Category Archives: movies

Blood, But Not Bloody Cheesy

Posted on July 16, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Saturday night I took a break from both cheesy horror movies and Mohawk Valley adventures by popping in Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi.

Steven gave me Dracula as a present some time ago. I was reminded of it while looking over previous posts. So I have written about it, but not much about it, so I thought I could get away with at least a short post about it. It is, in fact, my only option, because it has been too damn hot to do anything else and I really don’t feel like writing yet another post about Why I Can’t Write A Post Today (but I will probably feel like it tomorrow when I go back to work. Just warning you). I will also mention that, although I own this movie, I think yesterday’s was only my second viewing of the movie in its entirety. I had forgotten a lot.

Black and white photography is perfect for this movie. I suppose that was merely making a virtue out of necessity in 1931, but I enjoyed it. The entire look of the movie is eerie, like a foreboding grey sky just before a storm. I hadn’t been looking at the movie very long before I grabbed the TV Journal and made the note: There is nothing cheesy about this movie.

The scene where we first see the vampires is scary. And a little gross, because there are rats. I hate rats. Renfield has just arrived at Count Dracula’s castle and has no idea he has been hired by a vampire, the warnings of the villagers having made no impression on him. One line I was particularly waiting for was when Dracula says, “I never drink… wine.” I remember Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi saying it in Ed Wood, one of my all-time favorite movies.

Dracula is very atmospheric. In fact, I’m afraid there is more atmosphere than action, which was a little disappointing to me, but I got over it, because the atmosphere was so well done. I’ve spoken about horror movies that manage to be unsettling with only noises, camera angles and acting. This one uses mostly acting and cinematography.

Slow as the action seemed to me, you had to pay attention or you missed a few plot points. Steven had to tell me Renfield had got bit (in my defense, I was knitting and probably had my eyes off the screen). I also thought some things were kind of glossed over, like the entire crew perishing on the voyage to England. There is a deliciously creepy shot of the shadow of the dead captain tied to the wheel. A few lines of dialogues from onlookers and a newspaper clipping explain.

The creepiest shot in the picture was a newly insane Renfield looking up the stairs. Ooh, he’s creepy.

The movie is not very informative about vampire lore. I would have had a hard time keeping up, but I remembered what I had learned in Lost Boys, a fun vampire romp from the ’80s. I was a little surprised when I realized who Dr. Van Helsing was. I had thought he was supposed to look more like Hugh Jackman. Oh, I know, I’m just being silly. I had to say it.

I greatly enjoyed my second viewing of Dracula. I highly recommend it to lovers of old movies, non-cheesy horror movies, and vampires.

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Tormented Movie Viewing

Posted on July 12, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I continued my quest for cheesy entertainment with Tormented (1960), starring nobody you’ve ever heard of. I guess I should say nobody I’ve ever heard of. I don’t know who you may have heard of.

The movie doesn’t waste any time on back story, but from the first scene we gather that this jazz pianist had an affair with the singer in his band but dumped her for another woman. Later on, when we meet the fiance, we find she is the daughter of a rich man, but there is no indication that the pianist is a gold-digger. More likely he just follows the usual movie guy propensity for preferring the softer, more insipid choice.

The dumped singer’s name is Vi, which caused some confusion in the opening credits when Steven thought there was a character named Six (you know, roman numerals, VI). Vi meets a tragic end off the top of an old, abandoned lighthouse which the pianist apparently frequents. He is racked with guilt or perhaps worry that her dead body will wash up on the shore.

It is a perfect set-up for a psychological thriller: is there really a ghost or is his guilt making him see things that aren’t there? Unfortunately, the movie makers did not have anything that subtle in mind. This is definitely a ghost story and a pretty cheap one at that.

One could take the charitable view that special effects were not very advanced in 1960; it was hard to do a ghost story without that there CGI. I say hogwash. They just weren’t trying very hard. I point to The Haunting made in 1963 (NOT the ridiculous re-make), which manages to be extremely unsettling using noises, camera angles and acting. I don’t say this in a carping tone of voice, though, because the bad special effects gave us the best laugh of the evening. At one point, Vi’s disembodied head appears, taunting the pianist. In desperation, he grabs it, and instead of a double-exposure would-be creepy thing, it looks like a wig form from the make-up department. Vi keeps talking even after her voice is muffled when he wraps a piece of cloth around it.

There are a couple of good effects. Early on the pianist and his fiance are walking in the sand and a third pair of footprints appears alongside them. Later, some flowers wilt as an unseen Vi walks by them. By that time, though, I was still laughing about the wig form and had lost any inclination to feel unsettled.

The supporting cast is pretty ridiculous. The fiance has a kid sister who probably had a great stage mother to get a part in a movie. She is there so that a child can be in danger. A blind realtor shows up bearing flowers which she puts in a vase with no water. She’s there to tell the story of another ghost who, alas, never shows up. The fiance’s rich father is on hand to disapprove of her marriage to a jazz pianist. That was my biggest disappointment with the movie: with a jazz pianist as the main character, I had hoped to hear a lot more jazz music.

On the whole, it was enjoyable as a bad movie. And perfectly usable as a blog post. Today I’m off on more Mohawk Valley adventures, so it is quite possible that my Friday Post will not be Lame as usual. Stay tuned.

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It Was No House of Wax

Posted on July 4, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Last night I took a break from my Boilermaker obsession to watch a cheesy horror movie from Steven’s DVD collection of 50 Horror Classics. We picked The Monster Maker (1944). I had been disappointed by the lack of monsters in the last Horror Classic we viewed, so I thought I would be safe choosing one with “monster” right in the title.

The real monsters, unfortunately, were the makers of the movie, passing off this dull piece of bologna as a thriller. I suppose you’ll have that in a collection of 50 movies priced to sell.

I had great hopes for it when I read the plot summary in one of Steven’s movie books: a mad scientist injects a piano player with some stuff that makes him a giant, particularly his hands. That reminded me of Mad Love, in which Peter Lorre fixes up a pianist with a new pair of hands that just happened to have come from a knife-wielding assassin.

In Mad Love, Lorre is obsessively in love with the pianist’s wife. In The Monster Maker, the evil doctor wants the pianist’s daughter, who looks exactly like the doctor’s dead wife. Have you ever seen anybody look EXACTLY like somebody else? I never have, but it seems to happen in movies all the time. The most notable case of the phenomenon is House of Wax (1953, starring Vincent Price), in which the evil sculptor finds a whole bunch of people who just happen to look exactly like the figures in his former wax museum.

So I basically sat through The Monster Maker comparing it unfavorably to other old horror movies. The monster, when he finally shows up, is pretty scary looking, but he doesn’t threaten anybody I liked, so where’s the suspense there? There is a scary scene involving a gorilla and the evil doctor’s doormat assistant. I won’t say more, in case you ever watch the movie.

When we first meet the evil doctor, he’s scary right off the bat, in a psycho, stalker sort of way. When he meets the beautiful girl who looks like his dead wife, he kisses her hand and gives her the scary eyeballs a la Bela Lugosi. He uses the eyeballs to better effect on his hapless assistant, who he is apparently in the habit of hypnotizing. I wish they had made more of the doctor’s back story. Maybe an extended flashback, which they had plenty of time for, because the movie clocked in at 64 minutes.

Then again, the movie was dull enough at 64 minutes. The back story sounded compelling with the assistant and doctor telling it to each other; there’s no saying they wouldn’t have messed it up trying to dramatize it. I wouldn’t say the movie was a complete waste of time, but if you happen to catch it, you won’t feel bad running out to the kitchen to get a snack, which both Steven and I did.

It is fun to write reviews of dull movies, though. I look forward to the next one. We saw a title of Vampire Bat that looked good. Stay tuned.

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But It Starred Boris Karloff!

Posted on June 29, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I have not reviewed — or even viewed — a cheesy horror movie in a while. I sought to remedy the omission Wednesday with The Fatal Hour (1940) starring Boris Karloff, part of our DVD set of 50 Classic Horror Movies.

The main reason we picked that one is that one of Steven’s movie books said it was 68 minutes long. This would get me into bed in a timely fashion, as it is important to me to get my beauty rest (and I don’t need anyone to tell me that I clearly do not get enough).

The movie opened with a hot blonde walking into the Homicide Department. I perked up. Was it, could it be… it was! An intrepid girl reporter! I love intrepid girl reporters! Of course she was looking for a story. And naturally everything was quiet UNTIL…

Actually, things started rather slowly, with the off camera murder of a policeman working undercover. Soon we meet Detective Wong, played by Boris Karloff, working on the case unofficially. I only recognized Karloff by his voice, and not the “Friend! Good!” voice he used in Bride of Frankenstein. It was the gentle, comforting voice he used when he narrated How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I kept thinking about How the Grinch Stole Christmas every time Karloff talked. He really had a beautiful voice.

The main bad guy, less so. He had an accent that came and went, and he referred to Mr. Wong as The Chinese Copper. That was probably the cheesiest aspect of the picture. That, and the bad girl’s hat. When I found out she was the bad girl, I realized I should have known right away she was bad, based on the hat.

The movie as a whole, I’m afraid, was not very cheesy. It wasn’t a horror movie, either. It was a detective film. What was that all about? I suppose it made it into the collection because of Boris Karloff. Apparently the people that put these things together do not necessarily watch the movies first.

As a detective movie, it was actually pretty good. The solution was clever. I arrived at it just before Mr. Wong confronted the killer (I’ve seen a lot of detective movies). As usual, I missed a few clues along the way. I’ll need to watch it again to pick those up, as because I’m still not clear on how the killer got one victim.

I was disappointed at the lack of monsters and cheesiness, but I did enjoy the movie. Steven looked at his collection of 50 Mystery Classics and discovered another Mr. Wong movie with Karloff. We’ll have to check it out. For the next Mohawk Valley Girl Movie Review, however, I hope to have something more cheesy to report on. Stay tuned.

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The Movie Should Have Been Invisible

Posted on May 25, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I don’t know that I’m technically qualified to review my latest cheesy horror viewing. I did not fall asleep this time. I left the room to check my Facebook notifications. I can’t even pretend I was expecting something important; I was just bored. Steven told me I didn’t miss much, but still.

On the other hand, I write a silly blog. It’s not like I’m influencing voters for the Academy Awards. And if I was trying to influence them, well, that’s on them to remain unbiased. My conscience is clear.

It might perhaps be a good idea to insert a spoiler alert here. I will soon give away such plot points as I could discern from this timewaster. I normally hate to give things away and am often at great pains not to, so as not to spoil anybody’s viewing pleasure. But I’m telling you, don’t watch this movie. It’s dull. If you really think you might want to see this movie and you like to be surprised… well I doubt you will be surprised anyways. So read my review or don’t. Watch the movie or don’t (Don’t!). My conscience is clear.

The Invisible Ghost (1941) stars Bela Lugosi, which should be a selling point. I suppose I ought to know better (but I’ve mentioned before how I almost never do what I ought to do). The movie begins creepily enough, with Bela having a formal dinner with a wife who is not there (the cliche there being that a lot of guys would like that set up) (misogynist bastards). Next we hear something about some murders that are happening, although it seemed to me that nobody was getting too exercised about it.

Then we see the missing wife. Some servant is hiding her until she feels better after the accident. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I was quickly losing track of this movie. I think the wife tried to leave her husband but met with an accident that affected her mind. You know that childlike state that movie crazy people often have. She has it.

Finally we get to see a murder. Bela gets to do his scary eyes and, as is often the case in movies of this era, it isn’t clear exactly how he kills his victims. He lifts up a cloak to just underneath his scary eyes. I suppose the director told him to be Dracula-like. Ah, typecasting at its Hollywood finest. And for anyone who thought revealing Bela as the killer was too big of a spoiler, come on! We’re watching a Bela Lugosi movie! Did you think he wouldn’t kill anybody?

It was shortly after this that I left the room and missed all the plot developments, if any. Just to obviate any need for any of you to sit through this garbage, I’ll tell you that at the end, the wife dies and Bela is arrested for all the murders.

I never found out why the murders were committed in the first place. I suppose in movie fashion it was something about him going crazy because his wife left him. Don’t worry, Steven! I’ll never leave you and thus induce you to commit scary eye murders. So once again, my conscience is clear.

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Not a Sleeper Hit

Posted on May 16, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I mentioned yesterday that I fell asleep during the cheesy horror movie meant for a blog post this week. Let’s see if I can write a post’s worth based on what I stayed awake for.

We picked Atom Age Vampire (1960) merely because it was on the first disc in our set of 50 Horror Classics. I had suggested we watch the first movie, but it turned out to be one we have on another set (that set also includes The Brain That Wouldn’t Die — my favorite!). The vampire movie was number two. In more ways than one, as it turns out, if you know what I mean (that joke was stolen from another favorite movie, Murder By Death)(I’ll explain it later; it’s disgusting).

Atomic stuff was very big in the ’50s and ’60s. A studio executive in the wonderful movie Ed Wood expresses interest in Bride of the Atom for that reason. Combine it with vampires and what’s not to like?

Well, I didn’t see any vampires as I know them. A guy starts killing beautiful girls to take… something from their bodies (a gland, I think, so you dirty-minded readers can stop snickering). I guess that’s kind of like sucking their blood. Nobody is feeding on what he takes; he’s using it to restore beauty to a blonde deformed in a car wreck. She was ready to kill herself, so I guess you could say her beauty was her life’s blood. To be even more metaphorical, I suppose you could say the killer is feeding his obsession with the girl. I am unlikely to say any such thing.

It takes a long time to get to the killing of beautiful girls part. First we have to meet the deformed blonde, before she gets deformed. She is an exotic dancer (I think; they never show her actually working) in love with a sailor who objects to her profession (how unreasonable considering that is probably how he met her). He leaves and that’s why she wrecks the car, which deforms her face.

Then we meet the killer before he is a killer. I guess you could call him a mad scientist, but I refer to him as the Bad Doctor in my notes in the TV Journal. He’s developing this serum to restore blah blah. Who pays attention to the technical stuff in these movies? (Oh, you probably do.) I was more interested in the assistant so in love with the Bad Doctor that she deforms herself (only her arm; she’s not entirely stupid) so he can test the serum on her. This does not make him fall in love with her (some of us girls never learn), so she goes to recruit the now deformed blond as a guinea pig (because she is somewhat stupid).

In a scene that was probably tacked on after they decided to add “Atom Age” to the title, we learn that Bad Doctor was in Hiroshima, where he learned blah blah. I told you I didn’t pay attention to the technical details.

The killings start because the serum, like a magic spell in a fairy tale, works but does not last. Soon the Bad Doctor starts turning into a hideous beast before he kills. I never saw a vampire that looked like that, not even Nosferatu, and he was pretty gruesome. I bet they added “Vampire” to the title, too.

Actually, Steven learned from one of his movie books, Video Movie Guide 2002 (Ballantine Books, New York, 2001), that the movie is a “badly dubbed Italian” film. We didn’t need them to tell us the film was badly dubbed, but I thought it was French, because the names include Jeanette and Pierre. I bet the original title was something quite different that translated oddly.

I fell asleep before the dramatic conclusion, so I couldn’t spoil the ending for you even if I wanted to (and of course I don’t). One other point of interest is that I could swear the staircase in one scene is the same one used in the Vincent Price/Agnes Moorehead movie we watched a few weeks ago (and reviewed in this space).

As a final note, I will share the joke I referenced earlier from Murder By Death.

Lionel Twain: I’m Number One!

Sam Diamond: To me you look more like number two, know what I mean?

Nora Charles: What does he mean, Miss Skeffington?

Tess Skeffington: I’ll tell you later. It’s disgusting.

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A Shriek on the Screen

Posted on April 21, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Here is another post on a Horror Classic which turned out to be less cheesy than anticipated. To recapitulate for readers who just tuned in: 50 Horror Classics is a DVD set I gave my husband Steven, and we have been enjoying some pretty cheesy old movies. So naturally I’ve been blogging about them. Yesterday I did a post on one that was less cheesy than others. Likewise the one I’m going to talk about today.

A Shriek in the Night (1933) stars Ginger Rogers, who famously did everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in high heels (just had to throw that in). This is apparently one of her first movies, and, alas, she does not dance.

The movie starts right out with a shriek. I was a little worried the movie was over already. I mean, hello, there’s the shriek, now what? But there are more shrieks as we go along. Not too many, though. After all, it’s not a ’70s slasher flick.

A man has jumped or been thrown from a penthouse balcony (hmmm… which do you suppose it is?). When we meet Ginger Rogers, she is being questioned by a cop, because she is secretary to the dead guy. Such an attractive live-in secretary raises some officers’ eyebrows, but she assures them there is a dumb, utterly respectable maid to chaperone. The maid, the cop decides, may be respectable but is certainly dumb. She was my favorite character. She added some comic relief and a few shrieks, but they came later. My other favorite character was a hapless cop who couldn’t seem to do anything right.

We soon discover that Ginger is really an intrepid girl reporter. I was glad to hear that. I love intrepid girl reporters, like Fay Wray in The Mystery of the Wax Museum (see post back in, I think January). Ginger is perhaps not as intrepid as Fay and she doesn’t crack as wise, but she helps unravel the mystery. Ginger butts heads with a brash boy reporter, who seems to want to both scoop and marry her. The plot thickens with another shriek and another murder.

It seems the victims all receive a card with a snake and the words, “You will hear it.” What they will hear is the hissing of the steam pipe. I bet the writers rubbed their palms together when they came up with that one. Imagine watching a scary movie where the steam pipe hisses before the murderer strikes, then going home and hearing your steam heat whistle. Do people still heat their houses with whistley steam pipes? I’ve never heard it, with or without a murder.

The movie is fairly scary and suspenseful. And the solution to the mystery holds up. At least, I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night saying, “Wait a minute!” Well, maybe one thing. I’m not clear on how Ginger Rogers escaped the deadly peril she inevitably found herself in. Oh, I saw the cops and boyfriend rush in, but the bad guy had already lit the incinerator. Where was she that she didn’t burn up or die of smoke inhalation?

Oh dear, now I’ve gone and revealed the climax. At least I didn’t say who the bad guy was or how Ginger ended up in the incinerator. And I’m sure nobody really thought the main girl would succumb to the deadly peril, so you can’t really ding me on revealing that she was rescued.

It was a fun watch. It held my interest, which some of the cheesier movies in the collection have not. I’ll let you know how I enjoy the next one. After all, the weekend’s coming.

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Batty Movie

Posted on April 20, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Spoiler Alert: I may give away too many plot points, so if you thought you might like to see The Bat from 1959 and you like to be surprised, you might want to skip this post till after you see the movie (that’s probably a run-on sentence).

I’ve had so much fun writing about cheesy horror movies that I asked Steven could we watch some more last weekend. He graciously agreed. I was a little disappointed in the cheese quality of our selections. I mean, they weren’t bad (although I do enjoy the irony of being disappointed that a movie is good). However, looking back at the truck sized plot holes in our first movie, I thought it was worth a post.

The Bat stars Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Now, Price has done some majorly cheesy movies, but I think the lowest Moorehead ever stooped was television (and who didn’t love Endora?). Although I may be wrong about that. I’ll have to look in Video Hound for a list of her movies. They used to make a lot more movies than they do these days, so the potential for cheese was greater.

But getting on to the movie. Moorehead plays a crime writer who has rented a mansion which may or may not be haunted. Right away you know you’re in for some excitement, because what fictional crime writer doesn’t encounter an actual murder? None that I know of.

Agnes’ lady maid and constant companion (I know it’s more proper to refer to her as Moorehead, but I feel it is friendlier to call her Agnes). Where was I? Oh yes, the companion right away warns Agnes about this mysterious killer known as The Bat. The Bat apparently rips people’s throats out with a claw. I did not know that was how a bat could kill somebody. I thought movie bats sucked people’s blood, but I guess that’s just vampire movies.

Anyways, this is plot hole number one, which I did not realize till much later when I started pondering What Really Happened (and that’s what makes a good movie plot hole: it’s not till much later on when you go, “Wait a minute!”). Here we have the murderer mentioned early on (as you should have in a murder mystery), but with no motive ascribed. Later on, when we get to the murders this movie is concerned with, there is a very definite motive, namely a million dollars (or is it two?) embezzled from the bank (actually the thief says he “embezzled” the money, but I think it was stolen and he was stepping way up in class). So when the Bat supposedly started killing, his motive for the later killings (the ones we see) hadn’t even happened yet.

But this actually might not be a plot hole. I don’t quite understand what went on. It’s quite possible that The Bat did not do all the killings, or even that The Bat wasn’t The Bat, or that there was no Bat, or maybe the Bat even randomly killed some people earlier in case he needed to establish a cover story. There are actual bats, by the way. The lady maid is threatened by one slipped through the transom, and Vincent Price, who is a doctor, is seen messing around with some in a scientific fashion.

We also encounter some typical old movie female behavior. There’s a mysterious stranger in the house the police can’t find him. We’re in the bedroom with the door locked and the transom kind of sort of blocked. Let’s try to get some sleep! Oh and the perennial, I just heard a noise! I’ll go investigate, you wait here. Never mind that my friend in the other room has a gun and I only have a flashlight (why didn’t that bitch give me the gun? is a question never asked).

The movie is pretty absorbing. It is definitely suspenseful and even scary in parts. It isn’t till afterwards that you realize that it does not make a whole lot of sense.

Looking back over this write up, I don’t think I’ve really done justice to how much the movie really doesn’t make sense. On the brighter side, it hasn’t been nearly the spoiler I alerted you about in the first paragraph. So go ahead and watch the movie. Tell me what you think.

And if anybody really does not want to watch the movie and really would like a plot summary, let me know that too. It’ll give me a subject for a whole nother blog post (oh, I know “whole nother” is not proper English. I can be cheesy too, can’t I?).

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I Love a Monster or Three

Posted on April 6, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I enjoyed writing my post about the Swamp Women, so I thought I’d continue the idea with another cheesy, uh, classic horror movie. This one has a monster. Three, in fact.

Monster from a Pre-Historic Planet is a Japanese movie from 1967, and the dubbing is pretty much as jarring as you’d expect it to be. I might have gotten used to it, but some of the characters seemed to change voices as they went along. Still, a monster movie from the ’60s, what’s not to like?

I was a little disappointed, though, because the words “pre-historic planet” made me think space travel would be involved, or at least a cool asteroid or alien spaceship landing. But, no, they were apparently referring to the pre-history of this planet. It probably sounded better in Japanese.

We open on a ship. One lady is sunbathing while some scientist-looking types are fooling around with beakers and test tubes. Scenes back on the mainland inform us of the mission. They are in search of exotic animals to populate a tropical paradise themed resort being build by a girly magazine which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. If that last bit got anybody’s hopes up, sorry. The girl sunbathing in the opening — in shorts if I recall correctly — is the only bit of flesh we get. (Not that I was looking.) (Although I wouldn’t have complained if a couple of those guys would have taken their shirts off.)

Soon the scientists and I think a couple of journalists (I knew I might be writing about this, but I still didn’t pay a great deal of attention. Hey, I need to relax on the weekends, too) arrive at a tropical island that coincidentally closely resembles the model of the tropical resort in the magazine president’s office. There they find a giant egg. I’m thinking giant omelet (hadn’t had dinner yet), but of course they think scientific find, something from millions of years ago. It does not occur to anybody that whoever laid the egg might still be around, even when it hatches, revealing a surprisingly cute baby monster, which, of course, they must take back to civilization with them.

I’m sure you see where this is going. It isn’t long before two big monsters come along looking for junior. Then people are fleeing as the monsters stomp on buildings. It’s pretty obviously done with miniatures, because the buildings are not very detailed and there are no people there while the buildings are actually being stomped. Still, I thought the effects were pretty good for the time. The movie spends a lot more time on building stomping than on character interaction, but you’ll have that.

There is some character interaction. The magazine president has a daughter who wants a mommy. There is a minor love triangle amongst the girl photographer, the journalist and the head scientist. This gives an opportunity for a little bit of anti-feminist rhetoric, but they don’t spend too much time on that. I don’t recall any lessons learned on not upsetting the eco-system, but parenthood gets a shout out.

What I did not understand was how the monsters became extinct except for those three. The things could fly, breathe under water and shoot lasers from their mouths. What could they not survive? I guess the ice age, but I’m no scientist.

It was a fun movie. I’m sorry it apparently did not spawn — or should I say hatch? — a sequel.

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Swamp Women or Mannix in Bondage

Posted on April 5, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

This past weekend I asked Steven if he would like to watch a “Horror Movie Classic” with me. I put it in quotes, because I am quoting the DVD box. “50 Horror Classics,” actually. I guess “classic” has different definitions, depending on who you ask. I would use a different c word to describe most of these offerings: cheesy.

Steven picked Swamp Women from 1955. I would not call it a horror movie, exactly. Maybe suspense/exploitation. And not as exploitative as you might think watching the opening credits. They show all these pictures of women with their hands tied behind their backs. Ooh. I noted that the director was Roger Corman. That alone makes it work a watch, I thought.

The movie opens with what looked to me like pretty obvious stock footage of a parade interspersed with actual movie scenes. The guy who would later play Mannix and this fairly sexy girl are flirting. She is after his money, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He has oil wells. She volunteers to accompany him into the swamp, where he has to go for some poorly defined business reason, to show him how tough she can be (any guesses on how that’s going to work out?).

Having thus set up the victims, the movie moves on to the villains. They are a set of gangster molls in a prison. They know where some diamonds are, so the head cop sends the best policewoman he knows into the prison to infiltrate the gang. The idea is she’ll help the girls escape then follow them to the diamonds. This turns out to be surprisingly easy and little time is spent in the prison (so no shower scene; I told you it was not as exploitative as they pretend).

I don’t like to say much else about the plot, because I hate to give too much away. I will mention that Mannix is the one that spends most of the picture with his hands tied behind his back. I’m sure some female viewers found this a delightful image. I’m not sure what it says, if anything, about Roger Corman’s fantasies. I’ll leave the reader to his or her own speculations.

The most unrealistic aspect of the picture to me was the utter lack of insects in the swamp. Not one mosquito was slapped. Did we miss the scene where they slathered on the Deet?

On the whole, I enjoyed the movie. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel the urge to pop it in again. However, if I happen to be in the mood to see a picture with a few good girl fights and Mannix in bondage, I’m all set.

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