Svengoolie’s June Schedule Is Here to Kick Off Your Summer of Fear
Svengoolie‘s June schedule for MeTV‘s Svengoolie Classic Horror & Sci-Fi Movie has arrived, so drop those vacation plans, forget about that backyard gardening project, and let the kids find their own ride to summer camp — it’s time to settle in for a month of zombies, vampires, evil children, damaged androids running amok, and Joan Crawford wielding an ax.
Read on to find out what what fanciful frights will be airing on the show this month, every Saturday night at 8pm ET!
June 7: Strait-Jacket (1964)
Everett Collection
Strait-Jacket has a pretty impeccable pedigree — it was produced and directed by B-movie legend William Castle, penned by Psycho author Robert Bloch, and stars Joan Crawford as Lucy, a woman recently released from an asylum where she has been confined for decades after the axe murder of her husband and his mistress.
But while Crawford had recently completed What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, a film considered to have jumpstarted the “psycho-biddy” movement of horror movies about older women, she wasn’t the first choice for Lucy — that would be 1930s star Joan Blondell.
In a nod to the film’s subject matter, its closing credits featured the Columbia torch-bearer with her head lopped off.
June 14: Son of Dracula (1943)
Everett Collection
In Universal’s third Dracula film, Lon Chaney Jr. stars as Count Alucard (hmmm, what does that spell backwards?), who has taken occult student Katherine Caldwell as a bride. Katherine’s ex-boyfriend finds recent changes to Katherine’s personality to be strange … and maybe vampiric.
The Wolf Man screenwriter Curt Sidomak was originally commissioned to writer the script, but claims he was fired after his brother, The Killers director Robert Sidomak, was hired to helm the film — he said the pair’s sibling rivalry prevented them from successfully working together.
June 21: Village of the Damned (1960) & Day of the Dead (1985)
Everett Collection
The kids aren’t alright in this sci-fi horror classic about a small UK village where a mysterious incident leads to the birth of a large group of spooky, precocious children. Though today it’s viewed as a quintessentially British horror classic, the original plan was to shoot in Culver City, California, with Russ Tamblyn as the lead.
(c) United Film/courtesy Everett Collection
Then, House of Svengoolie presents George A. Romero‘s third Living Dead film, which follows a group of bunker-bound scientists and soldiers who have survived the zombie apocalypse … only to find that they might not survive each other.
Though less critically successful than Romero’s previous two zombie films, it was said to be his favorite of the original zombie trilogy, and the film has been subject to multiple remakes and many homages, including a cameo by Bub, the human-like zombie, in an episode of The Walking Dead — which makes sense, since Walking Dead producer and director Greg Nicotero got his first big break working on this film’s special effects makeup.
June 28: Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
Everett Collection
There’s no mad scientist here, just a maimed android, and some evil Martians intent on abducting earth’s most bikini-clad women in this incredibly loose adaptation of the Frankenstein tale. After a war ends in the death of almost all the women on Mars, an evil Martian princess (former Playboy Playmate of the Month Marilyn Hanold) and her henchman head to the blue planet to kidnap some human honeys they hope will repopulate their world. Somehow, this leads them to shoot down the space capsule of android astronaut Colonel Frank Saunders, who, badly injured, becomes this story’s Frankenstein’s monster.
Though his name doesn’t appear in the credits, the monster who fights Colonel Frank was played by Bruce Glover, who went on to play Mr. Wint in Diamonds Are Forever — though he’s probably best known as the father of Crispin Glover.
Remind 
Glamour Goddesses
May 2025
Marilyn Monroe’s iconic wind-aided dress. Audrey Hepburn’s little black gown. Jean Harlow’s form-fitting costumes. Celebrate the lushest Hollywood looks among the stars.
Buy This Issue