In our last issue, we explored those great horror double features that once played in the local theater.  The trouble is, some of those matches weren't made in horror heaven.  The remedy is to become your own twin bill packager and treat yourself to...

By JOE WINTERS

You’re at home or visiting friends and watching a movie. Whether that film is great, merely good, or endearingly awful, sometimes it ends too soon and you find yourself wanting more. It’s early or you’re just too keyed up to call it quits and not in the mood to do anything else. Is there any reason to stop with one picture? Of course not! With the seemingly endless variety of movies on home video, you can treat yourselves to a double feature to delight your hearts!

Given the nature of the Webzine you’re reading, it’s likely that your double feature would be of the horrific sort. Therefore, we present for your approval film combos that are similar, yet different. Movies which, for whatever reason, simply go together and play off one another in a way that invites comparison while providing more bang for your entertainment buck.

Previously, we gave you a little background into the history of double features. Well, now’s your chance to have it your way (or at least my way for now, then yours) with some cinematic combinations designed to offer more of what you want.

The link in our first double feature is Lon Chaney Jr. portraying a pair of characters each revitalized by electricity. In Man Made Monster (1941), Lon is Dan McCormick, a likeable fellow with immunity to small doses of electricity. This comes in handy at his carnival job as Dynamo Dan, the Electrical Man, but when he agrees to take part in a series of electro-biology experiments with mad doctor Rigas (Lionel Atwill), Dan develops a dependence on high voltage snacks. Rigas plots to create an army of mindless electrical slaves, but gets his wires crossed when he pushes his prototype creation too far, and the result is (I have to say it)…shocking.

For the most part, the movie presents Lon in a positive light, literally glowing as the picture progresses. Through it all, we care about his plight and share the sadness of the little dog Corky who befriended him. Man Made Monster was the movie that put young Chaney on the map of Horror-wood and launched an approximately five-year stint as Universal Studios’ reigning horror star. After his contract with Universal expired, Lon went on to other character parts, some good, some not so good, which brings us to the second feature on our double bill, The Indestructible Man (1956).

Here Lon’s character is not nearly as sympathetic as good old Dynamo Dan. As racketeer Charles "Butcher" Benton, Lon is behind bars facing execution, yet vowing vengeance on the partners who left him to take the fall. They’re all looking for the $600,000 the Butcher hid following an armored car robbery, but after Benton goes to the San Quentin gas chamber, that would appear to be all she wrote, right? Wrong! A well-meaning doctor looking for a cancer cure secretly purchases butcher Benton's body. The tissue experimentation, topped with a 280,000-volt charge, returns the Butcher to life. His vocal chords are burned (so he doesn’t have to memorize any more dialog?), but his cellular structure has changed to the point where his skin is impenetrable.

About an hour and several bodies later, the Butcher completes his revenge, goes for the money, and gets a face full of flamethrower from the police. Making his way to a nearby power plant, Butcher Benton meets his end in spectacular (well, spectacularly cheap) fashion. While more crude than the superior Man Made Monster (itself re-released in the early Fifties as Atomic Monster), The Indestructible Man offers a later glimpse of Lon, his best days on screen behind him, but still giving his all to supply chills in a genre that had yet to totally turn its back on him. By the way, if you’re looking for an intermission snack for this double shocker, may I suggest hamburger and (what else?) French fries.

Another mad science double feature could start with The Black Sleep (1956) where Basil Rathbone creates a batch of deformities in an attempt to perform life-restoring brain surgery to his late wife. Rathbone’s less-successful experiments include Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson and John Carradine.In The Unearthly (1957) Carradine is a mad doctor who creates a batch of deformities in an attempt to uncover the secret of prolonged youth. On hand for this one too is Tor Johnson, as well as the lovely (and future 50-foot woman) Allison Hayes as an intended victim.

Boris Karloff’s tremendous output of quality terror films has qualified him in the hearts of many as the King of Horror. Coming up with merely one double feature starring Mister K. would merely be scratching the surface, but here’s one for starters: The Invisible Ray (1936) and Die, Monster. Die! (1965).

Made almost 30 years apart, each exposes Boris to radioactive meteors with devastating results. The first gives him a death touch and a touch of insanity that’s double deadly to those he thinks double-crossed him. The second (loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s "The Colour Out of Space") transforms an elderly, wheelchair-bound Boris into a rampaging, silvery bald-headed guy. Radioactivity is not something to treat lightly, as both characters learn when they go up in smoke. Microwave some popcorn to go with these movies and you’re all set!

Like Karloff, Peter Cushing was a gentleman of horror, and his presence is a boost to a pair of pictures with an island setting where the horror is anything but gentle. Island Of Terror (1967) pits Peter against slithering, bone-devouring silicates, while Island Of The Burning Doomed (1967) teams him with frequent co-star Christopher Lee in a battle against alien life forms who turn up the heat on area inhabitants. Terence Fisher directed both films while taking a break from Hammer studios. And speaking of breaks, your snack time could include some sort of fillet (with bones already removed) and maybe some red hots.

With characters based on John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos, Village Of The Damned (1961) presents the residents of an English village with super-intelligent children wielding hypnotically destructive powers. The follow-up, Children Of The Damned (1963) offers a new international group of youngsters determined not to make the same mistakes as their predecessors. Beware the eyes that paralyze!

Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend is the source for the Italian-made Last Man On Earth (1964) and the American-made The Omega Man (1971). The former (and more faithful to the book) features Vincent Price as a modern-day plague survivor in a daily battle for survival and a nightly battle against the other survivors, vampiric mutations out to destroy him. As The Omega Man, Charlton Heston has his work cut out for him against a band of religious fanatical night-dwellers.

If the end of civilization is too much for you, you can always opt for the old-fashioned charm of The Devil Bat (1941) with Bela Lugosi as Dr. Carruthers who trains the oversized title creature to attack anyone wearing his newly invented shaving lotion. "Rub some on da tender portion of your neck," he instructs future victims. "You won’t use anything else."

PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation), the poverty row studio which gave us that film, used much of the same premise five years later for The Flying Serpent. George Zucco plays an archaeologist who uses the legendary Aztec killer bird god Quetzalcoatl to kill those who might stumble upon his hidden treasure, simply by planting one of the creature’s feathers on the intended victim. Why Zucco runs around at the end carrying a feather while the bird is on the loose is one of the movie’s many loopy lapses in logic.

Alternate co-features to both of these films are also available. If you dare, you could team up The Devil Bat with its comparatively dreary sequel Devil Bat's Daughter (1946). For starters, Bela and the bats are not in this one, and the movie completely reverses the findings of the original by declaring Dr. Carruthers innocent, even though we saw him doing all those nasty things in the earlier film! Surely the doc wasn’t under some kind of spell! More likely the sequel’s writers were, if indeed they even saw the original.

While Devil Bat's Daughter might not be as enjoyable an alternate co-feature to The Devil Bat, a satisfying alternate co-feature for The Flying Serpent would be Q: The Winged Serpent (1982). Hiding atop the Chrysler Building, this titanic terror is capable of decapitating or skinning its victims alive! A hapless hoodlum, well played by Michael Moriarty, finds the creature and uses it to knock off his own not-so-nice enemies ("Eat him! Eat him!"). With its cast, script and stop-motion effects by David Allen, this contemporary vision of the Aztec legend is more frighteningly effective than its bird-on-a-wire predecessors.

Come to think of it, and to give you an idea of the different directions you can take with your do-it-yourself double features, an alternate co-feature to Q: The Winged Serpent would be The Giant Claw (1957). This laughable turkey (with visible strings attached) from outer space chows down on pilots and parachutists and is impervious to bombs with it’s own antimatter force field. How will Earth get out of this one? See the movie and find out. And for an intermission snack, how ‘bout wings? Mmmmm…de-lish!

Anyway, you get the idea. You might go into this planning to like one film more than the other or you may be surprised. Or perhaps one film will make you appreciate the other even more. Give it a try. Sometimes seeing double can be good for you!

Thanks, Joe!  Your recommendations are duly noted and appreciated.  Readers, why not make your own double horror feature presentation for Halloween?  Just take two horror flicks, add popcorn, and enjoy!

Article copyright © Joe Winters

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