Movie Title (Country) Year
D. Director S. Star(s)
Alternate title(s) Synopsis. Notable Scene(s).
Movie Rating/10DVD Producer
*=indicates DVD Special Features
#=indicates as part of DVD collection
Macbeth (UK/USA) 1971
D. Roman Polanski S. John Finch
The Tragedy of Macbeth If there were ever a work of Shakespeare that qualified as horror, Macbeth is it, particularly as interpreted by Roman Polanski in this gloomy, Grand Guignol adaptation complete with genuinely creepy witches, macabre imagery and generous amounts of blood and gore.
9/10
Mad Doctor of Blood Island (Phillipines) 1969
D. Eddie Romero S. John Ashley
Blood Doctor This most well-known of the Filipino "Blood Island" movies has a promising prologue featuring the Green Blood Oath (a last-minute gimmick improvised by producer Sam Sherman, who must have sensed what a stink-bomb the picture was) but the other 88 minutes of the movie pretty much blows. Bad photography, bad acting, bad make-up effects, and nothing remotely as fun as the introduction. The inhabitants of an Indonesian island are terrorized by a green monster with chlorophyll for blood.
3/10
Madhouse (UK) 1974
D. Jim Clark S. Vincent Price, Peter Cushing
The Revenge of Dr. Death Vincent Price's final movie for AIP, Madhouse wants to be an homage to Vincent Price's AIP career, even using clips from Corman classics like The Pit And The Pendulum, Masque Of The Red Death and others, but the crooked storyline ultimately skews into dreamlike unreality. Price plays famous horror star Paul Toombs (obviously paralleling Price's own career), who is haunted by a killer disguised as his evil screen persona, Dr. Death. Peter Cushing makes his only appearance with Vincent Price as Toombs longtime friend, and the writer of the Dr. Death movies. Look for Count Yorga, Vampire's Robert Quarry dressed a lot like the dapper bloodsucker at a masquerade party.
5.5/10
Mad Love (USA) 1935
D. Karl Freund S. Peter Lorre
Among the most brilliant forgotten horror film of the 30's, this wild adaptation of The Hands Of Orlac lets Lorre exhibit his unique flair for playing creepy creeps, with at least one scene that would make even some modern moviegoers shudder. A world-famous piano player's hands are saved by a brilliant surgeon after being mangled in a train wreck. The musician thinks he's come to terms with the fact that he'll never play piano again when his new extremities start displaying a talent for throwing knives, at the most awkward moments. Could his strange condition be connected to the deranged surgeon's psychotic fixation on his beautiful wife?
8/10
Mark Of The Vampire (USA) 1936
D. Todd Browning S. Bela Lugosi, Lionel Barrymore
Vampires of Prague Atmospheric Browning remake of his lost silent horror London After Midnight, with Lugosi as an undercover vampire in a highly unconventional murder investigation.
5.5/10
Masque of the Red Death (USA) 1964
D. Roger Corman S. Vincent Price, Hazel Court
Corman gets Medieval with another Poe classic, this time resulting in the most opulent, and philosophical, of the series, though it does suffer a bit for being so morally confused. An iniquitous noble plays host to an orgy of extravagance and sadism as a terrible epidemic ravages the countryside beyond the castle walls.
8/10
Matinee (USA) 1993
D. Joe Dante S. John Goodman
Joe Dante's mostly enjoyable homage to William Castle and the Cuban missile crisis is queered somewhat by a sappy coming-of-age story to which the showman character (John Goodman) is oddly peripheral.
5.5/10
Mill of the Stone Women (Italy) 1960
D. Giorgio Ferroni
Il Mulino delle donne di pietra, Drops of Blood This well-crafted oddity pairs two familiar horror movie plot elements: a mad doctor who needs fresh blood from female victims to keep his beloved alive, and a kook who makes sculptures out of the corpses of female victims for display in a museum of horrors. Genuinely poignant at times, and beautifully shot, MOTSW was in fact an influential entry in the "golden age" of Italian gothic horror by director Riccardo Freda. Remarkable as it is, in time the film, abetted by a few highly unsatisfactory VHS incarnations, seemed to have descended irretrievably into the video murk, making this terrific, beautifully restored release by Mondo Macabro all the more magical.
7.5/10
Monster A-Go-Go (USA) 1965
D. Bill Rebane
Another Dagwood-sandwich of bad movies and bizarre supplemental material compiled by the Something Weird weirdos. Monster A Go-Go, one of the shoddiest movies ever made, concerns a lost astronaut and a briefly glimpsed monster that turns out to be nonexistent. An MST3K favorite.
1.5/10
The Monster Club (UK) 1980
D. Roy Ward Baker S. Vincent Price, Anthony Steel
Congenial vampire Vincent Price offers to let horror writer John Carradine join his monster club after drinking some of the old git's blood. This serves as the wraparound for an anthology of three barely adequate horror stories from the then floundering Amicus Studios. The 3rd story, about a movie director stumbling upon a town of ghouls while scouting locations for his horror movie, manages to be atmospheric. The Monster Club is better known, however, for the exceedingly cheesy musical acts that sandwich the trilogy of tales, complete with a disco filled with badly dancing "monsters" wearing cheap rubber masks.
5/10
Monster Mania (USA) 1997
S. Jack Palance, Elvira
The history of horror movies is examined in this slightly irreverent AMC documentary hosted by Jack Palance.
6.5/10
Monster On The Campus (USA) 1958
D. Jack Arnold S. Arthur Franz
A college professor stupidly gets his blood contaminated with that of a coelacanth, regresses into a berserk Neanderthal, and develops an unhealthy habit as a result. Interesting allegory to the drug-fiend genre, and amusing, unintentional camp from the director of Creature From The Black Lagoon.
6/10
Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (USA) 2001
D. David L. Hewitt
A fascinating collection of, trailers, ads and short-films from the world of the old-time spook shows. Mandatory for Halloween parties and nostolgics.
1.5/10
Motel Hell (USA) 1980
D. Kevin Connor S. Rory Calhoun
Motel Hell has a basic premise that sounds more than a little like the horror legend The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (i.e.: a rustic cannibals poaching unwary travelers for their down-home cooking), but distinguishes itself nicely with a blend of over-the-top violence, grim humor and American Gothic charm. Rory Calhoun plays the congenial proprietor of a motel in the stix whose locally renowned, home-grown smoked meats have a closely-guarded secret recipe.
5/10
The Mothman Prophecies (USA) 2001
D. Mark Pellington S. Richard Gere, Will Patton
This supernatural mystery is beautifully shot, so I can forgive it for straying from the source material, and for being a little on the bland side.
6/10
The Mummy (USA) 1932
D. Karl Freund S. Boris Karloff
Universal drew on dubious mythology, as well as the sensation surrounding the supposed curse of King Tutt, to create a new monster to follow up the successes of their own Dracula and Frankenstein. This first Mummy picture is far more conservative in it's use of the familiar, shuffling, bandaged corpse than the many Mummy sequels that would follow, as Karloff sheds his burial dressings to become a fez-wearing mesmerist in the first five minutes of the movie. Jack Pierce's unique make-up is only glimpsed for a few seconds.
6/10
The Mummy (Warner) 1959
D. Terence Fisher S. Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee
Hammer hammers out the most competent mummy movie ever made and Warner spits out an insultingly low-quality DVD with a poor transfer and no extras. For shame.
7.5/10
The Mummy's Hand (USA) 1940
D. Christy Cabanne S. Dick Foran, George Zucco
Hardly the "frightening chiller masterpiece" that the DVD's box promises, The Mummy's Hand can easily be summed up: Based on the inscriptions on a broken Egyptian vase, likable lug Dick Foran and his shriekingly irritating shlump side-kick embark on an archeological dig to find the tomb of an ancient Egyptian princess, and through an unlikely turn of events end up bringing along a bumbling stage magician and his attractive daughter for the fun. En route they encounter a high priest, sworn to protect the secrets of the tomb, who revives the guardian mummy Kharis using a tea brewed with tana leaves and dispatches him to shamble around ineffectually on the extremely remote chance that he might manage to sneak up on the grave-robbing infidels one-by-one and throttle them with his one good hand (why the high-priest didn't just buy a gun and shoot them himself, I can't imagine). Alas, the mummy (played by cowboy actor Tom Tyler, in his only monster role), parched and failing miserably at his sacred objective, is easily slain while pathetically trying to lap up some spilled tanah tea from the ground. The tone of TMH is markedly more comic than the original Universal Mummy movie, of which it was the sequel (made about eight years later), and aside from an impressive tomb set left over from a jungle movie, and the introduction of the immortal mummy plot-device of tana-leaf tea, there is little about it to compel repeated viewings.
4/10
The Mummy's Tomb (USA) 1942
D. Harold Young S. Lon Chaney, Turhan Bey
"Those who despoil the tombs of Egypt must die..." Thus, in The Mummy's Tomb, the son of the high priest of The Mummy's Hand rouses the mummy Kharis again (a neat trick, since Kharis was presumably reduced to ashes at the end of the previous cinematic debacle) and brings him stateside to avenge his father against the guy who desecrated Princess Nananka's tomb (again Dick Foran, now playing a checkers-playing geezer), and all of his kin in the bargain. This time Kharis has a little more success, killing his prime target, and several other slow, elderly people. In spite of not really being built properly to play a desiccated mummy, I think Lon Chaney does a passable job as the monster, and the movie itself, having dropped the vaudeville shtick of the previous outing, is a more solid follow-up to the original. Seeing the mummy stalking around in a more traditional, gothic setting for a change doesn't hurt, either.
5/10
The Naked Witch (USA) 1961
D. Larry Buchanan
A semi-naked witch is the feature attraction of this typical goodie-bag of bad movies and trippy trailers from Something Weird Video.
2.5/10
Near Dark (USA) 1987
D. Kathryn Bigelow S. Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton
A fair-faced shit-kicker has a run in with a down and dirty family of the living dead. The Anchor Bay DVD features a director's commentary with Kathryn Bigelow and a second disc with a documentary and the standard supplements.
6.5/10
Night of the Bloody Apes (Mexico) 1972
D. René Cardona S. Armando Silvestre
La Horripilante bestia humana Desperate to save his son's life, a mad scientist transplants his heart with the heart of a gorilla, causing the young man to periodically change into a sort of Mexican version of the Hulk and go on a rampage of rape and bloody murder.
3/10
Night of the Living Dead (USA) 1968
D. George Romero S. Duane Jones
Another one of those horror classics I saw for the first time after video first came out, by which time I was already a jaded, young man, not sophisticated enough to appreciate such seminal shock cinema. This first of the Romero zombie movies plays so much like theatre, I wonder why it wasn't made into a off-Broadway play.
7/10
Night of the Living Dead (USA) 1990
D. Tom Savini S. Tony Todd, Tom Towles
Director (and celebrated FX-man) Tom Savini turned up the gore a few notches in this remake of the classic zombie-stomp, designing and supervising the cutting edge gore effects himself. The results, while not leaving as much to the imagination, is certainly more frightening that the original and serves up some different twists. What if the mousy Barbara of the first movie had transformed into an ass-kicking, zombie-plugging Sigourney Weaver clone inside of twenty minutes? *Ahem* Cool zombies, at any rate.
7.5/10
The Ninth Gate (USA) 2000
D. Roman Polanski S. Johnny Depp, Frank Langella
Polish director Roman Polanski's second foray into Satanic thrillerdom and the exciting world of Satanic book-dealing. Johnny Depp plays cynical, thirty-something antique books expert Dean Corso sent to the ends of Europe in search of a triad of identical books titled "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows", the uniting of which, according to legend, can be used to evoke the Dark Host himself. Despite the rather unlikely premise and slow pacing, the sublime TNG is far more cerebral than most Satanic-themed fare. The scene where the sardonic villain Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) rudely interrupts an elaborate Satanic ceremony is not to be missed.
7/10
Nosferatu (Germany) 1922
D. F.W. Murnau S. Max Schreck
F.W. Murnau took the initiative to create the first, haunting adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Stoker's widow was quick to file suit for copyright infringement. All copies of the German expressionist masterwork were ordered destroyed, a campaign which ultimately proved futile, to the benefit of horror cinema to come. The Dracula character, here dubbed Count Orlok, was played by a mysterious German actor named Max Shreck, upon whom the recent speculative drama Shadow Of The Vampire was based.
6.5/10
Nosferatu (Germany) 1979
D. Werner Herzog S. Klaus Kinski
Werner Herzog's curious update of Nosferatu in which the title character is actually named Dracula, even though the character's appearance is fashioned directly after Max Shreck's portrayal of a nightmarish rat-like phantom. Klaus Kinski's count is a quite a bit more lethargic and pitiful than the original, and the tone of the movie is gloomy and morose more than anything else. Herzog shot a version in German, and also an English language version (not dubbed), both of which are available on the Anchor Bay DVD.
7.5/10
100 Years of Horror (USA) 1996
Hoary horror veteran Christopher Lee takes you on a guided tour of horror history via a bunch of poor-quality movie trailers, stock photos, and interviews clipped from other documentaries. Not a lavish production, but Mr. Lee narrates with a great deal of personal insight and respect, and it beat all the prominent horror docs to DVD.
7/10
