Ah, Monster a Go-Go!—a film so baffling, so broken, so boldly incompetent that it feels less like a movie and more like a cruel psychological experiment disguised as a 68-minute endurance test. Directed by Bill Rebane and (reluctantly) finished by schlockmeister Herschell Gordon Lewis, this cinematic trainwreck is proof that sometimes the scariest monster of … Read More “Monster a Go-Go! (1965): A Cosmic Switch to Total Incompetence” »
In the realm of kaiju cinema, Godzilla may be king—but in 1965, a surly, tusked turtle stomped his way out of a mushroom cloud and into the radioactive hearts of monster kids everywhere. Gamera, the Giant Monster is the cinematic equivalent of letting your pet turtle eat uranium, grow wings, and fight the military. And … Read More “Gamera, the Giant Monster (1965): Turtle Power, With a Side of Nuclear Anxiety” »
What happens when you take two unrelated Mexican monster movies, some stock footage, a grab bag of confused American actors, one old Lon Chaney Jr. in a sweaty werewolf suit, and blenderize the whole thing like you’re making a cinematic margarita? You get Face of the Screaming Werewolf—a film so incoherent it makes Plan 9 … Read More “Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1965) “A Face Only a Mother—or Jerry Warren—Could Love”” »
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Boris Karloff’s Face Melting Off Let’s be honest—if you’re adapting The Colour Out of Space, a paranoid cosmic horror tale about incomprehensible alien forces warping reality, you probably shouldn’t end up with what feels like a PSA about why it’s bad to garden with radioactive space … Read More ““Die, Monster, Die!” (1965): When Meteorites Attack… Your Sanity” »
There are bad movies, and then there are bad paintings that somehow get projected at 24 frames per second. Color Me Blood Red, the third part of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s so-called “Blood Trilogy,” is exactly that: a film that thinks it’s about tortured genius but ends up looking like a kindergarten art project spilled across … Read More “Color Me Blood Red (1965) – Jackson Pollock by Way of a Blood Bank” »
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Phantom of the Opera was remade by a high school drama club armed with cheap torches, jitterbug records, and half a can of Aqua Net, look no further than Renato Polselli’s The Vampire of the Opera. It’s not so much a horror film as it is a … Read More “The Vampire of the Opera (1964) – Jazz Hands from the Crypt” »
William Castle, patron saint of gimmicks, was never content to simply make movies. He had to sell them like discount furniture: loud, cheap, and guaranteed to collapse under pressure. By 1964, he roped in Joan Crawford—already sharpening her knives for Pepsi board meetings—and handed her an axe in Strait-Jacket. What we get is not so … Read More “Strait-Jacket (1964) – Joan Crawford Swings an Axe, the Movie Plays Dead” »
Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan is a film about ghosts, but its greatest haunting is the runtime. At 183 minutes, this anthology has all the spectral terror of a library sleepover, where the ghosts whisper not about vengeance or eternal damnation, but about how you really should’ve brought a thicker pillow. The film adapts Lafcadio Hearn’s “ghost … Read More “Kwaidan (1964) – Four Ghost Stories, None with the Decency to End Quickly” »
If The Horror of Party Beach were a cocktail, it would be equal parts toxic sludge, high school talent show, and a blender accident at the malt shop. It is the kind of movie that makes you nostalgic not for the ‘60s, but for the sweet release of death. Directed by Del Tenney—whose previous cinematic … Read More “The Horror of Party Beach (1964) – Radioactive Waste, Rubber Fangs, and the World’s Saddest Beach Party” »
Some horror films creep under your skin. Some stalk your imagination. The Curse of the Living Corpse trips over its own coffin lid, lands face-first in a bog, and stays there bubbling for 89 minutes. Made in 1964 by Del Tenney—who also gave the world The Horror of Party Beach (aka radioactive monsters, hot dogs, … Read More “The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964) – When Even the Corpse is Bored” »