(1963)
Dir - Maury Dexter
Overall: MEH
Journeyman filmmaker Maury Dexter worked in various genres, both for the big and small screen throughout his two-ish decade-long career, with House of the Damned serving as his only foray into proper be it unimpressive horror. Allegedly shot over seven days, it fails as the haunted house foray that it initially sets it self up as where an architect and his wife, (Ron Foster and Merry Anders, respectively), are tasked with surveying an old abandoned mansion. The only thing that happens on their first night where the electricity fails to work is a set of hands stealing their keys and Anders thinking that a door slightly made noise. We do get a sequence where a young yet still gigantic mute-brute-ready Richard Kiel slowly walks towards the camera as a woman screams, but otherwise the film is void of anything thrilling, let alone any spooky window dressing or atmospherics. The ending is a cop-out, but a singular one at least which further evaporates any potential menace that the proceeding sixty minutes may have built up to if Dexter had any sense of the genre that he was working in.
(1964)
Dir - Ray Dennis Steckler
Overall: MEH
The first of several confounding Z-grade horror works from filmmaker Ray Dennis Steckler, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies was advertised as the first "monster musical", though its legacy was instead solidified as simply one of the worst movies ever made with one of the longest titles. While it is certainly bad in every traditional sense, it is also nonsensical, bizarre, and stupid enough to warrant some chuckles, whether purposefully or not. The production design, hallucinogenic editing, wacky costumes, and Joseph V. Mascelli's atmospheric cinematography are more inspired than such ridiculous material deserves, highlighting the carnival setting where wacky carney folk cult members, (or something), psychologically terrorize Steckler, who casts himself in the lead under his silly alias Cash Flagg. Further adding to the absurdity is the prerequisite amount of stock music, off-kilter performances, goofy accents, and numerous musical numbers that grind everything down to a halt and provide the biggest pacing complaints that one can file against it. The story is non-existent at worst and inconsequential at best, but it comes off as accidentally charming and demented instead of boringly incompetent, which in this case is hefty praise.
(1966)
Dir - Michael A. Hoey/Arthur Pierce/Jon Hall
Overall: WOOF
Mangled, low-rent, and in effect unwatchably lame, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, (Monsters of the Night, The Night Crawlers), barely constitutes as a monster movie at all. It can more accurately be described as "boring white people acting bored while boring the audience" with their inconsequential dynamics with each other as a prehistoric plant menace is gradually unleashed upon them. In the opening scene, something exciting happens off camera of course upon a C-47 on its way to refuel with some cargo, but from there it is an insultingly long wait for any proper stakes to get raised. The isolated island navel base setting is well equipped with Caucasian actors putting in minimum effort to collect a paycheck, including yet not limited to Anthony Eisley and Mamie Van Doren having zero chemistry with each other yet somehow falling kind of in mutual love by the finale. We are eventually treated to some sporadic murderous vegetation sequences before military backup is finally called in to kill the monstrous threat with stock footage, but this comes late in the game, long past the point where most viewers will give up. Allegedly the film was turned in ten or so minutes too short, which prompted producer Jack Broder to shoot additional scenes of people standing in rooms while talking, as well as the aforementioned new ending of bomber planes dropping napalm on the plant creatures. Neither of these add-ons help matters.
No comments:
Post a Comment