Friday 7 June 2019

106 - 1930-1960

The Phantom (1931 -  B/W) - Dreary old dark house with   Guinn "Big Boy" Williams.

The Drums of Jeopardy (1931)-  Has Warner Oland as  mad doctor Boris Karlov  (yes,  really) in a speedy  silent-like Imperialist Russian melodrama.

Behind The Mask (1932 - B/W) -  Karloff gangsterism.

Get That Girl (1932  - B/W) -   Blurry silentish vehicle for  limber acrobat/Casino Royale director Richard Talmadge.

Murder at Dawn (1932  - B/W) -  Mischa Auer in dimly-lit crime   tedium.
Supernatural   (1933   -   B/W)  - Sangsteresque mad woman melodrama with Carole Lombard and Randolph Scott.

The Moonstone (1934 - B/W) - Dreary quota quickie-ish modern dress adap  from Monogram. Fedoras ahoy.

The Return of Chandu (1934 - B/W)/Chandu On The Magic Island  (1935 - B/W) - Lugosi miscast as hero. Even the film treats him like a baddie.

Black  Moon  (1934 - B/W)- Tedious Fay  Wray voodoo  romance.

Double Door (1934  - B/W) - Awful, talky, on  cheap chipboard stages. Paramaount adap of a Lifetime-ish Broadway play about  a spuned mad woman. Ok.ru.

The Ninth Guest (1934 - B/W)- Roy William  Neill directs a murderous drawing room argument. 

The Beast of Borneo (1934 - B/W)  - Uninteresting travelogue.

House of Mystery (1934 - B/W) - The only highlight of this Monogram dud  is a  Hindu ape.

The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935 - B/W)  -  Von Stroheim's 1930s  Casualty.

Condemned to Live (1935 - B/W)- Dreadful, primitive vampire thing.

Shadow Of Chinatown (1936 - B/W) - Unactionable  un-Chinese Lugosi serial cutdown.

Revolt of the Zombies (1936 - B/W) -  Dean Jagger in colonial Cambodian   thuggee grot.

King Solomon's Mines (1937 - B/W) - Paul Robeson's singing highlights  a stolid adap.

Torture Ship (1939 - B/W)  - Catfighting, inept  ocean peril   with Lyle Talbot.

Son of Ingagi (1940- B/W) - A  jaunty all-African American mad  science pic,  more like a musical.

Before I Hang (1940 - B/W)   -  Disappointing Karloff  science-crime  noir wannabe cheapie.

Ladies In Retirement (1941 - B/W) -  Hollywood Briddish music hall Gothic.

The Face Behind the Mask (1941 - B/W) - Peter Lorre goes about, shifty and feeling sorry about himself.

King of the Zombies (1941 -  B/W) - Just a load of people including Mantan Moreland bulge their eyes out.

The Living Ghost (1942  -   B/W) - Mediocre Monogram thing about a pathetic zombie in a house.

The Mad Monster (1942- B/W) - Incompetent  Zucco/PRC scientific wolf man   pic.

The Corpse Vanishes (1942 - B/W) - Mostly Bela hanging about a wedding like a seedy uncle.

Man with Two Lives (1942- B/W) -  More  fedora-laden  Monogram  folderol.

The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942 - B/W) - Atwill on autopilot.

Leopard Man (1943-  B/W)-   Feels ashamed to  be horror.


The Return Of The Vampire (1943 - B/W) - The idea of a vampire amongst the Blitz and  ARP wardens,   but Lugosi seems half hearted.

Revenge of the Zombies (1943 - B/W) - Carradine reanimating plantation nonsense.
See also Face of Marble (1946 -  B/W).

The Monster Maker (1944   - B/W) -  A  PRC melo where acromegaly makes people  look like aliens   in a 90s TV sci-fi.

The Soul of a Monster (1944 - b/w)  -  Forgettable Columbia  paranormal noir.

Crazy Knights (1944  -  B/W) - Intolerably   goofy Shemp comedy.

The  HalfwayHouse  (1944 - B/W)- Sentimental Welsh  Ealing  with the  Johns clan as ghosts.

Murder In the Blue Room (1944-   B/W) - Annoying musical-comedy. Ian Wolfe buttles.

Voodoo Man (1944 - B/W) - More interchangeable Lugosi experiments.

Ghost Catchers (1944 - B/W) -  Olsen  and Johnson stink.

Gildersleeve's Ghost (1944- B/W) -  Baffling radio  adap. Has a gorilla.

Phantom of the Opera  (1943)/The Climax (1944) - Color musicals  with limited horror dressings.

The Woman Who Came Back (1945- B/W) - True/bullshit melodrama.

Black Magic (1944 - B/W)- Boring Monogram Charlie Chan.

The Great Flamarion (1945 -  B/W) - Cookie-cutter vaudeville  noir.

 DEVIL MONSTER (1936/1946 - B/W)  - Stock footage  laden travelogue seemingly  enacted by arthritis patients.

The Phantom Speaks (1945 - B/W) Richard Arlen walks about feeling sorry for himself.

Devil Bats Daughter  (1946-   B/W) -  A big cheat.

The Brute Man (1946- B/W)/House of Horrors (1946-  B/W) - Rondo Hatton didn't have  much presence.

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946 - B/W) - Lorre miscast, too glossy for its own good,  feels like  a period piece even though it isn't.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946 - B/W) - Same as almost every noir.

The Amazing Mr. X (1948 -  B/W) - Noir longingly staring at a beach.

Feathered Serpent (1948 - B/W) - Roland Winters' Chan is like Abanazer.

Inner Sanctum (1948- B/W) - Yokel noir.

The Fall of the House of Usher (1950  -  B/W) - Amateurish primitive Britishadap with   Gwen  Watford.

Bride of the Gorilla (1951 -  B/W) - Jungle  tedium with little  ape action. Woody Strode has more presence and  dignity than his character  calls for.

Son  of   Dr.  Jekyll  (1951 - B/W)   - 15 years too late. Dreary, and forgotten/forgettable.

The Strange Door (1951 -  B/W) - Less a horror, and just a rote albeit goth swashbuckler.  See also the also-Karloffian The Black Castle (1952 - B/W) with   Richard Greene.

The Voice of Merrill (1952 - B/W) - I'm sick of noirs, even UK ersatz ones with Edward "not Le Mesurier" Underdown.

Captive Women (1952 - B/W)  - Boring 50s apocalypta. Not to be confused with Untamed  Women.

Dementia (1955 - B/W) - An incompetent nightmare.

The She-Creature (1956 -  B/W) - So dreadful PeterLorre was horrified when he was offered the role.

FRIGHT (1956 - B/W) - DrearyW. Lee Wilder reincarnation guff.

CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON  (1956 - B/W) - Unmemorable  travelogue disguised as horror.

Francis in the Haunted House (1956) -Goofy, terrible Mickey Rooney  vehicle.


Back From the Dead (1957 - B/W) - More reincarnation guff, explicitly dramatising the "Bridey (sic)  Murphy" case.

Blood of Dracula  (1957 - B/W)-  Intolerable. Eddie  Munster as a sorority girl.

The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958- B/W)  - Dreadful  western-infused ranch horror.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957 - B/W)  -   I'm not quite  a fan. Again, it's a Twilight Zone concept.

The Giant Claw (1957 - B/W) - Worth it  only  for the incredible beast.Ok.ru

The Werewolf (1957 - B/W)  - A hairy  man wanders around a national park being chased by other hairy men.An old woman looks  like Kenneth  Mars.


The Unknown Terror (1957 - B/W) - Terrible jungle/caving schlock.

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957 - B/W) -  Gormless idiocy with Frank Gorshin and some aged teenagers.

The Monolith Monsters (1957 - b/w) - How are rockpiles scary?

The Smallest Show on Earth (1957)-  Twee.

She-Devil (1957 -B/W) -  Laborious sub-noir premake of the  Wasp Woman.

Beginning of the End (1957 - B/W) - Bert I. Gordon's incompetent  grasshopper boredom with Peter  Graves. Mant!

Zombies of Mora Tau (1957 - B/W)-  More jungle gruel.

Voodoo Island (1957 - B/W)- So  incompetent that the model used  for the establishing shot of the resort  is infinitely  worse  than the model used as a model of the resort by Karloff and co for investors. Elisha Cook pulls  his face.

Attack  of the 50 Foot Woman  (1958- B/W)  Again, rural sci-fi-tinged jiggle schlock. Ok.ru
Not to be confused  with the deliberately idiotic Lou Costello vehicle The  30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959 -B/W).

Night of the Blood Beast (1958 -  B/W)- Proto-Alien drear.

Teenagers Battle The Thing (1958) - Literally amateur Indian mummy.

My World Dies Screaming (1958 -  B/W) - Shonky American psychothriller  dressed up in gimmicks.

The Snorkel (1958 - B/W)  - Annoying Hammer Nancy Drew-alike with Mandy "Nellie the  Elephant" Miller as the bitchy heroine.

Monster on  the Campus (1958 - B/W) - Typical Universal50s schlock, down to jokes about attractive men studying palaeontology. More hairy men.

The Flame Barrier (1958 - B/W) - More shonky    jungle schlock.

The Space Children (1958 - B/W) - Children's Film Foundation-type larks done seriously,  with added peril.

Macabre (1958  - B/W) -  Unidstinguished William  Castle trash.

Terror from  the Year 5000  (1958 - B/W)  -  AIP  crud. Is Salome Jens' Hollywood's leading alien-actress?

Frankenstein's Daughter (1958- B/W)/She-Demons (1959- B/W) -  Crud  from Cunha.

Flesh and the Fiends (1958 - B/W)-  Staid, sub-Gainsborough gothic with Cushing as Dr.  Knox.

Corridors of Blood (1958-B/W) - Lee  and Karloff do  more old-fashioned  grave-robbing.

The Haunted Strangler (1958)- Karloff in a dodgy Lodger.

The Brain Eaters  (1958-  B/W)  -     More AIP nonsense, with Leonard "Nemoy".

Ghost Of Dragstrip Hollow (1959 - B/W) - Like a bad  SCTV parody of 50s JD movies.

The Cosmic  Man (1959 - B/W) -  A big goofy Glitterball.

Teenage Zombies (1959 -  B/W) -  Prematurely aged action-less,no-budget cop.

The Hideous Sun Demon (1959 - B/W) - 'Tis hideous.

Night of the Ghouls (1959 - B/W) - Ed Wood was a cabaret man not a filmmaker.

Battle Beyond The Sun (1959) -Typical Soviet po-faced space larks, edited for Corman by Coppola.


1 comment:

  1. Ants are not the menace in B.I.G.'s Beginning of the End, giant grasshoppers are. I'm imagining you gazing at the screen in a daze, like Kate Reid in The Andromeda Strain, with all these dodgy low budget horrors and sci-fi clicking past your eyes. Must be oddly soothing.

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