There's a maniac in the lab!

 A madman is loose in the lab tonight, with the 1934 pre-code shocker MANIAC. Click below to watch...

Going MAD in the lab this week!

This week's movie is one I'm excited to finally be able to show - the 1934 exploitation/mad science film, Maniac! It was made by independent filmmaker Dwain Esper, who throughout the 30s made some of the wilder non-Hollywood pictures. 

This one has some outrageous stuff going on it it, especially wild when you consider it was made in the early 30s. Esper peppered his films with as much craziness as he could get away with, then took his film town to town screening it wherever he could get away with. When sales were a bit lackluster for this one, he re-titled it SEX MANIAC and audiences lined up around the block to see it. There is a mad scientist keeping disembodied organs alive, experimenting at bringing the dead back to life, body snatching, murder, eyeball gouging (and eating), cat mutilation, and more. 

People like to mock this one for being a "bad" movie - and yeah, it is rough around the edges and the acting is over the top - but it has more entertainment value than many modern "quality" pictures. You have to admire Esper, who got into filmmaking because he won a film lab in a settlement and decided to start churning out his own pictures. I always admire the indy spirit of low budget pioneers, even sleeze peddlers like Esper, who showed films like "Narcotic" that showed people actually shooting up, "Sinister Harvest" about marihuana smoking, Marihuana (1936), and "How to undress in front of your husband." He was also involved with the distribution of the re-release of Freaks, taking it town to town and screening it with his own films. Always an exploitation man, he once rented the mummified corpse of an old west outlaw named Elmer McCurdy and displayed it in the lobbies of theaters when screening Narcotic, claiming it was a victim of drugs! 

Check out his magnum opus MANIC this Saturday right here in the Cinetarium website, also streaming on the Necat Roku Channel at 10pm central and airing on Nashville's Comcast CH9 at 9pm central as well!

Rondo Awards!!

Greetings fright fans, it's that time of year again, and I'm honored to announce Dr. Gangrene has been nominated for 2 Rondo awards: 

Best website (for this very website)

Favorite Horror Host!

This is the 21st annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards - it's an annual fan-voted award given to recognize excellence in the horror field in a number of categories. The vote is all done by email - so to vote simply email your choices to taraco@aol.com

To see the entire ballot go to: http://rondoaward.com

And remember to STAY MAD!

This month in the Lab!

 Join the Doc in the Cinetarium for March Madness all month long, a celebration of mad science, monsters and madness!

The Manster

It's a 2-headed terror this week in the lab, as a mad doctor unknowingly injects a reporter with a test serum that turns him into a... MANSTER!

This week's movie - Night Fright

This week's mad movie is another exercise in independent filmmaking, this time in 1968 in Dallas Texas with Night Fright from director James Sullivan. James had worked on low budget indy films before, on several Larry Buchanan films and as an editor on Manos the Hands of Fate (another Texas production). In his directorial debut he makes a good old fashioned creature feature about a government satellite that crash lands and brings back a vicious space monster that begins killing the teens in the small town of Satan's Hollow, TX. It's up to the town sheriff, played by John Agar, to stop it.

There's two main things going for this film: 1, plenty of monster time, and 2. John Agar. You can never go wrong with good ole John Agar. Unfortunately the film suffers from slow pacing, no doubt in an effort to get it to feature length. I still really like this one, and appreciate the independent film gusto to get out and make a monster movie. We need more of those nowadays!

This week's movie - Killers from Space

 This week's mad movie i the Cinetarum - click to watch:

This week's mad movie...

 We have a new episode in the Cinetarium this week, fright fans, the 1954 sci fi schlocker Killers from Space.

Killers from space tells the story of a nuclear scientist named Dr. Douglas Martin (Peter Graves) whose plane goes down while doing nuclear testing. He is presumed dead, but mysteriously reappears one day, at a loss to explain how he survived. As he recovers he unwittingly stumbles onto a plot to destroy mankind by a race of aliens who have set up a secret underground base on Earth. Or so he says - is the Doc telling the truth, or is he hysterical and hallucinating from the crash?

Tune in here to find out Saturday night at 9 central/8 Eastern time, and keep watching the skies!!

This week in the lab we get a visit from the skies...

This week's dose of horror therapy comes via director Ed Wood Jr. with the 1959 Sci-Fi classic "Plan 9 from Outer Space." Alien invaders resurrect the dead to do their bidding - among the corpses brought back are Bela Lugosi, Vampira, and Tor Johnson. 

They're the best part of the film, to be honest, although the Bela scenes make little sense and are shoehorned in just to get a name actor into the film. In fact, it's actually footage of Bela that Wood shot earlier, unrelated to the movie. Bela passed away prior to shooting, so Ed figured he'd find a way to get what footage he had into the movie. It works... sort of. 

The entire film is entertaining in its own weird way, despite the cardboard tombstones, hokey sets, wooden acting and juvenile script. Or perhaps because of it. In hindsight those very attributes are the things that draw people to this film almost 65 years after its release. The amateurish touches make it a charming viewing, and the weird cast is oddly compelling. The film has a sincerity in it that is lacking in films that try to be "so bad they're good." You can't set out to make something like that, it never works. Wood and company set out to make the best film they could, and in the process made an enjoyable, if somewhat silly, picture that's still entertaining audiences to this day. Here's to you, Ed!

February's movies in the Cinetarium...!

Keep watching the skies for an otherworldly lineup of alien invasion films this month on Dr. Gangrene's Cinetarium - every Saturday night at 9pm central (10 eastern) right here and on the Necat Roku Channel.