'Lady Frankenstein' mixes monster-making with sexual perversion

Lady Frankenstein (aka "Daughter of Frankenstein") (1972)
Starring: Sara Bey, Joseph Cotton, Paul Muller, Mickey Hargitay, and Paul Whiteman
Directors: Mel Welles and Aureliano Luppi
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Tania Frankenstein (Bey) proves psychopathy is an inherited trait when she continues and perfects her dead father's work in reanimation and monster-making... by creating her perfect mate and sex-toy, using the body of a hunky handyman, and the brain of her father's former assistant (Muller).

"Lady Frankenstein" is a fast-paced--once it gets started... it opens rather slow--decidedly sleazy twist on the typical Frankenstein film. Monsters are created, monsters run amok, and torch-wielding villagers burn the castle down, but the twist here is that Frankenstein (played with class above this movie's station by Joseph Cotton) dies at the end of the first act, leaving his twisted daughter in charge of the murder and mayhem. Boy, does she rise to the challenge.

This film is most remarkable for the most disturbing sex scene I've seen so far on film with Tania Frankenstein having an orgasm as her lover is being murdered under her. Twisted stuff, but in perfect keeping with the overall tone of the film. It is also remarkable for having just about the lamest-looking monster of any featured in a Frankenstein film. (Yes, even lamer than the non-monster in "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter"... what we have here looks like the Toxic Avenger's retarded country cousin.)

Decently acted, and featuring better music, camera work, and sets than many films of this kind, "Lady Frankenstein" might be worth a look if my comments above haven't warned you off.

'Re-Animator' is a gory trip into movie madness

Re-Animator (1985)
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale and Robert Sampson
Director: Stuart Gordon
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Dan's new roommate and fellow third-year med student, Herbert West (Combs) draws him into his bizarre (and successful) experiments with re-animating dead bodies.

"Re-Animator" is one of the craziest movies ever made, and it ranks up there with "Dead Alive" as one of the funniest creepy movies ever made. While it is nowhere near as gory as "Dead Alive" and the slapstick isn't quite as sharp, it features a cleverer script and a superior cast.

Jeffrey Combs is particularly excellent as Herbert West. We get the sense that he's a bit weird early in the film and highly strung; Combs performance puts the viewer in mind of Peter Cushing's Victor Frankenstein in the first couple of Hammer Frankenstein films... coldblooded, arrogant and probably sociopathic but not necessarily completely bonkers. When West calmly a bone saw through the chest of a zombie and then immediately sets about reanimating its recently deceased victim, it's clear not just from his actions but from Combs performance that he more than a little off. And when he later animates the severed head of an obnoxious rival (likewise brilliantly played by David Gale), it's clear that he is completely unhinged.

Speaking of the severed head, it gives rise to some of the most unnerving moments in the film, as well some of the funniest. I don't want to go into too much details, because I'd ruin the shock value. Suffice to say, it's something that needs to be seen.

Credit also needs to be go to Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton. While Combs and Gale are giving performances that seem like they just teleported in from a Hammer Films set in 1960, they play their characters mostly low-key. This, combined with the fact that their characters are nice and normal people, give the audience someone to identify with as the film unfolds and provide an island of calm in the middle of the evermore turbulent sea of madness that is this movie.


"Re-Animator" elevates Herbert West among the great movie mad doctors, even if, according to the very informative interview included on the Achor Bay edition of the film, he was actually a minor character in the script and through most of the filming. It wasn't until "Re-Animator" was crafted into a releasable movie that the emphasis shifted to Herbert. (Comments in the interviews on the DVD even make me wonder if the filmmakers knew they were making a comedy until late in the process....)

Whether intentional or accidental art, this is one of those movies that gets everything right, from the mood-setting prologue, through its score (which spoofs Bernard Hermann's famous music for "Psycho") to its chilling end. It's also feels as fresh as when it first released in 1985. This is one of those very rare horror movies that actually deserves the label "classic."

If you are inclined to add this film to your personal library, make sure you get the limited edition "unrated" version from Anchor Bay. The cut presented there may be shorter than the R-rated version, but the humor and shocks are more outrageous than its tamer and slightly bloated counterpart. The disc full of extras is also something that you'll find extremely interesting if you have any interest at all in the filmmaking process. (The same is true of the commentary tracks.)

Karloff is 'The Man Who Changed His Mind'

The Man Who Changed His Mind (aka "Body Switch", "Doctor Maniac", and "The Man Who Lived Again") (1936)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, John Loder, Donald Calthorp, and Frank Cellier
Director: Robert Stevenson
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Dr. Laurence (Karloff) devises a method to switch the intangible elements that makes up a being's mind from one body to another, but snaps when he is mocked by the scientific establishment and a rich newspaper publisher (Cellier) pulls his patronage for the doctor's research. He decides to use his method for his own gain, up to and including switching bodies with the son of his former patron (Loder) so he can marry the beautiful and intelligent Dr. Clare Wyatt (Lee).

"The Man Who Changed His Mind" is perhaps one of the most intense horror films from the 1930s that I've come across. From the first time Boris Karloff's chain-smoking mad scientist crosses paths with Anna Lee's brilliant and independent-minded surgeon, you know things are going to end badly for more than one of the film's characters. But even with that knowledge, you're not going to guess how badly and for whom until the story is all but done unfolding. Even after nearly 75 years, this is a horror film that countless modern-day filmmakers need to study and emulate' their films would be far better for it.

The film is driven by a tight, expertly paced script that presents just the right mixture of horror and humor to make both aspects as effective as possible, especially given that most of the humor is of a pitch-black variety. The cast is also excellent and everyone is perfect for their parts and talented enough to bring depth to even the thinnest of characters. Dr. Laurence's assistant Clayton could easily have been just an obnoxious and unpleasant jerk, but Donald Calthorp brings enough humanity to the role that the viewer had a little empathy for him. The same is true even of John Loder's character who belongs to that most loathsome of 1930s comic relief characters--the wise-cracking, corner-cutting reporter; the superior script and dialogue makes even that character type bearable, and the viewer will actually fear for him when he becomes a target of Laurence instead of cheering the villain onward to success just to shut him up.

But the film's coolest--and most chillingly unexpected-- scenes is the one where Dr. Wyatt takes on the mantle of "mad scientist". The lighting, editing, and superior acting talent of Anna Lee all add up to the character going to a dark place that few heroic characters go even in the nihilistic modern horror movies.

There is a hard coldness on her face and in her eyes that would have made even the mad Dr. Laurence shiver in fear, as she works switches and buttons on the mind-switching contraption. It's a performance that puts to shame even the one that I until now considered Lee's best--her turn as another strong-willed woman in Bedlam (review here, at the Boris Karloff Collection). It truly is one of the greatest moments in horror films, and I don't understand why more critics who fancy themselves experts in Great Cinema don't include it on their lists of "Top Fifty Horror Moments." Heck, it might even belong in the Top Ten!

"The Man Who Changed His Mind" is one of the many under-appreciated films from the early days of the horror genre. It is superior to a number of the more famous movies--including the ones from Universal that everyone has seen--and I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to give it a try.

It's all very Russian...

The Drums of Jeopardy (1931)
Starring: Warner Oland, June Collyer, Lloyd Hughes, Hale Hamilton, Wallace MacDonald, Clara Blandick, and Mischa Auer
Director: George B. Seitz
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When one of the men of the Petrov family makes his daugher pregnant, dumps her, and causes her to commit suicide, but then won't own up to his misdeed, Dr. Boris Karlov (Oland) sets out to gain revenge by seeing them all dead. He persues them halfway around the world, to America, where a secret service agent (Hamilton) and a feisty young American woman (Collyer) end up in the middle of this Russian struggle for survival and revenge.


"Drums of Jeopardy" is a nifty little thriller from the early takes of talkies that's jam-packed with meldodrama, action, and humor. Its fast-paced script hardly gives the viewers a chance to realize that just about everything in this film has become almost painfully cliche in the nearly eighty years since its original release, nor does it pause long enough to really let us consider how outrageous and dimwitted the "brilliant" plan of the Federal Agents who match wits with Karlov is. We're too busy hating the slimy Russian nobleman Prince Gregor (Wallace MacDonald) who not only impregnated and dumped a poor girl, refuses to live up to what he's done and ultimately tries to sell out everyone else to save his own skin; admiring the beauty of the resourceful young Kitty Connover (June Collyer), snickering at the comic relief provided by her sharp-tongued aunt (Clara Blandick), and grinning with sinister glee as Dr. Karlov delivers zingers and pulls tricks on the good guys that allows him to take a place among the great villains of movie history 's zingers as his evil plans fall into place (an honor deserved in no small part due to an excellent performance by character actor Warner Oland who is best remembered or playing Charlie Chan and for his role in "Werewolf of London").

Another remarkable aspect of this film that sets it apart from many of its contemporaries is that it has a villain that the viewer can relate to. His daughter was violated and tossed aside by the Petrovs, so, given that this is a melodramatic thriller and we're talking about Russians here, it's only natural he'd take elaborate and final revenge against not only the Petrovs but Russian nobility in general. Karlov is a character who is almost like a tragic hero in his stature within this film and he is must more interesting than most film villains from the early days of film.

I should note that as much as I enjoyed this film, I was a little dissapointed in some apsects of how the story unfolded. I've already commented on the moronic nature of the government agents in the film, but a bigger dissapointment was that Karlov didn't really get his full revenge and we don't get to see that rat bastard Gregor die a slow and painful death. (That alone makes me wish for a remake of this movie. I'd love to see Tim Thomerson as Karlov!)

Speaking of Karlov... yes, the villain of this movie is named Boris Karlov. Given that this film is based on an American novel that was originally published in 1920, I think we can chalk this up to one of those weird coincidences. Karloff was an obscure stage actor touring Canadian backwaters at the time the book was written. (Although at least one source claims that Karloff chose his screen name because of the novel.)

With Paula, it truly is a glandular problem

Captive Wild Woman (1943)
Starring: John Carradine, Milburn Stone, Lloyd Carrigan, Acquanetta, Evelyn Ankers, Fay Helm, and Ray Corrigan
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A mad genius (Carradine) proves the correctness of his cutting-edge theories in glandular functions by transforming a gorilla into a shapely young woman he names Paula (Acquanetta). Tragedy and death ensue.


The more one watches horror and sci-fi films from the 1940s, the more obvious it is why Universal's attempt to recapture the magical horror profits that carried them through the depression in the 1930s failed. Too many of the films from this "revival period" are no different than the sort of nonsense that was issuing forth from small studios like Monogram and PRC; instead of living up to greatness of "The Mummy" and "The Invisible Man," Universal production executives and directors instead lowered themselves to the level of those who had followed on their coattails.

When compared to the classics of the 1930s, or even "Ghost of Frankenstein" and "The Wolfman" from the 1940s--something the modern-day Universal marketeers are encouraging us to do by including this film is DVD multipack titled "Universal Horror: Classic Movie Archive"--this movie falls woefully short. It's more in the league of low-budget efforts like "The Devil Bat" or "The Monster Maker," just to pick two movies about mad scientists at random. That is a serious step down from the great horror shows of the 1930s.

While disappointing when considered in the light of the cinematic greatness that Universal had once brought to the world, "Captive Wild Woman" is well-acted and well-filmed, with a fast pace to carry us quickly through the story. While Carradine is no Bela Lugosi or Lionel Atwill, he does a decent enough job as the mad doctor at the heart of the story, and the exotic beauty of Acquanetta makes the movie more enjoyable as well. This is not a "classic" in any sense other than it's an old movie, but it's worth checking out if you like the fantastic pulp-fiction science of the early sci-fi and horror flicks.

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.

Girls in swimsuits vs. zombies = Idiot proof concept? Alas, no.

Attack Girl's Swim Team vs. Undead (2007)
Starring: Sasa Handa, Yuria Hidaka, and Ayumu Tokitô
Director: Koji Kawano
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

All teenaged Aki (Handa)wants to do is to fit in at her new school. However, on her first day, the student body and teachers are turned into zombies by a mysterious virus... except for the swim team who are immune because of their exposure to chlorine in the pool. Now, they must fight off the undead (and mad scientist rapists) if they are to stay alive. Good thing Aki's been trained to fight undead from a young age.


That is one cool cover image, wouldn't you say? It certainly sold me on the film. That and the promise of boobs and bloody gore. Unfortunately, it is like the majority of American horror-themed softcore porn flicks, except with a better marketing department creating imagery to sell it.

The biggest problem with this film is that cheapness wafts off it like the moldy smell of a wet swimsuit that's been left in a plastic bag for too long. It was shot on video by a crew that didn't understand how to light a scene properly or even place the camera for maximum dramatic effect. It features actresses who were hired first for their willingness to throw off their clothes for on-camera nudity and simulated sex (both consensual and forced) and for their acting talents second. The make-up and special effects--from most of the gore effects to some very poorly done CGI explosions--is strictly amateurish and on a level that shouldn't be seen outside films made by high schoolers with extra time on their hands. Finally, most of the fight scenes are badly choreographed and even more ineptly filmed. It will probably never cease to amaze me how many filmmakers who think they know how to make actions films underestimate the importance of camera placement when it comes to making it look like the actors are actually beating on one another.

The movie is not all bad. It moves along at a fairly fast pace--faster than most American movies to this type--and there are a few scenes that do work. The scene where a zombified teacher starts killing students with a ruler and the one where another teacher goes at our swim team heroines with a chainsaw are fairly well done. The same is true of a couple of the sex scenes.

And then there's the vagina laser. One mustn't forget the vagina laser.


If you want to look at young Asian women in little or no clothing while getting a fair dose of blood and gore along the way, you'll find what you're looking for in this film. Just be aware that it's all presented in a fairly lackluster way. (Except the vagina laser. There's no way to present that in a lackluster fashion.)

Peter Lorre lends a hand in the name of 'Mad Love'

Mad Love (aka "The Hands of Orlac") (1935)
Starring: Frances Drake, Peter Lorre, and Colin Clive
Director: Karl Freund
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Dr. Gogol (Lorre), a brilliant but mentally unstable surgeon (Lorre) becomes obsessed with the beautiful actress Yvonne Orlac (Drake)--obsessed to the point where he has a wax statue of her installed in his music room. When Yvonne's husband's (Clive) hands are crushed in an accident, Orlac saves them using a revolutionary surgery technique to save them... but then turns to the task of driving Orloc insane, so he can claim Yvonne as his own.


"Mad Love" is a slightly muddled movie with a confused plot (made more-so by the obnoxious comic relief character of an American newspaper reporter (played by Ted Healey). However, the film is well-acted and filmed on impressively lit sets--Gogol's large, empty house/clinic becomes a great metaphor for his his hollow soul, as shadows play throughout it--and its mixture of romance and horror is bound to entertain lovers of early horror movies. The climactic scenes are particularly chilling, as the depths of Gogol's psychopathy becomes crystal clear.

(It may even serve as part of the lineup for a Bad Movie Nite, although it's by no means a bad movie. Some of the more melodramatic elements may tickle the fancy of certain kinds of movie lovers, especially Dr. Gogol's disguise at one point in the film. It's one of those rare cinematic moments that's both scary and hilarious.)

Although not necessarily considered one of the "founding" films of the horror genre, it is certainly the first "transplanted hands take on a life of their own" movies. I can think of at least three others I've seen over the years with very similar plots. (And I think there's a fourth one lurking in my Review Pile.)

Weird terror in small packages

Attack of the Puppet People
(aka "Six Inches Tall" and "The Amazing Puppet People")(1958)
Starring: John Hoyt, June Kenney and John Agar
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Mr. Franz (Hoyt), a demented puppeteer turned dollmaker invents a machine that will shrink living beings to the size of dolls. He uses it on anyone he likes who appears to be exiting his life and keeps them in his workship. When his secretary (Kenney) prepares to leave his employ to marry a likeable traveling salesman (Agar), the couple become his latest victims.


As the title of "Atack of the Puppet People" implies, the main storyline of this film involves a small group of shrunken men and women attempting to escape their captor, and, hopefully, return to their full size. It's an engaging movie--assuming you can buy into the whole "puppeteer shrinking people with mad science wonder-tech" aspect of the story--that is fast-paced and well-acted. Unfortunately, the script isn't quite up to snuff, and it features a number of plot threads that don't go anywhere and an ending that not only just sort of peters out but which leaves the fates of the majority of the puppet people a mystery.

(Even more annoying, for me at least, was that we never got to see the Jekyll/Hyde marionnette in action after all the talk that revolved around it. The scene with the tiny John Agar trashing the marionette was pretty cool, but I still would have liked to see the supposed transforming puppet actually tranform.)

Double Feature: Tales of the Astro Zombies

Ted V. Mikels is one of those filmmakers who is spoken of in the most glowing of terms by creatives and B-movie fans alike. However, from what little exposure I've had to his work, I think he might be to those enthusiasts as Charles Band and Full Moon is to me: You either like his movies or your don't.

In the case of Mikels, I think I may be in the "don't" category. I've only seen two, but I was led to believe that "The Astro-Zombies" was among his best. Maybe I was misled--it could be a fellow reviewer was playing a cruel prank on me!--but my reaction was that if "The Astro-Zombies" is Mikels' best, then I don't get the appeal.

This is the first of two Ted Mikels Double Feature posts I'll be making--I have his "Grinder" movies sitting in my 'To Be Reviewed' stack, and I'll get to them some day. If you have an opinion on his work in general, or these two movies in particular, I'd love to hear it.


The Astro-Zombies (1968)
Starring: John Carradine, Tura Satana, Joan Patrick, Wendell Corey and Tom Pace
Director: Ted V. Mikels
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A disgraced NASA researcher (Carradine) trying to create the perfect astronaut using dead bodies, hi-tech, and radio waves uses the brain of a homicidal maniac for one of this creations... and it runs amok. A sinister Mexican spy ring gets wind of his creation and dispatch sultry psycho Satana (Satana) to secure it for their use as a super-soldier. Meanwhile, the Astro-Zombie is stalking the beautiful nurse that was the last person he saw while alive (Patrick).

"The Astro-Zombies" is one of those flicks that mix all sorts of genres into a wild B-movie stew. In this sense, it's a In this film, we get horror, we get action, we get spy vs. spy intrigue, we get blood and guts... we get everything but excitement.

Despite all the plots and subplots and characters crammed into this film, it is still very, very boring. If it had clocked in at a crisp 60 minutes, it might not have been so bad, but an additional 20 minutes are added to the running time through padding. We overlong and pointless scenes of Carradine's mad scientist puttering around his lab uttering techno-babble, we have long and pointless scenes of characters driving about, and we have lonmg stretches of badly delivered expository dialogue that's only slightly more boring than watching Carradine puttering around the lab set.

Aside from the padded, we can add that the film is universally badly acted--except perhaps the performances from John Carradine and Joan Patrick, but the characters they play are so archetypal and flat that all they're doing is delivering their lines competently--weakly directed, and full of illogical plot conveniences without which the story would fall apart.

There are a few moments in the film that let us see what might have been if it had been more competently mounted--such as the climactic confrontation between mad doctor, evil secret agent Mexican bitch and Chad Squarejaw of the FBI--but they are too few to save the movie from a very low 4 rating.



Mark of the Astro-Zombies (2002)
Starring: Sean Morelli, Robert Southerland, Tura Satana, Brinke Stevens, and Shanti
Director: Ted V. Mikels
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Evil aliens unleash machete-wielding Astro-Zombies upon unsuspecting shoppers at mini-malls as a prelude to their plan to invade Earth (I think). While the greatest scientific minds of the United States try to figure out where these murderers are coming from, an opportunistic psychopath (Satana) sets about conning intelligence agencies from around the world that she commands the unstoppable killers and that they can be theirs for the right price.

"Mark of the Astro-Zombies" is a kinda-sorta sequel to the 1968 "cult classic" from the same writer/director, although the connections make absolutely no sense. (Why do the alien Astro-Zombies look like the ones created by an Earthling in the first movie? Why did it take the twin sister of the evil Mexican femme fatale super agent in the first movie 35 years to mount her revenge? And just how and why did they keep John Carradine's head alive for all that time?)

The film further suffers from two major problems. First, it feels like director Ted V. Mikels took the approach "we shot the scene, so we gotta use it!", which leads to a number of redundant and repetative dialogue exchanges, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with the main thrust of the story and just serve to bore and annoy viewers. Second, it's script is so atrociously bad both in story organization and in dialogue that I sincerely hope it was ad-libbed from a loose outline and that said outline morphed as filming took place. The only thing that works in the script is the comedy... oh, wait. The comedy here is almost entirely unintention. NOTHING works in the script!

There are a few ideas here that made me give the film a very generous rating of 3. The notion of an uscrupulous and well-connected member of the intelligence community attempting to take advantage of a global crisis to con corrupt regimes like Iran, North Korea, China and Venezula out of piles of money is pretty cool. It's completely botched here due to a non-existent budget (if international spies can be fooled into thinking a guy in a Halloween mask is an industructable super-soldier, then it's not at all surprising that Saddam Hussein fooled them all into thinking he had nukes and chemical weapons) and sloppy writing.

Despite liking some of the ideas in the film, there is really nothing here to recommend it. The behind-the-scenes footage included on the DVD make it look like everyone had a good time making the movie--and I get that sense from watching the film unfold as well--but the end product is simply not worth the time you'll waste watching it.





Ted V. Mikels is about to start production on his second Astro Zombies sequel, "Astro Zombies M3: Cloned". He will be casting and interviewing potential crew on 1/19/2010, and cameras are slated to roll on 1/31/2010. You can read more about the project and watch a teaser trailer at his official website by clicking here. (You can also see pictures of Mikels and his cool moustache there.)

Now they've gone too far! Nazis are turning sexy chicks into monsters!

She Demons (1958)
Starring: Irish McCalla, Tod Griffin, Victor Sen-Yung, and Rudolph Anders
Director: Richard Cunha
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

An obnoxious an rich girl (McCalla) and two of her daddy's employees (Griffin and Sen-Yung) are shipwrecked on an uncharted island. They must fight fight for survival against a Nazi mad scientist (Anders) who has harnessed the secret of perpetual motion and is using it and processes he perfected in the WW2 concentration camps to steal the beauty of native island girls (who like all native girls only want to dance) and transferring it to his wife, in the hopes of restoring her fire-ravaged body. The process reduces them to horribly mutated, violent monsters.... you know, She-Demons!

My summary gave away the element that almost earned this film a Four Rating. It's going along likea fairly standard, low-budget castaways-on-a-jungle-island-with-monsters-and-a-hot-babe movie when suddenly Nazis appear on the scene. And they're not just any Nazis... they're led by a mad scientist Nazi who, although his research is dedicated to restoring his wife's beauty (at the expense of a bevvy of hot bikini-babes) he immediately wants to do the horizontal mambo with Aryan beauty Irish McCalla.

That strange turn resulted in this film perhaps being the greatest combo of B-movie/exploitation movie/"grindhouse" movie mainstays ever made. (Uncharted island, jungle inhabited by strange creatures, a mad scientist transforming humans into beasts with his weird experiments, Nazis--sadistic, whip-weilding Nazis no less--a wife with a disfigured face who only Weird Science can restore, wise-crakcing colored sidekick, and exploding volcaones. All this movie needed was a flying saucer, nudity, and lesbian vampires, and it might have been been the Platonic ideal of crappy movies.)

Of course, it would need better acting and something resembling decent dialogue to truly be worth viewing. Only Rudolph Anders as mad scientist Colonel Osler was truly any good, because he went waaay over the top with smariness and superior attitude. Irish McCalla did an okay job, because her character was so obnoxious that I wanted Osler to turn her into a She-Demon because it would shut her up.

On its own, "She-Demons" is not worth your time or money. It might be odd enough to be a secondary feature for a Bad Movie Night, but if you are going to get it, look for a DVD multipack that includes it and one or two movies you know are good. That way, this becomes a "bonus feature", and you've gotten your money's worth.

The overall blandness is spiced up by the exteme sadism of the bad guy

The Monster Maker (1944)
Starring: J. Carroll Naish, Tala Birell, Wanda McKay, Ralph Morgan and Terry Frost
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A mad scientist (Naish) goes to extreme measures to force the daughter (McKay) of a celebrated concert pianist (Morgan) to marry him.


"The Monster Maker" is a sadistic little horror film about a maniac with a talent for epidemiology, the young lady he wants to possess no matter what, and her father that he infects with a horrible disease to make it happen.

The movie is a little on the slow side, the acting is uniformly bland and the camera work is even more so. However, the absolute and pure insane evil that is represented by J. Caroll Naish's character of Dr. Markoff will make you stick with the film. His plan to force the lovely Patricia to marry him can't possibly work, but he proceeds with the unwavering certainty that only a complete lunatic would display... and the film gets increasingly sadistic toward its various characters as it unfolds.

Dr. Markoff may well be one of the most evil mad scientists of the first decade of horror cinema, not to mention one of the craziest. (I can't comment on the full reason why I say he's the evilest and craziest as it ruins one of the film's shocking revelations, but take my word for it: You haven't seen the final word in an evil mad scientist until you've seen "The Monster Maker".

The film is also noteworthy if you're interested in following the trail of the obviously fake gorillas that were so common(and possibly even proscribed by some sort of cinematic code) among low-budget film studios in the 1940s. Perhaps it was the same fake gorilla? It shows up again here and it's just as unintentionally hilarious as every other time it shows up.

(Has anyone tried to catalogue the number of times these fake gorillas showed up during the 1940s? If not, there might be an article in that idea....)

"The Monster Maker" is worth checking out if you're into mad scientists and/or fake gorilla suits. I highly recommend the version available from Alpha Video as the DVD transfer was made from a virtually prestine print of the film. Click here to read more about, or to order a copy, it at Amazon.com. (There are some minor scratches, but it's in far better shape than what is typical for films from long-bankrupt minor studios like PRC.)

'Frankenstein Island' is a land of missed opportunity

Frankenstein Island (1981)
Starring: Robert Clarke, Steve Brodie, Robert Christopher, Tain Bodkin, Kathrine Victor, Cameron Mitchell, George Mitchell and John Carradine
Director: Jerry Warren
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Hot air balloonists crashland on an uncharted island where they discover primitive bikini babes descended from alien visitors, stranded pirates, Kung Fu zombies, and Shiela Frankenstein (Victor) continuing the experiments of her famous relative.


Despite a crazy mix of elements--any one of which could have brought some excitement to this film--"Frankenstein Island" is a crushing bore from beginning to end. The dull 'heroes' wander around not doing much of anything--even the Kung Fu fight versus the zombies who all look like they just walked out of a beatnik cafe is boring--and the villains aren't much more active or effective.

The biggest shame of the movie is how badly everything is executed. The writer/director was clearly going for a cross between a "Lost World" film and a "Mad Scientist on a Rampage" movie, but he was not competent enough to capture the feel of either genre, and he botches even the simplist elements. (Worst offense: He doesn't make full use of the bikini babes... one should have developed a romance/association with one of the heroes early on and then should have been following the around. At the very least, we would have had something nice to look at while struggling to stay awake.)

Another missed opportunity was the identity of Sheila Frankenstein's husband. When he was first brought up in an ominous way, I was hoping he would be revealed as as the Frankenstein Monster. Alas, this was not to be. Sheila's mysterious husband turns out to be one of the more boring elements of the film.

"Frankenstein Island" is not a place worth visiting.

A cautionary tale about mixing up your meds....

The Vampire (aka "Mark of the Vampire") (1957)
Starring: John Beal, Kenneth Tobey, Lydia Reed, Coleen Gray, Dabbs Greer, and James Griffith
Director: Paul Landres
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A kindhearted small-town doctor and single father (Beal) accidentally takes an experimental drug in place of his migraine medicine. Each night around 11pm, he now transforms into a hideous manbeast whose bite infects victims with a virus that causes the cells in their bodies to disintegrate. Will he find a way to stop the transformations before he attacks and kills his pretty nurse (Gray) or, worse, his little daughter (Reed)?

"The Vampire" is a somewhat misleading title. There really aren't any vampires in the film, and the story draws more from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" than from any vampire legends.

That aside, this is a neat little flick where horror meets mad science. John Beal plays a very sympathetic main character who is as much a victim as the people he attacks--and unlike many other movie characters in his stead, he actually tries to take action to stop himself but fate or disbelief on the part of those he asks for help always steps in to keep the movie going until it's inevitable conclusion.

Although there are few moments of horror in the film, it does manage to deliver many tense moments. It is also structured in such a way that I was starting to wonder if the film would take the unusual step for movies from this period of having the precocious young daughter of our hero/monster (played with better-than-average skill for a child actor) be attacked or even maimed. It film doesn't go down that road, but it's an illustration of the how well the script is put together that I even thought it might. (Actually, this is one of those rare movies that could do with a remake. What if Beal had bitten his daughter or the nurse but not killed them? The race to swiftly develop a cure before their bodies start to break down would have made for a great end to the film.)

"The Vampire" is one of those films that can feed the imagination if you're in the right (twisted) frame of mine, and that makes it worth seeking out. Entirely too few movies do that.

Another cancer cure worse than the disease....

Atom Age Vampire (1960)
Starring: Alberto Lupo and Susan Loret
Director: Anton Giulio Majano
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Professor Levin (Lupo) has developed a treatment that temporarily cures cancer and regenerates cells to remove scar tissues and other disfigurements. Unfortunately, the effect of the professor's treatment is very short-term, and he has not yet found a way to quickly make more of his wonder-drug. So, in order to keep a one-time horribly disfigured ex-dancer (Loret) whom he helped from reverting to her former state, he drinks another of his inventions and turns into a hideous, super-strong killer and runs around ripping glands out of young women and impanting them in the stripper as a stop-gap measure.


I'm not sure where the vampires enter into "Atom Age Vampire" as this weak Italian mad scientist movie is more of a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" tale... just it's Dr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde, as Levin is a pretty repulsive character even before he starts downing the Mad Science Potion.

This movie is a nice addition to a Bad Movie Night line-up, but otherwise isn't really worth your time.

'Project Vampire' is a failure

Project Vampire (1993)
Starring: Brian Knudson, Mary-Louise Gemmill and Myron Natwick
Director: Peter Flynn
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A mad scientist, Dr. Klaus (Natwick), is perfecting a longevity serum that turns those who use it into vampires. A brave intern from the univsersity hospital (Knudson), a kind-hearted nurse (Gemmill), and a Chinese genius (Cho) join forces to save themselves from the effects of the serum and to stop Klaus's convoluted schemes from coming to fruition.


At the center of "Project Vampire" is a neat idea--I like the notion of the vampire serum--but that idea is brutally strangled by a script so badly structured I doubt the writer/director has even heard the term "three-act structure", and then dumped in a shallow grave by a cast of actors who have almost certainly heard the phrase "don't quit your dayjob" many times. To make matters worse, the film is a mixture of a chase story and a race-against-time story, but both of these normally dramatic plot-types are made deadly dull by chase scenes that have all the excitement of my daily commute to work.

"Project Vampire" is yet another badly executed low-budget film where a good idea falls victim to a shortage of talent. (It's also the only film of recent vintage that features a Chinese character that brought to mind Lionel Twain's rant at Inspector Wang in "Murder By Death" about geniuses being unable to grasp the use of preposition, articles, and pronouns when speaking.)

'Transylmania' should have had a stake through its heart

Transylmania (2009)
Starring: Oren Skoog, Jennifer Lyons, Tony Denman, Patrick Cavanaugh, Paul H. Kim, Musetta Vander, Natalie Garza, Nicole Garza, David Steinberg, James DeBello and Irena A. Hoffman
Directors: David Hillenbrand and Scott Hillenbrand
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A group of American college students travel to a remote Transylvanian university for a semester of studying and partying abroad. Will the partying or the vampires kill them first?


I need to learn the lesson that the smart choice is to go home if I arrive at the theater too late to see the movie I had planned on. But, as I was stood at the box office, I noticed "Transylmania" was about to start. And, seeing that I love old monster movies and this was part college stoner comedy and part spoof of the classic monster-in-the-creepy-castle films, I thought it might be fun. "How bad can it be?" I asked myself.

Well, it was pretty bad. The humor is more stupidly offensive than funny, the acting universally weak--especially when it comes to the comedic timing of the cast, which is surprising given the long resumes of everyone appearing in the film--and the story features numerous characters that do nothing except serve the purpose of a single joke and otherwise just clutter up the film and story.

It's too bad, becuase in the hands of competent writers who understood how to streamline a story (not to mention write funny jokes) and with some better actors, this could have been a really funny movie with roots in classic films from Universal and Full Moon. The vampire/college student look-alike and the midget mad scientist had all sorts of potential, potential that we can see shining through at the film's best moments, but which remains tragicaly unspent or even wasted.

I really wish this film had been better and that it had done well at the box office. I applaud the filmmakers for writing a spoof that actually has an original story instead of just a cobbled together string of lame references to recent movies and current news events and pop culture. Maybe (God willing!) this film is a sign that story will be returning to the spoof film... or maybe the failure of this film will mean the genre will go dormant for a while because the business people and creatives STILL won't get the message that quality is what sells a movie.