Bummer indeed. Sorry my strokes were not yours. I really wanted to love it.

Saw it when it first came out and felt the same way. At the same time, unlike so many films I've seen even this year, I've never forgotten it, so that's saying something.

Week 2

I managed to fit in a few more movies, mostly older ones. I don't purposely go looking for older movies, but these always seem to catch my attention. I'm trying to make an effort to move towards some more later films before the end of the month. I doubt I'll have time to watch everything I've lined up, so I'll likely keep going with some of these into November


Nosferatu (1922)

I've watched this one once before years ago, but the version I watched this month seems to be different than what I remember. This version used character names from Dracula, but I'm pretty sure the one I watched before distanced itself from the source material by using original names to avoid infringement problems.


Poltergeist (1982)

I watched this about 40 years ago when I was a kid at a friends house, but don't think I ever had opportunity to rewatch it. I remembered the basic plot well enough, but probably enjoyed it more now that I was old enough to appreciate it. I've never seen the sequels, but I think they're streaming on a service I've got available, so I'll make a point to watch those next week.


The Black Cat (1934)

I had my PVR set to record this just because it had Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi, a couple of actors that that usually catch my attention, together or individually. I didn't recall watching it before, but once it started I realized I had seen it not too long ago. Chances are I watched it before for the same reason I did this year. It's based on an Edgar Allan Poe story which I don't believe I've ever read. It occurred to me that I've had a collection of Poe's works sitting on a shelf, right next to where I'm typing this, which I've never actually read, so I'll make an effort to climb up there and check it out to see if this one is included. At the very least, I'm sure I can find something else in it I'd like to read.


Spooks Run Wild (1941)

This one I knew I had seen, but it's one I always like, and it's got Béla Lugosi. The movie is part of the Dead End Kids, East Side Kids, Bowery Boys series. I've watched a bunch of these over the years. I can never remember which name they use for any of their films, but I enjoy them all and don't really care. Whatever they call themselves, there's always something to make me laugh.


I also caught up with all the available episodes of Agatha All Along, so I'll try to watch the remaining episodes weekly as they're released which should take me through the end of the month.

My next film was the Mexican action/thriller/horror Las Luchadoras Contra El Medico Asesino, aka Wrestling Women vs The Doctor of Doom, aka Doctor of Doom. The film features Lorena Velzquez as Gloria Venus and Elizabeth Campbell as The Golden Rubi. The pair are lady wrestlers (luchadoras, in Spanish), with Gloria as the Mexican ladies' champion and Rubi as a newly arrived competitor, from the US. The film begins with Gloria Venus and her partner winning a wrestling match, while Gloria's sister, Alice, watches from ringside. While this goes on, the mad doctor is conducting experiments, trying to transport a brain form one body into another, but experiencing another failure. His only success was transplanting the brain of a gorilla into a man's body; a man named Gomar. He is experimenting with women and decides they need a more intelligent specimen. Alice works for a scientist, who worries about her going home alone, with the mad doctor out there, kidnapping women, but she says she will take a cab. The mad doctor, who dresses like the medical officer for the KKK, orders his men to grab their next target and shows them Alice's picture. When she leaves work, she is mugged and carried off by goons, but the operation is a failure. The police find the body and detective Mike Henderson is sent to find Gloria Venus and give her the news and bring her to the morgue to make a positive ID.

Later, Golden Rubi joins the circuit and works out with Gloria and they become fast friends. Gloria offers to share her apartment with Rubi and they form a tag team. They then have lingerie pillow fights....oh, wait; that may have been a dream I had.......

The ladies meet Mike Henderson and his partner Tommy Johnson, after their match against The Gazelle & Bertha Galindo. Tommy is quite taken by Rubi and she seems to like short men, with a sense of humor. Hey, maybe I'm in with a chance!

The mad doctor decides he needs physically strong women and dispatches his goons to kidnap Gloria and Ruby, but they kick their @$$es, because Gloria apparently sleeps in her wrestling tights (well, bottoms, anyway) and Rubi is quite the battler in a babydoll nightie. They contact the police and Mike convinces them to go with the goons, if they try again, so they can follow them to the mad doctor. They agree, the goons turn up and Gomar whomps the gals on the back of the head and carries them off. Mike and Tommy track them to the hideout and get the gang, though the mad doctor and Gomar escape. They have his assistant, Boris and try to make him talk and he dies in the process. An autopsy finds that a needle was fire into his heart, at high velocity. They find a small cylinder, which was hidden in the mouth, which fired the dart. It was someone at the station. Mike and Tommy give Gloria and Rubi Dicky Tracy two-way wrist radios, to keep in touch.

Later, the mad doctor snatches Mike and Tommy and has them thrown into the dungeon, with Gomar in his cage, on one side, trying to get at them, and a moving wall of spikes, on the other side. Mike sends the danger signal to Gloria and Rubi and they follow it to the place, where they fought Boris and the other goons. They rescue Mike and Tommy and battle with the mad doctor, as Gloria throws a bottle of acid at him, disfiguring his face. They escape and Gomar carries off the burnt doctor. They believe he is dead, but he and Gomar snatch another lady wrestler and transplant Gomar's brain into her body. She then appears as a new challenger, the masked Vendetta, complete with a masked manager (the mad doctor). Vendetta challenges Gloria Venus, for the title, and the face each other in the ring. Vendetta is whomping Gloria, when Rubi spots the mad doctor's accomplice. She puts him in an armbar (almost has a real one applied, in the scene) and he rats out the mad doctor. Gloria does a run-in and the ref tries pulling vendetta off Gloria, as she is choking her. She kicks the ref's butt and tosses around Gloria and Ruby, then she and the mad doctor escape, before the commissioner can fine her and ban her from the ring. They run up a water tower and are trapped and Mike goes after them and the pair try to stomp his hands and make him fall. Tommy borrows a carbine and first shoots Vendetta, then the mad doctor, who turned out to be the professor, from the lab, where Alice worked.

The mad doctor is one of a long line of Medcio Asesinos and there was an actual luchador called El Medico Asesino, who starred in several films, including Los Campeones Justicieros, along with Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras, the "Justice League" of Lucha Libre. The reveal is typical movie serial stuff, as are brain transplants and the spike deathtrap. the wrestling adds a new wrinkle to it. This was actually one of the first lucha horror films.

Lorena Velasquez was an actress and she is mostly doubled, by a much shorter and wider wrestler, though she does get to do a few shoulder throws. She appears to be personally responsible for the deterioration of the ozone layer, based on her hair helmet. Velazquez was a stunning actress and built like the sex symbols of the era. She also played the vampire queen in Santo vs The Vampire Women. Elizabeth Campbell was a real American actress, who worked in Mexican films and would go on to do several Luchadora films, with Velzquez. She is taller and a bit more stacked and she has a nice rapport with Chucho Salinas, as Tommy. He provides most of the comic relief. Quite frankly, I'd be more interested in a series of action-comedies with Golden Rubi and Tommy, solving crimes and capturing madmen, and kicking butt, in the ring. Campbell's double is a closer physical match.

I watched the English dubbed version, which was produced by schlockmeister K Gordon Murray. Murray is an interesting character. He was from Bloomington, Il, home of Dr Henry Blake and my grandparents. His father ran a funeral home and he ran some kind of "corn game," in one of his funeral tents, then took it on the road, with a circus, after meeting several circus performers in their off season. he was instrumental in recruiting Little People to play munchkins, in The Wizard of Oz and worked with Cecil B DeMille, on The Greatest Show on Earth. He and his wife then settled in Miami and he set himself up in film distribution, buying up Mexican kiddie films, horror movies and other such fare, redubbed them and released them as kiddie matinees and drive-in movies. He was responsible for English editions of things like Santa Claus (1959, aka Santa Claus vs the Devil, as seen on MST3k), The Robot vs The Aztec Mummy, Samson vs The Vampire Women (retitling Santo vs The Vampire Women) and several fairy tale films, from Germany and elsewhere. He dubbed two of the Luchadora films, this one and Wrestling Women vs The Aztec Mummy.

Several of the women are real luchadoras, though the only one I had heard of was Irma Gonzales. The actors appeared in several of them, with Armando Silvestre, who plays Mike, appearing in several Santo films, this and Wrestling Women vs The Aztec Mummy, Neutron vs The Amazing Dr Caronte, as well as some Hollywod productions, like Two Mules For Sister Sara and Kings of the Sun (with Yul Brynner). Both he and Roberto Canedo, who plays the mad doctor, appeared in The Bat Woman (La Mujer Murcielago), about a lady wrestler fighting a mad man, in a skimpy Batgirl-esque bikini outfit, from 1968 (ripping of the Batman tv series), though not to be confused with The Wild World of BatWoman (another MST3k favorie), which was an American cheapie, trying to cash in on Batman (and got sued for its trouble).

This is goofy fun, even if you don't care for pro wrestling (and this isn't the best lucha action on film, either). The English dub is a bit campier (though I have not seen the original Spanish, to compare) and some of it doesn't make sense and there might be scenes missing, as things seem to jump ahead, at one point (or maybe they just didn't bother linking things). Personally, I like it better than Wrestling Women vs The Aztec Mummy and Samson vs the Vampire Women. It's B-Grade horror (C-grade, really) and probably a bit more akin to a Saturday matinee serial.

I first saw this on Commander USA's Groovy Movies, on the USA Network, paired with Samson vs The Vampire Women. This was the better film, overall, though the latter had better wrestling scenes (and Santo had a cool little sporty convertible). This was GLOW before GLOW, either one (the original campy tv wrestling show or the Netflix series, inspired by the GLOW documentary film), but with funnier jokes and better action (Though I'd say it was a toss up between who is better looking, Golden Rubi or Hollywood, of Hollywood & Vine, aka Jeane Basone (or Lisa Moretti, aka Tina Ferrari, aka the WWF's Ivory).

Yeah, this was a new one for me, I saw it on the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society page and thought, "what the heck, 20 bucks? I'll try it." and I'm glad I did. I've heard good things about the silent film take on Call of Cthulhu so I might try that and hope it ships in time. Thinking on it, I'm continually surprised that there aren't that many adaptations of Lovecraft's work. While a lot of the trouble comes down to their length( most of his stories are pretty short) there are several that are good length like At The Mountains of Madness which would make pretty straightforward adaptations. The same can be said for Poe as well, though his stories are short and there have been some decent adaptations over the years you'd think they would have been more heavily mined. 

For last night's viewing I went with a Werewolf double feature: The Wolf Man (1941) and Werewolf of London(1935)


This is one I enjoy doing back to back just about every year as although they share similar themes it's really interesting to see just how different these two films actually are. On top of that I love sharing it as so many people aren't even aware that Lon Chaney Jr. wasn't the first Wolfman as Universal's original take on the film in 1935 was largely overshadowed by The Bride of Frankenstein. Of the two Chaney's Wolfman is definitely my favorite as it develops a much deeper werewolf lore than Werewolf of London, but there's something to be said of the plot surrounding the plant and it's ability to stop the transformation in the original that added a nice bit of suspense to the film. On top of that I'm always torn on the make up, part of the plot of Werewolf of London was that Werewolf's identity had to be discernible and so the make up crafted is much subtler than the design in the latter film. And while I do love full furry look and do generally prefer my women to be more wolf than man the simplicity of the original's look is really cool.

Either way you slice it though both films are fantastic and I love watching both of them.

Both great films. I actually prefer Werewolf of London, even if he's just a hairy Dr. Hyde. I adore the subtext of The Wolfman, but somehow Lon Chaney Jr. always irks me.

Have you seen She-Wolf of London?