EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Bardlerx Strictly average movie

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Scarecrow-88 Despite being 50% Country music concert film, this debacle which is a sad swan song for the likes of Basil Rathbone and Lon Chaney, Jr. (John Carradine somehow continued on into the 70s without missing a beat) has everything from a giant gorilla (pet to Chaney, Jr.) to espionage/counter-espionage criminal shenanigans (Rathbone, Chaney, Jr., and Carradine are in cahoots with Linda Ho's Chinese agent, Madame Wong to steal an atomic formula). This follows Ferlin Husky and Joi Lansing, country singers headed to Nashville along with their agent, Don Bowman, who happen upon cops shooting it out with mobsters (!), literally in the path of gunfire! Nonetheless the trio drive into a desolate ghost town, needing a place to rest until a storm (and night) blows over, and the gas station attendant tells them of the Beaugard mansion which could provide just that…what the attendant fails to tell them (it just kinda slips through his mind until the very moment they scat!) is that the mansion is supposedly haunted! So you have Husky as Woody Wetherby, Joi as Boots Malone, and Bowman as Jeepers (yes, Bowman's name is Jeepers), finding their way to the mansion, doing a run-through when not going into musical interludes. Our villains have added bedsheet ghosts and bat managed by wires, a werewolf mask on a dummy in the closet, and creepy sound effects to hopefully give the "invading hicks" the jolts, figuring once they realized this mansion was seriously haunted they'd hit the bricks…well, they don't get the point. So you have the gorilla snatching Boots, taking her to the secret room where the villains are hiding (they have equipment, like monitors to spy on areas of the house and grounds outside, telephone to keep in touch with their Chinese contact and provide the atomic formula, and controls to set off their haunted tricks), while Woody and Jeepers try to look around the house to find her. Soon an agent for the US government (they could only afford one, I guess), Jim Meadows (Richard Webb) comes looking for the enemy agents as well. Joining forces with Woody and Jeepers, Meadows will embark on a rescue mission and also hope to capture the villains. Chaney, Jr. has an Iron Maiden he'd like to imprison Boots in, but it seems all the spikes have been removed so all it could do was hold her inside (but with what I never determined). There's a scene where Rathbone and Carradine decipher Boots Malone's (believing she's a spy against them) name…that's kind of the microcosm of the comedy you get with this "film". I won't even try to go around the obvious no matter if there were times I enjoyed myself: this is a turkey in every shape and form. It gives way to a final thirty minutes of country music jamboree, for heaven's sake…for country music fans of the old school, this might be a fascinating curio (it even has Merle Haggard sing a couple songs). But for us horror fans of the great icons of the genre, this is a rather unfortunate example of what the industry was doing to them…this is what the likes of Rathbone, Chaney, Jr. and Carradine were subjected to. Not long before this Lugosi was treading in the excrement of Ed Wood, while Karloff was trying to maintain any semblance of credibility with Corman. Some will undoubtedly find reason to enjoy just seeing the icons together, but watching Rathbone trapped in a bedsheet, scrambling on the floor as Husky tries to wrangle him is a rather pitiful sight. Chaney, Jr. gets into his labcoat, with his badge, but neither is really needed as he enters an office complex (I reckon this was supposed to be a top secret atomic outpost, but only the janitor and one more suit are in the whole building which isn't even highly guarded!), gets the "formula" (later to be determined as a trick), and escapes without a hitch! At least the house of the film is fun with all its cobwebs, rickety stairs, aged furnishings, and dilapidated conditions. The "hillbillys" of the film are engaging enough personalities, with Joi still blessed with impressive curves and bust (sadly, she'd succumb to breast cancer in the coming years, cutting her life and career short). For whatever reason, the idea of gorilla dated back to the 30s, an act that inexplicably didn't tire until perhaps the 60s before mercifully being extricated from the genre. There's bad continuity (day for night, or sunny, blue skies opposing the supposed thunderstorm brewing, is all screwy and this Civil War hat one and off Jeepers' head is noticeable in one scene), odd decision making (why would Chaney and Ho decide to just leave the three alive when they could easily dispose of them?), rough comedy (Rathbone mentioning how a trip to a dry climate would be good for his sinuses, the mentioned Boots Malone spy name decipher, anything with the gorilla), and country music infiltration providing ammunition for pundits to place this right in "worst film ever" lists. If anything, it *is* a candidate. Yarbrough, a veteran director of film and television, might have made this, but his career was thankfully long enough to survive with rep still somewhat intact.

countrygent201 This is one of those movies that is so bad, it,s good. I believe the movie is considered to be one of the 50 worst movies ever made and I would't argue with that. But seriously if you are a fan of the old universal horror films as I am, you will find the movie interesting if only to see Lon Chaney jr, John Caradine and Basil Rathbone together in their latter years. And really it is a sad tribute to such a talentd and distingushed actor as Basil Rathbone that this horrid movie was his last. I still can't concive of such a wild combination of people together on a screen. Lon Chaney jr., Basil Rathbone, John Caradine along with Merle Haggard, Lefty Frazell and Sony James and a bombshell blonde in Nashville. That's about as crazy as a movie can get!

m2mallory Criticizing "Hillbillys in a Haunted House" (yes, that's really the way "Hillbillys" is spelled) might seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but even by 1960s grind-house standards, this picture is dreadful. In fact, I think Ed Wood can breathe a little easier wherever he is, knowing that THIS is really the worst movie ever made. Only one scene involving Lon Chaney, Jr., and a murder has any kind of impact, but it doesn't really belong in the picture, since that it is played straight, and the rest of this mess is farcical. Much has been made about the star trio of fading horror stars, but actually seeing them here is truly sad. Chaney tries to inject some life, but it's pretty hopeless (this same year Chaney was featured in a good big-budget Western, "Welcome to Hard Times," and was a semi-regular on TV's "Pistols and Petticoats," so did he REALLY need the money that bad?). John Carradine phones it in, apparently not having bothered to read the script beforehand (in once scene he calls Basil Rathbone "George" when the character's name is really "Gregor"). It is poor Rathbone, however, who elicits the highest cringe rating. Clearly ailing, his speech is slightly slurred as he struggles to get the maimed dialogue out. The Country Western leads are inept, with someone named Don Bowman, ostensibly the comic relief, taking the Unfunniest Man Alive award away from Fidel Castro, and Ferlin Husky grimacing so mightily as he goes for the high notes that it looks like a tribute to Chaney transforming into a werewolf. Joi Lansing is awful, but an eyeful, and Linda Ho is so amateurish that she should have had her SAG card revoked. The plot involves spies, a "haunted" house, a gorilla in the basement, really dumb comedy, even dumber characters, and far too many musical numbers, which means it could have been made in the mid 1940s (with largely the same cast!), and they might have gotten away with it. But coming a year before "Rosemary's Baby," it's just pathetic. If you want to see the nadir, knowing that you'll probably never see anything worse, then watch it.

MartinHafer I recently learned about this movie when I saw a documentary entitled "The Fifty Worst Movies" and since I am a glutton for punishment, it sounded like it would be so bad it was funny. Well, after seeing this film, it is so bad that it's just plain awful. Seeing the movie to make fun of it isn't really possible--it just stinks so badly! Towards the end of their careers, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney and John Carradine would star in just about anything--and this film is the proof. It's a combination horror movie, Country Music marathon and spy movie!! Yep, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you! Talk about awful! The film begins with old-time Country singer Ferlin Husky and his friends driving to Nashville for a concert. You know it's going to be a long ride when one of the friends is named "Jeepers" and they start the film with one of the worst songs I can remember. The problem was that it was very obvious that they were just moving their lips and the song literally sounded like it was recorded in a tunnel. In fact, all the songs in the film (and there were MANY) sounded this way. Throughout the film, they'd break into song in the darnedest places and most ridiculously inappropriate moments. And, at the end, when there was no more plot, they just had about 6 songs in a row by a variety of long-forgotten Country stars. The net effect was a lot like watching an extended episode of "Hee-Haw" without all the corny jokes.As far as the aging actors go, they were spies (naturally) who lived in a haunted house and had a killer gorilla (obviously a guy in a costume). None of it made a bit of sense and the film made BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA look like Shakespeare in comparison!! Dumb, pointless and absolutely painful if you hate old-time Country music. This is a chore to watch!