From Zombos' Closet

What's It All About, Igor?

Zombos' Closet...a vast trove of endearingly cheap thrills, including movie and book reviews, and scans of his collections of cinema pressbooks, goofy paper-cutout Halloween decorations, and his amazing collection of Mexican lobby cards from B-grade films. If you have time to descend into a serious rabbit-hole of marvelous trash-culture nostalgia, visit that site just as soon as you possibly can. (DangerousMinds.net)

about this blog From Zombos' Closet...

The Land Unknown (1957) Pressbook

Almost a fun movie, but the special effects, which included a guy in a really ill-designed dinosaur suit, take away the being-there aspect quite a bit. The set itself is beautiful and, were this in color, may not have been as effective; but the matte paintings and whole diorama effect is foreboding and filled with danger in black and white. Bill Warren, in his Keep Watching the Skies!, lambasted this one pretty good. Not one of Universal's best from the 1950s, but they all couldn't be winners like Creature From the Black Lagoon. There was a real fascination, at least where cinema was concerned, with ancient or alien landscapes, ancient or alien cultures, and dinosaurs, when it came to jungle and horror movies of the 50s and 60s. And often there was always a man-eating plant stuffed in there, somewhere. You won't see newspapers running Antarctica Geography Quizzes for a movie anymore, either. 

Comic Reader version: Download The Land Unknown

The Pit and the Pendulum: More Radio Spots

The Pit and the Pendulum Pressbook Cover

Good old Granny lifted up her nephew, turned him upside down, and shook real hard to loosen up some more radio spots from The Pit and the Pendulum from his pockets. Here are a few 60, and one 90, minute spots for your time to be well spent. Bet you won't be able to watch the movie ever again without hearing these ominous jingles playing in your head. Again and again. Like that blade that keeps on coming. Swoosh...swoosh...swoosh...

Pit and the Pendulum (60)b

Pit and the Pendulum (60)c

Pit and the Pendulum (60)d

Pit and the Pendulum (60)e

Pit and the Pendulum (60)f

Pit and the Pendulum (60)g

Pit and the Pendulum (90)

Superman (1948) Mexican Lobby Card

The first live-action appearance of Superman on screen was with Kirk Alyn playing the lead role. This 15 chapter serial finally brought the Son of Krypton to movie audiences, but was hampered by that era's lack of the necessary technical effects to make the Man of Steel really fly, although Captain Marvel's flying proved better on screen. Flying was achieved with animation, which did not work well. However, the serial was a commercial success and gave us Noel Niell's Lois Lane, which she reprised in The Adventures of Superman with George Reeves. Interestingly, as noted in Wikipedia, animating him from live-action takeoff to animated flying was easier to do than animated flying to live-action landing. So they had animated Superman land behind something then he would pop out as live-action Superman.

Kirk Alyn was offered the starring role in The Adventures of Superman television series but refused it, not believing in the Superman Curse, in which anyone portraying the character would be typecast and not hired for any other role. Alyn eventually said "playing Superman ruined my acting career, and I was bitter for many years about the whole thing. I couldn't get another job in Hollywood." George Reeves, who did take on the role in Adventures died two years after that series ended, whether by his own hand or someone else's is still a mystery.

Ragman by JG Faherty Book Review

This review was written for The Horrorzine. Special thanks to the author for providing a review copy.

 

Zombos Says: Good

What is Faherty thinking? He takes the awkwardly slow-moving ancient mummy of Hammer and Universal Studios fame, inhales the plot-thickening of Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, Lot. 249, and wraps a tidy bundle of revenge killings and weird menace that would fit quite naturally into a pulp magazine like Strange Detective Mysteries. On top of this, he adds a unique quality to the mummy’s bandages as they take on a life of their own and wreak bloody havoc: and all this without a tana leaf in sight! Such thinking, hopefully, will lead to more supernatural detective adventures with Reese, Reardon, and one determined forensic scientist, Joanna, who is married to Detective Dan Reese.

And that is where the friction heats up between Detective Reese and drummed-out-of-the-police department, ex-partner, former detective Reardon. Now they are hateful of each other, the only other person more despised, by both of them, is Driscoll, a sloppy, almost-retired to pension slacker, counting the days, just-close-the-books kind of detective messing things up and going for the easy but false answers. The true answer is one they all have trouble wrapping their heads around.

It involves a revengeful mummy resurrected by sucking the life force out of others unfortunate enough to cross his path (leaving people looking like mummies themselves), and another demonic mummy (a ushabti), very tall, very determined, and intent on dismembering those he is summoned to kill. All because a group of men, many years before, betrayed one of their own while stealing sacred artifacts from the Temple of Sokar. Seemingly unstoppable and able to appear out of thin air and return to it, Reese, Reardon, and Joanna are hard pressed to stop it or convince anyone else of what is happening; especially when it is finally directed to go after them.

In between the escalating carnage, the sexual tensions and a sullied past history caused by a strip poker game gone wrong, Reese and Reardon’s ability to work together is skittish at best, and the fumbling Driscoll keeps pushing to close the case with false leads in spite of the facts as the rich descendants of those tomb plunderers wind up in pieces, one at a time.

Joanna uses her forensic connections and skills to dig deeper into the nature of the enemy they are facing: a deadly giant mummy on one hand and its unseen guiding force on the other. They must piece together the why before they can figure out the how, to stop the deaths piling up from an event begun in 1888, now coming to its climax in New York City. When the ushabti goes after people not connected to the original descendants’ curse, matters take a turn for the worse.

Faherty does a wonderful job giving his people everyday problems tossed in with the supernatural ones, making his characters believable and endearing, even when they overstep each other's personal boundaries. His monsters are not too simple, not too complicated, and usually have personal boundary issues too, and here those issues lead to point-blank death or narrow escapes from it. Those death-defying escapes provide the quickly moving action in Ragman, and his villains here, aside from the titular demonic one, have either valid grievances or imagined ones, providing the mystery that pushes Reese, Reardon, and Joanna together again to solve it while staying alive trying.  

 

Horror Rock (2006) Music

John Russo (yeah, that guy) produced a 39-minute compilation of horror rock and movie clips called Horror Rock, from 2006, now playing on Tubi (yup, free). It includes Elvis Hitler, Hurricane, The Pandoras, The Dickies, Wrath, The Del-Lords, gracing the cords and notes with ear-slashing frenzy. The film clips accompanying the music fit in nicely. I admit I'm not familiar with some of the clips, but seeing them piques my interest (don't you just hate when you don't know where a video clip is from!) I love the Pandoras (Run Down Love Battery music video), just saying. The Dickies aren't too shabby either.

 

 

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) Radio Spots

B&K Roosevelt Theater on State Street, Chicago IL

This just in from Granny Creech's nephew, Gary Fox...

It was Wednesday, September 20, 1961, when I first heard the radio spot for The Pit and the Pendulum. It was on its opening day and, to my 11 year-old brain, it was amazing. I had seen the ads for the movie in the newspaper and was intrigued by what I saw: a guy bound on a large stone table with a long blade-like thing hanging over him while a good-looking woman looked on. I could only imagine what was going to happen until I heard it and saw it…on the radio. Whoa! Poor guy! I had to see the movie.

The next day after school I rode the bus into town and saw it, the first of four times over the course of the next few days.  But, after the first viewing, I had a pressing task: I had to tape record the radio commercial before they took it off the air. And for that, I had to wait until Saturday when I went to my granny’s house where my beloved reel-to-reel resided. Would it still be on? You can imagine my joy when I heard them (!) on Saturday morning, and I was able to record several versions. They went on my growing radio spot reel.

I was finally able to purchase the radio spot disk much later in life.  The radio spots were produced on a 12”, 33 1/3 rpm red vinyl disk, with spots on both sides. Usually spots were just on one side of a disk with the other side blank, unless it was a giant movie or if the studio gave it the first class marketing treatment, which American International did with Pit.

The vinyl is spectacular. It features renowned voice actor Ken Nordine (Nor- DEEN), who was also a recording artist who developed a style of storytelling he called Word Jazz. Not only do the spots differ in length, they also differ in content and emphasis. They are extremely atmospheric, and create a sense of doom, torment and despair. With added sound bites and eerie sound effects, including an ever-present slicing sound made by the pendulum, the listener gets a sense of dread from the poor guy chained to the table, and of the mental instability of his tormentor. In some clips, Nordine is the narrator; in some, he is the victim; in others he is the tormented inquisitor inflicting the pains of the torture chamber on his victims. In one cut, he is even Edgar Allan Poe himself.

A true-treasure trove of visual imagery, one can easily listen to the entire album and get a complete feel for the movie. As a kid, I was not disappointed. I loved the pendulum with its heavy gear works, the immense pit room with its hooded figures observing the foul deed, the buried-alive corpse in the crypt, and the overall look and sound of the movie. The spots had done their job.  I eventually lost count how many times I saw the movie, but I even recorded the spots when the movie came back to the drive-in later in the year.

So now, sit back and enjoy the mental pictures conjured up by these effective and horrific spots to The Pit and the Pendulum. Pleasant dreams! or unpleasant screams!

Pit and the Pendulum (20)

Pit and the Pendulum (30)a

Pit and the Pendulum (30)b

Pit and the Pendulum (30)c

Pit and the Pendulum (30)d

Pit and the Pendulum (30)e

Pit and the Pendulum (60)a

To be continued...and special thanks to Milton Moritz for identifying the theater.

It Lives Inside (2023)

Zombos Says: Good, in spite of what some other critics may say.

Sticking demons in jars probably isn't the best approach to containing them, especially when the jar is made of glass. Getting the beastie into the jar in the first place can be a painful and terminal experience too. But all of that Tamira (Mohana Krishnan) and  Sam (Megan Suri) already know, in this effective chiller directed by Bishal Dutta. 

Trying to fit in at an American school is bad enough, but deciphering the cryptic book left behind by a family that left the neighborhood the hard way, and a mother (Neeru Bajwa) who expects she follow family traditions, is making it all very difficult for Sam, her new boyfriend, and her school councilor, Joyce. Her friend, Tamira, has it worse since she is the one left holding the jar. Until Sam smashes it in a fit of disgust. Cue the terror and screaming for both of them.

In true horror movie fashion, the adults are clueless and little help, so Sam and her boyfriend check out the house where that other family didn't stay long. A scary mural matches a drawing in the book and is also not much help at that moment. When the demon goes after her and those around her, the story picks up speed and bloodletting. 

While Joyce (Betty Gabriel) becomes a believer in Hindu demonic entities--the hard way--Sam and her mother  embrace their culture to fight against the monster and save who they can. Not so surprisingly, it involves a lot of cooking. The ending leaves an opening for more mayhem, but don't they always?

Some critics have reviewed this one as derivative, too cliche-heavy, and the usual freaky creepy tropes kind of effort. I admit the use of oh-it-was-a-nightmare-moments are cheap these days to foster scares and pad the story, but the creature design is beautiful (in a demon sort of way of course), and filming its presence is nicely handled: glimpses at first, then full-0n, run for your life reveals as the situation worsens. And Sam thought fitting in at school was difficult?

I will say the use of yet another cryptic book, filled with incoherent Crayola scribblings and drawings as the key provider of clues, like the overused Internet and YouTube search for just about anything evil, is getting wearisome as go-to ways of moving a story forward. Especially when those books are always beaten, leatherbound, and look like they were buried and dug up a few times while being chewed on. Why not use a Mead notebook for damn sakes, like everyone else?

 

 

 

 

Gale Stay Away From Oz (2023)

This one has me somewhat confused. I'm not sure if it's a series, a movie, or what it is supposed to be from Chilling. I'm not even sure where you access Chilling. The screener request provided a short teaser for this horror, and not much else. Promotion not at its finest so far.

As for the teaser, it looks promising. Dorothy Gale (Karen Swan)  is an elderly woman suffering from dementia and a fear of something that causes her to yell a warning to stay away from OZ. Visiting her estate is Emily Gale (Chloe Crump), who is the person she warns. Emily is having nightmares and those lead her to seek out Dorothy, though it is not clear what her relationship is with the famed author of the OZ books beyond their last names matching up.

The nightmares trouble Emily enough for psychotherapy sessions with a doctor who looks very familiar, hint hint. Crump's Emily is lethargic and hopefully, will pick up some energy and more facial expressions beyond the one she uses throughout this teaser. 

During her brief and bizarre visit with Dorothy, she meets her therapist (Clara Emanuel) who, again, seems very familiar, hint hint. It seems therapists are a big thing with anyone connected to OZ.

Spooky nightmares, yet another cryptic, well worn book, frantically scribbled and drawn in to provide parts of clues (doesn't anyone in horror movies know how to take good notes?), and the start to a quest for answers, ironically, are leading Gale to OZ and not away from it.

Like I said, promising but confusing. I will keep you posted when I find out more.