THE GIRL HUNTERS - Mickey Spillane IS Mike Hammer! (1963)

Well, some of us made it to 2015, now let's just see if we an get through it! Life ain't getting any easier so it's good to have tough guy, good guy around like Mikey Spillane when you're in a pinch!

This title card tells it all! It's a Colorama Feature, but "The Girl Hunters" is a black and white film! All future bets are off, and anything goes from here on out, and justifiably so! The snappy title theme was created by Phillip (Space Master X-7, Weasel While You Work) Green! Phillip also composed the music for 15 episodes of "The Huckleberry Hound Show, and 41 episodes of "Quick Draw McGraw!"

Indeed he is! Indeed he is! This is the reason I wanted to see "The Girl Hunters" so much! It's not often that you get to see a real writer, not an actor, acting out his own character the way he wrote it!

Frank Morrison Spillane was a rough and tumble guy, and his main character Mike Hammer was just as tough or tougher! Here's a couple of quick facts you might not know about Mickey Spillane!  He started his career writing super hero comic books before he starting writing novels! His books have sold over 200 million copies world wide! When he got out of the Army, Mickey worked with the Barnum and Baily circus as a trampoline artist, a knife thrower, and the guy who got shot out of a cannon! He worked undercover for the FBI! Later in life, he became a Jehovah's Witness!

"The Girl Hunters" starts off with private detective Mike Hammer just starting to come out of a seven year drinking binge caused by the mysterious disappearance of his secretary/lover Velda! Even after he stops drinking, he still always has time for a Pabst Blue Ribbon or two!

Mike Hammer's got good taste in cars! This T-Bird looks so perfect that it looks like a Matchbook toy car!

And what do you know? Here's the Barbie Doll! Shirley Eaton two years before "Goldfinger" as Laura Knapp, the wife of a recently murdered Senator! Mike Hammer has some hard questions for her!

A lot of the time he's delivering his lines, Mickey has a pained expression on his face like this!

A lot of the people that Mike Hammer knows start dying off....

....One at a time!

Great bar scene! So what are you doing here Gringo? You are not welcome here!

I'd like you to meet my little brother Ice-P!

Uh, No thanks, you answered my questions just fine!

There's always time to have another beer! In real life, Mickey Spillane didn't drink any hard liquor or smoke, but he would have an occasional beer! Mike Hammer, on the other hand, was a different story!

Mickey/Mike has a pensive moment!

Mike and Laura have been getting along pretty swell, but just before they are ready to go to dinner, Mike finds a shotgun with the barrel shoved down into the dirt of a large potted plant! He explains to Laura in no uncertain terms, that if the shotgun was plugged up with dirt, it would explode in her pretty face, and that would be it!

Well, I'm sorry, I'm just a girl!

Mike Hammer is so pissed off that he cancels their dinner date! He doesn't want to eat with somebody that stupid!

Down at the local news stand while picking up his favorite magazine, it hits Mike in the face like a mackerel, and he puts a whole bunch of pieces of the puzzle together in his mind!

After almost getting killed, it's time to head back and talk to Laura with a whole new set of questions!

Laura's got a different answer for Mike this time!

While it's not as good as "Kiss Me Deadly" by a long shot, no matter what, it's fun to see an author act out a character he created on his own terms! Mickey Spillane passed away in the year 2006 at the age of 88, and he'll never be replaced!  It's kind of hard to imagine him in this last shot, walking up to the door and offering up a copy of "The Watchtower!"

THE WAR IN SPACE / Toho Company - 1977

It's time to take a trip into space to fight a war with invaders from Venus! Other movies involving Venus include QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, STRANGER FROM VENUS, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS and FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS.

Here's a sound clip from this flick, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button located there by our grounded space ship, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula!.. Here's... THE WAR IN SPACE!

The story starts with a meeting at the space command, invaders from Venus are on Earth and have started attacking certain locations... Cool photo!

The good guys chase down an invader and find this weird mask he was wearing!

Professor Takigawa has constructed a special space craft, the Gohten, to confront the numerous little attacking flying saucers from Venus.

The crew gets a transmission from the decked out Venusian leader while they're in space.

Destination Venus!.. The Gohten barely makes it safely to the surface of Venus after a wild ride through the hot sulfuric atmosphere!

Here's the token American fighter, Jimmy, as he zeroes in on the Venusian command center.

This is pretty weird, they fire the rockets out of what looks like the giant bullet cylinder of a revolver! Photo shows one rocket just appearing before it streaks out of the chamber.

The guys from Earth explore the surface and eventually find the command center, actually a spaceship protected by a pink force field.

Is this a surreal picture or what?!.. Welcome to X-ville!!

Check it out, they even throw in this big old bull monster guard for fun! Wheeeee!....

Well anyway, the two ships battle it out and it looks like defeat for the Gohten. But, it has an ace up its nose, a super bomb that can destroy a planet! It strikes the Venusian ship and it slams into a volcano! Game over, man!

The Gohten and crew safely make it into space just before Venus explodes to oblivion from the super bomb... You know, WTF?!! I guess we didn't really need that many planets!

Tune in Wednesday when we're back with more insanity, here at The Dungeon!

CATACOMBS - Carlo Martelli - "The Woman Who Wouldn't Die" (1965)

To kick off 2015, tonight's feature is a twisted little tale of almost pre-code comics style from 1965 called "The Woman Who Wouldn't Die," which is a pretty descriptive title!

The original title was "Catacombs," but that's a much more obscure reference that you would really have to see the movie to understand since I'm not going to take the time to explain it! When I put this movie on and saw this title card, I thought this movie would probably be a real sleeper, but I was quite surprised! This is a portrait of Georgina Cookson as the lean and mean shrewd businesswoman Ellen Garth!! Not much else horrific in Georgina's résumé, she spent most of her time on dramatic TV shows, but she was on two episodes of "The Prisoner!"

Gary Merrill is Ellen Garth's husband Raymond! His job is mostly just to do whatever she tells him, and she likes to tell him what to do a lot, so it's a full time job!

The lovely Jane (Island Of The Burning Damned) Merrow is Ellen Garth's niece Alice Taylor! She has no parents and has just come home after being away at school for a couple of years! She's a lot more grown up than Raymond remembers! One of Jane's earliest roles was one of the chorus girls in the 1962 Herbert Lom version of "Phantom Of The Opera! Never to far away from the camera, Jane's in a film scheduled to come out some time this year!

This is a nice cast ensemble shot that includes that fourth main member of this story, Neil McCallum as Richard Corbett, Ellen Garth's secretary! Neil was in "Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors," and was the voice of Dr. Ray Pierce in "Thunderbirds Are Go!" Neil's career was cut way too short at the age of 46 when he died from a brain Hemorrhage! What the Heck!?

Despite Ellen Garth's pleas that Alice move in with them, she gets her own flat
 instead! Alice is also an aspiring artiste, and thinks she'd like to do a bust of Raymond!

Ellen Garth's got a bad wheel, and when the pain gets too bad, she is able to put herself into a trance!

Working on that bust has caused Raymond and Alice to spend a little too much time together, so after coming home from a late drinking and eating bout one night, things start to heat up between the two of them!

BUSTED!!!

"Raymond, I've got soap in my eye, and I can't find a towel."

Well, Raymond has had enough! As hairy and demonic looking as Gary Merrill can be, I think he would have been a good candidate for the role of  Dr. Jekyll at some point!

I rest my case!! Gary Merrill had a great career that included 5 episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," a stint on "Twilight Zone" in the episode called "Still Valley," and the "The Outer Limits" episode titled "The Human Factor!"

So here's the deal! Raymond and Richard Corbett had a plan to kill Ellen Garth, and split the inheritance money between them, but when Raymond lost it, and killed Ellen prematurely, he screwed up the whole deal! Richard found an out of work actress who was a ringer for Ellen! She is to go on vacation to Italy, and as a known bad driver, she is going to have an accident on some curvy country road! I don't think this gal got paid enough for this role!

Richard brutally murders the actress, douses the car in petrol and sets in on fire, and it's all set to the only swingin' music in the whole movie! The composer here is Carlo Martelli, who out of a career of ten credits, six had titles like "Witchcraft," "The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb,""Who Killed The Cat?," "Prehistoric Women," and "IT!"

Raymond is terribly distraught when he gets the news about Ellen's car crash!!

Now that Ellen is dead, Ramond and Alice are equal partners as far as the inheritance is concerned, and then everything starts to go haywire! The electricity goes out and there's something creeping around outside!

Left to himself, Raymond sees that the body of his dead wife has become re-animated!

He backs up while at the same time emptying his pistol into the apparition, goes too far and falls out the window to a certain death!

Now it's up to you to figure out the who & why? "Catacombs!" Why wouldn't this damn woman die?