John Rozum's Blog, page 48

31 Days of Halloween - Day 22 - Movie 1

After the death of her grandmother, a young woman vows to protect the kappa that her grandmother cared for. The people shy creature becomes friendly and both he and the young woman are captured by a group that wants to use the kappa as part of its army of fishmen that they have created to return Japan to its glory days. As the kappa and the young woman fight to free themselves, a nuclear explosion is ignited in the fringe group's headquarters. The kappa survives, becoming a giant monster who fights another giant monster named Hangyolis who is currently stamping around Japan.

This ridiculous movie pretty much divides into too separate movies featuring the same creature. Obviously a parody of a variety of Japanese fantasy and science fiction movies, the humor is really too brad to be funny, but does make some direct hits on the tropes of movies such as the Gamera series. I can't recommend Death Kappa (2010), but fans of the giant monster and yokai films from Toho and Daiei may want to take a look.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 22

The Gorn from the Star Trek episode "Arena" (January 19, 1967). Cut paper.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 21 - Movie 2

Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore) escapes from prison after a seventeen years stretch for a crime he didn't commit. He escapes with a scientist who plans to live the rest of his days altruistically trying to reduce living things to 1/6 scale in order tom further earth's resources. When the scientist dies, Lavond helps his widow continue the work, but for different reasons. Lamond plans to use the shrunken humans to exact revenge against the banking partners who set him up for their own crime.

The Devil Doll (1936) is a pretty lively weird thriller from director Tod Browning.  Lionel Barrymore spends much of the movie in old lady drag, an identity he adopts in order to evade the police, insinuate himself into the lives of the men he plans to kill, and secretly interact with his, now adult, daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) who despises her father for the crime he allegedly committed which forced her and her mother to live in poverty. It's Lavond's relationship with his daughter that elevates him from simply being a man out for revenge and brings him a chance at redemption. Rafaela Ottiano as the scientist's widow, encapsulates the ultimate incarnation of the mad scientist with her wild eyes, demented expression, white streaked unkempt hair and her asymmetrical physical deformation.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 21 - Movie 1

Twenty years after murdering her husband and his lover, Joan Crawford leaves the sanitarium and returns home to her now adult daughter.  While she naturally feels awkward and out of place, her behavior becomes more and more troubling. When people start vanishing mysteriously her family begins to wonder if she was fit to be released after all.


Strait-Jacket (1964) is a pretty tight thriller from William Castle. The psychological suspense is genuine, heightened by Joan Crawford's performance. The cast as a whole is good, particularly Diane Baker as Crawford's daughter. George Kennedy supports as the skeevy handy man, and Lee Majors appears as Crawford's two-timing husband. Because it's a William Castle film, you know it's not going to be straight forward and that there's going to be a gimmick. In this case it's not broadcast, but is also pretty apparent what it will be. Even so, it packs a punch sold by the performance of one of the key cast members.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 21

The nurse (Jennifer Howard) from The Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder" (November 11, 1960)

31 Days of Halloween - Day 20 - Movie 2

Boris Karloff discovers a powerful element, Radium X, which causes him to become lethal to the touch. Bela Lugosi is a colleague who develops a serum to keep these effects dampened. He also finds a way to use Radium X as a powerful healing device. Karloff, affected by both Radium X and side effects of Lugosi's serum, is filled with murderous jealousy and turns against everyone who was involved in his discovery. 
The Invisible Ray (1936) demonstrates some wildly improbable "science" in the method used by Karloff's character to discover the meteor that brought Radium X to earth. In spite of that it is a pretty decent film filled with some really nice production design, a heroic Lugosi, and a less than sympathetic Karloff as the socially aloof scientist with the killing touch. 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 20 - Movie 1

In The Invisible Ghost (1941), Bela Lugosi plays a beloved doctor who is compelled to murder my visions of his absent wife. This is a better than average no frills thriller with a decent cast of characters and a sympathetic Lugosi as a man unaware of his hidden compulsion.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 20

The Abominable Snowman from 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964). Cut paper.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 19 - Movie 2

On her deathbed, a genetic scientist asks her son, John, to burn all of her research and to not get sucked into picking up where she left off. She also mentions "Anthony" the brother John never new he had. Instead of immediately destroying everything as asked, John recruits a bunch of his scientist friends to go through his mothers journals in order to find out anything about Anthony. When they finally do, it's to discover that Anthony was the culmination of his mother's research, and that a far less ethical scientist is also after Anthony for his own ends.


The Kindred (1987)is a prime example of 1980s gooey rubber monster movies. Even though the design for the creatures is a bit less than convincing, and some of the characters were indistinguishable, this movie was actually pretty damned entertaining. Things moved along pretty quickly, and even when there was no monster action happening on screen, the human interactions were interesting enough that they didn't seem like filler between the effects scenes. There is also a nicely done sequence where one of the characters sprouts gills right before our eyes.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 19 - Movie 1

People are being murdered in Los Angeles by a killer dubbed "The Mangler" who rips their faces off and only kills at night. On the Mangler's trail are a detective (Richard Jaeckel) a best selling author and father of the first victim (William Devane) and a reporter trying to be taken seriously (Cathy Lee Crosby).

Throw in Casey Kasem as a pathologist and Dick Clark as one of the film's producers and you have The Dark (1979). Formulaic in it's pattern of murder, "we need answers" murder, like many low budget monster on the loose movies, the movie remains watchable mostly through Richard Jaeckel's performance. The Mangler turns out to be some sort of super strong, bullet proof, alien who can shoot energy beams out of his eyes. Apparently this was originally meant to be a zombie movie which tested poorly, so it was changed into a space monster movie by adding the laser beam eyes and so forth. Either way, it plays out like a glorified tv movie, or an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, without Kolchak.