responsibility have never been heard of. It is this lunar purity which largely imparts to the film its classic stature. Like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and a very few others, it will remain as an artifact in years to come to which scholars and searchers for truth can turn and say, “This was trash! ” Lester Bangs, In Greil Marcus. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Random House, 1987)

“As a film, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies is too boring for even unintentional laugh potential. Ray Dennis Steckler directs seemingly without involvement. Almost half the running time is taken up by the monotonous rock‘n’roll numbers, although these are made near incoherent by the shoddy recording. (If this were a film made in the 1980s or 90s, you would regard the endless songs as a cynical marketing excuse to sell a soundtrack album, but that was not the case back then). Director Ray Dennis Steckler also plays the hero under the name Cash Flagg and manages to give an incredible geeky performance – he is a gangly beanpole, like a Pee Wee Herman played straight.” Richard Scheib, Moria

“With a film so deliriously absurd and hard to describe in plain English, it’s easiest to entice the uninitiated to pick up this flick through Steckler’s advertising technique: ‘SEE a bizarre dream sequence with screaming, laughing showgirls, ballet dance moves, swirling opticals! SEE Ray Dennis Steckler, aka Cash Flagg, dressed like the Unabomber stab a dancing couple to death on-stage! SEE musical numbers which have nothing to do with the actual film! HEAR a Brenda Lee-wannabe crooning “It Hurts” and “Shook Out of Shape”! SEE the ugliest hunchback ever captured on film! SEE the Hypno-Wheel and its disastrous results! SEE the worst stand-up comedy routine ever! SEE the Mixed-Up Zombies attack their mistress Brett O’Hara, famous look-alike and stand-in for Hollywood legend Susan Hayward! SEE a goofy beach chase! SEE endless footage of the carnival to bring back that good old feeling of nostalgia! SEE swirling camerawork by Laszlo Kovacs, Vilmos Zsigmond and Joseph Mascelli! HEAR hip beatnik dialogue! FEEL the nausea induced by yet another…and another…and another musical number! LEARN the “Zombie Stomp”!’ In other words, every cult/drive-in/exploitation/kooky film fan should have a copy of this on their shelf pronto!” Casey Scott, DVD-Drive-In

“It’s an incredibly bad movie made worse by the many slow patches and the muffled sound, but the film’s lovely visuals, shot by no less than Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider), shine through (even if Media Blasters didn’t have the time or the money to remove print scratches and other impurities). And it’s an absolute must-see from the annals of legendary bad movies.” Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

Wikipedia | IMDb

We are most grateful to Wrong Side of the Art! for some wonderful images above

Bigfoot is a 1969 (released 1970) American horror film. Despite its low budget, it featured some well-known actors and family namesakes in the cast, including John Carradine as “Jasper C. Hawkes”, a Southern traveling salesman. Robert F. Slatzer directed and co-wrote the screenplay with James Gordon White (The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant and The Thing with Two Heads). Chris Mitchum, Joi Lansing, Doodles Weaver and Lindsay Crosby co-starred.

Plot:

People are captured by Bigfoot and his family. A group of hunters are trying to hunt down Bigfoot, bumbling at first, but in terms of rescuing the captured women, and capturing the gigantic ‘King of the Woods’ alive for public exhibition for profit victorious (with the help of others) in the end. It also involves college students riding motorcycles  to rescue the captured young women.

In the middle of the film, the skeptical sheriff’s department and the ranger’s station are notified of the women’s disappearance, but to no avail on the part of the authorities with respect to actually searching for the missing women. The unlikely heroes in the very end are a hardy, gun-toting old mountain man who had previously lost one of his arms during a historical encounter (this encounter is not dramatized in this film as a flashback) with the gigantic, erect animal and one of the idiotic dynamite-armed bike riders. The old man hero’s wife, an Indian squaw, prophesies “bad medicine” (for Bigfoot, that is) just before the final man-vs.-Bigfoot showdown…

Reviews:

“Bigfoot is a truly awful movie, combining a doofus storyline with shoddy production values and terrible acting, but it’s arresting in a fever-dream sort of way. Carradine’s supposed to be a formidable big-game hunter, but he’s an arthritic, emaciated senior dressed in a suit and tie. Christopher Mitchum, the son of screen legend Robert Mitchum, is supposed to be a tough-guy biker, but he’s a passive nebbish who politely refers to Carradine’s character as “Mr. Hawks.” Jordan and Lansing are so outrageously curvy—and so nonsensically underdressed—that their scenes feel as if they were guest-directed by Russ Meyer. The movie toggles back and forth between second-unit location shots showing actors full-figure from a distance and cheesy soundstage footage with the principal cast in close-up, so it’s like the flick drifts in and out of reality. Bigfoot creatures get more screen time here than in virtually any other ‘70s Sasquatch movie, which is not a good thing—prolonged exposure highlights the bad costumes. And we haven’t even talked about the upbeat honky-tonk music that plays during suspense scenes, or the incongruous surf-music cue that appears whenever the bikers are shown driving. Oh, and at one point, a lady Bigfoot wrestles a bear.” Peter Hanson, Every 70s Movie

“Screw the Mona Lisa, the poster for 1970s Bigfoot is a true artistic masterpiece. The movie is pretty wonderful too. Noticing the public’s fascination with Bigfoot that was kicked off by the Patterson/Gimlin film and the biker craze that ensued following the release of Easy Rider, writer/director Robert F. Slatzer had the idea to incorporate both elements into a film. It was an inspired “you got chocolate in my peanut butter/peanut butter in my chocolate” decision that resulted in cinematic brilliance.” Rob Bricken, Topless Robot

“Bigfoot, a certifiable mess with the most unconvincing sets this side of Gilligan’s Island, at least knows how to have a little fun. Bikinis, funky music and motorcycles go a long way in hypnotizing the viewer into ignoring small details like the fact that you have to actually light dynamite to make it explode. John Carradine and, count ‘em, two Mitchums (John and Christopher) are on hand to ease some of the pain, but me thinks the film makers were relying mostly on the voluptuous talents of Joi Lansing to carry the audience through the film. I have to admit there is dopey fun to be had in this showdown for species dominance, but as usual I think I was routing for the wrong team’s victory. One thing is undebatable, the sasquatch were not the most alarming inhabits of this film.” Kindertrauma

Wikipedia | IMDb

Horror House Target Set is a horror-themed ‘shoot-em-up’ children’s game produced by Palmer/Multiple at some point in the 1960s in the USA. Aside from the image above and the fact that kids were drawn in by the “Knock down the horribles!” blurb we have found no other information online, except that this kids game is highly collectible and costs big $$$.

Thanks to Psychotronic Movies on Facebook for making us aware of Horror House Target Set.

The Projected Man is a 1966 British science fiction horror film starring  Bryant Haliday, Norman Wooland, Mary Peach, and Ronald Allen. It was released in the United States by Universal, on a double bill with Island of Terror.

Discovered by Alex Gordon as an unproduced screenplay by Hollywood writer Frank Quattrocchi, The Projected Man was directed by Ian Curteis; it would be the first theatrical film that he would direct. However, due to his lack of experience, he ran into several problems during filming. As the film fell behind schedule and the budget kept increasing, he was fired during the film’s final stages. Producer John Croydon replaced him; however, Croydon remained uncredited as the producers did not wish to publicise the problems which had occurred on set.

Plot:

Dr. Paul Steiner (Bryant Haliday) and Dr. Christopher Mitchell (Ronald Allen) work on a projection device that enables them to transmit any object within a few miles of the machine. While they find the device works with inanimate objects, the living creatures they use it on always seem to die. When Dr. Patricia Hill (Mary Peach) arrives, she helps them fix the error, making Steiner think the problem has been solved. Meanwhile, Dr. Blanchard (Norman Wooland), Steiner’s boss and head of the institute he works for, is being blackmailed by Mr. Latham (Derrick De Marney), who wants credit for Steiner’s discovery. He forces Blanchard to demand Steiner to give a premature presentation to Professor Lembach (Gerard Heinz).

Steiner, Mitchell, and Hill feel they are ready to present, but at the event, Blanchard sneakily places acid on the machine, causing an explosion. The funding for Steiner’s project is ended instantly, however, Mitchell later discovers that the device has been tampered with. Steiner goes to Blanchard’s house. He presents the men with the evidence that his machine was deliberately tampered with, and Lembach allows him to have another chance…

Topless scene included at the insistence of Tony Tenser’s Compton Films

Reviews:

” … certain aspects of its story never quite get around to making much sense, but it’s much faster- paced and more tautly directed than most of the 50’s monster-rampage movies from which it takes its cues. The acting is well above the average for movies of this type, and the special effects are excellent, considering the constraints of The Projected Man’s obviously low budget. You could easily find a hundred worse Saturday matinee time-wasters than this one.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“British horror thriller with scientific overtones would have been more watchable with faster pacing and less superfluous material.” John Stanley, Creature Features Movie Guide

“The title monster is sufficiently different in appearance to anything I had seen before, the laboratory actually looks like a proper laboratory and equipment rather than the contents of someone’s garage. There’s some explosions at the end , a brief view of some bare breasts and more than a few unintentional laughs.” Tim Rogerson, The Shrieking Sixties

Buy The Projected Man on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Publicity shots emphasized actress Tracey Crisp in her underwear

“Nearly the whole first half is spent on annoying arguments at the research center. The second half commences with a decent lab scene and then turns into a monster-on-the-loose story, like First Man into Space. But even this second half wastes itself with annoying people meandering around, trying to figure out what’s happening. The action quotient is tiny.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers: Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy Film

Buy The Horror Hits of Richard Gordon book by Tom Weaver from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Buy The Shrieking Sixtes: British Horror Films 1960 – 1969 book from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Wikipedia | IMDb

Pop-Up Frankiestein was a plastic toy manufactured in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s by the Wilkin Toy Company of Hong Kong. Atop his turreted castle, Dr Frankenstein’s ghastly creation looms over all before him. The players of the game, up to three, take their trusty dagger (red, blue or green) and take turns in stabbing them into one of the slots in the body of the castle itself. All but one of these will result in nothing happening and it will then be the next player’s turn – eventually, an unlucky player will cause Frankie to leap alarmingly from his perch – as with most toys of the 60′s and 70′s, this could potentially lead to injury or heart failure.

A proud possession as a child, this game was not without its concerns. Any number of the 17 (quite sharp) daggers would end up down the back of the settee or fly up the hoover at some point, putting at least one player at an advantage. My memory will not allow me to confirm whether the idea was to cause the walking cadaver to leap off the building in a suicide attempt, or at you in devilish glee. The effect was the same – quite extraordinary alarm and fear, not least because the monster was made of quite significantly heavy plastic (about 4 inches high), coupled with a visage that was utterly malevolent. Whatever the game was, the fun element was curiously well-hidden. It only remains to point out the deliberate mis-spelling of the name – slightly before Universal was combating any number of copyright infringements against its large shark, Wilkin took no chances and renamed the famous monster in a manner that surely no court in the land would have a problem with.

Daz Lawrence

Thanks to posters on http://megomuseum.com and http://www.universalmonsterarmy.com for the pics.

King Kong vs. Godzilla (キングコング対ゴジラ Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira) is a 1962 Japanese science fiction Kaiju film produced by Toho Studios. Directed by Ishirō Honda with visual effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, the film starred Tadao Takashima, Kenji Sahara, and Mie Hama. It was the third installment in the Japanese series of films featuring the monster Godzilla. It was also the first of two Japanese made films featuring the King Kong character (or rather, its Toho Studios counterpart) and also the first time both King Kong and Godzilla appeared on film in color and widescreen. Produced as part of Toho’s 30th anniversary celebration, this film remains the most commercially successful of all the Godzilla films to date. The US version sported a different edit and Universal Studios library music including cues by Henry Mancini from Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Plot:

Mr. Tako, head of Pacific Pharmaceuticals, is frustrated by the ratings the television shows his company is sponsoring. When a doctor tells Tako about a giant monster he discovered on the small Faro Island, Tako believes that it would be a brilliant idea to gain publicity. Meanwhile, American submarine Seahawk gets caught in an iceberg. Unfortunately, this is the same iceberg that Godzilla was trapped in by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces back in 1955, and the submarine is destroyed. Godzilla breaks out and heads towards a nearby Arctic military base, attacking it. He continues moving inland, razing the base to the ground. Godzilla’s appearance is all over the press, making Tako furious.

On Faro Island, a giant octopus attacks the native village. The mysterious Faro monster is then revealed to be King Kong and he defeats the octopus. King Kong then drinks red berry juice, becomes intoxicated, and falls asleep. Tako’s men place Kong on a large raft and begin to transport him back to Japan. However, a JSDF ship orders them to return Kong to Faro Island. Godzilla had just come ashore in Japan and destroyed a train, and the JSDF doesn’t want another monster entering Japan. Unfortunately, during all this, Kong wakes up from his drunken state and breaks free from the raft. Reaching the mainland, Kong meets up with Godzilla…

Buy King Kong vs. Godzilla on Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews:

“There are two major fights in the film, the short scuffle near the middle and the big climax. The short one is basically a tease for the climax and establishes the hate the two monsters have for each other. Tsuburaya gives some great personality into these battles. These aren’t just two mindless animals fighting, they have reactions and make plans. (Who didn’t laugh when King Kong walks way from the short scuffle while scratching his head like he’s not sure what he’s up against?) The climax is easily one of the most exciting of the Godzilla franchise.” Daniel Alvarez, Unleash the Fanboy

“This marked the first step into a more comical approach to Godzilla. Many on the production crew were displeased with how lighthearted the film was, believing that Godzilla was more appealing when he was something to be feared. However, Toho wanted to broaden the audience and felt targeting children with the more comical scenes was the way to go.” Monster Movie Kid

“Solid fun. The dubbed dialogue hits all kinds of fantastic comedic moments, such as a character’s tendency to ache and complain about his ‘corns’ or the behavior and stuttering of Mr. Tako, the guy who takes over custody of Kong (bet he wishes he didn’t do that now, eh?). Normally I’d be a bit peeved at the infusion of comedy in a monster movies – I tend to like my monster flicks taken seriously – but considering that the humor and satire is part of the script’s DNA, well, I don’t quite mind it at all. And that adds substantially to the overall funness of this flick.” Andrew Simon, The Ramblings of a Minnesota Geek

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Buy Godzilla Yuki Sakai Works Godzilla Concept Structure by Ban Dai from Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | IMDb | Wikizilla | We are most grateful to Cathode Ray Mission for some of these images

Harry Novak (January 12, 1928 – March 26, 2014) was an American film producer. Best known for his sexploitation and exploitation movies, Novak also distributed a number of horror films via his Boxoffice International Pictures company.

Novak began his career at RKO handling Disney movies until its collapse in 1957 and he also handled the US release of early Carry On films.

His first production was the 1964 ‘monster nudie’ Kiss Me Quick! (original title Dr. Breedlove, a pun on Dr. Strangelove). Although it features Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, a mad doctor and an alien, this science fiction horror comedy flick was merely an excuse for full colour topless female nudity. Cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs later worked on Ghostbusters. Click here to watch the trailer [contains nudity].

Horror-themed films distributed by Boxoffice International Pictures include The Beautiful, the Bloody and the Bare (1964), Mantis in Lace/Lila (1968), Any Body, Any Way/Behind Locked Doors (1968), Jean Rollin’s The Nude Vampire (1970) and Requiem for a Vampire/Caged Vampire/Caged Virgins (1971), The Mad Butcher (1971), The Toy Box (1971), Toys Are Not for Children (1972), A Scream in the Streets (1973), Please Don’t Eat My Mother! (1973, an ‘adults only’ remake of The Little Shop of Horrors), The Sinful Dwarf (1973), Axe/Lisa, Lisa (1973), Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1973), Rattlers (1976), The Child (1977) and Rituals (1977).

Wikipedia

The Kiss of the Vampire also known as Kiss of the Vampire and Kiss of Evil, is a 1962 (released 1963) British vampire film made by Hammer Film Productions. The film was directed by Don Sharp and was written by producer Anthony Hinds using his writing pseudonym John Elder.

Originally intended to be the third movie in Hammer’s Dracula series (which began with Dracula and was followed by The Brides of Dracula); it was another attempt by Hammer to make a Dracula sequel without Christopher Lee. The final script, by Anthony Hinds makes no reference to Dracula, and expands further on the directions taken in Brides by portraying vampirism as a social disease afflicting those who choose a decadent lifestyle. The film went into production on 7 September 1962 at Bray Studios.

Plot:

Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne Harcourt (Jennifer Daniel), are a honeymooning couple in early 20th-century Bavaria who become caught up in a vampire cult led by Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman) and his two children Carl (Barry Warren) and Sabena (Jacquie Wallis). The cult abducts Marianne, and contrive to make it appear that Harcourt was traveling alone and that his wife never existed. Harcourt gets help from hard-drinking savant Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans), who lost his daughter to the cult and who finally destroys the vampires through an arcane ritual that releases a swarm of bats from Hell…

Reviews:

“Sharp’s ability to use his settings, including a beautifully photographed Bavarian wood, the sinister castle and a deserted inn, demonstrates his talent for mise-en-scène, the hallmark of his subsequent films, including Rasputin – The Mad Monk and The Face of Fu Manchu (both 1965).” The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror 

“Kiss of the Vampire ends in the most lackluster way possible, a low for the studio. Our gruff vampire hunter conjures up a pack of bats to come flying to the rescue and it looks as cheap as special effects come. They bob through shattering stained glass windows and swoop down to feast on the flesh of the undead cult members, their white robes turning red with each new bite. The deaths are over dramatic and poorly timed as they shriek out through the rubber bats glued to their faces.” Anti-Film School

“My favorite aspect of the film, though, is how concisely it encapsulates the contradiction between Hammer’s status as the foremost envelope-pushers in the British movie industry and the intense social conservatism that shines through practically all of their output in the horror genre. Just watch the scene that plays out between Ravna and Gerald when the latter comes to spring Marianne from the vampires’ clutches. In no other movie that I can think of from this era is it so glaringly obvious that the real threat posed by the vampires lies in their capacity as sexual emancipators of women, and it’s hard to think of anything more obnoxiously retrograde than horror at the prospect of women having a say in the expression of their own sexual identities.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“Kiss of the Vampire has a relatively tight script, one of the many penned by son-of-Hammer honcho Anthony Hinds, a typically effective score by James Bernard, quality performances, and both bathes in tradition and extends it. Those are all good reasons to seek this film out, but the best is that restrained but prolonged tension and ghostly ambience that Hammer did so well. While there are films that achieve it as well as Kiss of the Vampire, few achieve it better.” Brandt Sponseller, Classic Horror

Offline reading:

Rigby, Jonathan (July 2000). English Gothic : A Century of Horror Cinema (in English). Reynolds & Hearn.

Wikipedia | IMDb

The Embalmer is the English release title for Il mostro di Venezia, a 1965 Italian horror film written and directed by Dino Tavella from a story by Antonio Walter. It was  filmed in Trieste and Venice. It stars Maureen Brown, Luigi Martocci, Luciano Gasper, Anita Todesco, Francesco Bagarin, Alba Brotto, William Caruso, Viki Castillo, Roberto Contero, Gaetano Dell’Era, Alcide Gazzotto, Antonio Grossi.

In the US, the film was released as a double feature with The She Beast. In the UK, it was released with Jess Franco’s Diabolical Dr. Z.

Reviews:

Despite a few creepy encounters in The Embalmer‘s lair and a fluid finale, this Edgar Wallace inspired horror-giallo is a fairly run-of-the-submerged-monastry affair. The necrophiliac theme was perhaps still shocking to Sixties audiences but the subtle way in which this nefarious activity is implied will leave modern thrill seekers cold. The filmmakers obviously had a great deal of assistance from the Venice Tourist Board because the movie is jam-packed with overt plugs for a gorgeous city that surely needs no promotion. The addition of dire comedy relief and an Italian Elvis impersonator are also unwelcome distractions.

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

” … a quirky little movie, made during a respected and beloved period in Italian horror, and it’s not successful on a whole, but does have its moments. Most of those moments are saved for the climax, when the hooded and skull-masked killer is given the most screen time in his eerie, darkly lit catacombs. Director Tavello (who didn’t do much else) has him scaring the hell out of one of his victims, while a bunch of sitting hooded skeletons are scattered around as a memorable attraction. The killer even camouflages himself with the other corpses in a moment of ingenuity – the other piece of uniqueness being where the film freeze frames on the next victim, as there probably wasn’t much surprise in store anyway.” George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

“In terms of a thriller, The Embalmer fails on almost all accounts. The plot is extremely over-the-top, the villain at times almost comical, and the music rarely fits the mood of any given scene. Yet ironically at the same time those failures are what make this film quite entertaining in an entirely different way. I loved the fact that the streets of Venice seemed to become completely deserted when it became dark.” Common Sense Movie Reviews

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“The Embalmer‘s lack of excitement (or its deadly dullness) is also a bit sad: it’s not difficult to imagine what a better director (or even someone just vaguely competent) could have made out of the same elements Tavella used to brew a sleeping draught. There’s a masked evil-doer living in a secret cellar, leaving his lair through unconventional means, there’s the promise of necrophilia and exciting hunts through catacombs or of a look into human abysses – everything that could make for a great horror film or an excellent thriller.”

Wikipedia I IMDb