RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[M.10rda]

INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE (1959):
I had such fun w/ TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN that I figured I'd catch up on what crapmeister Jerry Warren did w/ the project after he bought the U.S. distribution rights. Short answer: Nothing positive! He did spend some non-zero amount of money hiring John Carradine (not in the original) to appear in two introductory shots, addressing the viewer and philosophizing very broadly on the nature of space travel. Someday maybe I'll try to create a list of how many films were re-released with new JC-intros or linking scenes - he must've made a lot of mortgage payments this way! He does a pro job as usual (at least through the 1950s) but unlike his added scenes in HALF-HUMAN, he disappears from sight after his two brief takes - and, more disappointingly, he says nothing about Bigfoot! Actually, this could well be footage that Carradine shot for an entirely different film!   

Anyway, at least he provides voice-over for the remainder of IOTAP... pleasantly though unnecessarily as the original film (unlike HALF-HUMAN's source material) is 97.5% in English anyway! I guess Carradine's narration helps (sort of) explain the new film's next sequence, which appears to be the only other new addition to TERROR...: very attractive brunette Barbara Wilson picks up another paycheck, waking up in a UFO-induced panic in her Hollywood bungalow before running through the nearby streets in a Laura Dern-in-INLAND EMPIRE freak-out and then being taken into police custody. After a psych eval, she's released, gets a one-sided/Godfrey Ho-like phone call from her scientist uncle from TERROR, then flies blithely to Sweden to cavort on the slopes, never again mentioning her extraterrestrial-fueled breakdown.

Warren's negligible additions to TERROR in no way warrant a revisit, but much worse still is what Warren removes....... Wilson's scintillating if wholly gratuitous nude shower scene!!! I guess even a glimpse of boob-n-butt, not to mention a lingering wide-shot through a sheer shower curtain, was still too racy for Americans in '59. Unfortunately it's far-and-away the highlight of TERROR until Bigfoot shows up! I will say one thing for INVASION... - the print is in such poor, grainy condition that it actually makes TERROR's corny Bigfoot suit look much creepier than it does in the pristine restoration of TERROR! But unless you are capable of finding Bigfoot at all creepy (as I am), just watch TERROR instead.
2/5
Either MST or Rifftrax or possibly both have given INVASION their treatment and I'm sure that's worth watching, but I need a Bigfoot break...

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Cry of the Werewolf (1944)
https://youtu.be/KVPVamWH6Yk?si=QoeSj6WrgiSBJ7_U

A researcher has converted a New Orleans house into a museum for vampires, voodoo & werewolves, emphasis on the werewolves, as one may have lived there a generation earlier..... He gets murdered after learning about a secret crypt in the house....
Afterwards, his son & Transylvanian secretary then aid the police in looking for the killer, while looking into a band of gypsies that camps out on the property once a year....

Slow & plodding, even for just an hour.....