To me, Horror Express is an excellent example of a perfect “B” movie. Not FLAWLESS, mind you, but perfect in the solid manner it locks you into your seat right from the beginning and takes you on a nearly non-stop roller coaster ride that’s terrifying, amusing and very, very satisfying by the time the credits roll.
Granted, the version I first saw on New York City’s WOR-TV (Channel 9, to those in the know) had no end credits at all and subsequent countless viewings on that channel (where the film seemed to be in heavy horror rotation every few months) led me to believe this was the way the film was in its initial theatrical release. However, when checking this horror classic out recently on a borrowed Blu-Ray, I discovered the film did indeed have credits, but they were in Spanish, meaning whomever prepared the US version or television edit saved some money (and about a minute or so of time) by merely chopping off those end titles and that was that…
I think I like MARTIN the best out of all George Romero’s films because despite its age it still holds up one of the best modern takes on the vampire genre (even though the titular character only thinks he’s one) and is about as uncompromising as it gets from beginning to end.
It’s also an extremely hard to watch film if you’re squeamish about a few things like needles, fresh razor blades and blood, but everything clicks on multiple levels and there’s a powerful payoff at the end that offers up a bit of slyly amusing social commentary common to Romero’s work. If all you know about vampires is that tween sparkly Twilight crap or even the used to be interesting before it went into fairy fantasy crazyland True Blood, this one will stake a claim in your brain as soon as you meet the titular character doing his version of the bloodsucking thing he needs to slake his thirst… Continue reading →
Someone hipped me to this upcoming Shout Factory box set of six classic horror flicks featuring the late, great Vincent Price (who’s also Star of the Month on TCM all October) and I had to give it a thumb and a three-quarters up just for that lovely cover art alone. Oh, alright, the six sick flicks here are all top picks (and on Blu-Ray for the first time, I believe). But I’d still have to gripe out a grape sized whine about the total lack of love for Doctor Phibes Rises Again, which SHOULD have been grafted into this sextet just because it’s the darn sequel to The Abominable Doctor Phibes and yes, I’m STILL waiting my ass off for Tim Burton to announce he’s remaking both Phibes philms at the same time like Peter Jackson did with his epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Granted, Phibes’ offbeat mix of camp and 70’s era gore “lite” isn’t anywhere on the same level as Tolkein’s works, folks. But hey, I grew up glued to the tube with many of Price’s films and those two hold a very special place in my still beating heart. Hey, it’s not as if I’m asking for Scream and Scream Again, right? RIGHT? If you ever see that one, you’ll understand, kids…
Anyway, if you’re too lazy to click links, that collection costs $55, features tons of special features and the six films are as follows:
THE PIT & THE PENDULUM
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
THE HAUNTED PALACE
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES
WITCHFINDER GENERAL (aka THE CONQUEROR WORM)
Who needs to go out on Halloween and get a tummy ache from some lousy cheap candy bought at the dollar store? Get this Blu-Ray set, pop up that dried out corn display you’ve had on the table for years and sprinkle some chili powder on it, slap a few razor blades into a pomegranate (apples are SO last century!) pull up a chair and veg out! Friends optional, but go “borrow” some (have some rope and gags handy) so you can show them a good time before you kick them out in a more bewildered but appreciative state (like Maine or maybe California, ha ha)…
Yeesh, how OLD is this story? Let’s see now, W.W. Jacobs wrote it in 1902, according to Wikipedia (and they’re NEVER wrong, right? Heh.) and it’s been mangled into other stories, films, TV shows and comics ever since. Warner Bros. and Chiller Films are bringing it back in this new flick that doesn’t look all that “scary” to me, but hey – you may be shaking in your shoes right about now. Not sure if this is in theaters in October or straight to video, as I’ve only found one poster link and it doesn’t have any rating info on it at all. Well, it’s not as if I’ll go see this… but YOU might want to. More details to follow at some point. I love a good mystery… but only to a point.
One of those crazy 50’s “B” sci-fi/horror flicks that sticks in the mind thanks to the performance of its lead, The Indestructible Man is also one of those forgotten gems that modern audiences would most likely laugh out of a theater or change the channel after a few minutes of dialog during a slower moment. Of course, I grew up seeing this flick countless times on TV, so it was a formative part of my misspent youth. Combining sci-fi, horror and film noir elements and featuring a creepy performance from Lon Chaney Jr., this is one of those short, snappy little movies that makes for a nice jolt as well as few unintentional laughs.
Chaney plays Charles “Butcher” Benton, a convicted killer and thief who’s been given the gas chamber treatment, but has his dead body illegally sold to a scientist for research purposes. Of course, it being the 1950’s and a “B” movie and all, that scientist happens to be studying the effects of electricity and his own chemical concoctions on dead subjects and ends up quite thrilled when Benton is brought back to the land of the living. Naturally, when you beef up a dead man with voltage and vitamins, his first response will be to kill you and your assistant then take off with intent of wiping out just about anyone who sent him behind bars. Maybe that stupid scientist should have invented a time machine so he could pop up today and read this post, then zap back and get better prepared…
Since it’s hot as HELL outside, I figured I may as well throw you readers a bone in the form of a film with a lot of heat under its hood that won’t burn you (unless you’re expecting it to blow you away with stellar acting and a memorable plot.) If you take it at all seriously (and it’s VERY hard to do so, mind you), 1977’s THE CAR isn’t a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure as hell is a really and unintentionally hilarious one.
It’s more or less a nasty-tasting cake made up of equal parts of single-word title films (JAWS, DUEL), a dash of devil possession from some other popular 70’s flicks, a custom George Barris ride that looks like a tricked out rolling bathtub and some (as in too many) scenery chewing lead and character actors having at the jumbled script and its crazy plot diversions.
This is a “Yours is not to question why…” flick, plain and simple. Small run down desert town gets visited and its citizenry terrified (and run down) by a mysterious driver-less evil car from hell (more or less). Sheriff and crew take on car with mixed and amusing results until they realize that good old fashioned explosives and a few tons of boulders solve many problems. Crash, Bang, Boom… The End? Yeah, it’s that simple enough to be a thirty minute episode of some sort of horror anthology on TV (or as part of a much better film anthology), but THE CAR is padded with a number of dopey subplots that don’t really go anywhere because after too many minutes of greasy buildup someone usually gets killed (and taken out of the picture as a result), leaving that screen door swinging in the breeze until the next victim shows up…
Whee. I’ve actually only seen the US edit of Dawn of the Dead, so when I was offered a copy of this Ultimate edition by a friend who had an extra copy, I jumped on it. OK, short post here because I’m now off to see what I missed in those other two versions and of course, watch the hell out of those special features so I can geek out on the stuff I didn’t already know. Yeah, my Saturday nights are less (or more) exciting than yours depending on what you consider “exciting”… Off to watch the Dead now… back in a bit.
Every once in a while, I get to thinking that parts of my boring life would make an interesting book, but thankfully, I haven’t done a damn thing about that. Sure, I’ve had adventures in babysitting, silenced a few lambs (hey, they were bugging me!) and maybe even raided a lost ark here and there, but in general, I really have no shocking stories of drug-fueled hotel trashing (well, there’s ONE story, but it wasn’t drugs, wasn’t in a hotel room and guess who had to clean up afterwards AND go to work the next day?), scandalous encounters with ladies of the opposite sex or anything like that. However, I have had some really bizarre jobs that kind of fit what I’m doing here on this blog-o, so hell, I may as well tell this long, dull story before I go and decide to forget the damn thing happened…
That clip above is from a 1968 Spanish horror film called La Marca del Hombre Lobo (Mark of the Wolfman)*, known outside of Spain as Hell’s Creatures: Dracula and the Werewolf, The Nights of Satan and Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror. I believe the latter title was exclusive to the US version of the film and note if you please that it’s the only title that mentions Frankenstein. Unfortunately, there’s not a Frankenstein to be found in the film… at least not in the original version. Apparently, the US producer had some legal issues with a different Frankenstein film he was trying to distribute, but snapped up this import and had an oddball animated sequence added in that combined the Frankenstein and Wolfman myths and brought the world… WOLFSTEIN!
Yeah, it’s about as silly as it sounds (and once again, I’ll need to do a Random Film of the Week on this one, as it’s got some interesting stuff going for it), but that’s not what were here to talk about. Anyway, back in 1981, 3D films were making a comeback and in addition to new movies coming from assorted major and independent studios, plenty of older 3D films were pegged for a second shot at potential box office success. If you’re read that link above, you’ve most likely guessed that a certain monster flick just so happened to have a 3D print floating around that, while not in the best quality, would probably be good enough to cash in on the revived craze for the gimmick before its shelf life expired. Don’t worry – we’re getting to the good stuff, folks. Keep reading… Continue reading →
Expectant mother Liz wakes to find her nearly-to-term pregnancy has disappeared overnight. When doctors can find no medical explanation for the loss, police treat Liz and her husband Rick as prime suspects in what has now become a missing child case. Only Liz’s husband and brother trust her version of events.
Well, that’s an eyeball-opening teaser and plot synopsis for the indie horror flick ABSENCE, that’s for sure. I don’t think the movie has any visible fetus removal scenes, but your attention is grabbed right away and kind of held for that fifteen seconds above. Below, may I suggest not clicking on that clip at all if you easily get carsick? I’m don’t at all but the handheld camerawork did give me a headache just watching it the first time. These found footage flicks are take it or leave it for me, but I guess this will do well enough with the horror fans who love this “reality” genre stuff. I’ll most likely catch this at 3am on cable at some point in the future when I should be sleeping or am otherwise up way too late working…
So, are you frightened yet, or did you need to down a Dramamine?
One problem some of us cranky genre fans have with most of today’s Hollywood horror movies is too many of them end up with ridiculous plots, under-written, one dimensional (as in terminally dumb), sometimes nude characters going through the same ridiculous motions that get them bumped off in even more ridiculous and bloody ways at intervals you can set your watch to most of the time. Not to mention stuff like some inane product placement that makes those parts of the film seem like ads dropped in between kills for stuff that would kill you if you consume too much of it.
Oddly enough, all this and more makes Mario Bava’s seminal gore classic Twitch of the Death Nerve (or (A) Bay of Blood, Carnage, or Blood Bath or one of many other titles it’s been released as) one of my favorite “B” horror films. Maybe it’s the blinders-on Bava fan in me that makes me like this one so much (some awesome shots aside, it’s far from his best work), or maybe it’s because the movie is actually kind of (alright, REALLY) funny in a very twisted way. The story is nuts with most of its assorted beautiful, handsome or unattractive characters motivated by their greed and/or assorted desires becoming random targets (and I mean random in some cases) of a killer (or killers) with their own agendas. By the end when the bodies are laid out all over the island, none of it makes any sense because the ending literally and figuratively blows away the remaining bits of the paper-thin plot. Continue reading →
To me, Horror Express is an excellent example of a perfect “B” movie. Not FLAWLESS, mind you, but perfect in the solid manner it locks you into your seat right from the beginning and takes you on a nearly non-stop roller coaster ride that’s terrifying, amusing and very, very satisfying by the time the credits roll.
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