THE HOUSE OF GHOSTS - 1906

Okay, here we go... Today we have a European horror production from 116 years ago!! The short is also considered to be one of the first 'haunted house' films, and boy, have there been a lot! And I swear, it's much more fun to watch than most of the stuff today.

The movie was distributed in the US in 1906 under the title, THE HOUSE OF GHOSTS.

It starts with three weary travelers, a woman and two men, looking for a spot to rest and get out of the incoming storm.

Out of nowhere, an old house appears, and the storm is coming fast. They all rush inside the house just as the storm hits... What luck!

After they're inside, the front of the house changes into a monster with googlie eyes! Like, what in the Hell's going on here! It even has a top hat.

Once the group is inside, one guy opens the front door to see how bad the storm is and a lightning bolt hits right in front them. They ain't going nowhere!

They are straightening the place up after the hectic entrance when a spook appears in the painting. One of the guys sees it, and tells the others to look at the thing in the painting, but it's gone when they turn around, a great gag!

Then their clothes pick themselves up and wander out the front door!

Next on the list of spooks is this ghostly bed sheet that does a devilish dance for them.

Finally, they find some food for dinner and prepare the table for the meal.

As they watch, the knife cuts the salami into pieces and places them neatly on a plate. The knife then slices the bread and stacks them on another plate.

The tea or coffee pot rises up and pours a cup full for each of the visitors.

They used a set that could be tilted from side to side, making for this hilarious scene.

The fun just never ends, now a bunch of little ghosties attack them and they all pile onto the bed to escape the mayhem.

The spook in the painting, now a giant, has returned and finds the three travelers in the bed with the covers over their heads. He grabs the three with the sheets around them, and...

The house is gone now, and the monster holds the sheets up and starts shaking and the three travelers tumble out...

The weirded out threesome find themselves in the forest, where they collect their senses and make a bee-line outta there! Well, hope you enjoyed this blast from the past, we did!

13 CRAPPY HORROR AND SCI-FI MOVIES I LOVE

 What we gots today is 13 of my favorite crappy horror and sci-fi movies from the fifties and sixties. Six of these have been great fodder for the MST guys to chew on, and boy do they! So, grab a cup of coffee for old Tabonga, sit back and enjoy the ride...

Thank you Phil Tucker for putting this one together for TV in 1960, it's pretty cool and I like it a lot. Aliens Hauron and Nadja are fun to watch, his left arm missing with a blood stained sleeve, and their transmission procedure is just weird! Word is... Plastics!

The MST boys have a field day with this Coleman Francis, Tony Cardoza production, wow is it cheap and crappy, but, not without its charm. They just put layers of rubber cement on Tor's face for makeup, plain crappy. They show off Marcia (woo woo) Knight on the poster but she's only in it for a minute, and never sees the Beast! It would have been a much better movie if they filmed her just flopping around for an hour!

Oh my effing Gott!!.. This thing is such a damn mess, but the MST guys hit a home run here, saving the day, one of my favorites! The ending is the most ridiculous POS in the history of film, a Must See!

This one is on the list if for nothing else, for the mind bending séance scene put on by Dr. Acula, with a messed up voice from beyond, that swizzle stick and the pathetic trumpet sounds, holy scheiss! Tor never looked better though, he's all messed up as Lobo the enforcer. I remember seeing a full page promo shot of him in Famous Monsters, he looked creepy and cool.

This movie takes the cake!! That amateur poster there really captures the movie's quality, or lack thereof. It is so whack! The monster is indescribably ridiculous, what a piece of shit, it's slow as Hell too. Just plain amateur hour. MST saves the day again though!

Holy Crap, Holy Crap. Holy Crap!!! This movie is soooooooo BAD!! Larry Buchanan's take on INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN is pathetic. But you can't not watch it to see if that military guy wins that five dollar bet. The nighttime scenes are filmed at like, noon, in actual dark scenes you can see the monsters are are just wearing their head pieces, things just don't match, a total mess! AARGH!! Again, MST does its job, Joel comments on the title card, he says... Who wrote Attack Of The, The Eyes Creatures?!.. Mel Tilllis??

The music alone will make you want to beat your head against a wall. The characters are a mixture of weirdos littered with spider women, male dwarfs, a giant spider, a mad scientist, a psycho and a love triangle! Rifftrax recently got their hands on this one. Love the movie and its madness.

I don't know why I like this one so much, but I do, for me it has a certain charm. Plus it has Him in it, Him likes to look at nudie magazines with pages torn out and hung on the wall. The producers were thrilled when they saw the poster for the movie, but when they finally got to see it, they were flabbergasted by the difference between the fantastic poster and the weak-ass movie!

Eegah and I saw this crazy movie when it came out, and boy did we crack up when they showed the little critters up close! They look like Brillo pads with white pipe cleaners sticking out of them, holy cow! Our band Hermanos Guzanos did a 'musical' version, "Brain Eaters," that can be found on You Tube along with lots of other HG 'tunes' there too.

Man, what can you say about this total bomb that hasn't already been said. It's a hoot to watch as they work their way through the script. Well, maybe I have something to note that hasn't been discussed before about this 3-D disaster... As Ro-Man is walking up one hill in particular, he's tippy-toeing his way up the trail (he looks so damn silly here), looks like he's a little concerned about falling down, or stumbling. seems like he's having trouble seeing what he's doing because of the stupid space helmet!

The madness never stops! This movie is just plain whack, but I love it, it delivers all the low budget monsters, props and effects you'd want for a good laugh. What's really cool is that Bob Crewe (from The Four Seasons) does a number of tunes throughout the film. What I remember most is the super-crappy makeup job on Dr. Nadir's ears, jeez!!

Here's a weird little movie with a David Hewitt tie in, also known as SPACE MONSTER, a TV movie that made it to the theater circuit. The only thing you'll probably remember are those sexy dreams of one of the spaceship crew, and that little alien (with its tongue hanging out) they found in an abandoned ship just floating around in space, but still, I like it.

I saved my favorite crappy movie for last, wow, this thing is surreal... The theme song is great, the cast is great, and it has one of the most interesting movie monster ever conceived. So, what more could you want from a crappy movie?.. Hope you enjoyed.

KOMMISSAR X - DREI BLAUE PANTHER - "Kill Panther Kill" (1968)

"Kommissar X - Drei Blaue Panther" was the third of five Kommissar X movies that had three shades of animals in the title. In 1966, it was Three Yellow Cats, 1967, it was Three Green Dogs, and in 1968, it was this Saturday Night Special feature about Three Blue Panthers. To round it out, there were Three Golden Serpents in 1969, and Three Red Tigers in 1971.

In English, only "The Three Golden Serpents" used that info in the title. This one is close because it at least mentioned a panther, but the titles of the other three are "Death Is Nimble, Death Is Quick," "Death Trip," and "FBI Operation Pakistan."

The people who made these Kommissar X films are smart, and they use locations where they can get cool shots for free. "Kill Panther Kill" was filmed in Canada. A lot of the early footage was shot at the Calgary Stampede, a celebration that has been going on since 1912. These days it's billed as "The Biggest Outdoor Show On Earth," and will open this year on July 8.

 

This float cracked me up, and all I could think of was............

.............A giant Hostess Snowball!

I just had to include this shot of Miss Pot O' Gold. 

Following the parade, they have a huge rodeo, an

event that is still one of the highlights of this ten day celebration!

Brad Harris is Captain Tom Rowland, and Tony Kendall is Jo Walker. They have a complicated relationship. They are like best friends, but they don't like each other getting involved in their business, so they fight and argue a lot. The Captain is from Los Angeles, but he's in Canada working on a case. Jo Walker works for an insurance company, and is trying to retrieve stolen jewelry in the same case.

Austrian born Hannelore Auer has the role of Jo Walker's girlfriend/secretary Betty Rogers. She was also in "Three Golden Serpents" as one of Jo's girlfriends.

In the sixties, Hannelore Auer was a popular singer in Germany. She was married to Austrian prince Alfred von Auersperg for eleven years, and after their divorce, she married German singer Heino, to whom she has been married ever since.

577477 has escaped from jail and is headed back to Canada to get the jewels he left with his twin brother years earlier.

Wow! They had a rocket pack demonstration at the rodeo. Pretty cool for 1968!

Even though he's north of the border, Jo Walker shows up in disguise as somebody from south of the border to try and blend in with the western festivities.

From Calgary, the action moves to Montreal, and a shot of the Biosphere, which was donated to Canada by President Lyndon B. Johnson after the the Expo 67 ended.

Dirty bastard 577477 kills his twin brother, and assumes his identity so he can find out where the jewels are.

Jo Louis Walker, sometimes also known as Kommissar X, starts putting all the pieces together after reading about brothers Cain and Abel in a Bible that a nice lady gave him.

Sometimes they are at each other's throats, and sometimes you just can't separate these two.

Here are the three panthers in question, and inside is the key to the jewels.

You just know that they are going to use each and every object you see in this shot, and indeed they do!

This is what villains see most of the time when they mess with the Captain and the Kommissar!

 

Somebody finally gets to the location of the jewels, and of course, this is what they find instead, a picture of Kommissar X.

The bottom line is that every Kommissar X film I've seen so far has been fun to watch, and are always full of shots like this!

Not much of a surprise that Jo's got the key! 

There's no reason for me to tell you how it all works out, because you can see for yourself right

HERE!