SMASHPOUNDX' CREEKY PROJECTOR

1960 directed by Roger Corman starring Michael Forest, Frank Wolff, Wally Campo, Richard Sinatra and Sheila Noonan. An infantry patrol must blow up a rail-road bridge behind enemy lines. Besides having to deal with evil, German patrols, there is also an intense conflict between the American patrol’s veteran sergeant and its inexperienced lieutenant. The film was shot in ten days in the Black Hills of Deadwood, South Dakota. The film's musical score, written by cellist Fred Katz, was originally written for A Bucket of Blood and was used in a total of seven films, including The Wasp Woman and Creature from the Haunted Sea.

1960 directed by Joel Rapp starring Richard Devon and Ron Gans as two American G.I.’s who, during WWII, find themselves stranded on an island swarming with bloodthirsty, leering Japs.

1943 directed by Sam Newfield starring George Zucco in dual roles as twin brothers: one, a kindly physician who secretly murdered his twin to prevent him from committing evil, (not unlike Brutus killing his buddy Caesar); the other, a seedy Satanist whose desire for revenge is so great he actually rises from the grave. Also starring Dwight Fry, Nedrick Young, Fern Emmet, Robert Strange, Hal Price and Mary Carlisle in the girl part.

1943 directed by Sam Newfield produced and released by Producers Releasing Corporation, a major Poverty Row studio, starring George Zucco, Robert Livingston, Noel Madison, Charles Middleton, Robert Middlemass, Glenn Strange, J. Stanford Jolley and Wanda McKay in the girl part. During a dark and stormy night, a group of travelers, some with seedy pasts, seek shelter at a creaky hotel owned and operated by George Zucco, which should put everyone on alert. And oh, yes, there’s a stash of money.

1941 directed by Joseph H. Lewis, produced by Sam Katzman and starring Bela Lugosi and Polly Ann Young in the girl part. Bela is a divorcee who becomes “haunted” by his ex-wife who, unbeknownst to himself, became a brain-goggled zombie after having an auto accident and who begins wandering back to his house in the middle of the night and leering eerily through the window.

1932 American pre-Code horror film independently produced by Edward Halperin and directed by Victor Halperin. The screenplay by Garnett Weston is based on The Magic Island by William Seabrook. The film stars Bela Lugosi as a Haitian voodoo master named “Murder LeGrande who has a large, bushy uni-brow and who has perfected the art of turning people into zombies, (pronounced “sssombies.”). When the wealthy Brandon Hurst get a serious case of the hots for a newlywed named Madeleine, he enlists the aid of Murder not realizing he’s made a deal with the devil.

The Old Barn Dance is a 1938 American Western film directed by Joseph Kane and starring Gene Autry and his horse Champion, and in lesser roles; Smiley Burnette, Joan Valerie, Earl Dwire and featuring Roy Rogers, The Maple City Four, Jo Stafford and His Sisters and Walt Shrum and his Colorada’ Hillbillies. Yeehaw! Gene arrives in Ye Old Grainville with a string of horses he expects to sell at auction, and plans to put on a barn dance to attract potential buyers, because we all know people who buy horses also love to dance. The horse business has been affected lately by the invention of the new-fangled “horseless horse,” also known as the tractor. Hearing of Gene’s arrival, a radio station owner named Sally approaches Gene and offers him a “deal” which Gene promptly refuses, being wise enough to put his trust in horses rather than girls. However, Sally is a determined little hussy….

1942 directed by Wallace Fox starring Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters, Tristram Coffin, Elizabeth Russell, Minerva Urecal, Angelo Rossitto, Joan Barclay, Kenneth Harlan and Vince Barnett. Mad scientist Lugosi murders young brides by sending them a poison orchid. He then trucks away the body in his hearse and, when he's back in his laboratory, he extracts fluid from their bodies which he then injects into his aging wife, a super-biotch who can't stand a wrinkle.

1937 directed by Joseph Kane and starring Gene Autry and his horse, Champion, and in lesser roles: Smiley Burnette, Betty Bronson, LeRoy Mason, Charles B. Middleton, Russell Simpson, The Tennessee Ramblers and Fred “Snowflake” Toones Cattleman Gene becomes entangled in a range war between the Cattlemen and the filthy Turpentiners, who make their living harvesting pine tree sap (and doing God knows what with it). It seems the busky Cattlemen want to burn the fores down because it gets in the way of their cattle-grazing, while the Turpentiners need the forest because, well, that’s where all the trees are, and without the trees there’s no sap which means no turpentine, (kind of like the knee bone connected to the ankle bone). As for Gene, aw shucks he only wants to spend his days a-yodelin’.

1959 mystery thriller directed by Crane Wilbur and starring Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead and Darla Hood. It is the fourth film adaptation of the story, which began as a 1908 novel The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart, which she later adapted (with Avery Hopwood) into the 1920 play The Bat. The first film version of the play was the 1926 silent film The Bat. This version was adapted by playwright Crane Wilbur, who also directed. Author Cornelia Van Gorder rents The Oaks, a summer home in a small town, from local bank president John Fleming. While on a hunting trip with his physician, Dr. Malcolm Wells, Fleming confesses to stealing over $1 million in negotiable securities from the bank. He offers to split the dough with Wells in return for help faking his own death and threatens to kill him if he does not comply. Fine doctor that he is, Wells shoots Fleming so he can grab all the loot for himself, then covers up the murder. Meanwhile, the town is being terrorized by a mysterious murderer )weirdo) known as "the Bat", said to be a man with no face who murders women at night by ripping out their throats with steel claws.

1955 Austrian drama film directed by Karl Hartl and starring Oskar Werner, Johanna Matz, Gertrud Kückelmann, (I wish I knew a girl named Kuckelmann), Erich Kunz, Nadja Tiller, Annie Rosar, Hugo Gottschlich and Angelika Hauff. It was entered into the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. The plot explores the mental state of Mozart during production of his final opera The Magic Flute.

1952 quasi-historical film directed by Felix E. Feist and starring Lex Barker, Helen Westcott in the girl part, Lon Chaney Jr., Berry Kroeger, Roy Roberts, Larry Chance, Guy Teague and Katherine Warren in the other girl part. Conflict between Ottawa Native Americans, led by Chief Pontiac, and the British back in 1763.

1953 directed by Ida Lupino starring Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, Edmund Gwenn and Edmond O'Brien. Producer/Screenwriter Collier Young was married to Fontaine at the time and had previously been married to Lupino, (Hollywood Swingers?). The Bigamist is the first American feature film made in the sound era in which the female star of a film directed herself, and so it’s ground-breaking. Edmond O'Brien and Joan Fontaine want to adopt a child, as Eve is infertile, (unless it’s Edmund’s fault and those little buggers aren’t doing their job). The adoption agent informs them that he has to first check them out to make sure they aren’t too weird, which “worries” O’Brien, as he’s been up to something, the dirty fellow.

1961 directed by Roger Corman starring Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland, Robert Towne, Beach Dickerson, Robert Bean, Esther Sandoval, Sonia Noemi Gonzalez (say that rapidly ten times in a row) and Edmundo Rivera Alvarez. Secret agent XK150 joins the oddball crew of a seedy crook who’s been hired by anti-Castro rebels to help them smuggle the state treasury out of Cuba. Everything goes wrong, of course, and oh yes, there’s also a monster! Rare excursion into comedy by director Corman, filmed in Puerto Rico along with The Last Woman on Earth and Battle of Blood Island. The Creature was made from a wetsuit, some moss, Brillo pads, tennis balls for the eyes, ping-pong balls for the pupils and pipe-cleaners for the claws.

1959 directed by Victor Trivas starring Horst Frank, Karin Kernke, Helmut Schmid, Paul Dahlke, Dieter Eppler, Kurt Muller-Graf, Christiane Maybach and Michel Simon. After inventing a serum that keeps a dog’s severed head alive, Dr. Abel makes the mistake of inviting the mysterious Dr. Ood to be his assistant. It isn’t long before Abel’s own, severed head is kept alive, and his disfigured nurse is given a new body. German film dubbed into English. Director Trivas had worked with G.W. Pabst and the set designer, Herman Warm, had fashioned the sets for the famous silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Eerie, electronic music by Willy Mattes and Jacque Lasry. Original German title; Die Nackte und der Satan (the Nude and the Devil).

1949 Technicolor musical-comedy suggested by the play by Nikolai Gogol, directed by Henry Koster and starring Danny Kaye, Walter Slezak, Alan Hale, Gene Lockhart and Barbara Bates and Elsa Lanchester in the girl parts. Original music and lyrics are by the associate producer Sylvia Fine, who was married to Danny Kaye. Snake-oil salesman Danny Kaye is arrested and sentenced to be hanged, (by the neck until dead!), by the seedy town officials, who are all related, and who mistakenly believe that Kaye is the Inspector General sent to investigate their corrupt little village.

1933 directed by Paul Czinner starring Laurence Olivier as Orlando, Elisabeth Bergner as Rosalind, Henry Ainley as the exiled Duke, Felix Aylmer as Duke Frederick, Stuart Robinson as Amiens, Leon Quartermaine as Jacques, Austin Trevor as Le Beau, Lionel Braham as Charles the Wrestler, John Laurie as Oliver, J. Fisher White as Old Adam, Mackenzie Ward as Touchstone. Aubrey Mather as Corin, Richard Ainley as Silvius, Peter Bull as William and Sophie Stewart as Celia. J. M. Barrie worked on the adaptation and David Lean served as Editor. Engaging, early adaptation of the play by Shakespeare, in which a seedy Duke banishes the goodly Duke and his daughter to the mysterious Forest of Arden, where nothing is as it seems and love softens even the stoniest of hearts. Only drawback is Bergner's shrill voice, which is as appealing as a woodpecker.

1945 directed by Sam Newfield, (who by this time has come out of the closet as a director and is no longer disguising himself), and starring Buster Crabbe, Al St John, Dona Dax, (which sounds like a porno name) Charles King and Karl Hackett. The railroad is coming to the town of Red Rock, where Billy’s friend Fuzzy is the town’s Sheriff, Judge and Barber, and Billy is called to help out in case of trouble. That trouble comes in the form of the dastardly Vic Landreau, who kills the guy who called for Billy, and then plots other seedy acts of villainy.

1942 directed by Sam Newfield, (who at this point was still cleverly disguising himself as Sherman Scott), and starring Buster Crabbe, Al St. John, Caroline Burke, (in the girl part) John Merton and Jack Ingram. After escaping from a Marshall, Billy and Fuzzy ride into the Ghost Town of Laramy to find it eerily empty. It seems the dastardly Sykes and his gang have driven everyone away as they want to search undisturbed for the gold of a man they have killed, the seedy villains.

BE FORWARNED1 This is a case where the movie poster is better than the movie. Doctored version of Madmen of Mandoras, in which Nazis saved Hitler’s head and are keeping it alive in a fish-tank until they can bring the Fuhrer back into power, ostensibly with a new body. 1968 TV movie directed by David Bradley. It was adapted for television from a shorter 1963 theatrical feature film, Madmen of Mandoras, produced by Carl Edwards and directed by David Bradley. The film was lengthened by about 20 minutes with additional footage shot by UCLA students at the request of the distributor. It is often cited as being one of the worst films ever made.

1951 directed by Richard Whorf and starring Ginger Rogers in the girl part, Jack Carson, Joan Davis in the other girl part, Stanley Ridges, John Litel, James Brown, Victor Sen Yung and Mira McKinney as…the adult woman. Singing cowboy Ben Castle hires girl- lawyer "A.J." Furnival (Ginger Rogers) to get him out of his gambling debts, the weak-willed sap. All sorts of complications ensue including the ones you’d expect when there’s an attractive young woman around, and along the way we discover Ben, besides being an inveterate gambler, is also a phony cowboy who can’t ride a horse, rope a steer, ride a bull or do any “cowboy stuff.”

Il mostro di Venezia, (The Monster of Venice') is a 1965 Italian giallo film directed by Dino Tavella, and starring Gino Marturano, Alcide Gazzotto, and Alba Brotto in the girl part, which in this kind of film means she’s doomed. A serial killer dressed in scuba gear and a wet suit is on the loose in the canals of Venice. He kills his prey, (women only, at least he’s got that going for him) by drowning them in the canals and taking their bodies back to his underwater lair (a submerged monastery) where he embalms them to preserve their beauty and look at them forever, at touch them and do other dirty stuff.

1945 directed by Sam Newfield starring Buster Crabbe, Al St. John, Sydney Logan, (in the part of the girl) Charles King, Emmett Lynn, George Chesebro, Ed Cassidy and J. Stanford Jolley. The evil Horace Black, (who, wouldn’t you know, is a seedy lawyer) wants two things that belong to other people; Taylor’s saloon and the Lane Ranch. This puts him into conflict with Billy when his pal Fuzzy buys the saloon with the gold the two of them had got from mining.

1945 directed by Sam Newfield starring Buster Crabbe, Al St. John, Arch Hall Sr., Charles King, Karl Hackett. The seedy Thorne and his gang are wiping out the ranchers, apparently for the sheer joy of it. When good-guy Andy dies after being wounded, Billy has his buddy Fuzzy pretend to be his ghost and the two set out to give the gang heck. (This time, there is no girl part but there is a horse part played by Falcon. Who needs girls anyway when you’ve got a horse).

1944 directed by Sam Newfield starring Buster Crabbe, Al St. John, Frances Gladwin, (in the girl part) Marin Sais, Charles King and Jack Ingram, and also Falcon the Horse in the part of the Horse. While looking for rustlers, Billy kills a guy in a gunfight and gets thrown in jail. The judge finds him to be innocent but keeps him in jail anyways because, what the hell. But when the rustling continues Billy get released to look for the bad guys.