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I remember seeing this back in 1970 (it was made in 1968) on a double bill with HORROR HOUSE (THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR) which featured Frankie Avalon. Both were released by American International in America but were made by Tony Tenser’s Tigon Films, the company responsible for WITCHFINDER GENERAL. The movie was billed asContinue reading “CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR: Dated But Still Entertaining Old School Horror Film”

…that this well produced rubbish from the director of the notorious MARK OF THE DEVIL would still be entertaining 40 years after the fact? In fact HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR (U.S. title: HORROR HOUSE) is more enjoyable now than when I saw it back in 1970 on a double bill with THE CURSE OF THEContinue reading “HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR (1969): Who would have guessed…”

CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD was the first of Christopher Lee’s “European vacation” movies that I had ever come across. I saw it in a drive-in back in the late 1960s along with several other “dubbed horrors” as we called them. I remembered it because unlike most of the other movies that were featured, thisContinue reading “CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD Is Genuinely Odd & Grotesque”

. As someone who teaches courses on silent films at the local university and someone who has been interested in silent films for half a century now, I have seen quite a few silent movies over the years including several of this vintage but I have never seen one this old that is as accomplishedContinue reading “ATLANTIS: TITANIC Like Storyline Is A Remarkable Film From 1913”

DEATH LINE is a first class low budget British horror opus. The director, Gary Sherman, is an American and surprisingly this was his first film (he would later do the cult films DEAD & BURIED and LISA as well as helm POLTERGEIST 3). I first saw it as part of a double or triple featureContinue reading “DEATH LINE / RAW MEAT: Original & Influential”

Whenever you remake a classic film especially one with the Hitchcock name attached to it, there are bound to be a number of unfair comparisons which is what happened when this film was originally released in 1980 (the same fate befell Don Sharp’s 1978 remake of another Hitchcock film, THE 39 STEPS). Cybill Shepherd hadContinue reading “THE LADY VANISHES (1979): Ill-Fated Remake Is Better Than Its Reputation”

I remember seeing this movie when I was in college and being totally captivated by it. I had already seen the Olivier version as well as a modernist version with Maximilian Schell so I was familiar with HAMLET on the big screen (I had also just seen Dame Judith Anderson’s take on HAMLET live onContinue reading “HAMLET (1969): Nicol Williamson & Tony Richardson’s Minimalist Interpretation”

The great Ingmar Bergman never got around to directing KING LEAR, but if he had the results might have looked something like this. Peter Brook, whose original stage production was influenced by the “theatre of cruelty” theories of Antonin Artaud, transferred that bleak outlook boldly unto film in this stark black and white version whichContinue reading “KING LEAR (1970): Peter Brook’s Bergmanesque Vision”

I first saw this movie at a drive-in back in 1971 along with several other features which I don’t recall. Having been a Boris Karloff fan since the age of 8, I had to see it and I remember being struck at the time by how old he looked (he was 79 then and hadContinue reading “THE SORCERERS (1967): Boris Karloff’s Last Mad Doctor Role”

Joe May’s ASPHALT has been impossible to see in America until Kino released it as part of their ongoing series of German silent cinema. Their edition is a Region 1 copy of this Eureka release which came out in 2005. Joe May (pronounced MY) was once a very important man in the German cinema ofContinue reading “ASPHALT: Good But Not Great Example Of German Silent Cinema”