Category Archives: Bad and weird movies

B-MOVIE HOST DR. LUCIFER (1957-1959)

DR. LUCIFER (1957-1959) – The actor playing this Movie Host was named Richard Dix, but to be clear he’s NOT the same Richard Dix who starred in old westerns and was jokingly mentioned in Blazing Saddles. This Richard Dix was a legend in Baltimore, MD for his stage and television work with a few movies thrown in.

From November 9th, 1957 to March 21st, 1959 Dix as Dr. Lucifer would emerge from a coffin to host B-Movies on Shock on Friday nights at 11:15PM. The program was broadcast on Baltimore’s WBAL-TV. This eccentric Mad Scientist had a very disorganized laboratory and was noted for carrying out bizarre experiments that often went awry, earning him the nickname “the bumbling bogeyman of Baltimore.”

The doctor hated bill collectors and a memorable booby trap for one involved dropping a marble slab on top of him. An attempt to bring a supposedly beautiful ancient Egyptian princess back to life actually succeeded, but in reality she weighed 350 pounds. An experiment to prove the existence of Santa Claus by catching him in a bear trap ended with Dr. Lucifer’s leg getting caught instead.    Continue reading

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BAD MOVIE: HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973)

Despite the movie poster's warning this flick won't even untie your shoelaces. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973) – Directed by THE Darren McGavin and featuring his wife Kathie Browne in a small role, this hilariously bizarre film is also known as Run, Stranger, Run. “Run, Potential Viewer, Run” would be a more appropriate title. 

Happy Mother’s Day Love, George  (henceforth HMDLG) is often described as a psycho-sexual thriller but actually it is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera with a few murders and VERY few scenes of blood and gore. Those blood and gore scenes are so over-the-top they are completely at odds with the low-key, almost made-for-tv mildness of the rest of the movie.

This was a theatrical release but is so subdued and slow-paced it seems like a telefilm. You and your friends can keep yourselves entertained making jokes about the recognizable cast members to kill time since the first murder doesn’t happen until we’re more than an hour into this flick.

Mascot FOUR original pics

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Ron Howard IS Johnny, a teenager who has come to town to discover who his birth parents are but who mostly just stands around staring at people and ESPECIALLY at houses. He seems completely taken aback that the townspeople find this somewhat creepy. Johnny is intrigued by the rash of missing persons plaguing the small town and feels they are connected to the secret of his past. Continue reading

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BAD MOVIE: THE BRAIN (1962)

brainTHE BRAIN (1962) – Freddie Francis directed this black & white film, which was the third movie adaptation of Curt Siodmak’s science fiction novel Donovan’s Brain. The characters’ names were changed and the sci fi elements were mixed with detective story elements this time around.

Max Holt, a callous, bloated rich pig of the George Soros/ Koch Family type, is one of the passengers on an airplane which crashes near the laboratory of Dr Peter Corrie (Peter van Eyck). That reclusive doctor and his colleague Dr Frank Shears (played by Bernard Lee himself) have been conducting experiments to see how long they can keep monkey brains alive once removing them from their host body.

masc graveyard smallerCorrie and Shears discover that Max Holt is the only one of the airplane passengers still clinging to life, but just barely, and has no hope of survival. Corrie browbeats Shears into helping him get Holt’s body back to their lab, where they remove his brain to see how long they can keep it alive in one of their fish aquarium containers filled with life-preserving fluids and equipment.

The pair of unethical physicians turn over the rest of Holt’s body for burial while continuing to monitor the preserved brain of Max Holt. Instrument readings indicate there is still thought wave activity in the disembodied organ. Continue reading

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THE VAMPIRA SHOW (1954-1955) TOP MOVIES SHOWN

Vampira

Vampira and her Movie Host show are still remembered fondly here in the present day. For something a little different in a Bad Movie Host item this time around, I’ll follow up my original post about her from long ago with a look at my favorites from the films shown on The Vampira Show.

Like almost all hosts and hostesses, Vampira (Maila Nurmi) had no control over the movies shown and the station saddled her with a bunch of lame detective and mystery films mixed in with the old horror flicks that the program is remembered for.

Here are what I consider to be the most fitting films from the short run of The Vampira Show.

PREVIEW: DIG ME LATER, VAMPIRA (Apr 30th, 1954) – A special devoted to hyping Vampira’s movie show which would start the next night.

THE FACE OF MARBLE (1946) – John “He’s probably even in the Zapruder Film if you look hard enough” Carradine stars as a mad scientist who is trying to use electrical and chemical treatments to revive the recently deceased. Human and animal test subjects come back to life able to walk through solid objects and are controlled by John’s voodoo-practicing maid. William “One-Shot” Beaudine directed and Willie Best was on hand as the butler. Continue reading

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BAD MOVIE: ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES (1983)

For more bad movie reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

attack-of-the-beast-creaturesATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES (1983)- Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following.      

Some passengers from a Transatlantic liner get shipwrecked and marooned on an uncharted island filled with acidic ponds and streams plus a whole tribe of the titular creatures who all look even sillier than the doll that attacked Karen Black in Trilogy of Terror.

And it’s the 1920s for no reason whatsoever! Nothing in the story has Continue reading

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DR. DEATH: TED KNIGHT PLAYED A MOVIE HOST IN THE 1950s

DR. DEATH (195?-195?) – Ted Knight, famous for his roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Too Close for Comfort is among the surprising names who worked in the American folk art of Movie Hosting. Yes, just as Tim Conway played Ghoulardi’s sidekick and Gary Busey was Mazeppa’s sidekick; just as Pat Sajak wrote for Nashville’s Phantom of the Opry, Bill O’Reilly for Uncle Ted and Tom Snyder for Bob Hersh’s Movie Host the Advisor, Ted Knight is in the mix as well.

Though the other figures mentioned above were in the supporting staff, Knight was the host himself as Dr. Death, a Mad Scientist who was also some form of revenant back from the dead. Most sources describe Ted’s Dr. Death character as a combination of Dr. Phibes and the 1930s Mummy.

I often wonder if it was more a case of Knight basing the concept partially on Humphrey Bogart’s “back from the dead Mad Scientist” in The Return of Dr. X from 1939 rather than on Boris Karloff’s Mummy. Whatever the thought process was, as Dr. Death the future Ted Baxter hosted Milkman Movies (one source says Milkman’s Movies), which aired so late at night/ early in the morning that it ended before the crack of dawn, when milkmen of the past did their rounds. Continue reading

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A FILM SERIES EVEN I WON’T REVIEW? YEP.

THE UNCLE GODDAMN MOVIES – Over the years, several people have asked me if there are any weird films that I won’t review. Believe it or not, there are. First would be the decades-old version of A Christmas Carol performed by a class of mentally challenged students.

The production was filmed so the students and their loved ones could have copies but eventually a copy fell into the hands of some fairly cruel-humored people who made many more copies and packaged it as a movie to watch so you could laugh at what they called “retards” acting out A Christmas Carol.

Over time, that film became one of the products sold by the now-defunct mail order site called Blackest Heart Video. So far, it has been the only version of A Christmas Carol that I’ve neither bought nor reviewed.

Cruel as that video offering was, it was only one movie. There is also an entire video series I won’t review – the infamous Uncle Goddamn shorts (see above pics). WARNING: If you don’t want to read the vicious details, don’t click on “continue reading.” Continue reading

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SCARTICIA (1971-1975) BAD MOVIE HOSTESS

SCARTICIA – From 1971 to 1975 Annette Stutzman starred as the witch Scarticia, hostess of Horrible Movie late Saturday nights on WAPT-TV in Jackson, MS.  Stutzman also worked as the personal secretary of the station manager.

Scarticia, the Mistress of the Night, would welcome her viewers every week with the words “Greetings, animals” and close each show by saying “Pleasant nightmares.” The witch’s main sidekick to abuse was her gravedigger Scoop Gravely, played by famous local DJ Ed Hobgood (lower right).

Filling in for Scoop from time to time was Dr. Choke Throttle, a vampire mad scientist played by Marvin Gardens, who also worked on the show’s set, did Scarticia’s makeup and served as cameraman. As usual, the can’t-miss format of Bad Movies presented by a sarcastic host or hostess and their sidekicks became a hit.

Soon, Jackson, MS teens and 20-somethings began holding Horrible Movie viewing parties on Saturday nights. Inevitably, hundreds of fan letters began pouring in every week.

Part of what made Scarticia and company stand out was the way they made many of their Host Segments as parodies of the iconic program Dark Shadows. What comedies like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Soap were to traditional soap operas, those Horrible Movie sketches were to the Gothic horror soap with Barnabas Collins, etc.    Continue reading

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INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973) BAD MOVIE REVIEW

INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973) – Category: More weird than bad, but with a classic premise and execution  

This little honey (sorry) is the perfect example of why I prefer bad movies from the 1980s and earlier: because back then they played them straight and weren’t constantly making self-aware jokes to the audience. If this movie had been made more recently it would have been INTENTIONALLY cheesy and goofy, like the Killer Condom flicks or the Gingerdead Man movies.

Invasion of the Bee Girls plays like a sexploitation version of The X-Files long before that show was on the air. The hero of the movie is a State Department investigator played by cult figure William Smith, known from the tv series Laredo and from countless exploitation flicks like Black Samson to the “Hell’s Angels Fighting the Vietnam War” biker movie The Losers. The film’s screenwriter was THE Nicholas Meyer of Star Trek II and The Seven Percent Solution fame. Herb “The Worm Eaters” Robbins also shows up onscreen.

William Smith’s character, Neil Agar, is sent to California to investigate why a scientist involved in top secret government research dropped dead under suspicious circumstances – he died of apparent sexual exhaustion and people nearby swear they heard a sound like bees buzzing at Continue reading

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B-MOVIE HOST UNCLE TED (1974-1982, 1984-1997)

Edwin L. Raub (1921-1998) served as a paratrooper in World War Two and fought on D-Day & during Operation Market Garden. He was written about by name in Cornelius Ryan’s non-fiction book (later a movie) A Bridge Too Far about the latter action.

After the war, Raub went on to work as a magician, television sales rep, producer and announcer. While working at Scranton, Pennsylvania’s WDAU-TV, he adopted the on-air persona “Uncle Ted” and hosted The Uncle Ted Show performing magic tricks and otherwise entertaining children in the studio and at home.

Graduating to the hour-long Uncle Ted’s Children’s Party, Edwin Raub cemented his position as a local television icon. In 1974, Scranton’s WNEP-TV hired him to use his Uncle Ted persona to host their Friday nights at midnight Bad Movie show Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School, elevating his kiddy-show schtick to the more wry and sarcastic approach of hosting old and bad movies.

For this program, Edwin changed Uncle Ted’s costume to a suit and fez while adopting the air of a vaudeville-level mad museum curator to accommodate this show’s older audience. Uncle Ted performed magic tricks and acted in comedy sketches for his Host Segments.   

In 1975 WNEP reporter Bill O’Reilly, future national figure, did a 9-month stint writing for Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School to supplement his income. Already a jackass, O’Reilly (per his book) clashed with Edwin Raub, whom Bill felt muffed his jokes too many times. Continue reading

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