New Blu-rays!

So, I picked up a few Blu-rays last night, and with store credit, it only cost about $7 for the bunch.

The new Scream Factory special edition of John Carpenter's The Thing is stunning, and the supplemental material is damn-near exhaustive. Hopefully, I'll never have to buy this one again.

Batman: The Return Of The Caped Crusaders is a lot of fun, though I found the actual animation to be underwhelming and kinda TV-cheap-looking.

Cat's Eye is a nostalgic 80s favorite and looks great on Blu.

Kino-Lorber's Blu-ray of I, The Jury is a bit of a disappointment, though. It looks like it was sourced from the same material as the manufactured-on-demand DVD from a few years ago. There's a marginal uptick visually from the SD version, but it really should have been re-scanned and remastered.

October Horror Moviethon: THE LOST BOYS

1987's The Lost Boys isn't really one of my favorites - I hadn't seen it since it originally aired on HBO and didn't care for it then - but revisiting it on Blu-ray was fun.

October Horror Moviethon: THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS

Tonight's Movie: Roman Polanski's 1967 horror spoof, The Fearless Vampire Killers, a visually arresting yet only intermittently amusing satire of Hammer-styled gothics. I'd only seen random parts of the movie on cable before tonight, but thanks to the Warner Archive streaming channel, I was able to finally check it off my list. Fun poster by the great Frank Frazetta. (Well, the bottom part is Frazetta, anyway.)

October Horror Moviethon: HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (1958)

Tonight's movie - an early attempt at "meta" horror from AIP.

October Horror Moviethon: THE MUMMY (1959)

Tonight's movie - Hammer's color remake of the Universal "Kharis" films, with Cushing & Lee. Brandi reviewed it on her blog.

A Bit O' The Irish

Happy St. Patrick's Day to evil leprechauns everywhere....

Weekend Double Feature: Hammer Horror

Two favorites, back-to-back!

A Monstrous Weekend Double Feature

Hammer Hotties in HD

Among the many upcoming Blu-ray releases that I am looking forward to, Synapse Films' forthcoming HD edition of the 1971 Hammer horror film Twins Of Evil is easily in the top five. Part of the studio's erotic "Karnstein Trilogy" (which included The Vampire Lovers and Lust for A Vampire), Twins features Mary and Madeline Collinson, identical twins who had posed together for Playboy the year before. Of course, the film also stars Hammer veteran Peter Cushing as a puritanical witchfinder.

I've seen the film once before on VHS back in the mid-90s, and am eager to see the stunning Collinson sisters in hi-def. The disc is due the day after my birthday (July 10th), and will include not only a newly-remastered HD transfer but a variety of exclusive supplemental features. Among them is a new retrospective documentary, the original theatrical trailers, and deleted scenes. For more detailed information, visit the Synapse website.

31 Days Has October: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Over the weekend, I watched the new Phantom Of The Opera (1925) Blu-ray from Image Entertainment. I still have to work my way through the other features (including the 1929 re-release versions of the film) before I can write my full review (for DVD Late Show), but the restoration of this silent film classic is really quite amazing. It's impressive how engaging and thrilling a cinematic experience it is, even now, after nearly a century.

31 Days Has October: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED

Tonight's Countdown To Halloween movie: Village Of The Damned, from 1960. Earlier today, we re-watched Halloween III: Season Of The Witch. Boy, even with Tom Atkins and Dan O'Herily, that film was a complete misfire. Intriguing premise, but unfortunately lackluster execution. Still - I can't get that damned Silver Shamrock jingle out of my head.

William Castle week didn't really go all that well, unfortunately - Brandi's been having a rough time at work lately, and she really wanted to burn our way through the Fringe season 2 Blu-rays that we've been renting from Netflix. So most of the week, we concentrated on those episodes, and she tried to get to bed earlier than usual. This left no time for our nightly fright features.

On Friday night/early Saturday morning, I did watch the new Blu-ray edition of the 1925 Lon Chaney Phantom Of The Opera. It looks great, and the film still holds up as a remarkable cinematic experience.

31 Days Has October: MR. SARDONICUS

Trailer for William Castle's 1961 Gothic horror film, Mr. Sardonicus.

31 Days Has October: Bela Lugosi Day

Remembering the immortal Be'la Ferenc Dezso Blasko on the anniversary of his birth. Hollywood's boogieman supreme, now and forever.

31 Days Has October: THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL

Confession: the wife and I did not watch any scary movies tonight. Brandi was really tired, and we kinda got hooked on watching Psych episodes on Netflix.

But, as I'm determined to post something Halloween-related every day this month, here's the original theatrical trailer for William Castle's classic, The House On Haunted Hill, from 1958. I love this movie, and I even like the 1999 remake. In fact, I'm thinking we'll probably watch a double feature of both versions on Friday night. Maybe....

31 Days Has October: THE TINGLER and William Castle

We kicked off the third week in October - which I have deemed "William Castle Week" - with the producer/director's 1959 chiller, The Tingler, starring the great Vincent Price. I'm a huge fan of Castle's gimmicky spook shows - he brought old fashioned showmanship and a sense of tongue-in-cheek gallows humor to his productions, a combination that seems very much in the spirit of the Halloween holiday to me.

Tomorrow night, I'm thinking we'll be watching The House On Haunted Hill or maybe Mr. Sardonicus....

31 Days Has October: NOSFERATU

Tonight I'll be digging out my old Image laserdisc of F.W. Murnau's 1922 unauthorized silent adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Nosferatu, and giving it a spin in my old LD player. For some reason, I never picked up any of the DVD versions of this film over the last decade or so. I'm looking forward to seeing how the picture holds up on our HD big screen television.

I first saw the movie in high school, a 16mm print rented by the library. I don't remember why - I don't think it was Halloween, and we definitely didn't read Dracula in class - but even then I wasn't turned off by a silent film. I really enjoyed the nightmare quality of the imagery, and to this day, Nosferatu remains one of my favorite vampire movies... and the pseudonymous Max Shreck remains one of the best Count Draculas - even if he's operating under the alias of "Orlok."

31 Days Has October: THE WEREWOLF

We're wrapping up Week 2 (Werewolf Week) of the greatest month of the year with The Werewolf, a 1956 Sam Katzman production that puts a Fifties, Atomic Age twist on classic lycanthropic lore. Ordinary businessman Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch) becomes a bipedal, bloodthirsty werebeast not through any sin of his own doing, nor through an unfortunate, violent encounter with a rabid wolfman, but through the machinations of a couple of remarkably irresponsible scientists. This pair of geniuses take this survivor of an automobile accident, and impulsively decide to test their latest experimental "radioactive wolf blood" serum on him. Obviously, these guys skipped the ethics class.

Anyway, though produced by the notoriously cheap Katzman, The Werewolf is a nifty little monster flick, that benefits from some picturesque natural location work, shot around Big Bear Lake in the San Bernadino National Forest in Northern California. The werewolf make-up is cool, too; created and executed by Clay Campbell, it is nearly identical to the one he created for actor Matt Willis  a decade earlier for the 1944 Bela Lugosi chiller, The Return Of The Vampire, just a little shaggier.

The script is exciting and even thoughtful, populated by a cast of characters that come across as real people. The characters evince sympathy for the tortured human within the monster, and try to take him alive with the intent of trying to get him help. It's only when the body count gets too high and the wolf overcomes the man that the townspeople, led by the compassionate sheriff (Don McGowan), realize they have no choice but to shoot to kill. And that's another cool thing about the movie - as this werewolf is a creature of science, there's no need for silver bullets or full moons or any of the other traditional trappings.

The Werewolf is not a horror "classic," but it's a much better-than-average 50s B-monster flick, and one of my favorites.

31 Days Has October: DOG SOLDIERS

Neil Marshall's debut film, 2002's Dog Soldiers, is a great little action horror film pitting a handful of British soldiers in the Scotland highlands for training exercises against a vicious pack of exquisitely-designed werewolves. Fast-paced, with good performances from Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd and the rest of the cast. The script is relatively smart, too, with some genuinely inventive suspense sequences and a nice, black sense of humor.

I bought the DVD back in '03 or so, and really enjoyed it, but hadn't watched it again since. Spinning it tonight reminded me how much I liked it - it's a fun, different kind of werewolf movie. I haven't liked all of Marshall's follow-up films, but his cave-crawling thriller The Descent is a damned good scary flick, too.

31 Days Has October: WEREWOLF OF LONDON

The second night of werewolf week was spent with Universal Studios' first lycanthropic effort, 1935's Werewolf Of London, starring Henry Hull, Warner Oland and Valerie Hobson. It's not a great movie - Hull's cold Dr. Glendon is a remarkably unsympathetic protagonist, and the melodramatic plot hasn't much bite - but I very much like Jack Pierce's design for Hull's hairy alter ego. It's quite different from the one he would design for Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man, six years later:

While more man than wolf, I definitely think it's scarier than the more famous Wolf Man make-up.

31 Days Has October: SILVER BULLET/CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF

Every night in October, the wife and I are watching scary movies, and each week of the month, we're choosing a theme. The first week of the month were Amicus Productions horror anthologies from the 60s and 70s, and this week - to accompany the full moon - we're watching werewolf flicks. We kicked Wolf Week off tonight with 1985' Silver Bullet, adapted by Stephen King from his illustrated novella, The Cycle Of The Werewolf.

It's a fun movie - very 80s - with a good cast, including Gary Busey, Megan Follows, Corey Haim, Terrence O'Quinn and Everett McGill.

The animatronic werewolf effects created by Carlo Rambaldi aren't quite up to the level of Rob Bottin's work on the first Howling film, or Rick Baker's American Werewolf In London effects, but they're effective enough, and still preferable to today's computer-animated cartoons. Too bad the actual creature looks more like a bear than a wolf.

I hadn't seen the movie in about ten years, and it's been longer than that since I read King's book. I have often pulled it off the shelf to enjoy the great illustrations by Berni Wrightson, though.