The Phantom Planet (1961) is a one-shoestring budgeted, space-rangers kind of science fiction from Four Crown Productions (apparently their only one), shot largely on soundstages with a mix of miniatures, rear projection, and recycled stock footage, then released by American International Pictures as the bottom half of a double bill with Assignment: Outer Space using the second shoestring. It’s noteworthy for the first appearance of Richard Jaws Kiel (Eegah, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker). Of course Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a go at it, and it inspired the name of the rock band Phantom Planet, best known for their 2002 hit track California, the theme song for the Fox TV series The O.C. In 2010, La Quinta Inns & Suites, the hotel chain, leveraged clips from it for its humorous ad campaign.
Assignment: Outer Space (1960), originally titled Space-Men, was an Italian space opera picked up by AIP, redubbed to English, and suitably packaged with The Phantom Planet as a quick-money item for exhibitors (especially drive-ins). Commentary from fans and critics point out that, despite its era and limited budget, the film gives its female officer characters a surprising amount of competence, with multiple scenes of women handling station duties and technical tasks, which leads some viewers to note that the film even manages a primitive form of the Bechdel Test. (The Hannibal 8). Note: For an example of a complete failure for the Bechdel Test as comparison, I refer you to The Green Slime. It’s instructive and still very funny, the best way to learn, I say.
A glorious press book for a garbage flick. At least, that is my assumption, as I’ve never seen the picture and I’m not a huge fan of Shock-Doc’s (says the guy who created the cover art for Faces of Death director John Alan Schwartz’s 2014 memoir titled My Faces of Death.) Now that my full disclosure is finished, let’s move on.
Taboos of the World is a 1963 Italian-made documentary that AIP picked up sometime in 1964. On page two of this pressbook (upper left corner), you will see a copyright notice that reads 1964. The film wouldn’t be released until the Fall of 1965. Another one of those AIP headscratchers that we will probably never figure out.
For a Shock-Doc, it is apparently tame. According to Robert L. Ottoson’s 1984 tome American International Pictures: A Filmography, Taboos of the World contains “a mass for lepers; a funeral in the Ganges; atom bomb victims; addicts selling their children to support their habit; Scandinavian blood drinkers; tattooed women; and a Japanese sect who cut off their little fingers as part of an initiation ceremony.” My feeling about Ottoson’s description is that it probably came about as a result of watching the movie on VHS in preparation for his book, rather than him sitting in a theater surrounded by guys in trench coats at 11 pm on a Wednesday night in 1965. More on that VHS release in a bit. …
Thanks to It Came From Hollywood for sending along these stills. I added two additional ones from MovieStillsDB to add some crab legs.
Them was the first movie to suggest the possibility that radiation could cause giant mutations…[Jack] Warner may have thought it was utter nonsense but audiences loved it, so much so that for the next six years Them set the pattern for dozens of science fiction films…Attack of the Crab Monsters was one of these films, and one of the few to radically vary the formula. (Roger Corman, The Best of the Cheap Acts, Mark Thomas McGee)
Another giant crab trying to get ahead.
I saw Attack of the Crab Monsters when it became available for television in 1963, from Allied Artists through their Exploitables package of B movie sci fi and horror goodness. I was seven years old and watching on a cathode ray tube TV in my bedroom. That metal-encased TV probably bathed me in enough radiation to turn me into the Hulk, but no such luck. To make the flickering glow of this black and white Roger Corman classic even better, Zacherly was hosting the horror on WABC with his usual shenanigans as giant smart crabs, scissoring off and eating the heads of people to get smarter, and blasting their heat rays to whittle down the already sinking island, attempt to serve up the remaining frantic and terrified and dwindling survivors. The trumpet, strings, and brass score by Ronald Stein added to the terror and tension as the giant crabs figure out how to use dynamite too. So did the ominous stick run along a picket fence clicking sound made from their dainty crab feet.
Richard Garland and Pamela Duncan go crab fishing.
The movie title was made first, the film followed second. But with such a catchy title (who doesn’t like giant crab legs?), Corman delivers the goods: giant crabs with human-like faces that gave me great nightmares at such a tender age. Of course, the budget allowed for one giant crab to be built. The fiberglass shell was man-handled the old fashioned way, and you do get a peek at Ed Nelson’s feet under the crab in one scene that got through the editing phase. Or maybe not: you know quick work and those tight budgets come first on B movies.
Hey, is that the Professor (Russell Johnson) working on another radio on another island? Where’s Gilligan?
Charles B Griffith’s (It Conquered the World) script tuned-up the usual giant mutation gags by making the crabs more intelligent as they eat more people, specifically the brains. Pretty soon, ghostly voices of the dead are heard as the crabs shoot out their psychic vibes with the memories and voices of the headless. This makes for quite the problem: unlike in other mutation movies of the 1950s, the monsters here are as smart as the people. Griffith sold Corman on doing underwater scenes after he watched The Silent World (1956). Corman agreed, but the giant crab (which cost $400 to build) didn’t. It was nearly impossible to submerge. By the time they finally got what they needed, the arms had cracked off and the eyes followed them. Allied Artists released the movie on a double bill with Not of This Earth.
Pamela Duncan and Richard Garland worrying about who is coming for dinner.
Pamela Duncan (who starred in another one of my cheap favorites, The Undead), did not have fond memories of the shoot, having experienced trouble with the scuba equipment and Corman’s direction to swim alongside sharks in a tank at Marineland. A double filled in for her. The bottom line here is that Attack of the Crab Monsters is a fast-paced low budget gem that stands out for its novel scripting of the monsters, the deteriorating situation they are in, and the the down and dirty production that keeps the weirdness and terror moving to a solid — not ideal, as you will find out — climax. It definitely pairs well with the weirder and slower-paced The Undead, so think about that for your next movie party night. Bring the crab cakes and tropical drinks too for a perfect evening.
Pamela Duncan and Richard Garland still worrying about who is coming for dinner.
Pamela Duncan and Richard Garland at dinner.
Sources for this article include Roger Corman, The Best of the Cheap Acts by Mark Thomas McGee, and Keep Watching the Skies by Bill Warren, and my love for this movie.
In the early days of talkies, Studios would shoot foreign-language versions of their films for the international market. These included French, Spanish, German, and Swedish. For the Latin American markets, the Spanish version of Drácula was directed by George Melford. He didn’t speak the language so communications went through co-director Enrique Tovar Avalos and interpreters. The lead blood sucker was Carlos Villarías as Count Dracula and his victims were Lupita Tovar as Eva (aka Mina), Barry Norton as Juan Harker, and Pablo Álvarez Rubio as Renfield. On a side note, in 1937, Melford directed Jungle Menace, Columbia’s first serial, alongside Harold Frazer. (I presume he didn’t need an interpreter for that movie.)
The film opened in Havana in March 1931 and in Mexico City in April, weeks after the English version’s February release on Valentine’s Day. It was well received in its target markets but was essentially forgotten in the United States for decades. Universal didn’t preserve their print carefully and the movie was thought to be lost for decades.
In the 1970s a print was discovered in a New Jersey warehouse, but it was missing footage regarding Renfield’s seduction by Dracula’s brides and the Demeter voyage. A complete print was finally located at Cinemateca de Cuba in Havana in the late 1980s, and after considerable diplomatic effort during the Cold War, a copy made its way back to the Library of Congress. Universal finished the full restoration and released the movie on VHS in 1992, and the film had its American premiere at Universal’s 80th-anniversary celebration. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2015. Lupita Tovar, who lived to be 106 (she died in 2016), spent her later years as an ambassador for the film at screenings and conventions. The stills used in this article are from the 1992 relaunch.
The Spanish Dracula was filmed simultaneously with Tod Browning’s starring Bela Lugosi, using the same sets, costumes, and screenplay, but with a completely different cast and crew working at night, from around 8 PM to dawn, after Browning’s production wrapped for the day. This gave them access to the same Castle Dracula sets, the Carfax Abbey interiors, theater set, and the shipboard sequences without Universal having to rebuild them. Lupita Tovar gave many interviews over the years describing how exhausting the schedule was, and how they would sometimes pass the English-language cast in the hallways or commissary.
Universal had originally aimed to adapt Bram Stoker’s novel more directly and on a grander scale. Early treatments by Louis Bromfield and then Fritz Stephani envisioned sweeping sequences in Transylvania, the Demeter voyage shown in full, and elaborate setpieces. As the Depression deepened through 1930, Carl Laemmle Jr. and the studio insisted on a drastically cheaper approach, which meant falling back on the Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston stage play that had been a hit in London and on Broadway. The stage play was structurally tight and largely confined to a few interior sets, which is why so much of the finished film feels stage bound. The thrilling in-Transylvania meeting between Renfield and the count, within Dracula’s creepy broken-battlements of a castle, is over in twenty minutes, then a quick voyage and the rest takes place in England, unfolding in drawing rooms, bedrooms, the theater encounter, and Carfax Abbey. Garrett Fort did the final screenplay, working from Balderston’s stage adaptation rather than the novel.
While Lugosi’s voice and measured performance flies well over Villarías’ melodramatic and somewhat antic fluttering as a lively undead count after 500 years, the actual camerawork and pacing is considered by some better than Browning’s direction and Karl Freund’s lens. Melford and cinematographer George Robinson used more fluid camera movement, deeper focus, and more inventive framing. The camera glides through Dracula’s castle and swoops down stairways in ways the English version doesn’t. However, the Spanish crew was up a leg or two because Universal wasn’t as overbearing on them as it was with the English version. While Universal demanded cuts, script changes, and enforcement to the Production Code on Browning’s efforts, they left Melford mostly alone, so he kept dialog and connecting scenes, making the Spanish Dracula a longer movie with a bit more violent and erotic overtoning. They also watched the English dailies each evening before shooting so they could move faster and build on what had already been done during the day.
The Spanish version runs about 104 minutes versus 75 for the Browning film, which gives the story more room, develops supporting characters more fully, and includes scenes and plot beats omitted from the English cuts. Lupita Tovar’s Eva is considerably more sensual and overtly affected by Dracula’s influence. Her nightgowns are more revealing and her performance, after being bitten, is more unhinged than Helen Chandler’s restrained Mina.
The major weakness generally acknowledged is Carlos Villarías. He simply is not Bela Lugosi. Villarías was reportedly instructed to watch Lugosi’s performance and imitate his mannerisms, and the result is lacking in poise, command, and intensity. Lugosi’s hypnotic stillness and that unmistakable voice are what made the English version iconic (along with Dwight Frye’s stunning Renfield, I might add). The Spanish Dracula doesn’t match that presence of menace, even though it may be more fluid in its camerawork.
The following interview was conducted on January 20, 2009, and aired on the Drive-In of the Damned radio show a week later. It later appeared in Drive-In of the Damned Magazine (Issue #1/FEB 2018) which has long been OOP. This is the first time it has been shared online.
Of all the interesting people involved in the business of show that I have been fortunate enough to interview, either in print or on the radio, hands-down, the most interesting was Ted V. Mikels. Talking with this genre giant was akin to having an entire day of fun in just two and a half hours. He literally elevated your mood just by listening to him talk, and his personality immediately puts one at ease. The usual anxiety of how well an interview will go, especially one that will be broadcast, disappeared seconds into this discussion. After a two-and-a-half-hour talk that included the decision by both Ted and me to hang up and take a bathroom break mid-way through (this bit was excised for broadcast, but is definitely a piece of the recording I have gone back to listen to just because it still makes me laugh!), Ted and I kept in touch. He delighted me and my radio show audience once again on Halloween 2010 with a live phone-in that lasted over an hour. He was a true Showman even when he had nothing to show. You couldn’t ask for a better interview subject. Ted V. Mikels departed our realm on October 16, 2016.
Paul McVay– One of the best loved packaging of films was the triple bill of The Corpse Grinders, The Undertaker and His Pals and The Embalmer. Can you share any stories about how that all came about? …
The nightclub [shown in the movie] called The Haunted House was a real nightclub in Los Angeles, located at the famous corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Vine St. It was also featured in the 1967 film It’s a Bikini World and a TV special in which it was visited by Sonny & Cher. (Mst3k)
Girl in Gold Boots is a low‑budget (less than $50,000) crime‑drama musical about a small‑town waitress who follows a fast‑talking hustler to Los Angeles and gets pulled into the sleazy world of go‑go dancing, drugs, and petty crime. It’s one of Ted V. Mikels’ most infamous exploitation films and later became a fan favorite through its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Mikels was a jack of all trades when it came to cult movie-making. He often filled multiple crew roles on a single project: producer, writer, director, cinematographer, and editor. A New York Times obituary notes he typically employed small, inexperienced crews and little‑known actors working for minimal pay, likening him to figures like Ed Wood and Herschell Gordon Lewis in his relentless output of gory thrillers, sci‑fi cheapies, and action pictures. His corpus of work that included body‑part‑stealing zombies, a cat‑food company grinding corpses, an all‑female commando squad, a black magic witch queen, and stalking killers, fueled through scant resources and mixing it up with gore, camp, and cheesecake, make him a cult movie legend.
The movie’s afterlife has been interesting. Because the film fell into public domain circulation, it was widely available on VHS and later DVD compilations, which helped keep it in circulation among bad‑movie aficionados. It’s a so‑bad‑it’s‑good time capsule of the go‑go era, often noted as an example of Mikels’ peculiar charm: clumsy direction and writing, but full of bizarre yet interesting choices, oddball characters, earnest performances, and surprisingly memorable details like the “gold boots” stage leap and off‑kilter musical cues.
Terrified is a proto-slasher (sounds cool, right?). It is a transitional movie that, just barely, embraces a few tropes of the slasher genre that would kick into gear in the 1970s. Unfortunately, it is also a half-shoestring budgeted production that Lew Landers (The Raven, The Return of the Vampire) can barely keep credible with his fear-inducing environs because the script is under-baked and wordy and ponderous; but still very interesting in its exploration of fear and the killer’s modus operandi.
Shot at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, and on location at a left-over Western ghost town, the sets are sparse: two small tablecloth joints for closeups and mid-shots as people are introduced and the story is set up; the Western ghost town and nearby blacked-out (as in no frills set dressing and background) cemetery where the killer prowls and young people keep winding up and run scared, a lot, with tight camerawork that chills the atmosphere; and a blacked-out car interior where the main young couple drive, back and forth, while talking a lot too, as they go to the spooky ghost town…at night…looking for someone. Then back again, looking for someone. While the nighttime scenes are effective, they are mainly used to hide the budget shortcomings, but Landers still keeps it all cool and effective.
Meanwhile, the killer, dressed in a suit and tie and wearing a knitted head mask that only shows his piercing maniacal eyes, delights in scaring people off the road and burying young guys in shallow graves while laughing and taunting them. Of course, since only one other guy in the movie wears a suit and tie, you kind of know who the crazy killer is early on. We just don’t know why he’s acting so crazy until the end.
An interesting point to make here: we tend to not give movie serials much attention when talking about the evolution of horror (or movies in general), especially slashers, but looking at the killer’s fashion sense in this movie, he reminded me of the criminal masterminds found at the center of various serials’ plots (The Crimson Ghost, Mysterious Doctor Satan), driving fear through hidden identities and evil actions. That dangerous-presenting persona resonates through to today’s pivotal menacing characters in many horror movies. Each set-piece too, where the hero (who can also be a victim) is confronted by the menace, triggering an action from fear and survival, is reminiscent of the serial chapter-play structure that was capped with the cliff hanger. Just a thought.
The Mad Executioners was produced by Central Cinema Company and released in West Germany in 1963. CCC, as it is known, was a then exclusively West German production outfit started by Holocaust survivor Artur Brauner. They specialized in drama and anti-nazi films. This was 1946, and the horrors of World War II were a little too fresh in the minds of the citizens of West Germany to produce any kind of significant box office take, so CCC shifted gears and began producing a wide range of pictures covering just about every genre. CCC’s coffers soon exploded with all kinds of deutsche marks and allowed them to successfully build and operate multiple studios in Germany and parts of Spain.
In 1963 CCC expanded into the UK with major plans to continually produce films there. Alas, The Mad Executioners was one of only two films made before CCC closed shop and shifted productions back to their established studios. The other picture was Station Six Sahara which was released stateside by Allied Artists in 1964.
There are several valid reasons given for this move and the entire CCC story is nothing less than a fascinating essential chapter in the history of motion pictures. A history I will leave up to the reader to discover for themselves. But, before I get too long-winded (I heard someone say, “Too Late”!) let me focus on the film at hand and share a little bit of why you are aware of the genre films CCC produced, but you may not know it! …
My wife is a WITCH! -OR- Pardon me, but this concept has legs!
This 1967 Spanish production pick-up by Producers Releasing Organization (PRO) was clearly inspired by the hit television show Bewitched (1964-1972), which itself was inspired by no less than two previous cinematic endeavors, most pointedly, United Artists’ 1942 release of I Married a Witch, and the 1958 Columbia Pictures film Bell, Book and Candle. …
The 12-page pressbook for National General’s The Light at the Edge of the World (1971) from It Came From Hollywood. Paul says: “It’s a pretty standard NG pressbook, pretty low on frills, but it did come with one outstanding item you didn’t often find within a pressbook. It is a theater herald mock-up with fantastic artwork, and printed on parchment paper. I’ve included a scan of the herald along with a photo. The scan kind of flattens out the greatness of the herald, so I included a photo so people could get a finer look at it. This is another one of those books I’ve had for years but only recently cracked-open to do a scan on. The herald was in the middle of the book, so I had no idea it was there.”
Not a box office fire cracker, this Spanish-American adventure movie was a passion project for Kirk Douglas. Based on the Jules Verne novel, the script turned much darker as pirates mix it up with shipwrecked survivors. The movie adds a female character not in the novel, Arabella, played by Samantha Eggar. It’s a period film set in 1865 centered around a lighthouse. The pirates screw up the light to wreck ships and collect the floating booty. Kirk Douglas as Denton aims to rescue Arabella and stop the pirates. The captain leading the more brutish pirates is Kongre (Yul Brynner), and, of course, he’s cultured but sadistic (a character that Brynner could easily pull off).
Just given what I wrote above, the movie is well worth a watch, but just not one for the 1970s, a decade when movies were transitioning in the New Hollywood. Hard to say what killed the buzz on the movie, but period films were plentiful in the 1970s. By 1975, the birth of the blockbuster kicked in too. While marketed as a Jules Verne adventure, it was not suitable for family audiences given its darker and violent tone and scenes, although the U.S. release to theaters was edited to PG, so the re-editing, the poor miniature work, and the overall tone of an “older” movie, at a time when younger audiences were taking up more seats in theaters, pretty much ran the movie aground. …
You have to love the movie titles in the 60s and 70s. Today the title would be more like Door to Door Dangerously Manic Person, which doesn’t quite carry the immediate emotional concern that “maniac” carries. Special thanks go to our resident maniac Paul, at It Came From Hollywood, for this and his research that follows.
Here is the AIP ad-mat for Door to Door Maniac.
“According to the AFI catalog, “Door to Door Maniac” (also known as “Five Minutes to Live“) started production in March 1957. After three years of production and less than 30 days of filming between 1960 and 1961, the movie premiered in Dallas, Texas, in December 1961. The less than 30 days of actual filming make sense if you’ve seen the picture. The three years it was in some form of production is the real head scratcher.
“Produced by Flower Film Productions, a “one and done” production company headed by a mysterious figure known as Ludlow Flower. I say mysterious because Ludlow Flower left no trace that he even existed on planet Earth outside of this motion picture, save for a few mentions in some unclassified documents released by the F.B.I. concerning organized crime. Draw your own conclusions on that one. …
It Came From Hollywood sends us the Horror of the Blood Monsters pressbook, along with Paul’s reminiscence.
“A press book that is very close to my heart.
“Horror of the Blood Monsters was produced and distributed by Sam Sherman’s Independent-International Pictures. I-IP was created by Sam and Director Al Adamson (who passed in 1995.) Sam Sherman passed away on Monday, September 29, 2025, at the age of 85. I never met Sam Sherman in person, nor had I ever talked to the man via phone, but I felt a huge sense of loss when he passed away.
“I had toiled away, along with my fellow editors, on Sam’s book “When Dracula Met Frankenstein: My Years Making Drive-In Movies with Al Adamson”which was published in July of 2021.
“Starting around 2017, genre legend, and long-time Sam Sherman confidant, Tim Ferrante, gathered a gaggle of die-hard I-IP fans to aid in putting together a book based on Sam’s recollections and recorded audio-commentary tracks. This was a super-secret project and the lot of us were admonished to not share what we were working on, on any social media avenue, and we didn’t. Mostly because we had no free time to share what we were working on. The bulk of this book, Sam’s memories, literally took up all available free time within our group. From the start of the project to the end it encompassed about five years. But, for the group of us involved in putting the book together, the time it took to make it happen was not of concern. We all did it out of love for the I-IP films and our distinct appreciation, and admiration, for Sam Sherman. …
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