Monsters Crash the Pajama Party is a short 1965 US horror movie co-written, produced and directed by David L. Hewitt (Gallery of Horror; The Mighty Gorga). It stars Vic McGee (The Wizard of Mars), James Reason, Clara Nadel, Pauline Hillkurt.

During its original theatrical release, actors would venture out into the seats in costumes as though they were the monsters coming out of the movie screen, similar to The Tingler.

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party was released on DVD by Something Weird Video in September of 2007. The DVD was positively received due to its visually-interesting cover, extensive menus, and abundance of short horror films and clips.

Buy Monsters Crash the Pajama Party + Asylum of the Insane from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Plot teaser:

A group of teenage girls spends the night in an old dark mansion as an initiation into a college sorority. The girls all agree to the initiation due to them all not believing in ghosts. Their boyfriends begin to play spooky pranks on them with store-bought masks, which fails to frighten the girls since they had been expecting these pranks.

However, unbeknownst to the teenagers, the building is actually the headquarters for a mad scientist and his hunchbacked assistant, who are experimenting with turning humans into gorillas. The mad doctor abducts the girls, who are later rescued by the boys. The boyfriends then fight off the doctor’s henchmen, a gorilla, a werewolf, and a creature of some sort. Incensed by his monsters’ failure to re-capture any of the girls, he instructs them to blast a hole through the movie screen with a laser gun and venture out into the audience!

It is at this point during the original theatrical run of the film that actors dressed as the monsters from the movie would wander about the theatre seats to scare people, however lightly. The actors often wanted to seem comically spooky rather than actually scary.

Related: Ghost in the Invisible Bikini

Wikipedia | IMDb

Kill, Granny, Kill! is a 2014 US horror movie co-written and directed Jacob Ennis (Stash, Hillbilly Bloodbath). It stars Donna Swenson, Alicia M. Clark and T.J. Pack and is a Camp Motion Pictures production.

The film is released in the US on DVD and Digital on 21 April 21 2015 by Alternative Cinema. Special features include a director commentary, outtakes and a trailer vault.

Official plot teaser:

Answering an in-home help ad for an elderly woman, Abby Daniels leaves family and friends for a remote farmhouse in the country. But all is not as it seems with her fluffy employer, whose locked doors and cellar seem to be hiding some unusual hobbies.

When she drunkenly sneaks her boyfriend into the house, breaking the rules about cursing and fornication, Abby is plunged into a nightmare of hellish proportions – pitted against a clan of ruthless, amoral, and degenerate flesh-eaters lead by their murderous GRANNY!

IMDb | Facebook

“From time to time you have to make a film like Armageddon so people see that you’re still around.”

Udo Kier – born Udo Kierspe; 14 October 1944 – is a German actor who has appeared in over 200 films, across many genres, though his appearances in horror films have been particularly notable.

Kier was born in Cologne, near the end of World War II. The hospital in which he was born was bombed by the Allies moments after his birth and both Udo and his mother had to be dug from the resultant rubble. In his youth he worked as an altar boy and cantor. He moved to the United Kingdom to learn the English language when he was 18 years-old.

In 1966, Kier was cast in the lead role for the short film, Road to St. Tropez by director, Paul Sarne. His first major film, appropriately enough, was the notorious horror movie Mark of the Devil (1969) a production packed with sexual imagery, extreme violence and, if you were lucky, a branded paper bag to vomit in, handed out at selected cinemas. Working alongside one of the titans of the screen, Herbert Lom, Kier, with his good looks, was cast opposite the facially disfigured Reggie Nalder; to ram home the point, Kier’s character, Christian (the hero) is pitted against Nalder’s sadistic witch torturer, Albino. The notion of Kier wearing a metaphorical mask and adopting a larger than life personality would become one of his trademarks.

Two of the most important films in his early career were made back-to-back; Flesh for Frankenstein in 1973, directed by Paul Morrissey, a relationship which began when they met on an airplane flight, and Blood for Dracula, filmed by Paul Morrissey for Andy Warhol’s studio and produced by Vittorio de Sica and Roman Polański, with Kier playing the lead roles of young Dr Frankenstein and young Count Dracula (Warhol had little to do with either film, aside from the selling power of his name in the title). Udo’s thick German accent and wildly over-the-top performances immediately made him a cult figure with audiences. Indeed, Kier’s accent had led to many of his early performances being re-dubbed.

In a typically contrary fashion, rather than building on his now alluring performances and growing fan base, he continued to act in wildly disparate and, in a mainstream sense, uncommercial selection of films; Just Jaeckin’s inadvertently funny erotic drama, The Story of O (1975) and the following year’s bizarre Spermula, in which he played an alien ‘popping out’ of a man, did little to sell him to a family audience.

Adding to his appearances on the list of DPP banned list of films in the UK, his role in 1976’s House on Straw Hill aka Exposé as an anguished writer is both intense and alarming and Udo attempts to break the world sweating record. Alas, the film was something of a bone of contention, the film’s producers apparently doing everything possible to avoid paying him. It was to take another maverick member of the film-making community to drag him back to a medium he always felt happiest with.

Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) is now, rightly, considered a classic of the genre and though Kier’s role of the doctor can scarcely be considered the lead role, his association with the film and his mannered performance reminded audiences that Kier wasn’t just a pantomime ham. Ironically, he later appeared in Argento’s Mother of Tears, in which the director proves himself to be infinitely hammier than his actor.

It should come as little surprise that Kier also crossed paths with other Euro film philanderers: Poland’s Walerian Borowczyk cast the actor as Jack the Ripper in Lulu (1980) and in the following year’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne and Czechoslovakia’s Kurt Rabb gave him a role in his The Island of the Bloody Plantation, 1983.

Probably based on his cult status as Count Dracula, Kier has appeared in a number of other vampire movies, such as Die Einsteiger (1985), Blade (1998), Modern Vampires (1998, alongside Rod Steiger), Shadow of the Vampire (2000), Dracula 3000 and BloodRayne (2006).

Throughout his career, Kier has almost uniquely managed to balance his acting projects between ‘high art’ and gruelling trash (such as Evil Eyes and Fall Down Dead), a trick which has endeared him to audiences and film-makers without necessarily leading to him being mobbed on the street.

Fans of the actor have included Walerian Borowczyk, the aforementioned Dario Argento, Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (which allegedly ruled him out from appearing in any Werner Herzog films, due to an unspoken agreement between the directors – there was some slight leeway with a fleeting appearance in 2001’s Invincible). He has appeared in all of Lars von Trier’s movies since 1987’s Epidemic (with the exceptions of The Idiots, The Boss of it All and Antichrist) as well as the far more mainstream Hollywood blockbuster Blade (1998) as well as the ironic independent film Shadow of the Vampire (2000) produced by Nicolas Cage. He has also frequently worked with idiosyncratic German director Christoph Schlingensief.

He made an appearance in cult movie My Own Private Idaho (1991) directed by Gus van Sant. Well-known film appearances were in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) with Jim Carrey as a billionaire, Ronald Camp, in Barb Wire with Pamela Anderson, as a NASA flight psychologist in Armageddon, and as Ralphie in the film Johnny Mnemonic, though these flirtations with Hollywood did little to dampen his enthusiasm for horror and the absurd.

In the music world, the actor’s cult status led to an appearance in Madonna’s infamous 1992 attention-seeking book called Sex, as well as the video for her disco hit “Deeper and Deeper” from the album Erotica. Kier appeared in nu-metal band Korn’s music video “Make Me Bad”, in Eve’s music video “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” and in the music video for “Die Schöne und das Biest” by defunct German band Rauhfaser.

He also starred as the psychic “Yuri” in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and its expansion, Yuri’s Revenge, played the villainous Lorenzini in the 1996 film The Adventures of Pinocchio, and then later reprised his role in the 1999 sequel The New Adventures of Pinocchio. He also voiced Professor Pericles in the 2010 – 2013 animated series Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.

A documentary on his life and career entitled “ICH-UDO…der Schauspieler Udo Kier” (“ME-Udo…the actor Udo Kier”) was filmed for ARTE, the French-German culture channel in Europe, and released in 2012. The documentary won the New York Festival “Finalist Certificate”. He was honoured by the Munich Film Festival with its CineMerit Award in July 2014.

Kier continues to act with horror films still featuring heavily on the horizon and so it is fitting that this career overview should end with the news that he will play Bela Lugosi in the 2015 movie The Final Curtain: The Last Days of Ed Wood, Jr.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Selected Filmography:

1969 Mark of the Devil
1973 Flesh for Frankenstein
1973 Blood for Dracula
1975 The Story of O
1976 Expose
1976 Spermula
1977 Suspiria
1981 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne
1983 The Island of the Bloody Plantation
1989 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler – Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker
1990 Blackest Heart (The German Chainsaw Massacre)
1991 My Own Private Idaho
1993 Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
1994 Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
1994 Terror 2000 – Intensivstation Deutschland
1995 Johnny Mnemonic
1996 Barb Wire
1998 Modern Vampires
1998 Armageddon
1998 Blade
1999 Besat
1999 End of Days
2000 Shadow of the Vampire
2000 Dancer in the Dark
2002 Feardotcom
2003 Dogville
2004 One Point O
2004 Evil Eyes
2004 Dracula 3000
2005 Headspace
2005 BloodRayne
2005 Masters of Horror – Cigarette Burns (dir. John Carpenter)
2006 Pray for Morning
2007 Grindhouse (Werewolf Women of the SS trailer)
2007 Fall Down Dead
2007 Halloween
2007 Mother of Tears
2011 Melancholia
2011 The Theatre Bizarre
2012 Night of the Templar
2012 The Lords of Salem
2012 Iron Sky
2013 Nymphomaniac
2014 The Editor
2015 The Final Curtain: The Last Days of Ed Wood, Jr.

‘One Hell of a party!’

Saturday the 14th Strikes Back is a 1988 comedy horror film, written and directed by Howard R. Cohen and produced by Julie Corman for Concorde. It is a sequel to Saturday the 14th.

The film stars Ray Walston (Galaxy of Terror; Blood Salvage), Avery Schreiber, Patty McCormack (The Bad Seed; Crowhaven Farm; Silent Predators), Jason Presson, Julianne McNamara, Rhonda Aldrich, Daniel Will-Harris, Pamela Stonebrook, Joseph Ruskin. Horror icon Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes; The Devil’s Rejects; Self Storage) has a minor role as a mummy.

Plot teaser:

Eddie and his family have just inherited a spooky wreck of a house. What they do not know about the house is that it was built over an evil passage way, but they are soon to discover the wacky evil it releases…

Reviews:

A cynical Corman attempt to cash-in on the surprising video rental success of their already feeble 1981 comedy horror. Thematically, this is a throw-it-all-at-the-screen affair from Herman R. Cohen (who’d previously given the world Vampire Hookers, the original Saturday the 14th and Deathstalker). The self-reflective ending includes apocalyptic footage from previous Corman acquisitions and productions, including a bizarre one second shot of Johnny Ramone’s lower half and guitar from Rock ‘n’ Rock High School! Avoid, unless in a very charitable mood, or a die-hard Michael Berryman fan.

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

“The film isn’t completely terrible though. There’s some cool looking puppets as well as entertaining stop motion throughout. There’s something moderately charming about the fact that the film never takes a second to stop. It’s one bad gag and bad joke after another. While the film doesn’t hold the same level of “so bad it’s good” praise that a Troll 2 or Plan 9 will receive it’s probably the only film where you get to see a werewolf spy on an olympic gold medalist in the shower.” Geekscape

” … few films are as entertaining as watching this movie try to be clever and fail. It’s simply that earnest and determined, and pity makes belly laughs deeper. Like a kid in socks trying to turn a corner on linoleum, like a drunken man hitting on a waitress, there is humor in watching repeated clumsy failure. For this, Saturday the 14th Strikes Back should be saluted.” Axel Kohagen, Slasher Studios

” … one of the most insane genre-related movies I think I’ve ever seen. If you’ve never experienced it for yourself, ST14SB basically makes Troll 2 look Oscar-worthy in comparison and yet, it’s really hard for me as a fan to hate on ST14SB because despite its numerous (and boy do I mean numerous flaws), you can tell it’s a movie with a horror-loving heart beating deep beneath its wacky surface and that’s something I can always appreciate as a fan.” The Misadventures of the Horror Chick

Cast:

• Ray Walston as Gramps Baxter
• Avery Schreiber as Frank Baxter
• Patty McCormack as Kate Baxter
• Jason Presson as Eddie Baxter
• Julianne McNamara as Linda Baxter
• Rhonda Aldrich as Alice
• Daniel Will-Harris as Bert
• Pamela Stonebrook as Charlene
• Joseph Ruskin as Kharis
• Riad as Takatiri
• Phil Leeds as Leonard
• Leo Gordon as The Evil One (as Leo V. Gordon)
• Tommy Rall as The Werewolf
• Michael Berryman as The Mummy
• Dave Workman as The Plumber

Wikipedia | IMDb

“The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula” was a double-episode of The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries American TV series which aired for three seasons on the ABC network from January 1977 to January 1979.

The series starred Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy as amateur sleuth brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, respectively, plus Pamela Sue Martin (later Janet Louise Johnson) as detective Nancy Drew. Many of the episodes, such as “The Mystery of the Haunted House“,”The Mystery of Witches’ Hollow“,”A Haunting We Will Go“,”The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom“,”The House on Possessed Hill“, and “Voodoo Doll” featured mild horror themes.

The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were both successful book publishing franchises, owned by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a publishing group which owned many popular children’s book lines.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries was unusual in that it often dealt with the characters individually, in an almost anthological style. That is, some episodes featured only the Hardy Boys and others only Nancy Drew. “The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula” marked the first time that the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew met and worked together…

Buy The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Season Two on DVD from:

Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Plot teaser:

International investigator Fenton Hardy (Ed Gilbert) has gone missing whilst looking into art thefts and so his sons attempt to track him down, which leads them to Paris and then Munich. The Hardy boys hook up with a three piece rock band named The Circus, led by a chirpy English leader, who happen to be playing at a music festival in Castle Dracula hosted by a rock star named Allison Troy. Meanwhile, the boys encounter amateur sleuth Nancy Drew, who is also attempting to track down Hardy Senior.

All roads lead to Transylvania and soon local town dignitaries are being bitten by a vampire. Or so it seems…

Review:

It’s probably not worth waving up a big ‘spoiler’ once guest star Lorne Greene turns up playing a slightly-dour and mysterious Romanian Inspector. He’s clearly the villain-to-be and aforementioned “rock star” Allison Troy is obviously a red herring. Indeed, the playful plot positively encourages this development.

Somewhat arrogant Troy is amusingly played by diminutive composer/crooner Paul Williams (also in Brian De Palma’s 1974 movie Phantom of the Paradise), and is seen to be hosting a world-televised music fest to about twenty-five fans dressed as monsters such as Frankenstein’s creation and a werewolf! Alas, Bernie Taupin, lyricist for many of Elton John’s songs and one-time Alice Cooper collaborator, joins Williams’ on stage for some cringe-inducing soft rock that is only slightly eclipsed when Shaun Cassidy takes his star turn for insipid saccharine songs such as ‘Teen Dream’.

Soon, the Hardy Boys are creeping around Castle Dracula, being mildly troubled by the requisite bats and rats in the caverns, whilst an angry mob (“I say we burn the castle!”) are demanding justice for the mysterious near-deaths in the neighbourhood. All along, Nancy Drew is given less to do, but there is one great female empowerment moment when she floors a bewildered Frank Hardy with a swift move. Elsewhere, there’s some mild humour to be had with two former comedy Nazis being mocked as downtrodden employees at a hotel in Munich.

It all ends with the inevitable revealing of Lorne Greene’s character as the baddie hankering for power, yet there’s at least a coy suggestion that something supernatural was indeed going on. This being a double-trouble TV-episode, the amateur sleuths’ antics are somewhat protracted but, like old episodes of Scooby-Doo, its all done with ’70s-style campy fun and amiable enough to pass nearly a couple of hours if you’re in a pretty charitable mood and willing to endure the soft rock interludes.

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

Choice dialogue:

“Why don’t we just come back in the morning? You can almost feel death!”

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Going to grannies was never like this.’

Rabid Grannies – originally Les Mémés Cannibales [translation: “The Cannibal Grannies”] – is a 1988 Belgian comedy horror film written and directed by Emmanuel Kervyn. It stars Danielle Daven, Anne Marie Fox, Catherine Aymerie and Robert Du Bois.

The film was dubbed and distributed in the US on VHS and DVD by Troma Entertainment. Due to its unusual subject and title and its graphic scenes of gore, Rabid Grannies is one of the most infamous titles in the Troma library. A Blu-ray + DVD combo release is scheduled for March 10, 2015.

Plot teaser:

Two elderly sisters invite their wonderful nieces and nephews to a dinner party in celebration of the sisters’ upcoming birthdays. The one nephew who is not invited is the ostracized black sheep of the family whose devil-worshipping activities have resulted in his being removed from the sisters’ inheritance.

The rest of the guests are merely putting in time; they’re really just waiting for their aunts to kick the bucket, leaving them amply endowed via their respective inheritances. But, the nephew sends a party gift that turns the scene into a frolic of the macabre: the aunts turn cannibal and attempt to eat their guests…

Buy Rabid Grannies on Blu-ray + DVD combo from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“The gore is ok. I guess they have a “rabid” hunger to eat their family, but allegedly the Troma version did cut down some of the gore (begging the question of what’s the point?) The grannies eat, dismember, and throw body parts around. It is bloody, but more goofy than gory.” JP Roscoe, Basement Rejects

“Though hardly a great stylist, Belgian director Emmanuel Kervyn does a decent job of keeping things moving at a nice and bloody clip. Too bad the headache inducing British accents haphazardly dubbed into the film ruin most of the admittedly eye-catching visual atmosphere; turn down the volume, however, and at least the avalanche of special effects makes for a decent party film.” Mondo Digital

” …it takes forever to get going, and then when it does you don’t really get a lot of splatter to make up for it. Plus, the rest of the movie is little more than a repetitive series of disjointed gags; someone runs into a room, and gets killed by one or both grannies, followed by a few minutes of the various protagonists arguing, moving about the castle, and then the cycle restarts.” Horror Movie a Day

Wikipedia | IMDb

Vampire Slayer is a US cheese produced by Calkins Creamery Cyber Farm. Here’s their sales pitch:

“Vampire Slayer is what happens when you set out to make an “anti-garlic cheddar”. We start with a stirred-curd cheddar and hand-mix garlic, ginger, onion, paprika…  8 lb wheels are encased in black cheesewax (the cape) and aged for a minimum of 60 days…”

Buy here

Monster Munch is a British baked corn snack although there have been variants with the same name in Ireland and France.

Monster Munch was launched in 1977 by Smiths (who also produced Horror Bags snacks). Originally called “The Prime Monster”, the decision was taken to rename the snack “Monster Munch” in 1978. Advertised as “The Biggest Snack Pennies Can Buy” – in reference to the large size of the crisps – each pack featured a different monster on the front of the packet.

The snack was supported by a “Monster Munch Club”, whose members received a “Monster Munch Munchers” membership pack which included a membership card, pen, several story books, and a story tape which included six “tall stories” and accompanying songs.

By the late ’80s there were four main monsters featured on the packaging, although originally a total of six featured in the advertising:

Monster Munch was available in a variety of flavours over the years including Roast Beef, Pickled Onion, Saucy Tomato, Bacon, Cheese & Onion, King Prawn and Salt & Vinegar. Pickled Onion has remained in the selection throughout the years, with Roast Beef appearing in almost every combination. By the 1990s the four main flavours available were Pickled Onion, Roast Beef, Smokey Bacon and Saucy.

The original Monster Munch used two different snack shapes, related to two of the Monsters. The shape known as a “monster paw” that is still used today has long been the subject of dispute over whether it represents a paw or, instead, the eye and lashes of a monster. The other represented the gangly, long-tongued pink monster: circular with two bumps on the top for eyes, protrusions on either side and a tongue dangling down. For a limited time in the early 1990s, there were also spider-shaped Monster Munch with a smokey bacon flavour.

A short-lived range of Monster Munch themed drinks – Monster Fizz – was available in the 1980s.

In 1995, the Monster Munch brand was taken over by Walkers who relaunched them with a range of four flavours and smaller crisps. The monster characters were also redesigned.

Since then, the range of flavours has changed several times, such as Cheesy replacing Spaghetti Sauce (and the Blue Monster being recoloured yellow). A wide range of Tazos, featuring images of the monsters, was produced, with one Tazo included in each bag.

In September 2008, Walkers re-launched Monster Munch, based on the original Monster Munch from the Smiths days. The crisps returned to their original larger size (now referred to as “Mega”), and the packs include retro designs based on the original packs, featuring three of the original four monsters.

Throughout the years there have been several limited edition flavours available. A Baked Bean flavour was made available in 2003 for Comic Relief. A Vanilla Ice Cream flavour was released in 2004, and was received with mostly negative reaction. There were also variants that could turn the consumer’s tongue a different colour. This usually meant the tongue was turned blue, though a variant that could turn the tongue either blue or green was available for a time.

A Product Called “Mega Monster Munch Webs” was sold for halloween 2013 and came in a bacon flavour.

Wikipedia | Image thanks: The Cobwebbed Room

Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters – original title: Santo y Blue Demon contra los Monstruos – is a 1969 Mexican action horror movie directed by Gilberto Martínez Solares from a screenplay by Rafael García Travesi and Jesús Sotomayor Martínez for Sotomayor productions.

The film stars masked wrestlers Santo and Blue Demon, plus Jorge Rado, Carlos Ancira, Raúl Martínez Solares, Hedi Blue, Vicente Lara, Manuel Leal, Gerardo Zepeda, David Alvizu, Fernando Rosales.

Plot teaser:

To foil his plan for world domination, wrestling superheroes Santo and Blue Demon battle the mad Dr. Halder and his army of reanimated monsters: The Vampire, The Female Vampire, Franquestain, The Cyclops, The Wolfman, The Mummy and zombie thugs…

Reviews:

” …probably the grooviest of the bunch. A mad doctor revives a ton of horror movie monsters (wait, so they’re monsters AND undead?) and brainwashes them to do his bidding. There’s a spanking good sequence at the start of the flick that introduces each monster, one by one …

If you’re a fan of B-movie grandeur, do yourself a favor and check this bad boy out.” Analog Medium

“Despite the budget woes and quality issues, Santo and Blue Demon vs the Monsters still ends up being a fun flick, and is among the Santo films you should see first just to get your toes wet.

If you can handle Santo and Blue Demon punching their way through a castle filled with people in bad masks, you are ready to expand your journey.” TarsTarkas.net

“Still, despite all obstacles, Santo y Blue Demon contra los Monstruos staunchly resists the temptation to laugh at itself, and that is what really sells it. One wink, one moment of intentional camp, and it would have become unbearable, but, instead, every actor who looked upon those pitifully ridiculous monsters reacted to them as if they were the gravest threat ever faced by mankind. And bless them for it.” Teleport City

IMDb | Visit Teleport City for a detailed review and more images | Related: The Ship of Monsters

‘They’ll get you in the end!’

Ghoulies is a 1984 US comedy horror movie. It was to be directed by Charles Band, with special effects by Stan Winston (the two had previously collaborated on Parasite) but ended up being directed by Luca Bercovici with special effects by John Carl Buechler and his company Mechanical and Makeup Imageries Inc. It was released theatrically by Empire Pictures in March 1985 and was a surprise success on home video thus spawning three sequels. The film’s original title was Beasties.

The film stars Peter Liapis (The Stepdaughter), Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance, Scott Thomson, RalphSeymour, Mariska Hargitay. Bobbie Bresee (Mausoleum; Evil Spawn) has a minor role as a temptress.

Buy Ghoulies + Ghoulies II on Blu-ray from Amazon.com

Reviews:

You’d think that by saving their appearance for the 3rd act that they’d go all out, but instead we get one attack by a clown doll of some sort (with a Ghoulie inside it), a couple of dwarfs, and even a full grown woman with a giant tongue, who turns out to be the real (hey wait a minute, did Dream Warriors actually rip this movie off?). Said villain is actually our hero’s father, who tries to kiss his son for some reason I wasn’t interested in exploring. Even when it seems like they’re about to do something cool, they don’t – there’s a scene where everyone has gathered for a dinner party, and the Ghoulies are actually SITTING ON THE TABLE, but no-one notices them, because they all have sunglasses on.” Horror Movie a Day

“The script for Ghoulies, written by Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy, does contain a few instances of cleverness (it’s brimming with movie references, from Rosemary’s Baby to The Ten Commandments), but there’s just not enough here to warrant a recommendation. How this managed to spawn three sequels is beyond me, though the ghoulies themselves are enjoyably campy.” Reel Film Reviews

“The set design is wonderful, with the Graves Estate looking suitably overgrown and creepy, but with a refreshing Beverly Hills feel that sets it apart from your average Scooby Doo haunted house. There aren’t a lot of stand-out kills to comment on, but the bit with the clown doll is definitely one of the coolest sequences in the film.” Adventures in Poor Taste

IMDb

‘Piece by bloody piece… he built a nightmare!’

Dr. Frankenstein’s Wax Museum of the Hungry Dead is a 2013 US comedy horror movie produced and directed by Richard Griffin (Creature from the Hillbilly Lagoon; Atomic Brain Invasion; The Disco Exorcist) from a screenplay he co-wrote with Seth Chitwood.

The film stars Michael Thurber, Jamie Lyn Bagley, Samantha Acampora, Andre Boudreau, Sean Carufel, Alex DiVincenzo, Jesse Dufault, Christopher L. Ferreira, Aurora Grabill, Ryan Hanley, Shannon Hartman, Patrick Keeffe, David Langill,Beatriz Lopez, Jamie Lyn Bagley.

The film is unleashed on DVD in the US courtesy of Wild Eye Releasing DVD on March 24, 2015 as Frankenstein’s Hungry Dead.

Plot teaser:

A group of high-schoolers on a class trip to a wax museum become the latest victims of the evil doctor Charles Frank, who is attempting to create the perfect human being from the reanimated parts of previous unlucky patrons – reanimating an army of undead mistakes and experiments as the teens try to survive the night.

Buy on DVD from Amazon.com

IMDb | Facebook

‘The mammoth monster that terrified the Earth! Too awesome to describe! Too terrifying to escape! Too powerful to stop!’

Monster from Green Hell is a 1957 science fiction horror film directed by Kenneth G. Crane (The Revenge of Dr. X) from a screenplay by Endre Bohem and Louis Vittes. It was produced by Al Zimbalist (Robot Monster; King Dinosaur; Cat Women of the Moon). The film’s strident score was provided by Albert Glasser (The Amazing Colossal Man; Earth vs. The Spider; Tormented).

Plot teaser:

In preparation for sending a manned rocket into space, American scientists Dr. Quent Brady and Dan Morgan are put in charge of a program that sends various animals and insects into orbit to test their survival rates. After one of their rockets carrying wasps malfunctions and goes off course, a computer calculates that the rocket is likely to land somewhere off the coast of Africa.

Some time later, in Africa, Dr. Lorentz and his daughter Lorna perform an autopsy on a native and determine that he died of paralysis of the nerve centers caused by an injection of a massive amount of venom. Arobi, Lorentz’ African assistant, then informs him that a monster is believed to be terrorising people and animals in an area known as Green Hell.

Several months later, Brady reads a newspaper account of turmoil in Central Africa caused by gigantic monsters and surmises that the wasps in the missing rocket were exposed to huge amounts of cosmic radiation because an earlier, minimal overexposure had resulted in the birth of a spider crab twice the size of its mother. Brady and Morgan request a leave of absence from Washington and head for Africa to investigate…

Reviews:

‘You might think it impossible to make a mostly boring film about giant, radioactive wasps, especially when the giant, radioactive wasps look like the ones in Monster from Green Hell. These are some of the most comprehensively failed atomic bugs in the business, making even Roger Corman’s notorious Crab Monsters look good by comparison. The stop-motion models used for those scenes in which we get to see a wasp’s entire body are reasonably detailed and fairly well animated, but the fact is that they look nothing on Earth like wasps.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

‘Crane’s monstrous film incorporates ingenious trick photography, model work and stop-motion animation, as well as extensive footage culled from the 1939 Spencer Tracy picture Stanley and Livingstone. The result is not so much a movie as a patchwork.’ Time Out

‘Monster from Green Hell is essentially the kind of movie that relied on good effects to provide major thrills when the monsters attack, like The Black Scorpion. The script calls for a socko conclusion with a hive of wasps on the rampage. Money and time must have plain run out, for we see only a couple of angles with more than one insect. Instead of a real sequence, editor/director Crane can only come up with a meaningless, freeform dissolve montage. Every effect shot we’ve seen before is double-exposed with lava flows and boiling magma, and intercut with some of the dullest ‘observers’ I’ve ever seen. Bad movie, + bad effects, = dissatisfaction.’ Glenn Erickson, DVD Talk

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Some things are better left unused’

Alien Tampon is a 2015 German science fiction comedy horror film written and directed by Jan Zenker from a screenplay co-written with Hanno von Contzen.

Plot teaser:

When an unsuspecting student unwiitingly inserts a tampon soaked in bright green alien goo and mutates into a murdering monster, a group of students unite their forces in order to confront her with weapons and courage…

IMDb | Official site | Facebook

Related: Killer Condom

The Tommyknockers is a 1993 US television miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. It was directed by John Power, from a screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen, and stars Marg Helgenberger and Jimmy Smits.

Plot teaser:

Bobbi Anderson (Helgenberger), a fiction writer, and her boyfriend, Jim Gardner (Smits), a poet, live on the outskirts of Haven, Maine. Anderson suffers from writer’s block and Gardner is a recovering alcoholic. One day, they stumble over a manmade stone object protruding from the ground. They begin excavating the object and discover a series of connected cubes that are made of an unknown alloy.

As Anderson and Gardner unearth more of the object, the local townspeople begin to undergo subtle changes. Insomnia becomes common along with rudimentary telepathy. Some individuals begin inventing wild gadgets using kitchen tools, batteries, small appliances and other odds and ends. Some of the inventions include an automatic letter sorter, a telepathic typewriter and a BLT sandwich maker that creates the sandwiches from the raw ingredients. These inventions have a green glow when active…

Reviews:

‘Here, everything isn’t translated well at all and instead of being scared or creeped out you have to laugh or groan at such ham-fisted delivery of over the top execution and pathetic horror elements. Everything is so typical and literal. The characters are barely sketched or believable, despite having a very talented cast who have all done much better, before and ever after.’ Vince Fontaine, Slasher Studios

‘Some details of the production design work well: the aliens themselves are creepy, and the effect still look pretty good for ’93 TV; also, the effects on the gadgets, particularly the hands-free typewriter, are quite good. The ship itself, though? Awful. Looks like a bunch of those things Olympian medal-winners stand on when receiving their medals, just with some dirt thrown over them.’ The Truth Inside the Lie

‘A number of weird plot twists are tossed in (the townspeople are inventing crazy new devices, including a novel-writing machine) before the satisfying climax in the haunted woods involving a buried spaceship and some great looking aliens.’ John Stanley, Creature Features

Cast:

• Jimmy Smits as Jim “Gard” Gardner
• Marg Helgenberger as Roberta “Bobbi” Anderson
• John Ashton as Trooper Butch Dugan
• Allyce Beasley as Deputy Becka Paulson
• Robert Carradine as Bryant Brown
• Joanna Cassidy as Sheriff Ruth Merrill
• Annie Corley as Marie Brown
• Cliff DeYoung as Joe Paulson
• Traci Lords as Nancy Voss
• E.G. Marshall as Ev Hillman
• Chuck Henry as Chaz Stewart
• Leon Woods as Hilly Brown
• Paul McIver as Davey Brown
• Yvonne Lawley as Mabel Noyes
• Bill Johnson as Elt Barker

Wikipedia | IMDb

Night Fright is a 1967 US science-fiction horror film directed near Dallas, Texas, by James A. Sullivan from a screenplay by Russ Marker (who wrote a similar script for an unfinished project named The Demon of Devil’s Lake in 1964). Sullivan was a production manager and cinematographer on several Larry Buchanan movies and is credited as an editor on the infamous ‘bad’ movie Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966). It stars John Agar (Tarantula; Revenge of the Creature; The Brain from Planet Arous) and Bill Thurman (1966’s The Black Cat; Keep My Grave Open; The Evictors).

In the UK, the film was cheekily released on VHS in 1983 by porn producer David Grant on his World of Video 2000 label as E.T.n. The Extra-Terrestrial Nastie – with the tag line ‘What’s 12 ft tall and eats people’ to cash-in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi family movie and the ‘video nasties‘ moral panic. British video renters were doubtless disappointed by the tame 1967 offering they rented on tape and, as Universal International Pictures threatened legal action, the opportunistic release was rapidly withdrawn. The following year, Grant was ridiculously imprisoned for distributing Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981) on video.

Plot teaser:

A Texas community is beset by a rash of mysterious killings in and around “Satan’s Hollow” involving some of the students from the local college. The sheriff investigating the deaths discovers the startling identity of the killer responsible for the murders. A NASA experiment involving cosmic rays has mutated an alligator into an ogre-like form and bullet-proof unstoppable killing machine with a thirst for blood…

Reviews:

‘Over-wordy and yet mildly amusing in places (especially the frugging to guitar music by The Wildcats scenes), Night Fright comes over as a vapid leftover from the late 1950s, although at least during that classic monster movie era filmmakers remembered now and again the audience needs to see at least a semblance of a creature from outer space. Here, all director Sullivan gives us are day-for-night shots of something we generally can’t quite see due to the poor lighting (dark VHS doesn’t help us either). Meanwhile, composer Christopher Trussel’s score is overly-dramatic to the point of ridiculousness. Alas, Night Fright is more Manos-like than Ed Wood fun.’ Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

‘The monster in this movie must be related to Robot Monster. It’s a gorilla with three-toed footprints and an alien head. We don’t see much of it but we do see a lot of John Agar … The Wildcats provide cool instrumental music and the kids wear V-neck sweaters and white boots.’ Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Video Guide

‘An unimaginative and poorly-made monster-from-beyond entry.’ John Elliot, Elliot’s Films on Video

‘ …director brings no pace or style to the routine story. Instantly forgettable. John Stanley, Creature Features

Cast:

• John Agar as Sheriff Clint Crawford
• Bill Thurman as Deputy Ben Whitfield
• Carol Gilley as Nurse Joan Scott
• Ralph Baker Jr. as Chris Jordan
• Dorothy Davis as Judy
• Roger Ready as Prof. Alan Clayton
• Gary McLain as Wes Blau
• Darlene Drew as Darlene Scott
• Frank Jolly as Rex Bowers
• Bill Holly as Deputy Pat Lance
• Janiz Menshew as Carla
• Russ Marker as Mitch
• Toni Pearce as Betty the Waitress
• Christi Simmons as Annie
• Brenda Venus as Sue
• Byron Lord as Government Man
• Ronnie Weaver as Government Man
• Olivia Pinion as Partygoer
• Nancy Mann as Partygoer
• Lewis Helm as Partygoer
• Jeanie Wilson as Mary Bennett
• Rod Paxton as Buddy Williams
• The Wildcats as Themselves

Choice dialogue:

“Ooh, you dirty young man. C’mon, let’s get next to nature!”

Sheriff Clint Crawford: “Look punk, don’t ever call me fuzz!”

Offline reading:

Buy Regional Horror Films, 1958 – 1990 from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Prepare for the ultimate trip!’

Evil Bong 420 is a 2015 comedy horror movie directed by Charles Band. It features franchise regulars Sarah Leigh (Robin Sydney), Larnell (John Patrick Jordan), Rabbit (Sonny Carl Davis), Velicity (Amy Paffrath), Hambo, Gingerdead Man and Ooga Booga.

The film will receive a worldwide streaming premiere on April 20^th (4.20, get it?) via Hulu, VUTOPIA, iTunes, FullMoonStreaming.com, Amazon, Google, ConTV and other streaming platforms.

Official plot teaser:

Rabbit has escaped the Evil Bong’s World of Weed, and has opened a topless bowling alley. It’s the Grand Opening and the balls are rolling, the boobs are bouncing and the weed is plentiful. When his old friends, Larnell and Sarah Leigh stop by to help him celebrate his wacky new business venture, things are finally looking up for Rabbit, right? Wrong! Evil Bong is hot on Rabbit’s trail. With the help of the murderous Gingerdead Man, they crash the most balls out party of the century. But Gingerdead Man has plans of his own when he learns that the secret to becoming a real man is getting his cookies off…

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‘Beyond Django… He’s sixteen inches with an attitude!’

Ooga Booga is a 2013 US comedy horror film directed by Charles Band from a screenplay by Kent Roudebush (Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt; Zombies vs. Strippers; Unlucky Charms). It stars Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror; Burnt Offerings; House of 1000 Corpses), Gregory Blair, Ciarra Carter, Patrick Holder, Charles Hutchins, Dallas James, Stacy Keach (The Mountain of the Cannibal God; Roadgames; The Cell), Corey MacIntosh, Maddox, Tom Massmann, Gregory Niebel, Kyle Quesnoy.

Plot teaser:

An innocent African American law student who is brutally murdered by dirty cops, but his soul is magically transferred into an action figure named Ooga Booga. With on his tribal spear and old girlfriend to help he takes to the streets and trailer parks to find the men that ended his once bright future…

Reviews:

‘All these stereotypes are more overbearing than effective (even Donna wonders why Ooga Booga constantly smokes marijuana when Devin never did). Band is no Jonathan Swift and he’s no Tarantino. The film feels a lot like a long, feeble racist joke with an animated puppet at the center of it.’ J.C. Macek III, Pop Matters

‘There’s a voice in my head that keeps telling me I should be tearing Ooga Booga to shreds. There’s also that voice in my head that once told me to write a four-star review of The Gingerdead Man. They could be the same voice. For all its faults this one succeeds in its own loopy, sometimes sleazy, rough around the edges, b-movie sort of way. Had Ooga Booga come up out during the 1970’s heyday of blacksploitation it would probably have a minor cult following today.’ Dread Central

‘For a movie that seems intent on offending and being as exploitative a film as possible, it really doesn’t take advantage of its screen time. The title character barely has anything to do, the revenge story is tame and lacking in tongue in cheek humor, and I’d like to know who thinks the character Hambo is even remotely interesting. It had potential to be so much better.’ Felix Vasquez Jr., Cinema Crazed

IMDb

Damn Sea Vampires! – aka Beast of the Bering Sea, Bering Sea Vampires – is a 2013 American horror film, directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy and written by Brook Durham. It stars Cassie Scerbo (Sharknado), Brandon Beemer, Jonathan Lipnicki and Jaqueline Fleming (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). The film first aired on the SyFy channel.

While dredging for gold beneath the Bering Sea, siblings Donna (Scerbo) and Joe (Lipnicki) are confronted by a horde of horrific sea vampires. When their father falls victim to the insatiable creatures, Donna and Joe join forces with a dedicated marine biologist ( Fleming) and a loyal deckhand (Beemer) to kill or be killed by the beasts…

Buy Damn Sea Vampires! on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

“A mediocre effort that still manages to be quite endearing, Bering Sea Beast is a passable piece of throwaway entertainment that really should have been accompanied by a soft toy line.” Eye For Film

“There are no surprises, the FX are really poor, and there is no consistency afforded to the characters (Joe is particularly badly written – a prankster one minute, the audience’s moral guide the next). But the dialogue is so ripe, the finely chiselled cast so game, and the violent set-piece scenes so unabashedly cheesy, that Damn Sea Vampires! will almost certainly leave you in a good mood. Depending on what you spent to see it, of course…” Sex Gore Mutants

“Fact of the matter is, in 2014 you’re unlikely to convert any new fans to these relentlessly produced low-budget creature features, and similarly the mere sound of the title will elicit a moan of disdain from the haters. If however you are part of that committed army of b-movie cheese aficionados, then this piece of trash will excite and delight in equal measure.” Scream

IMDb

WH

‘You’ll scream yourself into a state of shock when you see-‘

Horror of the Blood Monsters is a 1970 US science fiction-horror movie produced and directed by Al Adamson (Dracula vs. Frankenstein; Brain of Blood; Nurse Sherri). It stars John Carradine, Robert Dix (Las Vegas Strangler; Blood of Dracula’s Castle), Vicki Volante (Brain of Blood), Joey Benson (Gallery of Horror), Jennifer Bishop (Bigfoot; House of Terror; Impulse), Bruce Powers, Fred Meyers, Britt Semand.

The film’s caveman footage was derived from a 1965 Filippino movie – Tagani – then even older stock footage clips of various screen monsters were added. As these clips were in black and white they were tinted various colours using a phoney gimmick named ‘Spectrum X’. The film has also been released as Space Mission to the Lost Planet; Vampire Men of the Lost Planet and The Flesh Creatures.

Plot teaser:

In the near future, when an intergalactic vampire plague threatens Earth, an expedition travels a distant galaxy in hopes of discovering the plague’s source…

Buy on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews:

‘Adamson’s technique of combining a bunch of footage with an over-use of color filters was condescending to the audience at best, and downright criminally stupid at its worst. The idiocy of the plot is so mind-numbing that I still could not explain to you what the film was about.  There were giant mutant crabs, space vampires, something which looked suspiciously like part of a Dokken music video, and a John Carradine either hard-up for cash or–more likely–kidnapped for the role.’ Cheap as They Come

‘The Filipino-shot scenes are actually quite impressive and deal with a number of battling caveman tribes (some which are dubbed by Paul Frees!), including long-toothed vampires, bat demons that fly (heavily made-up dwarves on wires), lobster men that live in the water, and a race of snake-men (well, men with small snakes coming out of their shoulders — kill the snake, and you kill the man) … Overall, the result of the patchwork is an eccentric piece of B-movie cinema, and it’s easy to see why this is one of Adamson’s most popular films.’ DVD Drive-In

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‘The bulk of the planetary scenes are taken up between battles between the peaceful Tagani and the brutish Tubeton (who have fangs – the nearest we get to any actual vampires). These contain some bizarrely entertaining scenes – like where the people are attacked by crab men (extras with pincer appliances on their hands) and a cave full of hairy winged bat creatures that are played by dwarves.’ Moria

‘Oh this is poor… I mean really, really poor. The cut and paste makes little sense and doesn’t work storywise. One can’t even say it is art, simply butchery. The cast are uniformly poor, with the exception of Vicki Volante who is masterful in her ability to count backwards! Poor old John Carradine seems, in turns, bemused and annoyed by the whole thing.’ Taliesen Meets the Vampires

IMDb | Image credits: GregKriegar.com | Scenes from the Morgue | Wrong Side of the Art!

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“Animal desires… Human lust. Test Tube terrors… Half beast… all monster.”

Twilight People is a 1972 horror movie directed by Eddie Romero (Beast of Blood) and made in the Philippines. It stars John Ashley and in an early film appearance, Pam Grier.

While diving, Matt Farrell (John Ashley) is kidnapped by Neva Gordon (Pat Woodell) and Steinman (Jan Merlin) and taken to an island where Neva’s father Dr. Gordon (Charles Macauly) is experimenting, trying to make a “Super Race” by combining humans and animals. His creations are Ayesa the panther-woman (Pam Grier), Kuzma the antelope-man (Ken Metcalfe), Darmo the bat-man (Tony Gonsalvez), Primo the ape-man (Kim Ramos), Lupa the wolf-woman (Mona Morena) and Doro the boar-man (who is shot down by Steinman while trying to flee early in the film). Dr. Gordon wants Farrell to be one of his upcoming experiments but Neva begins to doubt her fathers’ work after a botched experiment on another test subject, Juan Pereira (Eddie Garcia). She decides to help Farrell and the animal people escape. As Steinman and his men hunt them down, Ayesa turns completely savage and is killed. A fierce gun-battle begins, and Farrell kills Steinman. Most of the other animal people are also killed, except Darmo, who is now able to fly and returns to the compound to attack Steinman’s men. Dr. Gordon tries to escape, but is confronted and killed by the tree-woman who used to be his wife. At the end, Farrell and Neva watch as Darmo flies off.

Buy Twilight People on DVD from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Reviews

“Fans of ‘C’ movies and drive in drivel will get plenty to chew on here. The first half is relatively slow, but about 40 minutes in the hilarity and poverty row production values kick in showcasing some goofy charm for those who can appreciate this sort of thing. Schlock lovers need only apply.” Cool Ass Cinema

Trailer:

“Darmo the bat is crappy enough to be worth the price of admission all by himself, and he probably gets more screen-time than any of the other Twilight People, even though he’s only rarely the focus of a scene. You have to admire the nerve of a filmmaker who isn’t ashamed to glue cut-up plastic garbage bags to a guy’s arms, and call him a bat-man.” 1000 Misspent Hours

“Any potential this flick had goes out the window pretty fast thanks largely to the film’s languid pacing. Sure, those Blood Island movies weren’t the finest examples of low budget made-in-the-Philippines horror, but at least they had their moments.  This one is the pits.” The Video Vacuum

Wikipedia | IMDb

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