TALES FROM THE CRYPT / Amicus Productions - 1972

It's Friday Night Horror Theater with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon... What we gots is another Amicus anthology, this time they took five stories from the pages of fifties pre-code EC horror comics. Actually, two stories are from Tales From The Crypt, two stories are from The Haunt Of Fear and one story is from The Vault Of Horror! After the implementation of the Comics-Code in January, 1954, EC and other horror comic publishers were forced to tame everything down to 'boring' or not be published. Everything turned to total crap, so, EC put all their effort into MAD Magazine, because, magazines were exempt from the code! We salute William Gaines and the many awesome artists and writers he employed!

Like with ASYLUM, Amicus uses creepy old classical music to their advantage, here, it's Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor! Sooooo, wif'aus further adieu, you can push the big red 'GO' button right there, NOW, Rufus The Gnat! Here's our classical soundclip for... TALES FROM THE CRYPT!

Dungeon favorite Freddie Francis directs this anthology about five people who get separated during a museum tour and end up trapped in a crypt with a mysterious cryptkeeper. They are all shown their dubious futures and given the option of avoiding their fates by not living out the rest of their lives!

AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE: Sexy Joan Collins hates her husband, she murders him on Christmas Eve to collect on his life insurance policy, but, ends up being attacked by a psychopathic killer dressed up as Santa Claus!

Oliver (THE FROZEN DEAD) MacGreevy plays Santa... Scary Xmas, everbloody!!

REFLECTION OF DEATH: Ian Hendry plays a guy who leaves his family for a younger woman, played by Angie Grant.

As they drive off into the night, their car crashes into a ravine, and, after Carl manages to escape the burning wreckage, Susan's nowhere to be found! He eventually realizes (people are repulsed by him) that he was killed in the wreck and is now a walking corpse. He suddenly awakens and is relieved that the whole thing was only a dream, but then, the car crashes exactly as it did in his dream and the horror is now real!

POETIC JUSTICE: A ruthless property developer (and, dick), played by Robin Philips, feels that his elderly neighbor, the kindly old dustman played by Peter Cushing, is an eyesore to the community. He launches a smear campaign against Peter, hoping that he will sell the property to him cheap and leave the area for good.

He commits suicide instead!

Peter had a few more skills than some people realized.

The greedy stinking little bastard is counting his dough when he hears something creeping around in his dark room...

Peter has returned a year later to give Robin's father a special Valentines Day gift!

WISH YOU WERE HERE: Ruthless business tycoon played by Richard Greene is declared bankrupt by his lawyer, but, his wife has discovered a statuette which can grant three wishes!

After he's killed in a car crash, wifey wishes her husband back to life, to live forever!

However, his body has been embalmed and that only means one thing... He must live in eternal agony... Forever!!

His wife tries to end the suffering by chopping him up with a sword, which only means that the pain gets even worse!

BLIND ALLEYS: Selfish Nigel Patrick takes over the running of a home for the blind, he uses funds allocated to the needs of his patients for his own comfort. He won't even buy them a few blankets! Patrick Magee is a helper.

When his neglect results in a death, Patrick and the other patients come up with a devious plan for revenge. First, they have to separate the German Shepherd from it's master with a trail of meat scraps...

After they starve the dog, Nigel gets trapped in a corridor lined with razor blades, and, when he tries to squeeze through, they let the hungry dog go, to feast on it's tasty master!!

And, if you try and escape your fate, you'll fall into this pit to a burning Hell!

Ralph Richardson plays a very British version of EC's Cryptkeeper!

DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE - Alice Cooper - (What's The Consequence To Be Free?) (1970)

"Diary Of A Madman" with Vincent Price came out in 1963, and was a pretty scary movie, so when "Diary Of A Mad Housewife" came out in 1970, I had high hopes for a similar viewing experience! Boy, was I wrong! Not that it's a bad movie, and even though some of these characters really deserve it, nobody gets killed or even modestly threatened, because "Diary Of A Mad Housewife" is not a horror movie, unless you count the horrors of a modern society! So why is this film on this site?

Here's the happy couple! Richard (WESTWORLD, CATCH-22) Benjamin as stick up his ass attorney Jonathan Balser, and Carrie (THE FURY, TRICK OR TREATS) Snodgress as his misunderstood wife Tina Balser!

The prefect family with the prefect spoiled and brattiest kids on the face of the planet, but there's something weird going on here, between the two of them, Frannie Michel as Liz Balser, and Lorraine Cullen as Sylvie Balser, they only have a total of 6 more acting credits! This film might have had that kind of effect!

So off the Balsers go to party with the innest of the in crowd, and it's pretty obvious who needs to smooze, and who would rather just go back home!

At the arty farty coolest of the cool party they couldn't get The Velvet Underground, so the next band of choice was none other than ALICE COOPER!!

Tina Balser is totally turned off by the sexual arrogance of Frank (DRACULA) Langella as hip author George Prager!

Alice Cooper "Pretties For You" one more time!! That pillow over there turns into one monstrous pillow fight!! The Alice Cooper band was fleshed out by Michael Bruce on guitar, Glen Buxton on guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and drummer Neal Smith!

You'd have to be John Holmes to be a bigger dick that Richard Benjamin in this flick!

At the next "Be there of Be square" party they go to, Tina Balser runs in to George Prager again, and he starts really coming on strong to her! Her stupid husband is just so proud of the fact that she can hang with somebody so intellectually superior, nothing else matters!

This is what it looks like when rich dicks are sick!

I once knew a really nice older man named Richard Peters! One of the last times I saw him, he was wearing a Cox cable hat! He had no idea!

In 1970, if you were exceptionally cool, you had one of these power shoe shiners!

You know you've made it when a Nobel Prize winner steals your shit! Jonathan throws a big party to try and impress the top of the heap, but as luck would have it, everything he pays big bucks for is already passé, and the omelets by the best chef who didn't show up, are already last year's model! Who the Hell serves omelets at a party anyway? Unless they had caviar and lobster in them, I make a better one here every Sunday morning for about nine thousand dollars less!

Very simple but effective shot from Director Frank Perry and Cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld!

Tina finally cuts loose, and lets her husband know how she really feels about all his bullshit!!

The seductively sweet and stunning Carrie Snodgress (For years I thought it was Snotgrass), undresses and gets dressed again at least 4 or 5 times in this film, and that's not such a bad thing! Carrie was rocker Neil Young's girlfriend for four years, and was the Mother of their son Zeke! She passed away in 2004 at an age of 59, which I consider very young!

The last word is that if Tina was really such a mad housewife, she would have pulled out a giant butcher knife and done away with both her annoying husband, and her eloquent and embarrassing assholish lover, and got away with it, but instead she ends up in therapy with Peter (THE DREAM TEAM, THE MONITORS) Boyle! I doubt it's a coincidence that this film is almost impossible to find!

SILVER ANGEL vs THE DEATH ZOMBIES / Wray Film Productions - 2003

It's Monster Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. What we gots is the second movie the Dungeon Gang produced for our 13 O'Clock Theater series, the first being a b/w horror comedy, THE CREEP, in 2001.

We're reviewing it in an effort to create some interest in our movies offered there on the sidebar, both our DVD features for $10 with free shipping! Check it out! This poster was a 1-sheet printed by Budweiser for our local premiere. NEUTRON vs THE DEATH ROBOTS was pretty much the model for our script, I dig vintage Mexican monster movies the most!

We used royalty free sound files to create the music for our soundtrack, which is the way to go for quality and convenience when on a shoestring budget. But, you still have to compose all the pieces, I really like the theme, has a latino feel! Sooooo, push the big red 'GO' button there in front of your mandible, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our soundclip for... SILVER ANGEL vs THE DEATH ZOMBIES!

This alley urchin (our pal, Donicio) is the first victim of the punching pink robot! We wanted the color burgandy, but, you can't dye tyvek, it will only tint! We kept them, concluding that pink was actually pretty cool considering our budget restraints.

Here are our heroes... Crime fighter Silver Angel and his gadget toting sidekick, Professor Valdez. World champion kickboxer Allen Tackett plays Silver Angel and Joey Garza plays the Professor. Joey was the first pick to star in CHICO AND THE MAN, but, turned it down! Allen got to meet Bruce Lee. The silver mask is a Santo knockoff from Mexico.

These are the bad guys... Dr. Mercury and his twisted little bald helper, Pluto! Robert Hernandez plays the mad doctor, who has visions of taking over the world with the use of his zombies, some of which are robots. Rodney Lee plays Pluto, Rodney was also The Creep!

We like to film at night, and, there are some exciting chase scenes that'll get your adrenaline flowing! Angel's Camero (owned by his friend) ran on jet fuel and I had to pay a staggering amount to run it!!

The robots are out collecting people for their brains so that Dr. Mercury can create more zombies. Eegah!! is piloting the main robot there, you can barely see him through his glass shield. I'm bringing up the rear, I just beat up a guy in the house.

Dr. Mercury's lab is pretty cool with it's lead walls and all, that way, it can't be located by radiation detectors!

The police find brainless 'Frank' laying in the woods after Pluto and the robots dumped him there!

Pluto asks Dr. Mercury if he would put his brain in a robot if he crashes the van and gets killed!

Eegah!! was given the task to learn some special effects software for this scene where Dr. Mercury blasts Silver Angel and Professor Valdez with this electric raygun, you can hear it electrocuting them in the soundclip.

What a great promo shot of Robert as Dr. Mercury!

Pluto collects the 'meatheads' from more of the doctor's victims!

There are even scenic nighttime shots of the city.

Great fight scenes with some of Allen's monster buddies, they weren't afraid to make the action look real. A friend of mine commented recently after seeing this for the first time, hey, the fights look real! Allen even kicked me real good a couple of times! Then, I tore my arm up when I fell back into a pomegranate tree. Mars was at it's closest point to Earth back when we were filming, and, my apartment building nearly burned down and I had to move, and, came close to losing everything! I ended up on the TV news holding one of my paintings, WTF!!

The professor shoots Pluto in the side and Dr. Mercury gets some revenge for Pluto screwing up another assignment by giving him an experimental booster shot, this is one hilarious scene! By the way, we don't do parody.

The zombies are back for more mayhem but are foiled with some quick thinking by Professor Valdez...

Even though Dr. Mercury and Pluto made their escape, Silver Angel is ready to strike back against any and all crimes that may come his way!.. Remember to check out our ad for our cool movies, Forry Ackerman hosts THE CREEP!