For lovers of movies from the silent era to modern day with an emphasis on horror, sci-fi, exploitation, WIP, westerns and anything of the fantastic and bizarre. THIS SITE IS DEDICATED TO BOB WILKINS, GEORGE ROMERO, ALAN FREED ,ROGER CORMAN, CAROLINE MUNRO, JOHN FREDRIKSEN, JOHN ZACHERLE, CLEO MOORE , ROSALBA NERI, ERIKA BLANC, FEMI BENUSSI, SHIRLEY CORRIGAN, ROSANNA YANNI, MIRTA MILLER and, of course, CASEY KASEM.
Nabors played Gomer Pyle for 5 years on the TV show Gomer Pyle USMC and before that he starred in the Andy Griffith Show as the same character.
Nabors was a man of many talents including a singing voice that was simply incredible. Many people to this day do not even know that. Besides the TV show fame he also starred in several movies including "Stroker Ace", Cannonball Run 2" and more.
He passed away in Hawaii ate the age of 87.
Marion Michael is Liane, a white jungle goddess who is leading several tribes in Africa.
All is well until some rich relatives come looking for her and convince her to return to civilization. She is soon kidnapped by slave traders and it is up to Frank (Adrian Hoven) to rescue her and the other slaves.
That is the entire plot of this very simple escapist film. It only runs 68 minutes so things have to happen fast, and they do. This West German/Italian co-production isn't too bad if you're in the right frame of mind.
It isn't anything you haven't seen before, and Michael is excellent eye candy. This is actually one of the earliest film I ever purchased on DVD from Sinister Cinema. AKA Nature Girl And the Slaver.
Starting Dec. 2nd I will be kicking off the Top 60 countdown of what I consider to be the best releases of the year 2017.
The horror film world has lost some great people this year such as George Romero and Tobe Hooper. In my opinion there will NEVER be anyone in the modern age of film making who will replace them. There really is no talent left in the US horror field.
As I mentioned earlier on this blog, 2018 is looking to be a very good year for DVD and Blu-ray releases. January is already looking solid and of course February sees the long awaited Blu-ray release of Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
With winter coming here and it getting colder, I might actually get more time to watch a few movies, at least when I don't have to work incredibly long hours at the old job.
Thanks for the support this year and all the kind comments. Keep em coming.
John Dall stars as Bart Tare, a young man who returns from the army. Tare has always had a gun fetish, as we are shown in the beginning of the film.
When he returns to his small home town he visits a local carnival and immediately falls in lust with a young female sharp shooter named Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins). They are both attracted to each other like moths to a flame.
Starr is bored with her life and wants excitement and money. This sets the scene for an awful lot of trouble.
She finally convinces Bart to commit several small robberies, which he does. Although Bart has a gun fetish he believe a gun should never be used to kill anyone, but Annie is a bit more psychotic. During one robbery she kills two people and now Bart and Annie are hunted by both police and the FBI.
Their situation gets more and more desperate as the law slowly closes in on them. Joseph H. Lewis directed this gem and it has some fantastic film noir touches.
The best of those being the long, uninterrupted scenes in which the viewer is out in the back seat of the car Annie and Bart are driving around in plotting a crime. It is magnificent to behold this scene and very unique.
The ending is also very bleak, as is usual with these types of films. I highly recommend this one, and if you can find it on DVD without it costing a fortune, grab it.
This outrageous piece of cinema is also known as "Gang Wars" which is a highly misleading title.
The film opens in ancient China as several men are seen burying a medallion that traps a demon. The men all ill themselves to keep the location a secret.
Jump to modern day (1973) New York and a karate student named Luke Curtis (Warhawk Tanzania) and his friend Rodan (Wilfredo Roldan) visit Hong Kong for some rest and further Kung Fu training. Rodan finds the medallion and steals it.
The now free demon follows them to New York and kills several people before possessing the body of a hapless Chinese man. the police believe the murders are part of a gang war going on in New York.
Things move along hot and heavy in this strange little film and the battle between Luke and the demon in the subway is something one shouldn't miss. Several genres are mixed in here including horror, blaxploitation, kung-fu and action.
The ultra low budget shows thru in many places, but that only helps build the charm for this film. The synopsis on the IMDB is totally wrong so ignore that.
The print from Code Red is excellent and it mentions on the back of the case it took them a very long time to find the elements for the Blu-ray. But it paid off and if you're a horror fan you really should see this movie. It's a hoot, and one of the best releases I have seen in a while.
It arrived after my cut off date for the Top 60 of the year, but I can tell you it will be included in the 2018 countdown. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Rance started his career in 1956 in a small film called "Frontier Women" and moved on to do a lot of TV after that including "Bat Masterson" and "Zane Gray Theater" to name a couple.
Howard became a great character actor and one of those faces you saw and recognized immediately. He also had roles in films like "Village Of The Giants" which also starred his young son Ron, and "Cool Hand Luke".
His other son Clint was in a TV show called "Gentle Ben" and Rance was in 30 of those episodes as well. Rance worked in every genre of film and television and would pop up unexpectedly in many films such as "Mars Attacks", "Sasquatch Mountain", and "Grand Theft Auto".
A talented man with a very talented family. He died on Nov. 25th, 2017 at the age of 89 just 8 days after his birthday.
AKA "Night Of The Howling Beast" this film is full of pulp horror and just plain fun. Paul Naschy stars as Waldemar Daninsky, and this time he is helping an explorer find a mythical creature called the Yeti.
He gets lost in a mountain pass and is rescued by two gorgeous women living in a cave. He soon learns they are cannibalistic, demonic, sex crazed nymphets that guard a lost Buddhist temple. they make him a kind of sex slave and when he discovers what they really are he kills them, but not before one bites him and curses him with lycanthropy.
The rest of his party is captured by a sadistic man called Sekkar Khan (Luis Induni) and either tortured and killed or imprisoned in the dungeon for the Khan's amusement. Daninsky and his girlfriend Sylvia (Grace Mills) are captured shortly after, yet before they are captured Daninsky has killed several of the Khan's guards when transformed into a werewolf.
Living with Sakkar is and incredibly beautiful and sadistic woman named Wandesa (Sylvia Solar) who enjoys making the female captives suffer and who knows what Daninsky really is.
Yes, there is a climactic fight between Daninsky as a werewolf and the Yeti, however in this film Daninsky lives thanks to Sylvia and a rare plant that blooms in the mountains. She uses them to save Daninsky. For a change everyone dies BUT Waldemar and his girlfriend!
This film is a mixture of several genres and has enough pulp to satisfy everyone, or at least me. I really enjoyed this movie and found it to be my favorite of the five in the "Paul Naschy Collection 2" set.
Forget all the bad things you read and check this out for yourself. It's a real treat.
Paul Naschy stars as a priest who is close friends with a family that is having a few problems.
What kind of problems? Well a young woman named Leila (Grace Mills) participates in a Satanic ritual and this causes her to be possessed by the spirit of her dead father.
This slowly causes her to act very odd and as the possession becomes more and more obvious she begins vomiting green slime, cursing and the usual possession signs.
I know many people have compared this to "The Exorcist" and while that may be true in certain scenes, I cannot really compare the two. Mills does a very good job as the possessed woman and this film moves along at a brisk pace.
What I like most is we also get Euro babes Maria Perschy as as Lelia's mother and the gorgeous Maria Kosti as Lelia's sister, Deborah. Kosti is always a welcomed actress in any Euro film.
Once again, the presentation is very good from Shout, and if you have other copies of this film you won't need them anymore. The ending is rather abrupt, but a recommended film none the less.
Leon Klimovsky directed this interesting film starring Paul Naschy as Baron Gilles de Lancre who returns from battle and begins a reign of terror over his people.
He uses witchcraft and torture to keep the people in line. he does this because he has fallen for a sexy female named Georgelle and and evil alchemist and believes he will have power if beautiful women are sacrificed to Satan.
The plot is pretty straight forward and is not really a horror film. The sets and costumes are very good for the period film, and Naschy plays the role to the hilt..
The presentation from Shout is better than any other print I have ever seen of the film, and they have done a fine job even if they didn't have the original film elements to work with.
This is part of Shout's "Paul Naschy Collection 2" and no Spanish movie fan or Naschy fan should be without it.
A mysterious killer is stalking the streets of Milan. He has taken it upon himself to clean up the streets of what he calls "immoral and trashy people".
The killer leaves an ornamental dragonfly soaked in the victims blood on each body. Naschy is Inspector Paolo Scaporella who is on the case, but not getting very far as he lacks clues.
There are several killings at the beginning of the film in rapid succession and it sets up the rest of the film. Scaporella is very frustrated that he cannot find this mysterious killer and it gets to the point where the killer is sending him things in the mail like letters, or in one case a severed head!
His girlfriend, Silvana (Erika Blanc) tries to help him solve the case and gets a little too mixed up in it. To me Erika steals every scene she is in because she is so damn sexy. Good God, I wish they made women like that today!!
Oh well, back to the movie. As Paolo closes in the film draws to a very bizarre conclusion involving a transvestite and a classic roller coaster escape attempt. I have to admit I have never seen anything quite like it before.
The presentation by Shout is excellent and Naschy fan should love this. The rest of the cast includes Angel Aranda and the gorgeous Maria Kosty. This is another in the Paul Naschy Collection 2 set from Shout.
Cassidy will always be known as Keith Partridge on the long running show "The Partridge Family".
I don't think I knew any girl back in the early 70's that didn't have a picture of David tacked to their bedroom wall. Cassidy made many appearances in TV shows and was a fixture on pop radio in the 70's.
Some of his biggest hits were with the "Partridge Family" and they included "I Think I Love You", "I Woke Up In Love This Morning", "You Were The One" and many, many more.
Another part of my childhood goes away. He was 67.
First let me say that Shout makes it very clear they couldn't get the top of the line film elements from Spain, so they settled for the best they could find from their licensor, and they didn't do too bad of a job.
The picture is still better than anything else I have ever seen of the film. Naschy plays Gotho a hunchback who is in love with a very ill woman. When she dies he takes her body to an underground lair and promises to take care of her. Soon her body is eaten by rats in a scene that really creeps me out.
Gotho sets the rats on fire and as everyone knows, during that scene Naschy was actually bitten several times by the nasty little critters. One thing leads to another and soon Gotho is supplying a mad doctor with dead bodies for bizarre experiments involving a living organism he is growing.
One of the mosty twisted of all Naschy films, this one really goes in several bizarre directions at once and climaxes in a scene which reminded me of "Brain That Wouldn't Die" in several aspects.
There are a lot of familiar faces from the Euro horror genre in here including Vic Winner and a lot of Euro beauties including Rosanna Yanni.
This is a must for Naschy fans and everyone else who loves horror. There are some scenes in the film that are really cruel including a bunch of kids throwing rocks at Gotho and striking him in the head and then laughing about it.
This is part of Shout's Paul Naschy Collection 2 and a very welcome addition to Blu-ray. The other four films in the collection will be reviewed here in the coming days.
One the first disc you get a round table discussion of the beginnings of the "Attitude" era from people like "The Godfather", Ron Simmons, Mick Foley, Kane, and Shawn Michaels. Their insight into that particular era of pro wrestling history is a very very good listen and right on the money.
The other two discs are 3 hours of the wildest matches from the very beginning of the era which lasted from 1997 until 2002. What goes on in some of these matches and interviews could never happen today in our liberal oriented PC world, but back in the day it made for great TV.
If you're a wrestling fan I would recommend this to you as a chance to relive some great moments and matches from a bygone era that will never be back. If you look at this DVD and others like it, you can easily see how the sport has gone from being highly entertaining and jaw dropping to the blather filled muck it is today.
I am still waiting for WWE to turn out a DVD set on the women who have made the company what it is....oh well maybe someday.
This is a bizarre movie about pirates on a ship called "Black Eagle" that attack the Christian strongholds along the Spanish coastline.
When they decide to stop off in Sheba they pick up some new sailors as well as some slave girls. This causes some problems, but even more lay ahead as the movie turns "swashbuckler".
A young man named Omar (Jose Suarez) whose father has turned traitor and joined an evil Sultan vows not to ever speak to his father again. Upon learning of his death he wants vengeance. A slave girl, Olivia (Linda Cristal) helps him out.
The Sultan has Olivia tortured in the dungeon to get information about Omar and his plans.
This film is not talked about much and it was released here directly to TV by American International Pictures in the 1960's. I owned a print once before from Something Weird. It was Black and White and not too good of quality, but I have kept it for a long time until something better came along, and it has.
The print from Sinister is in color and from 16mm which makes the picture quality much better. I can't really say why I like this film so much, but I always have. I first saw it many years ago on TV and something just struck me about it's oddness. Or maybe it was the stunning beauty of Linda Cristal.
Well whatever it is, I recommend the film for those who like action and both "sword and sandal" and "swashbuckler" films. A note of trivia here, Umberto Lenzi helped write the screenplay along with Sergio Leone.
Tillis was a country music superstar who had countless hits on the country charts as well as a very successful songwriter. Tillis also appeared in many different movies.
His first role was in the 1967 film "Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers with Sonny Tufts. He went on to appear in such films as "W.W. And The Dixie Dance Kings", "The Villain", "Smokey And The Bandit 2", and "The Cannonball Run".
His music was in over 50 feature films, and he was named Country Music Entertainer Of The Year in 1976. A true talent has left us. He is the father of singer Pam Tillis. He was 85.
I happen to have caught this film on one of my many overnight trips I have to make, and it made for a very good 80 minutes of entertainment.
Montgomery is a rancher who has the idea of cross breeding heifers and long horns for a heartier breed of cattle that can survive the harsh Wyoming winters. He buys a lot of stock in Oregon and then cannot find anyone who wants to help him bring them back to Wyoming.
Montgomery's character of Steve Patrick not only has that problem to worry about, he also has his best friend, Bob Andrews (Peter Graves) being nursed back to health after being shot in an Indian attack. Patrick also is unaware that Andrews has set him up to have all of the cattle stolen so he and Maddox (Walter Sande) can make all the money.
For a small western, this has a ton of plot and many different stories going on at once, which eventually all come together in a great little climax.
The rest of the cast for this little gem includes Marcia Henderson, Richard Eyer, Robert Wilke and Alan Hale, Jr.
I don't usually ever talk about films I haven't watched all the way to the end, and I very seldom never finish a movie.
But in every life there are always exceptions, and this is one of them.
I put this movie on knowing I wasn't in for any great shakes, but that it might be a bizarre way to kill 90 minutes. Yep, I was wrong.
This movie is about infectious monkeys that escape from a lab at a soon to open Zoo and infect the animal population with a zombie virus, that the people who work in the zoo try and find a way to stop.
However, all I could get through was the first 30 minutes, and that was enough. I don't expect much from The Asylum, but this is strictly bottom of the barrel. I found myself hating all the characters and being bored to death.
I'm sorry, Zoombies might be some people's idea of entertainment, but not mine. It is actually the first film I have ever reviewed here that I couldn't sit through, and that is saying something! CGI animals, lousy actors and actresses and a very stupid plot makes for a trying time watching anything.
This kind of dreck is why I usually stick to older films, because if this is what the new generation is growing up on, I want no part of it. Give me a man in a turkey head drinking the blood of drug addicts and going "gobble gobble" over this shit anyday.
Avoid Zoombies at all costs.
Kino has announced that in early 2018 they are releasing "No Orchids For Miss Blanchard" which is an very good British mystery film, and the 1974 remake entitled "The Grissom Gang" and the latter is by far a much more bizarre film.
Shout Factory is releasing "Night Of The Seagulls" on Blu-ray on 2/13/18. This is a wonderful film and the last in the "Blind Dead" series from Armando DeOssorio.
Kino has also announced the the Dan Curtis TV terror classic "Trilogy Of Terror" will be released on Blu-ray sometime in 2018. I can already tell you that it will be a top release of 2018.
More DVD and Blu-ray releases to be announced shortly and I will try and keep up with it all.
