Your humble purveyor of fine cult cinema presents a small collection of nice sci-fi and horror film posters. I am not really sure if The Night of the Living Dead image was ever a poster for the film but it is a familiar image and one I used to have on a T-Shirt made by Something Weird Video in Seattle. In fact the B/W background wallpaper for The Uranium Café’s margins was appropriated from the SWV website. Check it. Plenty of good stuff for sell there if you have the bucks to buy it.
I did not research any relevant trivia for these films as I am simply passing along the edited artwork for the denizens of the Café to use as they choose. There will be posts on George Romero, Roger Corman and Ed Wood in the future and there may be a sub-category for zombie films coming soon, so hold onto your intestines if you can.
Jeepers Creepers 2001/Director: Victor Salva/ Screenplay:Victor Salva/ Cast: Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck, Patricia Belcher, Eileen Brennan Most everything I have read about these movies really pans them without mercy but I do not think these Jeepers Creepers movies are that bad. They are not fantastic either but I really do not know what people expect from this sort of genre. The acting is not bad, the editing and cinematography are pretty good and while there are no surprises you get basically what you expect to get.
The plot is about some sort of creature billed as “The Creeper“ who returns to our world every twenty three years for twenty days to feed on human body parts. He is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people over the decades. He keeps the bodies stored under an old church where he has developed a past time of turning the corpses into preserved works of art. They are stuck to the ceiling and wall like some sort of Satanic Sistine Chapel. He is selective about who he gets his parts from and is able to detect by smell the right type of fear. He traumatizes two teenagers (Gina Philips and Justin Long) in his serial killer truck until selecting one of them for a helping of eye balls. The creature wrecks havoc in a rural and desolate community and is all but unstoppable.
There are some problems of course and some parts are a little more than corny. The show down on the country road with Gina Philips running him over after he does flips over the car cold have been done better. And then he assaults the police station where the cops are hapless before him. It just is not scary to have a creature lose in a police station. It is more like an action movie (Terminator) here than a horror movie. And the two genres can mix of course, but I did not like the brew this time, but enjoyed the rest of the movie.
The Creeper (Jonathan Breck) is interesting and enough about him is left unexplained to keep some mystery. The movie ends begging for a sequel and one is delivered. Maybe my taste is really bad, but I enjoyed it and recommend it completely. BEATINU baby.
Jeepers Creepers 2 2003/Director: Victor Salva/ Screenplay:Victor Salva/ Cast: Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Eric Nenninger, Nicki Aycox, Marieh Delfino, Thom Gossom Jr.
I liked the sequel here more than the original. It takes up right where the last one left off and the Creeper is running out of time to collect and digest body parts as the action takes place on day twenty three of his most recent hunting spree. Most of the story takes place in and around a school bus packed with high school students returning from a homecoming football game. The mood is tenser than in the first movie where the kids soon realize the Creeper is selecting who he will kill and eat and who he will not. All the adults on the bus are killed right off and disorganizing ensues as it always does when teenagers are being stalked by a supernatural serial killer.
There is also a subplot of a father seeking revenge on the Creeper for abducting his son in a corn field. He creates a sort of harpoon gun out of a hydraulic fence post puncher and he takes on the Creeper over and over and the movie ends with the makings of a sequel dangling before us but I have not heard anything about it yet.
The killings and action again take place in some vast and desolate rural area of what looks like Kansas or Nebraska. The acting is good and there is tension between the characters as they try to help each other and yet stay alive themselves as the relentless Creeper stalks them one by one. But the kids and the vindictive father all fight back and give the creature a worthy fight in this fine sequel.
Fiend without a Face 1958/Director: Arthur Crabtree /Screenplay: Herbert J. Leder Cast:Marshall Thompson, Kim Parker, Kyanaston Reeves, Stanley Maxted, Terence Kilburn, Gil Winfield This is a great little disembodied brain movie full of cold war paranoia and strange science gone awry angst. I could not figure out why these supposedly Canadian and American actors all had weird British or Irish sounding accents until I read that it was part of a series of British movies filmed during the late 50's that were supposed to be set in the States. It is on the Criterion Collection which as I understand tries to find and transfer the best quailty prints possible. Well, the film looks great and is a barrel of fun. Plenty of unintentional laughs and some really disgusting looking brains that crawl like inch worms using their spinal cords. The story takes place on and around an American military base somewhere in western Canada. The characters are typical 50's sci-fi sterotypes... the dashing and sickingly noble hero and sexy but coquettishly innocent female lead who fall in love with each other after the obligatory cold period, the brilliant and ultimately altruistic scientist whose vision to help mankind turns against him and destroies him, and a whole slew of doofy supporting characters that hardly have a disembodied brain between the lot of them. The misguided doctor creates a machine that projects his thoughts as teleketic energy and soon he can move small objects around his room. This is to suppose to help the world somehow. His thoughs soon evolve into an invisible and muderous power that is later made visible by increasing the level of radioactivity at the military base. The creatures are stop-action animated brains that spurt gobs of blood when shot or hacked with axes. One scene I really liked was when some Canadian redneck (played by a Brit) comes mumbling into a room where a meeting of the towns folk is going on. His brain has been drained by the one of the beasts and the look on his blithering face is classic. Definintly worth a look. Loads of fun and campy dialog that is taken seriously by the cast of bad actors. Check out the weird Jerry Lee Lewis lookin' guy that runs the nuclear power plant. But the brain beasts are not the only radiactive matter in this fantastic B-gem. The movie contains enough plutonium to power a microwave for six months or more.
Yet another fine studio still of the love-struck gill-man clinging onto a swooned Julia Adams. I am as obsessed with her white swim as he is and would challenge his spawning rights as well. Ever notice how in so many of the older monster movies it was the humans who seem to be the real bad guys. Of course you cannot have amphibious fish men just slithering from the depths and hauling off perfectly formed human females. But if you study the movies close you find that like in King Kong it is the invading humans who upset the balance that the so called monster had maintained in its little quiet (albeit lacking in sexy girls) environment. Then everyone simply freaks out and basically destroys the creature's little world and then its life. Most of these movies too had some handsome though hardheaded hero too who is intent on making sure the hapless heroine is kept safe and chaste. Here is a nice background I am promoting from a great site called horrorseek.com. Below is a direct link to a great section on all three of the Creature movies plus some news on the possible remake I keep reading about. You can go to their homepage from there and there is a myriad of links to choose from. And I might as well throw in a collection of great trailers for this monster classic while we are in the murky Amazon:
Picked up a copy of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. It was beautiful really. Lush black and white and those great old Universal studio sets. A perfect movie as was its predecessor Frankenstein. There have been numerous remakes and many were truer to the orignal Mary Sheely story, but for sheer visual effect and atmosphere none can even come close. Elsa Lanchester as the bride. Immortal iconography. She never did much else that could compare but she did this one really great thing and this image will exist in some form or another for hundreds of years to come I'll wager, as will the Karloff images such as the one below. Boris Karloff as the pathetic creation of Henry Frankenstein. In just these couple movies there were created so many fatanastic images and moments that other films have, to this day, tried to capture or immulate in one way or another. I think the opeining sequence in Bride with the windmill and the monster in the well is a study in itself for any film fanatic. I replayed some of it over and over just to look at the flawless sets. I think black and white can be beautiful and some of these early Universal horror films are excellent examples of just what can be done with it.
A Roger Corman film that is as fun as its titles suggests. I hate to admit this, but when I was a kid I saw this alone one night and it scared me to death. Really lame'o campy stuff, but lot so of fun dialog and bad acting.Classic Corman. Another movie that scared me in a deep way as a kid and I have never been able to find it as an adult. A little more genuinely unnerving than Crab Monsters. This was a black and white "blob" movi made by Hammer Studios. The action takes place in a remote area of Scotland and it lacks any of the humor The Blob had. Simply a mass of radioactive mud (the result of army testing of course) starts killing and burning people. Pretty creepy really.
1958/Credits: Directed by:Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr Produced by:Jack Harris Starring: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corseaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howlin, Stephen Chase I remember really freaking out on this in Texas as a kid. Guess it would be considered pretty cheesy and campy by today's standards. But today's standards suck really. This is really a gem of a movie that started both Steve McQueen and Burt Bacharach onto their careers. The title song is rockin'. The story is all about space slime terrorizing a small town. The only people who know the truth are, well, teenagers and no one can possibly believe them. The color is fanatastic and all the good people survive, even the little dog. One scene that will stand out forever is McQueen's kid brother emptying his cap pistol at the ever expanding Blob then throwing the empty toy revolver at the ooze. WELL,IT'S KIND OF LIKE A MASS THAT KEEPS GETTING BIGGER AND BIGGER A more contemporary remake was made with Kevin Dillon and was pretty good until it turned into a stupid evil government cover up movie but worth a watch or two for the high tech death scenes. I just thought the simple idea of a space alien in the middle of a meteorite was much more plausable.
I do not know what this is about. I wonder if a copy of the orignal Gojira (before the scenes with Raymond Burr were spliced in and he was talking to the stars with their backs to camera all the time) was released on DVD. Maybe I should read the articles as I swipe the images. If so it may be findable in China. Actually, I have never seen a Godzilla flick for sell here. lot of Samuri stuff but no monster movies. Anyway, I have never seen the original all Japanese version when Godzilla was simply evil and destructive. I had a chance at Scarecrow Video in Seattle but they needed a $500 dollar deposit on the video to be able to rent it it was so rare then. I hope I get to see this one day.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon 1954/Credits: Directed by Jack Arnold/ Writing credits Harry Essex Arthur A. Ross Cast: Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Whit Bissell, Bernie Gozier Can you blame the poor lonely gill-man for flipping for lovely Julia Adams and her white one piece. Poor lonely giy may have found a playmate after a lifetime of hanging out with catfish and mud frogs. Of course the movie is actually pretty sad. The gill-man is smitten and the other manly men in the movie will have none of this interspecies spawning going on so long as they have an ounce of vigor in ther veins. It is the Beauty and the Beast theme done almost perfectly. Not as perfectly as say King Kong where the damsel falls for the beast one some level. But sexy Julie is not attracted in the least to the slimy fish-man. I am new at reviews and have little practice so I expect one day to give a more fitting review of this fine B classic. I actually had a chance to buy this in Beijing and passed. Went back to the store and could not find it. Damn me! Damn me to hell!!
(On an upnote, since I last updated old posts and checked in on this one I have found a new copy of The Creature and no longer need to be damned to Hell.)
INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN 1957/Directed by Edward L. Cahn/Writing creditsPaul W. Fairman (story)Robert J. Gurney Jr. Cast:Steven Terrell, Gloria Castillo, Frank Gorshin, Raymond Hatton
Really fun flick with Frank (the Riddler) Gorshin. Haven't seen it since I've been to China but if you get a chance check it out. Great dialog, a drunk cow, sexually deprived teenagers who look like they are 25 or 30 and pre X-File evil military cover-ups. The creatures kill by injecting the body with booze and so you die from alocohol overdose. The black and white images are great and the creatures are corny but rather creepy at the same time. Do not pass up a chance to see this one.
WIDGETIZE