The Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

Film of 2012 #17
Some Spoilers

Another of the Public Domain films that I recently got and decided to watch and to be honest i was drawn in by the title but half way thorough I did have to investigate the history of this film and what was happening. It is originally a German film and the version I watched was dubbed in to English and I have to say it was not done with any great care or attention. Your plot surrounds a dance troupe being taken to the Far East, you start with the selection of the girls to go and en-route to their destination the plane crashes and they are washed up on a desert island. 

Now watching the film I actually had the thought that it was essentially and opportunity to titillate the audience in the 1960 as there were quite a few scenes of the girls getting down to their underwear and overall the only survivors of the plane crash were Gary the band manager, his assistant and all of the girls he had chosen for the troupe. So you were given the set up of 1 man and 7 women and you had dancing and shower scenes and thinking that back in the day when this film was released there must have actually been an audience of young men hoping to be titillated and see a little flesh. However the production and the follow up dubbing crew did not take enough care and the film was literally just thrown out there with no care if it was any good or not. 

I would not recommend seeing this film unless you were to watch it as a look at how badly some films could be made back in 1960, this is a one star review. I have since watching found out that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 did a review of this and that I think would be worth seeing as it is a bad film that commentary can only make it better. 

The House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Public Domain films are abundant and easy to get your hands on and one I watched recently via a free podcast was the 1959 Walter Scott classic The House on Haunted Hill starring the classic horror actor VIncent Price who brings his full presence to this atmospheric film.

The set up of this film is a Millionaire, played by Vincent Price invites 5 strangers to a haunted house party and straight from the start there is something going on within the household and the scene between Vincent Price and his screen wife Carol Ohmart is brilliant and will help redifine how you think of black and white films from the 50's if you are not a fan of these films. This film is a true classic of it's time and still holds up today and is worth seeing.

I really enjoyed this film and would recommend that everybody gives it a look, this is a 4 star film for me and as it is public domain it should be easy for everybody to see. Let me know if you have seen it or if you do see it in the near future.