Welcome to Chapter Three from Manhunt of Mystery Island. Now that Captain Mephisto has captured lovely Claire Forrest, the evil genius tries to force her to help him recover a missing part for the Radiatomic Power Transmitter. If he can get his hands back on a working transmitter, the diabolical Captain Mephisto can control the world. Enjoy, and return next Saturday for Chapter Four: The Lethal Chamber.
Welcome to Chapter Two from Manhunt of Mystery Island, our current Saturday Matinee serial. Originally released in 1945, this sci-fi flavored actioner was repackaged in 1966 as the 100-minute TV movie Captain Mephisto and the Transformation Machine, so you might have seen some of this material in that condensed form. But over the next four months, we’ll present all 15 chapters of the original serial in their entirety, a new installment appearing each Saturday. Join us next week for Chapter Three, The Murder Machine.
Today’s Trillion Dollar Movie, Goliath and the Sins of Babylon, stars muscle man Mark Forest as the heroic Goliath going up against the Babylonian empire on behalf of the enslaved nation of Nephyr. The Babylonians are pernicious conquerors. Each year, they demand that Nepyr surrender the kingdom’s 30 most beautiful virgins to serve as concubines and sacrificial lambs. This galls Goliath and his band of renegades, who lead a rebellion to free the virgins and overthrow Babylon’s evil King Calphus.
Goliath and the Sins of Babylon is one of the most lavish examples of the much-maligned “peplum” genre, consisting of Italian-made sword and sandal epics set in ancient times. Many of these movies involve mythological heroes and supernatural beasts. This 1963 picture doesn’t go down that path. Goliath is courageous and beefy, but otherwise, not endowed with unearthly strength.
Still, the action scenes are above-par, including a dangerous chariot race and a barnstorming naval battle. The Brooklyn-born Forest (real name: Lou Degni) is more charismatic than the stiff studs usually cast in this genre, and the film boasts other appealing elements — comic interludes with a dwarf and a tense rollout after Goliath is captured, pinned to a rack and forced to dodge a barrage of deadly spears.
Altogether, before building a new career as a fitness trainer and opera singer, Forest played in about a dozen “peplum” movies, among them Hercules Against the Mongols and The Lion of Thebes. One interesting aside: The character he portrayed was known as Maciste in the original Italian version but transformed into Goliath in the English-dubbed version, distributed by American International Pictures. Enjoy, and do return next Friday for another Trillion $ Movie.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/rKAM3CvSvwfP/
Michael Myers is back … and it’s the grooviest Halloween yet!
Mike Myers IS Michael Myers in yet another unnecessary Halloween remake!
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Today’s Trillion Dollar Movie, The New Adventures of Tarzan, celebrates an important milestone. It was exactly 100 years ago, in October of 1912, that Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan of the Apes — the first of Burroughs’ more than two dozen novels recounting legends of the fearless hero, born a British lord, but marooned in Africa at a young age and raised in the jungles by the Mangani Tribe of Great Apes.
Trim and athletic, handsome and tan, courageous and loyal to a fault, a defender of women and children, blessed with the ability to communicate with animals and master any human language in a matter of days, Tarzan quickly became one of the most popular pulp fiction idols the world over. The visionary Burroughs built a lucrative franchise around Tarzan. The feral super-hero not only appeared in Burroughs’ novels, but also serialized magazine stories, films, radio plays, comic books and comic strips.
Unfortunately, owing to copyright restrictions, none of the classic Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies made by MGM can be viewed in their entirety online. Burroughs personally produced The New Adventures of Tarzan in 1935, hoping it would prove as popular as the MGM releases and he could keep more of the profits himself. He also was motivated by another desire — to present a Tarzan who more closely embodied the Tarzan from his books: Intelligent, capable of speaking in complete sentences, and noble in character, befitting his bloodlines as John Clayton, Earl Greystoke. Did Burroughs succeed? Yes and no.
Herman Brix and Ula Holt
As played by Olympic shotput Silver medalist Herman Brix, the Tarzan from New Adventures is every bit as buff and virile as Johnny Weissmuller’s, as well as being more literate and well-rounded. But Brix was stiffer in delivering his lines (and his signature yell), and Burroughs’ indie production team didn’t have nearly the same budgetary or technical resources as MGM, so New Adventures wasn’t quite the financial windfall that Burroughs intended. The film you’ll see here is actually a much condensed version of the original, which was shown in a 12-chapter serial form, cumulatively lasting more than four hours. As such, there are some gaping plot continuity issues, but never mind the story: Sit back and soak up the barnstorming action as Tarzan wrestles lions, jaguars, panthers, alligators and scores of Mayan natives.
How, you might ask, did Mayan natives land in Africa? They didn’t. Instead, Tarzan goes to Central America to help find a lost friend and to retrieve the Green Goddess, a talisman full of priceless jewels as well as a vial of the most explosive compound known in the world. Filming took place on location in Guatemala.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Two sidenotes: 1. Brix got over his shyness in front of the camera, and went on to act in 147 films under the pseudonym Bruce Bennett. Most notably, he starred in Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Mildred Pierce. 2. Ashton Dearholt, who plays the villain Ragland, fell in love on the set with Ula Holt, who portrays the heroine Ula Vale. One complication: He was married at the time to former actress Florence Gilbert. She divorced Dearholt upon learning of his affair, and who should she remarry but Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Enjoy, and do return again next Friday for another Trillion $ Movie.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/L4exWEiAIePm/
Here is the infamous nude swimming scene from Tarzan and His Mate. The MGM film came out in 1934, just ahead of the Hollywood Production Code, which banned any subsequent scandalous displays of this ilk. Maureen O’Sullivan played Jane opposite Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, but she refused to go skinny dipping: The lithe beauty appearing here is body-double Josephine McKimm.
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And no remembrance of Tarzan would be complete without paying homage to Cheetah, who outlived Weissmuller by a good 25 years, dying in 2011 at the ripe old age of 80 — the longest living chimpanzee in captivity. Wonder if his well-known taste for alcohol contributed to his longevity.
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The jungle adventure, East of Borneo, is today’s Trillion Dollar Movie. This 1931 film has been largely forgotten, overshadowed by King Kong, the Tarzan movies, Island of Lost Souls, The Most Dangerous Game and other escapist jungle fare that Hollywood created in the early years of the Depression.
Prince Hashim (Georges Renavent) woos stunner Linda Randolph (Rose Hobart)
That’s unfortunate, because East of Borneo is well worth watching. It’s not as epic as King Kong or as tightly scripted as The Most Dangerous Game, but the wild animal thrills rival any from the Tarzan flicks. Witness the scene of a condemned prisoner forced to swim in a lagoon crawling with ravenous, flailing crocodiles. This was before CGI, so these humongous crocodiles were real, and altogether terrifying. Director George Melford filmed the perils with such realism that he came to be typecast, following this assignment with East of Java as well as Jungle Menace and Jungle Terror.
The tale takes a little while to pick up speed, but stick with it — the second half rocks, including a magnificent volcano eruption that rains down fire and brimstone on the jungle kingdom of Marudu. That’s where an alcoholic doctor played by Charles Bickford has gone to lick his wounds, after mistakenly presuming that his wife (Rose Hobart from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) has been cheating on him. She tracks him down, hoping to patch up their estranged marriage, but he wants nothing to do with her. Of course, he has a change of heart after Marudu’s impervious and Sorbonne-educated rajah, Prince Hashim (Georges Renavent), starts making a play for his woman. The jealous doctor snarls, “White women are bad enough in their own environment, but when you get them into the jungle…”
It’s a little melodramatic by today’s standards, but not so much to be relegated to the scrapheap. One side note: The servant girl Neila is portrayed by Lupita Tovar, fresh off her appearance in the Spanish-language version of Dracula, directed by Melford and filmed at nights on the same set as the Bela Lugosi version. This Mexican-born beauty, the mother of actress Susan Kohner, is still alive and kicking, having celebrated her 102nd birthday earlier this year. Enjoy, and do return next Friday for another Trillion $ Movie.
Today’s Trillion Dollar Movie, White Zombie, holds the distinction of being Hollywood’s first zombie picture. It’s much different in tone, though, than contemporary zombie thrillers –achieving its chilling impact through atmosphere, rather than gore. Released in 1932, White Zombie has more in common with Universal Pictures’ horror classics of that era, beginning with its star, Bela Lugosi, fresh from his success playing the
title role in Universal’s Dracula.
Lugosi made a monumental career mistake by appearing in this low-budget feature by Amusement Security, a small indie company. He only got paid $900, and because he was tied up with this role, he had to turn down Frankenstein, paving the way for the rise of his longtime rival Boris Karloff. While Frankenstein became a staple of the genre, revived often on television, White Zombie disappeared from view and, owing to legal complications, didn’t resurface again until the 1960s.
Too bad, because in White Zombie, Lugosi delivers the best performance of his career, truly a menacing turn as “Murder” Legendre, a voodoo high priest in Haiti who can raise the dead using black magic. He runs a successful sugar plantation and mill staffed solely by working zombies. But now he wants a bride, and finds the ideal candidate when the virginal Madeleine Short (Madge Bellamy) arrives on the island for a planned wedding with her fiance. Instead, she’s spirited away by Legendre with help from a rich baron who also is carrying a torch for her.
White Zombie not only boasts creepy sets, but also many eerie Gothic touches — from the natives’ chanting to the shrieking vulture that’s always hovering around Lugosi. The fluid cinematography evokes the great Expressionist thrillers of the silent era, surpassing the static camerawork that prevailed after the first “talkies” hit the screen. Among the uncredited musical contributors was Xavier Cugat. Enjoy, and do return again next Friday for another Trillion $ Movie.
P.S. In case you’re wondering Rob Zombie did name his first band after this movie.
Quite possibly the worst movie death scene ever from the 1974 Turkish actioner Kareteci Kiz or Karate Girl. H/T The Clearly Dope
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This week’s Trillion $ Movie, The Terror of Tiny Town, was billed as Hollywood’s first all-midget, musical Western upon its release in 1938. To this day, it remains the one and only example of the genre. Tiny Town came out under the imprimatur of the low-budget Spectrum Pictures Corporation, but Columbia Pictures subsequently picked up the title to fulfill the production quota it had promised to exhibitors.
Producer Jed Buell bought into the concept, having made Hollywood’s first all-black, feature-length Western, Harlem on the Prairie, in 1937. After deciding to cast only midgets for his next novelty picture, he assembled a troupe of players that reportedly boasted an average height of 3 feet, 8 inches. Most of them had never appeared in a movie before, which is glaringly obvious from their clumsy and stilted line readings. But the experience would serve them well, as a year later, many of these same cast members got the call from MGM to flesh out roles as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.
Except for the pint-sized players, Tiny Town covers familiar Western turf. A gang of cattle rustlers, bushwhackers and murderers has pitted ranchers against each other in a Dry Gulch town. But the black-hatted villains don’t reckon on the heroics of Buck Lawson, a working cowpoke who rides around on a Shetland pony, lassos calves and easily saunters into the local saloon by walking under the swinging doors. Buck has a star-crossed love interest, and also inspires palpitations on the part of barroom chanteuse Nita, a sultry heartthrob inspired by Marlene Dietrich.
This isn’t a film that will set the prairie on fire, but it’s certainly distinctive, short (pun intended), moves quickly and has enough comic interludes (including a singalong with a penguin) to justify its marketing as “a rollickin’, rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ drama of the great outdoors.” In a week when the news has been dominated by debate over a politically incorrect, low-budget movie on YouTube, it’s rather apropos to resurrect The Terror of Tiny Town and celebrate the God-given, American freedom to create offensively bad movies. Enjoy and return next Friday for another Trillion $ Movie.
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