The Crawling Hand (1963)

How bad is it? Well, the hand doesn't switch from right to let-handed, but that's the most I can say for it.
Should you see it? If you're desperate.

There are more than a dozen disembodied hand films (not including The Addams Family's Thing), a few which are worth seeing. This one is the worst. There's an accident involving spacecraft and radiation and all that's left of a man is his hand, which takes on a life of its own, a poorly-explained homicidal life. A boy finds it, brings it home and doesn't tell anyone - this actually rings true to me, though it probably shouldn't. The film plods along with occasional violence but ends up with the hand getting eaten by cats in a junkyard. I think they didn't know how to end the film, had enough in the can and just ended it the first way they could think of.

The Conqueror (1956)

How bad is it? It's badly miscast and poorly constructed.
Should you see it? Yes.

Howard Hughes had enough money to make movies he wanted to see and to micromanage their filming; unfortunately, he had questionable taste. "The Outlaw" was strange and interesting. "Jet Pilot" was strange and uninvolving. "The Conqueror" is strange and ludicrous. Six foot four blue-eyed John Wayne makes for an unlikely Mongol. Until you see Susan Hayward. And Agnes Moorhead. This was filmed in the desert southwest (reportedly a nuclear test site) and used local natives as extras; they, to most American eyes in the 1960's, look a bit more like Mongols, but that just makes Wayne look more ridiculous. Even without the casting problem, the plot neither follows historical fact nor legend and the stilted dialogue is often laugh-out-loud ridiculous. John Wayne was always as good as his material (he was the star of my favorite film), but he's awful here.

Cyclone (1987)

How bad is it? It's very brainless.
Should you see it? Only to see the cast.

This film by Fred Olen Ray (see also previous review) was from his "peak" years of directing more than 130 films. It's about a motorcycle prototype that has the power of a fighter jet and shoots lasers. It also comes with a helmet that shoots lasers. Apparently, lasers are cool and easy to film. Like all Ray films, this has its jiggle factor, mostly at the start, as we see Heather Thomas in a gym exercising and then in the locker room (where women shower in the background). The cycle is stolen and the film's all about recovering it. As the film proceeds, you get treated to surprise actors: Martin Landau, Robert Quarry, Russ Tamblyn, Troy Donahue, Martine Beswick and even Huntz Hall (and if you don't recognize those names, you need to watch a lot more movies)! The film has little else going for it.

Cyberzone (1995)

aka Droid Gunner, aka Phoenix 2

How bad is it? It's just barely science fiction and almost porn.
Should you see it? Probably not.

This is the only photo of this film I could find without nudity!

In the 1960's, directors were switching from nudies to horror. In the 1990's, Fred Olen Ray made the switch the other direction. This is probably the last film he made that wasn't just soft core titillation, directed to fill time late at night on new cable and satellite television stations. That said, there's no doubt where he was headed when he made this film, about recovering stolen robot hookers. Ray knew that science fiction was hard to do on a budget, so this is very tongue-in-cheek and it kinda works. Some of the amusement for me in all Ray films are the styles seen - in this film, you not only see bad hair and clothing choices, but you see that plastic surgeons had some odd ideas about what breasts should look like.

[see also the next review]

Curse of the Blue Lights (1988)

How bad is it? In some ways, it's competent, in others, it's wretched.
Should you see it? Not really.

Most of the films I cover here look terrible and cheap. This one looks like it had a budget, or at least made good use of what little money they had. Teens get abducted to an underground lair of ghouls who need sacrifices to awaken a demon; they spend the film trying to escape. The ghouls makeup isn't terrible, but hits that uncanny cross between silly and ugly; the demon is actually done fairly well. The lighting and sound are okay. The acting is sub-par and the plot sounds like it should work. Unfortunately, the film doesn't work - you can't get this dull without bad direction, which sinks it.

Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966)

How bad is it? It's extremely cheap and cheesy.
Should you see it? It's slow, but it has it's charms, so... yes.

Larry Buchanan made a number of films on the Gulf Coast, all very low budget. The reason I know about them is because of a marketing strategy. In the 1960's, television stations needed material, so they bought films and the studios, to make more money, required package deals - if you wanted one good movie, you also had to buy a bunch of others - and very cheaply made movies meant high profits. Thus, television stations showed terrible movies late at night (if I ever get to "Revenge of the Virgins," I'll cover this some more).

The story is about a doctor who's trying to cross people with reptiles. If you think that that was "Attack of the Swamp Creature," that film was crossing with fish. If you think it's like "The Alligator People," well, that movie's not bad. This film is one of Buchanan's better efforts, as it has John Agar as star and the film's incredibly sleazy low-rent atmosphere is somehow compelling. The badly done monster is only seen occasionally, usually picking someone up and throwing them to alligators.

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

How bad is it? It's dull until the last 5 minutes, when the worst monster ever appears.
Should you see it? Not unless you can fast-forward to the end.

This is a thriller, where a plot is created to move the leaders of a caribbean island and their riches, then kill them and take the booty, claiming it's the work of a legendary monster - which turns out to be real. The movie's slow and heavy on talk. Then the monster appears. It's terrible. The photo above doesn't do it justice. It's laugh-out-loud funny for the 5 minutes it attacks.