October Movie Challenge installment number I-don't-care

Brood, The (C, 1979)   Oliver Reed is a Dr. Phil-like psychiatric psychopath who practices a weird form of psychotherapy that causes his patients to express their angst as physical manifestations.  In a demonstration he goads a man about his daddy issues until he breaks out in sores.  Another former patient is trying to sue Reed for giving him cancer through suggestion, and his lymph glands are swollen lumps.  But the worst is Samantha Eggar, who's been breeding deformed dwarfs in a womb outside her body, as embodiments of her rage.  These dwarves go out and bludgeon to death the people she's angry with, and she's got a lot of resentment toward her husband and their daughter...   When all her other relatives start dying brutally, the husband tries to stop her before it's too late.  Effective but weird horror.





Maniac (B&W, 1934) aka Sex Maniac. Crazy Dwain Esper exploitation curio that has to be seen to be believed.  A mad scientist, Dr. Meirschultz, is working on a method of reviving the dead, along with his vaudeville-actor sidekick.  Turns out all you have to do to bring a corpse back to life is rub its arms.  Try it!  Meirschultz wants a bigger challenge -- transplanting a heart he's kept beating in a tank -- so he tries to kill his assistant.  The assistant kills him instead and impersonates him, becoming completely crazy in the process.  He walls up Meirschultz's corpse, Edgar Allan Poe style (when it's discovered later you can see it helping to push the bricks out), and gouges out a cat's eye and eats it.  One of his patients turns into a raving lunatic after an injection, delivers one of the weirdest rants in the history of cinema, then kills a woman and apparently rapes her corpse (which includes a topless scene that was a big no-no at the time).  There are two vicious catfights -- one between women, one between actual cats.  Whenever the assistant has a psychotic episode (which is frequent) footage from Haxan and other strange silent films are superimposed over hi, and occasional text describing mental illnesses are scrolled onscreen so this could be marketed as  "educational."  Must-see vintage trash.

injection scene (watch this if you watch nothing else!)


Full movie:
 


Rites of Frankenstein, The (C, 1972) aka La Malidicion de Frankenstein, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, The Erotic Adventures of Frankenstein, The Curse of Frankenstein.   Jess Franco nonsense that's not as bad as most of his junk; in fact, it's downright okay if you're content with a string of images and aren't concerned with coherent plots.  Dr. Frankenstein transplants a brain into a silver monster and it works, but then the doctor is soon killed by a blind, flesh-eating bird-woman (an eerily-pretty girl with ridiculous feather gloves who goes around sniffing for flesh).   She's the sidekick of Cagliostro (Howard Vernon with a goatee), an evil hypnotist who can revive the dead.  Cagliostro wants to build a perfect woman to serve as a mate for the creature (apparently just so he can watch).  The bird-woman usually delivers all his speeches so Vernon can just stand there, staring wide-eyed.  Frankenstein's daughter keeps reviving her father's corpse for brief periods so he can advise her how to deal with Cagliostro.  Meanwhile, Cagliostro's summoning robed skeletons to walk through misty forests and getting the silver monster to whip captives until they fall on beds of spikes, just to entertain acolytes.  It doesn't add up to much but it's not as careless and boring as many of Franco's overrated offal.

Awful clip but it's what I could find: 





Monster From A Prehistoric Planet (C, 1967) aka Diakyoju Gappa, Gappa The Triphibian Monster, The Giant Beast Gappa, The Triphibian Monster.  Archaeologists and reporters scouting locations for a resort hotel go to an island full of natives who worship a giant monster statue, which they call Gappa.  Volcanic activity on the island makes them think Gappa is angry, and they get really upset when a giant egg hatches a baby Gappa and the scientists take it back to Japan.  They intend to study it but the newspaper man who sent them on the trip claims he owns the monster, plans to exhibit  it, and treats it cruelly, which causes its parents to come after it.  The monsters look basically like winged Godzillas with beaks and pointy heads.  The daddy one has an octopus-tentacle beard.  Massive havoc is unleashed upon civilization when they reach it, and tanks and jets come to fight them, but if you've seen any other kaiju movies you know about how well that works.  The Gappa also have fire-breath, like Godzilla.  Nothing will stop them from taking their kid back, and the movie does its best to make this silliness seem "touching."  It's a Japanese take on Gorgo, which was a British take on Godzilla.  The circle is complete. 

Trailer:


Whole movie: