Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “In 1933, the bold and successful filmmaker Carl Denham travels by ship with a large crew, his friend Jack Driscoll and the starlet Ann Darrow to an unknown island to shoot a movie. The local natives worship a huge gorilla called Kong and they abduct Ann to offer her in a sacrifice to Kong. Jack Driscoll, who …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “Atomic scientist Doug Martin is missing after his plane crashes on an reconnaissance mission after a nuclear test. Miraculously appearing unhurt at the base later, he is given sodium amethol, but authorities are skeptical of his story that he was captured by aliens determined to conquer the Earth with giant monsters and insects. Martin vows to use …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “Romania, 1942, a detachment of the German Army is sent to guard a mysterious Romanian citadel located on a strategic mountain pass. When soldiers begin to be mysteriously murdered, the SS arrives to deal with what is thought to be partisan activity. What the SS finds, however, is an evil force trapped within The Keep and a …

There were some good but usually fairly conventional fantasies produced by the commercial cinema in the forties. But in the middle of all this was one small oasis of the unusual: The low-budget low-key horror movies produced by Val Lewton for RKO Radio Pictures between 1942 and 1945, and made by a small, fairly autonomous unit, saving money where possible …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “Based on the true story of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, two close friends who share a love of fantasy and literature, who conspire to kill Pauline’s mother when she tries to end the girls’ intense and obsessive relationship.” (courtesy IMDB) REVIEW: From the time of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles to the more recent Menendez brothers and …

How does one identify a monster? The question is easier to answer by example than definition. In movie terms, a monster is something unnatural, dangerous and out of control. King Kong (1933), the Frankenstein (1931) monster, Godzilla (1954), Dracula (1931), Ray Harryhausen’s cyclops from The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad (1958), the Alien (1979), The Mummy (1932). That’s the monster A-list, …

One of the most successful and prolific British production companies, Hammer Films has become synonymous with horror – most notably the unforgettable series of Dracula and Frankenstein films which were instrumental in launching the careers of my dear old friends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Elevating the horror film in much the same fashion as the illustrious Ealing Studios did …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “In 16th-century Prague, a Jewish rabbi creates a giant creature from clay, called the Golem, and using sorcery, brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.” (courtesy IMDB) REVIEW: The Gothic tradition had always been stronger in Germany than anywhere else, ever since the Romantic Movement at the beginning of …

Horror cinema is almost as old as cinema itself, for the very good reason that fantasy is implicit in the very nature of film. Action can be slowed down or speeded up, people can be made to appear or disappear, scale can be altered so that people can become giants or mannequins, double-exposure allows one actor to play two roles …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “A carnival barker displays a sideshow freak called the Feathered Hen and tells her story. Cleopatra, a trapeze artist with the carnival, is adored by a midget named Hans. Frieda, Hans’ fiancée (also a midget), warns Hans that Cleopatra is only interested in him so that he will give her money. Cleopatra has an affair with Hercules, …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “Near an isolated beach on California’s coast, a sinister plan is underway in a laboratory of horror. Three renegade scientists have resurrected the Frankenstein Monster and they have also created a genetically engineered half-man half fish abomination, to use as secret weapons in the fight against terrorists worldwide. However, disaster strikes when the terrifying monsters chemical brainwashing …

Although she passed away in December 1986, Virginia Andrews‘ name lives on as one of the world’s biggest selling novelists, with over seventy million copies of her books and stories in print. Often described inaccurately as horror novels, her tales reveal the dark side of human nature, mixing Dickensian motivations with Gothic melodrama to create a hybrid fiction that has …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “Happily married New York lawyer Dan Callagher has an affair with his colleague Alex, and the two enjoy a love weekend while Dan’s wife and kid are away. But Alex will not let go of him, and she will stop at nothing to have him for herself. Just how far will she go to get what she …

Rate This MovieSYNOPSIS: “Maximus, a small-time music hall mind reader, has frightening flashes of precognition; but he cannot predict or control them – until he realizes he has them in the presence of Christine, attractive daughter of a publisher, who makes Rene, his equally lovely wife, wretchedly jealous. But worse trouble comes to Maximus when he’s accused of causing a …

Dino De Laurentiis is something of an enigmatic figure in film-making. Generally dismissed as a philistine, insolently nicknamed Dino De Dum-Dum by a British cinema magazine, he has nevertheless been described by director David Cronenberg (who is nobody’s ‘yes-man’) as “A very interesting man, one of the last of the old-style moguls. It’s pretty exhilarating working with him, because he …