Welcome to my annual Halloween DVD review page! Apart from loving music I am VERY big horror movie buff! Here are a few scary releases to consider for this season!
"Castle of Blood" is a long awaited arrival for DVD! British horror star Barbara Steele stars as one of the many spectres that haunt a castle where a writer is dared ( by Edgar Allen Poe) to spend the night! Not all is what it seems as the ghosts come out of the shadows tempting the living into their shadowy world! The atmosphere and sets are absolutely incredible! A very classic style movie for fans of the days long gone! A MUST SEE!
Two delicious vampire offerings this year from Retromedia! The first is the unofficial sequel to "Count Yorga" and "Return of Count Yorga" called "The Deathmaster." Robert Quarry reprises his role as the vampire but not as Yorga but instead Korda. This seventies' sleeper is remastered quite nicely with a great Quarry audio voice over if desired! Korda's coffin washes ashore a California beach and the next thing you know Korda has control of a hippy cult ala Manson style, turning them into vampires! GREAT FUN!
Armando de Ossorios's "Fangs of the Living Dead" aka "Malenka" is not as nicely mastered as The Deathmaster" but the print is still far better than any bootleg video! It's a vampy dark comedy about a young woman going to her family castle to get her inheritance, only to discover vampire mayhem and the legend of Malenka her ageless bloodsucking aunt! It's Spanish, it's the sixties, there are fashion models and monsters, how can you say no? Ossorio is well known for his Blind Dead Zombie movies!
Warner Brothers finally gets around to releasieng some long awaited Hammer Studio classics! "Horror of Dracula" features both Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing! The transfer is beautiful! The sets are drippy with German mountain village gloom-this is a flawless film! Let's hope a few more in the series appear!
The first two Hammer Frankenstein films "Curse" and "Revenge" are also digitally re-mastered to perfection! "Curse" reunites Lee and Cushing as monster and madman! Just when you thought he was dead, our anti-hero, the Baron, escapes the gallows to return in "Revenge" and start building a new monster with the help of a medical student!
It's not so much about "Monster a Go Go!" as it is about "Psyched By the 4-D Witch." Monster a Go Go is a black and white drive-in movie about a giant alien that terrorizes teens in a small town! Big Deal! But "Psyched By The 4-D Witch" is a very weird movie featuring a strange dubbed over soundtrack and rock music! A poor young girl is sexually possesed by her Salem witch ancestor who takes her into the 4th dimension and makes her have sex in psychedelic sequences! UNREAL!
