Halloween movies and stuff.

[daglob]

What is your favorite scary movie? Even if it's not so scary.

My favorite monster movie is Gorgo. I don't know why, since it's basically a bunch of puppets and a guy in a rubber suit (but isn't that what classic Godzilla is?); maybe it's the whole

Spoiler

boy and his mother

thing going on. Maybe it's the fact that all the destruction is in London instead of New York or Tokyo.

I'm not really into horror per se,  but I enjoy the old classic Universal monster movies. There used to be afternoon movies on the local CBS and NBC affiliates back in the '60s. Channel 5 (WKRG) started theirs, The Early Show at 3:30, Channel 10 (WALA) started theirs, The Big Show at 4:00. During the winter, both stations showed dramas, romantic comedies, and mysteries, with a lot of tearjerkers and melodramas and the occasional classic ("Wuthering Heights") tossed in. During the summer, though, they showed westerns, comedies, Tarzan, and monster movies. This included science fiction, and a lot of SF from the 1950s were just monster movies in outer space or from the ever useful lab accident. But one summer, Channel 5 showed the Universal monsters. It had "Frankenstein", "Dracula", "The Invisible Man" and "The Wolfman", followed by all the sequels (except for "Daughter of Dracula". Y'know, there's that scene...). "The Mummy" and "The Phantom of the Opera" (Claude Raines) got in on the action, too, as well as a lot of much lesser efforts. And, of course, "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein". All in all, there were about two weeks at the beginning of the summer with nothing but Universal monsters, spreading the remainder out over summer vacation. Good times, good times indeed.

Bear in mind both of those stations had about 60 days to fill with something. And "some thing" is often what they filled the time with.

Of the Universal pictures, "The Bride of Frankenstein" really is the best, but "A&C Meet Frankenstein" and "Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman" are still my favorites. The other "Abbot and Costello Meet [fill in the monster]" aren't nearly as good, but it is fun to see Boris Karloff as Dr. Jekyll.

Of the science fiction movies they had over the years, you could see "Forbidden Planet", "The Thing", "This Island Earth", "Things to Come", "Destination Moon" (my favorites), and the SF Monster Movies like "Them" (Hey, look: Leonard Nimoy), "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" (and its sequels), "It Came From Beneath The Sea",  "The Beginning of the End", "The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", "The Amazing Colossal Man", "The 4D Man", "Konga",  "Godzilla", "The Monolith Monsters", "Earth vs. the Spider", "Tarantula" (Hmmm... Clint Eastwood's adam's apple) and so on. One of the stations had "The Giant Claw" and "Attack of the Crab Monsters", so there were a lot of laughs interspersed. I have a fondness for the giant anti-matter turkey buzzard and the solid electricity goofy eyed crabs.

They also had all the Teenage Monster movies: "I was a Teenage Werewolf", "I was a Teenage Frankenstein", "Blood of Dracula", and "How to Make a Monster". They had some real stinkers, like "Teenagers from Outer Space", "Mars Needs Women", "Queen of Blood", "Attack of the Giant Leeches", "The Giant Gila Monster", "The Killer Shrews" and "The Wasp Woman". And of course "The Mole People",  "Little Shop of Horrors", "13 Ghosts", "House on Haunted Hill" and "Bucket of Blood".

Then they had a few movies like "Fiend Without A Face" (love to make those monsters for Freedom Force), and "First Man Into Space", a couple of British SF/monster movies that were really quite good. Good too were "It Came from Outer Space", "The Beast from 20000 Fathoms", "20000000 Miles to Earth", "Curse (or Mark) of the Demon", "House of Wax", and "The Day The Earth Stood Still".

Strangely, I saw "Five Million Miles to Earth" on "Tuesday Night at the Movies".

On WALA they showed "The Raven", which had the best wizard's battle before Harry Potter, "It Conquered the World", "Five", "Invasion U.S.A." (Hey, look... it's Lois Lane... waitamanit, and that's Lois Lane... Phyllis Coats and Noel Niell in the same movie.), "The Werewolf", "The Next Voice You Hear", "Repiticus", and "The Fly" (and its sequels). Unfortunately, they also had Larry Buchanan's "Zontar-The Thing from Venus" (remake of "It Conquered the World"), "The Eye Creatures" ("Invasion of the Saucer Men"), "Creature of Destruction" ("The She Creature"-reptiles with boo... um... accessories),  "In The Year 2889" (If man is still alive, if woman can survive, they will fiiind... oops, sorry; wrong song. anyway, it's a remake of "The Day the World Ended"), and "Swamp Creature" (said by Buchanan to be original, although it has similarities to "VooDoo Woman". Regardless, it is just plain bad). I've also seen the movies Buchanan did the remakes of. Just a side note: Buchanan also did "High Yellow" , a movie that was considered scandalous around here (Mobile, Alabama). Other bad (but fun) movies were "Creature with the Atom Brain", "Invaders from Space", "The Five Skulls of Johnathan Drake", "Night Monster", "Terror From The Year 5000", "Man From Planet X", and "The Amazing She-Creature".

At some point, in the '70s I think, they added the Hammer horror movies: "Dracula" (and its sequels), "Frankenstein" (and its sequels), "The Phantom of the Opera", "Curse of the Werewolf, "The Gorgon", "The Reptile", "The Mummy", and "The Abominable Snowman" (No relation to "The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas").

Channel 5 had a "Late Show" every Saturday night at 10:30. I'm pretty sure I saw several monster movies on it, but the only one I remember is "King Kong vs. Godzilla".

Somewhere along the way, I saw "Mill of the Stone Women", which I thought was creepy as all get out.

I don't know who did "Frankenstein meets the Space Monster", but they shouldn't have. Same applies to "The Manster". Then there are several movies that have the same basic  plot: a scientist has to have glands (or something) from freshly killed women to restore the beauty of his disfigured wife/girlfriend. He, or his assistant, take a serum that mutates them so they won't be recognized, or something like that.

I didn't see "Plan 9 From Outer Space" until I was grown. And we won't even discuss "Bride of the Atom".

Yeah, I know; a lot of these have shown up on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

So, here are my favorites for some reason or another in no particular order:

Grogo
The Thing
Fiend Without a Face
The Raven
The Fly
The Monolith Monsters
Return of the Vampire
Mark of the Vampire
It Came from Outer Space
It Came From Beneath The Sea
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Forbidden Planet
This Island Earth
Bride of Frankenstein
Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Curse of the Demon
The Body Snatchers
House of Wax
It Conquered The World
Them
Things to Come
The Giant Gila Monster (I don't know why)
The Giant Claw (ya gotta laugh)
The Attack of the Crab Monsters (ditto)
The Monster that Challenged the World (giant killer sea monkeys)

What are your favorites, and what memories of similar TV shows do you have.

[kkhohoho]

No Young Frankenstein?

[Shogunn2517]

Less about the movies, but more about certain moments in the movies and both of these are anthology movies: Tales From the Darkside: The Movie and Creepshow II.

Tales From The Darkside: The Movie
The last story with James Remar and Rae Dawn Chung.  He and his friends gets attacked by a gargoyle, kills one and makes Remar promise to not tell anyone that he ever saw what happened.  Later that night, he met Rae's character and they eventually hooked up and fast forward they build a life together.  He then decided after 10 years to tell her about the night they met.  Since he was an artist, he made a statue of what he remembered and showed it to her.  The way she reacted, for whatever reason gives me the chills some 30 years later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EniROJmSS8U

Creepshow II
Again, the last story, featured a cheating wife who was leaving her lover later than she wanted.  On her way home, she was smoking and dropped a cigerette in her lap and while recovering, she hits and kills a hitchhiker.  Instead of calling the authorities and outing herself to her husband, she looks around and surmises no one saw it and drives away.  She thought she could get away with it, but all he wanted is to say thanks.  I guess it isn't "scary", but in my book definitely creepy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzHKKo1oKD0

[daglob]

No Young Frankenstein?

I didn't list "Young Frankenstein", "Phantom of the Paradise", "2001", or a lot of other movies that I saw at the theater. These are movies I saw on TV, mostly when I was a kid, mostly on The Big Show or The Early Show.

About the only show I know of similar these days is Svengoolie. The shows I was talking about disappeared in the late '70s-early '80s, I guess because most of the movies they showed were being licensed for VHS (now DVD). We didn't have a monster host locally, but we did have Big Chief Rain-In-the-Face on WALA. One summer I had to live with my grandparents in New Orleans (finally got a smallpox vaccination and couldn't touch my sister for ten weeks). They had Morgus the Magnificent on WVUE, and that was the first time I had seen a Horror Host.

It seems like Wolfman Mac's "Chiller Drive In" and Elvira's whatever have gone .