When an atomic bomb test triggers the arrival of invaders from another planet who command an army of mutated lizards and insects, one thing is clear: some hack director has combined the dumbest plots of about a dozen b-movies into a single film!
Worst Sellers Ever
Riding the tail end of the great Swamp Boy movie craze of the early 70s (see: Columbo the Swamp Boy, McCloud the Swamp Boy, Maude the Swamp Boy) Zindy the Swamp Boy effectively ended the genre. And for good reason: it violated one of the sacred tenets of the swamp boy genre: do not cast the annoying little kid who played Zindy as your swamp boy.
Beast of the Yellow Night! No, it’s not a cleverly-named Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment, it’s a movie! A movie about a man named Langdon and his deal with the devil. Langdon’s deal doesn’t involve a fiddle made of gold, it’s more about turning into a monster with a face straight out of the mask section at Spencer’s Gifts. Also the devil is not so much the traditional “pitchfork and horns” type, he’s more of a fat ghost with a bad hairline who travels with his own fog machine. And the fog machine seems to break down a lot. But hey, are you a fan of “yellow nights”??? Because the movie doesn’t actually have any of those.
It’s packed with everything you want in a vintage monster movie: giant spiders, dancing girls, spider-girls, DANCING spider-girls, mad scientists, square-jawed test pilots, and minor characters based on horribly dated ethnic stereotypes (we’re looking at you, Pepe and Woo the “houseboy”)! And, of course, nonstop wall-to-wall flamenco guitar. It’s like everyone says, “Flamenco guitar: why have a little when you could have an insane amount that is clearly way too much?”
He wears a mask. And little else. Yet he strolls casually through the halls of government, convives with the world’s power brokers and fights international crime bare-chested with his moderate wrestling skills. He’s Neutron, the Atomic Superman! *
- Actual super-powers may not exist.
Yambaó! No, it’s not a dopey social media app you’d never heard of until it was purchased by Google for billions of dollars. Nor is it a miracle cleaning solution sold in 90s infomercials for only $19.99, including a bonus travel-sized tube of Yambaó. Yambaó, quite simply, is Yambaó, and there’s nothing else quite like Yambaó. It’s also entirely possible we just enjoy saying Yambaó.
You know that feeling when you’re being chased by a murderous re-animated giant, and you’re like, “Where’s he FROM? What middle school did he go to? I wonder what he’s all about?” but there’s no time for small talk because he’s a murderous giant trying to murder you? Well, good news, we’ve found a movie that tackles this awkward situation head-on: Giant from the Unknown!
Bela Lugosi! An ugly robot! The power of invisibility! A military intelligence officer romancing an ambitious reporter! All of these exciting-sounding elements are undeniably contained within the runtime of The Phantom Creeps!
Follow-up to the rarely seen, totally imaginary films Ennui at Eightkiller and Nausea at Ninekiller, Terror at Tenkiller really brings the goods! And by “the goods” we mostly mean there’s a character named Tor in it. Seriously, at this point the Venn diagram of “movies featuring a character or actor named Tor” and “movies we have riffed” must be approaching a perfect circle. Why does this keep happening? We don’t know, but you can be sure an insane scientist in some B movie is hard at work on the answer, and that his name is Tor!
You expect a movie called The Revenge of Doctor X to have two things: a character named Dr. X and said character enacting some sort of revenge. Were it to lack a Dr. X, you might assume this was a careless oversight. Were it to lack revenge, you might be slightly upset, but perhaps hopeful that it instead replaced it with something comparably exciting, such as blackmail or bobsledding. Were a movie called The Revenge of Doctor X to lack BOTH revenge and Dr. X however, there could be only one explanation: Ed Wood was involved.