Witchfinder General





Michael Reeves only directed three films before his tragic death from an overdose of downers in the late 60s. Luckily he left us with some fantastic films including a great late Boris Karloff vehicle, the Sorcerers, but of the three, Witchfinder General is his masterpiece, a slice of harrowing 17th horror that's a million miles away from the campy fun of it's Hammer contemporaries.

Vincent Price dropped the melodramatic...

If





Malcolm McDowell (Clockwork Orange) takes on the establishment in this allegorical tale about the horror's of the British Public school system. Made in 1968, when popular culture seemed to be questioning everything, If... mirrored the global explosion of youth rebellion and it presents an educational system for the sons of the well off that seems designed to brutalize and beat the will out of young boys.

Directed by Lindsay Anderson...

Rosemary's Baby





"This isn't a dream... This is really happening!"


Mia Farrow stars with John Cassavetes in Roman Polanski's timeless chiller about Guy, a jobbing actor, and his elfin wife, moving into an old fashioned apartment building in New York City*. The filmmakers used the Dakota Building, which became infamous later on as the place outside which John Lennon was shot. The loving couple soon become friendly with the apparently...

The Yellow Teddybears

The early 60s saw censorship slowly slipping and UK producers cashing in with a series of controversial (by the standards of the day) movies that pushed the sexual content envelope to it's limit.

Tony Tenser, later of UK horror specialists Tigon Pictures, was behind this 1963 movie which was packaged as an exploitative and pervy look at burgeoning sexuality among teenage school girls but was in fact a message movie about the perils of pre-marital...

I Bury The Living





Robert Kraft is starting a new job as the chairman of a committee overseeing the running of a massive cemetery, a graveyard so huge that a map is kept in the office, displaying every grave. Pins are used, black for filled graves and white for sold plots that have yet to be occupied by the deceased.

When Robert makes an error and places a pair of black pins on the wrong grave site causing the young couple who paid for...

Carnival of Soul





This was a one off movie by a company who specialized in industrial and educational films for businesses and schools. The producers obviously didn't realize they were making a classic that would go on to influence many genre filmmakers, including Romero who was clearly influenced in his choice of zombie make-up for "Night of the Living Dead"

A teenage drag race goes horribly wrong causing a car to plummet from a bridge...

Satan's Sadists





A perverse thrill can sometimes be gotten from wallowing in the last gasps of a once successful actors career. Think of Molly Ringwald, once a part of Pretty in Pink and heading for glory before crashing in the 90s and ending up in the terrible Aussie slasher movie "Cut".

And so to Russ Tamblyn, once riding high on the success of West Side Story, before Hollywood's excesses saw him plummet to earth, leaving him starring...

Danger Diabolik





Well, here it is, one of the greatest slices of kitsch 60s pop-art cinema ever produced.

Directed by Italian genre expert Mario Bava, this comic book tale of crime capers and daring heists is the source the Beastie Boys video for Body Movin', in which they use footage from the movie.

Telling the OTT story of Diabolik (John Phillip Law), a masked international thief and his blond bombshell girlfriend as...

If I was 30 years older I'd marry Ingrid Pitt...

Countess Dracula





Hammers most voluptuous Scream Queen, Ingrid Pitt stars in a film loosely based on the notorious Countess Bathory, a genuine character from the darker annals of medieval European history, although I wouldn't want to vouch for the veracity of Hammer's take on here story.

She is a withered old crone who longs for the erotic attentions of a young stud who has...

Dracula Vs Frankenstein





Al Adamson should win a posthumous Oscar for services to the trashy drive-in movie! Whether it be cheap Kung Fu knock offs, scummy biker flicks or this ghost-train wreck of a movie, his films may have been terrible, but they were never dull.

Cobbled together from other unfinished projects, Dracula Vs Frankenstein has it all, Mad scientists hiding out in fair ground attractions, deranged hunched back assistants...

Curse of the Crimson Altar





Second division horror from the Hammer Studio's chief rivals, Tigon,The Curse of the Crimson Altar features three of the horror genres biggest stars, Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Euro-Scream Queen, Barbara Steele, in a campy witchcraft tale for fans of kitsch 60s gothic.

Mark Eden plays Robert Manning, a man who finds out that his brother, Peter, has mysteriously disappeared. Robert visits an isolated...

Night of the Eagle

A sensible university academic played by Peter Wyngarde is looking forward to a bright future until he finds out that his wife has been concealing magical charms around their home, believing that they will protect and bring good luck. He tells her to destroy them but this turns out to be a grave error as his luck is about to change, bringing a whole mess of trouble.

A quirky old fashioned little spook show, Night of the Eagle plays up to the old cliches...

The Blood Beast Terror





A shaky but fun slice of British Schlock from the Tigon studio, who brought such classics as Witchfinder General and Blood On Satan's Claw to the screen. Although this cheap programmer isn't in the same league as those movies, it's still a good watch for fans of the ropier end of Brit horror thanks to the ridiculous concept of a "were-moth" on a killing rampage, combined with Peter Cushing, as ever remaining quietly dignified...

Peeping Tom





Director Michael Powell went from being a darling of the British film industry to a virtual pariah with this difficult and, at the time of it's release, deeply controversial proto-slasher.

Mark Lewis is a seemingly ordinary young man with an evil secret...he loves to kill women and capture the agonies of their final moments in film. As a child his father, a scientist, performed some nasty experiments on Mark's nervous system...

Jess Franco's Fu Manchu Movies




Clip from Blood of Fu Manchu


Christopher Lee turns in another couple stern faced performances as the racially dubious Far Eastern criminal mastermind Fu Manchu, a character who would have fitted perfectly into the Bond Movies of the 1960s. At the Helm of these late entries in the Fu Manchu cycle is sleaze kingpin Jess Franco, whose career was peaking at the time thanks to the patronage of Producer Harry...

The Witches





More production line horror fun from the Hammer Studio now, with The Witches, a scary vehicle for Actress Joan Fontaine who plays a school teacher struck by a nervous breakdown following an unpleasant run in with voodoo witchcraft while teaching in Africa.

When she returns to Britain she is hired by a rich family to become head teacher at a small private school in an isolated rural village. In classic Hammer style the villagers...

Plague of the Zombies





Although not as well known as the studio's Dracula and Frankenstein movies, Hammer's Plague of the Zombies rates as one of their most satisfying productions, managing to balance the delightful camp that we all ironically enjoy 40 years after the fact with some real chills.

Opening on some stereotypical voodoo rituals*, we move swiftly on to James Forbes, a medical professor who has received a letter from a former...

The Sorcerers








Michael Reeves died tragically in the late 60s from an overdose of Barbiturates having completed only three films, films that singled him out as a major talent in the industry. Had he lived, then most of those who worked with him agree that he would have gone on to be a Hollywood major player.

He first directed She-Beast, a rather amateurish low budget B flick that showed he had the tenacity in getting...

Reposted from the tragically defunct DVDisgo...

Valley of the Dolls







During the extra features on the Cinema Reserve special edition of Valley of the Dolls, one of the hacks dragged in to hype this rather fine exercise in big budget lunacy states that the definition of a camp movie is one that doesn't set out to be over the top, garish or silly. A camp movie should never be self-conscious and it certainly shouldn't wink...