Santa Claus vs The Devil (1959)

Some truly bizarre Christmas fare.

Santa Claus (José Elias Moreno) is preparing for Christmas, and bringing joy to all the good little girls and boys. These include poor Lupita who is a very good girl who only wants a doll. However, the Devil sends his minion Pitch (José Luis Aguirre), who tries to corrupt Lupita into stealing that doll. Luckily Lupita remains good (a real little angel to be honest). Pitch recruits three bad boys to help him try and stop Santa in a number of traps and ruin Christmas...

Very strange stuff and often very surreal, Santa's robot surveillance system and flying castle base are amazing if somewhat odd. In mortal peril from the evil of the Devil, Santa is helped by Merlin (Armando Arriola) - well of course! The film has some real mind bending charm and is fun, though may cause some nightmares. Well Merry Christmas anyway!

Santo vs the Vampire Women (1962)

Masked wrestling super hero antics which takes a while to get going.

A group of vampires led by their queen Zorina (Lorena Velazquez) need a new fresh body to be the next bride of Satan, they choose the daughter of Professor Orlof (Augusto Benedico), Diana (Maria Duval). Only one man can save Diana and foil the vampires, the wrestling legend Santo! 

This is great fun, one of many Mexican films starring real Lucha Libre wrestlers as the heroes and Santo was the greatest of them all, this being just one of dozens of films he made. The only problem with the film is the lengthy first act which includes much slow vampire ritual and pointless moving from one spooky room to the other. Once Santo gets involved then the action and pace really hots up.

Beaks! (1987)

A rather gruesome version of the "birds attacking humans" story, many pigeons were probably harmed bringing you this nonsense.

Why is unknown, and the way the film keeps jumping from random scene to random scene doesn't help, but birds have declared war on mankind. From the mightiest eagle to a budgerigar, they are all out to attack (with various degrees of devastation). TV reporter Vanessa (Michelle Johnson) and her cameraman Peter (Christopher Atkins) are sent to cover the attacks. Initially they are sceptical but soon they are fighting for their lives, even blowing up part of a train!

Meanwhile, highly successful hunter Arthur (Aldo Sambrell) - his house has more mounted skulls than walls, is hosting a childrens' party. What could go wrong? Much horror!

Rather gory and very ridiculous. It does have plenty of scary moments though. The effects are pretty well done, though in most cases it looks like pigeons were thrown at people. However, the story is rather poor and very disjointed. No explanation is given as to what is happening, and why very little is being done about it by the authorities. It isn't as bad as Birdemic: Shock & Terror, though that isn't a very high bar...

Neutron vs. the Death Robots (1962)

An example of the rather strange genre of the luchador movie. Where masked Mexican wrestlers appear in movies as super heroes and villains, and do a decent job of it too.

Neutron (Wolf Ruvinskis) is a crime fighting super hero who recently defeated the similarly masked but evil Dr Caronte (Julio Aleman). Caronte, however was not killed and has returned with a new plot to revive the brains of three dead scientists. With the help of their knowledge, the help of the alive scientist Professor Thomas (Jack Taylor) and his army of robot mutants, Caronte plans to build the ultimate bomb. Oh he also had a midget assistant called Nick.

In between various musical interludes starring Nora (Rosita Arenas), Dr Caronte sends his army to gather the chemicals he requires to build his bomb. Then the bomb goes missing at the airport...

A very odd film indeed. The final fight between Neutron and Dr Caronte is very good (and goes on for a long time) but much of the rest of the film is rather slow and disjointed and doesn't make a lot of sense.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956)

A Western / Monster movie... however it makes you wait so long for the monster it can't help but be a bit disappointing when it finally arrives. Jimmy (Guy Madison) is a gringo with a cattle ranch somewhere in Mexico. Local lovely Sarita (Patricia Medina) has caught his eye, much to the distaste of Enrique Rios (Eduardo Noriega) who is her fiancé and also wants Jimmy's ranch. Enrique and Jimmy have a hilariously bad fight in the town, which seems to mostly consist of them knocking over every stall in the market.

But some of Jimmy's cows are disappearing, are they falling into the swamp, being stolen by rustlers or some other reason? After what feels like a lifetime we finally discover it is the other reason... a highly dubious looking monster. He snacks on the hapless Pancho (Pascual Garcia Pena) but can Jimmy save the day with some nifty rope action?

Truly this is not a good film. The monster effects are poor even by the standards of the day. The film also makes you wait for it too long. For cheese value the film isn't bad, and it is undeniably fun once the monster action gets started. It is just a shame it takes so long to get there.

Snake People (1971)

A colourful but rather average zombie horror film, worth watching mostly as it was one of Boris Karloff's last films before he died. Captain Labesch (Rafael Bertrand) and Anabella (Julissa) arrive on a remote island. They find the authorities spend most of their time in a drunken stupor especially the police chief Carlos East (Anabella is especially keen to stop this as she wants funding for a temperance society!) and a crazed voodoo priest called Damballah is practising strange rites including we are told, raising the dead.

Anabella's uncle (Karloff) owns most of the island and warns that the ancient rites should not be interfered with. He is researching secret powers of the mind. Does he have involvement with something more sinister on the island too?

This isn't a good film by any means though is not unentertaining, the voodoo rites follow the usual script with plenty of skulls, fires, near naked women dancing with snakes and a sinister dwarf. However, they often go on a bit with not much happening. The plot doesn't really make such sense either but the film looks pretty good.

Octaman (1971)

Half-man half-octopus and he is on a killing spree in this fun trash. Octaman is a mutation caused by radiation and he doesn't like scientists like Susan (Pier Angeli) and Dr Torres (Kerwin Matthews) capturing his octopi kin in Mexico. He kills people who get in his way with his large tentacles, usually by hitting them over the head.

The scientists are investigating radioactive pollution in Mexico and the changes it is causing to local fauna. However to fund the expedition the scientists have had to bring along a ranch owner who wants a new attraction for his zoo. Octaman doesn't care, he is an equal opportunity killer.

The plot is barely present but that doesn't really matter because Octaman just has to be seen to be believed. This film takes men pretending to be monsters in silly rubber suits to a new level. It is silly nonsense and hilarious.

The Bermuda Triangle (1978)

An awful movie, though the awfulness makes it strangely compelling. A small boat is sailing into the mysterious Bermuda Triangle (we get a little historical vignette about some of the ships and aircraft that have gone missing over the years) with Edward (John Huston) leading a team of stereotypes looking for the ruins of an ancient city, maybe Atlantis.

Strange happenings begin to befall the crew after a strange doll is found floating in the sea. Weird lights at night and a bizarre parrot attack. Then when the divers go down to explore some ruins there is a sudden sea quake and various columns collapse on them...

The film has many problems, and is rather long with far too much meaningless padding. Few of the characters are fleshed out or matter in any way though Peter (Carlos East), the alcoholic ex-surgeon is amusingly bitter and dark. The film also includes some pointless shark murder. Maybe it was because they were out acting most of the humans?

The Robot vs The Aztec Mummy (1958)

Some films are so bad they are good. Some are just bad. Despite the sheer nonsense of the premise this film falls a bit closer to the latter than the former unfortunately. Which is a shame as you want a film about a robot fighting an Aztec mummy to be nothing short of great...

The main problem with the film is that it takes too long to get going, the actual meeting and battle between the robot and mummy is right at the very end (and isn't the most amazing battle in movie history if we are to be honest though is mercifully short). The film is slow because it includes a recap from the two previous mummy films in the series so at least you can save time by just watching this one and not the others i guess.

As to the film plot, the mummy Popoca (Angelo de Steffani) is guarding ancient treasure which mad (of course) scientist Dr Krupp (Luis Aceves Castañeda) wants for himself. As the mummy usually kills all who try and steal the treasure Krupp builds a cyborg robot (Adolfo Rojas) to destroy the mummy. Then he plans to use the loot to build an army of similar robots and conquer the world. Though if we are to be honest i suspect the world's armed forces would have the ability to defeat an army of robots that move incredibly awkwardly and slowly.

Like the robot the film isn't very good, the best part of the film is the title. However it is worth watching once just for that.

Treasure of the Amazon (1985)

A rough jungle exploitation film that rips off the likes of Indiana Jones quite shamelessly at times.

Gringo (Stuart Whitman) is a semi-crazed adventurer who once went into the jungle with his friends to find treasure and returned years later unable to remember his own name and with the shrunken heads of his friends in a bag.

But naturally he now wants to return to the jungle with a group of fellow adventurers and others after the loot including former Nazi Klaus (Donald Pleasence) and Barbara (Ann Sidney) who has found some diamonds but doesn't seem to have found the correct accent to use...

The film isn't very good to very honest. The narrative jumps around all over the place and is often shamelessly exploitative for example including scenes with naked native women wrestling and another one where a native eats a tarantula! It also has massive amounts of gore and violence. The sheer disjointed awfulness however makes it fairly entertaining.