AKAThe Madhouse of Dr. Fear, The Revenge of Dr. Death
1974, Directed by Jim Clark
Now this is what it’s all about - thirty seconds of shrieking and weird-masked murderers.
I absolutely love how the narrator builds everything up to be a horrifying experience, then deflates the whole mood by revealing the movie is rated PG. You couldn’t make it up, etc.
In case you’re wondering what this film is all about - Vincent Price plays an actor who is released from a mental institution. The character he plays in horror movies then seems to take on a life of its own and start murdering people without Price being present. Peter Cushing is involved somewhere.
I will say one thing in Madhouse’s defence - the blobby fanged mask the murderer wears is pretty cool.
Now this is what it’s all about - a seventies trailer of such batshit insanity that it makes you feel confused and upset by the end of it.
So what’s happening here? Starting off with some genuinely creepy goings on, it suddenly turns into a jolly teen musical, then with a terrible animated special effect we’re back into creepsville. Then at 1:10 everything goes mental and we’re assaulted with screeching cats, man-eating pianos and goodness only knows what else.
A surreal and almost psychadelic mix of horror and absurdist humour, House assaults the senses with a cavalcade of ropey blue-screen effects and silliness. And excellently it’s just been released on DVD in the UK so you can give yourself a migraine whenever you fancy! Just don’t get it confused with the better known American horror of the same name released in 1986.
Favourite bit: The disembodied fingers playing the piano. IMDB LINK
I Married a Monster from Outer Space
1958, Directed by Gene Fowler Jr
Typical - you marry the man of your dreams and he turns out to be some kind of rubber alien.
Obvious parallels with The Invasion of the Body Snatchers aside, this looks like standard 50’s B-Movie fare. It serves up the standard menu of paranoia, dodgy special effects and men dressed up in funny Martian suits. However, unlike other 50’s B-movies this one is apparently quite good.
Several sources say that this movie was banned in Finland. I wonder why? It seems to be fairly harmless. I can only assume that Finnish Government were all secretly aliens at the time, and were worried that releasing the film would teach the population how to see through their disguises.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space was remade for television in 1998 as I Married a Monster, splendidly featuring the lead actors from the original as an old couple.
Favourite bit: The lightning-flash-evil-face-reveal, or LFEFR for short. IMDB LINK
The Food of the Gods
AKAH. G. Wells’ Food of the Gods
1976, Directed by Bert I. Gordon
“Where does fiction end and reality begin?” Hint: Reality begins after all the giant chickens have gone.
Trailer Club favourite and size disparity specialist Bert I. Gordon presents another tale of wrongly-dimensioned things. Mostly big rats hassling people in shabby farmhouses, by the looks of it.
This trailer has a pretty strange format. It goes HG WELLS PROMO - BIG ANIMALS ATTACK - BIT OF TALKING - BIG ANIMALS ATTACK - BIG ANIMALS ATTACK - REQUEST FOR SEX - BIG ANIMALS ATTACK. Not sure what to make of that, to be honest.
“Will H. G. Wells most frightening prediction in ‘The Food of the Gods’ also prove accurate?” asks the voice-over bloke. As the only prediction we’ve seen is extremely silly, it’s fairly safe to say no…
Favourite bit: The giant mouse/rat at 1 minute in, which growls like a dog for some reason. IMDB LINK
Something Weird
1967, Directed by Herschell G. Lewis
Only a madman could understand it all, they say. That’s not the best indication that a movie has a clear narrative…
The plot synopsis genuinely is something weird - a man is facially disfigured in an accident which also inexplicably gives him psychic powers. He is then coerced into shacking up with a grotesque shape-shifting witch who fixes his face, and they go off to banish ghosts and catch a serial killer. All in a day’s work.
Something Weird lacks the usual gore of Herschell Lewis’ movies, but makes up for it by not making much sense. Brilliantly, some people remember a “3D” version of this movie.
The excellent DVD company Something Weird Video took their name from this film - they specialise in hoovering up the rights to forgotten and strange old movies and releasing them to the home market before they’re lost forever. Trailer Club 70 salutes them.
Favourite bit: The incredibly sub-standard make-up on the witch. School panto a-go-go! IMDB LINK
The Worm Eaters
1977, Directed by Herb Robins
Ugh. “I know! Let’s make a movie where loads of people eat worms! Real worms! Hahahaha!” You’d expect anyone saying that to sober up and forget about it, not make the damn film.
Not that you’d know from the trailer, but the plot involves a magical worm-controlling hermit hiding said annelids in a town’s food. The consumers then turn into half-worm creatures, and thus come under the control of the hermit.
Produced by Ted V. Mikels, one of the godfathers of slightly crappy cinema, this effort mixes gratuitous real-life worm murder with z-grade special effects to create something deeply pointless. The Worm Eaters frequently features on lists of the worst movies ever made, and it’s not hard to see why…
Favourite bit: The half-worm people - they’ve just got their legs in sleeping bags. IMDB LINK
Deranged
AKADeranged: The Confessions of a Necrophile
1974, Directed by Jeff Gillen & Alan Ormsby
Apparently it’s ‘too late to scream’, but that doesn’t stop the women in this trailer. Don’t they listen to the voice-over?
There’s some deeply unpleasant stuff with corpses going on in this one. But more unpleasant still is that it’s based loosely on the real-life story of notorious American murderer Ed Gein - in fact several sources describe it as the most accurate cinematic portrayal of Gein’s crimes. Which doesn’t bear thinking about, frankly.
Trailer Club Inbreeding: The co-director Alan Ormsby was the chap with the pipe and crazy facial hair at the start of the trailer for Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. He also appears in this trailer - he’s the face in the photograph during the shooting-through-the-pillow scene.
Favourite bit: The weird yell as the woman throws the old lady’s corpse at the maniac. IMDB LINK
Zombie
AKAZombi 2, Zombie Flesh Eaters, Island of the Living Dead
1979, Directed by Lucio Fulci
This trailer’s soundtrack screams “Early eighties!” even louder than fluorescent socks.
Italian gore master Lucio Fulci throws more blood around in this movie than most horror directors manage in a lifetime. Not that you’d know from the trailer, which appears to be a failed attempt at ‘arty’.
This was one of the infamous ‘video nasties’ banned by on VHS by the UK in the mid-eighties. It was massively popular, however, and as such home-copied tapes were passed around so everyone could see the cool underwater bit where a zombie fights a shark. It was eventually released uncut on DVD a few years ago under the ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ title, showing the entirety of the infamous scene where a woman has her eye slowly gouged out by a bit of wood.
This movie isn’t a sequel to anything but was apparently released as “Zombi 2” as an attempt to cash-in on the success of Dawn of the Dead, which was released as “Zombi” in Italy. Despite Zombie being written before Dawn of the Dead. Confusing.
I’m getting the distinct impression that no woman will dare go home alone after seeing Corruption. Maybe they could have given a hint as to what the film was about rather than repeating that over and over, interspersed with screaming.
This is one of the lower quality horror movies that Peter Cushing appeared in during the sixties. Apparently the plot is actually similar to the classic French horror Eyes without a Face - A woman has been disfigured facially and a ‘mad doctor’ murders other women in a bid to cure her.
What a terrible trailer. All hyperbole and no actual information.
Favourite bit: The bearded man drooling rice pudding. IMDB LINK
Wicked Wicked
1973, Directed by Richard L. Bare
Filmed in our latest worthless gimmick: ANAMORPHIC DUOVISION! Which is apparently a permanent split-screen effect, where one side shows what the murderer is up to whilst the other concentrates on the victims. And yes, all reports state that to be as confusing and distracting as it sounds.
The sub-Leatherface murderer in this outing has a really rubbish mask. It looks like he was trying to mould something out of rubber and it went horribly wrong, but he decided to use it anyway.
This trailer commits the cardinal sin of giving away the surprise at the end by showing the corpse gallery, thereby reducing any potential interest in the full movie to below zero. Also notice the odd editing decision near the end where it looks like the hero fires a man out of his gun and through a window.
Favourite bit: The “Wicked Wicked” song being sung by the worst lounge singer ever. IMDB LINK
