Category: Movie Discussions
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Devil Times Five (1974)
When I began this review, I typed how life is full of lessons, and one of them is that I should watch movies before I buy them blindly on Blu-ray. Call it a New Year’s resolution, if you will, but I realized I didn’t need to own every movie that’s a subject for Classic Horrors.…
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Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow (1963)
Before I removed the plastic on The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh Blu-ray that my daughter gave me for Christmas, I hadn’t realized it was originally a three-part series that aired on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on ABC-TV. I remembered it as the movie I saw in theaters as a kid: Dr. Syn, Alias…
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Lady in a Cage (1964)
When I can’t locate mentions in my collection of vintage monster magazines or horror movie reference books, I like to find original reviews of a movie from when it was first released in theaters. I wouldn’t say this usually uncovers anything earth-shattering; however, in the case of Lady in a Cage (1964), two reviews indicate…
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Love from a Stranger (1937)
aka Night of Terror Get out your whiteboards and markers for this one… In 1924, Agatha Christie (you may have heard of her) wrote a short story called, Philomel Cottage. In it, a woman named Alix Martin inherits a fortune. Her boyfriend, Dick Windyford, disapproves of her financial independence. When she meets Gerald Martin and…
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Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
Author, Phil Hardy (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies), marks Roger Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters as a high point for young director Roger Corman, not just financially, but also stylistically: The most commercially successful of his early features, Attack of the Crab Monsters saw Corman refining his directorial style to produce a film…
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Last Woman on Earth (1960)
We all know about the big Hollywood names that started their careers with Roger Corman; however, we hear mostly about the actors and directors. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown, 1975) also got his start with Corman by writing Last Woman on Earth (1960.) I’ll be darned if his screenplay doesn’t make this low-LOW budget…
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The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
It’s impossible to know how much I would have liked The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) had I never seen its musical counterpart from 26 years later, Little Shop of Horrors (1986.) While it’s surprising that I watched the former for the first time only recently, I couldn’t keep myself from hearing the songs from…
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Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
This week’s review of Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) is an unintentional continuation from last week’s review of Beast from Haunted Cave (1959.) You may recall this introduction from Jeff Rovin’s The Fabulous Fantasy Films: In addition to Universal, Roger Corman, Dean of the Poe films, made his mark on the man-monster genre. His…
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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…
Classic Horrors Club 