Nightlife / Stephanie Depasquale

B movies not bad nor too scary

By Stephanie De Pasquale | Saturday, September 06, 2008 | () comments

I scare very easily, but I love scary movies. It’s a problem that usually is solved by watching Disney movies immediately after the conclusion of any and all horror films.

So when I went to watch the double-feature as part of Showcase Cinemas 53’s Attack of the B Movies series a week ago Thursday, (just one night after watching “Se7en” by myself at night and scaring the beejesus out of myself), I was hoping “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” and “First Spaceship on Venus” would be so terrible that they couldn’t be scary.

In “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” a doctor playing God who is engaged to a nurse (sound a little like “Grey’s Anatomy?”) gets in a traffic accident during which his fiancee’s head is severed.

It may sound gross, but since it’s an old movie you don’t see a thing, which I found myself appreciating. But here is where the story gets going. The doctor with the God complex has been trying to transplant limbs and has had some success creating a Frankenstein-like creature that resembles Sloth from “The Goonies.” So he manages to keep his fiancee’s head alive while he goes on a search for the perfect body to go with it, which is, I’m sure, the dream inside the id of many men.

But the rest of the movie is just comical as the doctor heads to a Moulin Rouge, a bathing suit contest and eventually a fashion shoot in search of the perfect body and the perfect situation in which he can snatch a voluptuous woman without being suspected of the crime.

The head and the Sloth look-alike manage to save the day.

“First Spaceship on Venus” was released the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis and is about a group of scientists who head to Venus after receiving an undecipherable message from life forms there.

On their one-month voyage to the next planet, they translate the message and find out the Venusians were planning to destroy Earth by using radiation. Once they reach the planet, the scientists discover that the Venusians’ nuclear technology grew out of control and destroyed the planet except for a few seeds.

While such a concept was probably much scarier during the middle of the Cold War, and probably still should be now, it didn’t make me afraid to take my dogs out at night or fear for the safety of little girls pulling petals off of daisies.

But for $5, I’d say it was a good night at the movies, even though I often found myself laughing at the dialogue, overacting, primitive special effects and overly dramatic music. After all, that’s what makes it a B movie and a good night at the theater.

If you go

What: Attack of the B Movies

When: 7 p.m. every Thursday through Oct. 30, with a special Halloween showing Oct. 31

Where: Showcase Cinemas 53, 3601 E. 53rd St., Davenport

How much: $5

Information: Call (563) 441-0200

Schedule:

Sept. 4 — “Giant from the Unknown,” “She Demons”

Sept. 11 — “The Wasp Woman,” “Phantom from 10,000 Leagues”

Sept. 18 — “Monster from a Prehistoric Planet,” “Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet”

Sept. 25 — “The Last Man on Earth,” “Bride of the Beast”

Oct. 2 — “A Bucket of Blood,” “Attack of the Giant Leeches”

Oct. 9 — “House on Haunted Hill,” “Amazing Transparent Man”

Oct. 16 — “Last Woman on Earth,” “Bloodlust”

Oct. 23 — “Screaming Skull,” “Tormented”

Oct. 30 — “Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory,” “The Bats”

Oct. 31 — “Nightmare Castle,” “Dementia 13,” “House by the Cemetery” and “Night of the Living Dead”

Stephanie De Pasquale can be contacted at (563) 333-2639 or sdepasquale@qctimes.com.