(1955)
Dir - John Parker
Overall: GOOD
An experimental oddity for its time, Dementia is a wonderful if still flawed bit of movie history to seek out. Parallels can be drawn back to it from numerous future works; Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls, Roman Polanski's Repulsion, and David Lynch's Eraserhead all bear its mark in some form or another. Yet it is also seeped in the German Expressionism, early surrealist cinema, and the Hollywood film noir that came before it. Writer/producer/director John Parker crafts a handful of strange images such as a quasi-cartoonish matte painting, a weird cemetery dream, people wearing black pantyhose or something on their heads, close-ups of a guy who looks like Orson Welles eating chicken, a severed hand showing up in a few places, and a jazz club scene full of people smacking the ground and fondling women. There is no dialog sans a couple of people laughing and Freudian symbolism is everywhere, so it is certainly experimental in enough respects. While it struggles to maintain one's attention for the whole of its fifty-eight minute running time, you would be missing a thoroughly unique bit of independent filmmaking by skipping it.
(1957)
Dir - Arnold Laven
Overall: WOOF
Even by low-budget, B-movie, science fiction giant monster standards, The Monster That Challenged the World is an atrociously boring entry into the comically over-saturated sub-genre of its era. The only type of movie like this in director Arnold Laven's filmography, (Laven having primarily worked in television throughout his decades long career), the screenplay by Pat Fielder is structured for maximum lethargy as roughly ninety-eight percent of the running time is dedicated to stock, square-jawed Caucasian characters having conversations in rooms while the camera merely stays on them until they are done finishing their lines. That leaves two percent for the special effects crew to show off their over-sized creature which is supposed to be a mollusc yet comes off looking comparatively more alien. This is a good thing as it is not as embarrassing to behold as countless other such monsters are in silly drive-in fare such as this, but its severe lack of screen time is detrimental. Laven maintains a more serious tone than the material deserves and even tries to make the threat genuinely frightening, but alas, it is one of the many, many examples of these film's being undone by inadequate funding, a rushed production job, and a profoundly laborious structure.
(1959)
Dir - Edward Dein
Overall: GOOD
Possibly the very first vampire western, Curse of the Undead was an unusual entry for Universal at the end of the 1950s when the studio, (plus several others), was pumping out alien/giant monster/mysterious blob sci-fi outings. Released a year after Hammer's Horror of Dracula rebooted the Gothic vampire mythos in bloody color, this one is interesting not just for it being a seemingly desperate genre mash-up, but also for being black and white and coming from the same studio that Hammer was currently updating. The premise allegedly started as a joke between the screenwriting team of director Edward Dein and his wife Mildred under the title of Eat Me Gently which was "a Western horror story about a fag vampire running around the desert eating little boys". As hilariously offensive as that movie would have been, it was a wise move that they ended up making something more serious instead. The story, performances, and cinematography are all compelling enough, plus the religious themes brought to the front by the small town preacher and returning vampire squaring off against each other work well, especially in the appropriate shoot-off in the finale. Aside from a couple of plot holes here or there, it is a very worthy, often overlooked bit of vampiric cinema.
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