Goliath and the Barbarians (1959)

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)”

Assignment: Outer Space (1960)

Hindsight being what it is, I don’t imagine that I should have ever thought that a movie starring people named Rik Von Nutter and Gaby Farinon would be anything above “worst movie about a runaway space station ever” status. If Rik and Gaby never had the good sense to change their names to something that didn’t immediately make me think that this was some type of send up of movies about runaway space stations, then why would I think they had any ability to judge scripts? Continue reading “Assignment: Outer Space (1960)”

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Among the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s various works, The Masque Of The Red Death stands out as one of the best, featuring superior production values (they flew over to England for a tax break and apparently ended up re-using the sets from Beckett), an appropriately vile performance by Vincent Price as Prince Prospero, and a story that was more than the standard old dark house with degenerate families story that seemed to permeate these productions like the stench of a corpse moldering in a secret chamber somewhere in the living room walls. It didn’t hurt this movie any either when this midget burned alive a guy in a gorilla suit. Continue reading “The Masque of the Red Death (1964)”

The Premature Burial (1962)

PrematureBurialPosterWay back in the 1800s, man’s greatest fear was being buried alive. Medical science wasn’t as evolved as it is today, so the ignorant masses were afraid that when they took an afternoon siesta after a particularly large tankard of ale and gruel, their overeager relatives would see this as a chance to get their mitts on all their worldly possessions (lice-infested cloak, rusty shovel, and empty tankard – stuff like that no doubt), proclaim the unfortunate chap dead and have the little bugger all buried just before he wakes up wondering why the devil his mouth is full of dirt and maggots are trying to move in on his soft parts. Continue reading “The Premature Burial (1962)”

House of Usher (1960)

Roger Corman‘s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher is a bore that left me with several questions. For instance, do the characters really stand around for the first forty minutes whining about some family destiny that dooms them all to death? Are there really only four actors in this movie not counting the extras in the dream sequence that Corman must have felt compelled to put in so that something remotely interesting could be highlighted in the movie’s trailer? Did Vincent Price really dye his hair blonde for the role of Roderick Usher? Continue reading “House of Usher (1960)”

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)

Having already run through this premise with Charles Laughton in 1933’s Island Of Lost Souls and a bunch of nobodies in 1959’s Terror Is a Man, I wasn’t too excited at the prospect of sitting through some goof in his ape man make-up running down Moreau’s laws whenever Moreau wandered into his cave with a bullwhip and a chip on his shoulder. Continue reading “The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)”

The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)

Tomb of Ligeia PosterThings get off to a promising start with Vincent Price‘s Verden Fell arguing with small-minded church types who are refusing to let him bury his dead witch of a wife, Ligeia, in one of the official cemeteries with their fancy consecrated land just because she supposedly said something before she died about how she would never die. I was thinking, “heck Verden, why don’t you just keep her almost-dead ass in a secret room in your fancy abbey and let her screw with your mind for the rest of your miserable life” and by golly if that’s what Verden went and did. Continue reading “The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)”