THE HAUNTED STRANGLER - Buxton Orr - Jean Kent - "Enjoy The View" (1958)

Not to toot my own horn, but Beep, Beep!! Has this not been a great month of titles or what? I learn things daily around here, and sometimes I have to admit it's truly amazing, and speaking of amazing, tonight we've got another delight from the crown prince of the double entendre, probably one of the nicest guys who ever inhabited this planet, and also a master of the macabre, Boris Karloff, in the 1958 feature "The Haunted Strangler"!!!

Originally released as "Grip of the Strangler," it all starts with a murderer's execution!

The lovely Yvonne Buckingham is the uncredited whore in attendance, and what a dance it would be to attend to!! Yvonne was one of the many class acts who appeared in the early 60's "Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre" TV show that I forget to mention half the time! Cue the wolf whistle!!

With an exuberant crowd like this, it really makes a guy kind of nostalgic for a good old fashioned public execution!! Yeehaw!!!

Oh, Shit!! What if he wasn't guilty of the crime!!!

I defy you to tell me this isn't in tribute to "La Mort de Marat," the classic 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David!!

Cut to 20 years later, and our hero Boris at the age of 71, still looking great, and all prepared for what would be his first shot at the role of what is basically the "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" storyline! Boris is an author who thinks the hanged man was possibly innocent, and is bent on proving it!

So freakin' Boris goes and digs up the guy's grave, and finds this knife, and............

.....the next damn thing you know, well, I guess he wasn't so innocent after all, because his spirit has overtaken the kindly Boris and turned him into a hideous and ruthless killing machine!!

Meanwhile back at Boris's favorite hangout, "The Judas Hole," there's a party going on, and the wine is flowing like water!!

Hey, what kind of movie is this, anyway? How many degrees? Vera Day as Pearl gets doused with wine by this drunken fool, months earlier she was Sally Norton in "The Womaneater!"

Now that's what I call entertainment!!!

Meanwhile backstage, all the girls are talking about the killer on the loose!!

All right, now it's time for the headliner, Jean Kent as the marvelous Cora Seth to come out and do her song and dance schtick! "Cora, Cora, all the boys adore A," Man, that thing will get embedded in your mind as bad as "Hey Mickey!" The musical credits go out to Buxton Orr who we've raved about before for his work on "Corridors Of Blood," First Man Into Space," Dr. Blood's Coffins" and "Fiend Without A Face" but Jean Kent gets the award for her Coraformance!

For a minute there, I almost forgot this was a horror movie, Boris's personality swings are just getting worse, and he literally crashes the party, and the show at "The Hole!"

They were trying to figure out how to do Boris's makeup cheaply when he himself came up with the idea of simply removing his dentures! What a sport!!

Going from having a pretty good time to no fun at all, Boris takes the most extreme turn for the worst and even kills his own loving wife!!

Pretty bawdy and wild for 1958, and further proof positive that Boris Karloff, despite any present day claptrap, will always be known as one of the best actors of any era, period!! Great movie!!

ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU / Columbia Pictures - 1957

Welcome to Friday Frights with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon! Tonite we gots a lil' flick that seems to get forgotten about, so, we're gonna remind you now...

I mean, it's even got Allison Hayes in it for Hell's sake! It was originally double billed with another Columbia picture, THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE.

The story goes like this... A crew of sailors went down with with their ship 60 years earlier with a treasure of diamonds onboard. A legend says that the treasure is now guarded on the ocean floor by the dead sailors, who are now zombies! But, a group of treasure hunters don't believe in zombies (or, ghosts), so, they continue with their plans to search for the fortune.

One tagline reads... "ZOMBIES OF THE OCEAN DEEPS!"

The music is by an uncredited Mischa Bakaleinikoff, one of our favorite composers! What an awesome guy, he even had 458 Music Dept. credits besides his composing credits! Here's a few movies he composed music for... THE SPIDER'S WEB, THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK, CRY OF THE WEREWOLF, RHYTHM ROUND-UP, THE THIRTEENTH HOUR, DEVIL SHIP, THE DEVIL'S HENCHMAN, MULE TRAIN and SPOOKS!

Let us now bring in that fuzzy lil' freek and Dungeon helper, Ralphie The Tarantula! Whowray for Ralphie The Tarantula!.. He's standing next to the big red 'GO' button, and, ready to start our Eariffic Earclip for ... ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU!

I think them words speak for theirselves!

Gene Roth plays Sam, the chauffeur. We fondly remember Gene's performances in SHE DEMONS, THE SPIDER, THE GIANT LEECHES and THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES. He ended up with 267 acting credits.

Sam plows over a zombie standing in the middle of the road and Miss Jan Peters wants to know, why?.. The film was shot at the LA County Arboretum & Botanic Garden! The zombie he ran over was played by Karl 'Killer' Davis!

Here's the gang of fortune seekers. It's the fifties, so, you needed to be drunk most of the time... Cheers!

Allison plays flirt, Mona Harrison, and is married to her wealthy husband there, George.

Marjorie Eaton plays Grandmother Peters, the keeper of the legend. You'll best remember her as the old biddy who gets the cat's brain in the super weird, MONSTROSITY! She was also in NIGHT TIDE and THE THREE STOOGES IN ORBIT.

Man, striped suits always cause those weird looking morays!

Morris Ankrum, playing Dr. Eggert, was in soooo many great horror and sci-fi films, check this list out... ROCKETSHIP X-M, FLIGHT TO MARS, RED PLANET MARS, INVADERS FROM MARS, EARTH vs THE FLYING SAUCERS, KRONOS, BEGINNING OF THE END, THE GIANT CLAW, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, HALF HUMAN, CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, TOWER OF LONDON and X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES!!!.. We salute you, Morris!

Great part here, worth seeing just for this! A zombie comes in the house, picks a guy up over his head and throws him into the wall, hard!.. Looks totally awesome!!

Nice grouping of walking dead!

A flare gun can come in real handy when confronted by those zombie critters from the sea!

Mona joins the guys on the boat for the first dive for the treasure. Of course, Jeff Clark, played by Gregg Palmer, has a few puffs on a smoke before putting on his diving helmut. Gregg played the radio announcer in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS and was in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US!

Later, Mona falls under a trance after being attacked by the monsters.

She's quarantined in her bedroom, kept there by the flames of candles.

A little zombie on man action here! Ray 'Crash' Corrigan plays one of the sailors. Remember, Ray played IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE!

Dr. Eggert grabs the chest of diamonds from Jeff, which now makes the zombies really go berserk!

Love this part... One zombie tries to board the boat when Cap'n Sneaky there pops up and puts a torch in his face! A second later, he quickly bails back into the sea from where he sprung... Now, that's how you handle a zombie!!

Tune in tomorrow for Saturday Shock to see what old Eegah!! has in store for us, here at The Dungeon!

PAN SI DONG - Fu-ling Wang - "The Cave Of Silken Web" (1967)

It's a Wacky, Weird, and WTF Wednesday courtesy of those zany cats, The Shaw Brothers, you've got to be ready for all the wrong reasons when you venture into "The Cave Of Silken Web", so let's Run Run!!

Here they are, guys, it's another female dominated society, a little smaller than some lost South American stronghold, it's a cave, an orifice that signifies the strength and power of womanhood, you know, like Deep!!

"Sisters be doing it!" One by one, here's Angela Yu Chien as Third Sister. Usually going by just Chien Yu, Angela was also in "The Oily Maniac," "Killer Elephants," and "That's Adultery" and was considered to be part of the Shaw Bros. Bombshell Trinity!

Next up is Lia Liang Hua as Elder Sister, the "Temptress of a Thousand Faces!"

How bout a big round of applause for Tien Meng of "Axing of the Coffin" fame??

That brings us to Shirley Huang who among her 42 titles was in films with names like "The Godfather Of Hong Kong," and "Deaf Mute Heroine."

Next in line is swordswoman Helen Ma from "Royal Tramp 2," and "Nine Girls And A Ghost!"

Don't forget about Shen Yi of "Angel Strikes Again" and "Killer Darts" fame!

And last but by no means least, presenting Yu Ching who was also in "Monkey Goes West," and "The Dragon Creek!" All together, these seven gals have got a lot of collective footage under their sashes!!

And here they are for one more encore, the Seven Sisters, Yes, indeed, the Seven Demon Bitches from Hell in all their glory!!!

Just in case you really wanted to know what's going on, "The Cave Of Silken Web" is the third installment out of four, in the Shaw Bros. version of the classic novel "Journey To The West," where the monk Tripitaka or Xuánzàng is traveling with his three guardians, The Monkey King, Pigsy, and Sandy!

After a big musical number at the beginning of the flick, the spider girls settle down, and find out that Xuánzàng is cruising around their area! Well, it's a well known fact with the girls that if they eat Xuánzàng's flesh, they will live on forever through eternity! It's at this point you start wondering what kind of a movie is this? Is it a kid's movie? Is it a comedy/horror/fantasy film? Even after watching it, you'll probably still be wondering!

The spider demon girls capture Xuánzàng, and take him to their lair! Chow Lung Cheung aka Zhou Long Zhang is phenomenal as The Monkey King! The girls and the guys have all kinds of krazy powers, and they can also change into each other or other people or become invisible on a whim! Very difficult to deal with!

Time to send in the second string!

In order to keep The Monkey King out, the girl demons use their Spidey powers to seal off the entrance with electric webs!

Then they throw this evil lookin' dude at you, just to complicate things, so he can change into a normal looking guy and become Third Sister's lover!!(His existence also allows Monkey King to slip into the cave unseen when Third Sister lets him in!)

Sandy and Pigsy were also captured along with Xuánzàng somewhere along the line, and at this point, they are being deceived again, but think they are being saved by Bodhisattva! Xuánzàng was played by Ho Fan who after a few films left the Shaw Brothers in 1969, and started over as a director! Sandy was played by Tin Sam, and Pigsy, probably the strangest of them all, was played by Paang Paang or Peng Peng, depending on who is writing or what you're reading!!

Wow! Mr. Fu-ling Wang wasn't fooling around when he was composing the music to some 160 movies, including all time classics, "Fists Of Fury," "Naked Love," "One Armed Boxer," "The Bod Squad," "The Rat Catcher," and "The Flying Guillotine" just to give you a smattering of the man's work!

When they are outside the cave, anything goes, and some of the shots are amazing! I think the cinematography by Kuo-Hsiang Lin deserves an extra large round of applause!

Good prevails, evil fails! "May Buddha bless you!!!