Ghost in the Invisible Bikini 1966 ***

Dir: Don Weis

Stars: Tommy Kirk, Aron Kincaid, Boris Karloff, Nancy Sinatra, Harvey Lembeck, Monstro the Gorilla

This is not the most obscure of films, but in terms of what it provides for bizarre enjoyment, it's tops. This is considered one of the AIP "beach" films, but it's missing several ingredients - there's no Frankie, no Annette, and no beach. But it compensates, does it ever, with Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and a haunted house, just for starters. Not an awful lot of movies have scenes of biker gangs, go-go bikini dancing, ghosts, gorillas, dungeons and wax statues, but this one does, and more.

The main plot involves Karloff as elderly Hiram Stokely discovering he is dead and that he has to do a good deed or he goes to the bad place. So he oversees a weekend get together of relatives to make sure the inheritance goes to the right place. One thing leads to another and soon groups of teens are doing the monkey and every other current dance out by the swimming pool, to the swinging sounds of Nancy Sinatra and the Bobby Fuller Four. The song performed there, "Geronimo", is probably the best song in the picture, per se, but a couple of the other songs are well worth it due simply to their strange incongruity. For instance, at one point baddie Basil's daughter, the shapely Sinestra, is supposed to use her feminine wiles to fool heir Kincaid into drinking some poison. Only trouble is, gee whiz, Sin loses her glasses and ends up singing her song to a suit of armour, shimmying nicely all the while.

A circus caravan with a gorilla shows up, and then Eric Von Zipper and his bikers as well, and soon all sorts of hallway hijinks are taking place in the mansion as secret passageways are uncovered. Everyone winds up in the secret dungeon where, after some Perils of Pauline action with a mill saw - in which a young heiress is nearly cut off from the will, as it were - all is well and the youngsters start a kah-razy dance party in the dungeon. Oh, yeah, and all the while the former Mrs. Stokely, who died many years ago, is appearing as a ghost in an invisible bikini.

This is no masterwork of acting, and there are practically no close-ups, except on Boris, with many extended stationary longshots. But the flick is definitely groovy fun.

Kong Island 1968 ** 3/4

Dir: Robert Morris aka Roberto Mauri

Stars: Marc Lawrence, Brad Harris, Esmeralda Barros, Adriana Alban, Ursula Davis

This Italian movie is also known as King of Kong Island, but don't let either title fool you, the apes in this are all regular sized. But gorillas are gorillas, and I'm a sucker for any movie with gorillas, especially if they are portrayed by people in gorilla costumes, and especially if, as in this movie, they are remote controlled by a mad scientist. The Leonard Maltin Movie Guide says this movie is "not even good for laughs". I beg to differ, but that could be because I find amusement in the concept of a mad scientist named Albert plotting to somehow control the world with an army of mind controlled gorillas in Africa. There are, admittedly, a lot of scenes where the film drags, as people walk endlessly through the jungle, but there's a lot to recommend it, as there is a jungle girl, referred to as "The Sacred Monkey", and a kind of fun dancing/club scene, as well as just a bizarre, twisted plot. One highlight includes the gorillas invading a camp and kidnapping the breathtaking Ursula Davis, also seen in Crypt of the Vampire and An Angel for Satan; she's one of my favourite Eurohorror beauties, seeming to always play the "good girl".

The last twenty or so minutes are especially good, as everything comes to a head and there is one fight after another in the lab/cave hideout of Albert; man versus man, woman versus woman, mad scientist versus gorilla. I must also admit I like this movie because it seems like something I may have caught part of on TV when I was a kid and been forever baffled and intrigued. I'm not sure if I really did, but it has that sort of strange evocative feel for me, between the nonstop muzak soundtrack and the blurry, otherworldly visuals. It puts me into a good b-movie trance, what can I say. That's what I look for.

Monsters Crash the Pajama Party 1965 ***1/2

Dir: David L. Hewitt

Stars: Vic McGee, Peter James Noto, James Reason

Perhaps the greatest half-hour absurdist saga of all time. It's amazing how much insanity is packed into the short running time of this oddity, which was originally presented with live actors participating so it would seem as if things were coming out of the screen at you. When watched as is, this makes it all the more surreal and disjointed. This is available from Something Weird Video, packaged with a bunch of other curiosities, including the Richard Carlson ghost noir, Tormented, of which I was very glad because my own copy of that stopped working half way through. The main feature has just about everything I look for in a b-movie, so much I'm sure I will run out of space for the labels as it only allows 200 characters, so I will have to choose the most prominent aspects.