The problem with these movies that were made in the 1950s about big sea monsters cavorting around in scenic coves is that the actors back then had no compunction about doing a swimsuit scene without the benefit of about three months of intense training. (Or at least cutting back on the Pabst about two weeks prior to shooting.) Continue reading “The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955)”
Category: Aquatic Horror
Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)
You ever have one of those days where you wish you could go back to bed and start it all over again like Bill Murray in that irritating Groundhog Day movie? I’m pretty sure that’s how Dave Walker felt in this movie about guys in black tarps harassing backwoods types. Dave is the lard ass who runs the general store that serves the tri-swamp area with all its food, bait, and gossiping needs. Continue reading “Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)”
Tormented (1960)
Tom Stewart (inertly played by Richard Carlson of Creature From The Black Lagoon) tells his girlfriend Vi that he is breaking up with her and is instead going to marry his other sweetheart Meg, mainly because she’s prettier and her daddy is stinking rich. Vi pulls the old “well I guess I’ll just have to publish my little book I’ve been working on called Tom Stewart’s Love Letters to His Skanky Hooch Vi.” She also threatens Tom with giving the letters to her lawyer for a lawsuit. I guess if she’s alleging that he’s a stud jazz pianist, then he’s guilty as hell! Continue reading “Tormented (1960)”
Endless Descent (1990)
Jack Scalia (Dark Breed, The Silencers) co-stars with his gigantic hair as the bad ass submarine designer who dives down a billion miles into the ocean to blast some respect into mutant sea monsters that have gone and wrecked his sub! And don’t lie to me and say you didn’t just rip a fricking hole in the crotch of your wet suit when you read that! Incredibly, like some sort of unbelievable deep sea anomaly that can only exist because of the extreme conditions down there, Endless Descent goes out and just blows away the lofty expectations you have for a film featuring Scalia vs. mutants! Continue reading “Endless Descent (1990)”
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 Great Alligator (1979)
Director Sergio Martino is an old hand at these types of movies (Italian trash), having been behind 2019: After The Fall Of New York and Mountain Of The Cannibal God as well as forays into the giallo, spaghetti western, and Eurocrime arenas. And having worked extensively with the likes of Daniel Greene in flicks like After the Condor and Beyond Kilimanjaro, Across the River of Blood, if anyone could take a plastic alligator named Kruna and make an entertaining film out of it, it would be Sergio. Continue reading “The Great Alligator (1979)”
Alien from the Deep (1989)
I really couldn’t tell if Charles Napier’s Colonel Kovacks, the evil chemical plant operator, was supposed to be the bad guy in this mouth-watering alien slime drenched Italian jungle/horror/sci-fi casserole.
Napier ruthlessly pursues a couple of trespassing environmental activists, cusses out his employees, shrugs off the Chicken Little whining of his head scientist (first about the problems with the volcano they are using to dump toxic waste in and then about the strange burrowing creature that’s terrorizing the plant) and settles on a plan of blowing everything back to the Stone Age to defeat the creature.
How can you not admire a guy who, when given dire information about the alien, smirks and says “don’t worry about it Geoffrey because this is war and that’s something I know a lot about.” First environmentalists and now this? It’s all just more asses to kick for Col. Kovacks! Continue reading “Alien from the Deep (1989)”