THE DEVIL COMMANDS - "The Iron Hand Of Horror" (1941)

"The Devil Commands" is a freaky little picture! First off, there's no Devil in it, or even any reference to one, except in the title that I noticed!

It's actually about a poor misguided man searching for a way to reunite himself with a deceased person he loves more than anything, who, in this case, just happens to be his wife!

Boris Karloff is that man, a role he always plays so well! His name this go round is Dr. Julian Blair!

Dr. Blair is experimenting with brain waves, and communication without speaking!

One dark and dreary night his wife is accidently killed while she is sitting in a parked car waiting for him in the pouring rain!

Dr. Blair is a wreck himself after that incident and horribly distraught!

Firmly believing there is a path to the other side, Dr. Blair seeks solace with the local medium Mrs. Blanche Walters played by the Oscar Winning Anne (SCUDDA HOO! SCUDDA HAY!) Revere! I was going to make a joke that she was Paul Revere's wife, but then I found out that she was actually Paul Revere's descendant!

Dr. Blair wastes no time proving that Mrs. Walters is a phony, but yet he still believes she has more moxie than your run of the mill fake medium, and decides to invite her back to his mad lab for some further experimentation!

Mrs. Walters is a tough bird! Dr. Blair shoots ten thousand volts through her, but just like a Timex watch, she takes a licking and comes back ticking!

The two of them with the help of Dr. Blair's slightly warped assistant Karl, move to an old mansion and set up shop anew with the help of a few dead locals! Karl was played by Cy Schindell, who despite only living to the age of 41 before succumbing to cancer, was able to wrack up 152 acting credits including quite a few "Three Stooges" shorts!

Dorthy (Hot Rod Rumble) Adams as Mrs. Marcy the maid is just about to bite off a whole lot more than she can chew! Snooping around just doesn't pay!!

Whoa! A Dead body inside some kind of rockin' robot getup, what gives around this joint! AAaaaahhhh!!!

Right about here, this movie gets real creepy as all the bodies kind of come alive and start gyrating and bouncing around like a bunch of robots in some mad electric poker party!

The surge of electricity is way too much for Mrs. Marcy, so now Dr. Blair has really got a murder on his hands! Before it was just stealing bodies, but now they've actually killed somebody!

The local law enforcement was already suspicious, but when Mrs. Marcy doesn't come back home from work, her husband demands that the law investigates things a little further! Sherriff Ed Willis is played by Kenneth (Punchy Cowpunchers) MacDonald, and Seth Marcy is played by Walter (The first "Floyd The Barber") Baldwin!

Blanche Walters goes on one last wild ride! Aaiiieeee!!!!

Dr. Blair has now totally lost it, and is willing to sacrifice his loving daughter's life just to be able to speak to his dead wife again! Anne Blair was played by Amanda Duff! This film must have been enough for Amanda who called it quits after only 8 acting credits! After what they did to her in this film, you can't hardly blame her!

After the locals storm the house just like in a "Frankenstein" movie, Dr. Blair gives it one last final attempt! He's getting so close he can almost taste it!

But instead of success, the whole place crumbles down around him! What a weird movie, simple, short at 65 minutes, and very effective, but I still don't think they should blame the devil!

DOUBLE EXPOSURE / Greyhill Productions - 1983

It's another Friday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. We gots a wild little flick all about a photographer for a men's magazine who's disturbed by his recurring dreams, he thinks he may be killing his models by various gruesome methods because the city's being terrorized by a slasher that's stalking and murdering women in LA.

Eegah!! sent over this cool little soundclip from the flick, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button over there by the Stairwell To Hell, NOW, Rufus The Gnat! Here's our audio offering for... DOUBLE EXPOSURE!

The LA cops keep coming across murders that are just plain bizarre, even by their standards!..

Michael Callan and James Stacy play brothers, Adrian and B. J. Wilde, photographer and stunt car driver. An interesting note, besides being married to Connie Stevens and Kim Darby for short times, in 1973, James was in a motorcycle accident and had to have his left arm and leg amputated! Also, his girlfriend died in the crash...

At this shoot, Adrian bludgeons this sweet tart with the aluminum handle of the pool sweep... Or, did he?!

Adrian and his new model at another shoot at his bro's race track.

I'm not sure what's going on here, but, I like this photo!..

I'm not sure what's going on here, but, I really like this photo!..

Of course, there's lots of partying going on. That's Robert (THE VELVET VAMPIRE and THE DEEP) Tessier as what else, an arm wrestling bartender!

Adrian has another episode at the next shoot and wraps this garbage bag full of rattlers around this gal's pretty face! He then goes home and has a talk with himself!

Decent make up job here as the cops pull the dead rattlers out of the bag!

It's wild 'n' weird to watch James mud wrestle with a hot chick. Unfortunately, after his career, James has ended up on National and California state sex offender registries.

DICK TRACY - "And The Dirty-Thug Known As Splitface" (1945)

Welcome to World Class Wrasslin' Wednesday with the spotlight this week on one of the masters of the art, and one Helluva nice guy,  the wrestler known as Iron Mike Mazurki!

Also known as "Dick Tracy, Detective," you used to be able to find movies like this for 99 cents down at the Dollar Store, but now with today's modern technology, all you have to do is go to the amazing Internet Archive and download yourself a copy for nothing! Life is good!

The coolest thing is that "Dick Tracy" is actually a pretty good movie, and clocking in at just one minute past an hour doesn't give the people who made it any time to mess around, so it's just pretty much 61 minutes of thrilling action and adventure!

People are always longing for the good olde days, but it wasn't even safe to walk the streets alone back in 1945!

And whatever you do, don't look back! Just to show you what a tough guy Splitface is, his first victim is an innocent school teacher!

This is possibly the first known reference to rap in Pop Culture!

Once the word gets out, the newspaper headlines go completely insane!!

This movie might be called "Dick Tracy," but Splitface really shines as the star, and maybe that's because to me Morgan Conway doesn't really look that much like Dick Tracy! He does a good job in the role, but his look just wasn't quite right! The following year Morgan also played Dick Tracy in "Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball!"

Now Anne (ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY) Jeffreys on the other hand, is perfect in the role of Tess Trueheart! In fact, she's downright smokin' hot! Anne is even going to be in a film coming out next year called "Le Grand Jete!"

So here he is, big Mike Mazurki as the evil Splitface! Just in case you didn't know, Mike was a very intelligent and witty man, but being 6' 5" and looking mean as Hell and intimidating, he got typecast as bad guy bruisers for years, and was very successful at it!! Mike continued to wrestle even through the years that he was acting!

Is this a great shot of Splitface sneaking up on Tess Trueheart or not?

Does this look like the face of a man who graduated with a Bachelor's Degree at the top of his class? In 1965 Mike established a non-profit fraternal organization called the "Cauliflower Alley Club" that has honored wrestlers everywhere, gives out scholarships and has a benevolent fund that helps out retired wrestlers!  In the last 14 years, they have given out over $40,000.00 to anybody associated with wrestling who is in need! Anybody can become a member for a small donation, and if you're interested,  you can look them up at The Cauliflower Alley Club!!

Dick Tracy and Tess Trueheart make for quite a handsome couple! Other characters appearing with Dick Tracy over the years haven't been as lucky! Check out some of these names: B.O. Plenty, Frizzletop, Lottie Latte, Acres O'Reilly, Blowtop Jones, Breathless Mahoney, Chuck Hole, Gravel Girtie, Habe Corpussle, Hammerhead, Measles Enog, Miss Rinkles, Piggy Butcher, Piston Puss, and Wormy Marron! And that's just barely scratching the surface!

Great name for a mortuary! The author and illustrator of the Dick Tracy comic strip was Chester Gould, a man with a wild imagination! Dick Tracy premiered October 4th, 1931 in the Chicago Tribune, and even though Chester Gould is long gone, Dick Tracy still continues to run in newspapers all over the world!

Mr. Deathridge is going to need a mortician himself after Splitface got done with him!!

Look at those amazing angles! The awesome cinematography was done by Frank Redman!

Splitface tangos with Tess Trueheart!

And then he tangles with Dick Tracy!

Mike Mazurki's own cauliflower ear is the centerpiece of the iconic logo for the Cauliflower Alley Club!! May his memory live on forever!

CRUCIBLE OF HORROR / Abacus Productions - 1971

It's another Mayhem Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. We gots a film starring the great Michael Gough, in fact, Michael's real life son and daughter play his son and daughter in it! This is the only film Abacus ever produced, and, they did the special effects for LIFE OF BRIAN. By the early seventies, seems like a lot of the horror films just started going with sadistic bastards for main characters. It does have atmosphere. Some of the keywords for this flick are.. Back from the dead, dead body in car trunk, daughter kills father, riding crop, stolen money, murder of father by mother and strict father. The tagline reads... The nightmare never ends!

Eegah!! sent us over a soundclip that sums everything up real swell, sooooo, you can push that big red 'GO' button there next to the the little green 'KAPUT' dial, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... CRUCIBLE OF HORROR!

Michael was in many great British horror films like... HORROR OF DRACULA, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, KONGA, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, BLACK ZOO, DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, THE SKULL, THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE, BERSERK and TROG! Okay, TROG wasn't that great... He died on my birthday in 2011 at the grand old age of 94!

His wife paints portraits of her sadistic bastard husband.

It's all in the eyes you know!

The daughter is into the occult and mixes up a special drink for her father dearest!

Wifey has had enough of the abuse and takes matters into her own hands with a freakin' shotgun at point blank!

You never realize how heavy a body is until after it's deceased and have to move it around!

They have to put the body in a crate, get the crate into the small station wagon, drive far into the hills and dump it down a ravine... PHEW!!!

The girls are paranoid as crap, Michael makes his way back to the land of the living and makes their lifes an ever-lasting Hell!!