Not of This Earth - I don't know why but I tried watching this once before and ended up turning it off after a couple of minutes. This time I stuck with it when I found out it was directed by Roger Corman. He's usually dependable even when they're his usual economy affairs. The movie opens with a teenage girl being dropped at her house after a date. Lurking in the bushes is a guy who incapacitates her in 50's low budget, sci-fi fashion, meaning she screams and falls out for no reason. The man then busies himself filling vials with what are apparently bodily fluids.
Next, an odd bird named Paul Johnson (Paul Birch) shows up at Dr. F.W. Rochelle's (William Roerick) office. He has a strange and stilted way of talking and wears unusual looking sunglasses that he never takes off. He informs Dr. Rochelle that he needs an immediate blood transfusion. The doctor refuses without first running some tests on the man's blood. The guy can apparently manipulate people's minds using telepathy and mentally coerces the doctor into helping him. He then hires his nurse Nadine (Beverley Garland) to take care of him in his home.
When I first started watching this I had it figured that Birch was a terrible actor. An Ed Wood level of crapitude. But the more I watched the more I realized he was actually nailing the role. His Paul Johnson is obviously an alien visitor and Birch never wavers from his vision of how this stranger in a strange land would conduct himself. Garland plays the requisite blonde hottie who inevitably finds herself on the precipice of danger. Seeing as how this is a Corman project there are small casting surprises sprinkled throughout.
Little Shop of Horrors Jonathan Haze plays Johnson's manservant Jeremy. But it wasn't until the great Dick Miller puts in an appearance as a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman that I fully appreciated what I was watching. This should in no way be considered a classic but I tell you what, it gets the job done.
70/100
(The) Manster - Started it on the strength of that title alone and kept going because it had just enough odd little touches to make it reasonably quirky. It takes place in Japan where scientist Dr. Robert Suzuki (Tetsu Nakamura) arrives at his secluded laboratory perched atop a volcanic mountain. In his workshop is a mutated life form inside a large cage. It was apparently once a woman and Suzuki asks her where "Kenji" is. That turns out to be a furry smallish sasquatch creature that attacks the doctor who promptly shoots it and throws it in an incinerator.
Larry Stanford (Peter Dyneley) is an American foreign news correspondent and interviewing the reclusive Suzuki is his final assignment before going home to his wife in the states. Suzuki starts pumping Larry for personal information like his age (which he clearly lies about) and his health status. The good doctor obviously likes what he sees and slips Larry a Mickey Finn and injects him with his new and improved "formula". This has a sort of Jekyll and Hyde effect on him and Larry takes up with the doctor's vampish assistant Tara (Terri Zimmern). He forgets all about going home to his wife, the inexplicably fish-eyed Linda (Jane Hylton). Hylton was basically an empty canvas in most of her scenes. Dyneley gives off all kinds of Lon Chaney Jr. vibes while his metamorphosis from hotshot reporter to furry handed serial killer runs it's course. Victims pile up, the local police are baffled and it all leads to a climactic showdown at the mountaintop lab where the volcano starts erupting for no earthly reason.
I made the same mistake I always make and watched a mediocre public domain print on youtube when all the while there was a superior (and possibly colorized) version with clear sound and subtitles on Prime. Try it out it for the title and you might find yourself sticking around. Or not.
65/100
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. A wild ride from start to finish
