13 MEXICAN LOBBY CARDS Of Fifties Monster Movies

Hello everbloody, Eegah!! has the night off, so, Tabonga is filling in for him on this Halloween Countdown Wednesday 2012, here at The Dungeon!.. Years ago I collected a big pile of very nice Mexican lobby cards from a guy in Mexico, these cards are from that collection...

~ THE FLAME BARRIER - I saw this one when it came out, pretty creepy blob flick for a 10 year old with a good imagination!

~ FRANKENSTEIN 1970 - Saw this one at the movies too, I loved the big monster creeping around in his white clinical bandages!

~ FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER - I love this movie, I have a special place in my heart for make-up maestro Harry Thomas and his use of ping pong eyeballs, of which he also used in KILLERS FROM SPACE! Caught this flick on TV in the early sixties for the first time.

~ THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON - I got to see this classic at the theater, love all those cheap flicks with Robert Clarke.

~ INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS - Caught this one on TV like when I was 12, this little creepfest always left you with a sickening feeling, the same way INVADERS FROM MARS did!

~ MISSILE TO THE MOON - This is another one of my favorites even if it's totally whack, and, it has my love doll Sanita Pelky as a Moon Girl in it! Check out the image on the card of Leslie Nielson and Anne Francis from FORBIDDEN PLANET!

~ MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR - This was the first monster movie produced by Roger Corman and the first movie Jonathan Haze appeared in. The animated monster looks great, but, you have to wait almost an hour to see it and the thing only runs for 64 minutes! Typical Corman.

~ THE NEANDERTHAL MAN - Saw this one on TV around 1956, boring as Hell. Harry Thomas made the caveman mask, he said that he had it all set up for special lighting to make it look very scary in the cave, then, when it came to the shoot, they told him they didn't have time for stuff like that, therefore, that's why the monster looks so crappy!

~ PHANTOM FROM SPACE - They played the crap out of this title on TV throughout the fifties, loved that Radar Ford they drove around in! Great special effects for the time.

~ THEM! - What a great flick, Warner Bros' first venture into the Big Atomic Bug genre! Starred THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, James Arness.

~ TOBOR THE GREAT - A real fave they played regularly on TV, TOBOR was a great looking, very convincing robot, we can thank those robot building dudes over at Republic Pictures! My favorite part is when the commies try to enter the restricted area and all Hell breaks loose when the professor uses highly amplified sounds of war and strobe lights to terrorize them back, very effective and totally hilarious!

~ UNKNOWN WORLD - This movie must have played monthly during the fifties, saw it a few times. The Cyclotron they use to burrow through the earth was a very cool machine, looks like it's actually a redone version of one of the large tank models in THINGS TO COME from 1936!

~ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS - I paid $50 for this card, that's what it took to score a mint card with an insert featuring the Martian!

BODY SNATCHERS / Dorset Productions - 1993

It's another Monster Monday Halloween Countdown 2012 with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Our feature is the third not well known incarnation of Jack Finney's classic story, this time the Army gives the insidious old space pods a helping hand. An odd statistic on IMDb, if it's correct, sez that it cost $13,000,000 to produce, and, made only $428,868 in the US! Seriously, WTF!!

Eegah!! sent over a soundclip from the flick, sooooo, push the big red 'GO' button located next to the unhuman duplicator, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our nails on the chalkboard audio offering for... BODY SNATCHERS!

Like I mentioned, the flick takes place at a desolate, depressing Army base and there's a sinister stank in the air for the new family who just transferred there...

At school, the kids all like to paint the exact same mess, they even have the teacher's frosty blessing!

New kid little Andy Malone tells his mom all about the creepy weirdos at school and doesn't want to go back! Meg (PSYCHO II / ONE DARK NIGHT) Tilly plays mom.

Gabrielle Anwar plays mousey daughter, Marti. Here, she falls asleep in the tub as the pod's tentacles try to get all up inside her!

Her pod is above her, supported by eighth inch masonite with peep holes! Anyway, the thing crashes through the flimsy ceiling!

It falls into the tub with her, creating a moment of bizarro fright!

Then, mom turns on dad and screeches out at the top of her lungs, spilling the beans!

Resistance is basically futile!..

Marti, Andy and dad escape the insanity in a helicopter!

Later, Marti gets fully transformed nude before she's saved by her boyfriend, kind of a twist on the old established rules of pod tranformation!

Everyone assembles in the square to disperse the pods. When Tabonga was stationed in Deutschland in 1969, he drove a deuce and a half pod carrier just like that!

Well, anyway, the word finally gets out and the real Army steps in and blows the living Hell out of the pods and everything else!

I VAMPIRI - Mario Bava - aka "The Vampires" - "Lust Of The Vampire" - "The Devil's Commandment" (1956)

If you haven't seen "I Vampiri" or it's English incarnation "Lust Of The Vampire" lately, well, what are you waiting for? It's a prefect film for the season!

Created in 1956, "I Vampiri" stakes claim to being the first Italian horror film of the sound era!

"I Vampiri" is not your tradtional Dracula type vampire movie, but instead is a film about bad science sucking the life out of helpless and hapless victims in order to keep one rich individual alive and beautiful! That's right, it's kind of like politics! As you can plainly see, there's a reflection that no unwitting person would want to see in the mirror of their dressing room. At least she had one last positive thought, he wasn't a vampire!

 Paul Konrad Muller is just a pawn in this nasty game of blood taking and giving!  Just the kind of person you want working for you! He'll do anything, as long as he gets his fix! As he is also sometimes known, Paul Müller has some 242 titles to his credit, and there's a wanted poster hanging on a wall in The Dungeon with his picture on it!

Here's your fix, sucker! We don't need you any more!!

The authorities are starting to get suspicious, so the only way they can get out of this one is to fake the professor's death, so he can continue his work unimpeded!!

The family motto is, "I shall conquer Hell!" Petty lofty ambition, and an ultracreepy mausoleum to go along with the attitude!!

On the left is Renato Tontini as Rinaldo, the professor's assistant, and on the right is Antoine (Fantomas Against Fantomas) Balpêtré is Dr. Julien du Grand! Renato was the kind of guy you'd want if there was trouble, and it wasn't difficult for him to act like a tough guy, because he was actually a professional light heavyweight boxer with a record of 26 wins, 14 losses and 4 draws!

The very atmospheric cinematography was done by none other than Mario Bava, who also ended up finishing the film as the director after the first director Riccardo Freda got into an argument with the producers! Almost the same exact thing happened when the two worked together a few years later on "Caltiki The Undying Monster!"

The dynamic music used in "I Vampiri" was composed by Franco (Hercules, Prisoner Of Evil) Mannino and Roman (Caltiki The Undying Monster) Vlad!

The next innocent prey is told by a man on the street to go to this apartment for a very special unexplained reason, and the results turn out to be another unexpected meeting with a hand full of chlorophyll!

They need to drain her blood to keep the madam young and viral!!

When the cops finally show up, all they find is an empty apartment!

This is one of the very first high-tech laser disc players!

Sword and Sandal Goddess Gianna Maria Canale is Mistress Giselle du Grand, a woman with more than just a few problems! Gianna was also the wife of the director of "I Vampiri," sculptor and art critic Riccardo Freda!

The blood of the last girl is having a very strange effect on Giselle in an actual physical and
mental way!

Straight out of the du Grand crypt, here's some '13' wallpaper for you!

Without a doubt, this is one of the creepiest excuses for a guard railing I've ever seen!

Giselle finally picks the worst possible time to change back to her true self, right in the middle of a police interrogation! It's going to be downright impossible to try and smart talk her way out of it this time!! "I Vampiri" is a well made movie available on Netflix that any lover of the genre is bound to like!