The Skull (1965)

Directed by: Freddie Francis

Even though Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing made a lot of movies together for Hammer Films my favorites are the ones that was made for other companies. Their best, in my opinion, is Horror Express, but this might just be my second favorite with the gruesome twosome that was Lee and Cushing. The Skull was made by Amicus and the more I watch the Amicus movies the more I feel that they were really up there with Hammer when it comes to making great atmospheric horror movies. I've always held Hammer as the best by far and then Amicus and Tigon and companies like that... nah, screw that, Amicus were just as good as Hammer and this movie is one of many proofs of that.

The DVD (released by Paramount / Legend Films) lacks when it comes to extras and this is not really a review of the DVD, but I just wish that they could drag Christopher Lee into a studio and have him record commentary tracks for every damn movie he's made while there's still time. Even though his part in this movie is pretty small (he's billed as a guest star) I would have loved to listen to him talk about the movie and his work with Peter Cushing... well, a guy can dream, can't he?


The film starts in the 1800's and a cemetary where a man is having a grave dug up and he hacks off the head of the corpse lying in that grave. He brings the head back home with him and into his bathroom where he strips it of its flesh, but moments later his mistress finds him drowned in his bathtub and the skull is sitting on a table facing the dead man.

We then jump circa 150 years into the present day (well, it was the present day when the movie was released) and at an auction we meet Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing), an collector of occult stuff (and author of books dealing with the occult). Present at the auction is also Maitland's friend and fellow collector Sir Matthew Phillips (Christopher Lee), and when four small statues of different devils are up for bids they start a bidding war that ends when Phillips ups the price far beyond their worth. Maitland returns to his home where he is visited by Marco (Patrick Wymark), and unscrupulous antiques dealer. Marco has sold many things to Maitland in the past, but this time he feels he has some real good shit to sell him. Marco has brought with him a book, bound in human skin, that's about the life and death of the Marquis de Sade. Even though he at first doesn't seem that interested Maitland buys the book and is told that he will be offered something even greater the next evening...


The following evening Marco returns and this time he offers Maitland a skull, but it's just not any skull... it's the skull of the Marquis de Sade (the very same skull that was dug up in the beginning of the movie). Maitland doesn't jump on the chance of owning the skull of de Sade immediately though as Marco asks for too much money... that kind of cash needs some sleeping on. So, they decide that Maitland will come around Marco's place the next evening if he wants to buy the skull.

While visiting his friend Phillips, Maitland discovers that the skull was stolen from him and he really don't want it back. Phillips warns Maitland to buy it as it is an evil skull with powers to possess you during the first nights of the new moon... spooky stuff... Maitland returns back home where he later that night is visited by a couple of police men who are there to arrest him. They bring him to a strange house and a weirdo judge who forces him to play russian roulette before locking him up in a room that is filled with gas (this whole segment reminded me of the TV show The Prisoner for some reason, it has that strange weird feeling over it). And just then Maitland wakes up in a strange place he doesn't recognize... he's in the building Marco lives and when he enters Marco's apartment to talk about the skull he finds Marco dead. But, before calling the cops he finds the skull and hides it in an hallway closet.


Later on when the cops are gone he returns for the skull, and while taking it from it's hiding place he runs into the building's caretaker which he pushes down the stairs to his death. The skull is already slowly taking over Maitland, who then breaks into Phillips' house to steal one of the small statues from the auction in the beginning of the movie... When he returns back home the skull wants him to kill his wife, but Maitland refuses to do it making the skull to go after him instead...

This here is a great movie, and I wonder why the hell I had never watched it before... I always go back to the great atmospheric Hammer horrors, but this one almost felt more like an Hammer film than the Hammer films themselves. This is how it should be done! Peter Cushing holds up the entire movie on his shoulders and he does it so well, the last 20 minutes or so has almost no dialogue and still he manages to crank out such a great performance. Christopher Lee is in only three scenes, but he is still very important to the plot and as always he shines in his part. I didn't even think about how little screen time he had as this truly felt like an Cushing/Lee movie all the way.

Freddie Francis also shines as the director, his use of strange angles adds to the weirdness that comes from the skull's powers. His skull point of view cam is also superb. Everything about this film felt just perfect to me, the library/study where Maitland is working is one of those places you just feel you want to visit for real and just sit there and read through all of those books. The attention to detail is wonderful... and one thing that probably isn't so perfect from the filmmaker's point of view just made my day, when the skull is flying through the house at the end the strings holding it up are clearly visible and I just LOVE that! Today it would of course have been done by using CGI (and Cushing's and Lee's roles would probably have been played by stupid teens from a soap opera or something), but this is how it should be... more visible strings!!!

This is a truly great movie that you should rather be watching right now instead of reading this shitty so called review!

Witchboard (1986)

Directed by: Kevin Tenney

Want some cheese with that? Or wait a minute... it should probably rather be: Want some extra cheese on top of all that cheese, and maybe some cheese on the side? If you like cheesy 80's horror flicks this is probably the holy grail for you as it has plenty of cheesy stuff in it... I love cheesy movies, but even I have a limit somewhere and this flick might have crossed the line. Well, maybe not totally as I did enjoy it, but god damn it's a cheesy flick! It was the director Kevin Tenney's first movie and he truly went for all the clichés in a supernatural horror flick in the 80's (he wrote the flick as well). There are plenty of jump scares (is that even an expression? hopefully you know what I mean), bad 80's acting and silly looking effects.

Back in my teens I used to have this big Swedish Witchboard poster above my bed, I think it was the same image that was on the UK poster as well, a painting of a very scantily clad Tawny Kitaen with some ghostly hands reaching for her. After having rewatched the movie now I wonder if it wasn't because of ms. Kitaen I had that poster up rather than the movie itself... I do remember liking the movie back then, but trust me when I say that a short nude scene with Tawny was probably all I needed to like this movie as a horny teenager with hormones flying all over the place (I would probably have exploded if I had watched Gwendoline at the time...).

It all starts at a party that Jim (Todd Allen) and Linda (Tawny Kitaen) are throwing. Among the guests are Jim's ex best friend and Linda's ex boyfriend Brandon (Stephen Nichols) - apparently hooking up with your best friend's ex can break a frienship... but, in the movie world it would be worth it for the lovely ms. Kitaen. In the real world I don't think it would be a great idea, rather stay with the best friend and not get beaten up by the not so lovely ms. Kitaen... Ok, back to the story, Brandon has brought with him a Ouija-board to the party - it should preferrably be two people using it by placing the board on their knees and put their hands on the thingy that moves over the letters. So, Brandon enlists Linda to help him contact his dead buddy David - David shows up, but Jim not liking his girl doing this with her ex manages to upset David by acting like an asshole. David splits in a rage and the party has come to a halt.

The next day Linda finds the Ouija board still being at their apartment and she starts using it to contact David on her own (a big no-no as you should never do this alone). She manages to contact David (or is it?) who is very helpful and nice again... meanwhile, at the same time some spooky spirit stuff is going on at the construction site Jim works at when a coworker gets crushed under a big load of construction material. And all of a sudden "David" is starting to scare Linda and even go so far as to attack her, sending her to the hospital.

Jim and Brandon have to work together to save Linda from whatever it is that is terrorizing her. They contact David through another Ouija board and is told that there is another spirit that is the one terrorizing Linda, the evil Malfeitor. And just as the boys get this news they are attacked by Malfeitor and Brandon gets clobbered over the head with an axe and it's bye bye to him... Meanwhile, Linda is now out of the hospital and of course she just can't keep her hands from the board, but this time she gets no response. She decides to take a shower (and yes, here comes the nude scene) and there she gets attacked again. When Jim comes back home the whole place is in a mess and Linda shows up, possessed by the spirit of Malfeitor, holding an axe. She attacks him and right here a cop shows up to get knocked out immediately, but his gun falls to the floor and Jim uses it to shoot the Ouija board to free Linda from Malfeitor's powers.

Ok, what can I say that I didn't say in the beginning of this "review"? It sure is a cheesy movie, but it's grade A cheese at least, no matter how silly it gets it's still a charming 80's horror flick that contains everything an 80's horror flick should have. It drags along at times, but if you wait around you'll get one of those extra silly horror flicks that could only have been made in the 80's. And we also get a super hot Tawny Kitaen (yep, I NEED to watch Gwendoline again soon!) dressing up in men's clothes and acting crazy (um, is that maybe just me with that kind of fetish? ;-)).

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

Directed by: Edward L. Cahn

I'm not sure if the tagline "It breathes, It hunts..., It kills!!" is just on the DVD cover and (hopefully) wasn't used back in 1958 to promote this flick as it's beyond stupid. Sure, being hunted by the IT in the movie is probably no picnic and being killed by it isn't of course something that I would choose, but IT breathing isn't really that scary now, is it? Sure, it's a part of the plot, but still... I'm not gonna complain too much though as I live for these over exaggerated taglines for sci-fi/horror flicks from the 50's. The wilder the better, I just felt a little let down by the whole "It breathes!" thing... ;-)

I'm a total sucker for 50's sci-fi and this is one of the classics, so it was with bated breath that I finally sat down to watch it for my very first time. And I have to confess that losing my It! The Terror from Beyond Space virginity wasn't as exciting as I had hoped for... More about that later though, what I want to mention (and I suppose everyone else does as well) is the Alien connection in this flick. This is one of a couple of movies that are said to surely must have been inspiration for the movie Alien, there are flicks like Planet of the Vampires and Queen of Blood that would fit with this one as being close plotwise as well. Ok, we have a space ship with a monster on the lose picking the crew members off one by one, the ending has something to do with an air lock and that's about it that I can recall from this flick. I've read somewhere that some people look at Alien as a remake of this one, but I just can't see that at all.

The movie is set in 1973 (yay! the year I was born, but I don't remember people still dressing in very typical 50's clothes in 1973...) and 6 months after the first manned mission to Mars crashed a second space ship arrives to rescue the survivors. There's only one man left though, Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson), and immediately he is suspected of killing the other members of his crew. Supposedly so he would have more food so he could stay alive longer... Yep, he truly is being treated as guilty without no evidence. That he tells his rescuers a monster killed his crew really doesn't help either... so, it's back to earth and court martial for Col. Carruthers.

Before the ship lifts off some stupid idiot leaves a door to the space ship open for quite some time (hm... here we are in space and people are leaving the god damn doors open???), and just like that something sneaks onto the new ship as well. It doesn't take long before some crew members disappear and when their dead and mangled bodies are found people start to believe Carruthers about the monster. They run into the monster and no bullets can harm it, so the crew has to hide on the upper floors of the space ship while the monster is lose a couple of floors below then munching on dead crew members (or something, I don't know what he does to them...).

The remaining crew members hatch a plan and that is to head outside of the space ship, walk down the body of the ship and enter a floor beneath the monster. There they will try to electrocute it by putting some electric cords on the stairs (yep, it's THAT high tech ;-)). This doesn't work and the monster is now getting mightily pissed off and starts to break through the hatches on the floors above him to get his hands on the remaining crew. But, thanks to some bright thinking they realize that the monster needs a lot of oxygen to live (kinda strange as I just don't see that much oxygen existing on Mars to begin with) and when it breaks through the last hatch they throw everything they got at it. That includes a bazooka, ladies and gentlemen... yep, a big fucking bazooka on a space ship!

When the monster is getting weak from the attack they open an air lock and let all air out (while having donned space suits themselves) and the monster soon dies of lack of oxygene... back on earth we get to witness a press conference telling people about the dangers of the planet Mars. And the over dramatic guy holding the press conference ends the movie by letting us know in an typical 1950's over the top way: "There's another name for Mars, and that is... Death!".

This is a movie I have read about many times and have wanted to see for a long time and maybe it was my anticipation that kinda killed it a little as it really wasn't as good as I had hoped for. I'm not gonna say that this is a bad movie though, I did enjoy it in a way, but I just felt that there was something lacking. The movie is very short, only 69 minutes, but still at times it did feel like it was a lot longer than that as there isn't anything happening. The monster itself was quite underwhelming as well, I don't think it was made for the guy wearing it ("Crash" Corrigan) as it looks very much like a suit and not the body of a space creature. We get folds and creases all over when it moves and the head just looks stupid (also probably due to it having a last minute change right before they started shooting the movie).

If you enjoy, just like I do, old black and white 50's sci-fi you should check it out though, I might just have had a bad day (I'm gonna rewatch it later on just to see why I didn't like it more than I did, after all this is the stuff I live for). But, I would rather recommend movies like This Island Earth and Forbidden Planet first if you haven't watched them yet, those are some really good 50's sci-fi movies (both in color though).

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)

a.k.a. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue / Don't Open the Window / The Living Dead / Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue etc etc etc.
Directed by: Jorge Grau

After having had myself an Arrested Development marathon this last week it is now time to return to the wild wild world of weird weird movies... and what better movie to restart this with than Let Sleeping Corpses Lie? I do prefer the title The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue as it has such a poetic touch (yep, you heard me!) and I just love the use of "The Living Dead" rather than the word zombie in a title... Like most zombie flicks of the 70's/80's this one has a million alternative titles and apparently it was released in italy as Zombi 3 at one time as well... That's not a small feat considering it was marketed as a second sequel to a movie that still was 4 years away from being released... Oh, those crazy italians!

I'm not sure what to call this movie as it was filmed in the UK and Italy (mostly in Italy), with an british, spanish and italian cast and a spanish director. It's set in the UK, but it sure does feel more like a spanish 70's horror flick than anything else... and you could of course do a lot worse than that. I love the zombies in this movie as they are not the decomposed walking dead that you usually see in the italian zombie flicks that started to pop up a couple of years after this movie was released, these zombies are more recent dead that still have some use of their brains. Their mission is the same though - eating human flesh! And when we're talking about that subject I have to say that the gore we get in this flick is pretty damn impressive for the time it was made.

The movie starts with the hip bike riding and leather wearing antiques dealer George (Ray Lovelock) closing his London Antiques shop to head out to the English countryside on his bike. He's made plans with some friends to fix up a cottage as well as to flog off an ugly looking statue from his shop. On his way to the cottage he stops by a petrol station and manages to get his bike run over by a car driven by the beautiful Edna (Cristina Galbó), being the man's man that he is he more or less forces himself into her car and decides that she will let him drive himself to the cottage and then she can go where the hell she was going afterwards. After all, she owes him that from running over his bike, right?

It turns out that Edna was on her way to meet her junkie sister and her husband and at a crossroads she manages to persuade George that she really needs him to get her there a.s.a.p. After some grumbling on George's part they head for the sister's home instead, but first they have to stop and ask for directions... While good ol' George walk onto a field where some farming people are using a weird insect killing machine (that uses ultra sonic waves to kill off the insects) a strange looking man comes stumbling towards Edna. He attacks her, but she manages to flee from him and when George returns with one of the farmers the weird looking dude is gone - and of course Edna is not believed as the guy she described died last week...

They get into the car again and drive to Edna's sister's cottage where the same man now attacks her inside the house... that is one fast son of a bitch! The sister flees from the house to where her photographer husband is taking pics of some flowers and manages to be followed by the weirdo from the house... Just in time as George and Edna arrives the strange man attacks the photographer husband and kills him, and as this is on the countryside where people aren't as bright as in the cities (right?) George and Edna immediately get under suspicion of killing Edna's sister's husband. It doesn't matter if there is any proof or not, the Police Inspector on the case (Arthur Kennedy) don't believe a thing he's being told by anyone as he is so set on George and Edna being guilty of this crime. He is without a doubt the biggest dick I've ever seen in a movie (and that comes from someone who has watched a couple of John Holmes movies in my days), but not even he is above the law so he must let George and Edna go... but only to the nearby village where they have to stay at a hotel so he can get to them whenever he needs.

Our dynamic duo won't stay at the hotel though and as George now starts to believe Edna about the first attack they decide to go to the local cemetary and check out if they can find out anything about that dude who died last week. They end up in the basement where they are attacked by this man and it's quite obvious he's a zombie, he can also turn other corpses into the living dead by touching their faces, so soon the two "heroes" have three zombies coming for them. They manage to get out of the basement and into the church (together with a cop that was following them), but they are soon under siege as the zombies REALLY want their flesh. The cop makes a run for it to get his radio (that he had dropped outside), but he ends up as a healthy meal instead... The zombies then manage to break into the church only to be burnt to a crisp by reliable ol' George.

So, do you think our beloved Police Inspector believes a word he's being told when he arrives at the scene? Of course not... now George and Edna are under suspicion of killing the cop (and being satanists), but they escape in a cop car as George has now worked things out. The dead are coming back because of that ultra sonic wave machine he saw earlier in the movie... yep, it's as clear as a sunny day that he has found the culprit! He must stop it, but leaves Edna at another petrol station, where she freaks out and get hurt and is sent off to the hospital. George arrives at the field where the machine is and starts banging on it, not really damaging it that much, but he seems happy with it at least. He returns for Edna, after he has been told she's been sent to the hospital, and again he has to battle zombies...

This is quite different from most zombie movies as there has been no zombie apocalypse, there are not zombie all over the place (I think there are something like 7-8 zombies altogether in the whole movie). These zombies are the product of a local pesticide experiment (the ultra sonic wave machine) and not the usual zombie plague.

I'm a sucker for this movie, no matter how much I love the italian zombie flicks that came a couple of years later I'd say that this one beats them all. Sure, there are some hefty plot holes, but nothing I can't live with. The special fx are great (the fx dude Gianetto de Rossi would later work with Fulci on Zombi 2), the zombie in the pic above this text really looks like he's been cut up and then stapled back together again... that gash all down his front looks damn deep to me.

Hell, you get it all, some swinging 70's people battling it out with some great looking zombies... what more can you ask for from a movie?

Vampyres (1974)

a.k.a. Daughters of Dracula / Vampyres: Daughters of Darkness / Satan's Daughters / Blood Hunger
Directed by: José Larraz

I'm a pretty simple person, when there's some blood and gore mixed with nudity I'm gonna watch it. When those ingredients are present in a british flick from the 70's I'm really gonna watch it! Sex and horror go well together and seldom have the two of them mixed so well as in this movie... It's strange as I wouldn't really say there's a huge ass plot that moves the story forward all of the time, it's rather that we get to spend a couple of days with the main characters and that's it, but I fucking love this movie. And it's not only because of the plentiful amounts of nudity we get here, the whole movie has such a great gothic atmosphere and, at times, quite shocking violence. But, I'm not gonna say that all of those nude lesbian scenes with Marianne Morris and Anulka made when wanna turn the movie off either...

This is also an utterly beautiful looking movie that really takes advantage of the british autumn as the falling leaves is a nice metaphor for death, and there is a lot of death in this movie. I'm not sure if it's because of the spanish director, but it doesn't feel like other british horror flicks at the time - it has a more south european feeling and it's easy to compare this flick to the vampire films of Jean Rollin as Vampyres is in the same vein as those (being surreal and dream like), but this one is so much better (and I do really like the Rollin vampire movies).


We start the film with two very beautiful and very nude women tumbling around in a bed, enjoying some sapphic love together when someone with a gun enters their bedroom and shoots them. We then flash forward and find the couple John and Harriet (Brian Deacon & Sally Faulkner) out on a camping trip with their trailer arriving on the grounds of a big mansion in the english countryside. While driving to their destination, Harriet noticed these two women standing by the side of the road trying to hitchhike... and for some reason she can't get that image out of her mind.

The two women were the two from the beginning of the movie, so already here we know that there's something fishy going on. The two women are Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka) and they have this little thing going on where Fran is picked up by a car and get the driver to bring her back to her home (the big mansion). The driver is invited into the house and end up in bed with the beautiful Fran... and before you say "now, that's one lucky dude!", I have to tell you that the driver ends up dead the very next morning in what looks like a accident with his car.


One day Fran gets picked up by a man named Ted (Murray Brown), who of course won't say no to some rolling around in the hay with her. The next day he finds the bed empty and he's feeling a bit drained... sure, from all the sucking the night before he should feel drained, but not like that... He also has this big scar on his arm that appears he got from a broken glass. Or did he? Um, no he didn't... but more about that later. As he can't find Fran he decides to leave, but not feeling too good he ends up at the trailer with John and Harriet, where he's bandaged up and after having had some coffee he's right as rain again.

Instead of just leaving, Ted lets his little head do the thinking and he returns to the mansion, waiting in his car for Fran to return. She does, this time together with Miriam and another dude that picked them up in his car... yeah, why stop a winning concept? Later that night Miriam attacks the guy who drove them home and bites him to lick his blood (sounds sexy, but this is pretty ferocious), Fran joins in and soon the poor dude has his main vein drained, and not in the way he was hoping.


The next morning Ted wakes up again, and again feeling weak and unusally drained. He again looks for Fran, but as she's not around he gets into his car and drives off... on the road he passes by a car crash scene and when he stops he recognize the dead driver as the guy from the night before. Instead of letting the cops know this he instead returns to the house, where he manages to get locked inside the wine cellar looking for Fran. She returns to the house that same evening and again they have this new guy with them, and again it's party time! This time without Ted as he's too weak to party (I don't care how weak you are, you don't say no to partying with those two gorgeous women!).

The party ends just like all of the other parties these two women have, the guy gets killed and they drink his blood. But, throughout the movie, Harriet (the woman camping near the house) has been doing her Ms. Marple thing and been nosying around the house where she even entered the wine cellar to find Fran and Miriam sleeping a very strange looking sleep (well, Miriam awoke and hid from Harriet). So, things really needs to be taken care of there...


As I said earlier, I really love this movie and one of the things that I really love is how the movie ends... it's not a happy ending and it's not really an end to what is going on in the movie either, if that makes sense. We get to spend some time with these people and then we move on, while they keep doing before we first entered their world. I also like the way these two vampires are being portrayed as there is none of the regular vampire myths present. There are no fangs, the girls have to cut open wounds to drink the blood from people, they can move around in sunlight, they don't transform into any bats or anything and somehow I don't think crosses would make them go away either.

Even though Hammer (yeah, I know... apparently I can't talk about a british horror film from the 70's without bringing up Hammer, but it's valid here) are known for their lesbian vampire movies in the Karnstein series (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire & Twins of Evil) this is the definite lesbian vampire movie to me (well, I'm ashamed to confess that I haven't watched Daughters of Darkness or The Blood Spattered Bride yet, but I will!). Sexy nude lesbian vampires... need I say more? Watch it!!!!

The Asphyx (1973)

a.k.a The Horror of Death / Spirit of the Dead
Directed by: Peter Newbrook

It's hard to not compare this movie with the Hammer films from the same time. I mean, it's a gothic horror film set in the victorian era (the film is set in 1875) and it has all of the ingredients that a Hammer flick would have had as well. But, if you go beyond the similarities you'll soon spot the signs that this isn't a Hammer flick. Don't get me wrong, I do think the film is quite OK, but at times it has a tendency to be a bit too slow paced, talky and in all honesty, a bit on the dull side. Even though the sets looked good it still felt like a low budget little brother to the Hammer films of the time and I know it's not fair to compare to Hammer all of the time, but they really set a standard for gothic period horror flicks.

The low budget showed quite well in the last scenes of the movie (I'm not gonna tell you exactly what happens - watch it for yourself) where there is a mask that looked even worse than the old alien masks in the original Star Trek TV series. That was a pure low budget series and still this flick managed to look even cheaper when it came to the special effects. Not that it should matter as a great movie is a great movie no matter how cheap it might look, but then again... I wouldn't go so far as to call this one a great movie.


The main character in the movie is the scientist Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens), who is taking photographs of dying people (quite a macabre hobby, wouldn't you say?). When he discovers a black blur in all of the photographs he starts to research the phenomena, coming to the conclusion that he has captured the souls leaving the bodies. Later when he is out filming with his family (yes, he's also an inventor as he has invented a way to make moving pictures) his son and Hugo's soon to be second wife capsize with their small boat and drown. Hugo continues to film them when they're drowning (that's dedication for ya!), while the rest of the family at least tries to save them.

Later on when Hugo is examining the film from the accident he finds the same black blur there as well, but realizes that the blur is not leaving the bodies - it's coming for them. And later when he's filming a public hanging he manages to capture a weird muppet looking blue spirit coming for the hanged man. Hugo comes to the conclusion that what he captured on film was the spirit of the dead, The Asphyx, who came to take the hanged man to the underworld. Being the bright guy that he is he realizes that if he can capture the spirit he will have found immortality... if there's no spirit of the dead to take you away you will not die.

He uses a guinea pig (it's an actual guinea pig) for an experiment in trying to capture the Asphyx, and after having fed it some poisoned paste the guinea pig starts to die - and viola! the Asphyx appears. Thanks to some weird blue light Hugo uses he traps the spirit and locks it up in a box - the guinea pig recovers and it comes clear that if you catch the spirit of the dead you can not die. He's not only a brilliant scientist, he's also a bit koo-koo, so Hugo decides to top himself off (well, almost at least) and with the help of his adopted son, Giles (Robert Powell), capture his very own spirit of the dead who will come and collect his soul and thus become immortal.


After doing what they do so well in Texas, using an electric chair, Hugo's very own Asphyx is now trapped and locked up in a room in the cellar. Having lost half of his family recently Hugo wants Giles and Hugo's daughter (who wants to get married to Giles... her adpoted brother, what the hell is going on in that family, really???) to do the same so he won't lose them as well. After some persuading they both agree (he won't let them marry unless they do this, nice guy that he is), but things don't really go as planned...

This is by far not a bad movie, not at all, but I feel it could have been so much more... It's a horror film, but in all honesty there isn't really that much horror in it. I don't know if it's the low budget, but at times it does feel like I'm watching an old british TV theater episode - it's a very talky movie that rather than showing some of the stuff let the characters tell us about it instead. Even though the DVD I have of this flick looks pretty washed out when it comes to the colors it is a good looking film with some great looking sets - and even if some of the acting was a bit too TV theater looking I really liked Robert Stephens as Hugo Cunningham. The ending was maybe a bit on the cheesy side, but I like cheesy so I won't complain too much.

It's a good flick to check out when you have run out of Hammer flicks to watch... well, check out the Amicus ones before this one as well, but then you should definitely check this one out as it is well worth the time you'll spend with it if you're into british 70's gothic horror flicks.

Dolls (1987)

Directed by: Stuart Gordon

I've never been creeped out by dolls, but after having watched this movie I'm happy there are no dolls in my home - who the hell could sleep with those damn things around? Killer dolls movies were pretty popular in the 80's/early 90's with movies like Child's Play, Puppetmaster, Demonic Toys etc, but this one might have been the first in that wave. It was released in 1987 (Child's Play was released in 1988 for example), but filmed already back in 1985.

This was director Stuart Gordon's follow up to Re-Animator and From Beyond and anyone could of course understand that this movie couldn't top those two. Not that I think that it was ever the intention as this is a very different kind of movie. It feels like a very dark fairytale rather than the usual horror movie, and at times I almost get a feeling I'm watching a children's movie... with some damn fine gore here and there. It's probably because the main character that we get to follow in the movie is a seven year old girl and I do feel the movie get a bit too cute here and there because of her. She's adorable as hell, but skip the kid and show me the violence!


I know I usually go on forever when describing the plot of a movie in my "reviews", but with this one I could probably do it in one sentence: Some people end up in a mansion one stormy night and those who are bad are killed off by some dolls coming to life... Something like that! Well, as I enjoy being boring I will at least try and expand the plot description.

Seven year old Judy (Carrie Lorraine) is stuck for the summer with her father, David (Ian Patrick Williams), and his new sugarmama Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy Gordon). And they seem to feel stuck with her as well as neither of them are being very nice towards little Judy (and already here we realize that these two won't survive the movie - it's that kind of movie, act bad and you'll get killed). They're out driving during a thunderstorm and manage to get stuck in some very shallow looking mud, good thing there's this big mansion just by the side of the road... Our dysfunctional family unit knocks on the door, but as no one opens the door they break into the cellar to get away from the rain. There they are found by the two residents of the mansion, Gabriel (Guy Rolfe) and Hilary (Hilary Mason) and instead of telling them to get the hell outta there the family is asked to stay the night.


Hm... not sure I would want to spend a night with those creepy looking old people around... Like we didn't already had enough people to have a little party even more people turn up trying to get away from the rain. Ralph (Stephen Lee) and two hitchhikers, Isabel (Bunty Bailey - the chick from the Take on Me video by Aha) and Enid (Cassie Stuart), that he picked up (and probably thought he could sex up later on as well ;-)). Being the good (and creepy) hosts that they are Gabriel and Hilary invites them to spend the night in the mansion as well.

It turns out that Gabriel is a doll maker and the whole building is stuffed with dolls, creepy looking dolls... When it's time to hit the sack our two hitchhiking "punks" (although one is very much trying to look like Madonna did in the mid 80's, so I'm not sure how much punk they really are) decides that the place should have a lot of valuables that would be easy to steal. Isabel starts checking out the place on her own and is taken care of by some dolls... in a quite nasty way as she gets her face bashed in against a wall. Judy is a witness to this and tells her dad and the bitch he's together with and as this is a movie no one believes her, of course.

No one except for that Ralph guy as apparently he is still a "child at heart", they find blood on the floor where Isabel was taken care of, but no Isabel. And Gabriel has an explanation for the red stuff as well, so everyone goes back to bed. Or at least they're trying to as there are still some bad people alive in the house and the night is still young...

Hm, felt like I ran out of steam there, but I'm trying to keep my ramblings shorter when it comes to tell the story of the movie. I'm not here to write a damn book adaption of the movie... well, something that I hopefully will get better at with time... Aaaanyway, I have said this about other movies before, but I'll say it again. At times this movie remind me a little bit of the 90's TV show Tales from the Crypt, the movie mixes horror with some dark humor (just like the TV show) and it's that whole thing about "if you're naughty you WILL get punished" that feels taken straight out of most episodes of that show. Didn't they all end like that, by the way?

I mentioned earlier that this flick could of course never top Re-Animator or From Beyond, but it's still an entertaining movie. I wouldn't go so far to call it a great movie, but it's without a doubt well worth spending the 75 minutes it takes to watch it. I was quite impressed with the gore in this flick, not that there is that much of it, but what there is is great looking and effective. The pace of the movie is also quite good, with such a short movie there really isn't time to drag things out and we get some action quite early on in the movie. It was also great to see stop motion used to give the dolls life and it looked damn good. All in all an entertaining movie that delivers on the horror and even some chuckles.