Looking for entertaining 1940-60s schlocky films to watch

I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958).

Hot Tom Tryon seems to have become an alien who won't have sex with his wife, and instead prefers wandering around the woods looking for other husbands like himself!

Anything with Betty Hutton in it.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Is that Marilyn, OP?

Them! (1954). Two words: Giant Ants

It Conquered the World!

Abbott & Costello Go to Mars is one of the nuttier movies ever made

George Hamilton and Suzanne Pleshette in The Power. No creatures but plenty of overheated melodrama.

"Seconds", starring DL fave Miss Rock Hudson, will scare the green beans out of you, OP. It's brilliant.

Creature from the Haunted Sea - 1961. Stars Beach Dickerson (Scotty Bowers' fuckbuddy). He did a bunch of these things. Just google his name.

STRAIT-JACKET, starring Joan Crawford as an ex-con axe murderer. After she’s released from prison, the murders start again...

From Hell it Came - the cheesiest monster movie ever

Macabre - a fun William Castle movie

Mr. Sardonicus - another William Castle movie. The lead character has served as an inspiration for plastic surgery victims everywhere

I Saw What You Did - 1965. Crawford was more of a drunken bystander in this movie. It still gave me nightmares when I saw it.

"The call is coming from inside the house."

Dementia 13, hokey, but , atmospheric & watchable.

One of the worst has to be the one where a scientist saves his fiancee's head after she is in a car accident. He then trolls strip joints to find a body to put the head on. I think it was called "The Brain That Wouldn't Die", or something like that. Hilariously bad, but the lead Jason Evers (billed as Herb Evers) is hot.

Also, "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" with Michael Landon.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman 1958. It' a favorite. It helps if you have a pretty good sense of humor.

Agree with r13. I Saw What You Did is a hoot!

Hammer films are a good bet. I like Paranoiac, The Snorkel, Stop Me Before I Kill, Maniac, Cash on Demand. There's also all the Mummy/Dracula/Werewolf films they did

Wicked Woman

Pickup

I’m always mining movie archives for this kind of stuff.

I recently watched IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE!

ALIEN screenwriter Dan O’Bannon cited it as a direct inspiration for 1979’s ALIEN. You’ll notice it has pretty much the same plot elements:. A crew aboard a starship gets boarded by an alien who hides in the air ducts and starts eating them.They eventually fight the alien with flamethrowers and the airlock.

It’s rather amusing to watch people aboard a space ship use bullets, grenades and rocket launchers to fight an alien, which apparently isn’t the only indestructible thing!

Fans of ALIEN will love spotting the similarities.

After that, you can watch the major influence for James Cameron’s ALIENS called THEM! to spot all the similarities.

THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is actually a good movie with interesting themes if you can get past the silly rubber suit.

It makes a great double feature with THE SHAPE OF WATER, which could be viewed as a direct sequel to the first film.

One of Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s disasterpieces, the docudrama GLEN OR GLENDA (1953) has some campy and bizarre moments.

Ed Wood's most famous disasterpiece, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1957) was voted "the worst film ever made" in the Golden Turkey Awards book.

Look for old Roger Corman movies like “House of Usher” and “Masque of the Red Death”.

"Leech Woman" (1960) from Universal is one of my FAVORITES!

It's actually pretty good, lots of crappy stock footage inserted very obviously, bu it all works! Critics carp that every character is rotten and technically there's no hero to root for, but I myself root for...... the LEECH WOMAN!

I don’t think CARNIVAL OF SOULS is schlocky at all. It’s one of the best horror flicks ever.

But it was based on a pre-existing urban legend and THE TWILIGHT ZONE did it first.

Mr. Sardonicus 1961

The Mephisto Waltz 1971

Someone said The Power, I agree. It was great.

‘Carnival of Souls’ has received a Criterion Collection release, so it’s not schlocky. I first saw it in the 90s, late at night on TV. It struck me more as an ‘existentialist’ art-movie, than a typical horror movie.

"Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!", along with all of Russ Meyer's exploitation films.

The Czechoslovak film Daisies (Sedmikrásky) from 1966 is delightful and weird. One of my favorites, it has a Criterion release.

These are all funny movies, but most aren't in the top 10 worst ever made. Here are a few that usually make the list:

The Beast With a Million Eyes (1955)

The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961)

Manos the Hands of Fate (1966)

The Creeping Terror (1964)

Eegah (1962)

The Ghost in the Wild Bikini and any of those Beach films. All schlock but some hot guys in swimsuits.

OP you should also look up Giallo, i.e. Italian thriller-horror movies of the B-variety from the 60s and 70s. Some of my favorites:

- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

- Blood and Black Lace

- All the Colors of the Dark

- Don't Torture a Duckling

-The Case of the Scorpion's Tail

- The Perfume of the Lady in Black

- The Black Belly of the Tarantula

- Torso

- Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

- The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh

- Four Flies on Grey Velvet

The Italian sword and sandal films made on cheap cinecitta backlots. Glistening pecs, muscular legs in little skirts, what’s not to like? Steve Reeves was stunning.

“The Wasp Woman”, directed by Roger Corman and starring Susan Cabot, who always features prominently in DL threads about “stars who came to a bad end”.

Valley of the Gwangi . . .

It's a western AND a monster movie

I've seen The Creeping Terror! It was in a sort of double bill with a 1940s sex education film. The latter showed a caesarean birth where the cut was made vertically and the rather long wound was stitched with the thread being passed through large coat buttons.

Little Shop of Horrors - the original, not the remake. Cheap and fun.

Homicidal - A William Castle classic from the 60s

Also, the Mystery Science Theatre series shows some great shlocky films and their commentary is usually very clever.

Wasp Woman

Great thread!

There's a funny story in Roger Corman's autobiography How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime about IT CONQUERED THE WORLD.

Originally the evil creature Corman had the special effects department build for the film was very flat and wide, like a pancake with a hideous face. When Beverly Garland first saw the creature off-set, Corman watched as she looked down at it and jokingly said, "So, you conquered the world eh? Take that!" And raised her foot as if she was going to stomp on it. Corman immediately instructed the department to build another creature, very tall.

Giallo is not schlock and is not funny. It's very violent. Not what OP asked for at all.

Tallulah Bankhead as a Jesus-freak!

Turn in your gay cards! It's Zsa Zsa in " Queen of Outer Space."

Fans of "schlocky 1940-60's" b-movies are quite possibly also fans of the giallo genre. But giallo films are a whole different mood.

Of course, THE BLOB is a classic from this era.

So is WAR OF THE WORLDS.

Speaking of early influences on modern hits, you might want to check out EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.

It was the inspiration for INDEPENDENCE DAY.

Link is for full movies on YouTube.

You can filter by decade or genre and choose resolution.

Enjoy.

R44 Plenty of Giallo movies are absolutely ridiculous and camp, I reckon most fans of schlock also watch Giallo for that reason.

[quote]One of the worst has to be the one where a scientist saves his fiancee's head after she is in a car accident. He then trolls strip joints to find a body to put the head on. I think it was called "The Brain That Wouldn't Die", or something like that.

And, to quote MST3K, the scientist keeps her head in a lasagna pan.

Wow, Boris Karloff really scraped the bottom of the barrel sometimes ....

[quote]Turn in your gay cards! It's Zsa Zsa in " Queen of Outer Space."

Worth noting is that Zsa Zsa doesn't play the title role. ("I hate dat qveen.") She plays a *scientist.*

[quote]Is that Marilyn, OP?

Nah. Just one of the many coarse Marilyn wannabes of the 1950s.

Let's Kill Uncle

Picture Mommy Dead

R15 YES!!!! "The brain that wouldn't die" is a CLASSIC!!!

Jan in a pan!

Ed Wood directed by Tim Burton. I'm no Johnny Depp fan but he did a good job and Martin Landau as Bella L was great, won an Oscar for it. (Not that Oscars mean much anymore.)

"Where Where You When there Lights Went Out?"

Thanks R33 for mentioning Eegah! Crazy bad. Another great Hammer film is "The Brides of Dracula" from 1960.

For campy and schlocky I've been watching the Charlie Chan films. They're problematic, to be sure, but since I read the book about the "real" Charlie Chan I get great enjoyment from them. Mantan Moreland's vaudeville routines are nuggets of showbiz history. His reputation took a beating during the civil rights era. I get why people might find them insufferable in these times.

THE BAD SEED is one of the most entertaining over-the-top movies I've ever seen.

R63 The Bad Seed! Oh yes, a great one. And Eileen Heckart's five minutes are worth the entire movie.

“Queen of Blood” with John Saxon, about a female vampire alien, is creepy, campy, and a good watch. “This Island Earth” is a little too good to be schlock and is definitely worth checking out. “Planet of the Vampires”, which is Italian and incredibly stylish, is a strange, fun film.

Maybe schlock-adjacent, but Doris Day in MIDNIGHT LACE, where she’s stalked by a murderous creep in the impenetrable London fog, and JULIE where she’s an airline stewardess stalked by a murderous creep and ends up having to land the plane!

I rented "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" at a video store because from looking at the box, I thought it would be schocky and campy and I'm into that. But it turned out to be exciting and great fun to watch. Later I realized it has a cult following. My friend even ordered an autographed copy directly from Russ Meyer himself, some years ago, who autographed it and mailed it to him. Didn't John Waters state on an Oscars telecast that it was his favorite film?

“First I’m gonna a-wash-ah you, Then I’m gonna a-spinna you dry!”

Always and forever: PSYCHO (1960).

Hitchcock would NOT be outdone by the likes of Roger Corman and William Castle! He beat them at their own game.

Agree with Midnight Lace and Julie. Campy fun.

The Mad Room - with Shelley Winters and Stella Stevens

This thread reminds me of the famous Gahan Wilson's Movie Plot Generator flow chart...

^^^Here's a close-up...

Thanks for all the recommendations guys; haven't seen or even heard of most of the films mentioned above yet. I decided to start with top-tier schlock first because I'm afraid I'll be turned off by the genre if I start watching the ones with the worst reputation right away. I watched "I Married a Monster from Outer Space", "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (thanks to the posters above for mentioning these two), "Tarantula", a Steve Reeves peplum "The Last Days of Pompeii" and "Invaders from Space" this last weekend. The last one sucked but the rest were all awesome, especially the first one; Tom Tryon was a delightfully atrocious actor but his woodiness worked perfectly for the part. And with good looks and biceps like those his acting couldn't possibly matter less.

But there aren't really that many B-movies that are supposed to be genuinely good around so I'll have to dig into the campfests mentioned in this thread sooner or later. I'm both looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time.

Thanks to this thread I watched PICKUP (1951) last night. I loved it! I'd seen Beverly Michaels in WICKED WOMAN, recently for the first time actually, and liked that a lot too. So this was an interesting treat.

What an interesting little film. Sometimes the low-rent noirs are the most interesting. The plot in PICKUP was exceptional. Halfway through the film I was wondering why things were happening, then I saw why. It's was a clever plot device I could see Hitchcock having fun with in a story.

I'm a life-long cult film buff so I always think Ive seen everything. On these kinds of threads on DL, which I always love, I always spot a handful of films I've never heard of that turn out to be treasures.

Tonight I'm going to watch THE POWER.

Burn, Witch, Burn

[quote] It Conquered the World!

More like, “It Briefly Occupied a Cave”

If you liked Pickup you might like some other Hugo Haas films

PSYCHO is not schlocky, r69. None of Hitchchock's films are, with the possible exception of THE BIRDS.

Hitchcock was a sensible, realistic filmmaker. PSYCHO is one of the best horror films ever made and it holds up today.

It was based on a real serial killer and events like PSYCHO's happen in real life.

WAR OF THE WORLDS is an enduring, sci-fi and horror classic that's considered "good," r74. It's just that the 1953 effects that look schlocky today. WORLDS has stood the test of time, from its inception as a 19th century novel, to the Orson Welles radio show panic of 1938, to the 1953 movie, to TV versions and the great Spielberg/Tom Cruise version.

So it will hold your interest and you'll familiarize yourself with a classic.

FORBIDDEN PLANET and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL are also classics considered good stories for the genre but schlocky effects.

Bear in mind, however, that "schlocky" means campy and funny to most people; we thought that's what you wanted!

Anything with Vincent Price after 1950. Try the Tingler.

"The Tingler is loose in this theater!"

If you like both Italian peplum and '50s creature features, just watch when both worlds collide!

PERSEUS THE INVINCIBLE stars the hunky Richard Harrison and a Medusa monster that looks more WAR OF THE WORLDS than any description of Medusa from the ancient world.

Here's a free link to the entire movie.

You'll also get a double dose of colliding schlock in MOLE MEN AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, starring the glorious muscles of Mark Forest and Paul Wynter.

Free movie @ linK:

Well you can go back to the 30s and of course there is Freaks from the staid classy glamourous MGM. Louis B Mayer loathed the film. But for some reason he kept Tod Browning on and the director gave him The Devil Doll with Lionel Barrymore and Maureen Sullivan. A very bizarre strange which you would not expect to see with these stars or from this studio.

More schlocky films from the 30s definitely worth watching. Zoo in Budapest with Gene Raymond who plays an animal rights activist who works at the zoo, steals fur stoles from women and finds orphan Loretta Young hiding there. They strike up a romance and for some reason the film turns into an adventure movie with escaped animals. A lot of fun with some very beautiful photography.

Then there is Madame Satan from DeMille which is a dull backstager with DL fave Lillian Roth until they decide to hold a party in a zeppelin at which point it turns into Die Fledermaus which features a production number about electricity until there is a storm and then it turns into a comedy disaster movie.

The '53 War of the Worlds is not schlock as somebody pointed out.

1983 - so 20 years after the 60s. Wicked Stepmother. Bette Davis’s last film. Total trash but Bette is in character; smoking, with the signature speech inflection. She had disagreements with the director and walked off the production, so her character morphed into a black cat! TCM ran it probably 20 years ago and I recorded it onto disk so I’ve a copy. I’ve not seen it on broadcast cable since.

Did anyone mention THE example of this genre yet?

Hitchcock made the ridiculously bad "Torn Curtain", cliche-ridden and poorly shot on the Universal backlot, schlock but not bad enough to b e camp.

Lady in a Cage (1964) with DL fave Livvie de Havilland (age 103)...

Jack the Giant Killer and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, both starring hot GAY actor Kerwin Mathews

These kinds of film genres are endless, which I love. Also as newer generations come along there's a whole new appreciation for them. You start discovering strange small films that don't seem popular but really stand out (then often watch them grow in popularity again as they get rediscovered again and again).

One like this for me was I BURY THE LIVING (1958, dir: Albert Band, starring Richard Boone). Spooky and surreal. Like a really good low-budget Twilight Zone episode...

r86 through r89 clearly didn't read the thread.

The "Grande Dame Guignol" movies from the 60s like Baby Jane, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, and Lady in a Cage are fun

The Mugger from 1958, featuring a young George Maharis

Parrish, a Troy Donahue campfest from the 60s

Susan Slade, starring Miss Connie Francis

Any film featuring Ray Harryhausen special effects. Here's a compilation of every Ray Harryhausen animated creature in feature films, presented in chronological order...

Mighty Joe Young - Mighty Joe Young (1949)

Rhedosaur - The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

It (giant octopus) - It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)

Brontosaur - The Animal World (1956)

Allosaur - The Animal World (1956)

Brontosaur Hatchling - The Animal World (1956)

Stegosaur - The Animal World (1956)

Sceraptosaur - The Animal World (1956)

Triceratops - The Animal World (1956)

Tyrannosaur - The Animal World (1956)

Flying Saucers - Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

Spaceship - Twenty Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Ymir - Twenty Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Elephant - Twenty Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Cyclops - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Serpent Woman - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Roc Hatchling - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Roc - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Skeleton - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Dragon - The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Squirrel - The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)

Crocodile - The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)

Crab - Mysterious Island (1961)

Phororhacos - Mysterious Island (1961)

Cephalopod - Mysterious Island (1961)

Bee - Mysterious Island (1961)

Talos - Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Harpies - Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Hydra - Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Skeletons - Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Moonship - First Men in the Moon (1964)

Space Sphere - First Men in the Moon (1964)

Moon Cow - First Men in the Moon (1964)

Kate Calendar's Skeleton - First Men in the Moon (1964)

Selenite - First Men in the Moon (1964)

Grand Lunar - First Men in the Moon (1964)

Brontosaur - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Archelon - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Allosaur - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Triceratops - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Ceratosaur - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Pterodactyl - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Rhamphorhynchus - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Pterodactyl Hatchlings - One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Horse - The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Eohippus - The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Pteranodon - The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Ornithomimus - The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Gwangi - The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Styrathosaur - The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Elephant - The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Homonicus - The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

Figurehead - The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

Kali - The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

Centaur - The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

Griffin - The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

Ghouls - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Baboon - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Minoton - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Hornet - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Walrus Giganticus - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Troglodyte - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Guardian of the Shrine - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Vulture - Clash of the Titans (1981)

Pegasus - Clash of the Titans (1981)

Calibos - Clash of the Titans (1981)

Bubo - Clash of the Titans (1981)

Dioskilos - Clash of the Titans (1981)

Medusa - Clash of the Titans (1981)

Scorpions - Clash of the Titans (1981)

Kraken - Clash of the Titans (1981)

It's Miss Kathleen Hughes in It Came From Outer Space, r56.

Not of This Earth with another Oscar-worthy performance from the gifted Miss Beverly Garland.

City of the Dead AKA Horror Hotel. My favorite horror movie of the 60s. Atmospheric beyond belief, with fantastic production design, score and performances on a shoestring budget.

This print is pristine.

Love it.

Burn, Witch, Burn

R97. Um...?

"Susan Slade" (with, yes, Connie Stevens, not Connie Francis, as noted above) and Troy Donahue, is a high-camp hootenanny. John Waters once called it his favorite movie.

R55 I hate Dat queen! Did Zsa Zsa mean Merv Griffin!

Spider-Baby, or, The Maddest Story Ever Told.

Whatever happened to Baby Jane.

Ladybug, Ladybug (1963) is a pretty unsettling film.

The burning baby scene in Susan Slade is a classic, but perhaps even worse is "A Summer Place": classic theme music, DL fave Constance Ford has some great lines, there's a Christmas tree scene that John Waters imitated in "Female Trouble" and because Sandra dee and Troy Donahue couldn't act you just need to wait for Max Steiner to do a crescendo to know when they have something important going on. Sandra Dee is often telling Troy Donahue "let's not be bad" (which I guess mean she doesn't want to fuck).

Three Coins in the Fountain, and the even cheesier Ann-Margret remake The Pleasure Seekers

There is an old film called "The Queen of Babylon" with Ricardo Montalban and Rhonda Fleming that I used to love as a kid. I haven't seen it since then but I"m sure it's as schlocky as you'd like.

The Sins of Jezebel with Paulette Goddard is super campy

Yeah, r98, we can view Harryhausen's oeuvre ourselves at imdb.com.

Twat.

Now watching Wicked Woman. Very entertaining!

In case anyone's interested, here's a list of schlocky horror and sci-fi movies that were shown together as double features from 1940s to 70s. I decided to outgay myself and recreate some of these double features in the comfort of my living room this next weekend. And between these movies I'll be playing those cheesy vintage ads they were showing in between double features in drive-ins. Unfortunately I'm too young to have ever experienced a drive-in theatre (and there were never any in my country anyway) so this way I'll at least be getting some taste of the fun moviegoers back then had.

And here's one of those fun drive-in intermission ads. Youtube's loaded with them.

"Wicked Woman" is great--from the off-key theme song onward, and through the ridiculous plot.

Robot Monster, filmed at the Bronson Cave in Los Angeles.

Queen of Outer Space (1958), featuring Zsa Zsa Gabor. "Vimmen cannot be happy vidout men!"

Doesn't every town have a novelty drive-in theater, r115?

My city does. I heard drive-ins are making a comeback because of the coronavirus.

This one has a great reputation in the world of schlock horror. Extremely cheap and laughable hippie-era exploitation.

My family’s Super 8 home movies.

😱

[quote] The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American thriller film directed by Charles Laughton, and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee was based on the 1953 novel of the same title by Davis Grubb. The plot focuses on a corrupt minister-turned-serial killer who attempts to charm an unsuspecting widow and steal $10,000 hidden by her executed husband.

The Night of the Hunter. If that's not enough entertainment, I don't know what is.

I just watched The Leech Woman. Wow, what a delicious film: it's like a jungle adventure meets a voodoo horror meets a slasher film meets a Douglas Sirk melodrama. And I loved this monologue by Coleen Gray (which should resonate with the fading beauties of DL):

[quote] For a man, old age has rewards. If he is wise, his gray hairs bring dignity and he is treated with honor and respect. But for the aged woman, there is nothing. At best, she's pitied. More often, her lot is of contempt and neglect. What woman lives who has passed the prime of her life who would not give her remaining years to reclaim even a few moments of joy and happiness and know the worship of men. For the end of life should be its moment of triumph. So it is with the aged women of Nandos. A last flowering of love and beauty before death.

The 1956 Hitchcock film [italic]The Trouble With Harry[/italic] is about as un-Hitchcockian as you can get. It's a sly little comedy. IMDb says, "The trouble with Harry is that he's dead, and everyone seems to have a different idea of what should be done with his body." It stars John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, and Jerry Mathers (not as the Beaver). This is one of the most underrated movies of all time. I highly recommend it.

R125 It's a good movie, but it's definitely not schlocky.

"The Trouble With Harry" was Shirley MacLaine's movie debut and also featured Jerry Mathers, not as the Beaver.

Hitchcock sucked when he did straight-up comedies: The Trouble With Harry and Mr. & Mrs. Smith were both terrible movies. His sense of humor worked so much better when it was a bit more subtle and more perverse.