Apocalypse Corman! (or 'Three actors, three days, and three bucks')

Last Woman on Earth (1960)
Starring: Betsy Jones-Moreland, Antony Carbone, and Robert Towne
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A crooked business man (Carbone), his wife (Jones-Moreland), and his young attorney (Towne) through a fluke survive a mysterious disaster that kills every living thing on the surface of Earth's northern hemisphere, perhaps in the entire world. They attempt to forge a life on the now deserted planet, but how long can two men tolerate each other with just one woman between them? Not very long.

There isn't much more to this film that that paragraph. If I told you that one man kills the other, and the remaining couple lives happily ever after, I wouldn't be spoiling the film, because that's the outcome that's set up early on, and it's an outcome that's never in any doubt.

The cinematography and acting is serviceable for a film which was probably written on the back of cocktail napkins, for which much of the dialogue was probably ad-libbed (the only explanation I can think of for inexplicably repeated lines within the same scene), and which was only made because "Creature from the Haunted Sea" wrapped a few days early and director/producer wanted to squeeze as much work out of the cast and crew he had brought to Puerto Rico as possible.

But for a movie that was probably made in a single-digit number of days, it isn't all bad. The characters are interesting in a community theater one-act play sort of way, and the story moves along at a quick pace. While there isn't a whole lot that happens in this film, you can still watch it and not get bored. Antony Carbone is particularly interesting as the crooked business man, mostly because you know that he's going to kill someone before the film's over. The only question is who.

That's not to say that it's necessarily worth watching unless you're interested in what an "artsy" Corman film might look like, or if you want to check out the humble beginnings of the writer of "China Town". But in the final analysis, this is yet another Roger Corman production where the poster art is more interesting than the film itself.

'Ski Troop Attack' may leave you cold

Ski Troop Attack (1960)
Starring: Michael Forest, Frank Wolff, Wally Campo, Richard Sinatra, and Shiela Noonan
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

An American ski-borne scout patrol trapped behind enemy lines during the winter of 1944 find themselves hunted by their German counterparts while trying to blow up a strategic bridge.


This is a pretty straight-forward war movie that offers a little bit of something for those who like to think of American soldiers as heroes, as well as those who like to think of them as bad guys. It also stands as one of Corman's better, dramatic non-horror efforts, with decent pacing and fairly decent dialogue. But there is nothing here that really stands out, except that the film's environment and the dangers faced by the soldiers is unusual.

"Ski Troop Attack" is at its best when the Americans are playing cat-and-mouse with the German patrol tracking them--there are moments of suspense that measure up against some of the truly great war movies to be found there. It's at its worst when the Americans force themselves upon a German woman in a farm house they come across while looking for a way back across the enemy line--they behave like stupid brutes... although this is probably the scene the dozens of people who liked Brian De Palma's "Redacted" a few years ago will like the most. (It's not so much the soldiers suddenly behave like idiots who confirm every bit of Nazi propaganda in the mind of the German woman that bothers me, but rather the fact that the scene drags to the point where you'll be WANTING someone to get shot... which is the obvious outcome from the moment the Americans enter the farm house.)

Overall, however, this is not a bad little war movie. It's just not all that great, either.

Picture (Im)perfect Wednesday

(The menu screen from "Ski Troop Attack," as found in BCI's budget collection The Cult Films of Roger Corman.)

'Night of the Blood Beast' had promising script, but not much else

Night Of The Blood Beast (1958)
Starring: Michael Emmet, Angela Green, Ed Nelson, John Baer, Georgianna Carter, and Tyler McVey
Director: Bernard L. Kowalski
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Things go from bad to worse for the scientists at an isolated observation post maintained by the US space program. First, they have the sad duty of recovering the body of an astronaut(Emmet) from the wreckage of a crashed experimental spacecraft (which they helped design). Then, they find themselves cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious magnetic disturbance. But when the dead astronaut is restored to life by alien microbes that are breeding in his bloodstream, things are at their lowest. Well, until the parent alien shows up to check on its incubator and engage in some murderous mayhem.


"Night of the Blood Beast" has all the makings of a truly fun sci-if horror movie. It's a film that could due with a remake by a talented filmmaker with a good cast, as it could be lots of gory fun. "Evil Dead" but with aliens is the possibility that is lurking within this film.

However, what presently exists is this movie, something that's barely worth watching. While it's a fine example of how to make a film with very little money--small cast, limited sets and locations--but also of how editing can ruin a movie. Although it only runs 62 minutes, "Night of the Blood Beast" seems far longer than that, because nearly every bit of dialogue is punctuated with a pause, almost every scene runs longer than it needs to, and whenever the characters venture outside in search of the creature menacing them, it's like we get to see their entire two-mile hikes.

Of course, this could be the fault of the director rather than the editor. Bernard L. Kowalski also directed the slow-moving, almost-as-boring "Attack of the Giant Leeches" (review here). Like that other movie, this one has some nice moments--such as when our heroes return to the lab to find one of their number suspended from the ceiling with his head missing--but most of the movie is just a little too slow to be interesting.

It is, however, a near-perfect vehicle for a "Mystery Science Theater 3000"-type bash-fest if you and your friends are into that sort of thing. The cheap sets and effects, the goofy monster costume, the agenda and methods of the would-be alien overlord, the interactions between the characters, and, just as importantly, the many pauses so-pregnant-we-may-need-to-deliver-the-next-line-by-C-section, are all ripe breeding ground for witty and caustic commentary. (I'd be surprised if this film wasn't featured on the MST3K show.)

Carniverous plant life has never been funnier

Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Starring: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Dick Miller, Tammy Windsor, Toby Michaels, and Jack Nicholson
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When the nebbish flowershop employee Seymore (Haze) creates a brand-new kind of plant as an expression of his love for fellow employee Audrey (Joseph), their boss Mushnik (Welles) is delighted that business starts booming after curious passer-bys stop in to see the plant. However, it soon becomes apparent that Seymore has created a monster--a talking plant with telepathic powers and a taste for human flesh!


"The Little Shop of Horrors" is a bizarre, chaotic, strange, and thorougly entertaining comedy. The jokes, nonsensical situations, and oddball characters keep coming non-stop, and along the way, Corman and crew mananges to parody cop dramas, monster movies, romance films, and even swashbuckler movies. The film unfolds almost like a dream, so random are some of the characters and dialogue exchanges, yet it all comes together in a film that exudes a great surreal atmosphere.

This may look like the low-budget movie that it is, but it was made with a crew that understood the limitations they were working under. It's also blessed with a fun script, and a cast of entergitic actors with fine comedic timing--I particularly love the three leads (Haze, Welles, and Joseph), Miller (as the "flower eater"), and the two girls buying flowers for a parade float. This is one of Corman's very best, and I think it's a flm worth seeing for anyone who loves kooky comedies... because this is one of the kookiest!

One of Corman's first is also one of his best

A Bucket of Blood (1959)
Starring: Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, and Julian Burton
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Walter (Miller), the dorky, put-upon busboy at the beatnik hangout Yellow Door Cafe, wants desperately to be an artist--both so he can impress his beautiful coworker Carla (Morris) and receive the sort of adulations that are heaped nightly upon poet Maxwell Brock (Burton). After he accidentially kills his neighbor's cat, he hits upon the perfect medium for his creative expression--covering dead bodies with clay and presenting them as sculptures. Soon, people are dying to be his models.

For years, I maligned Roger Corman as a terrible filmmaker. This was partly due to the fact that that the first few movies of his that I saw were indeed awful, such as "The Gunslinger." However, as I've been seeing more of his films, I've realized I misjudged him. He could make good movies, and "A Bucket of Blood" is one of this best!


"A Bucket of Blood" is a dark comedy where a talentless loner, desperate for acceptance, goes to extremes to fit in. Its events and messages can be interperted in many ways--as commentary on what passes for "art"; as a statement about the downsides of societal pressures to fit in, even among supposedly accepting counter-cultures; that the one constant in life is hypocracy; or perhaps even all of these--or the viewer can just switch off the brain and watch Walter's quest for acknowledgement spin out of control.

The general structure, story, and even the types of characters, of "A Bucket of Blood" is similar to Corman's later "The Little Shop of Horrors", but the story is more tightly focused, the humor sharper, and the actors' performances more restrained. Where "The Little Shop of Horrors" was a broadbased spoof, "A Bucket of Blood" keeps its attention on beatniks, artists, and wannabes. The main characters are virtually identical, and they even come to similar final fates, but Walter emerges as a far more sinister and evil character than Seymour, and the climactic moment in "Bucket" is more impactful (where it was just goofy in "Shop".

The camerawork and lighting of this film are near perfect. Yes, this is a low-buget film, and the sets are simple and shabby, but Corman uses a wide range of filmmaking techniques that heighten the drama and horror toward the end of the film, and they greatly enhance the pitch-black comedy when Walter's boss (Carbone) is reacting in the background while Walter is showing his latest creation to him and Carla, after the boss has realized how the sculptures are being created. In fact, during the chase scene toward the end of the film, I found myself wondering if many modern filmmakers should be forced to watch this movie to see how to properly apply the tools of their trade.

The actors are also universally excellent, with great comedic talent shown all-around, from the pair of doped-out beatniks who wander through the scenes spouting hilarious nonsense; to Carbone, as the demanding boss who finds respect and fear for his busboy; to Morris, Walter's kindhearted coworker and target of his affections; to Burton, as the blowhard, psuedo-intellectual poet; to Miller, who, in his only starring role, puts on a spectacular show as a dork who turns into a homicidal maniac because of a hunger for acceptance. Miller does a fine job of going from goofy to menacing, but still maintaining a comic tone.

'Attack of the Giant Leeches' is boredom

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)
Starring: Ken Clark, Jan Shepard, Yvette Vickers, Bruno VeSota and Gene Roth
Director: Bernard L. Kowalski
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A small town located on the edge of a swamp and inhabited primarily by unpleasant hicks is menaced by giant leeches. Will the studly game warden (Clark)--one of three citizens with a double-digit IQ--save the day?

"Attack of the Giant Leeches" is one of those movies where the various characters can't get eaten by the monsters soon enough. This is partly because they're portrayed by second-rate actors delivering badly written dialogue, but also because the film is just plain boring.

The movie reaches its high point when the local shopkeeper (Bruno VeSota) chases his wife (the town slut, played by Yvette Vickers) into the swamp after catching her with one of her lovers. There's some genuine tension and suspense in that scene, and it's the only bit that materializes in the entire movie.


(Later scenes might have had some suspense to them, but it's ruined by the fact the "giant leeches" are obviously plastic and their suckers look more like eyes than suckers. They effect is not one of horror but one of goofiness.)

There is one important lesson to be taken from this film: If you think you are hearing an angry leopard or wildcat while wandering through a swamp, it's probably just the mating cry of a giant leech.

I suppose, in fairness, I should acknowledge the fact that the movie lets us oogle a sexy chick getting dressed as her slobby husband oogles her getting dressed. I guess that's a little bit of entertainment value right there.



(Although it did make me wonder: Do most women really put their shoes on before they've even finished putting on the rest of their clothes? It seems like they always do it that way in the movies....)

A couple of intense moments highlight the otherwise boring 'Dementia 13'

Dementia 13 (1963)
Starring: Luana Anders, William Campbell, and Patrick Magee
Director: Francis Coppola
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

After her husband dies of a heart attack, Louise (Anders) covers up his death and travels to Castle Halloran, his family's ancestral estate in Ireland, where her strange inlaws live. Here, she enacts a scheme to gain the trust of her mentally unstable mother-in-law and get a piece of the family fortune. Her plan is working well...until the crazed axe murderer shows up and starts hacking people to bits. Which member of the creepy family in Castle Halloran has an axe to grind with the rest of them?


Much like "Psycho" starts out seeming to be one kind of crime drama and then veers suddenly in another direction and turns into a completely different sort of crime drama, so does "Dementia 13" transform from a slow-moving, mildly interesting gothic thriller into a precursor for slasher-flicks like the "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" series. (The scene where the axe murderer is after Lady Halloran, and virtually demolishes a shack to get at her, would fit right into just about any slasher flick.)

"Dementia 13" is about average for a Roger Corman-produced low-budget quickie. The acting is pretty bad all around, although Magee is fun as the creepy family doctor, and Anders has an interesting look about her and is good at seeming sinister without trying. (She also has some of the creepiest scenes in the flick. The sequence of her in the pond is very well done; it is actually the film's highpoint.)

The attempts at scares are pretty feeble and universally badly executed, and aside from the aforementioned scenes with the axe murderer hacking his way into a shack, and the one where the scheming daughter-in-law is diving in the castle's pond, virtually no suspense or tension ever really gets going in the flick. To some extent, the bad soundtrack music can be blamed for that, as it is overly loud and dramatic at all wrong times, distracting more than adding to the film. However, the fault lies mostly with the fact that there simply is nothing scary about the scenes.

"Dementia 13" is worth watching if you're out of other things and interested in seeing the building blocks that led to the slasher flicks of the 1980s, or if you're a huge Francis Ford Coppola fan. This was his directorial and scripting debut, and it was before he became so huge a sensation that only three names could properly describe him!

'The Wasp Woman' won't give you a buzz

The Wasp Woman (1960)
Starring: Susan Cabot, Michael Mark, Anthony Eisley, Barboura Morris, and William Roewick
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Four of Five Stars

Cosmetics industry queen and aging "glamor girl" Janice Starlin (Cabot) undergoes an experimental treatment developed from the jelly of queen wasps. She regains her youth, but transforms into a marauding, flesh-eating wasp woman when the sun goes down.


"The Wasp Woman" is a film that the word 'tedious" was invented to describe. There isn't a scene or a shot that drags on, and, although the pace is picked up in the film's final 15-20 minutes, getting there is an experience almost as boring as watching wasps build a nest.

The film does features decent acting and a few genuinely scary moments (such as the transformation scene that leads into the climax), but its first and second acts are in so desperate need of trimming that this movie can't be considered worth your time.

(Trivia: Susan Cabot retired from acting after making this film and became the mistress of the King of Jordan. He dumped her when he discovered she was Jewish. She was later beaten to death by her midget son. Yes... truth can be stranger than fiction.)

One of the better 'bad monster movies' you'll ever laugh at

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
Starring: Anthony Carbone, Robert Towne, and Betsy Jones-Moreland
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When a general flees Castro's revolution with most of the Cuban treasury, he hires notorious gangster Renzo Capetto (Carbone) to bring him and his aides to safety. Capetto intends to kill his charges and keep the gold for himself, but his plans go awry thanks to a tough-talking U.S. government agent who has infiltrated his gang (Towne), persistant bearded agents of Castro, and a sea-creature that starts killing before Capetto can get around to it.


I came to this movie without any idea of what to expect other than a made-on-the-cheap monster movie. But even before the pre-credit sequence--where a man having his tennis shoes shined and then is chased by killer beatnicks with murderous intent--I knew I was in for something strange. When the tough-talking, film-noir narrator introduced hims as having infiltrated Capetto's gang undercover, but assured us that his "real name is Agent XK150" I realized that I was in for a comedy ala "Little Shope of Horrors" or "A Bucket of Blood."

"The Creature from the Haunted Sea" is a strange, nonsensical litle movie that is performed by a collection of decent to average no-name actors who spout bizarre lines with great conviction and zeal. The movie spoofs monster flicks, spy flicks, pirate movies, gangster movies, and probably one or two genres I missed. The film is very disjoined, and I'm not sure this is intentional at times, but I loved the sort of freewheeling nature of the film and the way it kept getting stranger and stranger as it progressed. (It could have done with a few more appearances by the title creature--despite the utterly awful and giggle-inspiring design)and by the hot chicks living on the island where our cast of weirdos get stranded, though.)

This is by no means a great movie, but it has a certain charm about it. It is included in a wide range of different DVD multi-packs, and its presence should be at least partly a reason to pick one up. It's a strange little film that brighten the proceedings at any Bad Movie Party.

I've placed a link to an edition that includes both the original film and a colorized version, because I am increasingly fascinated by the way films are changed--usually not for the better--when the colorization process is applied. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT some purist that will rattle on about the integrity of a director's vision--I will put good money on many directors during the 1950s and 1960s shooting in black and white because their budgets didn't allow for color film--but most directors and their cinematographers understood how to make the most out of the black and white medium and their scenes are lit and filmed to make the most of it. In the vast majority of cases, colorization drains visual excitement from a film rather than adding to it.

Then again, I'm a guy who enjoys black and white movies so I could be biased. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter? Especially if you've seen the colorzied version of "Creature from the Haunted Sea"?)