WEIRD WOMAN / Weaving Her Dread Spell Of Voodoo - 1944

In this Inner Sanctum story based on the novel CONJURE WIFE, a professor meets and marries an exotic native woman. Unknown to him is the fact that she was raised by superstitious natives who believe her to have supernatural powers.

Here's something I just learned, and fills in a blank about what year we started watching the great Universal movies playing on TV. Well, in 1957, Universal released 52 of their titles and called it their Shock Package. Then in 1958, they released 20 more titles and named it, Son Of Shock!! Boy is that poster misleading!!

It stars Lon Chaney as Norman Reed , Anne Gwynne as his wife Paula, Evelyn Ankers as Ilona Carr, Ralph Morgan and Elisabeth Russell.

The story starts with Professor Norman Reed at his home after returning from the South Seas with his new wife, Paula. They brought many items from the island to decorate their home, and now he's pondering how these items of superstition play a role in native life. Then he has a flashback of when he met his wife to be...

On vacation, Reed walks in on natives dancing to drum beats, he watches.

After the dancing ends, he walks right on in on the gathering and the male natives are ready to pounce on him until a mysterious woman enters the scene.

Reed makes the mistake of trying to touch the woman and he pays the price, big time. After that, the rest is history.

At Norman's party for his return, his old flame is there to belittle his new wife Paula. Later when she has Norman alone, Ilona  tells him that she wants him, so he should dump Paula. Norman basically tells her to go to Hell... 

Unfortunately, Norman and Ilona work in the same building at the university, so, it's easy to spread rumors about the staff. Like here, this student's girlfriend has a crush on Reed and got the job as his secretary over Ilona. She tells him that the professor has a thing for her...

Then she comes up with a tale about a manuscript that could get her friend Evelyn's husband (professor Sawtelle at the university) in trouble and Norman knows all about it and is going to expose him!

Sawtelle dies and Ilona starts spreading the rumor that Paula and her voodoo were behind the... MURDER!

Then, Norman follows Paula into a cemetery only to find her stash of voodoo paraphernalia, which he ends up trampling on in anger.

Back at their home, Norman demands that she get rid of all the items and burn them in the fireplace, including her sacred amulet...

After Ilona has spread even more lies, Norman and the jealous boy at school have another confrontation, this time the kid brings a gun!

Yes, in the scuffle, the moron shoots himself, Norman's blamed, but he's released from jail (on bond) because the boy lived.

Everything is going crazy until Norman tells Evelyn (who still blames Paula for her husband's death) that all the mayhem being created points in one direction... ILONA!! Evelyn sees the light and agrees to help in exposing the Royal Bitch!!

Evelyn invites Ilona over to show her something, on the floor... She has made up a story about a dream she had, and a tall figure told her that the liar would die in (I think) 13 days at one minute after midnight. Ilona sees her own face on the voodoo doll on the rug. Wild!!

Evelyn keeps repeating, and the liar will die in 13 days! Evelyn really despises the evil Bitch at this point, very satisfying.

Ilona sees this when there are exactly seven days left til doomsday.

On the last night, Ilona shows up at Evelyn's place and demands to have the doll, and in doing so, exposes herself as the person responsible for the insanity... With Norman, Paula, the head of the university and the dead boy's girlfriend, Margaret, listening in the shadows.

Ilona jumps out the window and gets onto a trellis to get away, but, her weight causes some boards to break and she falls through, hanging herself  with some vines, at exactly at one minute after midnight, just like in the made up dream! This was a good one!

CARRY ON REGARDLESS - "Fast And Furious Fun" (1961)

This Saturday Night Special harkens back to a time in history when it was still okay to have fun.

 "Carry On Regardless" was the fifth of 31 'Carry On' films made between 1958 and 1992, many of which featured the same troupe of actors.

"Carry On Regardless" is not a movie as much as it is a series of vignettes, or an hour and a half of edited down Three Stooges-like episodes, or some other comedy shorts. It's sexy, it's bawdy, but it's never cheap or dirty. It really is just fun!

"Carry On Regardless" is a story of a 'Temp' agency providing part-time jobs for a bunch of misfit job seekers as they get sent endlessly on a series of botched, and/or misunderstood jobs.

Sidney James is Bert Handy, the guy who runs the "Helping Hands" agency. Sidney was quite a guy. He came from South Africa where he worked as a hairdresser, but he told people that the reason he looked so rough was because he had been a boxer, which there is no record of. Sidney was in 19 of the 31 "Carry On" movies.

The reason I watched "Carry On Regardless" initially was to see something else that Stanley Unwin was in, but as it turns out, he has one of the smaller roles, but it's one of the more memorable ones.

He comes to "Helping Hands" for some reason, but Bert Handy can't understand a word he's saying, and Stanley turns in a fine performance, doing what he does best, mumbling and bumbling and taking the English language to a place where few are willing to venture, which he will reprise a couple of times before the movie is over.

So off they go on a series of adventures in krazy town! Liz Fraser is the ditzy blonde Delia King, and was in a total of four 'Carry On" movies. Her first assignment is to go to a guy's house and try on a bunch of clothes he bought for his wife to see how they fit. Innocent enough, but of course it goes horribly awry when his wife comes home and finds her half naked in the closet.

 

Kenneth Connor as Sam Twist gets a large amount of  the assignments, and they're all pretty dang entertaining, In this particular segment he's sent out on a babysitting job, but this isn't the baby he was expecting.

The openly gay and outrageously hilarious Kenneth Williams as Francis Courtenay, gets the call to take a pet for a walk, but he was expecting something more like a dog instead of a chimp. Kenneth was in 25 "Carry On" films.
 

Joan Sims as Lily Duveen gets a gig taking invitation cards at an exclusive wine tasting event, and after all the guests arrive, she's made an offer to stay. She starts gulping wine and gets intoxicated very quickly! Joan Sims was in 24 "Carry On" films.

Bert Handy has a cranky old millionaire hire him to go wait at the hospital for for his appointment for him, because he's too important to wait himself. While Bert is there, he's mistaken for a Doctor. He tries to help this patient by giving him tips at the racetrack.

He doesn't hesitate when a chance comes up to help give the nurses their regular checkups!

Francis finally gets a job he wants as a model, only to be foiled again!

Francis is multi-lingual, and gets a job translating between a man and his wife, who has suddenly started speaking what I think is German.

The pretty hilarious Charles Hawtrey as Gabriel Dimple was also in 24 different "Carry On" films. The job he gets is as a corner man in a professional boxing match!

But the boxer breaks his hand accidentally and Gabriel Dimple substitutes for him in the match, and is doing pretty good sticking and moving until his pants come down. He does end up winning the bout!

The office gets a call and a muffled message about something to do with a fourth bridge, and Sam Twist goes on a mysterious trip aboard a train. He's certain he will be contacted, and when all else fails, he decides to needs to jump off the train at the fourth bridge.

What the man on the phone really wanted was to hire a fourth player in a game of bridge when one of the regulars couldn't make it.

Talk about being offtrack!!

Sam is one of the main characters, and gets another job in a library. He's supposed to be completely silent, but the old men in the library are cracking him up with their snoring and shifting hairpieces, and he can't take it, and starts laughing out loud!

The last segment involves all the players when the maid knocks over the box with all their individual assignments in it, and gets them all mixed up when she puts them back. The workers all know what they are supposed to do, but are sent to the wrong places to do it, like here, Francis knows he's supposed to translate for a bunch of Chinese people, and is very confused when it turns out to be a bunch of white girls. He's then perceived as some kind of pervert, and is hauled away!

Bill Owen as Mike Weston was supposed to go to a strip club full of 'birds' to work as a bouncer, but they sent Gabriel Dimple instead, who was supposed to come help this lady move her birds.

Stanley Unwin shows up again, and this time Francis does some translating for them. It turns out he's the landlord, and he's been trying to tell Bert Handy that he's going to have to re-locate "Helping Hands," because he's going to lease it to somebody for a higher price. 

He then tells them they can stay with no increase in rent, if they will just renovate an olde home for him that he owns!

The place is a total dump, and then it gets worse when the water comes on! Maybe this wasn't such a good deal after all!

Totally exasperated, the gang is finally saved when Stanley shows up, and tells them he has decided to tear the whole place down and build new, rather than trying to fix it up, and they are then allowed to take out their frustrations out on the building!

I enjoyed "Carry On Regardless" so much, I think I'll go watch "Carry On Screaming" again!

TALES OF TOMORROW / "Read To Me, Herr Doktor" - 1953

In this strange tale, Professor Kimworth has built himself a robot to read to him as his eyes are in pretty bad shape. But the robot starts to take on the personalities of the heroic characters in the books he's reading to the professor...

It stars Mercedes McCambridge as Patricia Kimworth, Everett Sloane as Professor Kimworth, William Kemp as Sidney Strong and Ernest Graves as the Robot.

Professor Kimworth is enjoying the story his robot is reading to him. He's interrupted when his daughter Patricia comes in to tell him that one of his former students is there to visit him.

Former student Sidney Strong (I swear to god, William Kemp has the longest forehead I've ever seen! He should have been an alien in THIS ISLAND EARTH) shows up t at Professor Kimworth's place for a little visit. When he asks the professor what he's been up to, well, take a look...

Holy freaking cow, what's THAT?!! I know the professor is a professor and all, but seriously!! Maybe he should have gotten some fifth grader to give him some pointers! Anyway, Sidney sits and listens to him read, after the professor tells it, read to me, Herr Doktor, a quote from one of the professor's favorite stories.

On his way out though, Patricia tells Sidney that she hates the robot, and that her dad is actually having conversations with it...

After Sidney leaves, the robot attacks the professor, and tells him that he must help it become a man. It forces the professor to read scientific books so it can attain knowledge.

Then things really go off the rails!! The robot lets Patricia know its intentions, it's madly in love with her, it wants to be her knight in shining armor, like in the stories he's been reading.

Sidney shows up and the robot threatens to harm the professor if she doesn't send him away, which she eventually does.

The robot makes more advances toward Patricia, the professor tries to shut the thing off but fails in his attempt.

Patricia, after listening to it repeat lines from Romeo and Juliet, tells the robot that ...THE BOOKS ARE WRONG!!

The robot just repeats... The books are wrong, the books are wrong.. It goes over to its seat and sits down, and hangs its head. The professor opens it up and pulls something out, it's the heart mechanism, and it's broken!.. What the Hell man, LAME!

And, we say goodbye to this cardboard robot from the junk heap of time. Good Riddance!!

Speaking of 2 cent robots, here's a Cinder Blockhead with an Eyeball I made back when we were making movies. Sucker was heavy!!

Here's one I made out of cardboard and two plastic parts, pretty cheap-ass, no?