Cinema: Shock Around the Clock

Far below the dizzying spires of cinematic art (musicals, adult westerns), lower even than the swarming, unswept streets of cinematic commerce (cops-and-robbers films, childish westerns), lies a dank catacomb, for years the lair of wound-up scientists, unwound mummies, vampires, hyperpituitary apes, cat men, spacemen and skirt-chasing tyrannosaurs. Here budgets are low, actors obscure (Bela Lugosi is dead and Boris Karloff has graduated to TV) and taglines visceral: The Man Who Turned to Stone ("Incredible revelations from the blackest annals of medicine!"), Zombies of Mora Tau ("A tide of terror!''), Half Human ("Half-man,...

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