Svengoolie’s July Schedule Has Arrived to Put Some Scares in Your Summer
After you’re done celebrating the red, white, and blue on July 4, tune into Svengoolie for a little red, white and boo. The July schedule for MeTV‘s Svengoolie Classic Horror & Sci-Fi Movie is here and it’s packed with aliens, cults, World War I & II-related plot points, and more Lugosi than you can shake a stick at (shake a stake at?).
Read on to find out what what summertime scares will be airing on the show this month, every Saturday night at 8pm ET!
July 5: Return of the Vampire (1943)
Everett Collection
More than a decade after his genre-defining turn in Dracula, Lugosi donned the cape once again in a film that’s considered by many to be a spiritual sequel to the earlier Universal film.
This time around, Lugosi plays vampire Armand Tesla, who runs afoul of some British scientists during the first World War, and ends up with a stake through his chest for his trouble. Two decades later, during World War II, some helpful soldiers mistake his staked corpse for a living man hit with a piece of shrapnel, unleashing him on the UK capital once more.
July 12: Invaders from Mars (1953)
20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection
When he shot this film, director William Menzies was 57 and at the end of a long, decorated career — literally, he started his career doing set decoration, and took home an Oscar for Best Art Direction at the first Oscars in 1929. The man for whom the term “production designer” was coined, he’s likely best known for his work on 1939’s Gone With the Wind (he designed the production, and directed the famous “burning of Atlanta” sequence) and for directing the dream sequence in the 1945 Hitchcock thriller Spellbound.
But he did also direct two films: 1936’s Things to Come, and this classic alien invasion film. Though not a blockbuster upon release, it has developed an impressive cult following: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Joe Dante all counted it as an influence, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre auteur Tobe Hooper went so far as to remake the film in 1986.
July 19: The Black Cat (1934)
Everett Collection
Bela and Boris made eight movies together, beginning with this tale of evil architects and World War I vendettas. Lugosi plays Dr. Vitus Werdegast, a doctor recently liberated from a Siberian prison camp who is in search of his wife; Karloff plays Hjalmar Poelzig, a villainous architect/ cult leader whose country estate hides countless horrifying secrets.
Though the credits state that the film was suggested by Poe’s short story of the same name, the two works don’t share any plot points. If there’s any real-life inspiration at work, it’s in Poelzig, whose character was supposedly inspired by infamous occultist Aleister Crowley.
July 26: Earth Girls are Easy (1988)
Hosted by the Sven Squad!
How many movies about randy space aliens featured four actors who went on to become some of the biggest stars of the ’90s? By our count, this New Wave-tinged musical comedy is the only film that fits the bill. Jeff Goldblum (just a few years after The Fly) Jim Carrey, and Damon Wayans (just a few years before In Living Color) star as a group of fuzzy aliens who crash-land in Day-Glo 1980s Los Angeles; Geena Davis (just one year after marrying her The Fly costar Goldblum) plays the bored manicurist who helps them run from the authorities. This candy-colored, sexed-up version of E.T. is based on a song by comedy songtress Julie Brown, who also appears in the film as a sassy hairdresser who depilates the furry visitors.
The film was a box office bomb upon release, making back less than half of its production costs; but the subsequent fame of its stars (plus frequent basic cable airings in the ’90s) transformed it into a cult favorite.
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