The Brainiac - I was planning to see a film from a box called "Serial Chillers" but it turned out to be later than I thought so I switched to a different title on the same box which ran for 12 minutes less. This film, the Brainiac, is a black and white Mexican horror from 1962 and its original title is El barón del terror, (the baron of terror). As in most cases, the original title makes much more sense, because what the hell is a brainiac? The baron from the original title is being sentenced to burn at the stake in 1661, and he swears to take revenge in 300 years. How convenient, because this was the year the film was made. Because he was found guilty of performing witchcraft, he actually can return in 1961 and hunt down all the descendants of the judges who ordered his death. This is done in a pretty clumsy way, where there is a sideplot on a comet which was also visible back in  1661: the comet is thus the vehicle of the evil baron. When the baron is alone with a victim, he turns into some weird looking monster with hairy insect-like claws and a devilish face with large ears and a long tongue. With this tongue he pierces the neck of the victim and sucks out the brains. This last thing ;puzzles the police and the people at the morgue, but eventually they find some clues as to how these people have died and the baron is burnt to death again. The end. Effects are laughable, acting is so so and the monster really looks ridiculous, If you are into a bad movie then you can safely pick this one.

The Deadly Bees - Vicki Robbins, a singer who is nearing total exhaustion, is being sent on a vacation to get some rest. Ending up on a farm on Seagull Island, she finds out there are several mysterious people on the island. And what's up with the bees? They seem harmless at first but soon they start attacking people, seemingly out of nowhere. But when Vicki, who has been visiting the neighbour, starts to dig a little deeper, she finds out some terrible secrets of the island... a British horror from the 1960s which has the vibe as if it was presented to Hammer but they declined. It has some touches of that typical Brit mystery to it, but never really gets tense or exciting. The effects are a bit crappy, with the flying bees being filmed and then layed over the screaming people who are trying to look like they are being attacked. Overall not too bad, but nothing groundbreaking either. You might have fun as a bad moviefan, but there are "better" films to pick for that, for example The Swarm was a much more SBiG experience imo.

The Lost World - the 1925 silent movie. I watched the 1960 remake back in August and now it was time for the original, Apart from it being a silent movie of course there are several differences: the dinosaurs look more realistic in this one, even though the Brontosauruses make weird movements with their long necks. Where in the 1960 version the Latinos die and the Brits survive, the Brits have an African in their company here, played by a white actor painted black and talking like a halfwit all the time (but for the 1920s this was a normal thing in Hollywood). In this version, the expedition manages to capture a dinosaur and bring it back to London: this scene resembled the final scenes of Gorgo a lot. Maybe the filmmakers of Gorgo did think about this film when they made theirs. If you look past the contemporary racism, the obvious miniature landscapes and the sometimes crappy stop motion (it even stops entirely in one scene, freezing the group of dinosaurs in the midst of their flight from the fire), this is a really nice film. Not a masterpiece like for example Metropolis was in its time (and still today) but the special effects must have been a blast back in the 1920s. So back then it might have been a masterpiece but it didn't stand the passing of time as well as Metropolis did. A film where background noise doesn't matter but where you can't keep your eyes off the screen or you might miss something. The pace is quite up tempo for its age. Not for everyone, I guess, but still a good film imo.

The Deathless Devil - aka Yilmayan Seytan. Turkish pop cinema film from 1972. If you don't know anything about Turkish pop cinema, this DVD, a Mondo Macabro release, also contains a nice short documentary on Turkish pop cinema. You might wanna start watching that first. Some titles which are priceless examples are The Man Who saved The World, Turkish Rambo and The Killing of Satan. This one easily fits the bill, as it's filled to the brim with goofs and mistakes, I'll name a number of them (this list is by no means final): 1) in a fistfight in a room, the two guys beating each other up continue through the door which leads to the corridor (earlier some characters came in through the very same door) but suddenly they are on the roof of the building. When they re-enter the same door from the roof, they are in the room again, skipping the corridor entirely. 2) In a carchase, the bad guys switch cars at a fuelstation and they pick a fueltruck out of all available vehicles, among which were some very fast sportcars. The pumpguy they knocked out, comes to when Tekin (the main character) arrives, and knows the vehicle the bad guys took and also the exact direction in which they departed, even though he was out when all this happened. 3) While in the fueltruck, the driver thinks it's a great idea to leak fuel intentionally and then set it on fire to stop Tekin from chasing them. Meanwhile he totally forgets about the fact the fire could blow up the fueltruck they are driving. 4) Dr Satan, the main bad guy, has a robot which looks like a children's kindergarten craft work, it's totally ridiculous and very hard not to laugh at: all castmembers manage to scream in fear and agony though. 5) Copperhead (this is Tekin in his superhero form) is shooting twice at Dr Satan in his lair, but he is hitting a glass wall, then firing a third shot, exclaiming "bulletproof!" and then firing yet another shot, just because he can. If this sounds great to you, you should definitely watch this, as this film is bulging with scenes like these. I can't wait to see Tarkan vs The Vikings, which is also on this disc! Highly recommended for bad moviefans.

The Crawling Eye - aka The Trollenberg Terror. Two sisters, one of whom has psychic powers, are visiting Geneva, but they get off the train at Trollenberg because Ann, the psychic one, says so. They meet up with UN researcher Alan Brooks, who is investigating the disappearance of a number of mountainclimbers in the area. Some of the searchers get lost themselves, and while they are being looked for, professor Crevett is working in his top notch supermodern observatory and they unravel the mystery piece by piece. Pretty nice black and white 1950s horror, this disc is part of a series which consists mostly of US B-film scifi schlock, but this one is different: not only is this one European, but it also has higher production values. The quality of both image and sound are way higher on this one than on the other films in the series. The monster itself is very much in the line of the B-flicks, as it's a giant blob with an eye in the middle and several tentacles, which are obviously moved by threads, although you don't see 'em as well as in some other B-films. The ending is quite radical but fitting enough. Acting is quite OK and although it never really gets scary, there are some tense moments. Pretty well done, much better than I anticipated.

Virgin Report - aka Jungfrauen-Report. This Franco presents itself as a documentary about virginity and all kinds of rituals related to it. Supposedly filmed in the Garden of Eden, the German voice over takes us from Adam and Eve all over the globe educating us on various rituals. Lots of skin is shown and several of the rituals are invented just as means to show us more T&A. There is no dialogue, except from a few scenes taking place in Berlin. All other scenes have the voice over mentioned before. The film boasts that it was shot on all continents, but I missed Australia, and I guess most other footage was stock footage anyway. Franco regular Howard Vernon makes an appearance as a 19th century father, and also as an inquisitor. A curiosity, but not something you really need to see. 

The Alligator People - a 50s scifi with a remarkably sharp image, nice. The story is rather weak, it's about Joyce, a nurse who is being hypnotised and then tells her story to two scientists: she married a certain Paul Webster. This man however, abandons her on their wedding day. She starts to look for him, and eventually she winds up in the Louisiana bayou. In the house where she is trying to find shelter, the family is quite mysterious, but when she insists, she starts to find more and more clues about what happened to her husband. A quite chaotic role for Lon Chaney Jr, as the guy who got his hand bitten off by an alligator and now has a life mission to exterminate every last one of them. When Joyce finally meets her husband again the terror is real! The sfx in this film are pretty bad and typical for their time. The backgrounds are all very obviously stage sets, but overall this one isn't too bad and the acting is pretty well done. Still a B-movie, but one of the less messy ones.