THE MAD MAGICIAN - Arthur Lange/Emil Newman/Dr. Samuel Hoffman - "Spooky Theremin Theme" (1954)

"The Mad Magician" was an excellent outing for theremin maestro Dr. Samuel Hoffman, and added to the music of composers Arthur Lange and Emil Newman, it makes for some pretty creepy music!! Tra La La Boom De Ay!!!! 

 

That's what this movie is about anyway, Creepy!!! And I'm sure Dr. Hoffman should officially get credit for sending chills down more people's spines than anyone else on earth! Although he died in 1967, Dr. Samuel Hoffman's achievements will live on until time stands still!! 

 

Vincent Price looks downright debonair without the ever present moustache that we've all grown so accustomed to! Donald Randolph as Ross Ormond seems a bit perplexed by Vincent's charm! 

 

Here we have the always stunning Eva Gabor as Claire Ormond in what was possibly her only horror appearance until she portrayed Lisa Douglas on "Green Acres" and "Petticoat Junction." And for all of you people out there that can't read and thought this was about "Mad Magazine" Go Here for the official "Mad Magazine" site!!

UCHU DAISENSO (Battle In Outer Space) - Akira Ifukube - "See You Later" (1959)

One of the earlier outings for the Toho, Honda, Ifukube team, the credits are filled with more familiar names and faces. 

 

All the early Japanese Sci-Fi stuff is worth searching for, no matter what, there's always lots of excellent eye candy, and this music is just absolutely crazy! 

 

Last time we saw Yoshio Tsuchiya, he was a "Human Vapor." Here, in the role of Iwomura, he just wants to go kiss some girls!! 

 

In "Battle In Outer Space" we only get a brief glimpse of the jazz skills of Akira Ifukube, as some hot music is playing on the radio before the car gets transported through space and time. 

 

Pretty cool sequence of shooting through time conceptually pre-dating "2001" by almost a decade with drums from beyond anywhere! 

 

And so Iwomura ends up in traffic in the middle of the city and has no idea what happened, with a look on his face not too far removed from Dorothy in the "The Wizard Of Oz." 

 

This is just a great shot! period!! Nuff said!!

BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA - Duke Mitchell & Sammy Petrillo - "Deed I Do Too Soon" (1952)

Before Steroids, way before Milli Vanilli, going back before P.T. Barnum, and right to the very roots of civilization, there's always been, and there always will be people going for the cheap con! In 1952, one example was "Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla"!! 

 

In this case, you had a guy, Sammy Petrillo, who sometimes looked and acted more like Jerry Lewis than Jerry himself, and so, the people with the money added a suave partner, a fella named Duke Mitchell (who was a good sport, but a mere shadow of a character like Dean Martin), play it up big, add a 'big name' star like Bela Lugosi, make a cheap movie, and hope you dupe enough people into thinking it's the real thing. It really is quite uncanny!! 

 

Information dissemination was slow back in 1952, so it was easy to get away with cheap stunts like this. Even though Sammy was brought on originally as the character of a baby Jerry Lewis, Jerry couldn't take it, had his manager take on Duke & Sammy's career, and made sure they stayed out of work, so, at least one of Jerry's kids was left behind!! For a great and timeless interview, thanks to WFMU, go here:"Sammy Petrillo Speaks Out!"

 Duke Mitchell belts out "Deed I Do" composed by Walter Hirsch and Fred Rose, and later sings "Too Soon" by Nick Therry, to the lovely Charlita, who was playing the native girl Nona. Richard Hazard rounds out the musical score with some sweet island lounge music!!! 

 

Bela Lugosi looks quite poised and relxed throughout this whole film. 

 

I'm thinking he was pretty amused by the whole lookalike situation! Sammy has nothing but nice things to say about Bela in the interview! 

 

Pretty big budget really, I mean, at least they could afford two gorilla suits!!!

TORTURE GARDEN - Banks/Bernard/Martell - "I Hardly Knew The Man" (1967)

"Torture Garden" is a series of twisted tales of terror with a tricky ending brought to you by Amicus and director Freddie Francis. Out of the four stories, only one has cool jazzy music, and it is really excellent, like you could expect Art Farmer or Frank Strozier to step up and take a solo at any second. Composers Don Banks, and James Bernard get credit for the music, but Phillip Martell was involved too. By looking at his resume, I think James Bernard might be responsible for a lot of these swingin' scenes, having more of a jazz mentality in his compositions. 

 

And let's not forget to give a big thanks to the eye of Freddie Francis stalwart, Cinematographer Norman Warwick!! This is a great ferris wheel shot!!! 

 

Timothy Bateson as the carnival barker went on to be, among a bevy of other things, the voice of The Worm, The Four Guards, and Goblin in "Labyrinth", and has been seen recently as Kreacher in "Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix!" Go Timothy!!! What an awesome career! 

 

Here we have 60's bombshell Beverly Adams on the right, as Carla making a total mockery of her friendship with Millie played by Nicole Shelby! Nicole went on to be a regular on The Benny Hill TV Show. Beverly did some early surf movies before she went evil here & went on to marry Vidal Sassoon, had a reoccurring role in Dean Martin's Matt Helm movies as "Lovey Kravezit", and continued acting well into the 90's on TV and the movies!! 

 

This club is so cool, they even have a living snowglobe! Now if only a giant monster had reached in and grabbed it & shook it up, that would have been extra cool!! 

 

There's a lesson to be learned here, don't get drunk and start shooting off your big mouth, because you never know who is listening, Mike! 

 

Burgess Meredith does a splendid job as "My name is Diablo, Dr. Diablo!" 

 

"There's something going on, that I don't want to know anything about!!!"

GLI AMANTI D'OLTRETOMBA - Ennio Morricone - "Piano And Strings" (1965)

It's not often we get requests, but I must admit this was a little piece we let slip, I just didn't think it was that exciting the first time I heard it, but now after several listens, I'm glad 'anonymous' suggested we include it. 

 

This is really a gorgeous tune, and it's just long enough to not be annoying! Barbara has just sat down to play the piano and her lover is coming up the stairs. 

 

She's starting to get ready for the biggest mistake of her life!!! 

 

The Ennio Morricone Strings start to flourish right about the time they embrace!!! These were definitely happier times for them!!! 

 

And this all happens at the very beginning of this wicked movie! You have no idea what is in store, but to put it bluntly, it ain't pretty!! A true bloody horror classic!!!

KING OF KONG ISLAND (Eva, La Venere Selvaggia) - Roberto Pregadio - "The Evil Suite" (1968)

"Kong Island" was another one of those movies that had so much interesting music, that I really became fascinated by it, and now this will be the third and final presentation, something we call, "The Kong Island Evil Suite"! If listening to this segment doesn't make you want to see this movie, you are a zombie, and they will be able to control you with this brainwave device, just like they do with the monkeys! 

 

It's kinda mixed up, as you can tell from the original Italian title, the movie is really about Eva, the jungle girl........ 

 

.......but no, it's really about Burt/Brad, no, it's about the evil Albert Muller, played by the notorious Marc Lawrence, but where's Kong? 

 

Nice distorted buzzing guitar licks combined with kalimba, crazy wild percussion, and clever dialogue from the evil doctor like, "You'll have the honor to be the first man to be my slave, come on, come on!" and stuntman/muscleman Brad Harris, who had quite a successful carrer as director/actor in the golden age of 'Sword & Sandal' movies, later comes back with the oh, so clever retort, "Now, I'm gonna kill ya, I'm gonna give ya what's comin' to ya!" 

 

If you mess with good people like Brad Harris, this is what happens to your stuff!! Evil people and selfish drivers of the world, let this be a warning to you!! Wake up before it's too late!! 

 

We love this movie, put us on any island with some monkeys and some savage women, and we're ready to take on all the evil in the world!! It's fun to watch, the music by Roberto Pregadio is whatever is way beyond cool! We should all try and seek out some of the other films he composed for, because I'm sure they are all remarkable, although finding some of this stuff can be kind of like a scavenger hunt!!

GLI AMANTI D'OLTRETOMBA (The Faceless Monster) (Nightmare Castle) - Ennio Morricone - "Nightmare" (1965)

The real name of this film is Italian, "Gli Amanti D'oltretomba" and is an early outing, and one of a handful of films between "A Fist Full Of Dollars" and "For A Few Dollars More" that composer extraordinaire Ennio Morricone composed the music for on his way to almost 500 titles!!! Wow!!! He was just getting warmed up!!!! The film opens with this ponderous organ music that if it went on much longer, would start getting under your skin! Ennio's version of "Phantom Of The Opera" music!! 

 

The music in this "Nightmare Sequence" sounds like a cross between "2001" and "The Mask!" Yeah, it's that weird, and not to forget you still get more of those wraithlike soaring angelic voices from above, to top it all off!! 

 

This movie really needs to be seen to be fully appreciated, and since you have so many titles to choose from, it should be easy to find, unless you don't have a face!! 

 

I do believe Barbara is really starting to look like Morticia right about here, and her boyfriend, well, he's just sick!! 

 

Sometimes we obsess over Barbara Steele, but it's simple, she was the best!! 

 Tabonga and I were talking for about 20 minutes one night about this movie, I was telling him how I had just watched this movie called "The Faceless Monster" and that Barbara Steele was in it again, and that she looked good as a blonde, and he proceeds to tell me how he just saw another movie in which she was blonde called "Nightmare Castle." Well, when we started talking about how there was a scene in both movies where they get electrocuted on a bed, we knew something wasn't right.