LA PEAU DE TORPEDO - François de Roubaix - "Only The Cool" (1970)

 It's another Saturday night down in The Dungeon, and I ain't got nobody but you and this weird ass flick! I watch a lot of strange and odd movies, and this one is right up there with the best, so get Ready, Set, and here we GO................!!!!

 It's "La Peau De Torpedo," No, it's "Torpedoes Skin," No, It's "The Children Of Mata Hari," No, it's "Pill Of Death," No, it's "The Deathmakers," No, it's "Only The Cool!"

Nothing like a little bit of gratuitous sex to get things going! The music in this film is very cool throughout! Here's the theme and a little more created by Maestro François de Roubaix of "Le Samouraï" fame! When he wrote the music for "The Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay," François used the name Cisco El Rubio! I don't know why, but I find that interesting!

This movie is so ambiguous in so many twisted ways! I'm going to guess at the times and just tell you what it felt like to me! It starts off with this spy guy going to sneak into some place and steal some secret documents! You don't know who he is, or why he's doing it, or whether he's a good guy or a bad guy! The actor is Frédéric de Pasquale!

To me, this went on for about 15 minutes! He finally reaches his destination, and takes some secret photos with a secret camera!

What this guys is up to is so secret, his wife, the lovely Stéphane(The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie)Audran as Dominique, can't even know about it, so she just thinks he's being unfaithful to her! On his latest job, there was a malfunction at the junction, so he has to be squirreled off to a secret destination! Unfortunately, the sneaky spies get spotted by Dominique's best girlfriend as played by Noëlle(Wild For Kicks)Adam who spills the beans, and tells her that she saw her husband with another woman in Paris! How freakin' ironic! These people are all up to some over the top secret affairs, and they get busted up by some daytime soap opera script!

Dominique goes to the address her girlfriend gives her to confront her husband, and ends up shooting him dead, and the agent who was housing him that she thought was his girlfriend! So, I'm confused right away, I thought he was the star of the movie! The female agent is Catherine(Poof)Jacobsen as La 'boîte aux lettres' or 'The Mailbox!'

Lilli (Chamber Of Horrors, The House That Screamed) Palmer as Hélène is the Boss of the whole operation! She is cold and calculating just like Dr. Joyce Brothers or Hillary Clinton! So now it's time for this different agent(or is it the same actor, I can't tell?)to go clean up the mess, and silence anybody who might leak anything to anybody! He's happy to do it! She gives him a hard shelled pill full of instant death to put in his mouth and bite if and when it comes down to it!

AAAhhhh!! What's this? The Island of Dr. Moreau? No, it's just a little girl sticking her face up against the side of one of those things that don't exist anymore, a phone booth!

'The Mailbox' didn't die in the shooting, so one of the nurses (they seem to have agents virtually everywhere) gives her a snoot of some stuff that kills her instantly, just in case she recovered and might talk to somebody! These people seem to have some major issues about information leaking out!!

In the meantime, Dominique ran off into the night after the shooting, and ends up on this anti-establishment guy's boat! This crooner is Angelo(Secret Agent Super Dragon)Infanti! He serenades Dominique with this sweet song he wrote! "I don't like buildings, I don't like the subway, I don't like week days, I don't like the office, I only like luxury hotels, I only like dough, I only like Sundays, I only like mink, I only like cars, I only like caviar, I only like stars, I only like jaguars......" etc.

I had to include this shot, because it reflected the way I felt watching this movie a lot of the time!

Obviously, some of this is tongue in cheek! If the sub-titles look a little funky, I think it's whoever did it, didn't quite have a handle on the English language! Doesn't matter though, the end result is the same!

The local authorities have been monitoring the whole scene! I love these two shots, and the juxtaposition between the cops in private drinking beer and chowing, versus on the street, looking all official!

The last guy bites the pill, and the dust after another 15 minutes of chase, so now it's the always interesting Klaus Kinski's turn as Torpédo I ! The Boss lady Hélène doesn't know what to make of Klaus's character! He's a bit too loose for this organization (so he must be REALLY good)!!

Dominique remains on the boat, but they have figured out where she is! Everybody wants to kill everybody else, because nobody knows that nobody else doesn't even know anything!

The guy who owns the boat who was singing the song seems like he's a character that matters, but once Klaus boards the boat, he unceremoniously kills him too!

Klaus pursues Dominique, but falls through a big hole and breaks his back! He's failed, so he wants to die, and the authorities don't mind if he does, because they don't need him any more since they caught his Boss lady!

Someone even higher up decides that they need to make sure that the Boss doesn't talk either, and Dominique, who still doesn't know anything, gets taken in by the authorities!

What you do now, and where you go from here is all up to you!

THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE / RKO Radio Pictures - 1944

It's Freakin' Feline Friday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Here's the sequel of the original CAT PEOPLE story from 1942 also starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Jane Randolph. But, this time there's a young daughter involved. I'm showing the colorized version done by Ted Turner.

Here's a nice little sound clip from this cursed movie for your approval, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button over by our pile of killer kitties, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here's a taste of... THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE!

Here's little Ann Carter as Amy, daughter of Oliver and Alice Reed who were married after the first movie. Amy is so adorable but is very upset when a classmate catches a butterfly for her in his net during a field trip, killing the insect. She slaps him in the face.

Amy is different than most children, she's a very imaginative child with trouble differentiating fantasy from reality, making her unpopular with the others.

Amy goes into the yard of a neighbor and someone tosses something to her from the open window. Amy finds a gold ring wrapped in a cloth.

She's told by her parents that she must return the ring to the owner, Mrs. Farren, so, Amy goes back to the house where she's met by the rude daughter, Barbara, played by Elizabeth (WEIRD WOMAN) Russell.

Amy meets Mrs. Farren, who was an actress, she gives Amy a taste of her ware by reciting The Unseen Playmate by Robert Louis Stevenson from 'A Child's Garden of Verses' published in 1913... As heard in the sound clip.

Then, the Ghost of Irena (Simone Simon) appears for Amy, she comforts her and they bond immediately.

Amy goes searching for Irena into the woods by herself and gets lost. She hears an old car coming her way and thinks it's the Headless Horseman!

Amy makes it to the Farren's house during some drama there, Mrs. Farren thinks Barbara is going to kill her.

Mrs. Farren dies from a heart attack on the stairs and Amy is left alone with Barbara, but, Irena appears in the place of Barbara.

Amy goes down the stairs and hugs Barbara because she thinks she's Irena. Feeling the love of the child makes Barbara return the love, something she never got from her mom.

Everything works out in the end and Amy says goodbye to Irena... Goodbye!

And, be back tomorrow for more way cool junk from the Dungeon gang!!

HOUSE OF MYSTERY - "The Curse Of Kai" (1934)

Welcome to O.G. Wednesday down in The Dungeon, and tonight's classic big monkey horror show, "House Of Mystery!" This movie is so mysterious, even the title is a mystery; is it "House of," or "The House of"......?  Only The Gorilla knows, and he ain't talking!

 

 Okay, "House Of Mystery" may not be the best movie ever made, but it sure has one of the most classic titles of all times! Made some freakin' 80 years ago in 1934, this version wasn't even the first movie ever made with this title! There were also two "The House Of Mystery" movies made before this, one in 1901, and one made in 1921! After this film, there were even more movies titled "House Of Mystery," one in 1940, and one in 1961!  None of these movies are about the same thing! To top it all off, there was a movie made in 1938 titled "Mystery House!"

I'm not quite sure about the time and place of this film, but I think it might be Asia - 1913!

The guy on the left with what looks like a golf club, but is really a riding crop, is a big jerk, drunken lout named John Prendergast! He's played by Clay(Don't Bet On Blondes)Clement! He's quite the ass, maybe he wasn't acting!

This hot dancing girl is Joyzelle Joyner as Chanda! If she looks kind of exotic, it's probably because she was born in Alabama! Here's a monkey biscuit's worth of the theme song, and the wild music that Chanda is twirling to!

These 1913 Asian people are simian worshipers! Take note of the big guy in the background! The high priest is Brandon (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, White Zombie, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame) Hurst!

When John Prendergast was drunk, he hurt an innocent little monkey, and now he's cursed for life to death!

Chanda helps John Predergast escape, and they head for higher ground to live happily ever after! (Take note of how normal she looks!)

There was a reason that John Prendergast was acting like such an ass, he is one!

John is tracked down some time into the future by the investors of the original expedition, and he tells them to all come to his creepy olde house, and he will explain the whole situation! Two of the investors can't make it, because they were recently murdered in England! John explains to the group that he didn't tell them, because he didn't want to pass the curse onto them, and that he had tried to give the treasure back to the natives, but they wouldn't accept it!

These two are quite the couple! On the left is the chocolate-gobblin' hypochondriac Mrs. Geraldine Carfax as played by Dale(House Of Horror)Fuller, and on the right is Fritzi(Red Hot Speed)Ridgeway as Stella Walker, her keeper! Chanda off in the background makes it a perfect threesome!

Sometimes you can't tell whether this movie is a comedy or if it's the fact that the characters are just stupid! I think it's the latter! The plumber who also turns out to be the undercover guy from Scotland Yard is played by John(Swing Time Johnny)Sheehan! Chanda is everywhere, always watching, but not saying much, and the same thing is true for the plumber!

John's an olde horndog, and crippled or not, he's hot for his nurse Ella Browning, and wants her to marry him! Note Chanda is in the back watching just like the big gorillas used to do! Ella Browning is played by cutie pie Verna(Duck Soup)Hillie!!

Time for the big seance scene, so Stella can conjure up the spirit of Pocahontas and get answers to all these crazy question!

Again, is this a comedy or not? I'm confused! These three are a cross between The Three Stooges, and The Keystone Kops! Two words come to mind, blundering idiots!

"I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee!" No credit for who was loping around in the hairy suit! People keep getting killed, and every time, strangely there has been some kind of exotic incense burning in their room!

Chanda has been in the dark about John's trend towards infidelity, but now she has caught him red-handed! He has even told Ella that Chanda is nothing more than merely his housekeeper! Bad move jerk-off!

Almost all the investors are dead by the time that John reveals that he is not crippled at all, and is just a dirty, nasty scalliwag! Here's a final toast, and a suggestion that Chanda should go back to her native country for a while and chill! Maybe he'll call her later!!

Chanda exits the room, and locks the door before John sees or smells the incense burning! He's seen it before and he knows what's coming next, and you don't need a lot of imagination to figure it out either!

Here's four examples of how Director William Nigh packed as much as he could into each and every shot! I'm sure if he thought he could have got the entire cast into every shot, he sure as Hell would have done it!

I made you this wallpaper from a random sample of what you get if you do a Google search for House of Mystery poster! I thought it was pretty cool! Just for the record, if you're in the market to see a 1930's big monkey movie for free, you can find "House Of Mystery" to stream or download over at the always utterly amazing, and always free, Internet Archive!!  Fuckin' A!!