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  "Our tale begins dramatically amidst the smoldering ruins of what was once a great city. Twisted girders, cracked, blistering sidewalks and the skeletal frames of demolished buildings paint a grim portrait of this smoldering memorial to the unknown. Tokyo, once a proud metropolis of six million people, is now a graveyard." - Steve Martin - United World News Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is a 1956 kaiju film directed by Terry O. Morse and Ishirō Honda. This "Americanization," is a heavily re-edited version of the 1954 Japanese film Godzilla. The film was a Japanese-American co-production, with the original footage produced by Toho Co., Ltd, and the new footage produced by Jewell Enterprises. Starring Raymond Burr, Takashi Shimura, Momoko Kōchi, Akira Takarada, and Akihiko Hirata, with Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka as Godzilla, the film follows an American reporter covering a giant reptilian monster's attack on Japan.

 Written By Ken Hulsey  Directed by Nathan Juran, "Twenty Million Miles to Earth" was written by Charlotte Knight and Christopher Knopf. The film's cast included William Hopper as Col. Robert Calder, Joan Taylor as Marisa Leonardo, Frank Puglia as Dr. Leonardo, John Zaremba as Dr. Judson Uhl, Thomas Browne Henry as Maj. Gen. A.D. McIntosh, Tito Vuolo as Police Commissioner Charra, Jan Arvan as Contino, Arthur Space as Dr. Sharman, and Bart Braverman as Pepe.

 By Ken Hulsey Prince of Space was originally a Japanese children's television series that was later edited into a feature film. The film adaptation suffers greatly from this choppily edited format. While the acting, special effects, and story were intended for a children's TV audience, the production values fall far short of other Japanese sci-fi films from the same era, most notably The Mysterians.

 Another week, and another Svengoolie inspired installment of Fantastic Photos From Fantasy Films. This time around the subject is a duel magazine advertisement for The Monster That Challenged The World and The Vampire. 

 In honor of the 1955 Universal horror classic Revenge of the Creature airing on Svengoolie tonight, I decided to resurrect my  Fantastic Photos From Fantasy Films series and share some of my publicity photos from the film. I acquired these photographs from a movie memorabilia shop in Henderson, Nevada several years ago. Sadly, that shop is now out of business. I don't know if any of these images have been published before? Generally movie studios print out numerous images to promote their movies, yet many of these photos never made it into theater lobbies, newspapers, magazines or books. That being said, this my be the first time that many fans will have seen these.

 Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai is one of the greatest films ever made! Most film historians considered Kurosawa's 1954 epic Seven Samurai a true cinematic masterpiece and this past Saturday Terri and I found out why. It is indeed brilliant on almost every level. The story is compelling and the actors are true masters of the craft. We were so drawn into the story that I actually feel that I experienced the events portrayed on screen alongside the warriors and the villagers that the swore to defend from raiders. Rarely does such a film leave such a personal impact. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote this about Seven Samurai in 2001: Seven Samurai (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] - $28.99 @ Amazon,com - Order Here Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (1954) is not only a great film in its own right, but the source of a genre that would flow through the rest of the century. The critic Michael Jeck suggests that this was the first film in which a team is assemble...

Ever since I started this website back in 2020 I have wanted to do a regular feature about the hundreds of movie stills in my own personal collection. So far I have managed to post about a mere ten of these images. For some reason I just can't seem to find a couple of minutes to pull a photo out of a box and plop it down on my scanner.  Creature From the Black Lagoon: The Legacy Collection (Creature from the Black Lagoon / Revenge of the Creature / The Creature Walks Among Us) by Universal Studios DVD - $9.44 @ Amazon.com I need to be a lot more disciplined about getting these things posted so that fans can get as much enjoyment out of them as I do. I'm certain that many of these may not have ever been seen by many movie fans. Today I have a great promotional image from the 1955 Universal horror classic Revenge of the Creature. I would have to assume that it is Ricou Browning in the Creature costume and not Tom Hennessy, who replaced Ben Chapman in this film. Strangely the capt...

You're going to need a mop and bucket handy because this movie is filled a horde of gigantic, and very drooly, creepy crawlers from the prehistoric past who are unleased on a terrified Mexican city.  The Black Scorpion is a 1957 horror film released by Warner Brothers, with stop motion special effects done by Willis O'Brien. The film begins when an earthquake hits Mexico, resulting in the overnight birth of a new volcano. Sent to study this phenomenon are geologists Dr. Hank Scott and his partner Dr. Arturo Ramos. En route to the village of San Lorenzo, the two men happen upon a destroyed house and an equally totaled police car. Shortly afterward, they find the dead policeman nearby, as well as an abandoned infant. The Black Scorpion - 1957 - 13 x 19 Inch - Movie Poster $14.99 @ Amazon.com They take the baby to San Lorenzo and give it to some friends of its (now missing) parents, and are welcomed by the village's priest, Father Delgado. In addition to the disappearances of ...

Back in November of 2008 Life Magazine dug up a batch of unpublished photos of Ben Chapman and Julie Adams from the 1954 Universal horror classic Creature From The Black Lagoon. These shots were taken on the back lot of Universal and feature Chapman in the 'publicity' version of the Creature costume and Adams in her famous white bathing suite that was featured in the film. Creature from The Black Lagoon Canvas T-Shirt Tagline Black - $27.99 @ Amazon.com In 2008 Cortlandt Hull, a documentary film maker and owner of  " The Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum " interviewed Julie Adams and she had this to say about the different Creature suits: "The costume in the film was not painted with the vivid shades of the color publicity costume."  Adams added - "The colors in the film costume were more muted, various shades of moss green - no red lips! These photos were not taken during actual production of the film, but to promote the film." Here are the...

Sadly I have to report that the last of the actors from the Universal monster movies has passed away. Ricou Browning put on the Creature suit for all three of the movies featuring the monster (Creature From The Black Lagoon 1954, Revenge Of The Creature 1955 and The Creature Walks Among Us 1956). Due to the fact that Browning was champion swimmer he was tasked with playing the monster in scenes filmed under water (The late Ben Chapman played the monster on dry land). Later in his career he would go on to write and direct episodes for the popular TV series Flipper. I had the pleasure of meeting Ricou Browning and the late Julie Adams at Monsterpalooza in Burbank, California several years ago. He really enjoyed talking to fans about his experiences working on the Creature films with fans. It's sad that the last of the great Universal horror actors has passed away. There will never be anything like those great horror and monster movies ever again. With the passing of Ricou Browning an...

In honor of Godzilla: King of the Monsters being featured on Svengoolie  tonight I decided to pull off a mega post of many of my movie stills from the film. These were used to advertise the movie inside theaters while it was being exhibited.   What I always love about the stills produced by Toho to promote their films both in Japan and abroad are that they are almost always composites. That is images that are produced by combining several objects and different images to produce a totally different photograph. A perfect example of this is the photo above, which is actually my favorite Godzilla movie still because of its rather unique composition, in this image you have a photo of Tokyo as the background and then of course you have Godzilla himself - who is made up of the body of the creature as seen in the film with a different head. His left hand as you can see is actually painted to illustrate the monster crushing an airplane. Fire and Japanese fighter planes were added to ...

. Normally I'm not a big fan of westerns but every once and a while I come across a really good one. The 1957 James Stewart and Audie Murphy film Night Passage is by far one of my favorite westerns. When you put Stewart, who in one my favorite actors, in a movie that revolves around the building of the Rio Grande Railroad in Colorado you just can't go wrong. My love of trains aside, Night Passage is a really entertaining movie with fine acting, plenty of action and darn good plot. When a local railroad becomes the constant target of a band of desperadoes led by the notorious Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea), train officials recruit soft-spoken but life-hardened employee Grant McLaine (Stewart) to guard the payroll from any more robberies. Trouble is, the gangs most skilled and lethal gunslinger, the Utica Kid (Audie Murphy), is Grant's kid brother. Torn between the bonds of blood and his allegiance to the railroad, Grant finds himself hoping for the best but preparing for the wo...

When electronics engineer Mitch MacAfee spots a UFO as "big as a battleship," from his plane, the Air Force scrambles planes to investigate. However, nothing shows up on radar, and one of the jets is lost during the action. MacAfee is regarded as a dangerous crackpot until other incidents and disappearances convince the authorities that the threat is real. Some believe it is a French-Canadian folk legend come to life, but it turns out to be an extraterrestrial giant bird composed of anti-matter whose disregard for human life and architecture threatens the world. The Giant Claw is a 1957 sci-fi film about a giant bird that terrorizes the world. Produced by Clover Productions under the working title 'Mark of the Claw' and released through Columbia Pictures, it starred Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday, and was directed by Fred F. Sears. The film has been a staple of the bootleg video market with only two official VHS releases (one in the USA through Goodtimes Home Video and ...