Robert Lawrence Stine (born October 8, 1943), known as R. L. Stine, and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American writer and producer. Stine, who is referred to as the “Stephen King of children’s literature,” is the author of hundreds of horror fiction novels, including the books in the Fear Street, Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, and The Nightmare Room series. R. L. Stine’s books have sold over 400 million copies.

In 1986, Stine wrote his first horror novel, called Blind Date. He followed with many other novels, including The Babysitter, Beach House, Hit and Run, and The Girlfriend.

In 1989, Stine started writing Fear Street books. In 1992, Stine and Parachute went on to launch Goosebumps.

A Goosebumps TV series that ran for four seasons from 1995–1998 and three video games; Escape from HorrorLand, Attack of the Mutant and Goosebumps HorrorLand. In 1995, Stine’s first novel targeted at adults, called Superstitious, was published. He has since published two other adult-oriented novels; The Sitter and Eye Candy.

In the first decade of the 21st century, Stine has worked on installments of five different book series, Mostly Ghostly, Rotten School, Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, Goosebumps Horrorland and the stand-alone novels Dangerous Girls (2003) and The Taste of Night (2004). A direct-to-DVD movie The Haunting Hour Volume One: Don’t Think About It, starring Emily Osment was released by Universal on September 4, 2007.

Goosebumps Series 2000

1. Cry of the Cat
2. Bride of the Living Dummy
3. Creature Teacher
4. Invasion of the Body Squeezers, Part I
5. Invasion of the Body Squeezers, Part II
6. I Am Your Evil Twin
7. Revenge R Us
8. Fright Camp
9. Are You Terrified Yet?
10. Headless Halloween
11. Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls
12. Brain Juice
13. Return to HorrorLand
14. Jekyll and Heidi
15. Scream School
16. The Mummy Walks
17. The Werewolf in the Living Room
18. Horrors of the Black Ring
19. Return to Ghost Camp
20. Be Afraid – Be Very Afraid!
21. The Haunted Car
22. Full Moon Fever
23. Slappy’s Nightmare
24. Earth Geeks Must Go!
25. Ghost in the Mirror

Give Yourself Goosebumps

1. Escape from the Carnival of Horrors
2. Tick Tock, You’re Dead!
3. Trapped in Bat Wing Hall
4. The Deadly Experiments of Dr. Eeek
5. Night in Werewolf Woods
6. Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter
7. Under the Magician’s Spell
8. The Curse of the Creeping Coffin
9. The Knight in Screaming Armor
10. Diary of a Mad Mummy
11. Deep in the Jungle of Doom
12. Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum
13. Scream of the Evil Genie
14. The Creepy Creations of Professor Shock
15. Please Don’t Feed the Vampire!
16. Secret Agent Grandma
17. Little Comic Shop of Horrors
18. Attack of the Beastly Baby-sitter
19. Escape from Camp Run-for-Your-Life
20. Toy Terror: Batteries Included
21. The Twisted Tale of Tiki Island
22. Return to the Carnival of Horrors
23. Zapped in Space
24. Lost in Stinkeye Swamp
25. Shop Till You Drop…Dead!
26. Alone in Snakebite Canyon
27. Checkout Time at the Dead-End Hotel
28. Night of a Thousand Claws
29. Invaders from the Big Screen
30. You’re Plant Food!
31. The Werewolf of Twisted Tree Lodge
32. It’s Only a Nightmare
33. It Came from the Internet
34. Elevator to Nowhere
35. Hocus-Pocus Horror
36. Ship of Ghouls
37. Escape from Horror House
38. Into the Twister of Terror
39. Scary Birthday to You
40. Zombie School
41. Danger Time
42. All-Day Nightmare 

Fear Street

1. The New Girl
2. The Surprise Party
3. The Overnight
4. Missing
5. The Wrong Number
6. The Sleepwalker
7. Haunted
8. Halloween Party
9. The Stepsister
10. Ski Weekend
11. The Fire Game
12. Lights Out
13. The Secret Bedroom
14. The Knife
15. The Prom Queen
16. First Date
17. The Best Friend
18. The Cheater
19. Sunburn
20. The New Boy
21. The Dare
22. Bad Dreams
23. Double Date
24. The Thrill Club
25. One Evil Summer
26. The Mind Reader
27. Wrong Number 2
28. Truth or Dare
29. Dead End
30. Final Grade
31. Switched
32. College Weekend
33. The Stepsister 2
34. What Holly Heard
35. The Face
36. Secret Admirer
37. The Perfect Date
38. The Confession
39. The Boy Next Door
40. Night Games
41. Runaway
42. Killer’s Kiss
43. All-Night Party
44. The Rich Girl
45. Cat
46. Fear Hall: The Beginning
47. Fear Hall: The Conclusion
48. Who Killed The Homecoming Queen?
49. Into The Dark
50. Best Friend 2
51. Trapped

New Fear Street

1. The Stepbrother
2. Camp Out
3. Scream, Jennifer, Scream!
4. The Bad Girl

Fear Street Super Chiller

1. Party Summer
2. Silent Night
3. Goodnight Kiss
4. Broken Hearts
5. Silent Night 2
6. The Dead Lifeguard
7. Cheerleaders: The New Evil
8. Bad Moonlight
9. The New Year’s Party
10. Goodnight Kiss 2
11. Silent Night 3
12. High Tide
13. Cheerleaders: The Evil Lives!

Cheerleaders

1. The First Evil
2. The Second Evil
3. The Third Evil
4. The New Evil
5. The Evil Lives!

The Fear Street Saga Trilogy

1. The Betrayal
2. The Secret
3. The Burning

99 Fear Street: The House of Evil

1. The First Horror
2. The Second Horror
3. The Third Horror

Cataluna Chronicles

1. The Evil Moon
2. The Dark Secret
3. The Deadly Fire

Fear Park

1. The First Scream
2. The Loudest Scream
3. The Last Scream

Fear Street Sagas

1. A New Fear
2. House of Whispers
3. Forbidden Secrets
4. The Sign of Fear
5. The Hidden Evil
6. Daughters of Silence
7. Children of Fear
8. Dance of Death
9. Heart of the Hunter
10. The Awakening Evil
11. Circle of Fire
12. Chamber of Fear
13. Faces of Terror
14. One Last Kiss
15. Door of Death
16. The Hand of Power

Fear Street Seniors

1. Let’s Party
2. In Too Deep
3. The Thirst
4. No Answer
5. Last Chance
6. The Gift
7. Fight Team, Fight
8. Sweetheart, Evil Heart
9. Spring Break
10. Wicked
11. The Prom Date
12. Graduation Day

Fear Street Nights

1. Moonlight Secrets
2. Midnight Games
3. Darkest Dawn

Ghosts of Fear Street

1. Hide and Shriek
2. Who’s Been Sleeping in My Grave?
3. The Attack of the Aqua Apes
4. Nightmare in 3-D
5. Stay Away from the Tree House
6. Eye of the Fortuneteller
7. Fright Knight
8. The Ooze
9. Revenge of the Shadow People
10. The Bugman Lives!
11. The Boy Who Ate Fear Street
12. Night of the Werecat
13. How to Be a Vampire
14. Body Switchers from Outer Space
15. Fright Christmas
16. Don’t Ever Get Sick at Granny’s
17. House of a Thousand Screams
18. Camp Fear Ghouls
19. Three Evil Wishes
20. Spell of the Screaming Jokers
21. The Creature from Club Lagoona
22. Field of Screams
23. Why I’m Not Afraid of Ghosts
24. Monster Dog
25. Halloween Bugs Me!
26. Go to Your Tomb — Right Now!
27. Parents from the 13th Dimension
28. Hide and Shriek II
29. The Tale of the Blue Monkey
30. I Was a Sixth-Grade Zombie
31. Escape of the He-Beast
32. Caution: Aliens at Work
33. Attack of the Vampire Worms
34. Horror Hotel Pt. 1: The Vampire Checks in
35. Horror Hotel Pt. 2: Ghost in the Guest Room
36. The Funhouse of Dr. Freek

Mostly Ghostly

1. Who Let the Ghosts Out?
2. Have You Met My Ghoulfriend?
3. One Night in Doom House
4. Little Camp of Horrors
5. Ghouls Gone Wild
6. Let’s Get This Party Haunted!
7. Freaks and Shrieks
8. Don’t Close Your Eyes!

Rotten School

1. The Big Blueberry Barf-Off!
2. The Great Smelling Bee
3. The Good, the Bad and the Very Slimy
4. Lose, Team, Lose!
5. Shake, Rattle and Hurl!
6. The Heinie Prize
7. Dudes, the School is Haunted!
8. The Teacher from Heck
9. Ready, Set… Ghost!
10. Party Poopers
11. The Rottenest Angel
12. Punk’d and Skunked
13. Battle of the Dum Diddys
14. Got Cake?
15. Night of the Creepy Things
16. Calling All Birdbrains
17. Dumb Clucks

The Nightmare Room

1. Don’t Forget Me!
2. Locker 13
3. My Name is Evil
4. Liar Liar
5. Dear Diary, I’m Dead
6. They Call Me Creature
7. The Howler
8. Shadow Girl
9. Camp Nowhere
10. Full Moon Halloween
11. Scare School
12. Visitors

The Nightmare Room Thrillogy

1. Fear Games
2. What Scares You the Most?
3. No Survivors

Goosebumps HorrorLand

• Welcome to HorrorLand: A Survival Guide
• Revenge of the Living Dummy
• Creep from the Deep
• Monster Blood for Breakfast!
• The Scream of the Haunted Mask
• Dr. Maniac vs. Robby Schwartz
• Who’s Your Mummy?
• My Friends Call Me Monster
• Say Cheese – And Die Screaming!
• Welcome to Camp Slither
• Help! We Have Strange Powers!
• Escape from HorrorLand
• The Streets of Panic Park
• When the Ghost Dog Howls
• Little Shop of Hamsters
• Heads, You Lose!
• Weirdo Halloween
• The Wizard Of Ooze
• Slappy’s New Year!
• The Horror at Chiller House
• Claws!
• Night of Giant Everything
• The Five Masks of Dr. Screem
• Why I Quit Zombie School
• Don’t Scream!
• The Birthday Party of No Return

Goosebumps Most Wanted

• Son of Slappy
• Planet of the Lawn Gnomes
• How I Met My Monster
• Frankenstein’s Dog
• Dr. Maniac Will See You Now

Hark

1. The Badlands of Hark
2. The Invaders of Hark

Dangerous Girls

Both story were re-released in 2010 under the name Bitten.

1. Dangerous Girls
2. The Taste of Night

Stand-alone novels

• The Adventures of Shrinkman
• The Beast
• The Beast 2
• Curtains
• Eye Candy
• It’s the First Day of School…Forever!
• A Midsummer Night’s Scream
• Phone Calls
• The Sitter
• Superstitious
• Three Faces of Me
• When Good Ghouls Go Bad
• Zombie Town

Wikipedia

Wake in Fright (also known as Outback) is a 1971 Australian-American thriller film directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence and Chips Rafferty. The screenplay was written by Evan Jones, based on Kenneth Cook‘s 1961 novel of the same name. Made on a budget of A$800,000, the film was an Australian/American co-production by NLT Productions and Group W.

For many years, Wake in Fright enjoyed a reputation as Australia’s great “lost film” because of its unavailability on VHS or DVD, as well as its absence from television broadcasts. In mid-2009, however, a thoroughly restored digital re-release was shown in Australian theatres to considerable acclaim. Later that same year it was issued commercially on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.Wake in Fright is now recognised as a seminal film of the Australian New Wave. Australian musician and screenwriter Nick Cave called Wake in Fright ”The best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence.”

John Grant is a middle-class teacher from the big city. He feels disgruntled because of the onerous terms of a financial bond which he signed with the government in return for receiving a tertiary education. The bond has forced him to accept a post to the tiny school at Tiboonda, a remote township in the arid Australian Outback. It is the start of the Christmas school holidays and Grant plans on going to Sydney to visit his girlfriend but first, however, he must travel by train to the nearby mining town of Bundanyabba (known as “The Yabba”) in order to catch a Sydney-bound flight.

At “The Yabba”, Grant encounters several disconcerting residents including a policeman, Jock Crawford, who encourages Grant to drink repeated glasses of beer before introducing him to the local obsession with the gambling game of two-up. Hoping to win enough money to pay off his bond and escape his “slavery” as an outback teacher, Grant at first has a winning streak playing two-up but then loses all his cash. Unable now to leave “The Yabba”, Grant finds himself dependent on the charity of bullying strangers while being drawn into the crude and hard-drinking lifestyle of the town’s residents.

Grant reluctantly goes drinking with a resident named Tim Hynes (Al Thomas) and goes to Tim’s house. Here he meets Tim’s daughter, Janette. While he and Janette talk, several men who have gathered at the house for a drinking session question Grant’s masculinity, asking: “What’s the matter with him? He’d rather talk to a woman than drink beer.” Janette then tries to initiate an awkward sexual episode with Grant, who vomits. Grant finds refuge of a sort, staying at the shack of an alcoholic medical practitioner known as “Doc” Tydon. Doc tells him that he and many others have had sex with Janette. He also gives Grant pills from his medical kit, ostensibly to cure Grant’s hangover.

Later, a drunk Grant participates in a barbaric kangaroo hunt with Doc and Doc’s friends Dick and Joe. The hunt culminates in Grant clumsily stabbing a wounded kangaroo to death, followed by a pointless drunken brawl between Dick and Joe and the vandalizing of a bush pub. At night’s end, Grant returns to Doc’s shack, where Doc apparently initiates a homosexual encounter between the two. A repulsed Grant leaves the next morning and walks across the desert. He tries to hitch-hike to Sydney, but accidentally boards a truck that takes him straight back to The Yabba”…

‘Wake in Fright was originally released around the same time as The Last Picture Show, which used startlingly similar camerawork to capture the hero’s desolate surroundings, and Straw Dogs, which took a similarly nihilistic approach to backwoods mayhem. In 1971, The New York Times’ Roger Greenspun thought it had “a particular terror … that is not quite like anything else I can remember feeling at the movies.” Several decades later, it still chills.’ John Hartl, The Seattle Times

‘Kotcheff depicts an animalistic landscape, one that at the time angered Aussies for showing the flip side of its cherished myth of rugged white male individualism, stark geographical beauty and mateness. But as a strictly psychological portrait of destructive masculinity it’s a gut-sock, vividly photographed, thrillingly edited and marked by performances (Donald Pleasence and Jack Thompson, most notably) that heave with strange complexity and dark camaraderie. Wake in Fright is true horror.’ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

‘It’s a vision of several terrors: not just the bloodshed but also the brutality of men unmoored from restriction, and the culture of “mates” whose delight rises with each dark act. Wake In Fright burrows deeply under the skin. Like Deliverance, or Straw Dogs, it’s an adventure movie that turns into horror: the horror of human nature.’ Jay Stone, Canada.com

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official website | Related: Razorback

Enter the Devil (re-issued as Disciples of Death) is a 1972 low budget American horror film co-written and directed by Frank Q. Dobbs. It stars Joshua Bryant (Black Noon, Salem’s Lot), Irene Kelly, David S. Cass Sr. (who also co-wrote it, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, The Island of Dr. Moreau), John Martin (Mesa of Lost Women), Robert John Allen, Norris Domingue, Linda Rascoe, Happy Shahan, Wanda Wilson and Byron Quisenberry (who later directed Scream in 1981). It was filmed in Texas.

‘Minor classic and unjustly forgotten horror film seems to have disappeared into the mists of time. I don’t ever remember seeing or hearing of this film until I ran across it in the Sinister Cinema catalog. I’m guessing that the film disappeared into the void since it probably had small distribution and was made about the same time as other western set horror films like Race with the Devil, The Devil’s Rain and others of that type. It’s a shame since the film is actually quite creepy and even scary.’ Steve Kopian, Unseen Films

‘Playing out quietly, stylishly, and just a little bit skewed, it’s the very definition of “regional rarity.” The film feels like S.F. Brownrigg (Don’t Open The Door) rubbing off on Leonard Kirtman (Carnival Of Blood) in an isolated patch of no-man’s land in Texas. But nothing much happens. However, for the first time in a long time, blank happenings carry little baggage.’ Joseph A. Ziemba, Bleeding Skull!

‘There are some surprises and one pretty good shock at the end that I did not expect. So the payoff is rather good in this one, especially if you like cult films, but the movie moves so slowly that you have to be patient.’ Geno McGahee, Scared Stiff Reviews

Buy Enter the Devil on Instant Video | DVD from Amazon.com

‘The death scenes are actually pretty tame, with the camera panning toward burning torches, while the grotesque killings are going on. However, with the pseudo-western “charm”, the scenery of the desert, the weird latin chanting, the red robes and torches, and the carrying of human sacrifice subjects out into the sunset and down into caves; you simply cannot deny that this moviedoes have some amount of atmosphere and suspense. This is a bit more than you’d expect from your typical, early 70s drive-in fare.’ Jorge’s Film Reviews

‘Enter the Devil should be watched into infinity. It’s truly a fantastic film, and although I’m sure the pampered elite of gore-hounds (don’t worry, I’m still with you, mark my words) would find it “boring”, I can recommend it to almost anybody. I will have no regrets doing so.’ Adam Bezecny, The Liberal Dead

IMDb | We are grateful to Basement of Ghoulish Decadence,  eMoviePoster.com, CultMovieForums.com and Critical Condition for some images.

Horror High (also known as Kiss the Teacher… Goodbye!  and Twisted Brain) is a 1973 (released 1974) American horror film directed by Larry N. Stouffer (assistant director on Keep My Grave Open) from a screenplay by J.D. Feigelson as ‘Jack Fowler’ (Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Cry for the Strangers, Chiller). It stars Pat Cardi, Austin Stoker (Abby, Assault on Precinct 13, Uninvited), Rosie Holotik (Encounter with the Unknown, Don’t Look in the Basement), John Niland, and Jeff Alexander (Zontar: The Thing from Venus, Curse of the Swamp Creature and The House of Seven Corpses). The odd score by Don Hulette is distinctive. Filmed in Texas, it was distributed by Crown International Pictures. Return to Horror High (1987) has no connection and is not a sequel.

‘An obvious take off of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (in fact, Vernon’s English class is watching a film version of the novel), Horror High feels like a 50s monster B-movie that’s been transplanted right to the 70s. Besides the obvious 70s stylings, the movie also shows the influence of the more graphically violent films that preceded it, particularly the works of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Though it’s kind of a monster movie, it really ought to be considered more of a proto-slasher due to the way Vernon dispatches of his victims. Not only is it fairly graphic for the era, but it’s also quite creative in its use of various implements of death, such as paper cutter blades and sulphuric acid (which is housed in a huge barrel right in the middle of a classroom!).’ Oh, the Horror!

‘ …foreshadows Harry Kaufman’s The Toxic Avenger (1984) in many important ways such as: featuring a bullied nerd gets who super powers (like hairy forearms) and then runs murderously amok plus, just like many Troma features, this movie was made on a shoe-string budget but was able to engineer some gory and realistic practical effects such as face melting.’ Sleaze Blender

‘Make no mistake, Horror High is total 70s doom. The music score is an eerie prog-rock sounding thing; it’s more Alice Cooper than Goblin, and it’s not nearly as prevalent as it should have been in the finished product. There’s even a spooky, folky ballad theme song, a hallmark of the 70s Doom genre! And woooo….it even has Vernon’s name in it. I can’t recommend “Horror High” enough to fans of the weird. If you haven’t seen it yet, you absolutely NEED to, or…I dunno, the world will implode or something.’ Groovy Doom

‘The gore is passable if rudimentary, but plentiful and in some instances, brutal and shocking. Fingers and heads are sliced off, faces are melted with acid and chest is crushed into pulp are among the bloody bits. In addition, the film frequently features odd camera angles and unusual lighting for added spooky effect.’ Cool Ass Cinema

‘With more than a splash of crudeness in the production values, a storyline not only inspired by “Jekyll and Hyde” (the lit students are seen watching a film of Stevenson’s horror novel) but by the Herman Cohen teenage monster flicks of the 1950s, and an odd mix of intended camp and borderline disturbing displays, Horror High is practically mesmerising and essential 1970s drive-in horror. The overall acting is pretty bad (it’s fun to watch non-actor Niland as the bullish coach and decipher whether he’s plain awful or naturally brilliant) except for former child-star Cardi (who holds the film up quite well and ads pathos to the character) and the always great Stoker, who was such a recognisable fixture in 1970s cult movies, his presence here pretty much gives this cheapie creepy a sense of authenticity.’ George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

Buy Horror High on Code Red 35th Anniversary DVD from Amazon.com

‘If not a lost masterpiece, Horror High delivers enough sleaze, violence and sensitive science geek meanderings to make for an enjoyable watch. It probably helps if you’re predisposed to like low budget seventies cheapies, but even looking at it objectively with that factor removed from the equation, it’s hard to imagine anyone not at least appreciating the entertainment factor this quirky dime store production provides in spades.’ DVD Talk

‘The Code Red release of Horror High is way better than the Twisted Brain version that was put out on dvd by Rhino Home Video a few years back. The new version looks sharper and sounds better. Most important though is the fact that this is the uncut PG release. Contrary to the rumors ( including what’s written on the back of the box ) there is no R rated version of this movie. When the movie was originally released in 1974 and even during it’s re-release in the early 80′s, it was the same version that is presented here. And it was rated PG. Yes it’s violent enough to have an R rating, but it was given a PG when it was originally released. In fact I couldn’t find a rating code for this movie, so it’s quite possible that the PG rating on the poster was made up, and Crown International just went ahead and booked the film into theaters without a true rating from the MPAA. I love this movie…’ Lightning Boy, Amazon.com

Buy Regional Horror Films, 1958 – 1990 from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Also released as Cérebro Diabólico (Brazil), L’ange merrier (France), Horror gimi (Hungary), Die Teufelsbestie (Germany).

Related: Evilspeak

IMDb

Scream Bloody Murder (also known as Matthew; Claw of Terror; The Captive Female and, more recently, repackaged on DVD-R with the splendidly sleazy title Amputee With an Axe) is a 1972 horror film written, directed and produced by Marc B. Ray (The Severed Arm; Stepfather III story lines) and co-written by Larry Alexander. The film could easily be claimed to be one of the first slasher films though has suffered from the many guises it has appeared under and remains relatively unknown.

Farm-based nutcase, Matthew, drives the family tractor over his father but inadvertently gets his own hand trapped in the machinery, resulting in a quick stop-off at the hospital to be fitted with a claw/hook contraption before enjoying his new surroundings in the local asylum. Upon release some years later, Matthew returns to the family home but is horrified to find his mother isn’t sat about moping about her son but has remarried and is getting on very-nicely-thank-you. Matthew’s love for his mother rather breaches the ‘traditional’ and it’s not long before he sets out to rescue her from her husband’s clutches by hacking him to death with an axe.

Alas, reconciliation talks with his mother end with her cracking her head on a rock, leaving mental Matt even more traumatised. Murdering a couple on his way to a new life in a new town, his sexual hangups lead him to kindly prostitute, Vera, whom he becomes increasingly protective of and vows to offer her a better life, achieving this by slaying the owner of a local mansion (and her pet dog, for good measure) and masquerading as the owner. Despite his efforts, Vera remains unimpressed, leading to Matthew tying up the object of his affections and keeping her captive. Can Vera escape the knots of a man with one hand?

Packed with gory deaths and an engagingly silly story, Scream Bloody Murder is top-notch low budget exploitation fare from a director who only made one other film (1969′s Wild Gypsies) and a lead actor (Fred Holbert) who decided not to chance his arm in any further roles, in all senses of the phrase. Elsewhere, Leigh Mitchell, who plays the dual role of Vera and Daisy, appeared again in a small role in the similarly enjoyable The Incredible Melting Man in 1977. The most recognisable face is that of Matthew’s doctor, played by Angus Schrimm, best known as The Tall Man in the Phantasm franchise, appearing in one of his first screen roles.

The film succeeds, despite the best efforts of the character of Matthew who it’s difficult to have any sympathy for; everyone he kills is getting on with life without causing any upset, a fact that seems to enrage him. Psychologically damaged for no particular reason, it’s something of a novelty not to have a rambling back story explaining how he arrived at his madness, the pre-credit sequence of him killing his father already clarifying he’s a loon. The film was marketed with typical 1970′s exploitation bravado, proclaiming it to be the first film classed as ‘gore-nograpghy’ and filmed in breath-taking ‘violent vision’ and ‘gory color’. To complete the effect, cinema-goers were supplied with a Scream Bloody Murder blindfold to shield them from the film’s bloody excesses!

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Buy Scream Bloody Murder + Sisters of Death on DVD from Amazon.com

Thanks to http://www.kino-50er.de for some of these images

Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby is a 1976 TV movie directed by Sam O’Steen, and a sequel to the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby (which O’Steen edited). It has little connection to the novel by Ira Levin, on which the first film was based. It stars Stephen McHattie, Patty Duke Austin, George Maharis, Broderick Crawford, Ruth Gordon, Ray Milland and Tina Louise.

A coven are preparing for a ritual, only to discover that Adrian (Rosemary’s baby), who is now eight years old, is missing from his room. Knowing Rosemary must be responsible for this, the coven members use her personal possessions to enable the forces of evil to locate her. Rosemary and Adrian are hiding in a synagogue for shelter. While hiding there, supernatural events begin to affect the rabbis. However, as they are seeking sanctuary in a house of God, the coven is unable to affect them.

The next morning, Guy (George Maharis), who is now a famous movie star, gets a call from Roman Castevet. Roman informs Guy that both Rosemary and Adrian are missing and that Rosemary may attempt to contact him. Later that night, Rosemary and Adrian are sheltering in a bus stop. Rosemary makes a phone call to Guy, while Adrian plays with his toy car nearby. As soon as Guy answers the phone, Rosemary immediately issues instructions on how to send her money. Outside, some local children start teasing Adrian and bullying him by stealing his toy car. Suddenly, in a fit of rage, Adrian knocks the children unconscious to the ground. Attempting to flee, the pair are accosted by Marjean, a prostitute who was witness to the incident. Marjean offers them to hide the pair in her trailer…

“Everything involving Duke and her young child on the run from evil Satanists is cheaply done but automatically fun. Flash-forwarding the “action” years into the future is a mistake that the film should never have attempted in the first place. Lizard-faced Stephen McHattie is well cast as the adult demon seed Andrew/Adrien, but has little to do but act confused. Ray Milland is a great pick to take over for the deceased Sidney Blackmer as cult leader Roman Castevet, but it doesn’t make up for the sinful waste of a downgraded returning Ruth Gordon as wife Minnie, who rarely does more than echo her husband.” Kindertrauma

“Suffering from such maladies as a psychotic script, some stilted acting, and sub-par special effects (whenever such things are attempted) you may correctly assume that this sequel to Roman Polanski’s 1968 suspense film does not live up to its heritage. What a pleasant surprise, then, to find that this ultra-obscure sequel to a horror classic is a wacky 70s Doom film full of hallucinogenic images and a constantly downbeat tone.” Groovy Doom

“The acting, directing, writing, pacing, and climax where all horrendously bad. There is not one redeeming thing going for the film (and for a laugh, it tries to recreate the famous rape scene from the first film). It’s just sad to watch. Stick with the original, and count your blessings if you haven’t seen this.” Karmic Cop

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to VHS Collector for the video sleeve image

Lynn Lowry is an American actress, best known for her appearances in cult horror and exploitation films during the 1970s.

Born Linda Kay Lowry on October 15^th, 1947, she made her first film appearance in 1970 as part of the cast of ultra-gory shocker I Drink Your Blood, a tale of satanist hippies who become crazed after being infected with rabies. Although she only had a small part (and wasn’t even credited), she did appear in what has since become one of the film’s most iconic moment, brandishing a severed hand.

I Drink Your Blood was the first of three ‘infection’ films that Lowry made over the next few years, and these movies remain her best known and best loved work. After I Drink Your Blood, she had a pivotal role in George Romero’s The Crazies in 1973. This film rejigged the concept of Night of the Living Dead into a more plausible concept – a plane carrying a government bio weapon crashes, infecting the water supply in a small town and causing an outbreak of madness in the local population.

Lowry followed this with David Cronenberg’s Shivers (aka They Came from Within / The Parasite Murders), which again saw an infection – in this case a phallic sex parasite – running rampant, spreading through the self-contained residents of a soulless tower block. In this film, Lowry was effectively the female lead.

In all three of these films, Lowry proved to be an effective presence. Her unusual beauty and hippy chick style helped to create a certain unease, as the viewer was unsure if she was infected or not. In The Crazies, she featured in a controversial incest rape scene, while in Shivers, her character helps show how emotionally dead the characters are before infection (she memorably strips in from of her boss, who shows no reaction) and how sexually liberated they are by the infection.

In each of these films, Lowry has arguably the most memorable scenes – her startling death in The Crazies is an iconic moment, and her “even dying is an act of eroticism” speech in Shivers, along with her appearance at the climax, both erotic and unnerving, remain both unforgettable sequences and the point where the film’s controversial philosophy of liberation through sexual disease is made most clear.

Between these films, she appeared in Lloyd Kaufman’s directorial debut, the sex comedy Battle of Love’s Return, alongside cult movie queen Mary Woronov in Theodore Gershuny’s arthouse sexploitation drama Sugar Cookies, and Radley Metzger’s impressive erotic film Score. These films all took advantage of her willingness to undress and perform softcore sex scenes, and usually featured her as a naïve hippy type who gets caught up in a world of decadence and deviation. But she often turns out to be less the victim than she initially appears.

She also appeared in short-lived TV show How to Survive a Marriage in 1974.

In 1976, she appeared in the vengeance thriller Fighting Mad, and in 1982 had a role in the remake of Cat People. There were a handful of small part TV appearances in the 1980s and 1990s, but for the most part, her screen career was replaced with theatre and a singing work, with Lowry performing with a band playing show tunes, jazz and folk music.

However, in the last decade, she has made a screen comeback, starting in 2005. Her cult status has seen her called upon by a number of horror film makers, keen to have her appear in their movies. The highest profile of these is The Theatre Bizarre, where she appeared in David Gregory’s segment Sweets.

Other films of the last few years include Splatter Disco, Beyond the Dunwich Horror, Schism, Psychosomatika, I Spill Your Guts, The Legend of Six Fingers, Torture Chamber, Cannibals, Night of the Sea Monkey: A Disturbing Tale and several more. She also made a cameo appearance in the 2010 remake of The Crazies.

IMDb | Official website

Bio by David Flint

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories – and the ongoing industry spun off from them – have a curious connection to the horror genre. The image of the master detective, stalking the fog-bound streets of London, seem to be as much a part of the Victorian horror world as Dracula and Jack the Ripper, and it is no surprise that enterprising filmmakers and writers have chosen to pit Holmes against these infamous monsters.

But the original Holmes stories only occasionally flirted with the supernatural, and even then, a rational explanation for events would be uncovered by Holmes in the end – like Scooby-Doo, Sherlock Holmes always found an altogether human cause for seemingly demonic forces.

The most famous of the Holmes stories is one such horror tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Originally serialised in The Strand magazine between 1901 and 1902, it is one of only four novel-length adventures for Holmes that Conan Doyle wrote. It remains the most popular and widely adapted of the Holmes stories, even though for a large part of the novel, Holmes is absent, leaving his companion and assistant Dr Watson to carry the story. This tale of greed and murder sees Holmes and Watson investigating the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, apparently at the hands (or paws) of a gigantic supernatural hound, part of a family curse. It is down to Holmes to protect Sir Henry, the Baskerville heir, while unmasking the killer from a collection of suspects and red herrings.

This is the most widely adapted of the Holmes novels, the story for some time being the ‘go to’ Holmes adventure for filmmakers. With the current trend to bastardise the Holmes character and use original (or barely recognisable) stories, the frequency of film and television adaptations has slowed, but with Sherlock Holmes being as popular as ever (albeit in modernised and unrecognisable forms), it can’t be long before another film or TV version of the tale appears.

The first Hound… film appeared from Germany in 1914. Conan Doyle’s creation was hugely popular with German readers, and this first film was a four part silent movie based on both the novel and Der Hund von Baskerville: Schauspiel in vier Aufzugen aus dem Schottischen Hochland. Frei nach motiven aus Poes und Doyles Novellen (“The Hound of the Baskervilles: a play in four acts set in the Scottish Highlands. Freely adapted from the stories of Poe and Doyle”), a 1907 stage play. As you might expect, it played fast and loose with the original story. Three further German adaptation appeared in 1920, and Richard Oswald, who had shot the third and fourth parts of the 1914 version, had another go in 1929.

The first British film based on the story was made in 1921 by Maurice Elvey, and it would be subsequently filmed again in 1932 in what would be the first ‘talkie’ version of the story. Edgar Wallace worked on the screenplay.

1937 saw another German version of the story, and in 1939 the first American version was shot. This version, made by Sidney Lanfield, is still regarded as one of the best adaptations of the book, and was the first of fourteen Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It’s a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel, but – bizarrely – due to copyright reasons, it is absent from the DVD box sets of the Rathbone Holmes movies.

After this flurry of Hound activity, it would be a decade and a half before the next version of the story, another German adaptation. But in 1959, Hammer films added The Hound of the Baskervilles to their series of gothic horror movies that had begun in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein. Starring Peter Cushing as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Sir Henry, the film was a rather loose adaptation of the story – there is more drama and the horror elements are (unsurprisingly) emphasised. Yet thanks to Cushing’s performance (many consider him the definitive Holmes) and the sheer quality of Terence Fisher’s film, this remains a much loved version of the story.

A decade later, Cushing would reprise the role of Holmes in a BBC TV series, taking over from Douglas Wilmer. The Hound of the Baskervilles was adapted as a two part story in 1968. This was more faithful than the Hammer version, but the tight schedule and reduced budgets of TV showed in the production values. Nevertheless, for fans of Holmes and Cushing, it remains well worth seeking out.

Proving the global popularity of the story, the next version appeared in 1971 from the Soviet Union. Another Russian version appeared a decade later, as part of a TV series based on Holmes. This 147 minute adaptation adds some ill-fitting humour to the story and while handsomely mounted has some eccentric performances (Vasily Livanov’s Holmes is rather too laid back while other characters chew the scenery).

1972 saw a US TV movie version of the story, with Stewart Granger making for an unconvincing Holmes in a fairly lacklustre movie that co-starred William Shatner! But the worst was yet to come.

In 1978, Paul Morrissey made a disastrous attempt to make a British comedy version of the story, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore starring alongside a host of well known British names — Denholm Elliot, Joan Greenwood, Hugh Griffith, Irene Handl, Terry-Thomas, Max Wall and Kenneth Williams — none of whom could save the film. Crass, bad taste humour that was mishandled and sheer self-indulgence all round – it feels essentially like a vanity project for Cook and Moore – made this one of the worst comedy films you could imagine, devoid of laughs or any sort of coherent story. It even includes a parody of The Exorcist…

1982 saw a four part British TV adaptation, with a rather miscast Tom Baker as Holmes, and a year later another British TV film adapted the novel.

This was the first of what was planned as a series of Holmes TV movies to be co-produced with US producer Sy Weintraub. Unfortunately for him, the Holmes stories slipped out of copyright and Granada TV announced their own series with Jeremy Brett. Only this and The Sign of Four were eventually shot. With Ian Richardson as Holmes, it’s a solid though unremarkable effort from director Douglas Hickox (who was going for the visual feel of Dario Argento’s films) and suffers from Martin Shaw’s Sir Henry being obviously and unconvincingly re-dubbed by another actor.

The Granada TV series that had scuppered the planned film series eventually adapted 42 of the 60 Holmes stories, and finally got around to The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1988. While critics praised Brett’s nervy performance, the series was often overly stagey and perhaps a little too faithful to the stories to always work as drama.

Also in 1983, Peter O’Toole voiced the character in the animated version Sherlock Holmes and the Baskerville Curse, and this would be the last version for some time. Holmes and the Hound eventually clashed again in 2000, in one of four Canadian TV films with Matt Frewer, who was hopelessly unsuited to the role.

Equally unsatisfactory was a dull BBC version from 2002, with Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This version again made changes to the original story, but was ultimately rather flat and lifeless.

The most recent – and possibly most annoying – version of the story appeared in the second series of the BBC’s overly smug Sherlock. Titled ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’, it throws out Conan Doyle almost entirely, to tell a story of secret military research into mind-altering drugs. While Mark Gatiss’ screenplay retained the horror elements, it made the worst mistake possible when changing a familiar story – namely, that if what you come up with isn’t better than what existed to begin with, why bother? The end result of this is a version that is just as much a slap in the face as Paul Morrissey’s ‘comedy’ adaptation.

It’s to be hoped that someone will make a more faithful, full blooded horror version of The Hound of the Baskervilles soon. While the story might seem to have been done to death, there are always new generations unfamiliar with the story. And after so many ineffectual – or downright insulting – versions, we deserve a new version to match the Rathbone and Hammer versions. Meanwhile, the story still inspires writers, artists and others in a series of novels, comic books, video games and even music… as you can see in the rather unusual version of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid below!

Article by David Flint, Horrorpedia

Frankenstein: The True Story is a 1973 American made-for-television horror film loosely based on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It was directed by Jack Smight, and the screenplay was co-written by novelist Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.

The film stars Leonard Whiting as Victor Frankenstein, Jane Seymour as Prima, David McCallum as Henry Clerval, James Mason as Dr Polidori and Michael Sarrazin as the Creature. James Mason’s wife, Clarissa Kaye-Mason also appeared in the film. The cast also includes Agnes Moorehead, Margaret Leighton, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Tom Baker (The Mutations), Yootha Joyce, Peter Sallis (Taste the Blood of Dracula), Norman Rossington (Death Line) and Dallas Adams.

The character of Dr Polidori, who did not appear in the original novel, was based on the character of Dr. Pretorius from Universal Pictures Bride of Frankenstein, but named after the real-lifeJohn Polidori, an acquaintance of author Mary Shelley who was part of the competition that produced her novel. Polidori’s own contribution was the first modern vampire story The Vampyre (1819).

A notable feature of the production is that, instead of being ugly from the start, the Creature is portrayed as physically beautiful but increasingly hideous as the film progresses, similar to the plot line in Hammer Studios’ The Revenge of Frankenstein. The make-up was by Hammer horror veteran artist Roy Ashton.

It was originally broadcast in two 90-minute parts, but is often seen edited into a single film. Its DVD debut date was September 26, 2006. Included at the beginning is a short intro featuringJames Mason wandering through St John’s Wood churchyard, London. He suggests that this is where Mary Shelley is buried, which is incorrect (she is in fact buried in the family plot in Dorset), despite standing beside a gravestone bearing her name.

Victor Frankenstein is a man training as a doctor, engaged to Elizabeth Fanshawe. After Victor’s younger brother, William, drowns, Victor renounces his belief in God and declares that he would join forces with the Devil if he could learn how to restore his brother to life.

Shortly afterward, Victor leaves for London to train in anatomy. He immediately meets a scientist named Henry Clerval, who Victor later learns has discovered how to preserve dead matter and restore it to life. As Victor becomes fascinated by Clerval’s experiments Clerval reveals his ultimate plan: creating a new race of invincible, physically perfect beings by using solar energy to animate “the Second Adam” constructed from parts of corpses. Clerval is unable to complete it on his own due to a worsening heart condition. Frankenstein volunteers to help and the lab is completed.

Word reaches the pair that several peasant lads have been killed in a mine collapse. After their burial the doctors quickly dig up the bodies and stitch together a physically perfect human. The night before the creation, however, Clerval discovers in a most disturbing way that a reanimated arm set aside for weeks during the construction of the lab and of “Adam”, has become diseased, unsightly and deformed. Shocked and overcome, Clerval suffers what appears a heart attack, and unable to get his medication on time, dies in the middle of recording his horrible discovery in the journal.

The next morning, Victor finds Clerval’s body and misreads the incomplete journal entry (“The process is r–”) as meaning “the process is ready to begin” rather than the intended meaning of“reversing itself”. Since neither of them wanted the perfect body to have the brain of a peasant, Victor transplants Clerval’s brain into their creation and he is able to complete the experiment. Victor introduces his creation into high-class London society, passing him off as a friend from a far-off country with little grasp of English.

Victor’s sweet and guileless creation wins the admiration of London’s elite class, but Victor soon discovers the still-living but now repulsive arm in Clerval’s cupboard. He realises some flaw in the process causes it to reverse itself…

‘ … a misogynistic reading is clearly intended (with the two brides, Frankenstein’s and the monster’s, emerging as more treacherously villainous than either of their mates). For a while it comes on like bad Hammer, until the arrival of the monster – a handsome lad, but the process is reverting – perks things up considerably. Particularly memorable is a scene where the monster’s demurely virginal Bride sings ‘I Love Little Pussy, Her Coat Is So Warm’, before gleefully attempting to strangle a sleepy persian and lasciviously licking a drop of mauve blood from her scratched arm; and a glorious moment of delirium when the monster disrupts a society ball to collect his bride, ripping off her pearl choker to reveal the stitched neck, then annexing her head as his property.’ Time Out

‘The casting is another major point in this movie’s favor. Particularly by television standards, Frankenstein: The True Storyfeatures some impressive performances. Michael Sarazin’s monster is the most believable I’ve yet seen, Leonard Whitting hits just the right combination of drive and naivety as Frankenstein himself, Ralph Richardson invests Lacey with a humble species of dignity that only British actors seem to be able to pull off, and even daffy old Agnes Moorehead does a good job as daffy old Mrs. Blair. But even with so much competition, James Mason threatens to steal the entire show. His Dr. Polidori is smooth, smarmy, ruthless, and genteel all at the same time, and he gets many of the best lines in the whole film.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

‘The True Story is best enjoyed not as a straight adaptation, but as a different take on the same idea. It is not without flaws. The dialogue is occasionally stilted, no effort is made to make the animation of the two creatures look like anything but cheap science fiction, and Polidori’s skills as a hypnotist are practically a super power (one actually wonders why he would need Prima when he himself can place people under hypnosis almost instantly).’ Kim Bruun Dreyer, The Terror Trap

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to DVD Beaver for the lead image

Evil Come Evil Go is a 1972 American exploitation horror film written and directed by Walt Davis (Widow Blue/Sex Psycho) for adult movie producer Bob Chinn. It stars Cleo O’Hara, Sandra Henderson, Jane Tsentas (The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio, Terror at Orgy Castle), Rick Cassidy (Desires of the Devil), Margot Devletian, Chesley Noone (Angel Above – The Devil Below) and porn star John Holmes (who was also assistant director).

Previously available on DVD via Something Weird Video, the film is re-released on a DVD triple-bill by Vinegar Syndrome on January 7, 2014.

Traveling Evangelist preacher, Sister Sarah Jane (Cleo O’Hara), is hellbent on ridding the world of evil, sex-obsessed men. Taking to the streets of Los Angeles, she quickly befriends a gullible young bisexual woman and the two embark on a mad, sex-filled killing spree…

‘Though the film fails to come up with a satisfactory conclusion, the overlong sex scenes (which are pretty graphic and feature plenty of full male and female nudity) bog things down at times and some of the audio is heavily damaged, most of the humour is on target, it’s in very bad taste and O’Hara is hysterically funny as the deranged Southern Belle.’ The Bloody Pit of Horror

‘When it comes to mixing crazed religious harpies, almost-porno sex scenes and gooey gory murders, no film does it better than Evil Come Evil Go!… It’s another peek into the bizarro mind of Davis, but is competently photographed by Manuel S. Conde and better-acted than his more familiar films (The Danish Connection, Sex Psycho). The violence and sex is a tad more restrained this time around for Davis, but it’s still a sleazy, off-the-wall gem which could have only been made in the 1970′s!’ Casey Scott, DVD Drive-In

‘Although quite bloody at times (with much crimson-smeared bared flesh on display) the violence is not as explicit as the sex. And although there is more bloodshed here than in “Sex Psycho” there is nothing as extreme or gory as that movie’s machete to the neck demise. But once again sex and violence do taboo bed-fellows make so what violence there is seems magnified as a result.’ Beardy Freak

Buy on Vinegar Syndrome triple-bill DVD from Amazon.com

IMDb

Mike Vraney was the founder of Something Weird Video, an American film distributor company based in Seattle, Washington. On January 2, 2014, he died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was fifty-six years old. His sterling efforts to dig out and release masses of horror and exploitation films have undoubtedly been a major boon to the world of cult cinema, especially as his iconic label — which started out as basically a fan operation — had moved into legitimacy long ago via officially sanctioned DVD releases in conjunction with Image Entertainment and had recently been releasing Blu-rays and their own documentaries. Mike’s passion for trash cinema will be sorely missed.

Something Weird Video specialise in exploitation films, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis. The company is named after Lewis’ 1967 film Something Weird, and the logo is taken from that film’s original poster art. Something Weird has distributed well over 2,500 films to date. Even when the movies themselves were pretty awful, Vraney ensured fans got their money’s worth by making up themed triple-bills and loading DVDs with masses of ultra-obscure and head-shaking extras.

Vraney was inspired by his teenage job as a theater projectionist. His love for the obscure films that never made it to video prompted him to transfer hundreds of ancient reels of film to VHS and DVD. On the company website, he explained the label’s genesis:

‘In my mind, the last great genre to be scavenged were the exploitation/sexploitation films of the ’30s through the ’70s. After looking into this further, I realized that there were nearly 2,000 movies out there yet to be discovered. So with this for inspiration, my quest began and wouldn’t you know, just out of the blue I fell into a large collection of 16mm girlie arcade loops (which became the first compilation videos we put together). Around the same time I received an unexpected phone call that suddenly made all this real: my future and hands-down the king of sexploitation Dave Friedman was on the other end of the line. This would be the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship for both of us. Dave’s films became the building blocks for our film collection and he has taught and guided me through the wonderful world of sexploitation, introducing me to his colleagues (Dan Sonney, Harry Novak, H. G. Lewis, Bob Cresse and all the other colourful characters who were involved during his heyday) and they’ve been eager to dive into the business again.’

Adrian J Smith

David Tynan O’Mahony (6 July 1936 – 10 March 2005), better known as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian and actor, perhaps best known for his 1970s BBC TV series, which saw him sitting in a studio – cigarette in hand, glass of whiskey by his side – telling humorous, observational, sometimes acerbic stories, interspersed with sketches. He was famous – or infamous, depending on your viewpoint – for his mockery of religion, the Catholic church in particular. Many of his skits would probably not be done today in our times of heightened sensitivity towards / fear of religious offence.

So why is he here on Horrorpedia? Well, quite simply, Allen’s work often included horror movie pastiches. It’s clear that this was a man with an affection for and appreciation of horror cinema. While other comedians may have donned the cape and fangs and camped about as comedy Draculas, Allen’s sketches were more nuanced. Often, the humour didn’t become apparent until the  punchline, and until that point, many of his skits – based around Hammer style gothic horror usually, sometimes involving a Death figure straight from The Seventh Seal and once mocking The Exorcist – were straight-faced, atmospheric and often creepier than many a genuine horror film.

Most of these sketches are (at best) gathering dust in the BBC vaults, but a few have been reshown over the years. Here are a couple.

Posted by DF

Halloween with the New Addams Family was a 1977 comedy horror film. This NBC TV-movie was directed by David Steinmetz and George Tibbles from a screenplay by Davy Levy. It stars John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, Ted Cassidy, Lisa Loring, Ken Weatherwax, and Felix Silla and was a reunion of sorts with the actors reprising their roles from the original 1960s series The Addams Family. Blossom Rock was ill at the time of the production (she would die in early 1978, shortly after this special aired) causing her role of Grandmama to be portrayed by Jane Rose.

In 1989 GoodTimes Home Video released Halloween with the New Addams Family to VHS. The film has never been issued on DVD.

Gomez’s brother, Pancho, is staying with the family while Gomez goes to a lodge meeting in Tombstone, Arizona. Gomez is jealous of his brother, who once courted Morticia. Halloween is nigh, and Pancho tells the legend of Cousin Shy, who distributes gifts and carves pumpkins.

A gang of crooks have bugged the Addamses’ home and plan to take advantage of Gomez’s absence to steal the family fortune. The lead crook “Bones” Lafferty sends an associate named Mikey to investigate. Wednesday (Senior) is home from music academy, where she studies the piccolo (she breaks glass with it). Pugsley (Senior) is home from Nairobi medical school, where he is training to be a witch doctor. Mikey panics and flees after treading on the tail of the family’s pet lion Kitty Kat. The crooks have a fake Gomez and Morticia to help in their plans, along with two strong-arm goons, Hercules and Atlas…

‘The outcome was a decidedly “Un- Addams” like quality. There was no attempt to follow any continuity. Brothers, Mothers and new children family members were brought in only to serve as window dressing. The Halloween Special aired on October 30th, to a wide amount of well deserved criticism. Ted Cassidy was noted as saying that the only reason he was reprising his role was the money, and to work with the other stars one more time. The feature was such an abysmal failure that the new series was cancelled before it even started.’ The Lurch Files

Wikipedia | IMDb

Eerie Publications was a publisher of black-and-white horror-anthology comics magazines. Less well-known and more downscale than the field’s leader, Warren Publishing (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella), the New York City-based company was one of several related publishing ventures run by comic-book artist and 1970s magazine entrepreneur Myron Fass.

Titles published during their fifteen years of operation included Weird, Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Tales from the Tomb, Tales of Voodoo, and Witches’ Tales. All of these magazines featured grisly, lurid colour covers. New material was mixed with reprints from 1950s pre-Comics Code horror comics. Writer and artist credits seldom appeared, but included Marvel Comics penciler/inkers Dick Ayers and Chic Stone, as well as Fass himself, with brother Irving Fass and Ezra Jackson serving as art directors.

• Horror Tales (27 issues, June 1969 – Feb. 1979)
• Strange Galaxy (4 issues, Feb. 1971 – Aug 1971)
• Tales from the Crypt (1 issue, July 1968)
• Tales from the Tomb (33 issues, July 1969 – Feb. 1975)
• Tales of Voodoo (36 issues, Nov. 1968 – Nov. 1974)
• Terror Tales (46 issues, March 1969 – Jan. 1979)
• Terrors of Dracula (9 issues, May 1979 – Sept. 1981)
• Weird (69 issues, Jan. 1966 – Nov. 1981)
• Weird Worlds (5 issues, Dec. 1970 – Aug. 1971)
• Witches’ Tales (34 issues, July 1969 – Feb. 1975)

Wikipedia | We are grateful to Comic Vine for the images above

Don’t Look in the Basement (1972), also known as The Snake Pit and The Forgotten, is a Texas-shot horror film written and directed by S.F. Brownrigg. It stars Rosie Holotik, Anne MacAdams, Gene Ross, Hugh Feagin, Camilla Carr, William Bill McGhee, and Rhea MacAdams.

When a pretty nurse called Charlotte Beale arrives at a privately run sanitorium to begin her new job, she discovers to her dismay that the patients, many of them violent, are allowed to mix indiscriminately with the staff. As she tries to settle into her challenging new role a succession of disturbing events take place, leading the increasingly fragile young woman closer and closer to a complete mental breakdown.

Despite having made four excellent horror films in the early 1970s, Sherald ‘S.F.’ Brownrigg has received only small-scale attention from genre fans, perhaps because his work generally lacks the extravagant gore offered by America’s better-known auteurs of the period. A persistently downbeat approach may also have barred him from wider appreciation. None of his movies have much in the way of overt humour, except for what’s to be had from observing his sleazier characters, and due to the talent of his skilful repertory cast there are few of the usual cheap laughs at the expense of bad actors. Instead he offers compassionate characterisation, a strong sense of place, and a melancholic moodiness that may be his most significant contribution to the grindhouse/drive-in circuit where his movies routinely played.

Brownrigg’s earliest work in the industry was as sound-man for low-budget directors like Irvin Berwick and fellow Texan Larry Buchanan. This, plus his wartime experience as a cameraman on Army training films, prepared the way for Don’t Look in the Basement, his first directorial venture. Initially called The Forgotten (you can see why that title had to go), it was shot in just twelve days in 1972 and looks to have been made on half the usual shoestring. The only location is a grim, sparsely furnished three-storey concrete building (actually the dorm block of a Texas religious college) standing on a dismal plot of land, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The plot concerns frightful goings-on at a privately run insane asylum presided over by Dr. Stephens (Michael Harvey), a ‘progressive’ psychiatrist who “doesn’t believe in the doctor/patient relationship.” It isn’t long before one of the patients is demonstrating his lack of faith in the doctor/patient relationship – by whacking Stephens in the head with an axe. Coincidentally, new nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) arrives the next day, to be greeted by Dr. Masters (Anne MacAdams), an imposing older woman who informs her of Stephens’s violent death and seems very anxious to be rid of her.

For the first thirty minutes we are treated to a procession of grotesques as the script puts the inmates of this miserable bedlam through their paces. There’s a paranoid soldier (Hugh Feagin) awaiting enemy attack, a deranged woman (Camilla Carr) mothering a baby doll, a guilt-ridden ex-judge (Gene Ross) obsessed with his past hypocrisies, a hulking lobotomised black man called Sam (William Bill McGhee) reduced to a state of childish passivity, and a weird old lady called Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams) who, according to Masters, “has a number of interesting worlds.” She also has some of the best lines, particularly her habit of quoting from The Fairies, by 19th century poet William Allingham (whence the old lady’s name): “Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting, For fear of little men.” Off with the faeries she may be, but she’s the only patient who really grasps what’s going on, gurgling cryptic warnings to the asylum’s nervous new arrival.

It isn’t long before Nurse Beale starts to suspect that all is not as it should be: for instance, Dr. Masters’ understanding of professional protocol seems crude at best. “I’m the doctor and you’re the nurse, and what I do decides what you will do!” she yells. Violence escalates, paranoia takes hold, and Nurse Beale really starts to crack when Mrs Callingham is found bleeding from the mouth with her tongue cut out.

The film showcases the talents of Brownrigg’s cast, many of whom would go on to appear in the rest of his films (Ross, Weenick, Fulton, Feagin and Carr were already known to Brownrigg, having appeared in his friend and mentor Larry Buchanan’s A Bullet for Pretty Boy in 1970). Annabelle Weenick, who assisted behind the camera, also excels in front of it (working under the name of Anne MacAdams). She gives the role of ‘Dr. Masters’ a dauntingly hard edge, reminiscent of late period Bette Davis or Shelley Winters. Of the male cast, Gene Ross is particularly compelling in this, his first of four great Brownrigg roles. Ross is always convincingly villainous, bringing to the screen a seamy, insinuating menace the equal of better known Southern actors like M. Emmet Walsh, whom he also resembles physically.

The climax has Nurse Beale rescued and set free by Sam, and the chief culprit (see if you can guess) savagely murdered by the remaining inmates. Sam returns to the bloodbath upstairs to commit a violent act of his own, and the film ends with this abused innocent, alone and drenched in blood, finally comprehending his bleak reality. It’s typical of ‘the S.F. Brownrigg experience’ that despite the abundant gore we are left with feelings more of sadness than of horror. Compassionate without being sentimental, Brownrigg films skew towards territory not immediately associated with drive-in exploitation movies, and it’s this, his concern for the feelings of his characters, that distinguishes him from, say, the grand-guignol black humour of H.G. Lewis or the seething nihilism of Andy Milligan. Don’t Look in the Basement is rough around the edges and  somewhat limited in sophistication, but it’s an engagingly sombre little movie well worth seeing, as are the other three horror movies (Poor White Trash Part 2; Don’t Open the Door; Keep My Grave Open) by this sorely neglected director.

After a small scale release in Texas cinemas under its original title The Forgotten, the film was picked up for nationwide distribution in 1973 by Hallmark Releasing, who tried the film out as The Snake Pit before hitting on a new title that would resonate throughout the horror genre for years to come. Don’t Look in the Basement (taking a cue from the place where Nurse Beale finds the bloody corpse of Dr. Stephens) initiated the persistent trend for ‘Don’t’ titles which gave us Don’t Open the Window (actually Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue), Don’t Open the Door (Brownrigg’s third film), Don’t Go in the House, Don’t Answer the Phone!, and eventually, Edgar Wright’s comic trailer for a non-existent movie called Don’t, as seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse (2007).

Brownrigg’s film was also the beneficiary of the first ever recycling of Last House on the Left‘s famous ad’ campaign, with posters proclaiming “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it’s only a movie… only a movie… only a movie…” This promotional artwork also claimed that Don’t Look in the Basement came “from the makers of Last House on the Left” when in fact the only connection between the two films was Hallmark, the distribution company.

Note: alternative English-language titles are rumoured to include Death Ward #13 and Don’t Go in the Basement, although these are currently hard to verify with visual materials.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Poor White Trash Part II (1974), also known as Death is a Family Affair and Scum of the Earth, is a Texas-shot American horror film directed by S.F. Brownrigg, starring Gene Ross, Norma Moore, Ann Stafford, Camilla Carr, Charlie Dell and Hugh Feagin.

Helen (Norma Moore) and her new husband Paul (Joel Colodner) arrive at a holiday cottage in the woods where they plan to spend their honeymoon, but their idyll is ruined when a mystery attacker slams an axe into Paul’s chest. Fleeing in terror as night falls, Helen encounters Odis Pickett (Gene Ross), whose shack is the only dwelling for miles around. He persuades the hysterical woman to stay overnight with him and his family, including his daughter Sarah (Camilla Carr), retarded son Bo (Charlie Dell) and pregnant wife Emmy (Ann Stafford). Reluctant, but terrified of the unseen killer, Helen agrees. However, the attacker is not to be dissuaded…

Filmed for three weeks on location in a hundred year old shack in Mexia, East Texas, with a small crew of about seven or eight, Poor White Trash Part II exudes sticky, sweaty sexual malaise and grimy gnat-nibbled discomfort. A consummate tale of backwoods horror, it proves that the promise Brownrigg showed in his debut feature Don’t Look in the Basement was no fluke, emphasising his talent for depicting seedy, morally depraved characters and underlining his consistent streak of compassion for the isolated, under-privileged and vulnerable.

A lot of the appeal of Brownrigg’s films has to do with the strength and talent of his repertory cast, and Poor White Trash Part II is no exception; indeed it’s almost a star vehicle for the most prominent of the troupe, Gene Ross, whose sleazy lascivious good ole boy ‘Pick’ fairly oozes from the screen. Here is a man who introduces his pregnant wife as “the skinny one with the big belly”, and repels her offer of sexual attention by snarling “I don’t want no puckered old blown-up balloon!” We soon discover that he is very friendly with Sarah, his bitterly sarcastic and sexually active daughter: when he tells her that he intends to have a talk “real private, like” with new arrival Helen, she taunts “I know what privates you got in mind – the same sort you been pokin’ in me since I wuz twelve.” This is followed by a heated exchange about how he gave her the clap.

So, not really the sort of film you can imagine the Texas Film Commission being involved with? Think again; actor Charlie Dell (who plays Bo) states that Brownrigg received around $200 a week from the T.F.C. (“and they were very lax about how they counted weeks!”).

Unlike her pig of a husband and her squabbling degenerate children, Emmy (Ann Stafford) is shown to be far more decent, sane and compassionate, but her stoicism in the face of her monstrous husband is perhaps the story’s most horrible facet. She knows how dangerous he is: while father and daughter take delight in taunting the distraught ‘city gal’, Emmy persuades Bo to fetch help, knowing her “likkered up” husband will soon attempt to rape the poor woman. Tucked away within what is essentially an exploitation film is a pointed attack on the primacy of the patriarchal figure in Southern family life: and in the figure of Emmy, the film expresses dismay at the breaking of womens’ spirits in abusive relationships.

In comparison to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, another tale of Deep South family life released around the same time, narrative momentum is not this movie’s greatest asset; instead claustrophobia is the watchword, as Brownrigg revels in confining us to close quarters with the sort of ‘white trash’ the cast of Pink Flamingos might look down upon. Technically the film is better than its predecessor; Robert Alcott (who’d worked for Larry Buchanan before lensing Don’t Look in the Basement) excels here with what at first seems a limited pallette, his subtle use of coloured lighting giving surprising variety to the wretched interiors and shadowy, threatening woodlands. Art direction is more appreciable too – it seems that this time the budget could extend to rolls of hideous wallpaper as well as Don’t Look in the Basement’s battered furniture. Robert Farrar, whose scores for Brownrigg’s movies are an integral part of their sorrowful mood, livens things up occasionally with electric guitar, lending a stylized exploitation crackle to the proceedings.

Most importantly though, there’s a very entertaining script on offer. The credits name Gene Ross as writer of ‘Additional Dialogue’, a fact confirmed to me by Ross himself. Dell and Carr also added new lines to the script, making it something of a co-operative effort. Replete with choice bon mots such as “I’ll whup you till Hell won’t have it!”, this is a movie for connoisseurs of fetid verbal sniping. Indeed the film is compelling as much for what is said as for what is shown: the violence meted out by the killer seems almost prim in comparison to the psychological violence eating away at the dysfunctional Pickett family.

Brownrigg’s original title for the project was Death is a Family Affair, but there’s no evidence that the film saw release as such. After doing the local rounds as Scum of the Earth for a while it was bought up and retitled again for national distribution. “In the tradition of The Godfather Part 2!”, boasted the distributor responsible for calling it Poor White Trash Part II and then putting it on a double bill with Harold Daniels’ re-issued 1957 pot-boiler Poor White Trash (confusingly, the film’s British Intervision VHS release was simply as Poor White Trash (not Part II).

A note on the director’s credit: in interviews conducted for my next book, Nightmare USA Vol.2, Charlie Dell, Camilla Carr and Gene Ross all maintained that their fellow actor Annabelle Weenick (aka Anne MacAdams, Dr. Masters in Don’t Look in the Basement) was in many ways a co-creator of the films, offering the inexperienced Brownrigg technical advice and also making significant contributions to scripting and the handling of actors.

In exciting news, Grindhouse Releasing have announced that the film will be making its debut appearance on DVD and Blu-Ray in the Spring of 2014.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Second Opinion:

Scum of the Earth may well be the ultimate back-woods/redneck exploitation film, filthy and grimy, full of characters with no redeeming features and with utterly head-swirling dialogue, what it lacks in cash and dramatic art, it makes up for in sleaze. Brownrigg can be mentioned in the same breath as Andy Milligan, another low-budget director who played to his strengths but has divided critics ever since. The film was released theatrically twice, under two different titles, doing rather better the second time around under the title Poor White Trash II. Whether this is because audiences had a fondness for the Peter Graves-starring Poor White Trash, or simply thought that anything with a sequel must be worth seeing is not known.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein was a Canadian children’s television series produced by Hamilton, Ontario’s independent station CHCH-TV in 1971. It was syndicated to TV stations across Canada and the USA. The producers were fortunate enough to get horror icon Vincent Price to star in introductions for the show’s various segments. Price was attracted to the project because he wanted to do something for kids. He filmed all of his segments (around 400) in 4 days for a fee of $13,000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poW0OJGT9C4

A quirky sketch comedy series that included some genuine educational content among the humor, aside from Vincent Price the show’s cast included Billy Van, Fishka Rais, Guy Big, Mitch Markowitz, Julius Sumner Miller. Van played most of the characters on the show.

All 130 episodes were made in a single nine-month span starting in 1971; the scenes with Price and Miller were all filmed within one summer. The chief character, Count Frightenstein (Van), was the thirteenth son of Count Dracula and was exiled to Castle Frightenstein in Frankenstone, Canada for failing to revive Brucie J. Monster, a Frankenstein-like monster. Assisted by Igor (Rais), an overweight incompetent, and a three-foot-tall mini-Count (Big), each episode followed the Count’s efforts to revive Brucie and featured comedy sketches. Each episode opened and closed with an appearance by the venerable horror star Vincent Price as he recited intentionally silly poetry with toy skulls and shrunken heads in the background. Price also did introductions for segments within the show.

Vincent Price on Horrorpedia: The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo | The Abominable Dr. Phibes | Bloodbath at the House of Death | The Comedy of Terrors | Cry of the Banshee | Dead Heat | Dr. Phibes Rises Again | The Fly | From a Whisper to a Scream / The Offspring | The Haunted Palace | House of Usher | House of Wax | The Last Man on Earth | The Monster Club | Monster Mash (song) | The Oblong Box | The Pit and the Pendulum | The Price of Fear (radio play) | Scream and Scream Again | Tales of Terror | Theatre of Blood | The Tingler | The Tomb of Ligeia | Welcome to My Nightmare (album) | Witchfinder General

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poW0OJGT9C4

‘The Hilarious House of Frightenstein’s cheap production values actually act in its favor and lend to the show’s B-movie charms. I think it’s safe to say that this show was responsible for me developing an interest in and a love for the horror genre. It was really the ideal introduction for a child growing up in the ‘70s – not too intense but just enough of a tantalizing taste of the macabre – albeit with a healthy dose of humor and educational content. There was nothing like it on T.V. at the time and there has been nothing like it since.’ J.D. Lafrance, Radiator Heaven

‘Two things come to mind when I watch it now, one how much fun everyone seems to be having, especially Billy Van who is amazing at ad lib and two, how wonderfully psychedelic it all is. From Brucie’s peace sign necklace to the Maharishi to the wonderful Wolfman music sequences there is no doubt in anybody’s mind what era this came out of.’ Plaid Stallions

‘On the plus side, you have the talented Van in some pretty good make-ups and a heap of different personalities, some pretty impressive soundstage sets for such a moderate show, and there’s the presence of the legendary Vincent Price alone. Although many Canadians and some U.S. residents hold the series as an innovative classic, it’s certainly not for everyone, so even 22 minutes of it might be heard to stomach. TV buffs who grew up in the 70s with horror hosts and monster mags will most likely find this stuff nostalgic, others will find the juvenile and sometimes tedious humor nauseating. It would be interesting to know what a six or seven year old of today thinks of it!’ George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

Vincent Price on Horrorpedia: The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo | The Abominable Dr. Phibes | Bloodbath at the House of Death | The Comedy of Terrors | Cry of the Banshee | Dead Heat | Dr. Phibes Rises Again | The Fly | From a Whisper to a Scream / The Offspring | The Haunted Palace | House of Usher | House of Wax | The Last Man on Earth | The Monster Club | Monster Mash (song) | The Oblong Box | The Pit and the Pendulum | The Price of Fear (radio play) | Scream and Scream Again | Tales of Terror | Theatre of Blood | The Tingler | The Tomb of Ligeia | Welcome to My Nightmare (album) | Witchfinder General

Wikipedia | IMDb | Frightenstein

We are grateful to Radiator Heaven for some of the images above

Don’t Open the Door (1974) also known as Don’t Hang Up, Seasons for Murder and The House of the Seasons is a Texas-shot American horror film directed by S.F. Brownrigg, starring Susan Bracken, Gene Ross, Jim Harrell, Larry O’Dwyer, Hugh Feagin, and Rhea MacAdams.

A young woman, Amanda Post (Susan Bracken), is summoned to the house in which she grew up to attend to her dying grandmother Harriet (Rhea MacAdams). The place holds bad memories for her; as a child she witnessed the murder of her mother there, and the mystery assailant was never caught. On returning she encounters three sinister individuals: Dr. Crawther (Jim Harrell), who refuses to admit the sick woman to hospital and insists on administering her medication himself; Judge Stemple (Gene Ross), a corrupt local magistrate, and Claude Kearn (Larry O’Dwyer), curator of a nearby museum, who is angling to inherit the old lady’s collection of antique furniture, garments and jewellery. Amanda gives the three vultures their marching orders, only to find herself targeted by a menacing phone pervert who knows her every move…

If you find Brownrigg’s Don’t Look in the Basement (1972) and Poor White Trash Part II (1973) too depressingly claustrophobic then you may prefer Don’t Open the Door (1974), a murder-mystery that’s a little less stifling than his prior work. This time we’re treated to glimpses of the outside world, and in one heady moment a small-town high street; quite a contrast to the earlier films, whose leading ladies may as well have been living on Mars for all the social contact they enjoyed.

The shooting style is a little airier too. While most of the action takes place in a rambling old house, the camera is allowed a few surprising flights of fancy. One might even wonder if Brownrigg (or cinematographer Robert Alcott) was influenced by the more adventurous camerawork found in Italian horror (after all, Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and Argento’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage passed through Southern drive-ins in the early 1970s). A scene in which the heroine ascends an ornate spiral staircase is conveyed by a camera craning upwards through the centre, and when she enters the attic, a domed, blue-tinted room illuminated by sunlight through huge red-paned windows, the spirit of Mario Bava is almost palpable. Indeed colour is vivid throughout the film, with certain scenes revelling in bright, hallucinatory hues. From Amanda Post’s colourful modern day dress sense, to the gorgeous interiors of the house and nearby doll museum, there appears to have been a concerted effort by Brownrigg to shake off the squalor of the first two films.

One thing that remains a constant in all of Brownrigg’s cinema is the music. Robert Farrar’s score has some lively interjections of buzzsaw guitar, interspersed with a ‘chamber-rock’ ensemble comprised of drums, bass guitar and electric harpsicord, but fans of his work will be glad to hear that he still insists on his trademark, the muffled flutes, a regular feature of his sound that delivers a heady dose of mystery, sadness and resignation.

Storywise, Don’t Open the Door is perhaps too sparsely decorated, and elements such as the menacing telephone caller are required to shoulder more screen time than they can really handle. Nevertheless, the telephone scenes are comically sleazy and without doubt the high point of the film. After repeated conversations have terrorised poor Amanda into a state of jittery obedience, the mystery caller (have a guess…) browbeats her into making “…the sounds… that you make… when you are making love!” It’s a blackly hilarious scene, made even more so when Amanda’s embarrassed attempts to comply nudge the unseen pervert (his hand stroking a half-dressed little-girl doll) to a grotesquely feverish orgasm.

To begin with, Amanda appears more than equal to the task of seeing off the jackals circling her grandmother’s death-bed, but she soon begins to crack when subjected to the phone calls. Her breakdown accelerates faster when the caller says that it was he who murdered her mother. The spacious old house becomes a suffocating death-trap, and in a frenzy of melodramatic giggling and psychedelic montage Amanda becomes the third Brownrigg heroine to lose her marbles. Nurse Beale in Don’t Look in the Basement descended into hysteria and survived thanks to the intervention of a lobotomised male patient; Helen Fraser in Poor White Trash Part II sank into catatonia and seemed destined to live in the Pickett shack; here, Amanda Post loses her mind through exposure to a phone pervert and murderer. This puts Brownrigg’s work at a fault-line running through the genre. On the one hand, in a genre generally designed to appeal to young males he places strong yet sensitive females at the centre of his films; on the other hand these women pay for their initial displays of strength and autonomy with degradation and madness. However, I would cite the gentler than average mood of Brownrigg’s horror films as the best guide to his sympathies, and although his female leads always crack under pressure there’s no sympathy at all for the aggressive or threatening males: the plight of the woman is Brownrigg’s sole concern.

Personally I would be glad to watch another five movies made in this idiom by the same cast and crew, but it’s not hard to see how Brownrigg’s work slipped from favour in the drive-ins. There simply isn’t enough violence or spectacle for an exploitation sales-pitch, and the gory massacre that brought his debut film to its alarming conclusion seems far, far away in this talky and restrained psychological tale. Don’t Open the Door is probably the least gloomy, most aesthetically pleasing of Brownrigg’s films (it’s certainly his most colourful), but it still remains obstinately down in the dumps. The potential for cult appeal depends on whether you have space in your viewing habits for a cocktail of melancholy music, cheapskate production values, character over incident, and an ineffable sensation of sadness seeping from every frame. If you do, then Brownrigg is the man, the Deacon of Downbeat; if you don’t, you’ll probably fall asleep.

Shooting took place for three weeks in the historic town of Jefferson, Texas, most notably at The House of the Seasons, W. Austin Street (from which the film gained its original shooting title The House of the Seasons). So-called because the upper floor has tinted windows representing the four seasons (green for spring, amber for summer, red for fall, and blue for winter), it was built in 1872 by Col Benjamin H. Epperson a prominent lawyer, political leader, and president of the Memphis, El Paso Pacific Railroad.

Shooting also took place at the nearby Doll Museum and Jay Gould’s Atalanta Railroad Car. This luxurious 88ft custom rail carriage with mahogany, maple and silver interiors, in which 19th century rail tycoon Jay Gould travelled with his family and servants, has been a proud feature of Jefferson’s tourist industry since the 1950s.

Sadly, Don’t Open the Door never really set the box office alight. The film played a few dates in the South as Don’t Hang Up and Seasons for Murder, after which it sat on the shelf until 1979, when Capital Films Corporation retitled it Don’t Open the Door (maybe hoping that a little bit of magic would rub off from the financially successful Don’t Look in the Basement).

Finally, a little conjecture. A flashback after the opening credits, showing Amanda’s mother being stabbed to death and her daughter finding the body, appears to have been shot and inserted later (if I’m right, probably just prior to the 1979 retitling). The film’s otherwise thorough end credits make no mention of the actress playing the mother, nor the young Amanda, and instead credit two characters who are nowhere to be found in Don’t Open the Door; ‘Local 1’ and ‘Local 2’. In a film this minimally populated, even a passer-by would catch  your attention, yet there are no incidental characters to whom these names could apply. I suspect that Locals 1 and 2 bit the dust when footage was removed from an early version of the film to make room for the new material. In addition, the flashback murder seems trendily reminiscent of Halloween, that most prominent horror hit of the late 1970s.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia.

Slime was a toy product manufactured by Mattel, sold in a plastic rubbish bin and introduced in the winter of 1976 consisting of a non-toxic viscous, oozing green material made primarily from guar gum. Different variations of Slime were released over the years, including Slime of differing hues containing rubber insects, eyeballs, and worms and Masters of the Universe Slime for Hordak’s Slime Pit playset in the 1980s.

The late 1970s also introduced a Slime Monster board game; the object of the game was to avoid having your game piece ‘slimed’ on by a foot-tall plastic monster that had slime oozing from its mouth. Other toy companies have produced their own slime such as the “Ecto-Plazm [sic]” sold with select figures in Kenner’s Real Ghostbusters toyline. Playmates’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figure line also had Retro-Mutagen slime sold in containers and included with playsets.

In scientific terms, slime is classified as a non-Newtonian fluid. These are thick liquids that have a variable viscosity, the measurement of the resistance to flow when a shearing force is applied. Newtonian fluids have a constant viscosity depending on their composition. For example, water is always a thin liquid with a low viscosity. Molasses is thick and has a high viscosity. Non-Newtonian fluids, like slime, have a different viscosity based on the amount of force put on them. If a small amount of force is applied, such as stirring them slowly with your fingers, they feel thin and water-like. If a high force is applied, like throwing it against a wall, the resistance is very strong. They are called non-Newtonian fluids because they do not behave as predicted by Newton’s laws. Other materials that also behave like this include ketchup, gelatin, glue, and quicksand. Slime as a toy dates back to the 1920′s, when chemist Hermann Staudinger was researching polymers.

In non-scientific terms, slime was one of the must-haves for any 70′s or 80′s youth. The shocking uranium imbued colours and endless possibilities were simply too much to resist. Alas, as with many of these fantastically marketed toys, the sad truth was soon realised – there really wasn’t anything you could do with it. After five minutes of sneeze-related gags your hands were soon both cold and neon and the clean-up operation had to begin in earnest. Perhaps more than any other substance created, it was doomed to find itself troubling inanimate objects, in my case the family roll-top bureau, the only piece of furniture we had which we were specifically told to be careful around. To compound the issue, the particular strain of slime I had was the day-glo pink with rubber worm trim.

The main components are the polysaccharide guar gum and sodium tetraborate. Instead of the polysaccharide, other alcohol-group containing polymers may be used, such as polyvinyl alcohol, however polymers formed in this way are more often called flubber. It is possible to make slime in the comfort of your own dwelling.

Ingredients

• 1 cup hot water
• 1.5 tsp. Borax (non-toxic/available by laundry detergents)
• 2 cups clear glue
• 2 cups warm water
• 1 tsp. liquid watercolor

What to do:

1. Mix 1 cup hot water and 1.5 tsp. of Borax until dissolved. Set aside.
2. Mix 2 cups of clear glue and 2 cups of warm water together in a plastic bowl.
3. Using a metal spoon, slowly pour Borax mixture into the glue mixture while stirring quickly. Stir until the mixture leaves the side of the bowl. Slime will be sticky. Knead the mixture until it is no longer sticky. The more you work with it the easier it will become.

I have not attempted this and accept no responsibility for mishaps, fatal or otherwise.

Realising that slime alone was quickly being rumbled as even more useless than silly putty, Mattel put the wheels in motion to give the substance more of a purpose. Their big hitter was their Slime Monster board game, a typically baffling affair that consisted of a pleasingly large marauding plastic monster who you had to stop destroying a town. Via a spinner, you worked your way across town in a big too plant a landmine (!) to destroy him. If you were unlucky, the monster would spew slime over the plastic character representing you, ruining the carpet and anything else in its path.

Following later were Slime It’s Alive!, the same sticky goo but with eyeballs and other treats hidden within, the aforementioned pink slime with rubber worms, and Ooze It, an oddly pathetic-looking green monster who when filled with red slime would expel it from various orifices.By 1986, it was a no-holds barred affair, Dissect an Alien was a toy from 1986 where an alien could be cut open, its organs removed, with a bucket of “slime” to serve as blood.

Daz Lawrence

Thanks to stretcharmstrongworld.com and plaidstallions.com for some of the pics.

Keep My Grave Open, also known as The House Where Hell Froze Over, is a 1974 Texas-shot horror film directed by S.F. Brownrigg. It stars Camilla Carr, Stephen Tobolowsky, Ann Stafford, Gene Ross, Sharon Bunn, Bill Thurman and Chelsea Ross.

Lesley Fontaine (Camilla Carr), a troubled single woman in her thirties, lives in an isolated farm estate miles from the nearest town. Someone is committing murders in the vicinity, and the only suspects are Lesley or her brother Kevin (Chelsea [Chelcie] Ross). Among the victims are a hitchhiker (Bill Thurman) looking for food, a local girl called Susie (Ann Stafford), Bobby (Stephen Tobolowsky), a young farmhand, and ‘Twinkle’ (Sharon Bunn), a middle-aged prostitute. Despite the attentions of compassionate Doctor Emerson (Gene Ross), Leslie sinks further into depression and sexual frustration; her only source of happiness is her brother, to whom she is incestuously attracted. But is Kevin real, or a figment of Lesley’s imagination?

Keep My Grave Open, the fourth film by Texan director S.F. Brownrigg (Don’t Look in the Basement; Scum of the Earth), can seem dauntingly slow and minimalistic to those unfamiliar with his earlier work. However, if the viewer can set aside the desire for gory thrills and prepare for a slow psychological mood-piece there’s a great deal to be enjoyed. Any of Brownrigg’s earlier movies would make a better introduction to the charms of his cinema, and yet, despite an almost static plot, this fourth and final horror film is in many ways the culmination of his work.

The film’s lead character (a withdrawn, isolated, mentally ill woman) is emblematic of Brownrigg’s difficulties as a storyteller. He is drawn to creating minimalist character studies involving isolated or hermit-like characters (the ‘forgotten’ residents of an asylum, a reclusive Bayou family, a friendless young woman in a house of bad memories), but the pressures of commercial genre film-making require him to provide typical moments of excitement, tension and release; in a word, action. Keep My Grave Open sees Brownrigg rebel as never before against this requirement. He devotes an uncommon amount of time to shots of the heroine doing the washing up, unpacking groceries and generally wandering around. The slender narrative struggles to keep this introverted woman attached to possible sources of story interest, often resorting to desperate measures (such as the hungry hitch-hiker who wanders in and raids the icebox, or the young farmhand comically obsessed with horses). In Brownrigg’s first three films there’s a compromise – the narratives follow the trajectory of outsiders who must enter tightly-knit groups far removed from ‘mainstream’ society. A new nurse at a run-down asylum, a woman fleeing into the bayou to elude a murderer, a relative called back to her rambling childhood home – these women are audience identification figures as they enter disturbing new environments. The tension between their innocence and the situations they encounter keeps the narrative engine ticking. What makes Keep My Grave Open different, and less commercial, is that the lead character is no longer someone who gets tangled up in other people’s craziness – she embodies it herself.

This change of emphasis seems to have short-circuited Brownrigg’s fragile grip on genre structure. Although there’s an interesting shift, from the earlier films’ terrorised innocents to Grave’s schizoid protagonist who is the author rather than the victim of horrors, the film never quite makes the leap into subjective storytelling. As the sole focus, here, is a deranged central character, it would have been a bolder move to convey her perceptions ‘raw’ in preference to the objective views provided by her victims. What ‘subjective’ scenes there are come with explanatory reverse angles that give the game away too readily. We have plenty of opportunity to see the heroine as demented and self-deluded, whereas, if seen through her eyes, the film would have profitably included ‘Kevin’ all the while, just as Robert Altman gave priority to the delusions of Catherine (Susannah York) in his marvellous film Images (1972). Indeed, Keep My Grave Open shares quite a few qualities with the Altman film; certain camera angles and music cues are similar, and Camilla Carr even resembles Susannah York at times. In this context, the bizarre twist ending is perhaps best regarded as Brownrigg’s final, gallant but implausible reiteration of his favoured theme – the woman isn’t to blame, man is still the agent of destruction!

For all its limitations, there’s still a great deal to admire in this swansong to a special sort of deep Southern cinema. Most importantly, Camilla Carr is excellent in the pivotal role of Lesley. She’s tense, distracted, introverted, and yet sensuous, aggressively so at times, caught between repression and sexual fire. Strikingly different in appearance from scene to scene, as befits a depiction of multiple personality, she effortlessly switches from depressed housebound spinster to sexually provocative siren, and conveys the character’s slide into madness with a vigour that stays just the right side of actorly excess.

There are moments in this movie that give a sense of what Brownrigg might have achieved with a little coaxing and recognition. The opening shot of a vagrant surveying the road, his back to the camera, sat on the rear end of a pick-up truck as the open road stretches away like a memory sliding out of sight, conveys a sweet melancholy that by now has become the sine qua non of Brownrigg’s cinema. The sense of time having passed the characters by, both in terms of their life stories and the psychogeography of the region, is subtly worked into the emotional fabric of the film; “There is no now,” Lesley declares at one point, when asked to compare past and present. Such is the mood of the film, soaked in languor and a subtle sense of decay. Nostalgia, regret, melancholy, a sense of life running down; these are the emotional hues of the film.

Brownrigg had the ability (rather like Hitchcock) to marshall other people’s skills whilst always ending up with something uniquely his own. He didn’t write his own scripts, and the actors to whom I’ve spoken all stress that ‘Brownie’ was not the sole arbiter of what happened on set: he needed technical assistance, and he had help dealing with the performers. But the four films he made between 1972 and 1974 share such a powerful linking ambience that mere ‘organisational’ talent has to be put alongside something more elusive; the ability, desire and determination to convey a particular compact of emotions; horror and fear mixed with sadness, tenderness and regret.

Keep My Grave Open was made some time in 1974, but the date has frequently been mis-attributed as anything from 1976 to 1980. There are no dates on the available video prints, but testimony from the cast indicates that all four of Browrigg’s films were made within two years of each other. Given that Don’t Look in the Basement was shot in the late fall of 1972, this puts Keep My Grave Open somewhere towards the end of 1974; the partially denuded trees, chilly-looking weather and sunlight angled low in the sky suggest late October to mid-November. Furthermore, the actor who plays Kevin (Chelsea – now Chelcie – Ross) left Texas in 1975 to join a theatre troupe in Chicago, which puts a definitive outer limit on the possible shooting date of the film.

Interestingly, Keep My Grave Open marked the beginning of two notable acting careers. Chelcie Ross went on to roles in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Basic Instinct, A Simple Plan, and Drag Me to Hell, while Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays Robert, has carved a busy and varied career working for Mel Brooks, Alan Parker, John Carpenter, Paul Verhoeven and Christopher Nolan. The familiar and wonderful Brownrigg repertory cast (Carr; Weenick; Ross; Stafford) were also joined this time by Bill Thurman, a fellow stalwart of Texan exploitation movies, who worked frequently with Larry Buchanan on films like Mars Needs Women and Zontar: The Thing from Venus, along with classic deep South drive-in movies like Gator Bait, The Creature from Black Lake and The Evictors.

A recent photo of Mimosa Hall as it looks today

Location work for the film centred around a handsome brick building called Mimosa Hall, near Leigh, Harrison County, Texas. Built in 1844, and once the hub of a 3000 acre plantation, at the time of shooting the estate had shrunk to one-hundred and fifty acres and was owned by Douglas V. Blocker, who gave Brownrigg permission to shoot there.

Lesley’s favourite shop, in Jonesville TX, seen here in 2011

Another fascinating location is the general store in which Lesley shops, found in the tiny, almost abandoned settlement of Jonesville, Harrison County, TX. A treasure trove of antique Americana, seemingly caught in a time warp, the store was established in 1847 by the Vaughan family, who still run the business today. For more info and some beautifully atmospheric shots of the rest of Jonesville – population 28! – visit Daniel Barnett’s excellent blog Texas Ghost Towns.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

The artwork for this VHS sleeve re-uses imagery from The House That Dripped Blood and Tenebrae!