Ah, the American dream! Jerry Warren grew up in Los Angeles and wanted to go into the movie business. However, unlike untold numbers of people who only wanted to do it, he actually did it. After creating and distributing his first four films, though, he decided it took too much effort, so he began buying…

Talk about dedication to a project. On the first day of filming The Lost Missile (1958), director William Berke suddenly died of a heart attack. Not missing a beat, his son, Lester Wm. Berke, completed the film. However, I imagine most of the work fell upon the supervising film editor, Everett Sutherland, because much of…

Prior to watching Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere (1951), I had never seen an entire serial. To be fully transparent, I still haven’t. I watched one-half of it, which is 10 chapters and a nearly three-hour running time. (One, 26-minute introductory episode and nine 16-minute episodes.) I didn’t dislike it. It’s just a big…

As is sometimes reported, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959) was not Lou Costello’s only movie without longtime comic partner, Bud Abbott. (He started his film career solo with several extra or uncredited roles.) It was, however, his final movie, and although I’ve seen only a few of them, it’s got to be…

The 27th Day (1957) is a thinking man’s alien invasion movie, full of almost more big philosophical ideas than its 75-minute running time can hold. However, that’s the perfect running time to not notice what could be some pretty big flaws. Even now I must think about it carefully before I write about its plot points. There’s…

What I always remember about 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) is the little boy, Pepe, played by Bart Bradley. He’s a shrewd, business-minded child always looking for an angle. He’s also annoying. He opens a canister washed up on the beach of an Italian fishing village after a rocket ship returns from a mission…

If you thought Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) had the stars, wait until you see Fourteen Hours (1951.) You might have to look a little harder, though. Sure, the headliners are easy to spot, but try to find these uncredited actors among the chaos of a New York street scene as “thousands” of people…

Hear me out! If you wonder why we’re discussing a crime drama with virtually no thrills or chills, let me share the plethora of behind-the-scenes tidbits that tantalized me to make Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) horror-adjacent. First, it was directed by Don Siegel and we had just released an episode of The Classic…

You can’t expect much from a one-hour movie made quickly with the sole purpose of serving as the bottom half of a double-bill with another movie. That’s exactly what The Headless Ghost (1959) delivers… not much. It also seems like an odd companion for a movie as dark as Horrors of the Black Museum (1959.)…