B3D Studios: Research: What is a B Movie? ... Retro?

B3D Studios: Research: What is a B Movie? ... Retro?: What is a B Movie? In cinema terms a B-Movie is considered a low- budget commercial film, and defined the Golden Age in Hollywood Cinema...

What are some of your favorite 30;s 40's 50's & 60's B-movies?

I love the 40's & 50's Si - Fi, Teens gone bad & sexploytation B- movies. It's great to look back. A lot of things are mild compared to today's films.It's fun to see some future stars with bit parts who were just starting out.

Nothing like siting down on a Friday night & watching some old B-Si Fi or mystery's.

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Thanks to:

samuelowengallery.com

classiccinemaonline.com                                            
imdb.com
tcm.com

badmovie.org
bmovies.com
for Movie info.



Abbott and Costello Go to Mars



                        

                                                                                                 

 
             


(1957)  People are trapped on a shrinking island by intelligent, brain-eating giant crabs.

Director: Roger Corman
Stars : Richard Garland  & Pamela Duncan  with Russell Johnson ( Prof. from Gilligan's Island)
Movie Quoite: Dr. Karl Weigand: Lieutenant, I don't want to annoy you again, but nothing was left? Not a hair or a fingernail clipping? Only McLane's journal?




(1940) Star: Leslie Banks & Lilli Palmer
Early roll for Robert Montgomery as

Craig the Butler.

 A murder is found to be connected to a false heir and a secret underground torture chamber.

Black & White.

(1956) AKA: USA- Godzilla.
A 400-foot (122-meter) dinosaur-like beast, awoken from undersea hibernation off the Japanese coast by atomic-bomb testing, attacks Tokyo.
Stars : Raymond Burr & A lot of voice dubbing.
Movie Quote : Dr. Kyohei Yamane: They are so wrong. Godzilla should not be destroyed, he should be studied.

(1957)
Arny joins a hot rod club, but his eccentric mannerisms (a Marlon Brando rip-off performance from "The Wild One" by look-alike Hartunian) make him unpopular.
Stars: Leigh Snowden & Richard Hartunian

Tagline:The slick chicks who fire up the big wheels!

(1958)

American astronauts are drawn by a mysterious force to the planet Venus, which they find to be inhabited only by beautiful women and their despotic Queen.

Stars: Zsa Zsa Gabor & Eric Fleming  .

Venusian Girls-  Mary Ford  Laura Mason Lynn Cartwright Marya Stevens

Coleen Drake

Trivia: Costumes worn by the ship's officers and Motiya are re-used or copied from 
Forbidden Planet.

Coleen Drake





(1958)  Strange things are happening in Riverdale, Illinois. A huge, seemingly alien structure has been found jutting out of the earth. Stars:  Ed Nelson ,Joanna Lee & Leonard Nimoy.
Triva: The producers of this movie were sued by Robert A. Heinlein, who claimed the plot stole several elements of his novel, "The Puppet Masters". The suit was settled out of court.





(1954) An uptight, leather-clad female alien, armed with a raygun and accompanied by a menacing robot, comes to Earth to collect Earth's men as breeding stock.
Stars: Patricia Laffan & Hugh McDermott .
With - Hazel Court & Peter Reynolds .

In 2008, Laffan was interviewed for the British documentary British B Movies: Truly, Madly, Cheaply.



(1953)
 A spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert, and only an amateur stargazer and a schoolteacher suspect alien influence when the local townsfolk begin to act strange.
 Stars : Richard Carlson & Barbara Rush
With Russell Johnson & Kathleen Hughes
Triva : Although credited to Harry Essex, most of the script, including dialogue, is copied almost verbatim from Ray Bradbury's initial film treatment.

This was one of the few American movies from the 1950s to place its credits at the end rather than at the beginning.

 

(1968)
The Plan - to build a super human; How? - by murdering innocent convenient victims and using various bits of them; The Result - Creatures on the rampage.
Stars: Wendell Corey John Carradine  & Joan Patrick
A bad film with a good cast. A true B- movie.
Screenplay - Wayne Rogers -Yes Wayne (M.A.S.H) Rogers

(1956)
A starship crew goes to investigate the silence of a planet's colony only to find two survivors and a deadly secret that one of them has.
Stars : Walter Pidgeon Anne Francis & Leslie Nielsen
With: Earl Holliman James Drury Harry Harvey Jr. & Robby the Robot
One of the Best Si - Fi movies ever.
Triva: This movie was filmed on the same sound-stage on which the movie The Wizard of Oz had been filmed seventeen years earlier; the set of Altaira's garden is a reuse of the Munchkin Village set from The Wizard of Oz.

(1964)
Sea creatures created from radioactive sludge terrorize a beach community.
Stars: John Scott & Alice Lyon ?
Movie quoite:

Girl: Do you believe that kissing is unhealthy?
Boy: I don't know. I've never been...
Girl: [interrupting] You've never been kissed?
Boy: No, I've never been sick.

Horror author Stephen King cites this as one of his favorite films

(1959)
Stars: Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Paul Marco & Tor Johnson.
With : Lyle Talbot, Criswell Vampira &
archive footage of Bela Lugosi
Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb).
The Classic B-Movie.Concidered the worst film ever but has gained a great cult following.
Director Edward D. Wood Jr. was portrayed by Johnny Depp in the 1994 hit movie Ed Wood
Tor Johnson was in the Bing Crosby - Bob Hope movie Road to Rio (1947)
A Tor Johnson Halloween mask was created and sold by famous Hollywood maskmaker
Don Post



((1953)
The monstrous Ro-Man attempts to annihilate the last family alive on Earth, but finds himself falling for their beautiful daughter.
Stars:George Nader  & Claudia Barrett
Movie quotes: Johnny: [to Ro-Man] You look like a pooped out pinwheel.



Trivia:

One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell





(1954)
A true classic Si Fi Flick.

A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study.
Stars; Richard Carlson The hot Julie Adams
Ricou Browning-The Gill man in water
Ben Chapman the gill man on land,
A great Si Fi Film. Still holds up today,

Trivia

The Creature, using the name "Uncle Gilbert", appeared in an episode of the TV series The Munsters The episode is titled "Love Comes to Mockingbird Heights."

Creature & Babe



(1954)
The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization.

Stars: James Whitmore Edmund Gwenn James Arness & Joan Weldon Fess Parker .

Classic Man VS Atomic Bugs!



Trivia

The sound that the giant ants from "THEM!" make as they approach their prey is a recorded chorus of bird-voiced treefrogs (Hyla avivoca) of the southeastern United States. Occasionally a grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) can be heard on the soundtrack as well, as these species can often be heard together at the same wetland.



(1953)

Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive young women in black tights.

Stars:Sonny Tufts -Great name! Victor Jory Marie Windsor Suzanne Alexander

& The Cat women - Bette Arlen  Ellye Marshall  Judy Walsh  Roxann Delman

Triva:

 Music enthusiasts will note Elmer Bernstein's credit for the score, while space art enthusiasts will recognize the moonscapes by Chesley Bonestell.

Flash & Dale



(1958) Stars Allison Hayes & William Hudson.
When an abused wife grows to giant size because of an alien encounter and an aborted murder attempt, she goes after cheating husband with revenge on her mind.

Movie Quote:Dr. Heinrich Von Loeb: How long will the morphine be effective?
Dr. Isaac Cushing: No telling with the size of her body.



(1969)
A British military paratrooper disappears in mid-air during a jump from an army plane. Two investigators, Patrick Allen and Neil Connery, try to unravel how this happened. What they uncover is an alien plot to steal the bodies of earthlings by snatching them out of the air.
Known in the US as Thin Air.Also Known As:Invasion of the Body Stealers
Stars: George Sanders Maurice Evans  & Hilary Heath




?









(1965)
In the near future the two spaceships Argos and Galliot are sent to investigate the mysterious planet Aura,
Stars: Barry Sullivan Norma Bengell & Evi Marandi .
Triva:

This film had more than 15 titles before it was decided to be Planet of the Vampires.

1956)

A team of astronauts lands on a moon of Jupiter to find it populated with beautiful young women looking for mates. An old man explains to the explorers the group's story, as well as the moon's dangers.
Susan Shaw Anthony Dexter  &Jacqueline Curtis
This 1956 release take place on the 13th moon of Jupiter. The 13th moon of Jupiter was not discovered until almost two decades later, in 1974.

(1955)
Bug vs Man again.
 spider escapes from an isolated desert laboratory experimenting in giantism and grows to tremendous size as it wreaks havoc on the local inhabitants.
Stars: John Agar  Mara Corday & Leo G. Carroll
With: Raymond Bailey & Nestor Paiva
Look for a young Clint Eastwood as the (uncredited) leader of the jet squadron that attacks the tarantula in the film's climax.

(1968)
Astronauts landing on Venus encounter dangerous exotic creatures and almost meet some sexy Venusian women who like to sunbathe in hip-hugging skin-tight pants and seashell bras- Oh Ya!
Stars: Mamie Van Doren  Mary Marr  Paige Lee & Gennadi Vernov
Triva: Director "Derek Thomas" is actually Peter Bogdanovich.

Mamie Van Doren Home Page
mamievandoren.com