Forrest J. Ackerman Filmography

Surge of Power

Synopsis: Play an entertaining game of spot the celebrity while laughing along at the campiest superhero adventure since Adam West punched out The Joker. A completely original comic-book-style crime fighter who's not afraid to give his enemies a shocking surprise, Surge of Power is hot on the trail of a Read More

Vampira: The Movie

Actors: Maila "Vampira" Nurmi, Forrest J. Ackerman, Sid Haig, Lloyd Kaufman, Black Betty

Synopsis: This documentary travels behind the scenes of camp classics such as Plan 9 from Outer Space to visit the life and career of onetime horror star and TV horror hostess Vampira (aka Maila Nurmi). The title figure was previously portrayed by Lisa Marie in Tim Burton's picture Ed Wood. ~ Nathan Read More

Ringers: Lord of the Fans

Synopsis: Explore the influence of author J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings on modern popular culture in this revealing documentary narrated by Lord of the Rings star Dominic Monaghan. For over fifty-years fans of Tolkien's literary masterpiece have bonded over tales of brave hobbits and evil wizards, and Read More

Skinned Deep

Actors: Karoline Brandt, Jay Dugre, Aaron Sims, Kurt Carley, Peter Iasillo

Synopsis: The horror film Skinned Deep begins when a family suffers a flat tire on a barren stretch of road with only a diner dotting the landscape. They meet Granny, the seemingly nice old woman who runs the establishment, but they soon find that she is the leader of a deranged clan. The family is slain Read More

Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces

Actors: Kenneth Branagh

Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies

Synopsis: Pauline Kael once wrote that since movies were so rarely great art, if one weren't interested in great trash, there wasn't much reason to pay attention to them, and one could reasonably argue that few periods brought us more top-quality cinematic trash than the 1950s and '60s. With drive-ins and Read More

The Double-D Avenger

Actors: Francesca 'Kitten' Natividad, Haji, Raven de la Croix, Forrest J. Ackerman, Mimma Mariucci

Synopsis: A superheroine who proves the old adage that "it's what up front that counts" takes on bad guys and gals in this over-the-top comedy. Chastity Knott (Kitten Natividad) is the owner of a saloon which had been taking a lot of business away from a nearby watering hole run by cranky Al Purplewood (Larry Butler Read More

Attack of the 50 ft. Monster Mania

Synopsis: Hosted by everyone's favorite vamp, Elvira, this program is a lighthearted look back at the monster movies of the '50s. All the monsters that scared your parents make appearances here including Godzilla and King Kong. Also included are many interviews with the men behind the monsters including Read More

Universal Horror

Actors: Kenneth Branagh, Forrest J. Ackerman, Turhan Bey, Ray Bradbury, Jim Curtis

Synopsis: Assembled by film historian Kevin Brownlow and narrated by actor Kenneth Branagh, this 90-minute special celebrates the classic horror films that emanated from Hollywood's Universal Studios. Beginning with such silent classics as The Phantom of the Opera and The Cat and the Canary, Universal went Read More

Vampirella

Crew: Producer

Actors: Roger Daltrey, Talisa Soto

Synopsis: The beautiful vampire from space who starred in her own successful comic book series comes to the screen in this adaptation produced in part by Roger Corman and Forrest J. Ackerman. The planet Drakulon is populate by a race of vampires who are able to feed on the rivers of blood that flow Read More

Future War

Actors: Daniel Bernhardt, Travis Brooks Stewart, Ray Adash, Robert Z'Dar

Synopsis: In this thrilling sci-fi tale, a high-kicking Runaway (Daniel Bernhardt) escapes from his space captors in the future and ends up in present-day Los Angeles, on the run from a slew of evil cyborgs ready to take him back. It seems that these moustachioed cyborgs have been abducting humans from the Read More

Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold

Actors: J.J. North, Ted Monte, Raelyn Saalman, Tammy Parks, Tim Abell

Synopsis: When a finalist for "Centerfold of the Year" downs an experimental beauty-enhancing potion concocted by mad-scientist Dr. Lindholm, the unforseen side effects render her a shaply 60 feet tall. Jealous over all the attention, a rival guzzles the elixir, and soon the gargantuan beauties are battling Read More

That Little Monster

Actors: Melissa Baum

Synopsis: Paul Bunnell's horror film That Little Monster stars Melissa Baum as Jamie, a student studying abroad who begins the film interviewing for a nanny position. She gets the job, but soon discovers that strange things are occurring with the child, the family, and their house. She soon begins to fear Read More

Innocent Blood

Actors: Anne Parillaud, Robert Loggia, Anthony LaPaglia, David Proval, Don Rickles, Don Rickels

Synopsis: An uneven but entertaining blend of graphic horror and black comedy from John Landis, very much in the mode of the director's successful An American Werewolf in London. French actress Anne Parillaud -- star of Luc Besson's acclaimed thriller La Femme Nikita -- plays Marie, a lithe and lovely Read More

Dead Alive

Actors: Timothy Balme, Diana Penalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin, Brenda Kendall

Synopsis: Director Peter Jackson's second feature cheerfully trumps the gross-out quotient of his splatterfest debut, the appropriately named Bad Taste. The tone is cartoonishly comic, and the premise is simple: The village dweeb (Timothy Balme) is trying to maintain a budding romance with the sweet Paquita Read More

Hard to Die

Synopsis: Roger Corman's Concorde-New Horizons studio rolled out this nutty exploitation hybrid -- a half-baked attempt to fuse a Die Hard action theme (hence the title) to a T&A psycho-horror flick in the hope of producing direct-to-video pay dirt. Viewed on those terms, it almost works. The story begins Read More

My Lovely Monster

Crew: Additional Dialogue

Actors: Silvio Francesco, Forrest J. Ackerman, Matthias Fuchs

Synopsis: This horror spoof boasts pun-filled dialogue by the always off-center Forrest J. Ackerman, who gained genre fame in the 1960s as the editor of "Famous Monsters Of Filmland" and "Spacemen" publications. Ackerman also has a cameo appearance in the film. Knowledgeable fans of early movies and silents Read More

Transylvania Twist

Actors: Robert Vaughn, Teri Copley, Stephen Altman, Monique Gabrielle, Angus Scrimm, Ace Mask

Synopsis: In Transylvania Twist, producer Roger Corman and director Jim Wynorski make Mel Brooks movies look like Noël Coward drawing-room comedies. The film begins with nubile innocent Patty (Monique Gabrielle) being chasing through the woods by the Greatest Horror Hits of the 1980s --with Jason, Freddy Read More

Return of the Living Dead Part II

Actors: James Karen, Thom Matthews, Michael Kenworthy, Marsha Dietlein, Dana Ashbrook

Synopsis: A virtual remake of its predecessor, Return of the Living Dead (1985), which itself was a tongue-in-cheek rip-off of director George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), this follow-up adheres strictly to a gore and gags formula. Jesse Wilson (Michael Kenworthy), is a young boy being bullied Read More

The Wizard of Speed and Time

Actors: Mike Jittlov, Richard Kaye

Synopsis: Mike Jittlov, a master of special effects who's strutted his stuff in several short films, is both the director and star of The Wizard of Speed and Time. Jittlov plays himself, an eager-beaver director who offers a reel of special effects to a TV producer. The director makes a huge bet to the Read More

Amazon Women on the Moon

Actors: Rosanna Arquette, Ralph Bellamy, Carrie Fisher, Griffin Dunne, Steve Guttenberg

Synopsis: The 1987 portmanteau comedy feature Amazon Women on the Moon lampoons several film genres in general and the 1954 sci-fi cheapie Cat Women of the Moon in particular. Other sketches in Amazon Women include an opening bit with Arsenio Hall; a vignette titled "Son of the Invisible Man" wherein a Read More

Evil Spawn

Actors: Bobbi Bresee, Drew Godderis, John Terrence, Donna Shock, Jerry Fox

Synopsis: Evil Spawn, a violent, bloody, but surprisingly effective English horror film directed by Kenneth Hall, deals with a woman's fear of aging and its consequences. When a space probe brings back microbes, scientist Dr. Zeitman (John Carradine) uses them for his experiments in aging but dies before Read More

Curse of the Queerwolf

Actors: Forrest J. Ackerman, Michael Palazzolo, Mark Pirro, Conrad Brooks

Synopsis: This mildly amusing horror spoof was filmed on Super-8 film by fledgling indie director Mark Pirro (Nudist Colony of the Dead). The plot concerns a swinging bachelor, Larry Smallbutt (Michael Palazzolo) who is bitten on the rear end by a transvestite "queerwolf" whom he believed was a woman. He Read More

Attack of the B-Movie Monster

Scalps

Actors: Kirk Alyn, Carroll Borland, Jo Ann Robinson, Richard Hench, Roger Maycock

Synopsis: Dr. Howard Machen (Kirk Alyn) and his students have been raiding California's Indian graveyards for archeological artifacts, a criminal practice that the university wants him to stop. After being ordered to make a complete inventory of his illegal finds, Machen regretfully withdraws from the Read More

Zombie Aftermath

Actors: Steve Barkett, Lynne Margulies, Sid Haig, Christopher Barkett, Alfie Martin

Synopsis: B-movie specialist Steve Barkett directs this sci-fi shocker about a pair of astronauts who return from a mission in space to discover that the world has been decimated by a nuclear holocaust. Arriving back on terra firma, the two space travelers learn that sadistic despots have horded high-tech Read More

The Howling

Actors: Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Christopher Stone, Belinda Balaski

Synopsis: This groundbreaking, darkly-comic horror film from director Joe Dante changed the look and feel of werewolf movies in ways light-years distant from Universal's horror classic The Wolf Man. The story begins with television reporter/anchor Karen White (Dee Wallace) taking part in a dangerous police Read More

Nudist Colony of the Dead

Synopsis: A group of naturists open a nudist camp near a small town, but local religious fanatics pressure the authorities to close the camp down. The nudists are so ashamed and outraged by this act that they commit mass suicide -- but not before vowing revenge on the zealots who had their camp closed. Five Read More

The Kentucky Fried Movie

Actors: Donald Sutherland, George Lazenby, Henry Gibson, Bill Bixby, Tony Dow

Synopsis: Comedy writers David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams of Airplane and The Naked Gun fame got their start at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, when they formed a theatrical group known as The Kentucky Fried Theater. The Kentucky Fried Movie is based on the KFT's gag-filled theatrical skits. Read More

Schlock

Actors: Eric Allison, Enrica Blankey

Synopsis: Southern California is being terrorized by a mysterious murderous monster living in a cave. As the bodies pile up -- with incriminating banana peels always near by the crime scene -- a group of teens stumble on the guilty party: a 20-million-year-old Schlockthropus, an ape-like creature with a Read More

Dracula vs. Frankenstein

Actors: J. Carrol Naish

Synopsis: A slapdash epic of bad filmmaking geared strictly toward drive-in audiences, Dracula vs. Frankenstein has gone on to achieve cult status thanks to its sheer ineptness and impressive cast. At an oceanside amusement park, Dr. Frankenstein (J. Carrol Naish) runs a house of horrors that serves as a Read More

Mad Monster Party

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: The only theatrical feature from Rankin/Bass -- the outfit behind countless animated holiday TV specials including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman -- this quaint and colorful production pays amusing homage to nearly every movie monster in Universal's catalog, even to the Read More

Planet of Blood

Actors: John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Judi Meredith, Dennis Hopper

Synopsis: Shot on a miniscule $50,000 budget, and including footage from a 1959 Russian film that was later purchased by Roger Corman, this science fiction feature finds a tiny planet slowly dying. With the inhabitants in danger of perishing, some kind-hearted astronauts bring a green-blooded female alien Read More

The Time Travelers

Actors: Preston S. Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, John Hoyt, Dennis Patrick

Synopsis: After a nuclear holocaust, a group of scientists travel to the future and find a world in tatters, where the human survivors must constantly defend themselves against mutated beasts. Upon seeing the future of the earth, the men would like to return to 1964, but find it may not be possible. Read More

Horrors of the Red Planet

Crew: Consultant/advisor

Actors: John Carradine

Synopsis: Released theatrically as The Wizard of Mars, this incredibly strange (and cheap) science fiction spin on The Wizard of Oz involves the journey of a stranded rocketship crew (in the far-off future of 1975), which includes an astronaut named Dorothy (Eve Bernhardt). Low on oxygen and desperate to Read More