Bill Thurman Movies
American actor Bill Thurman is one of several Southern performers specializing in "regional" pictures -- films made exclusively for distribution in the deep South by states' rights exhibitors. In the '60s, Thurman appeared in a group of inexpensive horror films, many of them remakes of earlier American-International Pictures releases, and most of them directed in a hurry by Larry Buchanan: titles in this series include Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966), Zontar, the Thing From Venus (1968) and In the Year 2889 (1968). The actor has had numerous roles in other exploitation quickies like Gator Bait (1975) and Slumber Party 57 (1977). Bill Thurman had one shining moment of glory in an A-picture, as the high school coach husband of frustrated Cloris Leachman in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1972); but as late as 1986, Thurman was back at his old stand, appearing as Reverend Bill McWilley in Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1986). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This obscure horror movie is a remake of an even more obscure horror movie, 1964's The Demon From Devil's Lake. The sheriff of a small Texas town investigates when a serial killer starts bumping off female students at a local college. He discovers that the murderer is not a serial killer at all, but a hideous monster, the result of a botched NASA experiment. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Agar, Ralph Baker, Jr., (more)
- 1966
This deliciously campy sci-film has developed a minor cult following. It chronicles the exploits of a Venusian bat-creature who tries to take over the Earth by invading the mind of a hapless victim and forcing the victim to attempt to shut off all the world's power sources. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1966
In this campy sci-fi film, the hero and his little band of post nuclear holocaust survivors find themselves stalked by telepathic cannibal mutants. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Texas-based cult director Larry Buchanan made this low-budget horror oddity starring John Agar as Rogers, a geologist who travels through the swamps to see a scientist named Simon (Jeff Alexander). What Rogers doesn't know is that Simon is quite mad and is experimenting on the local voodoo-practicing natives in order to create a mutant being, disposing of the corpses in a pit of alligators. Capturing Rogers' traveling companion, the treacherous Brenda (Shirley McLine), Simon turns her into a hideous monster before his horrible experiments are curtailed. As silly as most of Buchanan's films of the period, this forgettable trifle will be of interest to genre completists only. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
In this sci-fi film, lonely Martians wire Earth in hopes of finding fertile women to repopulate their dying world. They are particularly interested in a voluptuous dancing scientist. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1965
John Agar leads an American demolition squad into Italy to destroy a U.S. headquarters recently commandeered by Axis forces. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1965
Set during the tempestuous mid '60s, this drama seeks to expose the darkest aspects of a contemporary upper class family as it tells the story of a 17-year-old light skinned African American who decides to pass herself off as a white girl. She gets a job working in the home of a powerful movie mogul. Everything seems hunky-dory on the surface, but it doesn't take her long to learn the sordid truth about the man's troubled family. The wife is a sniveling hypochondriac, a promiscuous hellion for a daughter, and a son who was booted out of West Point after he was falsely accused of homosexuality. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1963
In this campy sci-fi adventure, an obsessed Nazi inventor devises a time machine that will allow him to bring Hitler into the present. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
