The Curse of the Living Corpse (Del Tenney, 1964)

In 1892 New England, Rufus Sinclair, a tyrannical family man prone to cataleptic fits, passes away. His lawyer, James Benson (All My Children's Hugh Franklin), reads his will, which states that if his provisions are not fulfilled, his heirs will not only receive nothing, but die in the way they most fear. His wife Abigail (Helen Warren) will die by fire. Eldest son Bruce (Guiding Light's Robert Milli), an arrogant failed doctor with gambling debts, will be disfigured before he meets his end. Younger son Philip (Roy Scheider in his first film role), an alcoholic, will choke to death. Philip's conniving wife Vivian (Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women's Margot Hartman) will drown. Good-natured nephew Robert Harrington (The Doctors' Dino Narizzano...as you may have noticed, there are a lot of soap actors in this movie) will lose that which is dearest to him, presumably his beloved Deborah (Carnival of Souls' Candace Hilligoss), Benson's daughter. Family servant Seth (J. Frank Lucas) will be buried with his master. All the heirs have broken the provisions, and soon they begin being picked off one by one, and the conclusion seems inescapable Rufus Sinclair may not be dead...

Fifteen months later, I am back and hopefully better than ever. The Curse of the Living Corpse is the third film I've seen by Del Tenney, and without a doubt the best. The Horror of Party Beach was marred by lame comedy and a goofy-looking monster, although some great songs by the Del-Aires did help redeem it a smidgen, and I Eat Your Skin was a pre-Romero zombie story released six years after it was made on a double bill with the more entertaining I Drink Your Blood. Eventually, I'm gonna try to see Tenney's fourth and final film, Descendant, starring Jeremy London (T.S. Quint in Mallrats), Katherine Heigl, and William Katt. This film is a murder mystery that, while not innovative, is well-acted and enjoyable. Roy Scheider in particular turns in a great performance as the dry-witted drunk Philip, showing all the signs of future stardom. Candace Hilligoss isn't given as juicy a role as Mary Henry in her most famous film, but she acquits herself well nonetheless. With the exception of Abigail and Robert, none of the members of Rufus Sinclair's family (especially Clark Gable lookalike Bruce) are very sympathetic, and their deaths are no great losses, although it's worth wondering how much Rufus' undesirable traits, often referenced by the characters, rubbed off on them. Tenney himself plays the titular Living Corpse, clad in a hat, cloak, and scarf a la the Shadow. The Cross and the Switchblade's Paul Haney and Captain Video and His Video Rangers' George Cotton play passable comic relief Constables. The music by George Burt and Wilford L. Holcombe is nicely atmospheric, and Richard Hilliard's cinematography is another strong point of the film. Fans of mysteries may or may not get a kick out of some of the classic tropes used, including the killer peeking through the eyeholes of Rufus Sinclair's portrait at his widow. If you want to see Del Tenney at his best, head over to Amazon Prime and check it out!

The Ape Man (William Beaudine, 1943)

Agatha Brewster (Minerva Urecal) comes to America to find her brother James (Bela Lugosi), a scientist who has disappeared. James' colleague Dr. George Randall (Henry Hall) takes her to his mansion, where she learns that his experiments have transformed him into a half-man, half-ape. Investigating Dr. Brewster's disappearance are reporters Jeff Carter (Freaks' Wallace Ford) and Billie Mason (Adventures of Captain Marvel's Louise Currie). James' condition can be staved off with injections of spinal fluid, but this would require killing the donors, and Randall is understandably reluctant to do so. Therefore, James and his savage lab gorilla take matters into their own appendages...

The Ape Man is the third film I've seen directed by William Beaudine and starring Bela Lugosi, the other two being the fairly decent Voodoo Man and the execrable Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, which I covered here a while back. Thankfully, our current subject is more akin to the former than the latter in terms of watchability. The absence of Sammy Petrillo helps considerably in that regard. Besides Bela, Louise Currie and Henry Hall were also in Voodoo Man. Both films also have surprisingly meta endings, in The Ape Man's case involving a oddball character who turns up at the most opportune times throughout the film, and whose identity is only revealed in the last scene. Bela as usual puts 110% into his performance. His ape makeup is cool, and way more convincing than the gorilla suit Emil Van Horn has to wear. Dr. Brewster's sister Agatha is supposedly a ghost-hunter, a la William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki, but other than a scene where Agatha attempts to convince Jeff and Billie the ooking they've heard coming from the mansion came from a spirit called "the Galloping Ghost," this never becomes relevant to the plot. Too bad, because an ape man and ghosts in the same movie would've been awesome, in my movie. Jeff is pretty much a sexist ass to Billie throughout, even though they're on friendly terms, stating in the aforementioned last scene he should take her over his knee for going off on her own to find Brewster. Then again, his character of Phroso in Freaks was kind of a jerk with a heart of gold, so there's precedent for such a character in his resume. Henry Hall is better here than he was in Voodoo Man, where he was saddled with lines like "Gosh all fish hooks!" and "What I'm really interested in is young girls," which taken out of context sounds really troublesome. Bela fans should definitely give this one a look-see.

Test Tube Babies (W. Merle Connell, 1948)

Junior architect George Bennett (William Thomason) and his wife Cathy (Dorothy Duke) have been married for a year, and spend much of their free time with their friends at wild parties and baby showers. George becomes jealous after his Lothario lawyer friend Frank Grover (John Michael) escorts Cathy home. Frank plants a passionate kiss on Cathy, but she turns him down flat. After a party at their house that gets out of control, George and Cathy decide that having a baby would help their failing relationship. Wondering why they haven't conceived in the past year, they go to a gynecologist, Dr. Wright (Glen or Glenda's Timothy Farrell), seeking answers. Wright offers them both heartbreaking news and a scientific solution.

This film was made only 64 years after artificial insemination was first attempted. Of course, in vitro fertilization is just as much a well-known fact of life now as surrogacy. The concept, however, is not brought up until about 15 minutes are left in the film. Before that, we see George and Cathy dealing with their irresponsible, sex-crazed friends and talking about starting a family. The film was probably intended as exploitation, as shown by the poster above, but it's not very provocative. The raunchiest scene we get is the party at the Bennetts' house where a stripper and a male partygoer do a striptease for the audience, after which the stripper gets into a catfight with a colleague also in attendance. There is implied female upper body nudity during Cathy's gynecological exam, but we never get a good look at her breasts. This film was produced by George Weiss, who also financed Glen or Glenda, but it never shatters as many taboos or reaches the levels of weirdness of that underappreciated, forward-thinking, and deeply personal Ed Wood classic.

The acting is, with very few exceptions, pretty wooden. William Thomason and Dorothy Duke deliver their lines flatly, without much genuine emotion. Timothy Farrell, who played a doctor in Glen or Glenda, is his usual stiff self as Dr. Wright. Interestingly, Farrell apparently played the same character in another 1948 film by W. Merle Connell, Hometown Girl. This wasn't Farrell's only recurring role: he also played oily gangster Umberto Scalli in not only Connell's The Devil's Sleep, but also Racket Girls and Dance Hall Racket, the latter of which was written by and starred Lenny Bruce! Those who have seen Racket Girls will recognize some of the music in Test Tube Babies. By the way, Dr. Wright is not only a smoker, but actually asks George to go buy him some cigarettes during the delivery of Cathy's baby. Overall, this was a disappointment for Yrs. Truly, who was hoping for something a bit more over the top, or that at least spent a little more time on the titular subject. Those wishing to judge for themselves, however, can check it out on Amazon Prime.

Neutron the Atomic Superman vs. the Death Robots (Los autómatas de la muerte; Federico Curiel 1962) and Love After Death (Glauco Del Mar, 1968)

Now that I'm set up with my new apartment and the internet, I am proud to present Diary of a Madman's very first double feature review! ("Science fiction, double feature..." to quote the immortal Richard O'Brien in one of my all-time favorite films, the ultimate midnight movie). Both films were made in Spanish-speaking countries in the 1960s, and both are in black and white, but there the similarity ends.

The evil Dr. Caronte is supposedly dead after his battle with the masked crimefighter Neutron, but in reality nothing could be farther from the truth. Caronte is alive and well, and is using the brains of three scientists whose bodies he stole from the grave, an army of hideous blood-drinking robots, and his little person henchman Nick in order to acquire the formula for a neutron bomb. Neutron must save the day once more. But who is Neutron? Three friends are potential candidates, all of whom are in a love triangle with lovely nightclub chanteuse Nora, the daughter of Professor Walker (The Mansion of Madness' Claudio Brook).

I love luchadore films. El Santo, Blue Demon, and their ilk push my buttons in the best ways. I don't care for American wrestling, but I dig the hell out of their Mexican counterparts. Neutron isn't a luchadore in the sense that he's a professional fighter, but with his black full-face mask with three lightning bolts on it, muscular physique, shirtlessness, fighting ability, and refusal to take off his mask, he fulfills every other aspect one associates with them. (However, he does not wear the cape seen on the film's poster). This was the second in a series of five Neutron films, with 1960's Neutron, the Man in the Black Mask representing the first battle between Neutron and Dr. Caronte. I've not seen the other films in the series, but this one was a lot of fun. The death robots are basically zombies, albeit blood-drinking rather than the flesh-eating type later created by George Romero and much imitated subsequently. There's an interesting scene where one of the robots literally loses his head. Both Neutron and the bandage-masked Dr. Caronte look cool, and Nick is a memorable character whose disability isn't exploited overmuch, even if the dwarf henchman is a genre standby. Claudio Brook is excellent as always,

The fact that Neutron's identity is never revealed (IMDB doesn't even list who plays him, or Dr. Caronte) is heavily played up, and the film never actually resolves which of Nora's three suitors is the masked man. Nora delivers a couple songs in Spanish, as do a male trio. The dubbing is pretty good for a Mexican film from the '60s, and there are some good lines, even if a policeman saying one of the robots "Looks like my mother-in-law!" made me roll my eyes. Neutron also appears to have pioneered the art of disappearing when the police aren't looking later pioneered by Batman. I cannot wait to see more of Neutron's adventures. Those of you with Amazon Prime memberships, give this film a look.

Mr. Montel (Guillermo de Cordóva) is prone to cataleptic fits, and during one of those episodes his beautiful blonde wife Sofia (Carmin O'Neal) and his friend Dr. Anderson (Roberto Maurano) claim he's dead and have him buried. Clawing his way out of the grave, Montel, who according to Sofia was impotent before, becomes a sex-crazed maniac, pursuing every woman he can find, sometimes with their consent, sometimes not. Meanwhile, Sofia and Dr. Anderson are having an affair, though the doc doesn't know Sofia is also screwing his crony Arturo (Angel Mario Ramirez). Discovering the plot that resulted in his burial, Montel vows revenge on his wife and the doctor.

Love After Death (or Unsatisfied Love as the print on my Something Weird Triple Feature DVD, which also includes The Atomic Brain and The Incredible Petrified World, is titled) is the second Argentinean sexploitation/horror hybrid I've seen, the first being another Something Weird release, The Curious Dr. Humpp. Neither are particularly good films, but of the two, this is probably the better. There's not much of a plot, and not a lot of dialogue either, with all of Montel's lines being delivered in voiceover as his inner monologue; it seems that he was unable to speak once he got out of his cataleptic state. What the film does have is its share of beautiful unclad women. While there's no male full frontal nudity, and the film never goes straight hardcore, we do come close to seeing genitalia at times. The film also touches on non-heteronormative sexual relations. An old woman who witnesses one of Montel's rapes says of his blonde victim, "If I was only ten years younger." Montel pursues a dancer he finds in a tryst with a woman, with said dancer turning out to be a male transvestite. There's also a lesbian couple. It's not a particularly progressive film in its sexual attitudes, but still worthy of note.

The horror elements are not very prominent, although there are some decent bloody FX when Montel gets his revenge. There's a surprise ending that, while I get what they were going for, still seems a bit bizarre. Montel's "castle" is clearly nothing of the sort. The best part is the opening where Montel is horrified that he can't tell his mourners he's not dead, followed by him busting out of his grave. It's too bad the rest of the movie couldn't be quite that strong.

Arrest Bulldog Drummond (James P. Hogan, 1938)

Richard Gannett, the self-styled "Earl of Destiny" (The Mummy's Leonard Mudie) sends a letter to Colonel Nielsen of Scotland Yard (H. B. Warner, Mr. Gower in It's a Wonderful Life) saying with his invention he will bring peace to the world, whether they want it or not. Meanwhile, Captain Hugh C. "Bulldog" Drummond (The Invisible Woman's John Howard) is preparing for his forthcoming nuptials to Phyllis Clavering (Alice in Wonderland's Heather Angel) when his chum Algy Longworth (Rebecca's Reginald Denny, no relation to the truck driver who was a victim in the L.A. riots) shows up, having also received a letter from Gannett about his invention. They go to Gannett's flat in Birnam Wood Road to investigate. Gannett is showing his machine, an explosive ray, to Rolf Alferson (the ever-dependable George Zucco). Gannett wants to offer his device to the governments of the world, beginning with his own country's, but Alferson murders him with something called "the Stinger."

Arriving at Birnam Wood Road, Drummond and Algy discover the lights in the building have been flickering every night. Breaking into Gannett's place, they find his body, and are promptly arrested by the police. The autopsy confirms their innocence, and reveals he was murdered by a stingray. Drummond and Algy become resolved to look into the matter further, aided by Drummond's butler Tenny (Bride of Frankenstein's E. E. Clive), even though it may jeopardize Drummond's wedding plans.

Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond was the two-fisted hero of a series of novels by H. C. McNeile, who wrote under the pen name "Sapper." Drummond was a Great War veteran who found peacetime utterly monotonous, and being an adrenaline junkie, soon found himself getting mixed up in thwarting evildoers, notably the master of disguise Carl Peterson, who appeared in several of the books alongside his equally sinister mistress Irma. Arrest Bulldog Drummond was the fourth film Paramount Studios made with John Howard as Drummond; he was neither the first nor the last to play the character, the latter being Richard Johnson in Deadlier Than the Male (1967) and Some Girls Do (1969).

The reason the character has not been seen on film since is probably due to some unfortunate content in the novels. Their depiction of non-WASPs is not always very enlightened. I hesitate to call them "a product of their times," since that implies everyone in the past was a bigot, but of the two Drummond novels by McNeile I've read, The Return of Bulldog Drummond has Drummond using the expression "n***** in the woodpile" in the very first chapter, while one of the criminal conspirators in Bulldog Drummond at Bay is a wealthy anti-Semitic stereotype. I understand, however, from people who've read more of the series than I have, that McNeile dialed back the xenophobia in the later books, and Gerard Fairlie, who continued the series after his death, even called out some of Hugh's earlier methods of crimefighting as fascist in the text of the books themselves. Apart from the cringeworthy bits, I found the ones I read enjoyable if not particularly deep adventure stories.

Arrest Bulldog Drummond is based on McNeile's The Final Count, but makes several changes, including replacing Carl Peterson with the somewhat less distinctive Rolf Alferson. Carrying over from the previous films, Hugh's significant other, the lovely Phyllis Benton, has her surname changed to the more unwieldy Clavering, while Drummond's butler Denny's name is changed to Tenny, presumably to avoid confusion with actor Reginald Denny playing a different role. The script was written by Stuart Palmer, better known for his series of novels about spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers. Howard pulls off the literary Drummond's wisecracking swagger reasonably well, though he's a little too good-looking compared to McNeile's Bulldog's "pleasantly ugly" features. The aforementioned Reginald Denny and E. E. Clive provide some adequate comic relief, with one notable example being Tenny lighting a candle in a warehouse that turns out to be storing fireworks, with predictable results. George Zucco is as sinister as ever, and deserves more screen time than he actually gets.

Being based on a book of the mostly male-oriented "clubland heroes" genre, it's no surprise that the women come off pretty undeveloped here. Heather Angel as Phyllis is a pretty bland love interest, and her Aunt Meg (Werewolf of London's Zeffie Tilbury) doesn't do much more than provide moral support for her niece in her nuptial travails, while Jean Fenwick doesn't do much as Alferson's female accomplice, presumably taking Irma's place.

As with other movies from the '30s I've seen there's surprisingly little music in the film - only a bit at the beginning and the end. One thing that I find astounding is that when Drummond is rehearsing his speech at his bachelor party, he addresses his "fellow members of the Drones Club." For the uninitiated, this is the name of the London gentleman's club (not in the ecdysiastal sense) many of P. G. Wodehouse's upper class twit protagonists, including the immortal Bertie Wooster, belonged to. I love crossovers myself - in fact, I've written two massive books on the subject, and if you haven't bought them yet, click this link RIGHT NOW, so finding a shout-out to Wodehouse in an unexpected place tickled me to no end. This is a fun film, the second with Howard in the role I've seen, and you can bet I'll check out the others.

The Pace That Kills (Wm. A. O'Connor, 1935)

Nick (Noel Madison) and his cohort are making a cocaine delivery for their boss when they find themselves pursued by the cops. Nick goes to a diner, where he meets waitress Jane Bradford (Lois January), who he convinces that the men following him are hijackers. Afterwards, he tries to convince her to go to the city with him. He offers her some coke, which he calls "headache powder." They marry and move to the big city. Jane, now called Lil, learns that the "headache powder" is actually dope. Now hooked, she is forced by Nick to get a job at the Dead Rat Cafe. Meanwhile, Jane's younger brother Eddie (Dean Benton) comes to the city to look for her, getting a job as a carhop at a drive-in restaurant, where he works alongside waitress Fanny (Sheila Bromley), a customer of Nick's. Lil recognizes Eddie at the restaurant, and is careful not to be seen by him. Later, at the Dead Rat, Eddie does see Lil, who pretends she doesn't know him. They also encounter Dan (Charles Delaney) and his "questing" girlfriend Dorothy Farley (Lois Lindsay), who were also at the restaurant. Fanny introduces Eddie to cocaine, and soon they're both fired, and living as addicts in a cheap apartment.

Anti-drug films of the '30s are often good for a few easy laughs, such as the infamous Reefer Madness, but The Pace That Kills (aka The Cocaine Fiends, a remake of the 1928 silent film of the same name, with which it shares Wm. A. O'Connor as director), while not exactly the searing indictment its opening text makes it out to be, is less histrionic and more depressing than Dwain Esper's cult classic. Although the film never shows the characters actually taking cocaine, the effects of the drug on addicts are shown in a fairly realistic manner. All the drug users have tragic fates, with the possible exception of Eddie, and he will have to deal with heartbreaking loss even if he kicks the habit. Jane, meanwhile thinks she has no hope of ever going straight, telling her brother "girls can't come back," an obvious bullshit sexist premise. In addition to the sexism, there's also a racist song in pidgin English sung by a guy at the Dead Rat (and who wouldn't want to frequent an establishment with that name?) called "Towsee Mongalay." As a (hopefully) enlightened Millennial, this song made me cringe.

The performances are mostly understated, with Lois January as the initially naive Jane/Lil being a standout. Amazingly, four years later, she would appear in The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy's manicurist in the Emerald City! Charles Delaney's last film role was in The Beatniks, notable for characters who resembled beatniks in no way, shape, or form, not to mention a wildly overacting Peter Breck, who gives the shrillest delivery of the line "I KILLED THAT FAT BARKEEP!!!" imaginable. In a golden example of how financial times march on, Eddie and Fanny's bill of $9.79 at the Dead Rat is portrayed as exorbitant spending. Fanny also points out an actress to Eddie, who is played by stock footage from the original The Pace That Kills of the actress who played Fanny in that film! This never becomes important to the plot, so I assume it was added for padding. The happy ending for Dan and Dorothy doesn't ring true, particularly as we find Dan has been lying to her the whole film. This is a pretty unspectacular anti-dope film for the era, certainly never reaching the heights of Dave O'Brien imploring Lillian Miles to "Play faster!" on the piano while they both furiously puff on joints, but it's worth a view for those who want to see how America's attitude towards drugs has evolved over time.

Hot Skin, Cold Cash (Barry Mahon, 1965)

Shelly's husband is in prison, and to pay his lawyer Mr. Stone to get him out, she turns to prostitution, sending her son away and spending her nights walking through Times Square looking for clients. After sleeping with Stone, she encounters a variety of Johns, including a young Japanese photographer, a hepcat whose wife wants to have an affair with a woman but gets cold feet because Shelly is being paid to do it rather than actually wanting to, a priest who only wants to talk her out of her life of sin (as he sees it), a virgin who's put up to it by his potential frat brothers, and a guy who wants her to pose as his girlfriend at an orgy.

Barry Mahon is a director of odd dichotomies. Besides sexploitation fare like this, he also did a few kid's movies, including Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, an utterly insane piece of garbage that makes Santa Claus Conquers the Martians look like A Christmas Story. His voodoo flick Blood of the Zombie is also extremely entertaining in an incompetent way. This movie has its share of odd moments, but is way more depressing than either of the two aforementioned Mahon films I've seen, which is saying something. Shelly (played by Victoria Astor, whose only other credit is Mahon's short Naked Moonshine) seems resigned to her fate, and says that men have been trying to get into her pants since she was 14. Despite this, most of her clients (with the exception of Mr. Stone and the virgin) never seem to actually have sex with her, so it's amazing she manages to make any money at all. The black and white film and minimal soundtrack only drive home how cold and harsh Shelly's world is. Despite this, it is still a Barry Mahon film, so there are a few moments that will make you go "What the fuck?" Shelly has a pet parakeet named Orpheus, which I would think was symbolic, but Shelly is trying to save her husband, not vice versa. Or it could be a cinematic in-joke, only I can't see Mahon being a Jean Cocteau fan. There's also Shelly telling the hepcat, "No ticky, no washy" (I wonder how Yoshi the photographer would've reacted to that), which causes him to tap-dance before giving her money. He also offers her a joint, which he refers to as "gin johnson," a term I've never heard, and for which Google doesn't seem to turn up many relevant results. During her conversation with the priest, we hear what sounds like a squeeze toy, but neither character remarks on it. At the orgy, Shelly's client has sex with a French girl (though both keep their undies on, as this movie is short on actual nudity), but the sound of buzzing coming from a closet leads him to discover a girl using a vibrator, who briefly comes out of the closet with another girl (more possible symbolism?). The two sniff the air and then go back in. Most of the actors had little-to-no experience, and it shows. Astor is surprisingly decent, but even better is Allen Joseph as the priest who tries to save her. Joseph had the most extensive career of anyone in the cast, and cult film fans will most likely recognize him as Henry Spencer's girlfriend's dad in Eraserhead. The cinematography by Joseph Mangine (whose other work includes The Naughty Victorians: An Erotic Tale of a Maiden's Revenge and 13 episodes of the Judy Blume adaptation Fudge) captures Times Square back in its grittier, pre-gentrification days, including a theater marquee with a title that, though partially obscured, end in "Pussy." A good movie this isn't, but it is an interesting time capsule for its time and place.