October 1st kicks off Balladeer’s Blog’s usual mixing of horror items in with my usual topics. I review horror films from the silent movie era onward as well as obscure stories from the 1800s and earlier, like they’re Halloween counterparts to my Ancient Science Fiction reviews.
To give new readers a taste of how Halloween is done around here, take a look at some of last year’s Halloween Month highlights:
GRAND FINALE
HALLOWEEN WITH PAUL NASCHY – I capped off the horror season with a look at the 60s, 70s and 80s movies of Spain’s King of Horror – Jacinto Molina aka Paul Naschy. And I mean all of them, not just his many, many werewolf movies about tormented lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky. Naschy also starred as a mummy, as Dracula, as slashers, as an exorcist and so on.
There was Assignment: Terror, one of my all-time favorite Bad Movies featuring aliens who possess the dead bodies of scientists so they can conquer Earth with a vampire, a mummy and a werewolf. Werewolf vs the Yeti was another as was Dr. Jekyll vs the Wolfman.
Non-werewolf Naschy films I reviewed included Count Dracula’s Great Love, Horror Rises from the Tomb, The Hunchback of the Rue Morgue (yes), Vengeance of the Zombies, Return of the Witch, The Mummy’s Revenge, House of Psychotic Women, Exorcism, and The Man with the Severed Head.
FORGOTTEN HORROR STORIES
MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE (1887), about old stone statues of two evil knights which come to life to do evil. Classics like The King in Yellow (1895), Isabella of Egypt (1812) and several Ambrose Bierce short stories.
HORROR TELEVISION
I reviewed British tv’s proto-X-Files show The Omega Factor (1979) and Halloween at Yuletide (1971-1978), an anthology series. Plus America’s The Scarecrow (1972), a made for tv adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Feathertop, about a witch bringing a scarecrow (Gene Wilder) to life to do her evil bidding. Also with Blythe Danner and Will Geer.
HORROR COMIC BOOKS
HACK/ SLASH, the independent series about courageous Cassie Hack. She travels around fighting slashers and other horrors. And MARVEL’S FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER, featuring their unique take on new adventures of the monster.
OTHER MOVIE REVIEWS
CEMETERY OF TERROR (1985) – This Mexican flick dealt with the way a dead serial killer engineers his return from the dead on Halloween night via the unwitting help of partying college students in his creepy old mansion next to a graveyard.
POSSESSION (1981) – Sam Neil and Isabelle Adjani starred in this arthouse – but hardcore – horror film about a couple who get caught up with violent romance resulting in a monstrosity which also takes the woman as a lover.
GANJA & HESS (1973) – Black actors Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) and Marlene Clark starred in a very unique and atmospheric movie about two vampires in 1970s New York.
WAXWORK (1988) – The often-forgotten 80s horror flick about deadly, monstrous displays in a wax museum. Starred David Warner, Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, Miles O’Keefe, John Rhys-Davies and more.
THE PHANTASM FRANCHISE (1979-2016) – My quick take on all five Phantasm films and the otherworldly Tall Man, sinister mortician.
AGAINST THE DARK (2009) – Steven Seagal fights zombie-vampire creatures in a post-apocalypse future.
SILENT FILM ADAPTATIONS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE STORIES – The Silent Era’s Poe movies like The Golden Scarab (1910), The Pit and the Pendulum (1910 & 1913), The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather (1913), The Raven (1915), Masque of the Red Death (1919), Annabel Lee (1921), The Oval Portrait (1934), The Cask of Amontillado (1909) and The Tell-Tale Heart (1928).
Plus TWO versions of The Fall of the House of Usher from 1928, and a pair of adaptations of Murders in the Rue Morgue – one from 1908 and two from 1914.
