Cult Camp Classics Vol. 2: Women in Peril: DVD Review (2007)

Sometimes horror isn't a boogeyman wielding a knife or a monster munching on a co-ed's throat, but something never intended to be scary, such as a botched performance gone awry, the fiery end of a career or a movie so bad, you can’t quite look away.

This second volume in the "Cult Camp Classics" series embraces that notion, knowing that the lowest movie also can be the highest comedy.

Take Joan Crawford’s last film, for instance. In 1970, the actress, having hit rock bottom at age 66, decided to throw back her shoulders and take the lead as anthropologist Dr. Brockton in "Trog," a movie in which a troglodyte is discovered, feared, misunderstood and who then goes berserk.

Crawford's great misfortune wasn't just playing nursemaid to a man in an ape suit, but selling this sort of dialogue: "You've got Durando on the brain! You do, Trog! You do!" Crawford has been eating for those words for 37 years.

Other films in this enjoyably risible collection include the 1950 crime thriller "Caged," in which a young woman (Eleanor Parker) is sent to the big house and corrupted by a female prison tough. (If Paris Hilton had a whiff of humor, she’d remake the movie.)

Finally, there's 1969’s "The Big Cube," in which Lana Turner is tricked into getting addicted to LCD via sleeping pills tainted by the wild she-devil trying to undo her. Poor Lana, sure--but lucky us.

Grade: A-

Below is the trailer for "Trog." Enough said.