Future recipient of the British Distinguished Flying Cross award, Barry Mahon returned from WWII a war hero and became Errol Flynn’s personal pilot. This led him to a producing gig, including Crossed Swords (1954), starring Flynn and Gina Lollobrigida. Soon, though, he widened his horizons by producing and directing over 70 drive-in movies in the…

The third “Yokai Monsters” movie, Along with Ghosts (1969) is the strangest, not because of its content, but because of its lack of content. It has a decent story: When her grandfather is killed by the equivalent of gangsters, a little girl named Miyo ventures toward the city to find her father. However, there are…

If this is the kid-friendly Yokai movie I was expecting, then I must have it confused with something else. Even more than 100 Monsters (1968), The Great Yokai War (1968) has truly terrifying moments with pre-1970s melted Crayola blood and Yokai that curse like drunken sailors. It’s only when the “good” monsters appear to battle…

Before I watched Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (1968), I had no idea what a “Yokai monster” was. After watching a handful of experts discuss it for 40 minutes on the Arrow Video Blu-ray special feature, Hiding in Plan Sight: A Brief History of Yokai, I learned that the term can mean many things. I’m not…

The Man Who Finally Died (1963) completes a trilogy of films Peter Cushing made for British Lion in the early 1960s. However, it comes at the end of 10 films sandwiched between it and Suspect three years earlier. So prolific was the actor that you’d never have known that, according to author Jonathan Rigby, he…

The movie Suspect (1960) was as much an experiment as the ones its characters perform. Producer/directors John and Roy Boulting wanted to “raise the level” of the supporting feature, or B-movie, shown at the bottom of a double bill. With the budget of a supporting feature, they completed the film in 17 days, hoping to…

Peter Cushing once claimed to have played only four villains during his lengthy film and television career. One of these was Captain Judd in Cone of Silence (1960) aka Trouble in the Sky. Sandwiched between two Hammer horrors, The Mummy and The Brides of Dracula, and following The Flesh & the Fiends, Cone of Silence…

Twice recently I’ve seen a giant monster movie in which the characters and story steal the spotlight from the destruction and mayhem. The first, or course, was Godzilla Minus One, and now it’s The Whale God (1962) aka Killer Whale aka Kuijira gami. To be clear, though, this one features a real monster rather than…

October 30, 1964 The seventh film out of Roger Corman’s eight-film cycle based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death (1964) is perhaps the best, but not necessarily the most entertaining. In some ways, it’s Corman’s “art film,” with imagery that evokes The Seventh Seal (1957), a concern that…

October 21, 1959 Back in late November of 2020, I wrote an unplanned series on early Roger Corman films such as Beast from Haunted Cave, Creature from the Haunted Sea, Last Woman on Earth, and The Little Shop of Horrors. Missing from the group was A Bucket of Blood (1959.) If you recall, this was…