Saturday, October 9, 2010

STRAIT-JACKET - Van Alexander - "Lucy Harbin Took An Axe..." (1964)

Well, by the fate of the magpies, it's a Bloch to Bloch weekend, because just like last night's "Asylum," tonight's feature was also penned by Robert Bloch! It's called "Strait-Jacket,"and it is a pretty straight ahead, and down to earth scary flick, perfectly suited to this time of year!

Produced and directed by Dungeon All-Star, William Castle, "Strait-Jacket" jumps right out of the box and doesn't stop until the ride is over, and again, it's William Castle, so it's not just your average Rollie Coaster! This sumbitch has broken tracks, and hairpin curves aplenty!

Yep, believe it or don't, it's Lee "The Six Million Dollar Man" Majors in his first on screen appearance as bad boy Frank Harbin, the husband of a much older woman, whose wife is out of town! On the other hand, Stella Fulton, was played by Patricia Crest in what would amount to be her last role ever, maybe what's about to happen got to her!

Frank takes Stella back to his house, and makes passionate drunken monkey love to her with the bedroom door open, just knowing his little girl Carol is fast asleep!

It just so happens that Frank's wife Lucy Harbin got home earlier than was originally anticipated or planned! That first step sets the scene!!

Lucy Harbin was portrayed by the obsessively amazing Joan Crawford, who it is said, personally answered all her own fan mail, but obviously, by looking at this shot, not the kind of gal you want to go out on!! "Strait-Jacket" was sandwiched like a piece of head cheese in between "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte." Joan was on a roll!!

You get the idea! If this movie seems a bit pseudo psycho to you, it might be because master horror author Robert Bloch, among his other achievements was also responsible for writing that very famous novel, "PSYCHO!"

After 20 years in The Nuthouse, Lucy Harbin is free to roam again. Welcome Home, Mother! Lucy Harbin's grown daughter was played by Diane Baker, who is still working today!

Carving meat in front of a reformed axe murderess is just downright mean!!

I thought it was probably William Castle trying to make an extra buck, but in reality, Joan Crawford was the one who insisted upon the Pepsi product placement! Joan was the widow to a Mr. Alfred Steele, who just happened to be the CEO of the Pepsi Corporation, and Joan was on the board of directors!

Look Mom, I saved these annoying jangly bracelets you love to wear so much, that you can hear rattling around for the whole rest of the movie!

Carol has decided to take her Mom to town to get a makeover, and it looks like The Harbins have the only Fiat in town! I know how that feels, my folks used to have an Opel when everybody else was driving Buicks and Oldsmobiles!

With one of them new style wigs, and a new outfit, here she is, the new old Lucy Harbin!!! Joan Crawford actually started her entertainment career as a dancer before running off to California to seek fame and fortune as an actress!

Mom is doing pretty good, really, considering the circumstances, and Carol is feeling pretty smitten with herself!!

But all is still not well, especially when the night mares and stallions start to stampede through your brain!

The killer music for "Strait-Jacket" was composed by Van Alexander!! Later in his career, Van seemed to have a penchant for composing for TV shows about chicks, including "The Donna Reed Show," "The Farmer's Daughter," "Hazel," "Bewitched," and "I Dream Of Jeannie!"

Lucy gets kind of mean spirited when she drinks, maybe you should have left well enough alone, Carol!! What the Hell were you thinking, anyway??

Ever since Lucy was released there have been a series of brutal killings, imagine that!! This particular one included a man for all time, World War II vet George Kennedy, as the handyman Leo Krause!! George is still active and has work in production right now!

"Did somebody fart?"

William Castle paid attention to every detail, and always came up with some kind of stunt, so no matter what, his movies would always be something you would remember, and it worked!!!! "Strait-Jacket" was released on DVD as a double feature with another Castle chiller classic "Homicidal" and is also available on Netflix! What a deal!!

Friday, October 8, 2010

ASYLUM / Amicus - 1972

Hello everbloody, welcome to our Halloween Friday Night Drive-In, here at The Dungeon. Tonight we have another great Amicus anthology of frights, this time the fun all takes place at the... ASYLUM! It's written by that master of horror, Mr. Robert Bloch and directed by Roy Ward Baker!

The music is by Douglas Gamley, Douglas worked on movies like PORTRAIT OF A SINNER, HORROR HOTEL, THE RETURN OF MR. MOTO, AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS and now, THE MONSTER CLUB. Then, music composed by the awesome Russian, Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881), which you'll easily recognize in the soundclip, ended up on these cool Soundtracks... THE WIZARD OF OZ, FANTASIA, JABBERWOCKY, THE TOXIC AVENGER, WRESTLEMANIA III, ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER, THE LITTLE MERMAID, EARTHWORM JIM, THE CARTOON CARTOON SHOW, THE SIMPSONS and THE REN & STIMPY SHOW...

So's, on wif' da sho!.. Here's Dungeon helper and pal, Ralphie The Tarantula, what gets the honors of pushin' that big red 'GO' button, which in turn starts our Eariffic Earclip rollin' along, jes' fer yer listnin' pleshur! Welcome to the... ASYLUM!!

This little thriller starts with psychiatrist Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) going to the Dunmoor Asylum for the `incurably insane' to interview inmates, and satisfy a requirement for employment. Here, he talks with Dr. Lionel Rutherford (Patrick Magee), acting director of the facility. The real director has just suffered a mental breakdown!

Dr. Martin checks out some of the artwork displayed along the stairway.

Max, played by Geoffrey Bayldon, shows the doctor around, then introduces him to a patient, Bonnie.

She begins her story...

Richard Todd plays Bonnie's devious married lover, he has special plans for his unsuspecting wife.

Later that night!..

Yo, Eegah!!.. Remember this?!!

Bonnie shows up just in time to be chased by wrapped body parts, then gets axed in the face by a wrapped arm! She's played by Barbara Parkins. The Brits had some very attarctive women in film, to be sure!

Next, the doc's introduced to the nutty tailor, Bruno. Bruno (Barry Morse) has a sad tale of his own to tell...

He tells how a 'Mr. Smith' (Peter Cushing) commissioned him to make special clothing to reanimate the corpse of his dead son...

Bruno decides not to take the job, and in a scuffle, Peter is shot and killed by his own bullet!

Feeling grief for the victim, Bruno decides to complete the task, and to show that nothing would happen when he dressed the corpse with the special suit anyway! It's a great part when the thing gets up and starts creeping around, very weird!!

The third 'dual personality' story is totally tame and totally lame, it stars Britt Ekland as Lucy and Charlotte Rampling as Barbara, the same person...

The last story stars Herbert Lom as Dr. Byron, manufacturer of strange little robots with people heads!..

Dr. Byron actually goes inta a trance to control the mini-bot.

Here, it exacts some revenge with a sharp scalpel!

Dr. Martin steps on the manical thing to stop it, and it screams out in agony!!

Max gets the last word...

Ghoulnight Everbloody!!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Official Dwrayger Dungeon Halloween Countdown 2010 Wallpaper #1

Here's some wallpaper for ya'll that is a take-off on what you will see if you do a Google image search for Dwrayger Dungeon!!!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE AND HARRIET - Basil Adlam - "Halloween Party" (1952)

Here's a little something different for your All Saints WTF?! pleasure! It's the 5th episode out of 435, of the TV show, "The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet." This particular episode was titled "Halloween Party" and was a story about übergoober Ozzie and neighbor Thorny planning a Halloween party, and screwing up the whole thing because they tried to do it without any help from the women! They forgot a couple of basics like a place for the party, but of course, it all works out in the end!! I stumbled across this the other night on The Internet Archive, and you lucky people can download it, or just watch it for free right Here!!

Little Ricky really digs his skeleton costume, and does a short A cappella rendition of "Dem Bones!" The rest of the music for this episode was created by Basil Adlam, who also played Saxophone in the Ozzie Nelson, and the Phil Harris bands!

Ozzie looks like he's searching for something with those googley eyes!

At one point a couple of trick or treaters come to the Nelson's door! The little girl is Vickie Churchill in her only known film or TV appearance, the little boy, on the other hand is just the opposite! It's none other than "The Beaver" Jerry Mathers in his second ever role!

This is a funny bit with veteran actor William Haade as the over age trick or treater!! Those of you who have seen "The Creep" will notice some amazing similarities in dialogue we just discovered ourselves! Like minds, I guess!

William Haade had a long career in film and was cast in many a film as a Henchman! The man has a long list of 284 credits during an era when guys had names like Slug, Dusky, Rocky, Shrank, Slim, Turk, Butch, Bonecrusher, Buster, Spike, Duke, Bull, and Moon!!

David and Ricky find Thorny's extra long kilt amusing! He explains it by telling them the guy he borrowed it from was real tall!!

Finally the party is rolling along, except the guys also forgot about refreshments!! Doesn't Ozzie look cool in that devils outfit??

So in The End, Oz has to call a burger joint and make reservations for 31!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

- - DEATH TRAIN by Hermanos Guzanos - -

Hermanos Guzanos had a great time recording this schlock rock classic back in 1990...

To avoid the 'unhinged' label, HG decided to not even use hinges!!

DEATH TRAIN!

Monster Music

Monster Music
AAARRGGHHH!!!! Ya'll Come On Back Now, Y'Hear??