The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)

August 7, 2021 Ken Miller Leave a comment

After the mummy of Ra-Antef is discovered in 1900 by three Egyptologists (Ronald Howard, Jack Gwillim and Bernard Rebel), all the mummy’s artefacts are taken to London by the expedition’s backer – brash American showman Alexander King (Fred Clark) – who intends to exploit the discovery as a travelling road show.

The mummy, of course, comes back to life and starts killing off various members of the expedition. Meanwhile, Annette, the daughter of one of the Egyptologists, finally discovers the mysterious origin of rich arts patron Adam Beauchamp (Terence Morgan)…

...lurking in the sewer — …lurking in the sewer

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB was directed by Michael Carreras, who also wrote it under the pseudonym ‘Henry Younger’, and was originally released in a double bill with THE GORGON. It was the second of Hammer’s four Mummy movies.

You'd have the same expression if a big-boned mummy was looming over you! — You’d have the same expression if a big-boned mummy was looming over you!

If only the mummy was as huge as it is depicted in this poster!

This Hammer yarn features a rather chunky mummy (played by stunt man Dickie Owen) that comes back to life fairly late in the movie. I prefer the lithe, mud-caked look of Christopher Lee’s mummy in 1959’s THE MUMMY, but this is a colourful, watchable production with Michael Ripper as Achmed, a cool scene where a bunch of coppers with a net take on the mummy, a plot twist concerning an immortal character and a finale set in the sewers.

A rather stout mummy... — A rather stout mummy…

The film has a preoccupation with hand-severing, featuring three different scenes of hands getting cut off. At one point there’s a flashback where we see the Egyptian prince (who will become the mummy) getting his hand chopped off. Now, surely this would mean that the roaming mummy in this movie should have a stump? Or was the hand reattached to Ra-Antef when he was mummified, perhaps?

The second hand-lopping seen in the film

Yet another hand gets chopped off in the film!

Definitely not a classic Hammer film, this production passes the time, however, and does boast a lively performance by Fred Clark as the showy, profit-obsessed Alexander King.

Gorgeous French poster by Jean-Claude Ghirardi

I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

August 5, 2021 Ken Miller Leave a comment

The groom changed so much after the wedding... — The groom changed so much after the wedding…

A young wife (Gloria Talbott) starts to worry that her husband (Tom Tyron) is not the man he was before they tied the knot…

Soon she finds out that he’s not the only guy in town that seems to have changed character. Eventually she discovers that her husband is actually an alien… and realises that she has married a monster from outer space!

Despite its gimmicky title, this is a well-made 50s sci-fi movie, directed by Gene (I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF) Fowler Jr, which was released as a double feature with THE BLOB (now that’s what I call an amazing double bill!)

Yikes! An awesome coupling of movies! — Yikes! An awesome duo!

I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE’s script, written by Louis Vittes (who usually wrote for television), is really quite effective, gradually building a sense of paranoia experienced by the newlywed heroine, with the plot focusing on the stealthy invasion of Earth by human-mimicking, glowing aliens in search of females they can procreate with. Dripping with subtext, the story can be seen as an allegory for how couples can quickly grow apart and become alienated.

The couple becomes 'alienated' — The newlyweds become ‘alienated’

Some decent special effects by John P. Fulton, good performances from Tom Tyron and Gloria Talbott, and a finale that involves dogs ripping out the aliens’ breathing tubes all add to the enjoyment of this film.

Glowing, gnarly alien — A glowing, gnarly monster from outer space

Nice touches include ‘alien smoke’ FX, the grotesque aliens’ true faces being revealed during lightning flashes (creepy!) and the main extraterrestrial character finally developing a knowledge of human feelings.

I urge you to seek this out if you’ve not seen it, because it’s a satisfying film that can be relished simply as a B-movie romp or as a sci-fi tale with some crafty subtext.

Hostile (2017)

August 3, 2021 Ken Miller 4 Comments

In a post-apocalyptic world a woman (Brittany Ashworth) crashes her truck, breaks her leg and must survive the night as a creature menacingly lurks outside.

Okay, whether you like this movie or not will probably depend upon how much you are interested in the many flashbacks that reveal the heroine’s relationship with her lover in pre-apocalypse times.

I actually found the flashbacks concerning the burgeoning romance interesting, though they do take up a great deal of the running time (SPOILER) …and the romance does relate to the plot twist at the end.

The non-flashback section of the film is handled like a contained horror-thriller, with the protagonist stuck in her overturned vehicle for the duration of the movie.

In a land where mutants lurk — …in a land where mutants lurk

Creature-wise, I liked the look of the beings that populate the wasteland: hairless, scrawny humanoids with deformed heads.

Dawn of the Beast (2021)

July 30, 2021 Ken Miller Leave a comment

Students travel into an area of wilderness in search of Bigfoot, but eventually discover there is also a dangerous supernatural spirit known as the Wendigo lurking here… and this antlered, evil presence has the power to turn people into hairless, humanoid creatures.

'The legends are real... and they kill' — ‘The legends are real… and they kill’

The Bigfoot is behind you... — The Bigfoot is behind you…

One of the Wendigo's creatures — One of the Wendigo’s creatures

Director Bruce Wemple’s previous film, THE RETREAT (2020), also featured the Wendigo and its hairless minion creatures, but DAWN OF THE BEAST is more entertaining and manages to add more tension to its scenes compared to the previous flick, which shares some of the same actors.
(Oh, and Wemple ALSO made the Bigfoot movie MONSTROUS in 2020).

Shadow of the Wendigo... — Shadow of the Wendigo…

This film is far from perfect, though, with a fuzziness concerning just how the Wendigo affects its victims: some become glowing-eyed, smooth-skinned creatures, whilst others remain people resembling possessed deadites from the Evil Dead movies.
And I didn’t like the early scene where the group come across an old corpse, which they decide to ignore because it would ruin their weekend! When people make such unrealistic, stupid decisions it can really pull you out of the film.

One of the characters goes very 'Evil Dead'... — One of the characters goes very ‘Evil Dead’…

But DAWN OF THE BEAST does have a standout moment: a third act scene where we see Bigfoot fight and kill a bunch of the Wendigo’s creatures in the woods, accompanied by a cool synth score! Nice!
I do like the fact Bigfoot really kicks these creatures asses! Go Bigfoot!

Bigfoot gets covered in the blood of the creatures he's killing — Bigfoot gets covered in the blood of the creatures he’s killing

The protagonist watches the creatures fight

I was also surprised when the feisty female character Lilly (Anna Shields – also the writer the script), who I thought was going to end up being the movie’s ass-kicking ‘final girl’, gets her arm ripped off and she is killed!

I wasn’t expecting this!

City Under the Sea (1965)

July 27, 2021 Ken Miller Leave a comment

Known as WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP in the US, this period fantasy-sci-fi-horror yarn stars Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, Susan Hart, David Tomlinson and John Le Mesurier.

The plot involves Price as the leader of a group of smugglers/seamen living in the sunken remains of a lost city off the coast of Cornwall. This place gets its air via the lost city’s advanced pump machinery that is still working. The race who built the city are now few in number and have devolved into gill men.
Price and his men never age so long as they stay in the ruins beneath the waves, but if they venture to the world above they immediately grow old and die.

The sunken city and underwater volcano (in Cornwall!)

Released as WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP in the US

Well, this is a movie that pretends to be a Poe film (a poem of his is recited), but the film is really more of a faux Jules Verne yarn with its steampunk diving suits and general decor.

CITY UNDER THE SEA, directed by Jacques Tourneur, looks great, with good scale model work, gorgeous lighting and detailed, nicely art directed sets, featuring bull-headed statues, a giant stone hand and walls covered in Babylonian-style writing and paintings. We get an earthquake at the end too.

This stone hand is a great piece of decor

Jacques Tourneur gives this movie a great look

However… the plot goes nowhere, with the story becoming simply a series of attempted escapes, involving walking through passages and Price threatening to punish people, even when the local underwater volcano (in Cornwall?!) threatens to destroy everything.

The plot problems can be attributed to the heavy rewriting the script suffered to add humour to it, mainly so that David Tomlinson’s character could be introduced… with his pet chicken (I think the producers wanted to add the chicken because animals had featured in similar movies: there was a duck in JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, a sea lion in 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and a poodle in the 1960 version of THE LOST WORLD).

During the undersea chase scene Herbert the chicken sits in Tomlinson's diving helmet! — During the undersea chase scene Herbert the chicken sits in Tomlinson’s diving helmet!

The gill men could have been a big plus for the film, but these aquatic humanoids are not too impressive and seem to have been made from doctored wetsuits.
The underwater chase scene at the end is v-e-r-y slow and plodding too.

I've got to say I've seen better movie gill men... — I’ve got to say I’ve seen better movie gill men…

With a decent script this could have been so much better, even with the inclusion of Herbert the chicken, but the film remains an enjoyable watch anyway.

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

July 26, 2021 Ken Miller Leave a comment

A giant tongue sprouts a toothy mouth and tentacles!

A tax collector (Leslie Cheung) travels to a rural town and ends up taking shelter in a creepy, deserted temple in the forest. Here he encounters a beautiful young woman (Joey Wong) and falls in love with her. A Taoist priest (Wu Ma), however, informs our hero that this woman is a ghost… and it is soon revealed that she is under the control of an evil Tree Demon.

Directed with kinetic panache by Ching Siu-Tung, this film is a horror-romance-martial-arts-comedy-actioner that is crammed with atmosphere, emotion, gravity defying swordplay and some goofball physical comedy.

Leslie Cheung and Joey Wang — Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong

Its mix of Asian story elements (beautiful flying ghosts, a Taoist priest-swordsman, etc) and western filming techniques (Sam Raimi-esque roving cameras and some gooey FX) make this Hong Kong production an enormously entertaining watch, with Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong and Wu Ma all perfect in the leading roles.

Wu Ma performs a very acrobatic Taoist rap!

Joey Wong is a standout playing the sexy-yet-vulnerable ghost, flying about the stylishly-lit locations in her flowing silk robes. There is a wonderful moment where she gives Leslie Cheung’s character (who is having to hide from her evil ‘sisters’ underwater) a slow motion kiss that is also providing him with much-needed air.
(This is my all-time favourite screen kiss!)

And, of course, we shouldn’t forget the shrivelled stop-motion corpses in the temple. These undead dudes shuffle around the building in the early part of the film, trying to get hold of the hero, but thanks to a series of comedic, lucky mishaps he remains completely unaware that the zombies are there, eventually killing them with sunlight without ever noticing them!

Another shot of the stop-motion corpses — Another shot of the stop-motion zombies

Full-scale zombie head used for close-ups

The ancient tree spirit villain is a great antagonist, appearing as a cross-dressing dame or a gigantic human tongue. At one point the tip of the huge tongue splits, becomes a toothed maw with a face at the back of the jaws, with tentacles sprouting everywhere!

Produced by the legendary Tsui Hark, the film’s plot is loosely based on a tale from writer Pu Songling’s short story collection STRANGE STORIES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO. That ghost yarn was originally adapted for the screen in 1960 as the Shaw Brothers film THE ENCHANTING SHADOW, a movie that was an influence on Hark when he made his own version of the tale in 1987.

I was really impressed with A CHINESE GHOST STORY when I first saw it in the cinema back in 1987. With its effortless merging of genres, a haunting score and a finale featuring the heroes battling it out in the netherworld to save the heroine, the movie turned me into an avid, obsessed Hong Kong movie fan!

Wu Ma is especially good as the sword-fighting monk

Awesome stuff!

(If you hunt this down to watch, make sure you see the perfectly-formed ’87 version and not the remake)

One more look at the undead corpses in the attic!

Episode 79 of MOVIESTRUCK…

MOVIESTRUCK is a New York-based podcast about movies and the people who watch them – and this episode features me, along with Eastern Heroes magazine publisher Ricky Baker, talking to host Sophia Ricciardi about the utterly amazing A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987). You can listen to it HERE!

The Throne of Fire (1983)

July 24, 2021 Ken Miller Leave a comment

Bad guy Mora, who is the son of the devil (well, he’s actually the son of a messenger of the devil), wants to sit on the Throne of Fire, but he must marry a princess who is a rightful heir first. The princess that Mora sets his sights on is Valkari, who is helped by the very buff Siegfried (Pietro Torrisi), but the muscled hero finds himself dealing with such obstacles as the Well of Madness.

When the villain Mora is born he looks like this... — When the villain Mora is born he looks like this…

It turns out that Mora's soldiers look like this under their helmets... — It turns out that Mora’s soldiers look like this under their helmets

This Italian poster has 'borrowed' from Frazetta it seems... — An Italian poster that has ‘borrowed’ from Frazetta, it seems…

THE THRONE OF FIRE is an Italian sword and sorcery film (it comes across more like a peplum) directed by Franco Prosperi, who reuses the village raid sequence from his previous 1982 movie THE SWORD OF THE BARBARIANS. Princess Valkari is played by Sabrina Siani, who was the mask-wearing, sadistic, topless villainess Ocron in Lucio Fulci’s mist-shrouded fantasy barbarian yarn CONQUEST (1983).

This movie has some interesting elements, including the aforementioned Well of Madness, where the muscular hero is confronted by a panther, a python and fights an empty suit of armour. The villain’s origin is okay (you see brief shots of him as a newborn, slimy monster baby) and the titular throne is a fun concept: it burns alive anyone who is unworthy of sitting on it!

A floating mangled head — …and here’s a floating mangled head

Anyone who is unworthy gets incinerated on the throne!

So it’s a shame that this sword and sorcery film doesn’t do enough with its ideas, coming across as rather dull and meandering, even with a floating ghost head, some fairly decent sets, and the on-screen presence of Sabrina Siani as the blonde-haired warrior princess.

Yep, a shame.

Thirst (2015)

July 23, 2021 Ken Miller 2 Comments

Alien critter alert! — Toothy-faced beastie!

The staff and teenagers at a wilderness boot camp for problem teens are attacked by a vicious bio-mechanical alien. With nobody nearby to help them, they are forced to fight back on their own.

The poster artist doesn't seem to know the movie is set in a desert... — The poster artist doesn’t seem to know the movie is set in a desert…

This is a just-about-okay flick that is better than the stuff produced by the Asylum, for instance (which I know isn’t saying much!)

Directed by Greg Kiefer, THIRST features almost-okay (or at least acceptable) CGI, but some of the cliched characters get pretty irritating, which affects the potential watchability and enjoyment of the movie – and I think it would have been better if the alien’s origin had been gone into.

If you fancy watching a bunch of one dimensional protagonists getting bumped off by a CGI critter that looks its best in the night scenes (but is featured in a lot of bright daylight scenes) this could well be the cliche-ridden flick for you!

Creature concept design by Mauricio Ruiz…

Shame the creature in the movie wasn't as cool as this original design — Shame the creature in the movie wasn’t as cool as this original design

Dracula (1979)

July 23, 2021 Ken Miller 3 Comments

Count Dracula (Frank Langella) arrives in Whitby on the doomed ship Demeter that runs aground during a stormy night. He is discovered by Mina Van Helsing (Jan Francis), who is visiting her friend Lucy Seward (Kate Nelligan). The suave Count visits Mina and her friends at the Seward’s mansion that is also the local asylum.

Dracula starts preying on the women, turning Mina into a ghastly vampire and offering Lucy eternal, undead life as his bride. Jonathan Harker (Trevor Eve), Lucy’s fiancé, joins forces with Mina’s father, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier), to combat the charming-but-deadly Count.

Just like Universal’s 1931 production of DRACULA, that starred Bela Lugosi, the screenplay for this version of the Bram Stoker story was based on the 1924 stage adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L Balderston. Langella starred in the Broadway play and had been nominated for a Tony Award for his performance.
(This version of the tale also changed characters and names around too).

I think this is a very satisfying, enjoyable, Edwardian period-set vampire movie.

I know some horror fans avoid this version because it’s a ‘romantic’ take on the story, but it is a great-looking production that boasts a fine score by John Williams, a memorable central performance by Frank Langella and a good supporting cast, including Donald Pleasence and Tony Haygarth, who is great as Renfield.

With a screenplay by W. D (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) Richter, the film has a bunch of well-done horror moments directed by John Badham, such as the underground encounter with a very ghoulish-looking undead Mina, Dracula twisting Renfield’s head 180° to break his neck and the Count crawling vertically down walls in slow motion.

Wonderful stuff.

Oh, and I like the love sequence between Dracula and Lucy (which many people knock), that uses the sumptuous John Williams score really effectively… and features laser effects!

Love scene — Okay, the love scene does go a bit ‘James Bond title sequence’, but that’s probably because Maurice Binder was Visual Consultant on this movie…

A beautiful matte shot by Albert Whitlock

View from a spider's web — View from a spider’s web

About the colour timing…
In 1991 John Badham (who had originally wanted to shoot the film in black and white) tweaked the colour timing for home video with a desaturated look. This remains the most widely available version (it’s the version available on Amazon Prime, for instance).

For their 2-Disc Blu-ray Collector’s Edition, Scream Factory included the desaturated version plus the original version that screened in theatres (which I saw and enjoyed so much).

Mina gif — Thought I’d show Mina one more time!

The Stuff (1985)

July 21, 2021 Ken Miller 4 Comments

David Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) is hired by several dessert manufacturers to find out about a new product called The Stuff that is ruining their businesses.

Art by Graham Humphreys — UK art by Graham Humphreys

Rutherford discovers that The Stuff is actually a living, parasitic, blob-like organism that seeps up out of the ground and is being packaged as a new fast food… that gradually takes over the brains of users, turning them into hollowed-out, zombie-like beings.

Larry Cohen’s low budget yarn about a sentient dessert that sets out to take over mankind is a fun 80s B-movie romp featuring a bunch of rough & ready & enjoyable practical effects scenes (animatronics, miniatures, etc), some satire on fast food culture (colourful logos & catchy jingles sell The Stuff to consumers) and a likeable performance from Michael Moriarty, who was also good in Cohen’s god-monster movie Q (1982).

The Stuff leaves users all hollow inside

The film has hints of INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS in its DNA, plus a bit of INVADERS FROM MARS (a child character’s family is taken over and no one believes anything the kid says), and also, of course, it has visual influences from THE BLOB.

“Are you eating it or is it eating you?”

Ultimately, THE STUFF features some good sequences and has fun with the overall premise, though Larry Cohen isn’t able to make his monster, which basically resembles yogurt with an IQ, very scary!

It's pouring straight at them! — It’s pouring straight at them!

Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien. Plus monsters from other media too, including books and comics.