News

Robert Eggers is working on a 13th century werewolf horror movie.The 'Nosferatu' filmmaker - who has already tackled vampires with his recent blockbuster hit - is moving onto another horror creature as he continues to explore the genre.According to the Hollywood Reporter, he has co-written upcoming film 'Werwulf', which will be his next big screen flick.The movie - which will be backed by Universal's art house branch Focus Features - is set to be released on Christmas Day, 2026 in a similar move to 'Nosferatu'.Eggers has reunited with 'The Northman' collaborator Sjón for the script, with details being kept under wraps.However, insiders told the outlet the story will be set in 13th century England, with dialogue "true to the time period".Translations and annotations will be provided for those who don't understand Old English, but Eggers has now decided against shooting...

“Come to me, hear my call,” murmurs Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) in Robert Eggers’ full-blown Gothic melodrama Nosferatu. She’s speaking not to her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), a young estate agent who’s journeying to the jagged, windswept Carpathians on business, but to his undead client Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), whose sulphurous powers have scrawled his signature upon her heart and soul as clearly as he scribbles his John Hancock on the property deeds for a new home in Wisborg, Northern Germany.

Come to me. Eggers is here obeying a similar call. Enraptured by F.W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror since eyeing it, aged nine, on VHS, he mounted a stage play in high school and has been yearning to fashion a big-screen version since 2015. It is, you might say, the film he was born to (re)make, for the talon-prints of Murnau’s spectral frightshow...

Robert Eggers says his 'Nosferatu' remake is inspired by gothic horror classic ‘The Innocents’.The 41-year-old director has helmed the remake of 'Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror', F. W. Murnau's silent German Expressionist vampire film, but the 1922 movie is not the only inspiration for his latest horror.Eggers also was influenced by Jack Clayton’s 1961 picture ‘The Innocents’, which is based on 1898 novella 'The Turn of the Screw' by the American novelist Henry James and focuses on a governess who watches over two children and comes to fear that their large estate is haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.During an appearance on Alamo Drafthouse’s YouTube series ‘Guest Selects’, the filmmaker said: “I think it is one of the best - perhaps the best - gothic ghost movie ever made. “I watch it a couple times a year probably for inspiration.

New month, new horror recommendations from Deep Cuts Rising. This installment features five selections reflecting the month of November 2024.

Regardless of how they came to be here, or what they’re about, these past movies can generally be considered overlooked, forgotten or unknown.

This month’s offerings include a horror western, a gory tale of bad science, and a supernatural slasher.

Craze (1974)

Image: Craze (1974)

Directed by Freddie Francis.

The choices for movies to watch on Occult Day (November 18) are endless, but what about the lesser known Craze? This adaptation of Henry Seymour‘s novel The Infernal Idol is a grisly delight. Jack Palance (Alone in the Dark) is the murderous antiques dealer whose killing spree is done in the name of an African idol.

Here Palance goes around butchering women as part of a series of sacrifices for the aforesaid idol. His plans to lure and slay his targets become...

This year has seen a lot of returning features and revamped traditions here at The A.V. Club, and Halloween is giving us the opportunity to bring back one more: Asking a horror aficionado to program a 24-hour horror film marathon that readers can enjoy at home. Filmmaker Robert Eggers contributed...

Monster movies from the 1970s don't necessarily fall into the horror genre, but they often involve some scares and thrilling elements to keep the audience engaged. Every decade has a different spin on what kind of creatures are most terrifying to audiences, as horror and monster movies typically reflect the cultural and social anxieties of the time. As technology and visual effects were evolving, the way monsters could be created for the screen was becoming more advanced, meaning audiences were shocked at how realistic some of these creatures looked when these films first premiered.

Creature features make up some of the best horror movies of the 1970s, and these films have come to define the 1970s as a decade. In the past, monster movies like King Kong or Creature From the Black Lagoon were considered pulpy B-movies. While plenty of genre films still fall into this category, contemporary monster movies...

The cordyceps fungal infection of "The Last of Us" may be the hottest infestation on television, but lest we forget John Wyndham's groundbreaking novel "The Day of the Triffids," which featured a tall, mobile, carnivorous plant species hellbent on eating us all. If the title sounds familiar, it's likely due to the film of the same name by Steve Sekely and Freddie Francis, or it's from singing the line "and I really got hot when I saw Janette Scott fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills," in the song "Science Fiction (Double Feature)" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

Johan Renck, director of the critically acclaimed HBO limited series, "Chernobyl" has been announced by The Hollywood Reporter as the latest to tackle Wyndham's novel, with a new series adaptation for Prime Video. Amazon Studios snagged the rights to the novel, looking to adapt the story as a collection of miniseries.

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Asylum"

Where You Can Stream It: Shudder

The Pitch: Halloween may be over for 2022, but for some of us, the month after October is just an excuse for more scary movies. As Mark Venturini's character in "The Return of the Living Dead" asserts, "this isn't a costume, this is a way of life." November is also a time of preparation for a slew of holidays, birthdays, and celebrations as the leaves change and fall, so by the time one is done orchestrating family visits and planning the gift budget, committing to a two-hour movie might be a tall ask. But what about a crisp 88-minute collection of four creepy stories and a wraparound? What if I told you...

Halloween is over, but we keep the horror movie recommendations coming your way all year long with our Best Horror Movie You Never Saw video series. Today’s new episode takes a look back at the 1972 film Tales from the Crypt (watch it Here), which was inspired by the same EC Comics series that also inspired the popular HBO series. You can find out all about it by checking out the video embedded above!

Directed by Freddie Francis from a screenplay written by Milton Subotsky, Tales from the Crypt has the following synopsis:

When people in a tourist group get lost within ancient catacombs, they meet the sinister Crypt Keeper, who tells them each their fate. The creepy figure’s macabre stories involve Joanne Clayton, a wife dabbling in murder, and Grymsdyke, a retired sanitation worker targeted by his suspicious neighbors. Among the other characters is adulterer Carl Maitland, who...

Hammer Horror: the name rings so ubiquitously in the realms of cinema, and especially around Halloween. Hearing the name, you’re likely to picture one of a number of the British studio’s releases between the 1950s and early 1970s which boasted decadent set design and an intensity of fear and playfulness. A studio of progressive storytelling compared to other offerings of the time, in Hammer’s horror subdivision could be found Technicolor horror (and its subgenres), often sexually and socially provocative, taking classical source material and turning it on its head. Seen as vulgar to the critics, audiences loved the low-budget thrills of Hammer Horror as a refreshing alternative to Hollywood, with two actors in particular becoming distinct heroes of the cycle, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.But what are the sounds behind the horror? The wonder of movie soundtracks can be put on best display in the horror genre,...

The term ‘filmed opera’ in no way describes this phantasmagoria. Powell & Pressburger re-envisions the Offenbach work with dance sequences refracted through a cinematic prism. It’s high art made for the movies, without the condescenscion seen in Disney’s Fantasia. The stars are Moira Shearer and Robert Helpmann. Powell perfects techniques from Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes to fuse music, theater, dance and cinema; Martin Scorsese calls it a ‘composed film.’ This full restoration reinstates footage not seen since the first previews in 1951.

The Tales of Hoffmann

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 317

1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 133 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 7, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tchérina, Anne Ayars, Pamela Brown, Léonide Massine, Frederick Ashton, Mogens Wieth, Robert Rounseville;

— And the voices of: Robert Rounseville, Monica Sinclair, Bruce Dargavel, Fisher Morgan, Rene Soames, Dorothy Bond, Grahame Clifford, Murry Dickie, Margherita Grandi, Owen Brannigan, Ann Ayars, Joan Alexander...

Alvin Straight is not the twisted David Lynch character audiences expected… he’s a well-adjusted old Iowan with the same kinds of regrets that most people have. Taken from a true story, Alvin can’t drive and hasn’t much money, but he undertakes an eccentric Odyssey that in different circumstances might get him committed. And there’s the rub — his ‘impossible’ 5 mph trek across Iowa becomes a voyage of affirmation. Lynch is no cheater: we may expect bloody disaster but he instead gives us a statement about common decency and goodwill from his own Midwestern roots. This one movie will lower your blood pressure by 10 points.

The Straight Story

Region Free Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 61

1999 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 112 min. / Street Date August 25, 2021 / Available from / 39.95au

Starring: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Dan Flannery, Everett McGill, Barbara Robertson, James Cada, Sally Wingert, Kevin P. Farley, John Farley, John Lordan, Russ Reed, Harry Dean Stanton.

The upcoming Venice Film Festival world premiere of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” is inspiring moviegoers to look back on the last big screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal science-fiction novel, David Lynch’s 1984 “Dune.” That release was such a notorious critical misfire that Lynch wanted his name off it, as his creative vision was meddled with by producers and the studio. Lynch said as recently as April 2020 that his “Dune” remains “a huge, gigantic sadness in my life.” For cast member Francesca Annis, who played Lady Jessica, “Dune” was a misfire as soon as she heard the first lines of dialogue spoken in the movie.

“I’ll tell you, when I first went to see the film at the premiere — and I’ve only seen it once — as soon as Princess Irulan started to talk in voice-over at the beginning, explaining the story, I thought ‘Uh oh, this film is in trouble,...

Ignored, maligned and hammered out into an ‘Alan Smithee’ extended cut for TV, David Lynch’s outstanding Sci-fi epic arrives on 4K Ultra HD, finally achieving the visual opulence on home video that it had in 70mm prints at the end of 1984. The fractured, de-Lynched storyline can be argued over, but the amazing design and arresting characterizations never fail to impress — Lynch attracted a world-class cast of movie stars and used them well. Even if it’s described as a hundred fragmented scenes from a larger narrative, they’re superlative fragments. Lynch should have been authorized to make an alternate cut, his own completely personal ‘impressionist’ version of the Frank Herbert story.

Dune

4K Ultra HD

Arrow Video

1984 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 137 min. / Street Date August 31, 2021 / 59.95

Starring (alphabetically): Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino, Brad Dourif, José Ferrer, Linda Hunt, Freddie Jones, Richard Jordan, Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Silvana Mangano, Everett McGill,...

Once an upstart and now a company to contend with, Britain’s Indicator continues their series of Hammer Studio releases with Hammer Volume Six: Night Shadows, a purely generic subtitle fit for any horror film, Hammer or otherwise. What isn’t generic is Indicator’s winning formula—top notch image quality and boatloads of extra materials including documentaries, commentaries, image galleries—the works. The films in their latest set are already available stateside in more than adequate Blu ray versions—but Indicator’s work prevails on the sheer magnitude and quality of their content.

Hammer Volume Six: Night Shadows

Blu ray – Region B

Indicator

Starring Barbara Shelley, Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Jennie Linden

Cinematography by Arthur Grant, John Wilcox

Directed by John Gilling, Peter Graham Scott, Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis

The Shadow of the Cat – 1961

Directed by John Gilling

Starring André Morell and Barbara Shelley

Cat lovers of all stripes...

They Came From Beyond Space, the Amicus Productions’ 60s sci-fi horror from the legendary director Freddie Francis is available to buy on Blu-ray for the first time and on DVD and digital formats from 8th March 2021. To mark the release we’ve been given 2 copies to give away on Blu-ray.

Starring Robert Hutton, Jennifer Jayne, Zia Mohyeddin and Bernard Kay They Came From Beyond Space was written by Milton Subotsky, the acclaimed screenwriter of Dr Who and the Daleks and Tales from the Crypt, adapted from the book ‘The Gods Hate Kansas’ by Joseph Millard. An enjoyably camp B-movie, the Amicus producers followed in the tradition of 50s classics such as Invasion of the Bodysnatchers adding some 60s kitsch-styling and ingenious low-budget special effects to this British retro treat.

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Small Print

Open to UK residents only...

This month’s home media releases are off to a fun start as a few of my favorite movies from 2020 are headed to Blu-ray and DVD this week—Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter and Josh Ruben’s Scare Me. Beyond that, we have a pair of titles from Vinegar Syndrome that genre fans are going to want to pick up on Tuesday—Cthulhu Mansion and Dark Tower—and there are a few other titles being released on March 2nd, too, including Where is She?, Vampire Virus, and the Nicolas Cage Collection.

Cthulhu Mansion

After a drug deal gone wrong, a group of punks attempt to flee a local amusement park by taking a mysterious old magician named Chandu (Frank Finlay; Lifeforce) and his beautiful daughter hostage. While trying to evade the police, the punks force Chandu to take them to his secluded mansion where they plan to seek...

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

There’s an image from The Elephant Man I can’t get out of my head.

Well, there are a few. David Lynch and Freddie Francis didn’t exactly slouch here. But there’s one moment, quite early on, that struck me with its oddness. Dr. Treves (Anthony Hopkins) has snuck into the legally-tenuous circus of Mr. Bytes (Freddie Jones), just as the police are about to shut him down. The deeper one ventures, the strange the surroundings look. Here we see a cop navigating this temporary labyrinth of light and shadow...

It’s Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing together in a horror picture, a formula no shock feature fan can resist. Most of us remember staring at the beautiful full-color photo of Chris Lee in monster makeup in Denis Gifford’s picture book about horror movies. Yet this has remained one of the pair’s most obscure items, at least as a quality presentation. Powerhouse Indicator’s expert added value items put all the rumors to rest, including the question that’s been repeated through the years — where’s the legendary 3-D version? Or perhaps more to the point, was there really a 3-D version? And then there’s the other question — is the movie any good?

I, Monster

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 75, 81 min. / Street Date September 28, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Mike Raven, Richard Hurndall, George Merritt, Kenneth J. Warren.

Cinematography:...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

One has to appreciate Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s winking self-awareness in calling his new feature Creepy. It’s as if the Coen brothers released a film entitled Snarky, or Eli Roth named his next stomach-churner Gory. Kurosawa, who’s still best known for Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001), two rare outstanding examples of the highly variable J-Horror genre, instills a sense of creepiness into virtually anything he does, regardless of subject matter. His latest, which sees him return to the realm of horror after excursions into more arthouse territory, certainly lives up to its name and has a lot of fun doing so. – Giovanni M.C. (full review)

Where...

It’s a great time to be a horror fan. Not only are Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Shudder awash with all kinds of horror movies old and new, but the Criterion Channel is getting in on the gruesome action with a month’s worth of horror titles from the 1970s.

The subscription service is the digital offshoot of the Criterion Collection, which for more than 35 years has been providing definitive archival home video versions of classic and contemporary films from around the world. Criterion launched its streaming service last year as a way to offer a curated cross-section of its library of films online.

Horror has always had a respectful home at Criterion, with the company publishing definitive editions of a number of the genre’s landmark films. The October rollout of horror movies for the Halloween season is similar to what other companies are doing, but the focus is the difference here.

Why is it that, when a horror film achieves something special, both the critics and the public tend to elevate it above and beyond the ‘lowly’ horror genre? David Lynch’s most humane and sympathetic film still makes our heads spin, and this new 4K remaster renders Freddie Francis’s great cinematography at its best. Lynch extends and develops the visual nightmares of his experimental Eraserhead for this true-life classic. Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller and Freddie Jones all give indelible, emotionally-moving performances. How many horror pictures hold up hope for social decency and personal dignity?

The Elephant Man

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1051

1980 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 123 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 29, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Freddie Jones, Michael Elphick, Hannah Gordon, Helen Ryan, John Standing, Dexter Fletcher, Lesley Dunlop, Phoebe Nicholls, Lydia Lisle,...

Dr. Who and the Daleks/Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1965, 1966 / 82, 84 min.

Starring Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbens

Cinematography by John Wilcox

Directed by Gordon Flemyng

The story of Doctor Who turns on a distinctly British conceit; our hero, a grandfatherly type usually found puttering in the garden, is in fact an alien in human form who does his puttering in a time-traveling laboratory disguised as a police box—a notion Roald Dahl might have dreamed up during one of his rare good moods.

It premiered on BBC One, November 23, 1963, the day after the Kennedy assassination (the start of the show was delayed by news updating the tragedy). British character actor William Hartnell portrayed the first Doctor to man the controls of the cosmic phone booth, followed by Patrick Troughton in 1966 and Jon Pertwee in 1970 and on and on—Jodie Whittaker currently carries the mantle and made history...

The writer/director of Host talks about some of his favorite cinematic hauntings.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Psycho (1960)

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1966)

Hard Times (1975)

High And Low (1963)

Host (2020)

Tenet (2020)

Don’t Look Now (1973)

The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)

Ring (1998)

Sleepers (1996)

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Haunting (1963)

The Sound Of Music (1965)

Citizen Kane (1941)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Vertigo (1958)

Rear Window (1954)

Ghostwatch (1992)

The Innkeepers (2011)

The Innocents (1961)

Burn Witch Burn a.k.a. Night of the Eagle (1962)

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Lake Mungo (2008)

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

Death Sentence (2007)

Dead Silence (2007)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Unbreakable (2000)

Other Notable Items

Akira Kurosawa

Christopher Nolan

Nicholas Roeg

Hiroyuki Sanada

Kevin Bacon

Robert De Niro

Robert Wise

Val Lewton

Orson Welles

The American Cinematheque

James Olson

David Wayne

James Stewart

Tfh Guru Ti West

Richard Linklater

Jack Clayton

Freddie Francis

Deborah Kerr

Mike Flanagan

The Haunting Of Hill House TV series (2018)

Truman Capote

Peter Wyngarde

The Avengers...

The September 2020 lineup of The Criterion Collection has been unveiled, and it’s a packed one. Leading the list is Claire Denis’s masterpiece Beau travail, which has finally received a new 4K digital restoration and features a conversation between the director and Barry Jenkins, and much more.

The third edition of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project is also getting a release, featuring films from Brazil (Pixote), Cuba (Lucía), Indonesia (After the Curfew), Iran (Downpour), Mauritania (Soleil Ô), and Mexico (Dos monjes). David Lynch’s second feature The Elephant Man will get the Criterion treatment as well with a new 4K restoration, plus a special feature lineup featuring Lynch and critic Kristine McKenna reading from their book Room to Dream.

The full-length, four-hour restored cut of Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli will also be arriving in September. Lastly, a pair of crime drama classics from Jules Dassin...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, Michael Haffner, Sam Moffitt, and Tom Stockman

Peter Cushing, born on this day in 1913, was one of the most respected and important actors in the horror and fantasy film genres. To his many fans, the British star, who died in 1994, was known as ‘The Gentle Man of Horror’ and is recognized for his work with Hammer Films which began in the late 1950’s, but he had numerous memorable roles outside of Hammer. A topnotch actor who was able to deliver superb performances on a consistent basis, Peter Cushing also had range. He could play both the hero and the villain with ease.

Here, according to We Are Movie Geeks, are Peter Cushing’s ten best roles:

10. Dr. Maitland

During the 1960s, Amicus Studios had a knack for borrowing from the pool of Hammer Studios actors and filmmakers to make their own Hammer-inspired films. While...

Happy Monday! We have a relatively quiet home media releases week ahead of us, so I’ll just jump into all the good stuff coming out tomorrow. If you missed it in theaters (like this writer did), you can catch up with Brahms: The Boy II on Tuesday once it hits both Blu-ray and DVD. Scream Factory has put together a Collector’s Edition release of The Evil of Frankenstein that fans will definitely want to pick up, and if you’re a big fan of Mandy, it’s getting the nifty Steelbook treatment this week as well.

Other releases for May 19th include War of the Worlds (2005) 4K, Behind You, Zombi Child, Penance Lane, Breakdown Forest, and Scarecrow’s Revenge.

Brahms: The Boy II

Unaware of the terrifying history of Heelshire Mansion, a young family moves into a guest house on the estate where their young son soon makes an unsettling new friend,...

Starring the legendary Peter Cushing as Baron von Frankenstein, The Evil Of Frankenstein is coming to Blu-ray in a new Collector's Edition from Scream Factory on May 19th, and ahead of its release, we've been provided with the full list of special features, including new interviews and a new audio commentary:

Press Release: The Evil Of Frankenstein [Collector's Edition] comes to Blu-ray™ on May 19 from Scream Factory. Customers ordering from ShoutFactory.com will receive an exclusive 18" X 24" rolled poster featuring our brand new artwork, available while supplies last.

Horror great Peter Cushing stars in this fantastic tale as the monster's creator, Baron von Frankenstein, determined to bring the creature back to life. Long thought destroyed, Dr. Frankenstein's creation is discovered frozen alive and resurrected in his laboratory. Unfortunately, the creature's mind is dormant and, much to the Baron's horror, he finds that only a hypnotist can order the creature to do his unfathomable bidding now.

One of the first ‘kitchen sink realist’ films of the British New Wave is also one of the best English films ever — believable, absorbing, and emotionally moving. The adaptation of John Braine’s novel launched Laurence Harvey as a major star, and English films were suddenly touted as being just as adult as their continental counterparts. It attracted a bushel of awards, especially for the luminous Simone Signoret. Unlike the average Angry Young Man, Joe Lampton’s struggle feels universal — bad things happen when ambition seeks a way through the class ceiling, ‘to get to the money,’ as says Donald Wolfit’s character.

Room at the Top

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date January 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Ambrosine Phillpotts, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Hermione Baddeley, Allan Cuthbertson, Raymond Huntley, John Westbrook, Richard Pasco, Ian Hendry, April Olrich,...

“Rise Of The Angry Young Man”

By Raymond Benson

Along with the French New Wave that kick-started in 1959, Britain had its own informal New Wave of what was referred to as the “angry young man” or “kitchen sink” dramas. They began on the stage with such playwrights as John Osborne. Filmmakers like Jack Clayton, Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, and Karel Reisz are most often associated with the movement, which presented gritty, realistic tales of domestic or socio-economic situations involving working class families and/or single protagonists struggling to get ahead in an England that hadn’t quite pulled herself out of the post-war doldrums.

Room at the Top was one of the first—and best—of the bunch, and even more remarkable is that it was Jack Clayton’s feature directorial debut. Made on a low budget in stark black and white (photographed by the great Freddie Francis), Room stars...

Welcome my friends, to the stories that always end…usually in a tidy 15 or 20 minutes to be precise. Yes, we’re back in anthology land with a title that became Amicus’ modus operandi (and money makers) for the next decade, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965). While this isn’t my favorite Amicus omnibus (it’s still good!), it is their first and credit shall be paid.

Released Stateside in late February by Paramount, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors did very well with audiences, giving Amicus a reliable hook for their future releases; while they didn’t focus solely on portmanteaus (they released The Skull the same year), those did become what they were known for.

And rightly so; Dr. Terror sets up a formula that works: well known horror actors in short bursts of terror and humor, easy to digest. This one starts us off on a British passenger train...

Have the classic films of Hammer been subjected to more reissues than The Beatles? Not by a long shot but it can feel that way to dedicated Hammer-heads. The relentless tide of upgrades and re-packagings both foreign and domestic, each with their own pleasures and pitfalls, could inspire loyal fans to lobby for their own version of the Consumer Protection Agency – Home Video Division. Here’s a look at what should have been the definitive collection – from 2016, Universal’s Hammer Horror 8 Film Collection.

Hammer Horror 8 Film Collection

Blu ray

Universal

1960-1964/ 2:1 – 2:35.1 / 686 min.

Starring Peter Cushing, Oliver Reed, Herbert Lom

Directed by Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, Don Sharp

When production began on the inevitable sequel to Hammer’s Horror of Dracula, Peter Cushing returned as Van Helsing but Christopher Lee’s Count was missing in action – fortunately Cushing was presented with an equally intimidating antagonist in Martita Hunt as the implacable Baroness Meinster.

Joseph Losey’s fortunes as an expatriate director took an upswing with this efficient, nervous and somewhat overcooked thriller with a daunting ticking-bomb deadline story gimmick — alcoholic wreck Michael Redgrave has only twenty hours to save his son from execution for murder. Losey racks up the tension, but he doesn’t give a hoot for Ben Barzman’s whodunnit scripting. Just the same, it’s good to see the director finally gaining traction — from this point forward most every Losey picture received serious international attention.

Time Without Pity

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 89 min. / Street Date October 28, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK (Region Free) / £15.99

Starring: Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, Ann Todd, Peter Cushing, Alec McCowen, Lois Maxwell, Richard Wordsworth, Joan Plowright.

Cinematography: Freddie Francis

Film Editor: Alan Osbiston

Original Music: Tristram Cary

Written by Ben Barzman from a play by Emlyn Williams

Produced by John Arnold, Leon Clore,...

Dead of Night

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1945 / 1.33 : 1 / 102 Min.

Starring Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave, Googie Withers

Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe

Directed by Basil Dearden, Alberto Cavalcant, Charles Chrichton, Robert Hamer

Anthology films have been a reliable Hollywood staple since D.W. Griffith’s time-traveling Intolerance and Paramount’s depression-era dramedy If I Had a Million. The short story format has proved especially popular with horror movie fans who prefer their thrills lean, mean and straight to the point.

That humble subgenre contains multitudes – from Masaki Kobayashi‘s elegant Kwaidan to the comic book stylings of Freddie Francis’s Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors to the state of the art shocker Nightmare Cinema – but the great-granddaddy of them all is surely the 1945 classic from Britain’s Ealing Studios – Dead of Night.

Mervyn Johns, the eternal Everyman, plays Walter Craig, a restoration expert whose newest project – a provincial manor called “Pilgrim’s...

When one thinks of filmmaker Ken Russell, one thinks “excessive”, “lurid”, and “over the top”. But there’s an honest to God beauty in the profane as seen through his eyes. Simply put, you can choose to experience a Russell film or ignore it, but they will always live on as messy, indulgent, yet heartfelt works. Personally, these are a few of my favorite things; and when Russell directed his flights of ripened fancy towards a piece of horror, the results could be spectacular like The Lair of the White Worm (1988), a hilarious and ribald tribute to Hammer, Aip, and Amicus.

Released just in time for Halloween in the U.S. by Vestron Pictures, Lair brought in less than its $2.5 million budget at the box office and the reviews were mixed. This was really nothing new for Russell, who by this point in the game was either revered or reviled...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.News Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria.The lineup for this year's Venice Film Festival has been announced. In-competition titles include Carlos Reygadas' open-relationship romance Where Life is Born (the auteur's first feature in 5 years), Shinya Tsukamoto's much-anticipated samurai film Killing, and Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale, a Gothic revenge story set in Tasmania. The Venice Documentaries section joins an eclectic range of heavy-hitters, from Gastón Solnicki (Kékszakállú) and once-retiree Tsai Ming-liang, to Errol Morris and Frederick Wiseman, whose Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library screened in competition at the festival last year.Meanwhile, the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival has followed suit, releasing the names of the films set to premiere at its Special Presentations and Galas. Notably, this edition reunites the festival with Barry Jenkins, whose James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk will have its world premiere.

New York's Quad Cinema got this summer off to a bloody good start with part 1 of their "Hammer's House of Horror" movie retrospective series featuring 32 films from the Hammer vault. On July 20th, the Quad Cinema team will continue the frights and fun with part 2 of their special Hammer horror screenings, and we've been provided with exclusive details on the second half of their retrospective series that's aptly titled "The Decadent Years."

From July 20th–August 2nd, Quad Cinema will screen a wide range of Hammer horror films from "The Decadent Years," including Dracula A.D. 1972, Countess Dracula, Twins of Evil, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, and many more! There will be 25 total titles shown (all of them from 1967–1976), with 20 of the films screened in glorious 35mm.

Below, we have the full list of titles screening as part of Hammer's House of Horror Part II, and to learn more about screening dates and times,...

Hammer Film Productions ran itself on a loose set of commandments that had to be followed in all of their horror pictures. They obviously made more than that, often combing the fertile grounds of science fiction, sword-and-sandal affairs, and even the rare bank robbery, but their legacy is horror, and in those films you were going to see certain things. You could expect Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee (maybe both) duking it out in suave Gothic mansions or the quaint decor of a vampire’s crypt. You were going to see blood, sometimes lots of it, and women were going to wear beautiful, low-cut dresses that mostly existed to sing the praises of God-given cleavage. These were B-pictures, often trashy and always pulp, but behind the camera and in the heart of these movies is the single greatest output of house-style scares this side of Val Lewton’s cabal of...

Last year, New York's Quad Cinema paid tribute to Mario Bava with a 21-film, multi-day marathon, and this summer they're heating up the big screen once again with a two-part Hammer horror movies celebration, and we've been provided with the exclusive details on part 1 of their massive celebration of Hammer movies from 1956–1967.

Read the official press release below for all 32 titles (21 of which will be displayed in 35mm) in part 1 of the Quad's Hammer movie marathon, and keep an eye on their website for more information!

Press Release: May 30 - June 19 It's a chilling season at the Quad! Brace yourself for mummies, vampires, werewolves, and more with our extensive two-part retrospective celebrating Britain's genre studio powerhouse, Hammer Films

Throughout film history, many countries have had their own point-of-pride movie studios; Britain can claim several, whether as backlots or sites of creative capital. In Hammer Films, a genre-oriented counterpart to Ealing Films,...

Robert Bloch and Milton Subotsky may have helped to codify the Giallo in this murder thriller but the results are not up to even the shaky standards of Amicus. That said, horror fans are going to flock to get their hands on a big color & ‘scope release that’s gone missing for decades. It’s a significant ‘save’ by Kino Lorber.

The Psychopath

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen Techniscope / 82 min. / Street Date April 10, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Patrick Wymark, Margaret Johnston, John Standing, Alexander Knox, Judy Huxtable, Don Borisenko, Thorley Walters, Robert Crewdson, Harold Lang, Gina Gianelli, Greta Farrer, John Harvey.

Cinematography: John Wilcox

Film Editor: Oswald Hafenrichter

Art Direction: Bill Constable

Original Music: Elisabeth Lutyens

Written by Robert Bloch

Produced by Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky

Directed by Freddie Francis

A look at the cast and crew of The Psychopath raises one’s hopes. Good actors Patrick...

Dysfunctional families have long been a cornerstone of the movies; conflict is key, and the closer to home the harder it hits. Horror has capitalized on this for several decades; Spider Baby (1967), The Baby (1973), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (’74), and The Hills Have Eyes (’77) are just a few examples of familial ties more than a little twisted and frayed. But hey, that’s hospitality North American style; let’s hop across the pond and check in with the clan in Girly (1970), Freddie Francis’ veddy British and very dark comedy of manners, games, and psychotic role playing.

Distributed by Cinerama Releasing in February stateside but not until April in its homeland, Girly did much better business in North America than back home (where it was released under its original title Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, & Girly); this can be attributed to the U.K. buttoning up while exploitation films pulled everyone else’s knickers down around the globe.

With nearly two years of worthy Blu ray releases under their belt, ranging from traditional favorites like To Sir With Love to rare essentials like Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater, it can be said that UK’s Indicator has finally shed their rookie status. Their newest effort is Hammer Volume Two: Criminal Intent, a well-programmed package of that studio’s little seen crime films featuring two minor classics and a couple of honorable misfires, all in glorious black and white.

The Snorkel

1958 – 74 Minutes

Written by Peter Myers and Jimmy Sangster

Produced by Michael Carreras

Directed by Guy Green

Featuring the sloppiest killer this side of the Coen Brothers and the least curious investigator since Chief Wiggum, 1961’s The Snorkel, with its urbane villain and Riviera scenery, is positively Hitchcockian in its intent but definitely not in its execution.

Shadow of a Doubt dogs this story of a young teen...

In the late 1980s after six successful years on “St. Elsewhere,” Denzel Washington was making a successful segue into the movies. Just as that show was about to end for NBC, he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor as a South African activist in the 1987 film “Cry Freedom.” He lost the award that evening to Sean Connery (“The Untouchables”), but it would be just two years later that he would take home the gold for his performance as Private Silas Tripp in “Glory.”

See Oscar Best Supporting Actor Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

Watch his acceptance speech above from the 1990 Academy Awards ceremony as the 36-year-old actor beams in front of his mother and wife after presenter Geena Davis announces his name. He also thanks the men of the 54th from the American Civil War. In the film, Washington played an emancipated former slave...

Welcome back for another week of horror and sci-fi home entertainment releases, readers! January 16th features plenty of intriguing offerings, from cult classics to sequels of cult classics to even a few recent films as well. If you happened to miss Blade Runner 2049, Happy Death Day, or The Snowman in theaters, all three are making their way home this Tuesday. Severin Films has put together The Amicus Collection (which features Asylum, And Now The Screaming Starts and The Beast Must Die), and Scream Factory is giving Eye of the Cat the Blu-ray treatment as well.

Beyond Skyline is also coming to Blu on January 16th, and for all you Joe Dante fans out there, Shout Select has put together a Collector’s Edition release of Matinee that looks like it’s a must-have.

The Amicus Collection (Severin Films, Blu-ray)

Known as The Studio That Dripped Blood, the British film...

The Executioner’s Song

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber

1982/ 1:33:1 /188/135 Min. / Street Date January 2, 2018

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Rosanne Arquette

Cinematography by Freddie Francis

Written by Norman Mailer

Music by John Cacavas

Edited by Richard A. Harris, Tom Rolf

Produced by Lawrence Schiller

Directed by Lawrence Schiller

Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, target for Saturday Night Live, punchline for Seinfeld and tagline for Nike, was already a pop-culture sensation when he sat down before a firing squad and proclaimed, “Let’s do this.” The surprising thing about The Executioner’s Song, Norman Mailer’s hardscrabble epic detailing Gilmore’s final months, was that it was decidedly unsensational, a close-to-the-vest yet wide-ranging narrative focused on the killer’s tragedy, not the writer’s ego.

Mailer saw in Gilmore, if not a kindred spirit, at least a rough sketch for one of the novelist’s own conflicted protagonists. Like Mailer, Gilmore had a poetic...

Even 56 years after its original release, Jack Clayton’s 1961 gothic horror film The Innocents has lost none of its ability to disturb. Based on Henry James’ Victorian novella The Turn of the Screw, the film is shot in black and white in CinemaScope (a rare pairing of the two), its wide aspect ratio manipulated through the use of eerie lighting by cinematographer Freddie Francis. The film’s striking imagery is visceral, unsettling and hard to forget, but isn’t the only determinant in the tense atmosphere established within the film. The Innocents innovative soundtrack and sound design is responsible for much of the film’s creepy mood and it is showcased from the film’s very first frame.The Innocents opens with a completely blackened screen, a canvas of nothingness from which the sweet singing of a disembodied little girl suddenly emerges. Her gentle voice is heavily reverbed and amplified...

With Christmas now only a week away, there’s a big day of genre-related home entertainment releases to look forward to in the meantime, just in case you were in need of some last-minute gift ideas (or if you were looking to spoil yourself, which is totally cool). Easily my most anticipated Blu-ray release for all of 2017, Synapse Films' stunning 4K restoration of Suspiria gets the royal treatment via an incredible three-disc limited edition Steelbook set this Tuesday, and Severin Films is also keeping busy with their HD upgrade of The Amicus Collection, which includes Asylum, And Now The Screaming Starts, and The Beast Must Die.

Other notable Blu-ray and DVD releases for December 19th include American Gothic, Leatherface, mother!, and the limited edition Steelbook for Donnie Darko.

American Gothic (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)

A new tale of terror from the director of The Legend of Hell House and The Incubus.

While us horror lovers revelled in the ripped bodices and cobwebbed corridors of another vampire plagued castle, Hammer was busy trying to clear the halls and make their way into the modern world. Take Nightmare (1964), an effective black and white thriller that shows you don’t need fangs to be fearsome.

Released in its native U.K. in April and stateside in June, Nightmare (Aka the amazing Here’s the Knife, Dear: Now Use It) still has a lot of wandering down darkened hallways, but instead of coming up against the undead, our heroine has to do battle with her own brittle mind. Or has the dead come back for her?

Pity poor Janet (Jennie Linden – Old Dracula). Our film opens with her hearing a distant voice calling her name. She leaves the comfort of her bed and follows the whispered voice which leads her to a shadowed room where...

Ghosts are famous for their flexibility, spiraling through keyholes and up from the floorboards in search of their next mark. But movies about ghosts can be flexible too. Three classics of the genre, The Uninvited, House on Haunted Hill and The Innocents, demonstrate that there’s more than one way haunt a house.

These films never appeared on any triple bill that I know of, but I’d like to think they did, somewhere in some small town with a theater manager that knew a good scare when he saw it. How could the programmer resist it? Each film is united by a beautiful black and white sheen, eerie locales and their ability to scare the bejeezus out of you. But they’re also alike in their differences, coming at their specters from distinctly different vantage points.

1944’s The Uninvited, a three-hankie haunted house tale with a dysfunctional family subplot,...

This time on the podcast, Trevor Berrett, David Blakeslee, and Scott Nye discuss Jack Clayton’s The Innocents.

This genuinely frightening, exquisitely made supernatural gothic stars Deborah Kerr as an emotionally fragile governess who comes to suspect that there is something very, very wrong with her precocious new charges. A psychosexually intensified adaptation of Henry James’s classic The Turn of the Screw, cowritten by Truman Capote and directed by Jack Clayton, The Innocents is a triumph of narrative economy and technical expressiveness, from its chilling sound design to the stygian depths of its widescreen cinematography by Freddie Francis.

Episode Links The Innocents (1961) – The Criterion Collection The Innocents (1961) – IMDb The Innocents (1961) – Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia Trevor’s review of The Innocents – The Mookse and the Gripes Bosley Crowther’s review of The Innocents – The New York Times 1961 Tasha Robinson’s review of The Innocents – The Dissolve 2014 Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) – Wikipedia,...