JAL's October Horror Movie Binge

[JAL]

Every October I binge on horror movies as it leads up to Halloween at the end of the month. I have an enormous film library, nearly all on Blu-ray, some on DVD, and an increasing number on 4k disc . . . mostly new releases and some replacing older Blu-rays. The horror genre portion of the library spans ~1920 to contemporary 2022 movies, with some foreign, including Japanese, although the horror genre is dominated by U.S. followed by UK and then Canada.

This year I'm focusing on post WWII to the early 1960's. Nearly all are B&W B-movies, the stuff of that era's grindhouses, and double-features at the late night drive-ins and Saturday matinees. Not everyone at the drive-in was watching the movies. Some were watching the submarine races.

I'm going to play some catchup as I started on October 1st and will post everything up to today (October 6th), and then one for each day following.

Oct. 1st
The Quatermass Xperiment, a 1955 British production from the prolific Hammer Studios that cranked out many horror B-movies in that era.
The movie was an adaptation of the 1953 BBC TV serial for cinema. Professor Bernard Quatermass' manned rocket ship returns to Earth, but two of the astronauts are missing and the survivor seems ill and unable to communicate. If you guessed that their trip into space has brought something back with it, you guessed right, and it's going to wipe out all life on Earth if it isn't stopped.
IT CREEPS . . .
IT CRAWLS . . .
IT KILLS!

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) ⭐ 6.6 | Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 18m | Not Rated

www.imdb.com

 

[JAL]

Oct. 2nd
Tarantula A 1955 example of the numerous gargantuan man-eating arthropod movies of its era. A spider escapes from an isolated Arizona desert laboratory experimenting in giantism and grows to tremendous size as it wreaks havoc on the local inhabitants. See if you can spot Clint Eastwood in a minor supporting role. Not easy, but you can recognize his voice. One of the movies he was cast in before starring in the Rawhide TV series. My generation should recognize the British actor who starred in 6 Hitchcock films, and as Mr. Waverly in the 1960's Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV series.
CRAWLING TERROR 100 FEET HIGH!

Tarantula (1955) ⭐ 6.4 | Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 20m | Approved

www.imdb.com

 

[DoggyDaddy]

I bet @Mgderf would enjoy this thread, since he's a Svengoolie fan!

 

[JAL]

Oct. 3rd
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers - Produced by Sam Katzman, this 1956 film features Ray Harryhausen's Dyamation stop-motion effects to create the flying saucers. Harryhausen was noted for the cutting edge special effects, particularly in dramatically and effectively changing the scale of animals and other objects with humans. Extraterrestrials traveling in high-tech flying saucers contact a scientist as part of a plan to enslave the Earth's inhabitants of Earth. Comes with the stereotyped Professor Smokesapipe character.
FLYING SAUCERS ATTACK!
WARNING!
TAKE COVER!

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) ⭐ 6.3 | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 23m | Unrated

www.imdb.com

 

[d.kaufman]

With the colder weather setting in I'll probably binge watch the Saw series. Love those movies.

 

[JAL]

Oct. 4th
Creature with the Atom Brain - another Sam Katzman production, this one from 1955. Want zombies? We've got radio-controlled nuclear powered ones, a product of the post-WWII Atomic Age. An ex-Nazi mad scientist uses radio-controlled atomic-powered zombies in his quest to help an exiled American gangster exact revenge and return to power. If the initial "creature" looks a little like Ed Asner, he resembles him, but it's not Asner.
SHOCK-FULL OF THRILLS!
HE COMES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!
YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!
SO TERRIFYING ONLY SCREAMS CAN DESCRIBE IT!

Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) ⭐ 5.5 | Crime, Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 9m | Approved

www.imdb.com

 

[JAL]

With the colder weather setting in I'll probably binge watch the Saw series. Love those movies.

I've got I - VII in a Blu-ray set. Allegedly VII was the "Final Chapter", but I knew that would never stand with a money-making franchise. Jigsaw cannot be allowed to die. Sure enough there was a #8, #9 and a Saw X released this year. Stopped with the first seven. My movie library spans an very wide range of genres - just about everything there is - and higher priorities took over.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Oct. 4th
Creature with the Atom Brain - another Sam Katzman production, this one from 1955. Want zombies? We've got radio-controlled nuclear powered ones, a product of the post-WWII Atomic Age. An ex-Nazi mad scientist uses radio-controlled atomic-powered zombies in his quest to help an exiled American gangster exact revenge and return to power. If the initial "creature" looks a little like Ed Asner, he resembles him, but it's not Asner.
SHOCK-FULL OF THRILLS!
HE COMES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!
YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!
SO TERRIFYING ONLY SCREAMS CAN DESCRIBE IT!

Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) ⭐ 5.5 | Crime, Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 9m | Approved

www.imdb.com

Nuclear zombies make much more sense than coal-fired zombies.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Nuclear zombies make much more sense than coal-fired zombies.

Or solar powered zombies, or wind-powered zombies.

 

[Libertarian01]

At last I have found an expert on olde B-grade horror movies. Perhaps you can answer a question about one I saw as a kid.

It starts with a ship going down. It's in B&W if I recall. A group of about 6 - 8 survivors in a lifeboat are drifting. During their floating about one (1) of the survivors is pulled overboard and killed by floating little monsters.

As I recall the remainder wind up on another ship. It may have been stuck in something like the Sargasso Sea or doing research.

That's all I can remember. It frightened me as a kid and I never saw it again. I've always wanted to see it again. It was made at the latest in the 60's. I don't know if it was B&W because for several years as a child all we had was a B&W TV.

If you have a few choices for me to peruse I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

Doug

 

[JAL]

Oct 5th
The Werewolf, another Sam Katzman produced creature feature, this one from 1956 (he was a prolific B-movie producer). Two scientists come across an auto accident and find an unconscious man in the wreck. They take him back to their lab and inject him with an atomic serum they have been working with. Yup, in the mid-1950's new Atomic Age, radioactive stuff does all sorts of things. It turns a man in this movie into a murderous werewolf. In the U.S. this one was released as the 2nd film in a double feature with Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (see the one for Oct 3rd above).
THE HORROR OF ALL MANKIND TERRIFIES THE SCREEN!
IT HAPPENS BEFORE YOUR HORRIFIED EYES!
EVIL ATOM-AGE SCIENTISTS TURN MAN INTO DEADLY, SNARLING BEAST!

The Werewolf (1956) ⭐ 5.9 | Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 19m | Approved

www.imdb.com

 

[JAL]

At last I have found an expert on olde B-grade horror movies. Perhaps you can answer a question about one I saw as a kid.

It starts with a ship going down. It's in B&W if I recall. A group of about 6 - 8 survivors in a lifeboat are drifting. During their floating about one (1) of the survivors is pulled overboard and killed by floating little monsters.

As I recall the remainder wind up on another ship. It may have been stuck in something like the Sargasso Sea or doing research.

That's all I can remember. It frightened me as a kid and I never saw it again. I've always wanted to see it again. It was made at the latest in the 60's. I don't know if it was B&W because for several years as a child all we had was a B&W TV.

If you have a few choices for me to peruse I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

Doug

This one I've got to chew on for a while. Nothing comes immediately to mind. I'm by no means an expert on them. There were hundreds of them produced from the late 1940's into the early 1960's. The one with a ship sinking and about eight survivors that comes to mind is Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 movie, "Lifeboat", based on John Steinbeck story, but there aren't little monsters floating around in the water. It's about survival, and the psychology of what people will do with very limited, dwindling resources in an extremely confined space. A bit different from what most people would think of in a Hitchcock movie.

 

[Michigan Slim]

Watched a ton of B flicks when I was a kid. Late night movies on channel 55. Kent Horman was the host, then Elvira. The creature from the black lagoon scared the crap out of me.

 

[JAL]

Oct. 6th
The Black Scorpion - Another of the giant arthropod run amok sub-genre. Set in Mexico, volcanic activity frees giant scorpions from the earth who wreak havoc in the rural countryside and eventually threaten Mexico City. Various techniques were used to put the volcano background on the set, including in-camera mattes, aka Dawn Processs, a common method of the time to put a distant background into a scene, and to put backgrounds into a studio lot foreground. Also used rear projection in various scenes on the mountain. Stop-motion animation was used for the scorpion and from what I know and can tell watching the movie, stop-action footage of the creature moving was rotoscoped into the live footage with the actors.
EVERY HORROR YOU'VE SEEN ON THE SCREEN PALES BESIDE IT!
NOW FOR THE BIGGEST SHOCK OF A LIFETIME!
DON'T BE AFRAID TO SCREAM - IT HELPS RELIEVE THE TENSION!

The Black Scorpion (1957) ⭐ 5.4 | Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 28m | Approved

www.imdb.com

Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This catches up with today . . . I'll be (trying to be) posting one a day to the end of the month.

 

[littletommy]

My firestick home page is pretty much nothing but suggestions for 50s and 60s B movie/sci-fi/horror movies. I only really like the black and white ones, but occasionally will watch a color movie if the special effects are cheesy enough.

I really like the old serials that were Saturday matinee regulars in the 50s and 60s, some of them are really well produced.

 

[JAL]

Watched a ton of B flicks when I was a kid. Late night movies on channel 55. Kent Horman was the host, then Elvira. The creature from the black lagoon scared the crap out of me.

The one long-running independent VHF (no network affiliation) ran science fiction and horror B-movies late at night after the news, and on Saturday afternoons (this wasn't in Indiana). I remember watching Starman, the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers Sci-fi serials, and the 1930's Universal horror stuff: Frankenstein, The Mummy, Dracula, The Invisible Man, etc.

 

[JAL]

Remember the double-feature intermission?



Drive-in theaters had intermission stuff like this that ran for 10-12 minutes with a countdown announcement every minute. The typical theater makes much more on the concessions than they do on ticket sales. Been like that since before WWII. Hence the rise in theaters now that serve full meals you order when first seated. That's where their profit is.

 

[JAL]

Oct. 7th
The Thing from Another World - This 1951 RKO film is based upon the 1938 novella, "Who Goes There". A United States Air Force crew and scientists find a crashed flying saucer and a humanoid body nearby, frozen in the Arctic ice. Returning to their remote arctic research outpost with the body still in a block of ice, they are forced to defend themselves against the still alive and malevolent plant-based alien when it is accidentally thawed out. More well known today is John Carpenter's 1982 adaptation, "The Thing" (starring Kurt Russell). Those familiar with the "Gunsmoke" TV series may recognize James Arness who plays The Thing in this film. It was 1951's highest grossing Sci-fi movie. Produced by the famed director Howard Hawks, who is credited as its producer, there has been debate over whether he or the credited director, Christian Nyby actually directed the movie. Both had a significant hand in it.
FLAMES CANNOT DESTROY THE THING . . .
NOR BULLETS KILL IT!
IT CREEPS!
IT CRAWLS!
IT STRIKES WITHOUT WARNING!

The Thing from Another World (1951) ⭐ 7.1 | Horror, Sci-Fi

1h 27m | Approved

www.imdb.com

 

[Libertarian01]

This one I've got to chew on for a while. Nothing comes immediately to mind. I'm by no means an expert on them. There were hundreds of them produced from the late 1940's into the early 1960's. The one with a ship sinking and about eight survivors that comes to mind is Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 movie, "Lifeboat", based on John Steinbeck story, but there aren't little monsters floating around in the water. It's about survival, and the psychology of what people will do with very limited, dwindling resources in an extremely confined space. A bit different from what most people would think of in a Hitchcock movie.

Thanks, but it wasn't Hitchcock. It was a sci fi / horror. An olde movie with little monsters in the water and they weren't the only ones. I just don't remember too much of it. I guess that's my infatuation with it. I was a kid at the time, don't remember too much, and have always wanted to see it to the end. I've done several "horror movie" searches but cannot narrow it down enough to get a list of horror movies without it sprawling.

Have you watched The Thing (1984) with Kurt Russel and the prequel The Thing (2011) with Mary Elizabeth Winstead? I love the prequel with Mary. The Norwegians put up a much better fight than the Americans. Of course, Mary's team knew what they were dealing with right off.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Regards,

Doug

 

[JAL]

Thanks, but it wasn't Hitchcock. It was a sci fi / horror. An olde movie with little monsters in the water and they weren't the only ones. I just don't remember too much of it. I guess that's my infatuation with it. I was a kid at the time, don't remember too much, and have always wanted to see it to the end. I've done several "horror movie" searches but cannot narrow it down enough to get a list of horror movies without it sprawling.

Have you watched The Thing (1984) with Kurt Russel and the prequel The Thing (2011) with Mary Elizabeth Winstead? I love the prequel with Mary. The Norwegians put up a much better fight than the Americans. Of course, Mary's team knew what they were dealing with right off.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Regards,

Doug

I've watched both the John Carpenter 1984, and the 2011 prequel. You can watch them in a time frame order double-feature with the 2011 prequel first followed by the 1984 film. The ending of the 2011 prequel moves almost seamlessly into the beginning of the 1984.

If I run across anything regarding the one you remember, I'll post it here.