Movies From Beyond: Night Of The Living Dead 3D & Creature From The Black Lagoon

Humans, we have travelled many of your earth miles across space and we come in peace and have spent many years observing you, we know you to be a reasonably intelligent race with a passion for art, literature and what you call ‘B-movies’, now focus, stop crying, close your mouths and take us to your leader.

This week's Movies From Beyond: Night of The Living Dead 3D and Creature From The Black Lagoon…  

We love to while away the long dark winter evenings tucked up inside watching B-movies, especially when wearing ‘80’s style 3D glasses, much like that guy from Back To The Future. We are especially keen on zombies, and of course the grandaddy of all zombie movies was Night Of The Living Dead all the way from the late 60s. So we were literally beside ourselves with glee when we got our sweaty hands on Night Of The Living Dead 3D directed by Jeff Broadstreet, the man behind the classic Area 51: The Alien Interview and Sex Bomb. The film makes use of the 3D goggles with some pretty nifty shots, although why wouldn’t you want to make a boob jump out of the screen? The plot is pretty much exactly the same as the original, but hey, 'if it ain’t broke' and all that. The zombies rise from the dead and chase Barb to a farmhouse where she holds up with a motley crew of stoners (watch out for the legend that is Sid Haig (House Of 1,000 Corpses) wildly swinging his shovel into the heads of the shuffling undead). It really is all good stuff and with four pairs of specially-branded 3D glasses included it is perfect for a night in with the lads.  

Now, it is fairly safe to say that Universal has all the best monsters, and whilst digging about in the Universal Monsters Legacy Collection - a whopping 13-disc boxset featuring all the greats: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman and the other usual suspects from the early days of horror -  we found The Creature From The Black Lagoon. It's due for a remake next year, so we thought it was only right to see the original from all the way back in 1954. Scientists have discovered what appears to be body parts from a long lost Amazonian species of fish-men and obviously they are going to travel down river in a rickety boat with a harpoon and damsel in distress for company. After the disappearance of some of the group, something has to be done - especially as the Gill-man has a thing for Julie Adams as Kay Lawrence. There is something really fantastic about this slice of classic horror movie, and trivia fans please note: Peter Jackson was given the choice of two old-school monster movies to remake - this and King Kong - and the rest, as they say, is history.

[story by Simon Woodley]