A fun and colorful film, Hercules in the Haunted World gloriously features Reg Park, one of our beefiest Hercules (his pecs are the size of a mere mortal’s head) and whose acting consists of standing around talking in a dubbed monotone, while periodically swinging giant papier-mâché stones over his head. British horror legend Christopher Lee also shows up as the evil King Lico. Obviously he lost some kind of bet. Continue reading “Hercules in the Haunted World (1961)”
Category: Mario Bava
Shock (1977)
Dora, her son Marco, and her new husband Bruno (is this a mob family or something?) are moving into a new house. Except that it isn’t a new house at all. It’s the same house that Dora used to live in when she was married to her first husband. But he committed suicide. And she ended up in the insane asylum. Other than that though, I’m sure it has a lot of great memories for her. Continue reading “Shock (1977)”
I Vampiri (1957)
Riccardo Freda was the director who started I vampiri, but it was cameraman and future legendary director Mario Bava who finished it after Freda got huffy and quit the movie after filming for ten days.
That might not seem like such a big deal, but Freda had made a bet with the money men behind the movie that he could shoot it in ten days! Mario swooped in and finished everything up in 48 hours, apparently “padding” the film to its anemic 78 minute running time by using stock footage and those swirling newspaper headline scenes that are mandatory in movies about a crazed killer stalking a city. Continue reading “I Vampiri (1957)”
Planet of the Vampires (1965)
This is a well aged slice of 1960s Italian sci-fi cheese from Mario Bava (Hercules In The Haunted World, Baron Blood) that tells the horrifying tale of some astronauts who get in a whole heap of trouble on the mysterious planet of Aura.
Two spaceships, the Galliot and the Argus use their space TVs to contact one another regarding their mission. There has been a radio signal emanating from Aura. This means either one of two things – that there is intelligent life there or more probably, that there is intelligent life there that is laying a dastardly and nefarious trap to enslave the human race! Continue reading “Planet of the Vampires (1965)”