Squirm (1976)

Part of the 1970s wave of animal attack films, but in this case even more weird than usual, but also rather more compelling too.

A storm has bought down the electric lines in rural Georgia, the electricity flows into the Earth and brings millions of meat eating worms to the surface! City boy Mick (Don Scardino) is in town to see his local girlfriend Geri (Patricia Pearcy). Being a smart ass from Noo Yoick and therefore not a hick he knows that something strange is up already (of course) though the strangely smug Sheriff (Peter MacLean) won't hear anything about it...

Things really start to deteriorate when the somewhat odd Roger (RA Dow) has worms fly up into his face and literal masses of worms appear everywhere, eating people left right and centre. Mick has to try and save Geri and her family and fight a strangely zombified Roger...

Truthfully this film is a total mess, but a glorious one all the same. It makes little sense and at times the red necks are as scary and dangerous as the worms. The film is full of cheese, strange characters, gore and stereotypes. It is actually pretty great... somehow.

The Phantom Planet (1961)

Middling science-fiction thrills, nothing too original overall except for one thing...

It is the future (well 1980 anyway) and USAF spaceships are going missing, thrown off course by a mysterious force. Captain Chapman (Dean Fredericks) is sent to investigate, his ship is also seized by a force and his ship lands on an unknown planet. Chapman heads out in his spacesuit and sees tiny people, then he passes out and his suit is opened. When he breathes the air of this planet he is also shrunk! Luckily for the film's classification although the rest of his clothes remain normal size his underpants also shrink with him...

Chapman is captured by the people of this planet, he is told he cannot leave but can have his choice of two beautiful women (Coleen Grey and Dolores Faith) as a wife! That doesn't go down well with one of the girl's beau Herron (Anthony Dexter) who challenges Chapman to a deadly duel. When Chapman wins but spares Herron's life they become friends. Herron offers Chapman the chance to return home but first he must help them battle the brutal aliens Solarites who are attacking...

So fairly familiar stuff, the plot is mostly what you may have seen before in other films (and probably made better too). The shrinking of Chapman is an interesting twist with some decent effects. The film is not great but is perfectly reasonable.

Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

Like the shrunken people it is about, this film is small but mighty!

Sally (June Kenney) gets a job at a doll maker called Mr Franz (John Hoyt). She notices that he keeps some remarkably lifelike dolls in glass containers however, she doesn't think any more about it. Or that Mr Franz has a strange looking machine in his back office that he likes to keep locked, or that a number of people who have worked for him have mysteriously gone missing...

Sally falls for salesman Bob (John Agar) and eventually plans to leave her job and move to another city with him, which disappoints Mr Franz. However, Bob is next to go missing. Sally then discovers that Mr Franz has shrunken Bob to doll size, and does the same to her! Like a number of other victims, Sally and Bob are now doll sized people who are let out of their glass cages for Mr Franz's amusement...

This is a lovely little film really, it may be small in budget and not well known but it is very watchable. The special effects may be a bit cheap, some of the outsize props are a little off in proportion but this is very fun stuff indeed. Hoyt is superb as the outwardly kind but secretly monstrous Franz.

Firehead (1991)

A Russian cyborg with super powers is running amok but (plot twist!) he isn't the bad guy!

Ivan (Brett Porter) is a Russian cyborg with special powers who defects to the West, however after a couple of years he is blowing things up in the good old US of A instead. Vaughn (Christopher Plummer), the head of a secret US government lab, sends the scientist Hart (Chris Lemmon) and special agent Meila (Gretchen Becker) to stop Ivan. However, Ivan is really the good guy and it is Vaughn who is secretly head of a mysterious secret society which is using Ivan's attacks to bring about World War 3...

It is complete nonsense of course, and rather inept in execution. Hilarious for all the wrong reasons (of course). It's probably better not to wonder what exactly the relationship of super smart tweenager Smith (Lauren Levy Neustadter) is to Hart, or quite why no one can shoot straight. Why does the secret society have pictures of Mussolini on the walls of their lair? Also wonder why did Plummer and Martin Landau agreed to appear in this cheap madness. Just enjoy the fact they did and helped create an incredibly inane but enjoyable film.

Wings Over Africa (1936)

A bright and breezy quota quickie set in the jungles of ...er.. Shepperton. 

A skeleton is discovered by Tony Cooper (Ian Colin) and Dalton (James Carew) in the African bush. With the skeleton is a letter to Wilkins (James Harcourt) in London. Cooper naturally makes the very long trip to act as the postman. Wilkins, an ornithology obsessed clerk, says the letter is from his brother and that he discovered a fortune in diamonds in Africa.

Cooper and Wilkins recruit Trevor (James Craven) and Carol (Joan Gardner) to fly them to Africa. The natives are friendly though the other white men already there not quite so. Dalton is also rather annoyed at Cooper who he thinks has tricked him out of the diamonds. The diamonds are discovered but then the deaths begin. Who is killing off the party to keep the diamonds for themselves? 

A straightforward film with a basic story padded out with plenty of wild animal and native footage. More a murder mystery than a jungle adventure though you pretty much guess who it is before very long. Not a bad little film at all.