Radioactive waste dumped off the coastline creates mutant monsters. The beasts attack slumber parties, beaches, tourists, and terrorize a waterfront community as a scientist, his daughter, her boyfriend and the local police try to find a way to stop them
A creature that looks like a cross between a Chinese dragon puppet and the Pope sucks up people into its maw. A sheriff, his wife, and a "handsome" scientist battle it to the end, with a sub plot about the evils of bachelorhood.
A deranged scientist is using his employer's top-secret bio-laboratory to engage in clandestine eugenics experiments. When he starts kidnapping leading citizens for use in his twisted tests, it's up to rogue cop Mike Halstead to come to the rescue of all and sundry, including his lady friend Connie, who is also being held captive by the madman
Working for O.S.I., the Office of Scientific Investigation, A-Man agent Jeffrey Stewart and his partner Dan Forbes are sent to a local hardware store where they find a strong magnetic field has magnetized every metal item in the store. Investigating further, they eventually trace the source of the magnetism to an airborn flight carrying scientist Howard Denker, now dying of radiation poisoning, who has carted on board with him a new radioactive element which he has bombarded with alpha particles for 200 hours. The element, dubbed 'serranium' grows geometrically by creating matter out of energy which it absorbs from metallic objects surrounding it. Stewart calculates that if the substance is not destroyed soon that within 24 hours or so it will have grown large enough to throw Earth out of its orbit.
Scientists working on induced hibernation for space travel are killed, apparently by machines acting independently. Security agent Sheppard arrives at the secret underground space research base to investigate possible sabotage. He finds that the whole base is coordinated by supercomputer NOVAC and its robots Gog and Magog; and a strange aircraft is detected high overhead.
In an overpopulated futuristic Earth, a New York police detective finds himself marked for murder by government agents when he gets too close to a bizarre state secret involving the origins of a revolutionary and needed new foodstuff
"Cardinal Richelieu and his power-hungry entourage seek to take control of seventeenth-century France, but need to destroy Father Grandier - the priest who runs the fortified town that prevents them from exerting total control. So they seek to destroy him by setting him up as a warlock in control of a devil-possessed nunnery, the mother superior of which is sexually obsessed by him. A mad witch-hunter is brought in to gather evidence against the priest, ready for the big trial."
Easily the best version of Dracula filmed to date, this BBC television production was originally presented as a three-part miniseries. This version hews fairly close to the original novel, including a fairly extended version of Harker's adventures at Dracula's castle, Lucy's sleepwalking in the cliffside graveyard at Whitby (apparently shot on location, with the famous long stone staircase of Whitby memorably showcased), and a final chase across the "Transylvanian" countryside.
Louis Jordan (of "Gigi" fame) seems an odd choice to play the Count, but proves to be surprisingly effective. Beneath his courtly Continental manners, he manages to imply a will of steel and an otherworldly coldness. Frank Finlay is also memorable as the comically eccentric Professor Van Helsing, whose habitual lightness of manner makes his occasional serious moments more impressive by contrast. (The BBC lost a great opportunity by never casting Finlay as Dr. Who.) The comely Susan Penhaligon vamps her way outrageously through her role as the flirtatious Lucy, and her interludes with the Count are some of the more torridly suggestive that have been filmed in a serious movie. When her vampire tendencies start to surface, once can sense a current of barely concealed mirth in Penhaligon's performance. The other performers are more perfectly in character, with Mark Burns showing a tortured gravity as Lucy's hopeless admirer Doctor Seward; Richard Barnes as Quincy has the comical Wild West accent ascribed to the character in the novel. The improbably named Bosco Hogan makes Jonathan Harker's vulnerability and desperation very real. Jack Shepherd is a memorably intense Renfield, a grotesque but surrealistically poetic and finally tragic figure. Finally, Judy Bowker as Mina Westenra/Harker overshadows the male leads, as she must, with her nobility in the face of her own creeping transformation.
The special effects in general are primitive by today's standards, but always interesting and atmospheric. The storm scene with a model ship bobbing about on slowly undulating black sheets seems to show great inventiveness in the face of a limited budget. Other psychedelic visual elements enhance the otherworldly character of the story. The treatment of the story as a metaphor for Victorian sexual repression is typical of more recent productions and may have served to influence the campy Bram Stoker's Dracula and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary. However, the usual modern device of tying Dracula to his historical namesake, is only briefly hinted at here by woodcuts of the Impaler's work in the opening credits.
While the hot rodders and motorcyclists are having a rock-and-roll beach party, a barrel of radioactive material is unloaded from a passing ship, plunges to the bottom and splits against a jagged rock. A black liquid oozes out and covers a shapeless mass on the ocean floor, which suddenly moves and becomes an encrusted vicious monster. Soon there are several monsters and they must have human blood to survive. Tina is the first victim, and football hero Hank Green and airhead Elaine Gavin enlist the aid of her science-professor father, Dr. Gavin, to solve and capture the killer. Not working fast enough to prevent the attack on twenty teen-agers at a slumber party nor the killing of three girl motorists, Dr. Gavin finds an arm lost by one of the monsters and discovers that only sodium will destroy the monsters whose composition is mostly water. Can they gather enough salt in southern California to put an end to this horror?
The Creature from the Black Lagoon is back! This time he's captured by scientists and transported to an aquarium in south Florida. Naturally, he's attracted to the lovely female scientist and manages to escape and kidnap her, heading to Jacksonville, presumably to catch a Jaguars game.
Professor Nolter believes it's man's destiny to survive an uncertain future by evolving into a hybrid plant/human mutation. To test his theories, Nolter supervises the abduction of young co-eds and fuses them with mutant plants he's developed in his lab.
Universal Pictures introduced audiences to yet another classic movie monster with this superbly crafted film, originally presented in 3-D. The story involves the members of a fossil-hunting expedition down a dark tributary of the mist-shrouded Amazon, where they enter the domain of a prehistoric, amphibious "Gill Man" -- possibly the last of a species of fanged, clawed humanoids who may have evolved entirely underwater. Tranquilized, captured, and brought aboard, the creature still manages to revive and escape -- slaughtering several members of the team -- and abducts their sole female member (Julie Adams), spiriting her off to his mist-shrouded lair. This sparks the surviving crewmen to action -- particularly those who fancy carrying the girl off themselves. Director Jack Arnold makes excellent use of the tropical location, employing heavy mists and eerie jungle noises to create an atmosphere of nearly constant menace. The film's most effective element is certainly the monster itself, with his pulsating gills and fearsome webbed talons. The creature was played on land by stuntman Ben Chapman and underwater by champion swimmer Ricou Browning -- who was forced to hold his breath during long takes because the suit did not allow room for scuba gear. The end result was certainly worth the effort, proven in the famous scene where the Gill Man swims effortlessly beneath his female quarry in an eerie ballet -- a scene echoed much later by Steven Spielberg in the opening of Jaws
Hard encoded japanese subtitles... :( but excellent 3-D retro movie nontheless.. A sculptor of wax figures for a museum is horrified when his partner proposes setting fire to the unpopular museum in order to collect the insurance money. As the wax figures melt amid the blaze, the two men have a fight. The sculptor is knocked out in the scuffle and left to "perish" among the flames. He resurfaces many years later for the launch of his own wax museum. The opening coincides with the sudden disappearance of some dead bodies from the city morgue. His assistant begins to suspect his boss of foul play, especially after the deranged wizard of wax begins eyeing his assistant's lovely girlfriend's friend as a model for a waxed figure of Marie Antoinette(A must for the Charles Bronson fans !!!)
John Putnam is a writer and an amateur stargazer with a new home out in the beautiful Arizona desert, which he enjoys with Ellen Fields, his girlfriend and a local schoolteacher. John is not trusted by the people of the small town near where he lives, certainly not by Sheriff Matt Warren, who feels protective of Ellen,"I think he fancied her for himself". One night, John and Ellen see a meteor crash in the desert. John drags his friend, Pete, out of bed to take him over to the crash site in his helicopter. Once there, John climbs down into the crater. Unfortunately, he does so alone, as Pete and Ellen wait for him. John is the only one who sees the spaceship before a landslide covers it. And John is the only one who catches a glimpse of the hideous thing inside. At first John's story seems mad, until some of the townsfolk begin acting strange - as if they aren't really who they seem to be. NB:never climb into craters unsupervised....
What makes this film stand out is the genuinely amazing hallucination sequences,an utterly surreal barrage of imagery, sometimes coming faster than a vindaloo the morning after: dozens of hands are seen reaching, grabbing from beneath a river; a flaming eye crashes from the sky and becomes a flame-throwing skull-headed beast; a giant skull floats above a strange temple, where a woman is reclining upon an altar. What can it all mean?...and who cares as long as its 3 f**k*n D
Not only is The Mask Canada's first horror film, it also happens to be Canada's only 3D film. All of the psychedelic mask sequences are arranged in 3D, to give the viewer the same experience Barnes is receiving from the mask. It is handled competently and is neither intrusive nor detracting.
(For the original theatrical release of this picture, the 3D glasses were attached to a wearable mask. Whenever one would hear the Voice in the film tell Barnes, "Put on the mask," the audience knew to do likewise with their own masks.)
Regardless of whether its hallucinations mean anything or not, this film offers a tripping experience. I can guarantee you've not seen anything like it.
A New York anthropologist named Professor Harold Monroe travels to the wild, inhospitable jungles of South America to find out what happened to a documentary film crew that disappeared two months before while filming a documentary about primitive cannibal tribes deep in the rain forest. With the help of two local guides, Professor Monroe encounters two tribes, the Yacumo and the Yanomamo. While under the hospitality of the latter tribe, he finds the remains of the crew and several reels of their undeveloped film. Upon returning to New York City, Professor Monroe views the film in detail, featuring the director Alan Yates, his girlfriend Faye Daniels, and cameramen Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso. After a few days of traveling, the film details how the crew staged all the footage for their documentary by terrorizing and torturing the natives. Despite Monroe's objections, the television studio Pan American still wishes to air the footage as a legitimate documentary. In order to change their minds, Monroe shows the station's executives the film's final reels, so they could see first hand how the crew's fate came to be.
Two lovers stationed at a remote base in the asteroid fields of Saturn are intruded upon by a retentive technocrat from Earth and his charge: a malevolent 8-ft robot. Remember, in space no one can hear you scream… In the distant future, single man and woman scientific team living on one of Saturn’s moons to grow food for the starving Earth, have their isolation shattered when a deranged killer, masquerading as a visiting technology expert, arrives at their lonely outpost to take over their work and build a lethal creation: a super-intelligent 8-foot robot which later takes a murderous mind of its own.
Unable to escape the clutches of Hector, the lust-crazed humanoid, FARRAH FAWCETT struggles to free herself.
A stray planet on a collision course with Earth instead takes orbit around our blue marble. What seems like a dead planet suddenly launches a fleet of flying saucers which attack our space fleets.
Commander Kit Draper and Colonel Dan McReady are orbiting Mars in an exploritory surveyor. A malfunction forces them to eject with only Draper and a monkey named Mona surviving. Draper must learn to survive in this hostile environment fighting thirst, hunger and even hostile aliens if he expects to see home again.
Susan Winter undertakes an expedition to a remote area of Mexico, hoping to find her fiance, Bruce Barton, whos plane-crashed there some time ago. The area is suspected to have a good supply of uranium, so Susan has promoted this to wealthy Martin Melville to get money for her expenses. In addition to Melville, she is accompanied by guide Russ Bradford and pilot Lee Brand in his small-engine craft. But the plane crashes, stranding the four in an isolated valley, which they soon discover is highly radioactive and inhabited by mutated life forms - giant insects, enormous lizards, and a 25-foot-tall human male with a deformed face, just one eye, and only brute animal instincts to feed and protect its turf...
It is the future, and humans are divided into two groups: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals (but don't have the vision). Completely separate, neither group is complete, but together they make a whole. One man from the "thinkers" dares visit the underground where the workers toil, and is astonished by what he sees...
Roman Polanski's movies divide movie fans. Even admirers of his output will single out a particular movie that just doesn't work for them (in my case it's 'The Fearless Vampire Killers', which for me is an utter waste of time). But I would bet that virtually every Polanski buff would list 'Repulsion' as one of his very best movies. It's a brilliant exercise in unease and paranoia that has lost none of its power of the years. It is still one of the most disturbing movies ever made, and manages to evoke an atmosphere filled with dread and fear without resorting to obvious shock tactics. Catherine Deneuve is perfect as a beautiful and disturbed girl slowly lost to delusion and phobia. This is arguably her most memorable role along with Bunuel's equally brilliant 'Belle De Jeur'. The rest of the cast is interesting, and includes Yvonne Furneaux ('La Dolce Vita'), underrated Brit character actor Ian Hendry ('The Hill', 'Theatre Of Blood', 'Get Carter'), John Fraser ('The Trials Of Oscar Wilde'), and Patrick Wymark ('The Conqueror Worm', and Hendry's co-star in the fascinating but almost forgotten 'Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun'). All the cast are excellent, but Deneuve's unforgettable performance is what really sticks in your mind long after the movie is over. That and Polanski's accomplished and tense direction make this movie essential viewing for all movie buffs. One of the most important and impressive movies of the 1960s, and one of the most chilling horror movies ever made.
Christine Penmark (Nancy Kelly) is the daughter of a famous writer, Richard Bravo (Paul Fix). She's married to Kenneth (William Hopper), a military Colonel who seems to spend most of his time away from home, usually on short-term call in some other city. The landlady of their apartment building, Monica Breedlove (Evelyn Varden), is obsessed with psychology, having even been analyzed by Freud. Because of this, she courts friendships with other intellectuals, including a criminology author, Reginald Tasker (Gage Clarke). But by far the most important character is Christine's young daughter, Rhoda (Patricia McCormick).
Rhoda is oddly adult in her behavior. She goes out of her way to excel at everything she does, to be prim and proper, to seem amicable and innocent. However, in the wake of one of Rhoda's classmates falling victim to a drowning accident while on a school picnic, suspicion falls on Rhoda. As more facts come out, Christine realizes with horror that her child just might be a "bad seed".
A tightly focused ensemble piece, heavy on dialogue and taking place primarily in one interior location, The Bad Seed is one of the better but more understated horror films from the 1950s. Because of its ideas, its unusual portrayal of a manipulatively "evil" child (and a weirdly cute young girl at that), and its nihilistic and abruptly mind-blowing ending, The Bad Seed was quite a shocking film in 1956. In my book, it still is. That's not to say that the film is graphic. Much more so than, say, The Haunting (1963), The Bad Seed is the classic example of how something implied and not shown can be just as effective and disturbing as something shown.
Still, not everyone loves it, of course. "Staginess" is often cited with either a direct claim or an implication that that quality is necessarily a flaw. The Bad Seed's "staginess" is easily explicable. It is a film adaptation of a play by Maxwell Anderson, which was itself adapted from William March's last novel, published in 1954. It's easy to see how only minor changes would allow the film to be performed on a stage. However, I don't see The Bad Seed's staginess as a flaw. It's not as if plays are bad merely for the fact that they're plays, right? There seems to be some unspoken or unanalyzed attendant assumption that cinema shouldn't bear strong similarities to other artistic media and/or a belief that cinema should always be "naturalistic". I don't agree with either of those assumptions. Cinema can do many different things. It shouldn't all just be one way or another.
Rather than being a flaw, the staginess of The Bad Seed is an asset. It catalyzed the effective "tell, don't show" attitude towards the film's violence. It allows all attention to be placed on the fantastic ensemble performances, and especially on McCormack, who turns in the best young female performance this side of Dakota Fanning. And it helps make the film feel like the parable that it is.
Under director Mervyn LeRoy's hand, The Bad Seed is an extended meditation on two philosophical ideas--twisted psychologies and the nature versus nurture debate. It's not just Rhoda who has psychologically-rooted problems and dysfunctions, but everyone in the film. Christine is in denial, and shows that she has long been in denial, about her happiness, her life and her daughter. She continually tries to act as if everything is kosher and normal, but as the film progresses, she has periodic cracks in the armor, until the "breakdown" at the end--and even in the midst of that, she tries to act as if everything is okay and mundane. Monica, who keeps trying to psychoanalyze everyone (except the one person she most needs to psychoanalyze), tends to also intellectually browbeat or overpower them. Kenneth is an absentee husband. Leroy Jessup (Henry Jones), the apartment maintenance man, presents himself as just as twisted, deceptive and manipulative as Rhoda, and there is a pedophile subtext with the character. Claudia Fern (Joan Croydon), the head of Rhoda's school, seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and also seems to be in denial, as does Christine's father Richard, who also has elements of absenteeism and emotional distancing. Hortense Daigle (Eileen Heckart), the mother of the drowned boy, is an alcoholic, and her tragedy puts her over the edge. In fact, the only character in the entire film who seems well-adjusted is Reginald, and perhaps that's symbolic of his function as a criminologist.
The nature versus nurture material is incorporated in an unusual way. Characters debate this to an extent, but most take the nurture side. However, the film itself makes more of an argument for the nature side, and Christine, despite being in denial, comes to believe the nature side, as does Reginald, the even-keeled character. In fact, William March (the author of the novel) believed more in the nature side, and said as much to colleagues while he was working on the book, including doing research into psychotic killers.
What helps to amp up the disturbing qualities of the film is that Rhoda is manipulating the audience as well as she is manipulating other characters. Only very seldom does LeRoy have her "true nature" come through, and it's a shock to us in the same way that it's a shock to the other characters. The ending of the book was changed to be in line with the "moral code" for Hollywood films at the time, but the resultant, somewhat bizarre ending, is probably more shocking in retrospect than March's original ending would have been. There have been many horror films over the years with endings somewhat similar to March's. There haven't been many that end in quite the same way that The Bad Seed
This is the best adaptation of any H.P. Lovecraft movie ever made, either by fans or big studio. It's a silent movie, done in a style that makes it look almost as if truly made long years ago.
The script comes directly from the Call of Cthulhu story, with virtually no alterations whatsoever.
It has been done to look as an old movie (from the times when Lovecraft was alive), so the F/X department are appropriately rudimentary or done in modern media to replicate the original ones.
Direct influences to the style are Metropolis, Faust, and Nosferatu; 3 great silent movies.
Back in the 1800's a lady gives birth to a monster. They decide that the baby is too ugly to name, therefore the monster is known as the "Unnamable". The creature brutally slaughters his family, and gets trapped in a vault. Go ahead to 1998, and some college students have heard the story about the unnamable and want to check out the vault...
effrey Combs returns as the insane scientist, Dr Herbert West. Unfortunately, Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) from the other two films doesn't return, but Re-Animator was always Combs' series anyway, so although it's a loss; the show must, and most certainly does go on. Jeffrey Combs was made for the part of Herbert West; his portrayal of the character is absolutely wonderful. He catches just the right atmosphere of a man obsessed by his work in all three films. He also manages to tie a lot of humour in, which is obviously a good thing for a tongue in cheek movie such as this. The rest of the cast acts as a support to Combs, and succeeds fairly well in that respect but none really impress much on their own. Jason Barry (who had a small role in the rubbish movie; Titanic) acts as Dan Cain's replacement and Herbert West's new understudy; Howard Phillips. He never really impresses in the movie and it would seem that his main objective in the movie is to make West look more insane, and through his subdued performance; he does that well. Elsa Patasky looks good as the lady of the film, but her performance is terrible; even embarrassingly bad at times. Simón Andreu is the only member of the cast other than Combs that really impresses, and he plays the prison warden; the villain of the piece.
This anthology is divided into four segments: "The Library" which is the wraparound segment involving Lovecraft's research into the Book of The Dead and his unwitting release of a monster and his writing of the following horror segments "The Drowned", "The Cold", and "Whispers"
Dr. Pretorius and his colleagues are working on a sensational experiment: by means of stimulation of the pineal gland, they want to open the human mind to higher dimensions. When the experiment succeeds, however, they are immediately attacked by terrible life forms, which apparently are floating around us all the time.
n the third film of "The Evil Dead" series, our gun-toting, chainsaw-handed hero, Ash, has been transported to the 13th century where he has been prophesied as the one who will find the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead, and deliver the people from the terrors of the Deadites, who quest for the book, too. But he is mistaken as a spy from a rival kingdom and forced to fight two Deadites before the people find out what he is here for. He also falls for a woman named Sheila before he searches for the book. But after finding it, he says the wrong words that will allow the wise men to use the book to send him back and stop the Deadites and accidentally awakens the Army of the Dead, led by his clone, Evil Ash. Now, Ash must use his 20th century wits and skills to beat Evil Ash and his army of skeletons.
Ash - the sole survivor of the original 'Evil Dead' - returns with his girlfriend Linda to the remote cabin in the woods. He discovers a tape recorder that a professor had used to record incantations from the Necronomicon XMortis - the Book of the Dead. When he turns it on, the recording releases a dark, sinister force from the woods. It turns Linda into a zombie, her soul possessed by some hideous demon, and then tries to do the same to Ash. Other people come to help Ash, but one by one they are taken over by the Evil Dead force that also possesses Linda, the Professor, and the Professor's wife...and they try to make sure Ash is...Dead by Dawn!
Five friends go to a cabin in the woods for a vacation. They discover The Book of the Dead and a tape recorder belonging to a professor, who also owns the cabin. One of them plays back what is recorded on the tape-- which just happens to be Candarian resurrection passages translated from the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead) by the professor, which unleashes an evil force from the woods. The people start turning into evil deadites, and the others soon learn from the tape that the only way to kill a person who is turned into a deadite is by total body dismemberment. People are dying left and right. only one remainins alive, and it is up to him to survive the night and battle the evil dead
H.P. Lovecraft's creepy classic gets a modern makeover with this debut from writer-director Dan Gildark. In CTHULHU, a Seattle man returns to his Oregon roots after the death of his mother. He reunites with a childhood friend and their meeting quickly turns passionate, but his visit becomes dangerous when he uncovers his father's connections to a cult
Originally titled, The Darkest Evil, the adaptation of this classic Lovecraft tale is set in Louisiana and tells the story of several scholars headed by Henry Armitage (Dean Stockwell) who discover the secret to destroying mysterious, other-worldly beings that threaten humankind. Jeff plays Wilbur Whateley, part of a strange, inbred family who with the help of the dreaded tome, The Necronomicon, helps unleash these beings on to the world.
