Foster on Film

Cruel, elderly Julia Endicott (Blanche Friderici), matriarch of a dying family, walks through the cemetery, trailed by Philip (Irving Pichel), her feeble-minded, brutish son and Miss Roberts (Martha Mattox), the housekeeper. Julia claims they are going to the family crypt to lay flowers, but really it is to check the moaning alarm horn she’s had

Old dear lord… OK, here goes: In some fantasy Deep South straight out of the wet dream of a KKK Grand Dragon, Voodoo practitioner and stereotype Mammy (Georgette Harvey) has returned to the broken down hovel she’d abandoned when her husband Old Sam was killed by Colonel Gordon (Francis Joyner). She brings along her half-White

Distraught physician Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) writes his mentor, Sir James Forbes (André Morell) a rambling letter about deaths with no natural explanation in a rural village. Forbes’s daughter (Diane Clare), interested in seeing her friend Alice (Jacqueline Pearce) who happens to be Tompson’s wife, convinces her father to take train and coach to visit

Miners discover a giant frozen reptilian tail and hunkiest miner sends it to Professor Marteen of the Copenhagen aquarium. Professor Marteen has two, hot, man-hungry daughters. It doesn’t matter for the story, but the film wants you to know just how male-crazed these two chicks are and how lucky any man is who they get

Tarantula (1955)  The Black Scorpion (1957)  The Deadly Mantis (1957)  The ‘50s giant bug craze was part of the larger atomic monster sub-genre which started with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and went on full tilt for the next decade. These were B-pictures—or C-pictures—where sparing expense was always a factor. Still, they tended not to

A series of mysterious disappearances in the arctic leads the military to call in paleontologist Ned Jackson (William Hopper). His keen use of a magnifying glass allows him to work out that the culprit is a giant praying mantis, recently released from the ice. Ned teams up with Colonel Joe Parkman (Craig Stevens) and hot

At a Spanish medical school, Bárbara (Macarena Gómez), a beautiful and fashion-conscious student, dreams of a future with a plastic surgeon husband, a lovely house, multiple jobs, and two kids. Med school is for husband-shopping. While there, she goes on a joyous murder spree. Most of her victims are scumballs, but she isn’t out to

A meteor shower brings the Legion to Earth: large insects along with a single true giant. They build nests, that when complete, launch a pod into space to further spread the species—the launch destroying everything in a six kilometer area. Colonel Watarase is on the case, leading soldiers against the bugs. He’s aided by Midori

Ben, the lead rat from Willard, picked up tens of thousands of followers in the 10 seconds between it and its prequel. Now he has an army of rats to feed, which is hard work, and involves breaking into grocery stores and trucks. It’s made harder by the police who are dealing with the dead

In a bleak Estonian village, the peasants survive with the help of witchcraft and folk magic, which is as much a part of everyday life as the tree bark they eat. The most notable magic takes the form of “kratts,” automatons made from wood, bone, straw, farm implements, and eventually even snow, and animated by

Ten years after the death of eccentric Cyrus Norman, the family converge on his bayou mansion, cared for by Miss Lu (Gale Sondergaard), for the reading of his will by lawyer Crosby (George Zucco). The potential heirs include radio personality Wally Campbell (Bob Hope), beautiful actress Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard), aunts Susan and Cicily (Elizabeth

Maximus (Claude Rains) performs a mind-reading act with the assistance of his wife, Rene (Fay Wray). They travel with an aging partner (Ben Field) and Maximus’s mother (Mary Clare). When a performance falls apart, he receives an actual prophecy. Predicting the future casts him into the limelight, which brings money but starts to pull his