I have to confess that the icky ecclesiastic epic The Other Hell surprised me. Not because it was well made. Because it wasn’t. Not because it featured an original story. Just your standard possessed by the Dark Lord tale here. And certainly not for its acting. Franca Stoppi from Beyond The Darkness and Carlo De Mejo from City Of The Living Dead? Wasn’t George Eastman or at least Bret Halsey available? No, what thoroughly caught me off guard was that in this entire convent of nuns there wasn’t a single lesbian! Continue reading “The Other Hell (1981)”
Category: Horror
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Among the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s various works, The Masque Of The Red Death stands out as one of the best, featuring superior production values (they flew over to England for a tax break and apparently ended up re-using the sets from Beckett), an appropriately vile performance by Vincent Price as Prince Prospero, and a story that was more than the standard old dark house with degenerate families story that seemed to permeate these productions like the stench of a corpse moldering in a secret chamber somewhere in the living room walls. It didn’t hurt this movie any either when this midget burned alive a guy in a gorilla suit. Continue reading “The Masque of the Red Death (1964)”
The Premature Burial (1962)
Way back in the 1800s, man’s greatest fear was being buried alive. Medical science wasn’t as evolved as it is today, so the ignorant masses were afraid that when they took an afternoon siesta after a particularly large tankard of ale and gruel, their overeager relatives would see this as a chance to get their mitts on all their worldly possessions (lice-infested cloak, rusty shovel, and empty tankard – stuff like that no doubt), proclaim the unfortunate chap dead and have the little bugger all buried just before he wakes up wondering why the devil his mouth is full of dirt and maggots are trying to move in on his soft parts. Continue reading “The Premature Burial (1962)”
Blood Suckers (1970)
Instantly boring, this British production (originally titled Incense for the Damned) about a guy who goes to Greece because he’s impotent and ends up getting turned into a vampire by a sexy woman also manages to be insanely stupid. While I’m sure this movie had great appeal for all those British dudes without any motion in their ocean, for us American guys with plenty of rise in our Levis, the whole thing seemed a bit silly! Continue reading “Blood Suckers (1970)”
Contamination (1980)
In true Italian movie fashion, Director Luigi Cozzi (Demons 6, Hercules, Sinbad of the Seven Seas) gets an Italian, Canadian, and a Scotsman to play a trio of Americans taking on an alien invasion housed in a Colombian coffee plant.
Though a bit of a let down due to the lack of snappy coffee oriented one liners whenever an alien was wiped out (You should’ve ordered decaf!) the loving attention paid to slow motion chest explosions, an exploding rat, and the description of one character as “whiskey-soaked” easily overcomes that disappointment. Continue reading “Contamination (1980)”
Forbidden World (1982)
Cancer gets a pretty bad rap what with it killing millions of people yearly and not having any cure for it and all. It even gets blamed for making something cool like smoking really, really uncool.
It’s nice then to see in that in far flung future of Forbidden World, cancer is on the side of the angels, aiding haggard-looking space hero Mike Colby in defeating an apparently rampaging (you don’t really see it move much – it just sort of shows up in places opening and closing its toothy mouth) alien eating the dullards inhabiting a research lab on the planet Xarbia. Continue reading “Forbidden World (1982)”
Galaxy of Terror (1981)
Were you put off by all the high-brow stuff Alien forced you to endure such as deliberating building up suspense and rationing out the monster attacks? Did it annoy you that the story was pretty simple to follow? And were you disgusted by how a strong woman was featured when all you were wanting was to see women killed and violated in a parade of sleazy misogynistic scenes? Don’t sweat it, dude, because producer Roger Corman has got you covered with a Man’s edition of Alien, the superbly scummy and undeservedly entertaining Galaxy of Terror! Continue reading “Galaxy of Terror (1981)”