Wednesday, April 23, 2014

TIMESLIP - "The Atomic Man" - Merton Park Studios (1955)

"The Atomic Man!" What a great title! The movie itself is not all that exciting, but for the price, it's well worth an hour or so of your time! The original UK title was "Timeslip" for reasons you'll find out about soon enough!

Just in case we get disconnected, you should know that "The Atomic Man" can be downloaded for free right HERE from The Internet Archive! What a bargain and a half that is!

Here's how this story goes, they find this guy shot up and almost dead, and when he comes to, he's got a serious case of amnesia, and somebody needs to figure out who he is, and what happened! The man in the picture is Eddie Arne in one of his earliest roles as Dr. Stephen Rayner, the man with a formula to turn dirt grade metal into precious metal!

If for no other reason, this movie is worth watching to see the performance by one of The Dungeon's favourite heroines, Faith Domergue! The three films Faith made before this one in the same year are "Cult Of The Cobra," This Island Earth," and "It Came From Beneath The Sea!" Pretty amazing run!

Faith is newspaper photographer Jill Rabowski and her boyfriend Mike Delaney is played by Gene Nelson! Born Eugene Leander Berg, Gene Nelson started out his career as a dancer! For a guy who was a dancer, and sang in quite a few films, this movie was a real change up for Gene! Except for the opening theme, this movie is almost completely devoid of music! Gene was also a director and directed the John Agar classic, "Hand Of Death!" In this shot, Jill has just taken a picture of the atomic man in his hospital bed, they're not quite sure why he is still alive!

This is a serious film, but some of the fast-paced interaction between  Delaney and Rabowski is often quite comedic, and mostly the highlight of the film!

It's the olde "How can you be in two places at once, if you're not anywhere at all" gig! The man in the hospital bed has been identified by Delaney as Dr. Stephen Rayner, and yet when investigated, it's found out that Dr. Rayner is indeed at work, where he is supposed to be, but for some reason he's got bandages on his face, and a cockamamie story about being bumped from behind in his car and hitting his face on the windshield! There's something fishy going on around here! I smell a rat!!

Delaney accuses Jill Rabowski of not loading the film properly when the photo of Dr. Rayner comes out glowing. It takes a little while, but they will eventually put two and two together!

Vic Perry, the 'world's greatest pickpocket' is the face of bad man Emmanuel Vasquo!

Delaney is not real a crime journalist, he's supposed to be writing articles on science, so when he can't give up the chase, he gets fired, and relocates to the local bar!

I like this part of the story a lot! When he's conscious, Dr. Rayner seems to only speak gibberish!

But as it turns out, he died for 7 1/2 seconds when he was shot, but his brain somehow managed to live through it, so now he lives 7 1/2 seconds in the future, and that's why it sounds like he's talking nonsense, because he's answering the questions before they are asked! Presto Change-o, "Timeslip!"

Jill finds the evidence, photos of the plastic surgery plans for Dr. Rayner in Emmanuel Vasquo's office!

Her big mistake is lollygagging around too long and calling Delaney on the phone from Vasquo's office, when she should have left the buiilding! Now she's in big trouble!!

Don't worry, believe it or not, the happy couple comes out unscathed, and their relationship is stronger than ever! Aaahhhh! It's atomic, it's free, you can't lose, ka-boom!!

Monday, April 21, 2014

YOU'LL FIND OUT / RKO Radio Pictures - 1940

It's Monsterous Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Here's a rare movie that's the only time Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre appeared together on the screen! There's plenty of fun to be had, and, the fun never lets up with a hefty budget of $353,000!

Eegah!! sent over a musical soundclip from the beginning of the show, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there by the ghost mask assortment, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... YOU'LL FIND OUT!

And, there's a special second soundclip at the end you'll definitely want to check out.

Kay Kayser was a popular Radio personality along with his talented band members, and, he starred in 12 movies between 1939-45. Here he is asking audience members silly questions related to music.

Kay's band manager books them for a birthday party bash for an heiress at a spooky old mansion! There's always plenty of clowning around going on, as you can well imagine.

Here's Boris as Judge Mainwaring, this is the look of disdain he exhibits throughout the flick! Blogger the Gremlin is still up to it's same old mischief, tinting cretain photos sepia, or washing them out, so, it's not our fault...

Then, Bela pops in, he plays Prince Saliano, mystic!

The first time we see Peter is at the window, he's Fenninger!

Kay and the band do their act for the guests, which includes lots of get-ups and Ish Kabibble as the sad ice cream man. The droll Ish was also Kay's real band manager.

I just had to show another wonderful photo of Boris, boy, if looks could kill!

One of the guests gets a near death experience when the chandelier (with a giant metal spike) nearly makes her a dish-kabob!

Kay goes exploring and finds all kinds of interesting things!

Classic shot of the wrecking crew, first and only film appearance together!

Here's our hero, he blows up the bad guys with dynamite and doesn't even get a damn credit, c'mon man, what gives?!!

Okay, it's 1940, look at how far ahead of it's time this voice enhancing gadget was, check out this amazing soundclip!.. Harry On The SONAVOX Machine...

Saturday, April 19, 2014

PICTURE MOMMY DEAD - Mr. B.I.G. - "Flaming Passion" (1966)

We've paid homage multiple times to Mr. B.I.G and his colossal body of work before, and tonight's feature film is just another notch in that championship belt of his! I hate being redundant, but just in case you don't know who Bert I. Gordon is, he's the man responsible for one of the greatest runs of monster movies of all time with movies like KING DINOSAUR,  BEGINNING OF THE END, THE CYCLOPS, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, EARTH Vs. THE SPIDER, THE MAGIC SWORD, and VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS!

"Picture Mommy Dead" might not be the best movie in the world, but it is interesting, entertaining, and jam packed with talent!

But basically, it's just a vehicle to showcase Bert's daughter Susan's talents, so much, that the first line spoken in the film is "Daddy!" What's kind of funny is that Susan was tired of the whole gig, and gave it up after this movie, except for appearing on a couple of episodes of "My Three Sons!" Susan was about 13 years old when she appeared as Jenny in the "Twilight Zone" episode titled "The Fugitive!"

Susan's disengaged Father and step Mom are played by the always suave Don Ameche and the always gorgeous Martha Hyer! They've come to pick her up from the looney bin she's been in ever since the night her Mother died! They never came to visit her because they were too busy traveling around the world and partying!

The music in "Picture Mommy Dead" was written by Robert Drasnin who appears to have written the music for about half the TV shows of the 70's!! Here's "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out..!" as just a taste! Now it's time to go back to the place where it all happened, the restored family estate!

It's explained to Susan by a lawyer that as long as she is of sound mind, then it all belongs to her!

The always entertaining Wendell ( AGENT FOR H.A.R.M., CYBORG 2087, THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES) Corey is that lawyer! He's asks Susan questions like, "Do you think it's right to get rewarded if you kill someone!"

Except for occasional flashbacks, Susan has blocked the whole night of her Mother's death out of her mind, and seems perplexed by the whole situation! "What do you mean?"

Since there are no giant monsters of any kind in this movie, Mr. B.I.G. resorts to super closeups of stuffed animals in one of Susan's first meltdown scenes! Personally, I find the stuffed bird toy to be kind of creepy!

During Susan's next implosion, she scratches her Mother's portrait and it bleeds, or was it just a dream?

The square root of all evil can always be found in some weird-ass doll like this!

Susan's deceased Mother was played by none other than Zsa Zsa (QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE) Gabor! I'm pretty sure she's not in the greatest of health these days, but Zsa Zsa just turned 97 a couple of months ago! Wow!

Maxwell Reed is Susan's Mom's cousin, former lover of her step Mom and third in line on the inheritance list! His face is scarred from pulling Susan's Mom from the raging inferno! Martha Heyer's character is a cheap slut who plans on following the money, no matter which way it goes, and she's really good at it! I find it intriguing that two years earlier Martha was in another fiery epic, "Fuego," or "Pyro, The Thing Without A Face," whatever you want to call it! Martha was also marvelous in "First Men In The Moon," and "House Of 1,000 Dolls!

Susan has another bad instance, and goes running screaming from the house followed by her Dad! It's causes enough commotion that these two totally forgot what they were doing! Oops!!

Martha Hyer dons the dress that Susan's Mom was wearing the night of her death! Now she just wants to find the jeweled necklace she was wearing that same fateful evening!

Things go awry and Martha is able to finally reveal her true nasty bitch character!

She decides she needs to have a talk with Susan, and a pair of scissors just might come in handy!

Luckily Susan's Dad shows back up, and it's revealed that maybe he's not as easy going as originally assumed, but then why should he be? Both his first and second wife totally disrespected him, and it turns out that both were going out on him too! Why shouldn't they deserve the same fate?

In The End, we find out that maybe Father and daughter aren't so different from each other after all!! In real life, Susan Gordon passed away in 2011 at the age of 62, but unbelievably, after 24 years of inactivity, Bert I. Gordon has got a movie in post production right now called "Secrets Of A Psychopath" that he wrote, directed, and produced at the age of 92!! Go Bert!!

Monster Music

Monster Music
AAARRGGHHH!!!! Ya'll Come On Back Now, Y'Hear??