- Welcome to Badmovies.org Forum.
Recent posts
#11
Bad Movies / Re: RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie...
Last post by Dr. Whom - Today at 09:45:03 AMThe Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)
aka The Blood Demon, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum, Blood of the Virgins and Castle of the Walking Dead. No idea why it has so many English titles. The German orginal is Die Schlangengrube und das Pendulum, which translates to 'the snake pit and the pendulum'.
This is a German answer to the Hammer movies. It even has Christopher Lee as 'Count Regula', who seeks immortality by absorbing the blood of virgins. He is executed but comes back for revenge.
I liked it better than a regular Hammer. The action is very tame, even more so than in a Hammer movie. Lex Barker mostly stands about looking manly and dashing. It does have a lot more atmosphere. For one thing, it is actually filmed in Central Europe and they make good use of picturesque locations. I can imagine if you see this at an impressionable age, it can become a childhood favourite.
The count certainly didn't hold back when it came to installing portcullises in his castle.
aka The Blood Demon, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum, Blood of the Virgins and Castle of the Walking Dead. No idea why it has so many English titles. The German orginal is Die Schlangengrube und das Pendulum, which translates to 'the snake pit and the pendulum'.
This is a German answer to the Hammer movies. It even has Christopher Lee as 'Count Regula', who seeks immortality by absorbing the blood of virgins. He is executed but comes back for revenge.
I liked it better than a regular Hammer. The action is very tame, even more so than in a Hammer movie. Lex Barker mostly stands about looking manly and dashing. It does have a lot more atmosphere. For one thing, it is actually filmed in Central Europe and they make good use of picturesque locations. I can imagine if you see this at an impressionable age, it can become a childhood favourite.
The count certainly didn't hold back when it came to installing portcullises in his castle.
#12
Bad Movies / Re: The Killer Tomato movies
Last post by Dr. Whom - Today at 02:23:37 AMThe first one is wonderfully inept, but it is carried along by its unflinching commitment to silliness.
I did see the second one, but I only have vague memories of it. They did smooth over some of the rough edges of the first, but that lost the charm of the original. It did have Karen Mistal in it, who then went on to do Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.
I did see the second one, but I only have vague memories of it. They did smooth over some of the rough edges of the first, but that lost the charm of the original. It did have Karen Mistal in it, who then went on to do Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.
#13
Off Topic Discussion / Re: Random Thought Thread Part...
Last post by LilCerberus - October 16, 2026, 10:37:33 PMI wonder if that new Tesla Roadster can get you out when you're stuck in the mud.....
#14
Off Topic Discussion / Re: The Random Crap From Aroun...
Last post by LilCerberus - October 16, 2026, 07:53:55 PMPumpkin Song - Jack Stauber
https://youtu.be/KdalB5nxSrU?si=CmrIuJxXCwgnO2ov
https://youtu.be/KdalB5nxSrU?si=CmrIuJxXCwgnO2ov
#15
Off Topic Discussion / Re: Memes n' stuff of the day
Last post by LilCerberus - October 16, 2026, 07:30:06 PM
#16
Games / Re: Answer the question with a...
Last post by bob - October 16, 2026, 06:32:37 PMthe first order of business:
Where's the keymaster?
Where's the keymaster?
#18
Bad Movies / Re: The Killer Tomato movies
Last post by bob - October 16, 2026, 06:29:00 PMI own the first one
it's okish, seems like it would be more fun to watch with the right crowd
I never saw any of the sequels
I do remember seeing the Killer Tomatoes cartoon as a youngster
it's okish, seems like it would be more fun to watch with the right crowd
I never saw any of the sequels
I do remember seeing the Killer Tomatoes cartoon as a youngster
#19
Good Movies / Re: Recent Viewings, Part 2
Last post by M.10rda - October 16, 2026, 01:48:53 PMI'm ugly, not athletic, don't have much money, and I've got a crummy personality. Nevertheless I often console myself that I'm a smart guy... until on occasion I watch a movie like this one...
IL MEDIUM [THE MEDIUM] (1951):
...And I simply have no idea what to make of it. To be fair to the movie, this might be due to user error; to be fair to myself, IL MEDIUM is an opera, so it's 99% sung, in English but occasionally w/ eccentric phrasing, and maybe the copy I watched had subpar audio, and there were no subtitles. In any case, I think MEDIUM is more or less a good movie that left me confused and ultimately cold.
Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti wrote this opera for the stage - maybe in English, as it debuted on Broadway in the 40s. Then he filmed it/directed it in Italy, w/ actors w/ Anglo names and Italian names all singing in English. It won the Oscar for Best Original Score (even though he wrote it originally for the stage) and it also won some kind of special prize at Cannes. A lot of reviewers on the internet seem to like/admire it. Yet again (per my current Halloween cold streak), it's a pseudo-supernatural semi-thriller where the horror elements are ultimately kind of irrelevant.
MEDIUM does have one truly gorgeous and very freaky sequence, early on, which lasts only five or so minutes. It takes place during the title character's fake seance, and what we see and hear is presumably what her customers/victims feel or believe rather than what is literally happening. This sequence is... phenomenal, and totally could exist in a David Lynch film. MEDIUM was edited by Alexander Hammid, who was Maya Deren's husband and collaborator, so maybe he also assisted Menotti here.
The rest of the film builds from this sequence yet is never as good. The Medium suddenly gets spooked during the seance and then suffers a bout of guilty conscience about bilking those who have suffered tragedies. Her teen daughter and adopted (?) son assist in the charade, but the Medium (who looks like a chubby Angela Lansbury or a standard Shelly Winters) begins to suspect that the angelic son (who looks like Prince Rogers Nelson) is plotting against her somehow. The last ten or so minutes is mildly suspenseful and then there's a shock twist ending that was entirely predictable yet what it was supposed to mean confounded me.
I tried to research MEDIUM and read several reviews about it. None mention the possibility (which seemed obvious to me, at least from the seance scene) that the son actually has some telekinetic abilities. Some reviews suggest that the Medium's ambivalence towards the son is because he's queer-coded. (Menotti was gay.) That's sort of interesting but it doesn't help make sense of the dramatically mystifying and rather flat finale. The seance scene is a 5/5, the movie overall, uhhh... 3.5/5?
Coincidentally I watched the first three hours of Mike Flanagan's CARRIE a day or two after I watched MEDIUM. Stills of the actress who played the Medium appear briefly as a voice-over (Carla Gugino, I think) discusses the events of this film as if they were based on a true event. I can't find any evidence that this was true and it seems that Menotti wrote it from whole cloth. That's a fun Easter Egg on Flanagan's part, though.
IL MEDIUM [THE MEDIUM] (1951):
...And I simply have no idea what to make of it. To be fair to the movie, this might be due to user error; to be fair to myself, IL MEDIUM is an opera, so it's 99% sung, in English but occasionally w/ eccentric phrasing, and maybe the copy I watched had subpar audio, and there were no subtitles. In any case, I think MEDIUM is more or less a good movie that left me confused and ultimately cold.
Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti wrote this opera for the stage - maybe in English, as it debuted on Broadway in the 40s. Then he filmed it/directed it in Italy, w/ actors w/ Anglo names and Italian names all singing in English. It won the Oscar for Best Original Score (even though he wrote it originally for the stage) and it also won some kind of special prize at Cannes. A lot of reviewers on the internet seem to like/admire it. Yet again (per my current Halloween cold streak), it's a pseudo-supernatural semi-thriller where the horror elements are ultimately kind of irrelevant.
MEDIUM does have one truly gorgeous and very freaky sequence, early on, which lasts only five or so minutes. It takes place during the title character's fake seance, and what we see and hear is presumably what her customers/victims feel or believe rather than what is literally happening. This sequence is... phenomenal, and totally could exist in a David Lynch film. MEDIUM was edited by Alexander Hammid, who was Maya Deren's husband and collaborator, so maybe he also assisted Menotti here.
The rest of the film builds from this sequence yet is never as good. The Medium suddenly gets spooked during the seance and then suffers a bout of guilty conscience about bilking those who have suffered tragedies. Her teen daughter and adopted (?) son assist in the charade, but the Medium (who looks like a chubby Angela Lansbury or a standard Shelly Winters) begins to suspect that the angelic son (who looks like Prince Rogers Nelson) is plotting against her somehow. The last ten or so minutes is mildly suspenseful and then there's a shock twist ending that was entirely predictable yet what it was supposed to mean confounded me.
I tried to research MEDIUM and read several reviews about it. None mention the possibility (which seemed obvious to me, at least from the seance scene) that the son actually has some telekinetic abilities. Some reviews suggest that the Medium's ambivalence towards the son is because he's queer-coded. (Menotti was gay.) That's sort of interesting but it doesn't help make sense of the dramatically mystifying and rather flat finale. The seance scene is a 5/5, the movie overall, uhhh... 3.5/5?
Coincidentally I watched the first three hours of Mike Flanagan's CARRIE a day or two after I watched MEDIUM. Stills of the actress who played the Medium appear briefly as a voice-over (Carla Gugino, I think) discusses the events of this film as if they were based on a true event. I can't find any evidence that this was true and it seems that Menotti wrote it from whole cloth. That's a fun Easter Egg on Flanagan's part, though.
#20
Good Movies / Re: Recent theatrical viewings
Last post by M.10rda - October 16, 2026, 12:32:18 PMThanks, Rev! You weren't kidding about "one week only", but there is a theater playing it in downtown Buffalo and one south of the city (the other side from my northern neighborhood). Nice that the distributor didn't forget us!