Category: Movie Discussions
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Beast from the Haunted Cave (1959)
In addition to Universal, Roger Corman, Dean of the Poe films, made his mark on the man-monster genre. His contributions were mostly in terms of science fiction: Day the World Ended (1956), with its atom-spawned mutants, and Night of the Blood Beast (1958), an astronaut turned into a crusty tendrilled being by an outer space…
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Fade to Black (1980)
There I was, a still-young monster kid in the process of graduating from Famous Monsters of Filmland to Fangoria, from Universal and Hammer to Michael Myers and Jason. In the pages of Fangoria, I read this about an upcoming movie: Fade to Black: Irwin Yablans, the man who made film history when he asked John…
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Robot Monster (1953)
Robot Monster (1953) is one of those supposedly awful sci-fi movies that I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch. However, when Amok Time Toys advertised a 13” deluxe vinyl figure of the titular creature (technically called “Ro-Man”), I realized how darned fun it might unexpectedly be. I mean, the gorilla body with a…
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Beyond the Door (1974)
Calling Beyond the Door (1974) an Italian rip-off of The Exorcist (1973) isn’t quite fair. On one hand, that’s exactly what it is; but, on the other, it covers more original ground than I expected it would. Besides, if you believe the argument that The Exorcist isn’t really a horror film at all, then Beyond…
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Messiah of Evil (1973)
In a 1984 interview in People Weekly, timed for the release of Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, writer Gloria Katz said of her and Willard Huyck’s 1973 horror film, Messiah of Evil… It was a real bowwow. In the same interview, Huyck defending it, saying… It appeared on a marquee in a Woody…
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The Undying Monster (1942)
It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to believe Twentieth Century-Fox was eager to capitalize on the success of Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941) when it made The Undying Monster a year later. Then again, that might not be the case, because it was not promoted as one. As Jeff Rovin writes in The…
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The Werewolf of Washington (1973)
In The Monster Times #32 (April 1974), R. Allen Leider says The Werewolf of Washington (1973) was filmed in a “semi-documentary” style. I’m not sure that’s what i’d call it, but the first third or fourth of the movie is full of short shots that fade to black before starting a new one. At first,…
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The War of the Worlds (1953)
In the Movie Archaeologists bonus feature on Criterion’s beautiful new Blu-ray edition of The War of the Worlds (1953), Craig Barron and Ben Burtt mention an original Variety review in which the critic called the movie, “socko entertainment.” I had to find and read this review. Sure enough: War of the Worlds is a socko…
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Brotherhood of the Bell (1970)
The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) is the closest thing to a prestige picture one might find at the beginning of the 1970s TV horror movie boom: Of course, it’s not really a horror film. Instead, it’s a suspense thriller in which the secret society that Professor Andrew Patterson (Ford) joined in college comes collecting…
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The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
In his on-air introduction of The Hitch-Hiker (1953) on TCM, Ben Mankiewicz shared the kind of perceptions about the film that I wish I were smart enough to realize myself. The fact that it was directed by a woman (Ida Lupino), though, doesn’t impress me in and of itself as much as the fact that…
Classic Horrors Club 