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
Phantasm (USA) 1979
D. Don Coscarelli S. Angus Scrimm, Reggie Bannister
Surreal low-budget quickie about grave-robbing aliens who enslave the dead. It managed to attain cult-status and spawn a lengthy franchise of relatively flawed sequels.
6/10
Phantom Of The Opera (USA) 1925/1930
D. Rupert Julian S. Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin
The original Lon Chaney rocks the house in this classic story of a disfigured madman who takes the 19th century Paris music scene by storm. The Image two-disc.DVD includes both the 1925 and (tinted) 1930 versions of the hoary horror film, a insightful audio commentary by film historian Scott MacQueen, trailers and much more.
5/10
The Pit And The Pendulum (USA) 1961
D. Roger Corman S. Vincent Price, Barbara Steele
A tragic Spanish count (Vincent Price), heir of an evil Grand Inquisitor (Vincent Price, in flashback-sequence), is dubious host to the brother of his late bride, who suspects the recent bachelor of foul play. A shocking succession of events and revelations drives the tortured count to a macabre repeat-performance of family history. As Poe's short story couldn't sustain a full-length movie, it was up to Richard Matheson to craft a suitable gothic thriller around the titular torture device. Vincent Price is the real star of the movie, of course, but that pendulum sure is swell.
8.5/10
Plague Of The Zombies (USA) 1966
D. John Gilling
The Zombies Atmospheric Hammer retread of the premier zombie-flick White Zombie. This time voodoo is employed to produce slave labor for a Cornish tin mine. The zombies are distinctive, the voodoo ceremony scenes deliciously ludicrous and the tone is eerie enough to make it a good candidate for Halloween viewing. A nice World of Hammer short accompanies the movie on the DVD.
6/10
Plan 9 From Outer Space (USA) 1959
D. Ed Wood S. Bela Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson
Grave Robbers from Outer Space Surreal low-budget quickie about grave-robbing aliens who enslave the dead, this winner of The Golden Turkey Award made Director Ed Wood a post-mortem sensation twenty years after it wrapped. The film is notable for Bela Lugosi's final performance as "the dead, old man" who comes back as a decidedly Draculean zombie under the control of decidedly incompetent, rayon-wearing Frisbee-flying aliens, who are out to stop mankind before they can invent a doomsday weapon that will one day threaten the entire Universe. And then there's Vampira, Tor Johnson, cheesy UFO attacks and the classic, incoherent Ed Wood dialogue. The Image DVD also includes Flying Saucers Over Hollywood, a terrific two-hour retrospective of Plan 9 and the strange and sordid career of the cross-dressing B cinema icon himself.
4.5/10
Popcorn (USA) 1993
D. Mark Herrier S. Dee Wallace Stone, Jill Shoelen
The definition of a mixed-bag, this horror spoof by Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things Alan Ormsby tries mightily to be a tribute to schlock, but the movie is so dominated by it's central gimmick--a horror-movie festival within a horror movie--that the actual movie (a weak, by then already out-moded teen-slasher) is completely disposable. The setting of the movie is a horror-movie festival in a run-down theater featuring faux-classics of the genre like The Amazing Electrified Man and The Mosquito. The abbreviated fake movies are quite well done, but the rubber-faced villain of the movie that bookends the others fails to inspire chills or compassion, but simply seems badly cast. Boasts the highest number of fatalities by a flying giant-mosquito prop of any movie in history (to my knowledge). A fun flick for Halloween. Synopsis: A beautiful young film student (Jill Schoelen) finds herself stalked by the man of her dreams at an all-night horror-festival.
5.5/10
|
|||||||||
The Prophecy (USA) 1995
D. Gregory Widen S. Christopher Walken, Virginia Madsen
God's Army This over-powering dish of unintentional cheese features Christopher Walken in kind of a fun role as the iniquitous renegade angel Gabriel, but no measure of dead-pan delivery by him or the other actors can make one take the monumentally inane yet odiously convoluted storyline the least bit serious. Some mildly intriguing scenes, like every scene with Viggo Mortensen playing Lucifer, and those with Gabriel's zombified lackeys, are suspended in a banal cereal mixture of action, horror, theology and oblique humor. Some people actually consider this movie a classic but I feel completely secure in comparing it with Plan 9 from Outer Space, with a not-dissimilar plot. Synopsis: A cop who lost his faith in priest school finds himself an unwitting soldier in a heavenly war between the in which humankind itself hangs in the balance.
4/10
Psycho (USA) 1960
D. Alfred Hitchcock S. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles
Hailed recently as the #1 motion picture in the "thriller" category, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho might not strike the typical modern viewer as particularly thrilling, but cinema enthusiasts who look below the tepid surface of this seemingly out-dated horror classic invariably find quite a bit to get excited about. Hitchcock brought the modern horror film into the future with his subtle adaptation of the Robert Block's book loosely based on Wisconsin weirdo Ed Gein. Hitchcock boldly broke several Hollywood horror conventions by killing off what seemed to be the main character (Janet Leigh's role as a women on the run who finds refuge in a remote hotel) early in the picture, shifting the focus of the picture to the rather sympathetic villain (Anthony Perkins), the friendly, timid hotel proprietor who dotes over an overbearing (and seemingly murderous) mother. Hitchcock also blazed trails by showing a couple in bed together, a savage knife-attack on a showering woman (without actually showing any gore or nudity), and a toilet!
8/10
Pumpkinhead (USA) 1988
D. Stan Winston S. Lance Henriksen
Vengeance: The Demon What really gets me about the MGM release of this curious supernatural revenge story is that the viewer has only to look at the included trailer to see what a horrible job they did transferring the movie itself, which is washed out and grainy. I mean, why bother guys? Admittedly, the film itself is marked with minor flaws, such as the typical unsympathetic slasher-movie characterizations, a slow-moving (though unquestionably cool-looking) monster, and use of blue filters to make rather unconvincing day-for-night shots.
5.5/10
