The Tingler (1959)

I grew up with a copy of the Cinemania 97 CD-ROM as a kid, which featured a John Waters commentary all about 1950s filmmaker William Castle who was a great influence on Waters and other filmmakers (including Joe Dante who made a fictional tribute to the guy in the John Goodman comedy, Matinee). A sort […]

Phase IV (1974)

Phase IV (1974) feels like a perfect movie to discover randomly on a grainy public access TV channel. “Hmm, looks like an ordinary movie,” you might think. “Oh, it’s sci-fi. And ants? Ants are the threat? Okay.” And then you walk away and think, “What the hell did I just watch?” This is the only […]

The Iron Rose (1973)

The Iron Rose (1973; La Rose de Fer) is the third film I’ve seen from French director Jean Rollin, and along with Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco, their names represent a quintessential arty Euro-horror milieu. Rollin is known for low-budget genre flicks, usually concerning vampires, where there’s nudity and blood, and actors wandering around castles and […]

Tales From The Crypt (1972)

One of the many horror anthologies that British studio Amicus produced in the 1970s, Tales From The Crypt (1972) is based on the William Gaines EC comics well before HBO revisited them with a quippy animatronic ghoul in the 1990s. Here, the Cryptkeeper is played by Sir Ralph Richardson, basically wearing brown robes and acting […]

House Of Wax (2005)

House Of Wax (2005) is a remake in name only, from what I gather of the Vincent Price original (which I have not seen), and seems more inspired by another horror film (that I have seen), Tourist Trap, with a similar plot about a group of teenagers finding themselves in a deserted town off the […]