Foster on Film

Tarantula (1955)  The Black Scorpion (1957)  The Deadly Mantis (1957)  The ‘50s giant bug craze was part of the larger atomic monster sub-genre which started with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and went on full tilt for the next decade. These were B-pictures—or C-pictures—where sparing expense was always a factor. Still, they tended not to

A series of mysterious disappearances in the arctic leads the military to call in paleontologist Ned Jackson (William Hopper). His keen use of a magnifying glass allows him to work out that the culprit is a giant praying mantis, recently released from the ice. Ned teams up with Colonel Joe Parkman (Craig Stevens) and hot

At a Spanish medical school, Bárbara (Macarena Gómez), a beautiful and fashion-conscious student, dreams of a future with a plastic surgeon husband, a lovely house, multiple jobs, and two kids. Med school is for husband-shopping. While there, she goes on a joyous murder spree. Most of her victims are scumballs, but she isn’t out to

A meteor shower brings the Legion to Earth: large insects along with a single true giant. They build nests, that when complete, launch a pod into space to further spread the species—the launch destroying everything in a six kilometer area. Colonel Watarase is on the case, leading soldiers against the bugs. He’s aided by Midori

Ben, the lead rat from Willard, picked up tens of thousands of followers in the 10 seconds between it and its prequel. Now he has an army of rats to feed, which is hard work, and involves breaking into grocery stores and trucks. It’s made harder by the police who are dealing with the dead

In a bleak Estonian village, the peasants survive with the help of witchcraft and folk magic, which is as much a part of everyday life as the tree bark they eat. The most notable magic takes the form of “kratts,” automatons made from wood, bone, straw, farm implements, and eventually even snow, and animated by

Ten years after the death of eccentric Cyrus Norman, the family converge on his bayou mansion, cared for by Miss Lu (Gale Sondergaard), for the reading of his will by lawyer Crosby (George Zucco). The potential heirs include radio personality Wally Campbell (Bob Hope), beautiful actress Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard), aunts Susan and Cicily (Elizabeth

Maximus (Claude Rains) performs a mind-reading act with the assistance of his wife, Rene (Fay Wray). They travel with an aging partner (Ben Field) and Maximus’s mother (Mary Clare). When a performance falls apart, he receives an actual prophecy. Predicting the future casts him into the limelight, which brings money but starts to pull his

An acting troop, including young lead Sun Xiaoou (Chau-Shui Yee) and his girlfriend Liu Die (Xu Manli), arrives at a dilapidated theater, and are greeted by only Zheng (Wang Weilyi), the guardian of the theater and a hunchback with a monstrous appearance, that no one ever mentions. They set to work on a new opera,

Crooked Privy Councillor ten Brinken (Albert Bassermann) has had some success with his experiments with artificially inseminating rats, and wants to take it to the next level: inseminating a prostitute with the sperm from a dead murderer. Seems like that shouldn’t be the next level, but hey, I’m not a mad scientist, so what do

Police detective Jimmy Kelly (Wally Ford) and ex-department store detective Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper) are in a hurry to get married so hop across the border to the Red Rock Tavern, which is instead an inn—I suppose when the producers couldn’t find a tavern set for cheap they decided it was too much effort to

Death (Fredric March) wants to understand humans and their reaction to him so decides to take on human form and spend three days on the estate of Duke Lambert (Sir Guy Standing) in the guise of Prince Sirki. Death makes one rule: the Duke cannot tell any of the others in attendance who he really