Movieline Online

There are no two sweeter words in the low-budget horror language than "public domain." Roger Corman made his career on the back of Edgar Allen Poe, crafting a feature length movie out of nearly every novel, short story, poem and turn of phrase the author put to paper. And thanks to U.S. copyright law that categorized any pre-1923 published work in the public domain, the producers didn't have to pay a dime for the idea. Of course, most of Poe's stories needed some updating but his work proved surprisingly malleable; so much so that filmmakers continued to use his macabre masterpieces for some free-of-charge inspiration. Arrows Films has put together an unexpected double-feature of Italian titles under the heading of Edgar Allen Poe's Black Cats , a handsomely packaged set that includes blu-ray / dvd combo special editions of Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (1981) and Sergio Martino's Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key (1972) both of whi...

The rise and fall of the spaghetti western has been well documented, but for the lay-fan it comes down to this: there's the Dollars trilogy...and then there's everything else. Tony Anthony's "Stranger" films fit very comfortably in the everything else category, particularly Get Mean (1975), the fourth and final outing that sends his scruffy ne'er-do-well cowboy on a time-traveling adventure to Spain to return a stolen princess and claim a mythical treasure. Actually, just how the Stranger happens to meet up with these fuzzy barbarians and stuffed-shirt Spanish nobles isn't made clear. Get Mean glosses over the fine details and cuts straight to the battle scenes, anxious to get to its fish-out-of-water scenario with as little dialogue as possible. For those already familiar with Tony Anthony's "why so serious?" take on the reinvented Western, the film is a bizarrely satisfying finale to a series of films that got progressively m...

There's been a resurgence of minimalist ghost stories in cinemas of late. Saw and other related splatter franchises finally succumbed to subtler PG-13 frights that, while not always original, at least make you reach for the armrest rather than a barf bag. In a sense Kwaidan (1964) is the most minimal horror film ever made, consisting of four traditional Japanese ghost stories that, if presented in a straightforward linear fashion, would take up only around a half-hour of screen time. But director Masaki Kobayashi's film run three full hours, telling each tale at a pace that demands the utmost patience...but delivers the most visually sumptuous rewards. The first story, The Black Hair , foreshadows many '90s J-horror entries like The Ring featuring stringy-haired ghost girls looking for revenge. But, but based on folk tales, there's a bit more of a lesson involved as an arrogant swordsman leaves his loyal wife to look for good fortune elsewhere. Years later,...

Of all the major horror directors, David Cronenberg has the bleakest world-view, with the vast majority of his films ending as the main character lies dead, dying, absorbed or twitching in a puddle of bodily fluids. But 1979’s The Brood is in a league all its own, inspired by the director’s custody battle during an ugly divorce which he turned into his most personal body-horror nightmare to date. Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) is the originator of “psychoplasmics,” an experimental form of therapy that encourages patients to release their anger and anxiety through actual physical manifestations of their skin; rashes, hives and cancer are the result. But Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar) is the star of the clinic, giving birth to actual dwarf-sized children who respond to her emotions with deadly results. Her husband, Frank, senses that something is wrong and cuts off his daughter’s visits, which only exacerbates Nola’s feelings of resentment and distress. And soon the brood is unconsci...

“They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” - Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) from Jurassic Park While re-mastering Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) for high-definition doesn’t have the same potential for catastrophe as cloning dinosaurs, the quote is still an apt headline for what surely must be the most unexpected Blu-ray ever . Funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, this cleaned up version of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic (sans robots) presents the best possible version of what many people consider the worst movie of all time. For those unfamiliar with the film, a plot description may make it sound like a relatively routine horror quickie. Rest assured, it’s not. Taking the wrong turn on their family vacation, Michael, Margaret and little Debbie wind up spending the night with Torgo, the creepy caretaker of a ramshackle home on the edge of the desert. Torgo insists that “The Master” – whose portr...

Horror-comedy it tough to pull off even when one has plenty of resources. Considering 1948’s Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein is a high-water mark for the genre, it’s been nearly 70 years since anyone has had unanimous success. And director Gary Jones’ Mosquito (1994) had an uphill battle from the beginning, with a low budget, local actors and overly ambitious screenplay. The results are, on one hand, exactly what you would expect: an amateurish attempt at recreating the “big bug” movies of the ‘50s. But the film’s imaginative effects and go-for-broke pacing wind up hooking you anyway. The mutant bloodsuckers grow to giant size after feasting on an alien that crash lands in a local swamp, which just so happens to be not so far away from a popular campground. Soon, campers are being drained of all their vital fluids, leaving one incompetent park ranger (Ron Asheton, guitarist for The Stooges) and a motley crew of scientists, civilians and bank robbers to clean up the mess...

Horror fans have long memories. And while millenials are inundated by digital monsters of every sort, there still remains a great deal of affection for the old-school artistry behind Hammer Studio’s pioneering versions of Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy. It took a while to get going, but the Hammer catalog is now fairly well represented on standard DVD. What it lacked was an impressive hi-def Blu-ray treatment….until now! Warner Bros four-movie Horror Classics Volume One is long overdue. While Universal got great results from the hi-resolution remastering of its seminal monster flicks from the ‘30s and ‘40s, it seemed that Hammer’s distribution history (their films were released in the US through several different companies) would prevent any particular studio from investing too much time and energy. But here they are – The Mummy, Dracula has Risen from the Grave, Taste the Blood of Dracula and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed – in exactly the sort of pristine collection fa...

When he’s working at full steam, there’s no other director alive who imbues more passion into his films than Francis Ford Coppola. His greatest works always seem teeter on the edge of collapsing into madness, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula is no exception. A bravura showpiece of costume design, old-school optical effects and overblown romance, the film failed to revitalize Coppola’s career like it should have, instead winding up as a footnote to more cerebral works like Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. But from a purely visual perspective, this take on the Dracula mythos is by far the most successful ever filmed. Challenging himself on two different fronts, Coppola pledged to stay true to the original novel and utilize only traditional in-camera effects to create the film’s elaborate scares. He got it half right, coming up with ingenious and beautiful camera tricks through the use of miniatures, matte work and puppets. But the story itself, from a screenplay by James V. Hart, layers the ac...