Here’s one for zombie completists – Jean Rollin’s The Grapes of Death aka Les Raisins de la Mort, so much better at being a zombie movie than his actual zombie movie Zombie Lake (reviewed here). Some bad, bad grapes are producing some bad, bad wine, making anyone who drinks it into a rapidly-decaying murderous psychopath. [...]
I can imagine in the context of the time, with Hammer Films entering its final creaky decade and with the stunt casting of twin Playboy Playmates, that Twins of Evil would’ve been received as one of Hammer’s lesser efforts. No matter; time and distance have been kind to Twins of Evil. The Collinson Twins carry [...]
It’s a good time to be a Blu-ray collectin’ horror fan. Almost all of the classics of modern horror have gotten solid high-def releases, while classics and curiosities continue to get released in a steady stream that reminds me of the heyday of DVD and companies like Anchor Bay. Kino-Lorber has really stepped up their [...]
I can’t speak for how faithful this adaptation of Marquis De Sade’s Justine (aka Cruel Passion) is, but if it doesn’t stick directly to the text, I have to imagine it sticks to the author’s intent (the best it can, that is, without being pornographic). Under the direction of Chris Boger, and the lens of [...]
First things first, I can almost guarantee you’ve never seen a film like Bill Gunn’s 1973 effort Ganja & Hess. Perhaps incorrectly labeled as “blaxploitation” because of the time period in which it was released, this vampire movie is about as far from something like Blacula as you can possibly get. Kino Lorber, along with [...]
What the hell is The Roving Eye, and what is it doing here? A fair question, if rudely phrased. Here at HND our passion for the genre tends to restrict us, often under penalty of death from The Old One, to only writing about horror. While this is an acceptable edict for any website model [...]
For a little while, I was fascinated by Mill Creek Entertainment’s 12-in-1 DVD horror sets. The movies were, by and large, pretty terrible, but every now and then, you’d come across one that had just enough production value and narrative interest to compel you to actually finish it. Those watchable films were rare. If you [...]
After starting in Washington D.C. nine years ago Horror Movie Night has expanded to include chapters in Austin, Dallas and Chicago. Horror’s Not Dead’s own Brian Kelley is the originator and programmer of this illustrious weekly Wednesday night tradition which features a “classic” horror film. Each week I will be reviewing/commenting on the past week’s selection so [...]
After starting in Washington D.C. nine years ago Horror Movie Night has expanded to include chapters in Austin, Dallas and Chicago. Horror’s Not Dead’s own Brian Kelley is the originator and programmer of this illustrious weekly Wednesday night tradition which features a “classic” horror film. Each week I will be reviewing/commenting on the past week’s [...]
From Brian Salisbury–“Knowing Noah’s proclivities as well as his blind spots, I continued with the theme of Italian horror. Noah seems to know Fulci pretty well, but that’s about it. I don’t blame him, Fulci is my favorite as well and Argento can get a little flowery with his more supernatural stuff. But his giallo [...]
In our last installment of the Blu Review we covered a film directed by the great William Lustig: Maniac Cop. This time around we are delighted to tear into one of our all time favorite horror films released on Blu-ray by the company William Lustig founded to give horrorphiles like us the precise degree of [...]
The Film Edward Theodore Gein is one of the United States most notorious killers and disturbed human beings. With an actual body count of only 2 people, Gein was known for digging up graves of recently deceased women to fashion keepsakes from their skin and bones. And it’s this level of depravity that has given [...]
Here at HND, we are die-hard advocates of VHS. Many of us are collectors of these ancient relics of a better, purer, more exciting time in horror history while the rest of us just marvel at the artistry of the VHS cover art. With that in mind, we started this daily feature to celebrate all [...]
The Film Terror Tuesday host Zack Carlson has a brilliant way of building up the anticipation for the films we’re about to see. In this week’s Terror Tuesday, he told us a story of a director named Giulio Paradisi, a man who felt he had a unique film and didn’t want to be saddled with [...]
I, like many of the HND writers, am an avid collector of VHS tapes. To some, collecting out dated technology is less a hobby and more the early warning sign of a serious psychological disorder. But there was a certain magic to VHS tapes that never made the transition over to DVD or, subsequently, Blu-ray. [...]
I, like many of the HND writers, am an avid collector of VHS tapes. To some, collecting out dated technology is less a hobby and more the early warning sign of a serious psychological disorder. But there was a certain magic to VHS tapes that never made the transition over to DVD or, subsequently, Blu-ray. [...]
The Film Revenge From Planet Ape isn’t very good, but not for the reasons you’re probably expecting. The title suggests that this 1971 Spanish film was made to capitalize on the gargantuan success of the Planet of the Apes series and that it’s just a lame rip-off cash-in good-for-nothin’ imitation of an American success. Nah, [...]
The Film Do you know what It’s Alive has in spades? Pathos. Humanity, man. Tons of it. This movie contains some of the most heart-breakingly realistic depictions of grief I’ve ever seen, honest, understated work from a cast of terrific character actors. Who cares if this is movie about a mutant baby running amuck and [...]
The Film Everyone has their personal creep-out zone. For many, the mere sight of a friendly clown sends a cold shock straight down the spine. For others, lifelike porcelain dolls might be just the trigger they need to draw their heart up firmly into their throat. For me, there’s nothing more demonic, nothing more unspeakably [...]
The Film There aren’t a lot of Terror Tuesday shows that will make me want to take to the Internet to look up more about a particular subject. It was a pleasant surprise this week to have my interest piqued in a subject that I ultimately learned was called pediophobia. Pediophobia is defined as a [...]
One of my favorite horror films of the 1970s finds 35mm glory and official immortalization thanks to Terror Tuesday. Tourist Trap is an immensely creepy film despite operating under a number of familiar horror movie cliches. The thing that struck me most about Tourist Trap when it was first recommended to me by a clerk [...]
The Film On a remote stretch of Canadian road, Rose (porn megastar Marilyn Chambers) and her boyfriend are involved in a terrible motorcycle accident that leaves her pinned under the vehicle when it explodes. Fortunately, the incident occurs very close to a boutique hospital specializing in plastic surgery. The head of the facility, Dr. Keloid, determines that only [...]
The Film So you’re a piss-poor psychic operating out of your bachelor pad, conning old women out of their fixed incomes, when you learn that your old flame has an immortal Native American medicine man reincarnating himself in her neck and that this ancient being reborn has the power to bring about the end of [...]
The roots of my excitement for this week’s film are threefold. First, it was directed by William Girdler who also directed Terror Tuesday alums Day of the Animals and Grizzly. I love both of these films wholeheartedly and the chance to see another entry from his canon is one I wouldn’t dare miss. Also, if [...]
The Film Notorious biker badass William “Big Bill” Smith plays Neil Agar, a security agent working for the State Department sent to investigate the death of a scientist who was working at the Brandt Research facility. While Agar is busy flirting with laboratory librarian, Julie Zorn (1968 Playboy Playmate of the Year, Victoria Vetri), and [...]
Directed by Roy Ward Baker, 1972 Written by Robert Bloch A young psychiatrist, Dr. Martin, is looking to fulfill an empty job position in an insane asylum. He arrives at the asylum, and upon meeting with the head physician he’s told the reason why a job opening exists. One of the former doctors has him/herself [...]
Written and Directed by Dario Argento, 1971 Welcome back to AYIF. I have often lauded the questionable merits of Italian cinema as it pertains to my penchant for shitty post-apocalyptic knock-off films, but the truth is that there are some really fantastic Italian films. Sure, for the film snobbish among us, we could quickly cite the [...]
Directed by Bob Clark, 1979 Written by Roy Moore Welcome back to AYIF. Today’s film epitomizes why I started this project in the first place: to mine obscurity and strike paydirt! I love horror films and have since I was a kid. While I have grown to be picky, even a bit snobby, on the [...]
Directed by Glen Morgan, 2006 Written by Glen Morgan, Roy Moore (1974 Screen Play) I’m really curious how this current generation of minors turns out, assuming that they also stay up late to watch R-Rated films past their bedtime. I was one of those kids roughly fifteen years ago and I stayed up into the [...]
Written by Stephen King as Richard Bachman, 1979 Stephen King’s publishing pseudonym was created because, presumably, the public would not accept an author who published more than one novel per year. Thus Richard Bachman was created, an alter-ego that allowed King’s market output to keep pace with the author’s throughput. Bachman was also the mouthpiece [...]
Written and Directed by George Barry, 1977 On his new CD Werewolves and Lollipops Patton Oswalt confesses the pain Death Bed: The Bed That Eats causes him. Not pain from watching it, but from knowing it exists. Knowing someone not only finished a script about a bed that eats people, but that other people thought [...]
Directed by John D. Hancock, 1971Written by John D. Hancock, Lee Kalcheim It is hardly a forgotten classic, thanks to its cult following, but Let’s Scare Jessica to Death never fully made its way into the popular vocabulary. Not in the same way as some of its cohorts; Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Last House on [...]
Directed by Dario Argento, 1977 Dario Argento is a mad man with a camera. I’m no psychologist, or psychiatrist, or scientist, or any kind of -ist for that matter, but I’m pretty sure that if you could record the world through the eyes of a crazy person it would look exactly like Suspiria. If you [...]
Directed by Wes Craven, 1977 I’ll admit that I hadn’t seen the original before seeing the remake. You’d expect someone who has a horror site to have all the cult classics crossed off their list, but I guess I’m just a failure. Having seen the remake it is a little redundant for me to praise [...]
Directed by David Cronenberg, 1977 I’ll tell you right off the bat, if the name David Cronenberg is meaningless to you, this movie will be as well. Cronenberg’s earliest entries to the genre have strange qualities to them that I really dig. He has a way of creating scenarios that are obscurely atypical, but never [...]
