(1956)
Dir - Jack Pollexfen
Overall: MEH
Lon Chaney Jr.'s career was in pretty rough shape by 1956 when he got the leading though almost entirely mute role in the D-rent Indestructible Man. The once enduring actor looks practically pickled in alcohol here and it does not help that he spends most of the movie walking around with his hands in his pockets while the editor routinely interjects the same unintentionally silly close-up of his angry looking eyes. What really sinks the ship though is the comically dated, no nonsense, and stereotypical performance of Max Showalter as a lieutenant who also has the misfortune of narrating the film. We even get an elongated scene of him and a showgirl sitting in a car, sharing their life stories with each other, a scene that seems to go on for days and grinds the already unforgivably boring story down to an even more pronounced halt. There is also a stock, dramatic musical score that literally never lets up and plays through scenes with no rhyme or reason as to its would-be mood setting significance. Seeing Chaney lift up cars and throw lowlife criminals off of buildings might sound fun on paper, but this no budget, lame-brained realization of such a thing is a colossal waste of time.
(1958)
Dir - Herbert L. Stock
Overall: MEH
The final entry in American International Pictures' teenage monster movie block goes meta with How to Make a Monster. It is still the same old plot of someone who is either a master of science or hypnotism using a teenage, good looking person for some kind of moronic experiment or in this case, a moronic revenge scheme. While the premise sounds fun of a bitter, veteran make-up artist using young actors disguised as the title monsters from I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein to murder the cold studio heads who are putting him out of work, the film is as overtly talky and bland as the ones that it references. Returning director Herbert L. Stock breathes absolutely no life into anything happening on screen as it is just one flat, stock dialog exchange after the other. The very few murders happen far enough apart from one another that they probably failed to stop the drive-in audience members of the day from making out with their dates or getting more popcorn. Robert H. Harris makes an unsympathetic lead as well and once again, the movie kicks into color for the last few minutes for no decipherable reason. Each previous film in this particular series is a dud and this one is no different.
(1959)
Dir - Bernard L. Kowalski
Overall: WOOF
Part nature horror, part "man in a rubber suite" creature feature, part hillbilly bumpkin marital drama, and all garbage, Attack of the Giant Leeches is one of the many no dollar budgeted drive-in duds produced in the 1950s. While all of the lackluster components from such films are present, (stiff acting, uninspired direction lacking any and all atmosphere, very little screen time given to the monsters, stagnant pacing, an overtly talky script, etc), it makes plenty of other blunders to limit the amount of unintentional laughter possible for the audience to indulge in. The giant leeches of the title look positively ridiculous, but their very rare appearances are thrown into a script with moronic police officials ignoring oodles of evidence pointing to something strange going on, a doctor who tries to blow up all of the creatures underwater with merely a couple of sticks of dynamite, and two idiots with a single harpoon who go scuba diving looking for them. Of course it is the enormous lack of action though that drowns the movie in its own ultra-cheep, hare-brained lameness. Yet another example of "two minutes of monster screen time and over an hour of people standing in rooms talking", it is possibly even more forgettable than usual for such nonsense.
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