Death Bed - The Bed That Eats (1977)

How bad is it? It wasn't released, it escaped after sleeping for 30 years.

Should you see it? Yes. I can just barely recommend seeing this mess.

This film just starts with a couple breaking into a house (?) and then, while making out on the giant bed of the title, their apples, wine and chicken get absorbed into the bed - the bed dissolves, but the apple has teeth marks - and then the people get dissolved, too. Ten minutes in, the titles appear. A man trapped within/behind a drawing narrates and talks to the bed (which actually snores on occasion); about half-way through, he decides to explain who he is and how the bed got evil. There's flashbacks to earlier victims and the film takes a turn for high camp with an old lady and her "Tropic of Cancer," among other victims, including an orgy that takes place outdoors and entirely under covers. A bottle of Pepto-Bismol makes a humorous appearance.

By the way, there's no way that bed fits through the doors. And the stones of the exterior don't match the brick of the interior. The film's so slow you have to look for things to watch. There is occasional nudity to perk things up.

Three women are in the final group of victims, who take up most of the screen time, along with the brother of one of them, who's looking for her. The brother drives over a bag with her clothes, for no apparent reason. The black woman half-escapes, her legs being digested and the girl not yet eaten apparently goes mad, which explains (maybe) why she doesn't try to flee or to warn her brother when he comes. He gets his hands eaten and treats it like a science experiment.

The demon that created the evil bed slumbers in a tree once every ten years and this just happens to be that night (are you still with me?), so the guy in the drawing can tell the crazy girl (played by the presumably pseudonymous Rosa Luxemburg) how to stop the bed. "But I lied," he explains, and she's to be sacrificed, too, to resurrect a girl buried outside (really, are you still there?) and free the guy in the drawing.

The bed burns, outside, for a few minutes.

Cat Women of the Moon (1953)

How bad is it? It's very shoddy, even by 1950's 3D standards.

Should you see it? It's not essential. There are a few good laughs.

Publicity photo - suggests more than is delivered.

Though only 63 minutes long, this is incredibly padded. Nothing really happens in the first half, but we get to see an astronaut whose only interest is profiteering off the mission and an emergency handled by a guy in a beekeeper's outfit and a fire extinguisher (there's no fire). There is a funny shot of the rocket pivoting for landing. Sonny Tufts and Marie Windsor, veterans of this type of film, are wasted.

Once they land, one person pulls out cigarettes and another a pistol - the 1950's calling cards - and, while both get questioned, both are essential for the plot. The spacesuits don't match, having been borrowed from two other films (and reused many times in later films). They land on the dark side of the moon and show that the bright side will burn the cigarettes (despite lack of air). The one female astronaut sense a cave is nearby and she's right - and they fight two giant spiders, again taken from other films. They discover that there's air in the cave, though why it doesn't evaporate into space is never addressed.

Finally the cat women arrive and they turn out to be nothing cat-like. They have their own Egyptian/Greek Classic architecture. They use mind control on Marie Windsor. The greedy astronaut is led to his doom in a cave of gold. There's a love triangle of sorts. There's a truly awful stage slap. The cat women all get killed, mostly by firearm. They go back to Earth.

Brain From Planet Arous (1957)

How bad is it? It's ludicrous and cheap, but well-crafted.

Should you see it? Yes. Repeatedly. It's my favorite bad film.

Foreshadowing. Classy.

John Agar has a reputation for having been in a lot of turkeys and, if I review every film I want to on this blog, his name will appear from time to time ("Zontar," at the very least). This has one of his more hammy performances.

The film has nuclear physicist Agar turning on his Geiger counter and it's screaming. He points it out the window and says it must be coming from the mountain in the distance (the more science you know, the funnier that is). He goes to the mountain, into a cave and there meets, fights and is taken over by a giant disembodied floating brain with eyes. Agar then goes on to develop shiny silver eyes and he uses them to shoot down airplanes, while chuckling. The alien in Agar gets the hots for Joyce (not Jayne - I've made that mistake) Meadows. Another disembodied brain comes to Earth, takes over Agar's dog (!) and battles the one in Agar. Meadows and Agar then kill the bad brain with an axe and all is well.

Deadly Weapons (1974); Double Agent 73 (1974)

These were both filmed by Doris Wishman and both star Chesty Morgan, so it makes sense to review both together.

Deadly Weapons

How bad is it? Even the director disliked it.

Should you see it? No.

The plot is a simple revenge story, where the star uses her enormous breasts to smother men. It could've been sexy, it could've been funny, but it's just tedious. Doris Wishman is, in my opinion, the worst director who ever made more than a few films; some people have nothing to work with, some have huge budgets that don't amount to much and then there's Doris who squandered whatever she had.

A word about the star and the type of film: unlike today, breast reduction surgery in the 1970's was rare, expensive and never covered by insurance. Some women made money by allowing their huge breasts to be photographed and then used the money to pay for surgery to reduce their size. Some tried to make as much money as they could first, and Morgan was one. Wishman didn't like her. Russ Meyers didn't like her (he probably would've given her only a token non-speaking role, as she couldn't act and had a thick Polish accent), Fellini cut her scene from his "Casanova." I actually met her briefly when I was 15 and I didn't like her, either.

The movie seems to take place entirely indoors, probably filmed in one house. The camera is static, the dialogue minimal and hard to understand (Chesty's voice is dubbed to cover her thick Polish accent), the entire production is terrible. One expects a film of this type to be "titillating" but it doesn't even manage interesting or tawdry; one doesn't care about Morgan, one doesn't even feel sorry for her for being in such a film and so burdened.

The two scenes that stand out in my mind involve one where she's bathing - and it's about as interesting as if watching her peel potatoes and one where she's undressing and flab just hangs everywhere. 

Double Agent 73

How bad is it? It's almost as bad as the above.

Should you see it? Only if you're really desperate and it's free.

They don't even look mammoth here. There's NOTHING to see here, folks.

This time, Morgan's voice is her own, at least.  Chesty's infiltrating a drug smuggling ring and, after she kills men, she uses a camera surgically implanted in her left breast to take pictures for identification, (why not before?), so the film has a lot of her extricating a breast, holding it like a loaf of sliced bread and pointing it, with a shutter click sound effect. There's also a time bomb in the camera, for reasons inadequately explained.

Sometimes I think that the film could be remade into something worth watching. There's actually someone who would currently fit the role (and her English isn't great, either):

If you're going to see a Doris Wishman film, I'd pick one of the early nudist camp films. Nude on the Moon (1961) has a couple of laughs (my main recollection of it is one guy who looks like he has bird crap in his hair). Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) is probably her best. Another Day, Another Man (1966), The Amazing Transplant (1970), Keyholes Are for Peeping (1972) and the documentary Let Me Die a Woman (1977) all have a few admirers, but I cared for none of them.

Blood of Ghastly Horror (1972) and other Al Adamson films

aka Man with the Synthetic Brain

How bad is it? It's a mess.

Should you see it? It's not essential viewing.

Someone gets revenge on John Carradine

Al Adamson and his partner made a heist film called Echo of Terror (or Two Tickets to Terror) around 1965, but they couldn't sell it, so they added footage and a soundtrack and added a new plot about a killer and called it Psycho A-Go-Go (1967). This wasn't successful, so they added more footage and made it a detective film called Fiend with the Electronic Brain (1969). Then they added yet more footage about zombies and called it The Man with the Synthetic Brain (1971). Then they retitled it Blood of Ghastly Horror. Apparently, somewhere along the way, versions of this were called Fiend with the Atom Brain and The Love Maniac.

Don't expect to follow the plot too closely. There's a murder in an alley. The detective on the case gets evidence that it's linked to an old case. Flashback to diamond robbery. Then there's evidence that it's linked to a mad doctor. Flashback to John Carradine treating a brain-damaged Vietnam vet by replacing brain cells with electronics. The vet becomes a maniac. In response, the vet's father kidnaps the doctor's daughter (played by Regina Carroll, the director's wife), not for ransom, but to turn her into a zombie, as that's his special field of knowledge. Jewel thieves have controlled the vet's brain and are using him to commit murders. Policeman Tommy Kirk chases the bad guys. Go-go dancers get killed.

Then I get lost.

There's a lot of extreme close-ups, partly because the original film was done in wide-screen and this got the pan-and-scan treatment, partly to do a head-in-a-box scene. There's a witch doctor who wears a lab coat. There's terrible dialogue ("I flew in... on a plane.") There's some good music (by the Vendells) and some good cinematography (by Vilmos Szigmond), though the latter is piecemeal, as later parts were shot by someone else. There's some nice scenery around Lake Tahoe. There's a lot of puppets... for some reason.

I have to admit that I zoned out a lot while watching this.

Adamson directed a lot of bad films at the start of the alphabet:

Angels' Wild Women - dullest biker film ever.
The Black Samurai, 1977 - okay blaxploitation with Jim Kelly
Black Eliminator, 1977 - more Jim Kelly, still okay
Black Heat, 1976 - yet more of the same, still okay
Blazing Stewardesses - absolutely awful "comedy" with surviving Ritz Brothers
Blood of Dracula's Castle 1967 - dull vampire film with John Carradine as a butler
Brain of Blood  1971 (aka The Brain, aka The Undying Brain, aka The Creature's Revenge) Mad doctor performs brain transplants. Acting, camera work, score and sound effects are all poor.

Added 8/20/14

Dynamite Brothers 1974 Poor martial arts blaxploitation.
The Female Bunch 1971 Dull action film.
Five Bloody Graves 1970 (aka Gun Riders, aka The Lonely Man, aka Five Bloody Graves to Tombstone) Very violent western; watchable but nothig special.

The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969)

How bad is it? It's among the worst-made films available.

Should you see it? It's only available on cassette in a murky print, but if that's your thing, sure. It looks like it was filmed in Super-8, so even a clean print wouldn't be great.

This is about the best photo I can find from this movie.

You can learn a lot about movie-making from bad films; I learned blocking scenes from "The Giant Gila Monster," for example. "Mummy/Jackals" shows how long-range shots are filmed before two-shots or close-ups - because this movie used whatever footage they had when they ran out of funds and a lot of it is done solely in long shots.

The plot has an Egyptian goddess that carries a curse for whoever spends a night with her. Of course, someone has to do it. The goddess comes to life... and passes herself off as a low rent Vegas showgirl, for reasons not adequately explained, and she comes complete with a fat mummy with one bulging eye (that switches sides at one point). A guy gets turned into a were-jackal, with special effects that are rock bottom. John Carradine says he can solve the problem on the next full moon - and then doesn't show up again. [He also doesn't move. I like seeing how directors worked around his arthritis problems.] There's a dinner scene where a woman says she's going to make a call - and then never comes back and no one comments on it. There's a chase scene filmed on the Vegas strip, where people stare into the camera and laugh at the actors. Finally, the Mummy and Were-jackal drown in a hasty ending that leaves so many hanging threads it gives new meaning to "fringe film."

The music is actually pretty good, except that there's only a couple of minutes of it and it gets reused repeatedly. Some of the acting isn't terrible. I'm stretching to find something nice to say... this is wretched. Reportedly filmed in 1967, they ran out of money and couldn't finish the project (I'm guessing someone saw rushes that involved the Vegas strip scene and backed out), but had been contractually obligated to supply a film and did the best they could with what they had. The film then sat unseen until it got a brief release on videotape and has since all but disappeared.

Maniac (1934)

How bad is it? It's cheap and tremendously overacted.

Should you see it? Definitely. It's the first great terrible film.

When I first read about this movie, I thought it would be horrifying. For example, a man plucks out a cat's eye and then eats it. It's so poorly done, however, that it's fun, rather than scary.

The story has a mad scientist trying to bring life to the dead. His assistant is an actor who dresses up as the coroner so the two of them can work on a body in the morgue. While they do this, two men (janitors?) watch and have one of the most entertainingly stupid conversations ever committed to film. Later, the doctor causes a disembodied heart to beat and then tells his assistant that he (the doctor) is  going to kill him (the actor) and bring him back. The actor then kills the doctor instead. Thinking that the doctor will be missed, but he won't, he decides to dress up as the doctor and take over his practice - including the experiments. We get to see a man who believes he's a gorilla (a la Murders in the Rue Morgue), then the cat's eye thing - a real one-eyed cat was used, and we get to see some brief nudity. Then we get to see the actor's wife and three other women in lingerie behaving in what Esper and wife must've thought was a provocative way; the brunette with the Betty Boop voice makes me laugh whenever she speaks, one prances around the room and another uses one of those old-timey shake-your-weight-off-with-a-vibrating-belt devices. Meanwhile, two women have a cat-fight with syringes in the basement! Lastly, the police arrive to discover that a man has been entombed in a wall with a live cat (also from Poe. "Cask of Amontillado?"). The cop, leading the actor away, has the final word: "Man, you're crazy!"

Esper made a number of terrible films, the ones after the Hays Code skirting decency standards by pretending to be educational and by not being shown in movie theaters. "How to Undress for Your Husband" does not live up to its title, unfortunately, but all his films have something entertaining; "Cocaine Fiends" has a scene where a prop window slams shut by itself and startles the cast, but they didn't retake the shot. "Maniac" remains the one essential Esper film.