HELL BOUND - Les Baxter - "Va Va Voom!" (1957)

HELL BOUND!! 

I say HELL YEAH!!

Welcome to the Hell Bound Wednesday version of The Dungeon and tonight's feature from the year 1957! "Hell Bound" is a pretty nifty little movie that clocks in right under and hour and fifteen minutes, so there's not a lot of time to goof around! It's gritty as Hell, and I enjoyed it a lot!

John "The Lawman" Russell is a shifty crook named Jordan! Now Jordan's got a plan, and in order to sell his act, he made a movie about how he can rob this cargo ship to show to investors!

 

It's a complicated plan that includes one guy acting as a sailor lost at sea that needs rescuing, and another fellow, the Health Inspector who happens to be diabetic! When the Health Inspector comes on board, he feigns illness, so instead of disembarking, he gives himself a shot of insulin! Meanwhile the rescued sailor lifts some two million dollars worth of WWII surplus narcotics from a locked room, and puts it in the Health Inspector's Jacket, and then when an ambulance comes and gets him, another plant, the nurse in the ambulance, takes the jacket, and everybody gets rich, so they think anyway!

So Jordan sells his plan to this dude, and it gets OK'd by his girlfriend Paula, who suddenly is too tired to put her own shoes on! Paula tells her man that in order to keep Jordan honest, that she should be the one to play the nurse instead of Jordan's girlfriend! That way she'll be the one picking up the drugs! Paula is played by June Blair who was in "The Fiend Who Walked The West," and "Island Of Lost Women." She stopped acting in 1966 after being in 26 episodes of "Ozzie And Harriett" as David Nelson's wife June! She was also his real wife at the same time!

In the same year "Hell Bound" was made, June was the Miss January Playmate Of The Month!

The ambulance driver named Eddie Mason is played by the always entertaining Stuart Whitman! Now Eddie isn't privy to what's happening, all he knows is that the regular nurse has a substitute for a couple of days! Here's a cool fact, Stuart Whitman's first two roles were bit (uncredited) parts in two of the best Science Fiction movies of all time, "When Worlds Collide," and "The Day The Earth Stood Still!" Both Stuart Whitman and June Blair were born in San Francisco, California, and they are both alive and well today! Must have something to do with growing up in all that fresh air!!

I thought it was important in case you ever go there, that you should know that the Hi-Ho Motel is Air Conditioned!

Cut to my favourite part of the movie down at the old El Rancho Burlesque club!

Introducing Virginia De Lee as the strip tease artiste at the club! This might have been her only movie appearance, but Virginia was a cover girl on many of the men's magazines of the time like Stag and Caper! I'll give her some credit, she's got some moves, and right here's a good spot to insert a little bit of the superbly greasy music she's dancing to composed by another Dungeon hero, Mr. Les Baxter! Type Mr. Baxter's name into the search engine on the side bar to see a small sampling of his massive body of work! Phenomenal!

 Enjoying the strip show and a glass of milk, on the right is American Indian actor Dehl (WOLFEN) Berti as the drug dealer Daddy! On the left is George E. (GALAXINA, RING OF TERROR) Mather as loser junkie Stanley Thomas, the guy who is going to be the lost at sea sailor!

So what do you think? A blind man in a strip club! This has got to be one of the best moments in cinematic history since the Throne Room in "Fireball Jungle!"

So everything is literally not only Hell bound, but going to Hell in a handbag real fast! After having to play real nurse to a dying boy, and a couple of nights on the job, Paula is falling for Eddie! Now that's gonna put a hitch in the diddly-widget real fast!

Jordan catches wind of what's happening, and in his own gentlemanly way, shanks poor Paula in the gut! Previous to this event, as a thank-you, he snuffed the guy who lifted the key for the boat's safe room for him! Jordan is what you might say, "HELL BOUND!"

Absolutely every part of this fail proof plan falls apart! Junkie Stanley gets on the ship all right, but then he goes into withdrawals, and totally freaks out basically blowing the whole scene right then and there!

If that's not bad enough, Stanley (THE GRASSHOPPER, THE CLONES) Adams as the Health Inspector, has been told by his Doctor that he doesn't need insulin any more and that if he uses any, he very well might die, but he needs the money real bad so...........You can guess what happens!

After the Health Inspector dies, the junkie gets arrested, and Paula didn't die, Jordan decides it time to run! What a cool junkyard they found to wrap the whole thing up in!

After cutting in and out of old buses and stacks of old motors, Jordan finally climbs into and hides in an empty rail car!

It just so happens that same car was just being loaded with tons of scrap metal! 

Jordan is bound for Hell, no doubt!

I found "Hell Bound" streaming on Amazon Prime! They seem to be the only ones willing to invest in old movies like this, so thumbs up to them in my book!

SHATTER - David Lindup - "Call Him Mister" (1975)

Now this one is a little bit different, it's an action adventure crossover brought to you by the combination of Hammer Studios and Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers, and called simply "SHATTER, Shatter, Shatter, Shatter"

.....and there's no hopping vampires either!

There's an African dictator by the name of Ansabi M'Goya in town just in time to be assassinated! Ansabi was played by Yemi Ajibade who was in a couple of other Hammer flicks like "The Devil Rides Out," and "The Witches."

Things sure do change fast once a person is out of the public eye, it's all hookers and champagne!

Shatter steps in to spoil the party, nothing personal, it's just a job!

The uncredited hooker is really cute!

Cool leading man Stuart Whitman is Shatter! Stuart might not look that tough, but he was actually a pretty good boxer when he was in the U.S. Army in the 1940's, having racked up some 30 odd victories! Stuart Whitman has had an incredible career that didn't really include much horror or sci-fi over the years, but the first two uncredited roles he ever had were in two of the biggest sci-fi classics ever, as a man just standing around in "When World's Collide" and as a sentry in "The Day The Earth Stood Still," both in 1951! He was also Sergeant Walters in 13 episodes of the TV series "Highway Patrol" with Broderick Crawford! In the 80's he was in "The Monster Club," Demonoid: Messenger Of Death," and "Invaders Of The Lost Gold!"

For some reason I keep reading this as "Cool World Hotel!"

Shatter stuff!

Anton Diffring is the Big Cheese Hans Leber, the master of this puppet show! You gotta be super cool to use a phone like that! You walk into an office and a guy is using a phone like that, then he's either The Boss or insane, and maybe both! We'll always honor Anton for his roles in "The Man Who Could Cheat Death" and "Circus Of Horrors" if not for his phone skills!

Pull my finger, Hans Leber!!

I think I'll pass on that offer, Mr. Shatter!

No, No, No, this is not one of those kind of films! A very awkward moment for Shatter!

Time out for some well deserved product placement, and kill two birds with one stone!!

The fantabulous Peter Cushing has the role of British Secret Service agent Paul Rattwood, and quite the rat he is! Can you believe Peter Cushing was only in 129 titles, it seems like he played Van Helsing or Baron Frankenstein that many times alone! This would be Peter Cushing's last Hammer film!

This is Lily Li, as Mai-Mee, or the gal who comes to Shatter's rescue! Lily was also in "The Oily Maniac!"

Now it's Shatter's turn to be in the center of the bullseye!

The very James Bondsy music in "Shatter" was written by a Mr. David Lindup who also composed the music for 6 episodes of the late 1960's TV cartoon show "Spider Man!" His music has also been used on "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "The Ren and Stimpey Show!" He also did a lot of orchestration and arranging, and his son Mike is in the UK band Level 42!

The cat behind the bar is Lung Ti as tough guy Tai Pah. Lung Ti's career started in 1969 with a movie called "Return of the One Armed Swordsman!" Since then he's been in a fistful of flicks, and has one currently in production called "Two Knives" where he plays a charcter that's the same as my favorite Chinese restauant, Chen Yeng! Hey barkeep, bring us over a couple of Tsingtaos please!

Mild-mannered bartender by night, and martial artist instructor, champion, and all around bad ass the rest of the time!

Tai Pah and Shatter chum up and go downtown to catch some of the local action. Much better than MMA, there's no wimpy cage to protect the fans, they've got a drummer who can put down a tight drum roll at just the appropiate times, and they have a great menu during happy hour!

Jeez, I get acrophobia just by looking at this picture!! Yikes!!

Shatter gets in a lot more trouble!

In the end, it all falls into Tai Pah's ass-whuppin' lap quite nicely, and Hans Leber gets a chance to see if he can fly! "Shatter" should not be confused with the highly touted 1985 First Comic with the exact same name, by Peter B. Gillis and Mike Saenz that was heralded as THE first comic book created entirely on a computer, but it's really a tie because the lesser known team of Brian J. Riedel and Gary Wray actually completed a 12 page indie comic on my buddy Bill Ellis's computer, entitled "Click-A-Mouse" the same year!

THE MONSTER CLUB - "Happy Halloween" (1981)

 Well, tonight's Saturday Night Special wraps up my Countdown To Halloween 2017, and it's a good one! Thanx again to John Rozum for organizing this whole thing one more year, and all the contributors new and olde!

 Tonight's special Halloween presentation is a curious movie made in 1981 that should be the go to Halloween movie because it's got it all! It's called "The Monster Club," and it not only has an all-star cast, it also has an all-star cast of musical performers! How in the Hell can it get much better than that??

 All three members of this power trio were still going strong in 1981 thank goodness!

"The Monster Club" is a movie that there is so much going on story wise and music wise that it's just too much for this format! It's a trilogy of terror with rockin' fun horror based music interspersed in between the story segments! In other words, it's almost freakin' prefect!

Vincent Price is an olde vampire that, after just taking a neck-sip wants  his almost-victim John Carradine to join him in a members only place called "The Monster Club!"

"The Monster Club" is literally a jumpin' place! They serve up terrific Bloody Marys using real blood, but they substitute tomato juice in John's drink since he's human!

 Vincent explains to John the whole lineage of monsterology! Even I, before watching this had never thought about how Werewolves, Vampires, and Ghouls are all related, and all the cross species you never even normally hear about, like shadmocks, and humghouls!

 Random shots of evil! I know, I have a split face calico cat in my face every morning at 5:00 AM!

 I am a sucker for long hall/path shots, and I just never ever get tired of this perspective!

 One of the stories is about a monster guy who is quasi-normal some of the time, but if you upset him, and he starts whistling, this is what can happen to you! 

 B.A. Roberstson performs "I'm A Sucker For Your Love!"
 Slurp, Slurp!! 
It just doesn't get much better than this!
TURN IT UP!!

The always beautiful Britt Ekland is the vampire's wife in one story!

This is the front door of the vampire's house! Other than that, they're just a normal family with a Father that works nights!

This trio are the notorious vampire killers! That's Donald Pleasence in the middle!

The band called Night with Stevie Lange on vocals, rocks the house down with a song called......

..... "The Stripper!" 

 Drop dead goregous Suzanna Willis takes it ALL off!!

And you can watch the show for free right HERE!  

I guess there's no soundtrack CD available, which is too bad because the music is killer throughout! The Pretty Things, and The Viewers also perform, and the solid background music is provided by UB40!

Way back in 1981, and these creatures still look more gruesome than current members of the walking dead. I think it's the smiles! These things are having way too much fun!!

As always, Stuart Whitman puts in a fine performance, this time as a movie maker looking for a quaint village location he can exploit! Stuart's going to be 90 this coming February, and we wish him well!

As a human, John Carradine questions why he is invited to be a member of a monster club, so Vincent the vampire in a nice monologue enlightens him to the fact that humans are the biggest monsters of all, and are single-handedly responsible for more death, mayhem and malice than all types of monsters combined! No vampires, ghouls or werewolves have ever created an atomic bomb etc, and you know what? He's right!!

Come on back on Monday when Tabonga will bring you our last Countdown to Halloween feature of the year!