BLACK MOON - "And The Drums Play On" (1934)

Welcome to Jungle Jive Saturday Night down in The Dungeon!

Tonight's installment is called "Black Moon" and is a dark little film made in 1934! It looks to be shot in Haiti!

There's really an amazingly small cast, as long as you don't count all the natives!

Dorothy (Girls In Chains) Burgess is Juanita Perez Lane. Juanita is predisposed with playing the drums lately, and can't think of anything except going back to the jungle where she was raised!

Juanita truly has a unique style of babysitting! Her daughter Nancy was played by Cora Sue (Mad Love) Collins! Cora Sue was in 47 movies before abruptly calling it quits, and retiring from acting at the age of 18!

Juanita's husband seems a bit more caught up in his golf game than he is with his wife's apparent boogie fever. Meet Stephen Lane as played by Jack (Cat People) Holt! Jack only lived to be 62, but in that amount of time he managed to chalk up 191 acting credits! Dude must have lived on the set!!

Yes, indeedy, except for that drum thing, they seen to be the perfect Atomic Family!

Queen of The Dungeon, Fay Wray has the role of Gail Hamilton, Stephen Lane's personal secretary! Stephen doesn't get it at all, but Gail is quitting because she is SO in love with him, she can't stand to be around him any more if she can't have him! Stephen talks her into going off with his wife for a short trip back to the jungle before she quits! Little does he know that his wife has no intention on ever returning!

Dorothy and Fay make quite the lovely combination!

Everything goes to Hell on the island, so Gail radios Stephen and beckons him to come and see what's going on, then people start dying, including the radio operator who is found hanged!

Stephen is brought ashore by singer, songwriter, and actor Clarence Muse as "Lunch!" Clarence wrote the classic tune "When It's Sleepy Time South" that has been recorded by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, Wynton Marsalis, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé, and Louis Prima!

So calm and beautiful, you'd never know how much turmoil is happening in this tropical paradise!

Stephen gets the news from Juanita that she doesn't plan on returning back to that states, and it doesn't sit real well with him! That night Lunch tell him that they are planning to sacrifice his daughter, and takes him to the site where the grisly act is about to occur!

And it's at that moment that Stephen finally realizes that his wife is really the Queen of the Jungle!

Stephen ends up shooting the High Priest in the middle of the ceremony, and when they get back to the house, there's a big gun battle with the natives! Outnumbered, they flee to the basement when the natives set the place on fire!

They're captured when they try and escape out the back door, and now all they can do is wait! Since there is no more future, Gail finally confesses her undying love for Stephen!

Madame Sul-Te-Wan had the role of Ruva, the housekeeper who was responsible for introducing Juanita to the Voodoo as a child!  Madame Sul-Te-Wan was also in "King Of The Zombies," "Revenge Of The Zombies," "King Kong," and "Mighty Joe Young!"

To atone for all of Stephen's sins, the natives have decided that Juanita needs to sacrifice her daughter Nancy to the Gods, and even though she was torn internally, Juanita is still prepared to do it, until Stephen shoots her ass!

Stephen, Gail, Nancy, and Lunch can all go back home and live happily ever after, and that incessant drumming finally stops!

INSEMINOID / Jupiter Film Productions - 1981

It's Alien Valentine Friday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. We gots a $2,000,000 ALIEN inspired production from Britain that ended up getting on my bad side and just seemed like a lame attempt at horror to me. The story's about a crew of interplanetary archaeologists who are threatened when an alien creature impregnates a female member, causing her to turn homicidal. Alternate title is HORROR PLANET.

Eegah!! sent over a soundclip of the synthetic theme from this flick for our earjoyment, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there by the alien inseminator, NOW, Rufus The Gnat! Here's a taste of... INSEMINOID!

Like in ALIEN, this comatose dude finds something strange in a cave and gets attacked by an unknown creature.

Here's an interesting shot, the director's trying to get an ALIEN feel with a 50 cent prop!

Judy Geeson, playing Sandy, gets nude for this scene where a big alien bug inseminates her using it's clear tubular penile device... Gross!!

Sandy is pregnant by the big brute and isn't happy consuming just pickles and ice cream!

After killing off half the crew, Sandy gives birth to two ugly little bugs!.. Gross!!

The rest of the crew members lock Sandy out of the living quarters, so, she starts using explosives to get to them!

This guy finally strangles Sandy a goodern, putting an end to her deadly rampage!

But, now the babies are finishing off whoever's left of the remaining crew.

An emergency message is received by these space cowboys, the last survivor tells them about the urgent situation there, so, they head to the planet to help out.

Everyone's dead by the time they get there and they grab a few souvenirs to take back with them! This shot reminds me of GHOULIES.

ORFEU NEGRO - "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" (1959)

 

Welcome to yet another installment of Weirdo Wednesday! Tonight's feature is an Academy Award winning film based on a classical tale of romantic tragedy titled "Black Orpheus!" Before he made movies, Director Marcel Camus was a Professor of Sculpture and Painting, and it shows in this film!

 

The French film "Orfeu Negro" is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice as played out in 1959 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during Carnival!

If you had to choose a place to shoot a movie that was a lot of fun in 1959, it would either be Rio or New Orleans. Today it would probably be Vegas!

One of the reasons that "Black Orpheus" won an Oscar in 1960 for Best Foreign Film is because it's just fun to look at! No, not fun, it's actually beautiful!

All the bright colours of Carnival matched up with an almost endless stream of batucadas will hypnotize you if you're not careful!

 

And then it's all juxtaposed to the stark sleek angles of the city itself!

Eurydice is played by the lovely and oh so innocent looking Marpessa Dawn! Marpessa was born in Pittsburg, Pa. but moved to the UK as a teenager.  This was her first starring role!

To fans of schlock 50's horror, Marpessa was 'the native girl' in the 1958 classic "The Woman Eater!"

This is Orpheus, the regular guy trolley car conductor, as played by Breno Mello! When he first spots Eurydice, it's literally love at first sight! Breno was a native of Brazil, and was only ever in five other movies! In the 'kind of strange department,' Marpessa and Breno passed away within weeks of each other in 2008!

Orpheus is engaged to Mira as played by Lourdes de Oliveira, who could dance her ass off, but was only ever in one other movie, but Eurydice is where his thoughts lie!

Eurydice on the other hand, has problems of her own and is being pursued by some unknown stalker, and it's really pretty creepy!

It's a very festive time, and everybody is in costume for Carnival, so Eurydice's cousin Serafina gets all dolled up as a lampshade!

Okay, this dude genuinely creeps me out! This is the ex-lover of Eurydice who is pursuing her through the streets and alleys of Rio dressed as Death! The costume, the way he moves, it just all adds up to creepy, and here's why! This guy, in reality, is athlete and actor Ademar Da Silva, and why wouldn't you want a guy like Ademar chasing you through the streets of Rio? Well, if he looks just a little muscular it's because he won the Gold Medal in the Triple Jump at The Olympics in 1952 AND 1956! He also at one point held seven world records! Not the kind of guy you'd want chasing you!

There's no screwing around here, these people know how to party!!!

Death just hangs back and watches! That's the other creepy part, because everybody's in costume, nobody, not even Death, is suspected of being a little weird!

This pretty much says it all, "Black Orpheus" will make your head spin!

It's not just Death, it's a slow, torturous, purposeful Death, and he just keeps getting creepier!

In a nutshell,  when it's over, this is what life's all about, just one long vacant corridor!!

If there is any hope in the world, it rests with the children!

The music used throughout "Black Orpheus" was composed by two of Brazil's many musical geniuses, Luiz Bonfá, and Antonio Carlos Jobim! Three years later, Vince Guaraldi would have a massive hit with his "Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus" single, "Cast Your Fate To The Wind!" All of Dave Brubeck's music is very cool, and Dollar Brand's "Cape Town Fringe" is understated brilliance, but "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" is one of the coolest from the first time you heard it to the last time you heard it, and will be forever!