Countless Saturday afternoons of my youth were spent cross-legged on the floor in front of the television as legendary horror host Dr. Paul Bearer presented yet another of his "horrible old movies". Mom's ritual nagging about unfinished chores would once again fall on deaf ears. I was enthralled by a man in a rubber lizard costume stomping on toy buildings as model army tanks fired bottle rockets right at him. The guy in that suit had the coolest job in the world. Or perhaps this week it was an astronaut in an open faced space helmet trying to steer his rocket ship through a meteor shower of wadded tinfoil. I never understood the value of an open faced space helmet, but all of the movie astronauts used them. My favorites were the giant bugs: tarantulas, ants, and praying mantises. Sometimes I wished we would leave Florida and move out west where nuclear testing had opened a pandora's box of giant insects. I would trade in my trusty Daisy air rifle for a flame thrower since giant bugs could only be destroyed by fire. If Johnny Quest could shoot communist Chinese with an M-1 rifle, there should be no reason why I couldn't have a flame thrower with all these giant insects running around.
Eventually, after the bottle rocket
army had driven the giant lizard back into the sea, after the rocket ship
had returned safely to Earth, and after the giant insects had been fried
to a crisp, I would mow the lawn... and daydream about next week's horrible
old movie.
Atom Age Vampire (1960) GO
Battle of the Worlds (1960) GO
Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)
GO
The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961)
GO
The Killer Shrews (1959) GO
Last Man on Earth (1964) GO
The Monster Maker (1944) GO
Red Planet Mars (1952) GO
Revolt of the Zombies (1936) GO
Thing from Another World (1951)
GO
Young Frankenstein (1974) GO