The first words on the screen were “Presented by R.I. Diculous.” A few more of these “wacky” credits followed confirming my suspicions that I was in for one of those most painful of movie going experiences: the bad movie that tries to be so bad that it’s funny. Continue reading “Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962)”
Category: American International Pictures
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Scientist Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the last man on Earth! Does he spend his days going on kick ass shopping sprees, cruising the wastleand in a tricked out battle van and rescuing the only fertile woman left on the planet who just happened to be a lingerie model before things fell apart?
Uh, no, he’s puttering about his house sharpening wooden stakes, loading the door up with fresh garlic, and playing with his shortwave radio. Most embarassing of all, he drives a station wagon. Remember when you thought Armageddon would be super awesome? Sheesh. What a let down! Continue reading “The Last Man on Earth (1964)”
Hell’s Angels ’69 (1969)
The selling point with this biker flick is that the unkempt guys with bad attitudes are the real Hell’s Angels. How that was supposed to be a selling point eludes me since the only thing I learned about Sonny Barger and his Hell’s Angles from this movie is that they drink a lot of beer, smart off to authority figures, don’t practice much in the way of motorcycle safety, and are easily duped by outsiders. Continue reading “Hell’s Angels ’69 (1969)”
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, it’s the old “alien invaders taking over monsters” gimmick again. Yes, we’ve seen it before in this very film series and it always seems to be a bit strained in the logic department. If these aliens were such smarty-pants nerds, couldn’t they figure out a way to take over our world without having to rely on big, smelly, dumb monsters? You would also think that word would get out in the far reaches of space that earth is more trouble than it’s worth, but most aliens are slow learners, I guess. Continue reading “Destroy All Monsters (1968)”
Frogs (1972)
I’ve always considered Ray Milland’s less glamorous work in movies like Panic In Year Zero, X – The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, and Frogs much more important than roles like the Oscar-winning turn he did as a boozehound in The Lost Weekend. So many of our most beloved actors (and even more so, our hottest actresses) fade into obscurity and therefore into taxpayer-funded nursing homes once they hit their late thirties and start looking all wrinkly.
Ray though didn’t give a crap if a part simply required him to sit in a wheelchair, casting irritated glances at large quantities of fat frogs as in this film or even more amazingly, appear with Don Rickles when Ray had his x-ray eyes. If he was breathing, he was working. (Check his filmography – the credits run from 1929-1985. He died in 1986.) Continue reading “Frogs (1972)”
The Food of the Gods (1976)
Morgan’s grandpa always told Morgan that one day the Earth would rebel against Man for taking a big dump all over the land. Nature would surely exact its revenge against humanity because this was the 1970s and “nature run amok” movies about hoards of rabbits (Night of the Lepus), plagues of frogs (Frogs) and outbreaks of William Shatner (Kingdom of the Spiders) were all the rage.
You know what Morgan’s crazy old grandpappy forgot when terrorizing Morgan with his left wing hippie eco-terror tales? That Nature may be pissed, but none of that matters when the giant rats, wasps and chickens attack a professional football player! Who gives a crap about a rat the size of a Volkswagen when you’re facing off against a psychotic 350 pound lineman every Sunday? Continue reading “The Food of the Gods (1976)”
Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
This was the first beach party I’d seen, so I wasn’t too sure what I was getting myself in for. I guess I imagined there’d be a little singing, probably a surfing contest against some snooty rich kids, and some square parents who thought all surfers were no good.
Other than the singing, I was completely off base, because instead of snobs vs. slobs and parents who just don’t understand, we had a comic relief biker gang, a sky diving story line, a pop singer named Sugar Kane, and a mermaid!
Beach Blanket Bingo is pretty close to the end of the cycle for these beach party movies and without having seen any of those others as of this writing, it’s difficult to say whether the film makers had exhausted their beach movie material or what, but you get the feeling watching the various storylines peter out at various points in the film, that they didn’t really have any solid ideas for what this movie was going to be about. Continue reading “Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)”