Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The Flesh Eaters (1964)

By the title, you would probably guess this is a zombie movie but by the release date you would have to quickly discard that idea. Night Of The Living Dead wouldn't hit the screen for another four years and that is fine because The Flesh Eaters is not a zombie flick at all.

Two pretty girls are stranded on a island with a macho pilot. They are greeted by a mad-Nazi scientist and a skeleton that washed ashore. It turns out that there are flesh eating parasites in the water. They rip every bit of flesh from the body, leaving nothing but bone.

Of course our Nazi scientist is to blame and the creator of these nasty creatures and its not long before these things mutate into a giant man eating monster.

The story is silly and full of plot holes but the movie itself is awesome. For 1964 this thing is pretty goddamn gory. In one of the goriest moments a Flesh-Eater gets into a mans leg and as the blood gushes out, help arrives to stick a knife into the wound and dig the little sucker out. We also get a shooting, a brutal stabbing and a really disgusting suicide with a bullet to the achy-breaky skull, complete with falling out eyeballs. Some of the other highlights consist of dissolving stomach's, complete with guts spilling out. Flesh pealing away and some really silly special effect where it looks like they scratched the film negative for added weirdness. Our sex appeal comes in the form of a blond who rips her shirt off to mend a wound. Luckily for us she spends most of her remaining screen time in her bra or in a bikini.

This is one of my all time favorite black and white 60's horror flicks. Its right there in the same vein as The Horror Of Party Beach which would come out the same year. Its really to bad more people haven't seen this thing because I feel it's cult status should be much higher. Flesh Eaters is fun all the way through and never gets boring. The story on the other hand is a mess, as is the day for night and night for day shots. The time continuity is so bad that you don't even know how long they have been stranded. Has it been one day or seven? Who the hell knows... Then we have a ridiculous climax in which our tough-guy hero learns that human blood shot directly into the nucleus of the monster will kill it. So he makes a gigantic syringe and they all take turns drawing blood and we have a final battle between the monster and our hero. Why would human blood kill something that is called a Flesh Eater?

Despite the obvious flaws in this campy B-movie from Mars, the ineptitude isn't the main point of interest here. Its the fast paced gory mayhem that really holds the interest. A must see for lovers of oldie B-Movies and gore-hounds alike.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Grave Of The Vampire (1974)

How does this even happen? The guy who directed this thing did one of my all time favorite roughies called Help Wanted Female. It sleazily depicts senseless violence and exploits sex to the fullest with an amazing pace that never bores.

This piece of shit on the other hand starts off with a bang and becomes a total let down. In the early part of the film we are treated to a couple who leave a house party to spend some quality time amongst the dead in the local cemetery. Boy proposes to girl and I guess the setting turned her on as much as it did me because she says yes. Next a rotting corpse pushes open his coffin and he has a spider crawling across his hand and some kind of a lizard crawling on his face. The undead man looks more like a zombie then a vampire and is oddly reminiscent of the vampire in Herschell Gordon Lewis's A Taste Of Blood. Our grotesque vampire sneaks up on our couple while they are playing doctor in the back of the car and before the guy can let go of the boobage he is ripped from the car, lifted in the air and has his spine shattered on a tombstone. Next the walking dead pulls the girl into a grave and rapes her. The girl becomes pregnant and gives birth to a vampire baby and while breast feeding the little blood-sucker she accidentally cuts herself (I don't understand either) and spills blood on her baby sons face. Next she draws blood from herself with the help of a needle and feeds her newborn properly.

With an opening like that how can this movie fail? Well sorry to say folks but its all down hill from there. The vampire baby grows up with the mission to kill the vampire who raped his mother and created him. He finds his father vampire as a college professor and plots out how he will destroy daddy.

As I mentioned before, the vampire looks pretty damn cool in the beginning of the movie but through the rest of the film he just looks like a Cameron Mitchell look alike. I have nothing against Mitchell, in fact I'm a big fan but there is just nothing entertaining about his appearance.

We get a few more murders, non of which are very graphic or anywhere as cool as the opening cemetery scene. We get lots of boring dancing to shitty music. We get a stupid possession scene that doesn't make much sense and it all comes to a end with daddy and son brawling on a stair case, complete with (Yes, you guessed it) a wooden stake through the heart.

I feel fucking gypped and the worst part is that I now own two copies of this piece of garbage. For an interesting time with vampires check out Martin and leave this one in the grave where it belongs.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Typical 80's Slasher with a really memorable killer but not much gore to offer. Surprisingly enough there really isn't a lot of nudity here either, with the exception of a quickie high school shower scene in the beginning a little bit of tit groping in a car.

With a title like Slumber Party Massacre one would expect tons of nudity and rivers of red stuff. Despite the lack of the two slasher essentials, somehow Slumber Party Massacre still entertains. Personally I feel it is mainly due to the unforgettable killer who runs around with a giant drill and has his way with high school kids. In what is probably the most memorable scene, he kills the pizza delivery guy with a drill-bit to the eyes. The funny thing is that this is the most memorable death but it happens off screen. We just get to see the eyeless body fall into a room. Later one of the dumb bimbo's will eat a slice of the pizza. I really shouldn't call the females dumb in this movie because they have more survival instinct than the average scream queen in a 80's Slasher. This is probably because the film was written by a feminist. Yes, I know... its almost impossible to believe that a feminist would chose The Slumber Party Massacre or even consider it as a project but it is a fact.

Don't worry, the message doesn't come across and it plays like every other Slasher from this time period, with dead bodies falling out of refrigerators and cats jumping out of closets for the jump scares. Scream Queen Brink Stevens (Sorority Babes In Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama) shows up here in one of her earliest films along with Robin Stille who plays Valerie, who is the best looking in the film.

While Driller Killer will always be my first pick for a drill wielding maniac Slumber Party Massacre is still a fun time passer. The average slasher fan shouldn't be overly disappointed unless of course if they were looking for tons of nudity. So tell your friends to bring their pajamas and stay up late with this silly slasher for some death by drill.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Every generation needs a good Halloween anthology horror movie. For me growing up it was Creepshow and I still love it to this day. Personally not being a big fan of modern cinema I was pretty surprised with how much I liked this one and I am happy that younger kids have at least one movie to celebrate the season with.

This one offers up a child killer, a little bit of nudity and some red stuff but its done in a totally campy sort of way that isn't or at least shouldn't be taken serious. For this reason, I was surprised that the movie is rated R. If this thing came out in the 80's it surely would have a PG13. I guess tits in celluloid these days is an automatic R. Too bad because Trick 'R Treat is a total kids movie.

The stories all play together in a sort of Quentin Tarantino kind of way with no real importance on the chronological order. When its all finished, it works quite well. The kiddie killer sort of looks like Jeffrey Combs from Re-Animator with his white shirt and tie and his nerdy glasses but instead of bringing the dead back to life he poisons the candy of little brats and chops their heads off. Now that's the Halloween spirit! We also have a "Halloween school bus massacre" in which a greedy old man drove his bus full of retards off of a cliff, into a lake.

We get our sex appeal from a werewolf story, with a bunch of sexy lycanthrope bitches, who put the werewolf orgy in The Howling 2 : Your Sister Is A Werewolf to shame. These babes offer up some bare breasts and then rip their flesh off exposing the wolf underneath. I guess you can call them a wolf in a babes clothing... The special effects look pretty good in this scene but unfortunately Marilyn Manson is playing on the soundtrack. Next we get some zombie action with yet again some child killing, complete with gut munching. We have a slasher type story that offers up the most gore complete with Achilles tendon slashing, nasty glass wounds to the hand and a dead dog. We have a monster with a pumpkin-head (complete with shotgun wound and drippy mess). Theres also a vampire running around and the whole thing is just a fun ride of Halloween mayhem.

Skip Monster Squad this year and check out Trick 'R Treat. You're never to old for a fun Halloween horror flick.

Straw Dogs (1971)

Cinema rebel, Sam Peckinpah delivers this classic tale of rape revenge right in the height of his career. Pecikinpah proved two years earlier with The Wild Bunch that he can build and build suspense and then deliver the nasty goods with a bang. He succeeds once again!.

Wes Craven's cult classic Last House On The Left would follow in the next year and the Death Wish wouldn't hit screens for another three. Of course this genre of film has already been toyed with but perhaps Sam Peckinpah is once again under credited by genre fans.

Straw Dogs casts Hollywood lame-o Dustin Hoffman as a wimpy American married to a British women played by the incredibly hot and stylized actress Susan George (Die Screaming Marianne, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry). The couple move to a back woods shack in the middle of nowhere England and have more to deal with then relationship issues. Dustin Hoffman's character is a weak coward who runs from everything and avoids confrontation and Susan George has had enough of it. Ms. George looks as good as can be and the local pervy, lowlifes have some nasty plans for her.

In Susan George's introduction the camera zooms in on her chest and her erect nipples poke through her sweater for all to see. She complains that the men in the village are undressing her with their eyes, as is the male audience. Her husband warns her to wear a bra when out in public and she ignores him. Peckinpah chooses a voyeuristic style of shooting her scenes. For instance, when she gets out of her car the camera gives a glimpse up her skirt, leaving the audience wondering if this is just carelessness on her part or if she enjoys taunting the men around her. Its not long before she is standing in front of her window with her beautiful bare breasts exposed, as the men stare in at her we suddenly realize that this is all going to end very badly.

The men become more aggressive and go as far as to kill the couples cat and hang it from a noose in a closet. Of course Hoffman is to much of a pussy to confront the men that did it and this shows them that they can walk all over this man and do what they want. Susan George is raped by two of the local scum and the rape scene is also open to suggestion because it seems to weave in and out of what is a mean spirited, violent experience to something that Susan George seems to enjoy at times. Eventually the rapists and three of their friends accidentally shoot the towns sheriff in a angry drunken stupor. Hoffman and George were witness to the brutal killing and the couple finds themselves fighting off a home invasion from the five drunk rapists and murders. Hoffman's character shifts gears once his life is threatened and kills the whole lot of them.

What Straw Dogs has in store for us next is some boiling vegetable oil to the face. A head caught in a bear trap, a stabbing, achy-breaky skulls are smashed with blunt instruments, a man has his foot blown off with a shotgun and another has his guts blown apart. We also have a pervy village retard named Henry who strangles a young girl in a barn.

Although Straw Dogs isn't quite an exploitation film. Fans of this type of extreme cinema are bound to love it. From the nasty rape scenes to the dead cat in the closet, the violent vengeance and not to mention the dead cop, Straw Dogs is another example of amazing renegade film making from Sam Peckinpah. Of course Hollywood has their greedy little hands on this title as well and the remake is due for release any day now. I doubt it will ever come anywhere near the original and I'm sure Peckinpah would be turning over in his grave. Until we have another outlaw director who likes to piss on the buildings of the executive producers, Straw Dogs will always remain king.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

The Vampires Night Orgy (1974)

This not so great Spanish vampire flick comes from the same director of Werewolf Versus The Vampire Woman with Paul Naschy but where Werewolf Versus The Vampire Woman can be slow at times it makes up for it with some Naschy werewolf-fu and hot naked chicks. The Vampire's Night Orgy on the other hand can't even get that right. We get the slightest bit of tit from a typical Euro blond bimbo but that's about it.

This one also goes under the title of Orgy Of The Vampires and Grave Desires which I think is the more accurate title because there isn't any vampire orgies to be seen.

The plot follows a group of tourists on a bus. When the driver suddenly dies at the wheel the tourists pull into a small village which appears to be vacant and take a load off in a typical spooky castle like building. Eventually the towns people show up and the tourists are being drained of their blood, only to return as blood-suckers themselves. Jack Taylor (Succubus) who I remember best as the pectoral lecturing professor in Pieces plays the hero here but when he is not saving the day he likes to peep through little holes in the wall and watch girls get dressed in true Norman Bates fashion.

We also get an axe wielding oaf who lobs the limbs off of selected victims from the countess. Why exactly the countess orders dismemberment, I'm not exactly sure but I guess it adds a little bit of character to the movie. The film also offers up lots of maggots in scenes of decaying vampires but the best scene in the movie is the final chase scene in which Jack Taylor and his blond girlfriend speed through the village with vampires hanging off of the car. He smashes them into walls and sends them flying off his car and it makes for one hell of an entertaining scene. To bad The Vampires Night Orgy has such a horrible ripoff of an ending. The village and all of the vampires disappears into thin air and Jack Taylor stares into the camera with a look of confusion but he can't be more confused as the viewer. The only thing worse then a ending like that is the dreaded "It was all a dream" ending. Aside from the awful end the movie is entirely to dark. Its almost impossible to make certain scenes out and that always knocks a lot of points off of a movie. So unless you like to guess whats going on in your movies instead of seeing it, I wouldn't waste my time with this forgettable vampire tale. No real gore or memorable death scenes and the bare minimal of bare breasted women.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Revenge Of The Sun Demon (1983)

Revenge Of The Sun Demon also known as Whats Up, Hideous Sun Demon is not a sequel to the 1959 Robert Clarke monster movie The Hideous Sun Demon. What it is, is a reedited and re-dubbed version of the original. Obviously the success of Woody Allen's Whats Up, Tiger Lilly? Which Woody re-dubbed a Japanese flick for comedic relief was the motivation behind this project, hence the Whats Up title.

Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are sure to get a big kick out of this thing. I have to admit it was done quite well and the over dubbing is hilarious. It's hard to believe but late night televisions Jay Leno took on the voice over of the main character played by Robert Clarke. Of course Leno has never done anything else remotely as interesting before or since in his career but it adds just a little more to the bizarre nostalgia that is Revenge Of The Sun Demon. There is also some added footage, which blends in with the original film amazingly. The intro is shot in color and Mark Holton, who I remember best as Francis in Pee Wee's Big Adventure and for silly roles like The Leprechaun and Gacy (2003) shows up for his first ever screen appearance as a drunken frat boy who watches The Hideous Sun Demon with his drunk friends and mocks the classic B-movie in true MST3K fashion.

The jokes are pretty raunchy in this thing and they bring The Hideous Sun Demon to a level of perversion that I didn't know was possible. Penis, poop, sex, and body fluid jokes are constant. We also have a naked she-sun-demon on display. For once we can let someone else make the jokes for us while watching our favorite campy B-movies.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Satans Slave (1976)

Lots of gore on display in this one. We also get nudity and some Satanism for added fun but unfortunately this thing takes to long to get going and the first half of the movie is very boring.

Satan's Slave also known as Evil Heritage tells the tale of Catherine who takes a road trip or as they say in England, a holiday to her uncle Alexanders (Michael Gough) house in the country side. She has never met her uncle or her cousin and she was better off that way because her relatives are part of a satanic cult and plan on sacrificing Catherine on her 20th birthday to resurrect a priestess named Camilla.

For me the story is generic and lame but there is some value to this British piece of trash. The value of course lay within the senseless violence and gory mayhem that seems to come out of nowhere. The naked ladies doesn't hurt either and we get a decent amount of that as well. If only the movie could hold an interesting pace Satan's Slave would probably have a huge cult following.

In one of the films finest moments in all of its gory awkwardness a possessed man jumps from a tall building leaving brain matter in the street from his achy-breaky skull. Naturally the viewer thinks he is dead... that is until he tries to drag his mangled body away. It makes no sense but there is tons of red stuff. Satan's Slave's nastiest scene shows (in gory detail) a man being stabbed in the eye. A girl has her face pushed through a mirror. Then she is stabbed with the shards of broken glass. Then she is stabbed through the mouth with a kitchen knife and is left hanging off a door in true Michael Myers, Halloween fashion. A married couple is killed in a crash and burn car accident, another girl is stabbed to death, another has her achy-breaky skull smashed in a door and is then stabbed.

We also have an attempted rape scene that ends with some bitch-slapping. We get some cheesy pentagram-fu and an upside down crucifix is shoved between a women's legs in a typical 70's horror, sacrificial scene. We get a bit of incest and a naked girl covered in snakes, Another is striped, whipped and burned at the stake.

With a track record like that, I wish I loved this movie but it really is nothing more then a bad movie which happens to be a great time passer. Watch for the gore and sleaze factor and you might even find yourself into it by the films final reel. This thing was directed by the same cat who did Bloody New Year which might give you an idea on the weird pacing and awkward tone that runs throughout.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Enter The Dragon (1973)

Enter The Dragon is probably the most important Kung Fu movie ever made, at least for American audiences. Reason being that is the first of its kind. Never before has an American production taken on a Chinese martial arts project and to take it on  such a high scale is a story all in its own.

Aside from being Americas first mainstream introduction to martial arts cinema, Enter The Dragon is also probably the sole reason for African Americans on going fascination with Kung Fu films mainly due to the introduction of Blaxploitation icon Jim Kelly, who would go on to do Black Belt Jones, with the same director. Personally I feel that Jim Kelly and Enter The Dragon had a huge impact on Americas black community and although Jim Kelly was a supporting actor to the commodity that is Bruce Lee, he certainly had a impact on cinema in his own way.

Of course it is Bruce Lee who brings the real life to this classic. Lee takes what would have probably been a generic Kung Fu flick and turns it into something meaningful. Looking at Enter The Dragon from the outside, one might think it is a typical one hundred minute spectacle of exploitative violence and although we get our fair share of slap-em-silly scenes, Bruce manages to add his personal philosophical views into the story and the violence is never uncalled for. "You can call it fighting without fighting". On the other hand Lee's choreography is meticulous and the fights look so real that it is almost impossible to believe that his enemies are not really being hit. Lee kicks the ass of dozens upon dozens of opponents. Some of the highlights consist of a broken bottle brawl that ends with Lee jump kicking his opponent across the screen, through a crowd of people and into some chairs. We also get a bad-ass muscle man who crushes his victims with his bare hands, leaving broken dead bodies to be dragged away. The character of Bruce Lee's sister puts on a good ass-kicking show before committing suicide. Faces are slashed with switchblades, heads are crushed with nun chucks, we have some poisonous snake action, prostitutes with painted faces, heroin addicted slaves, and what has to be the most memorable fight sequences in Kung Fu history involving a man with a claw for a hand battling it out with Bruce Lee in a room full of mirrors. John Saxon also has a pretty big role which is also a big plus and we even get a bit of tit from some sexy Asian ladies.

Although Bruce Lee says martial artists should never follow a style, Enter The Dragon has enough style to remain a classic for ever.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Poseidon Adventure is probably the greatest action/adventure flick of all time and it never seems to get old. Personally not being the biggest fan of these types of movies its pretty weird how obsessed with this film I am.

Right off the bat we have an amazing cast that merge together perfectly. We have Leslie Nielson as the captain of The Poseidon which will be hit by a massive wave that looks more like a wall of water. The Poseidon will be tipped upside down and of the 14000 passengers on board, only a handful will survive. Some of the survivors and non survivors aboard the ship consist of Gene Hackman who plays a renegade priest. Then we have the great Ernest Borgnine as the rude and crude loud mouth cop from New York along with his wife who is a ex prostitute played by Stella Stevens (Slaughter). Shelly Winters, who also has some blaxploitation credits to her name, such as Cleopatra Jones, has a big role as well. Rody Mcdowall (Class Of 1984, Fright Night) also appears along with Jack Albertson who I remember best as grandpa from Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. Together they race against time as the sea watter pours in and follows them through the ship. The thing that makes this movie so interesting is that since the ship is upside down they have to work their way up to the bottom of the ship where they will try to exit.

The Poseidon Adventure offers up suspense and good acting but some extra bonus's are a dead hippie, a fat woman has a heart attack, two dead priests (one of which has a screaming match with god), death by electrocution, lots of death by drowning, death by fire, Stella Stevens panty-shots, "Just Panties, what else do I need?", and a whole lot of death defying action.

Although this was a huge box office hit The Poseidon Adventure has a huge cult following. I am part of that following and so is just about everybody else who gives it a watch. Skip the three useless remakes and stick with this timeless original.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Toxic Avenger (1984)

Here it is, the one that started it all. Back in 1984 this low budget tale of a nerd who falls into a barrel of toxic waste only to become a super hero that crushes the bad guys in gruesome ways, became such a hit that it spawned its own children's television show called Toxic Crusaders, Cereal, Children's action figures and more. Sure this was an oddity even for the 80's but thinking back on it now it just proves how different the world we live in really is. This sort of thing would never happen today. There will never again be a independent film that depicts rape and over the top graphic violence that will spawn children's action figures.

The Toxic Avenger reflects the ridiculousness of comic book super hero's but is done with as little taste and class as possible. We have scenes of children being run over in the street by hit and run drivers who are playing a sort of Death Race 2000. We see the kids shattered body laying in a pool of blood in the middle of the street after the first collision but the car comes back again for some achy-breaky skull action (complete with head explosion), Then there is the fact that the movie is loaded with bare breasts, we get a black on white rape scene, a seeing eye dog is blown away with a shotgun, arms are ripped off, hands are stuck in deep fryers. We get gratuitous genital punching, heads are smashed together, eyeballs are poked out, etc. Despite the silly subject matter there are also some political messages thrown in for added fun. We have a Nazi police officer, a fat corrupt politician and the whole thing is some sort of warped message against pollution. In one of the best scenes a drug dealer has his achy-breaky skull smashed to bits from a weight machine in a gym.

The movie also has its share of stunts. We have people running down the street on fire. A cop has his hands catch fire and the skin melts away, some crazy car chase scenes, people being thrown around, men fall from bridges and we even get car explosions.

These were the days for Troma Studios. Class Of Nuke Em High would shortly follow as would Troma's War. Countless films would try to copy, mimic and ripoff the chaotic film making style of The Toxic Avenger and most would fail. The Toxic Avenger is always a perfect pick for a totally insane and mind-numbing time. The perfect movie to watch with a bunch of drunk friends.

Point Of Terror (1971)

I wouldn't exactly call this early 70's flick a horror movie. It's more of a thriller then anything else. I suppose it has elements of a mystery as well but it really is just a thriller. Personally not being the biggest fan of thrillers it is no surprise that this film didn't have to much hold on me.

Point Of Terror tells the tale of a greedy nightclub singer who will do anything to become a star. He decides to manipulate an older woman named Andrea, played by Dyanne (Ilsa : She Wolf Of The S.S.) Thorne who is partial owner in her husbands big time record company. The tables are turned on our singer when we learn that Andrea is more manipulative and vindictive then he. Mix in some blackmail, jelousy and murder and a typically depressing 70's ending and you have Point Of Terror.

This thing comes from the sometimes good but most of the time awful Crown International and while watching for the first time I couldn't help but be reminded of Blood Mania which makes sense because it has many of the same cast and crew members. Where it was most obvious was in the cinematography and lighting departments but even the pace and tone were very similar. Since I am perhaps the worlds only fan of Blood Mania, I sort of had high hopes for this one but was sadly let down with the films boring plot and awful song and dance routine from our main character. The music is as bad as can be and so is the wardrobe but there were still some elements that helped me get through this one in one sitting. The first of course being the Dyanne Thorne breasts on display. The second being the nice camera work and the oh so familiar Blood Mania style lighting. Point Of Terror also offers up some male nudity for all the ladies out there. We also get a scene in which a wheelchair bound man is drowned in a swimming pool, a gialo-esque stabbing, achy-breaky skulls (complete with a woman being thrown off a cliff, leaving a shattered skull on the rocks), gun wounds to the gut, excessive drinking and a scene in which Dyanne Thorn spreads em in a teasing up-skirt shot. 

This one really isn't worth watching unless of course you are a die hard Thorne fan. I would recommend Blood Mania over this one any day.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Invisible Man (1933)

Two years after the classic Boris Karloff Frankenstein and two years before its sequel Bride Of Frankenstein, the genius horror director James Whale gives us The Invisible Man, starring Claude Rains in his signature role as the mad scientist who's bandages conceal his invisible identity.

Although Rains only did one film before The Invisible Man and his acting skills weren't much to be desired, his voice on the other hand was. Rains was carefully selected for this role due to his distinct voice that couldn't be duplicated. Where Vincent Price who stared in The Invisible Man Returns would later be remembered for the same reason, Rains unique vocals were due to a tragic attack in World War I when he was subjected to a poison gas, that left him blind in one eye and forever altered his voice. Oddly enough Rains had a speech impediment through the younger years of his life. The fact that he could not pronounce the letter R in a sentence properly and a thick Cockney accent on top of it, its amazing that the stage actor would become famous for the very thing that stood in his way through his youth.

Casted along Claude Rains is James Whale favorite Una O'connor who I remember best as the shrieking old hag in Bride Of Frankenstein. She goes about the same obnoxious routine in this one and I usually hold my ears while she is present on the screen but we do have the privilege of watching Una being hit with pint glasses in a surprisingly violent and satisfying scene. To bad nobody broke a bottle over her head in The Bride Of Frankenstein... John Carradine also shows up for a cameo as a street moron who wastes the police time with idiotic phone calls. We also have a police officer who strikes an incredible resemblance to the guard in A Clockwork Orange but of course it is not the same actor.  We also get Gloria Stuart from James Whales The Old Dark House and would go on to do the crap-tastic 90's blockbuster hit Titanic as The Invisible Man's girlfriend. H.G. Wells is the genius behind the story but Universal Studios took the film into a much darker territory with madness and murder.

The Invisible Man tells the tale of a scientist (Claude Rains) who comes up with a concoction of drugs that turn living beings invisible once injected under the skin. There is only two problems. The first being that Rains is using himself as a guinea pig and the second being that one of the drugs is "Monocaine" which strips the color away from any subject but also has a negative side affect. It has been known to cause insanity. Well Rains most certainly is stripped of color and he also goes very violent. Overwhelmed with thoughts of power and control The Invisible Man becomes a murderer "We'll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction" but how do the police catch a man they can not see?

The Invisible Man blends humor and horror better then most. It also offers up amazing special effects of the time and the film holds up even today. The effects look better in this 1933 picture then they did in Hallow Man with Kevin Bacon, that's for sure. The film also offers up some achy-breaky skulls (complete with text books to the head and bodies being thrown down stairs) We get some invisible bike riding, invisible bank robbing, One dead cop who has a bench smashed into his achy-breaky skull, death by car off the edge of the cliff (complete with crash and burn). gun violence, invisible slap-stick ass-kicking, and apparently The Invisible Man doesn't wear any underwear. Check it out for one of the best in the Universal Studio's classic horror collection.