Heavy Metal Thunder

Motorcycles!  Be there any young virile man (or even some women) who hasn't dreamed of flying down the highway on a chopper, the wind flowing through his (or her hair) and experiencing the thrill that generations before have experienced, that of the feeling of total freedom?  Marlon Brando, leather-jacketed and brimming with machismo asking the response to "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?"... "What'ya got?"

Hollywood has always had a love affair with motorcycles, but in the early days the riders were mostly outcasts and delinquents.  Occasionally some good guy hero would appear on the scene who was also a biker, but the norm was to have the motorcycle seen as a threat to the staid community.  One of the weirdest of these was one called Werewolves on Wheels in which a motorcycle gang is cursed by a satanic cult.

The Wild Angels (1966)

A movie from the King of the Drive-In, Roger Corman, The Wild Angels apparently had the blessing of Hell's Angels MC because they are acknowledged in the opening credits.  Which may or may not be surprising, since the motorcycle club in the movie is not cast in a particularly good light.  The movie begins with Peter Fonda (named "Blues" in the movie) arrives at the work place of a fellow biker "The Loser (Bruce Dern) to tell him they have figured out where his, Dern's, stolen bike ended up.

The biker gang, a fictional club of the real Hell's Angels, all ride out to the town where a group of Mexicans are running a chopper shop.  Apparently an illegal "chop shop", to boot, because the gang finds evidence of The Loser's chopped bike and proceed to kick some culo.  But the police arrive en masse so the gang makes their getaway.  But Loser hijacks one of the police motorcycles.  In the ensuing chase he is shot in the back by a cop and is captured.

Meanwhile back at the club, everyone is worried about the Loser.  Some of the worry is over his health, but a majority is over what will happen to him when he is back to health and then prosecuted for his crimes.  So an elaborate plan is hatched to rescue Loser from the hospital.  But not being doctors, or even halfway aware of the negative consequences, they only manage to get him free to watch him die.

An all-out party happens again at the funeral when the preacher at the church decides to use the format to preach a half-hearted sermon, which of course is not well-received by the gang members.  They knock out the preacher and break out the liquor and destroy the church.  After which they go to bury the Loser in the cemetery.  But the locals cause a ruckus, and the Angels being what they are join in a melee.

Roger Corman delivers a very exciting piece here, like most of his movies on a rather limited budget. (He made this one for about $350K).  There's not much plot, but there is some decent Corman violence, and Fonda shows some promise in one of his early film roles.  This role is a bit edgier than that of Wyatt/Captain America in Easy Rider (reviewed below) but Fonda still shines through.  Diane Ladd, who was Bruce Dern's real life wife is good as the Loser's wife here.  And it's easy to see why Nancy Sinatra didn't go very far as an actress.  A mannequin could have been her stand-in and no one would have noticed.

Easy Rider (1969)

This is it folks.  The iconic movie that made Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and even Jack Nicholson stars.  It was also a turning point in film, moving away from the syrupy movies that preceded it to the harder edged stuff that came after.  The film has been called a touchstone of the counter culture.  It shows a contrast between the staid old school outlook of the 50's and before to the new oncoming viewpoint that the 60's produced, both on the news and life scene as well as in the movies.

The movie begins with a drug deal.  We are introduced to the two main characters Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt aka "Captain America" (Fonda).  Fonda is called Captain America at points in the movie mostly because of his American flag inspired helmet and motorcycle.  The two complete the deal with the Mexican drug dealer and the scene shifts to them selling the same stash to a limo-driven big wig.  Having made the sale, they stuff the money in a tube and hide it in Wyatt's gas tank.

THe movie shifts at this point to their journey to go see Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker who is going to his commune.  The two stay for a day in the commune, and we get to see life as it was attempted by uneducated hippies who had an ideal but no clue how to achieve it.   The hippies are barely surviving, but most of them seem to accept the consequences of their fate.  As Billy and Wyatt are leaving, the hitchhiker gives them some LSD telling them to use it when the time is right.

Back on the road, the two are going through a town which appears to be having a parade.  Billy and Wyatt goofily join the parade but are arrested for "parading without a permit", which sounds to my ears like being arrested for having long hair, but they end up in jail, anyway.

They end up in a jail cell with George (Nicholson), who is in there because he is basically the town drunk.  George offers his help in getting them out of jasil and asks them if he can go with them "You got a helmet?" "Oh, I got a helmet"

They continue on their journey, but in another town encounter hostility and ridicule when they try to eat at a diner.  They leave and camp out, but some of those hostile townfolks drop by for "batting practice", beating them with baseball bats. Wyatt and Billy come away with a few injuries, but George is killed. They vow to take George's stuff to his folks.

The Mardi Gras scene is very unusual for the time, although not so much today.  The two go to a brothel that George had mentioned   They get a couple of girls, but instead of making hay, they decide to go out to Mardi Gras.

In a cemetery, they share the LSD given to them by the hitchhiker earlier.  This leads to the bizarre scenes that highlight the buzz/trip on which the LSD takes them.

After Mardi Gras, Billy and Wyatt hit the road.  ///Spoiler Alert!  If you haven't seen or heard how this movie ends, you might want to stop reading.///

On the road, the two encounter a pickup with a couple of rednecks.  One of them points a rifle at Billy, threatening him, and, as Billy shoots them the finger, ends up shooting him.  The truck takes off at Wyatt turns back.  Finding Billy still alive, he tells Billy he will go for help and races off.  Meanwhile the rednecks turn back and shoot Wyatt, exploding his gas tank, as the credits roll.

There is much about this movie that is worthy of watching.  As a looking glass look into the counter culture of the 60's and how society perceived them, it is excellent. It may even have something profound to reveal to today's counter culture movement.  If nothing else, it's worth a look to see Fonda and Hopper and Nicholson in the early stages of their careers.

That's it from the backseat of the Plymouth Fury this time, folks.  Be sure to buckle up when you leave the theater.

Quiggy

Out of this World with Bugs Bunny

This is my entry in MovieMovieBlogBlog's One of My All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blog-a-thon!

My absolute favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon (my favorite cartoon period) is "Hare-way to the Stars".  In my younger days I used to relate the plot to this one scene-by-scene to friends (or any captive audience who would listen...)  It still remains fresh today as it did when I first saw it on the Saturday morning cartoon show, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show.  (I'm old, but not old enough to have seen it at the theater)

The story is done by the great combination of Chuck Jones as director and Michael Maltese as writer, the same duo who gave us such other gems as  "Rabbit of Seville" , "Rabbit Fire", "Beanstalk Bunny" and even the Daffy Duck classic "Duck Amuck", any one of which could have been on this "all-time favorite" list for me.

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I think in order to appreciate Bugs Bunny, you have to have a sarcastic streak in yourself, and be a person who has to be on the winning side of the argument, both of which describe me to a T.  Bugs almost always ended up with the winning poker hand, so to speak, and that has more to do with his personality than it does with pure luck.  When most cartoon characters (and most people) would concede and just go home, Bugs still has some fight left in him.

Hare-way to the Stars starts off with a rocket being moved into position to be blasted off into space.  The rocket ends up over Bugs Bunny's hole.  Meanwhile, below, Bugs is waking up from a "hangover" after a night of mixing carrot juice with radish juice.  Grabbing a towel, with a wistful " I hope the lake is warmed up" he begins the ascent out of the hole.  As he climbs, he ends up in the bowels of the rocket.  "Boy the hole seems long this morning!"  He gets to the top of the rocket and exclaims "Hey...who plugged up the hole".  Meanwhile the rocket has blasted off and is now deep in space.  Bugs unscrews the top of the rocket and is surprised to see the Earth rapidly moving way from him, but before he can react he is knocked off the rocket by an errant satellite and is deposited on a space station.

Bugs first encounters Marvin, the helmeted nemesis of the cartoon, scurrying along with his Illudium Phew-32 Explosive Space Modulator which,he, Marvin, has finally perfected.  The device is essentially a stick of dynamite, but that's just the MacGuffin of the story.  After being told that the Earth will not be in existence much longer because Marvin is going to blow it up (it obstructs his view of Venus), Bugs steals the modulator. An exasperated Marvin shouts "That creature has stolen" the modulator and immediately gives chase.  But he needs help.

Enter instant martians (just add water).  Marvin grows a few of these and sends them off to capture Bugs and return the modulator to him.  However, Bugs is a bit more quick-witted than any instant martian (who probably could have used a little more water on the brain...).  Through a series of pratfalls and comic twist Bugs manages to defeat all of the Martians, including one scene on space scooters that is absolutely hilarious.

At the end, Bugs manages to find a saucer, and while erratically trying to get it under control, manages to switch the Illudium Phew-32 Explosive Space Modulator, now lit, with the bottle of instant Martians, about the same time that Marvin is going to get more Martians to stop Bugs.  Marvin finds himself holding the modulator and is ecstatic to have it back, but the modulator explodes, destroying the space station and roughing up Marvin, who sighs "Well, back to the old drawing board..."

Meanwhile Bugs has made it back to Earth, crash landing into a sewer.  The earth rumbles and Bugs comes up in a panic, as little Martian heads start popping up in the cracks.  He runs off, exclaiming to the audience "Run for the hills folks, or you'll be up to your armpits in Martians!"

The cartoon was released on March 29, 1958.  An interesting thing to note:  The satellite that bumps Bugs off the rocket is, apparently, supposed to be Sputnik, the Russian satellite, the first one to be put into orbit.  Sputnik had been launched just a few months earlier in October of 1957.  But it would have decayed to nothing by January of 1958, so if Bugs actually went into space in March, it couldn't really have been Sputnik that bumped him off the rocket, could it?  (You weren't expecting a history lesson, were you?  Don't worry, it won't be on the test.)


Quiggy

Dead Men Walking

The recent fascination with zombies is not new, but the current fascination with zombies who are obsessed with "getting head", so to speak, is not the same as the zombies of old.  Zombies of the 30's-50's are as different from the current zombie as Klingons from Star Trek:TOS are from the more recent permutations of Klingons. 

The first zombie movie is generally agreed to be Bela Lugosi's White Zombie.  My personal opinion is that early zombies were indistinguishable from someone in a hypnotic trance.  They certainly weren't the lumbering, brain-seeking undead creatures from Night of the Living Dead.  And they weren't nearly as frightening as the CGI enhanced virus sufferers of I am Legend.

Nonetheless a few good (and many not so good)  zombie movies were made in pre-Living Dead era.  (I arbitrarily choose Night of the Living Dead as the transition point, although you are free to disagree.)  One of the better movies of this period is King of the Zombies.  And one of the worst is Teenage Zombies.

Both of these I acquired through a company called Synergy Entertainment which put out about a dozen or so public domain movies accompanied with a t-shirt emblazoned with a movie poster of that movie.  I reasoned that even if the movie sucked I still got a decent t-shirt.  LOL.  And a few of them did suck, but I still wear the t-shirts.

King of the Zombies (1941)

This movie is called a horror comedy (less emphasis on the horror and more on the comedy).  The movie stars Dick Purcell as the pilot "Mac", John Archer as Mr. Bill, and Mantan Moreland in an early comedic role as Jeff.  The movie starts out with a plane carrying the three lost over the Caribbean.  One of the men mentions its the same area where Admiral Wainwright was lost the week before (remember that because it becomes important).  The three crash land on a remote island.

They find a mansion on the island and are made guests by the head of the mansion, Dr. Sangre.  The two white men are made comfortable in the guest room, but Jeff is sent down to the servants' quarters.  Much of the humor by the way, politically incorrect as it may be viewed today, centers around Jeff (Mantan Moreland) and his jittery reaction to the zombies he sees but which the two white men think is just his imagination.

Jeff has a brief conversation with the maid (Marguerite Whitten) who introduces him to the zombies, but feigns ignorance when later questioned by Mac and Bill.  Meanwhile they all become suspicious of this Dr. Sangre and the fact that he claims there is no radio to contact the outside world, but both hear one in their bedroom.

They snoop around and come upon a discovery.  Dr. Sangre has taken Admiral Wainwright, who had crashed on the same island, prisoner, and is using a combination of voodoo and hypnotism to try to get secret information out of him.  So it turns out, as I stated earlier, that some of the zombies are only hypnotized human beings... Still there is some voodoo and some of the zombies are real, even if they do look like hypnotized live humans.

Oh, an interesting side note:  Believe it or not King of the Zombies was nominated for an Academy Award.  True! Along with the likes of Citizen Kane, Sergeant York, Suspicion, and the eventual winner, All That Money Can Buy, King of the Zombies was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Music (Best Score of a Dramatic Picture).

Teenage Zombies (1960)


This second movie, Teenage Zombies, is on many lists as being among the worst movies of all time.  Although I think its a stretch calling it a movie.  It's only 70 minutes long.  If you took all the purloined stock footage out of it.  It would be about 65 minutes long.  And then there are 3 separate scenes involving a search (the teenagers on the island searching for their boat...twice and the sheriff and one of the other teenagers searching for the rest of the teenagers) each of which is about 3-5 minutes long.  Now we are talking about a 45 minute film.  That's like an hour long TV show with commercials.  Except the commercials would be more interesting than the show...

The movie starts with some teenagers in a malt shoppe discussing what they want to do for the afternoon.  Two couples want to go water-skiing, while the third couple has committed to horseback riding.  After agreeing to meet later the couples go their separate ways.  The two couples who went water-skiing  find a strange island they want to investigate.  Upon seeing a strange woman with a bunch of lumbering men who freak them out they go back to where their boat was, but its not there.  Thus instigating one of those interminable search scenes.

The girls get tired, so they stop to reast while the boys continue the search.  But the girls disappear.  The boys find a house operated by the woman they saw earlier, and shortly become prisoners of the woman, along with the girls who were captured earlier.  The other pair, who went horseback riding decide to go looking for their friends and find the same island and same woman who tells them "nobody comes to the island" but as theyleave they see two strange men pull up to the island.

There's very little more to this bizarre but trivial movie.  The woman is in cahoots with the men (from the East, probably Russia) who are trying to develop a pill or a gas to turn everyone in the United States into docile zombie slaves.  More or less, a hypnotic trance from which they can never be brought out of.  Its up to the teenagers to foil the plot.

This movie is so bad, I couldn't even locate any stills from the movie to augment this section of the review.  It won't petrify your brain to watch it, but you'll wonder later what happened to that lost hour.  Fast forward through the search scenes and it will only seem like an hour, though...

That's it from the backseat of the Plymouth Fury, this time, kiddies.  Drive safely going home.

Quiggy

Rules of the Road

A Brief History and the Rules of the Road

I thought at this point it might be a good idea to establish the rules of my movie blog, if nothing else to keep me honest.  But before that I'd like to establish a brief history of the drive-in movie theater.

The first drive-in theater appeared in New Jersey in 1933, the inspiration of a guy named Richard Hollingshead.  He worked out the details in his front yard, then used the information to open the first one.  More opened over the next few years, but it really didn't take off as a phenomenon, until after the development of car speakers in 1941.  (Imagine the noise regulations broken by having to broadcast the sound from one central point before that!!!)

The 1950's saw the drive-in movie taking off like gangbusters.  According to wikipedia there were around 4000 of them across the US by the early 60's.  It was a family friendly type place.  As I said in an earlier post, my parents could take my sister and I to one without a worry about crying babies or noisy kids.

Several factors led to the decline of the drive-in.  The oil crises of the 70's led to more people just staying home.  The advent of VCRs and Betamaxes made watching movies in your home a more viable option than gassing up to go sit outside to watch one.  But the real culprit, in the end, I believe, was the value of the land  being used for the theaters.  As with the two in my home area, most of the ones closed down to be bulldozed and used as other higher-profit ventures.

By the 1990's, there were very few drive-ins left.  They had "gone the way of the dodo" so to speak.  But I have seen a revived interest and some new ones being opened in recent years.  It may just be a fad for the nostalgia driven and older retirees wanting to relive the bygone days.  But at least there is hope.

Rules of the Road

To establish this blog I need to set some rules.

1.  With the only exception of entering a blog-a-thon that requires it, I will refrain from reviewing silent movies.  In the early days there may have been drive-ins that ran silents on occasion, but those are better seen in indoor theaters in my opinion and thus not fodder for the drive-in.

2.  Movies I review will almost always be in double feature format, because that is my experience.  When I grew up and, into my twenties and thirties, going to the drive-in ALWAYS meant two movies.  If I review and extremely long movie, however, (over 3 hours) I will only review one movie.  Sticking to the true essence of the drive-ins, none of them would still be running movies into the wee hours of the morning.

3.  I will TRY to set the upper limit of the date of the movies to 1990, thus keeping it real.  I only want to review movies I could have conceivably been able to see in drive-ins at the time they came out.

4.  It's a family friendly site.  There were theaters with a screen that showed adult movies, but I will not review those.  Sorry about that...:-D


Quiggy

Children of the Night

This is my entry in the Universal Pictures Blogathon, hosted by Silver Scenes.

Dracula!

It is probably not hyperbole that more movies have been made with Dracula or his progeny as the subject than any other monster.  What with the original Universal flick of 1931 (which wasn't technically the first, since Nosferatu predated it by some 9 years), the sequels put out by Universal over the years, the Hammer films from England, and numerous remakes of the Dracula original, the vampire theme has permeated the cinema for decades.  This doesn't even include those non-Dracula vampire films that have popped up over the years, including the recent romantically  themed Twilight.

Universal was the first to really make Dracula a franchise, though.  And did it ever.

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

The fact that the Universal moguls waited 5 years before putting out a sequel to it's original is a mystery to me.  In these days, a sequel is already in pre-production before the newest one is even in the theaters is the norm, but it is a different era.

Dracula's Daughter begins, more or less, at the end of Dracula.  Two policeman (E.E. Clive and Billy Bevan), investigating the area come across a dead body, which they determine has been murdered.  Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) tells them the body was murdered by the person in the other room whom he, Van Helsing, had just driven a stake though the heart.  Van Helsing is arrested for murder.

The policemen, who are essentially the comedy relief of the picture (think Laurel and Hardy) are guarding the bodies waiting for the authorities from Scotland Yard.  The sergeant goes to meet the authorities on the train, leaving his subordinate to guard the bodies.  A mysterious woman (Gloria Holden) shows up, hypnotizes the poor souls and spirits away Dracula's body.

The mysterious woman, it turns out, is the daughter of Dracula, posing as Contessa Marya Zeleska.  She wanted the body to perform a ritual sacrifice which, she hopes, will rid her of the curse of Dracula.  Of course, it doesn't, or we would have an awfully short movie.  The rest of the movie deals with the daughter trying to find another way to cure herself.  Why not psychiatry?  Don't bother with the fact that most psychiatrists would have the girl committed for thinking she was a vampire...  The psychiatrist (Otto Kruger) tries to help her, but she is very cryptic about what she really wants.

There is an interesting scene in the middle of this movie where the Contessa wants to see if the bloodlust has been removed.  She has her faithful manservant Sandor (Irving Pichel) find a woman to bring her in, ostensibly for a painting session.  There is some erotic tension there, which was obviously subdued by the censors of the time, but it seems to me that the daughter liked women, if you get my drift.

In the end, the Contessa accepts her fate, but decides she wants the psychiatrist to join her in eternity, and contrives a way to get him to join her.  But fate intervenes in the person of her jealous manservant who apparently wanted to be the beau in her life.  What a shame!  We always seem to miss the real love right next to us, while out seeking perfection in the world.

Son of Dracula (1943)

Once again, another 7 years went by before the second sequel was released.  Universal had its money maker, but apparently didn't realize it.  This time they got Lon Chaney, Jr to assume the role of Dracula.  (Despite the title, there are ample indications throughout the movie that this is the real thing, not the "son")

Chaney was on his way to becoming a fixture in the Universal horror oeuvre.    He had recently portrayed the Wolf Man, the role for which he would be forever associated.  He also later played the Mummy and on one occasion the Frankenstein monster, making him the versatile horror icon he was and the only one to play four different Universal monsters.

The movie begins with the imminent arrival of a train bringing Count Alucard (Chaney) to a New Orleans plantation.  The Count, of course, does not get off the train, it still being daylight.  But his baggage is on the train, imprinted with his crest.  It is here that the first indication comes that ALUCARD  is DRACULA spelled backwards.  (Good, that saves the suspense of wondering who he really is...)

The movie then transitions to the plantation where there is a gala event awaiting the arrival of the Count.  But he is delayed still.  Meanwhile, Katherine (Louise Allbritton) has gone to visit an old Hungarian gypsy living on the plantation who warns her of imminent danger, but is killed prematurely by a bat.  (any guesses?)

The Count arrives secretly and kills the old colonel who owns the plantation, which was needed to initiate the reading of his will.

You will notice from the picture that the count become mist.  Which brings up a question...When he enters the old colonel's bedroom, why does he need to open the door?  Just wondering...

Anyway, Katherine ("Kay") and her sister Claire (Evelyn Ankers) find out from the will that Claire gets all the cash and goodies while Kay gets the plantation.  Soon the reason for this is discovered as Kay secretly weds the Count.  He makes her a vampire just as he is.

Kay's former beau Frank (Robert Paige) confronts the count, and tries to shoot him, but the bullets pass through him and apparently kills Kay.  Thinking he has committed murder, he ends up going to jail where the now undead Kay reveals her true plan.  She married the Count in order to become undead, and now she wants Frank to kill the Count and then become her undead husband in his place.

Son of Dracula is a treat, if nothing else, for the appearance of Lon Chaney Jr.  The rest of the cast, as was usual in the Universal horror movies, were secondary to the villain.  Anybody could have filled the role, and most of them you couldn't pick out of a lineup.  But in this case, I really liked Allbritton in the primary female role.

Well that's it from the backseat of the old Plymouth Fury, kiddies.  Be sure to buckle up and drive safe on your way home.

Quiggy

The Age of Innocence (and the End of It)

When I was a kid, back in the 70's, my father would occasionally take my mother, my sister and me to the drive-in.  We would load up the old Dodge Rambler station wagon with some snacks (my father was very frugal, there was NO WAY he was paying concession stand prices for stuff), some blankets and a couple of pillows for us kids in case we dozed off (which we usually did).

I can only remember a few of those movies.  One was a Sinbad movie (one of the old Ray Harryhausen special effects laden ones).  I can vividly remember a giant statue of a six-armed god coming to life with a sword in each hand, fighting Sinbad and his mates.  I have since watched it as an adult.  (It was The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, BTW).  I found that I remembered a few more things from that movie that I had forgotten.

One that I have absolutely no recollection of seeing in the drive-in was Patton.  It was rated PG, and the PG was as much for the language as the violence.  My father was very straight-laced and did not cotton to having his young children hear such language.  I guess he never thought we might hear it as easily among our friends as on the big screen....

Anyway, flash forward a few years.  We, my sister and I, are still under the age of accountability when Star Wars came out.  I desperately wanted to see this movie, but it was PG, and my father was adamant that we were not going to be exposed to the language a PG movie might have.  But, yet, they had allowed me to obtain the movie  tie-in book.  I pointed out that I was reading the book and there wasn't a bad word in it.  It took some begging, but I finally got my folks to relent and let us see it.  Not at the drive-in, unfortunately, but a few years later, after I turned 18, the sequel came out, and they paired it with Star Wars, so I got to see both in a drive-in after all.

Quiggy

Ed Wood Haunts My Dreams

What better way to inaugurate the new Midnite Drive-In with a dedication to one of the quirkiest film directors of all time?  Ed Wood may have not had the talent to step into the shoes of John Ford, or Billy Wilder, or Otto Preminger, or even Roger Corman for that matter, all of whom released memorably classic movies in 1959 (Rio Bravo, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder and A Bucket of Blood, respectively.). But  that same year also saw the release of not one, but two Ed Wood gems;  Plan 9 from Outer Space  and Night of the Ghouls.  Wood may not have had talent but, God bless him, he had heart.  And that's what endears him to me.

Night of the Ghouls (1958)

Night of the Ghouls is, like most of Ed Wood's movies, unintentionally hilarious.  The premise is that an old abandoned house, the site of some previous nefarious deeds (more or less, this was supposed to be a sequel to Bride of the Monster, an early Wood flick), is now the site of more strange events.  The movie begins with a coffin in which Criswell, a somewhat famous magician of the time, is apparently dead.  He rises from the coffin and delivers a a speech in his inimitable stentorian voice, warning the people in the audience of "Monsters to be pitied! Monsters to be despised!"

The movie really gets going with a few sequences of the mysterious; a young couple encounter a weird woman/ghost on the road, and an elderly couple encounter another while taking a short cut.   The police call in a lieutenant to investigate and send a uniformed officer to help.  The bumbling police officer is a familiar one to Wood aficionados, having played the same in several Wood's flicks.

During the investigation, the lieutenant finds that a fake psychic, Dr. Acula (Dracula, get it?) has set up shop in the old abandoned house on Willows Lake.  He has Lobo, a former inhabitant of the house for muscle and a very attractive blonde girlfriend to act as a "ghost" to scare away snoopers (this being the apparition the old couple saw earlier).  But there is also another woman/ghost who appears and is really scaring people, including the bumbling police officer.

The fake psychic meanwhile is trying to bilk an old woman out of her money through a "seance" with her dead husband.  This combined with the investigations by the lieutenant, and attempts to keep the whole thing under wraps makes for the rest of the story.  Confused?  Watching the movie won't alleviate that very much.  It is a story apparently written on some pretty decent drugs.  But it is funny in it's own way.  There's a ghost in a sheet which dances across the screen (with the pants legs of the person barely concealed at the bottom of the screen), and a gabbling head which appear during the seance which will have you rolling on the floor laughing.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

This is it.  The one that nearly everyone agrees is the WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME!

It's definitely not Academy award material.  But it is amazing that some of these people went on to have careers after this.  What makes this movie fun is the way everyone in the movie is so serious about their parts.  The script itself was ludicrous.  The actors barely able to hold their own.  And some special effects errors that are legendary.

The movie begins with the death of a poor old man who, after the death of his wife, cannot go on living.  (Ed Wood used some footage of Bela Lugosi he had shot just before Lugosi died, but for the majority of the movie it's not Lugosi in the cape but a guy who Ed conned into being him, with a cape across his face to help convince people it was Lugosi...but even that doesn't help.)

The police are called to the cemetery to investigate a mysterious flying saucer that supposedly landed there.  Inspector Clay, played by another Wood regular Tor Johnson, is killed by a zombie woman, played by Vampira (Maila Nouri).  He too becomes a zombie.

We are then taken aboard the flying saucer where two aliens have been working to animate corpses.  This is the "Plan 9" of the movie.  To animate the dead and have them help take over the Earth.  Why?  Because all people of the earth are idiots, ya see?  Especially the ones who invested money in Ed Wood's' harebrained ideas for movies.  All $2 worth of it.

But as I said before, the really fun part of Plan 9 is catching all of the unintentional flubs and special effects disasters:  From the cardboard gravestones that shimmy and shake and tip over as you walk by them, to the shadow of the boom mike on the wall of the cockpit behind the airline pilots (and the shower curtain that is a door to said cockpit), to the infamous strings you can see suspending the flying hubcaps ( I mean saucers...).  Plan 9 from Outer Space ranks as the worst movie of all time, but to me it is the absolute greatest "worst", meaning it is one I enjoy reveling in it's exquisite badness.

That's it from the backseat of the Plymouth Fury this time.  Have a safe trip home, kiddies.

Quiggy