THE GIANT WOMAN

         The giant woman from ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN. She was the only good feature in a movie filled with schlock special effects and a soap opera plot.

THE CASTLE OF DOOM (1934)

     The skull of the Vampire Woman after death from the movie CASTLE OF DOOM (1934). This film was a re edited version of VAMPYR dubbed into English.

TOR JOHNSON ATTACKS.

Tor Johnson as the zombie in Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE

     Happy Halloween everyone!

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE- THE 8MM VERSION.

                                           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUSrvavBZ0I
       Okay kids let me tell you about a time before you were born. In those days there was no DVD or Blu Ray disks. In fact there was no VHS machines like the one you saw at your grandparent's place.
   In those days if you wanted to see a movie you went to a movie theater or saw whatever came on the Television. And what they had on TV was often cut up to remove nudity, gore and four letter words. Also they would cut a two hour film down to fit a 90 time slot and still have room to show a bunch of used car commercials.
   If you wanted to collect movies you had to buy a 16mm or an 8mm projector and buy a print of your own to play on it.
   Well prints of 16mm and even 8mm features costed a lot. So what the movie dealers started to do was to make and sell condensed versions of feature motion pictures. A feature of 90 minutes to 2 hours would be chopped down to about 9 minutes.
   Castle Films was the most popular seller of these short prints. And they did a pretty good job of editing the movies. their print of FRANKENSTEIN is cut to 9 minutes and it still flows well story wise and has all the major scenes. 
   Castle Films and many of the other home movie sellers had sound prints of the movies but they also sold silent prints for a cheaper price to people with silent  projectors.
   The infamous PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE was sold as a 8 minute movie by some company in the United Kingdom. They sold both a sound and silent version. The silent version is the sound version without audio. Most of the home movie companies would add subtitles to their silent version but this company did not and it was just as well since there is very little talking in this version which has mostly action scenes.
   This 8 minute version of PLAN 9 opens with the saucers flying over Hollywood and then there is the scene in which Mrs Trent is chased in the graveyard by both Bela Lugosi and Dr Tom Mason. The scene of Tor Johnson rising from the grave as a zombie also plays and Vampira appears in a few shots wandering around the graveyard. The police then show and and fight with the aliens and the spaceship blows up after take off. Criswell then appears for a few seconds as a dark out line with THE END superimposed over him.You can see this 8mm print of PLAN 9 on You Tube with this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUSrvavBZ0I and you can find other 8mm digest prints there by typing Castle Films 8mm in the browser.
  
   
   
     

SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2013

     The latest San Diego Comic Con (AKA Comic Con International) will be happening next month.
     For the first time since 1975 I will not be going.
     It has become almost imposible to get a ticket to the event. I use to stand in line to buy a pass at the door with hundreds of others. It was unthinkable that there would be no more tickets at anypoint.
     It has also become almost impossible to get a cheap place to stay in San Diego during the Con. When I first started to go to the Con you could rent a room for yourself at the host hotels (Which were nice places) for under 20 dollars a night. Later on when the rooms got a little more costly a group of say 8 to 10 people would rent a room for say four people and then all cram into it. I did not mind sleeping on the floor. I was younger and I only slept for a few hours before going off to a movie in the middle of the night at the Con all night film screenings.
    The Comic Con use to be a nerd event for nerds by nerds. Things changed as the general public took notice of the Con. This was because a lot of the big Hollywood studios took notice of the Con and started to stage panels and host big name stars at the Con.
     The Comic Con became a cool event to go to and be seen. Tickets to the con now disappear in a few minutes once they are offtered online.
     Last year I got to go for one day. I spent the day inside the Convention Center and got to see a few panels and go to the World's Worst Cartoon Show.
     The next day I hung around outside the Convention Center and watched the people wandering around in cosplay costumes.
     If I still lived in San Diego I would still hang around outside the Convention Center to watch the crowds outside. I now live too far from San Diego to just go up to watch the crowds.
     But this year I will not even be going to the Con to do that.
     I will be watching videos of the Con on You Tube shot by others tho.  Not the same as being there but I will get to see what is going on over there.
     Good luck to all you who did get a ticket and a room. Be sure to upload your videos to You Tube.
    

THE WEREWOLF OF EGYPT

          This is a screen capture from the Egyptian movie HARAM ALEK aka SHAME ON YOU, HAVE MERCY, ISMAIL YASSIN MEET FRANKENSTEIN and ISMAIL AND ABDEL MEET FRANKENSTEIN. This film was a copy of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEETS FRANKENSTEIN.
          For years I heard of this film and I figured that I would never get to see it. Then came along home video recorders, cheap DVDs and You Tube. Now you can find rare movies like this if you keep looking around for it.
          Happy hunting rare film fans.

WHAT HAPPEN TO THE GRINDHOUSE THEATERS?

The CASINO THEATER now an ice cream and candy shop.

     In the mid 1980's I use to go to some old movie theaters in downtown San Diego. I got to see the last of the grindhouse movies as they call them now. Back then they were just trashy movies.
     A theater I went to a lot was the CASINO on 5th. It was a run down theater. I saw movies there like THE ZOMBIE ISLAND MASSACRE, BLOOD HOOK, CREEPOZOIDS, THE HOWLING PART 2, and GODZILLA 1985.
    A cross the street from the Casino was the Bijou and couple stores over from the Casino was the Azteca which showed adult movies. The Plaza Theater was a few blocks away where the Horton Plaza Mall now stands. The Plaza was sandwiched between two other rundown theaters. I do not remember the names of those theaters. Down the block from the Plaza was a theater that was open for only a few weeks that ran Chinese movies.
      There was a handful of other theaters around the area. One theater was open every night till 5AM in the morning. I am sure the homeless of downtown slept there. Cheap grindhouses often double as motels for the homeless. At one 24 hour adult theater the snack bar sold soup. I'll sure it was for the homeless so that they could get something better than snackbar junk food to eat.
     The home video recorder was the coffin nail for the grindhouse movie theaters.  People stayed home to watch sleazy movies instead of going to rundown theaters in unsafe parts of town.
     Last week I was in downtown San Diego and wandered around for awhile. I stopped off at an ice cream place that use to be the Casino theater. What use to be a rundown theater that showed trashy movies now sold tasty ice cream sundaes and candies. I had a sundae and enjoyed it.
     I asked the hostess there if anyone ever asked for the old movie theater. She was surprised when I told her that I use to go there to watch 3rd rate movies.