THE BLOOD DRINKERS (1966)
(a.k.a. THE VAMPIRE PEOPLE/KULAY DUGO ANG GABI)
Article #1101 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Day: 3-20-2004
Posting Day: 8-17-2004
Directed by Gerardo de Leon
Featuring Ronald Remy, Amalia Fuentes, Eddie Fernandez

A vampire plans to save the life of his love by replacing her heart with that of her twin sister’s.

I have to admit that I’m impressed by vampire movies that can come up with new ideas or take new slants on old ideas rather than just rehash the usual vampire lore. That’s why I quite liked this take on the vampire legend; it really is like no other I’ve seen. It was made in the Philippines, and features a tall bald vampire (a la Nosferatu) who has a group of followers, some human and some vampires like himself. The plot is bizarre and somewhat elaborate, and the use of color is truly unusual. The movie is billed as being in color, but that doesn’t quite capture it. Some of the scenes are in color, some are in black and white, and others are tintied red to indicate that the evil of vampirism is present. This vampire wields a whip and uses a gun when the need arises. He has a hunchback and a midget for his helpers, while the Van Helsing character (a priest who knows that faith is important in battling vampirism) has a deaf-mute servant of his own. There are scenes where the vampires regain their humanity, only to lose it again, and a scene where the vampire spares the life of one of his foes because he doesn’t want to draw the wrath of the police onto himself. It definitely has its flaws; the whole production looks somewhat ragged, and the rubber bat is frightfully bad, but this may be one of the weirdest vampire flicks since VAMPYR. It’s worth catching if you want to see something a little different in the way of vampires.

BLOOD BATH (1966)
(a.k.a. TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE)
Article #1100 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Day: 3-19-2004
Posting Day: 8-16-2004
Directed by Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman
Featuring William Campbell, Marissa Mathes, Sandra Knight

My local Creature Feature was in its waning days when this one popped up on it; at the time, I consigned the movie to the rubbish bin as one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Watching it again years later, I’m having second thoughts. The movie had a troubled history; Jack Hill was half way through with the movie when he was fired by Roger Corman and replaced by Stephanie Rothman, who was given instructions to incorporate footage from a Yugoslavian vampire movie into the film. That the result is a bloody mess should not come as a surprise; the thing looks like it was edited with a Cuisinart. Still, individual moments shine through; there’s quite a bit of moody footage that looks European rather than American (the bell-ringing scenes, the flocks of birds fluttering off of a building as a shadow passes over them) that I’m willing to bet is the Yugoslavian footage. There’s a good performance from William Campbell, especially in a very moody sequence in which he sees visions of the love of his ancestor in the black canvas he’s working on. There’s several other interesting scenes, though I still have no use for the trippy-on-a-budget ballerina-dancing-in-the-sand sequence. The movie reminds me at times of CARNIVAL OF SOULS (especially a sequence on a merry-go-round) or DEMENTIA 13, but the most striking similarities are with BUCKET OF BLOOD. In fact, I actually began to wonder if the movie was intended as a sequel of sorts to that one, and if the character of Max in this movie is supposed to be the same as the character of Max in that one, that may have been what was in mind. Certainly, the beatnik artists and their hangout have more than just a passing resemblance to characters and places in BUCKET OF BLOOD, and the humor in these sequences is also quite similar. It’s still a badly flawed movie (the ending is creepy but makes no sense), but it’s certainly better than I first considered it.

BLACK DRAGONS (1942)
Article #1099 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-18-2004
Posting Date: 8-15-2004
Directed by William Nigh
Featuring Bela Lugosi, Joan Barclay, George Pembroke

A doctor’s party is interrupted by the visit of a strange man. Then, one by one, all the members of the party are murdered.

Practically every description of this movie gives away the ending, which I’m not going to do here. Actually, I can see why; the ending is a lot more interesting and easier to understand than the confused, dullish first half. Bela Lugosi does a fine job in this one, and he’s given some excellent lines, my favorite having to do with how “accomodating” certain men have been to him. Incidentally, Bela has a dual role here, but I won’t give away the details.

THE BLACK CAT (1941)
Article #1098 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-17-2004
Posting Date: 8-14-2004
Directed by Albert S. Rogell
Featuring Basil Rathbone, Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford

A family gathers for the reading of the will of a cat-loving old woman. Then the murders start…

When I first started reading books on horror movies, I remember being puzzled about plot descriptions and stills from Ulmer’s THE BLACK CAT (1934), as I remember the movie popping up on my local Creature Feature but the plot descriptions and stills never matched what I remembered. I eventually figured out that the reason for this was that I had never seen that movie at all; it was this later film of the same name that popped up locally, and this is the film I had seen.

In a sense, it is a waste of time comparing the two movies. Outside of their sharing the same title, the presence of Bela Lugosi in both, and the fact that each one came from Universal, they have really nothing in common. The earlier movie is one-of-a-kind, and has never really been repeated, whereas this one belongs to that most common of horror subgenres, the ‘old dark house’ mystery-comedy. It’s definitely a lesser movie than the earlier one, but for what it is, it’s not bad. For one thing, it has a surprisingly strong cast, with Basil Rathbone (wait for the Sherlock Holmes reference), Broderick Crawford, Bela Lugosi (as the red herring caretaker…or is he?), Gale Sondergaard, Gladys Cooper, Anne Gwynne and Alan Ladd. It also features Hugh Herbert as the comic-relief Mr. Penny, and if the name doesn’t ring a bell, his schtick will, since it was parodied many a time in early Warner Brothers cartoons. Actually, I thought Herbert made for one of the better comic reliefs I’ve seen in a movie like this; he’s an antique dealer who believes that antiques are more valuable if they’re damaged, so he runs around trying to make all the furniture in the house more valuable. Again, it’s not bad, but it really doesn’t add anything new to the genre.

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)
Article #1097 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-16-2004
Posting Date: 8-13-2004
Directed by Ted Post
Featuring James Franciscus, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans

An astronaut on a rescue mission to find Taylor becomes stranded on the Planet of the Apes himself.

At heart, I’m fond of the whole “Planet of the Apes” cycle of movies; I was always a little impressed that the movies loop back on themselves, which gave the series as a whole a sense of completion. I suspect that it wasn’t initially planned that way, but I always liked that the decision was made to go in that direction.

However, I don’t place all of the movies on equal footing, and this is one I place fairly low. The first half of the movie plays somewhat like a bare-bones rehash of the original movie without that movie’s wit, while the second half with the bomb-worshipping mutants comes across as silly, especially during the worship sequence. Despite the fact that the movie does attempt to crack a joke occasionally, the movie takes itself several times more seriously than the original without ever becoming worthy of that seriousness, and at times the dialogue reminded me of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Several members of the original cast return for this one, though my favorite performance is from James Gregory as Ursus; it was fun to hear his distinct voice coming through that gorilla makeup. Other than that, I did enjoy spotting Victor Buono as one of the mutants, and I was also amused to see that Tod Andrews and Jeff Corey were in the cast. Charlton Heston is back for a few scenes, as well as Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans and Linda Harrison. Except for recycled footage from the original, Roddy McDowall is noticeably absent, however, though his character is still here (David Watson takes over the role); it would be the only movie of the series to lack his presence. Overall, the movie is a rather glum and gloomy addition to the series, and I think it lacks the fun that marks most of the other entries in the series.

THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS (1961)
Article #1095 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-14-2004
Posting Date: 8-11-2004
Directed by Coleman Francis
Featuring Tor Johnson, Bing Stafford, Larry Aten

A defecting Russian scientist gets caught in a nuclear explosion while being chased by KGB agents, and is transformed into a mutated murdering beast.

I’ve always believed that Ed Wood’s infamy was at least partially the result of his being spotlighted in the Medveds’ Golden Turkey awards books, and that Andy Milligan’s was the result of a passing comment in Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Movie Guide (“If you’re an Andy Milligan fan, there’s no hope for you.”). In the case of Coleman Francis, it was “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” that first brought his name to light, but unlike the other two directors listed, I have yet to encounter any defenders of the man’s oeuvre. Myself, I’ll give him a little credit for giving us the occasional interesting visual moment in this movie, but that’s where the praise ends. This movie is similar to THE CREEPING TERROR in that the soundtrack consists almost entirely of narration and the occasional post-dubbed voice (almost always with the actor’s back to the camera so the syncing of sound and movement doesn’t become an issue); although it feels that it was handled somewhat more professionally here than it did in the other movie, it isn’t any more successful. The narration is maddening; it’s alternatively pretentious, cliched, repetitive, opaque and useless, either telling you what you already know, pounding its themes into the ground with a sledgehammer (just how many people are caught in the wheels of progress?), and eschewing full sentences in favor of annoying sentence fragments (“Joseph Javorsky…Noted scientist…Caught in the wheels of progress… Flag on the moon… How did it get there?…etc, etc.). The editing is annoyingly bad and repetitive as well (just how many shots do we need to see of the concerned mother waiting in a forbidden wasteland for her children to return?). I don’t know if there’s a real story or any point to this movie, despite the narrator’s parade of messages; the sequence where the police try to shoot down an innocent man should have some impact on the movie, but it doesn’t appear to add anything to the movie as a whole. So what you have here is a movie which, from the opening scene in which a woman in a towel is strangled to the last shot of a dying Tor Johnson fondling a bunny, does nothing but make you aware of the slow march of time which turns this hour-long movie into eternal boredom. I’m afraid Tor was better off with Ed Wood.