Longtime ZONErs know how much I enjoyed watching horror/monster movies as a kid growing up in Indiana... especially those shown by late night horror host Sammy Terry. For years I've been saying that someone needs to find a horror host and run a double feature of scary movies late on Saturday night. Although, no major network has stepped up to the plate, my buddy Bill Black has released a series of dvds that fits the bill [as in black].
Last night I watched "M is for Madman" the third in Bill's Crypt of Horror series. It's a double feature of "The Man Who Turned to Stone" and "The Brute Man" hosted by Lon Madnight. Madnight [whose name is a play on "London After Midnight" - the lost, silent horror film starring Lon Chaney] maintains the perfect balance of insightful trivia about the movie to be seen and bad puns. He's just what the doctor [or at least I] ordered. The production values on the dvd are top notch. The films are crisp and clear with excellent sound. The movies can be seen without the Lon Madnight openings and closings, but they're so much fun, who'd want to miss them? Priced at less than twenty bucks for two remastered movies and Lon Midnight -- you'd be hard pressed to find a cheaper evening of family fun.
So let's take a look at "The Man Who Turned to Stone"...
The Pitch: Mad scientists run a woman's reformatory and drain the "bio-electrical" life force from inmates in order to prolong their unnatural lives.
The Good: The special effects are surprisingly well done for a low-budget film of this era. You're slowly made to realize that the people in charge of the reformatory aren't just bad, they're...
The Bad: This isn't a classic horror movie -- it's bad in all the right ways. The hero kind of looks like Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Ugly: What happens when Eric doesn't get enough "bio-electrical" life force.
The Summary: "The Man Who Turned to Stone" isn't a classic, but it's better than you'd expect given it's lack of budget and notoriety. It's exactly the kind of movie that works when you're in the mood for an old time horror movie that you haven't watched a million times. I can't wait to watch it with friends/family who love scary movies.
Here is a link to about 20 minutes of Sammy Terry from the early 80's. Of course I started watching Sammy when he premiered in the early 60's out of Indianapolis when I was but a child. You can imagine how spooky he seemed in black and white. [That's right youngsters, there was a time when television shows weren't broadcast in living color.]
