GAMERA Super Monster / Daiei - 1980

Hi everbloody an' welcome to 'nother Halloween edition of Friday Night Drive-In, here at The Dungeon! Tonight we gots a really great rarity from 1980. Daiei was hoping this flick would save the company, but unfortunately it was a box office failure and Daiei filed for bankruptcy the next year! Stock footage was used for all scenes featuring Gamera's monster fights from past movies.

The music is by the awesome Mr. Shunsuke Kikuchi, who has 153 composing credits which include these cool Japanese live action and anime TV shows!.. TIGER MASK, IRON KING, HANG IN THERE, ROBOCON!, GETTA ROBOT, GETTER ROBOT, G-MEN '75, UFO ROBOT GRENDIZER, SPACE IRONMEN KYODAIN, SPACEKETEERS and DRAGON BALL!

The clock on the wall sez it's time for lil' Dungeon freek, Ralphie The Tarantula, to push that big red 'GO' button over there and start our Eariffic Earclip rolling along, on it's merry way to yer earifices! Push that button, Ralphie!!.. THE GAMERA MARCH!

The basic storyline is that these three girls are secretly on Earth to fight against an invasion from outer space.

Let the flashbacks begin! Remember when Gaos shot his slicing ray at this copter filled with world dignataries! *Did you know that a flashback is a psychotronic element?

Nice shot of Gaos as he buzzes the air tower!

I swear, Tabonga digz Space Chix!!

Gamera finally shows up and after some battling, he kicks Gaos's ass!

Here's the Bad Old Space Lady spying on our heroes and reporting their every move back to the big boss, out there!

Classic sea monster Zigra in one of his forms, a giant shark!

Time out for a commercial, here's The Space Chix Dollhouse for all you monster kids out there in the ether... net!

Zigra 2.0 - Giant Pentapuss!

Then, Monster X enters the scene and does this to these Army guys with his light ray!

I think they're saying that Godzilla's a pussy!

Space Chik 1 hops onto Gamera's shoulder to disarm a control device being used on him.

Two nice shots!

Portrait of Guiron, aka Guillon.

It's stuff like this that put Gamera in a league of his own!

The weird city on Guiron's planet.

Is our hero gonna make it, or not?

No, Tabonga didn't put the pic upside down, this is a Gamera flick, remember?!

The last monster featured in this extravaganza is Barugon, what was in the very first Gamera sequel.

The big boss is fed up with his Earth spy, she turns good, so he shoots her from space! Nice guy!!

Gamera gets pissed so he flys into space and plows straight into the boss's Star Wars space cruiser. You see the results!

Hooray, Halloween's safe for at least another year!!

Ghoulnight Everbloody!!..

All Souls Day Greetings From The Reverend Tom Frost and This Clown!!

Just in case you somehow missed it, The Reverend Tom Frost over at Spread The Good Word found it somewhere in his black heart, to let us present to you, this tune off of his Bloody Halloween Mix, Part 15, his own particular version of "Tales From The Crypt!" The clown you don't even want to know about, trust me, you know too much already!!

THE THREE STOOGES in SPOOK LOUDER - Thomas Ravenscroft - "Three Blind Mice"

For tonight's Halloween Countdown feature, we have what amounts to more of a What The Heck Wednesday than WTF?! but we're talkin' about The Stooges here, so it doesn't really matter now, does it? I'll tell you one thing that's really WTF?! more than anything about a lot of the old Three Stooges shorts, they were almost entirely devoid of music! The theme song for this episode was "Three Blind Mice," a nursery rhyme written in 1609 by English composer Thomas Ravenscroft! Later on they would use a weird version of "Listen to the Mockingbird" written by Septimus Winner in 1855, and "Pop Goes The Weasel" was also used!

"Spook Louder" starts off in the office of Special Investigator J.O. Dunkfeather, who was played by Lew Kelly, one of those guys that movies couldn't do without, a man with over 200 movie titles, many uncredited, in such classic roles as the stagehand in "The Mad Ghoul," or the bartender in "The Mummy's Tomb!" Here he is the teller of the tale!

In this episode, Larry, Moe, and Curly are door to door salesmen. I don't know who the mysterious tall gal is!

Curly demonstrates the weight reduction machine they are trying to pawn off on the unsuspecting public!

They end up at the spooky house of a Mr. Graves, and are greeted by his butler, played by Charles Middleton, probably best known for his role as Emperor Ming the Merciless, in the "Flash Gordon" serials!

Graves explains that he needs to go to Washington to demonstrate a Death Ray he has invented, and asks the boys to house sit for him! Graves was played by Theodore Lorch, another veteran of the "Flash Gordon" series, and more Stooges! His very first role was the title character in a 1908 short titled "Shamus O'Brien."

Larry, Moe, and Curly end up having to deal with these spy guys lead by the guy in the middle, Stanley Blystone, who just might hold The Dungeon record for being in 517 different titles of movies, shorts, and TV shows! The list goes on forever!

The boys get spooked by some piano music, since they are supposed to be in the house alone, but it turns out to only be a "Kitten on the Keys! That's also the name of a 78 I own by pianist Freddie Slack!

Stanley Blystone finds himself on the receiving end of the first pie thrown!

A creepy hand takes Moe by surprise!

I got him, I got him!! Curly is clueless to the fact that he's got Moe, and not one of the intruders!

Curly gets a balloon on a string, with a face on it, stuck to his posterior, and manages to not only scare himself, but the other two Stooges too!

Another good shot of Curly when he gets scared by a mummified body!!

The spies close in, but The Stooges have a bomb that Curly lights accidently, and blows up just enough of the joint to scare the spies away!

The boys are the ones to get the final pies thrown at them by some mysterious unidentified character, and then it's over! The Three Stooges made almost 200 of these shorts! Curly was in the first 97, and there is no reason why you shouldn't try and see each and every one of them! They're everywhere!

ELECTRIC ZOMBIE DIRGE / Hermanos Guzanos

Here's a catchy little dirge from 1988 for all you zomboids out there! It's by the Dungeon's very own monsterous house band, Hermanos Guzanos...

eLeCtRiC zOmBiE dIrGe!

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE / MGM - 1935

Hello everbloody, welcome to a special Halloween Moldie Oldie Monday, here at The Dungeon! Tonight's feature is directed by Tod Browning and stars two Lionels and a Bela!

This film had 20 minutes edited out because of incestuous scenes, thus leaving a few holes in the plot and coming in at a measley 60 minutes. And, the budget was over $300,000! Browning had a way of really pissing off those MGM execs!

The uncredited stock music was composed by Jack Virgil. Most of Jack's credits come from the Music Dept. He worked on films like THREE ROGUES, ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1933), THE THIN MAN, OPERATOR 13 (cool!!), MAD LOVE, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, LAST OF THE PAGANS, THREE LIVE GHOSTS, BEG, BORROW OR STEAL, RADIO HAMS, BOMBER'S MOON, BELLE OF THE YUKON and THE SHOCKING MISS PILGRIM.

Here's our lil' Dungeon helper and shelf duster, Rufus The Gnat, to be pushin' that big red 'GO' button yet wonst again... and start our Eariffic Earclip a-rollin' along! So, hit the button, Rufus!!.. MARK OF THE VAMPIRE!

The story is very involved, so all I'll say is that Count Mora (Bela) and his daughter Luna (Carroll Borland) are blamed for the murder of a prominant citizen by the townspeople. They are thought to be vampires living in a castle. Lionel Barrymore, as Professor Zelen, tries to bring some sanity to solving the crime.

Above, a party to celebrate the birth of a child...

What a great graveyard! Art direction was by Cedric Gibbons, cinematography was by James Wong Howe.

This outsider gets a lesson about local vampires from the inn-mates.

Here's Count Mora and daughter Luna, just wandering around in their castle for no apparent reason... Well, except to make the audience suspicious! There's actually a bat there.

To prove Eddie steals from only the best, here's Luna standing by a roadway and she scares the bejesus out of some travelers! Raise your hand if you're familiar with the scene in NIGHT OF THE GHOULS where Harvey B. Dunn and his scaredy-pants wife encounter the identical situation!

Some interesting trivia... "Allegedly, Carroll was fascinated by Lugosi when saw him as Dracula at the Fulton Theater in Oakland, she wrote a novel called "Countess Dracula" and sent it to him. He called her to play Lucy, Dracula's favorite victim, on stage. Later he gave her the role of Luna Mora in the film Mark of the Vampire." She only had 5 acting credits including SCALPS in 1983 and BIOHAZARD in 1985 and was a Pisces.

The Count decides to get in on some of the action... Hubba, hubba!

More excellent graveyard scenes!

That creepy part near the end of the soundclip is where the Count tears into the scene, and it is very weird!!

Another standout scene is where Luna transforms from a bat to her human form as the organist plays on!

Three nice stills involving windows!

Professor Zelen finds some interesting things in the Count's basement!

The bat effects used in this movie were as good as it ever got for them little critters, until there was CGI!

This twist ending will make your head spin!!!.. Get it?

Ghoulnight Everbloody!!