From: donnell@tuna.micro.umn.edu (BogusMan)
Subject: Re: Most SHOCKING film in my childhood
Organization: none
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 12:22:29 GMT

In article <Bz41y5.8C8@mail.boi.hp.com> hypes@boi.hp.com (Gary Hypes) writes:
>I remember a GREAT series on television in the early 60s called
>"Thriller", hosted by Boris Karloff.  My folks wouldn't let us watch
>some of the episodes, but I did later anyway.  One segment was about two
>brothers or friends who take shelter in an old abandoned house and one
>winds up with a hatchet in his skull... another about a beautiful girl
>who is the servant (daughter?) of a witch; when her lover kills and
>buries the witch and runs away with the girl, it turns out the witch has
>tricked him into killing and burying the girl instead... another story
>about a murder in a mansion where a painter gets shot with an arrow
>right thru the eye socket, and as the mystery unforlds the painting he
>was working on becomes a painting of his own murder, until the real
>murder is revealed at the very last.... wonderful stuff that scared the
>pants off me as a kid.
>
Yup. Me too. the hatchet in the head is from "Pigeons From Hell", probably
still the best Robert Howard adaptation to date. Wish the Sci Fi channel
would show this one. I miss it! Oh well, Mario Bava's film "Black Sabbath"
features Boris as the host of 3 shorts, and has a similar feel, if you 
are looking for a fix.


>Feature films -- there were three films -- British horror, I think --
>that had the word "X" or "unknown" in their titles, or combinations
>thereof, e.g., "X the Unknown," "X marks the Unknown", "The Unknown
>(something)," etc.  One was about a British spaceship where 3 astronauts
>come acorss something in space, 2 are disintegrated, the survivor crash
>lands in a farmer's field and slowly starts turning into a monster slug
>that terrorizes London.  Another - with Dean Jagger in it, I think - it
>about a blob-type creature that oozes out from the ground.  The last is
>a corker I haven't seen since childhood.  The scenes I remember are
>about a scientist picking up a strange rock along the road -- the rock
>is making an odd sound. When he holds it up to listen to it, it "pops"
>and an alien sucker-blob sticks to his face.  In another, a team of
>researchers is checking out a factory tht has been taken over by the
>aliens, and the blood of one of their friends comes rushing through some
>pneaumatic tubes.  In the end, just as the hero is about to save the
>planet by throwing a switch to launch some rockets (for reasons
>forgotten), some humans taken over by aliens machine-gun him down;
>somehow, I think, he staggers back to his feet and throws the switch and
>the aliens are defeated.  If ANYONE can remember the name of this movie,
>I'd be glad to hear it.  All three movies give me wonderful nightmares
>for years.
>
>- Gary Hypes -

Well, the first one is "The Creeping Unknown" and is a retitling of "The
Quatermass Experiment" based on a popular TV show in Britain, by Nigel
Kneale. if you like this one, watch for the other two in the series,
"Enemy From Space", and "Five Million Years To Earth" <british titles:
Quatermass II, and Quatermass and the Pit>. There is also a 4th TV
mini-series, the Quatermass conclusion. The TV versions of Quatermass II
and 1/4mass <heh> and the Pit are also available.

The one with Dean Jagger sounds like "X The Unknown", called "one of the
first pulsating blob movies" by Mike Weldon of Psychotronic Magazine.
Also with a fine job by Leo McKern <Number 2, in several episodes of 
the Prisoner>

The third one must be the one you really want the title of, because although
it sounds familiar, I can't thik of the title. Hope these other two help.
Please let me know what that third one was!
I'll do some digging in my library.
Pax
					--Judex--