Another 50 titles down.
My Watchlist of 428 films is 38% complete.
Of the last 50 films, I recommend...
1. The Blood on Satan’s Claw
2. Blade of the Ripper
3. 10 Rillington Place
4. Messiah of Evil
5. Diabel/The Devil
6. Taste the Blood of Dracula
7. Robin Redbreast
8. The House That Dripped Blood
For the entire Marathon, the Top Five Ranked are...
1. Nightmare (1964)
2. The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)
3. Violated Angels (1967)
4. Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
5. Blade of the Ripper (1971)
Here is a look back at the worst of the Marathon so far...
The Giant Claw (1957)
*This one really kicked off the night. From what I read, this was a major studio effort to get in on the giant monster movie craze. However, Ray Harryhausen was either busy or too expensive, so Columbia Pictures hired someone else and what they got was a ridiculous-looking buzzard marionette that looks like something from Jim Henson's Dark Crystal. The rest of the film might have been okay, but every time they show the creature - which you should Google - this becomes one of the All Time Laughably Bad Movies. Despite the low rating, I'd be interested in seeing this in a theater full of unsuspecting viewers.
The Day of the Triffids (1963)
*Silly nonsense about most of the world going blind just in time for an invasion by killer plants. Cult film is most interesting for casting Howard Keel in a non-musical role. The effects are overall lousy, the story is obviously condensed from longer source material. In this case a book, which differs vastly from this film. I can see where this might work given more time to develop logic. (The story's been remade twice as a mini-series.) Abrupt ending is a joke here too, but there are many laughs to be found throughout. That said, this is much blander a good/bad time than The Giant Claw.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)
*A cheat. This contribution from the Bodmovies.org list is one of the few MST3K episodes I've never seen, and the first episode of Mike Nelson. So I didn't watch the pure cut, but I'm sure I had a much better time doing it this way. It's classic bad movie with a large dollop of female objectification that the MST crew relentlessly mocks for being creepy. One of their better efforts and one of this Marathon's worst movies.
Terror Beaneath the Sea (1966)
*A cross between Creature From the Black Lagoon and a James Bond film as Sonny Chiba takes on a madman who is creating an army of Water Cyborgs. I’m starting to feel I should have been more picky in my selections. After making the list, I watch each one without reading an IMDB or Letterboxd summary. I don’t know if the film is supposed to be serious or camp or ‘so bad it’s good’. So there comes a point where I go “another one of these” and even I am starting to wonder why I venture through to the end.
Planet of the Vampires (1965)
*Even for Bava - now 0 for 10 - this is amazingly bad. The costumes and cardboard sets are laughable, with colorful monitors and control panels that only add to the cheap-looking atmosphere. The plot is nonsensical and camp. I can’t tell if the comedy is deliberate cheese or if the straight-faced performances and amateur direction just came out that way. It’s like watching a youtube video by a director with ambitious vision and no idea how to express it. This has a cult reputation, but I imagine Gods of Egypt is about the same level of quality.
Satan’s Sadists (1969)
½ From The Deuce, which has a number of interesting Exploitation/Grindhouse titles, but this is just terrible. A biker flick with ugly scenes of violence and sexual aggression, oodles of filmmaking incompetence and one over-baked ham of a performance by Russ Tamblyn.
The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)
½ I hadn't realized we've moved into the Blood Feast type of ultra-gory horror, but this is a lesser-known example of one of those. A mixture of silly comedy and fake-looking graphic violence. The last scene is the best, an inspired idea to have all the murdered rise from their place of death to smile, wink and nod at the camera.
Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959)
aka. Invasion of the Animal people
aka. Space Invasion of Lapland
½A number of films from this Marathon are courtesy of Badmovies.org Best B-Movies. Previous films have been mixed to bad, but I get why they’re interesting from a B-movie perspective. This one is just terrible. A meteor crashes in Northern Sweden. Scientists arrive and get caught up in skiing and romancing a local figure skater. It’s a couple of days before they even go near the crash site. There’s a ridiculous-looking giant creature and some Conehead/Devo aliens that show up for one scene. Mostly, this is a film about skiing.
Blood Freak (1972)
½ A guy does too much drugs and turns into a giant turkey monster. According to Letterboxd, there are 30 worse films in this Marathon, but that would surprise me. It surpasses Terror in the Midnight Sun, though still slightly better than
Night of the Lepus, also released in 1972. This barely qualifies as a film with occasional cutaways to a guy sitting at a desk to fill in story gaps. Big laugh for the sound of a turkey gobble to attempt suspense.
The Last House on Dead End Street (1973)
aka. At The Hour Of Our Death
aka. The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell
aka. The Fun House
½ I understand people finding unusual films and declaring them art, but there has to be a line in the sand. A handful of artistic shots and meta touches doesn’t change the fact that this is absolute garbage. Large parts of it don’t make sense, leaving you with a laundry line of immoral imagery and a cast of repellent people. I read a review that calls it a masterpiece of “no-budget, underground, amateur gore films.” Let’s not be encouraging this.
Cuadecuc, Vampir (1971)
½ The problem with most any Watchlist is you’re usually not taking a list of titles from someone who knows you but more likely a general list of films considered worthy. That’s how a non-narrative, experimental film like this slips in. It makes me angry that there are genuine sleepers and buried treasure but people like Jonathan Rosenbaum would rather champion something that makes the deliberate choice to have a sound mix that only matches the picture at one point.