Not long ago Dario Argento had a cultish fan base and was the equivalent of fugu for foodies. Now he's a touchstone for hipster youth (remember the Herschell Gordon Lewis vs. Dario Argento debate in Juno?) who appreciate his giallo subgenre for the lurid, violent, and stylishly baroque thrillers the form embodies. If you're looking for plots that make sense, look elsewhere. But if you like your chills all'Italia -- graphic, bizarre and served con molto brio -- you're on track.

10. The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971)
A reporter, a blind man and the blind man's young niece inadvertently trigger a murder spree that has something to do with a top-secret genetic research project. And how about that hollow-eyed, screwed up rich girl ('60s Euro-babe Catherine Spaak) with her mysterious motives, shagadelic wardrobe and serious daddy issues? She's scary even if she isn't a killer. Be warned: Argento isn't afraid to terrorize cute kids.

9. The Stendahl Syndrome (1996)
A serial sex killer plays wicked head games with a police detective (Argento's daughter Asia) who suffers from Stendhal Syndrome: Too much great art gives her hallucinations. Not a big problem in, say, Kansas, but this is Italy -- there's a masterwork lurking around every corner. One minute the detective is looking at a seascape in the Uffizi, the next minute she's underwater, smooching a giant grouper fish with a vaguely human face. 

8. Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972)
Roberto, an American drummer living in Rome with his rich, high-strung wife confronts a stranger who's been following him. They scuffle, the man falls to his death. And that's not the bad part: Someone in a creepy puppet mask is photographing the whole thing. Is there a plot to blackmail Roberto? Drive him insane? Frame him for murder? It doesn't matter: The stalker in the puppet mask is seriously spooky and the ending is killer.

Continue reading "A Dario Argento Expert Ranks Her Ten Favorites" »

Linda Blair died for your sins. Or, rather, Linda Blair's career died for your sins. After starring in The Exorcist all she wanted to do was ride horses and maybe star in a few light comedies. She took on a couple of highly-rated, hot topic TV movies, but everyone wanted her to do an Exorcist sequel. The audience -- we -- demanded it. The studio demanded it. Her accountants demanded it. And so Linda Blair did it. Not because she wanted to, but for us. And it destroyed her.

William Peter-Blatty refused to be involved in a sequel to one of the biggest box office hits of the time. So did the original director, William Friedkin. Ellen Burstyn declined to return. Jon Voight, David Carradine, Christopher Walken and Jack Nicholson all passed. Besides Blair, only Max von Sydow and Kitty Winn (who? she plays Blair's housekeeper) returned. Directed by John Boorman, the movie also featured Richard Burton, Paul Henreid (Casablanca), Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and James Earl Jones with music by Ennio Morricone and cinematography by William Fraker (Rosemary's Baby). Now, it's possible for one of these talented individuals to have a bad day, but the odds that they would all, simultaneously, turn in the worst work of their careers is nothing short of miraculous. Exorcist II: The Heretic is just that kind of miracle.

Continue reading "With Exorcist II, Linda Blair Was Doomed to a Career of Cult Movies, Thank Goodness" »

American International Pictures, the legendary exploitation studio run by Roger Corman, is famous not just for the speed of its productions (Little Shop of Horrors -- two days and one night of shooting), or its casts of aging stars and up-and-comers equally desperate for work (The Terror paired Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff), but for the directors who yelled "Cut!" for the first time while working inside Corman's speed machine. Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante and John Sayles are just a few of the future auteurs who got their start slaving for Corman; Dementia 13 was Francis Ford Coppola's turn.

Working as the location sound recorder on Corman's The Young Racers, Coppola had previously directed nudie cuties like The Bellboy and the Playgirls under a fake name and done some creative editing on some scifi footage purchased overseas by Corman. But Racers was shot in Europe and the penny-pinching Corman, who hated not getting his money's worth, suggested that Coppola -- who had been begging for more work -- stay behind in Ireland. It was 1963 and William Castle had seeded American audiences for stories of mysterious homicidal killers in movies like, well, Homicidal. In Italy, Mario Bava was in production on the Italian version of the slasher film, his giallo called The Girl Who Knew Too Much. But the movie that dragged these films into the mainstream was Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho, which gave wholesome American audiences a cross-dressing, necrophiliac psychopath they could love.

Coppola pitched Corman his movie the next morning and, after getting the green light (and $20,000), he spent a couple of days writing the script, stole the actors from the now-completed Young Racers and got to work. Shot mostly on location and spiked with sweet underwater footage, Dementia 13 (what does that title even mean?) kicks off with a midnight boat ride that sticks in the mind of any who see it. Fat Jack Haloran hops in his rowboat for a midnight paddle, rockabilly-blaring transistor radio in tow. His wife, Louise (Luana Anders, sporting a peroxide blonde haystack on her head), hops in after him, ranting about his mother's will, which will leave the Haloran fortune to charity. She doesn't stand to inherit a penny, especially not after Jack keels over 30-seconds later with a massive coronary. Louisa hides his body and flies to Ireland to visit his spooky family in their spooky castle. Mom's a freak, one of the sons is a neurotic and the other is a dark, brooding macho man who looks like he can't decide whether he wants to kiss his fiancee or just slap her around. Louisa quickly worms her way into the heart of the family, pretending to have a psychic connection with Kathleen, the dead little sister who drowned in the castle's lake. Next come the axe murders.

Continue reading "Dementia 13 Review - Evidence of Francis Ford Coppola's Genius to Come" »

Take a good hard look at your own prom picture. (Go ahead and dig it out, I'll wait.) Does it already look tragically out of date? Do you appear to be having more fun than you really were? Or is there really still a spark there, a portrait of the glory of youth?

The original Prom Night is all of these things. And still, filmmakers keep hauling Prom Night back to its feet year after year. After three sequels and now a full-fledged remake, we can't help but feel a little silly as we watch the original, but it's familiar enough that we can't look away. John Carpenter had already thrown a coming-out party for Jamie Lee Curtis two years earlier with Halloween, making her casting as Kim Hammond a tad redundant. Yet without her warm liquid eyes, beautifully grave facial expressions -- and, yes, super-freaky disco dancing -- there would be no reason to care about this slash-by-numbers affair.

Continue reading "The Original Prom Night Revisited" »

For the first time in my life, I wish I lived in Detroit.

The Motor City may be best known for great American cars and great American music, but now it's bringing back another all-American tradition -- the late night TV horror host.  The show, called Nightmare SINema hosted by "Wolfman Mac", features sketches, classic commercials, animated shorts and classic horror movies.  It started airing on Detroit public access last year and recently began airing on the local "My" affiliate on Friday nights at 1 AM.

The brainchild of local DJ Mac Kelly, Nightmare SINema recalls the days of such great Detroit horror hosts as Sir Ghastly Graves and The Ghoul. Targeted for kids and nostalgic boomers, it currently airs public domain movies like The Brain That Wouldn't Die and Little Shop of Horrors. But the hope is that if the show prospers at its new home, they will be able license a classic or two -- and maybe even move to a timeslot when most kids are actually awake.

Continue reading "New Horror Host Wolfman Mac Haunts Detroit TV" »

Sad news for classic horror fans: Ben Chapman, who played the titular Creature From the Black Lagoon, has passed away. The 82-year-old retired actor and stunt-man was admitted to the hospital on February 12th, and died peacefully in the company of his wife and son yesterday morning.

After 1954's Black Lagoon, the "Gill Man" became a horror icon right up there with Boris Karloff's Frankenstein and Bela Legosi's Count Dracula. Like Karloff, Chapman found a way to bring depth and life to his character despite being buried beneath costume special effects. His film career may have been short-lived, but Chapman's devoted fanbase and niche in Hollywood history speak for themselves.

Continue reading "RIP: "Gill Man" Ben Chapman" »

The horror community has been abuzz with the news that New Line Cinema and Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes would be remaking the classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. But unbeknownst to most, another remake of Nightmare is not only on the way, it's showing this Thursday at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin, TX. Just over five minutes long, it was produced for next to nothing. Check it out here.

The Alamo Drafthouse has been one of the leaders in interactive cinema over the last few years, sponsoring numerous quickie DIY filmmaking contests, but their latest may prove to be their most amibitious. Called Rewind Kindly (inspired by the premise of Michel Gondry's, Be Kind Rewind), it allows contestants to rework their favorite films in short form. Numerous classic (and several not-so-classic) films, from Gone With the Wind to The Beastmaster (a personal favorite -- the remake, not the original), have gone the remake route for a chance to win a Dell AMD-powered workstation grand prize.

Continue reading "Horror Remakes Haunt Austin" »

Some stories flow with a grace that translates cleanly into song -- and this isn't one of them. Nevertheless, Troma's The Toxic Avenger will soon be mucking about on stage with showstopping numbers arranged by Bon Jovi's David Bryan, according to Icons of Fright's interview with the Tromatizer himself, Lloyd Kaufman.

Fans have staged the film before, "but this is the real Toxic Avenger: The Musical with a real professional producing team, and hopefully something will happen with it," says Kaufman, who co-directed the cult classic in 1985. Producers plan to test run the Toxic musical -- in Newark, where the original movie was filmed -- before trying to float it across the river to New York. Check out the rest of the interview for more on the musical, the Toxic remake rumors, and more.

Call me uninformed, but I had no idea that vampire memorabilia could be worth over a million dollars. On eBay today, one auctioneer is selling a large poster promoting 1931's Dracula (with Bela Lugosi) for a whopping $1,200,000. If you're a B-movie filmmaker, you could make three films with that kind of money.

Apparently, this one-sheet is one of only two known examples in the world. As you look at it, Lugosi at once looks like he's laughing, crazed. and angry. Quite a feat. And it is, after all, the ultra-cool "story of the strangest passion the world has ever known." Still, that's a lot of cash to pay? Would you buy it if you had the money? Or is it just too much of an extravagance?

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you lovers of horror. During this ultra-romantic 24-hour period, I realize that Monsterfesters may need a break from the roses and candlelit meals for a few minutes of sheer terror. Along those lines, here's a bloody scene from Valentine with Charlie Sheen's lovely former wife Denise Richards as the ill-fated Paige Prescott. Is love dead? Well, Paige is thrown into a hot tub, locked in by the Plexiglas cover, then attacked with a huge drill by an angry guy wearing a Cupid mask.

By the way, this was one of Grey's Anatomy star Kathryn Heigl's first fright flicks. Although Knocked Up has propelled her to higher levels, she's screamed for her life in everything from Bride of Chucky to Zyzzyx Rd.