Category Archives: Cult
Jim Morton Bonus Audio Interview
Jim Morton talks about Trashola, Incredibly Strange Films, and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies Continue reading
Filed under Cult, Podcast companion piece
The Travesty Story
Pat Caroll was the comic genius behind the Langely Punks shorts. They featured himself and fellow Good Counsel High School buddies Jim Phalen and Larry Zabel as the Langley Punks, a trio of hooligans who, when not drinking beer, have encounters with different extraterrestrial menaces. In The Insurance Salesmen From Saturn, the title creatures fail in their mission to bore earthlings to death when the tables are turned on them and they end up being bored into oblivion by the Punks’ endless, detailed descriptions of their cars. Pat’s eclectic inspirations for these early films were the Three Stooges, Chaplin, Keaton, and the masked wrestler and Mexican movie star, El Santo. Continue reading
Films Better Left Remembered: Gorath
Gorath (1962) Spaceship JX-1 (the first manned flight to Saturn) is ordered to change course and intercept Gorath, a rouge star barreling through the galaxy, heading straight for a planet-shattering collision with the earth. Outfitted in white coveralls and helmets, the crew of JX-1 look more like contestants in a go-cart race than astronauts, but in Gorath’s future of the “80s,” these are the men with the right stuff. Continue reading
Filed under Cult, Japanese Monster Movie, Movie Reviews
Santo vs the Vampire Women (an audio review)
For your listening pleasure, an audio review of Santo vs the Vampire Women. We’ve dug deep into our audio vault and turned up this long-lost gem. Listen as Lou, Steve, and Jim, once more take on the Silver Avenger. Vampire Women holds a special place in the Santo canon (it’s the first film many Santo fans ever saw), but you might be surprised at the score given to it by the three-man tag team of misfit reviewers. Continue reading
The MGM Dogville Shorts
Produced at the dawn of the sound era, the Dogville films, through their very existence, reflect the insatiable appetite filmgoers at the time had for talking pictures. That’s clear enough from the films’ tagline, “All Barkies” (a play on the era’s ubiquitous “All Talkie” promotional slogan). Ironically, these shorts are, in one way, actually more watchable than many of the features of the day as the “actors” voices, and all other sounds, were dubbed, freeing the four-footed thespians from the movement restrictions that sound enforced on their two-legged contemporaries. They fly airplanes, drive cars, fight wars, go to nightclubs…all with a freedom of movement human actors on film had to wait years for. Continue reading
Filed under Cult, Movie Reviews, Podcast companion piece
Curse of the Faceless Man (Plus Audio Review of The Lost Missile)
A mummy movie is never a good idea. Why? Because the only way to make the mummy a credible threat is by having it lumber after women who appear to suffer from some kind of inner-ear disorder. Incapable of sustained equilibrium, these women always stumble and fall for no apparent reason as they run in a blind panic, even when a brisk walk could easily out distance their bandaged assailant.
It’s not enough that the “faceless man” of the title is ancient and slow and wrapped in bandages–no, this particular mummy is also made of stone! This not only makes it the slowest mummy in film history, but for the first half of the film, even when the Faceless Man does manage to move, he is only capable of sustained, modest activity for minutes at a time.
Not every effort can be a home run, but this isn’t even a bunt.
In any case, Curse of the Faceless Man remains a cautionary tale for anyone who might consider making a mummy movie. The lesson? Don’t. That’s all there is to it: don’t.
Filed under Cult, Movie Reviews
Spaceflight IC-1
Unpublished Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick/Bernard Knowles.
Interview by Anonymous.
Early in 1968, Playboy magazine contacted me about the possibility of interviewing Stanley Kubrick. It was an offer I eagerly accepted. 2001: A Space Odyssey had just opened, and critics, whether they loved the film or hated it, were united on one point: nothing like it had ever been see on a movie screen before.
But was that really true? Continue reading
Filed under Cult, Movie Reviews
El Santo: An Appreciation (plus an audio review of Santo in the Wax Museum)
Fifty years ago, a new movie superhero entered the national consciousness. The nation was Mexico, and its hero was the masked wrestler known as El Santo. After first gaining fame in the ring and then in comic books, Santo next took on the challenge of film. It was in this medium that the wrestler would cement his legend as a larger than life action hero. Continue reading
The World’s Greatest Sinner
Plot:Frustrated insurance salesman Clarence Hilliard (played by Timothy Carey, who also wrote and directed) writes a Nietzche-esque pamphlet that claims, “all men are gods,” and then forms a rock ‘n roll band to help push his agenda. Not long after this, politics beckon, and Clarence ditches his guitar and makes a run for the presidency. Continue reading
Filed under Cult
The House in the Middle
In the mid fifties, a Civil Defense short was created to address what can only be called The Tidiness Gap. Since the film was intended for the outlying suburbs and towns not immediately in the kill zone of a ground zero explosion, the whole issue of large metropolitan areas being vaporized is discretely sidestepped. The short also tends to focus on the atomic heat or “thermal wave” from a nuclear explosion, and doesn’t have a great deal to offer on the other affects from the blast like… well, for one thing, radiation.
All these years later, it comes as something of a surprise to realize that Hazel might have been our first line of defense against nuclear attack. Perhaps the Civil Defense seal should have been replaced by The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Continue reading
Filed under Cult
Jim Rutherford
Nancy Louise Rutherford
Lou Aguilar
The Misfits
