In Craze (1974), Neal Mottram (Jack Palance) never forsakes his god, the African idol, Chuku. When a woman dances naked and slices her stomach in front of it, he says, “I pray that the bloodletting pleased you.” When he discovers gold coins in his desk, he tells it, “We shall always serve you.” And when…

10 Rillington Place (1971) is another film I never watched because of the VHS cover box. I couldn’t tell what it was, really… it seemed like more of a a drama or a stuffy British film with people of whom, at the time, I’d never heard. I was interested only in movies that were clearly…

As the camera floats around the bedroom, we hear moaning and see a generous splatter of blood against the wall; then a bloody straight razor and clothing on the floor. We then cut to a trunk tumbling down the dark stairs to the cellar. When it hits the bottom, a body falls out. A plump…

Thank goodness for Wikipedia! Had the entry for Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) not included a lengthy synopsis of the plot, I would have been unclear about the goings on. It’s not that it’s incoherent in any way, but there are a lot of characters that get killed one by one, for no…

Two things struck me during my first-time watch of Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971.) First was how stylish it is. That may sound silly since it was directed by Dario Argento (Suspiria, 1977), but I don’t mean “stylish” as in gloriously bloody set pieces, but as in the camerawork itself. The fact that it’s…

Prior to his untimely death in a helicopter crash at the age of 30, writer-producer-director-composer William Girdler had a promising film trajectory. Four years after his inauspicious beginnings with two drive-in quickies in 1972 (Asylum of Satan, Three on a Meathook), he made the most successful independent feature of 1976, Grizzly. Sprinkled among his nine…

Doomwatch (1972) is not the movie I thought I would be watching. The title has appeared in my research so many times over the years, that I did a blind-buy of the Blu-ray a while back. IMDb describes it as a “Horror, Mystery.” If anything, it’s science-fiction, but it’s barely even that. It’s more like…

There’s a fun bonus feature on the Severin Films Blu-ray of The Beast in the Cellar (1971.) It provides a high level look at the genre output of Tigon Films, the distant third of the trio of British production companies in the 1960s and 1970s, behind Hammer Films and Amicus Productions. However, it spends most…

Few movies capture a sense of authenticity with their setting as does The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971.) Of course, we don’t know what it was really like living in the 18th century, but after watching this film, I’d swear this was it… a gloomy countryside where the sun never shines, stone buildings that look…