Night of the Living Dead.

The Internet Movie Database describes this film as “a group of people hide from bloodthirsty zombies in a farmhouse”.  Seems like a fairly simple premise, and it is.  The film never actually calls them zombies.  They're ghouls, or something... Either way, this simple idea picked up steam, and has become the gold standard for zombie films.  It re-defined a genre, so much so, that “purists” will dismiss more traditional zombie films as “not a real zombie movie” even when they pre-date Romero’s classic.  Anyways, nothing can be said about the film that hasn’t already been said, so let’s just let Starkwell and Lovelock enjoy it, and say goofy meaningless shit.  What a perfect film to be the three hundredth film to make its way to Zombie Hall.

[...]

[Nerdlinger John complains about visiting his father’s grave on behalf of his old mom.]

Starkwell: So, John’s a huge dick?

[John continues to complain.  He sees a dude wandering aimlessly around the graveyard.]

Lovelock: Oh God, John better die.  Hard.

Starkwell: Die hard?

Lovelock: Welcome to the party.

[John tells a story about how he used to scare her as a kid, and then, he delivers the famous, “they’re coming to get you Barbra”.]

Starkwell: Even as a kid he was a dick?

Lovelock: Once a dick always a dick.

[Zombie Hinzman kills John.]

Lovelock: Immediately giving us what we want!

[...]

Barbra makes her getaway and Lovelock and Starkwell CHEER HER ON.  She finds the farmhouse and begins to explore the inside as she hides from Zombie Hinzman.  The phone? Dead.  The music? Stressful.  The Atmosphere?  Perfect.  The zombies? Multiplying.

[...]

[Barbra finds a dead body, and meets Ben.]

Lovelock: Dude, sweet cardigan.

[Ben takes down some zombies with a tire iron.]

Starkwell: Cool, collected, stylish.

Lovelock: The ultimate hero.

Starkwell: Although, he’s awfully sweaty.  Maybe he should think about taking off that sweet cardigan.

Lovelock: You take that back!

[...]

How could Romero get it so right on the first try?  The zombies are fucking perfect.  There’s a touch of “Last Man on Earth” with a sprinkle of “Plague of the Zombies”, but seriously, there was nothing else quite like it at the time (from what I read anyways).

[...]

Lovelock: Is it just me, or is Barbra kind of phoning it in?  LIFT UP A FUCKING HAMMER.

Starkwell: She’s in shock.

Lovelock: WHAT A FUCKING BABY.  Multi-tasking man extraordinaire, A.K.A. Ben, is telling stories, boarding up the house and rocking a cardigan.

[Cardigan is off.]

Lovelock: Aw mannnnn…

[...]

Barbra starts telling her story about John and FREAKS OUT, Ben is all “bitch calm down” basically.  Eventually he punches her in the face and Lovelock played air guitar.

[...]

[Ben listens to news report.]

Lovelock: I hope the reporter says it may be due to “wacky tabacky”.

[...]

The zombies seem to hate fire and are afraid of flames, which sparked a conversation between Lovelock and Starkwell as to why so-called zombie “purists” always get hung up on the “running versus walking” issue, but never mention the whole “fear of flames” thing… Further proof that people should just shut up and open their minds.

[...]

[News report mentions that victims of the ‘murderers’ have been partially devoured.]

Lovelock: There it is.  The invention of a genre.

Starkwell: People must have been freaking out.

Lovelock: I wish I could go back in time and have not seen all of the post-Romero films and see this movie with a clear head and totally shit my pants forever.

[Don’t we all…  Well except for the pants shitting.]

[...]

[Ben figures out that you have to shoot them in the head.]

Lovelock: There it is.

Starkwell: But again, people hold on to that one, but not the flames thing?  Strange.

[...]

Barbra and Ben meet Harry and Tom.  Harry decides that he wants to stay down in the cellar, Tom wants to stay upstairs.  They also meet up with Judy, Helen and Tom’s sick daughter, but, basically none of their opinions, nor Barbra’s really matters. They just do as their husbands say, essentially.

[...]

Lovelock: So the ladies are basically useless?

Starkwell: Seriously, Tom isn’t even counting them as people… “The three of us”…

Lovelock: You skirts ain’t worth a damn in a crisis.

Starkwell: They certainly aren’t helping their cause by sitting around not doing anything.

[...]

Judy ends up downstairs with Helen and Harry’s sick kid, while the rest sit around upstairs arguing about this and that.  Harry is easily the biggest piece of shit in the Universe.  Harry’s wife Helen finally speaks up, at least, and shits on her husband, but just as she is asking if she can do anything to help, Ben and Harry totally speak over her, interrupt her and have their own conversation, fully ignoring her and continuing to make all ladies feel and be useless.

[...]

[News report informs them that the killers are UNDEAD!]

Lovelock: I’m so happy.  I feel like I’m watching how life was created.

Starkwell: More like UN-life.

[...]

After the long news report explaining to us, the viewers, just what in the Hell is going on, Ben hatches a plan to get out of the house and take the truck to get to a rescue station.

[...]

[Tom convinces Judy that leaving is the right thing to do.]

Lovelock: Took him long enough.

[Tom tells Judy that she is of no use at all.]

Starkwell: Wait what?  Is that really what he said? Harsh.

[It seems that the ladies are just there to look pretty and smile.]

[...]

[Tom and Judy go get the truck, truck catches fire, Judy’s jacket gets caught, Tom tries to help her, truck blows up, they blow up.]

Starkwell: Of course, it's her fault.

Lovelock: That's why you just can't trust women with anything... apparently...

Starkwell: Wasn’t this when feminism or women's lib or whatever was getting started and going strong and whatnot?

Lovelock: Well, technically, she did burn her bra.

[...]

Ben runs back to the house, Harry does little to help him out, so Ben, obviously, beats the shit out of him.  Lovelock and Starkwell celebrate with a high five.  Then we see some serious flesh eating and it’s honestly still pretty fucked up and shocking.  They celebrated again, but this time with a series of roundhouse kicks.

[...]

[The kid becomes zombie, since she was infected by THE BITE.]

Lovelock: So this really did start it all…

Starkwell: But, again, why does no one care about the flamophobia angle?

[The brain of the ghoul has been activated by the radiation, destroy the brain, destroy the ghoul.]

Starkwell: But don’t worry about the fire thing?  No one will remember that one?  WHAT THE FUCK?

Lovelock: Please drop it.  Forever.  Starting… NOW.

[...]

Hell starts breaking loose.  Ben shoots Harry with his gun and Harry ends up in the cellar with his daughter who promptly starts eating him.  Then she kills her mom with a shovel.  And eats her.  Starkwell and Lovelock are sitting on the absolute edge of their seats.  No sounds coming from them, except the occasional nervous fart from Lovelock.  Barbra finally wakes the fuck up and starts helping, but it is WAY too little too late, as she immediately encounters her zombie brother Johnny who grabs her and, I assume, rips her apart and eats her with all of his ghoul friends.

[...]

[Ben goes down to the cellar and ices zombie Harry and Helen.  But then he is SWARMED…  And yet he MAKES IT!]

Lovelock: He’s still pretty calm and collected, but I can’t help but wish he’d put his cardigan back on.

[...]

Morning eventually comes, and a bunch of local militia, redneck weekend warriors and National Guard seem to have things under control.  They come upon the farmhouse and as Ben slowly exits to signal that he is still alive, they, rather casually, exterminate him with a shot right between the eyes.  Just another one for the fire.  Seriously, this film deserves all of the praise that it gets.  Nearly fifty years old, and it can still shock, surprise and delight.

[...]

Lovelock: If he'd been wearing his cardigan, I bet they wouldn't have shot him.

Black Sunday.

Bava is a legend.  And this movie, about an undead witch (played by Barbara Steele) coming back to do bad shit, was a damn good one from what I can gather.  The movie starts with Barbara Steele being executed for being a witch, and as they hammer a devil mask to her face and kill her, she tells them that she will return, armed with the power of Satan to KILL THEM ALL.  So, this ain’t no fake witch.  She’s a straight up evil woman.

[...]

Starkwell: Music in movies was so much damn better back then.

[...]

Bava’s a real pro, and it shows IMMEDIATELY.  The production is fantastic.  The cinematography looks genius, and the sets look absolutely mystical and terrifying.

[...]

Lovelock: So much fog!  How did they do that?

Starkwell: By actually caring about how the movie looks.  Something modern day film makers should learn.

[...]

[Two main characters, doctors, ask their carriage driver to take a shortcut through the HAUNTED WOODS.]

Starkwell: Pretty dumb for a couple of "doctors".

Lovelock: Rational science is about to FAIL YOU!  GHOSTS ARE REAL!

Starkwell: Wait… you mean in this movie, or… ?

[...]

Then the two doctors go into a crypt that they stumble upon, and therein find the Witch’s Tomb.  While fighting with a seriously awesome looking fake bat, the doctor breaks the cross that sits above the witch’s tomb.  Then he takes off her mask.  Then he accidentally feeds her a couple of drops of blood after cutting his hand on the glass.

[...]

[The Princess appears to them, and she has two big fucking dogs with her.]

Starkwell: How did the doctor manage to do THREE accidental things that could potentially lead to the re-animation of the satanic witch?

Lovelock: Blind luck?

Starkwell: Doctor Whateverhisfuckingnameis?  More like Mr. Magoo.

[...]

[The younger of the two doctors is clearly smitten with the princess.]

Starkwell: Quite possibly the two dumbest doctors in the history of medicine.

Lovelock: Mr. Magoo and his sidekick, Boner MD.

[...]

The shots of the witch corpse are utterly horrifying, crawling with worms, maggots and oozing black tar of some kind.  It’s both effective, and creepy as balls.  So Barbara Steele plays the present day Princess, living at the mansion with her brother and father.  I assume this also means that she is a descendent of the witch from the beginning of the film.

[...]

[Young girl goes through the woods to get to the barn to milk the cow.]

Lovelock: Talk about a shitty mom.  Sending her daughter out, in a storm, through the creepy woods, NEXT TO A CEMETERY, to milk a cow.  In the middle of the night.  Who keeps their cow there?

Starkwell: Those shots following the girl through the woods are amazing.  I’m actually kind of scared.

Lovelock: That’s because you’re a fucking pussy.

[Creepy Witch Corpse starts talking, telling dead people to “RISE”.]

Lovelock: Well, shit, now I’m scared.

[...]

Then a devil-masked zombie rises from the grave, and Lovelock and Starkwell high-fived and started doing roundhouse kicks and playing air guitar.  It’s amazing that they didn’t break anything.  I should add that the zombie has a shirt with a shiny winged dragon on it.

[...]

[Dr. Magoo follows zombie dude into the crypt, where he then witnesses the witch RISE.]

Starkwell: There he goes, blindly following again!  Good ol’ Magoo!

Lovelock: Maybe she’s going to grant him three wishes for freeing her?

Starkwell: You’re thinking of a genie, and no, I don’t think that’s about to happen.

Lovelock: You ain’t never had a friend like me.

[Dr. Magoo makes out with the corpse, dies and becomes a zombie.  The witch, however, is fully awake now, and continues to order around her zombie horde (currently consisting of two zombies).]

Starkwell: A whole new world.

Lovelock: Don’t you dare close your eyes.

[...]

The plan seems to be to get the witch into the Princess body, and then she can be all alive and sexy again.  Walk around, kill people, get revenge, etc.  Later that afternoon, Dr. Boner finally wakes up from his hangover and realizes that Dr. Magoo is gone, and goes off to find him at the castle.

[...]

[Princess Katia faints into Dr. Boner’s arms and he carries her to his room, staring at her breasts, pretty much the whole time.]

Starkwell: Boner MD certainly is handsy.

Lovelock: Can you blame him?  Barabara Steele is stunning.

[...]

Zombie Magoo botches an attempt to kidnap Katia for the Witch, and it only further drives her into the arms of Boner MD, much to his delight I’m sure.  Anyways, Boner and the Prince and the Priest continue to investigate and get to the bottom of what is happening.  After a few choice deaths, an exorcism, some zombie on zombie action, and an incredible burning corpse scene, Katia is brought before the witch.

[...]

[Shiny Dragon Shirt Zombie tears her shirt off.]

Starkwell: Did the witch really need for her undergarment to be exposed to complete the ritual?

Lovelock: Probably not.  Bava likely just wanted to see them boobies shake.

[...]

Well, Boner shows up just in the knick of time to save Katia from the witch, but he fails to really do anything, because he sees the witch and she looks at him with her captivating eyes, and he goes all "boner" and just sits there spellbound.  And Katia looks dead.  Thankfully, a mob of townspeople show up and set the witch on fire and Katia comes back and immediately makes out with Boner MD like crazy.  Fucking awesome.

Love After Death.

I have no idea what the fuck this is gonna be about.  The film starts off at a guy’s funeral.  Though he looks dead, he appears to still be able to see what is going on, as his wife, doctor and friends look down at his corpse in his casket.  Then he’s buried.  Is he dead?  Is he alive?  Who knows?

[...]

[The wife, and other men at the funeral, look at each other and smile.]

Lovelock: Ummm…. ?

Starkwell: Wait the title says it’s called “Unsatisfied Love”?

Lovelock: Usually movies with many titles are terrible.

Starkwell: And that’s based on?

Lovelock: Nothing I guess.  Well… this movie, so far.

[...]

After an incredibly long driving scene, we see Montel (the dead guy) rise up out of his grave.  It’s pretty funny because you can see that the actor put cotton balls in his ears and nose so that no dirt would get in it.  But on a whole, it’s a pretty cool scene, especially for the late sixties.

[...]

[Cut to the widow, having her boobies felt up by the doctor, she told the doctor that she is A VIRGIN.]

Lovelock: Montel probably died from blue balls.

Starkwell: I don’t think you can die from that.

Lovelock: You can if you blow your fucking brains out.

[...]

At this point there is an incredibly long and drawn out scene where Montel knocks a girl out in an alley, breaks into a nearby house, undresses her, feels her up and kisses her body parts, at which point she wakes up and… tells him to screw her?  But then he runs away… Seriously it’s a REALLY long scene.  Starkwell leaves.  Lovelock stays, confused, alone, scared.

[...]

[Montel hides in a dressing room and watches a transvestite SLOWLY undress herself/himself.]

Lovelock: Umm…?

[Cut to, an apartment, two women are making out and undressing each other.]

Lovelock: Right because that’s super relevant to the story.  Oh wait, there is no story.

[The lesbian scene lasts, a few minutes, then Montel hides in the closet.  The lesbians find him and want him to join in… but he runs away… scared?]

Lovelock: Dude.  Seriously?

[...]

At this point Lovelock realizes that there has been insanely little dialogue, and that most of this movie has been people groping one another.

[...]

Lovelock: What’s with the close-ups on the eyes and/or lips?  Why are they holding the keys like that?  HE JUST MET THAT WOMAN ON THE STREET, why would she invite him in and then strip?  What planet is this?

[...]

Sometime after another five minutes of Montel pulling off a woman’s panties and fondling her butt, it looks like he actually finished the job this time, and did sex all on that woman.  And then they finally developed more of the story.  It turns out that the bitch wife buried him alive… on purpose.  So… he’s not a zombie?

[...]

[Montel breaks into an apartment, watches a couple do it, then he… knocks the guy out and does the girl?]

Lovelock: Did she not notice that it’s a different guy?

[...]

Montel eventually tracks down his widow, kills the doctor, and then starts… raping his former wife?  And she’s into it?  Oh wait, he’s not into it anymore, he slaps her in the face and eventually chokes her.  But then… twist ending… he vanishes into thin air.  So... he was dead?  FUCK THIS SHIT.  It's a late sixties soft core porn living dead film that isn't good at being a soft core porn or effective at being a living dead film.

Dr. Orloff's Monster.

Oddly enough when I try to find this film online, it says the film is actually called “The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll” and was released in 1964, as opposed to what Netflix is feeding me, “Dr.Orloff’s Monster” from 1967.   What’s even better, is that when I play the film, the title appears in French and coincides with what my INTARWEBS search has given me.  Considering some of the titles that they ‘suggest’ for me, I should have known that accuracy was not Netflix’s strong suit.  This is an earlier Jess Franco picture, and within a few minutes we can already see that he had a very different style than most, even at this time.

[...]

[Old man dies, passes on his research to younger beard man.  The research involves reviving dead people with a high frequency sound.]

Starkwell: Holy Hell, do they need to actually play the sound like that.

[A couple of minutes of the sound goes, dead guy rises.]

Lovelock: Never has Franco’s slow pace made my head hurt this much.

Starkwell: In other news, that was one of the worst looking castles that I have ever seen.

Lovelock: It’s only a model.

Starkwell: Dude that was real.

Lovelock: For reals?

Starkwell: Really.

[...]

The film is full of jagged cuts.  Hard to tell if it is a bad print, or how it actually always was.  But unfortunately any time the scientist uses the zombie to do his bidding we have to hear the high pitched noise.

[...]

[Zombie chokes a stripper after her show.]

Starkwell: Why did they need to choke that stripper?

Lovelock: Did you see her 'show'? Lame.

[...]

[We are introduced to a girl named Melissa, Dr. Fisherman’s niece.]

Starkwell: I feel like something is lost in translation, like what they are saying is not what they are actually saying.

Lovelock: Wait, Beardy is Fisherman?  So where’s Dr. Orloff?  What about Dr. Jekyll?

Starkwell: I don’t know, but I feel like the ‘monster’ is that awful high-pitched noise.

[...]

Melissa goes to see her uncle and he acts all “DON’T GO IN TO MY LAB EVER”.  Alarm bells are ringing, Melissa.  Other than the aunt and uncle fighting and acting weird, not much happens for a while.  Then there’s a long dragged out club scene / musical number.  Well, actually, every scene is long and dragged out.  Oh, and I think he choked the stripper to get a necklace back?  I’m not sure.

[...]

[Fisherman sends his zombie to choke out the woman from the nightclub he just gave another necklace to, and get back the necklace that he just gave her?]

Starkwell: Ok, so Beardy finds nightclub singers and/or strippers that he likes, gives them necklaces, and then kills them and gets the necklace back?

Lovelock: He probably does sex on them in between those two.  I think that’s why he gives her the necklace.

Starkwell: That’s unclear.

Lovelock: Wait, he’s not taking the necklace back?  What a waste.

[...]

The cops are brought in, and realize that the stripper and singer must have had the same killer, since they had similar amateurishly crafted necklaces.  The cops don’t buy the whole “we shot him and it didn’t affect him at all” thing that the club owners are saying happened re: the zombie.  We then find out that the zombie is Melissa’s father.

[...]

Starkwell: I don’t get why he needs to kill the women… It's not like his wife isn't already onto him...

Lovelock: “Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll”?  More like “Dead Ladies of Dr. Fisherman”.

Starkwell: “Dead Ladies of Dr. Fisherman, that’s I’m pretty sure he didn’t even bang”.

Lovelock: “High-Pitched Noise of Professor Fisherman”?

Starkwell: That’s the one.

[High-pitched noise sounds off again for a few minutes.]

Starkwell: I’m fucking done.

[Starkwell’s out.]

Lovelock: He’s not named Orloff or Jekyll, and he has no actual mistresses… Just bitches he gives shit to and then chokes with the help of his zombie and super computer high pitched dog whistle.

[Wait… Dr. Orloff was the old dead guy from the beginning?]

Lovelock: I must have missed that.  Wait, did that cop say “robutt”?  The ZOMBIE is a RO-BUTT.

[...]

Holy shit, boring.  It goes on for what feels like forever, after zombie dad gets a few more chokes in and even punches a woman in the face.  There’s a scene where zombie dad and Melissa stare at each for like fifteen minutes.  She brings him to a hotel and all of the cops shoot the shit out of his head.  The end.  Or as they say at the end of this film “Fin”.  Or as Lovelock says “you know what? Fuck you, movie”. What a mess.

Santo Contra Los Zombies.

Legendary Mexican wrestler ‘El Santo’ fought all sorts of mythological beings, super villains and other wrestlers throughout his illustrious career.  Arguably the most famous of all luchadores, inevitably, he would have to fight the living dead, because any hero worth his weight in piss simply has to battle zombie hordes at some point.  This is some of the best shit the early sixties has to offer, I kid you not.

[...]

[El Santo wrestles in front of a packed house.  It seems to mix stock footage and more close up shots.  It’s fucking awesome.]

Starkwell: This certainly proves one thing, that pro wrestling CLEARLY isn’t what it used to be.

[After the credits roll, it cuts to another El Santo match.  The crowd carries him down to the ring on their shoulders.]

Starkwell: Is this movie going to mostly just be wrestling matches?

Lovelock: Honestly, I ain’t complaining if it is. 

Starkwell: I know you.  You’ll complain.  Especially if no zombies show up.

Lovelock: Whatever dude, the title said INVASION.  INVASION of the zombies.  And you can bet your last buck that El Santo is going to wrestle the pants off of every last one of them.

Starkwell: Zombies don’t really need pants.  He should wrestle their heads off.

[...]

So after a solid ten plus minutes of wrestling footage, we start to have a story developing.  It involves a beautiful woman and her missing father.  Then we see three zombies getting out of a car and robbing a jewelry store.

[...]

[Moving at the speed of molasses, the zombies crack he safe, a cop shows up and unloads his entire pistol on one of them.]

Lovelock: Man!  That cop ain’t fucking around.  First shot, directly in the middle of the forehead.

[Head shot does nothing.  More cops show up, and shoot at them, and they just slowly walk away.]

Starkwell: They’re not mean zombies.  They aren’t even hurting the cops.

Lovelock: Fucking cops.  Shoot first ask questions later… That’s why I don’t go to Mexico.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why.

Lovelock: Well that and the heat.  My God, the heat!

[...]

Then the cops contact El Santo on his El Santo video phone to tell him about the indestructible zombie thieves.

[...]

[Woman walks the city streets asking people if they have seen her father.]

Starkwell: Mexico City looks kind of like a painting.

Lovelock: And not a very good one.

[...]

[More wrestling footage.]

Starkwell: Spoiler alert!  I bet El Santo wins.

Lovelock: I don’t know…. “Miscellaneous Non-Masked Guy #14” looks pretty–

[El Santo wins.]

Lovelock: Never mind.

[...]

Then there was a dance sequence, and you KNOW how Starkwell and Lovelock feel about useless dance sequences.  They hate them.  Still Starkwell has so far been impressed with the cinematography and the general style of the film.

[...]

[The three thief zombies set fire to an orphanage and try to steal some children.]

Lovelock: Still think they’re not so bad?

Starkwell: No. They’ve crossed the line.

[El Santo shows up.  Saves the kids, wrestles the zombies.]

Starkwell: Seriously though, if guns don’t work, what chance does El Santo have?

Lovelock: I’m a true believer.

[Zombies drop El Santo on his ass, kick the shit out of him.]

Lovelock: I don’t believe in anything anymore.

[...]

Then there was a car chase and a car explosion.  I think Starkwell said something along the lines of this movie having it all and Lovelock did a roundhouse kick and broke a lamp.

[...]

[Two zombies climb into a girl’s window, and El Santo storms in and stops them from taking her.]

Starkwell: Why was he just waiting around right outside of her bedroom?

Lovelock: More like El Stalko.

Starkwell: El Peepo.

Lovelock: I like mine better.

[El Santo throws the zombies around the room and they vanish into thin air.]

Starkwell: If they can turn invisible, why wouldn’t they just be invisible all of the time?

Lovelock: If they can make fire like that, why wouldn’t they just light El Santo on fire?

[...]

Plotholes and questions aside, they really are enjoying this film so far.  Then the zombies climb into another window, choke out and kidnap El Santo’s tag team partner and make him full zombie and Lovelock was all “GASP!”  I should note that there are two mad scientists dressed like executioners that appear to be behind all of this.

[...]

[El Santo wrestles against the newly zombified wrestler friend.]

Starkwell: I love that he fights zombies but then still makes time to entertain people at the arena.

Lovelock: The show must go on.

[He wins, I think.]

[...]

After, the zombies come for El Santo, through his window, obviously.  The zombies almost unmask El Santo, but then he kicks one in the medallion and it blows up.  The medallion blows up, not the zombie.  Lovelock says he WISHES the zombie had blown up.  But then Lovelock is all “OF COURSE!  THE MEDALLION! Great work El Santo!”  Eventually El Santo finds the secret dungeon/castle/laboratory and wrestles the shit out of more zombies.  For some reason these zombies have belts, not medallions.  I don't know why, but it did lead to a weird scene where El Santo was on his knees with his face right in front of a zombie's crotch, and taking his belt off.  In the the end, he also wrestle/destroys the two Executioner Scientists, who turn out to be the girl's missing Father and Uncle, and all of the zombies disappear into a puff of smoke.  Then El Santo leaves before anyone can thank him.  Apparently El Santo doesn’t like to wait around to be thanked, but if he were here, I’m sure Lovelock and Starkwell would try.

Cape Canaveral Monsters.

There ain’t a whole lot out there about this movie.  What I have read about it, leads me to believe that I shouldn’t expect much.

[...]

[Couple hangs out on the beach, lights flash on a rock.]

Lovelock: Were those lights supposed to be something?

Starkwell: The music leads me to believe that 'yes'…

[Two lights flash in front of their windshield as they drive away, they crash… into… nothing?]

Starkwell: How did the guy’s arm end up in the back seat?

Lovelock: I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

[The music is completely insane and loud.  Credits play.]

Lovelock: So… were they possessed by those lights?

Starkwell: I guess.  Holy Hell, this music needs to stop.  My head already hurts so much.

[...]

We see laboratory shots, rockets flying, plenty of Cape Canaveral stock footage, and shots of people looking surprised.  Then the rocket blows up.

[...]

Lovelock: I love that they put huge glasses on an actress and assumed that would be enough to make her look like a scientist.

Starkwell: She looks more like a scientist than that old guy.  He looks like a homeless man.

[...]

This movie is incredibly hard to follow, partly because it is incoherent and makes no sense, and partly because the director chooses to occasionally use camera angles that I assume are supposed to be “FIRST PERSON VIEW”, but really do little more than give the audience motion sickness.  Lovelock imagined what this would have looked like in a movie theater, and then he puked.  Starkwell wondered if this camera trick was ahead of its time.  Then he puked for inadvertently complimenting the film.   

[...]

[We see the possessed zombie alien people, being chased by dogs, and they pull his arm (back) off.]

Starkwell: If they have the technology to travel across the universe, and inhabit the bodies of other lifeforces… you’d think they’d be able to do a better job sewing an arm back on.

[The aliens decide they need a new arm, so they need to find a living arm to replace his stump with.]

Starkwell: Why wouldn’t he just possess a new body entirely?  Why would keep the broken torn apart one?

[Lovelock had nothing to say, because after he vomited, he fell asleep.]

[...]

Apparently the aliens are there to prevent humans from figuring out how to space travel.  At one point the alien woman said “PERFECTLY CLEAR” and looked directly at the camera.  Starkwell laughed out loud so hard it woke Lovelock up from his slumber.  The missile explosions are actually pretty impressive, considering how shitty balls the rest of the film is.

[...]

Lovelock: Seriously, why did they bother have him lose an arm?  It would be one thing if the actor only HAD one arm, so they wrote it into the story, but instead, we get a lame ass dude with an arm tucked into his pants.

[...]

Rather than focus on their mission, or how they will prevent man from traveling through space, the aliens spend the bulk of their time finding healthy specimens to farm body parts from.  It’s all much lamer and more boring than it sounds.  I think the aliens teleport two humans to their planet, for their hometeam scientists to examine.  Did I mention that there’s a bad actor playing a hillbilly who waves around a shotgun wearing full body onezee pyjamas?

[...]

Lovelock: Detectives ALWAYS have mustaches in these old movies.

[...]

Eventually, and thankfully, the film ends.

[...]

Lovelock: They were just trying to get home.  Like E.T.

Starkwell: No.  No they weren’t.

Lovelock: Weren’t they?  Geez… maybe they weren’t.  What the heck was this movie?

Starkwell: Bad.

[...]

After all is said and done, the humans blow up the cave where the aliens had their lab, the cops drive away and then you hear screaming and a crash and we see the lights again.  Do I smell a sequel?  No.  Not ever.  Thankfully.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

Ray Dennis Steckler had a number of different aliases that he went by.  Usually this happens when a director also works in porn.  Well, Steckler was no exception.  In any case, this 1964, "world’s first, monster movie musical", is often regarded as one of the worst films of all time, and Steckler’s best work.  How does that happen?  What does that say about the rest of his work?  I for one can’t wait to confuse the bajesus out of Starkwell and Lovelock by finally showing them something that truly needs to be seen to be believed.  The film starts off at a carnival, and an ugly psychic is being insulted by a drunk guy.

[...]

[Lady Psychic orders creepy looking man servant Ortega to turn the Drunk into one of her pets, they pin the Drunk down and pour something labelled poison all over his face.]

Lovelock: What the hell is on her face?

Starkwell: Ortega might be one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen.

[...]

The credits roll and show a dude mutating into some kind of disfigured being.  Then there’s this really long dance scene.

[...]

Starkwell: We’re only a few minutes in, but CLEARLY we can see that "discriminating" is not one of Steckler’s strong suits.

Lovelock: All filler no killer.

[...]

Steckler, playing some slacker dude named Jerry, has a conversation with a heavily accented European friend, named Harold, who is CLEARLY reading his lines off of the “magazine” he is holding.  Jerry and Harold go to pick up Jerry’s girl.  Obviously her mother doesn’t approve of slacker Jerry, who claims “the world is my college.”  They go to the carnival.

[...]

[Horrible stand up comedian is the warm up act for the dance act we saw earlier, which we now see again.]

Lovelock: Is that what the open mics you do are like?

Starkwell: Basically.

[Drunk dancer girl falls down.]

Starkwell: Actually, that’s much funnier than most of what I sit through.

[...]

[Footage of people riding roller coasters.]

Starkwell: I’d imagine that given the size of cameras in the sixties, it must have been kind of insane to take one onto a roller coaster like that.

Lovelock: Steckler don’t care.  He don’t care about nothing.

[...]

[Drunk Dancer Girl goes to see Psychic.]

Lovelock: Here’s a reading: Hey DANCER LADY, you look like a DUDE.

Starkwell: Weak.

Lovelock: Where’s Ortega?

[...]

[Jerry, Harold and Angela go see the Psychic, Angela has her fortune told.]

Lovelock: Madame Estrella should tell Angela to tone down that bee hive on her head.

Starkwell: It’s a fortune reading not a fashion consultation.

Lovelock: Come on dude, she gave her fifty cents.  I’d expect a little honesty.

[...]

After that first scene before the credits, seriously, nothing has happened.  Starkwell and Lovelock agreed that “he set the bar a little too high a little too early in the film.”

[...]

[Jerry decides to go see the nudey show, Angela doesn’t want to, so Jerry tells Harold to drive her home.]

Lovelock: Shit, Harold, grow some balls.  Also, Angela, lose the Jerry.

Starkwell: Seriously… who is Jerry?  Who does he think he is?

Lovelock: Jerry is the man, I guess.

[...]

Then we see the whole show, minus the nudity.  But they made sure to show the lengthy ballad sung by “girl with bee-hive hair-do number a million”.

[...]

Starkwell: Why would the bulk of the audience at the strip show be older women?

[...]

Then Jerry went backstage to meet the stripper Carmelita, but was ambushed by a hypnosis session given by Madame Estrella, with Ortega and Carmelita watching.  After a few minutes and some horrible sounds effects, Jerry is eventually under Madame Estrella’s control.

[...]

Lovelock: I know it SAID it was a musical, but I guess I was expecting the musical elements to somehow incorporate zombies, as opposed to just being a bunch of shitty people performing shitty music sandwiched in between insane shots of Steckler being an asshole and Warty McPsychic doing evil with her mutant sidekick.  Also, dancer lady that kinda looks like a dude.

Starkwell: Well, we’re half way there… so… it will all be over soon enough.  Ugh… more stand-up?

[...]

[We see the same dance number for the third time.  Then a possessed Jerry kills the two dancers.  DURING THE SHOW.]

Lovelock: That’s more like it.

Starkwell: Why didn’t the film just start around this point?  It would have saved us forty five minutes.

Lovelock: That would be too easy.

Starkwell: Wait, that’s it?  No one is going after Jerry?  He just killed two people in front of an entire audience.

[...]

Then there was the most amazingly nonsensical dream sequence that made Lovelock shit his pants.

[...]

[Jerry gets up and goes to see Harold.]

Lovelock: Same clothes?  Gross.

Starkwell: No wonder Angela’s mom doesn’t trust him… same clothes all the time?  Creepy.

Lovelock: Well, also, he did just kill some people.

Starkwell: Yeah but she don’t know that.  Only the entire crowd at the carnival/nightclub know that.

[...]

[Jerry goes to see Angela, she twirls her umbrella, Jerry is hypnotized and strangles her.]

Lovelock: That’s why I never twirl umbrellas.

Starkwell: Yeah that’s why.

Lovelock: Wait… the mom didn’t call the cops?  They just caught Jerry STRANGLING her!

Starkwell: Jerry LITERALLY gets away with murder.  And attempted murder.

[...]

Anyways, the movie trails on with more crappy musical numbers, and Harold working with Angela and her family, trying to get a hold of Jerry before the police find out about him.  Neither Lovelock or STarkwell really understand "what's in it for Jerry?", but they're ignoring that.  In the meantime, Jerry is going around killing people.  There was a shot of Jerry killing some dude, but we only saw the shadow of Jerry stabbing the shadow of the dude in the head.  It was pure genius.  Lovelock and Starkwell watched it over and over again and laughed hysterically.

[...]

[Psychic and Ortega try to put Jerry in the cage with their other Acid Face Melt Zombies, the zombies escape and start strangling everyone in sight!]

Lovelock: Take away all the shitty musical numbers, and you actually have a pretty enjoyable turd of a film here.

Starkwell: It would only be seven minutes long.

Lovelock: Well, no one likes a long turd.

Starkwell: Unless you’re really backed up.

[...]

Lovelock: Why are all the zombies dressed the same?

[...]

Then the zombies interrupted yet another long dance number by strangling a bunch of the dancers.  Then the cops show up and shoot all the zombies.  Lovelock can’t help but wish that the zombies had made their appearance much sooner, and had stuck around much longer.  Eventually, after a long beach chase, Jerry dies too.  And the crowd goes wild.  The end.  This certainly is one giant unforgettable mess.