Richard Emerson “Dick” Smith (born June 26, 1922) is an American special effects make-up artist (nicknamed “The Godfather of Make-Up”) known for his pioneering work on such films as Little Big Man, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Ghost Story (1981) and Scanners.

Smith pioneered the method of applying prosthetics made from foam latex in small pieces as opposed to the standard of applying a latex mask as one solid piece. Smith’s technique allowed the actor to have a wide range of facial expressions, making the makeup appear more natural. Despite initial criticism from many professional makeup artists at the time, Smith’s makeup techniques proved to be superior. Today, the standard methods of applying prosthetics are those that he invented.

Early work by Smith was seen on a short-lived syndicated supernatural Twilight Zone clone TV show produced by David Susskind out of New York in 1961 called Way Out, hosted by Roald Dahl. Most memorable was a make-up of a man who had half of his face suddenly erased by a spilled vial of photo retouching fluid that affected real people when merely applied to their photos. In another Way Out episode, a Hunchback of Notre Dame make-up created by Smith becomes permanently affixed to an evil actor who then became his character and could never remove his make-up. Smith contributed to fourteen other memorable Way Out episodes, and other 60′s television shows as well, such as several episodes of Dark Shadows, when he aged actor Jonathan Frid‘s character to appear over 175 years old for one storyline.

In the early-mid 60s, Smith published an instructional book, entitled Dick Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-up Handbook, a special edition of Forrest J. Ackerman‘s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine series.

Smith was also one of the early pioneers of combining make-up with on-set ‘practical’ special effects, starting with The Exorcist in 1973. Though many of Smith’s make-up effects were so well conceived as to go undetected, his expertise gained prominence and acclaim through the variety and ingenuity of his many effect. He created the makeup for Robert De Niro‘s Travis Bickle character in Taxi Driver as well as created the effects for the bloodbath at the film’s climax.

Director Mike Nichols originally hired actress Karen Black to play the role of the sexpot Bobbie in Carnal Knowledge. When Nichols decided on a nude scene, he had Smith, who had been hired to create aging effects for the male characters that were never used, to fashion artificial breasts for Black. Disappointed by the way the artificial breasts moved, Nichols replaced Black with Ann Margret, who had large, natural breasts. Smith later recycled the foam rubber breasts in The Stepford Wives for the scene in which Katharine Ross played her robotic replacement in a sheer nightie.

Dick Smith’s has also worked on: The Fan, Scanners, Spasms, The Hunger and Poltergeist III: The Other Side.

Wikipedia

From the second half of the 1950s to the mid 1970s, Hammer Films ruled supreme as Britain’s masters of horror. But the company was not unrivalled, as several other producers sought to cash in on the horror boom. Some, like Planet Productions, came and went quickly; others, like Tigon, dabbled with horror as a part of their wider production slate. But one company stayed the course, building a reputation that might not have rivalled Hammer’s, but which ensured them a cult following that survives to this day. That company was Amicus.

Amicus was formed by American producer Milton Subotsky, who moved to the UK in 1959 after distributing films to US television for ten years. His US based partner, Max J. Rosenberg, was the man who would find the money, while Subotsky was in charge of the ‘artistic’ side – getting the films made.

The pair first dabbled in horror in the mid-Fifties, and could claim to have kick-started the Hammer cycle, as they submitted an idea for a new Frankenstein film to Associated Artists Productions, who in turn passed it on to Hammer. While the Subotsky/Rosenberg screenplay, entitled Frankenstein and the Monster, was considered too short and too derivative to be filmed, the pair were paid off and the experience – not to mention the huge success that Hammer subsequently had with The Curse of Frankenstein – set them on the road to fifteen years of horror and fantasy production.

The first Amicus film actually predates the company. The City of the Dead, better known as Horror Hotel, was made before Subotsky settled on the Amicus (meaning “friendly”) name and the film is credited to Vulcan Films. Made just prior to Psycho, this occult thriller is notable for killing off the heroine midway through the story – much as Hitchcock would do later the same year with Janet Leigh.

An effective shocker, City of the Dead holds up surprisingly well today (and thanks to its public domain status, is pretty easy to see). The crisp black and white photography and the almost Wicker Man approach to the subject matter make it stand out as a quality film. It also sees a early non-Hammer British horror appearance from Christopher Lee. Lee, along with Peter Cushing, would become as much regulars for Amicus as they were for Hammer during the 1960s and early 70s.

The next four Amicus films were of a very different strain – It’s Trad, Dad (aka Ring-A-Ding Rhythm – Subotsky’s favourite of his films!), Just for Fun, Girl of the Night and Lad: A Dog (a ‘touching’ tale of a disabled boy and his pet) were mostly forgettable youth and family films. There was little to suggest that City of the Dead had been anything more than a one-off.

Subotsky was a vocal advocate of ‘family entertainment’ throughout his career – something that would have an increasing effect on his approach to horror and fantasy as time went on – and he seemed an unlikely person to create a studio that would rival Hammer, who had eagerly embraced the ‘X’ certificate and were willing to push it as far as they could. But Subotsky was first and foremost a businessman, and he knew that horror would sell.

In 1964, Amicus returned to the genre with a film that set the scene for a decade of horror. Dr Terror’s House of Horrors took its title from an obscure 1940s film and its format from the classic Dead of Night (1945). Consisting of a series of short stories, linked together by Peter Cushing as a sinister tarot card reading doctor who predicts death for all his travelling companions during a train journey. The film set the tone for much of the subsequent Amicus output – over the ensuing years, Subotsky made the portmanteau film his trademark. While Hammer concentrated on the gothic, Subotsky mostly kept his films firmly set in the modern day, and had a particular affinity for the anthology (he was once quoted as saying he liked the format because it didn’t give the audience time to get bored!). It also allowed him to boast surprisingly starry casts, as it was cheap and easy to hire big name actors for a few days work on a short story.

Dr Terror is, in fact, a rather mixed bag – some stories (such as the vampire tale with Donald Sutherland) work well; others just drag or seem silly. But the film was a box office success and set Amicus on the fantastique road. In fact, they rarely made anything outside the genre from that point on. The company never reached the production levels of Hammer (who were making several films a year, across a variety of genres, at their peak) and for the most part stuck with what they knew would sell.

In 1965, for instance, apart from the compilation film The World of Abbott and Costello, all four Amicus productions were horror or science fiction. Best remembered of the films is Dr Who and the Daleks, a popular reinterpretation of the BBC series with Peter Cushing in the title role. The film deviated considerably from the TV series format, but was successful enough to spawn a sequel the next year, Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD. This film was less successful (possibly because the audiences flocking to the first film were rather disappointed with the changes made) and plans for a third film were shelved. Interestingly, for contractual reasons, both films were credited to ‘Aaru Films’.

The other 1965 films were the obscure thriller The Psychopath, The Deadly Bees (which is as dull as every other bee film) and The Skull, an ambitious but plodding adaptation of Robert Bloch’s short story The Skull of the Marquis de Sade. Poor as the film was, it did mark the beginning of a long relationship between Bloch and Amicus. This was consolidated in 1966 when he supplied the source material for the second Amicus anthology, Torture Garden.

Torture Garden

Not to be confused with Octave Mirbeau’s erotic classic of the same name (the title is, in fact, nonsensical and has nothing to do with the film), this turned out to be another uneven collection, despite having some excellent short stories as inspiration. Directed by Freddie Francis (who would become a regular for Amicus), only the story The Man Who Collected Poe, with a twitchy Jack Palance, came close to matching the original Bloch story.

Also in 1966 came two science fiction films. The Terrornauts, directed by Montgomery Tully, was a pretty awful children’s film, while Freddie Francis made the slightly better They Came from Beyond Space, a paranoid tale of invading aliens and mind control. Science fiction, it seemed, was not something Amicus excelled at, lacking the budget and the ideas to make it work. However, it did fit with Subotsky’s wish to make family films.

A couple of lean years followed. 1967′s sole Amicus film was forgotten thriller Danger Route while 1968 saw Thank You Very Much, a kitchen sink drama, and an attempt to move upmarket with an adaptation of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. None of these films made much impact. 1969 saw the intellectual science fiction drama The Mind of Mr Soames and, more significantly, Scream and Scream Again.

It perhaps shows how out of touch Subotsky had become by this time with audience – and genre fan – tastes that he had a dislike of the film. Interviewed by Cinefantastique in 1973, he commented “strangely enough, Scream and Scream Again made a lot of money and that was different from any film we’ve ever done. I don’t know why, it wasn’t all that good. It might have been because we used three top horror stars and it had a very good title.”

Or perhaps it’s because it spoke to modern audiences in a way that the increasingly old-fashioned Amicus horror films that followed didn’t. One imagines a company like AIP would have noted the success of the film and reacted accordingly. Amicus, unfortunately, blithely ignored it and went back to their safe formula.

The House That Dripped Blood

1970 saw The House That Dripped Blood, a decent anthology film again based on Bloch stories. It was more successful than Torture Garden, and even the token comedy story (The Cloak, starring Jon Pertwee and Ingrid Pitt) worked. Less successful was I, Monster, directed by Stephen Weeks – a young filmmaker with a unique vision that often made his films hard work. Putting an pseudo-arthouse director in charge of an adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for a commercial filmmaker like Subotsky was always going to be problematic. Shooting it in a new, experimental form of 3D was utter madness.

I, Monster

Opinions differ on what exactly went wrong. Subotsky cheerfully blamed it on Weeks’ ‘inexperience’; Weeks says it was non-starter from day one. It was certainly Subotsky who insisted on the 3D format (which turned out to not work) – he had something of a fixation with the format, announcing several 3D movies in the 1970s, none of which were made. Even if the 3D had been successful, it’s hard to see how it would have saved this stilted, talky film.

1971 saw the acclaimed and very un-Amicus psycho thriller What Became of Jack and Jill, an unpleasant tale of granny killing that fits well with other British twisted tales of the era (Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, Goodbye Gemini, Straight On Till Morning), as well as the more traditional Amicus anthology Tales from the Crypt.

Tales from the Crypt

Taken from the EDC comic books, this compendium proved to be the biggest Amicus horror hit and might be the best of the series. More or less all the stories work, and while the film doesn’t have the gleeful black humour of the original stories, it is nevertheless ghoulish fun. A sequel was inevitable, and The Vault of Horror, unfortunately not nearly as good, appeared a year later.

The Vault of Horror

Also in 1972 came Asylum, again based on Robert Bloch stories. Two anthologies in one year? I’m afraid so, and Asylum suffered from weak material – presumably, the best (or at least most movie-friendly) Bloch stories had been used up, and this was very uneven.

Asylum

In 1973, Amicus strayed into hammer territory with the period piece And Now the Screaming Starts. It wasn’t the best timing – Hammer themselves were struggling to sell their gothic horrors by this point, and this rather plodding Amicus imitation didn’t do well. The same year saw the final anthology, From Beyond the Grave. Hailed by some as the best of the series, it benefited from above average stories by R. Chetwynd Hayes, a witty linking performance from Peter Cushing and fresh direction by Kevin Connor.

The final Amicus horror film was the eccentric The Beast Must Die in 1974. You have the credit Subotsky for taking a chance on this inadvertently hilarious film, which has Calvin Lockhart as a latex suit-wearing big game hunter who invites a group of people to his country estate, believing one of them to be a werewolf. A mix of murder mystery, horror and The Most Dangerous Game, the film includes the infamous Werewolf Break, where audiences were supposed to shout out who they think the werewolf is. There are no records to show what audiences ACTUALLY shouted…

The Beast Must Die

Curiously, Amicus had their biggest hit at a time when the British film industry in general seemed on its last legs. In 1975, they made the prehistoric romp The Land That Time Forgot, which was a huge box office success. Horror was suddenly out – not only were giant monster films making more money, but they also fitted in with Subotsky’s own wish to make wholesome films for kids to enjoy. It was followed in 1976 with another Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation, At the Earth’s Core, which proved to be another popular success.

Unfortunately, the relationship between Subotsky and partner Rosenberg was becoming increasingly strained, and in 1977 the business was dissolved. Although The People That Time Forgot was in development at the time, it would eventually be credited to AIP. Rosenberg, never high profile to begin with, continued in distribution and production, often uncredited (among his executive producer credits are The Incredible Melting Man, Bloody Birthday, Cat People and Perdita Durango). Subotsky, not a great money man, was left floundering. He finally teamed up with Andrew Donally to form Sword and Sorcery Productions.

In the mid-Seventies, Subotsky had toyed with the idea of filming Robert E Howard’s Conan stories, but finding them too violent, instead went for Lin carter’s Conan knock-off Thongor. Subotsky planned a major action epic, family friendly of course, with little dialogue, lots of stop motion effects and Dave Prowse in the title role. Harley Cockliss was brought in as director and the search for financing began. AIP showed interest but wanted to make changes. Subotsky declined, fearing that they wanted to turn it into an R-rated movie. Eventually, United Artists agreed to back the film and gave S&S development money. Storyboards and monsters were designed and Thongor in the Valley of the Demons was scheduled for production in 1980. Six weeks after announcing the film, UA dropped the project, possibly because all their money was being gobbled up by Heaven’s Gate.

The Uncanny

Other films that failed to get off the ground included comic book adaptations The Incredible Hulk, Creepy and Eerie and science fiction epic The Micronauts. Then Sword and Sorcery finally did get a film into production, it was a return to what Subotsky knew best – a three story anthology about killer cats called The Uncanny. This was followed by lacklustre psychological thriller Dominique, like its predecessor a Canadian-UK co-production. Neither film was a success.

By 1980, Subotsky was in something of a quandary. Having poured most of his time and money into the now defunct Thongor, he’d also spent his remaining financial resources buying the rights to six of Stephen King’s short stories. He needed to make a film, and soon.

Now, you might wonder why, having bought the rights at a time when the author was at his cinematic hottest (with The Shining and hit mini series Salem’s Lot), Subotsky didn’t make a King movie. Instead, he dusted off an old screenplay and set about making his grandest folly, The Monster Club.

Like From Beyond the Grave, the film was based on short stories by R. Chetwynd Hayes. But unlike that film, The Monster Club became a textbook example of How Not To Make a Horror Film. Again, part of the problem was Subotsky’s fixation on family entertainment. As far back as The House That Dripped Blood, he’d wanted to make a film that kids could see (in Britain; in America, these films were routinely rated PG anyway). He’d complained bitterly that the BBFC had rated that film ‘A’, only to change it to ‘X’ on the insistence of the distributor. Condemning sex scenes as ‘boring’ and expressing a dislike of ‘gratuitous’ violence, he was now determined to make a horror film for all the family. The only problem was that this was 1980. A Fangoria generation was fixated on Dawn of the Dead, Phantasm and Friday the 13th and were just gaining access to those films – and stronger – through home video. Kids didn’t want to see a horror film aimed at them. And if the kids weren’t interested, adults definitely weren’t.

Worse still, the film was incredibly dated and pitifully under-budgeted. I remember sitting in my local cinema watching this film as the audience hooted, howled and yelled abuse at the awful monster masks, the tired direction by Roy Ward Baker and the terrible rock bands that Subotsky though would add youth appeal (B.A. Robertson? The Pretty Things?). In the year that audiences were flocking to violent slasher films, Subotsky was still thinking that Vincent Price and joke shop level werewolf masks were the way to go. Rarely has a film been so spectacularly out of step with reality. The film bombed, failing to even secure US distribution, and plans for a sequel (Monsters and Meanies, would you believe!) were quickly abandoned.

Subotsky’s career was pretty much over. He did co-produce the TV mini series The Martian Chronicles, and in later years had credits on Cat’s Eye and The Lawnmower Man – that shrew investment in Stephen King stories at least paid off to that level. He died in 1991. Rosenberg died in 2004.

Amicus never achieved the popularity or reputation of Hammer, and truth be told, their films rarely equalled those of their great rival. But the company did produce a handful of entertaining, sometimes excellent, sometimes terrible movies and they deserves to be remembered with a mix of affection and frustration.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

The Pan Book of Horror Stories was a paperback series of short horror story anthologies published by Pan Books Ltd. The series ran to thirty volumes, the first published in 1959.

The series was initially collected and edited by Herbert Van Thal. On Van Thal’s death Clarence Paget edited the series, from volume twenty-six until its demise with volume thirty in 1989.

Although Van Thal was synonymous with the series, it’s interesting to note that, unlike the editors of some similar collections, he didn’t write any sort of introduction to the stories.

The early editions of the Pan Book of Horror Stories were notable for Van Thal’s introduction of stories by new authors alongside classics of the genre. The first edition included works by Joan Aiken, Jack Finney, Nigel Kneale, Peter Fleming, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker and C. S. Forester. Later volumes feature Ray Bradbury and Lord Dunsany among others.

After volume nine, Van Thal placed a heavier reliance on new authors. The series grew in popularity and was the stepping stone for much blossoming talent. However, in the early eighties a slow decline in standards was observed. Many critics decried the series for its emphasis on gruesome and sadistic stories and increasingly lurid and gory covers, similar to the works of James Herbert, Guy N. Smith and other so-called ‘nasty’ authors. But while the horror literary establishment increasingly held their noses at the mere though of the books, for many younger readers – some of whom would go on to become writers themselves – the books were a first introduction to horror fiction. In the era of the Video Nasty, the very fact that these books were so un-respectable made them all the more exciting for teenagers.

The mainstream popularity of the series rose again in the late eighties but a multitude of reprint stories from Stephen King and a severe slide in quality ended the iconic series in 1989. The last book is now a rare collectors item, due to the small print run it received.

A U.S Edition of the first Pan book was released by Gold Medal, an imprint of Fawcett Publications and books 3 – 5 were released by Berkley Medallion. While the first book was complete in its contents – the other three books gave only a small selection of its UK counterparts.

A reprint of the initial Pan Book of Horror was published in October 2010, with an introduction by Pan expert Johnny Mains. A revival of the series has often been discussed, but has yet to come to fruition – the British paperback market is now very different than in the 1970s and 80s, and there may well be no room in the mainstream for such collections anymore. However, other ongoing series such as The Black Book of Horror (now in its ninth edition) have taken inspiration from these classic titles, in terms of style, cover design and content.

Black Park is a country park in Wexham, Buckinghamshire, England between Slough and Iver Heath. Covering 530 acres of woodland, heathland and grassland,  the park includes an imposing avenue of mature pine trees, and a lake (dug in the 18th century as a reservoir for a local farmer).

Adjacent to Pinewood Film Studios, Black Park has been used as an outdoor location for many film and television productions. The woods and lake featured prominently in the Hammer Horror films from the late 1950s to the 1970s, such as Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966). In the Hammer films the location was often used to represent Transylvania.

The park has also been used in other film productions such as the James Bond franchise Goldfinger, where it was used for a nighttime car chase scene, and the 2006 version of Casino Royale, and the Monty Python film And Now For Something Completely Different, plus several Carry On films, Batman, Sleepy Hollow, the Harry Potter film series‘, Captain America, The Bunker and the chillingly-effective Eden Lake.

For television, Black Park, together with its lake, was used extensively in location filming for the planet ‘Alzarius’ in the Doctor Who serial Full Circle (1980) which featured the memorable, albeit cheap-looking, Marshmen monsters.

Thanks to Seat at the Back for the Curse of Frankenstein image

Night of the Big Heat is a 1967 British sci-fi horror film produced by Planet Film. Based on the 1959 novel of the same name by John Lymington, the film was directed by Terence Fisher, and stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Jane Merrow (Hands of the Ripper, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, The Appointment)

The film was eventually released theatrically in the United States in the winter of 1971 by Maron Films as Island of the Burning Damned, where it was paired up nationwide on a double bill with Godzilla’s Revenge. When the film was released years later on US television it was retitled Island of the Burning Doomed.

Jeff and Frankie Callum run the Swan, an inn on the remote Scottish island of Fara. Jeff, a novelist in his spare time, hires a secretary named Angela Roberts. Unknown to Frankie, Jeff and Angela are former lovers. The Callums moved to Fara Island so that Jeff could escape Angela’s amorous advances (although as far as Frankie knows, it was to escape the tedium of city life on the mainland). Angela wants to resume her fling with Jeff, despite Jeff wanting nothing to do with her. Not helping matters much is the fact that despite the fact it’s the middle of November, Fara Island is experiencing a stifling and inexplicable heat wave, with temperatures in the 90s and rising daily. It has become so hot that cars stall, beer bottles shatter, Televisions explode, and telephones have ceased to work. Into this tense situation comes Dr. Godfrey Hanson, a mysterious scientist from the mainland who rents a room…

Wikipedia | IMDb

“A good  bit of hokum… Pity it’s an X: the kids would love it.” Kinematograph Weekly, 1967

“Island of the Burning Doomed’s greatest strength is the fact that it mainly keeps the aliens offscreen. This is not because of any intrinsic advantage in scare value that the unseen has over the seen (and in any event, this is about as unscary a movie as you could ask for), but rather because of what the aliens look like once they are finally revealed. The aliens, and I am being completely serious here, resemble nothing so much as fried eggs the size of St. Bernard dogs.” 1000 Misspent Hours… and Counting

“The creatures, when they belatedly appear, are hopelessly cheap and un-terrifying, rather reminiscent of the low budget Doctor Who inventions of the era … the creatures are infinitely more intriguing when they’re off-screen. The tatty, papier-mache, ‘made-in-the-garage’ creations that show up for the final act of the film are more laughable than scary. The climax also comes across a little rushed and muddled, though to give due credit it’s quite exciting in patches.” Leon Nicholson, FMV Magazine

“Making extraterrestrial spiders look convincing would have defeated a budget many times greater than the one on offer from Planet, so the writers transformed the menace into creatures resembling large fried eggs, sliding gracelessly through Black Park.” John Hamilton, X-Cert: The British Independent Horror Film: 1951 – 1970 (Hemlock Film, 2012)

The Nest of the Cuckoo Bird is a 1965 American horror exploitation film written, produced, directed by and starring Bert Williams. The rest of the cast were Ann Long, Chuck Frankle, Jackie Scelza and Larry Wright. Local act The Four Bits performed the theme song. 

The film was lensed in Florida where Williams ran his Experimental Camera Workshop but has since vanished and is allegedly lost.

Investigating Florida moonshiners, a detective (Williams) is searching the Everglades when he discovers a remote inn managed by a demented showgirl (Ann Long), a taxidermist who stuffs humans for display in her grotesque Chapel of the Dead.

IMDb

Horrorpedia is indebted to Temple of Schlock and The Dead Next Door for the information and visuals above. Both blogs are highly recommended for aficionados of esoteric cinema.

The Ripper (1997)

Jack the Ripper. The very name conjures up images of fog-shrouded streets, grisly murder and chirpy, voluptuous Cockney street girls spilling out of East End dens of inequity to meet their fate as the cloaked and top-hatted Saucy Jack searched in vain for the elusive Mary Kelly. In fact, so ingrained is the myth of the Ripper in our collective consciousness that it’s sometimes difficult to remember that this was a very real murderer, who appeared out of the blue in 1888 and, over a few months as summer gave way to autumn, killed five prostitutes, taunting the police with letters and body parts, before vanished as abruptly as he appeared.

The mystery of the Ripper is what keeps the mythology alive – the fact that he was never caught, and that even now, the British government refuse to release the files pertaining to the case (making ludicrous excuses about protecting the families of informers, as if the underworld holds a century long grudge against people who tried to help catch the world’s most notorious sex killer) ensures that all manner of theorising can take place as to the nature of the Ripper’s identity (or identities).

What’s more, the short burst nature of the crimes, their seemingly ritualistic brutality and the mysterious, sometimes ambiguous messages that the Ripper left or sent (“The Juwes Are The Men That Will Not be Blamed For Nothing” message left on a wall, the “Dear Boss”, “Saucy Jacky” and “From Hell” letters and postcards) – as well as the Victorian trappings that lend themselves to gothic melodrama – all lend themselves to myth making and speculation. Over the years, numerous books have claimed to have ‘solved’ the murders, none of them convincing – there was even the dubious ‘dairy’ that purported to have proven the Ripper’s identity, but which inevitably turned out to be fraudulent. It’s a sign of how much the Ripper still grabs our attention that any fresh claim about the murders will still make headlines today [In fact, after this article was posted, crime writer Patricia Cornwell has announced that she can prove that the Ripper was Camden artist Walter Sickert].

The Lodger (1927)

It’s very un-PC and immediately condemned if anyone tries to make a film or TV show about a true life murder in Britain these days. The only acceptable thing is to make a thoroughly serious police procedural docu-drama – a classic recent example being the Fred West film Appropriate Adult – that concentrates on the trial or the investigation and studiously avoids the crimes. Jack the Ripper has long been an exception to that rule. It’s easy to say that this is because of the age of the case, but of course, Ripper films first began turning up within living memory of the case – Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger, based on the book by Marie Belloc Lowndes was made in 1927.

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is the first British Ripper film, although it shied away from actually using the name and ultimately proves to be a case of mistaken identity, as a couple begin to suspect that their new tenant (Ivor Novello) is the murderer known as The Avenger. In the end, he turns out to be a vigilante investigating the case. The film would be remade several times, with the ending tweaked each time. In 1932, Novello revisited the role, but this time the killer – The Bosnian Murderer – turned out to be his twin brother. In 1944, all ambiguity was cast aside, and the lodger, played by arch villain Laird Cregar, was finally outed as being Jack the Ripper. This version was repeated in 1953 (retitled Man in the Attic) with Jack Palance as the murderer. The Lodger’s story was sufficiently universal for a 2009 version to use the premise while dispensing with The Ripper and much of the story, relocating the action to Los Angeles. It’s not a film many people have seen.

Man in the Attic

The Lodger was imitated in Room to Let, a 1948 radio play Margery Allingham that was subsequently filmed by Hammer a year later. In this story, Valentine Dyall is the Ripper, taking a room after escaping from a lunatic asylum. This is the first of three Ripper films from Hammer. In 1971, they made Hands of the Ripper, in which the killer’s daughter is turned into a murderer after seeing her mother die at her father’s hand, while Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde throws several Victorian horror characters, graverobbers including Burke and Hare, into the mix. In this film, the Ripper turns out to be Dr Jekyll, murdering women in order to secure their glands for his experiments.

Both films are rather better than you might imagine based on the description, shot with Hammer’s usual style but also having strong performances and intelligent screenplays. The idea of Dr Jekyll being behind the Ripper killings was later revived in Gerard Kikoine’s astonishingly deranged and slightly kinky, Ken Russellesque 1989 film Edge of Sanity, with Anthony Perkins on top form as Jack Hyde. If you haven’t seen this film because of poor reviews, stop reading now and rectify that immediately!

Edge of Sanity

Appearing a couple of years after the original Lodger film, Pandora’s Box is a German film in which the promiscuous Lulu (played by iconic actress Louise Brooks) meets a sticky end at the hands of Jack. The Ripper’s appearance here is simply as an incidental character, the film instead following its heroine’s moral decline. The two characters would meet again in Walerian Borowczyk’s Lulu, made in 1980.

Pandora’s Box

In 1959, Hammer screenwriter Jimmy ‘the Nasty’ Sangster stepped away from the company to write Jack the Ripper for producers Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker, for whom he’d previously written Sadean Blood of the Vampire. Like that film, this was a Hammer-influenced gothic tale, though shot in black and white (apart from a single, gory moment at the climax). In this version, British police inspector O’Neill (Eddie Byrne) is joined by New York detective Sam Lowry (Lee Patterson) to catch the Ripper.

As you can imagine, the film barely bothered to stick to the facts of the case, but it’s entertainingly trashy nevertheless. In common with a number of British films of the time, additional ‘Continental’ scenes were shot for foreign markets, featuring topless showgirls. This version can apparently now be found online…

Sherlock Holmes first met Jack the Ripper in 1965, in A Study in Terror. The combination of the world’s most famous (fictional) detective and the world’s most infamous (real) murderer was an obvious one, and the film is entertaining enough fluff. It loosely follows the facts of the case, with Holmes, played by John Nevill, investigating the murders, an investigation that leads him from the back streets of Whitechapel to the aristocracy. But in common with many Ripper films, it glossed over the horror of the killings while sexing up the victims – middle-aged, toothless prostitutes are played by the likes of busty Carry On queen Barbara Windsor.

Frank Finlay plays Inspector LeStrade, and quite coincidentally would repeat the role in the second Holmes / Ripper movie Murder By Decree. A high spot in the filmographies of both characters, this moody piece sees a starry cast (Christopher Plummer, James Mason, Donald Sutherland) caught up in the killings, which soon turn out to be less than random. In fact, they are part of a Masonic plot to cover up the misdeeds of the Duke of Clarence, son of Queen Victoria. This conspiracy leads to the very heart of government, and thanks to the quality of the film, the performances (Plummer is especially good as an emotive, passionate Holmes) and Bob Clark’s direction (he made the film between his horror movies Dead of Night and Black Christmas before wholly commercial movies like Porkys), you are swept along in the story.

Murder By Decree

The Royal connection and conspiracy of high powers had initially been ‘revealed’ by Stephen Knight, who originally used the theory in a 1973 BBC TV series, where modern day Scotland Yard detectives re-examine the case and uncover the truth. Monarchists and skeptics have widely dismissed Knight’s theory, but it’s as valid as any other given what we know (and would certainly account for why the Ripper files remain locked away!). In any case, it makes for great drama, and it’s no surprise that the theory has been dusted off subsequently.

Jack the Ripper (1988)

The 1988 two-part TV movie Jack the Ripper, which teamed Michael Caine and former Professional Lewis Collins as unlikely detectives, worked on a similar theory and 2001′s From Hell – adapted and simplified from Alan Moore’s exhaustive graphic novel – sees Johnny Depp as the absinthe-drinking Inspector Abberline, who uncovers the royal connection while trying to save Mary Kelly (who, in the grand tradition of Ripper films, is played by the rather too attractive Heather Graham). The 1997 film The Ripper dispensed entirely with the middle-men and had Prince Eddy himself as the killer.

Buy Jack the Ripper (1988) on Blu-ray | DVD from Amazon.co.uk

From Hell

This royal connection was mocked by comedy duo The Two Ronnies in their much-loved Ripper spoof The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town, which showed how far Jack the Ripper has become part of folklore – we could even make family-friendly comedy shows about the murders now.

Of course, most Ripper films were less serious of intent and less concerned with pesky things like historical accuracy than these movies. While there are those who suggest that Jack the Ripper probably killed more than the five women attributed to him – Ripper style murders continued to happen, but for whatever reason any connection was dismissed – many of the films dealing with the character generally ignore the known facts and simply make up their own story, with new protagonists and victims.

Jess Franco’s 1976 film Jack the Ripper is a magnificently lurid and sleazy effort in which mad doctor Klaus Kinski slices the breasts off saucy showgirl Lina Romay, while in José Luis Madrid’s Jack el Destripador de Londres (aka Seven Murders for Scotland Yard), made in 1971, the Ripper has reached 39 (!) victims – perhaps explaining why it’s set in modern day Soho. Spanish horror star Paul Naschy plays the main (but innocent) suspect.

Madrid’s film is one of several that seeks to relocate the Ripper into modern times (well, period sets and costumes cost money…). Some of these films feature copycats, while others have the Ripper reincarnated. 1988′s Jack’s Back, TV movie Terror at London Bridge – with David Hasselhoff – and early shot-on-video film The Ripper (1985) all have Jack’s spirit returning to possess others and carry on his work. None of these films are remotely good. Ripper Man and Bad Karma are more recent, no more impressive examples. Then we have the copycats – Jill the Ripper (2000) and The Ripper (2001) add little to the mythology.

The Ripper (1985)

Of the modern day Ripper films, only Time After Time is worthwhile. Directed by Nicholas Meyer, this is a fun fantasy romp rather than a slasher film, with H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) following Jack the Ripper (David Warner) to 1979 San Francisco after the latter steals Wells’ time machine to escape the police and carry on his work in the future. This is a rather charming romantic comedy, with the Ripper’s activities kept at arm’s length.

Time After Time

Of course, there are numerous other Ripper-inspired films, if only in title. Given that the Ripper name was still current enough in the 1970s to be given to real-life serial killer Peter Sutcliffe — the Yorkshire Ripper — it’s unsurprising that it would be used in many a slasher film – Blade of the Ripper, The New York Ripper, The Ripper of Notre Dame, Night Ripper (aka The Monster of Florence) and the Japanese Assault! Jack the Ripper for instance. Neither is it surprising that the Ripper would be used as a template for unconnected murderers in many a horror and thriller film – after all, he was in many was the first modern serial killer and everyone since has simply been following in his footsteps.

Assault! Jack the Ripper

The character of the Ripper would also pop up in a weird selection of films that were otherwise unconnected to the case, or to horror / thriller cinema. In The Ruling Class (1972), Peter O’Toole imagines himself to be Jack the Ripper at one point; Deadly Advice (1994) sees Jane Horrocks as a female serial killer taking advice from her ‘illustrious’ predecessors, Jack amongst them; Amazon Women of the Moon sees the Ripper exposed as The Loch Ness Monster in the segment “Bullshit- Or Not?”. And the character has turned up – in one form or another – in TV shows as varied as Boris Karloff-fronted horror anthology The Veil, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Fantasy Island, Cimarron Strip, Babylon 5, The Outer Limits and Smallville.

Amazon Women of the Moon

More recently, British TV has delved into the Ripper world. Whitechapel sees a copycat repeating the Ripper killings on the same dates as the original murders, while the current BBC hit Ripper Street is set a year after the murders, with the police investigating crimes that they initially believe to be the work of the Ripper but come to realise are unrelated. In the tradition of Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde and the work of Alan Moore, Ripper Street is mixing up all manner of Victoriana in its stories, including Elephant Man Joseph Merrick. Meanwhile, British-American series Dracula, launched in October 2013, posits that the Ripper killings were in fact the work of a vampire, with a shadowy group constructing the letters and other clues as a way of throwing the police off the scent.

Ripper Street

So it seems that our fascination with Jack the Ripper isn’t going to end soon. Short of the release of the Ripper files and the unlikely unquestioned confirmation of just who he (or she) was, this is likely to remain a mystery that will continue to inspire filmmakers, writers and artists, all of whom can use the story to explore their own beliefs, fears and obsessions.

Now, if only Black the Ripper actually existed…

Feature by David Flint

Buy Jack the Ripper: The Murders and the Movies by Denis Meikle from Amazon.co.uk

Horror (aka The Blancheville Monster) is a 1963 Italian/Spanish horror film directed by Alberto De Martino from a screenplay by Bruno and Sergio Corbucci, Giovanni Grimaldi based upon an (uncredited) story by Edgar Allan Poe. The cast includes: Helga Liné (Horror Express, The Dracula Saga, The Lorely’s Grasp), Gérard Tichy (Pieces), Leo Anchóriz and Ombretta Colli. On November 19th 2013 it was released in the US by Retromedia as a 50th Anniversary DVD in 1:66:1 widescreen and in high definition.

Brittany in France, 1884: Emily De Blancheville returns to her ancestral home from finishing school to find that her brother has sacked the entire staff and all the new servants act suspiciously. Her father – whom she had believed to be killed in a fire – is discovered to be alive but ‘horribly disfigured’ and having been driven insane. The family keep him locked up in the tower. It transpires that there is a curse on the De Blancheville line, and their father believes that the curse can only be broken if Emily is killed before her 21st birthday…

“Fun aspects here include: Roderick’s great harpsichord playing; some fantastic sets including the old manor house and the ruined abbey nearby; a great spookshow sequence with Lady Blancheville’s friend wandering through the darkened manor and finding her way to the tower with some genuinely creepy moments; and the Scooby-doo mystery of the scar-faced man, which wasn’t too hard to figure out but still fun … And for the b-movie perv in all of us, some extended moonlight sleepwalks by Lady Blancheville with the backlit-gossamer gown shot in full effect. Rowr!” Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies

“The Blancheville Monster is quite atmospheric and it benefits a lot from the amazing, spooky castle and the fetching ladies. A few scenes are really good. But as a whole, well, this is nothing special.” Pidde Andersson, Xomba.com

” …solid midnight viewing thanks to its dank theatrics and comforting adherence to genre conventions. Best scene: the Blancheville family and friends bury poor Emily… unfortunately, they don’t realize she’s still alive.” The Terror Trap

Belgian poster image courtesy of Poster Perversion. We recommend their great site.

House on Bare Mountain is a 1962 American comedy horror ‘nudie cutie’ film directed by Lee Frost (Love Camp 7, The Thing with Two Heads), Peter Perry Jr., Wes Bishop. Horror/exploitation producer Harry H. Novak was behind the scenes.

“Granny Good”  runs a finishing school for young women but it’s really a front for a moonshine operation. At a party. Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula and a werewolf (who has been working in the basement on non-union rates) show up…

“Some very attractive pneumatic 60s ladies suffer the indignity of baring all for The House on Bare Mountain only to be accompanied by some condescending and unpalatable voice-over tripe that’s supposed to be funny. It’s a shame as, if it had been handled right, the initial plot offers some opportunities for gleeful sexual titillation and mockery of society conventions.” Adrian J Smith, Horropedia

“Essentially this a run-of-the-mill nudie cutie with a pretty nice assortment of students who barely bother with clothes at all.” Creature from the Blog Lagoon

Thanks to Dwyrager Dungeon for some of the images above

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster is a 1965 American science fiction cult film, directed by Robert Gaffney and starring Marilyn Hanold, James Karen (The Return of the Living Dead), Lou Cutell and Robert Reilly. It was filmed in Florida and Puerto Rico in 1964.

The film was released in the UK as Duel of the Space Monsters. It is also known as Frankenstein Meets the Space Men, Mars Attacks Puerto Rico, Mars Invades Puerto Rico, and Operation San Juan. In the United States, it was initially released by Futurama Entertainment Corp on a double bill with Curse of the Voodoo. The film tells the story of a robot who combats alien invaders. Despite the title, neither Dr. Frankenstein nor Frankenstein’s Monster make any appearance in the film.

All of the women on the planet Mars have died in an atomic war, except for Martian Princess Marcuzan (Marilyn Hanold). Marcuzan and her right hand man, Dr. Nadir (Lou Cutell), decide they will travel to Earth and steal all of the women on the planet in order to continue the Martian race. The Martians shoot down a space capsule manned by the android Colonel Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly), causing it to crash in Puerto Rico. Frankenstein’s electronic brain and the left half of his face are damaged after encountering a trigger-happy Martian and his ray gun. Frank, now “Frankenstein”, described by his creator as an “astro-robot without a control system” proceeds to terrorize the island. A subplot involves the martians abducting bikini clad women…

” … undoubtedly a slapdash effort, lacking any form of suspense, terror, coherency, or social or political commentary. However, the film does pack a number of unintentional laughs and a slew of performances that will have you blushing in embarrassment for the actor or actress. And if there are any other positives to be pointed out, the film has plenty of monster action to keep B-movie fans coming back for seconds and thirds” Anti-Film School

“Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster is actually fairly well made if one can discount some wretched post-synched dialogue. The camerawork isn’t bad and the action cuts are pretty active. Just about all the director had to create space-age ray gun battles are some smoke pots and a few eager actors.” Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant

” … a thoroughly enjoyable relic that’s well-paced for its brief running time, despite the inclusion of mucho NASA and wartime stock footage. As unconventional a “Frankenstein” film as they come, the film is sort of a cheat in that respect, with the posters promising a more Karloffian figure than what’s delivered in the final product. But with a horribly mangled half-face and scorched astronaut suit, Frank is a memorable movie monster, especially when he’s seen hatcheting a beachside resident, assaulting a young couple’s automobile in the middle of the night, or fighting off the aliens with the one spark of decency he still has in him. Lou Cutell’s grimacing Nadir, with add-on Spock ear tips and a bald cap that looks like it was left over from a grammar school production of “Annie”, adds a dimension of perversion and unintentional chuckles to the proceedings.” George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

“In the end, it’s a bad movie. There can be no doubt about it. But it does just enough to instill a giddy smirk and a heap of schaudenfreude. It’s hard not to laugh as aliens target half naked Puerto Rican women for procreation, only to be thwarted by a reanimated corpse astronaut and NASA employees riding around on Vespa scooters, all wrapped up in a groovy 1960′s soundtrack and stock footage from the space program.” The Droid You’re Looking For

‘Portentous dialogue — two of the script-writers were poets — and repeated references to a ‘plan’ mark this camp trash masterpiece out to be in the realm of Ed Wood filmmaking, albeit with a bigger budget, despite the heavy use of stock footage. Highly recommended if you’re in into cinematic sludge’. Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

Wikipedia | IMDb | Related: First Man into Space | The Incredible Melting Man

We are grateful to The Deuce Grindhouse Cinema Database and Zombo’s Closet for images above.

Confessions of a Psycho Cat is a 1968 exploitation horror film produced abd directed by “Eve” (Herb Stanley) from a screenplay by Bill Boyd. It stars Eileen Lord, Ed Garrabrandt, Frank Geraci, Dick Lord, Arlenne Lorrance and boxer Jake LaMotta (later played by Robert De Niro in Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull (1980).

Buddy “the addict”, Charles Freeman “the actor” and Rocco “the wrestler”each receive mysterious notes to meet at the residence of Virginia Marcus. Virginia offers the men $100,000 if they can stay alive in Manhattan for 24 hours. The challenge? Virginia intends to hunt each one of them down. It’s a safari in Manhattan! “When you receive the cheque the game is on.”Why this particular trio of men? They each committed a murder that they were acquitted of. Virginia looks at it as a sort of public service and at the same time an entertaining game. The balance of Confessions of a Psycho Cat details the hunt with a lot of unnecessary sex scenes randomly scattered throughout.

I cannot lie, I would love to have seen what Confessions of a Psycho Cat looked like without the added sex scenes. Eileen Lord who plays Virginia Marcus gives a show stopping performance! She is truly magnificent! She has a great look and fantastic expressions; shouting, yelling and laughing hysterically. She just wanted to go on safari goddammit! It is one of those epic crazy performances that linger in the mind. She never holds back the emotions going from reasonable to insane regularly. The first thing I did when the film ended was look up Eileen Lord on IMDB and I was shocked to see Confessions of a Psycho Cat was her only credit! What a crying shame! This film is worth watching just for her character and her brilliant performance! She is not the only highlight ofConfessions of a Psycho Cat though. Virginia’s three victims were all perfectly chosen.

The sex scenes are filler and rather goofy filler at that. Some of the participants actually look bored and some of the acting by this group was hilariously bad. The keyword being “hilarious”. I didn’t hate the sex scenes. They are an attractive 60s-licious bunch of folks who spend their screen time nude or partially dressed and cough out some pretty silly nonsense that certainly gave me a chuckle. The Pièce de résistance was Rocco’s hooker pictured in the two images above. Her scene was one of the added bits and she was clearly not in the same room as Jake LaMotta. There is no way Rocco would have let that crazy dame in his room. Her dialog was priceless.

“What you bring me up here for anyway? All you’re doing is reading that silly little paper. I came up here to have some fun. What’s the matter? Don’t you like me? (Takes off bra and examines her breasts) I never had any complaints before. Can’t you tell I’m a girl? I think I look pretty good. I think you’re putting me down. I’m sexy and that’s what I came up here for…sex.” She than starts kissing her own reflection and really goes at it, tongue and all for a good minute plus. Classic sixties sexploitation fun!

While Virginia and her trio of victims was certainly the highlight and definitely the film’s best performances, the clumsily added sex scenes were quite amusing. The film had the deck stacked against it when some Einstein decided it would be more marketable as a sexploitation flick and it is a damn shame that seemingly no one will ever get to see the original vision of Confessions of a Psycho Cat. That said, the superb story and characters of the central plot make up the majority of the film and there are a dozen memorable well-executed scenes.

Goregirl’s Dungeon

Curse of the Stone Hand is a 1964 (released April 1965) composite horror film consisting of new footage shot by opportunistic U.S. producer/director Jerry Warren (Teenage Zombies) that features John Carradine (as “The Old Drunk”) and Katherine Victor, plus heavily edited sections of two 1940s Chilean movies, both directed by exiled Argentine directors.

The segment known as “House of Gloom” is derived from La casa está vacía (“The House is Empty”), which was directed by Carlos Schlieper, whilst the other segment, “The Suicide Club”, is drawn from La dama de la muerte, (“Woman of Death”) helmed by Carlos Hugo Christensen, and loosely based on a short story by Scottish 19th century author Robert Louis Stephenson (Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Body Snatcher).

American Film Institute synopsis: “Hands sculpted in stone, hidden in the niches of an ancient house, are regarded as sources of a curse by the present inhabitant, a country gentleman addicted to gambling; and indeed he does go to an early grave after experiencing bankruptcy. The house then passes to another family, one of whose sons becomes obsessed with the hands. This son develops sadistic tendencies and, acquiring hypnotic powers, finds himself exercising a mystical control over a brother’s fiancée. She repels him, however, and in doing so breaks the spell. The hypnotist, turning to the stone hands, is killed.”

“The most interesting thing about Curse of the Stone Hand is what it reveals about Warren. It turns out he was capable of editing his material carefully and thoughtfully, when the mood struck him. It’s just that his storytelling instincts were all wrong. His repeated insistence that he had no other aim than to make a quick buck may or may not have been the whole truth; but in this particular case, he would have been better off doing his usual hatchet job. At least a laughably bad film would have left us wondering if he was a talentless hack or a misunderstood genius, the way many still wonder about Ed Wood. Curse of the Stone Hand seems to prove pretty clearly which category Warren belonged in.” Braineater.com

We are also grateful to Wrong Side of the Art for one of the images above and Braineater.com for providing the true nature of this “feature” as most sources incorrectly cite it being an amalgam of footage from Mexican and Chilean films, plus Warren’s own additional material.

Robert Lawrence Stine (born October 8, 1943), known as R. L. Stine, and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American writer and producer. Stine, who is referred to as the “Stephen King of children’s literature,” is the author of hundreds of horror fiction novels, including the books in the Fear Street, Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, and The Nightmare Room series. R. L. Stine’s books have sold over 400 million copies.

In 1986, Stine wrote his first horror novel, called Blind Date. He followed with many other novels, including The Babysitter, Beach House, Hit and Run, and The Girlfriend.

In 1989, Stine started writing Fear Street books. In 1992, Stine and Parachute went on to launch Goosebumps.

A Goosebumps TV series that ran for four seasons from 1995–1998 and three video games; Escape from HorrorLand, Attack of the Mutant and Goosebumps HorrorLand. In 1995, Stine’s first novel targeted at adults, called Superstitious, was published. He has since published two other adult-oriented novels; The Sitter and Eye Candy.

In the first decade of the 21st century, Stine has worked on installments of five different book series, Mostly Ghostly, Rotten School, Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, Goosebumps Horrorland and the stand-alone novels Dangerous Girls (2003) and The Taste of Night (2004). A direct-to-DVD movie The Haunting Hour Volume One: Don’t Think About It, starring Emily Osment was released by Universal on September 4, 2007.

Goosebumps Series 2000

1. Cry of the Cat
2. Bride of the Living Dummy
3. Creature Teacher
4. Invasion of the Body Squeezers, Part I
5. Invasion of the Body Squeezers, Part II
6. I Am Your Evil Twin
7. Revenge R Us
8. Fright Camp
9. Are You Terrified Yet?
10. Headless Halloween
11. Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls
12. Brain Juice
13. Return to HorrorLand
14. Jekyll and Heidi
15. Scream School
16. The Mummy Walks
17. The Werewolf in the Living Room
18. Horrors of the Black Ring
19. Return to Ghost Camp
20. Be Afraid – Be Very Afraid!
21. The Haunted Car
22. Full Moon Fever
23. Slappy’s Nightmare
24. Earth Geeks Must Go!
25. Ghost in the Mirror

Give Yourself Goosebumps

1. Escape from the Carnival of Horrors
2. Tick Tock, You’re Dead!
3. Trapped in Bat Wing Hall
4. The Deadly Experiments of Dr. Eeek
5. Night in Werewolf Woods
6. Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter
7. Under the Magician’s Spell
8. The Curse of the Creeping Coffin
9. The Knight in Screaming Armor
10. Diary of a Mad Mummy
11. Deep in the Jungle of Doom
12. Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum
13. Scream of the Evil Genie
14. The Creepy Creations of Professor Shock
15. Please Don’t Feed the Vampire!
16. Secret Agent Grandma
17. Little Comic Shop of Horrors
18. Attack of the Beastly Baby-sitter
19. Escape from Camp Run-for-Your-Life
20. Toy Terror: Batteries Included
21. The Twisted Tale of Tiki Island
22. Return to the Carnival of Horrors
23. Zapped in Space
24. Lost in Stinkeye Swamp
25. Shop Till You Drop…Dead!
26. Alone in Snakebite Canyon
27. Checkout Time at the Dead-End Hotel
28. Night of a Thousand Claws
29. Invaders from the Big Screen
30. You’re Plant Food!
31. The Werewolf of Twisted Tree Lodge
32. It’s Only a Nightmare
33. It Came from the Internet
34. Elevator to Nowhere
35. Hocus-Pocus Horror
36. Ship of Ghouls
37. Escape from Horror House
38. Into the Twister of Terror
39. Scary Birthday to You
40. Zombie School
41. Danger Time
42. All-Day Nightmare 

Fear Street

1. The New Girl
2. The Surprise Party
3. The Overnight
4. Missing
5. The Wrong Number
6. The Sleepwalker
7. Haunted
8. Halloween Party
9. The Stepsister
10. Ski Weekend
11. The Fire Game
12. Lights Out
13. The Secret Bedroom
14. The Knife
15. The Prom Queen
16. First Date
17. The Best Friend
18. The Cheater
19. Sunburn
20. The New Boy
21. The Dare
22. Bad Dreams
23. Double Date
24. The Thrill Club
25. One Evil Summer
26. The Mind Reader
27. Wrong Number 2
28. Truth or Dare
29. Dead End
30. Final Grade
31. Switched
32. College Weekend
33. The Stepsister 2
34. What Holly Heard
35. The Face
36. Secret Admirer
37. The Perfect Date
38. The Confession
39. The Boy Next Door
40. Night Games
41. Runaway
42. Killer’s Kiss
43. All-Night Party
44. The Rich Girl
45. Cat
46. Fear Hall: The Beginning
47. Fear Hall: The Conclusion
48. Who Killed The Homecoming Queen?
49. Into The Dark
50. Best Friend 2
51. Trapped

New Fear Street

1. The Stepbrother
2. Camp Out
3. Scream, Jennifer, Scream!
4. The Bad Girl

Fear Street Super Chiller

1. Party Summer
2. Silent Night
3. Goodnight Kiss
4. Broken Hearts
5. Silent Night 2
6. The Dead Lifeguard
7. Cheerleaders: The New Evil
8. Bad Moonlight
9. The New Year’s Party
10. Goodnight Kiss 2
11. Silent Night 3
12. High Tide
13. Cheerleaders: The Evil Lives!

Cheerleaders

1. The First Evil
2. The Second Evil
3. The Third Evil
4. The New Evil
5. The Evil Lives!

The Fear Street Saga Trilogy

1. The Betrayal
2. The Secret
3. The Burning

99 Fear Street: The House of Evil

1. The First Horror
2. The Second Horror
3. The Third Horror

Cataluna Chronicles

1. The Evil Moon
2. The Dark Secret
3. The Deadly Fire

Fear Park

1. The First Scream
2. The Loudest Scream
3. The Last Scream

Fear Street Sagas

1. A New Fear
2. House of Whispers
3. Forbidden Secrets
4. The Sign of Fear
5. The Hidden Evil
6. Daughters of Silence
7. Children of Fear
8. Dance of Death
9. Heart of the Hunter
10. The Awakening Evil
11. Circle of Fire
12. Chamber of Fear
13. Faces of Terror
14. One Last Kiss
15. Door of Death
16. The Hand of Power

Fear Street Seniors

1. Let’s Party
2. In Too Deep
3. The Thirst
4. No Answer
5. Last Chance
6. The Gift
7. Fight Team, Fight
8. Sweetheart, Evil Heart
9. Spring Break
10. Wicked
11. The Prom Date
12. Graduation Day

Fear Street Nights

1. Moonlight Secrets
2. Midnight Games
3. Darkest Dawn

Ghosts of Fear Street

1. Hide and Shriek
2. Who’s Been Sleeping in My Grave?
3. The Attack of the Aqua Apes
4. Nightmare in 3-D
5. Stay Away from the Tree House
6. Eye of the Fortuneteller
7. Fright Knight
8. The Ooze
9. Revenge of the Shadow People
10. The Bugman Lives!
11. The Boy Who Ate Fear Street
12. Night of the Werecat
13. How to Be a Vampire
14. Body Switchers from Outer Space
15. Fright Christmas
16. Don’t Ever Get Sick at Granny’s
17. House of a Thousand Screams
18. Camp Fear Ghouls
19. Three Evil Wishes
20. Spell of the Screaming Jokers
21. The Creature from Club Lagoona
22. Field of Screams
23. Why I’m Not Afraid of Ghosts
24. Monster Dog
25. Halloween Bugs Me!
26. Go to Your Tomb — Right Now!
27. Parents from the 13th Dimension
28. Hide and Shriek II
29. The Tale of the Blue Monkey
30. I Was a Sixth-Grade Zombie
31. Escape of the He-Beast
32. Caution: Aliens at Work
33. Attack of the Vampire Worms
34. Horror Hotel Pt. 1: The Vampire Checks in
35. Horror Hotel Pt. 2: Ghost in the Guest Room
36. The Funhouse of Dr. Freek

Mostly Ghostly

1. Who Let the Ghosts Out?
2. Have You Met My Ghoulfriend?
3. One Night in Doom House
4. Little Camp of Horrors
5. Ghouls Gone Wild
6. Let’s Get This Party Haunted!
7. Freaks and Shrieks
8. Don’t Close Your Eyes!

Rotten School

1. The Big Blueberry Barf-Off!
2. The Great Smelling Bee
3. The Good, the Bad and the Very Slimy
4. Lose, Team, Lose!
5. Shake, Rattle and Hurl!
6. The Heinie Prize
7. Dudes, the School is Haunted!
8. The Teacher from Heck
9. Ready, Set… Ghost!
10. Party Poopers
11. The Rottenest Angel
12. Punk’d and Skunked
13. Battle of the Dum Diddys
14. Got Cake?
15. Night of the Creepy Things
16. Calling All Birdbrains
17. Dumb Clucks

The Nightmare Room

1. Don’t Forget Me!
2. Locker 13
3. My Name is Evil
4. Liar Liar
5. Dear Diary, I’m Dead
6. They Call Me Creature
7. The Howler
8. Shadow Girl
9. Camp Nowhere
10. Full Moon Halloween
11. Scare School
12. Visitors

The Nightmare Room Thrillogy

1. Fear Games
2. What Scares You the Most?
3. No Survivors

Goosebumps HorrorLand

• Welcome to HorrorLand: A Survival Guide
• Revenge of the Living Dummy
• Creep from the Deep
• Monster Blood for Breakfast!
• The Scream of the Haunted Mask
• Dr. Maniac vs. Robby Schwartz
• Who’s Your Mummy?
• My Friends Call Me Monster
• Say Cheese – And Die Screaming!
• Welcome to Camp Slither
• Help! We Have Strange Powers!
• Escape from HorrorLand
• The Streets of Panic Park
• When the Ghost Dog Howls
• Little Shop of Hamsters
• Heads, You Lose!
• Weirdo Halloween
• The Wizard Of Ooze
• Slappy’s New Year!
• The Horror at Chiller House
• Claws!
• Night of Giant Everything
• The Five Masks of Dr. Screem
• Why I Quit Zombie School
• Don’t Scream!
• The Birthday Party of No Return

Goosebumps Most Wanted

• Son of Slappy
• Planet of the Lawn Gnomes
• How I Met My Monster
• Frankenstein’s Dog
• Dr. Maniac Will See You Now

Hark

1. The Badlands of Hark
2. The Invaders of Hark

Dangerous Girls

Both story were re-released in 2010 under the name Bitten.

1. Dangerous Girls
2. The Taste of Night

Stand-alone novels

• The Adventures of Shrinkman
• The Beast
• The Beast 2
• Curtains
• Eye Candy
• It’s the First Day of School…Forever!
• A Midsummer Night’s Scream
• Phone Calls
• The Sitter
• Superstitious
• Three Faces of Me
• When Good Ghouls Go Bad
• Zombie Town

Wikipedia

Bees Saal Baad (‘Twenty Years Later’) is a 1962 Indian horror film produced by Hemant Kumar, who also gave the music and sings some of the movie’s songs. The film was directed by Biren Nag from a screenplay by Druva Chatterjee, loosely inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. It stars Biswajeet, Waheeda Rehman, Madan Puri, Sajjan and Asit Sen. Bees Saal Baad became the highest box office grosser in 1962. It was re-made in 1988.

Thakur Kumar Vijay Singh (Biswajeet) returns from London to claim his ill-fated legacy. He is warned to stay away from the marshes that have killed his ancestors, but Kumar intends to find out, who is behind the killings. Suspicion shifts from human to ghoul.

First there is servant Laxman, who always stands with his neck tilted at an acute angle. He tells Kumar the family is cursed because of the crime committed by Kumar’s grandfather. He raped a local girl, who eventually killed herself. Now her spirit is taking revenge! Then there is Dr. Pandey (Madan Puri), who is going to inherit the property in case Kumar dies. A crippled man (Sajjan), who mysteriously roams the jungle, adds to the curiosity.

Kumar hires a private detective (Asit Sen), who turns out to be a buffoon. Meanwhile, Kumar comes across Radha (Waheeda Rehman), the niece of the local doctor, Ramlal (Manmohan Krishan) and both eventually fall in love. Then one night a man is found dead in the forest wearing Kumar’s suit…

‘Bees saal baad is an unintentionally hilarious mess, a suspense thriller unburdened by any suspense or thrill. An absurd parade of creepies populates its roster of murder suspects … And since a murder mystery is apparently not sinister enough without a supernatural element, there is a ghost, a payal-wearing apparition who jangles ephemerally past each murder scene.  When the mystery really gets going, we  hear of men in disguises or misleadingly wearing one another’s clothes, the story takes on the aspect of a Scooby-Doo mystery – and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!’ Filmi Geek

IMDb

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories – and the ongoing industry spun off from them – have a curious connection to the horror genre. The image of the master detective, stalking the fog-bound streets of London, seem to be as much a part of the Victorian horror world as Dracula and Jack the Ripper, and it is no surprise that enterprising filmmakers and writers have chosen to pit Holmes against these infamous monsters.

But the original Holmes stories only occasionally flirted with the supernatural, and even then, a rational explanation for events would be uncovered by Holmes in the end – like Scooby-Doo, Sherlock Holmes always found an altogether human cause for seemingly demonic forces.

The most famous of the Holmes stories is one such horror tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Originally serialised in The Strand magazine between 1901 and 1902, it is one of only four novel-length adventures for Holmes that Conan Doyle wrote. It remains the most popular and widely adapted of the Holmes stories, even though for a large part of the novel, Holmes is absent, leaving his companion and assistant Dr Watson to carry the story. This tale of greed and murder sees Holmes and Watson investigating the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, apparently at the hands (or paws) of a gigantic supernatural hound, part of a family curse. It is down to Holmes to protect Sir Henry, the Baskerville heir, while unmasking the killer from a collection of suspects and red herrings.

This is the most widely adapted of the Holmes novels, the story for some time being the ‘go to’ Holmes adventure for filmmakers. With the current trend to bastardise the Holmes character and use original (or barely recognisable) stories, the frequency of film and television adaptations has slowed, but with Sherlock Holmes being as popular as ever (albeit in modernised and unrecognisable forms), it can’t be long before another film or TV version of the tale appears.

The first Hound… film appeared from Germany in 1914. Conan Doyle’s creation was hugely popular with German readers, and this first film was a four part silent movie based on both the novel and Der Hund von Baskerville: Schauspiel in vier Aufzugen aus dem Schottischen Hochland. Frei nach motiven aus Poes und Doyles Novellen (“The Hound of the Baskervilles: a play in four acts set in the Scottish Highlands. Freely adapted from the stories of Poe and Doyle”), a 1907 stage play. As you might expect, it played fast and loose with the original story. Three further German adaptation appeared in 1920, and Richard Oswald, who had shot the third and fourth parts of the 1914 version, had another go in 1929.

The first British film based on the story was made in 1921 by Maurice Elvey, and it would be subsequently filmed again in 1932 in what would be the first ‘talkie’ version of the story. Edgar Wallace worked on the screenplay.

1937 saw another German version of the story, and in 1939 the first American version was shot. This version, made by Sidney Lanfield, is still regarded as one of the best adaptations of the book, and was the first of fourteen Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It’s a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel, but – bizarrely – due to copyright reasons, it is absent from the DVD box sets of the Rathbone Holmes movies.

After this flurry of Hound activity, it would be a decade and a half before the next version of the story, another German adaptation. But in 1959, Hammer films added The Hound of the Baskervilles to their series of gothic horror movies that had begun in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein. Starring Peter Cushing as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Sir Henry, the film was a rather loose adaptation of the story – there is more drama and the horror elements are (unsurprisingly) emphasised. Yet thanks to Cushing’s performance (many consider him the definitive Holmes) and the sheer quality of Terence Fisher’s film, this remains a much loved version of the story.

A decade later, Cushing would reprise the role of Holmes in a BBC TV series, taking over from Douglas Wilmer. The Hound of the Baskervilles was adapted as a two part story in 1968. This was more faithful than the Hammer version, but the tight schedule and reduced budgets of TV showed in the production values. Nevertheless, for fans of Holmes and Cushing, it remains well worth seeking out.

Proving the global popularity of the story, the next version appeared in 1971 from the Soviet Union. Another Russian version appeared a decade later, as part of a TV series based on Holmes. This 147 minute adaptation adds some ill-fitting humour to the story and while handsomely mounted has some eccentric performances (Vasily Livanov’s Holmes is rather too laid back while other characters chew the scenery).

1972 saw a US TV movie version of the story, with Stewart Granger making for an unconvincing Holmes in a fairly lacklustre movie that co-starred William Shatner! But the worst was yet to come.

In 1978, Paul Morrissey made a disastrous attempt to make a British comedy version of the story, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore starring alongside a host of well known British names — Denholm Elliot, Joan Greenwood, Hugh Griffith, Irene Handl, Terry-Thomas, Max Wall and Kenneth Williams — none of whom could save the film. Crass, bad taste humour that was mishandled and sheer self-indulgence all round – it feels essentially like a vanity project for Cook and Moore – made this one of the worst comedy films you could imagine, devoid of laughs or any sort of coherent story. It even includes a parody of The Exorcist…

1982 saw a four part British TV adaptation, with a rather miscast Tom Baker as Holmes, and a year later another British TV film adapted the novel.

This was the first of what was planned as a series of Holmes TV movies to be co-produced with US producer Sy Weintraub. Unfortunately for him, the Holmes stories slipped out of copyright and Granada TV announced their own series with Jeremy Brett. Only this and The Sign of Four were eventually shot. With Ian Richardson as Holmes, it’s a solid though unremarkable effort from director Douglas Hickox (who was going for the visual feel of Dario Argento’s films) and suffers from Martin Shaw’s Sir Henry being obviously and unconvincingly re-dubbed by another actor.

The Granada TV series that had scuppered the planned film series eventually adapted 42 of the 60 Holmes stories, and finally got around to The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1988. While critics praised Brett’s nervy performance, the series was often overly stagey and perhaps a little too faithful to the stories to always work as drama.

Also in 1983, Peter O’Toole voiced the character in the animated version Sherlock Holmes and the Baskerville Curse, and this would be the last version for some time. Holmes and the Hound eventually clashed again in 2000, in one of four Canadian TV films with Matt Frewer, who was hopelessly unsuited to the role.

Equally unsatisfactory was a dull BBC version from 2002, with Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This version again made changes to the original story, but was ultimately rather flat and lifeless.

The most recent – and possibly most annoying – version of the story appeared in the second series of the BBC’s overly smug Sherlock. Titled ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’, it throws out Conan Doyle almost entirely, to tell a story of secret military research into mind-altering drugs. While Mark Gatiss’ screenplay retained the horror elements, it made the worst mistake possible when changing a familiar story – namely, that if what you come up with isn’t better than what existed to begin with, why bother? The end result of this is a version that is just as much a slap in the face as Paul Morrissey’s ‘comedy’ adaptation.

It’s to be hoped that someone will make a more faithful, full blooded horror version of The Hound of the Baskervilles soon. While the story might seem to have been done to death, there are always new generations unfamiliar with the story. And after so many ineffectual – or downright insulting – versions, we deserve a new version to match the Rathbone and Hammer versions. Meanwhile, the story still inspires writers, artists and others in a series of novels, comic books, video games and even music… as you can see in the rather unusual version of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid below!

Article by David Flint, Horrorpedia

In the early 1960s, US film distributor K.Gordon Murray had a surprising amount of success importing, editing and dubbing Mexican children’s films and releasing them to unsuspecting audiences. His biggest hit was Santa Claus (aka Santa Claus vs the Devil), which pulled in large audiences who presumably expected something more festive than the incoherent and badly-dubbed atrocity they got. And he pulled the same trick with several other films, including this bizarre sequel to Mexican fairy tale movies Little Red Riding Hood (1960) and Little Red Riding Hood and Friends (1961).

In this often incomprehensible film, we see Little Red Riding Hood (Maria Gracia) and Tom Thumb (Cesaro Quezadas) battling a collection of monsters who live in the Haunted Forest (which seems to be inconveniently next door to their village). The monsters, who include Dracula and the Frankenstein monster, are led by The Queen of Badness (Ofelia Guilmáin), who seems modelled o the Wicked Queen from Disney’s Snow White. She’s a ruthless leader, and we first meet her as she presides over a show trial for the Wolf (Manuel Valdés) and the Ogre (José Elías Moreno), who are accused of not being evil enough after what I assume were the events in previous films.

The Wolf is something to behold, dressed in the most ragged, flea-bitten and unconvincing animal costume you’ll ever see. He also rarely stops talking, his voice in the dubbed version a gruff vocal that soon starts to grate… especially when he sings! Did I not mention that this is a musical too? Well, it is… at least for the first 20 minutes or so, after which everyone involved seemed to forget that they needed to include songs until the final scene.

The Queen of Badness casts a spell on the local villagers, turning them into monkeys and mice, so it is down to Little Red Riding Hood, Tom Thumb (who is quickly transformed into a normal size child by the Good Fairy – presumably to save on special effects, as he’s rarely on-screen before his transformation) and Stinky the Skunk, another fine animal costume and dubbed with a speeded up chipmunk voice that immediately makes your teeth hurt and is only occasionally comprehensible. Oh, and they have Red Riding Hood’s dog, which is the most indifferent animal actor ever seen on film – he frequently just wanders off camera, ignoring the dramatic action.

Our heroes make their way through the Haunted Forest – a passably spooky set – towards the Queen’s castle, battling the odd monster. Sometimes, helped by other kids, they even torture the monsters they defeated – one poor creature is hung by his feet and beaten like a piñata.

On reaching the castle, they defeat Mr. Hurricane, Dracula and Frankenstein (sorry purists, that’s what they call the monster here), finish off a terrible looking dragon and save their friends the Wolf and the Ogre, who have been bickering away in a cell before being tortured by Siamese Twins 2-in-1. As for the Queen of Badness… well, let’s just say she meets an explosive end.

Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Thumb vs The Monsters (originally Caperucita y Pulgarcito contra los monstruos and also titled Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood) is, of course, complete rubbish. The dubbed version is entirely incoherent, but it’s hard to imagine it was a masterpiece beforehand, given the all-round shoddiness on display. Yet the film is certainly entertaining for fans of bizarre cinema, and it’s easy to imagine cinemas full of undemanding, monster loving kids in the early Sixties eating it up.

Review by David Flint

Watch the full film!

Mike Vraney was the founder of Something Weird Video, an American film distributor company based in Seattle, Washington. On January 2, 2014, he died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was fifty-six years old. His sterling efforts to dig out and release masses of horror and exploitation films have undoubtedly been a major boon to the world of cult cinema, especially as his iconic label — which started out as basically a fan operation — had moved into legitimacy long ago via officially sanctioned DVD releases in conjunction with Image Entertainment and had recently been releasing Blu-rays and their own documentaries. Mike’s passion for trash cinema will be sorely missed.

Something Weird Video specialise in exploitation films, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis. The company is named after Lewis’ 1967 film Something Weird, and the logo is taken from that film’s original poster art. Something Weird has distributed well over 2,500 films to date. Even when the movies themselves were pretty awful, Vraney ensured fans got their money’s worth by making up themed triple-bills and loading DVDs with masses of ultra-obscure and head-shaking extras.

Vraney was inspired by his teenage job as a theater projectionist. His love for the obscure films that never made it to video prompted him to transfer hundreds of ancient reels of film to VHS and DVD. On the company website, he explained the label’s genesis:

‘In my mind, the last great genre to be scavenged were the exploitation/sexploitation films of the ’30s through the ’70s. After looking into this further, I realized that there were nearly 2,000 movies out there yet to be discovered. So with this for inspiration, my quest began and wouldn’t you know, just out of the blue I fell into a large collection of 16mm girlie arcade loops (which became the first compilation videos we put together). Around the same time I received an unexpected phone call that suddenly made all this real: my future and hands-down the king of sexploitation Dave Friedman was on the other end of the line. This would be the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship for both of us. Dave’s films became the building blocks for our film collection and he has taught and guided me through the wonderful world of sexploitation, introducing me to his colleagues (Dan Sonney, Harry Novak, H. G. Lewis, Bob Cresse and all the other colourful characters who were involved during his heyday) and they’ve been eager to dive into the business again.’

Adrian J Smith

Eerie Publications was a publisher of black-and-white horror-anthology comics magazines. Less well-known and more downscale than the field’s leader, Warren Publishing (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella), the New York City-based company was one of several related publishing ventures run by comic-book artist and 1970s magazine entrepreneur Myron Fass.

Titles published during their fifteen years of operation included Weird, Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Tales from the Tomb, Tales of Voodoo, and Witches’ Tales. All of these magazines featured grisly, lurid colour covers. New material was mixed with reprints from 1950s pre-Comics Code horror comics. Writer and artist credits seldom appeared, but included Marvel Comics penciler/inkers Dick Ayers and Chic Stone, as well as Fass himself, with brother Irving Fass and Ezra Jackson serving as art directors.

• Horror Tales (27 issues, June 1969 – Feb. 1979)
• Strange Galaxy (4 issues, Feb. 1971 – Aug 1971)
• Tales from the Crypt (1 issue, July 1968)
• Tales from the Tomb (33 issues, July 1969 – Feb. 1975)
• Tales of Voodoo (36 issues, Nov. 1968 – Nov. 1974)
• Terror Tales (46 issues, March 1969 – Jan. 1979)
• Terrors of Dracula (9 issues, May 1979 – Sept. 1981)
• Weird (69 issues, Jan. 1966 – Nov. 1981)
• Weird Worlds (5 issues, Dec. 1970 – Aug. 1971)
• Witches’ Tales (34 issues, July 1969 – Feb. 1975)

Wikipedia | We are grateful to Comic Vine for the images above

Yongary: Monster from the Deep , original title: Yonggary or Yongary (Hangul: 대괴수 용가리; RR: Taekoesu Yongary; lit. Great Monster Yongary) is a 1967 South Korean Kaiju monster film directed by prominent genre-film director Kim Ki-duk. It stars Oh Yeong-il and Nam Jeong-im. It was released in 1969 in the USA by American International Pictures (AIP). The film is now considered to be in the public domain.

In 1999, a reimagining of the film was produced, released in Korea simply as Yonggary and released in the United States as Reptilian.

In the Middle East, a bomb is set off that creates massive earthquakes. Meanwhile in South Korea, a young couple is about to get married and the tension builds when South Korea sends a manned space capsule to investigate the bomb site. The earthquake makes its way to South Korea, caused by a giant monster named Yongary (inspired by a mythical creature in Korean lore). Yongary attacks Seoul and makes his way to the oil refineries where he consumes the oil…

‘What’s surprising about Yongary is how much effort seems to have gone into it, at least technically speaking. The budget was obviously agonizingly low, and the movie features some of the worst matte shots of all time, but there’s an enormous amount of miniature scenery getting smashed, and the monster suit itself is at least as good as what Toho was serving up in the late 1960’s. Such a shame, then, that the people responsible for this film didn’t feel the need to put commensurate effort into the acting, direction, or screenplay.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

‘Unfortunately, the effects as a whole were one of the weaker points of the movie. Yonggary’s fire breath was produced by a blow torch within one of the heads used for the monster’s effect, and the nozzle could clearly be seen during some of the scenes when he’s blasting fire. The sets were decent and looked realistic enough when it came to Yonggary destroying them, but when it came to actors interacting with the rubble, it wasn’t hard to tell that they were pieces of styrofoam or (in the case of bricks) cardboard boxes.’ Kaiju Classics

‘Yongary was obviously meant as a replay (some MIGHT say “rip-off”) of the Godzilla films. This is most notable in the destruction scenes where Yongary walks through a building VERY similar to Japan’s Diet Building which Godzilla walked though in the 1954 original and which King Kong climbed atop of in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). The special effects in Yongary are passable, but are not up to the standard set by Toho’s effects wizard, Eiji Tsuburaya. In particular, the scenes of the monster shooting fire features an obvious metal pipe protruding from the costume’s mouth. Actually, a Japanese cameraman was recruited by the Koreans to help make this film look as much like the Japanese monster films as possible.’ Joe Cascio, DVD Drive-In

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to Just Screenshots for some of the images above

The Body Beneath (1969) is a British-shot horror film written and directed by American auteur Andy Milligan. It stars Gavin Reed, Jackie Skarvellis, Berwick Kaler, Richmond Ross, Emma Jones, and Colin Gordon.

The Reverend Alexander Algernon Ford, a vampire residing at Carfax Abbey in London, wishes to revive his ailing bloodline, which has deteriorated due to inbreeding. With the help of his mute wife, Alicia, his hunchback servant, Spool, and a gang of female vampires, he sets about contacting the last few members of the Ford family not already converted. After abducting a distant relative, Susan Ford, whose role is to sire a new army of vampire babies, the Reverend convenes a vampire feast where the future of the Ford clan will be decided…

A tale of incestuous vampires cruising the outermost branches of their family tree for new blood, this was the second of five films made in London by Andy Milligan in the late 1960s (the first, Nightbirds, was shot immediately before it, in late Autumn 1968). Milligan generally preferred period-settings for his horror films (the late 1800s in The Ghastly Ones; medieval England in Torture Dungeon), although his ultra-low budgets and nonchalant approach to mise-en-scène resulted in numerous visual anachronisms. The Body Beneath is the reverse angle: a modern-day drama one could almost mistake for ‘period’. The primary location is a Neo-Tudor house with carefully preserved Victorian furnishings, the women wear flouncy dresses of uncertain vintage, and two of the main characters, an evil vicar and a hunchbacked simpleton, could have stepped out of a Gothic Victorian fantasy. However, the glimpses of formica surfaces and Kays Catalogue knitwear are intentional this time; we’re definitely in the 1960s.

Villainous bloodsucker the Reverend Ford, marvellously played by Gavin Reed, is The Body Beneath’s most compelling creation. Reed (who died in 1990 at the age of just 59) knew precisely how to handle Milligan’s dauntingly overwritten material. With a lofty, supercilious attitude and immaculate diction he would have made an excellent mischief-maker in shows like The Avengers or Department S. “I was reading the papers – The Times of course – when I came across your name in the arrivals,” he sniffs to Canadian relative Graham Ford. (Note how actor Colin Gordon starts to improve his own enunciation in response, as if cowed by the Reverend’s impeccable English.) Milligan gives Reed most of the best lines: when hammering six-inch nails through the hands of his hunchbacked servant Spool as punishment for disloyalty, he muses, “It’s strange… I have no soul, yet I feel compassion. It doesn’t make sense, does it?” The Body Beneath appears to have been Reed’s only major role; he had a couple of parts in obscure TV shows in the 1960s, plus a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance as a camp windowdresser in Carry on Loving (1970), but that’s about all. At some point in the 1970s he moved to the USA, but there’s an eleven year gap between Carry on Loving and his appearance in the oddball Bruce Dern vehicle Tattoo (1981). He turned up again as a snide theatre director bullying Dustin Hoffman in the early scenes of Tootsie (1982) but seems to have done little else on the big screen. Perhaps the theatre was his natural home?

A well shot sex scene introduces second-billed Jackie Skarvellis, and again, Milligan is well served; Skarvellis is a vivid, energetic performer who takes a relatively uninteresting character and makes her watchable. It’s rather a pity she wasn’t given a villainous role, because Milligan writes for his monsters far better than his heroines, and Skarvellis is the sort of performer who would gleefully sink her teeth into such an opportunity. Chiefly a theatre actor, she was one of the uninhibited London cast of the nudist stage show “Oh! Calcutta!” and went on to a busy career as actor, writer and stage director which continues to this day.

Berwick Kaler, who plays Spool, can barely recall making The Body Beneath, but says that his role took no more than two or three days to shoot. The main thing he remembers about ‘playing hunchback’ is that Milligan wanted him to stoop too much. Milligan may have been over-egging things, but since Spool comes across more like a child’s distant memory of The Hunchback of Notre Dame than a plausible depiction of disability perhaps it was simply a case of the director failing to convey the required tone to the performers. Either that, or he liked to see Kaler bent over…

Milligan’s stories often involve the travails of families riven by hatred, and The Body Beneath is no exception. The Fords’ vampire bloodline has been weakened by incest, requiring new donors, hence the Reverend’s attempt to track down and exsanguinate distant kinfolk. With smarmy relatives popping round for tea, and stilted conversation before murder, the film is like one of Mike Leigh’s suburban comedies crossed with an episode of the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows.

Buy Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

“Set in the graveyards of England!” boasts the US one-sheet for The Body Beneath, and indeed, the film begins with an atmospheric scene in Highgate Cemetery. Chiefly, however, The Body Beneath takes place in a brooding Neo-Tudor mansion called  was shot in West Hampstead’s Sarum Chase, built in 1932 on the edge of London’s Hampstead Heath. The owner, Frances Owen Salisbury, died in 1962 and left the house to the British Council of Churches, after which it was available for film and photo shoots (see the gatefold inner sleeve of The Rolling Stones’ “Beggars Banquet” album and the nudie short Miss Frankenstein R.I.P.). Milligan gathered some wonderfully creepy shots at Sarum Chase, staged a crude ‘crucifixion’ in the mansion’s ornate gardens (one wonders how the British Council of Churches would have reacted), and returned a few months later to shoot a werewolf movie Curse of the Full Moon - later released in the States as The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!.

In 1968, vampires and Gothic horror in general were still very popular in the UK, therefore Milligan’s decision to venture into the supernatural made sound commercial sense. Yet for reasons that remain unclear he eschewed the classic image-pool from which he could have drawn. The vampires in The Body Beneath have no fangs, they can move around in the daylight (albeit with special injections to counteract the sun), and they spend more time bickering with their victims than gnashing at their throats. Given that their leader lives in the liturgical splendour of ‘Carfax Abbey’ and wears priestly garb, one supposes too that this clan of peculiar bloodsuckers are immune to the effects of crucifixes and clerical paraphernalia, although this is never explicitly put to the test. Only in the semi-comedic and thoroughly wonderful Blood (1974) did Milligan at last give us a fanged vampire allergic to the cross.

Buy The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Andy Milligan from Amazon.co.uk| Amazon.com

When he does go for a touch of supernatural menace, Milligan handles it well. For instance, when Graham’s wife allows the vampires to enter the conjugal bedroom, their arrival is so creepy that we don’t think to ask how all four of them squeezed through one tiny window. The fate of a maid, eyes popped by knitting needles, is satisfyingly grisly, though inflicted on one of the few likeable characters, played by Elizabeth Sentance with a quirky charm not unlike British thesp’ Brenda Blethyn. The aforementioned prologue in the cemetery is a Gothic delight, with three female vampires, trailing coloured lace like some sinister Kate Bush cult, attacking a mourner in a graveyard. (The scene is further distinguished by Milligan’s wonky sound recording, which gives an unearthly warble to the vampires’ insinuating “Hello!”). Then there’s the vampire party in which, unusually, Milligan chooses eerie electronic music for accompaniment. It’s the sustained highlight of the film, and one of the best sequences he ever shot. With artfully blurred lensing and some accomplished low level lighting he creates a ritual haze of near-abstraction, redolent of underground/experimental films such as Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Less successful is Graham Ford’s off-camera demise, nibbled to death by vampire harpies while unconscious. It’s something of a let-down that we don’t see this stolid, handsome, but oh-so-boring hunk struggling for his life in a welter of gore. The pacing, too, is virtually non-existent. For instance, after the prologue we’re thrust into three consecutive dialogue scenes; long rambling discourses between Graham Ford and the Reverend, Susan Ford and her fiancé, and Candace Ford and her maid. This prolixity, however, is par for the course with Milligan. If you can’t dig the ceaseless prattle of his sniping, carping, endlessly debating characters, you’re never going to ‘get’ his films!

The Compton Cinema, Soho, owned and run by Milligan producer Leslie Elliot in the late 1960s.

Elizabeth: “Go to America? Never! What is America? What is it made of? Pimps, prostitutes, religious fanatics? Thrown out of England but a few short centuries ago. They’re the scum of the Earth.”

This scabrous attack on the USA comes during a ‘vampire summit meeting’ held by the Reverend Ford, in which he suggests that the assembled bloodsuckers should emigrate West. It is apparently word-for-word what Curtis Elliot, the bullying father of The Body Beneath’s producer Leslie Elliot, said during a row which brought to a violent end Milligan’s association with Elliot’s Cinemedia company. (How did the argument begin? Rumour has it that Elliot Snr. thought an offhand remark of Milligan’s was anti-Semitic; Leslie Elliot, however, believes his father deliberately took umbrage at an innocent comment.) Afterwards Milligan managed to eke out his finances for another three films shot in London (Bloodthirsty Butchers; The Man With Two Heads; Curse of the Full Moon) before returning to New York. The Body Beneath was never released in the UK, but it went on to play various 42nd Street dives throughout the 1970s, on a double bill with Milligan’s first film shot in 35mm, Guru the Mad Monk (1970).

Sadly, life didn’t get any easier for Andy back in New York. Despite or maybe because of his abrasive, combative manner he found himself regularly screwed over by producers and distributors. In many ways his sojourn in England was a highpoint of his career; he found himself wanted, in the homeland of the Gothic horror tale, making movies for a producer who admired him. Had he not so catastrophically fallen out with the man holding the purse-strings, who knows where his English adventure might have taken him?

Buy Nightbirds + The Body Beneath on BFI Blu-ray + DVD from Amazon.co.uk

The Body Beneath enjoyed one of the more startling renaissances in recent years when it was included as an extra on the BFI’s Blu-Ray release of Milligan’s Nightbirds.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Related: The Ghastly Ones | The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!