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Woman Who Came Back (1945) has a great gothic opening, generating a creepy atmosphere that’s sustained throughout the movie. In Eben Rock, Massachusetts, a “crypt” beneath the church holds documents that detail the history of witchcraft in the area. Nearby stands the palatial home of the judge responsible for killing 18 women 300 years ago…
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In a dark cave with the sound of drums beating in the background, a young woman moans that she can’t stand it anymore. “If you love me, kill me.” The man attending to her steps away with another man to discuss the infestation of vampire bats. While one describes how they “attach” themselves to a
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You’d think I would learn by now. With its reputation (and a 3.5 IMDb rating), The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955) has always been at the bottom of my watch list. When Cathy Downs was nominated for a 2019 Monster Rally Retro Award (http://tinyurl.com/rallies2019) on Monster Kid Radio, I decided I needed to watch it
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Death by Invitation (1971) opens with a guerilla filmmaking reenactment of an angry, 17th century mob capturing a witch and carrying her through town. Writer/director Ken Friedman uses handheld cameras, close-ups, POV shots, and freeze frame to suck us into the action. Even though the setting doesn’t feel 100% authentic, it’s effective and establishes high
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Interested in clearing something off my DVR, The House That Screamed (1969) piqued my interest one night last week, probably because I was aware that its director, Narciso Ibanez Serrador, had recently died. I happened to record it from Comet TV and figured its dark, muddy presentation was the best I could expect to see.
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aka Daikaiju Baran There may be a reason that Varan doesn’t guest star in a Godzilla movie until 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars, and even then, it’s via stock footage. The movie in which he stars, Daikaiju Baran (1958), is definitely a weak link in Toho’s chain of giant monster classics. Arriving fifth (after Gojira, 1954;
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You can’t blame Hammer for trying. First, it attempted to modernize its gothic Dracula saga by jumping 100 years into the future with Dracula A.D. 1972. Then, it committed to the conceit by making a direct sequel a year later, The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Both are incredibly fun films, yet they couldn’t be more
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Before we get to Milton Subotsky’s obligatory excuses for why What Became of Jack & Jill (1972) failed, I have to say that I kind of liked it. I watched it on a bootleg DVD because I wanted to be an Amicus Productions completist and it’s a movie of which I’d never heard, much less
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It seems that Milton Subotsky had an explanation for every Amicus Productions film that wasn’t a hit. In “Amicus: The Friendly Face of Fear,” author Allan Bryce quotes Subotsky regarding The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970): This could have been one of the great science-fantasy films of all time. The trouble was that we never
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Although Devil’s Nightmare (1971) includes beheadings and impalements, it’s hard to top the shock of the movie’s opening sequence. Other films have shown the death of a baby, but I can’t think of one that graphically represents a long dagger piercing a baby’s swaddled body and the resulting pool of blood soaking into its blanket.
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Classic Horrors Club 