Part One can be found here. Let's continue the review of what movies were shown during the WSM Channel Four horror movie series Creature Feature which ran on Saturday nights at 10:30PM. The great Sir Cecil Creape hosted these shows and was often the main reason to tune in to the show. This list will have the first half of 1972. I've provided a short synopsis of each entry. If you want more information you can always go to IMDB, google it, or you can buy the forthcoming book by Larry Underwood AKA Dr. Gangrene all about Nashville horror movie hosts and the films they showed.
January 1, 1972 King of the Zombies 1941 Stay away from spooky islands.
January 8, 1972 Preempted by UCLA vs Oregon basketball game
January 15, 1972 Atom Age Vampire 1960 There's an exotic dancer. There's murdered women's glands. A crazy scientist/monster. Yet, no vampire.
January 22, 1972 Battle of the Worlds 1961 Flying saucers emerge from a planet that has come into Earth's orbit. Strangely enough it's called "The Outsider" and not Nibiru.
January 29, 1972 The Disembodied 1957 Voodoo cult in the jungle. The movie poster for this one rules!
February 5, 1972 Preempted by the Winter Olympics
February 12, 1972 Preempted by the Winter Olympics
February 19, 1972 Godzilla 1954 One of my favorite movies of all time. Atomic radiation awakes a dinosaur like monster and Tokyo pays the price. Unfortunately. It's the inferior Americanized version, but I sure didn't know or care since I was only 5 when this aired.
February 26, 1972 House on Haunted Hill 1959 A William Castle directed classic starring Vincent Price in a haunted house. What more could you want?
March 4, 1972 The Last Man on Earth 1964 Vincent Price plays the title character with the greatest immune system ever who has to fend off the living dead after a disease ravages the world.
March 11, 1972 Preempted by the Cerebal Palsy Telethon
March 18, 1972 Godzilla's Revenge 1967 This one is quite confusing as Godzilla's Revenge is the alternate title to All Monsters Attack released in 1969. However the movie summary in the Tennessean Showcase says the film was originally released as Minya, Son of Godzilla in 1966. Son of Godzilla was released in 1967 and not 1966. I'm going with it being Son of Godzilla that aired on this night. If you were an orphan monster wouldn't you want to be adopted by Godzilla?
March 25, 1972 Hands of a Stranger 1962 A concert pianist gets in a car crash. Gets hand transplants and goes insane. The transplant hands were a killer's!
April 1, 1972 Rodan 1956 Giant prehistory turkey vulture menaces Japan. It's really cool.
April 8, 1972 The Little Shop of Horrors 1960 Feed me, Seymour! Giant plant needs to be fed with humans!
April 15, 1972 The Brain from Planet Arous 1957 An alien brain possesses a human scientist in order to conquer the world. You'd think alien brains would have something better to do.
April 22, 1972 From Hell It Came 1957 Groot goes berserk! Oh wait, it's some other tree menacing folks.
The Tennessean Sunday Showcase featured Sir Cecil Creape on their cover on April 23, 1972. Creature Feature had become a little bit of a sensation. Especially among us younger Generation X fans.
April 29, 1972 The Man Without a Body 1957 A wealthy man is dying of a brain tumor and he finds a scientist messing about with head transplants. The wealthy dude steals the head of Nostradamus and hijinks ensue.
May 6, 1972 Not of this Earth 1957 A blood sucking alien from the planet Davana comes to Earth to acquire the blood needed to save his dying world. Roger Corman films are always a hoot.
May 13, 1972 The Premature Burial 1962 Edgar Allan Poe meets Roger Corman.
Creature Feature expands to air from 10:30PM until 1AM. This confused me at first while compiling this list. I thought the series now showed 2 sci-fi/horror movies, but I was wrong. The next week would feature 2 titles, but on the subsequent one we'd see "Karloff Special" listed along with a movie. What was this "Karloff Special?" Then, from the dim recesses of my mind I recalled the television show Thriller which was hosted by Boris Karloff. Perhaps episodes of this series were being shown along with the movies. It ended up being easy to confirm since during the first 2 weeks of this the Tennessean Showcase listed the episode title from Thriller. I also vaguely remembered seeing these episodes on Creature Feature. They would run almost every week along with that week's movie until the end of the Saturday night airings.
May 20, 1972 Thriller episode "Worse Than Murder" 1960
May 20, 1972 Attack of the 50 Foot Woman 1958 The blurb from the paper says this movie is run of the mill. It's no Village of the Giants, but I like it.
May 27, 1972 Thriller episode "Man in the Middle"
The Sorcerers 1967 Boris Karloff might just hypnotize you and feel what you feel.
June 3, 1972 "Karloff Special" which would be an episode of Thriller. The Tennessean Showcase would no longer specify a particular episode. It would just note "Karloff Special" during what segment of Creature Feature it ran. It would run at the start of Creature Feature until 1973 when it was switched to airing after the movie. After this entry I will just note "Karloff Special" and the episode if it is listed and then the movie that aired.
June 3, 1972 The Giant Behemoth 1959 Atomic radiation is at it again. It's no longer Japan in peril, this time it's London facing the wrath of a giant dinosaur.
June 10, 1972 "Karloff Special" Indestructible Man 1956 Lon Chaney Jr. plays a death row inmate who is brought back to life after his execution. Bad things ensue.
June 17, 1972 "Karloff Special" This episode of Thriller is "The Watcher"
The Wasp Woman 1959 Cosmetics owner tries to look younger by getting experimental injections that are not botox.
June 24, 1972 "Karloff Special" From Hell It Came 1957 We get our first repeat movie on Creature Feature as it had aired previously on April 22, 1972. Will there be more repeats? Why, yes of course. Do you think WSM Channel 4 was rolling in Ted Turner type dough? Most local affiliates would buy movie packages they could afford. So, just like syndicated television shows, the same movies would get repeated every few months. This was perfectly fine back when most of us didn't have video recorders. I get a warm glow of nostalgia remembering watching the same stuff periodically throughout my youth.
That's all for this part. I'll have the second half of 1972 up in a few days. There are actually way more films not shown yet on Creature Feature to come.
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