Ryan Watches 50 Movies

Back to the "50 Drive-in Classics" DVD set! Once again I shun the order of the discs, and I jump directly to Creepers , a 1985 horror movie starring a very, very young Jennifer Connelly, before she won an Oscar, before she starred in Career Opportunities or Labyrinth , and before she became one of the most frequently screen-captured women on the internet. Creepers was directed by Dario Argento, an Italian filmmaker who is quite popular among horror aficionados. He's also the father of actress Asia Argento, who almost became a star after appearing in the craptacular Vin Diesel action movie XXX . An interesting fact I found in researching this movie online: Creepers is the title of the American cut of this movie, which has been edited to remove some of the gory stuff. The original version of the film is called Phenomena , which should not be confused with the movie Phenomenon starring John Travolta, even though Travolta, like Jennifer Connelly, has appeared in a movi...

Countdown update: After this film, I only have 2 left to go! Will I make it? Or will the next movie be so bad that it inspires me to feed myself to the walrus at the zoo? Stay tuned! The Last Man on Earth stars Vincent Price. Released in 1964, it was based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which would later be adapted as The Omega Man (with Charlton Heston), and again as I Am Legend (with Will Smith). How about that? Three different movies based on the same book, and they have three different titles! I can't think of any other instances of that happening, can you? Why did the first two versions change the title? I don't know, but maybe it was because I Am Legend is a pretty stupid title. I honestly have to wonder if it was supposed to be called I Am a Legend and Richard Matheson just forgot the article. Or maybe it's a referene to some classic medieval poem or something and I'm just showing my ignorance. Duhhhh. Synopsis The opening credits list a bun...

Check out that poster image. That's the best I could find on the entire internet. Mr. X doesn't seem so amazing when he's that small, does he? Man, is this really movie #44? That's insane. What was I thinking, taking on this box set? It's hard coming up with clever ways of describing 50 old movies nobody remembers. Which is why I'm doing this week's synopsis not in the usual way, but in the style of a 6-year-old trying to explain a movie to you. Take it away, six-year-old! Synopsis Um, there's this lady? And her name is Chris but she's not a boy like my friend Chris. It's short for Christine. And, um, she has a sister and her name is Janet, like my mom's friend, and she lives in a big house on the beach, and then she goes to sleep, and then she hears this man going, "CHRIS... CHRIS..." and she thinks it's her husband, but he's dead. I forget how he died. Um, and then she's gonna go on a date, but then there...

Before we proceed, I want to be certain everyone knows the title of this film is Bloodlust! with an exclamation mark. This puts it in the same category with such motion pictures as Tora! Tora! Tora! and Airplane! and Viva Zapata! As you will see, this film is nearly identical to those three. You may remember last week when I wondered aloud whether the "Robert Reed" listed in the credits for this film would be the same Robert Reed who starred on The Brady Bunch . I think you'll be as delighted as I was to know that yes, in fact, the guy who played Mike Brady stars in this movie running for his life from an insane man with a crossbow. Gee, you just never know what you'll get with this 50-movie pack of "horror classics." One week it's a silly Japanese giant-monster movie from the late 60s, the next week it's a dumb comedy mystery from the 30s, and a few weeks later it's a thriller from 1961 that shamelessly rips off a classic short story. W...

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Hey! Hold the phone for one cotton-picking minute! Hasn't this clown already watched a silly movie called The Gorilla ?" And the answer is: Nope. Several weeks ago I watched The Ape , which is completely different from 1939's The Gorilla . For one thing, The Gorilla stars the Ritz Brothers , a film comedy team from the 1930s. As a guy who's perhaps more interested than most of my peers in movies made before my parents were born, I've long been vaguely aware of the Ritz Brothers, but I'd never seen any of their films, and they seem to have faded into obscurity. I was looking forward to this movie because I was curious about the Ritzes: Do they deserve to stand alongside the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, and other greats of their era, or is their "forgotten" status deserved? Synopsis Newspaper headlines scream the top story of the day: A crazed killer called the Gorilla is on the l...

Several movies ago, I watched The Fatal Hour , a detective movie starring Boris Karloff as the Chinese detective Mr. Wong. Doomed to Die is the second Wong movie in this DVD set, which doesn't mean much because as you know, two Wongs don't make a right. According to IMDb, Doomed was made just after Fatal Hour , in the same year (1940). It also features the return of spunky girl detective Bobbi Logan and cranky cop Captain Street, and like its predecessor, it's not a horror film at all, but rather a murder mystery. Yep, it sure has a lot in common with The Fatal Hour , which is a movie I have seen. So it was interesting to me that when I went back and read my entry on Fatal Hour just now, I remembered almost nothing from it. When I saw Bobbi Logan and Captain Street in this week's movie, I had no idea I had seen them before. As I've gone through these "horror classic" movies, I've often wondered how much will stick with me... and now I have my answer....

So, here we have The Killer Shrews , a 1959 film directed by Ray Kellogg. Does that name sound familiar? It certainly should if you know anything about anything, because Kellogg was also the director of the horror classic The Giant Gila Monster , which I reviewed in this very space. According to the not-always-impeccably-reliable IMDb, Shrews and Gila Monster were intended to be shown as a double feature. I can see how they both came from the same brain. Synopsis Our hero is Captain Thorne Sherman. That's right, Captain Thorne Sherman. Is that a great hero name, or what? As the film opens, he and his first mate Rock (not the WWE wrestler) are on their way to deliver some supplies to Dr. Marlowe Craigis on a remote island. Ah, but there's a hurricane -- or, as Thorne calls it, a "hurric'n" -- coming, so Thorne decides they'll be staying on the island overnight. Ah, but there'll be no beach party for them... only KILLER SHREWS ! They meet Dr. Crai...

The Fatal Hour is a 1940 film directed by William Nigh. It's on side A of disc 4 of the Horror Classics DVD set, but it should have come with a disclaimer... for you see, my friends, The Fatal Hour is NOT a horror movie ! Though it has a number of things in common with other movies in this set (see tags below), it just doesn't qualify as horror. So what is it? Read on to find out. Synopsis The character right at the center of all the action is Mr. Wong, an Asian police detective affectionately known as "the Chinese copper." So who better to play him than a British guy ? It's none other than Frankenstein (and The Terror ) star Boris Karloff, which probably explains the presence of this movie in this DVD set. Anyway, the plot. So, our other characters include police captain Bill Street and spunky girl reporter Bobbie Logan. As the story begins, the body of Street's fellow officer and buddy Dan Grady is found floating in the San Francisco bay... and he's be...

I'm back! The dreadfulness of Revolt of the Zombies drove me to take a week off from watching horror classics, but now I'm back in the groove. The Giant Gila Monster is from 1959, and it seems like exactly the type of film that a teenage boy would take his date to, in the hopes that she would scream and grab his arm during the scary parts. It was directed by a guy named Ray Kellogg, but it has nothing to do with Corn Flakes. Most importantly, though: Is it better than Zombies ? Let's find out. Synopsis A young couple, Pat and Liz, are canoodling in a car when suddenly -- BLAPWOM! They're attacked! By a -- well, presumably it's a GIANT GILA MONSTER , but all we see is a scaly claw, so it could be anything... a giant iguana, a giant tuatara, or a normal-sized spinosaur. Meanwhile, a bunch of Pat & Liz's friends are waiting for them while boppin' to the rock 'n' roll at a local hangout when Old Man Harris, the town drunk, comes in. And boy, do th...

When you hear the phrase " classic horror ," who's the first actor that comes to your mind? Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing it's not Jack Haley , best known as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz . So I was surprised to see that he has the lead role in this week's movie, One Body Too Many from 1944. As it turns out, this film isn't really a horror movie at all. It's more of a comic mystery, like something you would expect to see in community theater or dinner theater. But the people who made the 50 Movie Pack threw it in because a) it includes a big, dark house and a dead body and a thunderstorm, and b) they didn't have enough films to produce a 50 Movie Pack: Comic Mysteries Like Something You Would Expect to See in Community Theater or Dinner Theater . Oh, and Bela Lugosi's in this one too, as you can see from the poster there. That's three films in a row to feature his special brand of spookiness, which is fine with me,...