Bela Lugosi’s Dead is a 2014 cover version of Bauhaus’ 1979 gloomy yet mesmerising gothic anthem of the same title by Scottish synth pop band Chvrches. The group consists of Lauren Mayberry (lead vocals, additional synthesisers and samplers), Iain Cook (synthesisers, guitar, bass, vocals), and Martin Doherty (synthesisers, samplers, vocals).

Chvrches poppy synth re-interpretation was commissioned for the soundtrack of 2014 release Vampire Academy.

Bauhaus’ original (with vile vinyl crackles):

Bauhaus’ version live in 1982:

Gothika is a 2003 supernatural horror film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz from a screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez for Dark Castle Entertainment productions. Halle Berry plays a psychiatrist in a women’s mental hospital who wakes up one day to find herself on the other side of the bars, accused of having murdered her husband.

Plot:

Psychiatrist Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) works at a mental hospital and has a car accident after trying to avoid a girl (Kathleen Mackey) on a road during a stormy night, while driving back home. She rushes to try to help the girl. The girl turns out to in fact be a ghost, and possesses Miranda’s body by burning her after she extends her hand to the girl. Miranda loses consciousness. Miranda next wakes up in the very hospital she works for, but as a patient treated by her co-worker, Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey, Jr.). Drugged and confused, she remembers nothing of what happened after the car accident. To her horror, she learns that her husband Douglas (Charles S. Dutton) was murdered and that she is the primary suspect. While Miranda copes with her new life in the hospital, the ghost uses her body to carry out messages (most noticeably, she carves the words “not alone” into Miranda’s arm) which leads her former colleagues to believe Miranda is suicidal and is inflicting the wounds on herself.

Meanwhile, Miranda bonds with fellow inmate and former patient, Chloe Sava (Penélope Cruz). Several times in sessions, Chloe had claimed that she’d been raped while in the hospital, but Miranda had always attributed these stories to mental illness. One night, the door to Miranda’s room in the hospital is opened by the ghost that has been haunting her. When she passes Chloe’s room in the hospital, she can hear the rape occurring and momentarily sees a man’s chest pressed against the window. The man’s chest bears a tattoo of an Anima Sola. Miranda realizes that Chloe was not making up these stories, and when she sees Chloe the next day, she apologizes, and the two embrace. Chloe warns Miranda her attacker said he was going to target Miranda next. Miranda begins regaining some of her memories bit by bit, and slowly comes to remember herself killing her husband. She realizes that the ghost had used her body to murder Douglas, thus making Miranda the patsy for his murder…

Reviews:

“Any criticism of this movie that says it doesn’t make sense is missing the point. Any review that faults it for going over the top into lurid overkill is criticizing its most entertaining quality. Any critic who mocks the line “I’m not deluded, Pete — I’m possessed!” should be honest enough to admit that, in the moment, he liked it. It takes nerve to make a movie like this in the face of the taste police, but Kassovitz and Berry have the right stuff.” Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

“The jumpy twists are terrifying enough; the loony asylum is a Gothic masterpiece; but the continuity is sloppy.” James Christopher, The Sunday Times

” … it’s at least a well made and nice looking film. Kassovitz and DP Matthew Libatique certainly have good eyes, and kudos to them for keeping the movie visually interesting even when it seems like a third of it takes place in Berry’s tiny cell. The title actually refers to the set design (Kassovitz explains as much on the commentary, saying it has nothing to do with the story or characters), and it’s almost worth watching the flick to appreciate the sets and overall look (a common theme in early Dark Castle movies, actually).” Horror Movie a Day

“Constantly bouncing from derivative to ridiculous and back to derivative again, Gothika will be tolerable for undiscriminating horror fans but should be shunned by everybody else.” Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

“There is definitely some unintentional humor in Gothika and the actors seem to be taking their roles far too seriously, but it is also dripping with dark and creepy horror atmosphere, and there are some genuinely chilling haunting sequences as well (some of the jerky-moving phantoms from Thirteen Ghosts are back on duty here in the psych ward). It’s actually a beautiful movie to look at, and taken at face value it is 90 minutes of an eerie spook-fest and that’s that.”  Staci Layne Wilson, Horror.com

Buy Gothika on Instant Video | DVD | Blu-ray from Amazon.com or on DVD | Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk

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The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies is a 1964 American monster movie written, produced and directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who also starred, billed under the pseudonym ”Cash Flagg”. Produced on a $38,000 budget, much of it takes place at The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California, which resembles Brooklyn’s Coney Island. The film was billed as the first “monster musical”, beating The Horror of Party Beach by a mere month in release date. The film was apparently to be titled The Incredibly Strange Creatures, or Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-up Zombie, but was changed in response to Columbia Pictures’ threat of a lawsuit over the name’s similarity to Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which was under production at the time.

Much of the movie was filmed in an old, long-empty Masonic temple in Glendale, California, owned by actor Rock Hudson. The nine-story building was a series of makeshift “sound stages” stacked floor after floor, some big enough to create the midway scenes indoors. This was the studio used that year for production of The Creeping Terror, another low-quality monster movie.

The film was originally released by Fairway-International Pictures, Arch Hall, Sr.’s studio, who put it on a lower half of a double bill with one of his own pictures. Dissatisfied, Steckler bought the distribution rights back from Hall, purchased the rights to the Coleman Francis picture, The Beast of Yucca Flats  and roadshowed the picture across the US. In order to get repeat customers, Steckler re-titled the film numerous times, with monickers such as The Incredibly Mixed-Up Zombie, Diabolical Dr. Voodoo and The Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary.

Plot:

Jerry (Steckler as “Flagg”), his girlfriend Angela (Sharon Walsh), and his buddy Harold (Atlas King) head out for a day at the carnival. In one venue, a dance number is performed by Marge (Carolyn Brandt, Steckler’s wife at the time), an alcoholic who drinks before and between shows, and her partner, Bill Ward, for a small audience. There Jerry sees stripper Carmelita (Erina Enyo) who hypnotizes him with her icy stare and he is compelled to see her act. Carmelita is the young sister of powerful fortune-teller Estrella (Brett O’Hara), and Estrella turns Jerry into a zombie by hypnotizing him with a spiraling wheel. He then goes on a rampage, killing Marge and fatally wounding Bill. Later, Jerry attempts to strangle his girlfriend Angela as well. It develops that Estrella, with her henchman Ortega (Jack Brady), has been busy turning various patrons into zombies, apparently by throwing acid on their faces…

Reviews:

“… this flick doesn’t just rebel against, or even disregard, standards of taste and art. In the universe inhabited by The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, such things as standards and responsibility have never been heard of. It is this lunar purity which largely imparts to the film its classic stature. Like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and a very few others, it will remain as an artifact in years to come to which scholars and searchers for truth can turn and say, “This was trash! ” Lester Bangs, In Greil Marcus. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Random House, 1987)

“As a film, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies is too boring for even unintentional laugh potential. Ray Dennis Steckler directs seemingly without involvement. Almost half the running time is taken up by the monotonous rock‘n’roll numbers, although these are made near incoherent by the shoddy recording. (If this were a film made in the 1980s or 90s, you would regard the endless songs as a cynical marketing excuse to sell a soundtrack album, but that was not the case back then). Director Ray Dennis Steckler also plays the hero under the name Cash Flagg and manages to give an incredible geeky performance – he is a gangly beanpole, like a Pee Wee Herman played straight.” Richard Scheib, Moria

“With a film so deliriously absurd and hard to describe in plain English, it’s easiest to entice the uninitiated to pick up this flick through Steckler’s advertising technique: ‘SEE a bizarre dream sequence with screaming, laughing showgirls, ballet dance moves, swirling opticals! SEE Ray Dennis Steckler, aka Cash Flagg, dressed like the Unabomber stab a dancing couple to death on-stage! SEE musical numbers which have nothing to do with the actual film! HEAR a Brenda Lee-wannabe crooning “It Hurts” and “Shook Out of Shape”! SEE the ugliest hunchback ever captured on film! SEE the Hypno-Wheel and its disastrous results! SEE the worst stand-up comedy routine ever! SEE the Mixed-Up Zombies attack their mistress Brett O’Hara, famous look-alike and stand-in for Hollywood legend Susan Hayward! SEE a goofy beach chase! SEE endless footage of the carnival to bring back that good old feeling of nostalgia! SEE swirling camerawork by Laszlo Kovacs, Vilmos Zsigmond and Joseph Mascelli! HEAR hip beatnik dialogue! FEEL the nausea induced by yet another…and another…and another musical number! LEARN the “Zombie Stomp”!’ In other words, every cult/drive-in/exploitation/kooky film fan should have a copy of this on their shelf pronto!” Casey Scott, DVD-Drive-In

“It’s an incredibly bad movie made worse by the many slow patches and the muffled sound, but the film’s lovely visuals, shot by no less than Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider), shine through (even if Media Blasters didn’t have the time or the money to remove print scratches and other impurities). And it’s an absolute must-see from the annals of legendary bad movies.” Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

Wikipedia | IMDb

We are most grateful to Wrong Side of the Art! for some wonderful images above

Dracano is a 2013 American monster film directed by Kevin O’Neil and starring Gina Holden, Corin Nemec and Troy Evans.

A catastrophic volcanic eruption releases ancient dragon-like creatures on the surrounding areas. Scientists believe this could start a chain reaction of volcanic eruptions giving way to a global Dragon Apocalypse….

“Since the SyFy Channel has seriously scaled back their original movie docket, crap movies like Dracano just don’t have a real home anymore. Now we have to the find them, as opposed to them finding us. This doesn’t please me. Who really wants to look for this stuff? I’ll do it, because I have a sickness, but I liked it better when these crap movies came on TV for free.” Film Critics United

“Wild science, dragons, gruff military personnel, probing news media, not a bad way to spend 90 minutes. The action in Dracano moves along at a decent clip, and the acting is decent. I recommend Dracano, a 7 out of 10.” Dan’s Movie Report

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Fleshbait is a British horror novel, published in 1979 by New English Library. It was written by David Holman and Larry Pryce.

Published at the height of the ‘animal attack’ craze that swept British pulp fiction publishing in the late 1970s, Fleshbait also seems to want to cash in on the surprising popularity of the Piranha paperback tie-in by John Sayles – it wasn’t unusual at the time for the novelisation of a movie to become a best seller even when the film itself bombed (The Legacy is a prime example of this), and while Piranha was a minor success as a film, in the UK the paperback was surprisingly popular. The cover image for Fleshbait brings that book to mind.

However, Fleshbait isn’t about piranha at all. Instead, it’s ordinary British river and sea fish that suddenly fight back, attacking fishermen and people paddling in the sea. But as an exploitation novel, this leaves much to be desired, and certainly doesn’t live up to the promise of the cover, with the fish drowning their victims rather than eating them. While written with the usual stock characters, the 160 page novel lacks both the salacious sex and gory violence that the horror pulp fiction genre demands. As the back cover blurb testifies:

“A young girl overwhelmed and drowned… by fish. A paddling child swept out to sea… by fish. Boats smashed and sunk… by fish. As the horror spreads along the holiday beaches, so do the questions. Has chemical pollution affected the sea creatures, turning them into savage, motiveless killers? Of have the fish, so long hunted and killed for sport, turned against their tormentors? Is this the final apocalyptic revenge of a species?”

This appears to be the only collaboration by the authors. There is a playwright called David Holman and a rock music biographer named Larry Pryce, but it is unclear if either are the author of this book.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

Parasite is a 1982 science fiction horror film produced and directed by Charles Band and starring Demi Moore in her first major film role. Irwin Yablans (Halloween) was the executive producer.

In the near future, an atomic disaster has reduced the world to poverty. Instead of a government, America is run by an organization called the Merchants, who exploit the degenerate remains of society. In order to keep control of the populace, the Merchants force Dr. Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini) to create a new life form, a parasite that feeds on its host. Realizing the deadly potential of such a being, Dean escapes the Merchants with the parasite, infecting himself in the process. Now on the run, he travels from town to town, studying the parasite so that he can find a way to destroy it, all the while keeping one step ahead of a Merchant named Wolf (James Davidson) who is hunting for him. While resting in a desert town, he is attacked by a gang of hooligans (Cherie Currie, Freddy Moore, Natalie May, Joanelle Romero, Tom Villard) led by Ricus (Luca Bercovici), a former slave of the Merchants. The gang steals silver canister containing the parasite, not realizing what it is, and it escapes and infects one of the members….

Buy Parasite on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“This will surely have appeal for those who have fond memories of parasites jumping out at you from the silver screen, but thirty years on and on the TV, it doesn’t translate quite so well. In fact, it translates terribly. This is a charmless rip-off, almost totally devoid of merit. Explore the many better examples of the sub-genre out there.” Digital Retribution

“The absolute stand out feature of Parasite is the FX.  Stan Winston did all the work, which will definitely bring a smile to a genre fan’s face.  The parasite itself resembles “the deadly spawn” which is definitely not a bad thing, and looks freaking awesome.  The gore, while not plentiful, is enough to keep gore-hounds content, and comes often enough.  It’s really crazy to see what they were able to do with the practical FX in 1982 and on a fairly low budget.” Cinema Slasher

“Look, I really like cheeseball horror movies. But the golden rule of “dummy movies” is quite simply this: Don’t bore me! (Actually, that’s the ONLY rule!) If you added up all the potentially entertaining ‘horror bits’ from the first 73 minutes of this movie, you’d have the cinematic equivalent of a postage stamp. (The three-cent kind.) I’ll never knock a movie for being stupid or derivative or unoriginal as long as it’s simply fun to sit through. Nothing in Parasite even comes close. The brief gore splatters occur way too late in the game for anyone to care, and the creature (early work by FX genius Stan Winston nonetheless) is about as horrifying as Miss Piggy covered in barbecue sauce.” eFilmCritc

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Blood Rage (aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods) is a 1983 slasher film written by Bruce Rubin and directed by John Grissmer (Scalpel/False Face, 1976). It stars Louise Lasser (Frankenhooker), Mark Soper (Graveyard Shift II), Marianne Kanter (who also produced this and Dark August  in 1976), Julie Gordon and sfx makeup artist Ed French (Amityville II: The Possession, Sleepaway Camp, The Stuff). It is not to be confused with the 1979 film Bloodrage (aka Never Pick Up a Stranger).

Although the film was shot in 1983, it was given only a limited release theatrically in the United States by the Film Concept Group under the title Nightmare at Shadow Woods in 1987. It was released on VHS by Prism Entertainment the same year under the title Blood Rage and this is the title it is now best known by. The Nightmare at Shadow Woods version is missing an early scene where Maddy visits Todd at the mental hospital, but includes a swimming pool scene not found in the Blood Rage version. The Nightmare at Shadow Woods version had a budget US DVD release in 2004 by Legacy Entertainment, but as of September 2011 is out of print.

Plot:

Todd and Terry are twins. They are blonde, cute, bright and identical in every respect, with one exception. One of them is a murderer. This starts one night at a drive-in theater when a teenager was slaughtered in the back seat of his car while his girlfriend watched. Todd is found guilty for the heinous crime and is locked away in an asylum.

Years passed and Terry lives happily with his mother (Louise Lasser), who smothers him with enough love for two sons. All is fine until one Thanksgiving when they receive news that Todd escaped. Terry goes on a killing spree to ensure that Todd goes back to the asylum. His first kill is his mother’s fiancée, when he chops off his arm with a machete, before stabbing him to death. Meanwhile, Dr. Berman and her assistant, Jackie, go out in search for Todd. Jackie meets a sticky end, when he is stabbed by Terry. Dr. Berman also suffers the same fate. Whilst in the woods looking for Todd, she comes across Terry, who cuts her in half with the machete, leaving her to die…

Reviews:

“This fantastic slasher film impresses with some very ballsy gore; everything from bloody severed heads and split open brains to women chopped in half and guys stabbed in the neck with barbecue prongs. While the film doesn’t offer much but killing and running, and I really would have liked some more meat with my potatoes, it still manages to be enthralling and an honest to God stand up and cheer blood bath. This is really all you need in a good slasher movie.” Jose Prendes, Strictly Splatter

“It’s all rather amusing yet somehow cruel at the same time, and it’s this element of mean-spiritedness that runs consistently throughout the film and hurts it to a degree … never quite knowing how to react in certain scenes had me a little alienated and made some of the funny stuff seem almost tacky or inappropriate. And the last scene, while ultimately fitting and not entirely downbeat, still resonates an eerie and disturbing message about parents who show favoritism toward their children, and will leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.” Hysteria Lives!

“While the body count isn’t jaw-dropping, there are still nine impressive kills by Terry that are, shall I say, “gore-ifying.” The acting was all quite good, and they only terrible acting I can really pinpoint is by Marianne Kanter as Dr. Berman, Todd’s doctor. Just look at her acting in her death scene to see what I mean. The rest are all quite good, even if the “mom” character was pretty over the top.” HorrorBid.com

Wikipedia | IMDb

Thanks to Critical Condition for some images above.

Zombies: The Beginning is a 2007 Italian horror film – original title: Zombi: La creazione – directed by Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead, The Other Hell) as Vincent Dawn from a screenplay by Antonio Tentori and producer Giovanni Paolucci. It stars Yvette Yzon, Alvin Anson, Paul Holme, James Gregory Paolleli, B.B. Johnson, Dyane Craystan, Gerhard Acao, Mike Vergel, Miguel Faustmann and Gene Zwahir.

Plot:

Sharon, the only survivor of the explosion of the salvage ship Dark Star, is having a hard time with the insurance company in furnishing them with a satisfactory explanation about her accident. She tells the story of her horrible experience, but is considered crazy – no one believes her when she tells about the existence of living dead on an island that can’t be found on any nautical map…

Reviews:

Bruno Mattei’s partner piece to his 2007 film Island of the Living Dead is another no-budget, no talent production shot in the Philippines for pocket change. Mattei made crappy zombie films even in the heyday of the Italian horror boom of the early 80s, so it shouldn’t really be any surprise that his more recent efforts, when Italian genre cinema has gone down the toilet, are irredeemably horrible. The story follows on directly from Island of the Living Dead: sole survivor Dr. Sharon Dimao (non actress Yvette Yzon) is packed off back to the zombie island with a bunch of half-wit soldiers and dubious scientists. When there, she discovers that as well as zombies, there are also weird zombie children with ping pong eyeballs who could or could not be part of the next master-race, as well as a disembodied brain connected to lots of air conditioning pipes which seems to be in control of everything. This looks unremittingly ugly, features uniformly terrible performances and is undeniably dumb. But in its attempts to be a two-bit zombie version of Aliens it’s actually rather fun, in a so-bad-its-good kind of way. But don’t take that as a recommendation!

Matt Blake, Horrorpedia

“it really isn’t all that bad. It’s dumb, and it’s derivative; but by comparison even to Island of the Living Dead, there are very few moments where you find yourself howling at the television in outrage. In fact, once you get past the fact that the whole thing’s an obvious plagiarism, you can even begin to enjoy the places where the movie decides to stray from its sources. One decided improvement over Shocking Dark is that the Newt character has been written out. Probably the best twist the movie adds is the entire last portion of the film, when the frame of reference changes from Aliens to… well, I’m not sure, exactly; but superficially, I was reminded of Luigi Cozzi’sContamination, with a faint echo of one particular sequence from Silent Hill.” Braineater.com

“I have, today, watched both a Timo Rose movie and the worst, arguably, science fiction movie of the eighties. But neither could possibly hold a candle to the transcendent, outrageous, offensive badness that is Zombies: The Beginning. The late Bruno Mattei truly outdid himself this time. The crapmaster’s final offering to the world of Z-grade cinema is also his worst film. And that’s saying something remarkable.” Robert Beveridge, Popcorn for Breakfast

IMDb

The Sacrament is a 2013 American found footage horror thriller film directed by Ti West (The Innkeepers, House of the Devil) and produced by Eli Roth. The movie had its world premiere on September 3, 2013 at the Venice Film Festival and will have a wide theatrical release on May 1, 2014. The movie’s plot takes several elements from real life events such as the Jonestown Massacre of 1978 (previously filmed as Guyana: Crime of the Century aka Guyana: Cult of the Damned).

Plot:

Patrick (Kentucker Audley) is a fashion photographer traveling to meet his sister Caroline (Amy Seimetz) at Eden Parish, the commune she’s been living at since she left her drug rehabilitation program. Despite some misgivings over his sister’s vagueness over the commune’s location, Patrick travels to the commune with his friends and co-workers Sam (AJ Bowen) and Jake (Joe Swanberg), who suspect that they might get a story out of the travels. Once there, Patrick is met by his sister, who is happier and healthier than she has been in a while. His friends begin to film interviews with Eden Parish’s inhabitants, all of which speak of the commune in glowing terms. However they soon discover that there is a sinister edge to the commune that belies the seemingly peaceful setting…

Reviews:

“The film’s intelligence extends to its strong but suitably modest tech package, with the narrative involvement of Vice providing an alibi for Eric Robbins’ fluid, generously lit lensing; most films in the found-footage genre have no reason to look this good. Jade Healy’s production design is a particular asset, visually conveying the camp’s spartan, faux-organic principles with absolute authenticity. Sound design, as ever with the helmer’s work, is tack-sharp, as is Tyler Bates’ spooky score — even if it occasionally seems to have crept in from one of West’s more retro efforts.” Guy Lodge, Variety

” … if you sit down prepared to be a little bit patient (it’s not even a very long movie!) there’s a good chance you’ll appreciate the mystery, the suspense, the shocks, and the payoffs that The Sacrament has to offer. With all due respect to The Innkeepers and House of the Devil — two very good thrillers — The Sacrament may be Ti West’s angriest, cleverest, and most accomplished feature yet.” Scott Weinberg, Fearnet

“If you know anything about the saga of Jim Jones, you know where “The Sacrament” is headed. It’s an unfortunate familiarity that West makes no effort to avoid, instead recreating the horrors that urged the Jonestown community into the afterlife. The picture is violent, a necessary cinematic pressure to capture despair, yet West lingers on the suffering, studying a man gasping for life as he’s poisoned to death, while showing a little girl getting her throat slit by her mother. It’s gratuitous, especially when it becomes clear that the film isn’t going anywhere original with its overview of brutal self-sacrifice, instead lingering the details of awful deaths. “The Sacrament” bottoms out in its second half, with West too paralyzed by the particulars of his inspiration to craft an innovative take on a horrifying event in human history.” Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com

Wikipedia | IMDb

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Utero is a 2014 American horror film written and directed by Bryan Coyne (Incarnate). Independently financed by Coinopflix, the film stars Jessica Cameron who is also producing along with her Truth or Dare partner, Jonathan Higgins. Cameron is also known for such films as the Roger Corman produced Camel Spiders and Steven C. Miller’s remake of Silent Night. Former Platinum Studios Exec (Cowboys and Aliens, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night) Richard Marincic also serves as a producer on the film. Also in the cast is Diane Goldner (Feast, The Collector, Halloween II, Pulse 2: Afterlife) and Peter Stickles.

Plot:

An agoraphobic unwed mother who finds her psyche unraveling as she becomes convinced that her unborn child is more monster than human.

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Jinn is an American action/horror film written and directed by Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad. It stars Ray Park, Serinda Swan, Faran Tahir,William Atherton, Milica Govich, Walter Phelan, Dominic Rains, Ele Bardha. The film is released at US theatres on April 4, 2014.

A car known as the Firebreather was created for the film. The car was unveiled to the public at the Autorama in Detroit on February 26, 2010. The car was designed by the film’s director Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad. It is a modified 5th generation Chevrolet Camaro.

Plot:

Shawn, an automotive designer, enjoys an idyllic life with his new wife Jasmine until it is interrupted a cryptic message. The message warns of imminent danger and a curse that has afflicted his family for generations. Having lost his parents as a child, Shawn doesn’t believe this unsettling revelation of his past….until strange things start to happen. Unable to explain the threats and fearing for his life, Shawn turns to Gabriel and Father Westhoff, a mysterious duo claiming to have answers. With their help, and the aid of Ali, a shackled mental patient, Shawn discovers that there is far more to this world than he ever imagined. These revelations set Shawn on a collision course with the unknown, and he alone must find the strength protect his family and confront the ancient evil that is hunting them.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official website

All Cheerleaders Die is a 2013 American comedy horror film remake written and directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson for Modernciné. It was screened in the Midnight Madness section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. The film stars Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler, Amanda Grace Cooper, Reanin Johannink, Tom Williamson, Chris Petrovski, Leigh Parker, Nicholas S. Morrison, Jordan Wilson, Felisha Cooper.

The film is a bigger budget remake of the 2001 shot-on-video film All Cheerleaders Die, also written and directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson. It will be released by Image in Spring 2014.

Plot:

Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) is a rebel and outsider at Blackfoot High, dead set on bringing down the clique of too-cool cheerleaders who rule the school. When Maddy turns up at tryouts to infiltrate their squad, you might think that you know where this film is going. But after things turn ugly at a bush party and Maddy’s wiccan ex-girlfriend Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee) interferes in her plot, Maddy, Leena and the whole pom-pom-wielding posse must become unlikely allies in a supernatural showdown against the boys, led by Terry (Tom Williamson), the captain of the football team.

Reviews:

“With its splashy paintbox palette and jaunty pop soundtrack, All Cheerleaders Die just about hangs together as a cheerfully goofy romp. The story has some of the pulpy energy of early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson, but little of their subversive attitude or spiky originality. The characters are cartoonish, the pacing is bumpy and the plot illogical. Does this matter? Probably not to the film’s target demographic, assuming there is still an audience for knowingly trashy semi-spoof horror comedies which appear to be stranded somewhere the 1980s. A guilty pleasure, but instantly forgettable.” Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter

“All Cheerleaders Die is either a feminist film, or a particular type of man’s idea of what a feminist film could be. But it certainly is schlocky, funny, violent, clever and surprisingly sexy. It is a great unwind movie if you like this sort of thing and does what it sets out to do – entertain.” John Sharp, The Hollywood News

“Mashing together elements redolent of “The Craft,” “Species,” “Pet Sematary” and anything featuring toned young bods jiggling booty and tossing hair in slo-mo, “All Cheerleaders Die” has fun with its umpteen cliches. Still, the satirical edge is underplayed enough to make some viewers wonder whether the film is faux-stupid or the real thing … Even for those most receptive to the tongue-in-cheek tone here, McKee and Silvertson’s in-joke will likely rate just middling on the scale of subversive hilarity. It’s a fond, briskly diverting homage, but not a truly inspired one. Performances, visual approach, f/x and other major contributions all faithfully adhere to current B-horror stylistic conventions.” Dennis Harvey, Variety

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official site | We are grateful to The Hollywood Reporter for the poster image.

The Mad Genius (1931) is an all-talking pre-code horror drama film produced and distributed by Warner Bros. and directed by Michael Curtiz. The film stars John Barrymore, Marian Marsh, Donald Cook, Charles Butterworth, and in small roles, Boris Karloff and Frankie Darro. The film is based on the play The Idol (1929) by Martin Brown, which opened in Great Neck, New York but never opened on Broadway.

In the exotic, rainy Eastern Europe of the early 20th century, two puppeteers perform to exactly no-one and are distracted by the surprisingly wicked beating of a young boy by a brutal father (a blink slowly and you’ll miss him Boris Karloff). Observing the young lad vault over fences away from his persecutor, club-footed Vladimar Tsarakov (John Barrymore, 1920′s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and one of early cinema’s biggest stars) sees a dazzling career for him, vicariously living the life of dance, women and debauchery always denied him. The young chap is duly hidden from his father and spirited away.

Dashing forward in time, the young boy, Feodor (Donald Cook from 1933′s similarly rum Babyface) is now embedded in the world of dance and theatre. Tsarakov is also present, literally draped on his casting couch, lining up nubile, starry-eyed young girls to visit him in his office later with the finer details of how they can become famous. Whilst he is happy relieving the young ladies of their innocence, he is dismayed to see his young apprentice falling in love with one of the dancers, Nana (Marian Marsh, also seen with Barrymore in what is in many ways this film’s companion piece, Svenglai). 

We watch as Tsarakov acts as puppeteer to those around him; the young girls, Feodor, his secretary and dogsbody, Karimsky (Charles Butterworth, seemingly channelling Stan Laurel) and the manager of the dance troupe, Sergei (Luis Alberni in a brilliantly wide-eyed performance) whom he is feeding a steady diet of class A drugs to keep in check.

In a twisted sequence of events, Nana is fired but elopes with her beloved to a series on European theatres with the dastardly Tsarakov in pursuit. With the young lovers determined to live their lives in blissful happiness, a strung-out Sergei frothing at the mouth for his next fix and Karimsky desperate to tell his boss of his brilliantly silly idea for a ballet, it’s a typically 1930′s Smokey and the Bandit race to the finish line.

If you thought ‘pre-code’ was simply a statement or a general term for the misty period of early cinema, then you could do a lot worse to take in this occasionally eye-popping film. From the early scene of Karloff whacking the living Hell out of his son to the seedy and rather disturbing drug dealing (and taking) to the extremely sexual portrayal of the young dancers and their elderly deflowerer, there would be uproar if a film so gloomy and comparatively realistic were released by a major studio today.

Though there is barely anything between the release dates, Karloff was essentially an unknown at the time of release, Frankenstein still yet to sweep all before it (hardly his first role, however). Ironically, Tsarakov lectures his young student early in the film of ‘The Golem’ (interesting that audiences would be expected to have seen this or be aware), ‘a homunculus or creation of Frankenstein’. The film may not yet have hit the big time but clearly the novel upon which it is based was very much part of popular culture and not an obscure reference. 

Barrymore, best known for his romantic and light-dramatic leads, is sensational as Tsarakov, perhaps not a traditional horror villain but one who develops from an innocent-looking benefactor to cruel deviant in barely perceptible speed. Director Michael Curtiz slummed it somewhat after this picture, directing White Christmas, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca. As you may expect, the sets are drenched with art deco, the ballet-themed setting being a perfect excuse for costume designers to run riot – not riotous enough to prevent significant leg and cleavage to be aired.

Warner Bros. was so pleased by the box office returns for Svengali (1931) and their first talking feature The Terror (1928), also starring Barrymore and Marsh, that they rushed The Mad Genius into production, and released it on 7 November 1931. 

Bigfoot is a 1969 (released 1970) American horror film. Despite its low budget, it featured some well-known actors and family namesakes in the cast, including John Carradine as “Jasper C. Hawkes”, a Southern traveling salesman. Robert F. Slatzer directed and co-wrote the screenplay with James Gordon White (The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant and The Thing with Two Heads). Chris Mitchum, Joi Lansing, Doodles Weaver and Lindsay Crosby co-starred.

Plot:

People are captured by Bigfoot and his family. A group of hunters are trying to hunt down Bigfoot, bumbling at first, but in terms of rescuing the captured women, and capturing the gigantic ‘King of the Woods’ alive for public exhibition for profit victorious (with the help of others) in the end. It also involves college students riding motorcycles  to rescue the captured young women.

In the middle of the film, the skeptical sheriff’s department and the ranger’s station are notified of the women’s disappearance, but to no avail on the part of the authorities with respect to actually searching for the missing women. The unlikely heroes in the very end are a hardy, gun-toting old mountain man who had previously lost one of his arms during a historical encounter (this encounter is not dramatized in this film as a flashback) with the gigantic, erect animal and one of the idiotic dynamite-armed bike riders. The old man hero’s wife, an Indian squaw, prophesies “bad medicine” (for Bigfoot, that is) just before the final man-vs.-Bigfoot showdown…

Reviews:

“Bigfoot is a truly awful movie, combining a doofus storyline with shoddy production values and terrible acting, but it’s arresting in a fever-dream sort of way. Carradine’s supposed to be a formidable big-game hunter, but he’s an arthritic, emaciated senior dressed in a suit and tie. Christopher Mitchum, the son of screen legend Robert Mitchum, is supposed to be a tough-guy biker, but he’s a passive nebbish who politely refers to Carradine’s character as “Mr. Hawks.” Jordan and Lansing are so outrageously curvy—and so nonsensically underdressed—that their scenes feel as if they were guest-directed by Russ Meyer. The movie toggles back and forth between second-unit location shots showing actors full-figure from a distance and cheesy soundstage footage with the principal cast in close-up, so it’s like the flick drifts in and out of reality. Bigfoot creatures get more screen time here than in virtually any other ‘70s Sasquatch movie, which is not a good thing—prolonged exposure highlights the bad costumes. And we haven’t even talked about the upbeat honky-tonk music that plays during suspense scenes, or the incongruous surf-music cue that appears whenever the bikers are shown driving. Oh, and at one point, a lady Bigfoot wrestles a bear.” Peter Hanson, Every 70s Movie

“Screw the Mona Lisa, the poster for 1970s Bigfoot is a true artistic masterpiece. The movie is pretty wonderful too. Noticing the public’s fascination with Bigfoot that was kicked off by the Patterson/Gimlin film and the biker craze that ensued following the release of Easy Rider, writer/director Robert F. Slatzer had the idea to incorporate both elements into a film. It was an inspired “you got chocolate in my peanut butter/peanut butter in my chocolate” decision that resulted in cinematic brilliance.” Rob Bricken, Topless Robot

“Bigfoot, a certifiable mess with the most unconvincing sets this side of Gilligan’s Island, at least knows how to have a little fun. Bikinis, funky music and motorcycles go a long way in hypnotizing the viewer into ignoring small details like the fact that you have to actually light dynamite to make it explode. John Carradine and, count ‘em, two Mitchums (John and Christopher) are on hand to ease some of the pain, but me thinks the film makers were relying mostly on the voluptuous talents of Joi Lansing to carry the audience through the film. I have to admit there is dopey fun to be had in this showdown for species dominance, but as usual I think I was routing for the wrong team’s victory. One thing is undebatable, the sasquatch were not the most alarming inhabits of this film.” Kindertrauma

Wikipedia | IMDb

Megafoot is an American 2014 science fiction horror film currently in development by scriptwriter and director Rolfe Kanefsky (There’s Nothing Out There, The Hazing, Emmanuelle Through Time: Emmanuelle’s Sexy Bite) based on an original idea and story by Justin Martell (producer of Troma’s Return to Nuke ‘Em High: Volumes 1 & 2). The filmmakers are currently trying to raise $35,000 production costs via online investor site IndieGoGo.

Press release: 

A highly classified experiment accidentally unleashes a top secret killing machine known as megafoot. Part Cyborg, Part Bigfoot. All Terror. And now it’s up to an elite squad of soldiers to track down the beast and kill it before it destroys everyone and everything in its path. A married couple, a group of college students, the scientists who know the truth, and some not-too friendly locals are about to confront their worst nightmare in this action-packed, horror thriller, gore-ride that’s bigger than big – It’s megafoot.

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This is a historical listing of all films considered to be ‘video nasties’ in the UK.

When horror films began to be seized by police under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, it was something new – previously, only sexual material was thought to be ‘obscene’ (“taken as a whole, the work has a tendency to ‘deprave and corrupt’ ‘ – that is, make morally bad – a significant proportion of those likely to see it.”). In order to ‘help’ the video trade – which of course had no idea which horror films would suddenly be considered ‘obscene’ – the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) drew up lists of titles that had either been successfully prosecuted or had prosecutions pending, starting on June 30th 1983 and ending o December 1st 1985. This list would change according to convictions or acquittals, and peaked at 62 titles. The final list that existed by the time the Video Recordings Act 1984 came into force featured 39 films, and this final list is the one used by most cult movie collectors as ‘definitive’.

Naturally, most shops began clearing their shelves of the films on the list – even those that were never successfully prosecuted – and so all these movies are amongst the most collectable VHS releases.

The final 39 official ‘video nasties’:

Absurd (uncut)

Anthropophagous The Beast

Axe (aka California Axe Massacre)

The Beast in Heat

Blood Bath (1972)

Blood Feast

Blood Rites (aka The Ghastly Ones)

Bloody Moon

The Burning (uncut)

Cannibal Apocalypse

Cannibal Ferox (uncut)

Cannibal Holocaust

Cannibal Man

Devil Hunter

Don’t Go in the Woods

Driller Killer

Evilspeak (uncut)

Expose

Faces of Death

Fight for your Life

Forest of Fear (aka Bloodeaters)

Flesh for Frankenstein

The Gestapo’s Last Orgy

House by the Cemetery

House on the Edge of the Park

I Spit on Your Grave

Island of Death

Last House on the Left

Love Camp 7

Madhouse

Mardi Gras Massacre

Nightmares in a Damaged Brain

Night of the Bloody Apes

Night of the Demon

Snuff

SS Experiment Camp

Tenebrae

The Werewolf and the Yeti

Zombie Flesh Eaters

The remaining films that were removed from the ‘nasties’ list over the 18 month period were (dates removed from the list included where known):

The Beyond (removed April 1985)

The Bogey Man

Cannibal Terror (removed September 1985)

Contamination

Dead and Buried (removed June 1985)

Death Trap (removed December 1985)

Deep River Savages (removed September 1985)

Delirium (removed May 1985)

Don’t Go Near the Park

Don’t Look in the Basement (removed December 1985)

The Evil Dead (removed September 1985)

Frozen Scream (removed October 1984)

Funhouse

I Miss You Hugs and Kisses (removed October 1984)

Inferno (removed September 1985)

Killer Nun

The Living Dead (aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue – removed April 1985)

Nightmare Maker (removed December 1985)

Possession (removed October 1984)

Pranks (removed September 1985)

Prisoner of the Cannibal God (removed May 1985)

Revenge of the Bogey Man

The Slayer (removed April 1985)

Terror Eyes (removed June 1985)

Toolbox Murders (removed May 1985)

Unhinged (removed December 1985)

Visiting Hours (removed November 1984)

The Witch Who Came from the Sea (removed June 1985)

Women Behind Bars (removed October 1984)

Zombie Creeping Flesh

It’s impossible to list all the films seized by individual police forces, of course – Manchester, under the grip of fanatical Christian police chief James Anderton (later immortalised in Manc music as “God’s Cop” by the Happy Mondays), operated a list in excess of the DPPs (including a blanket ban on the softcore Electric Blue series, Werewolf Woman, Dawn of the Mummy, Massacre Mansion, Night of the Seagulls, Mother’s Day, Rosemary’s Killer and Superstition), while other films confiscated by police forces included Maniac, The Hills Have Eyes, Xtro, The Thing, Friday the 13th, Madman, Basket Case, Emmanuelle 2, Children of the Corn (which had been further cut by distributors EMI after gaining BBFC certification), Suffer Little Children (seized by police before it was even released and while negotiations over cuts were taking place with the BBFC) as well as numerous softcore and hardcore adult movies.

Most notoriously – and evidence of the incredible ignorance of the repressive police carrying out these pointless raids – were the seizures of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (allegedly mistaken for Cannibal Apocalypse!), Lee Marvin war film The Big Red One, Burt Reynolds comedy The Last Little Whorehouse in Texas, Disney movie The Devil and Max Devlin (after a mischief-making complaint from anti-censorship journalist Liam T. Sanford) and An Unmarried Woman!

DF

JokerBats are a metal glam goth rock band. Their single ‘Vampire’ is due for release on February 24, 2014.

Press release:

“As a band they have drawn inspiration from traditional hard rock bands like Motörhead, Metallica and Black Sabbath who’s own Ozzy Osbourne was good friends with the band at their inception. Their influences also go to the likes of the Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees and they are particularly inspired by many bands from oversees such as Rob Zombie, Lordi from Finland and Nightwish from Norway. They hope to take the enjoyable side of heavy rock and gothic culture and to create their own fictional world which can by inhabited by them and their fans – musical reactionaries have been strictly exiled!

Welcome to EvilZgate, a fictional land of castles, heavy mists and dark mystery fraught by warfare between the evil ‘Demoncock Corporation’ who aim to monopolise the music market with heartless talent shows fighting the noble and courageous Jokerbats. Residing in nearby Brutons Castle, the Jokerbats have been locked in guerrilla warfare with the Corporate for hundreds of years, fighting back their barrages of tedium and monotony with their own brand of hard rock. They cast spells of theatricality, eccentricity and musical exuberance over the Corporation to try and liberate its prisoners from imprisonment. The full Chronicles of EvilZgate can be found here“

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‘Vampire” video:

‘Bad Magic Girls’ video:

‘Super Sick Dolly Witch’ video:

Horror House Target Set is a horror-themed ‘shoot-em-up’ children’s game produced by Palmer/Multiple at some point in the 1960s in the USA. Aside from the image above and the fact that kids were drawn in by the “Knock down the horribles!” blurb we have found no other information online, except that this kids game is highly collectible and costs big $$$.

Thanks to Psychotronic Movies on Facebook for making us aware of Horror House Target Set.

Cruel Jaws, also known as Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws and The Beast is a 1995 Italian mockbuster originally title Fauci crudeli, based on the 1975 blockbuster Jaws and its sequels. It was directed by infamous schlock filmmaker Bruno Mattei (Rats: Night of Terror, Zombies: The Beginning). The film stars David Luther, George Barnes, Jr., Scott Silveria, Kirsten Urso, Richard Dew and Sky Palma.

It’s hard to know where to start with such a shameless and inane film. Cruel Jaws is far, far beyond your average rip-off. The story is essentially Jaws with smatterings of Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D thrown in. Scenes from the Spielberg classic are recreated verbatim, and dialogue is directly lifted.

Explaining the plot of Cruel Jaws is almost pointless if you’ve seen Jaws. But the twists on the original tale are rather hysterical, such as the inclusion of Dag, essentially the film’s Quint. Dag Snerensen (Richard Dew) bears a striking resemblance to Hulk Hogan. His name “Dag” also mustered a lot of confusion as I thought characters were referring to him as “Dad”. Anyway, Dag owns a shoddy version of Sea World (their attractions consist of two dolphins and a seal). He’s in trouble because he owes his bullying landlord, Samuel Lewis (George Barnes Jr.), “fifteen years rent”. This is a problem because Dag has a young daughter whose legs don’t work and who apparently has no reason to live other than swimming with dolphins.

But all this is completely irrelevant. While this pathetic little soap opera is playing out, a giant tiger shark is chowing down on the locals! (The tiger shark, by the way, is not actually a tiger shark. Practically all the stock footage thrown on the screen features great white sharks.) Luckily, Billy (Gregg Hood), the film’s lame reincarnation of Richard Dreyfuss’s Hooper, happens to be back in town ready to help Sheriff Francis (David Luther) in his hunt for the shark. For a marine biologist, Billy really hates sharks referring to them as “sort of locomotive with a mouth full of butcher’s knives”.

Sheriff Francis and Billy try to get the beach shut down, but, with an attitude strangely reminiscent of the another shark-plagued town’s mayor, Mayor Godfrey (Kevin Dean) and aforementioned rich bully Sam scoff at the shark claims. It’s tourist season! There’s a big windsurfing event coming up! How could they possibly close the beaches?! It’s all very familiar and only moments featuring Dag, the Hogan lookalike, remind us we’re not watching Jaws… for example, this touching scene where Dag puts his daughter to sleep with an impressive use of hypnotism…

t’s hard to pick the worst actor from the cast. They’re all so phenomenally bad. The villainous George Barnes Jr. stumbles through his lines with wide-eyed determination. Richard Dew may look like Hulk Hogan, but he’s a much worse actor, and Hulk Hogan is a terrible actor. Gregg Hood and David Luther are atrocious heroes. Hood as Billy is particularly awful coming across like a socially inept lunatic. There’s a surreal moment where Dag rambles at Billy for ages about whales while Hood fiddles with a radar looking ready to explode.

Not that the actors have much to work with. The script, which unbelievably took three people to write is a fabulous mess. The dialogue swings from ludicrous shark diatribes to incomprehensible insults. (At one point, Billy screams “You fat FUCK!” in the villain’s face.) Subplots and characters are tossed around with little regard for logic. In a jaw-droppingly stupid party scene full of head-scratching lines (a girl says “I wanna dance!” while dancing), two (apparently) hot babes hook up with a couple of jocky antagonists. This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that only a few scenes earlier they were chanting “dickbrain, dickbrain, dickbrain” in their dumbfounded faces.

Bruno Mattei doesn’t stop at merely lifting story elements from Jaws. Cruel Jaws has the audacity to steal footage from Jaws, its sequels and even other Italian shark efforts like Enzo G. Castellari’s awesome Great White (1981) and Joe D’Amato’s Deep Blood (1990). He even “borrows” the theme song from Star Wars, remixing it slightly and playing it over a few scenes and the end credits! The hack didn’t even bother building his own fake shark, which in my books is a crime against shark films.

In shark attacks scenes, the film cuts madly between so many different rubber sharks that it’s almost seizure inducing. Footage from Great White and Deep Blood is awkwardly wedged into scenes with no regard for continuity. The stock footage of sharks is completely random, darting between different sizes and even different species. Mattei doesn’t even bother to throw any blood into the water for the few pathetic shark attack scenes he actually bothered to film.

I struggle to say Cruel Jaws is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen because I had such a ferociously good time with it. It’s the hardest I’ve laughed during a movie, comedy genre included, for some time. While it may be the laziest and shittiest work of his career, and it’s certainly the most shameless, Bruno Mattei (R.I.P.) made trash movie magic with Cruel Jaws. Stupid magic, but magic nonetheless.

Dave Jackson, Mondo Exploito (click link for Dave’s full review)

Cruel Jaws has a handful of Euro DVD releases. I’m not really sure how “legit” any of them are, but they are available via Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk 

Wikipedia | IMDb

Related: 2-Headed Shark Attack | Cruel Jaws | Ghost Shark | Great White | Jaws | Jaws 2 | Jersey Shore Shark Attack | Jurassic Shark | Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus | Piranha Sharks | Psycho Shark | Sand Sharks | Shark Attack 3: Megalodon | The Shark is Still Working | Shark Week | Sharknado | Sharktopus | Snow Shark | Super Shark | Swamp Shark | Zombie Shark

Buy Horrors of the Deep: Piranha + The Last Jaws + Tentacles DVD Collection from Amazon.co.uk

Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws is a 2014 New Zealand film directed by Andrew Todd and Johnny Hall. It was shot on a Canon 550D in Auckland, New Zealand, with additional shooting taking place in Christchurch and Los Angeles. The cast includes Campbell Cooley, Johnny Hall, Steve Austin, Kathleen Burns and Roberto Nascimento.

Ghost Shark 2 originated as a faux trailer in the vein of Hobo With A Shotgun, released on YouTube in August 2010. The trailer got posted on many websites such as Cinefantastique, SlashFilm and Premiere.fr., and CBSSports.com The online attention prompted the directors to turn the faux trailer into a feature film, and production on this feature version began.

A second teaser was released on December 24, 2010 along with behind-the-scenes photos and information on the official website.

A third trailer was released on August 14, 2013:

The plot concerns the mayor of Auckland and an “expert ghost shark hunter” as they fight to save the city from a supernatural beast known as Ghost Shark. Despite being labelled “Ghost Shark 2″, it is not related to Syfy’s Ghost Shark. The tone of the film is that of a serious drama, despite the seemingly parodic subject material.

Wikipedia | IMDb