CREEPY HALLOWEEN CLASSICS FOR KIDS (MOV)

by PC Treasures

Product Details

• Item Weight: 7 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B0006GASZ0
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,240 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

Platform:  DVD MOVIE Publisher:  PC TREASURES Packaging:  RETAIL BOX Includes: 2 Movies and a cartoon - Featuring horrible giant lizards and terrifying boogiemen these creepy movies contain all of the ingredients that make for a fun scary Halloween treat. So after the costume is made and the jack-o'-lantern is carved it is time to pour the soda pop the popcorn and gather around the TV to enjoy this horrific terrific matinee!Fully registered and re-mastered. Runtime: 160 minutesThe Giant Gila Monster - Starring: Don Sullivan Fred Graham and Lisa SimoneThe fearsome Gila monster is the only venomous lizard in the world and it injects its deadly venom by chewing on its helpless victims with its razor-sharp teeth. Now imagine this terror of the Southwest 100 feed long and looking to make a meal out of the citizens of a small Texax town. Only a gang of rock and rolling hot-rodding teens can save the public - and maybe the world!Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's DaughterJesse James the most notorious outlaw of the Old West meets his match in this B-movie classic!  Once again on the run from the law Jesse and his partner-in-crime Hank encounter the sinister Maria granddaughter of Baron Victor Von Frankenstein. Maria soon attempts to re-create her grandfather's most horrible experiment.Casper The Friendly Ghost - "A-Haunting We Will Go"Specifications:Region 1 NTSC

Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Count all the genres mixed up in these two bad B-movies, May 30, 2005

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: CREEPY HALLOWEEN CLASSICS FOR KIDS (MOV) (Electronics)

"The Giant Gila Monster" is one of those films where you take a real animal and having it crawl through miniature sets. The tagline for this film was: "Only Hell could breed such an enormous beast. Only God could destroy it!" But this 1959 film from director Ray Kellogg ("The Killer Shrews," "The Green Berets"--how is that for a credit combo?), filmed in north Texas for $138,000, is a lot more low-keyed than those lines would suggest. In fact, what is interesting given when this film is made is the key relationship between Sheriff Jeff (Fred Graham) and young Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan). The kid is working on his hot rod and instead of busting his chops the sheriff really functions as a mentor: he says he is concerned about the kids in town, and you actually believe it. The idea of having a movie in which a teenage hot rodder, who also sings like Pat Boone who is not a juvenile delinquent, or at least treated like one by the cops, is rather refreshing, although admittedly the character is a bit heavy on the saccharine. But Sullivan has a natural charm and the guy wrote his own songs, so give him some credit.

But since we are talking letting a Gila monster wander through miniatures in a film with teenage hot rodders, of course this movie received "MST3K" treatment (Season 4, when Joel turned Crow and Servo into "The Thing With Two Heads" as inspired by the movie of the same name"). My major complaint about this film is that the day for night shooting is so dark I have a hard time figuring out what is happening. Obviously the special effects budget is such that most of the "horror" is suggested by quick cuts rather than actually showing everything. Still, I like the way that everybody is pretty level headed in this film and deal with the giant Gila monster in a relatively intelligent manner without wasting a lot of time and effort. Yes, finding the monster, which is the size of several houses, should not take so long, but then the movie would be shorter and it is only 74 minutes anyway.

Intermission for this "Creepy Halloween Classics for Kids" double-feature is a Casper cartoon, "A Haunting We Will Go," which is almost as good as "The Giant Gila Monster," and way better than the second feature, "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter." I think it is safe to say that more people have heard about "Billy the Kid versus Dracula," the 1966 drive-in flick that had John Carradine hamming it up as the vampire count who is involved in a love triangle with the infamous American outlaw suddenly turned good guy, than have actually seen the film. But I think most of us have remained blissfully ignorant of this film, made by the same writer (Carl K. Hittleman) and same director (William Beaudine) that same year (1966). Part of the reason that this film has seeped through the cracks of pop culture history is that it lacks the redeeming campy nature of the other film, which was at least laughably bad. This one will just make you wince.

"Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" flips the situation of "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" with the cowboy coming to the monster this time around. Jesse James (John Lupton) is being pursued by Marhsal MacPhee (Jim Davis; that is right, Jock Ewing himself), so he hides out in Baron Frankenstein's hacienda, which is now being run by his granddaughter Maria (Narda Onyx) and her brother Rudolph (Steven Geray), both of whom have pretty bad fake German accents. She is a chip off the old mad scientist's block, and promptly turns Jesse's less than intelligent sidekick, Hank Tracy (Cal Bolder), into a bald zombie now named Igor. She has been experimenting with brain transplants on the local young boys and that has not been working out so well.

Believe it or not "historically" this film takes place between the disastrous James gang attempt to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota and Jesse's death (Jesse even calls himself "Mr. Howard"). There is also the Wild Bunch, led by Butch Curry, so that a large part of this film is a relatively straightforward western. It is only when Hank needs a doctor that Jesse ends up over at the Frankenstein place; however, I defy you to explain why Juanita (Estelita Rodriquez) would take anybody back there now that she has finally succeeded in getting away from the crazy sibling tag team. This film is literally a collision between these two genres, like Hittleman wrote two scripts for two different genres and then mixed them together. You would think a double-bill with "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" makes more sense, but logic is rarely behind these DVD combos.