After a friend of the portly aristocrat Lord Mortimer (Billy House) dies in an attempted escape from Bedlam. In order to appease the angered aristocrat, Master George Sims (Boris Karloff) throws a party for Lord Mortimer and his friends at the asylum with the inmates as entertainment.
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I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by Dracula’s Daughter–the first sequel to the classic 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. Unlike so many of the later Universal Dracula movies, Dracula’s Daughter does not attempt to revive Dracula. Rather it looks at the aftermath of his destruction, through the eyes of his daughter, Contessa Marya Zeleska. She is a very reluctant vampire, played wonderfully by Gloria Holden.
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In Hammer Studios’ Frankenstein films, the focus of the films was not on the monster, but rather on Dr. Frankenstein — an excellent choice. The Revenge of Frankenstein continues where The Curse of Frankenstein left off. The amoral, murderous Dr. Frankenstein (played excellently by Peter Cushing) is about to be executed by guillotine, for his crimes. He is accompanied by a priest and taken to his execution, where the camera focuses on the guillotine — except for a knowing smile between the executioner and a prison worker …
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Set in Palestine in 1918 “She“, relates the story of three wartime buddies — Major Horace Holly (Peter Cushing), Leo Vincy (John Richardson) and Job (Bernard Cribbons), who at the end of the war find themselves in the Middle East with no real desire to return home to England. Encountering a beautiful and mysterious woman called Ustane (Rosenda Monteros), one evening in a nightclub Leo is lured away and then knocked out. When he comes to, he discovers himself in a strange house where he encounters another beautiful woman, who calls herself Ayesha (Ursula Andress) — She who must be obeyed.
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Boris Karloff is superb in a dual role as twin brothers (one evil, one good), born to the ruling family in the early 1800’s in Czechoslovakia. The bad twin inherits the castle and becomes infamous for his sadistic behavior and murders the good twin, assuming his identity so that he might continue his heinous acts.
Read More »The Black Room (1935)
Larry Talbot, the unwilling Wolf Man, is returned to life with the unwitting help of grave robbers. He wishes only to die, in order to avoid hurting anyone else as the Wolf Man. So, he gets the help of the old gypsy from the original Wolf Man film. He is striving to get the assistance of the reviled Dr. Frankenstein … A man who supposedly discovered the secrets of life and death. The doctor isn’t available, but Talbot uncovers his monster (played by Bela Lugosi). With a confrontation between the two monsters being inevitable.
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Horror Express (1972) starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Telly Savalas – an above-average monster movie with the monster …
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In short, The Raven is one of the funniest movies that I’ve ever seen, in any genre. It has some truly scary moments as well, and gives some of the best horror actors of all time — Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre — room to work, and they do so wonderfully.
The movie is ever-so-loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s classic poem, The Raven. And, in fact, Vincent Price plays the part of Dr. Erasmus Craven, the previously-unnamed narrator of the poem, who is mourning for his lost wife, Lanore (played by the beautiful and talented Hazel Court) — although his daughter Estelle (played by Olive Sturgess) tries to comfort him, he turns inward, and away from the world, a virtual recluse — until he gets a visit from the titular raven. A talking raven …
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You can run and you can hide but there is no escaping the sci-fi classic Tarantula about a science experiment gone horribly wrong! When biochemist Leo G. Carroll decides to feed the world by using a special growth formula on plants and animals, he instead creates a spider of mammoth proportions with an appetite to match. Escaping from the laboratory and feeding off cattle and humans, this towering tarantula has the people of Desert Rock, Arizona, running for their lives. Can this horrible creature be stopped or will the world succumb to this over-sized arachnid?
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The Day Mars Invaded Earth isn’t a cheesy monster movie — but a subtle one. It’s an invasion that happens so gradually, that the characters, and the audience, isn’t sure at first that anything is going on. It’s in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but in my opinion, more subtle, and therefore more frightening.If you think “ashes in the pool,” you’re thinking of this movie — and if that means nothing to you, that simply means that you haven’t seen the movie yet. And I won’t spoil your viewing pleasure by explaining what that means in this review.