Terrordactyl is a modern creature feature, in the style of the cheesy monster movies that we grew up with. Except for a few minor language issues, I recommend it wholeheartedly. It’s fun, fast-paced, with good acting. It has a nice mix of humor and horror, and the special effects are fine.
Read More »Terrordactyl
House of Frankenstein is the first of the Universal Studios monster mashes. In short, mad scientist Niemann and “friend Daniel” his hunchback assistant escape prison and enact a series of revenges on the people who had him imprisoned. They murder a proprietor of a travelling show of horrors, impersonate him and revive his corpse of Dracula. Dracula succeeds in the first part of the revenge scheme, but Niemann abandons him to be destroyed in the sunlight. Niemann then travels to the ruins of Frankenstein’s castle. He hopes to recover the dead doctor’s secrets, but instead recovers both the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster. He revives them both, but a romantic triangle unravels the plot.
Read More »House of Frankenstein [monster movie]
In The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, a mysterious sea creature is murdering people, and two independent government agents are investigating. A marine biologist knows more than he is telling, and the body count rises …
Read More »The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues
To be clear, this is the original King Kong movie, not the 1976 remake, or the more recent remake by Peter Jackson. Both remakes are enjoyable in their own right although I strongly prefer Jackson’s. This is the original, a movie that is still watched more than 80 years after its original release. There are good reasons for that.
Read More »King Kong
King Kong Escapes is, in fact, one of the cheesiest monster movies of all time — with special effects by Rankin-Bass. No, seriously. It’s enjoyable, cheesy fluff that doesn’t take itself very seriously, which is a good thing. The plot is convoluted, but here goes:
Read More »King Kong Escapes
No one will mistake King Kong vs Godzilla for high art …. And that’s fine; it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than enjoyable silliness. It’s two men in rubber suits, fighting in choreographed style — shades of professional wrestling. The movie has a comically foolish executive decide to use King Kong for advertising. And he decides to bring the real deal to Tokyo. At roughly the same time, Godzilla is released from an icy tomb. He heads back to Tokyo for the inevitable slugfest.
Read More »King Kong vs Godzilla
There are certain movie cliches, and the 1950’s is possibly best known for the science fiction “giant monster” movie (ie. Kaiju). It often served as a morality story, about the dangers of atomic energy, unexpected consequences, and fear of the future, using ordinary animals that have been mutated to giant size to tell the story. It’s been told many times since, but never better than in the first movie of its’ type, Them!
Read More »Them!
When a giant, prehistoric praying mantis is released from its’ icy grave, it revives. Then, it looks for food. But the only food in the Arctic are the various military people and researchers posted there. It leaves no living survivors to tell the tail. When a paleontologist looks at the evidence, he realizes what’s going on … And has trouble convincing anyone else, until the Deadly Mantis goes where there’s more food–New York.
Read More »The Deadly Mantis [William Hopper]
You can run and you can hide but there is no escaping the sci-fi classic Tarantula about a science experiment gone horribly wrong! When biochemist Leo G. Carroll decides to feed the world by using a special growth formula on plants and animals, he instead creates a spider of mammoth proportions with an appetite to match. Escaping from the laboratory and feeding off cattle and humans, this towering tarantula has the people of Desert Rock, Arizona, running for their lives. Can this horrible creature be stopped or will the world succumb to this over-sized arachnid?
Read More »Tarantula
When a scientist crew returns from Mars with some space spores that contaminated their ship, they inadvertently bring about a nightmarish Earth invasion. After the spores are analyzed in a lab, one escapes, eventually growing into an enormous, rampaging beaked beast. An intergalactic monster movie from long time Shochiku stable director Kazui Nihonmatsu, The X from Outer Space was the first in the studio’s short but memorable cycle of horror pictures.