THE DEVIL'S MASK / Columbia Pictures Corporation - 1946

Here's a murder mystery from 1946 that's based on the "I Love A Mystery" radio program. While searching through the wreckage of a crashed airliner, the police find five shrunken human heads, and, one of them is a white dude with red hair! The head belonged to an explorer, deemed lost on an expedition to South America, it's tagged as a victim of jungle savagery. His daughter thinks otherwise and suspects foul-play. She hires a team of private detectives to investigate and points them in the direction of her stepmother and a colleague of her father, but, one detective looks in another direction for the killer.

The movie stars Anita (THE PHANTOM SUBMARINE) Louise, Jim (UNKNOWN WORLD) Bannon, Michael (THE RETURN OF THE WHISTLER) Duane and Mona (SECRET OF THE WHISTLER) Barrie.

The police are called in to check out the five shrunken heads found in the plane crash.

The detectives meet at the dead explorer's home to watch slides from his South American adventure. They obviously had slide projectors in 1946...

They discover that he had acquired a blow gun that shoots good old poison darts!

While looking at that last slide, the gang gets a visit from an unknown person who shoots a dart at them but misses and it ends up stuck in the wall!

The detectives get a lead and visit Leon Hartman, taxidermist extraordinaire. They have a few questions for him as he works away on a new piece... Nice taxi.

This detective tries to communicate telepathically with the shrunken head to get a lead!

The detectives' net closes in on Hartman and one of them confronts him about the situation he seems to be in on...

Hartman doesn't take it well and pulls out his trusty knife! As he tries to escape, the detective gets the blade in his back, but, don't worry, he doesn't die...

Another detective is on the job, he's hiding in Hartman's outside greenhouse jungle. Hartman comes out and lets his pet panther go to attack the dick, but, our hero ducks back into the main room and closes the huge metal door, leaving Hartman outside with the panther!

Well, you know how it's going to end up... Right, Hartman get's his reward for being a little bitch! Check in again tomorrow when we return with more weird junk, just for you!

THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE - TV Movie (1970)

Time for another Wretched Wednesday down in The Dungeon! 

Tonight's feature is a made for TV movie from 1970 called 

"The House That Would Not Die!"

So after about two hours of research or one Google search, I came up with this little bit of information about movies that were made for TV. The first one was called "The Killers," and starred Lee Marvin and included Ronald Reagan, but it was deemed to be too violent for television, so they released it to movie theaters instead, so the first made for TV movie that actually aired on television was "See How They Run" starring John Forsyth and Senta Berger! Both of those movies came out in 1964!

Nice lady and her nice niece move into old haunted Southern country home!

 Whoa! Pretty scary!

 Nope! It's just Richard Egan as the neighbor fellah!

The nice lady was Barbara Stanwyck! So what we have here is a movie length TV show which is basically a combination of  "Empire/Redigo" starring Richard Egan, and "The Big Valley" starring Barbara Stanwyck but with a mildly scary story line!

When TV movies started coming on television back in the 60's, we used to avoid them like the plague, because with TV censorship, there could be no cussing, no sex, no real slashing or bashing, and in a nutshell, they were just generally boring compared to the real thing. Watching "The House That Would Not Die" has not changed my opinion one iota!

This is what they considered to be violent and scary!

They paid Richard Egan an extra 13 bucks for his ability to give the look!

They had a scary seance scene that made Ed Wood's "Night Of The Ghouls" seem downright exciting, and that's not easy to do!

The Director of Cinematography must have been Arty Shatz!

Michael (Logan's Run) Anderson Jr. has the part of the young man who looks like this!

Kitty Winn's first role ever was in this movie as a possessed person. I guess it prepared her pretty good for her parts in "The Exorcist," and "Exocist II."

Richard Egan also gets a little possesed, and that's about it!

For me, The End couldn't come soon enough, but the good news is that it's not titled "The Movie That Would Not Die!"

If you really like your action to move at the pace of a soap opera, then you might really enjoy "The House That Would Not Die" a lot, but if you don't, then a nap might be much more exciting!

WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET - 1966 / MST3K Version

This is a little weird, when our pal Randall Landers left a comment on the John Agar post about not being able to find this title, I was browsing through my MST collection and found it there, season 1... Even if our MST pals appear at the bottom of the screen, we can now add this little title to our big list of posts!

MST hit the airwaves back in 1988, after 10 seasons, they ripped their way through 197 films that each had around 300 jokes (or, is it 600?) each! You do the math.

Joel Hodgson plays Joel Robinson, he gets shot into space by his bosses played by Trace Beaulieu (on the right) and Josh Weinstein. Joel spends his time in space with his robot pals, Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot and Gypsy.

This movie stars Wendell (AGENT FOR H.A.R.M.) Corey, John (NIGHTBREED) Agar, Keith (SPACE PATROL) Larsen and Merry (THE HYPNOTIC EYE) Anders. The story goes like this... A space ship crash lands on the third planet of a distant solar system, killing all hands except for a boy named Tang. The rescue ship arrives some 20 years later, one of the crew, a girl named Linda, meets Tang and falls in love with him. And, our crew encounters strange creatures on this somewhat familiar world.

Okay, so, lets get this out of the way... This movie sucks!

Anyway, our heroes are on their way to locate a missing crew from a previous space mission, meaning, there's plenty of yakkity-yak about what could have possibly happened to them.

So's you know, the spaceship's name is COSMOS III... The poster shows the saucer from THIS ISLAND EARTH but this one looks like a toy from the forties... Whatever.

In a flashback, Admiral King, played by Wendell Corey, tells the tale of the mission that crashed 20 years earlier... Pow!, right into a miniature lake!

Back to now... We're getting ready to land on the third planet of the distant solar system!

John and the gang cross deadly streams and the like, a fun cheap thrill when one guy falls in.

They find an old mad lab full of weird shit!

It's hard to make out but dude has a big stuffed spider on his back! When the guy shoots the spider, it explodes and fills the whole place with smoke! I'd bet that the guy in charge of explosives effed up!

People get frisky, you know... But, that very cool toilet seems to be out of place!!

Joel and the Bots try to dismantle a doomsday satellite they find next to their ship and it turns them into Isaac Asimov characters. They have til the end of the show to get the job done.

The earth's a shakin' like a B and it looks like mother nature is now in charge. It's time to gather up the crew and get the Hell out of Dodge!..

Good news!!.. Washer's fixed, grab the towels!..

Anywho, Linda gets to stay with Tang and the crew in the COSMOS III jet off into space, back to their home planet, out there somewhere.

Then, Admiral King finishes his tale... The planet they're leaving is called... Get ready... EARTH!!.. Mofo!

There you go Randall, glad to get this one under our belt, too bad the movie's so bad. We'll end with this double bill with a version of NAVY vs, THE NIGHT MONSTERS, also from 1966...