Category: Psychological Age

  • Chamber of Horrors (1966)

    Chamber of Horrors (1966)

    October 19, 1966 Chamber of Horrors (1966) was intended as a pilot for a series, but was too “intense” for television, so additional footage was added and it was released as a theatrical motion picture. Neither these circumstances, nor the movie itself, is as strange as what the series might have been: a period detective…

  • The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)

    The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)

    October 14, 1964 What a great title! However, screenwriter Harry Spalding supposedly never liked it. In a 2003 interview with Tom Weaver, he claimed that someone said the title as a joke and “somehow it kind of stuck.” As I said, it’s a great title, but not necessarily for this movie. In fact, it’s ironic…

  • Color Me Blood Red (1965)

    Color Me Blood Red (1965)

    October 13, 1965 If we judge Herschell Gordon Lewis movies based on the amount of over-the-top gore, then Color Me Blood Red is the mildest one I’ve seen. With its story of a creatively stalled painter who can’t get his colors right until he discovers blood is the perfect shade of red, you’d think it…

  • The Brain (1962)

    The Brain (1962)

    October 9, 1962 For some reason, I’ve never been fond of Donovan’s Brain… or any of its versions. When I watched three of them for discussion on the podcast, I rated Donovan’s Brain (1953) average, The Lady & the Monster (1944) slightly below average, and The Brain (1962) slightly above average… so it was my…

  • Repulsion (1965)

    Repulsion (1965)

    October 3, 1965 Purposeful or not, the opening of Repulsion evokes Psycho. However, instead of the camera slowly zooming-in on an eye, it slowly zooms out. This indicates we’re going to see events from the character’s (also a lovely blonde woman) point of view. At full frame, we immediately know something’s not right with Carol…

  • Night of the Big Heat (1967)

    Night of the Big Heat (1967)

    Note: After today’s review, Classic Horrors is taking a late summer vacation during the month of September while classichorrors.club gets a fresh coat of paint in preparation for October and the Halloween season. Follow us on social media for quick fixes so you don’t get out of the habit… There’s an explosive opening to Night…

  • The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

    The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

    Quake Threat Worsens It’s Never Been So Hot Cyclone Horror No, these aren’t actual headlines from this week’s newspapers, although they may as well be. Instead, they’re fictitious headlines from newspapers in the 1961 film, The Day the Earth Caught Fire. Apparently, the kind of disasters we’re experiencing now with climate change can also occur…

  • The Curse of the Crying Woman (1961)

    The Curse of the Crying Woman (1961)

    Released in 1963, two years after production was completed, The Curse of the Crying Woman, is the fourth Mexican horror film dealing with the subject of La Llorona, “the crying woman” or “the wailer.” However, it’s the furthest removed from the original legend of a vengeful ghost that roams near bodies of water mourning the…

  • The Witch’s Mirror (1962)

    The Witch’s Mirror (1962)

    In my review of Black Pit of Dr. M (1959), I wrote about a characteristic that seemed common among the Mexican horror films I’d seen so far. The Witch’s Mirror (1962) corroborates it. Three out of four movies from the Indicator Mexico Macabre box set, plus the handful I’ve seen at Monster Bash, all have…

  • The Brainiac (1962)

    The Brainiac (1962)

    In the wonderful and fact-filled book that comes with Indicator’s Mexico Macabre box set, Jose Luis Ortega Torres says about The Brainiac: …it is with this grotesque monster that Mexican cinema finds it greatest, one-hundred percent native horror icon, without any recognizable antecedent in any foreign myth or folklore. He is not a vampire or…