| Recently, while browsing Music World for cheap movies, I came across a cardboard stand groaning with $5.99 DVDs. A deal to be sure, but each disc also contained at least four complete films. The two genres available were horror and science fiction including a disc that contained all 12 chapters of the classic Republic serial Radar Men From The Moon (1952). Hell yeah! I wound up buying two discs – the serial, and something that seems to be called Great Horror Classics Vol. 6. I say "seems to be" because the only place this title appears is on that annoying security sticker on the top of the box – the one you have to peel off or slit open in order to get at the movie.
Radar Men From The Moon is terrific retro fun, with Commando Cody using his jet-pack to defeat an imminent invasion by dastardly Moon Men. Ludicrous inanities abound. The astronauts lean back in their office swivel chairs to simulate the effects of the crushing G-forces during takeoff. The token female character is brought along to the moon because she’s the only one who can cook. The Moon Men’s deadly atomic pistols take five minutes to reload after each shot. (Perhaps muzzle-loading muskets would be faster?) Still, some of this stuff is genuinely exciting, such as the end of episode two. The good guys hide in a cave where the enemy tank can’t follow, so the Moon Men simply melt the entire mountain with their ray gun!
Let’s move on to the contents of Great Horror Classics Vol. 6, which has four cheesy horror flicks crammed onto one side of a DVD. Snowbeast (1977) is a lame made-for-TV movie in which we barely get to see the monster. So is feature number two, Moon of the Wolf (1972). These turkeys aren’t the reason I bought the disc.
The Devil’s Nightmare (1971), on the other hand, is worth writing about. I already owned this kinky Euro-horror flick on VHS as Succubus, but it was clear that my copy was a censored one. Picture this: as everybody prepares to spend the night in the spooky old castle, the two hottest women in the cast volunteer to share a room. They lounge around in their bras and panties, eyeing one another suggestively. Feminine, manicured fingers gently glide over lacy underthings, and then, a jagged edit takes us to another room. Aack! Why? Why chop out a scene of tender lesbian nuzzling when an earlier scene of a baby being murdered onscreen is left intact? What kind of mentality is OK with baby stabbing, but balks at a little bit of topless smooching?
Fortunately, the disc appears to be uncut, and the mild sex and nudity so obviously missing from Succubus is joyfully restored. The movie as a whole is very entertaining and makes a compelling reason to shell out $5.99 for this DVD. The print itself seems to be stolen from the Redemption Video release, as it even includes Redemption’s intro, with naked British models writhing around in fake blood, spouting pretentious gothic nonsense that has nothing to do with the film. Lots of bargain DVD distributors have been sued into oblivion recently for distributing films they didn’t own the rights to, so I hope that the guys at the Platinum Disc Corporation know what they’re getting into. Better buy your copy now, just in case.
The fourth film on the DVD is the indescribably ludicrous Night Train to Terror (1985). This horror anthology takes place on a chugging locomotive that contains what seems to be a terrible ’80s music video. Fresh-faced teens wearing layered pastel outfits (help me – I’m having a Jem flashback) stare directly into the camera, waggle their shoulders at us and sing the same godawful song over and over and over. Meanwhile, in another compartment, God and Satan are having a gentlemanly argument concerning the fate of several doomed souls. I swear that I’m not making this up.
Anyhoo, the three short stories that God and Satan flash back to make up the meat of the film. These tales are actually three full-length movies that have been edited down into bite-sized, incoherent chunks. Two of them are available elsewhere in their complete versions, as Death Wish Club (1983) and The Nightmare Never Ends (a.k.a. Cataclysm) (1981). The other one is salvaged footage from an unfinished project. Each tale is awash with nudity, violence, bad acting, confusing narration and silly animated monsters that were added after the fact. In between segments we’re treated to more breakdancing from the annoying teens, and more beard-stroking philosophy from the two supernatural beings in the next compartment. At the end of the movie, everybody dies and the train ascends into heaven. Wha? |
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