THE DEVIL DOLL / MGM - 1936

Tabonga's back from computer limbo, hopefully, better than ever!.. Our feature is a great little film from MGM, directed by Tod Browning and based on the story "Burn, Witch, Burn." It's all about a former banker who was wrongfully accused of fraud by his partners and spends 17 years in prison before making an escape with another elderly inmate, a proclaimed scientist. They make their way to the scientist's house, where he and his wife have invented a way to minimize objects, in an attempt to reduce the size of people in order to save space and food in the future.

Eegah!! sent over a nice little soundclip from the movie, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there next to the flying saucer kiddie ride, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... THE DEVIL DOLL!

Here are Lionel Barrymore as the wrongfully accused Lavond, Henry B. Walthall as the scientist Marcel and Maureen O'Sullivan as his wife, Lorraine. Marcel is showing Lavond some of his little creations.

Then, Marcel and Lorraine miniaturize their maid, experimenting on a human this time! But, there is a problem, the process damages brains in living beings, reducing them to puppets that can be easily controlled by thoughts and words.

Lavond is horrified by all this at first, but after Marcel dies, he decides to move him and Lorraine back to Paris, where he can open a doll shop near his enemies, the one's who had lied and sent him to prison.

Wearing the disguise of dollmaker Madame Mandilip, Lavond is filled with hate for the ones that did him wrong, especially since his wife committed suicide and it turned his daughter against him! Tonight, he has a little (ha ha) surprise for one of his old friends!

His gift, the miniaturized maid, to the small daughter of his foe is activated, she goes first and recovers some of his dead wife's jewelry stolen from his estate. She drops the jewelry out the window and it falls into his bag!

Then, she sneaks up to her victim and injects him with a permanent paralyzing serum!! You can read about it in the papers...

The fear generated by Lavond's dolls gets the last dirty filthy bastard to confess to the crime, finally vendicating Lavond.

Lavond tries to convince Lorraine to destroy the shop and everything in it, the jig is up and there is no sense to continue the experiments... Lorraine doesn't take the news well...

She throws the vile of explosives and demolished the shop completely, allowing Lavond to escape the murder charges, since it's believed that Madame Mandilip was the killer!

DYNAMIT IN GRÜNER SEIDE - Peter Thomas "Death And Diamonds" (1968)

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is straight out of 1967 Deutschland and is called "Dynamit In Grüner Seide" oder auf Englisch,  "Death And Diamonds!"

First off, a big shout out to my old buddy from Berlin, Lord Litter, who was the first person to turn me on to the Jerry Cotton series of films! In the 1960's there were eight Jerry Cotton Films made, and each and every one of them are worth seeking out, and you can thank Sinister Cinema for making them still available today!

"Death And Diamonds" starts off with the heist of some poison gas! Love that smiling skull!! It's like "Danger!!! Go out and have some fun kids!!!"

Dungeon Super Hero George Nader is FBI agent Jerry Cotton! Jerry  is one cool mofo and it's up to him to find out what the Hell is going on!

First stop is the Green Silk Bar in Los Angeles, California, or is it Berlin?

What an awesome scene, there's more go-go girls than there are patrons in the bar! Man, this is a dream come true!

Great trick to pull when you know somebody is spying on you, pop a bag into the secret spy microphone and blow their eardrums out! Works every time!! Jerry Cotton knows all the tricks!

Is anybody out there old enough to remember when slot car racing was all the rage? There was a time when every small burg in the civilized world had a slot car track race course! I used to have a kickass slot car that was painted purple and chartreuse!!! The colors alone totally smoked the competition!

Some smart ass decides to challenge Jerry's masculinity!!

Just to prove that the movie was made in L.A., they took a shot of the Los Angeles Street sign!

One thing about Jerry Cotton films that sets them apart from most of the other spy movies made in the 60's is that the killer music was composed by the genius Peter Thomas! Peter also scored quite a few films in the Edgar Wallace series, and was also of course responsible for the über-cool music in "Raumpatrouille" aka the German "Space Patrol!"

Breaking all of the rules, the first thing they ever taught me in film class was don't wave at the camera!! Jerry Cotton is the only cat cool enough to make it work!!

In "Death And Diamonds" Jerry is posing as a British guy who is a specialist at getting past alarm systems!

After Jerry rigs the alarm, the gang shoots the gas into this room and knocks out all these men inspecting the diamonds and then remotely vacuum them up using this tricky device! If they stay in this condition for too long they will die, and that's when Jerry freaks out, and tries to disrupt the whole operation!

To try and get rid of him, they stick Jerry's ass in an incinerator!!

I'm allowed at least one of these per film, I just like this shot!!

Enter femme fatale Marlies Dräger as the vixen Mabel! Marlies only has 9 acting credits to her name but is still considered one of the glamour girls of the 60's! Follow this link if you want to see a picture of Marlies topless! Marlies was also in the Edgar Wallace classic that we will feature here one day, "The Man With The Glass Eye!"

Tied up there in the background is the other female lead in the story, Sylvia Solar as Lana! Sylvia was hot like the sun, and was in a bunch of weird movies like "Danger! Death Ray," "Mexican Slayride," "The Wicked Caressses OF Satan," and "Cannibal Terror!"

After Marlies Dräger, here's my favourite part of the movie, this Cadillac with the bad guys in it is coming right at Jerry, and he runs at it, jumps through the windshield feet first, and punches out the driver all at the same time! What a guy!!

Jerry is in hot pursuit right up to The End! There is only one way to describe a movie like "Death And Diamonds!" Incredible!!!

GARIBA NO UCHO RYOKO - "Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon" - Toei Studios (1965)

So I just got the call from Tabonga that his electricity went out and because of that his computer took a big dump! He wanted me to just put up a picture of a sandwich with a bite taken out of it, and a sign that said "Out To Lunch," but I decided to go another route!

So while Tabonga drowns in a morass of despair..........Let's blast off to Fantastic Fun Friday! 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1!!!

I'm going to treat you to some random stills from a movie that I've been putting off for a long time now, "Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon,"  and that's the way that it goes!

"Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon" was a Toei Studios production made in 1965!

The music for the English version, and there's lots of it, was written by Milton and Anne Delugg!

                                                                 This movie is  arty!

                                                               And it's very spacey!!

The art direction was by Saburô Yokoi of "Pyun Pyun Maru", "Mako The Mermaid," and "Chappie The Witch" fame!

The most fascinating part of the whole film for me was that the voice of  The Princess was that of Darla Hood of  "The Little Rascals!"

Let's just hope Tabonga gets his computer back up and running by Monday, I'll be back tomorrow with something a little more down to earth!!