And I was thinking of the original movie. Same point, though. The TV versions we saw as kids were very incomplete.
Finally got around to watching The Beast with a Million Eyes. And I know this was a Roger Corman cheapie, but still, I didn't expect it to be this crude. The opening narration and credits were actually pretty stylish and eerie, but after that it got boring, with unpleasant characters, weak dialogue and acting, and clumsy direction. The low point was the sequence where the mother was screaming in terror and trying to shoot the dog in self-defense because it was... acting mildly frisky. It was presumably supposed to be ferocious and threatening, but the only way you could tell that was from the mother's reactions and the music. Then there were the farcical bits where the characters faced mortal danger from a charging milk cow, and where the husband and wife were reacting in shocked terror to the idea of "a plane from another world!!" And then there's the bit where they saved the world from alien invasion by winning a staring contest. Oy. The only notable cast member here was a young Dick Sargent, whom I barely recognized. I think the teenage female lead's voice was dubbed, though, because it sounded very familiar, but I haven't seen the credited actress in any other role.
Finally revisited "The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow" for the first time in decades and I can see why my younger self was so disappointed by it. It's cute and watchable in a time-capsule kinda way, but, lord, is it a mess, even on a purely narrative level. The whole ghost/haunted house element isn't even introduced until at least halfway into the movie, without any foreshadowing whatsoever, while the climactic drag race between the two rival hot-rod chicks takes place offstage! I have to assume there was some sort of last-minute money crunch or logistical crisis, since, to the degree that the movie has a discernible plot at all, the whole flick seems to be building up to a rubber-burning showdown at, er, Dragstrip Hollow--which not only takes place offstage but is brushed off with a few clumsy lines of dialogue. "I don't think she or her pals will be bothering us again." On the plus side, there's some fun to be had spotting recycled monster masks and costumes from the likes of "The She-Creature" and "Invasion of the Saucer-Man." And let us also give the movie points for pushing (in 1959!) the surprisingly feminist message that, hey, girls can be drag racers, too. To be honest, I kept waiting for the "inevitable" scene where our car-crazy leading lady "grows up" and trades in her hot rod for Mister Right, but, to my surprise, that never happens . . .. .
Nemo sounds interesting and I remember an SNL skit called Blacula. I heard that 1138 was a number rattling around in his head so he used it.
Well, A Bucket of Blood was vastly better than The Beast With a Million Eyes. A very effective horror comedy and a fun satire of beatnik culture. I was surprised that Leonard found out the truth so early on, but his reactions to what Walter was doing made it funnier.
Oh, yeah, BUCKET OF BLOOD is a hoot, that shares a lot of DNA with Corman's original LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. (I honestly can't remember which one came first.)
Bucket was first, and Little Shop was filmed shortly afterward on the same sets, according to IMDb and Wikipedia. (Said sets being recycled in turn from AIP's Diary of a High School Bride, which was released on a double bill with Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow.)
Attack of the Puppet People was kind of a nice one too, if misleadingly titled, since they didn't do any attacking. I was expecting more of a sinister mad-scientist thing, but I was probably thinking of Dr. Cyclops and the Sid & Marty Krofft Dr. Shrinker TV series from '70s Saturday mornings. Instead, John Hoyt plays a character who's kind of poignant and pathetic, more deluded and desperate than malevolent (though still effectively creepy). It was pretty interesting. And leading lady June Kenney (who'd recently been in Earth vs. the Spider, also from Bert I. Gordon) was quite the living doll in her own right. The special effects were pretty lame, though. The "lifelike dolls" were obviously just flat photographic cutouts, and in the scenes toward the end where Sally and Bob are running through the streets, they're very obviously standing on a floor with a projection screen behind them. I love the chutzpah of having Sally and Bob watch Gordon's The Amazing Colossal Man at a drive-in. Not only was it blatant self-promotion and a way to save a few bucks by inserting clips from another film, but it's kind of impressive how well it actually fits into the story as thematically appropriate foreshadowing.
I tried watching Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, but lost interest pretty quickly. I watched the first half of it in two different sittings, and then on the third I just decided it wasn't getting any better and just deleted the recording, a bit over halfway through the movie. It was an odd sort of "Tarzan as James Bond" premise, starting with Tarzan in a suit and getting into shootouts before he ends up going into the jungle, and though I liked seeing a movie that treated Tarzan as an articulate, civilized man as he is in the books, it just wasn't very well-written or engaging. Come to think of it, it's a bit coincidental that David Opatoshu played Tarzan's enemy. He would later play Vultan in Filmation's Flash Gordon TV movie, in which Flash was played by Robert Ridgely, who'd played Filmation's Tarzan a few years earlier.
Interesting. I remember seeing it at the Midway Drive-in as a kid and really enjoying it. Mind you, I was seven years old at the time, so my critical faculties may not have been too sophisticated back then. I picked up a copy of the novelization (by Fritz Leiber) not long ago. Keep meaning to read it.
June: FRI 6/3 3:45 AM: Cabin in the Sky ('43): Vincente Minelli-directed film of an all-black fantasy musical about agents of God and Satan vying for the soul of a gambler played by Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Also with Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, and Ethel Waters, and featuring racial portrayals that were both commended as progressive and denounced as stereotypical, depending on the critic. SAT 6/4 9:30 & 10 AM: Ace Drummond Ch. 1 & 2 ('36): Start of a weekly serial based on the aviation-themed adventure comic strip co-created by famous aviator Eddie Rickenbacker. Has Lon Chaney, Jr. as a henchman. SUN 6/5 Midnight: 2010: The Year We Make Contact ('84): Holy cow, we're six years past that now. 2001 sequel that tells a more comprehensible story than the original, but is badly dated by its Cold War politics (which weren't in the book). 2:15 AM: The Church ('89): Italian horror film about a demon-ridden church. 4:00 AM: The Devil's Bride ('68): Aka The Devil Rides Out, Hammer-horror Satanist film with Christopher Lee and a Richard Matheson script. THU 6/9 11:45 AM: The Next Voice You Hear... ('50): Religious fantasy about people hearing the voice of God on the radio. With James Whitmore and Nancy Davis (future First Lady Nancy Reagan). FRI 6/10 2:00 PM: The Black Scorpion ('57): Giant stop-motion scorpions animated by Willis O'Brien! With '50s sci-fi stalwart Richard Denning and Tarantula star Mara Corday! Ohh, this sounds like a must. 3:45 PM: The Killer Shrews ('59): Oh, I remember this one from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Giant shrews this time, in hot pursuit of The Dukes of Hazzard's James Best. 5:00 PM: Beast from Haunted Cave ('59): Heist/monster movie from Roger Corman's company, starring Michael "Apollo from Star Trek" Forest and Frank Sinatra's nephew Richard. 6:15 PM: The Reptile ('66): Snake-monster Hammer horror. SAT 6/11 6:45 AM: The Wasp Woman ('60): Wasp-monster Corman horror. 8:00 AM: Queen of Outer Space ('58): Amazon women on Venus, including Zsa Zsa Gabor. 9:30 & 10 AM: Ace Drummond Ch. 3 & 4 MON 6/13 4:00 PM: The Black Sleep ('56): Medical-experimentation horror with an all-star horror cast including Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Tor Johnson, and Bela Lugosi in his last proper movie role (not counting Plan 9 from Outer Space). 5:30 PM: Hillbillys [sic] in a Haunted House ('67): Comedy whose title speaks for itself. Also has Rathbone, Chaney, and Carradine, and is also the near-swan song of one of its stars, in this case Rathbone's final English-language film. THU 6/16 (or "Wednesday night" if you prefer) Midnight: Harvey ('50): Jimmy Stewart and his invisible rabbit friend. SAT 6/18 9:30 & 10 AM: Ace Drummond Ch. 5 & 6 SUN 6/19 2:45 AM: The Hunger ('83): David Bowie/Susan Sarandon vampire movie. SAT 6/25 9:30 & 10 AM: Ace Drummond Ch. 7 & 8 TUE 6/28 3:30 PM: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil ('59): Harry Belafonte, Inger Stevens, and Mel Ferrer are the only survivors of nuclear war. Bummer. WED 6/29-THU 6/30: Shakespeare movie marathon, the first three of which have fantasy elements: 8:00 PM: Macbeth ('48): Orson Welles! 10:00 PM: Hamlet ('48): Laurence Olivier! 12:45 AM: A Midsummer Night's Dream ('35): Umm... Mickey Rooney? THU 6/30 6:15 PM: Cabin in the Sky again. We've come full circle!
Nothing really interests me there sadly. I'm mad I missed Forbidden Planet last weekend. I haven't seen it in ages, and I've been thinking about watching it again.
Thanks for posting the list, Christopher. Cabin in the Sky sounds interesting, if only for the involvement of Eddie Anderson. I'm a huge Jack Benny fan and I love seeing Anderson in other, non-Rochester roles. The B-movies on the 10th also seem interesting. I mean, come on, Frank Sinatra's nephew alone should be worth the space on my DVR, right?
Honestly, I haven't much enjoyed the non-Rochester roles I've seen Anderson in, since they were generally more racially stereotyped. Jack Benny was very much opposed to racism and was always adamant that his writers never use racial humor, never write Rochester as a stereotype or diminish him in any way. As a rule, Benny himself was the butt of Rochester's jokes, not the other way around. But most writers in radio and film at the time were more inclined to go for stock racial characterizations and humor at the expense of black characters.