Zone of the Dead (1978)

[b]Tuesday, September 12
40. What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)[/b] is best described as a slasher horror movie for your grandma. It's set in the 1930s, the producers bring back a couple of well thought of older actresses and there's lots of little girls in lengthy dance numbers to please any gray-haired oldie. Oh! Don't forget all the drippy red gore!!! :p It's b-movie land all the way, but Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds are a great team! Reynolds gets to show off her multi-talented abilities as actress/singer/dancer while Winters handles the creepy & weird portion of the story. Perhaps the pacing is off with the little girl dancing numbers needing to get pushed into the background more while the camera focuses on the weirdness. Still, for a b picture this ain't bad at all. 6/10 (guilty pleasure upgrade 8/10)

[b][img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/coverv/29/116529.jpg[/img]
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[b]41. The Bat People (a.k.a. It Lives by Night) (MST3K version). (1974)[/b] This is probably not the worst vampire movie but you'd have to do some looking to find something as bad. It's mainly about a couple who go on vacation to ski but end up in some caves where the man gets a bat hickey and then begins to have seizures and begins to enjoy wearing a fright mask (see picture below). Mystery Science Theater 3000 is the show that makes fun of bad movies and this one is prime material for them. A very nice job. It's more than watchable with their help. 4/10 (MST3K upgrade 9/10)

[img]http://www.stewartmoss.com/gallery/pics/moss41.jpg[/img]


[b]42. Zone of the Dead (a.k.a. The House of the Dead, Alien Zone). (1978)[/b] This film was originally called [b]House of the Dead[/b], then [b]Alien Zone[/b] (there are no aliens in it) then [b]Zone of the Dead[/b]. RT has it catalogued as the latter so I'm happy with that. The credits said [b]House of the Dead[/b] but that title is tied to a worse movie than this one. :D Anyway, this is a horror anthology piece with 5 very short stories of varying quality. My favorite is probably the first one. It's very halloweenish, with a mean school teacher experiencing various spooky movie cluches in her house before meeting her demise in a satisfiyingly creepy, if not [i]cheesy[/i], way (see the movie poster below). Posters on the net generally disliked this particular story but liked one about a couple of competing detectives. I liked both. ;) The final story reminded me of the movie [i]SAW[/i]. It wasn't half bad, although the ending was far-fetched. The bookend story was lacking. Overall, not a total waste of 85 minutes. 6/10 (guilty pleasure upgrade 8/10)


[img]http://www.movieposters.com/order/sc_images/products/30160_image.jpg[/img]

[b]I love this poster!! [/b]



Well, at this rate I MIGHT hit a hundred this month. Not bad!!