How I spent whatever Sunday of Lent it was last week…

Rick McGinnis unloaded two grocery bags of review DVDs on me at Christmas and I’m finally getting to the last of them.

Lots of “vampire,” “omnibus” and “witchcraft” stuff that isn’t really my thing (I’m a “Frankenstein” person) but the vampire ones were actually more than watchable. Plus a few other OK looking B-movies that were clearly trying not to suck.

The best of all these freebies was the Cult Camp Classics 3-disc set: Sci-Fi Thrillers.

All you need to know about Queen of Outer Space is that it stars Zsa Zsa Gabor. Gabor is what you call “ageless” although in her case, alas, it means she always looked (and looks) like a well-preserved 50-year-old. I know young people looked older in the “old” days (why do you think they’re called that?) but wow. Queen of Outer Space boasts borrowed costumes, a flaccid paper machier spider, an Imitation of Life colour scheme and what have to be a bunch of Vegas showgirls as the Queen’s army.

Attack of the 50-Foot Woman is basically Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Macy’s Parade. Way better than I expected. I could easily watch this again.

I’d never heard of The Giant Behemoth. Today the studio would never let the title stand (“I don’t see no bee, and I don’t see no moth!”). A This Is A Serious Movie score, good acting, and “we couldn’t afford Harryhausen” effects.

It’s nice to watch fantasy 1950s Londoners shift themselves so quickly to fight off a sea monster, considering they don’t seem as bothered about the real life menace currently in their midst. I guess like a stop motion monster, sharia is creeping in step by almost imperceptible step; they won’t see the horror until they run the finished film, and by then it will be too late.