Vic McGee Movies
- 1968
In this bargain basement biker film, a soldier returns from 'Nam and learns that his brother-the-biker has been accused of killing the boy friend of the sheriff's daughter and incarcerating. Believing his sibling innocent, the vet takes over the gang and roars off to find the truth. His brother's former girl friend and the sheriff's daughter assist. In the end, they are successful and the brother is released. Unfortunately, he would have fared better had he remained in the hoosegow, for he turns out to be a savage brute who leaves his brother with only one logical option for dealing with him.... ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors; Return from the Past; The Blood Suckers; Gallery of Horrors. No, that's not a quadruple feature at the Highway 194 Twin Drive-In. All four titles have been applied to the same film, which also travels under the name Alien Massacre. This multipart scarefest contains five short stories about magic, the occult, the "walking dead" and vampirism. John Carradine serves as narrator of "The Witch's Clock"; Lon Chaney Jr. plays a mad doctor in "The Spark of Life"; Vampire Mitch Evans figures into "Count Alucard"; "Monster Raid" features onetime movie ingenue Rochelle Hudson; and "King Vampire" spotlights a cast of no-names. The above-named veteran performers look suitably embarrassed in this low-budget farrago, which may not be the worst of its kind ever made, but certainly comes close. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Released theatrically as The Wizard of Mars, this incredibly strange (and cheap) science fiction spin on The Wizard of Oz involves the journey of a stranded rocketship crew (in the far-off future of 1975), which includes an astronaut named Dorothy (Eve Bernhardt). Low on oxygen and desperate to find their missing booster rocket, they stumble upon the ruins of an ancient civilization, through which winds a paved road... constructed of strangely-familiar yellow bricks. The road leads them to the central Martian (Emerald) city, in which they are greeted with a projected message from the Wizard himself (the ubiquitous John Carradine), who tells a melancholy tale of the Martian people's fate, brought upon them by their foolish manipulations of time itself. As his visage fades, he leaves them with a small piece of this time-altering technology, which allows them to return to their ship at a point in time before the accident. Though this may seem like a novel concept in print, this is not the film to carry it off -- writer-producer-director David Hewitt's reach far exceeds his grasp, thanks to the film's abysmally tiny budget of $33,000. Famous Monsters magazine founder Forrest J. Ackerman served as a technical advisor. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- 1960
A series of pornography-related murders has Lt. Carson (Kenne Duncan) frustrated, not only because the killer remains at large but also because the smut peddlers are distributing their disgusting products to high school kids at ice cream shops. They raid illicit photography studios, but it's not enough; Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine) runs the racket from a comfortable distance, and she's funded by "the syndicate." With a steady stream of naive hopefuls arriving in Hollywood with stars in their eyes, casting is no problem and the desperate, shamed girls aren't quick to blow the whistle. The director of these dirty films, Johnny Ryde (Carl Anthony), warns Gloria that her henchman Dirk Williams (Dino Fantini) is seriously unhinged. He's the one responsible for all the sex crimes, which he commits after long, loving exposure to their pornographic pictures. Eventually Dirk gets sloppy and the cops find his fingerprints on some very sleazy evidence, which leads Gloria's mobster backers to demand his execution. The whole dirty scheme goes awry, though, and the police are finally able to purge the community of the smut gang. ~ Fred Beldin, Rovi
