FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES / E.U.R. Cinematografica - 1962

It's Monster Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. What we gots is a sword and sandal tale with 'monsters' in it's title, but, it's about wandering strongman Maciste, Maxus in the US, who comes upon two warring tribes, the Sun worshipers and the Moon worshipers. He saves the leader of the Sun tribe from a monster, then, when the Moon tribe kidnaps the Sun tribe's women, Maciste is called on for help. Not so much about monsters, though. This Mexican lobby card was the best poster I could find for the post!

Eegah!! sent us over a lil' soundclip from the movie to examine, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there across from the Berserker Dalek, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES!

Get ready for some psychedelical colored photos for this one, those old Euro color prints can do some weird tricks when you make corrections on them in Photoshop!

While he's just wandering around, Maciste comes across the leader of the Sun worshipers and his woman being attacked by a monster from the lake. He tosses a spear directly into the eye of the poor thing, killing it! Why couldn't they just go around?!

They are then captured by the Moon worshipers and are taken to the son of leader for punishment. Maciste don't take crap from nobody!! Reg Lewis is the man, Reg has only 5 acting credits which includes playing a slave in THE BRASS BOTTLE...

Love this shot!..

Maciste meets his mate, Moah, played by beautiful Margaret Lee, who has 75 acting credits including PSYCHO-CIRCUS, SPY PIT, GHOSTS - ITALIAN STYLE and VENUS IN FURS.

I chose this shot because it's just cool and I love boids!

Bring in the dancing girls and bring on the eclipse of the Moon! Moon worshipers at work...

A couple of nice pics of Reg tearing the Moon worshipers' place apart with his bare hands!

Maciste and Moah get themselves into quite a predicament, having spears tossed at their heads and all!! Luckily, something goes awry with the ceremony and the place explodes, causing the ground to open up so that they can make their escape.

I included this wild picture from a fight scene just for it's surrealistic value!

Later, Maciste and Moah are awoken from their nap by one of the few monsters in this flick! Maciste battles the damn thing to it's death, natcherly!

And, the bad guys get whut's comin' to 'em! Tune in again Wednesday when Eegah!! brings you who the Hell knows what!!

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!!

KONGA - Gerard Schurmann - "I Was A Teenage Gorilla" (1961)

Welcome to redux Wednesday, and a movie I wrote about the first year I did this blog back in 2007!! I usually leave these up to Tabonga, but his "Konga" DVD wouldn't play, and since I had just recently scored one at Big Lots for $3.00, I volunteered for the job! Back in 2007 I wrote: "Michael Gough can be a devilish soul, &  in "Konga" he probably plays his best role of a really 'not nice' guy. His assistant Margaret loves him; she's so lowly, she doesn't even have a last name and he treats her like crap. Sandra Banks adores his intellect, but has no clue that he's just a dirty old pervert after her bod, not her mind. He has his big monkey kill anybody that pisses him off, and he's growing giant phallic-looking, meat-eating plants in his greenhouse." And that pretty much sums it up!

So where do you suppose they possibly derived that name from?

Michael Gough is Dr. Charles Decker!

First question, why is Konga such a goober? He looks like he could have been the fourth stooge!

The Doctor is completely mad, but his assistant loves him dearly! This ain't exactly a love story!

Michael Gough's character is such a two-face slime dog, I thought this transition shot captured him perfectly!

The Dean of the school that Dr. Decker works at should have kept some of those uncomplimentary remarks he made about Dr. Decker's research to himself!

This famed scientist wanted to collaborate with Dr. Decker, but finds out too late that Decker doesn't like any competition!

Now we get to the fun part! There's a guy here who is named Bob Kenton, and he is Sandra Banks' boy friend. Bob knows that there's something dishonorable how the professor is acting just a little too friendly with his girlfriend, and he doesn't like it!

Bob Kenton was played by a popular singer of the day, Jess Conrad! Although the

little bit of jazzy music written by Gerard Schurmann they have in "Konga" is very cool, it would have been a lot neater if they would have had Jess perform a tune or two! That would have catapulted this movie into the cult hall of fame!

As you can see, Jess was no slouch, sharing the bill with the ever popular Brenda Lee! Jess Conrad also has the distinction of having at least 7 songs like "This Pullover," "Why Am I Living," and "Cherry Pie" on The World's Worst Records list compiled by DJ Kenny Everett, but you can take that with a grain of salt, because also on that list is one of my personal favourite songs of all time, "Transfusion" by Nervous Norvus!!

Not a very nice way to treat an innocent teenager back in 1961, Dr. Decker has Konga dispatch poor Bob! He never even saw it coming!

Dr. Decker can't seem to keep it together, it's no wonder his scientific experiments are going haywire, he obviously has his mind on something a little more primitive!

Sandra Banks tries to get through to the Doctor that she's not interested in him, but he doesn't get it, and the fact that you might say she's just a little dense doesn't help matters either!

Oh, My! This lobby card doesn't appear to be doctored up at all! That's exactly how the movie looks!

I don't know how much Herman Cohen spent on special effects, and I guess it was okay back in the 60's when you only saw a scene like this for a couple of seconds in a theatre, but these days when you can stop a DVD on any given frame, it's so bad, I think the movie would have been a lot better without this doll scene!

This effect didn't come across much better, and Konga actually looks dumbfounded by the whole thing!

In this shot, Konga does his best impersonation of Barney Google, the man with the goo-goo-googley eyes!

It's doubtful that anybody could do a better job than Michael Gough at pretending they were getting squished by a giant gorilla hand! I love this shot!

Talk about timing, it just so happens that this coming weekend is the Annual Fundraising Ball for The Grand Order Of Water Rats of which Jess Conrad is currently The King Rat! If you'd like to become a friend of The Rats, then head on over to HERE and join up! Good people, they raise money for everything from "The British Theatre For The Disabled" to The Multiple Sclerosis Society!!!