Horror on the Lens: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (dir by William Beaudine)


This 1966 western/horror hybrid is just about as stupid as you think it is but it’s also a lot of fun if you’re in the right mood.  Notorious outlaw Jesse James (John Lupton) attempts to hold up a stagecoach but, in the process, his hulking partner Hank (Cal Bolder) is serious wounded.  Some helpful peasants direct Jesse and Hank to the mysterious German doctor who happens to live in a nearby dark and scary house.  That doctor is Maria Frankenstein (Narda Onyx) and she’s been conducting experiments to bring dead Mexicans back to life.  Imagine her joy when the nearly dead Hank shows up at her laboratory.  Anyway, Maria performs a brain transplant on Hank and once Hank comes back to life, she informs him that his new name is “Igor.”  Yes, she does.  That plot description pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the movie but I vaguely enjoyed vaguely paying attention to it.  Maria’s German accent is hilariously overdone, the Frankenstein laboratory is full of pointless electrical things, and a character dies halfway through the film just to later show up again with no explanation.  It’s that type of movie.

And it’s also the type of movie that you can watch below!

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF1leghsszg

Cleaning out the DVR: My Daughter Is Missing (dir by Tamar Halpern)


(Lisa is not just watching horror movies!  She is also trying to clean out her DVR!  She has got over 200 movies that she needs to watch before January 1st!  Will she make it?  Keep checking here to find out!  She recorded My Daughter Is Missing off of Lifetime on June 25th!)

My Daughter Is Missing and Liam Neeson is nowhere to be seen!

Fortunately, Sara (Miranda Raison) was in Belgrade when her daughter was kidnapped by a Serbian human trafficking ring.  Even more importantly, Sara is a former computer hacker and, in the world of Lifetime, there is literally nothing that the internet cannot do.

Need to view the security footage of your daughter being kidnapped from the club?

Use the internet!

Need to find out who is behind human trafficking in Eastern Europe?

Use the internet!

Need to figure out who you can trust or who you can’t?

The internet will explain all!

The other thing about Lifetime films is that mom will always be proven right.  Sara told her daughter to be careful.  Her daughter wasn’t and now, she’s about to be sold to the highest bidder.  Sara told the cops that her daughter had been kidnapped.  The cops didn’t believe her and now Sara’s going to find the proof on her own.  Fortunately, she knows how to use a computer and, as we’ve already established, computers are magic.

To be honest, Sara really should have been named “Mary Sue” because she is one of the biggest Mary Sues that I’ve ever seen on Lifetime.  Not only does she have a tragic and dramatic backstory but the main theme of the movie appears to be that everyone in the entire world is stupid except for Sara.  Whenever Sara uses the internet to prove everyone wrong, you can be sure that at least one person is going to say, “No one should ever have doubted you, Sara.”

(My favorite part of the movie is when Sara tracks down the web site for the auction and all the “hackers” standing behind her gasp in amazement and say stuff like, “She’s on the dark web.”)

Anyway, this movie was shot on location in Belgrade.  That does add a little authenticity to the film, though it doesn’t last long.  There’s a line towards the end of the film, where a sympathetic character points out that there’s more to Belgrade than just political corruption and sex rings.  That was nice of him to say because, otherwise, the movie probably isn’t going to do much for the tourism industry.

I ended up throwing a high heel in the direction of the TV while I was watching My Daughter Is Missing.  That’s my favorite way of expressing displeasure.  I guess the plot of My Daughter Is Missing would be intriguing if I had never seen Taken but I have seen Taken and this movie was a pure substitute.  Not only is the plot predictable but Sara is literally too perfect.  It’s hard not to get annoyed with her — and only her — being right all the time while every other person in the movie was portrayed as being either evil or willfully ignorant.  By the end of the movie, I was expecting someone to declare, “You’re the best mom ever!”

I should admit, however, that the movie didn’t go that far.  Maybe they’re saving it for the sequel.

 

Music Video of the Day: Something In My House by Dead Or Alive (1986, dir. ???)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bNMTgTRfbs

Yes, I did Creeper by Islands a few days ago. However, that song didn’t spin me right round like a record, baby, right round round round.

I can’t find much information on this one. The song was edited down for the music video. According to Wikipedia, the video is an homage to Jean Cocteau’s Beauty And The Beast. I buy that. It may have been about a decade since I saw that movie, but things like knockers made of human faces definitely remind me of that film. That’s all I can find.

We lost Pete Burns on October 23rd of 2016. On the 24th of this year, we lost Fats Domino. I thought about breaking with the October theme to do the live video of Cheap Trick covering Ain’t That A Shame, but I decided against devoting a whole post to it. Then I decided, I still wanted to include it. So, here is their cover of Ain’t That A Shame performed from where else, than Budokan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-jXJl0Zrg

Enjoy!