Not a made for television movie, This is Not a Test (1962) was nevertheless never released in theaters and aired on TV sometime in 1962. In it, Deputy Sheriff Dan Colter is instructed to set up a road block in the mountains in an undisclosed location, probably California. He’s simply following orders so sincerely has…

13 Ghosts (1960) starts strong. For the first half, maybe two-thirds, it holds its own with William Castle’s two previous films, House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler, both released a year earlier. I was enjoying it greatly, but then I grew weary.  This was about the time young Buck Zorba (Charles Herbert) goes down…

Curse of the Crimson Altar (or The Crimson Cult in the United States) is not usually recognized as a “good” movie. Watching it, there were times I’d call it, “bad.” However, I read that Christopher Lee, who plays  the owner of an old dark house, regarded it as one of the worst films in his…

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…