Episode 11: Leftover Turkey from 1974

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As you sit in front of your monitor, starting to doze from the effects of massive doses of Tryptophan, I am pleased to offer you “Jive Turkey” a great blackspoitation flick from 1974 . There are a few cheesey things about this one, but it is actually a very entertaining, mostly well acted  movie. Check it out and have a big piece of pumpkin pie.

“It’s a turf battle over the mean streets of Harlem between Italian mobsters and the black hoodlums living in the neighborhood. The fighting becomes intense, as each side tries to push the other out, with both groups bringing in their best hit men. Watch for a brutal transvestite mobster who kills with their high-heeled shoes and Frank DeKova from TV’s F-Troop as the leader of the Italian mob.”

Get ready for winter with next week’s movie, which can best be described as “Jaws at a ski resort”.

 

Episode 10: A dragon, a giant bat, Cerebus and a midget walk into a movie….

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About a year ago I got a collection of sword and sandal films, hoping for some cheap fantasy flicks with lots of bad dubbing and dodgy stop motion monsters.  This movie is just the kind of thing I was hoping for, which probably says something fairly unflattering about my taste in movies. Still, you can’t really argue with the entertainment value of the movie. I mean they already gave you a dragon, a three headed fire breathing hell hound, an evil warlord  and a giant bat. They were under no obligation to throw in an annoying midget at no additional charge, but they did.

“King Eurystheus rules the land with cruelty and terror, using his monsters to keep the people under his control. Goliath returns home to find his wife and the people in peril from the monsters and vows to defeat the creatures and overthrow the wicked king.

If everything goes as planned the next episode will be a day or two earlier because I’m preparing a little Thanksgiving turkey for you. Mom might save you the drum stick, but I’m showing up with a transvestite assassin.

Episode 9: Its Australian for “Western”

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This week’s movie is one I’ve had for a while, but hadn’t seen until I heard Stephen from JAFMP talking about how good it was.  I just checked it out this week and thought it lived up to his description quite well. Unfortunately I may have gotten hold of a TV edit because some of the early scenes seem a little truncated. I’ve never seen any other version so I’m not entirely sure through. Still, its well worth a watch all the same.

“Irishman Daniel Morgan arrives in 1850’s Australia to seek his fortune but ends up on the wrong side of the law and is sent to prison. After serving his sentence of hard labor, Morgan is released and he swears to seek revenge on those who’s wronged him. Becoming a rogue who is loved by the common people, a price is placed on his head by the rich and powerful, which fear him.”.

I’m sorry if this is, in deed, an edited version of the movie. It was the only version I had though and I think it still holds up. Stop by next week for a movie that is a sweeping tale of fantasy and high adventure set in a breathtaking word……..ok its just a peplum, but it does have a dragon, a magic stone and a few neat stop motion monsters in it.

Episode 8: A Man Called Doosh

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Welcome back to Dollar Movie Drive In. I have a little hicksploitation for your enjoyment this week. “In Hot Pursuit” AKA “Polk County Pot Plane” it a fun little bucket of southern fried cheese to clog your hard drive with. Imagine The Dukes of Hazard with weed and an airplane.

SORRY, NO TRAILER THIS WEEK. YOUTUBE DELETED IT.

This movie is about two young men, Oosh and Doosh, who live in a rural Georgia town trying to make a living by transporting marijuana. Caught red-handed with their latest shipment, the men are sent off to jail to face a long prison sentence. They  stage a prison break and head on the run, pursued by a group of police officers intent upon their recapture.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s movie. Stop by next week for Dennis Hopper in the tale of an Australian folk hero which comes highly recommended by Stephen at JAFMP.

Episode 7: A Double Dose of Halloween Horror

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Feature 1

Horror hotel A.K.A City of the Dead is one of the first flicks to come to mind when deciding what movies to show for Halloween. It is easy for any reviewer to throw around the word atmosphere, but this movie is almost a textbook example of how the right atmosphere can turn a good story into a great movie.  This fog covered New England town is creepy in spades, its people and its look set just the right tone of a place where things have been very wrong for a very long time.

A young college student is putting together a term paper on the history of witchcraft in American the the the various cases of people who have been burned at the stake. Her professor, Christopher Lee, suggest that she travel to the small Massachusetts town of Whitewood to continue her research. as it is purported to be the site of just such an execution.  Against the wishes of her boyfriend and her brother, the girl decides to spend part of her vacation following up on the professor’s lead and when she doesn’t return they are forces to retrace her trail to the odd, out of the way village.

Like I said before, this is a really good one. Also, this movie should appeal to any H.P. Lovecraft fan. The story and setting just have that sort feel to them.

Feature 2

Here is a fun little Spanish movie from Paul Naschy, who you’ll recall from The Werewolf VS the Vampire Woman. This time Naschy discards his fur and fangs for a dual role as a Satan worshiping french nobleman and the descendant who will eventually resurrect him.

The movie opens with the double execution of a French nobleman and his lover, both of which have been convicted of a series of diabolical crimes. He is decapitated and his head and body are separated to keep him from returning from the dead. Several generations later a group of friends, one of whom seems to have been drawn to the estate by his evil ancestor’s  influence, unearth the head and manage to resurrect the undead warlock and his lover. This unleashes a slew of bloody sacrifices and zombie attacks.

It isn’t as good as the first movie, IMO, but it is a lot of fun and any eurohorror fan should enjoy it.

Well folks, that pretty much wraps up the Halloween festivities for this year. I hope you enjoyed our fright filled offerings. We’ll be taking a break from the things that go bump in the next week. Instead, I’ll be bringing you the adventures of a couple backwoods pot smugglers.

Episode 6: Come up to the lab and see whats on the slab.

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One thing any regular visitor to this site will become accustomed to (tired of) is me talking about is my youth spent watching late night hosted horror shows. It my get old, but it is shows like that which influenced my love for b-movies and my appreciation for older flicks. The Hammer movies were a staple of these shows, and I’d love to have some on her. Unfortunately most of the Hammer flicks aren’t in the public domain. I know the Satanic Rites of Dracula is, but that is probably the weekend entry in that series.

There are, however, several “Hammer-like” movies that are pretty good and not copyrighted. Movies like Horror Express and, of course, our movie this week

Baron Frankenstein is being assisted in his research by his sultry daughter Tania .  The duo’s first attempt at a stitched-together creation results in a lumpy, pop-eyed monstrosity with little  respect for its creator. In fact, the monster begins its rampage by murdering the Baron and escaping into the surrounding village. The younger Frankenstein  soon begins work on a creation of her own by transplanting the brain of her brilliant but deformed assistant into the body of a brawny handyman. The result is a handsome and powerful male creature not only capable of destroying the original monster, but virile enough to satisfy his creator’s overwhelming sexual appetites.

The movies is lurid and more sexually overt than the Hammer movies, but there is plenty of mad science, surgery and rampaging creature mayhem to entertain any monster movie fan.

Be sure to come back next Friday for the final movie in this year’s Halloween Horror Fest. I’ll be sharing one of my favorite chillers, a very atmospheric Christopher Lee movie that is just perfect for Halloween night.

Episode 5: She gave him her heart and he….tore it out and buried in the greenhouse.

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I’ll be showing all kinds of movies here, but I do have a certain weakness for the horror flicks. ,  There are lots of good horror movies in the public domain and it has been difficult to decide on which ones to pick for DMD’s first Halloween series. Of course something like Night of the Living Dead or House on Haunted Hill would seem to be a given. Those two are definitely among the heavyweights of the PD horror scene and I’m sure they’ll be on here sooner than later. For our first batch of October movies, however, I wanted to dig a little deeper and put up some movies that not everyone has heard of or seen.

We’ve already had an axe murderer, a werewolf and some vampires in our little corner of the pumpkin patch, but this week I was in the mood for something gothic and European, maybe something about vengful spirits and buried secrets. Well, If you want European and gothic you’re going to have to eventually invite miss Barbara Steele to the party.

“A count who experiments with electro-stimulation of human blood discovers that his wife is having an affair. Catching the two lovers together, the count tortures and kills them, using their hearts and blood to further his experiments and to restore the beauty of his own lover. After his wife’s death, the count discovers that her castle and fortune are to be given to her sister instead of him. Hoping to continue his lifestyle and his experiments, the count manipulates the sister and marries her, hoping to eliminate her as he did his first wife, not knowing that the spirits of his wife and her lover are out for revenge.”

As the above breakdown would suggest, there is a lot going on in Nightmare Castle and I’ll admit that the middle section of the film does drag a bit as the plot gets increasingly convoluted. However the beginning and  final third of the movie more than make up for any shortcomings.  Of course, Barbara Steele is great in her dual role. The queen of the Italian gothics

Oh, you NOTLD fans shouldn’t feel too left out.  This one even has a couple great zombies to tide you over.

I hope to see you here again next week. We’ll take a trip to the lab and witness a bit of mad scientist nepotism.

Episode 4: Round 1….FIGHT!

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Welcome to week two of the Halloween Horror Fest. This week I’m showing a movie that reminds me so much of the weekend nights of my youth spent watching late night horror movies on TV. If you grew up in the 70s and 80s you probably remember these types of shows that would come on after the 11:00 news and were usually locally produced and hosted by some type of unique personality.

I don’t recall actually having seen The Werewolf VS The Vampire Woman on either of the two local shows I watched, but I could have. This little Spanish production would have been right at home there. I originally saw it on a double feature DVD that my cousin bought me for Christmas several years ago and right away I was transplanted back to the good old days of midnight creature features and monster movies. 

 

If it is from spain, came out in the early 70s and has a werewolf in it, you can pretty much be sure that Paul Naschy is going to be involved someplace. This time he does double duty as the lead furball and as co-writer. The movie opens with two doctors doing an autopsy on the body of a suspected murderer whom the villagers believe to be a werewolf. They begin by removing the two silver bullets from the dead man’s chest and their night just sort of goes downhill from there.

Sometime later, after returning to his human form, our cursed protagonist takes in two lovely students who are doing reasearch on witchcraft and who are searching for the crypt of supposed witch who was executed several centuries ago. Since the witch’s tomb is also supposed to contain a silver cross that can free him of his affliction, he agrees to help them.  Of course, once they find the crypt and remove the cross, the satanic vampire queen is resurrected and the fun begins.

If you are at all familiar with Spanish horror from the 70s, you’ll know what to expect from this movie. I enjoyed it for the memories it conjured up for me and decided to put it here this week because it fits in nicely with the Halloween season. You’ve got a werewolf, a vampire witch, a few blood rituals, the werewolf’s crazy sister creeping around and plenty of crumbling crypts and creepy castles.

If you can’t get enough of the gothic horror goodness, come back next week for an atmospheric Italian flick about revenge from beyond the grave starring genre legend Barbara Steele.

Episode 3: Resolving family issues the old fashioned way….with an axe!

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in addition to making dozens and dozens of movies for almost no money, producer Roger Corman is also well known for giving a start to many now famous names and faces. He gave Jack Nicholson early roles in The Little Shop of Horrors and The Terror for example. He was just as instramental in the careers of those working behind the camera. Years before he helmed the universally revered scream adaption of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola was earning his first major directing credit on this week’s atmospheric Whodunit.

An old Irish family is haunted by dark secrets around the death of a little girl seven years earlier.  When the clan gathers at their old family estate for a morbid memorial ritual, each with their own schemes and motivations, an unseen assailant with an axe to grind begins to whittle away at the list of prospective heirs.

Despite the cheesy impression given by the very William Castle like trailer and marketing, this is a really good litte chiller. This is one of those movies where being in black and white adds a lot to the whole feel of the picture. The old castle and its grounds seem to ooze menace from every stone and the troubled people gathered together for a memorial and a wedding have enough issues and hidden agendas to keep the viewer guessing throughout the movie and, of course, one of them is a homicidal psychopath which adds to the entertainment considerably.

This is the first feature of our month long Halloween Horror Fest. I picked it because, to me, a good movie for the Halloween season should be creepy, have a great “late night horror movie” feel and offer a bit of dreamlike dread. Dementia 13 fits the bill perfectly.

If you are going to do this time of year justice you are going to need some werewolves, vampires, eerie castles, creepy graveyards and a satanic witch or two. Well, come back next weekend for a movie that has ALL of those things.

Episode 2: Guns, Kung Fu and Peter Curshing Too

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When most people who grew up watching late night monster movies hear the name of Britton’s famous Hammer Studios it conjures up images of lavish and garish gothic horror. This week’s offering is a bit different however. It is the studio’s attempt to make an entry into the 70s martial arts movie craze. How does a studio whose reputation is built on Dracula and Frankenstein pull that off? Pretty well actually. Of course, they did manage to slip Peter Cushing in there, and that never hurts.

Stuart Whitman (who has been on just about every TV show in the last 40 years) plays the title role. He’s a hard-boiled mercenary hitman who has just completed his latest job, the assignation of an African dictator. When Shatter goes to Hong Kong to collect his fee he discovers that he has been double- crossed by his client. Swearing revenge, he soon becomes the target of his former employer, local security forces and the brothers of the man he has just killed. On top of all that, he has gotten his hands on some valuable information that will make him rich if he can live long enough to sell it. In order to make sure that he does, Shatter insists the aid of a local martial arts champion to watch his back.

This movie was pretty fun. It mixes the standard gun play and car chases of a typical crime thriller and has some pretty decent hand to hand fighting as well. It is sort of like Sonny Chiba’s Street Fighter in that respect and in the fact that the main character is a hired killer. Shatter may not be quite as brutal as Terry Tsurugi (no punching through a guy’s skull or ripping off the testicles of a would-be rapist), but he is still a pretty bad-ass guy. Peter Curshing is great as usual and the director Michael Carreras, who produced several of Hammer’s Dracula, Frankenstein and Mummy movies does a good job putting together a nice little action flick.

Enjoy the show and please be sure to stop by next week for the first feature in our Halloween Horror Fest that will be running all October long.