Well, I guess that's it for me this year, and I don't know about you, but for me, it's just about the same as it started, Weirdsville!!! I hope you had a good time. I've been holding on to tonight's feature for about two years for some reason. It's a hard movie to track down, but worth the freakin' effort, and this time I mean freak for real!
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"Curse of the Crimson Altar Cult" immediately sets the scene with this remarkable cast of characters, like A Man and His Goat, but at least it's a Toggenburg and not a Nubian!!
Nita Lorraine as A topless gal with a whip and........
A Holy Man of dubious virtue!!!
I'm laying down odds, Chicken Gal is going to meet up later with Goat Man after the show!!
Where did they have to dig this conehead up from??
Oh Boy, Nicholas Head (in his second and last role) as a blacksmith of questionable masculinity in a leather loincloth with antlers......
And Barbara Steele decked out like a dead bride of the devil, and we're only like 3 minutes into this movie!!! I haven't said it in a long time, but, Like Wow!!!
Here's the action at the end of the festivities! Denys Peek as Peter Manning takes the final oath!!
Mark Eden as Robert Manning is the guy who has come to find out what happened to his brother!! Mark Eden has done it all, from Quatermass thru The Avengers and Dr. Who, and walks through this film with a casual spirit usually reserved for the likes of somebody like Anthony Eisley!
There's quite the party going on at the Morley pad, the last place that Peter Manning was seen or ever saw!!
Like new and improved ways of drinking champagne!!
What a gig! How much do you get paid for a role like this? Kevin Smith as The Drunk worked about once every 10 years, but he took the 80's off for rest and recuperation!!
Man, this party is a real gasser, and the incredible thing is, it has nothing to do with the movie hardly at all!!! The wild music is provided by respected English composer Peter Knight!!!
Finally, it's time to get to the guts of this movie, and what a fine array of talent it is! First off is Christopher Lee as Morley, sometimes he's a good guy, but mostly, he's not!!
And the genius of Michael Gough as the nimrod Elder!!
And then, bigger than shit, out pops Dungeon God, Boris Karloff, just like Robert Manning predicted, in what was in reality, his last role!!!
In this village, it's the season for the annual celebration of the burning of the witch Lavinia (Barbara Steele)!!
Huge kudos to the developers of Photoshop, whose artistry made these fotos look at least 500% better for your viewing pleasure!!
Maybe part of the reason this film fell out of circulation was for it's opening reference to psychedelic drug use, and I quote, "........and drugs of this group can produce the most complex hallucinations, and under their influence, it is possible by hypnosis to induce the subject to perform actions he would not normally commit!" You know, stuff like signing your name in blood, and selling your soul to some cat named "Ba‘al Zəbûb!" Right On, Brother!!!
The Howdy Do-It Peanut Gallery for each and every acid induced sacrificial dream, sits in stoic rapture. What could these people possibly be thinking about??? It's no coincidence that the blogger id for this photo ends with 666!!!
Really cool shot of the secret passage to the sacrifice room, replete with tons of fake spiderwebs! No, really, as part of the plot!!
Robert Manning tries his damndest to explain to the local authority, Roger Avon as Sergeant Tyson, what all his suspicions are! Robert Avon made a career out of playing constables, clerks, and receptionists, and can't do anything under the circumstances without a search warrant!!
Just a nice classic picture of the mild-mannered genius, Boris Karloff!!
Well, it all gets pretty twisted toward the end, with deep seated family hatred and sole surviving members sought out for execution, all in the name of the witch, Lavinia! You know, Babara Steele has long been known for having that kind of effect on people!!
Dinner's Ready!!!
The smell of bar-b-qued Morley fills the air! Boris and Mark Eden are joined by Virginia Wetherell as Eve, and Michael Warren as The Chauffeur, for the final viewing!
Christopher Lee should have better sense by now than to be sucked into yet another infernal, eternal damnation! Good thing for him, they're just movies!! See you next year!
As far as cool jazz scores for monster movies goes, Paul Dunlap is definitely one of the names at the very top of the list with mandatory titles like "Angry Red Planet", "I Was A Teenage Werewolf," "Blood Of Dracula," "How To Make A Monster," "Frankenstein 1970" and so much more, including this great film "The Black Zoo"!!! Now, while "The Black Zoo" is often thought of as the last corner of the Michael Gough horror trilogy that also includes "Konga" and "The Horrors Of The Black Museum," there is one difference, and that is those other two Herman Cohen masterpieces, while both being very swingin', had soundtracks composed by Gerard Schurmann, yet another truly super talented individual!! 
First we're introduced to Mr. Jeffrey Stengle, played by Jerome Cowan, who passed away back in 1972, but whose legacy will live on forever through his work. He had been in the movies since 1936 and had gone on to be in a ton of TV shows of every ilk and flavor. Cowboys, cop shows, and comedies, Jerome did them all! 
Here we get a big dose of Michael playing the organ. Just about the time that you think he's going to break into "In A Gadda Da Vida" is when it cuts to........ 
This scene where Mike's wife Edna, played by the charming Jeanne Cooper, who was born in the big town of Taft, Calif. in 1928, lights a smoke, and starts listening to the radio when she gets the real news! If you don't have a life, you may have seen Jeanne in one of her continuing performances as Katherine Chancellor in the TV soap opera "The Young And The Restless", that she has been doing from 1978 right up to the present day. 30 years and almost 300 shows!! Now this woman is a real actress!!! 
"Carl, Did you take the truck and one of the animals and drive Mr. Conrad into Hollywood last night?"
This is a difficult movie to find these days. The only place I had any luck rounding up a copy was ioffer.com. Good Luck!!
