Trailer of the Week: Terror in the Swamp (1985)

Producer Martin Folse occasionally airs this film on his own Louisiana TV station.

Shreveport Shrieks: Jim McCullough, Sr.

Toward the end of 2012 I stumbled across an obituary for Louisiana filmmaker Jim McCullough, Sr., and I fully intended to provide a write-up for what was already an old story (McCullough died in April 2012), and then other things got in the way and I'm just now getting around to it. But if I didn't tell you about McCullough, it would be a complete dereliction of duty as far as this blog is concerned, since he was a critical figure in the Southern filmmaking scene of the 1970s and 1980s.

According to his obituary, McCullough studied at UCLA and worked as an actor in his early years, appearing on Playhouse 90 and Highway Patrol, as well small roles in Teenage Monster (1958) and The Love Bug (1968).

But it was his work as a director and producer (usually in partnership with his son, Jim McCullough Jr.) that is his biggest legacy, and of most interest to regional horror film fans. His first big success was Where the Red Fern Grows (1974), an adaptation of the book that was required reading for middle school students for many years, but he quickly followed that with Creature From Black Lake (1976), which was directed by another southern filmmaking legend, Joy N. Houck, Jr.

After a couple of comedies, McCullough took the director's chair for the alien kiddie flick The Aurora Encounter (1986), which starred Jack Elam and Dottie West, alongside Mickey Hays, a young Progeria sufferer, as the alien. He also directed Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1986), a staple of video rental shelves back in the day, and the last horror credit for character actor Bill Thurman. That unexpected dose of pseudo-slasher weirdness boasted some nice kill sequences, and one of my favorite taglines: "Please do not disturb Evelyn. She ALREADY is."

McCullough also gave us the cheap Video Murders (1988).

His company, Shreveport, La.-based Jim McCullough Productions, continued generating new titles right through the 1990s, and his son appears to still be in the business.

Trailer of the Week: Creature From Black Lake (1976)

Here's a homemade trailer somebody cut together for Creature From Black Lake, one of our five favorite regional bigfoot movies!

Trailer of the Week: The Evictors (1979)

Unfortunately out-of-print horror from Charles B. Pierce.

Trailer of the Week: The Wacky World of Dr. Morgus (1962)

Here's a New Orleans chestnut starring local horror host Dr. Morgus!


The.Wacky World.of.Dr.Morgus Trailer by soulpatrol

Trailer of the Week: Blood of the Zombie (The Dead One, 1961)

A Louisiana obscurity from Barry Mahon, available from Independent-International Pictures (in its entirety) on YouTube.

Tobe Hooper Meets Frankenstein

The archives here at The Dead Next Door are, to put it mildly, a bit disorganized, which is why I'm just now posting about another semi-lost regional horror nearly three years after I found out about -- and it was directed by one of the giants of the genre, to boot.

Back in 2008, Classic Horror Film Board member Paul Haight posted links to some interesting photos from the LIFE Magazine archive. According to the information on the site, the photos were from an amateur production of a Frankenstein film made in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by a crew of teenagers in 1959.

As it turns out, the teen director was none other than Tobe Hooper (that's him in the picture above, pouring chocolate syrup on one of the monster's victims), who would go on to later acclaim for his Austin-lensed Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hooper himself joined the conversation briefly (you can see his comments here), sharing that The Heir of Frankenstein was his first 16mm production -- unfortunately, he didn't say whether it was a full-length feature or a short.

I've posted a few of the photos below, but you can see the whole archive at the LIFE site. (All photos are, of course, properly of LIFE.)

Gore and Gumbo

In honor of this week's Mardi Gras festivities, a visual tribute to the strange world of Louisiana horror films courtesy of the Fred Adelman Archives, Shock Cinema, Wrong Side of the Art, and the Temple of Schlock.

Trailer of the Week: Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)

Sleaze from the Big Easy, courtesy of local legend Jack Weis, who also brought us Quadroon (1972) and Crypt of Dark Secrets (1976).

Trailer of the Week: Women and Bloody Terror (1969) and Night of Bloody Horror (1969)

Two for one from Louisiana -- in Violent Vision!