Ryan Watches 50 Movies

Countdown update: After this movie, there are... zero. Zero horror classics out of 50. Wow! Can that possibly be true? Why, as good as these movies have been, it seems like only... only 12 years ago that I started this project. And now here I am, about to write up the very last one, 1955's The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues . Do you suppose the people at Mill Creek Entertainment who put these DVDs together saved the best for last? Will this phantom be even better than that other phantom who hung around the opera? Let's dive in and find out. But first! Let me remind you that this blog ain't over yet! Next week I'll be posting the super mega deluxe Horror Movies Wrap-up post. In 3-D! Synopsis So there's this guy out fishing in a little rowboat in the ocean, and suddenly a monster shows up, tips his boat over, and fondles him vigorously until he dies . Wait! They already showed us the monster? It hasn't even been 5 minutes yet! And here already we know exactly wha...

Q: What's worse than a bloodsucking leech? A: A giant, bloodsucking leech. Q: What's worse than that? A: A swamp full of giant, bloodsucking leeches! This week's movie is Attack of the Giant Leeches , a 62-minute epic from 1959 that just happens to be produced by B-movie master Roger Corman (see also Creature From the Haunted Sea ). It's an hour and change of good, clean, bloodsucking fun, including a fat guy, a Mark Trail clone, and a Playboy centerfold. Let's dive in! Synopsis Our setting is a swampy rural town in Florida. At the general store, local man Lem tells his friends about the strange creature he encountered last night, before the opening credits. It was bigger than an alligator, it looked like an octopus, and he had to shoot it five times before it went away! None of the guys believe him. The guys include Dave, a big ol' boy whose trashy-sexy wife "Liz-baby" (played by Yvette Vickers, who according to Wikipedia was a Playboy centerfold i...

Today’s movie is Creature from the Haunted Sea from 1961. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was directed by Roger Corman, the prolific B-movie movie master who cranked out over 572,000 films in the 1960s, including the original Little Shop of Horrors . I will not be shocked if there’s some more Corman later in this DVD set. If you’re familiar with Corman’s style, you know that his “horror” movies were very tongue-in-cheek, and Creature is no exception. In fact, Wikipedia's article classifies the film as a comedy. I guess there's no 50-movie set of comedies, so here it is. Synopsis Our hero and narrator is an American secret agent named XK-150, who’s posing as a crooked businessman in order to infiltrate a crew led by a crime boss named Renzo Capetto. Renzo is helping some counter-revolutionary Cubans (remember, this is 1961) smuggle a trunk full of gold out of the country and across the ocean. This is explained in forest-set scene that appears to have been...