Attack of the 50 Ft Memories

I think I probably started watching horror films the day I was born.

My childhood memories go back quite far - I can remember things that happened well before I started school. I don't remember the first horror movie I saw - in fact, I don't remember not knowing who Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Vincent Price were. (I also don't remember not knowing who Elvis was, but that's a story for another day).

Consquently, I don't remember the first time I saw Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, Hammer films - the list goes on. They just have been always a part of my life and the beginning of awareness of when my life started. And that makes me pretty damn happy.


But for whatever reason, I DO remember the first time I saw the Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. I also remember my mom announcing with great excitement that it was going to be on TV. Also extremely unusual for me, is that I remember most of the plot as well. I'm not sure why the first time I saw this particular movie is so memorable to me - and for whatever reason, I haven't had the opportunity to see it in a very long time.

I also remember asking my mom (probably more than once) where the heck the 50 ft woman was when the movie started. Yes, my short attention span was already well in place. Show me the monsters, bitches!!!!


Our movie begins with the evening news and the report of some 'strange red fireball' that's been making its way around the planet.

Using sophisticated state of the art 'Finger Technology', the reporter shows us on his trusty globe all the places that the fireball has been seen, and then just by dragging his finger from the last place it was seen to North America, he's somehow able to tell us the exact time it will show up in our country.
The reason you don't see this spage age technology anymore is because the government bought it so they can use it in secret.

The movie wastes no time getting to the action as we see Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes) driving and screaming down the road. Guess this is what has her all messed up:

And this ain't helping matters either:

She runs back to town to find the sheriff and tell everyone what she's seen- of course nobody believes her. She also thinks that the giant tried to take the huge diamond around her neck. They just want to give her some coffee. You know us women, if we get upset, we're probably just drunk!

Then we find out what set her off to begin with - her jerk of a husband Harry (William Hudson) is at the local bar playing kissy face with his girlfriend, Honey (Yvette Vickers):

We also find out in short order that Nancy: has 50 million dollars, and has been in a sanitarium at least once. Well, you know what that means! Harry and his girlie friend decide in order to be together, all they need to do is just push her over the brink, lock her in 'the nuthouse', and then they can be together and enjoy Nancy's money. But they decide to play it all low key - which explains EXACTLY why they're discussing their plan in a crowded bar hanging all over each other.

The doctor comes in the morning, says it's all due to 'mental exhaustion' and alcohol, prescribes drugs and says another trip to the sanitarium would probably kill her. But somehow I'm not too worried about Nancy, a chick that dresses this great isn't going to have the wool pulled over her eyes easily:

Oh, look it's time for the news again:This man is completely incapable of connecting the dots.

Hey, it's the same dude with the magic finger! But now he's got some REAL news, he's reporting that Nancy (who we find out has the Star of India Diamond around her neck) is seeing flying saucers and alien giants! But, he reassures us, it's probably nothing - it's probably just a side effect of all the DRINKING she does.

Uh - didn't this dude just tell us that a big flying FREAKING FIREBALL was directly on its way to us???

Nancy decides she needs to prove to everyone that she's not crazy or drunk. She tells her butler to get the car and her revolver, because we're going on an alien hunt!
No surprise, they're successful:I'm sure at this point, the preschooler me was all, That is NOT a fifty foot LADY!!!!

Well, turns out I still had to wait through the rest of the story which involves radioactivity (because of course it does, things are growing out of control, people!)

And then we see a REALLY big hand......and Nancy's crack medical team deciding the only thing they can do is chain her up and sedate her.Finally, FINALLY, after more sedatives and nursing care and blaming all of Nancy's issues on reaching the 'age of maturity' (YES! GO MENOPAUSE!!!!) and an investigation of the spaceship which leads to cool shots like this:


Yes, FINALLY, in the whole last TEN MINUTES of the movie, we're rewarded with a REAL. LIVE. FIFTY. FOOT. WOMAN.

That looks like shit.



Lord knows my little black heart beats fast every time I see the zipper in the monster's back - and I will take a cheesy rubber space alien any day over a CGI anything....but even as much as I heart that kind of thing - I have to admit that 50 Ft Woman is really, really disappointing. For one thing, I can see right through her, and the same shot of her walking is used about a half dozen times.

Although there are times that props were built and she looks pretty damn righteous:

However, sometimes the props are pretty shiteous - as in this scene, when it's obvious that the prop that's supposed to be her husband is so badly made that it's always kept out of frame - except for this shot when it's very clear that the fake body doesn't even have feet:But I'm not ripping on the movie - I still had a great time watching it and now I finally understand why I was so impatient about when the big tall lady was going to show up. I remembered a lot about this movie but I definitely didn't remember that she was only in the last ten minutes of the movie. It would have been great if they'd given her even five more minutes to really tear up the crappy town that just wanted to give her coffee and blame everything on her hot flashes!

All in all, a perfect movie for a Saturday afternoon, and a great trip down memory lane.

The Deaths of Ian Stone

'The 8 Films to Die For' Series....don't you wish they were better? I do. Granted, I've probably seen less than half....but I've yet to see one that really impressed me. Some of them are better than others, and some of them have good concepts that unfortunately lose steam half way through. I'd have to place Ian Stone in that latter category.

The film starts out interestingly - we have Ian Stone (Mike Vogel) whose life is cut short when he's attacked by something very dark and scary on his way home from a hockey game.

After being brutally attacked (and killed, we assume) he suddenly wakes up at his desk at work....and isn't that blond woman at his office the woman that was just his girlfriend when he was playing hockey? Then Ian goes home to a different woman (played by the terrific Jamie Murray) who he's definitely involved with now. The mystery grows as Ian tries to recount his glory days playing hockey by showing her his yearbook - only the person in the team picture wearing Ian's number isn't Ian at all...

Ian tries to figure out why he's having memories that don't appear to have actually happened to him....and just when I was really starting to get into the story, a mysterious creepy man shows up with all kinds of warnings for Ian that he's about to be killed, and that he has been killed before.....in fact, every day for a long time - and then he starts a new life over.

Instead of just letting the story unfold, and letting Ian (and the audience) unravel this mystery slowly, the movie proceeds to spill out the whole story about halfway through. Leaving a) no mystery left at all, and therefore b) not much else that can happen beyond a whole lot of killing Ian a few more times and some running and screaming. And oh yeah, Mr. Mysterious Man tells Ian exactly who he is and what he has to do to fix everything.

And that's pretty much it. Except that it goes on about an hour and a half. The CGI effects become annoying, and I didn't even really care too much about the outcome once the mystery had been taken away.

I'll continue to watch more of the '8 Films' series - but my expectations are pretty low at this point.

High point of the DVD -the extras (which were the webisodes from the Miss After Dark HorrorFest 2007 contest). More fun than the movie and a lot more suspenseful.

-Mother Firefly

Zombiemania

Just finished streaming this short documentary on zombie films.

Even though it says a 'who's who of the zombie world', it really is more of a tribute to George Romero and his influence on the American zombie film. And there ain't NOTHING wrong with that.







There's some discussion of what zombie films were like before Night of the Living Dead, how NOLD changed zombies on film forever, a short fast vs.slow zombie debate (the film seems to come out on the slow side of the argument), the evolution of zombie makeup, and a fun discussion about how those of us that love the zombie also LOVE to plan out how we're going to survive the onslaught of the undead.



A lot of it was stuff I'd heard before, but the way the interviews were done and the context in which they were put made most of it seem new. If you're a big fan of Romero, Savini, Nicotero, and friends, then you'll probably enjoy this documentary.

nom nom nom

However, if you want more information about zombie films from other countries and how those filmmakers were influenced by American films - or vice versa - well, you're going to have to wait till someone makes that film, because this ain't it.

But it's a very well done documentary, and it covers a lot of ground in a short period of time (56 minutes! My short attention span thanks you!) and maybe best of all, it's directed by a woman-Donna Davies. See - the ladies love zombies too! Yay!

The documentary also spent some time on this Canadian film for some reason. For reasons I'm sure will become apparent, I. MUST. SEE. THIS:

OMG. OMG. OMG. (Adds it to Netflix list)

It was also fun because just when you think you know it all about Romero films, hey, you turn around and learn some more. Watching this made me want to sit down and watch them all -Night to Dawn to Day to Land to Diary....and then throw in Knightriders just because I wanna. Because any day is a good day to watch men joust on motorcycles.

Especially when those men include Tom Savini without a shirt on.
Oh YEAH.

Uncle George, you totally ROCK!

Word to your mother.

Ice-Ice-Zombie,
Mother Firefly

Still Around

Wow.....I can't believe it's been an entire week since I posted. It feels especially weird after getting in the habit of writing every day. But - the end of the semester (the LAST semester!) is winding down, and I'm really committed to finishing everything that I possibly can before Thanksgiving. That's about three weeks before the official end of the semester - but I'm especially motivated to get all the school obligations finished up before the end of the month because....

I HAVE A JOB!!!

The whole job hunting process took about twice as long as I anticipated - after all, it wasn't that long ago that it seemed like my colleagues were picking jobs off trees....... I'll be starting orientation the first week in December - so I'd really like to start knowing that my school obligations are fulfilled.


So I've been busy in the last week organizing, planning out the rest of the semester, and putting the final touches on Version 3.0 of my clinical project. Then I got the good news, took a day to celebrate, and then woke up with a head cold....and spent the day watching football and napping.


The only thing I've had time to watch since Halloween was a Dimension Extreme film called Botched.

Stephen Dorff plays a thief who needs to do one last job to work off his debts to his boss. The job he thought would do just that ends going horribly wrong, so he's sent to Russia to steal a precious artifact. Since it's his last chance to put things right - or pay the consequences, we're pretty sure it's not going to go smoothly.
He's paired with a couple of Russian brothers - one painfully inept and the other with some real anger issues - who don't make the job any easier. The artifact is located on the top floor of a very tall building. The ride up goes just fine but the problems begin on the ride back down....

They end up with a full elevator of people who they get stranded with on a mysterious floor of the hotel.....the thieves attempt to take control by creating a hostage situation - but it's soon apparent that someone else is calling all the shots. Just who are these people they think they've taken hostage? Is that really hotel security on the phone? And why are there portraits on the wall made of human skin??

I thought Botched was fun - I didn't think too hard about it, and I liked the vibe of black humor that was going on. I also liked the chemistry between Stephen Dorff and Jamie Murray. She was also on the second season of Dexter - and I thought she did a great job as well. It was refreshing to see a female character who wasn't falling apart or relying on the man to figure everything out. Smart and pretty women in horror films - who knew?

I was curious to see if she'd done any other horror films, and through an IMDB search, I found that she did 'The Deaths of Ian Stone' (from the 8 Films to Die For series) and she's rumored to have a part in an upcoming film called Devil's Playground. IMDB says the movie is about a man's search for a cure to the zombie apocalypse - while he is slowly becoming a zombie himself. Could be interesting.

Well, I hope that life has a better balance this week, and it's not all focused on work... I did just get a shipment of horror films (via the Amazon horror sale) so I'm anxious to get into those. I have a few more Something Weird double features, a few classic films, and a couple of foreign goodies as well........

Happy Happy Joy Joy,
Mother Firefly

It's Time for Something Weird Part II

I said that my 'Something Weird' Post would be part 1 of 2....so here I am to make good on my threat....er, um, promise.

I have to warn you, though.....the films on this double feature makes The Beast of Camp Sunshine look like ....well, an actual movie.

But we don't need much to put monsters and boobies in the same movie, right? And let me assure you, besides those two things, there's not a whole lot else going on in these movies.



In Kiss Me Quick, we have Sterilox - an alien on a mission to take an Earth woman back to his planet. He ends up in the castle of Dr. Breedlove, a scientist who just happens to have a bunch of half naked women go-go dancing and stripping. Thank god for serendipity.
So the movie goes like this: Dr Breedlove shows a 'specimen' to Sterilox - said 'specimen' has a scene with stripping, go-go dancing, or both - and then Sterilox says he's not sure if said 'specimen' will do. Push repeat.



















Some of this is kind of amusing in a cheesy and campy kind of way - I found the women doing topless go-go dancing while trying to balance half full beakers of liquid especially funny.


And every once in a while, a monster shows up for fun:


The worst part of the movie? The conversations between Sterilox and Dr. Breedlove. They're annoying as hell and really repetitive. For me, the movie was fun in a campy sort of time-capsule way - but even that got old after twenty minutes.

Movie #2, House on Bare Mountain, actually makes a small attempt to weave a story around the monsters and topless women.

We have Granny Good who runs a school for girls, where we get to see women educated in the best way possible - which evidently involves reading the dictionary topless. She's also got a werewolf for some reason or another:Werewolves are apparently good at making moonshine - or this one is, anyway, because that's what Granny Good's got hers doing.

We also spend an EXTENSIVE amount of time learning about the educational program that Granny has her girls on. It's very well rounded, including an exercise program that involves lots of jumping:

The fine arts:

And hygiene:

The end of the movie culminates in a costume party, spiked punch, and the cops trying to bust Granny making moonshine.

One of the undercover cops discovers there's a werewolf in the basement:

How is it that Frankenstein always manages to show up in these movies?

Some of the girls have to make their own costumes.

You get a quarter if you can tell me WHAT IN THE HELL THIS SHIT IS:
(And yes, I promise you, that's the costume she made for the party)

In the end, it isn't a party until Frankenstein is swinging from the rafters:
I'm pretty sure that the Phantom of the Opera put him up to that.

These campy little 'nudie-cutie' films are innocent fun - it's interesting, if nothing else, to see what used to be considered sexy or titillating, and how society's views on that have changed over the years. I enjoyed the other set more, especially The Monster of Camp Sunshine - the whole nudist camp - mutant monster storyline really amused me. All the films are really just vehicles to feature topless women, with the difference being that Beast/Camp Sunshine also extoll the virtues of the nudist camp and how wonderfully free it is to be naked. Kiss/House doesn't have any such pretense - they just want to show you naked women and get them to dance or shower.

Overall, it was fun to watch these movies as a little time capsule of an era gone by. Even though I can't put these movies over as some kind of forgotten classics, I'm still glad that there's a company like SW out there who takes the time to preserve them and package them in a great way. SW always packs their releases full of extras - including short films that go along with the theme of the movies.

Monster a Go-Go,
Mother Firefly

Paranormal Activity

Hello there......is your post Halloween hangover still lingering? I'll try to talk softly and not make too much noise....

Welcome. Welcome to the blog of the last person in in the blogosphere to see Paranormal Activity. I've spent the last couple of weeks avoiding reviews, previews, even skipping my brother's review over at Project Blue. I truly wanted my experience of the movie to be as untainted as possible. The only thing I had seen was the first trailer that came out - which was composed mostly of audience reactions - and I even turned that off before it was finished. So in honor of that, I'm going to attempt to give you my impressions without giving anything away about the movie.

I really tried my best to set aside all the hoopla and just focus on the film in front of me. So my review of the film itself is going to be short and sweet, but my review of my EXPERIENCE is going to be somewhat more extensive.

First of all - AWESOME job with a limited budget, cast, effects, sets.....you don't get much more basic than this movie. So huge, huge kudos to the filmmakers for doing what the big studios with a hella lot more cash can't manage to do - get us to care about the characters, get invested in the story, make us hide our eyes behind our fingers, and SCARE us.

My brother at Project Blue is completely right in his assessment that it is the suspense that makes this film. He's also correct in that they did an awesome job of building the dread as day turns to night......with the growing realization that maybe we're not safe at all, regardless of the time of day.

I think that you also need to suspend a bit of disbelief -that is, if you don't happen to believe that the actual events of the movie are possible. One of the downsides of the film is that it's being billed as 'the scariest thing ever' - and depending on what you think is truly frightening - you'll either have nightmares or be hugely disappointed. Putting aside the actual events of the film, what is scary to me is the loss of control of your environment and attempting to deal with a force that you have absolutely no framework of reference for.

In the end, I'm so glad that I avoided the media around this film as much as I could. I really think my plan to know as little as possible made a HUGE difference. Papa Cash said he only watched one or two previews but felt when the movie was over that he'd seen the scariest parts already......he went into the theater wondering 'what else are they going to show me?' and came away a little disappointed. I went in almost completely tabula rasa and came out scared. (One thing that was apparent to me is that reviews tended to fall either into loving the movie or feeling eh...so what) I'm wondering if P.C.'s experience isn't the reason for some of the 'eh..so what' reactions.

One thing I had heard was the opinion that seeing this movie in the theater was THE way to see it. I'm not 100% convinced of that. While the added experience of a dark, crowded theater had some positives - I did have the feeling several times last night that I was not getting the full effect of the soundtrack - which is not usual in a theater. But we're talking about a very low budget film and a very full, noisy theater. I anticipate that it'll be another experience on the surround sound in my quiet living room, and I'll be able to pick up on some of the more subtle moments of the film.

I'm looking forward to reading all the reviews I skipped to see if the audience reaction was mentioned. There were a few collective LOUD screams in the appropriate places (which was fun) but there were some weird reactions going on during the rest of the film.

First of all, there was a LOT of laughing - and sometimes it fell during very inappropriate places. There was the giggling that could have, I suppose, been interpreted as nervousness - waiting for the scare, wondering what was going to happen- although it was very rampant and kind of annoying. Then there was the laughing that seemed mean spiritied to me - such as when a character on the screen was genuinely upset and crying. There was a LOT of laughter from the audience during these moments - and I'm kind of at a loss to interpret it. These scenes were played without any amount of humor - and I felt they were very genuine and well- acted. I'm not sure why a huge part of the audience found it so amusing. As I listened to the reactions and comments from the audience as we left, it dawned on me that people treated the movie more like a Haunted House ride than an actual film. Which I think is kind of a travesty and doesn't give the film its due.

In retrospect, I wish I'd waited for another day to see it, in a different theater, with fewer people. I used to think there was a kind of fun element to watching horror movies in a packed theater, but after last night, I think I'm kind of over that. I don't think that I would have missed out on any of the experience if I'd just waited to watch it at home - and with what I paid for tickets last night, I could have just pre-ordered the Blu-Ray.

Bottom line is - this is an independent horror film made for next to nothing - and it's without a doubt the best horror film I saw this holiday season. While the studios continue to make Saw Part -Whatever, or remake some other film we loved twenty years ago, a group of the little guys made what I think is the scariest and most effective American horror movie this year. Whether you love the movie, or think it's over - hyped, I hope that we all as horror fans can at least get behind that.

Time to go watch the Packer-Vikings game....
Mother Firefly

Day 31: HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

Happy Halloween, Everybody!

Today is the first Halloween that I've been able to kick back, watch some movies, and do something FUN to celebrate in three years. There are no deadlines looming over my head, and everything I can do at this point is pretty much done.

So I've chosen the films for my daytime movie marathon and I've just realized that they're all of the Black & White variety. Nothing wrong with that....

So here's my list for the day-



Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein:

I blogged about A & C Meet F during last year's countdown, so I'll let y'all go read that post if you're so inclined. This movie is without a doubt a MUST WATCH for me every October. Love A & C, and this one is by far my favorite.


Movie #2: Young Frankenstein

Again, another MUST for Halloween. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love this movie. It's my #3 Favorite Movie of All Time. It was in the #2 spot for many years, until Devil's Rejects replaced it. (Nothing -not Evah! will budge DOLD from the #1 spot). I can watch this movie over and over and over and never get sick of it. It's endless quotable - and I'd like to pause to give a shout out to my bestie, KK:
SEDAGIVE?????????

Thank you. Now back to our show.....

Movie #3: Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

There are soooooooooooooooooooo many movies that I would have LOVED to watch today, but I went with this one because it fits in with my theme of the month of watching movies that honor days gone by.....and this movie is, in my opinion, really the King of all those films. Not only does it do a great job of honoring the genre, it's funny as hell.

Then it'll probably be time to get ready to go out for dinner, and then....well, I still don't exactly know what we're doing. I'm sure it'll either be Paranormal Activity or Rocky Horror, or both. Either way, I'll be blogging tomorrow about it. It's kind of chilly out there, so going to Rocky Horror is going to require a few layers of clothing. (No matter what, there's always at least a half hour wait outside)

Since it's the last day, I'd like to take a moment to look back at this great month. I still can't believe that I managed to post EVERY day. I did prepare a handful of posts, but I used them up quickly - so I ended up writing almost every day.

I got to do some fun Halloween things this month - much more than I thought I would. Not only did I get to spend a whole weekend at Zombie Con, I went to a haunted high school, went to go see the play Dracula at midnight last weekend, and saw a bunch of scary movies at the theater: Halloween II, Jennifer's Body, and Zombieland.

I also discovered some great blogs that were also part of the Halloween Countdown.
Check out my list on the right: most of those bloggers were participants.

Also thanks to the fellow bloggers who took the time to leave comments. Here's links to their great blogs!

My little bro JL from Project Blue and Old Spooky House

Dane from All Eyes and Ears

Belle Dee from Doo Wacka Doodles

Jay Amabile from The Sexy Armpit

Dusty from Crass Pip ( and for putting my review of NOLD: The Puppet Show on their website!)

Tor Hershman from Tor Hershman

HarleyGirl from Old Spooky House and Halloween Horror Night

And a thanks to my two AWESOME friends, Mandy and KK for leaving comments on the blog or in my email. I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read the blog and leave feedback.

And, finally, a HUGE thanks to the three people that organize the Halloween Countdown.....much love and appreciation!!!!!!! It's been a blast - thanks so much for inviting me last year and remembering to include me this year.

John Rozum from John Rozum

Shawn Robare from Halloween Countdown

Jon K from Ultimate All-Star Random Acts of Geekery (among others)

Thanks to John and Shawn for their comments as well.

Also thanks to everyone who signed up to follow my blog this month! Check out their great blogs (some of them listed above) on the right.

I'm especially grateful for the feedback this month because I was thisclose to taking this down and closing up shop. I've been writing about the films I watch for a few years for my own enjoyment - mostly through a personal log I keep at home. My brother encouraged me to start doing this in August 2008. I didn't start off writing about horror movies exclusively and soon it evolved into another version of what I'd been doing in my log. But I wasn't sure I was going to try to keep it up - sometimes my posts have been very intermittent due to school. But I really wanted to do the Halloween Countdown - so I thought I'd decide what I wanted to do after that.

I had so much fun this month writing and reading other blogs - combined with also having more free time than I've had since starting nursing school - that I'm planning on hanging in there and continuing on. I doubt that I'll be able to post every day - I am on the verge of graduation and have a few obligations left to fulfill - but I think the worst of the craziness with all that is over.

Now....back to my movies and to thoroughly enjoy the rest of my Halloween.
Have an awesome and safe holiday and I'll be back soon to let you know how the rest of the evening unfolded......

I'll leave you with a screencap of my absolute favorite moment in A& C meet Frankenstein. It completely sums up about how I feel about the scary.
I might start out a little apprehensive:

But, in the end, it always ends up like this:Yummy and Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........

Taffeta, Darling.......
Mother Firefly