Devil Girl from Mars (1954) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for Devil Girl from Mars (1954)Devil Girl from Mars (1954) by #DavidMacDonald
w/#HughMcDermott #HazelCourt #AdrienneCorri

A leather-clad female alien, with a ray gun and a robot, comes to Earth to collect men for breeding.

“Invasion from Outer Space!…Sights too weird to imagine! Destruction too monstrous to escape!”

“Earth Menaced By Fantastic Powers”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

Prior to last Friday, I had never seen Devil Girl from Mars (1954), and that is an oversight that I am very pleased to have corrected. It’s not rated very well (4.9 on the IMDb, and 24% on Rotten Tomatoes), so I didn’t expect anything extraordinary. Oh, how wrong I was… Continue reading →

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Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) by #EdwardLCahn
w/#StevenTerrell #GloriaCastillo #FrankGorshin

Diminutive alien invaders run into teenage opposition when they land in a rural lovers’ lane.

“CREEPING HORROR…from the depths of time and space!”

“SEE teenagers vs. the saucer men!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

Another in the long list of late 1950s sci-fi horror films that I may have seen as a kid on Not Quite Classic Theatre – but probably didn’t – is Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957). It would have fit in nicely with many of the other films, except for one thing: its tone is more deliberately comical. The basic joke at the heart of it seems to be that the alien invasion is foiled by unassuming teenagers – not the military, who are more or less fumbling around in the dark and unable to do anything. Continue reading →

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20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) by #NathanJuran
w/#WilliamHopper #JoanTaylor
VFX by #RayHarryhausen

“A Satellite Soared Into Space – And Returned With a Cargo of Terror!”

“Space-Monster Runs Amok on Earth!”

“Thousands Flee in Terror Before the Death-Dealing Monster from Outer Space!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) is a movie I’ve known about for a long time. I’ve read about in books, seen mention of it in articles, perhaps even heard people talk about it from time to time. But until a week and two days ago, I had never actually seen it. A week and two days? What the…? Don’t I usually write about my experiences at the home drive-in exactly one week later?  Continue reading →

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Cosmic Monsters (1958) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for Cosmic Monsters (1958)The Strange World of Planet X /
Cosmic Monsters (1958) by #GilbertGunn
w/#ForrestTucker #GabyAndré

A friendly visitor from outer space warns against conducting experiments with the Earth’s magnetic field, that could mutate insects into giant monsters.

“Shock by incredible shock this ravaging death overruns the earth…menacing mankind with overwhelming chaos!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

What can I say about Cosmic Monsters (1958) AKA The Strange World of Planet X? I had never heard of it before last week, and probably for good reason. It strikes me as an attempt to recapture the magic of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Both movies have (basically) the same premise: an alien comes to Earth to warn us to stop doing something stupid that will lead to our destruction. However, The Day the Earth Stood Still is a stone cold classic directed by Robert Wise, who made fan favourites like The Haunting (1963), Born to Kill (1947) and The Body Snatcher (1945).

Cosmic Monsters, on the other hand, is a mostly forgettable film directed by Gilbert Gunn, who also made, uh… Tyneside Story (1943)… Girls at Sea (1958)… and What a Whopper (1961)..?  Hmmm… not even another SciFi Horror film, I don’t think. Continue reading →

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The Astounding She-Monster (1957) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for The Astounding She-Monster (1957)The Astounding She-Monster (1957)
AKA Naked Invader
0r The Astounding She Creature
by #RonaldVAshcroft
w/#RobertClarke #KenneDuncan

An alien terrorizes the of kidnappers of a rich heiress.

“A creature from beyond the stars. EVIL… BEAUTIFUL… DEADLY…!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

I had heard of The Astounding She-Monster (1957), but somehow I had never seen it. I think maybe the title was too similar to (or at least reminiscent in some way of) other movies,  like She Demons (1958) and She Freak (1967) and maybe The She-Creature (1956) – all of which I’ve written about on the blog. But of course, The Astounding She-Monster is none of those movies…  Continue reading →

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Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: The Magnetic Monster (1953)

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Poster for The Magnetic Monster (1953)The Magnetic Monster (1953) by #CurtSiodmak
w/#RichardCarlson #KingDonovan #JeanByron

A new radioactive element begins to absorb all of the Earth’s energy.

“The astounding story of the “thing” that came alive!”

“It’s hungry! It has to be fed constantly – or it will reach out its magnetic arm and grab at anything within its reach and kill it. It’s monstrous, Stewart, monstrous. It grows bigger and bigger!”

#Horror #SciFi #NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

The Magnetic Monster (1953) is the first movie in a trilogy produced by Ivan Tors; the so called “Office of Scientific Investigation” (OSI) trilogy. The other two films in the series are Riders to the Stars (1954) – which I’ve never heard of – and Gog (1954), which I have in my collection (my 3D blu-ray collection!). Continue reading →

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Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Pharaoh’s Curse (1957)

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Poster art for Pharaoh's Curse (1957)Pharaoh’s Curse (1957) by #LeeSholem
w/#MarkDana #ZivaRodann #DianeBrewster

Archaeologists open a tomb in the Valley of the Kings and feel a mummy’s wrath.

“STRANGEST OF ALL HORROR STORIES!

“A blood-lusting mummy that kills for a cat goddess!

“Unleashing 4,000 years of horror upon this century!”

#Horror
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

When I was a kid, I loved movies about mummies, and curses, and mummy’s curses. There was something I found really scary about the idea of being “cursed” if you made the mistake of opening a mummy’s tomb. I saw several movies about this kind of thing. I’m not even sure what they were now (I suspect that one of them might have been The Awakening (1980), and I’m pretty sure I saw The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (1980), which was made for TV, but other than that, it’s a bit of blur to me) – but one thing I am sure of is that none of them was Pharaoh’s Curse (1957).  Continue reading →

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Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)

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Poster art for The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959) by #IrvinBerwick
w/#LesTremayne #ForrestLewis #JeanneCarmen

A doctor, a sheriff and a biologist pursue a creature hanging around a lighthouse.

“The fiend that walks Lovers’ Beach!”

“HE PREYS ON HUMAN FLESH!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

It’s pretty obvious that The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959) was influenced by Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which I saw on TV when I was quite young. I also had a friend who was obsessed with it, and had a book filled with with pictures from the movie. I knew another guy who, I think, had built of model of The Creature, or Gill-man. I may have even had a picture from that movie in a Famous Monsters magazine. In other words, Creature from the Black Lagoon was a super famous and popular movie. The Monster of Piedras Blancas, however, I had never heard of… Continue reading →

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Friday The 13th At The Home Drive-In: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

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Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) by #RobHedden
w/ #TiffanyPaulsen #KaneHodder

Jason Voorhees stalks a ship full of high school grads heading to New York City.

“The Big Apple’s in BIG trouble!”
“The city that has seen it all ain’t seen nothing yet!.”

#Horror #Slasher #FridayThe13th
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn
#FridayThe13thAtTheHomeDriveIn

I remember Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) hitting the big screen. I was working part time in a restaurant, and one of the other cooks went to see it. He told me it was so bad it was hilarious. I didn’t know if that was a compliment or an insult – but I didn’t really care, because I had more or less stopped watching after Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning (1985). I hated that movie when it first came out. And I wasn’t too fond of the idea that Jason had returned in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), either. I loved Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) and thought ti was a perfect ending for the series… I’ve probably already said this in my other Friday the 13th posts, so I’ll cut this short. I grew to love ALL of the Friday the 13th movies – some for different reasons than others. And Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is no exception… Continue reading →

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Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Monster from Green Hell (1957)

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Poster for Monster from Green Hell (1957)Monster from Green Hell (1957) by #KennethGCrane

w/#JimDavis #RobertGriffin #JoelFluellen

“The mammoth monster that terrified the Earth! Too awesome to describe! Too terrifying to escape! Too powerful to stop!”

“Atomic mutations with an appetite for flesh!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

A lot of the running time of Monster from Green Hell (1957) is taken up by stock footage and scenes taken from Stanley and Livingstone (1939). Even so, Monster from Green Hell is a wonder, and a delight, and a must-see for fans of #NotQuiteClassicCinema – but perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself… Continue reading →

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