Dracula

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

I’ve seen many vampire movies, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this particular version of Dracula. As with Frankenstein, my review may be coloured by the fact I’ve read the book. In fact, after reading the book I did a lot of research trying to figure out how the vampire went from being the loathsome creature depicted in the book to a romantic hero. I never did find a definitive answer, so in the end I abandoned my research. But I think Hollywood had a lot to do with it, although perhaps not with this particular film.

The movie begins with a carriage travelling along a mountain road. They’re in a hurry to reach the next village before nightfall because of the nosferatu. One of the passengers, a solicitor named Renfield, insists that he needs to keep going to Borgo Pass because he’s meeting another coach there. The villagers try to warn him about the danger, but of course he doesn’t listen, and the innkeeper’s wife gives him a cross to wear for protection.

As the sun sets we’re treated to a shot of inside the castle where rats and possums and insects all scurry for cover as a coffin begins to open. Out climbs a woman in a long, filmy dress. Dracula is seen just standing on the stairs and we get a close-up of his intense stare.

Renfield and his luggage are practically thrown from the coach when they reach the Borgo Pass, but Dracula’s coach is waiting for him. He continues his journey at breakneck speed and as they drive up a long, narrow mountain road we see a bat flying over the heads of the horses. When the coach stops, Renfield starts to scold the driver, then realizes the driver is gone.

The door to the castle opens by itself. For some reason there are a couple of armadillos wandering around, and three very cheesy looking bats hover by a stained glass window. Dracula glides down the long staircase to bid Renfield welcome and leads the way upstairs.

They discuss Dracula’s intention to lease Carfax Abbey in England. Renfield has brought the papers with him for Dracula to sign, and Dracula tells him he’s already booked passage on a ship. After pouring Renfield a glass of wine to have with his dinner, Dracula takes his leave. Needing some air, Renfield opens one of the French doors leading outside and then promptly faints. Dracula’s three wives are closing in on him when Dracula himself appears and shoos them away.

Next we cut to the ship that’s being tossed about by a storm at sea. When it reaches port, the only one still alive is Renfield, and he’s now batshit crazy (pun intended). He’s taken to a sanatorium run by Dr. Seward that just happens to be adjacent to Carfax Abbey.

It’s a foggy night in London and we seen Dracula strolling about. After draining a flower seller, he ends up at the symphony, were he ingratiates himself with Dr. Seward who introduces him to his daughter Mina, her friend Lucy, and Mina’s fiancé Jonathan. Lucy seems especially smitten with Dracula.

Late that night Dracula pays Lucy a visit and the next day we catch a glimpse of the operating theatre where Lucy is pronounced dead from blood loss. This is where we first see Van Helsing, who points out that there’s been several victims all dying of the same thing, and all with two small puncture wounds on their necks. He tells them they’re dealing with a nosferatu.

Meanwhile, at the sanatorium, Renfield begs Dr. Seward to send him away so he doesn’t “give Mina bad dreams” with his nightly cries. Van Helsing wants to help Renfield, but Renfield gets very upset when Van Helsing shows him some wolfsbane, which is known to ward off vampires. Van Helsing tells Dr. Seward to keep an eye on Renfield, especially at night.

That night, Dracula pays Mina a visit. The next morning she’s describing the dream she had about the mist to Jonathan and Van Helsing insists on looking at her neck. There are two marks on it, just like the others had.

When Dracula comes to pay a social call, Van Helsing glances at the mirror in the music box and Dracula has no reflection. He does this many, many times, just to make sure the audience gets the point, then shows it to Jonathan. Dr. Seward sends Mina off to bed and Van Helsing turns the music box so Dracula can see it. Dracula sweeps it from his grasp, then apologizes and leaves.

Van Helsing tells Dr. Seward and Jonathan that Dracula is the vampire they’re looking for. Meanwhile, Mina sneaks out to the garden where Dracula is waiting to bite her again. She’s found later by a maid. Then we hear a report of a woman in white luring children from a park and biting them. Mina believes it’s Lucy, who’s risen as a vampire.

Jonathan is all for taking Mina away, but Van Helsing convinces him that she’ll be safer under his protection. He hangs wolfsbane in her room and a wreath of it around her neck. The men discuss vampires and Van Helsing says they have to discover Dracula’s resting place if they are to save Mina.

Van Helsing is alone when Dracula comes in and tells him that Mina is his now and he should go back to his own country. Van Helsing in turn vows to destroy him. Dracula tries to mesmerize him but Van Helsing’s mind is too strong. He pulls out a crucifix and Dracula is scared off.

Later (or maybe it’s the next evening) Jonathan is sitting with Mina on the terrace and she’s telling him how much she loves the night. Dr. Seward and Van Helsing are off to the side discussing how best to help her. A bat flies overhead, squeaking, and the next thing you know, Mina is leaning into Jonathan trying to bite him. The other two men pull her off.

That evening Dracula hypnotizes the nurse looking after Mina and she takes down the wolfsbane and opens the window for him. He comes in and bites Mina (who’s already taken off the wolfsbane she was wearing).

Van Helsing and Jonathan follow Renfield to Carfax Abbey and then see Dracula there with Mina. They call out to her and Dracula, assuming Renfield has led them there, kills Renfield. By the time Van Helsing and Jonathan are able to break into the abbey, Dracula has carried Mina down to the crypt.

The sun is coming up and the men find Dracula in a box full of dirt. The other box holds nothing but dirt so while Van Helsing makes a wooden stake Jonathan goes looking for Mina. Though we don’t see Van Helsing actually stake Dracula, we do hear a lot of groaning. Mina is off standing in a corner and with Dracula’s death she regains her senses.

Van Helsing tells Jonathan and Mina to go ahead without him, he “has things to do.” They leave and that’s the end. Seriously, what is it about these 1930s movies and their abrupt endings? Hubby suggested that it was like Bela Lugosi died during the filming of it and they couldn’t finish it.

The underlying story in this film is rather choppy. After showing Dracula’s wives at the beginning, they’re never mentioned again. We have no idea who Renfield is when we first see him. We have no idea where Van Helsing came from or why he’s there . . . And we never find out what happened to Lucy or even if that really was her wandering around the park. And what the heck was with the armadillos wandering around Dracula’s castle?

The original Nosferatu, which closely followed the book, did so without permission. Stoker’s estate sued the filmmakers for copyright infringement and won their case. All the copies of the film were to be destroyed. However one copy survived and was duplicated over the years and was restored in 1996.

The producer of the 1931 version was wise enough to legally obtain the rights to adapt the book to film. It’s just too bad he didn’t stick closer to the true story.

The Wolf Man

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Even a man who is pure of heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.

I have to admit, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with this movie. While I hadn’t seen it before, I have seen The Werewolf of Washington, which was just plain stupid. So I was pleasantly surprised - I really enjoyed this movie.

There were a lot of big names in this one: Claude Rains, Lon Chaney Jr., Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi. And as a refreshing change, we’re introduced to them all during the opening credits - a quick clip from the movie with a label to name them. It made it a lot easier to keep the characters straight.

The story begins with Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney), returning to the family estate after the death of his older brother during a hunting accident. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter why he’s been gone for 18 years or what he’s been doing, what matters is that his father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), is happy to see him and wants them to be closer. To that end, Larry helps him finish building a telescope up in the new observatory.

The first thing Larry observes is the nearby village, specifically, a pretty girl primping in her room over a shop. Not wasting any time, he goes to the shop where she’s a clerk and asks to see some earrings, describing the ones on her dresser. That’s not creepy at all (said with sarcasm). He ends up buying a cane that’s topped with a silver wolf’s head and she recites the werewolf rhyme for him. He finally leaves, insisting that he’s coming back later to go for a walk with her, and a group of gypsies pass by on their way to set up camp.

Later the girl, named Gwen, waits outside the shop for him, wearing the earrings he liked. Joke’s on him because she has a girlfriend with her. They're going to the gypsies to have their fortunes told. The trio walk through the dark woods where the wolfbane is growing and Jenny (the friend) goes in first to have her fortune read by Bela (Bela Lugosi).

Larry and Gwen go for a walk in the fog and he admits to spying on her through the telescope. She’s not impressed (but not creeped out by it either), and tells him she’s engaged. Meanwhile, Bela is not happy about whatever he sees in the cards for Jenny. As he brushes his hair out of his eyes we see a pentagram mark on his forehead, and then we see the same mark on Jenny’s hand. He tells her to run away, and she does.

Outside of the wagon a black horse pulls at its tether. A wolf begins to howl. A woman screams.

Larry ditches Gwen to run to Jenny’s aid. She’s being savaged by a wolf and he starts beating on it with his walking stick. The wolf turns on him but he beats it off. Gwen arrives on the scene to find Larry barely conscious. An old gypsy woman from the camp - who just happens to be passing by with her horse and cart - helps Gwen get Larry home.

A group of men - including gamekeeper Frank (Gwen’s fiancé), Colonal Montford (an old friend of Larry’s who’s now the police chief), and Dr. Lloyd (a friend of his father’s) - find Jenny, her throat torn out, and nearby is Bela, whose head has been bashed in. Larry’s cane is found close at hand.

Next morning Larry wakes up in bed, a little confused and a whole lot frightened. His father, the Colonel, and the doctor pay him a visit. Larry identifies the walking stick as his, and tells them he used it to kill the wolf. But although the clothes he wore the night before are torn and bloody, there’s no sign of the wolf bite on him nor were they able to find the wolf. Larry is even more confused and frightened.

Gwen’s pretty upset over her friend’s death, and she’s in the backroom of her father’s store when Jenny’s mother enters with a few of her cronies and starts mouthing off. Enter Larry, who chases them off and tries to comfort Gwen. Enter Frank, Gwen’s fiancé, who doesn’t seem to like Larry much. Gee, I wonder why?

Now it’s later that evening and the gypsies are holding some kind of a carnival at their camp. Frank and Gwen are there having a good time. Larry’s there too, only not quite as happy as everyone else. There’s a lot of music and dancing and general merriment.

Larry crosses paths with the old gypsy woman who tells him that he killed the wolf and the wolf was her son Bela. She also tells him the wolf can only be killed by silver and “whoever is bitten by a werewolf and lives will become a werewolf themselves”. She gives him a pentagram charm to wear for protection.

Larry leaves, then the old woman comes out of her tent and whispers to another gypsy, who whispers to another, and whatever’s being said spreads like wildfire. Larry runs into Gwen, and tells her about the old woman and how she said he’s a werewolf now and gives her the charm.

Next thing you know, the gypsies are packing up and leaving. Gwen leaves on her own and Larry has a mini melt down. He thinks he’s becoming unhinged and doesn’t know what to believe. Back home he strips off his shirt and is relieved to see he’s not sprouting any extra hair. But then he takes off his shoes and we see his legs and feet are getting really hairy.

Now we have a completely transformed Larry wandering through the foggy grave yard. He attacks and kills the grave digger. Wolf howls wake up the villagers and some men go to the grave yard and find the man with his throat torn out.

Larry wakes up sprawled on his back across his bed. There’s a pentagram tattoo on his chest and he’s horrified when he sees the animal prints leading from the window to the bed. Clearly he’s having some kind of mental breakdown, which is why his father disregards his concerns about werewolves. Off they go to church together but Larry doesn’t stay. When he arrives home, his father and their friends are discussing the wolf problem. Larry insists it’s not just a wolf, it’s a werewolf.

That night, Larry (in werewolf form) is caught in one of the wolf traps. When he hears Frank and the other hunters he struggles until he passes out. The old gypsy woman finds him and he turns human again. Freeing himself from the trap, he wanders barefoot into the village to talk to Gwen. He tells her he’s going away, and even though he’s positive he’s the killer, she wants to go with him. As he holds her hand he sees the pentagram appear and he runs away.

He ends up back home where his father tells him he’s just suffering from mental stress, brought on by the gypsy woman and her fantastical stories. To prove it’s all in Larry’s head, he ties him to a chair while he goes to help with the wolf hunt. Larry begs him to take the silver headed cane with him and he does.

While the hunters lay in wait for the wolf, Sir John crosses paths with the gypsy woman. They’re arguing when they hear shots being fired. The hunters are positive the wolf was hit, but can’t find it. Gwen’s running through the woods looking for Larry and encounters the gypsy. Against the gypsy’s advice, she keeps looking.

Of course she runs right into the werewolf, who attacks her. Sir John is the first one to the rescue and hits the werewolf with the cane to get him away from Gwen. The monster then turns on him and he keeps beating it, in self defense. Then Sir John watches, horrified, as the gypsy woman speaks her blessing over the beast’s body and it transforms back into his son. She drives off in her cart and the others come running up.

The Colonel takes charge and it’s decided that the wolf attacked Gwen and Larry died defending her. Well done Larry.

At first I thought Lon Chaney’s portrayal of Larry was a little over the top, but actually, it helped show the mental breakdown of the character. You begin to wonder yourself if there really is a werewolf or if it’s all in his head. This movie really is a classic.

The only version of this movie I could find on YouTube is pretty dark, but if you can lighten up your screen this would be the perfect movie to watch while you’re passing out Halloween candy.

Frankenstein

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Right from the start, there were two things that bugged me about this movie. First, in the credits they called the author Mrs. Percy B. Shelley instead of Mary Shelley. Yes, she was married to Percy Shelley, but seriously! Second, they changed the name of the lead character! Instead of Victor Frankenstein, we have Henry Frankenstein. They gave the name Victor to his friend.

I’m going to be generous here and pretend I haven’t read, and enjoyed, Mary Shelley’s classic tale of a man slowly driven mad by obsession. The only thing her book and this movie have in common is the fact that it’s about a man named Frankenstein, and he brought a dead man back to life.

The movie starts old style, with a narrator in a tux, on a stage, introducing the story. This fades into a funeral at a cemetery with one of the cheesiest back drops I’ve ever seen. Creepy looking Fritz (not Igor) and Frankenstein are lurking behind a wrought iron fence (like the bars would really keep them hidden).

If you’re the least bit observant, you’ll see that the portly grave digger throws his hat and coat on the ground before filling in the grave (after the funeral goers have left), but when he’s done they’re hanging off the handle of a shovel that’s stuck in the ground. Same thing happens when Fritz and Frankenstein dig the coffin up again.

As they’re on their way home with the coffin in a hand cart, they pass a cross with a body tied to it and Frankenstein makes Fritz cut it down - mmm, fresh meat! - only to reject the body because the man’s neck is broken. Apparently a broken neck means the brain’s no good.

Now we see a doctor giving a lecture on the difference between a normal brain and an abnormal one. Fritz is peering in through a window, and after everyone leaves sneaks in to steal the normal brain. A noise startles him and he drops the beaker it’s in, so he takes the abnormal one instead (anyone else hear Marty Feldman’s voice saying, “Abby Normal?”).

Next we visit Frankenstein’s fiancée, Elizabeth, who’s reading a letter from him telling her all about how his experiments are so important they come even before her. Frankenstein’s friend, Victor, commiserates with her and promises to help. They go to the doctor and convince him to come with them to visit Frankenstein.

It’s a dark and stormy night. Frankenstein and Fritz are in the ultimate mad scientist’s lab high up in the falling down castle. They’re preparing for a great experiment - a lot of electrical arcing going on as they test the equipment.

Suddenly there came a rapping, as of someone gently tapping, tapping at the castle door. Frankenstein sends Fritz to send whoever it is away, but they’re not budging and start yelling for Frankenstein. He yells down at them to go away but they won’t, so he reluctantly lets them in.

Frankenstein tells them that he’s discovered a ray beyond ultra-violet on the spectrum and that this ray is the source of life. He allows the doctor to confirm the body he has on the table is dead. The storm continues to rage as Frankenstein turns on the equipment and uncovers the body. He raises the table up through a hole in the ceiling and begins counting. Lots of thunder, lots of lightning, lots of static. Slowly he lowers the table again - the body’s hand moves!

Apparently Frankenstein has a bit of a God complex and goes into near hysterics at his success.

Leaving the castle behind for the moment, we next find Elizabeth and Victor visiting with Frankenstein’s father, the baron, who’s complaining quite vociferously about his son’s continued absence. Thinking his son is holed up with another woman, the baron decides to go in person to bring him home.

Back in the lab, the doctor advises Frankenstein to lock the creature up because it’s dangerous - the stolen brain was that of a criminal, not a normal brain. The creature wanders in and appears somewhat harmless until Fritz rushes in and starts waving a torch at it. The creature’s frightened and reacts accordingly - Frankenstein and the doctor manage to subdue it and chain it up in another room.

We aren’t told what Fritz’s problem with the creature is, but he seems to enjoy tormenting it with a whip, and when Frankenstein takes that away from him, he uses a torch again. Frankenstein and the doctor are in the lab when they hear a scream and they rush into the creature’s cell to find Fritz hanging from the ceiling. Serves the nasty little worm right.

Frankenstein manages to give the creature a shot of something that knocks him out. At this point Victor arrives to warn them that the baron is on the way, and helps them hide the creature’s body. The baron is kind of pompous, demanding entry, and then he and Elizabeth go up to the lab. Frankenstein opens the door and promptly faints. They revive him and the baron tells him he’s taking him home.

Despite the fact the doctor promised Frankenstein he’d dispose of the creature humanely, he spends the next few days performing his own experiments on the creature, having to use increasingly larger doses of drugs to keep him unconscious. Unfortunately for him, he misjudges the dosages and the monster wakes up and kills him, then escapes the castle.

Meanwhile, Frankenstein is recuperating with Elizabeth at his side and they’re making wedding plans. Fast forward to their wedding day - the whole town is celebrating.

Out in the woods, the creature is wandering around and stumbles across a little girl playing by a lake. She invites him to play with her and they have fun floating the heads of daisies in the water. The creature gets a little too enthusiastic with the game and tosses her in too.

Back to the wedding. There’s celebrating in the streets, but Elizabeth has a really bad feeling and talks to Frankenstein. He brushes it off as wedding jitters. Victor interrupts them to tell him the professor’s been murdered and the creature’s on the loose. Frankenstein locks the door to Elizabeth’s bedroom as he leaves.

Suspecting the creature might be in the house, the men search upstairs. And while they do so, the creature climbs into Elizabeth’s room through the window. By the time the men get the door to the bedroom open, the monster is gone again and Elizabeth’s in a swoon on the bed.

The father of the little girl walks into town carrying her body, putting a damper on the festivities. The crowd follows him to the baron’s house and he promises that justice will be done. Elizabeth’s still in shock, so Frankenstein leaves her in Victor’s care so he can help search. The Burgomaster separates the large, angry mob into three smaller angry mobs to search for the creature.

The backdrop for the searchers is even worse than the one at the cemetery. You can practically see the brush strokes on it. Frankenstein gets separated from his group and the creature knocks him out and drags him off. The mob sees them and chases the creature to an old windmill. Still carrying Frankenstein, the creature climbs to the top where he growls at the mob below from a balcony.

Frankenstein regains consciousness and he and the creature struggle - the creature tosses him off the windmill. He must have had a soft landing because he’s still alive and some men carry him off. The rest of the mob set fire to the windmill and watch it burn. The monster is screaming as the entire thing is engulfed in flames.

They really could have ended the movie right there. But instead the tacked on a scene with a group of giggling maids with a bottle of wine on a tray. They knock on a set of double doors - the baron opens up and we can see Frankenstein in a bed with Elizabeth at his side. The maids suggest the happy couple might want the wine to celebrate but the baron decides not to disturb them, he’ll drink it himself.

I actually did find a copy of this on YouTube, although it’s only 49 minutes instead of 71. The beginning has been chopped off - it starts after the grave digger is about to leave the cemetery. I haven’t watched this one, so I have no idea what else may be missing.



My advice? Skip the movie. Read the book.

The Mummy

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

When I was a kid, I used to get into trouble for watching the Saturday afternoon monster movies. Or to be more precise, my father used to get into trouble for letting me. I adored the mostly science fiction, usually black and white, B movies, but they’d invariably give me nightmares. LOL

But that’s probably when my love for the creature features began. Two in particular stand out in my mind. There was one about a meteor that crashed on Earth, and when it got wet it grew. But then one of the heroes discovered that salt water would harm it, so they loaded up a reservoir with salt and then blew a dam to stop it. The other was the original Invaders From Mars where it begins with an alien craft landing in a sandpit during a storm. To this day I still don’t like walking on a beach or any other bare earth in the dark. :-)

I don’t recall seeing any of the classic horror movies during my Saturday afternoons, but at some point did see Frankenstein, Dracula, and one of my favorites, The Creature From the Black Lagoon. I never did see the original Mummy back then, although I have enjoyed the franchise staring Brendan Fraser.

The 1932 version of The Mummy begins with the discovery of the mummy of Imhotep, a high priest, during an archeological expedition lead by Sir Joseph Whemple. They also found the Scroll of Thoth and when Sir Joseph’s assistant reads from it, he unwittingly brings the mummy back to life. When Sir Joseph returns, it’s to find both Imhotep and the scroll gone, and his assistant gibbering in a corner, quite mad.

Ten years later, Sir Joseph’s son Frank and Professor Pearson are at the same field office when they received a visit from an Egyptian named Ardath Bey, actually Imhotep, who tells them were to find the tomb of an Egyptian Princess named Ankh-es-en-amon. This is an amazing find, but of course they turn the whole works over to the Cairo Museum.

Once the princess is on display, Ardath Bey sneaks into the museum to visit the princess, whom he loved when he was alive. As he reads from the Scroll of Thoth, a young woman named Helen, the ward of Dr. Muller, an Egyptologist who was with Sir Joseph when he discovered the original mummy, is drawn to the museum. Joseph and Frank are just leaving and spot her trying to get into the closed museum. Naturally they take her back to their house.

Ardath Bey is caught by the security guard at the museum, and when he flees after killing the guard he forgets to take the scroll with him. Sir Joseph is called to the scene and is surprised to find the scroll, which he takes home with him. Meanwhile, Dr. Muller has arrived at the Whemple house where Helen is still lying semi-conscious on a chaise, murmuring the name Imhotep. When she awakens she’s confused, remembering nothing about what happened. Frank is immediately smitten with her, and she seems to return his feelings.

Leaving Frank to sit with Helen, Sir Joseph and Dr. Muller move into the study and talk about the original mummy, Imhotep. He would have been a priest when the princess was a Vestal Virgin, and they never did find out what happened to his mummy. Dr. Muller advises Sir Joseph to burn the scroll.

Frank leaves Helen resting and joins the others in the study just as Ardath Bey arrives at the house. He seems to hypnotize the servant who opens the door, and as he stands over Helen’s sleeping form, she awakens again, but she isn’t scared. In fact, she seems mesmerized by him. Dr. Muller asks Frank to take Helen back to the hotel - she’s acting a little loopy and at first she doesn’t want to go, but Frank convinces her.

Dr. Muller confronts Ardath Bey about the scroll and the mummy coming back to live. Ardath Bey demands the scroll back and leaves in a huff when they won’t give it to him. Once agin Dr. Muller advises Sir Joseph to burn the scroll, and then leaves to see to Helen.

This time Sir Joseph listens, but as he’s about to start the fire, Ardath Bey is watching through a scrying pool and uses magic to cause Sir Joseph to have a heart attack. As Sir Joseph dies, the servant takes the scroll out of the fireplace and takes it to Ardath Bey.

Later, we get a creepy close up of Ardath Bey’s eyes and the next thing you know, Helen is on her way to his place, dragging her very reluctant dog. She and Ardath Bey sit in front of the scrying pool and he shows her her past life as a Vestal Virgin, and how much he loved her. She sees him kneeling beside her as she lay dying and the big procession when they entomb her. Then how he stole the Scroll of Thoth so he could bring her back to life and got caught trying to cast the spell, and subsequently buried alive with the scroll.

He awakens her from her trance and she hears her dog cry out and goes to find him. She arrives home to find Frank waiting for her. At first she’s a little annoyed, but then she realizes she left her dog behind, because it was dead! Frank comforts her and professes his love. She’s really confused and afraid she’s turning into someone else. A nurse Dr. Muller had hired gives her something to help her sleep and Frank volunteers to keep watch until the doctor returns. He wraps a charm of protection he’d been carrying around the knob of her bedroom door.

Once he’s done that, Ardath Bey begins casting a spell to kill him. He manages to make it to the charm so that he only passes out instead of dying, and Helen walks right over him in her trance to go to Ardath Bey.

She awakens dressed in the clothes she wore as Ankh-es-en-amon, Ardath Bey beside her. They’re in the museum where he sets fire to the princess mummy, explaining that once it’s destroyed its soul will be free to enter Helen. They go into an embalming chamber where he tells her he’ll have to kill her and then bring her back to life as Ankh-es-en-amon. She’s not on board with this at all but Ardath Bey uses his magical mojo to make her more compliant.

Dr. Muller and Frank arrive as Ardath Bey is about to sacrifice Helen on the altar. They distract him and Helen wakes up. She remembers her past life and prays to a stature of Isis. Ardath Bey is using his magic to stop the men and Isis answers Helen’s prayer, burning the scroll which was Imhotep’s only link to the mortal plain. Frank saves Helen with his love. The end.

The great part about buying the DVD versus watching it on YouTube is the bonus features. Here’s some interesting facts I learned:
- the original story was not Egyptian but inspired by a story about Alessandro Cagliostro, an Italian occultist. The story was about a man 3,000 year old magician.
- Imhotep was a high priest of the temple of the Sun in Karnak
- the original name of the movie was Imhotep
- supposedly, the guy responsible for the mummy makeup studied Egyptian embalming methods
- the mummy makeup took longer than the makeup for Frankenstein
- because of the way the makeup was applied, it was painful to remove

This movie was a classic in every sense of the word. At its heart it was a story of eternal love. There were no CGI effects, and the black and white leant an atmospheric creepiness to Boris Karloff’s portrayal of the mummy. His eyes spoke volumes all by themselves. One of the things I found really interesting was how much of the original movie made it into the remake with Brendan Fraser, including naming one of the main characters Ardath Bey.

If you enjoyed the remake, I highly suggest you pick up your own copy of the original. Currently it’s available at Walmart for under $10.00.

Teenage Zombies

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

I don’t know whether to applaud or curse the fact that we were able to access YouTube through our TiVo to watch this movie. Though it was released in 1960, this black and white film looks like it was filmed in the early ‘50s. It begins with three kids meeting at the soda shop (two malts were a total of 50 cents). They’re wondering what kind of clean cut fun they could have - Morrie leaves to go horseback riding, but arranges to meet the others in a couple of hours. Stick with me here because that’s important to the story.

Cut to a boat where Reg, Skip, Julie, and Pam are all set to go waterskiing. They discover an island (that apparently was really hard to find) and land to have their lunch. Since they’re already there they decide to go exploring for a bit.

Nothing much to see here and they keep going and are surprised to see a building in the distance. Even more surprising is the line of workers shuffling down a path. There’s a woman in an evening gown that appears to be overseeing the procession and when she catches sight of the kids she halts the parade, but the kids get scared and high tail it back to the boat.

Oh, no! The boat is gone! Figuring they might have just misplaced it, the start following the shoreline to see if it magically moved somewhere else. They wander for quite a while before finally sitting down to rest. The girls decide to keep resting while the boys mosey on up to the house they saw.

Being the polite sort, they knock on the door. The woman they saw earlier, Dr. Myra, opens the door and invites them in, offering them a soft drink. They ask about their boat but she plays dumb. She tells them they have no boats because no one ever leaves the island. The guys get kind of cranky at this point and threaten to go to the sheriff - an empty threat without their boat to back them up.

Suddenly, they hear a couple of screams! This hairy hunchback named Ivan has the girls in a cage down in the basement. Dr. Myra takes the boys down there and has Ivan throw them in the adjoining cage. She tells them if they behave, Ivan won’t hurt them.

Back at the soda shop, Morrie is getting a little worried about the others because they never showed up like they said they would. And because this is the ‘50s, a teenager being a couple of hours late is something to worry about and the soda jerk advises Morrie to talk to the sheriff. So off Morrie and his girl Dottie go to the sheriff’s office.

The kids get kind of panicky as they tell the sheriff how worried they are about the other four, and convince him to send out a search party (which consists of the sheriff and a deputy tooling around in a boat). They meet Morrie and Dottie at the dock and tell them they didn’t find anything, so after the adults leave the kids liberate a small boat and go looking themselves.

Big surprise, they go almost directly to the island, even though the sheriff missed it after being out there for hours. Of course they go exploring instead of going back for the sheriff, and the first thing they see is Ivan lurking around. They manage to avoid him and follow the path to the house. They knock on the door and Dr. Myra (wearing a different evening gown) lets them in.

They ask about the four missing kids, but get kind of nervous and skedaddle out of there when the good doctor tells them that no one ever comes to her island. Their boat is waiting where they left it, and as they’re pulling away from the island, two men in suits are pulling up to the beach.

Turns out Dr. Myra is a mad scientist and the suits are there for a progress report on their plans to conquer the United States. She takes them down to the lab for a demonstration of the mind control gas she’s been developing. Her victim of choice is a gorilla because “unlike a man, he’s not human.” Once he’s gassed, the gorilla is docile and obedient and the suits are impressed.

Meanwhile, the boys have managed to pick the lock of their cell, but they’re having trouble with the girls’ lock. They have a bit of an argument with the girls, but decide to leave them behind and go look for a boat or help or something and promise to come back for them. Of course they don’t find anything helpful, not even the boat the two suits came in. Just as they’re about to give up hope they get the brilliant idea of building a raft, but they don’t get much of it done before it starts getting light and they figure they’d better get back to their cell.

Back in town, Morrie and Dottie tell the sheriff about the suspicious island they found and how the woman lied about living in isolation. It takes a lot of convincing, but finally the sheriff agrees to go have a look.

Dr. Myra tells Ivan to bring the two girls - he drags them in kicking and screaming and the boys follow surreptitiously behind. The girls are shoved into the testing chamber and the boys don’t know what to do. At this point the sheriff and the other two kids show up and it looks like the sheriff is in on Dr. Myra’s evil master plan.

Ivan corrals Morrie and Dottie. The boys look for something to pry open the door to the testing chamber, the adults start arguing, the sheriff goes off in a huff and one of the suits shoots him in the back. Ivan is forced to let go of the kids so he can dispose of the body, and once he leaves all hell breaks loose and it’s a free-for-all fight between the adults and the kids.

Oops! Dr. Myra managed to release the gas into the chamber and the girls are doused with zombie gas. The kids win the fight and make her open the chamber, but it’s too late. When she refuses to produce the antidote, the boys put her in the chamber and turn her into a zombie. Unfortunately, she’s a little too zombified, so they threaten to put the men in the chamber next. One of them caves and points out the antidote.

After pouring some of the liquid into two glasses, they set the beaker down on the desk. They try it on Dr. Myra to make sure it works, and the first thing she does is sweep the beaker onto the floor. Good thing they poured two glasses of it. The boys de-zombify the girls and a scuffle breaks out. While the boys are fighting with Ivan and one of the suits, the other suit and Dr. Myra escape. But the gorilla (no idea where they were keeping him) wanders into the lab and licks up some of the antidote from the floor. He takes care of the suit and Ivan, allowing the kids to escape.

The other suit and Dr. Myra reached the boat the sheriff came in at the same time the kids do, and the adults prove to be no match for the determined kids. The kids deliver their prisoners to the sheriff’s office and the deputy tells them the military will be very grateful. It’s implied that they’ll get to meet the president himself for this. They’re heroes.

This was kind of a fun movie, set as it was in a simpler time. You couldn’t get away with a story like this these days. Well, you could have the mad scientist trying to turn the U.S. into zombies, but you wouldn’t have anyone blink twice at teens being a couple of hours late meeting a friend. And I think kids themselves are a little more savvy today.

The hubby says, “It wasn’t the worst bad movie we’ve seen, but it did have its dumb moments.” I think that’s supposed to be a good thing. ;-)

Mega Sharks!

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Still keeping with the theme of shark month here, and it just wouldn’t be the same without a nod to the Mega Shark franchise. For some reason I thought there were more of them, but apparently there’s only four (maybe it just seems like more).



We start with: Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. In a nutshell ... okay, you can’t really do a nutshell summary, but I’ll try and be as quick as possible: A pod of whales off the coast of Alaska go a little crazy after the military drops experimental sonar transmitters into the water. They start ramming an iceberg, freeing a frozen megalodon (giant shark) and giant octopus which had been locked in battle when frozen. They go to their separate corners to thaw out because the octopus attacks a drilling platform off Japan, while the shark leaps thousands of feet into the air to bring down a commercial airline.

Emma, an oceanographer who was fired from her job after borrowing an experimental sub without permission, teams up with her old professor and a Japanese scientist to figure out what exactly is on the video she filmed in Alaska - turns out to be both the mega shark and the giant octopus. Meanwhile, the mega shark eats a naval destroyer, which the navy takes a dim view of, and the three are shanghaied by the authorities to stop the monsters.

There’s several failed attempts, with a lot of collateral damage (more boats, a couple of subs, the Golden Gate Bridge), before the two giants are finally brought together in an ice trench off the coast of Alaska where they fight to the death. If you’re a fan of shark movies, this one is worth watching if for no other reason than to see the mega shark jump 15,000 feet into the air to grab the plane.



Next we have Mega Shark Vs. Crocosaurus. Apparently the megalodon wasn’t quite as dead as we thought at the end of the first film, because here he is again chewing up more navy vessels. At the same time, in the Congo, we have a 150 foot long crocodile who’s tranquilized and then loaded onto a cargo ship headed for Florida.

Mega shark attacks the ship, inadvertently freeing the crocodile. Turns out old croc has been pretty busy laying eggs all over the place and there’s nothing mega shark likes better than crocodile eggs and it starts eating them. This kind of ticks off the crocodile who invades Miami and then Orlando.

The military uses more eggs to attract the creatures to the Panama canal where they duke it out, but at the same time we have a bunch of eggs that were laid along the American coastline starting to hatch. The hatchlings attack the Santa Monica pier while the grown ups take the fight towards Hawaii. The military uses as sonic emitter to lure the all of the creatures towards an undersea volcano which erupts, killing adult and baby creatures alike. The world is safe again, until the next movie.

You really want to see this one because I’ve barely touched on all the action and destruction, and come on, who doesn’t want to see a 150 foot crocodile stomping through Miami?



The third movie in this series is Mega Shark Vs. Mecha Shark. This one starts with the mega shark being released from an iceberg that’s being towed into the port at Alexandria, Egypt, to begin its reign of terror. Scientist Emma McNeill (again played by Deborah Gibson) is back to warn the military that the reason the mega shark is so aggressive is because it’s looking for a mate.

To combat this new threat, a prototype submarine, the mecha shark, was created and is piloted by the team of Jack and Rosie. While Jack stays in the control room, Rosie pilots the submarine, with the help of an AI computer system called Nero, and goes after the shark. She tries to shoot it with a torpedo but manages to sink the USS Virginia instead. Oops!

Man, the US navy really takes a beating from these mega sharks! The best scene is where the mega shark launches upwards towards a commercial airplane (just like in the first one) and then mecha shark launches upwards and they bounce off of each other.

As the mega shark swims towards Syndey, Australia (where it was spawned millions of years ago), the mecha shark is having computer problems as Nero goes on and offline, decides all humans are evil because there were soldiers pointing guns at it, and becomes amphibious and terrorizes the streets. Now we have two giant killer sharks on the loose!

Jack and Rosie manage to get inside the mecha shark and get Nero back online, and then escape again before the mega shark bites into the side of mecha shark, setting off a torpedo that destroys them both. Sushi anyone?



The final entry in the franchise is Mega Shark Vs. Kolossus. In this movie we get the double whammy - a mega shark and a giant robot (a leftover doomsday device from the Cold War) that’s accidently reactivated.

Of course you have to know there’s a lot of senseless destruction, like the mega shark using its tail to bat a submarine into the Christ the Redeemer statue that stands over Rio de Janeiro, navy ships taking a beating, and Kolossus pretty much stomping everything in its path. But there’s also some pretty interesting characters, like the megalomaniac who wants to rule the world, the doctor who wants to preserve the mega shark, and the mentally unstable admiral.

A plan is devised to have the Kolossus and mega shark duke it out. Kolossus is lured into the water by an American flag trailing out of a helicopter and while the two monsters are occupied, everyone tries to stop the giant robot (I guess he’s the more serious of the two threats). The megalomaniac gets control of Kolossus and threatens everyone else into making the world more eco-friendly. The mentally unstable admiral tries to blow up Kolossus with an attack satellite. Kolossus takes out the satellite by tossing the mega shark at it. Yes, all the way up into space. And yes, mega shark is like a Timex watch - it takes a licking and keeps on ticking, because it’s still alive enough for Kolossus to give it a hug just before it self-destructs.

While these movies may not have the increasing campiness of the Sharknado movies, they’re still good for a laugh ... if you have nothing better to do. ;-)

Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens

Welcome back to Shark Month here on my bad movie reviews. Yeah, I know I said "week" last week, but I meant month. There are just so many really cheesy shark movies out there, and I've seen them all! ;-)



You know how the Scary Movies included a bunch of references to other movies and basically spoofed them? That’s pretty much what Sharknado 4 did too. So if you’re not up on your pop culture you’re going to miss a lot of the, uh, humour in it.

So ... five years have passed since Sharknado 3. Super rich Aston Reynolds developed a superfast space ship and rescued Gil Shepard (played by David Hasselhoff) from the moon. He also took Nova’s sharknado zapper a few steps further and created something called Astro-X pods that zap sharknados before they’re even fully formed. Fin and his five-year-old son are living on a farm in Kansas (called April’s Acres) with his mother Raye (played by Cheryl Tiegs).

Fin and his niece (? cousin?) Gemini are on their way to Vegas to meet up with Matt, Fin’s son, who’s on leave from the military. This just happens to coincide with the grand opening of Reynolds’ latest venture, Sharkworld, a luxury hotel and casino that features a humongous shark-filled aquarium as one of its walls. Of course a storm develops, this one a sandstorm tornado, and the Astro-X pods are unable to stop it.

Matt and his fiancé get married on the plane and then parachute out of it ... right into the sandnado. Trust me, there are almost as many ‘nados in this movie as there are cameos. And right on cue, here come the sharks, sucked right out of the aquarium wall in Sharkworld. Let the mayhem begin - people running, screaming, being eaten and maimed. The glass wall shatters and Vegas floods. Fortunately, Fin and Gemini are able to use a replica of a pirate ship to rescue Matt and his bride Gabby.

Thank god we have the opening credits at this point because I don’t think I can take any more one liners from Star Wars.

Here’s where it starts to get a bit complicated. Gil and Fin’s daughter Claudia are both working at Astro-X. Gil has been working closely with a scientist named Wilford (played by Gary Busey) on some kind of super-suit. It turns out that Wilford is also April’s father, which we discover when we find out - surprise! - April is still alive. After being hit by the piece of the shuttle at the end of Sharnado 3, April was in a coma for four years. Wilford convinced Fin to pull the plug and then spirited her body away, turning her into some kind of cyborg.

Fin, Gemini, Matt, and Gabby are on a train headed for Kansas when a dust sharknado appears from the desert and everyone has to fight for their lives. Again. The engineer is decapitated by a shark so Fin punches, wrestles, and fights his way through the sharks to the front of the train to save the day as the sharknado moves away to take out Hoover Dam. In an effort to save lives, Reynolds blows up part of the Grand Canyon to stop the ensuing flood. The sharnado picks up the debris from the explosion, turning it into a bouldernado (their word, not mine!).

Fin and his family end up at Reynolds’ headquarters in Arizona, where Reynolds makes a pitch for Fin to be an Astro-X spokesperson and go on TV to tell everyone everything’s going to be okay. When Fin refuses, Reynolds gets a little insulting. Leaving Reynolds behind, Fin’s group somehow ends up in a small town in Texas where they stop at a store run by Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife, who sell them chainsaws (best line so far: “It wouldn't be Texas without a chainsaw massacre.”)

The sharknado heads towards the Texas oilfields and becomes an oilnado. Their efforts to stop it cause it to catch fire and, you guessed it, it becomes a firenado. They need something bigger to fight this, and Finn uses a forklift that just happens to be fitted with a large chainsaw. Fin loads up the forklift with fire extinguishers and lets it get sucked up, then blows it up. But instead of stopping it, it sucks in an electrical plant and creates a lightningnado that’s heading straight for Kansas.

Meanwhile, two other sharknados form - one near San Francisco that becomes a hailnado, and one near Yellowstone that becomes a lavanado. April catches the news report and is surprised to hear the newscaster wonder where Fin is. Apparently daddy dearest lied to her - he told her that her family was dead. She immediately rushes off to find Fin.

Meanwhile, Gil and Claudia are fleeing one of the sharknados and are in danger of their car being sucked up into one. April saves their car, not knowing who’s inside, and there’s a tearful family reunion. Gil is also a little ticked at Wilford for keeping the truth from him.

Mayor of Chicago (wearing wicked witch stockings) warns Fin that he’s to blame for the sharknados and he’s not allowed in Chicago. Just over the state line into Kansas, Fin gets a car from an old friend of his - the car’s name is Christine, as in the book by the same name by Stephen King. We see general mayhem caused by the sharknados, many celebrity cameos, many one-liners from a plethora of movies. They reach April’s Acres just ahead of the sharknado.

Raye and little Gil made it to the storm cellar. A herd of cows gets sucked into the sharknado amid many Twister references and it becomes a cownado. Fin’s group not only has to battle the sharks, but the winds too. Matt’s wife gets her arm bitten off and then a shark falls on her. Little Gil wants his daddy and leaves the shelter - a lot of crazy holding on while the wind tries to suck them in. Everything is suddenly quiet and Raye leaves the shelter to look at the devastation around her. The storm is over - and that’s the last we see as we break for commercial.

Suddenly, we’re back in the middle of the twister - more screaming and yelling, more trying to hold on, lots of debris. It’s like they messed up the order of things or something. We never do find out what happened to Raye. The other survivors manage to hold on to various parts of the house as it’s sucked up into the wind. Predictably, it lands on the mayor of Chicago and all we see are her striped stocking clad legs sticking out from under it. Even more predictably is the line delivered by little Gil: “Dad, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.”

April, Claudia, and Gil team up with Reynolds who takes them on his private jet for a tearful reunion with the others. Oddly, there’s no mention of Matt’s dearly departed bride, nor does he seem all that upset about her being gone. By making some alterations to the Astro-X pods, Reynolds was able to shut down the lavanado and the hailnado, but can’t stop the lightningnado which hits a nuclear power plant to become, you guessed, a nukenado, filled with radioactive sharks.

He’s going to use a “quantum box” to reverse the flow of water from Niagara Falls so the water will get sucked up into the nukenado, turning it back into a regular sharknado so they can deal with it. Well, the box he had wasn’t powerful enough and he falls into the gorge. Fortunately, there’s a second box so it’s Fin and his family to the rescue.

Gil’s going to put on the super-suit to use the second, more powerful box, but before he can do so, he’s swallowed by a shark. Claudia is also eaten by a shark. Fin gets to the suit and puts it on; Matt puts little Gil into a barrel for safety. Finn activates the quantum box and the water from Niagara is sucked into the nukenado, making it a regular sharknado, but Fin is electrocuted in the process.

Matt gets eaten by a shark. Little Gil goes over the falls in the barrel. Gemini falls into the gorge. April, who can fly and shoot lasers out of her hands, saves little Gil. Fin is swallowed by a shark, which is swallowed by a series of progressively larger sharks until the last one is eaten by a whale that lands in the park at the top of the falls.

Little Gil pulls a chainsaw from a stone and cuts through the whale, then cuts various family members free - Claudia, Matt, big Gil, and finally Fin. Fin’s not breathing. April and Gil try CPR on him to no effect, so they make a defibulator from two small, electrically charged sharks and shock him back to life. Just as the family stands tall and proud that once again they’ve saved the day, the Eiffel Tower comes sailing down to crash into the gorge, the silhouette of Nova (who was mentioned earlier in the film as being on vacation in France) standing on it.

So now that you pretty much know everything that happens in the movie, why should you watch it? Because if you don’t, you’ll never get to see all the wonderful cameos, or see a Chippendales dancer repel a shark with his pelvis, or hear the lines from all the different movies they pay ... tribute to, or witness things like the pair of Baywatch babes who assist Hasselhoff with his suit (which includes some slow motion running). Okay, so you pretty much saw the Chippendales dancer scene in the clip at the beginning, but you didn’t see the sharks descend on a comic-con in Sault Lake City, nor did you see Fin being chased by the world’s largest ball of twine, a la Indiana Jones.

Watch it because in a series of progressively more stupid movies, this one was the best (or maybe that should be the worst). Let me not be the only one who’s tempted to throw popcorn at the screen as they yell out: “Are you kidding me?”

I can’t wait to see how they top this in Sharknado 5!

Creature From the Haunted Sea

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Billed as a horror/comedy, this movie was filmed over the course of five days. FIVE DAYS. That explains a lot. It was actually meant to be a parody of spy, gangster, and monster movies, which I guess accounts for the clichéd dialogue and cheesy monster.

The creature was described thusly by Beach Dickerson (one of the actors): the Creature was made from a wetsuit, some moss, lots of Brillo pads. [...] Tennis balls for the eyes, Ping-Pong balls for the pupils, and pipecleaners for the claws. Then we cover him with black oilcloth to make him slimy.

As the hubby says, you can’t go wrong with a cheesy monster!

Okay. So it stars with a spy named XK150 getting what I’m sure is his sneakers shined. The shoe shine guy slips a folded note into the spy’s sock, and as he leaves the shoe shine guy is shot. Naturally the spy runs and the shooters give chase. He finally loses them and after taking a moment to read the note, he puts on dark sunglasses and the phoniest looking moustache in creation. Oh, yeah, and he eats the note.

Entering the bar the note directed him to, he exchanges a really lame code about wine with a deadpan woman playing chess with herself, and we learn she’s his contact. Then we finally see the opening credits - cartoon opening credits with this really goofy looking, scaly monster, kind of like a wingless dragon.

The actual plot of the movie, such as it is, concerns a mobster named Renzo Capetto who meets with Cuban President Tostada who wishes to hire him to transport himself, a few of his men, and a chest full of gold to parts unknown. The loot is going to be used to finance a counterrevolution.

Once everyone is on board the mobster’s “yacht” (kind of small for a yacht if you ask me), the narrator introduces all the key players. These include the mobster, who’s also the captain and appears to be a Humphrey Bogart wannabe, his girlfriend, a former gun moll named Mary-Belle, her younger brother (Happy Jack), bumbling fool (Pete) who’s more comfortable making animal noises than actually talking, and our spy (who seems to be the sole deck hand, not really part of the gang) who’s under cover name is Sparks Moran.

The captain calls a meeting of his gang and the spy listens at the door. Surprise, surprise, the captain is trying to come up with a plan to ditch the Cubans and keep the gold for themselves. He comes up with the idea of creating a “Creature from the Haunted Sea” to dispose of them.

The gun moll seems to be making a lot of friends. First the Cuban general is hitting on her, although when she’s pretty adamant about telling him to get lost, the interpreter does not accurately translate. She no sooner gets rid of the general and his minion and the spy starts hitting on her. He tells her she’s too good for this life - he’ll save her, or die!

So the bad guys make it look like a monster came on board and killed an innocent Cuban using a plunger over his face, and then use it to leave tracks all over. But wait! there really is a monster! And he kills another Cuban!

The next day, the captain explains to the general that one of his men was killed by a strange creature from the deep. The interpreter outright laughs at him, but the general actually believes him. After they leave the captain scolds his men for getting carried away and killing two Cubans and his minions are just dumb enough to think they must have killed two by mistake.

The plan is to run the boat aground on a reef and Pete will take the chest of gold in a skiff and sink it in shallow water for them to pick up at a later date. So the yacht ends up smashing into the reef and taking on water and everybody abandons ship. The boat the Cubans are in sinks and the creature gets at least a couple of them. Hubby observes that it looks like the Cookie Monster, only with fins.

Eventually they all end up on shore (well, except for the Cubans that got caught by the monster). The Cubans get busy building a hut and the captain wants to dive for the chest and hide it in the reef.

Our friendly neighbourhood spy wanders off down the beach and finds payphone. Say what?? He has the operator put him in touch with Cuba and has to have it charged to his home phone because he has no money.

OMG! Some random guy with a patently fake grin lines up to use the phone. He just stands there with this smarrmy grin on his face. The spy finishes his call and heads back, and passes a guy in a suit with a cane who carefully steps in every puddle along the way. What the hell???

Meanwhile, Pete is off making animal noises and hears answering noises - OMG, it’s a woman named Porcina and it’s love at first sight. They gather a pile of fruit to take back to everyone.

Uh, oh. There’s a hitch in the captains plans - the Cubans are all certified divers and the general is chomping at the bit to have them start diving for the gold. All the men except the general jump into the water to look for the gold. The bad guys kill another Cuban and since they had so much fun, the kill another one. When the general learns that he’s missing two men, the decides from now on they’ll dive with spear guns.

Meanwhile, Happy Jack was sent off somewhere and brings back a girl named Carmelita along with a bunch of diving equipment. He declares love for her but she starts swooning over the spy, who tells her in no uncertain terms that his heart belongs to Mary-Belle. She doesn’t seem to care.

Pete takes Jack off into the jungle and he’s introduced to Porcina’s daughter Mango. Once again we have love at first sight, at least on his part. The four of them just want to live happily ever after and decide they’ll have to kill the others to make it happen. That appears to be okay with them.

The creature starts randomly picking off people. Mango is the first to go missing and Jack is heart-broken. The divers with the spear guns find the gold but the creature is watching. Back on the boat, the captain and Mary-Belle get into a fight and somehow the spy and Mary-Belle end up in the water. The monster attacks! He’s even cheesier out of the water than he was in it.

The Cubans are all dead and one by one the gang members are killed off too. The only ones who escape are the spy and Carmelita, who’s still in love with him. So the spy gets the girl, but the monster gets the gold.

Not the worst movie we’ve seen lately, but certainly not the best.

The Giant Claw

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

Also known as Mark of the Claw, this was one of the better stupid movies we’ve seen in a while. This low-budget, black and white film was made in 1957 and features a cast of unknowns. We watched it using our TiVo to access YouTube and it was pretty good quality.

It begins at the North Pole where electronic engineer Mitch is flying around so the people in the military station below can test the radar equipment. He sees an unidentified flying object “as big as a battleship.” The guys in the station are not impressed - nothing else showed up on their radar.

It flies by again and Mitch chases after it. He insists there’s something out there. He doesn’t know what, but it’s big and it’s fast. The radar guy presses a big button that says “Hot Button” and the interceptors are launched into the air.

When Mitch returns to the station, he’s given a cool reception. Not only did the interceptors not see anything, one of them didn’t come back. As Mitch hangs his head in shame, the radar guy gets a phone call that an air force transporter plane is missing. The pilot said something about a UFO before the radio went dead, but nothing showed up on the radar.

So Mitch and Sally, a mathematician who was also at the station, fly back to New York in a small plane. The pilot keeps looking around nervously and spots a UFO. There’s some really heavy turbulence and not only is the pilot knocked unconscious, they lose and engine. Mitch takes over and they crash land, apparently in Canada.

A friendly French-Canadian moonshiner takes them to his house. The police take away the body of the pilot (he died when the plane exploded and they all hit the dirt). General Buskirk phones to ream Mitch out, claiming he put the pilot up to calling in to report a UFO. Even Sally doesn’t believe in the UFO, although something hit the plane.

It’s really stormy out there and Pierre goes out to calm the livestock. He screams like a little girl, and Mitch and Sally go rushing out and find him unconscious. They drag him back inside and when he wakes up he begins blubbering about la Carcagne, a winged creature that looks like a woman with a wolf’s head. Legend has it if you see this creature it’s a sign you’re going to die soon.

As the police drive Mitch and Sally to the nearest airport we’re given a camera shot of a really big bird footprint in Pierre’s field. There’s a lot of flirting going on during the plane ride and arguing about what the object could be. Something Sally says triggers a thought in Mitch. He maps out the sightings of the UFO and finds a widening spiral pattern. Sally’s still skeptical about it being a UFO and Mitch starts to pout. Then they start kissing.

A military plane flies towards where Sally and Mitch crashed and is attacked by a giant bird-like creature. How can I do the description justice? I can’t, so here’s a picture of it.

The military guys are forced to jump ship and the bird eats them one by one.

Mitch and Sally don’t know anything about this until some military guys come to get them from their hotel. Then they learn there’s been two more sightings and another plane was destroyed. This time there were reports of a giant bird, not a UFO. Mitch and Sally go with the general to a facility in Washington.

Their biggest concern seems to be why the radar can’t pick it up. The big wigs are getting pretty hot under the collar and everyone takes turns having hissy fits. One of the squadrons they have up in the air have spotted it and the general gives the order to shoot it down. Then he puts the radio on speaker so everyone can hear what’s going on.

First we hear the pilots cracking lame bird jokes, then the bird starts screeching at them. Their rockets don’t affect it and the bird munches on a plane. The pilot bails out and the bird eats him. The general notifies the joint chiefs and more arguing ensues: “It’s just a bird!”, “Ten million dollars worth of radar equipment can’t track it!”

The two generals, Mitch, and Sally go to a research lab where they’ve been looking at the plane wreckage (not sure which plane). The researcher explains about atoms, and matter and anti-matter. The bird somehow generates an anti-matter screen which causes the radar to just slide around it. But the bird can open the screen to use its beak and claws as weapons.

They found a feather from it and it defies analysis: “The bird comes from some godforsaken anti-matter galaxy billions of light years away." One of the generals suggests they all pray.

Meanwhile, the bird that’s supposed to be a closely guarded secret buzzes a beach, then London, then snacks on some people in a square and somehow sets fire to a road. Sally runs some figures for Mitch in her “calculating machine” and speculates on why the bird came here. Could it be looking for a place to nest?

For some reason they figure the most obvious place to look for a nest is back at Pierre’s farm, so off she and Mitch go. With Pierre’s help they actually do find a nest, but don’t spot the egg until the bird lands on it. Mitch shoots holes in it and mama bird ain’t too pleased. Pierre has run off and the bird gets him.

Mitch thinks he’s figured out how to get past the bird’s shield. There’s a lot sciencey talk about masic atoms - if they can get close enough to the bird to bombard it with masic atoms they can bring down the anti-matter shield, so they proceed to build a machine to do so.

Failure after failure after failure and they’re losing hope. Panic and terror have spread to all corners of the earth - the bird is shown flying away, a train trailing behind it like sausage links. Mitch finally figures out how to get the machine to work (blowing himself up in the process) and everyone does a happy dance.

While they get the plane ready, the bird perches on the empire state building (of course) and chews the top off of it. For some reason the falling pieces are exploding. The plane is on its way and they spot the bird on top of the UN building now. It seems pretty proud of the mess it’s making.

The bird chases the plane, people are running, oops! There goes another building. The bird is right on the tail of the plane and they start shooting the atoms at it, then they shoot the bird with rockets. They got it! The bird falls into the water belly up.

As THE END flashes across the screen we have one last glimpse of the bird - one clawed foot sticking up out of the water, like it’s giving us the finger.

Monster A Go-Go

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

After last week’s movie I’d pretty much had it with movies so bad they were depressing. I wanted something so bad it was funny. Something utterly stupid. So I got out the list of bad/stupid movies the hubby had made out, and picked what was sure to be a lot of fun - Monster A Go-Go.

Boy was I wrong!

There were no go-go dancers in this movie, although there was one short, kind of random dancing scene. Research done afterwards touts it as one of the worst movies ever made, and I believe it. And I also believe that I need to start researching these movies before we watch them.

The budget for this 1965 movie was so low they couldn’t even afford to film in colour. It begins with a capsule being launched into space to check on “stuff” floating around out there. It lands/crashes back on Earth but whoever’s keeping track of it has a hard time finding it. A couple of guys in uniform - they seem to switch from being cops to being military guys - in an unmarked car go looking for it with a helicopter backing them up.

There’s a lot of talking on the radio between the chopper and the car, but despite cranking up the volume it was still hard to make out what they were saying. The guys in the car find the dinged up capsule, and also the helicopter. The chopper pilot is dead and there’s no sign of the guy that was in the itty bitty capsule.

It was a little confusing - I actually thought they were looking for two separate people because sometimes they said the name Frank, and sometimes Douglas. Turns out the guy in the capsule was Frank Douglas. The two cops/military guys are joined by Frank’s wife and another couple who just happen to be scientists.

Anyway, the helicopter pilot is shriveled up like a prune - their words, not mine, he didn’t look that bad to me - and there’s also a few burn spots on the ground, which are dismissed as kids playing a prank. Deciding there’s nothing more they can do at the crash site they go to the lab.

There they determine that the chopper pilot was literally cooked to death and that Frank couldn’t have survived, even though the chute on his capsule opened, because there’s no trace of him. And he’d be pretty radioactive because there’s an excessive amount of radiation in and around the capsule. Please note that the capsule was left where it landed and no precautions were taken to keep the public out of danger.

So then a bunch of military guys, presumably from the lab, arrive at the airport to meet a big air force jet with Dr. Chris Manning on board. Despite the fact he’s a civilian, they decided the case was important enough to send for him. They go to the lab to examine the pilot’s body.

Suddenly we cut to a random scene of some kids dancing - beehive hairdos, pencil skirts, boys in cardigans. I assume this is the “go-go” part of the movie. One of the guys gets mad that his girlfriend is having a little too much fun and pulls her off the dance floor. She must like being pushed around ‘cause she doesn’t protest and they drive off together. They don’t go too far before he’s pulling over so they can start necking.

He gets a little too touchy feely and she gets out of the car. Someone (we can’t really see who) goes up to the driver’s side window and she turns and screams. The three military guys appear out of nowhere and find the body of the boyfriend. Then they hear some moaning and find the girl. They take her to the lab.

Now we get some weird ass, nonsensical music as Dr. Logan goes back to the landing area. The narrator keeps giving away the action before it happens. So ... Dr. Logan’s looking around and finds a burnt stick, and then turns on this thing that looks like one of those guns the police use to clock speeders. He hears a noise like radar blips and a Lurch-like creature comes up behind him and strangles him.

The others get word there’s been another strange incident and toddle off to have a look see. First they find the speed gun, then they find Dr. Logan who looks worse than the other bodies they’ve found thus far. They look around, trying to figure out why he was out there.

A new doctor is flown in and once he’s in the lab he asks to be brought up to date. Dr. Kramer, the token woman in the lab, says that there was no blood in the body, it had turned to powder. It’s determined that Frank Douglas must have died in space and his place in the capsule taken by a 400 pound, ten foot tall, radio-active creature.

Dr. Kramer shows the new guy Dr. Logan’s notes. Apparently, Logan had been injecting himself with something that was supposed to keep him from being affected by radiation - obviously it didn’t work. Then we learn this was something the lab was working on.

There’s another scientist in the lab - didn’t catch his name and was unable to find a cast listing to check - after Dr. Kramer leaves he goes to drug up the creature they were talking about. Excuse me? Did I miss something? When did they catch this creature? I thought they just figured out it existed. Anyway, he’s late with the drug and goes back to the lab to find it trashed.

Now we’re at a park where girls in bikinis are sun bathing. The Lurch-monster comes out of the bushes and heads towards them. They see him and run away screaming. The military guys get a call that the monster’s been spotted. The science guys and the military guys have an argument and decide that the monster is actually Frank Douglas, changed by the radiation he was exposed to. They must catch him!

Lots of random shots of them searching. The military guys are getting something on their equipment - lots of flashing lights, more vehicles arrive. The scientist guys put on clunky suits - they think they have him trapped in the sewers. They blow a whistle like a train whistle - not sure why - and then they blow anti-radiation gas into the sewer. They check out the sewer and the monster is gone.

But wait! Everything is okay! They receive a telegram that Frank was found 8000 miles away in a lifeboat. He’s alive and well and normal size (their words, not mine). The monster was not mentioned again.

At this point the movie just kind of stopped, and hubby made the flippant comment that it was another movie where they ran out of money and just stopped filming. The most entertaining part for him was the fact that when I looked up the movie on the internet, that’s exactly what happened. At least according to Wikipedia:

Director Rebane ran out of money while making the film. Herschell Gordon Lewis, who needed a second film to show with his own feature, Moonshine Mountain, bought the film, added a few extra scenes and some dialogue, and then released it, creating an odd, disjointed film with little continuity. Rebane had abandoned the film in 1961; Lewis did not finish the film until 1965 and so was unable to gather all of the original cast, resulting in almost half the characters disappearing midway through the film to be replaced by other characters who fill most of the same roles.

Of all the movies we’ve seen so far, this is the worst. And not worst in a good way.

Phantom From Space

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

This black and white movie was made in 1953, with a budget so low I couldn’t find any information about it. It was directed by W. Lee Wilder, who is also responsible for such gems as Killers From Space, Manfish, and Man Without a Body.

It’s never a good sign when a narrator has to set the action up right from the beginning. He tells us that an unidentified flying object has been spotted over Alaska and for good measure we get the stats on its trajectory, speed, height, etc. The air force goes on alert and interceptors become air-born to the tune of a high pitched warning hum. The narrator goes through several such warnings, each accompanied by the vital statistics. With each successive colour coded warning, the annoying hum gets louder and rises in pitch.

The UFO disappears over Santa Monica and I guess it must not have been that big a threat because the red warning and hum also vanish. It’s up to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to try and figure out what’s causing the massive communications interference. No one seems to connect it to the UFO. Mobile One and Mobile Seven are dispatched to find the source of the problem. They’re driving cars with old-style television antennas on top.

Mobile One, with FCC agent Hazen, is cruising around when a woman comes running down the road and flags them down. She says that her husband and their friend Pete were attacked by a strange man who was wearing a suit like a diver. When Hazen can’t get his radio to work, he goes to try and help. Her husband has been killed, but their friend is just hurt. Because it’s now a murder, they all traipse down to the police station for questioning.

Police Lieutenant Bowers thinks they’re making the story up to cover up their plot to kill the woman’s husband, especially when Pete insists there was no head in the diving suit helmet. Just then, Bowers receives a phone call telling him there’s been another murder, and a fire, near the Huntington Oil Fields (same area). The night watchman also confirms the presence of a guy in the diving suit.

Meanwhile, Mobile One and Mobile Seven meet up at the oil field (that’s still burning) and after talking it over, figure the media interruption is being caused by a saboteur wandering around carrying something. Back at the station, someone draws a very cartoonish looking figure in a deep sea diving suit and the witnesses confirm that this is what the man looked like, and that there was no head in the space suit.

The FCC guys contact Washington and agree to keep the press out of it until they find this guy. They’re told to contact Air Force Major Andrews and Doctor Wyatt at the Griffith Institute and Observatory. Bowers, Hazen, Andrews, and Wyatt toss around ideas of what’s really going on and Andrews admits to the UFO sighting earlier. What a coincidence! That just happens to be when the interference started.

The FCC redoubles their efforts to find the signal and close in on the oil field again. It’s too bad they don’t think of looking up - the spaceman is up on the roof watching them. While the mobile units are setting up some equipment and wandering around with Geiger counters, the spaceman is bopping around like the Samurai Chef from Saturday Night Live.

Finally, they trap him in a shed, but the cunning spaceman takes off his suit which renders him invisible. So the good guys find the suit and surmise that he took it off to avoid detection. Gee, ya think? They wave a Geiger counter over it and the thing goes crazy, so they use tongs (and bare hands) to put this incredibly radioactive suit into a lead lined box. Never mind the fact that if it was that radioactive they’d all be dead by now. Or at least have one foot in the grave.

They put the box in the back of the car and the invisible spaceman sneaks into the back seat to hitch a ride with them to the Griffith Observatory. Here we’re introduced to the token female of the movie, Barbara, who works with Dr. Wyatt. They run a whole bunch of tests on the suit, trying to cut it up, burn it, drip acid on it - but nothing seems to damage it. They’re very puzzled.

Barbara tests the gas in the helmet’s tank and discovers - da da da! It’s mostly unknown with some methane thrown in. They realize the spaceman’s probably not going to last long without his breathing apparatus. They get a call that there’s an insistent reporter wanting to talk to them, so the men all leave and Barbara stays to run more tests. You can see what’s about to happen, right?

The door to the lab opens and closes, Barbara conveniently spills some power on the floor and a footprint appears. Then the key turns in the lock and starts to float around. Barbara’s husband Bill arrives to escort her home and she tells him she’s not alone. He runs to get Bowers, Hazen, Andrews, and Wyatt, and when they get back to the lab the door is open but there’s no sign of Barbara. We have no idea why the spaceman chose her over his suit, but we see her floating around (unconscious) the observatory - obviously the spaceman is carrying her. The other guys are busy running up and down hallways and Barbara comes to sitting in a chair in the lab.

We get a lot of blurry vision from Barbara’s point of view. She sees the door close and the lock turn, and when the spaceman puts his helmet on it freaks her out. He uses scissors to tap out a code on the table. Barbara starts writing down the code but then uses an ultraviolet light on him and sees his very human looking hand. They both kind of freak out. He escapes through a window.

Back in the lab the guys are having a lengthy discussions of the spaceman’s origins and how his cellular structure must somehow react with the natural gasses of the Earth to make him invisible. Meanwhile the suit is disintegrating and again, for something that’s supposed to be so incredibly radioactive, they don’t seem to have enough sense to stand back and not breath in the noxious fumes it releases.

Dr. Wyatt uses the UV light to show the remains of the suit. The helmet is still okay and they assume the spaceman carried his own atmosphere with him. Now they’re all sympathetic with him because he was probably shipwrecked and didn’t mean to kill those people and blew up the oil tank to try and make more gas to breathe. They figure he’ll be back for his helmet and really want to capture him - for his own good, of course.

They make sure the path is clear to his helmet and wait in the laboratory for him. Sure enough, he eventually appears - we see staggering footprints appear on the pavement. For a bunch of people who don’t want to scare him away, they sure are in a rush to “get ‘em!” Now we have a lot more running through the hallways of the observatory. Barbara goes back to the lab and there’s the floating helmet again. She stays calm and tries to communicate with him, and simultaneously uses the PA system to tell everyone where he is. They come in quietly and try to communicate with him, but no luck. Then a reporter snaps a picture and the flash freaks the spaceman out. He drops the helmet, breaking it, and then escapes again, this time smacking the reporter on his way out the door.

More chasing through the endless halls, and they finally corner him as he climbs to the scaffold surrounding the telescope. They just happen to have UV lights with them and spotlight him, showing him to be pasty white, hairless, and human in appearance. He’s trying to speak but there’s no sound - he’s suffocating. His glow is almost gone and he falls. His body evaporates just like the suit did and they watch with long faces. Dr. Wyatt opens the dome so they can see the stars. The end.

I can’t even really call this a bad movie, it was more like a meh movie. Hubby says: “It’s not the worst thing we’ve ever seen. I was a little disappointed it wasn’t so bad it was entertaining.”

Hard to be entertained when it was so boring.

The Terror of Tiny Town

Some movies are so bad they’re good, and some movies are just ... bad. My husband and I enjoy watching them both and I thought it would be fun to share the best of the worst. So without further ado, here’s my bad movie review of the week. I leave it up to you to decide whether the movie is bad, or just the review. ;-)

I’m pretty sure there aren’t too many people who haven’t at least heard of this week’s movie. We actually lucked(?) into it. I just happened to see it listed on one of the new channels we’re getting with our current cable package and I recorded it with our TiVo.

This western was made in 1938 for an estimated budget of $100,000.00 and features Jed Buell’s Midgets - I kid you not. It’s right there in the opening credits. It was listed on our on-screen guide as being 90 minutes in length, but actually it was only 62. All I can say is, thank God!

Okay, first of all, it’s kind of hard to take the “terror” part seriously when we’ve got an all midget cast riding Shetland ponies and there in the opening credits is someone listed as “the vampire”. The vampire! Seriously? And just so you know, my review is based on the notes I took while watching, so it’s more like a running commentary. :-)

It begins with a man on a stage (the only regular sized person in the whole film) who tells us this film is the first of its kind and tells us not to take it too seriously. In comes Buck Larson, the hero, who says this is a serious film and he’s destined to become a great star. Then, of course, Bat Haines, the villain, puts in an appearance claiming he’s going to be the biggest star. They start fighting and the emcee tries to keep them apart and then the film starts.

And they start ... with singing. OMG, the humanity! A bunch of townsfolk, including our hero Buck, are gathered around a blacksmith who’s shoeing a regular sized horse, and everyone is singing. Make it stop!

Okay, finally we get to the nitty gritty. Pop Larson, Buck’s father, wants him to check things out on the north range, they’ve got cattle going missing. Off he goes. The action cuts to Bat Haines, who’s tending a fire while his gang chases down a calf (they can’t go after the cows because they’re bigger than the Shetland ponies they’re riding). Buck spots the smoke and draws his gun. The bad guys see him coming and ride off, leaving their branding iron behind.

Oh my. They speed up the film when they’re riding. I can’t believe we’re still watching this!

Buck takes the branding iron Bat left behind to the sheriff. The iron is from the ranch belonging to Tex Preston and it looks like he’s the one that’s been rustling the cattle. Meanwhile, Bat goes to Preston and tells him he found one of his cows that had been shot and there was a calf hanging around with Pop Larson’s brand on it. Then all of a sudden we get some comic relief in the form of Preston’s cook who’s trying to coax a duck close enough that he can kill it for supper - I don’t know if someone taught the duck to walk backwards or they just ran the film backwards - it’s just really bizarre.

Preston and his men go to town - his niece is due to arrive on the stagecoach. The sheriff comes over and warns him not to cause any trouble in town. Then we cut to Pop Larson and Buck (and their men). Larson tells Buck to keep looking for rustlers while he goes to town.

I’m pretty sure they deliberately set the swinging saloon doors up a little higher than normal because some of these guys can walk right under them. More singing. I’m dying here - the midget saloon girl sounds like Shirley Temple.

Bat takes the sheriff aside and warns him to stay out of what’s going on (the fact that he’s stealing cows from both ranches and getting them to blame each other). Then he asks him about some money that’s coming in on the stage - the sheriff reluctantly confirms this.

Preston goes to the barbershop for a shave in honour of his niece coming. Just when you think it can’t get any worse ... there’s a barbershop quartet singing in the barbershop. Oh, but it gets better. While the camera is panning from singer to singer, we see that there’s also a penguin in the barbershop. Say what? The song finishes up and Larson comes in. He and Preston trade insults.

The stage is coming. Bat and his gang are in place and start shooting at the stage. Buck and his men just happen to be in the neighbourhood and ride in to save the day. There’s a lot of shooting (sounds like cap guns) and both of the guys driving the stage end up getting shot. The bad guys see the good guys coming and run away. Buck sends his men after them while he goes after the runaway stage. He manages to stop it and then he and Nancy, Preston’s niece, ride on top back to town. Oops! Looks like he forgot about the horse he’d been riding.

So then we see Bat and his gang at their hideout and Bat is understandably angry with Buck, but hey, they’ve got dynamite - no idea what they’re planning to do with it, but I guess that’s beside the point.

One of Preston’s men comes to him and tells him their cattle are disappearing, so Preston decides to round up some gun slingers. Nancy decides to go for a ride and takes with her a huge picnic lunch. She meets up with Buck who just happened to have his guitar with him. I think there’s a bit of a Romeo and Juliette thing going on here - what with the trouble between their families and all.

Oh, no! More singing. There’s entirely too much singing in this travesty of a movie! Gene Autry he ain’t! And now she’s singing back to him - she sounds like Betty Boop. Buck doesn’t want to settle down until the feud between their families is resolved. And then they’re caught by Buck’s daddy. The two men argue and Nancy rides off. Buck follows her - she doesn’t want to come between father and son.

That low down pole cat Bat was spying on them from the bushes and witnessed the whole thing. Looks like he has an idea. He goes straight to Preston to rat them out. Preston rides off and catches up to the love birds on their way to town. He sends Nancy home, but then he and Buck talk and they realize there must be a third person involved with the cattle rustling. Preston agrees to meet with Buck’s father in town to settle this, and as they go their separate ways, Bat shoots Preston.

Bat then rides to the Preston ranch to tell everyone that Buck shot Tex. And of course they all believe him, although Nancy’s kind of unsure. Bat puts the moves on Nancy but she shoots him down, almost as badly as the Preston hands shoot at Buck when he rides up to talk. Run away, run away!

Meanwhile, at the saloon ... Oh good lord! It takes two to play the bass fiddle - one on a chair to do the fingering, and one stretching up to do the bowing. MORE singing! In comes Bat, who gives his saloon girl girlfriend the cold shoulder and tells the sheriff to arrest Buck for murder even though he confesses to being the culprit.

Buck goes to see Nancy, who holds a gun on him. She tells him that Bat Haines told her about her uncle’s murder and he realizes Bat must have done it - only two people knew Tex had been murdered, him and the murderer. Buck goes to the saloon and is promptly arrested.

Now we’re back at the Preston ranch again and Bat is trying to put the moves on Nancy again. Again she rebuffs him, so he retaliates by telling her that Tex owed him a lot of money. He leaves in a huff and goes back to the saloon where his girlfriend is ready to give him another chance, but he gives her the cold shoulder again. She’s not a happy camper.

Bat buys drinks for everyone at the bar to get them all liquored up. He convinces them (doesn’t take much) they shouldn’t wait for the judge but should string Buck up now. Nancy rides off to get Pop Larson. Bat’s ex-girlfriend threatens to tell the townsfolk what she knows and he slugs her.

Uh, oh! They’re going to lynch Buck. The sheriff’s had enough and tells everyone that Bat is the real murderer. Bat shoots him and escapes out the window. Pop Larson arrives and lets Buck out, who immediately goes after Bat. The sheriff lives long enough to tell them where Bat’s hideout is.

Riding, riding, riding.

The ex-girlfriend beats Bat to his hideout and lights a stick of dynamite, hiding it under the floorboards, then leaves through a window. Buck and Bat have a fist fight inside the hideout, the fuse is still burning, Nancy yells for Buck, he manages to knock Bat out and runs outside, Bat is about to shoot him in the back, and the hideout blows up. Buck and Nancy finally get to share that kiss.

This movie was totally deserving of a golden turkey - the story itself wasn’t bad, it was just the whole concept that was bad. As the hubby said, “I cannot believe we sat through the whole thing.”

I can’t believe he thought this was worthy of a review and not Robot Shark. ;-)

Oh, and the vampire? I had to look it up. It wasn’t a literal vampire, it’s just the name they gave to Bat’s saloon girl girlfriend.