They say that some actors are so good that even if their movies aren’t, their presence can elevate them and make them worth watching. Specifically, this has been said about Vincent Price. Normally, I’d wholeheartedly agree, but Master of the World (1961) puts considerable strain on the theory. It’s been the Middle Ages since I’ve…

Curtis Harrington (1926-2007) I was now reaching the age where the idea of sex began to go beyond the theoretical into the actual, and I must confess that I began to make a few explorations in this direction with some of my male school chums. Of course, I went to parties and school dances with…

Eye of the Devil (1966) fits into that odd and wonderful era of 1960s British genre films that gave us Village of the Damned, Day of the Triffids, and Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn.) For me, this means they’re made with a perspective or sensibility that’s just slightly unfamiliar when compared to…

David Lowell Rich should be a familiar name to those who join us on Fridays for TV Terror Guide. Beginning his career in the 1950s, he was a prolific director of television shows who made several 1970s TV thrillers. He made the occasional theatrical film and it’s interesting that Eye of the Cat (1969) plays…

Although I can find no evidence of this, I remember a horrible VHS cover box for Mill of the Stone Woman (1960.) It was light brown with a fuzzy photo of a woman on the front. I can’t tell you how many times I picked up that box to read about it and never had…

With its plot happening within the span of a couple days, much of Horror Castle, aka The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963), plays like one of those movies that’s supposed to unfold in real time. Counterintuitively, when you think that should make a film more suspenseful, it really just drags it out. If not for its…

The second film Christopher Lee made during his three months in Italy beginning In May of 1963 was originally titled, Faust ’63. Written and directed by Giuseppe Veggezzi, it was unfortunately completed just as its production company, I Filmes della Mangusta, faced financial ruin. It supposedly had only one public showing under the title Katarsis.…

In an instance of the age-old style vs substance argument, I find myself struggling with my thoughts about The Whip & the Body (1963.) Please be patient with me as I work through it. Let’s start by saying that I unwrapped my never-seen VCI DVD copy of the film and popped it in my player…

One thing I am not is a Sherlock Holmes aficionado. A couple friends who are, and who have read the books and seen the movies, tell me that Sherlock Holmes & the Deadly Necklace (1962) is an “OK” film. Please consider my opinions in this context because… I absolutely loved it and it’s easily the…

In the winter of 1967, during the making of the thriller Agonizando en el crimen, Jacinto Molina had the idea of writing a horror film in the style of the Universal monster movies he loved so much. Despite the opinion of the movie’s director, Enrique Lopez Eguiluz, that the Spanish film industry would never support…