MILICENT PATRICK / Creator of Classic Fifties Universal Movie Monsters!

It's time to pay some respect to artist Milicent Patrick, she worked at Universal Studios in the fifties and was the amazing creator of three of their classic monsters!!... You go girl! Milicent was a commercial artist, fashion designer and illustrator of children's books when she was not acting in feature roles and television, she accumulated 28 acting credits including roles in WESTWARD THE WOMEN, WE'RE NOT MARRIED!, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET CAPTAIN KIDD, MAN WITHOUT A STAR, LUST FOR LIFE and THE PINK JUNGLE. She went steady with actor George Tobias for forty years, until his death in 1977!

First up is her Xenomorph from IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE in 1953, undoubtedly a real shocker when it showed up on the screen for the audiences that were lucky enough to see it originally in freakin' 3-D!!

Also in 1953, she designed the great monster mask for ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Her design seems to be the model for the masks used in TARANTULA! and MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS.

Then in 1954, Milicent designs her most famous creation, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, which appears in a whopping three movies! Secondly, it gets its revenge, then thirdly, it walks among us! Behold!.. THE CREATURE!!

Wow, what an imagination Milicent had, really amazing concepts! In 1955, she designs the Metaluna Mutant that tormented Faith Domergue in THIS ISLAND EARTH. In my sophomore year in high school, I painted a Mutant head for an art show! I wonder what people thought when they saw it...

Here she is on the set touching up the Creature before its big scene.

Here she is at her art table with her creations surrounding her...

She got to hang out with people like Kirk Douglas while doing her illustrations!

We'll end with this photo, hey, Milicent loves monsters too!!.. Eegah!! warned me about Wednesday's post, I certainly wouldn't want to miss that one!

ONE WAY TICKET TO HELL - Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. - "Teenage Devil Dolls" (1955)

 Tonight's Saturday Night Special is all about choices!

Choices, choices, choices!!!  To be a junkie, or not to be a junkie, that is the question! What's a person supposed to do?

 "One Way Ticket To Hell," also fondly remembered as "Teenage Devil Dolls," is a miserable story! Miserable, I think that's a very good description! No wonder we've got such a drug problem today if this is the way it was 66 years ago. Moving forward into the future is supposedly called progress, but I think that time is moving backwards as far as progress in heroin abuse and society is concerned!

 "Teenage Devil Dolls" is a quasi-documentary about the downfall of a young woman caused mostly by drug abuse! There is no dialogue, just sound effects, music, and a narration by this guy, Lt. David Jason as played by Robert A. Sherry but, Robert A. Sherry is just the actor, another fellow named Kurt Martell is doing the actual talking!

"One Way Ticket To Hell" starts at the end. This guy, Bamlet Lawrence Price Jr. is a no good troublemaker named Miguel 'Cholo' Martinez, and he's skulking around trying to get his girlfriend back! Bamlet was born in Tulare County, California, not a town, but a county, and not only plays this part, he also wrote, directed, edited, and produced this film! I guess I must have lead a sheltered life, because I grew up in the same Central Valley, and I never knew anything about drugs until 1967, some twelve years later! Beer was our drug of choice!

 The trouble all starts with motorcycles, and the lure of the wind blowing between your ears, and then it just escalates from there! Bottom line, motorcycles are the real gateway drug!

 After motorcycles, it's the herbs grown in the Devil's Garden, Marijuana!

 Barbara Marks is Cassandra Leigh, a girl with nothing but problems! This might have been Barbara's only acting credit, but she worked in the Editorial Department on "The Godfather," and "Apocalypse Now!"

After marijuana comes marrying a guy who is in love with you just so you can escape your dreadful home life!

But that doesn't work because Cassandra is not meant to be doing cooking and cleaning!

Her sole purpose in life is to get high!

After motorcycles, pot, and a shitty marriage, what could be next? 

That's right, booze!

The next step is over the counter drugs. Because she has problems sleeping, Cassandra gets a prescription for Seconal that she fills seven times more than she is supposed to in only one week!

With a loving family like this, why would anybody turn to drugs?

I just threw in this shot because I like it!

Cassandra leaves her husband, and gets a job as a carhop, and while she's delivering the food, some customers get the extra bonus of some weed brought to their cars too!

Cassandra is a mess!!

Cassandra makes a friend, somebody she can finally relate to!

Cassandra and her new best friend  Margo take up selling marijuana on the street. Elaine Lindenbaum is Margo, and this is her only acting credit. They are popular merchants because all the potheads think it's cool that two chicks are dealing. Unfortunately it also draws the attention of the authorities and other street vendors, and everything starts unraveling, and going to Hell really fast from here!

From there Cassandra and Margo get involved with heroin and Mexican gangsters! The heroin supplies become real low on the street, and there are a lot of distressed junkies!

 How often do you get a cop with an eyepatch, and the world's biggest phone all in the same shot?

The cops aren't playing around! They chase Cassandra and Cholo into the desert where they almost die, and she is finally captured and taken off to rehab again, and believe it or not, Cholo gets away, and only eventually gets caught because of what he's doing at the beginning of the film, wanting to get Cassandra back!

Yep, lots of bad choices!

You can download or watch "Teenage Devil Doll" at the Internet Archive, or if you just want to get a quick fix, the whole thing can be watched on YouTube!

"Teenage Devil Dolls"

SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING / A Blood Marriage Of Ghouls! - 1976

In the quest to post as many movie reviews as we can before we grind ourselves into dust, well, here's another one to add to the list. It's a direct to video story about a man from LA who travels to Monterey Bay for his sister's funeral, he wants to find out why she has killed herself. He discovers that she is actually a vampire that has returned from the dead to take revenge on her family!.. Since when is a Vampire a Ghoul?!

This 61 minute movie stars Greg (only acting credit) Braddock, Lisa (only acting credit) Milano, Ray (BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS) Myles and Barrett (NIGHT OF THE DEMON) Cooper...

This thing gets going when Nina Gray opens a casket with a vampire inside! Then, she starts making weird sounds, slits her wrist and dies, huh?

Mark Gray, Nina's bro from LA, is staying at her house until he solves the mystery of her death. A detective drops in and tells Mark the haps. Nina died at a different location and Mark wants to know what's up with the blood in her room...

Mark finds the novel Nina's been working on, it's about the 'high' worshiping of Satan, whatever that's supposed to mean!

A visiting family member gets attacked by vampire Nina while just going upstairs! Mark her off the list...

Then, Auntie hears some strange sounds outside her bedroom (she lives there) and is shocked when Nina 2.0 appears bearing the goofiest fangs ever! You can take Auntie off the hit list too!

Here's yet another shot of a vintage record player in a movie that we always like to show.

Mark wants to check out the location where Nina died...

Now what?!!.. So, check out the blood, you can see that it was painted on with a flat tip brush, where, they should have used a round tip, dummies!

It's a nice foggy day in Monterey Bay!.. Whoa, I'm a poet an' don't know it.

Anyway, Mark goes back to the vampires' lair to confront their leader, Father Daken.

So, Mark realizes that he's a bit outnumbered by vampires!..

Then, they roll out the detective to show Mark what could happen to him! The moment he gets the chance, Mark runs like Hell out the door!

Some vampire goons chase Mark all the way to his car, he barely gets away only to crash his car and die on his way back to LA! There you have it, the end to this little horror flick...