SIX UNSUNG HEROS OF THE DUNGEON!

 

We don't have a "Dungeon Hall Of Fame," but once in a while we will call somebody a Dungeon Hero because we really like them for whatever reason. There is no list, and we've actually never even discussed it between the two of us because we don't need to. I did a search of our site for "Dungeon Hero" and I came up with 47 different names, so I'm going to start with a list in no particular order, of six guys I call some of the..........

"Unsung Heroes of The Dungeon."

 

First up is John Hoyt, and I never knew until I started writing this, that an alternate title for "Attack Of The Puppet People" was "Six Inches Tall." In the tube is another Dungeon Hero, John Agar!

I also never knew John was such a stud! 

 

"Attack Of The Puppet People" was just about as good as it got for 1958!

John as The Puppeteer was kind of like Joe Biden, seems nice, but creepy!

 

Next up is one of our favourite bad guys, Milton Reid! Before his acting career, Milton was a professional wrassler known as "Mighty Chang!" It really is cool how many wrasslers and boxers have gone on to be actors! That's gotta be the toughest way to break into the business, but it still works to this day!

No credits on the poster, but at least they used his image!

 

Wow! Milton gets a cutting torch to the face in this poster for "Mission Desperate."

Gil Perkins is our next Unsung Hero!

 

What could be better than a 51 year old dude playing a "Teenage Monster?"

Gil Perkins has played a "Teenage Monster" and a guy named "Cauliflower," you got something better than that?

This is from just one of the many amazing "Batman" TV shows!

This 30 minute episode titled "Ring Around The Riddler" included Yvonne Craig as Batgirl....

 

...........And  also featured the amazing Joan Collins as "The Siren," but I digress.

Anthony Eisley is one of the most unappreciated actors of all time, and his work in "The Mighty Gorga," or "The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals" should attest to that! That's Anthony with the mustache as Tracy Steele on "Hawaiian Eye!"

And if that's not enough proof, there's always the immaculate reception also known as "Dracula Vs. Frankenstein!"

 

Jeff Morrow should be a common household name like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood for his contributions to cinema, but unfortunately he's not!

I couldn't pick between these two international posters for "The Creature Walks Among Us," they're both so insane! Look at how big the creature is in this bottom poster, and how about those hawk feet?

"This Island Earth" came out in 1955. It was so far ahead of it's time and Jeff Morrow was a big part of it! What a krazy action packed poster!

The last guy on this list is Jake LaMotta who only has one movie we've ever written about here called "Confessions Of A Psycho Cat," but that's not the reason he's on this list! Jake actually has 18 acting credits, and has a movie that was made about his own life, the classic "Raging Bull." Jake's boxing record was 83 wins, 19 losses. and 4 draws, and they were all battles!

 

The reason Jake LaMotta is on this list is because he's Jake LaMotta, and that's just good enough!

THE BIG COMBO - "First Is First And Second Is Nobody" (1955)

This week's Wildcat Wednesday feature from 1955 is titled "The Big Combo."

"The Big Combo" has an outstanding cast and is big fun to watch!

Writer Philip Yordan has some interesting credits for films like "The Fiend Who Walked The West," and "Dead Girls Don't Tango," but what's even more interesting are the credits he has for films like "Invasion Of The Triffids," and "The Naked Jungle," where he was just the front man for two writers, Bernard Gordon and Ben Maddow, who had been blacklisted in the 50's.

"The Big Combo" starts off with blonde bombshell Jean Wallace as Susan Lowell being pursued by these two thugs, Fante and Mingo!

Fante on the left is Lee Van Cleef, and Mingo on the right is Earl Holliman, two of my favourite character actors!

The lighting and cinematography are excellent throughout the whole film!

This looks like it could be a black and white version of an Edward Hopper painting!

Cornel Wilde is Police Detective Leonard Diamond, and his boss glaring at him is Robert Middleton as Captain Peterson. Diamond is spending too much time and money on one man, a Mr. Black, who is a slimy but slippery hoodlum they just can't get anything on, and the Captain is getting tired of trying to explain it to the people he has to answer to.

Richard (The Godfather) Conte is the notorious Mr. Brown. To show you what a ruthless bastard he is, there's this scene where he's chewing out a boxer who just lost a match. Mr. Brown slaps the kid, and when the kid doesn't hit him back, he calls him a loser, and tells him to get lost!

Richard Conte was also in "The Twilight Zone" episode titled "Perchance To Dream."

Susan is Mr. Brown's girl, but she's not happy in the role, so while out eating with Fante and Mingo, she becomes faint, and passes out while dancing!

It turns out she had taken some pills!

Now how hard would it be to have this role when nine years earlier Jean Wallace had tried to commit suicide in the same manner? When that didn't work, three years later, she tried stabbing herself in the abdomen. Despite all that unhappiness, Jean lived until 1990 when she died at the age of 66.

The third huge name in this production is Brian (Quatermass) Donlevy, there in the middle, as one of Mr. Black's stooges Joe McClure!

Diamond doesn't have a lot of extra time on his hands, but when he does, he likes to spend it with his showgirl girlfriend Rita, who was played by heavenly Helene (Jungle Moon Men, Beast From 10,000 Leagues) Stanton! The funny thing is that in real life Cornel Wilde was actually married to the other female in this story, Jean Wallace! Cornel Wilde spent a good deal of the rest of his life directing and promoting movies with Jean in them including a movie about an out of control virus in 1970 called "No Blade Of Grass."

Mr. Black and his boys rough Diamond up, and pour 47% alcohol hair tonic down his throat to make him seem drunk, and dump him off at the Captain's doorstep!

Dungeon hero John (Attack Of The Puppet People) Hoyt has a small role as an antiques dealer with a shady past, who only has what he has because he knows a secret about what happened to Mr. Black's ex-partner!

It doesn't pay to be a cutthroat henchman working for Mr. Black. He's got Fante and Mingo hiding out, and he brings them a big box that he says is money, but after he leaves, they open it, and it is sticks of dynamite instead!

Helen Walker is the missing Mrs. Brown. Her own story is more tragic than this movie. On New Year's Eve in 1946, she picked up three WWII veterans hitchhiking. She ended up in a horrible accident that flipped the car and killed one of the soldiers and injured the other two. She also broke her pelvis. The two survivors claimed she was drunk, and she had to go to trial, but even though acquitted, it seriously damaged her career. Now, this is just really weird, just like Jean Wallace, Helen was in a movie in 1949 called "Impact," and there was a scene of a fatal automobile accident that was caused by her character. In 1960, Helen's house burned down, and in 1968, she succumbed to cancer at the age of only 47.

Mr. Brown finally gets what's coming to him!

And Diamond and Susan, well, who knows where their life goes from here!

It seems like Cornel Wilde really was Sir Lancelot to Jean Wallace, so I thought that it was very fitting that after they made the Wilde directed movie "Lancelot And Guinevere" together, they came out with this Dell comic book in 1963!

"X" THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES / He Stripped Souls As Bare As Bodies! - 1963

It's time for a Dungeon Redo of this wild and weird Roger Corman flick that I saw with my cousins way back in 1963... The story's about Dr. James Xavier, a world renowned scientist experimenting with human eyesight. He devises a drug, that when applied to the eyes, enables the user to see beyond the normal realm of the light spectrum and also gives the user the power to see through objects! Xavier tests this drug on himself when his funding is cut off and continues its use as time progresses. He then begins to see, not only through walls and clothes, but eventually through the very fabric of reality!

This thing stars Ray (PREMATURE BURIAL) Milland, Diana (THE SWIMMER) Van der Vlis, Harold (THE INVISIBLE BOY) J. Stone, John (ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE) Hoyt, Don (MUSCLE BEACH PARTY) Rickles and features Morris (EARTH vs. THE FLYING SAUCERS) Ankrum, John (THE OMEGA MAN) Dierkes, Dick (WAR OF THE SATELLITES) Miller, Jonathan (NOT OF THIS EARTH) Haze, Barboura (A BUCKET OF BLOOD) Morris and more.

The Story starts with Dr. Xavier showing Dr. Diane Fairfax his experiments with increasing the possibilities of eye sight in animals and humans. He has had some success with his monkeys...

The doctor's funding gets cut off, so, he decides to test his sight enhancing drug on himself, you know, like, why not?!.. Right?

Diane thinks it would be a good idea for the doctor to take a break so they go to a party.

The serum kicks in and Dr. Xavier sees some pretty interesting sights! And, he even gets a peek at Diane in the nude, which makes him blush.

The doc keeps on using the serum and things are getting extra weird. When Dr. Stone tries to inject Xavier with something to counteract the serum, well, Xavier pushes him aside and his friend falls through the window of the five story medical building!

Xavier disappears after the accident and reappears as a psychic at a carnival. He now has a helper named Crane who takes questions from the audience. Dungeon heroes Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze are in the audience, and Dick is being a dick. It all backfires on him when Xavier tells the audience all about what a fuck up he is, funny stuff!

Crane finds out that Xavier is actually a medical doctor and wants to make more money by having him diagnose the sick, so they move into an old medical room. Things are going well until Diane shows up, and she takes the doc away from the setup against Crane's will.

She takes him to Las Vegas, he has a plan...

The Doc cleans up at the '21' table and the supervisors get suspicious when he wins ever time!

His glasses get knocked off and it reveals his mutated eyeballs! Now he's seeing psychedelic skeletons instead of people,... Help, Mr. Wizard!!

Dr. Xavier takes Diane's car and drives into the desert, chased by a heckilopter even! He crashes the car and starts walking, then, he hears some noise. It's a holy roller revival, he stumbles to the entrance.

The doc testifies, he tells the crowd of the things he has seen. They respond with, "If thine eye offend thee... Pluck it out, pluck it out!" So's, he plucks each eyeball out... Kind of a crappy effect, but, it gets the point across! Tune in again on Wednesday as we edge our way toward 'Halloween Countdown!'