Revenge Of The Creature (1955)

This 1955 follow up to the far superior Creature From The Black Lagoon takes the creature out of the amazon and into civilization. When the creature was killed and left floating in the water that was all a joke... The creature was only comatose and the scientist brought him home where they will place him in a tank as an attraction for all the world to come see "The Gill Man" on display.

John Agar who would fight everything from Tarantula to The Mole People and the shittiest monster of all time in Night Fright, plays the hero who has to protect the new bikini-clad bimbette. We get similar under water shots of our new blond sex appeal taunting the creature with her shapely body but it doesn't come off as affective as the original with Julie Adams.

The mission is to study the creature and eventually civilize him. Of course the best way to go about this is to electrocute him and give him various beatings. Its not long before the creature breaks free and kills some of the staff that has been tormenting him. The creature flips over a car and sends tourists running scared and eventually makes his way to the ocean.

But instead of going home the creature continues his pervy ways and tracks down his new swimming beauty. He is overly sneaky in this one and stays true to his voyeuristic ways and watches her change from her window. Then he kills her "boyfriend" who happens to be a German Sheppard named Chris. He even shows up to a rockin diner party and gives the people a good scare. The creature eventually gets his scaly hands on his girl and takes her along the river banks, leaving a trail of dead bodies. John Agar comes to the rescue with the help of the police force and shoots the creature dead. Jack Arnold uses the same exact death scene from the first film but this time we won't be fooled. We know he will be back for Creature Walk Among Us, where he walk in the sun and breathe like a man.

Revenge Of The Creature doesn't hold the originality of the first film but is still a fun watch for 50's monster movie fans. It has a level of camp that can keep the audience chuckling even through the slow talky scenes. The 3-D doesn't work as well in the sequel either but the film still manages to hold a certain social commentary on the evils of man towards nature. Check it out for skimpy 50's bathing suites, John Agar-Fu, A Gill-Man, and Clint Eastwood's first appearance of all time.

Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Its no secret that in the 50's these monster movies main audience was teenage boys but Creature From The Black Lagoon was its own entity. Young boys became obsessed with this tale of a half man half fish who terrorize a group of scientists and the pretty young brunette that joins them.

Parents were baffled by their teenage son's fixation on the creature. Was it the beautiful bikini-clad Julie Adams? Was it the creature himself? Or was it the concoction of the two? Horny adolescents of the 50's felt a connection with the creature who's curiosity for the female gender leads to misinterpretation from others and a frustration that turns violent from the creature.
Watching it today it is understandable why. The scenes of Julie Adams swimming in her white pin-up style bathing suite almost gives off the visual that she is nude do to the carefully planned camera angles. The creature swims beneath her horizontally in a sort of voyeuristic way and at the same time symbolizes sexual contact, with the Lagoon becoming a sort of bed for the swimming couple.

Then of course we have some social commentary on mankind. With scenes of littering cigarette butts into one of the few places that man hasn't yet corrupted through greed and carelessness. Every nature gone wrong flick seems to exploit this factor. After all the animals need a reason for revenge don't they? This time around the scientist poison the waters with the hopes of poisoning the creature but instead they kill everything else around them. (Sounds typical of the human race doesn't it?) All the fish and the wild life in the lagoon are poisoned and killed and left floating limp in the water. Now its time for the creature to have his revenge and of course grab the girl.

Being lucky enough to catch this thing in the theater twice with nifty 3-D spectacles, I can't help but hold Creature From The Black Lagoon a bit closer to my heart then the average 50's monster movie. The 3-D works surprisingly well with this film. Especially scenes in which fish are on the screen. The fish seem to be floating right past your head at times but oddly enough the action scenes don't work quite as well.

Jack Arnold would go on to do the inferior sequel Revenge Of The Creature and eventually another nature gone wrong epic Tarantula. The creature trilogy is wrapped up with one final gill-man flick called Creature Walks Among Us which portrays the creature as a ground walking victim of science taken from his natural habitat. While the later two films should be seen for at least no other then nostalgia reasons the first is a must. Its a true classic!

My Mom's A Werewolf (1989)

Nothing of any value going on here, unless of course you like really shitty comedies from the 80's that dabble in the horror genre.

Mrs. Shaber is a married woman with a pretty daughter but hubby just isn't paying any attention to here anymore. I don't think I can blame him because I wish I could ignore her myself. She has an overbite, her cheeks hang low (and this is before the Werewolf transformation) plus she is a terrible actress. Anyway, Mrs. Shaber's life is about to take a drastic change when she meets a handsome werewolf named Harry Thropen (Hairy Lycanthrope... Get it?) played by the one and only John Saxon (Tenebre, The Glove, Black Christmas, Hands Of Steele). For the life of me I can not figure out why John Saxon is in this piece of shit and I certainly can't figure out why he was casted as the mysterious, handsome one. Well, anyway Mr. Thropen seduces Mrs. Shaber with the help of a bit of hypnotism and bites her toes in some raunchy foot fetish action. Mrs. Shaber runs off and surprises her family for the next full moon.

Aside from John Saxon, Forrest J. Ackerman (Creator of Famous Monsters magazine) appears in a horror convention. Ackerman has no lines but its great to see his face in a moving crowd. So what the movie offers is MR. Saxon, Mr. Ackerman, some nerdy rants about horror movies, horror movie posters such as Prime Evil and Galaxina, and Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs are on the soundtrack. Other then that My Mom's A Werewolf is a total utter piece of shit that needs to be avoided at all costs. Its not funny, its not witty, its not creepy, its not gory, its not sexy, its just there collecting dust on my shelf and as far as werewolf comedies go, American Werewolf In London will always be number one. I'm pretty sure this one was just cashing in on the Monster Squad fad or was it an epidemic?

Heavenly Daze (1948)

This is one of the weirdest of all Three Stooges shorts. Shemp dies but can't make it into heaven untill he reforms Moe and Larry. Shemp gets a lightning bolt in the ass and is sent back to earth as a ghost where he will act out his mission.

Instead of leading Moe and Larry down a ritouse path Shemp takes advantage of the fact that the other two Stooges can't see or hear him and beats them both silly. I guess all those beatings Shemp has endured from Moe over the years are finally justified in this short. Shemp throws drinks in their faces and kicks them in the ass any chance he gets. Not to mention the good ole sewing needle to the ass gag.

Moe invents a pen that can write under whipped cream and plans to sell it to a rich collector but Shemp messes that one up for his pals as well in a scene that ends in a typical Stooges mess. Whipped cream goes flying and Larry has the pen embedded into his skull in a brilliantly violent moment. Heavenly Daze also offers up the slightest bit of racism from a typical 1940's black butler who is scared of ghosts. Shemp also pulls off a great stunt in which he sets his ass on fire "Hey Larry! He's been smoking in bed again! Get the water and the axe!" and he jumps around a room as it spreads up to his lower back. Gotta love it!

Hardcore (1979)

This is the perfect movie for a guy like me! It depicts sleazy America in the 1970's and all the exploits that movie-houses, peep-shows and seedy book stores had to offer of the time. Hardcore is chock full of prostitutes, pornography and eventually snuff.

Written and directed by Paul Shrader the creator of Taxi Driver and Blue Collar and staring George C. Scott as a wealthy business man who seems to have the perfect life until his daughter goes missing. When the police can't help, George C. Scott hires Peter Boyle who I remember best as the hippie killer in Joe (1969) as a private detective. When private dick Boyle learns that the missing girl has become part of a porn ring and has done a Stag film he brings George C. Scott to a dirty old grindhouse to watch his daughter on the big screen, in what is one of the best melt-downs in cinematic history. George C. Scott looses his marbles as he is forced to watch his daughter do the dirty with some scuzzy hippie types. "Turn it off!"

From here on Hardcore goes into darker territory as C. Scott continues his search for his daughter. He learns the hard way that the world is filled with filth and isn't the nice wholesome life that he was accustomed to. We ultimately find out that the missing girl is in great danger and she is mixed up with a man named Ratan who runs a snuff ring in the pornography racket. We watch a girl in a submissive bondage hood have her throat cut with a switchblade and a man is stabbed in the guts. George C. Scott must find his daughter before she ends up dead herself.

Hardcore blends drama, horror, mystery and black-comedy together for a brilliantly unforgettable walk through the nasty corners of the 70's. In one of my favorite scenes George C. Scott posses as a porno producer complete with 70's mustache, Sonny Bono wig and a tye-dye shirt. A big black porn star named Big Dick Blaque shows up and delivers an overly sleazy performance complete with groin grabbing and some incredibly filthy lines. "I'm Big Dick Blaque. I worked with Harry Reems and Johnny The Wad. I can cum 10 times in one day, I can keep it up for two hours straight... I know what it is... You just don't wanna hire niggers." Then we have some violent fist fights in vengeance scenes (complete with achy-breaky skulls and a lamp being smashed into the face), We also get a chain fight, a bullet to the guts and lots of naked breasts and bush.

Aside from the awesome, raunchy story, the acting is really good. One can't help but feel for George C. Scott's character. The lighting really adds to this film as does the locale and sets. Hardcore is a must see for fans of darker cinema from the 70's. In the ranks of Taxi Driver and Cruising.

A Man Called Blade (1977)

Director Sergio Martino (Torso, Mountain Of The Cannibal God, Hands Of Steele) chops into the Spaghetti Western genre with the tale of a bounty hunter who's weapon of choice is a hatchet.

 "Those who know me call me Blade because I let this do the talking for me" Sure he uses pistols as well but he is a real bad-ass with his miniature axes. In the opening scene which is also the greatest scene in the movie Blade lobs off a mans hand and takes him prisoner. Later Blade sets him free and next time he appears he has a hook for a hand and  Blade burries another axe into his body, this time leaving him cold and dead. Hatchets are embedded into enemy's skulls, chests, backs and stomachs. In one scene our hero even beats the shit out of some big dogs with the hatchet. A Man Called Blade also offers up some social commentary on religious fascists and their moral laws, a massacre in a blackened cave (yes you guessed it, lots of Hatchet-Fu), a violent revolution between laborers with shovels and pick-axes against pistol wielding bandits, a slow motion shoot-em-up massacre (complete with squibs and a bit of gore), sharp twigs shoved into eye lids and a spike pushed into the throat, mud wrestling (between men), artsy-fartsy falling tree flashback scenes and a tale of vengeance.

A Man Called Blade is also the last wave of the Spaghetti Western and it borrows heavily from Enzo Castellari's Keoma which came out one year earlier and is a all around far superior film. The influence is so obvious with dozens of comparisons, right down to the music and general vibe that the film gives off but where Keoma comes off as a stylish. unique masterpiece, A Man Called Blade also known as Mannaja just comes off as a big ripoff. Another problem with this movie is that it runs slightly to long and it just seems to take for ever to wrap it up when it could have been done pretty easily. Still ripoffs can be a lot of fun and A Man Called Blade does have its gory moments. Check it out for some dismemberment and some violence in the mud but only secondly to the great Keoma.

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967)

Jose Mojica Marins a.k.a. Coffin Joe follows up his blasphemous At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul with this equally mean spirited follow up. This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse starts off exactly where the first film leaves off and even though in the end of the first film we see Coffin Joe laying there with his eyeballs popping out, he is not dead. He is rushed off to the hospital where he recuperates and is eventually set back into the world that he resents.

Coffin Joe's contempt for mankind continues to grow and so does his obsession with having a child. "There's the most perfect creation of nature: children! Pity that they grow up to become idiots. In search of nothing. Lost in a Labyrinth of egoism... and dominated by a non-existent force: the faith in the immortality of the spirit. Man in his stupidity doesn't comprehend the only truth of life: the immortality of blood". This time Joe abducts six women and keeps them captive in a room where he will study them and find the strongest woman to bare his child. First off she must be an atheist. He believes that faith is for the weak and that a weak woman will taint the blood of his new born. Next he sets "hundreds" of tarantula's loose in their room while they sleep. The girls are covered in the giant spiders and only one of them doesn't scream. Naturally this is Joe's kind of girl. The remaining are locked in a crypt where they will meet their fate by killer snakes, with the exception of one girl who is given to his deformed partner as a birthday present. Joe's partner accidentally breaks the girls neck because he squeezed a bit to hard so Joe pours some acid on her face and we are treated to a nice flesh-eating moment. Anyway, back to the snakes... One of the girls places a curse on Joe and promises vengeance. The words of the dying girl contaminates Joe's mind and in a dream (or is it) he is dragged to hell by a black demon. Once in hell the film changes from black and white to full color. We have demons whipping men and women. Decapitated heads and dismembered body parts protrude from the walls, ceiling and floor. The ground splits and snow falls from the sky. Snakes slither free and the devil is of course Marins.

In the end Joe battles with his own lack of faith all while trying to survive the wrath of a angry religious town who want him dead. In the films final seconds Coffin Joe changes his mind and finds god but is still killed. This was the fault of the censors. I usually just ignore the last second of the film because anybody who knows their Coffin Joe movies would know that this was not by choice.

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse also offers up a head explosion (complete with a giant boulder to the skull), a mouse crushed by a rock, eyeball gore, death by snakes, floating skeletons, a axe to the head, zombies, death by quick-sand drowning, naked women, naked men and many more tortures of hell. This is a must see for anybody who likes weird movies. The perfect follow up to At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul.

Night Fright (1967)

Night Fright not to be mistaken for Fright Night (1985) or E.T. The Extra Terrestrial with its future ripoff vhs art work. Its sad to say but both of those other two movies are way better then this thing.

What we have here is a late 60's giant monster flick. The only problem is that the movie is so damn dark we can barely see the monster at all. Aside from the complete lack of light this thing crawls along at an annoyingly slow pace. The majority of the run time is eaten with scenes of people roaming aimlessly through the woods. John Agar (Tarantula, Revenge Of The Creature) plays the sheriff who of course saves the day but Agar also spends most of his time walking around in the woods. When were not watching people wander around, we are treated to typical teenagers necking in their cars at lovers lanes. Fortunately for us the monster has a sweet tooth for young lovers but don't worry as soon as the monster comes the quality of the lighting will drop by 90%. Even if we could see the monster we wouldn't get to see the murders because every death scene cuts away.

Night Fright does offer up one dead cop, a cool surf rock soundtrack by "The Wildcats" complete with go-go dancing, and some really cheesy beatniks. Other then that Night Fright is a complete waste of time from the bottom of the barrel of giant monster movies.

They Live (1988)

John Carpenter redeems himself with this 1988 politically charged sci-fi. horror flick. Around this time Carpenters work seemed to be getting softer and softer and while They Live isn't quite as relentless as Halloween or gory as The Thing it makes up for it with its unique expression on American consumerism and mind control.

Former wrestler Roddy Piper and Keith David who I remember best as Childs in The Thing learn that planet earth has been dominated by aliens who appear to be human but with the help of a revolutionary group and a new invention (sun glasses) that can expose the ugly, aliens for what they really are, they wage war.

For me this movie is really lame as far as a horror flick goes but as a political art flick its great. Consume, Obey, Watch T.V., Reproduce, Have children, Stay asleep, Respect authority and many other slogans are plastered all over billboards and signs. The general public can't see these signs because they are subliminal but once the special sun glasses are worn everything is as clear as day. For example a dollar bill will appear to be normal without the glasses but when worn the money says "This is your god".

There is a moment in the film where a news reporter brings up the violence in movies and George A. Romero and John Carpenter's names are both mentioned. I found this to be funny because I personally feel that Carpenter was trying to go the George Romero route with this one but where Romero's political commentary is subtle Carpenter went all out and straight for the throat. For this reason They Live worked and all the conspiracy theory losers should get a kick out of it as well as anyone who is generally pissed off and feels controlled and oppressed by the media, authorities and social status of their boring daily lives. Sci-fi nerds can dig on this one as well cause we do get some cool looking aliens. They Live also offers up some dead cops, a really over the top and completely ridiculous fight scene that just never seems to end. Silly one liners "I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick ass... I'm all out of bubblegum.", We get some bare breasts in a inter-species sex scene, dead yuppies, dead bums and a bunch of shoot-em-up scenes. The biggest downfall of the movie for me is the awful soundtrack and the poor pace that eats away at the later part of the movie.

Not as good as Carpenters early work but still a good watch and a nice come back for the director.

Murder By Death (1976)

Personally not being the biggest fan of comedies I was really surprised at how much I liked this one. Perhaps because it mixed in elements of horror and mystery in a very comedic way. I'm sure that seeing for the first time in a theater helped too.

Five detectives are invited to a "Diner and a murder party" at a creepy old mansion. A sum of money is offered to the first detective who can solve the murder that takes place at midnight. The only catch is that the murder is going to be for real and the victim will be one of the detectives.

Booby-traps await around every corner and the goofy detectives are caught in a game of cat and mouse. We get some truly funny moments especially from the Asian detective and his son. Although this mid 70's flick would be considered completely politically incorrect today I found it to be funny as hell. Peter Falk shows up as one of the detectives that is clearly spoofing on the Sam character of Casablanca. Falk is the gun-wielding tough guy who naturally turns out to be a homosexual in the end. Then we get a creepy blind butler and a deaf/mute maid. The characters, dialogue and of course insane story really help this one  move along at a nice pace. It never gets boring and delivers quite a few laughs.

Trouble With Harry (1955)

Trouble With Harry is one of the less spoken of Hitchcock films and that's probably because not so many people went to see it. The reason being, that Hitch stepped away from his normal format of film making. When the world was used to the dark, serious films of Alfred Hitchcock, the daring director chose to do a comedy... A very dark comedy but still a comedy.

One year earlier he would scare the world with a genius masterpiece shot almost entirely from the prospective of a man peering out of The Rear Window. This time around we fallow a corpse that is basically being dragged around the woods for one hundred minutes.

Edmund Gwenn (Miracle On 34th Street, Them) is the first to find the body of Harry. Naturally he thinks he killed poor Harry when he sees the hole in his forehead. After all he was recklessly shooting his rifle off in the woods. Naturally he decides to bury the body before he is caught. The only problem is the woods are very crowded on this particular day. Harry's wife and stepson find him sitting there but they seem almost happy. A bum steals the shoes off of Harry's dead feet. Another man trips over the body and many others cross Harry's path and the best part is that every one of them have their own reason for wanting to keep it a secret.

Shirley Maclaine shows up as Harry's wife and the films sex appeal and in a very odd moment one of her breasts are wet. Being lucky enough to catch this on the big screen great details of such pops out at you and I'm not sure if she was lactating during this film but Hitchcock being the perfectionist that he is usually doesn't allow for continuity. Look for it in the films final reel but aside from the milk leakage, there is quite a bit of sexual tension being built within this film. One of the best examples is in a piece of dialogue referencing the taking of virginity. Pretty risky stuff for 1955...

Trouble With Harry has a nice mix of laughs and mystery. Hitchcock fans shouldn't be disappointed. The man proves his talent yet again on a less traveled path.

American Grindhouse (2010)

This thing was put together by two college film students with the mission to make a Jack Hill documentary. The working title was Spiders To Switchblades which I found to be rather witty. The two film student, fan-boys changed the direction of the documentary when they realized how many great cult icons signed on to their little project to be interviewed. Instead they make the wise decision to shoot a documentary on the history of American exploitation films.

The great Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast, A Taste Of Blood) appears and sheds some light on his contribution to exploitation cinema, along with exploiteers such as Ray Dennis Steckler, Ted V. Michaels, Jack Hill (of course), Fred Olen Ray, Fred Williamson, Larry Cohen and many more.

All in all American Grindhouse turns out to be a well researched, very informative and very entertaining documentary. The research dates back as far as the films shot by Thomas Edison in the early 1900's. It works its way through the 20's and 30's with teen-scare flicks and sex hygiene movies like Mom And Dad and Sex Madness. The 50's & 60's roll in with Juvenile Delinquent pictures and silly monster movies, sometimes the two genres clashed with stuff like I Was A Teenage Frankenstein and Invasion Of The Saucer Men and while these films had mass appeal to the teenagers there was plenty of other stuff brewing for an older audience. American Grindhouse walks us through the days of Nudist Camp Cinema (Nude On The Moon) and the so called Nudie Cuties (Immoral Mr. Tease) and then the real fun and interesting stuff arrives.

The darker days of the Roughies are discussed by greats such as William (Maniac) Lusting and John Landis. They talk about the films of Doris Wishman and Roberta & Michael Findlay. Lusting also compares New York City from the 70's to present time and lets just say he isn't exactly pleased. Gory horror flicks, blaxploitation movies and women in prison films mainly take up the later part of the documentary but the likes of Biker films, beach party movies and many other sub-genres have their screen time. David Hess also appears in an exceptionally wacky interview "I wanted to cut your dick off while you were smelling roses".

You can talk about this documentary forever but what it all comes down to is that if your a fan of exploitation films, American Grindhouse is a must own. The dvd is jammed packed with interviews, trailers, radio spots and anything that a cult cinema fanatic needs. Check it out for a trashy good time.

Scream Baby Scream (1969)

Larry Cohen's name is a pretty popular one amongst cult fans. Remembered for his trashy horror films like God Told Me To and the Its Alive trilogy and of course his blaxploitation flicks like Black Caesar and its sequel Hell Up In Harlem, staring Fred Williamson. but before he was directing he was writing. Scream Baby Scream is amongst his early writings but was unfortunately directed by a nobody.

Scream Baby Scream also known as Nightmare House revolves around four hippies who enjoy the finer things in life, like dropping acid and going to the zoo or painting nude models. They drive motorcycles and go to hippie-delic rock & roll shows complete with go-go dancing and some really silly outfits. These hippies are in for a bad trip when they meet an artist who gets his motivation for his morbid paintings from real life victims. He kidnaps the better looking of the girls in the hippie foursome and slices into her face with some surgical tools leaving her disfigured. The girls boyfriend eventually catches on to the foul play and takes matters into his own hands. That is until he sees her face..

This one is virtually gore-less with the exception of the Grotesque-style mangled faces. There is unfortunately no nudity to be found either which is a disappointment from a film of this nature. The acid scenes are really cool though. We get weird texts that flash across the screen as the hippies swing from bars inside cages. This one is worth a watch for its level of camp alone but the truth is it's not a very good movie. I can only recommend this one to lovers of bad movies and fans of weird psychedelic trip-out movies from the 60's.

Beyond Your Wildest Dreams (1981)

Not really what I look for in a movie as far as the plot goes but Beyond Your Wildest Dreams is still another example of a well made Gerard (Deep Throat, Devil In Miss Jones) Damiano flick. Damiano has proved with films like Odyssey that he is more then just a smut director with slick camera movement, eye-candy sets and surreal tones and I feel that he was trying for the same thing with this one but was just lacking in motivation.

Beyond Your Wildest Dreams very poorly tells the story of a group of people who are trapped inside the dreams of Sharon Morgan, played by Juliet Anderson known best for the Aunt Peg series. Throughout the film we don't know if we are in a fantasy or real life so I suppose the film worked on that level but I just found the story to be rather generic and boring. What we do know is that Damiano thinks up some twisted shit. Although the film may not be as perverse as some of the rougher rape/revenge flicks in the adult cinema world, we still get plenty of sleazy kink to get us through a weak story.

First off there is a more then normal fascination with semen in this one. In one scene we watch a guy bust a nut on a mirror and Aunt Peg licks off every drop. In another, the burning man-seed is served on a plate and a busty young actress laps it up. Then of course we get the necessary facial money-shots and Mai Lin (Prisoner Of Paradise, All The Way In) gets the messiest of them all. We also have some snow-balling on display. Then we have a ultra-trashy scene where Aunt Peg inserts a bar of soap where it doesn't belong and spits it out over and over. Damiano's signature shaved vagina scene comes before to long. "Looks like a little girls cunt. Eat my little girl cunt". I'd say there is definitely some kind of fixation with young girls on Damiano's mind because we also get a actress with braces on her teeth and that's just a little to disturbing to think about. Wildest Dreams also offers up some anal action and a really weird scene where a transvestite licks Aunt Peg's ass. Come to think of it Odyssey also had some transvestite-fu.

To top it all off the movie ends on a bit of a down note where one of our characters tries to defy Sharon Morgon by waking her up and ruining her dream. Well, in return he starts decaying and it doesn't quite make sense. Does this make Beyond Your Wildest Dreams a zombie-porn in the ranks of Porno Holocaust and Porn Of The Dead? Nah, I suppose not. Only worth a look for die-hard Damiano fans and lovers of hot man-juice. Personally, I would only watch it again for Mai Lin's scene. She looks pretty damn good in this one.

Hideous Sun Demon (1959)

Actor Robert Clarke, who I remember best as the guy who thinks hes a dog in the Boris Karloff loony-bin flick Bedlam, tries his hand at directing along with Tom Boutross who would go on to editThe Town That Dreaded Sundown. What they came up with is one hell of a campy horror flick.

This 50's monster movie follows a young scientist played by Robert Clarke who is exposed to radiation in a accident at the lab and now has a horrible reaction to the sun. Sunburn isn't the word for it... With only minutes of exposure to the sun our scientist transforms into something that looks like a cross between The Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Wolf Man but unlike our reptilian creature from the lagoon this monster is lucky enough to be able to change back once he is out of the sun for long enough. However after a little baking in the sun our demon turns extremely violent. First he kills a rat by squeezing the life out of it (complete with a gooey, squishy mess). Later he will kill a dog and a total of three police officers. We get a cop down by hit and run driving and then some typical 50's monster style strangulation's.

We also get a bit of sex appeal from a blond lounge singer who despite his hideousness has a thing for our monstrous Sun Demon. Their first date consists of binge drinking, a bar-fight, a little bit of harmless drinking and driving and a frolic on the beach that ends with our blond bimbo wearing nothing but the monsters jacket. I suppose this got a bit of a reaction out of the teenage boy crowd of the time. 

The final reel of the film shows the monster running amok while the police are on his tail. Wait... He doesn't have a tail. The final showdown takes place in an industrial area and has a sort of King Kong type ending with the monster falling to his death.

The Incredible Melting Man would rip this one off pretty badly in 1977 in a much gorier version. Still I found this one to be a pretty fun watch. Clocking in at 74 minutes, I couldn't help but wish there was more when it was all over. So if silly monster movies is your thing, I would definitely check this one out.