Welcome to Friday Night Drive-In with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Tonite's offering is a Mexican production with a mostly Mexican cast and crew, but, it was filmed in English, then dubbed into Spanish for Mexican cinemas!! This title is actually the original version. The Mexican title is THE MANSION OF MADNESS...
It takes awhile to figure out what's going on, but, the inmates of an insane asylum have taken over the institution, they've imprisoned the doctors and staff, and put into play their own ideas of how the place should be run! I love this movie, it has my highest recommendation!
The music is by Nacho Méndez, which reminds me, I'm hungry! Nacho had 31 composing credits with titles like EL TOPO!!, HOT SNAKE, KATY CATERPILLER, THE KILLER TRAILER, KATY MEETS THE ALIENS and KING OF THE TAXI DRIVERS.
Letz bring in our littlest Dungeon helper and button pusher, the one and only, lil'...
Rufus The Gnat!! Rufus sez heez redi 2 start our Eariffic Soundclip, so, push the big red 'GO' button located in or about sector Q,
now, Rufus!! Here's...
DR. TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON!
The story starts with a group of travelers on their way to visit an isolated mental asylum. This is awesome, the carriage driver moves a tree that's blocking the roadway,
all by himself! 
The atmosphere created looks great.
Whatever place this is in Mexico, it's absolutely perfect for a film like this... Bizarroburg!
This still is so amazing, just soak it in! The dude wearing the hypno wheel is the Cult Priest.
Here's the Chicken Man you hear in the soundclip.
Buck, buck...
Here's the part where the viewer starts to realize that something's really not right! It's unnerving when the happy goofs at the top of this very tall building begin to make the rope ladder sway as the visitor is climbing down, and, the guy still has to drop about 20 feet just to get off the thing! Meanwhile, everyone's laughing their asses off! You know, it was just a childish prank! Ha ha...
No one laughs more than Dr. Maillard, the one showing their guest around. If he looks familiar, it's because he played Dr. Karol in SANTO IN THE WAX MUSEUM and Mario in NEUTRON vs DR. CARONTE.
Nurses and staff are all now exotic slave artists and actors for the new leaders of the nuthouse!
The guest, Gaston LeBlanc, makes an escape out his bedroom window at night.
This reminds me, Eegah!! and I used to pick grapes during the summers in the early sixties! Grapes and gurlz
always go together, no?!
Having escaped into the woods, Gaston discovers that it's filled with even more crazy people!
Maillard's helper likes to tease the people that are now on the other side of the cage!
It's time for the orgy, so, bring in Lady Godiva!.. Okay, sound the invisible trumpets!!
We're not crazy,
you're crazy!!..
Looks like a giant chicken coop for people! And, it probably smells a lot worse than chickens in there!!
The helper gets caught and knocked unconscious by the angry prisoners, then, they get the key from his possession.
All Hell breaks loose in Hell!
Who else but a beautiful woman to end all the fun!
**Starting tomorrow, The Dungeon will be posting each and every day during the month of October, celebrating our 2011 Countdown To Halloween, so, get ready for that!! We've been saving up some special treats just for this occasion, you will not believe some of the things we have planned!
Boowah, everbloody!!
Welcome to the first day of the complete month of October and our version of the daily countdown homage to All Saints Day! Hit the Vinnie link on the right, and get a full list of all the other vampires, monsters and ghouls participating! There's no reason to be bored this time of the year!
"Rosin on the bow, and here we go....!" Let's get this Horror Shindig fired up with the rockin' "Munsters" episode that first aired on March 18, 1965 titled "Far Out Munsters"!!!!
The basic premise is the Munster family has rented out their house to a rock band for a week, and they in turn went to a Hotel, but it's all too bright and clean, so they decide to return home!
When the family returns home, it's like "Splish, Splash," and there's a huge party going on! They are greeted at the door by two party-goers, a bearded Zalman King and Sue Winton as The Girl!
The band that rented The Munster house was one of L.A.'s best rock bands of the 60's, and Eddie Munster's new favourite group, those garage rockers, The Standells! It's said that The Standells' name was derived from standing around booking agents offices looking for work!!
The Standells members in this incarnation were vocalist/keyboardist Larry Tamblyn, guitarist Tony Valentino, drummer Dick Dodd, and bassist Gary Lane! For some unknown reason, after having great hits like "Dirty Water," and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White," the band chose to do a tune called "Do The Ringo," and a Horrible Beatles' cover of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" on the show! Trying to cash in on that British Invasion I spose!
Tabonga likes to tell the story of how in the 90's, his band was playing at Valentino's Dirty Water cafe and their music was so unappreciated by the owner, that they were asked to leave and never come back!
At first the Munster family is put off by the whole affair, but then they start getting into it!
You just have to love the way hipsters were portrayed on TV back in the 60's! Rock and roll was coming on strong, but hipster ties were still with the 50's beat era! Too bad Maynard couldn't make the scene!
Kelton Garwood as "The Hermit" does some inspiring free form poetry! Kelton was in an episode of "The Twilight Zone" titled "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" as "The Tramp." Tired of being typecast as a bum, Kelton learned to ride a horse, and ended up on a lot of western TV series like "Gunsmoke" and "Rawhide" as colourful characters with handles like Percy Crump and Blackpowder Charley! 
Now it's Herman's turn to do some hilarious free verse!
All the crazy cats and kittens think Herman is the most furthest out! What a group! The blonde with the one-sided sunglasses is simply the best!
"Life is real, life is earnest, if you're cold, turn up the furnace!"
"Man, that cat is deep!"
As the party winds down, the multi-talented and glamorous Yvonne DeCarlo as Lily, sings a song and plays the harp. This episode was the only time Yvonne performed any music during the whole series!
Herman is so touched by Lily's performance that he is brought to tears!
Eddie ends up getting an autographed photo of the band, and Herman can now get a good night's sleep "knowing that the future of America is the hands of boys like these!"
As a special bonus, here are a couple of pictures you're not going to see anywhere else, loaned to us by one of our pals, writer guy Douglas McEwan, and taken during the taping of the 1966 Munsters TV Special "Marineland Carnival." The kid in the lower photo with Lily is Doug's boyhood buddy Richard! When he sent me these photos, Douglas lamented that there were originally three photos, but the one of Fred Gwynne and him, with Fred in FULL make-up, but NOT the costume, wearing a robe and with his right hand on Doug's shoulder, with a cigarette blazing away in it, has been lost to the ever shifting sands of time forever along with the whole special, but you can still see a commercial for it right HERE!
