Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In 1999, cable's American Movie Classics hired legendary producer/director Roger Corman to host its now-annual MonsterFest, a month-long celebration of monster movies with hosted nightly programming for the last week of October and culminating in a nonstop weekend binge of genre films! MonsterFest 1999 was especially a treat for kaiju fans, with Godzilla movies showing all day October 30th and several other Japanese monster movies following on the morning of Halloween.
Corman, as himself, hosted the MonsterFest programming up to the weekend marathon; at that point, each movie was introduced by Corman as his character in "Roger Corman's 'The Phantom Eye,'" a meta horror parody produced specifically for MonsterFest. In fact, "The Phantom Eye" was initially split up into 35 short chapters to precede each movie, followed by the feature-length version on Halloween night.
It will also be of interest to kaiju fans that AMC aired the King Features/Sandy Frank version of "Gamera" (1965) right after this, even though Corman introduces the film as "Gammera, the Invincible," which is the title of the heavily-edited American version. My tape unfortunately cuts off right before the climax, so I don't have Corman's closing remarks on the film.
Originally recorded October 31, 1999 at 11:30 AM EST on EP-mode VHS; transferred in 2010 on a Panasonic DMR-EZ37V.
In 1999, cable's American Movie Classics hired legendary producer/director Roger Corman to host its now-annual MonsterFest, a month-long celebration of monster movies with hosted nightly programming for the last week of October and culminating in a nonstop weekend binge of genre films! MonsterFest 1999 was especially a treat for kaiju fans, with Godzilla movies showing all day October 30th and several other Japanese monster movies following on the morning of Halloween.
Corman, as himself, hosted the MonsterFest programming up to the weekend marathon; at that point, each movie was introduced by Corman as his character in "Roger Corman's 'The Phantom Eye,'" a meta horror parody produced specifically for MonsterFest. In fact, "The Phantom Eye" was initially split up into 35 short chapters to precede each movie, followed by the feature-length version on Halloween night.
It will also be of interest to kaiju fans that AMC aired the King Features/Sandy Frank version of "Gamera" (1965) right after this, even though Corman introduces the film as "Gammera, the Invincible," which is the title of the heavily-edited American version. My tape unfortunately cuts off right before the climax, so I don't have Corman's closing remarks on the film.
Originally recorded October 31, 1999 at 11:30 AM EST on EP-mode VHS; transferred in 2010 on a Panasonic DMR-EZ37V.
