I must admit that I enjoyed this thoroughly like I would an episode of "Gilligan's Island" or a Don Knotts movie. Certainly there are elements of 1960s sitcoms and horror movie spoofs here, and what little plot there is ends up being improved by the presence of some fairly decent country and western music that may not be hits but are tuneful and sometimes campy. The three visitors to the haunted house are the two singers and their agent, of whom only Joi Lansing is worth mentioning. A buxom and intelligent platinum blonde, she's more than just a beautiful face, definitely not a Monroe or Mansfield rip-off. I've enjoyed her work on TV and in movies and find her completely charming and charismatic.
Spider woman spy ring lead Linda Ho is the Anna May Wong/Gale Sondergaard of the 1960's, beautiful but severe, yet unwilling to commit violence at first. Her three moronic associates are horror legends John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr and Basil Rathbone, yet Lansing's associates are hardly Holmes and Watson. There's a gorilla too (isn't there always in films like this, as well as in silly TV episodes?), and while the house inside does look haunted, the structure on the outside looks perfectly normal.
So this is a pleasant little diversion, not the catastrophe that I have led to be believed, but much of the comedy is juvenile and adults will find it excruciating at times. Poor Lansing ends up in an Iron maiden which is frightening (if you seen all those Edgar Allan Poe based movies), and of the three horror icons, Chaney is by far the worst acting-wise. The cemetery looks like it was borrowed from the Bela Lugosi / Ed Wood flop "Plan 9 from Outer Space", as the mausoleum that's the spy ring sneaks out of ends up in a graveyard filled with obviously fake tombstones. Too bad tour Johnson wasn't there to add some camp. There is an actual ghost as well and some neat effects utilized to scare the trespassers out, but it all looks cheap and the musical numbers outside of Lansing campy "Gowns" song are definitely something that you would have seen on "Hee Haw". I had intended to pass this on to other bad movie lovers, but after seeing it, I've decided to keep it.
Spider woman spy ring lead Linda Ho is the Anna May Wong/Gale Sondergaard of the 1960's, beautiful but severe, yet unwilling to commit violence at first. Her three moronic associates are horror legends John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr and Basil Rathbone, yet Lansing's associates are hardly Holmes and Watson. There's a gorilla too (isn't there always in films like this, as well as in silly TV episodes?), and while the house inside does look haunted, the structure on the outside looks perfectly normal.
So this is a pleasant little diversion, not the catastrophe that I have led to be believed, but much of the comedy is juvenile and adults will find it excruciating at times. Poor Lansing ends up in an Iron maiden which is frightening (if you seen all those Edgar Allan Poe based movies), and of the three horror icons, Chaney is by far the worst acting-wise. The cemetery looks like it was borrowed from the Bela Lugosi / Ed Wood flop "Plan 9 from Outer Space", as the mausoleum that's the spy ring sneaks out of ends up in a graveyard filled with obviously fake tombstones. Too bad tour Johnson wasn't there to add some camp. There is an actual ghost as well and some neat effects utilized to scare the trespassers out, but it all looks cheap and the musical numbers outside of Lansing campy "Gowns" song are definitely something that you would have seen on "Hee Haw". I had intended to pass this on to other bad movie lovers, but after seeing it, I've decided to keep it.