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Corrinne (Julissa) & her fiancé Mark (Carlos East) have gone down to
the earth's core to fetch some rocks for Helga's father Doc Mandel (Boris
Karloff). But one of these rocks shows signs of life ... & it feeds on the
essence of fear (!). So Mandel does what every hot-blooded scientist would
do: he builds a secret lab disguised as a welfare shelter, & with quite
ingenious horror performances he frightens several of its (exclusively female)
patrons almost to death ... But then one of the girls staying at the shelter -
a thief by trade - breaks into the lab on her own & is killed by the
rock-creature. At this point Mandel knows he has put an end to his experiments,
& he sends away Corrinne & Mark on an almost honeymoon while he has to
stay in bed anyways, having just suffered a heartattack. The rock creature is
left to die ... or so it is intended, but Mandel's assistant Helga (Isela Vega)
decides to continue the experiments on her own, & she persuades Mandel's
halfwit servant Roland (Yerye Beirute) to secure her a steady flow of girls
(mostly strippers) & shield the truth about her experiments from everyone. Only
eventually, after a few strippers had to die, does Helga realize though that
her experiments might not be quite as benign as they might have appeared
previously & now she
wants to kill the rock ... much to the dismay of Roland, who has taken a liking
to the rock (really) & has been promised by it to become ruler of the world
(!?). & to defend his friend, the rock, he even murders Helga. But Mandel
has since found out that the rock uses the experiments performed on him to
properly adapt to life conditions above the surface, & now plans to call
his rock-friends from below to come live with him on the upper world & feed
on these puny humans ... But in a concerted effort, Mandel, & Corrinne
& Mark - who have just returned from their pre-honeymoon to pack their
things for their actual honeymoon - blow up the rock creature. & Roland ? He
has gone to the earth core, to find our rock's pals so they can make him ruler
of the world ... This is it ! A wonderfully funny piece of
trash-cinema, with an outrageous script, great cheap sets & light-effects,
a beautifully unconvincing monster (a rock with tentacles) & a host of
silly dialogues, not helped at all by most of the actors' rahter limited acting
efforts. The premise of this movie alone - a rock feeding on the essence of
fear - should make every trashfilm fan's heart beat faster. It's just so over
the top hilarious that it keeps the audience wondering yet totally entertained
throughout. Easily the best of Karloff's final four, Mexico-lensed films. You
might still want to hate it though (especially if you are a Karloff-fan).
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