(1953)
Dir - Phil Tucker
Overall: WOOF
Overall: WOOF
A rightfully infamous, Z-grade crud rock, Robot Monster, (Monsters from Mars), is that one movie where the alien is a guy in a gorilla suite with an astronaut helmet on who pronounces "humans" as "hew-mans". Made in four days for an estimated $16,000 that may as well be seventeen cents, it liberally, obviously, and pointlessly recycles footage from One Million B.C., Lost Continent, Flight to Mars, Rocketship XM, and Captive Woman. It also has your standard amount of stupid little kids, terrible acting, head-scratching scenes, a mentally ill plot, and comatose-inducing direction from Phil Tucker. Tucker's only previous work behind the lens was on the crime film Dance Hall Racket, (which was written and starred Lenny Bruce), and he allegedly attempted suicide after this one's release due to financial woes caused by a clash with its distributor. Not to make light of such a thing, but after watching such incompetent, nonsensical, and, (above all else), boring tripe, it is no wonder that the man who put his name on it was in a severely depressed state afterwards. As a bad movie watch, it has its moments of unintentional ineptitude and it is impossible not to laugh at every one of the extraterrestrial primate Ro-Man's ridiculous arm-waving appearances, but otherwise, the whole thing is more dull than stupid. Though make no mistake, stupid it surely is.
(1958)
Dir -Tom Boutross/Robert Clarke
Overall: MEH
The only directorial effort from Tom Boutross and actor Robert Clarke, (the latter of whom also co-wrote, produced and starred in the lead here), The Hideous Sun Demon, (Sun Demon, Blood on His Lips), is a low-grade monster cheapie with one or two redeemable qualities. Shot over the course of twelve weekends, it is an admirable labor of love in some respects, making the best use out of its insufficient budget with locations in place of actual sets, a stock musical score that many will recognize was also utilized in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, a Jekyll & Hyde/werewolf-adjacent story that is inconsistent with its rules yet rudimentary to follow, and a beastly makeup design that is better than most rubber suite creatures from the era; still cheap looking yet garish in its reptilian ugliness. Not that it makes nearly enough appearances since the movie is forced to concern itself with badly recorded dialog exchanges between a cast made up of film students and non-actor family members and friends of Clarke's. This is ultimately the movie's downfall since it is inescapably dull within its meager means, plus Clark and Boutross' direction is as lifeless as the performances are.
(1959)
Dir - Ray Kellogg
Overall: MEH
Shot back-to-back with The Giant Gila Monster, The Killer Shrews is a regional creature feature that has aged about as bad as any others of its kind, though it is not without some some low-grade charm. Visual effects man-turned director Ray Kellogg works within a pocket change budget, throwing his characters in a tiny house on an island whose only protection is a wood fence that stretches plausibility in keeping out the upwards of two-hundred, (or so we are told), oversized varmints of the title. Speaking of verisimilitude being shortchanged, the shrews themselves are adorable hand puppets in the closeups and sparely covered coonhounds in the wide shots, but to Kellogg's credit, he tries to mitigate their on-screen appearances and keeps the editing sharp enough to hide how ridiculous they look. Plot wise, this is a variation of the framework that George A. Romero would utilize nine years later in Night of the Living Dead, where a small handful of people are held up in an abode while monster things try to get at them and one of the humans is an asshole who cannot be trusted, but this was before unhappy endings became the norm so most of them make it out through an inventive steel chemical drum gag. It is still silly stuff with too much yakety-yaking between uninteresting characters, but it takes itself seriously enough to deliver some unintended chuckles.
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