th' mighty Lefty Seal of Approval! Lefty's B-Movie Reviews

Ranked from Zero through Ten stars...
Zero = Not even 'So-bad-it's funny'
Five = Unintentionally hilarious
Ten = You could watch it like it was REAL MOVIE!

Movies I've Reviewed:
Teenagers from
Outer Space		 The Deadly Mantis Killers from Space Night of the
Lepus		 Carnival of
Souls
The Indestructible
Man		 Warlords of the
21st Century		 Crash of the
Moons		 Journey to the
Center of Time		 Reptilicus
Giant Gila
Monster		 Day of the
Triffids		 Valley of
the Gwangi		 Kronos IT! the Terror
from Beyond Space
Radioactive
Dreams		 FROGS! Son of
the Blob		 The Wizard
of Mars		 Half
Human
Eegah Tarantula The Unearthly Killer Bats King of
Kong Island
Devil Girl
from Mars		 YOR; The Hunter
from the Future

Other Features:

  • Wanna-B   Movies that LOOK like they might be B or entertaining...but aren't. DON'T BE FOOLED, read the list!

    Teenagers from Outer Space

    This inspired the name for a role playing game, I'm told. Don't be fooled, this game has nothing to do with that or any role playing game, & very little to do with teenagers. It brushes with outer space, in as much as space ships land from there, 'cuz they want to let their giant lobsters grow here on planet earth. The film-makers, in deference to the great legacy that the Greeks left western society, they even call these giant lobsters 'Gorgons,' after Medusa & the others. One freedom-seeking spaceman is dissatisfied with the cold, unfeeling totalitarian galactic empire that he comes from (isn't that just like galatic empires?), & tries to prevent the lobsters from being loosed on our humble planet. This rebellious aspect is presumably the reason the word "Teenagers" is inserted into the title of this film, because the ages of the people involved certainly isn't.
    REDEEMING FEATURES:
  • Endless opportunities to pretend the loveable old coot "Grampa" is waking from a vomit-flecked, drunken stupor, instead of one of his numerous naps.
  • A 1940s-style beautiful heroine; short black hair doesn't come back 'in' for a while.
  • A space alien named "Derek." Everyone who told you aliens had weird names with lots of 'X's & 'Z's in them is full of it, eh?
  • The granddaddy of those rays in 'Mars Attacks!' that skeletonize people instantly!

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    The Deadly Mantis

    Well, guess what man's atomic tests woke up this time? I'll give you a hint: look at the 2nd & 3rd words of the title...preferably in that order. Its big and it buzzes planes, eating the occupants just like thousands of years ago it must have eaten the tiny people that piloted the other flying insects it hunted down...which is probably why those little Mothra-riding twins are about the last of their kind...but I digress. As so often happens in these films, the government turns to a relatively minor scientist that the film has shown us footage of before, to solve the mysterious disappearances. He clevers this out, & after declaring that the praying mantis is the most vicious predator the world has ever seen, he and his assistant go to the arctic circle. This movie has all the awkward, Barney Fife-like military personnel manning an out-of-the-way, freezing observation post you'd ever want to see in one room. Fortunately the creature attacks them, so you get to see their serious side (two of them shoot at it with a flamethrower). There's thrills & chills as the big insect attacks a bus and gets the largest bug-spraying on earth, etc.
    REDEEMING FEATURES:
  • A flamethrower.
  • 5' long insect footprints in the snow.
  • Polite, cooperative reporters.

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    Killers from Space

    More nuclear testing! But in the aftermath of the bomb-droppin', one of the observation planes crashes headfirst into the ground. Normally, this would be relatively fatal, but the nuclear analyst guy on the plane shows up later with an x-shaped scar over his heart ('cross his heart' jokes aside). He acts funny, upsets his wife and is very gung-ho about more testing...veterans of the genre will have seen the signs of Alien Control 3 seconds after he's back on screen. These aliens want to take over the world (unlike all the benevolent aliens, including but limited to "E.T.", I believe). They wear strange (presumably green...its in black-and white so we can only guess) suits and ping-pong ball eyes, and have made little nasty creatures (lizards, insects & the like) grow really big using the 50s miracle drug 'radiation.' Things happen, people disbelieve the now-not-controlled scientist, and everyone complains a great deal about the power plant being turned off just for a few minutes.
    REDEEMING FEATURES:
  • PING-PONG BALL EYES...what more do you want from aliens??
  • The guy looks a little like JFK..
  • A big explosion through badly blue-screened venetian blinds
  • A doctor who thinks the weirdest thing of the scientist surviving a nose-diving plane crash is that there is one new scar on his body...

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    Night of the Lepus  (no picture available)

    Wow! They were getting pretty desperate for creatures to make large & attack a small town when they turned to the universally feared BUNNY RABBITS! In a frightening melange of bunnies running in slow motion over tiny sets and guys in giant rabbit suits (for the no-holds-barred hand-to hand combat between man & floppy-eared terrors!), the directors of this quality piece of shmutz portray WHAT WOULD HAPPEN if there happened to be several hundred gigantic bunnies, just in case you were wondering. I wasn't, just for the record, but this is indeed a classic of B-movie mockability. See below for the all-star rabbit-dynamiting cast member!
    REDEEMING FEATURES:
  • Cast includes Deforest Kelly! (Dr. "The Real" McCoy of Star Trek fame).
  • Scene where a normal-sized guy in a giant-sized rabbit suit is whacked in the eye with a rifle, puts his hand over his eye & falls down.
  • Watch that electrified center rail!
  • Kind of like 'Tremors', if the monsters were cute & fluffy & the cast didn't include Kevin Bacon.

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    Carnival of Souls

    Here is the reason the rankings go up to '10 Stars.' This is a B-movie because of the budget and that it was filmed in "about 3 days," and it's in black-&-white. However, its actually a great movie...the acting is at least adequate, & the movie is really frightening, in a way that many of the gore-fest stuff that passes for 'scary movies' these days are not. Since this is actually like a real film, I don't want to give too much away, but I'll give you a few endorsements: first, this has some good 'am I the only one who sees that/why doesn't anyone see me' type sequences. Second, this plays on what I think is one of the most scary 'every-day' type things: something has been watching you for a while, & you just now notice it....I would say this is a good scary movie because every time I watch it, even though I know the plot & what happens, I get freaked out. Watch this with someone else in the room...
    REDEEMING FEATURES:
  • That spooky guy. You'll know what I mean when you watch it.
  • The bus sequence...I kind of feel that way about Greyhound, having taken a 12 & a 48 hour trip with them...
  • The background "Don't Drag Race" message, so vital to our generation...
  • There is cool tension between "Letting the sleezo from across the hall hit on you VS. not wanting to be alone with things after you..." Put that in your pipe & smoke it, Slasher films!

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