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This one is a real curiosity. It’s a documentary about UFOs made during the 1950s UFO craze that was sweeping the nation. I can’t say I learned anything from it, but it gave me a real sense of how the craze began at that time rather than looking back on it years later. For nostalgia’s…
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I’m arriving late to this (slumber) party. As big a fan as I am of the “original” slasher films, there are several of their follow-ups that I’ve never seen. I’m way past the point of discussing how The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) was written (Rita Mae Brown) and directed (Amy Holden Jones) by women and…
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Subgenres within subgenres… Within the “nature gone wild/when animals attack” horror subgenre resides one that belongs exclusively to dogs. Preceded by Dogs (1976) comes The Pack (1977), with nearly identical descriptions (on IMDb, at least.) They’re both in the company of Dracula’s Dog (1977), Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), and, into the 1980s,…
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Not only was Guru, the Mad Monk (1970) a first-time watch for me, but it was also the first Andy Milligan film I’ve seen. The writer-director-producer-costume designer-and so on has at least some fans, I assume, due to the existence of a deluxe box set of his movies from Severin Films. One of those fans…
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If Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) is criticized for being too much like a play, then The Thirteenth Chair (1929) doesn’t have a chance! On the other hand, this film is better suited for the stage; restricted locations don’t slow its pace. The plot unfolds primarily in two rooms, so we’re not longing for action anywhere…
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Joan Crawford once said that she learned more about acting from watching Lon Chaney work than from anyone else in her career. “It was then I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera and acting.” She appeared with Chaney in The Unknown (1927) during the first…
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If you’ve ever wanted to see Lon Chaney, “the Man of a Thousand Faces,” transform into one of his misshapen characters, there are a couple scenes in The Blackbird (1926) that at least give you a glimpse. He quickly pulls his ankle into the air, twisting his leg at the knee, then jerks his shoulder…
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Having been awed and amazed by previous Lon Chaney films that I’ve seen, I was a little disappointed in the one I’d heard most about: The Unholy Three (1925.) Learning now that it was the first collaboration between Chaney and director Tod Browning at MGM, it stands to reason that each film would only become…
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Now comes Satellite in the Sky, a version of the mid-century British sci-fi film I’ve mentioned the last couple of days… but one with a budget. Shot in CinemaScope in Warner Color, this was the first color science fiction movie made in the UK. It looks gorgeous and feels newer than 1956. It’s a shame…
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aka Cosmic Monsters The Strange World of Planet X (1958), aka Cosmic Monsters, aka The Cosmic Monster, belongs to that sometimes-odd sub-genre of mid-century British science-fiction. Think of Hammer’s Four Sided Triangle or Spaceways… Curse of the Fly, The Brain, Konga, etc. They’re all a little dry… a little unusual. At least they are to…
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Classic Horrors Club 