Forget the original title of Matango. It was the Americanized title of Attack of the Mushroom People that grabbed my attention. People that look like giant fungi on the attack? Sign me up. I’m not naïve about movies like this. I know, before ever seeing it, that a title like that promises more than it can deliver, but I’m okay with it. Should the film be dragged out and the mushroom people only make significant appearances during the last few minutes, that’s just fine by me. I wanted this movie to be bad, after all. And it is! Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Matango, aka Attack of the Mushroom People”
Author: capcom
Giant Monstershow: War of the Colossal Beast
This is the fifth review this Horrorshow featuring a film from giant monster auteur Bert I. Gordon. It’s only fitting, then, that Missile Test makes it official. Bert I. Gordon, I declare thee the unofficial official filmmaker of this year’s October Horrorshow. Keep an eye out for a certificate in the mail.
War of the Colossal Beast, released in June of 1958, is the sequel to Gordon’s The Amazing Colossal Man. Gordon not only directed this film, he produced and shared a screenwriting credit with George Worthing Yates (who penned an amazing six b-movies in 1958 alone).
In the previous film, Lt. Colonel Glenn Manning was exposed to a nuclear blast, resulting in him growing to about 60 feet in height. A finale at the Hoover Dam wrapped that film up nicely, but with a little more cash to be made from the idea, Gordon resurrected Manning for another film.
The action moves to Mexico this time around. A young Mexican man, Miguel (Robert Hernandez), is seen fleeing from something in a truck. He runs the truck into a deep puddle and it bogs down. The young man tries to run away, but doesn’t get far before succumbing to panic. Later, he is found and taken to a local doctor, but he is in shock. He can’t describe what it is that terrified him so. Continue reading “Giant Monstershow: War of the Colossal Beast”
October Horrorshow: God Told Me To
Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) of the NYPD has himself a bear of a case. Massacres have been happening all over the city, all carried out by different people, and all at random. There’s only one thing each of these awful events has in common: each of the perpetrators has said that God told them to do it. How is he supposed to stop that?
God Told Me To comes to us via writer, director, and producer Larry Cohen. This isn’t Cohen’s first appearance in the Horrorshow, having helmed the execrable film The Stuff . Whereas that film felt rushed, this earlier effort, from 1976, feels much more meticulous.
As much cop flick as horror, the film follows Detective Nicholas as he tries to find the common thread, other than the bizarre pronouncements from the perpetrators, that connects such disparate killings. It turns out that these killers aren’t suffering from some hallucination. There really is someone telling them to kill. Why they become so convinced that this person is God is one of the mysteries that Nicholas must solve. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: God Told Me To”
Giant Monstershow: The Amazing Colossal Man
No sea beasts, dinosaurs, giant arachnids, or skyscraper-sized gorillas in today’s flick. The monster in today’s entry in the October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow is a gigantic man.
The Amazing Colossal Man is the fourth film of this year’s Horrorshow, and the third released in 1957, from ’50s b-monster auteur Bert I. Gordon. The man found a niche, and stayed there until the box office returns started to dry up. From a screenplay by Gordon and Mark Hanna (who would pen Attack of the 50 Foot Woman the following year), The Amazing Colossal Man tells the tale of the unfortunate Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan), an army officer who is exposed to a nuclear blast during a test in the Nevada desert. Continue reading “Giant Monstershow: The Amazing Colossal Man”
October Horrorshow: Attack the Block
There have been a fair amount of unintentional comedies in this year’s Horrorshow, but this film is the first of the year where the jokes are intentional. It’s not just a horror/comedy, though. It’s also sci-fi/action, and crosses over into a few other genres should one wish to delve even deeper. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Attack the Block”
Giant Monstershow: The Black Scorpion
The poor performers in films like this. They come to a production, ready to put in enough work to make some mortgage payments, maybe dig a pool in the backyard, and they do a decent enough job. But then they go to the premiere of the film, with not the highest of expectations (after all, it ain’t John Ford or Howard Hawks they were working with), and they find the audience howling with laughter at the monster effects. Take a moment to appreciate the plight of the bad movie actor.
The Black Scorpion, the 1957 film from director Edward Ludwig and screenwriters David Duncan and Robert Blees, opens, as so many of these monster films from the ’50s do, with stock footage. But, for once, it’s not footage of Air Force jets or Arctic wastes. This time it’s footage of volcanoes oozing lava over the land. The expository voiceover informs the viewer that a new volcano is rising out of the ground in Mexico. In little over a month it has grown to gigantic size, threatening the surrounding ranches. Continue reading “Giant Monstershow: The Black Scorpion”
October Horrorshow: The Dead Pit
One would be hard-pressed to find a horror film that takes as much inspiration from the works of Dario Argento as The Dead Pit, the 1989 film from first-time director Brett Leonard.
From a screenplay by Leonard and the film’s producer, Gimel Everett, The Dead Pit stars Cheryl Lawson as Jane Doe, a patient at a mental hospital suffering from amnesia. Only she claims it isn’t amnesia at all. She says that a mysterious doctor removed her memories surgically. Her therapist, Dr. Swan (Jeremy Slate), doesn’t believe her, of course. He thinks some traumatic event in her past has welled up in the present and caused her brain to lock away her memories. Although, he of all people should listen a little more closely to her claims. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Dead Pit”
Giant Monstershow: The Cyclops
Exactly one month after Beginning of the End was released in 1957, another epic Bert I. Gordon schlock-fest hit theaters. Both written and directed by Gordon, The Cyclops is about as worthless a film as this terrible filmmaker ever made…for half of its Spartan 65-minute running time. But then the titular cyclops finally appears onscreen, and all is forgiven. Continue reading “Giant Monstershow: The Cyclops”
October Horrorshow: The House on Sorority Row
The 1980s were THE decade for slasher flicks. The subgenre of horror really picked up steam in the ’70s, but it was in the ’80s when it matured, like a fine wine. It also, somewhat paradoxically, got less gory. But that’s a subject for another day. For now, it’s enough to know that in 1983, someone made a slasher film called The House on Sorority Row. Oh, the possibilities.
From writer/director Mark Rosman, The House on Sorority Row tells the tale of a prank gone wrong. The Pi Theta house is about to shut its doors for summer break. The graduating sisters of the sorority want to throw one last bash before they all scatter to their adult lives. But the house mother/landlord, Mrs. Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt), isn’t having any of it. She needs the house for her own purposes, and wants the young women out.
Mrs. Slater has apparently been a domineering figure in the lives of the sorority sisters. After four years of putting up with her, the girls aren’t about to let Mrs. Slater ruin their big night. Their idea is to frighten Mrs. Slater with a gun firing blanks. How that will ensure they get to throw their party is a mystery, but it is believable that college kids didn’t think that far ahead. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The House on Sorority Row”
Giant Monstershow: Beginning of the End
The b-monster flick Beginning of the End marked the start of an epic year for filmmaker Bert I. Gordon. He directed not one, not two, but three giant monster movies in 1957. I’m impressed, but would be even more so had any one of these films looked like it took more than a week and a half to shoot.
Beginning of the End, from a screenplay by Fred Freiberger and Lester Gorn, tells the tale of a plague of giant locusts that descend on Chicago. For you readers in the American Midwest and points nearby, that’s ‘locusts’ as in real locusts, aka grasshoppers — not the colloquial locusts, aka cicadas. Either way, the bugs are about the size of city buses, with murderous appetites. Continue reading “Giant Monstershow: Beginning of the End”