IT TAKES A THIEF - "The Three Virgins Of Rome" (1969)

This Saturday Night Special is episode seven from season three of the great 1960's TV show "It Takes A Thief."

For this episode they left Universal Studios in California and headed to Rome, Italy for a more authentic location!

"The Three Virgins Of Rome" has a real Eurotrash look and feel to it!

There's going to be an big outdoor exhibition of some famous paintings, so Al Mundy has been hired to stop them from getting stolen. His Father, a noted international art thief known as The Panther just happens to also be in town. Coincidence? Not likely!

I'm sure part of the reason this is such a good looking episode is because the Director is none other than Jack Arnold, the man who directed some of our all-time favourite monster movies like "It Came From Outer Space," "Creature From The Black Lagoon," "Tarantula," "The Incredible Shrinking Man," and "Monster On The Campus," to name a few!

Using International Dungeon fave Karin Dor as Angela was also a stroke of genius!

The pretty cool cast also includes Victor Buono as as Mr. Kent!

I read that Victor Buono at one point was close to 400 pounds in weight, and I believe it from the looks of him in this photo! He was also 6'3" tall!

They come in all sizes. On the complete other end of the scale, Davy (Satan's Harvest) Kaye, the gentleman in the middle, was only 4' 11."

Robert Wagner and Karin Dor make quite an attractive couple!

I really think you could plug Joachim Fuchsberger and Natalie Wood into the same two roles and get away with it! Wouldn't that be interesting?

Just in case you wondered, there are no real "Three Virgins Of Rome" paintings!

Now that is a tricky hiding place!

Time for a word from our sponsor, "Spa-Fon" cleaning products. If you can't get it out with "Spa-Fon," it's permanent!"

So here's where it gets a little slightly unbelievable!

They float "The Three Virgins" away with helium balloons!

And land them safely in this field!

Right!

Here's the cover of a great 7" 45 single by pianist Dave Grusin!

I didn't have any "It Takes A Thief" music to listen to, so I listened to this killer soundtrack from the movie "Robbery," written by John Keating to get me in the mood!

No matter the role, Karin always looks freakin' amazing!

Lord Litter in Berlin was the one who told me about this great episode, so, from the both of us,
 "Cheerz!"

PHARAOH'S CURSE - "It Came From The Dead" (1957)

  It's time for another Saturday Night Special down in The Dungeon, and a classic little 66 minute movie from 1957 called "Pharaoh's Curse."

Eleven years later, and finally, the curse has been lifted, and boy, do I feel good about it!

 I did a very short write up on "Pharaoh's Curse" back in 2008, because the only DVD we could find back then malfunctioned, so I only got to watch a few minutes of it.
These days though it's a different story, and all you lucky people can just watch it any time you want to for free on the amazing Mr.YouTube!
And I just found out, that if you've got an Amazon account, they have a much better copy streaming there too!

 Here's a shot to prove the authenticity of the location of this film just in case you think it looks like Death Valley, California anywhere along the line!

Cute couple! Too bad she's got a husband!
That's Diane ( The Invisible Boy) Brewster and Mark (Hot Cars, Hot Shots) Dana!
Diane's character has followed her no good husband into the hot desert to inform him that she wants a divorce!

The exotic Ziva Rodann is the Cat Goddess. This was only Ziva's second film and she was credited as Ziva Shapir. Ziva was the go to girl if you needed somebody for a role that was dark and mysterious in the 50's and 60's like Nefertiti in the "Batman" TV series.

Jewelry like this is usually a dead giveaway, literally!

  There's really not a whole lot going on here, so they have Diane Brewster's character get stung by a scorpion!

"Pharaoh's Curse" was directed by Lee "Roll Em" Sholem who was notorious for no nonsense quick shoots, and I'm sure working out in the desert, everybody appreciated his style!

It made me wonder if The Beatles were a big fan of this movie, as the Doctor looks at this inscription on the sarcophagus, and utters the words that he believes to be sage advice,
"Let It Be!"

"Pharaoh's Curse" is kind of a takeoff on the regular old mummy story, except for one thing, there's no mummy out walking around!

Looks like Santa Monica to me!

In the wrong place at the wrong time, the Cat Goddess's brother Numar gets the Dorian Gray treatment!
Alvaro Guillot was in only two movies and one TV show, but he had a much more interesting life as a member of the "New Surrealist School" of painting!

Alvaro was a personal friend of Salvador Dali and was known for paintings like this brilliant piece!
 Here's a link to a website dedicated to the man!

So there's no mummy......................

...........Just this crusty, dusty old fart!

This guy's so old and slow just like a mummy, that his arm comes right off when it gets pulled on, and yet the stupid people can't seem to get away from him! That's what has always bugged me about mummies!

"Okay, Fess up! I know that you know what's up!"

Dude is still out wandering around, walking around in circles!

Dumb Diane, they told her to stay in the tent, but No..........!

Is it him? Is it her? How did it get back in the box and get the mask back on?  There's many unanswered questions, but there won't be a sequel, since there wasn't much of a story to begin with!

THE END
is always more pertinent and final when it's a shot of a bunch of mule's and horse's asses!

This lobby card includes almost the whole outstanding cast including Mark Dana and Ziva Rodann, George N.(The Three Stooges In Orbit) Neise, Ben (Three Episodes of The Twilight Zone & Three Episodes of The Outer Limits) Wright, Guy (The Unearthly, Queen Of Outer Space, The Hypnotic Eye) Prescott, and Robert (The Bottle Imp) Fortin!
"Pharaoh's Curse" might not be the most exciting movie ever made, but with this array of talent, you can't hardly go wrong!

DUNGEON POCKET-SIZED COVER GIRLS From the 1950's

Tonight I've got for you an assortment of covers from various 1950's Pocket Magazines that featured 1950's actresses that rocked our world at one point or another!

Most pocket sized magazines were 5 1/2" tall by 4 1/4" wide, and came out weekly. Some of them were news worthy and some of them were pretty sleazy. Amazingly, they didn't normally have any advertising in them. The name pocket sized comes from the fact that they were literally made for men to be able to slip them into their pocket, so they could catch up on information as the week went on, kinda like cell phones today!

All these magazines are from my personal collection!

There is no order, but the magnificent Mara Corday is a real good place to start!

Mara was in three of our favorite movies, "Tarantula," "The Giant Claw," and "The Black Scorpion," and this cover reminds me how much I need to go back and watch all three of them again!

When she was thirteen, Terry Moore was in "A-Haunting We Will Go" with Laurel and Hardy, and when she was twenty, she was Jill Young in "Mighty Joe Young," and she is currently working in three films! What a gal! In the 70's, she claimed that she was a secret wife of Howard Hugh's after the billionaire had passed away, and I have no reason to doubt her!

Terry was also in the two very crazy films, "The Great Rupert" and "A Man Called Dagger."

The amazing Ava Gardner was in more than a couple of great flicks like "The Killers" in 1946, and "Earthquake," in 1974!

Martha Hyer was in so many great movies like "Riders To The Stars," and "Pyro...The Thing Without A Face," but my favorite film of hers is "House Of 1,000 Dolls."

Lilli, Lilli, Lilli! 

We love Lilli Palmer for her roles in films like "Chamber Of Horrors," "Only The Cool," and "Murders In The Rue Morgue." 

This cover picture doesn't really do her beauty justice! 

I do not believe that Linda Darnell is capable of taking a bad photo. She's just that pretty! Linda was in "Hangover Square," with Laird Cregar, and "It Happened Tomorrow." It was such a shame that she died at the age of 41.

Sheree North was in "Destination Inner Space," and with Elvis, John Carradine, and Vincent Price in "The Trouble With Girls."
(Just for the record, that's not a crappy scan, that's how blurry the cover actually is.)

The always intoxicating Mamie Van Doren has had one incredible career that as included such Dungeon classics as
"The Big Operator,"
"The Navy Vs. The Night Monsters,"
"Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet,"
"The Girl In Black Stockings," 
"The Beat Generation,"
and "Girls Guns, And Gangsters!" 

Here's three easy reasons to fall in love with Ruth Roman! 

In 1956 she was in Hitchcock's classic "Strangers On A Train."  In 1963, she was in "The Outer Limits" episode called "Moonstone." In 1974  she was in a film titled "Impulse" with William Shatner as a major weirdo and loser!

Mala Powers looks amazingly gorgeous on the cover of this Tempo magazine!

 Mala was also in an awesome assortment of movies like "City Beneath The Sea," with Suzan Ball, or

"The Unknown Terror," or

"Doomsday Machine," or

"The Colossus Of New York!" 

Abbe Lane is the only one here that we've never written about before, but we will some day, because she was in an Italian movie in 1960 titled "Il Mio Amico Jekyll," or "My Friend, Dr. Jekyll," and she was also in the 1983 "Twilight Zone" movie in the "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" segment!
Sure gives me something to look forward to!

And back where we started from, here's another great cover featuring Mara Corday! It just doesn't get much better than that!

Mara Corday is now 89 years old,  Abbe Lane will  be 87 this year, Mamie Van Doren is 88, and Terry Moore is now 90!

 The rest have all passed away but I think the world is a pretty fortunate place to still have those four around! Thanks!