NEW YORK CHIAMA SUPERDRAGO - Benedetto Ghiglia - "Secret Agent, Super Dragon" (1966)

Hey everybody, welcome to The Dungeon Secret Agent Super Dragon Saturday Night Special! Most folks have a tendency to poke fun at movies like this and "Agent For H.A.R.M."  but I don't get it! "Secret Agent Super Dragon" is a great movie, and I'm here to tell you why! Okay, maybe it's a little ridiculous, but what the Hell? It's a movie, it's fun and it's very entertaining!

First off, let's thank the people over at "Sinister Cinema" for keeping movies like this alive! There have been so many that have slipped through the cracks, and are all but impossible to find, thank goodness somebody makes these funky old movies available at a very affordable price! "Sinister Cinema" rocks!!

Super Dragon is played by Ray Danton, one of the weirdest actors you'll ever see on the big screen! The last time we saw Ray, he was playing the character of "Lucky, The Inscrutable!"  There's just something about the way he delivers his lines that makes him hard to take serious, but you gotta love him just the same!  Super Dragon is able to go into a deep meditative sleep where he cuts off all outside influences, a talent that will come to good use later on in the movie!

I would have given Tabonga's left root to be able to interview Ray Danton, but he passed away way too early at the age of 60 back in 1992! Super Dragon's cell phone was obviously ahead of it's time!

Time to head on over to the bowling alley in the little college town of Fremont, Michigan. There's been some weird shenanigans going on there, and all the agents that have gone there to investigate have ended up in the local morgue! They need Super Dragon to come out of retirement and get to the bottom of this mess!

Here's about two minutes and one second of some toe tapping music from the bowling alley scene that proves that white girls can actually dance! Composer Benedetto Ghiglia just passed away last year at the age of 90! Benedetto was also responsible for the music in some swell flicks like "Adiós Gringo," "Psychout For Murder," and "Pigpen!"

Ray, what are you doing, man? The first thing you learn in film class is don't wave at the camera!

CATFIGHT!!!

That guy to Ray's left, your right, is obviously double F'd big time!!

Super Dragon can't pursue this case any further without some technical assistance, so he arranges for his old pal "Baby Face" to be sprung from Sing Sing prison temporarily! Baby Face was played by American born Jess Hahn, who was basically never in any films made in the U.S. but was revered in France and Italy for his film and TV work!

Super Dragon has a weird habit of taking cigarettes from people around him, taking a drag or two, and then putting them out!

Super Dragon does some major ass kicking when it is necessary! This set might just possibly be the grungiest looking place I've ever seen in a movie!

Seems to me that Cinematographer Antonio Secchi had an incredible sense of humor!

The evil henchmen seal up Super Dragon in a coffin and sink it to the bottom of the sea, but thanks to that meditative state I spoke about earlier, he is able to maintain long enough for Baby Face to find him with the aid of a miniature submarine, and get the coffin back to the surface safely!

Here's a couple of beauties for you, Margaret (Venus In Furs) Lee as Cynthia Fulton, and Marisa (Danger: Diabolik) Mell as Charity Farrel!

It's a big masked charity auction, and nobody suspects Super Dragon will be there, because they all think he's dead!!

Cynthia is almost forced to take an electric bath, but Super Dragon shows up just in the nick of time and turns the tables on the evil bastards!

Just simply a fine portrait of the man of the hour, Ray Danton!!!

Always the lady's man, after the case is over, Super Dragon decides to remain in Amsterdam and familiarize himself a little better with some of the local colour!!

GHOST CHASERS / Monogram Pictures - 1951

Welcome to Friday the 14th with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. We gots another in a long line of Bowery Boys adventures, this time they're chasing ghosts, not to be confused with SPOOK BUSTERS from 1946. I collected some good Bowery Boys titles off TCM recently.

Eegah!! sent over this fun lil' soundclip from the flick, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there next to the atomic glowing skeleton, NOW, Rufus The Gnat! Here's our audio offering for... GHOST CHASERS!

In this story, Whitey decides to become a fake medium and the boys almost give Louie a heart attack while trying to chisel some money out of him. Louie's last name is... Dumbrowsky!

Slip gives Louie's waitress a lesson in diction, as heard in the soundclip!

There's the guest ghost on the chandelier, Edgar Alden Franklin Smith, played by the very popular actor, Lloyd Corrigan. He also has 27 writing credits and 13 directing credits, and can be seen in THE GHOST BREAKERS, MEXICAN SPITFIRE'S BABY, CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, TARZAN'S DESERT MYSTERY, SHE-WOLF OF LONDON, THE GHOST GOES WILD, THE BRIDE GOES WILD, SON OF PALEFACE and my favorite, THE BOWERY BOYS MEET THE MONSTERS.

Slip and the gang put the screws to this old hag fake medium who's trying to bilk some big bucks out of their neighbor, Mrs. Parelli, who lost her loving son in Korea.

Sach hooks up with the pilgrim ghost for a few rounds of laffs!

Everyone except Sach is told to go down the ladder into a small room and wait there. Then, the bad guys start filling it with water, to drown them like rats!!

Edgar drives Sach to a telephone booth in the jalopy, he calls Louie's waitress to bring help. Luckily, that's a cop there, so, they head out to the spooky old location to assist the gang.

The bad guys use hypnotism to stop the gang dead in their tracks after they go on the attack!

Thing is though, Sach has Edgar on his side and is actually too stupid to be hypnotized!

ROMA CONTRO ROMA - Roberto Nicolosi - "War Of The Zombies" (1964)

Welcome to the Wednesday War Of The Gods, this week featuring The Zombies versus Rome!

"Roma Contra Roma" is kind of a sword and sandal version of "The Walking Dead!" Basically, all zombies are the same, they're real pains in the ass, and quite difficult to get rid of! It doesn't matter what era, living dead creatures are just a bitch to deal with, and they're really hard to kill since they are already dead!

In the third grade, when they asked little Aderbad to draw a picture of his girlfriend, they knew immediately they had a problem!

But when he brought out his new line of jewelry and made a fortune with it, all the skeptics changed their tune!

Pretty dang cool set for a cheap Italian movie! The crazy ass music composed by Dungeon Kingpin Roberto Nicolosi is equally impressive! I give it a 6 out of 7 on the weirdness scale!!

Please kind sir, I beg for your forgiveness, and swear my allegiance to the lord of lords, and the king of kings forever, and then some!

The star of this thing is Drew Barrymore's estranged Dad, John Drew Barrymore as the evil Aderbad! John's career was in turmoil in Hollywood, so he went to Italy to give it a second chance! Here's a weird story I read on IMDB! John's Dad had wanted to be cremated, but it never happened because of weird sanctions by the Catholic church, so in 1980, him and his son, John went and dug up Dad's body to take it to a crematorium, but air had leaked into the sealed casket, and the body was stinking rotten and basically fell apart! From what I read, it was a gross out! John passed away back in 2004!

Can you just imagine how much cash it would take to make a low budget movie like this today!

There are plenty of odd characters in this movie, like this olde hag!

Time for the legions of the dead to waken and go about their sordid tasks!

When the soldiers turn into zombies and attack, everything turns into technicolor!

 Aderbad gets what he has coming to him no doubt!

When that happens, the cyclopian idol goes up in flames, and everything goes to Hell in a handbag real fast!!

BURN, WITCH, BURN / Independent Artists - 1962

It's Black Magic Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. I remember when this movie came out because of Famous Monsters but did not see it at the theater because of my fixation on sci-fi and rubber monsters. The story's about a British college professor who discovers that his wife, unknown to him, has been practicing black magic. He forces her to destroy her assortment of magical charms and protective devices, thinking that she's just being a foolish girl. Then, the fun really begins, from a novel by Fritz Lieber, Jr.

Eegah!! sent over a fun little soundclip from this movie for our listening pleasure, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there next to the atom powered voodoo doll, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... BURN, WITCH, BURN!

Peter Wyngarde plays college professor Norman Taylor who's skeptical of the occult in his teachings. Peter played Klytus in the 1980 version on FLASH GORDON and was Timanov in four episodes of DOCTOR WHO.

Janet Blair plays his wife, Tansy. For years, she's been practicing magic without his knowledge, but, now that he knows, he wants her to get rid of all the evidence and end her affair with magic. Most of it ends up burned in the fireplace, an interesting assortment of items she has there.

Had to show their black cat, it's annoyed at Norman for some reason. I have two black cats, mama Boo and baby Moon, lucky me!

The original British title for this film is NIGHT OF THE EAGLES, and, there's a damn good reason for that! This shot is at the college campus where the professor teaches.

Strange things are beginning to happen to Norman, making him rethink his position on the power of the occult! Speaking of the occult, I was lucky enough to get to see CURSE OF THE DEMON at the theater in 1957, it was awesome!!

Then, Tansy seems to be hypnotized, she takes a bus and Norman thinks she wants to commit suicide by drowning, so, he follows her to their beach home. He barely saves her after a nightmare of deadly events.

But, she seems to still be in a trance...

Norman is desperate to get to the bottom of his problem, by chance, he listens to a recording that sheds some light on the subject. Him and Tansy have been set up by another witch, Flora Carr, an associate of Norman's at the college. Margaret Johnston plays Flora, she is actually a pretty scary character because she's very good at conjuring! Margaret was also in THE PSYCHOPATH.

To prove her point, she starts Norman's house on fire as Tansy sleeps.

Norman runs away and is then attacked by the huge eagle after Flora conjures it up from the stone eagle overlooking the campus! Some justice at the end when the heavy stone bird falls off it's perch and lands squarely on Flora!!!