Limiting myself to 11 for no reason. From the list in post #60, I would choose:
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
The Haunted Palace (1963)
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)
I would randomly add:
The President Vanishes (1934) - As trouble brews overseas, rapacious business leaders in the U.S want to get the country into another war to boost profits…but then POTUS thwarts their plans by disappearing! Fast-paced and utterly ridiculous, this Depression-era presidential fantasy is rarely shown nowadays.
Detour (1945) – Sometimes called “the greatest B-film ever made,” this film represents the darkest corner of film noir.
The Black Book (1949) – Rare period film noir set during the French Revolution. Guess what everyone’s after.
The Man from Planet X (1951) – Hollywood’s earliest foray into extraterrestrial encounters lacks both the budget and pretentiousness of The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Three Outlaw Samurai (1964) - Well-paced, action-packed sword opera has title characters siding with peasants in a dispute with their scumbag landlord.
Horrors of Malformed Men (1969) – Bizarre story of one man’s quest to make a refuge for the malformed people he creates. Not a cheesy Japanese horror film, but a dream-like/David Lynchian drama about an extremely dysfunctional family.
Honorable mention must go to Mysterious Island (1961) because it is certainly one of the greatest giant bee-movies ever made.
The “IMDB” (really one guy’s opinion there) picks “Hard Ticket to Hawaii” as a favourite. Andy Sedaris movies, all essentially the same, are very entertaining without requiring a scintilla of thought or concentration.
In the late 50s “giant-sized small creature” category, I really like The Black Scorpion, especially the close ups of the titular character’s drooling mug.
It was kind of circular – smaller budget equals lower-tier actors and fewer locations, which made them good fodder for filling out the program in a theater where one feature (no matter how A it was) would usually not be enough to satisfy the patrons*; there was also usually a contrast in styles and content between the A and B pictures, which made a more entertaining program. The lower budget also made it okay that the film made less money – it may have only been expected to play for a week or two in the movie chain houses. These days all that has been set aside, so if you’re talking about B movies it can be anything that isn’t a prestige movie.
*I believe in those days the only A movies that ran by themselves, and only on first release, were huge blockbuster types like GWTW or DeMille epics, which were distributed as “road show” engagements. I think that lasted into the 50s.
I love Andy Sidaris movies! They’re sort of like those old Disney movies with Fred MacMurray or Dean Jones, but with car chases, gunfights, and lots of gratuitous nudity.
Those are not B-movies. They’re not big budget productions either, but well-crafted British movies of their time with good actors. Yes, I admit they’re a bit cheesy, and not very true to the sources, but they are a staple of my childhood and never looked cheaply made to me. And the score is great!
I watched some of these with my daughter when she was a 'tween. We both thought they were great. Leeza loved it whenever Rutherford told the cops “You may pro-ceed with your inves-ti-ga-tion.”
And yeah, the harpsichord score was unforgettable. I first heard it when I was in high school, and I was still humming it forty years later. It was written by Ron Goodwin, whose catalog of movie and TV themes is extensive.
There was a small neighborhood cinema in Minneapolis back in the '70s that showed Harold and Maude every night for two years, on a double bill with the hilarious classic short De Düva. Fans complained whenever the owners floated the idea of maybe bringing in different features instead.
No disrespect to the lovely and talented Sybil Danning, but I’ll take Sylva Košćina in a Hercules flick any day.
I never understood anyway how “Local Hero” got into this discussion. Maybe it wasn’t very expensive to make, and it is an independent, alternative movie, but it’s wonderfully cast, up to the most minor roles, tells a unique and original story, has fucking Burt Lancaster in the lead role and a wonderful score by Mark Knopfler, when the Dire Straits were one of the leading bands in music. Why should that be a B-movie? It’s a gem of a movie.
You just reminded me of the Candy trilogy starring Carol Connor. My favorite part went something like this:
CANDY: (Surprised) Oh, my goodness! You’re different from all the other boys! JOHNNY WADD: (In “Nobody loves me!” mode) Oh, boo-hoo! You’re just like all the rest! CANDY: (Apologetically) I didn’t mean “different.” I meant … well … special!
Which is all I can write here.
This far down and nobody’s mentioned Flesh Gordon yet?
