Monster truck - emphasis on the monster

I am not one to be impressed with vehicles jacked high into the air on oversized tires. To me a car or truck is a utilitarian thing meant to move people or things from one place to another. But I have to admit that someone has found a heretofore unknown sweet spot in my brain.

VOYAGE OF THE ROCK ALIENS - seriously?

There are a couple of Tumbler accounts I check in on to see strange things and very strange things but this may top them all. I don't know if I'm pissed or happy that I never knew of this film's existence until now. I know I must now see it but I suspect I would have been in a more receptive mood in my college years when things like this might have seemed somehow cool. Or not. Think about the fact that it stars Pia Zadora and the poster touts an appearance by Jermaine Jackson. I can feel the 1980s leering at me from the shadows and laughing. There is so much about that decade that sucked and I fear I've found another sad marker of that terrible truth.

Thank you Bikini Machine. I think.

There's a connection here......

...but I can NOT put my finger on it.

IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE lands in comic shops

One of my favorite low budget, not-very-good-but-I-love-it-anyway monster movies from the 1950s is IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958). More than just a major influence on ALIEN it is a fast, creepy scare ride that manages to get under my skin if I let it work its black & white late night charms on me. Cheesy? Hell yes! But like so many of the science fiction/horrors of that decade it pushes geeky buttons in the same way the pulp fiction of the time does. For me there's a certain grin inducing thrill to getting wrapped up in a SF tale that takes place in the far flung future of 1973 and I must not be the only one to feel a large amount of affection for this film either. Back in 1992 there was a black & white adaptation of the film from Millennium Comics that I have and enjoyed but I always considered that a bizarre (if cool) anomaly. I mean- there is no chance of a series of comic book adaptations of old monster movies from the 50s! Right?

Apparently I couldn't be more wrong! Walking through a comic book shop today what do I spot but this---


That is the first issue of brand new comic version of IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. And this time its in color! And to make things even stranger/cooler this purports to be the first of an ongoing series called 'MGM Drive-In Theater' with unspecified future adaptations of other such movies on the way. Holy Crap! I didn't even think to wish for this! Amazing. If you'd like to get a look at the first few pages of issue #1 just follow this LINK. I've really enjoyed the first issue with its small changes of ethnicity for some characters and an upping of the romantic tension the film had to soft pedal to make it past the censors in 1958. Check it out to see if this is your kind of monster crazy too.

The Mark of the Spanish Werewolf - article in Fortean Times Online

I realized today that I completely forgot to tell everyone about this well done article about Paul Naschy in the Fortean Times. Posted back in March and written by Spanish journalist Maria J Pérez Cuervo its a good brief overview of Mr. Molina's life and career. Check it out!

LINK

Captain America and Thor production art

I know these have been posted just about everywhere in the past couple of days but I just had to share. I hope these two movies don't suck. Click to embiggen!

BMC - B-Movies Online

I'm thrilled to note that AMC's website has opened a page that allows the viewing of several classic B-movies for free. The movies are streamed in the usual inter-tubes manner and, from my sampling so far, seem to be from good looking prints. Several of the films have yet to be released on DVD so it might be the only way to see them without resorting to bootlegs of dubious quality. The offerings include CAT GIRL, Corman's THE UNDEAD, FIEND WITHOUT A FACE, DEVIL DOLL, VOODOO WOMAN and THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE. If you're looking to see some cool old horror movies for free this is as good a place as any other and word is that they plan to add more in the future.

LINK

PLANET OF THE APES coloring books

I never had these as a kid but I would have loved them even as I colored them very poorly. I'm sure many pages would have been hung on my bedroom wall regardless of my terrible artistic abilities. The cover price was 69 cents!

HERCULES (1983) trailer

Speaking of Luigi Cozzi (as I was the other day)--

Happy POTA Day!

Curved Space - STARCRASH fiction!

Rarely am I more stunned than I am by the announcement that a volume of short stories based on the main character of the hideously awful/wonderful 1979 science fiction mess-ter-piece STARCRASH is set for release. 'Curved Space - The Adventures of Stella Star' is a brand new anthology featuring short stories relating the further adventures of Stella Star, the beautiful spaceship Captain played in the film by Caroline Munroe. It is apparently fully endorsed by the film's writer/director Luigi Cozzi and, if I were to hazard a guess, is being published to take advantage of the upcoming release of STARCRASH to DVD and Blu-Ray later this year. Not that I'm complaining! Any additions to the cult of Cozzi and Stella Star is a good thing in my book. As soon as I have new information I'll let everyone know. I intend to be one of the first to own a copy of this book if for no other reason to find out what happens next........

Melody Anderson - Woman of my Dreams

I must confess that I have had a crush on actress Melody Anderson for almost 30 years. Maybe crush is too small a word. Ever since I caught her in two incredibly entertaining movies in the early 80s on HBO (all praise early pay cable!) I have had a small but...... useful series of fantasies built around her lovely face and fine female form. (And that’s as much detail as I’m going to give about my early teenage years in such a public forum so don’t ask. We all have our own methods of getting through the horrors of puberty.) The two films in question are FLASH GORDON (1980) and DEAD & BURIED (1981). Each is a classic of its type (IMHO) and far more entertaining than most of the dreck being squirted out onto Cineplex screens currently. Of course, both were considered box office bombs so my attraction to unpopular movies was clearly an early affliction and one I can hardly be expected to be ashamed of since I must have just been born this way. *sigh* Any way----

What has me thinking of Miss Anderson today? Well- I’ve been ever so slowly working my way through my bootleg of the LOGAN’S RUN television series from 1977-78 and tonight I got to the last aired episode ‘Carousel’ and who do I see in a very minor role but Melody Anderson. She only has one brief scene with Logan and Francis in a crowd but seeing her smiling, flirting face really gave me a grin. Man! What a sexy lady! I think I’d almost be afraid to meet her.

Images from PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965)

Random Poster Art

I can't wait to see this.

Alan Caillou - Now here's a Man!

Every now and then I watch an episode of the classic 1960s TV spy series THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. I do this mainly because I own the entire run on DVD and until I purchased the neat little briefcase set I had never seen any of the show. In general I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen and I am often surprised by the wit on display and the amazing gallery of guest stars that pop up regularly. The episode that featured both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in their pre-STAR TREK days was a real shocker.

This weekend I watched one called ‘The Terbuf Affair’ and when the show ended I continued to stare at the screen and read the credits. I noted that future film director Richard Donner had helmed the show and I saw it was written by someone named Alan Caillou. But as the credits rolled on I noticed Mr. Caillou’s name appeared again – as an actor! What the Hell? So it was off to the internet I went to discover how such a thing might have occurred and I was in for a story.


It turns out that Alan Caillou was the professional name taken by a fellow named Alan Samuel Lyle-Smythe and although he had quite a career in TV and film his life might have been a better movie than anything he was ever associated with onscreen. Born in 1914 in England he was a member of the Palestine Police from 1936 to 1939 where he was awarded the Civil Medal of the Order of the British Empire. After getting married in 1939 he decided for some reason to take up acting but soon after Hitler was on the march. Because he could speak Arabic he was placed in the Intelligence Corps in World War II which is when he began using the name Caillou as an alias. He was captured in North Africa, imprisoned in Italy and escaped to join the British forces at Salerno. He was then posted to serve with the partisans in Yugoslavia to serve out the war. In recognition of his service he was promoted to Captain and awarded the Military Cross in 1944. After the war he wrote about his experiences in the book The World is Six Feet Square.

From 1946 to 1952 he worked again in the Palestine Police and as police commissioner in British occupied Italian Somaliland about which he wrote the book Sheba Slept Here. After working a professional hunter in Somalia he moved to Canada and started working as an actor on television. He published his first novel in 1955 and then moved from Canada to Hollywood to work as an actor but also quickly gained jobs as a script writer. Caillou wrote a number of paperback thrillers under the Alan Caillou name and the nom de plume of Alex Webb with several of them being made into movies as well. What the Hell could this guy not do? Incredible!

A quick scan of his IMBd page is enough to make your eyes bulge out. He wrote episodes of not just THE MAN FROM UNCLE but RAT PATROL, FLIPPER, THE FUGITIVE, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and 77 SUNSET STRIP. He even wrote three of my favorite episodes of Boris Karloff’s THRILLER – ‘La Strega’, ‘Terror in Teakwood’ and ‘Hay-Fork & Bill-Hook’! And he also wrote the scripts for Bert I. Gordon’s VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS (1965) and the great Shatner vs. nature film KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977). As an actor it seems as if the fact that he didn’t write for a show meant he had to appear in it! He was in HIGH CHAPERRAL, BONANZA, IRONSIDE, DANIEL BOONE, TARZAN, COMBAT, MANNIX, QUARK, MY THREE SONS, and THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN- the list goes on and on. His final two acting gigs appear to have been in the films THE SWORD & THE SORCERER (1982) and THE ICE PIRATES (1984). He passed away in 2006 and I can only hope that after working his ass off for decades doing everything in the world he put his mind to he lived his final years happily retired and smiling about his amazing accomplishments. What a man!

I gotta remember to keep paying attention to the credits on old TV shows. Damn.

Naschycast #6 - DR. JEKYLL AND THE WOLFMAN

It's that time of the month my friends, so gather round! The moon is rising and so is our favorite hairy beast. This time out Naschy indulges his love for the Monster Mash and combines two unlikely members of the classic horror gallery for a romp through swinging London. Knowing that putting these two together requires some work Naschy first takes us to the rural villages of the Carpathian Mountains for a gothic tinged introduction to our old friend Waldemar Daninksy before his trip to England in search of a cure for his problem. The grandson of the infamous Dr. Jekyll agrees to try an unorthodox (and completely nutty) method of dealing with lycanthropy, but, as is usual in a Paul Naschy script, things don’t go quite as well as our poor cursed man might hope.

This was the sixth Waldemar Daninsky adventure and it’s a good one. Once again rebooting the character from scratch we have the tortured soul hoping for deliverance from a hellish life and given some small measure of happiness by the love of a beautiful woman. It’s a shame the village people hate him so! Troy and I have a great time going through this one point by point finding pleasures both large and small even if I have to be reminded that Hombre Loco is a very different thing from Hombre Lobo!

Available on iTunes, Podcast Alley and directly at the link below. Please send any comments or question to us at naschycast@gmail.com

NaschyCast #6

iTunes LINK 

What I Watched In June

I spent a lot of time this past month reading books and comics so fewer movies got watched. It helps that TV is in the summer doldrums and the movies being offered in cinemas are less than appealing - for the most part. SPLICE is a nice, nasty bit of science fiction/horror that audiences are ignoring to go see another Shrek film or a TV remake or yet another video game made celluloid. Pearls before swine, I suppose. Not that SPLICE is an easy film for a mass audience to like. It works hard to unnerve people with a fairly misogynistic angle to the story and a willingness to press hardwired Puritanical buttons some don’t seem to realize are still lurking in their psyches. I’ve been enjoying watching women try to figure out why they are responding so negatively – when they can manage to examine the ideas the movie tosses around, anyway. It dovetailed strangely with my $1.50 theater viewing of Atom Egoyan’s strong film CHLOE but I won’t ruin anything more about that fine drama. And Roman Polanski’s absorbing Hitchcockian thriller THE GHOST WRITER proved that the art of classic, slow-build suspense filmmaking is not dead.

On the comic book front I’ve started working my way through the excellent Robert Kirkman scripted 'The Walking Dead'. I’ve had the first four volumes in trade paperback sitting on the shelf for a couple of years and the news that AMC is in production on a 6 episode first television season made me finally start reading them. I have to say the series is just as good as I’d heard and I’m loving every zombie packed, depressing page. I’m up to volume 9 and if the library will hurry up I’ll read the next two books next week. Also, currently I’m scratching an itch to read some older (groovy age) science fiction by checking out author Edmund Cooper's work. A cheap copy of one of his 60s era paperbacks landed in my lap and I’m enjoying the hell out it.

Oh! And I checked MIGHTY JOE YOUNG off my ‘ashamed to have never seen’ list. Good movie!

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? (1974)- 7 (Solid Italian crime film)
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4 (1988) – 4 (sad sequel)
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5 (1989) – 3 (geez!)
THE LAST CHASE (1981) – 4 (sloppy and silly but it was fun as a nostalgia piece)
THE GHOST WRITER (2010)- 8 (excellent old fashioned thriller- Polanski’s last?)
CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)- 7 (rewatch)
SPLICE (2009)- 8 (great sci-fi thriller/Frankenstein variant)
DR. JEKYLL AND THE WOLFMAN (1972) – 7 (rewatch)
FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE (1991)- 2 (and I thought Part 2 was bad!)
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (2008)- 9 (rewatch)
APOCALYPTO (2006)- 8 (Gibson understands action)
SNAPSHOT (1979)- 5 (not bad/not good Aussie ‘thriller’)
BLASTFIGHTER (1984)- 7 (backwoods action film by Baby Bava)
MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949)- 7
PASTEL DE SANGRE (1971)- 6 (arty, low budget horror anthology from Spain)
HOSTEL PART 2 (2007)- 3 (Eli Roth cannot make a good film)
DEATH PROOF (2007)- 7 (QT’s weakest but I still get a kick out it)
CHLOE (2009)- 8 (sexual drama with a strong cast)
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (2009) – 6 (the missing bits hamper Gilliam’s fantasy but what’s there is good)
THE HIT (1984) – 7 (British gangsters played by great actors)
KING OF KONG ISLAND (1968)- 4 (terrible but fun jungle girl/mad scientist adventure story)
NEXT OF KIN (1982)- 7 (very good Australian mystery thriller)
BLOOD AND ROSES (1960)- 7 (rewatch)
IRON MAN 2 (2010) – 7 (rewatch) (took a buddy)
DINNER WITH A VAMPIRE (1988)- 3 (terrible Lamberto but there are things to enjoy)
FUTURAMA: BEAST WITH A BILLION BACKS (2008) – 7
HAWK OF CASTILE (1965)- 4 (silly, sloppy Spanish swashbuckler)