Article by Joseph A. Ziemba

Ah, Halloween. Before the obnoxious 80s razor blades, before the lazy soccer mom car pools of the 00s, you were pure, ghoulish bliss. Stolen candy! Tubes of fake blood! Shaving-creaming "F-U-C-" on somebody's lawn before getting shoo'ed with a rake! Antics like that are the stuff of legends. Kids today might knock over a few mailboxes, but are they clad in Tor Johnson masks? Plastic Ben Cooper regalia? Freddy Kreuger gloves? Certainly not.

Most of the time, when older people tell you how much better things were in the "old days," it's a crock of b.s. However, like anything in this world, there are exceptions to the rule. Case in point: Halloween and trashy horror films. Today, both the holiday and film genre are over-the hill and begging for mercy. Yesterday, there stood two vibrant cultural landmarks that made for a fiery exuberance, if only once a year. And that realization, my friend, is your call to action.

Now look. I'm not telling you to go out and stock up on Barbesol and eggs, wreaking hefty damage throughout your neighborhood. While that would certainly be a good time, us sensible adults have to set an example, right? As the whisp of October bites at the ankles, it's time to reclaim the season, if only in our own minds. While the outside world dresses their kids as Disney characters and rents The Ring at Blockbuster to get in the Halloween "mood," tried and true cinema fiends must turn to the only solace: The Trash Film Marathon.

Last year, I took a stab at sixteen unseen cheapos, straight from the vaults of Crown International, in the form of TOO OLD FOR TRICKS & TREATS: Hallowe'en With Rhino's Horrible Horrors. This autumn, I was feeling a little nostalgic. It was time to get back to the roots. Wracking my brain, I chose ten overlooked epics in glorious black and white, all of which exemplify the aura of a vintage Halloween season; grayscale monsters, cardboard decorations (you know, sets), and off-the-cuff urgency. Just like Halloween night, there's no time to think. We can only accept and indulge.

And indulge I did. September was spent in the company of ten old friends. We got together for drinks at the corner costume shop, swapped stories of candy victories, and most importantly, prepared for the very best time of the year for vintage spook zealots. You might know a few of these films by heart, while others may surprise you. You may scoff at some and find perfection in others. Whatever the case, a common thread is obvious. If you can't tell what it is, plan on watching this entire list for your own good. Twice.

FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1958)
Directed by Richard E. Cunha
Image Entertainment DVD
A "monster in a bathing suit." Two backyard stompers with the Page Cavanaugh Trio. Oodles of paperback gutter sleaze. A Frankenstein monster that walks like my great aunt after one too many glasses of wine. Richard Cunha, you're a good man.

With a six year filmography you can count on two hands, on-the-cheap director Richard Cunha brought a welcome air of indie befoulment to the late 50s. Frankenstein's Daughter is his most outrageous film; therefore the best. Somewhere in Hollywood, an incognito Dr. Frankenstein lives as a doctor's assistant while carrying on his father's experiments...and trying to force himself onto teenage girls. Along for the ride is John "Blood Island" Ashley, two mind-blowing ghouls, and the teenage woes of poor, poor Trudy. The plot disintegrates after ten minutes and feels like it was written by a team that wasn't on speaking terms. Dr. Frank's seedy acts of violence are only surpassed in goodness by the supreme awfulness of the female Frankenstein monster. Wrap it all up with the best cardboard basement ever caught on film and the electrodes get buzzing. Love the glad rags, Ms. Monster.

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: Girl next door Trudy alarms the neighbors with her skull-faced hormones (courtesy Ed Wood make up artist Harry Thomas) as the police lead the back alley chase. It all goes down at 22 minutes.

PHARAOH'S CURSE (1957)
Directed by Lee Sholem
Video Screams DVD-R
If Halloween passes without a mummy in your living room, you might as well hang up the candy bag for good. To save face, forget about those eye-bleeding Universal sequels from the 40s; it's time to get generic.

Produced by indie Bel-Air Productions and distributed by the big boys at United Artists, Pharaoh's Curse is 66 minutes of concentrated nonsense, gift wrapped with a keen score from space-exotica legend Les Baxter. Popping the top on a bathtub sarcophagus, a government expedition unleashes the curse of a grandpaw mummy, who looks like he just stepped out of the can on Sunday morning. A mysterious cat goddess lurks on the sidelines, Mr. Mummy sucks lots of blood, and marital dysfunction plagues our baker's dozen cast ("I don't know what it means to be a woman anymore..."). If YOU want to know what it all means, rest easy, 'cause you'll NEVER FIND OUT! Filled with bad accents and nifty plywood sets, non-genre director Lee Sholem keeps it tight. The film is set up in two acts (pre-mummy road trip and post-mummy spookhouse), rarely deviating from its eccentric parameters. A typical mummy yarn delivered with a gusto of weirdness and a dollop of late 50s creeps. Rub that cat medallion and suck out the poison!

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: Our dusty grandpap makes his first appearance at the 41 minute mark, stalking the ol' tomb on a quest for human blood. He gets it too.

TEENAGE ZOMBIES (1959)
Directed by Jerry Warren
Retromedia DVD
In Tom Weaver’s Science Fiction Stars And Horror Heroes, director Jerry Warren delivers one of the greatest bad film quotes of all time. “People aren’t interested in anything good, they don’t know and they don’t care. Just give them garbage!” Love him or hate him, you can’t argue with studied cinematic insight like that.

Mostly remembered for producing cut and paste tortures from bits of foreign films and his own handiwork, roughly half of Warren's output was 100% original. If his work was intended to be Le Stank from the get-go, Teenage Zombies is the golden turd. Watch in awe as the nerdiest teens of all time are trapped and held on a commie island, captives of mad scientist Katherine Victor and Ivan, her hunchbacked monster-slave! Wrangling theremin-infused bursts of brass, ridiculous sets, and a gorilla suit, Warren's quirkiest film (read: it won't kill you) is also his most efficient, at least in technical terms. Believe it or not, Warren cuts a few scenes with more than one master shot! Astounding. By the time the wrasslin' free-for-all goes down during the electrifying climax, you'll forget all about Attack Of The Mayan Mummy.

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: At 21 minutes, Ivan (Chuck Niles) stalks through a weird monkey-bars playground dome, as two frantic girls look on. It's short, but oh so sweet. Like Junior Mints.

THE WEREWOLF (1956)
Directed by Fred F. Sears
AMC Broadcast VHS
Who says Halloween shudders can't take an extended vacation into the snowy season? Certainly not our pal Duncan Marsh. You'd better agree with him too; he's a g-damn atomic werewolf.

The Werewolf is a modestly budgeted tour-de-force of emotional cheese and 50s paranoia from the team of skid row producer Sam Katzman and Columbia Pictures. Throw normal wolf-isms out the window as Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch, hamming for air) terrorizes a wintery small town and its lawmakers as an experimentally altered werewolf. On the trail is a duo of evil scientists, who injected Marsh with werewolf fluid after finding him in a car wreck. The purpose? To create an inoculation to the h-bomb; after all, "The human race will eventually destroy itself!" Broad daylight attacks. No yak fur below the jawline. Werewolf fall down go boom...a lot. Thankfully, the whole thing is played dead serious, with a noir-ish nod, gigantic wintery locales, and a terrific sense of impending doom. Also on board is a strong-willed female presence in the form of doctor Amy (Joyce Holden), which is both refreshing and welcomed, especially for 1956. Kudos to the downbeat ending as well. In the end, you just have to ask yourself: could this happen to ME?! Let's hope so.

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: A cave. An irrational scientist on the defense. A time lapse transformation. Be there at 35 minutes.

THE UNEARTHLY (1957)
Directed by Brooke L. Peters aka Boris Petroff
Image Entertainment DVD
"You eat. A puuurrty giirrrl. TIME FOR GO TO BED!" Tor Johnson has crashed the party. Hide the women.

Dashed off by Ed Wood pal Boris Petroff (Shotgun Wedding, Anatomy Of A Psycho), The Unearthly concerns John Carradine and his sinister "16th gland" experiments, all of which take place in the basement of the greatest creaky mansion of all time. Doubling as a shrink, Mr. C lures his handful of patients (including drowsy 50s siren Allison Hayes) into unwitting surgical implants -- all in the name of youth and eternity! Tor reprises his role as "Lobo" from Ed Wood's earlier Bride Of The Monster, looking very dapper in his leather sandals and business suit. And why not dress for the occasion? If this film was a Hollywood party, everyone would be there. It's that much fun. Although light on action and exploitive moments, the film carries us through with bent dialogue ("So I wear a leather jacket and I'm not a midget -- so what?!") and a cast of overemotional champions. And wait'll you get a load of that creepy ending. In fact, the film was so darn omnipotent that a thunderstorm actually developed halfway through my viewing. Now that's what I call results!

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: At 65 minutes, a knife-wielding zombie attacks Carradine. Tor employs a karate chop. You break out the Twizzlers. Again.

I BURY THE LIVING (1958)
Directed by Albert Band
MGM DVD
As much as any buck fifty monster, our pal The Cemetery is a necessity for any Halloween celebration. Welcome to Immortal Hills, where the crickets are always chirping.

A small scale experiment in sinister obsessiveness, I Bury The Living is a love letter to that most paramount of spooky icons; the graveyard. Sheened up by United Artists, this Albert Band production follows Bob Kraft, department store owner and Immortal Hills chairman, as he struggles to find a connection between his placement of black pins on the cemetery map and subsequent deaths that follow. In plot, this is an expanded episode of One Step Beyond. In presentation, it's a slight marvel, especially for a low budget, late 50s genre film. The singular haunts, freeze frame transitions, and visual collages work collectively to produce a surreal tone that pops up in just the right spots. Especially when the cemetery-as-a-character takes center stage. And just so we don't get too classy, there's 34 year old actor Theodore Bikel starring as caretaker Andy, in one of the most blissfully terrible "old man" make up jobs I've ever seen. The ending still escapes reasoning, but what the heck. We're not here for logic.

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: The graves are turning themselves inside out! At 64 minutes, it's time for a long jog through the day-for-night cemetery to find out why.

I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (1957)
Directed by Herbert L. Strock
RCA/Columbia Home Video VHS
So Herman Cohen's AIP films aren't exactly the skids. This one is close enough for me.

Sleazy, downbeat, and stiffed with budget cuts, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein is a mean-spirited simpleton that's miles away from its other "teenage" AIP counterparts. Hold on to your socks as ultimate asshole Professor Frankenstein (Whit Bissell from the earlier I Was A Teenage Werewolf) stitches together a teenage mope from car wreck strewn jocks. The Prof. manages to perfectly balance his work and home life, slapping around and belittling fiancé Phyllis Coates (courtship = 30 seconds) for no apparent reason. What a guy! In the end, all hell breaks loose, wrapping up with a color climax and that ol' grisly standby: the sacrificial alligator pit. There's lots of scientific gobbledygook, some surprisingly juicy gore, pretty much one location, and a stupid plot that goes nowhere. In other words, a highly delectable trash soufflé. Is this really the 1950s?

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: Around the 40 minute mark, teenage Frankie opts for the peeping tom route and a rampage ensues. There goes the neighborhood.

RETURN OF DRACULA (1958)
Directed by Paul Landres
Video Screams DVD-R
Fangs, bats, and oversized capes: better check the want ads. Dracula has no use for the standbys when he's got a set of acrylic paints on his side.

An early Gramercy production (The Vampire), The Return Of Dracula captures a cozy snapshot of suburban October in the 1950s, complete with foresty streets, non-stop wind sound effects, and Halloween parties for old fuddy-duddies. Follow Bellac Gardel aka Dracula (Francis Lederer, exquisitely miscast with his froggy muppet voice) as he flees vampire hunters from his homeland, winding up as a guest at cousin Cora's house in good ol' Carleton, California. This time 'round, plainclothes Drac has raided Humphrey Bogart's wardrobe, spending his days with empty canvases while luring nubile young femmes into the world of the undead. Despite the obvious pitfalls (painting? no fangs?), there isn't a film on this list that'll surround you with as much Autumn atmosphere; it even wraps up on Halloween night. The cemeteries are ominous, the day-for-night prevails, and the final shot will make you grab for the rewind button. And before you yell "BORING!!" at the screen, just try and forget about the color gore insert and that dang dog attack. Solid.

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: Jennie Blake thinks she's safely buried in her mausoleum plot. When Dracula resurrects her at the 41 minute mark, the transformation mist will roll.

NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1959)
Directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Image Entertainment DVD
So incredibly powerful, it was never released in the director's lifetime! Imagine what it'll do to you.

Night Of The Ghouls is Ed Wood's masterpiece of failed filmmaking. Barely completed and stuck in film lab hell for thirty years, it's a comprehensive capper to the golden age of his filmmaking career, not to mention a perfect summation of cut-rate Halloween goosebumps. The gang's all here: Lobo, the lumbering monster (yep, it's Mr. Tor Johnson, third appearance on the list), psychic graveyard nonsense, moldy basements, and an actual role for the godly Criswell. Join fake clairvoyant Dr. Acula (or is he?) as he schemes the life savings away from bawling widows in the comfort of his two story shanty. Disjointed and dreamy, you can feel the faux-art urgency in every misconstrued shot; every random sound effect; every curtain-covered set. Featuring footage from Ed's never seen Final Curtain short, stock Wood chums galore, and enough abnormality to please most anyone, the end result is valiant enough to hold the outside world at bay, if only for 70 minutes. On a night like Halloween, that's exactly what we need.

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: “He remembered the cold, clammy sensation of the railing. Cold, clammy, like the dead.” Lieutenant Bradford (Duke Moore) stakes out the old house and Criswell takes the lead. 41 minutes is a popular number.

THE BLACK SLEEP aka DR. CADMAN'S SECRET (1956)
Directed by Reginald Le Borg
Video Screams DVD-R
You've got to wind down at the end of a binge. As the eyelids droop, you'd be hard pressed to find better company.

The Black Sleep, another indie tag team from Bel-Air (production) and United Artists (distribution), is noteworthy for one reason and one reason only: it's the only film in history to feature ye olde horror icons Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Tor Johnson, and Basil Rathbone in the same frame. Get your nerd on as Dr. Cadman (Basil Rathbone) performs bloodless brain surgery with the help of exotic drug The Black Sleep, forever searching for a cure to his wife's extended coma. Experimental rejects unite! Big teddy bear Bela Lugosi demonstrates his vast sign language expertise; lumbering Tor-Tor sports a handsome wig, then grapples with a tanked Chaney; manic John Carradine beats some sense with his crutch; everyone seems disconnected. During the umpteenth discussion of the human brain, I realized that nothing much was going to happen during this film. That was A-OK though, because the quiet tone, sudden laughs, and antiquated charms trickled with welcome relaxation. Mongo...KILL!

Scene to get you in the Halloween spirit: At 66 minutes, it’s a virtual spookhouse trail. Ramsey (the hero) accompanies Laurie (the damsel) through Cadman's Basement Of Horrors. The rogues gallery plays show ‘n’ tell.

FILM AVAILABILITY
The pristine DVD releases from Image Entertainment are all very much in print, currently enjoying price cuts and multiple package reissues. Retromedia’s great presentation of public domain chump Teenage Zombies is long out of print. MGM’s definitive DVD of I Bury The Living, another public domain casualty, is also out of print. Both discs can be had for next to nothing on eBay and that’s the way to go. The always reliable Video Screams offers the above titles as noted, including I Was A Teenage Frankenstein and The Werewolf, which has yet to see a home video release.