It's a Pit of a Movie

Bloody Pit of Horror (aka "A Tale of Torture", "The Scarlet Hangman", and "Crimson Executioner") (1964)
Starring: Mickey Hargitay, Walter Brant, Luisa Barrato, and Ralph Zucker
Director: Massimo Pupilo
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A photographer (Zucker), writer (Brant), and their publisher/editor head with four sexy models and a production assistant (Barrato) to a supposedly deserted castle to take racy pictures intented to illustrate the covers of horror novels. It turns out, the place is not deserted, but is the home of a body-builder (Hargitay) who has retreated from the world, and who wants nothing more than to live life alone... well, alone aside from the trio of professional wrestlers (who dress like pirates) that share the castle with him. Soon, people start dying, as the restless ghost of the Crimson Executioner is unleashed upon the world again.

This is one of those "why ask why?" movies. As in, "why ask why these people caravan for days, hauling all that photography equipment AND darkroom equipment (including paper stock and chemicals) to this castle when they could have done far better, cheaper and efficient shoots in a studio?" or "why didn't they start taking the arrows from the crossbow in the hugely elaborate, spider-themed death trap instead of crawling under the trip-wires?" or "are we supposed to like ANYONE in this movie?"

I've seen many, many horror movies were the victims being killed by the psycho/ghost/demon/whatever are set up as more or less deserving what they get (in a twisted poetic justice kind of way), but this film goes so far overboard in making just about everyone so unlikeable that the viewer doesn't care if they survive the slaughter.

To makes matters worse, the film is generally more boring than scary, and snicker-inspiring rather than terrifying. Further, every fight scene in the film looks like it was staged by Vince McMohan of the World Wrestling Entertainment network (hence my wrestling comment above); We also have really terrible actors performing scenes that have been dubbed by even worse voice actors. And the syncing to dialogue to image is worse than anything I've ever seen. And the film's score--my God. It has GOT to be among the worst ever used in a film released to the public, and that's not even taking the terrible editing into account. (It's not usual to loop the same short bit of music several times during a scene, but it is unusual to have a static "pop" at the start/end of the loop.)

'Bloody Pit of Horror' is a pit of a movie. The only remotely clever part of the film is the spider-themed torture trap mentioned above--and even it falls into the "why ask why?" category, because like everything else, there's no sensible reason for it to exist.

The only reason to watch this film is if you're getting together with a group of friends intending to watch bad movies and mock them as they unfold. For THAT purpose, this is a perfect movie. Watching Micky Hargitay make an ass of himself in a red mask is especially hilarious. Like so:

For everything else, it's barely worth the effort to take it out of the DVD case.

The undertaker should get pals to bury this one

The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)
Starring: Rad Fulton (aka James Westmoreland), Ray Dannis, Warrene Ott, Marty Friedman, and Sally Frei
Director: T.L.P. Swicegood
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A crooked undertaker (Dannis) and his psychopathic greasy-spoon-owning friends drum up business by invading the homes of beautiful young women and murdering them. The cooks take parts of bodies and serve them in the restaurant, while the undertaker overcharges the families for buring the remaining remains. It's a great scheme, until they target the secretary of private eye Jim Glass (Fulton) and twin sex-pots Thursday and Friday (Ott).

Writing that summary is about all the time I intend to spend on this movie. I almost feel apologetic that I made you read it. You've probably never heard of or seen this miserable failure at making a black comedy, and I encourage you to keep it that way.

To say this movie is crap is an insult to fertilizer. The One Star rating is very generous, and it's based solely on the fact that the film does have a couple of good gags... but they are the sort of gags that a 12 year old would think up scribbling in his notebook while bored in class.

This has probably been used in torture sessions

Dungeon of Harrow (1962)
Starring: Russ Harvey, Helen Hogan, William McNulty, Maurice Harris, and Michele Buqour
Director: Pat Boyette
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A shipwrecked nobleman (Harvey) finds love and lepers in the castle of the insane, torture-obsessed Count DeSade (McNulty).

If anything, "Dungeon of Harrow" shows clearly that Pat Boyette made the right call when he stopped making movies in favor of a career as a painter and comic book artist; this goes double if it was Boyette who painted the artwork for the promotional poster for this film as it's the best thing about it. This film is Boyette's in every way--he helped write it, produce it, direct it, edit it, and even scored the music for it. The only thing that isn't terrible about it is the voice acting present in the narration, which was also done by Boyette, and which aleviates some of the pain of sitting through stretched-out scenes of actors wandering, sitting, or lounging around.

Every other actor in the film is as stiff and unnatural as the dialogue they deliver. Boyette was clearly going for an Edgar Allan Poe vibe with this movie, with the narrator looking back on horrible events, rampant madness, florid dialogue, and a storyline that will remind well-read viewers of "The Oblong Box", "Fall of the House Usher", and "The Raven" in equal measure.

Unfortunately, none of Boyette's actors have the chops to deliver the lines with the amped up melodrama present in the Corman Poe-inspired pictures from the same period and instead perform as though tye are under sedation for the entire film; I don't think there's ever been a movie about torture and madness with a more subdued set of performances ever released for viewing by the general public. Time and again, the lethargic actors turn what could and should have been frightening or dramatic into a test of patience so severe it would be out-and-out torture if forced upon a captive audience.

It's equally unfortunate that no-one seems to have taken the script further than a first draft, nor read it from beginning to end at any point during rehearsal, filming or editing. If someone had, they would have noticed characters behaving in contradictory and inconsistent fashions (not counting the batshit crazy DeSade), and several plotlines and characters appear and are dropped seemingly at random.

The film has two worthwhile and scary scenes--one where the Count believes he is being visited by a demon, and another where the main character is chained in the dungeon with an insane leper--but they are not worth sitting through the crap that surrounds them.

The Original Bad (VERY bad) Santa

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Starring: John Call, Leonard Hicks, and Vincent Beck
Director: Nicholas Webster
Rating: One of Ten Stars

Aliens kidnap Santa Claus (Call) and bring him to Mars so he can bring toys and holiday cheer to their depressed, television-obsessed children. But evil and conservative forces want to stop him from tainting Martian culture with Earth-based Christmas nonsense.

"Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" is a stupendously bad movie that fails on just about every level. The idea of Santa Claus converting grumpy evil Martians to the Light Side through the force of good cheer and Christmas spirit is a great idea, but since we never get a sense of why they would want to resist the Christmas Spirit to begin with, the idea remains stillborn.

Then there's the problem with the pacing of the film, with even the busiest scenes having a feeling of being padded. The story flow is also disorganized and rambling with the various scenes and events of the picture barely feeling connected to each other, and in some cases it is almost as if characters forgot what happened in the scene immediately prior.

The final nail in this film's coffin is that it's another example of a movie where the ideas and creative visions were bigger than the film's budget out accommodate. This is particularly evident in the sad, painfully cheap sets of the Martian space ship. The Martian costumes and make-up aren't much better, as they put viewers in mind of an Al Jolson black-face performance rather than Martians.

The only halfway decent thing about the picture is John Call as Santa Claus, although even he cant' rise above the awfulness of the material and often seems confused and even a little bored. He mostly pulls off the jolly Ho-Ho-Ho of the traditional idea of Santa and he delivers a number of rather funny lines effectively... unlike Vincent Beck, who, as the evil Santa-hating Voldar, manages to kill most of the Funny in his laugh lines. (Although Beck does sport one of the funniest mustaches to ever appear in film.)

"Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" is a holiday picture to avoid as strenuously as your aunt's homemade fruitcake!






Trivia: Pia Zadora made her first screen appearance in this film. She plays a little Martian girl who befriends Santa.

Save this one 'til it's the last movie on Earth

Last Woman on Earth (1960)
Starring: Betsy Jones-Moreland, Antony Carbone, and Robert Towne
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A crooked business man (Carbone), his wife (Jones-Moreland), and his young attorney (Towne) through a fluke survive a mysterious disaster that kills every living thing on the surface of Earth's northern hemisphere, perhaps in the entire world. They attempt to forge a life on the now deserted planet, but how long can two men tolerate each other with just one woman between them? Not very long.

There isn't much more to this film that that paragraph. If I told you that one man kills the other, and the remaining couple lives happily ever after, I wouldn't be spoiling the film, because that's the outcome that's set up early on, and it's an outcome that's never in any doubt.

The cinematography and acting is serviceable for a film which was probably written on the back of cocktail napkins, for which much of the dialogue was probably ad-libbed (the only explanation I can think of for inexplicably repeated lines within the same scene), and which was only made because Creature from the Haunted Sea wrapped a few days early and director/producer wanted to squeeze as much work out of the cast and crew he had brought to Puerto Rico as possible.

But for a movie that was probably made in a single-digit number of days, it isn't all bad. The characters are interesting in a community theater one-act play sort of way, and the story moves along at a quick pace. While there isn't a whole lot that happens in this film, you can still watch it and not get bored. Antony Carbone is particularly interesting as the crooked business man, mostly because you know that he's going to kill someone before the film's over. The only question is who.

That's not to say that it's necessarily worth watching unless you're interested in what an "artsy" Corman film might look like, or if you want to check out the humble beginnings of the writer of "China Town". But in the final analysis, this is yet another Roger Corman production where the poster art is more interesting than the film itself.

'Bloodlust' is not a desirable film

Bloodlust (1961)
Starring: Wilton Graff, Robert Reed, June Kenney, Joan Lora, Eugene Persson, and Lilyan Chauvin
Director: Ralph Brooks
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A homicidal madman (Graff) traps two young couples (Reed, Kenney, Lora, and Persson) on his private island and hunts them for sport... and for future display in his trophy room.


A "The Most Dangerous Game"-like riff (or maybe just rip-off) that is sapped of all excitement, tension, and horror by lackluster production values, weak wooden acting, awful dialogue, and an unbelievably stupid script. (Four strapping young people just stand there and listen to Graff as he tells them he's going to hunt them and kill them. Why didn't they just knock him on the head just then and there? More to the point, why would someone like Graff's character who likes hunting people because they're more dangerous prey than animals even WANT to hunt four people so passive they stand there while he gives a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong speech about how he's going to kill them?)

If I'm to be charitable, I would suggest that this script may have been written for a 12-page comic book story for "House of Mystery"--it would explain the speeches that go on forever, as word balloons ever seem to be as verbose on the page than if you read them out loud--but someone decided it would make more money as a movie. And so, they conned, um, CONVINCED Cincegrafik into producing it.

A far more real answer is that the screen writer and director on this project both show a distinct lack of talent.

While there are a few glimmers of something interesting now and then--Graff goes a passable Vincent Price imitation, and has a few almost funny lines... and the revelation of what's in the trophy room is creepy--but any developing potential is quickly squandered through a combination of bad acting and bad script-writing.

This is one movie to just take a pass on. It's so dull that even the "Mystery Science Theater" version is only mildly amusing, teetering on the brink between a Five and a Six rating. (Although, the 'bots do say everything you'll think to yourself if you don't heed my advice. This movie isn't so "bad it's good", it's just bad.)

'Luana': A movie as vapid as its title character

Luana (aka "Luana, the Girl Tarzan" and "Luana the Jungle Girl") (1968)
Starring: Glenn Saxson, Evi Marandi, Pietro Tordi, Al Thomas, and Mei Cheng
Director: Roberto Infascelli
Rating: One of Ten Stars

Isabella (Marandi) hires a burned-out jungle explorer (Saxson)--who is amusingly named George--to take into the remote jungle where her father's plane crashed 15 years earlier. Will they find any survivors? And just who is that mysterious, mostly-naked girl (Cheng) who keeps grinning at them from the underbrush? Could it be the title character?!

"Luana" is one of those films that sounds like it can't possibly go wrong, at least if you're a fan of Tarzan movies and babes in scant clothing. The Russ Manning-illustrated comic strip makes the film look even more appealing, so Big Kudos to the marketeers who cooked up that promotion. Of course, the drawback to the strip is that it tells virtually the entire story of the movie. Yeah... that's how empty and devoid of any action or even activity this film is... it can be summarized in its entirety in a handful of four panel strips. The Manning strips even give away most of what passes for plot twists in the film.

Something else the Manning strip does, although this is only clear in retrospect, is provide a preview of the fact that Luana is the most passive action heroine to ever appear on screen (on in any media for that matter). She does little more than lurk in the bushes and grin stupidly at... well, just about anything. The most action we get from her is during a storm when smarter humans and animals take shelter, but she goes prancing around in the rain, somehow managing to avoid being struck the the falling branches that are injuring other people and animals alike. I'm sure there are movies out there with more passive title characters--hell, Bernie was a more active character in the sequel to "Weekend at Bernie's" and he was dead for the entire movie.

The passivity of Luana is made all the more irritating, because the rest of the film is empty of interesting content, except for underbaked cookie-cutter characters portrayed by actors who seem like they are rehearsing instead of actually performing with cameras rolling, jungle sets that at times make "Gilligan's Island" seem gritty, and plot twists so lame one has to wonder why they even bothered. And then there's the climactic encounter between the heroes and the bad guys--for which Luana once again just stands around and grins stupidly--during which someone falls into a mutant carnivorous plant and is slowly, slo-o-o-o-w-ly devoured. One wonders why he didn't just roll out, or why one of his allies didn't just reach in and pull him out. Heck, this might even have been a moment where Luana could have developed some personality and have stepped in and rescued him. It would have explained why the natives think she's a goddess.

Finally, there's the ending. The heroes leave the jungle waving to Luana who stands alone and watches them go. We, the viewers, can't see if she's grinning stupidly or not, but the jungle explorer blathers on about how Luana is happy in the jungle and it's best to leave her there. If she was so happy, why did she seek the explorers out? Why did she keep following them? Why did she stand and watch them leave, perhaps even sadly? Had the Italian/German cinematic geniuses behind this film bothered to read Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels (or perhaps even one of the comic book adaptations of "Tarzan" or "The Return of Tarzan", of which several were available by the late 1960s, some even illustrated by the artist for the "Luana" strip, Russ Manning) they would have seen that Tarzan was given a choice between living in the jungle and living in civilization. That's one of the reasons the Tarzan story works. The ending to "Luana" is lame, and it makes characters we are supposed to feel positively toward come across like arrogant and collous assholes. What evidence does George of the Jungle have that Luana is happy in her isolation? And why could he not give her the opportunity to make an informed choice about how she wanted her life to be? The writers and directors manage to end their already bad movie on the most abysmal note possible. (Yes, I know the run-time probably wouldn't have allowed for us to see how things turned out for Luana, but it would have made a far better ended if the main characters had either chosen to stay and educate her, or if she had otherwise gone with them, with viewers having the understanding that she would be coming back to the jungle down the road.)

There are only two kinds of viewers this movie will appeal to, but I doubt it will even satisfy them.

The first are those who love everything that has even a slight whiff of classic Tarzan/jungle action movies to it. The film does has bizarre, spear-chucking tribesmen, a silly duel between the heroic explorer and one of the villains that involves stakes in the ground and scorpions, and it's got a "savage white man" (who in this case happens to be a savage Asian girl, but you know what I mean); if you are jonesing for a jungle fix and NOTHING else is available, maybe this movie will take the edge off.

The second kind are "men" like Gary Glitter and Roman Polanski... the sort of men who who like hanging around girl's schools in dirty rain coats and who subscribe to the theory "if it's more than a handful, it's too big." They will have a great time watching the diminutive Mei Cheng swing on vines and frolic in the rain wearing nothing but a small loin cloth and her long hair. They will watch enraptured as they discover that Cheng's hair is NOT has carefully glued down as Brooke Shields' hair was in "The Blue Lagoon". The film will undoubtedly seem to fly by, as they eagerly look for glimpses of Cheng's breasts (or even better)... and there is a single, very brief shot where their hopes are rewarded. (Of course, they might not be able to fully enjoy the picture, since the point is made that Luana is at least 18 years old when this story takes place.)

Heroes vs Head Hunters (and bad dancers)

Colossus and the Headhunters
(aka "Maciste vs. the Headhunters") (1964)
Starring: Kirk Morris, Laura Brown, Frank Leroy, Alfredo Zammi, and Demeter Bentic
Director: Guido Malatesta
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Wandering hero Maciste (Morris) leads his people from their volcano-ravaged homeland to another island where they find themselves in the middle of a civil war. Maciste takes up the battle of the kindhearted and babe-alicious Queen Amoa (Brown) against the evil pretender to her throne (Bentic) and his headhunting mercenaries, all in the interest of peace and finding a new home of this people.

"Colossus and the Headhunters" is a low-budget fantasy film that is several different shades of bad. The cheapness wafts from every frame, the acting is horrendous (both on the part of the original actors and the voice actors who did the English-language dub), and the script drags on and on, turning even what should be exciting battle- and chase-scenes into excrutiating tests of the viewers patience.

The one well-done thing is the costume designs of the three different cultures featured in the film--Machiste's people, the kingdom dealing with the cival war, and the headhunters. Each culture has a distinct look to it, and some level of thought and care went into their visual creation. (Although even this isn't perfect. Were their two civilizations on Machiste's original home island, because the people he leads to safety are your garden variety, Sword & Sandel, psuedo-Greek/Mediterreanian in costuming and armaments... yet most of the people we see fleeing from earthquakes and falling boulders as the island is consumed by the volcanic eruptions are fur-clad, sharpened-stick and stone-axe weilding cavemen! That's because this movie was so cheaply made that there was no money for the special effects shots required to portray an exploding volcano, so the director grabbed footage from an earlier third-rate fantasy film he'd made, 1962's "Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules." (You can follow this link to read all about that movie misfire at Cinema Steve.)

There is one reason to see this movie, one VERY good reason. It features one of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes ever put on film. Run the movie while you're reading a book or cleaning, but start paying attention when the villian is forcing Queen Amoa to marry him... and watch in awe-struck disbelief (and through eventual tears of laughter) as the handmaiden throws off her cloak and performs a wedding dance like none you've ever seen. That dance alone earns this film a full Star!

A severely edited version of "Colossus and the Headhunters" might be great addition to a Bad Movie Night, but, despite hilarious bits like the wedding dance, there are too many drawn out, boring sections to make it worth while.

(It's interesting to me that, despite the American title, there is no character in the film named "Colossus". What was the aversion to using the name Maciste in titles when these films were imported? Would "Colossus" reallly attract that many more viewers than "Maciste"? I suspect "Headhunters" was a bigger draw, and youd get the same audience if it had been called "Big Gay Al and the Headhunters" or "PeeWee and the Headhunters".)







Fun Fact: Maciste is sort-of the all-purpose Italian go-to epic hero. He is featured in tales of swashbuckling, freedom-fighting, and just plain old fashioned monster-bashing mayhem set in all historical ages, cultures, and places. For all I know, he even shows up in sci-fi stories and movies. (And if he doesn't, get on that Italy!)

'Castle of Fu Manchu' is Jess Franco at his worst (and his usual is already pretty bad)

The Castle of Fu Manchu (aka "Assignment Istanbul") (1969)
Starring: Richard Greene, Christopher Lee, and Tsai Chin
Director: Jess Franco
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

The immortal Dr. Fu Manchu (Lee) launches yet another nefarious scheme--this one involving a weapon that will freeze the world's oceans--and only Sir Dennis Nayland-Smith (Greene) can stop him. But will Sir Dennis save the audience from dying of boredom?


I think "The Castle of Fu Manchu" has got to be one of the absolutely worst movies ever released. Even by the low standards to which one has to hold Jess Franco--a director far worse than just about anyone who's still making movies today that you could mention--this is an awful, awful movie. It is so bad that it was one of the first movies that I slated for inclusion in the forthcoming 150 Movies You Should (Die Before You) See book, and it I never considered dropping it for some other film.

This is one of those movies that you have to have seen in order to be pass value judgements about what is and isn't "the worst movie ever made."

There's about 20 minutes worth of plot in this movie, with over 60 minutes of dull filler garbage. What's worse, the fight and actions scenes are so lame and cheap that the filmmakers didn't even bother adding sound effects in post production--so all we get are actors swinging at each other, falling over logs, and rolling around on the ground. And we have the embarrassing experience of watching adults tumble around like 9-year-olds playing Cops & Robbers instead of being able to surrender our imagination to the illusion that a movie should conjure.

I was tempted to give this movie One Star--and in fact when reviewed it several years ago on my Rotten Tomatoes blog, I did--because Christopher Lee once again gives a great performance as Fu Manchu. He even almost rises above the crap-fest he is surrounded by. But it's only almost, and even if he had given the best performance of his life, it still would have only earned this film a single of the smallest of small Stars. So, it gets Zero, in the interest of clarity and fairness to what an abominable effort this film is.

The most uneventful monster movie ever?

Night Fright (aka "ETN: The Extraterrestrial Nasty") (1967)
Starring: John Agar
Director; James Sullivan
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

A strange object crashes to Earth, and soon a mysterious monster is stalking and killing in the woods near a small Southern town. It's up to Sheriff Clint Crawford (Agar) to stop the beast before it claims the lives of too many of the bland characters being portrayed by horrible actors.


"Night Fright" is about 20 minutes worth of third-rate monster movie stretched an additional hour with scenes of aimless driving, aimless wandering in the woods, and pointless "character development" scenes where the cast of truly awful actors get to show how little talent they have. Adding to this is some of the worst dialogue ever written for a movie in the English language, awful editing, and an even worse soundtrack, and you have a movie that even the robots on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" couldn't make entertaining. To finally make the movie completely worthless, the monster is virtually not in the movie at all. (This is sort of blessing in disguise, I suppose, as the monster is almost as goofy looking as its explained origin.)

There is no reason to watch this movie. It's too bad and bloated with padding to even be amusing.

'Night of Bloody Horror' is bloody awful

Night of Bloody Horror (1969)
Starring: Gerald McRaney
Director: Joy Houk
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A young man (McRaney) who suffers from blackouts may be guilty of committing henious, violent murders. Or is something else afoot?


Grade-schoolers with a cellphone-cam and a backyard treefort would create a more exciting and coherent movie than what the drug-addled, drunk-off-their asses cast and crew of "Night of Bloody Horror" produced. Hell, those grade-schoolers would probably even stage better fight scenes. (The only decent part of the film is the marketing line "Filmed in Violent Vision" and one or two bits of purely unintentional comedy.

Don't bother with "Night of Bloody Horror" because it's bloody horrible and anyone who was involved with making it should be mortally embarrassed that it's available iin multiple different DVD versions. It's films like this that give "cult classics" a bad name, because too many marketeers like to slap the label "cult film" on turds they want to pass off as prunes.

A Voyage Not Worth Taking....

Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women (1968)
Starring: Mamie Van Doren, Peter Bogdanovich, Mary Marr, Paige Lee, Aldo Romani, James David, and Roberto Martelli
Director: Derek Thomas (actually Peter Bogdanovich and Pavel Klushantsev)
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

After an expedition gets stranded on Venus, a rescue mission is lauched. Both run afoul monsters, and when they kill the creature they worship as a god, beautiful alien sirines with telepathic powers and the ability to control the elements.


"Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" is a sci-fi adventure flick that was cobbled together with clips from a Russian sci-fi film that producer Roger Corman had acquired the rights to, and original sequences shot by Peter Bogdanovich; the storyline with the sexy, idol-worshipping, hip-hugger-and-seashell-top wearing sirines. There's a reason our astronaut heroes only hear the telepathic song of the aliens instead of coming face to face with them--the scenes were shot years and thousands of miles apart.

I don't know how good or bad the original Russian film was, but the result here is pretty boring and nearly pointless,and the segments featuring the astronauts is jumbled and with a plot that seems to unfold at random. It's a shame that the idea of the Venusian sirines was wasted in this effort, because taken by themselves there are some rather neat ideas and viduals involved. (The way they adapt and reject their gods even comes close to making an interesting statement.)

If you see this movie on the content listings of a DVD multipack containing ten or more movies, it should be viewed as a "bonus feature" to the package. In any other case, you're probably paying too much to own it. Although I like the space sirine idea, this is not a movie that's worth your money or your time.

Manos... fated to return?

For the decade or so that I've been focusing my attention on the more obscure and awful side of cinema, I've avoided writing anything about "Manos: The Hands of Fate." It's been covered by so many others, as well as featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000", that I didn't feel like I had anything at all to add. Plus, the film is almost too bad to even bother writing about... and I've written about some awful movies.

But, with the news that a sequel is in the works (click here to visit TorgoLives.com), I suppose I might as well join the crowd.


Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Starring: John Reynolds, Hal Warren, Diane Mahree, Tom Neyman, and Jackey Neyman
Director: Harold P. Warren
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

A family on vacation (Mahree, Jackey Neyman and Warren) take a wrong turn and find themselves in the clutches of the High Priest of Manon (Tom Neyman), his bizarre assistant Torgo (Reynolds) and the Master's unaging wives. Will they escape, or will the wife and little girl become the latest additions to the Master's harem?


A better question might be whether you'll have the stamina to stick with this movie long enough to find out, because this is without a doubt one of most boring films ever unleashed upon the innocent movie-watcher.

Scenes drag on and on with absolutely nothing happening in them--like the one where a couple of characters stare at a painting for what seems like FOREVER. One would think that in a film with no camera set-up lasting more than 30 seconds that they would have picked up the pace a bit. Even more damning, almost every character in the film is either unpleasant or apparently stupid.

And none are more unpleasant than the character who is supposed to be the film's hero, family man Mike. He is such a collossal jerk that, when he and his family get lost on the back roads, he forces himself upon the hospitality of the freakish Torgo... over both the objections of his wife and Torgo; and Torgo gives the best objection of all--the owner of the property will be angry that they're staying there. And to add injury to rudeness, he lets Torgo--who can barely walk--carry his luggage for him. Because even though they're unwelcome guests who are there for just one night, this family must apparently unpack. Finally, Mike turns out to be incompetent as well as obnoxious, as the bad end that his family comes to is absolutely, 100 percent his fault when he fails to lead them to safety or to even shoot The Master at point blank range.

And then there's the cult leader, the Master. I really, truly hope that they have him at least say "talk to the hand" once in the sequel. The fact that he worships Hand ("Manos" is Spanish for "Hand") and wears robes with red fingers on them makes it a joke that MUST be made. And just what is the connection between having a bunch of wives and worshipping the Hand? I would have thought that a bunch of wives would mean you didn't have to rely on your hand for certain kinds of pleasures... the again, maybe I have the wrong idea about polygamy. Maybe the amount of sex you get decreases in direct proportion to the number of pissed off women living in your household? (And I just grossed myself out there, because by the end of the movie, The Master has "married" a 9-year-old girl. But if pedophilia works for Mohammed and Roman Polanski, I suppose it's no surprise it works for The Master.)


The most bizarre aspect of this picture is that The Master's freakish assistant Torgo--who is supposed to be a satyr. but who ends up looking more like a guy with really huge knees than someone with goat legs--emerges as the closest thing to a sympathetic character this film has to offer. Everyone is always picking on Torgo, so we are almost cheering for him when he stands up for himself--those of us who haven't fallen asleep from boredom that is. (Of course, the sympathy is only generated because there is no one else in the film to care about--except maybe the little girl, but she is a non-entity, portrayed by a child actress who clearly received little or no direction and who was in a role that's badly written. Torgo, as much as we appreciate his rebellion when it comes, is a perverted rapist who only does what he does because he wants a woman to dominate; as he says, it's not fair The Master has several and Torgo has none.

I just wrote far more on this movie than it deserves. It is technically incompetent on every level. It even manages to make a cat-fight among cute chicks boring. The only halfway decent thing about the film is "Torgo's Theme."



Okay... I said halfway decent. At least it was covered nicely in the music videos produced by the creators of the forthcoming sequel. And, for once, it is almost guaranteed that the sequel will be far better than the original. (I wonder, though, if it too is being made because someone is trying to win a bet. That was what led to the creation of "Manos: The Hands of Fate"... a Texas fertilizer sales man bet a screenwriter that he could make a movie, because it can be that hard. While he DID make a movie--that in and of itself is a feat; how many dreamers never even start a film and how many must abandon their project due to lack of funding or other difficulties? As bad as "Manos" is, Harold P. Warren made his movie AND got it distributed. For a time. Then its reputation caught up with it.

I don't usually recommend this, but if you haven't seen "Manos" yet, and want to subject yourself to it, you should get the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" version. They've abridged some of the most boring sequences, and Joel and the robots also bring a bit of life to it. Failing that, get the double-feature I've linked to; at least then you'll have a second, more entertaining flick to watch when you tire of "Manos: The Hands of Fate."

Jesse James vs Frankenstein's Daughter

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966)
Starring: John Lupton and Narda Onyx
Director: William Beaudine
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

After Jesse James (Lupton) is ambushed by lawmen during a stagecoach robbery, he seeks help for his wounded partner from a pair of reclusive doctors living in an abandoned Spanish mission. These doctors just happen to be the granddaughter and grandson of Victor Frankenstein, and they are carrying on the family business of trying to create life. Well, sort of. Will one of the Wild West's greatest outlaws survive his encounter with mad science, or will he become FrankenJesse?


When you take a third-rate western and merge it with a Z-grade Frankenstein sequel, you get "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter." Although the acting is better than I would have expected from a movie like this, the fact that it must have been made for $1.95 is laughably obvious. The height of the movie's badness comes when a kindly Mexican girl points Jesse to the place where the doctors live... and we are treated to perhaps the worst matte painting ever. (The Frankenstein Kids apparently live behind a giant, ametuerish landscape painting!) And things get worse once Jesse's partner in crime is monsterfied and rechristened Igor by mad scientiest Maria Frankenstein (Onyx.)


I'm giving this one Two Stars, because for all its badness, it is watchable in a bad western kind of way. If the film's pace wasn't so darn slow, it might even rate Three Tomatoes--the acting is okay, and the sheer foolishness of the concept is kind of fun. Too bad it wasn't better executed.

A naked witch not worth checking out

The Naked Witch (1964)
Starring: Robert Short, Libby Hall and Jo Maryman
Directors: Larry Buchanan and Claude Alexander
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A graduate student (Short) researching the history of a VERY ethnically German town in Texas digs up the corpse of a long-dead witch (Hall) and restores her to life. She the proceeds to take bloody revenge on the decendents of the transplanted Teutonics who murdered her.


To describe "The Naked Witch" as awful is to give it a backhanded compliment. Awful is the mildest of terms one can apply to this film. To make it even worse, it's BORING. What we have here is enough content to barely fill an episode of "Tales From the Darkside" or "Ray Bradbury Theater" but it's stretched out to twice that length. And, although the film barely clears one hour of running time, it feels like twice that.

The fact the script was suitable for a 23-minute TV show rather than a movie is only part of the awfulness here. It's compounded by the film's cast.

First, there's leading man Robert Short, an actor who was born 50-60 years too late. He would have been perfect for slient movies, because he can act with his face and his body language, but whenever he tries to deliver a line, he spoils everything. I am convinced that if you were to put a loaded gun to Mr. Short's head and say, "Act frightened or I will blow your brains out!" he's say "Please, no. Spare me. I have a wife and kids" in a wooden monotone. And we get to suffer through that wooden monotone as Short narrates many of the movies events.


Second, there's Libby Hall, the Naked Witch of the title. She is slightly better than Short when it comes to the acting but not by much. With her, the problem is more a physical one. Although I like nudity as much as the next guy, there really are some women who should keep their shirts on. Ms. Hall is one of them. I don't mean to pick on her, but someone involved with the production should have realized that if you're going to try to sell you movie with sex, you need to have someone a little more sexy doing it; Hall's breasts would have looked just fine if they had been left to the imagination, but when they're exposed, you find yourself seeing something you wish you hadn't. (That said, we don't get to see much of her breasts--not only does the Naked Witch not spend a whole lot of time Naked but when she does, there are often censor bars across the unfortunate boobies.)


Third, there's the fact the fact that every bit of dialogue in the film is atrociously bad... and it sounds even worse coming from the mouths of untalented actors. This isn't entirely the fault of the actors, but good actors can make bad lines at least sound passable. No such luck here.

The only thing that saves this film from a 0-rating is that Buchanan does show the occassional flare for dramatic visuals. There are some great scenes of the Naked Witch walking through the Texas landscape, and there's an almost-great scene where the blood from one of her victims spreads in a body of water. However, such visual moments are shattered by the bad acting and Buchanan's otherwise incompetent directing. He misses more moments to create spookiness or great visuals than he grasps.

All-in-all, I have to wonder why anyone would think this film was worth preserving and re-releasing on DVD. There is so little about it that is worth anything that it was truly wasted time and effort.

Watch this film, you'll feel like YOU'RE cursed!

Death Curse of Tartu (1966)
Starring: Fred Pinero, Babbette Sherrill, Myara Christine and Gary Holtz
Director: William Grefe
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

An undead, shapeshifting Indian shaman takes gory revenge on a group of researchers that has disturbed his underground tomb (located deep in the Everglades swamp).


If you're looking for a movie that gets virtually nothing right, "Death Curse of Tartu" is the film for you. It's got bad actors delivering badly written lines, it's got bland cinematography, pathetic gore effects, some of the worst Foley work you'll see this side of silent movies, and so much inappropriate sound track music that you'll grow numb to it. (The director of the film apparently thought that dramatic music during scenes where nothing happens--such as shots of characters trekking through the bushes or someone making coffee at the campfire--would make the film more exciting). To perfect the awfulness of the film, every character is too dumb to ive, including the survivors of Tartu's wrath and even Tartu himself. There are few films that rely more on "Stupid Character Syndrome" to drag itself to its non-thrilling conclusion this one.

And then there's the fact that Tartu is buried in a bone-dry, sandstone cave that looks like it belongs in the American Southwest rather than a Florida swamp. It makes absolutely no sense and it destroys what little credibility the film had. (Even if such dry caves are possibly in a goopy swamp, it doesn't feel realistic... a thing that's important to achieve in films like this.)

The movie is also deadly dull for the first 35 or so minutes--as it's 12-15 minutes of real material padded with useless film of characters meandering about the swamp--but it picks up a bit when the main group of characters gets to the Everglades. Unfortunately, the padding problem only becomes slightly less severe, causing interesting and even borderline suspenseful parts of the movie to be separated with some of the most boring bits of film you'll ever sit through.

The 2 rating I'm giving "Death Curse of Tartu" is perhaps too generous, but there were glimmers of life in the last 45 minutes of so. If the director and producer had been disciplined enough to make a film 68 minutes instead of 84 minutes, maybe the 2 would be fully deserved. Perhaps this might even be a 3.

"Death Curse of Tartu" is available for the first time on DVD via a "Something Weird Video" Floria-themed double feature extravaganza. The second half of the double-bill isn't all that good either, but it looks like a masterpiece next to this one.

'Horrors of Spider Island' is absolutely horrible

Horrors of Spider Island (aka "The Spider's Web", "It's Hot in Paradise", and "Girls of Spider Island" (1962)
Starring: Alex D'Arcy, Helga Franck, and a bunch of washed-up dancers and wanna-be porn actresses.
Director: Fritz Boettger
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

An impresario (D'Arcy) and his Girl Friday (Franck) are on their way to Singapore with a recently hired troupe of obnoxious, bitchy strippers and chorus girls when their plan crashes. They take refuge on a desolate south sea isand, where the heat makes the girls strip down to bare essentials, where they are menaced by a goofy-looking spider puppet, and where their fearless leader (who's named Gary) is soon transformed into a hideous half-man, half-spider creature. And that's when things get REALLY boring.


I understand there's an "adults only" version of this film that was released, That's not the version I saw. Maybe nudity makes it more interesting, although I sincerely doubt that. Aside from being boring and full of unsexy sexiness, this film features such slipshod use of stock footage that even Edward D. Wood, Jr would grab director Fritz Boettger by the lapels and scream, "What in God's name were you doing man?!" For example, the doomed plane that carries Gary and the babes to Spider Island starts as a two-engine jet, becomes a four-engine plane while in the air, and transforms into a completely different kind of plane (a bomber, I think) as it crashes.

The only horror you'll find in this film is the realization you will never get the 80 minutes you spend watcing it back.

'The She-Beast' should be avoided like other she-beasts, be they mother-in-laws or ex-wives

The She-Beast (aka "Satan's Sister" and "Revenge of the Blood Beast") (1966)
Starring: Ian Ogilvy, John Karlsen, and Barbara Steele
Director: Michael Reeves
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Young newlyweds Phillip and Veronica (Ogilvy and Steele) are honeymooning in Transylvania (their first mistake) when they suffer a car accident. The injured Veronica is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead witch who uses Veronica's body as a vehicle for her revenge against the modern-day descendents of the peope who executed her. Will Phillip reclaim his beloved with the help of eccentric occultist Count Van Helsing (Karlsen) or will she remain the she-beast?


"The She-Beast" is bad on just about every level. It's attempts at comedy are not particularly funny, it's horror elements aren't terribly scary, the characters range from unlikable to annoying, and every technical aspects exudes cheapness. And what passes for a script is muddled and confused almost beyond comprehension.

Barbara Steele brightens every scene she is in with her exotic looks, but she's not in the film enough to make it worth your while to sit through it.





(Trivia: Barbara Steele was so contempteous of this film that even while working on it she tried to dissassociate herself from it by wearing a large hat and sunglasses in most scenes.)

Christopher Lee may look like Holmes,but the rest of the movie is a misfire

Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962)
Starring: Christopher Lee, Thorley Walters and Hans Söhnker
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Sherlock Holmes (Lee) and his arch-nemisis Professor Moriarity (Söhnker) matching wits over an Egyptian necklace owned by Cleopatra, as it is stolen, recovered, and restolen.


This 1962 German film, with its two British stars and a British director, has surprisingly little to recommend it. The script is like a reject from the Universal Pictures series starring Basil Rathbone (with everything I don't like about the weaker efforts among those amplified ten-fold here, most notably Watson being portrayed as a bumbling, retarded simpleton), with an unbearably bad score.

It's amazing that a film with so much potential--Christopher Lee as Holmes and Terence Fisher directing... should be a sure winner!--could go so wrong. While Christopher Lee is absolutely right in his opinion that he and Thorley Walters more closely resemble the literary Holmes and Watson than any other on-screen pair, and there's no question that Lee gives a good performance as Holmes, there is very little else that works in this movie.

There are a couple of interesting moments between Holmes and Moriarity (who is played by the appropriately sinister German actor Hans Söhnker), but the downside is that they feel like they belong more in a hard-boiled, pulp fiction detective novel than a Holmes adventure.

'Ring of Terror' has nothing to recommend it

Ring of Terror (1963)
Starring: George E. Mather, Esther Furst, Norman Ollsted, Lomax Study and Austin Green
Director: Clark L. Paylow
Rating: 0 of Ten Stars

A dippy graveyard caretaker (Green) relates a deadly dull tale of a medical student (Mather) who experiences the ultimate terror... and offers the viewers the experience of ultimate boredom.


"Ring of Terror" is a film with NOTHING to recommend it. From its cast of "college students" (who are being played by actors in their late 30s or early 40s, yet who are talking and acting as though they are in the late teens or early 20s, and thus making the viewer feel deeply embarrassed on their behalf... the lover's lane make-out scene is particuarly painful) to the utter lack of talent shown by anyone in the film's cast or crew, there is simply nothing good here. It's as if a group of actors whose career pinnacle had been roles in those lame public health/educational films from the 50s wrote a script outline on a napkin from the strip-club they were working at, rented a camera, and ad-libbed an atrocity of movie-making.

I've seen better acting at the first rehearsals for high school plays, and I've written better stories on a moment's notice. Don't waste your time with this one.

If you want to check out this movie just to verify I'm not exaggerating, I suggest you get the DVD multipack I've linked to below. That way, you're not out much cash AND you've gotten yourself a couple of decent films at the same time.





Trivia: Director Clark Paylow was an associate producer on Steven Spielberg's hit sci-fi film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."