"The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad", 1958

                                                 
Tagline: "Eighth Wonder Of The Screen!" I bet the other seven weren't the Police Academy series.

Plot: While sailing with Princess Parisa to Baghdad (and to their wedding) Sinbad stops on Colossa Island for food for his starving crew. They are greeted by a magician named Sokurah who is battling a giant Cyclops. (That's the Cyclops on the left, played by Nicki Minaj....just kidding. The Cyclops isn't that ugly.)

 Between Sinbad, his men and Sokurah's magic genie, they get away, but the magician loses his lamp and it's genie.

Sokurah offers a "king's ransom" to go back to the island and retrieve the lamp, but Sinbad won't budge. After all, he has a wedding to attend. The "King" Of Baghdad is partying it up with his former enemy, the Sultan of Chandra, in celebration of their children marrying each other. Sokurah, the magician, sees this as an opportunity to force a return to his island to retrieve his precious lamp. Secretly, he shrinks the Princess and then offers up a cure, but only if he can go back to Colossa Island. Sinbad agrees and scours the local prison for his motley crew, (not the band). Things go from bad to worse ("Well, that escalated quickly.") and it isn't long before Sokurah reveals his true colours.

Ray Harryhausen at his finest, I must say. What? You don't know who Ray Harryhausen is? GET OFF MY BLOG! Come back when you've Googled Ray Bloody Harryhausen! What the hell is the matter with you kids today? With your rap music and your body piercing and your iPhones! Why, when I was your age we didn't have movies! Eyeballs hadn't been invented yet! We just had to feel around and imagine fun things! Where was I?....oh yes:

...at his finest. Ray Harryhausen was computer-generated special effects before computers. That was all stop-motion effects. Each figure moved just a teeny bit and filmed one frame at a time. That man had more patience in his little finger than I have in my....ah, screw it. I don't have time to think of an analogy. I'm a serious fan. All the really awesome b-movies have Harryhausen in them somewhere. Here's just a few: Mighty Joe Young (King Kong's little cousin), 20 Million Miles To Earth (please don't bother the Ymir), The Valley Of Gwangi, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, It Came From Beneath The Sea, and Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers. And those are just the totally awesome ones!

Things I learned from this movie: 1- It's pretty frickin' cool, 2- apparently the first 6 voyages weren't worth making a movie about, 3- for safety reasons you should keep your tiny Princess in a tiny metal box,

 4- recognize the magician? he was in "The Return Of The Archons" on the original Star Trek, 5- "Sinbad" was born in Seattle, 6- four armed snake chick at 19 minutes,

7-  that giant two-headed bird would make a crap-ton of KFC,

 8- conversation:"I will meet you at the magician's castle."..."How will I know?"...you think you'll mistake it for some other magician's castle on this barren island filled with monsters?, 9- sometimes casting evil spells makes you go cross eyed,

 10- "Princess Parisa" was born in Texas....is ANYBODY in this movie born East of the Pecos?

"The Atomic Brain" aka "Monstrosity"....sounds like a really bad University: "Apply early to Monstrosity University! Get your career started in fields like Atomic Brain Transplants and Caring For The Elderly!"....ahem. -1963.

Taglines: "Chained! To the Devil's love lab!" or "Bodies For Sale!". Both are inaccurate, since only one character is chained and that's the man/dog and the bodies aren't for sale, the old woman just steals them.

Plot: Atomic power has been harnessed and used to transplant brains from one subject to another. How? Well, according to the writers those details were unimportant. Sometimes you needed to be in a giant cylinder and sometimes you didn't. Anyway, an old, occasionally crippled, woman uses her vast wealth to hire three women from overseas as her "servants". She also hires a scientist of questionable moral character to transplant the old bittie's brain into one of the young lady's skulls so she can write the girl into her will and transfer her huge bank account along with her brain. Which one? The hottest one, of course. Which is open to interpretation. The "homely" one gets a cat's brain, as a demonstration to the old woman. Yes, that's right, the cat then has a full-sized human brain crammed into it's tiny, tiny skull. *sigh* Meanwhile, there are two "oopsies" roaming the grounds. A disfigured dog-man and a vaccuous but lovely young woman wrenched fresh from her grave. The girls (finally) figure out something is off kilter when their homely friend climbs onto the roof and begins hissing and growling at them. One of those "Gee, that's peculiar" moments that movies like this are famous for. Things go askew when the morally-challenged scientist gets an idea. SPOILER ALERT! He sticks the old woman's brain into a cat (they're apparently all over the freakin' place) and decides to kidnap the hottie who has been chosen, thereby keeping himself close to the old woman's money. The old woman/cat decides that won't do and causes a cat-ish ruckus that evetually burns the whole place to the ground. Our heroine/hottie, Bea, escapes with her life, her originally equipped brain, and we assume a nice little "inheritance".

Things I learned from this movie: 1- it is not to be confused with the just-as-bad "Creature With The Atom Brain" (1955) which I haven't seen yet, but assume to be awful,

 2- it is also not to be confused with the punk rock band "Creature With The Atom Brain" whom I have also never seen or heard but assume to be awful,

3- apparently all night watchmen have drinking problems, 4- any female in B-movies (including corpses) will be beautiful,

 5- when you put an animal brain in a human their face will change for some reason,

 6- there's a ton of skin in this movie!....well, 60's B-movie skin, you don't actually see anything good,

 7- there is a doctor in this called Dr. Frank who experiments with brains....sound familiar?,

8- for a crippled old woman she sure walks around alot,

9- a human brain weighs approximately 3 pounds and yet somehow still fits inside a housecat's skull, 10- Xerxes the cat, who to his credit played both cats, was owned by the actress who played Bea (the hottie who survives).

BONUS FACT: the actor who played Dr. Frank was also in The Wasp Woman. We'll get to that one.
                                                                 (that's him in the middle)

 

"The Amazing Transparent Man" -1959

Tagline: "WARNING! Joey Faust, escaped convict, THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN, has vowed to "appear" invisibly IN PERSON at every performance of this picture!" Well, that should be pretty hard to dispute.

First, a few words about the title: Douglas Kennedy (left), the actor who played the lead, was not completely "transparent", you could see parts of him from time to time and at one point he flickered in and out like our old TV set used to when I was a boy. My Dad used to walk over and smack the side of the set to get it to stay on. My Dad wasn't around during the filming of this, so there's one problem. When he was "transparent" I would hesitate to refer to his actions or the special effects as "amazing". But I suppose it does have a better ring than "The Ludicrous Semi-Invisible Man", so there you go. In summary, neither Amazing nor Transparent....which I guess leaves us with the title "The Man", which in all fairness to the creators wouldn't attract the audience they were looking for.

Plot: A former Major in the army (top right) with delusions of grandeur has forced scientist Peter Ulof (top middle) to develop a radiation-based technique to turn men invisible. He plans to create an invisible army to sell to the country with the most dough to blow. He breaks out of prison a safecracker (Joey Faust) forcing him to undergo the invisibility treatment so Faust can steal more radioactive stuff to further the experimentation. Plans go awry when Faust discovers there is a side-effect to the invisibility treatments he didn't count on. Namely, he has only weeks to live. Throw in a scruples-deficient woman (bottom left) with a thing for bad boys and a former lawman with a rifle (the guy with the rifle) doing the Major's bidding and you've got yourself a crappy movie. Problem: turns out jailed safe-crackers don't always make the best decisions and once "transparent" Faust decides to rob a bank in broad daylight. Which goes okay until the bank guard sees a bag of money floating away and tries to stop it's exit. Then Faust begins to reappear and has to take it on the lam, see? Sorry, my inner gangster came to the surface. He and the broad who likes 'em rotten decide they have enough money to split, (or at least she invites herself along). It's right about then that the Major realizes using a criminal to carry out his orders may not be a simple as it seems.

I have a few issues with this movie and I will now list them, so pay attention because there's a quiz at the end of this post!

The Major utilizes blackmail to enlist the help of all of his cohorts, which is fine but why is he so surprised when they all turn on him?

People flip-flop with their allegiances in the blink of an eye in this movie. The former sherriff is the Major's stalwart hired gun, because he believes the Major holds his son hostage. Until the Bad Girl tells him his son is actually dead. Ten seconds later he's on their side. Do you suppose she might be lying because you were pointing a rifle at her?

The director takes great pains to point out that a lead-lined safe filled with (insert radioactive material here) is kept right beside the high-powered doo-hickey that could blow us all to Hell.....twice! Okay! Okay! We get it! You're going to blow everyone up at the end! Sheesh!

The scientist's daughter is locked in a room right next to where he slaves for the Major. Now, this isn't a metal door or boobie-trapped with explosives. It's just a door. Break it the Hell down and run with your daughter, you silly git!

After everyone is blown to bits....oh, sorry: SPOILER ALERT! After everyone is blown to bits, the scientist, who has escaped with his newly freed daughter, engages in a rambling diatribe concerning the power of nuclear energy and how it is our duty as a free society to reign in our governments and ensure the safety of our children. He ends his rant (and the movie) by looking directly into the camera and asking the movie-goer what he or she would do. A lovely setiment poorly written, poorly acted and tacked on to the end; sticking out like a sore thumb and destroying any semblance of interest in the world of pretend that is supposed to be a movie.

Things I learned from this movie: 1- in the opening credits, a person named Kevin Kelly is shown to play "Woman".....ohhhh-kay, 2- I have a bad feeling the writer chose the name "Faust" in reference to the German story of a man who makes a deal with the Devil; that story will NEVER be mistaken for this turkey, 3- when escaping a federal prison be sure to keep your prison-issued hat on your head....y'know, so everyone can easily see you're an escaped felon, 4- at a checkstop, police will not wake a "sleeping" man to check his I.D. because that would be rude, 5- after inventing an invisibilty ray there is no need to simply patent it and makes billions of dollars, instead set forth a half-baked plan to take over the world, 6- when guarding a dangerous criminal, always sit with your back to the door,

7- getting bashed over the head with a bottle will not cave your skull in like an over-ripe tomato but instead lightly stun you until you have a chance (60 seconds later) to dry off your uninjured head, 8- perhaps selecting criminals and people of loose morals is not the best way to ensure success.

My rating: way, way worse than Claude Rains' Invisible Man, way worse than Kevin Bacon's Hollow Man, about the same as Chevy Chase's Memoirs Of An Invisible Man. Unfortunately, not "transparent" enough.

"She Gods Of Shark Reef" -1958.

You know you're in for at least a little bit of B-movie fun when you see the name "Roger Corman" come up at the beginning of the movie. Corman is still making movies and has FOUR (!) movies coming out in 2013. The Golden Boy of low-budget cinema, Corman has either directed or produced some of the best-known B-movies ever churned out: Attack of the Crab Monsters ('57), Little Shop Of Horrors ('60), House of Usher ('60), Piranha! ('78), Attack Of The Giant Leeches (one of my faves, '59), and both Death Race 2000 ('75) and it's remake Death Race (with Jason Statham), not to mention the original The Fast And The Furious ('55). You can't swing a dead cat by the tail and not hit a wonderfully crappy movie he had a hand in. A hand in the movie, I mean. Not a hand in the dead cat, although I wouldn't put it past him. And best of all, he looks a little bit like an older, clean-shaven me.

The plot: well, first a little back story....Roger Corman, always the cheapskate, filmed two movies at the same time while cast and crew were on the island of Kaua'i, in Hawaii. The second movie was "Naked Paradise". Now, "She Gods" was about two men plotting to rob pearls and find a boat to escape a tropical island after a different robbery gone wrong. However, "Naked Paradise" was about THREE guys looking to find a boat to escape a tropical paradise after a robbery gone wrong. Totally different movie. Even though the main hottie, Lisa Montell, played the main hottie in "Naked Paradise" as well. And it featured an extended scene of the same hula dancer in both movies.

By the way, see that hot blonde wearing only flowers on the poster? Yeah, she's not in either film. There are sharks, though.

Jim, who's a dick, cons his buddy Chris into helping him on a heist. Things go south (pun!) and they take it on the lam, only to be swept away by a typhoon and deposited on the beach of an island inhabited only by hot, young, scantily-clad pearl diving girls. Damn! Of all the rotten luck! The girls are kept in line by an older woman who wouldn't know a smile if it kicked her in the teeth, and she isn't any too happy to have men on her island. Jim convinces Chris to help him steal the pearls the girls have accumulated, but Chris has a change of heart after rescuing Mahia from being sacrificed to the Shark Gods. This too displeases the old crone (who looks suspiciously like my librarian from grade 3). I won't ruin it for you (for once) but things get cookin' and people get "om-nom-nom"ed by sharks. I'm not telling who, though!

That's Jean Gerson playing the keeper of the virgins. Her credits include "Woman Selling Chestnuts" in Spartacus and "Slave Woman With Donkey" in The Ten Commandments. Plus she was in this! Don Durant, on the left, played Jim, the handsome but unscrupulous cad. That's Bill Cord on the right, playing Chris, the dipstick with a good heart who keeps getting sucked in to Jim's illegal schemes. Chris eventually falls in love with Mahia, below, one of the "She-Gods".

Things I learned from this movie: 1- Not all She Gods are created equal, 2- if you happen to have a private island loaded with a metric *bleep*-ton of pearls, be sure to leave the pearls in an unlocked and unguarded hut, 3- if you piss off a librarian (or an old woman who just looks like a librarian) she will feed you to the sharks, 4- pearl diving virgins speak only in the third person, 5- watching bad movies in colour is preferable if there are scantily-clad young women in the picture, 6- you know the movie is old when they refer to Hawaii as a "territory", 7- I really, really want to go to Hawaii one day, virgins or no virgins.

"Moon Of The Wolf" -1972 A made-for-TV movie that lives up to all the hype you have come to expect from under-budgeted TV specials. First, let's address the DVD cover pictured above. That's David Janssen (you might know him from the non-sucky TV show "The Fugitive"). He wasn't the werewolf. Plus he played the Sheriff, who never once had a jacket on. Then there's the girl who looks like she's on an episode of "Cops", turning to surrender. ("That *bleep* ain't mine, man! I was just holding it for this *bleep* I know, man! This is bull*bleep*") I have no idea who this chick is supposed to be. If she's in the show, I missed it. No clue. So, to summarise the DVD cover: utter bull*bleep*.

The woman who WAS in the movie (there are basically two women: the girl found dead in the Buy-You and the rich one the Sheriff has a crush on) is Barbara Rush, a veteran actress who has a few B-movie appearances in some of my favourites, like "When Worlds Collide" (1951) and "It Came From Outer Space" (1953). She's a gas! Barbara played the rich one. Some poor girl played the corpse, since we never see her face.

Geoffrey Lewis, a wonderful character actor you would immediately recognise if you ever had a TV on in the 70's or 80's, plays the wild-eyed local who's faceless sister gets made into Werewolf Helper down in the Buy-You (they keep saying it like that). He's famous for being in "Any Which Way But Loose" with Clint Eastwood, but he was in TONS of stuff from "Flo" and "Falcon Crest" all the way up to "The Devil's Rejects". If I remember right, one of the killers encourages him to "pray to your God" while he cuts his throat in that.

Which leaves John Beradino, who played a doctor in every single thing you ever saw him in, including this. Most famous for being on General Hospital, where he played a.........doctor. *Gasp!* Poor bastard.

The "plot" such as it is, is this: Sheriff Fugitive investigates the (we assume) grisly murder of a (we assume) beautiful young woman who's body is found face-down in the Bayou. (Sorry "Buy-You"). All the locals gather to see, 'cause it's Saturday and there's nothing good on TV. Faceless Girl's obviously much older and considerably uglier brother, Any Flo Crest But Loose, shows and blows a gasket. This guy did sweaty and wild-eyed before Jack Nicolson made it cool. Once brother and locals are shooed away, the Doctor-That-Always-Plays-A-Doctor admits to Sheriff Fugitive that he was doinking the Faceless Girl. That, really, is the single biggest mystery of this whole movie, 'cause he all ol' and junk!

After A LOT of gabbing and reminiscing between Sheriff Fugitive and Veteran B-Movie Actress Crush Woman, we stumble upon the idea that this may be the work of a supernatural being! *Gasp!* Yes, it would seem that the average person does not have the ability to overpower an armed Deputy and rip the bars of a jail door so he can chaw on Mr. Wild Eyes. And that took 39 minutes to get to. The whole movie is just over an hour long, people! Let's get crack-a-lackin'!

As you can see from the still of the Werewolf/German Shepard dude, the vast majority of the $137 budget went into make-up and special effects....*cough* Yes, well at any rate....

Long story short, SPOILER ALERT!, it's the Rich-Ass Brother of The Rich Woman who turns out to be the dog. I mean Werewolf.

He even crashes through a hospital window just to prove it. The sister has to use bullets blessed by a priest (no, really!) to kill her hairy-knuckled brother. He expires but not before giving us a good chuckle at his expense.

I learned very little from this movie with the following exceptions: 1- You don't need a budget for special effects if you don't show the Werewolf for half the movie, 2- this is the only movie I know of where you can kill a mystical monster with holy bullets....I mean, I had no idea Sylvester Stallone was even ordained, 3- it took 37 minutes for this show to reveal a hairy hand, and another 20 minutes after that to see the dog!...I mean Werewolf, 4- this movie would have made a better drama concerning the low-income Sheriff trying to get together with his high school crush, the well-to-do Rich Woman and having to deal with her over protective brother, who just happens to be a Werewolf. That would have worked.

"Queen Of The Amazons" -1947.

Okay. Today's rant is concerning the little known (and for good reason) "Queen Of The Amazons" which was released in 1947 to the eager movie-going public and was met with a thunderous "Meh." After all, this is three years after the end of WWII and it takes a little more than a crazy dame in a leopard skin dress to get people's tongues wagging.

Tagline: "White Goddess of the Dark Jungle.She offered ECSTASY and DEATH!" That, madam, is an offer I must refuse. Thanks though. You should have stopped at "ecstasy".

General overall plot:        
White chick leads a party to India to investigate the disappearance of her boyfriend but someone thwarts their efforts through lies and murder. After their best lead gets shot, they go to Africa where guide Gary Lambert and his comic cook Gabby (the fat guy with the gun in the poster) guide them into unknown territory. The boyfriend is found living with Zita (oops!), a jealous and beautiful Amazon queen. The mysterious deaths continue as the guide tries to discover who has been dealing in contraband ivory. When he solves that mystery, he also uncovers the identity of the mysterious murderer.

It's Gabby. Oops, I mean "spoiler alert!"....it's Gabby. You could probably figure that out from the poster all by yourself, I guess. Really, he's the best part of the whole movie. Gabby (played by J. Edward Bromberg....you'll remember him from such films as "Queen Of The Amazons" and...not much else) is one of those guys from movies of this era where when they shot a pistol they flick their hand forward while shooting, as if they have to flick the bullets out of the gun. It strikes me as very comical. Try that with a real gun and you'd probably shoot yourself in the face.

Things I learned from this movie:
1- There is apparently more than one Amazon
2- Natives of India, when speaking to each other in private, will speak in English
3- if you can't afford to film in India (or Africa) just go to the San Diego Zoo and get some footage there




4- crows are apparently common in the Amazon and make excellent pets
5- when you look through a telescope, you can see things in slow-motion
6- in spite of showing us the female lead is a perfect shot with a pistol, she will stand with a pistol in hand and do nothing as her guide is mauled by a lion

7- there is a hilariously bad scream at 35 minutes
8- Zita and....Greg?...of the wild Amazon

9- real quote, said in the middle of Africa "This is no place for a monkey!"
10- if a bad guy throws a spear in a hut ten feet across he will miss his target.

Bonus facts! Keith Richards is in this! No, really! Well, not the guy from The Rolling Stones but a guy named Keith Richards. I think the Keith from The Stones was probably only 25 or so in 1947.