Rock Baker

"The most flamboyant entertainer of the 50's celebrates the Christmas season." Okay, just sticking to how he was viewed in the 1950's, Liberace was something of an odd duck. His sighing voice, curly hair, and constant grin made him a perfect subject of parody.  His show, live or on television, was peculiar, too. Constantly…

"The continued adventures of Nostradamus the Vampire." Needless to say, Nostradamus didn't stay buried for long, although there's no indication how much time passes between chapters. We open with some kids skipping school (which doesn't let out til after dark, it seems) discovering and creeping into the castle of Nostradamus. They're chased out by…

"What would you do if, to live forever, you had to drain others of their lives?" Actually, a better title for this Filipino adventure movie would have been 'The Deadly Thirst.' Some might recall a 1960 Universal International effort called The Leech Woman, about a woman who discovers a means of restoring beauty and…

"A flea circus owner inherits a fortune, with complications." Jack Benny and Fred Allen were, in reality, good friends who toiled together in Vaudeville. Each went on to become among the Nation's top comics in radio, where their characters engaged in a long-running feud. Allen would make a dig at Benny on his Ipana…

"Psycho artist can't get his models to hold still, so he kills them." During the first half of Playgirl Killer, the phrase "sensory overload" kept running through my brain. It seemed at times that the film had been made specifically for me! Beautiful print, gorgeous color. Low budget 60's exploitation movie shot in Los…

"A doctor reanimates the corpse of his mad scientist grandfather, THEN figures out it was a bad idea!" Even for the dedicated genre movie fan like myself, Jerry Warren movies are often a challenge to watch, and few of them warrant repeat viewings. His actual 'movie' movies are better than his imports, although I…

"Universal International unleashes another mammoth insect upon 1950's America. Peter Gunn is on hand to handle the situation." The 1950's were, in almost every way, the zenith of American pop culture. You'd be hard pressed to find a time in which a better aesthetic and audible quality of entertainment existed. Certainly, monster movies were…

"A 17 year old girl thinks her step-father is trying to kill her and her mother." All in all, not a bad flick. Not terrific, but a workable suspenser. The plot is simplicity itself: a girl thinks her step-father is trying to kill her mother, digs into his activities, then believes she too has…