Category: 1950s

Valley of the Kings (1954)

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Their quest was for more than simple riches! The journey was beset by the very fury of the gods! The discovery of an ancient tomb would reveal the ultimate betrayal! And confirm a great truth! But even more importantly, men would die, camels would snort and a rabbit would cower in a sandstorm for some reason!

Hitch your tan pants up to your nipples and strap on the big brimmed safari hat because it’s time to saddle up the dromedary for another 1950s desert adventure where women embark on a tomb raiding mission in their Sunday finest and perfect makeup and archeologists come equipped with the only things a real scientist needs – a smart mouth and a pistol! Continue reading “Valley of the Kings (1954)” →

Pirate of the Half Moon (1958)

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Finally, an Italian swashbuckler that documents the financial hardship endured by lesser nobility in medieval Europe while still delivering to the masses the all-male fetish fights that we secretly watch these movies for.

And if things are generally too talky for most of the film, at least it’s a lot of humorous whiny talk from the stingy Baron about how he can’t really afford to host the duchess or provide enough gun powder to ward off the pirates. You also really don’t mind all that talking whenever our hero Nadir (worst name ever for a hero!) is rocking a costume that looks like his pirate ship docked at the Baron’s castle on the way to a drag queen ball. Continue reading “Pirate of the Half Moon (1958)” →

Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)

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Perhaps on some level director Roger Corman knew that a movie starring giant crabs wasn’t really going to get audiences that fired up. Most people have never dealt with the animals except as a tasty treat and thus there is no deep seated fear of them like there is of the various insects, spiders and other icky things that became engorged during the 1950s heyday of these types of films.

In fact, when Mysterious Island featured a giant crab menacing people a few years later, the unfortunate creature ended up as an all you can eat castaways crab meat buffet! So it was probably not a bad idea that Corman tricked out his crab monsters with some additional super powers. Continue reading “Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)” →

The Haunted Strangler (1958)

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Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) runs around with a gimped-up arm and makes faces to show us that he has turned from a genteel novelist to a serial killer who likes to slash the pretty girls that work at the local strip joint somehow named “The Judas Hole.” (I just looked this up and it means something like “peep hole”. If nothing else, this movie taught me some cool new slang.) Continue reading “The Haunted Strangler (1958)” →

Goliath and the Barbarians (1959)

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Made very early in the sword and sandal cycle of the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s, Goliath and the Barbarians attempts to get by solely on the fact that the biggest name in the genre, Steve Reeves, is the featured player. The movie fails to rise above “forgettable strongman epic” but the fault in no way lies with big Steve.

Steve and his Goliath-sized guns grunt and groan mightily in an effort to heave this movie into something approaching interesting, but even his mammoth chest, no matter how much it’s glistening with hunk-sweat, can’t overcome the dull story of barbarians harassing Steve’s lower class village. Continue reading “Goliath and the Barbarians (1959)” →

World Without End (1956)

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World Without End PosterHundreds of years from now Earth has been devastated by an atomic war! Mutant cavemen roam the planet’s surface at will, enslaving the survivors still living in the open, while technologically advanced humans cower underground!

Even worse, a gang of toughs appear, call out the underground dwellers for being the pussies they are, steal their surprisingly sexy broads, and force the pansy men to build weapons for them! Then these toughs take their keg party up top and blast the piss out of the cavemen before the head bad boy kills the leader of the cavemen, thus cementing his position as King Bad Ass! Continue reading “World Without End (1956)” →