Bad Horror

[Jenny _S]

I'm so very surprised that no one has mentioned that classic piece of shit - "Earth Girls Are Easy". Now that was stinkeroonie!

(Although Julie Brown (a personal idol of mine) gave a stunning performance)

 

[dr_mabeuse]

When I was a kid, my sister and I went to the movies every Saturday, and when we saw the Tingler--I was probably around 7 or 8, some of the theater seats were wired to give a mild shock when the Tingler (which was a tricked-up lobster, I think) tingled.

There was a part where the Tingler had somehow got into a movie theater and was crawling down the aisle. What a scene! Tingler, tingling seats, people screaming. No vegetable soup, though (that was The Exorcist).

Yes, yes! I saw the tingler in the theater too! The premise was that we all have this little creature that lives in our spine, and it grows when we get scared. If it gets too big it'll kill us, and the only way to get it to shrink back down is to scream. So they wired every 5th or 7th seat in the theater so that at the scary moments the seats would buzz and you were supposed to think your tingler was growing. I had one of the wired seats, but I just thought my buddy had farted.

That was William Castle. He also did "House On Haunted Hill" (with a skeleton that came dangling out over the audience while everyone hooted and threw popcorn boxes at it), "Mr Sardonicus" (where you got to vote on Mr Sardnocus' fate at the end by hlding up a little glow-in-the-dark thumb), "Thirteen Ghosts" and a host of other stinkers, always with a gimmick. A great, great man.

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

Dr M....

Perhaps then you have seen the movie "Matinee" with John Goodman (I think it was done in 1993) it was loosely based (I believe) on William Castle.

~WOK

 

[Vincent E]

Such hyper criticism of classics.

Gang, Roger Corman was a genius (ie The Day the World Ended featuring Mike Connors). You try to make a move with $29 and a three-day schedule. I'll bet you can't do it.

The Hammer films are fantastic. All color gore featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee switching off as monster and madman.

The Godzilla franchise is the stuff of movie making magic. So much so that they revitalized it in the 1990s on the heels of Godzilla 1985. They simply pretended that the movies after the original Godzilla, King of the Monsters never took place. (BTW Angeline, G vs. TSM for flying backwards).

True crap, I mean the absolutely worst horror film I have ever seen, is a recent piece of Euro-crap called Dagon. Give me a bleeping break. The guy is not able to outrun fish-people with no legs. Stupid.

Today we live in an era of computer generated crap. Slick looking creatures and no real plot line. Movie makers have been spoiled by the ability to put anything on the screen. Sure, a pie plate suspended by fishing wire is campy, and a giant crab with the wheels visible underneath is shlocky, but these masters of the films of yesteryear had to work to make those effects.

Maybe Corma was a bit limited by having to film an entire movie in a room with a blanket drawn across the doorway to change perspective, but he had some idea of camera angles. Now it is just "pulg in the computer program."

Give me a guy in a rubber suit stomping on toy tanks over a compudigit-bot any time.

Adding an edit to my ranting above...

Any movie with stop-motion animation belongs in the Smithsonian. The original King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms being the absolute best that type of movie making has to offer.

 

[Guest]

The guy is not able to outrun fish-people with no legs.

... having to film an entire movie in a room with a blanket drawn across the doorway to change perspective, but he had some idea of camera angles.

Vincenzo,

I think I'm in love. You know film! too much to take in. (I love and deeply respect Corman.)

grazie, Perdita

 

[Seattle Zack]

Corman's influence on American cinema is hard to ignore. Hollywood is filled with people who got their start on Corman projects. Jonathan Demme, director of Silence of the Lambs, wrote and directed possibly the best women-in-prison film ever made, the classic Chained Heat, produced by Corman.

In 1963 Corman made a truly awful film called The Terror. Boris Karloff still owed Corman three days of shooting from a previous project, so Corman made this clunker about a witch and a Baron and a mysterious girl. Karloff was pissed that he had to do it, and barely stirs from a somnambulent state throughout the movie. The film took less than a week to make and starred a kid named Jack Nicholson.

--Zack
(Editied 'cause I got the date wrong --- thanks imdb.)

 

[Angeline]

The Godzilla franchise is the stuff of movie making magic. So much so that they revitalized it in the 1990s on the heels of Godzilla 1985. They simply pretended that the movies after the original Godzilla, King of the Monsters never took place. (BTW Angeline, G vs. TSM for flying backwards).

Yes. v. The Smog Monster (and he appears to be propelled by very bad indigestion). And don't get me wrong--these films are schlockily wonderful, like Ray Harryhausen's stuff. Anyway, I have a soft spot for Godzilla--I spent years making up Godzilla bedtime stories at my son's request (now *that's* scary).

 

[Vincent E]

I spent years making up Godzilla bedtime stories at my son's request (now *that's* scary).

"Now son, let me tell you all about the time Godzilla stomped on the school cancelling classes for the rest of the year. It's called Godzilla versus the NEA."

"Yeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

 

[Vincent E]

Right now I am watching Frankenstein's Daughter on AMC, and this horror movie just plain sucks. I love bad 50s monster flicks, and this is truly terrible.

Let's see: the grandson of the original Victor Frankenstein has taken up residence in a typical American suburb working for a scientist with a German accent (named Carter) with a sexy young niece who is dating a police detective who is investigating a string of strange happenings I love strange happenings related to a female monster in a bathing suit - who happens to be the German scientist's niece. In the meantime the monster - that would be the other monster - that Frankenstein created with a female brain broke out of the house - not the laboratory - and went on a rampage.

Oh yeah, the brain for the creature came from a hot-to-trot blonde that Frankenstein was "parked" with on lover's lane, but she didn't want to "park" with him so he killed her and yanked the grey matter out of her head.

Then Frankenstein tries to strangle Carter himself when he has a perfectly good mentally deranged monster in the attic to do his dirty work, all the while the youngsters are in the back having a pool party with a rock band singing sha-la-la-la-la-la-la music.

Boy, this movie sucks so much I might run out and get the video.


By the way Angeline, any thoughts on Godzilla versus Frankenstein?

I'm going to go see Alien this weekend.

 

[cookiejar]

Right now I am watching Frankenstein's Daughter on AMC, and this horror movie just plain sucks. I love bad 50s monster flicks, and this is truly terrible.

Let's see: the grandson of the original Victor Frankenstein has taken up residence in a typical American suburb working for a scientist with a German accent (named Carter) with a sexy young niece who is dating a police detective who is investigating a string of strange happenings I love strange happenings related to a female monster in a bathing suit - who happens to be the German scientist's niece. In the meantime the monster - that would be the other monster - that Frankenstein created with a female brain broke out of the house - not the laboratory - and went on a rampage.

Oh yeah, the brain for the creature came from a hot-to-trot blonde that Frankenstein was "parked" with on lover's lane, but she didn't want to "park" with him so he killed her and yanked the grey matter out of her head.

Then Frankenstein tries to strangle Carter himself when he has a perfectly good mentally deranged monster in the attic to do his dirty work, all the while the youngsters are in the back having a pool party with a rock band singing sha-la-la-la-la-la-la music.

Boy, this movie sucks so much I might run out and get the video.


By the way Angeline, any thoughts on Godzilla versus Frankenstein?

I'm going to go see Alien this weekend.

I watched that one too. The dumbest part was when Frankenstein tells the monster to killl the cop. The cop is standing in an open doorway but instead of leaving he runs into the room and gets cornered.

 

[raphy]

I'm so very surprised that no one has mentioned that classic piece of shit - "Earth Girls Are Easy". Now that was stinkeroonie!

(Although Julie Brown (a personal idol of mine) gave a stunning performance)

Hey, I liked that movie!

Raph, shaming himself again.