When the horror compilation Terror in the Aisles proved to be an unexpected theatrical hit in 1984, it was unsurprising that several imitations sprung up, and this 1985 British production is probably the most disreputable of them all – quite an achievement in a world where Terror on Tape exists!

Produced by the infamous Dick Randall and Steve Minasian, the film is directed – if that is the word to use – by Ray Selfe, a veteran of the British sex film (hardcore and softcore) and more recently a film archivist who curates a vast collection of public domain material. Some of that turns up here, but mostly it’s a mix of Randall and Minasian productions / acquisitions and films that have almost certainly not been copyright cleared.

What imitations like this fail to understand about why Terror in the Aisles worked is because it wasn’t just a random selection of clips – instead, the film skilfully intercut scenes from several movies, using an original score, to help build a sense of tension. It also worked as a study (however basic) of the genre. This film, however, is too scattershot and messy, and simply presents rather lengthy clips from assorted films with little or no context.

For his linking scenes Price sits on a throne in a black room, as the camera zooms in and out wildly, introducing a series of clips that often have only the slightest connection to what he’s saying. “These days, special effects are much more believable” says Price at one point, as the film cuts to the ludicrous ‘flying head’ scene from Indonesian supernatural shocker Queen of Black Magic.

Christopher Lee is cheekily made to seem like a co-narrator, thanks to randomly selected clips from the 1975 documentary In Search of Dracula. “Here’s Christopher Lee”, says Price as though he’s a news anchor handing over to a reporter, and we get a couple of scenes that appear to have been taken from different prints of the movie. Price tries a similar schtick by having ‘conversations’ with Boris Karloff, courtesy of Black Sabbath clips.

The editing is terrible – we often cut back to Price when he’s mid-word. The sourced clips are in various aspect ratio, meaning that the 4:3 film frequently has heavily letterboxed scenes, and they vary in quality too.

So what does this badly edited, shoddily produced rip-off have going for it? Well, sex and violence, mainly. If you fancy Randall’s Don’t Open Till Christmas but are unsure about sitting through the whole thing, this is the movie for you, as all the best bits are compiled into one digestible chunk (and the footage here is actually much better than most versions of the film currently circulating), and you’ll get to enjoy the legendary “chainsaw elevator” scene from Pieces again.There are nasty bits from Slaughter High, Mark of the Devil, Last Cannibal World, Bay of Blood and Mother’s Day, as well as clips from Cannibal Man, Friday 13^th 1 and 2, Crocodile and Tombs of the Blind Dead. Most of the clips seem to have been selected on the sound basis of how much nudity and gore they contain.

But also thrown in are scenes from Devil Bat, The Lost World, the silent Phantom of the Opera, White Zombie, Scars of Dracula (the blood puking bat!), Nosferatu, The Thirteenth Guest, Who Killed Doc Robbin and The Ape, presumably because they are either public domain or taken from copyright-free trailers. Most bizarrely, there are clips from Paul Hart-Wilden’s short Horror Film.

Trashy as this outrageous scam is, there’s no questioning that it’s an amusing time waster. Perhaps inevitably, it was never commercially released but is now available via Youtube.

DF

The Corpse Grinders is a 1971 American horror film directed by Ted V. Mikels (The Astro-Zombies, Blood Orgy of the She-Devils), from a screenplay co-written with actor Arch Hall Sr and Joseph Cranston (The Crawling Hand). It stars Sean Kenney (The Toy Box), Monika Kelly, Sanford Mitchell, J. Byron Foster, Warren Ball, Ann Noble, Vincent Barbi, Harry Lovejoy, Earl Burnam, Zena Foster, Ray Dannis, Drucilla Hoy.

Mikel’s churned out a belated sequel, The Corpse Grinders 2, in 2000 and executive produced a second sequel in 2012.

The Corpse Grinders is one of those rare films that turns out to be every bit as deranged as you would hope it to be. While the title and the trailer – which has arguably been seen more frequently than the movie itself – promise much, the film actually manages to excel expectations, delivering a delirious, trashy, nonsensical tale that is heavy on weirdness.

The plot begins with a neglected cat attacking its owner – in common with all the cat attacks in this film, this is a triumph of sound and crazed acting over actual dramatic action – and then cuts to a grave-robbing couple Caleb (Warren Ball) and Cleo (Ann Noble). He looks like a mountain man while she has, inexplicably, a Cockney accent and the pair of them bicker constantly, setting the scene for the whole movie. She’s a few eggs short of an omelette, keeping up a conversation with a doll for some reason – this has no connection with anything else in the film, but establishes her wackiness. But then, everyone in this film seems somewhat eccentric – it’s the sort of film that even John Waters might consider a bit unrealistic.

Caleb is supplying dead bodies to Landau (Sanford Mitchell), head of the Lotus Cat Food company (“for cats who like people”). He pops them in his corpse grinding machine and sells the meat in his ‘expensive’ cat food – hence the sudden lust for human flesh that has arisen in the local moggies. We’re told that Landau and grubby partner Maltby (J. Byron Foster) are raking in the cash, but they work out of what looks like a slum and employ a bunch of odd characters – the one legged deaf-mute Tessie (Drucilla Hoy) and mentally deficient Willie (Charles Fox) being the only staff members we meet. Landau is a shifty character, even by the standards of a man who sells human flesh as cat food, and soon he’s made a deal with some sort of gangster to supply fresher corpses, while promising Caleb that he’ll “get everything that’s coming to you” – and we all know what that means. Meanwhile, nurse Angie Robinson (Monika Kelly) and Dr Howard Glass (Sean Kenney) have had their suspicions raised by the spate of cat attacks, and are investigating…

Ted V. Mikels churned out a bunch of eccentric horror movies over the years, but this is probably his best known, and arguably his most demented. At times, it has the feel of an Andy Milligan film, existing one step to the side of normality, as the collection of strange characters spout ridiculous dialogue in performances that are not so much bad as just plain strange. No-one here seems normal, not even our two heroes. Dr Glass starts off as a bitter, booze-soaked surgeon before transforming into a stolid hero, while Angie is just outside the norm for a glamorous heroine and seems to flip emotional states constantly. Similarly, Landau goes from calm and collected to deranged for no immediately obvious reason, while everyone else is just odd.

Interestingly, for a luridly titled exploitation movie, The Corpse Grinders is fairly restrained in its content. Bodies are fed into the corpse grinding machine, but we don’t see any gore, and they go in wearing underwear, which you can’t imagine improved the taste of the cat food. There’s no nudity, though the film does engage in PG-level titillation by ensuring that several female characters strip to their underwear for no good reason (at one point, a woman comes home, gets out a tin of cat food that she fails to open and instead strips to her bra and panties, lies on the coach and watches TV – frankly, she deserved to be eaten by her hungry cat).

Mikels keeps the film pacey – there are few slow points in the film – and now and again creates a certain sense of atmosphere. The basement where the corpse grinding happens is lit in reds and green, giving it a strange visual feel that is oddly effective (it also looks familiar from other Mikels’ films, including The Astro-Zombies) and he adds some flash frames that are also pretty good. But the overwhelming feel of the film is one of weirdness, not horror, with a strange grubbiness – most locations and people look decidedly run-down. How deliberate this is, I don’t know, but it certainly gives the film a curious atmosphere.

This cheapie certainly won’t appeal to everyone – it’s too damned eccentric for that. But if you have a taste for the more outré dimensions of early Seventies trash cinema, this will be a very tasty little treat indeed.

David Flint – Strange Things Are Happening

Buy The Corpse Grinders on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Buy Ted V. Mikels Collection on DVD from Amazon.com

IMDb | We are grateful to Critical Condition and Knifed in Venice for some images above.

The Dark Shadows Cookbook was published in 1970 by Ace Books to accompany Dan Curtis’ hit American TV horror soap opera series. Unlike Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price, which made sense given the genre icon’s status as a culinary expert and his British TV cookery show, the Dark Shadows Cookbook was simply an odd tie-in publication. It now sells online for for over $150…

Compiled by Jody Cameron Malis, the cover blurb boasted the delights of “Barnabas’s Beastly Beverages, Quentin’s Ghoulish Goulash, plus more than 150 unusual recipes, and including 65 complete menus: exotic beverages: and a “how to in the kitchen” section… if you like Dark Shadows, you can eat like they did on the TV show.”

Related: Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price | House of Dark Shadows

Harry Novak (January 12, 1928 – March 26, 2014) was an American film producer. Best known for his sexploitation and exploitation movies, Novak also distributed a number of horror films via his Boxoffice International Pictures company.

Novak began his career at RKO handling Disney movies until its collapse in 1957 and he also handled the US release of early Carry On films.

His first production was the 1964 ‘monster nudie’ Kiss Me Quick! (original title Dr. Breedlove, a pun on Dr. Strangelove). Although it features Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, a mad doctor and an alien, this science fiction horror comedy flick was merely an excuse for full colour topless female nudity. Cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs later worked on Ghostbusters. Click here to watch the trailer [contains nudity].

Horror-themed films distributed by Boxoffice International Pictures include The Beautiful, the Bloody and the Bare (1964), Mantis in Lace/Lila (1968), Any Body, Any Way/Behind Locked Doors (1968), Jean Rollin’s The Nude Vampire (1970) and Requiem for a Vampire/Caged Vampire/Caged Virgins (1971), The Mad Butcher (1971), The Toy Box (1971), Toys Are Not for Children (1972), A Scream in the Streets (1973), Please Don’t Eat My Mother! (1973, an ‘adults only’ remake of The Little Shop of Horrors), The Sinful Dwarf (1973), Axe/Lisa, Lisa (1973), Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1973), Rattlers (1976), The Child (1977) and Rituals (1977).

Wikipedia

Frankenstein Horror Series was a collection of nine American horror novels published in 1972 and 1973 by New York based Popular Library. Aside from the overarching collection name they appear to have no common theme or authors, however they are notable for their lurid titles and cover artwork.The collection consists of:

The Curse of Quintana Roo by Matt Gardner

The Frankenstein Wheel by Paul W. Fairman

The Marrow Eaters by Harris Moore

The Night of the Wolf by Frank Belknap Long

Ghoul Lovers by Robert Tralins

Seven Tickets to Hell by Robert Moore Williams

The Hospital Horror by Otto O. Binder

Dragon’s Teeth by Keith Miles

The Beast with the Red Hands by Sidney Stuart

We are hugely grateful to the Groovy Age of Horror for information and Too Much Horror Fiction for the images above and providing the inspiration for this post. If anyone has any of these titles and would like to review one please get in touch.

Haunted House ice cream was produced in the UK by Lyons Maid. It first went on sale in July 1973 and cost 4p. A series of badges were also issued to promote the ice cream.

The ice cream itself was ghostly white, and a picture was printed on it in edible ink. There were eight pictures in total: Frankenstein’s Monster, a spook, a skeleton, a spider and web, some bats, a wicked witch and a creature. The pictures were shown in one of the following colours: pink, orange, red, green and blue. It was impossible to determine which picture was on the ice cream until the wrapper was opened…

Wikipedia | We are grateful to Badge Collector’s Circle for the main image

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary is a 1974 (released 1975) Mexican/US horror film directed by Juan López Moctezuma (The Mansion of Madness, Alucarda) from a screenplay by Don Henderson, Don Rico and Malcolm Marmorstein. It stars Cristina Ferrare, David Young, John Carradine, Helena Rojo, Arthur Hansel, Enrique Lucero, Susana Kamini.

For years, only available on video, Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary was released in the U.S. on DVD in 2013 by 3D Circus, a company who apparently did not have the rights. Bizarrely, they also included a supposed 3D version even though the film was never shot in this process! Provocative modernistic artwork – see below – and the novelty of an obscure horror in 3D ensured that this release sold well, although a definitive high definition Blu-ray from Code Red is planned.

Quentino Tarantino is a big fan of this movie, so in October 2013 he loaned his print to the Mexican Cine de Morelia film festival and made a personal appearance, saying: “It’s not a vampire movie per se, because the lead character, Mary, does not have any supernatural powers, she just has a disease that she has to drink blood.” The director compared Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary to the film Martin (1976), by George Romero, whose protagonist isn’t a vampire either, but has the need to drink blood.

Plot: 

Mary, an attractive young American surrealist artist (Cristina Ferrare) lives in Mexico where she can more readily satisfy her bloodlust. Seducing then murdering her male victims, she then sucks their blood as they lie dying. Secretly stalking her, a masked figure in black, is also committing similar bloodsucking homicides.

Despite the bisexual attentions of her art dealer friend (Helena Rojo), she falls for Ben Rider, a handsome young American drifter (David Young) and begins to question her soulless existence. Meanwhile, the Mexican police and the FBI are closing in and suspect Ben is the perpetrator of the mysterious murders. Eventually, Mary is shocked by the appearance of her killer father (John Carradine), also a blood addict…

Reviews:

“Though Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary doesn’t have any of the surreal touches that Moctezuma’s better known pictures do, it’s an interesting and reasonably well made slice of seventies horror weirdness. The film is fairly well shot, features some nice atmosphere and okay moments of tension and it’s got a pretty cool cast on top of that.” Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop!

“The picture is smoothly put together and has some stylish touches, especially in the transitions from one scene to another. The shock cut to the shark attack victim is one, while other scenes are heralded by a closeup of a bejeweled skull, the closeup of Greta’s corpse (her murder isn’t shown), and so on. Mary’s paintings (with the exception of the portrait of her father) are rather Dali-like representations of brains, hearts, animals, caverns, tunnels, etc. López Moctezuma isn’t able to do much with the mise en scene given the contemporary setting – La mansión de la locura and Alucarda are much more flamboyant in their design–but the overall look of the picture is satisfactory.” Dave Wilt, University of Maryland

“Although in the scenes where she connects with other actors, Ferrare’s portrayal is solid there are other times where she has to be the cold killer. In some ways this makes sense. She is a predator when she needs to feed but still wants to have another connected life when the desire is not so great. Still in the last act the way she seems almost helpless as she is chased by the masked killer seems really out of place.” Soresport Movies

” … although  Moctezuma shows some visual flair in a number of the sequences, he doesn’t appear to have been capable of overcoming its crushing banality.” Phil Hardy (Editor), The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror

” [Carradine's] greatest contribution to the pic is to make the bloodbath climax a laughable one.” Variety

“A disaster… Juan Moctezuma could only procure Carradine for a few days of shooting, and decided to pull the old Ed Wood-Bela Lugosi scam on us? … Not recommended for the squeamish or the intelligent.” Fangoria

“Carradine – and his stand-in – play an unexpectedly energetic role in this expectedly awful U.S.-Mexican sex-horror bomb. Carradine receives “special guest star” billing for his part as “The Man”, the mysterious masked stranger who dogs Cristina Ferrare on his travels through Mexico. For most of the running time, the heavily disguised character is played by the double, who wears a black mask to conceal the substitution; he also wears a large black hat which (combined with the mask) makes him look like one of the characters in the comic strip Spy vs. Spy.” Tom Weaver, John Carradine: The Films (McFarland, 1999)

Buy John Carradine: The Films book from Amazon.co.uk

IMDb | John Carradine on Horrorpedia

We are grateful to Critical Condition and Soresport Movies for some images above.

The House in Nightmare Park (known as Crazy House in the U.S.) is a 1973 British comedy horror film directed by Peter Sykes and starring Frankie Howerd, Ray Milland and Hugh Burden. It was one of a number of British comedy films which parodied the successful British horror genre, closely associated with the Hammer Horror films. Its plot follows that of a traditional “Old Dark House” story.

Struggling artiste, Foster Twelvetrees (celebrated British comedian, Frankie Howerd) performs his excruciatingly over-sincere readings of the classics in the flea pits of London, oblivious to the fact his meagre audiences are, at best, asleep. Never one to turn down a paying gig, he accepts an offer from Stewart Henderson (Ray Milland, Dial M For Murder, X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes) to perform for his family in his sprawling Gothic mansion. Despite the spooky surroundings and odd behaviour of Henderson’s sister, Jessica (Rosalie Crutchley, 1963′s The Haunting) and their servant, Patel (a blacked-up John Bennett from The House That Dripped Blood) who seem particularly intent on rifling through Twelvetree’s luggage. During the night the house is stirred by the arrival of Henderson’s brother, Reggie (Hugh Burden, Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb) plus his niece, Verity (Elizabeth MacLennan, Hands of the Ripper), who seem to be looking for handouts from the ill brother of the family, Victor, who is apparently locked in his room, convalescing.. Elsewhere, it is apparent their aged mother is in a locked room in the house – Foster gets along with her very well until she attempts to murder him, Patel coming to his rescue.

Persuaded to stay, yet another brother arrives, Ernest (Kenneth Griffith, Circus of Horrors) and his wife Aggie (Ruth Dunning, The Black Panther), again looking for money from the AWOL Victor. Suspicions are roused that there may have been unagreed changes to Victor’s will and the confusion builds to a head when it is found that Victor isn’t in his room, only a dummy – not only that but Twelvetrees hasn’t been led to the house for reasons of entertainment but because he is in fact yet another brother and may hold the key to the missing family diamonds. With the family plotting between and against each other, the action leads to the peculiarly placed snake-house where it becomes clear that only the last person standing will have a chance of claiming the lost hoard.

The 1960′s had seen a remarkable change in the fortunes of Howerd who had despaired throughout the 50′s as both bad project choices, changing fads and crippling stage-fright had devastated his career as one of the UK’s top comedians. By recognising his strengths as an almost avant garde performer, able to spin on a sixpence and deliver out of character/script bon mots, he had embraced the variety background rather than rebel against it. Regardless, he still harboured thoughts of giving at least one great performance on the Silver Screen, especially since he had been denied the opportunity to reprise his successful stage role in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, overlooked in favour of the original star, Zero Mostel. His previous big screen appearances had usually missed the mark, often by a significant distance – he harboured a life-long grudge against director Michael Winner for, in his opinion, almost ruining his career, after appearing in his production of The Cool Mikado.

Milland was particularly keen on the project, as he was a big fan of Howerd’s – perhaps an odd admiration for the often dour, serious-looking actor. The House in Nightmare Park was essentially from the stable of Associated English Scripts (ALS), a company founded by Howerd and his agent Stanley Dale alongside the comedy writers, Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, later to expand to include the likes of Terry Nation (who here co-produces) and their secretary Beryl Vertue (now recognised as one of the most important figures in British television). In 1967 ALS merged with the Australian Robert Stigwood Company and through this antipodean connection led to Peter Sykes being installed as director (later to offer forth the rather less comedic Demons of the Mind and To the Devil, A Daughter for Hammer). Screenplay duties were handled by both Terry Nation and Clive Exton, who between them covered everything from Doctor Who to 10, Rillington Place over their relentless writing careers.

It is perhaps odd then that where the film fundamentally falls down is the screenplay. It is almost crushingly overworked and fussy, introducing so many brothers you half expect Howard Keel to start dancing at the end of the dining room table. There is also the perennial problem of pitching a comedy horror at the right level to please both audiences – it’s a pretty decent effort, Howerd’s character as a lousy ham actor allowing his whimsical one-liners to carry without dragging you out of the film. The film is clearly steeped in the history of both The Old Dark House (the 1963 version rather than the 1932 classic) and The Cat and the Canary (Bob Hope version as opposed to the 1927 film) and it is aided by the excellent cinematography of Ian Wilson (before he did Queen Kong!) in the recognisable surroundings of Oakley Court in Berkshire, seen in everything from The Plague of the Zombies to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, not to mention the oozy credits of TV series Hammer House of Horror.

Keeping with the Hammer connection, a word on the score – a masterful one from Harry Robertson (here, Robinson), famous for many horror scores, including Vampire Lovers and Twins of Evil. Some may say the score is too good for the film but that only lends the film even more of a peculiar air – so many familiar actors of such great standing and yet, somehow, it doesn’t quite work. The film very much belongs to Howerd, Milland stays in the shadows, never really able to build on a character that is far more crucial than the action suggests. Only Hugh Burden gets a good run out, constantly referring to Twelvetrees as a ‘swine’ – it borders on annoying but re-watches are surprisingly forgiving.

It goes without saying that violence is not a core part of the film and beyond the threat of interrupted sleep and some snakes, the fear is largely non-existent – this is even more frustrating when we are treated to an incredibly effective surprise ending, which only serves to remind the viewer how unnecessary the long introductions the characters get are.

The film, alas, did nothing to change Howerd’s luck at the box office but it remains his best film and the one he was most fond of. It’s a film which is well worth persevering with, a unique film in many ways, despite its familiar influences and one which has more laughs than many comedies of the era and more atmosphere than plenty of horror films.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

The Haunt of Horror is a American horror magazine published by Curtis Magazines – an imprint of Marvel Comics – that lasted just five issues from May 1974 until January 1975. It was co-edited by Roy Thomas (issues 1 and 2), Marv Wolfman (2 to 4), Tony Isabella (3 and 4), David Anthony Kraft (5), and Don McGregor (5).

Having attempted to launch a digest-sized prose horror anthology in 1973 with no success (just two issues were published as a prose digest with some spot and full-page illustrations, edited by Gerry Conway), Marvel Comics revamped The Haunt of Horror into a black-and-white addition to their roster of horror comics. Marvel characters such as Satana the Devil’s Daughter and Gabriel the Devil-Hunter were featured alongside short story adaptations, reprints of old Atlas comics stories, prose stories and articles. As The Exorcist was still shocking the world, possession and exorcism themes were prevalent.

We are most grateful to Comic Vine for some information and images.

Crescendo is a 1969 (released 1970) British psychological thriller directed by Alan Gibson (Goodbye Gemini, Dracula A.D. 1972) from a screenplay by Alfred Shaughnessy (The Flesh and Blood Show) and Jimmy Sangster for Hammer Film Productions. It stars Stefanie Powers (Sweet, Sweet Rachel; The Astral Factor), James Olson, Margaretta Scott. Jane Lapotaire, Joss Ackland, Kirsten Lindholm.

Alfred Shaughnessy wrote the script in the mid-60s. In 1966 Michael Reeves (The Sorcerers, Witchfinder General) approached Hammer with the script. James Carreras tried to make it for two years with Joan Crawford but could not get the finance. In 1969 the project was reactivated, with Jimmy Sangster hired to rewrite the script and Alan Gibson to direct. 

Plot teaser:

Drawn to the spectacular south of France to research the late composer Henry Ryman, music student Susan Roberts (Stefanie Powers) encounters his son, drug-addicted Georges (James Olson) and his eccentric family. Investigating the haunting strains of an unfinished Ryman concerto leads Susan to discover an empty piano… and a brutally savaged mannequin! Georges tells her she’s the lookalike of his lost love. But Susan may not be the only one at the villa with an eerie doppelgänger…

Buy Crescendo on Warner Archive DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews:

“Crescendo is one of Hammer’s most forgotten efforts. As a film, it’s weak in that the story takes quite a while to grab significant attention, and its events are stagy, even though Scott MacGregor’s château set design is impressive (only some brief second unit stuff was actually shot in France). While the story tends to borrow a bit from some of Hammer’s earlier Psycho-inspired thrillers, it does pick up quite a bit somewhere before the climax, with the usual twists and turns and several murders tossed in along the way.” George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

“Alan Gibson, who would go on to helm Hammer‘s modern-day Dracula films, over-directs with too many shots of people and objects placed in distinct foreground and background to compose a clever picture. The set pieces, however – albeit too few – are very effective indeed, and all the performances are understated when they could so easily have gone over-the-top. Viewed today, it could be a very good episode of the much later Hammer House of Horror. Should it ever turn up on satellite TV, it comes highly recommended.” David Hanks, The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television

” … despite some genuine location filming in France, this has an artificial,  largely stage-bound feel with the setting restricted almost completely to the main house and the area around the pool Not a patch on Taste of Fear then but with some decent performances, a nice musical score, and taut direction, this is a fairly enjoyable suspenser that delivers some nice twists  and deserves at least one viewing.” Tipping My Fedora

Buy Hammer Films’ Psychological Thrillers 1950 -1972 by David Huckvale from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Buy The Shrieking Sixtes: British Horror Films 1960 – 1969 book from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Choice dialogue:

Susan Roberts: “There’s more to life than just existing.”

Wikipedia | IMDb | EOFFTV

(Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens (9 July 1906 – 14 April 1983) was an English composer of classical music but is best known for her contribution for scores to horror films throughout the 1960′s.

Born in London, one of five children of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and his wife Emily, Elisabeth studied composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, before accompanying her mother to India in 1923. On her return she studied with John Foulds and subsequently continued her musical education from 1926 to 1930 at the Royal College of Music in London as a pupil of Harold Darke. 

Lutyens is credited with bringing the Schoenbergian serial technique to the world of film scores, not always employing or limiting herself to 12-note series; some works use a self-created 14-note progression. Schoenberg’s exploration of tonal and atonal music was a huge influence on Hammer’s early sound, the gloomy expressionism first evident in Benjamin Frankel’s 1960 score for The Curse of the Werewolf (1960) though it was Luytens who is credited with fully exploiting these avenues. Her rejection of the traditional lush, romantic scores often used in film, lead to her being viewed as ‘difficult’ and sometimes even ‘un-British’.

Perhaps it goes without saying that Lutyen’s ability to break into territory inhabited almost solely by men is little less than remarkable, paving the way for future female composers such as Nora Orlandi and Wendy Carlos (born Walter, of course). Lutyens was no shrinking violet though – striding through upper class London society amongst such company as Constant Lambert, Francis Bacon and Dylan Thomas (for a time, her lodger) but posturing as a radical left-winger, even joining the Communist Party, all the while living in something approaching squalor – a real paradox. This, combined with her often outrageous anti-Semitic outbursts and homophobic ranting (I may have forgotten to mention her alcoholism) did not make her an ideal dinner guest.

Lutyens once said, “film and radio music must be written not only quickly but with the presumption that it will be only heard once. Its impact must be immediate. One does not grow gradually to love or understand a film score like a string quartet”. She was the first female British composer to score a feature film, her first foray into the genre being Penny and the Pownall Case (1948) but her work on horror films, undertaken for financial reasons, are where she made her mark. Her work in the genre began in 1960 with Cyril Frankel’s Never Take Sweets From a Stranger for Hammer, an alarming film even now. Her distinctly anti-romantic treatment is wistful but still angular, leading you down, disturbingly apt strange paths.

This was followed in 1963 by a score for Freddie Francis and Jimmy Sangster’s Paranoiac, a marvellous work of grating textures – it sounds like a gnashing beast having a conversation with itself under the film. Lutyen’s score is mixed with diegetic music during some of the murder scenes, seagulls and running water mashing with her grim tones.

The following year saw her working on The Earth Dies Screaming but perhaps her most famous work was to appear in 1965 in Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, the well-regarded anthology for Amicus. The rather scattershot approach of instruments combating each other in random blasts is typical or her minimalist though very purposeful manner of phrasing. It’s almost rioutously unjoyous, about the most depressing, upsetting and jarring thing you could marry to images on a screen – of course, it works perfectly. It should be noted that the Roy Castle jazz section of ‘Voodoo’ is the work of the musician Tubby Hayes, not Lutyens.

Continuing her work for Amicus came her own particular favourite score, for 1965′s The Skull. Employing harsh, irregular percussion, it is one of the elements which differentiates Amicus from Hammer, despite the obvious similarities of theme and often cast. As if being one of the lone females composing for film, it says much about her deep-felt belief in the power of the structure of her works that she was confident enough to submit this for what essentially was a major work for the studio. Whereas Italian composers at a similar period were also willing to be challenging in their composition, this tended to veer far nearer to jazz than obtusely challenging avant garde classical music.

As time progressed her work became no less-challenging - The Psychopath and The Terrornauts were tonally slightly more fun but still deliberately exactly the opposite to any other British composer for film at the time. She concluded her forays into the world of horror in typically unexpected directions – 1967′s somewhat obscure Theatre of Death, the evocative of the era educational short, Never Go With Strangers and finally the as raunchy and absurd as it sounds Dutch effort, My Nights With Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie.

Her mark on the world of composition for horror film cannot be overstated – her complex, though often sparse pieces are hugely atmospheric and challenging yet give every film they appear alongside that extra something that would be sorely missed in their absence.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Satanwar (aka Satan War) is a 1979 American horror film written and directed by Bart LaRue. It stars Sally Sehermerhorn, Jimmy Drankovitch, Jane August, Reggie De Morton, Michelene Alexander and The Elaine Thompson Dancers.

Plot:

Newlyweds Bill and Louise Foster move into the house of their dreams but it quickly becomes a nightmare. Goop oozes out of cabinets and coffee pots, little earthquakes keep happening, things go bump in the night, kitchen chairs keep running into Louise, and, worst of all, the Foster’s cross keeps inverting itself over and over on their wall…

Reviews:

“The first hour is slow, repetitive and deadly dull in its familiarity. Aside from one brief scene, it’s all filmed in one house. There are a hundred shots of the crucifix on the wall, dozens of the coffee pot and long scenes of the characters cleaning up messes and walking around. As for the actors, they all appear to have been dubbed in post and are terrible enough to provide a few chuckles here and there … The synthesizer music score sounds like an annoying ambulance siren and it never seems to stop.”  The Bloody Pit of Horror

“It’s Amityville Horror in a small home on a Los Angeles street. And, it is very deliberate. Just two people, most of the time. The same five or so minutes of music play constantly. All the dialog is dubbed. It is one of those films that finds a very strange, almost Night of Horror groove, and then milks it for an hour. In fact, when stuff actually happens in the final ten minutes, it’s kind of scary. Mainly because you didn’t expect anything to actually occur.” Dan Budnik, Bleeding Skull!

” … a sublimely inept attempt at an Amityville Horror rip-off, a 76 minute movie with approximately an hour of plot, followed by a 15-minute Mondo-style presentation on the satanic elements of voodoo. The film proper is introduced with narration explaining that Satan’s demons target not just the general population, but Christians as well. This is demonstrated through the sad “true” tale of Bill and Louise Foster, whose new home is so ghastly — I leave the kitchen wallpaper to your imagination — that haunting seems redundant.” Mondo 70

“if you’re into boring, droning music drowning out actors, spinning crosses and bad acting/direction, then you should spend the time necessary finding this film.  If not, you should leave Bill and Louise with the ghosts or the boogymen or something, and save your time and money on this one.|” Internal Bleeding

Wikipedia | IMDb

Frankenstein Glow Putty, The Alien Glow Putty and Dracula Glow Putty was a range of three American toys produced in 1979 by the Larami Corporation for “ages 3 and up.” The glow in the dark putty came encased in a protective egg of varying colours.

Unopened sets are occasionally available via online auction sites for about $35 to $40.

The 1976 remake of King Kong spawned surprisingly little merchandise for such a big release (this was, of course, pre-Star Wars), but one of the items released was this board game. Utilising the iconic artwork from the film poster on the box, it didn’t become a top seller. It was sold by Ideal in the UK and Arxon in Germany.

As the rules state: “King Kong is climbing the World Trade Center. Can you stop him? As a member of a special attack team, you go up the building after him. If you can successfully attack him five times, you’ll win. But make one false move and the giant beast will twist and turn to knock you off the board. Then you must start again. Suspense mounts as he nears the top. Who will win? You…another player or the Mighty KING KONG!?”

The board was a long rectangular representation of the Twin Towers, and had a cut out Kong figure climbing it. This Kong figure would spin around, knocking the plastic human figures used by each player – any number from 2 -4 – who have to carry out attack missions. The winner is the first player to carry out five successful attacks OR an attack mission and the Special Mission (rescuing the girl from Kong’s hand).

Sadly, the game proved to be overly complicated and rather lacking in fun. Nevertheless, complete versions are now collectable items.

DF

Board Game Geek

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals – released in the USA as Trap Them and Kill Them – is a 1977 Italian erotic horror film, directed by Joe D’Amato (Aristide Massaccesi). The film is part of a loose series of Black Emanuelle films that emerged in the second half of the 1970s, mostly starring Laura Gemser and directed by D’Amato,

Following the global success of the softcore sex film Emmanuelle in 1974, many film producers around the world climbed on the bandwagon. Possibly because the Emmanuelle producers had the world’s worst lawyers, or possibly because copyright was rather more lax at the time, many of these films managed to use the Emmanuelle name by simply changing the spelling – in the case of Black Emanuelle and its sequels, this involved dropping one ‘M’.

While the original Black Emanuelle, made in 1975, was simply a softcore travelogue very much in the tradition of the original film, but with Laura Gemser – actually Eurasian rather than black, but that seemed close enough for 1970s audiences – in the title role. Interestingly, the same year she made Black Emanuelle, she also appeared in Emmanuelle 2. This version of the character was a photo journalist, who found herself getting into all manner of erotic adventures.

Under the guidance of D’Amato – who took over the series after Black Emanuelle 2 – the films rapidly became more and more outlandish and shocking. By 1977 – a year in which no less than four entries in the series were released, Emanuelle was investigating snuff movie rings in Emanuelle in America, violence against women in Emanuelle Around the World and even became a nun in Sister Emanuelle! These films pushed the limits of good taste – Emanuelle in America has graphic fake snuff movie footage, brief hardcore, while some versions of Emmanuelle Around the World had violent sex scenes and also hardcore inserts. It was no surprise, therefore, that D’Amato would combine the series with the newly popular cannibal films spawned by Ruggero Deodato’s Last Cannibal World. We should perhaps be grateful that he wasn’t pursuing the outrage a year earlier, or we might have had a Naziploitation Emanuelle film!

In Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Emanuelle, while working undercover at a hospital, stumbles upon a girl who seems to have been raised by a tribe of cannibals in the Amazon (this discovery is made shockingly when a nurse is attacked and has her right breast bitten off!). She decides to make an expedition to the jungle to find the tribe, taking a professor (played by Gemser’s real life husband and regular co-star Gabriele Tinti) and Susan Scott along, among others. After much erotic romping with both sexes, Emanuelle and her party are captured by the cannibals…

It’s hard to see who this was aimed at. The film has plenty of softcore sex, but it’s likely that the audience lured by the Emanuelle name would be repulsed by the graphic gore (which included graphic castration and some very poor optically created dismemberment), while horror fans would have assumed the film to simply be soft porn. However, the film has since gained a cult following, and is now seen as one of the highlights of the Black Emanuelle series. The film is now seen as a precursor to D’Amato’s sex-horror zombie films Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust.

The main theme of the soundtrack, by Nico Fidenco, was released as a seven inch single.

Buy Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals on DVD from Amazon.com

Buy Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

DF

IMDb

Witches’ Tales - not to be confused with the 1950s comics of the same name – was a black-and-white horror-anthology comics magazines published by Eerie Publications, a New York-based company run by comic-book artist and 1970s magazine entrepreneur Myron Fass, between July 1969 and February 1975. 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.

As with other Eerie Publications, such as Weird, Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Tales from the Tomb andTales of Voodoo, Witches’ Tales featured grisly, lurid colour covers.

We are eternally indebted to Monster Brains for already posting such wonderfully large images of these ghoulish cover images.

Love, Vampire Style is the English language release title for 1970 German sex comedy film Beiß mich, Liebling! (“Bite Me, Darling!”). It was directed by Helmut Förnbacher from a screenplay by himself, W.H. Riedl and Martin Roda-Becher. The film stars Eva Renzi (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), Patrick Jordan (Assault), Amadeus August, Herbert Fux (Mark of the Devil; Lady Frankenstein), Brigitte Skay (A Bay of Blood; The Beast in Heat), Barbara Valentin (The Head; Horrors of Spider Island).

In the UK, it was released on VHS in November 1981 by Intervision, and reissued by MPV, with the title The Amorous Adventures of a Young Postman.

Plot synopsis:

Unfortunately, postman Engelmann (Herbert Fux ) has an accident that makes him unable to work, and so he is replaced on his round by his younger colleague Peter Busch (Amadeus August). However, the young man has many other qualities besides being able to the deliver of letters, and after a short time his ‘services’ are all the rage in the beds of local widows. Sex therapist and marriage counsellor Hartlieb (Patrick Jordan ) is frustrated by this new situation, because all of his female clientele have nothing to report on the couch. Without further ado, he decides to convey the potent postman to the afterlife, especially since the randy postman is also planning to marry his niece Laura (Eva Renzi). However, the farce continues because the deceased deliveryman rises from his grave and makes the area his own again, as a bloodthirsty vampire…

IMDb | Related: Dracula Blows His Cool | The Vampire Happening

We are grateful to Beiträge: 6.865 on the Edgar Wallace Forum for a plot synopsis and Pre-Cert Video for the VHS thumbnail. Please contact us at horrorpedia@outlook.com if you’d like to submit a review of Love, Vampire Style. Similarly, if you have the British VHS sleeves, or any other artwork for this obscure title, please get in touch

Deathmaster – or The Deathmaster on promo material – is a 1972 American vampire horror film directed by former actor Ray Danton (Hannah, Queen of the Vampires; Psychic Killer; Tales of the Unexpected) from a screenplay by R.L. Grove. It stars Robert Quarry (Count Yorga, Vampire; Dr. Phibes Rises Again; Sugar Hill), Bill Ewing, Brenda Dickson, John Fiedler (Mystery in Dracula’s Castle; Bad Ronald; Kolchak: The Night Stalker), Bobby Pickett, Betty Anne Rees, William Jordan (Blue Demon y Zovek en La invasión de los muertos), LaSesne Hilton.

Plot teaser:

A vampire’s coffin washes up on the Californian coastline and the incumbent (Quarry) masquerades as a mystic in order to control a group of hippies…

Reviews:

“Quarry is not well supported by the cast and crew of Deathmaster, but together they do manage to catch a fragment of an anxious zeitgeist. Although it was certainly designed for the drive-in and grindhouse crowd, it comes across as a film more about youth than for them. Understood that way,Deathmaster can still be appreciated for what it tries to express and, to a limited extent, succeeds in expressing.” Mondo 70: A Wild World of Cinema

“Packed with an array of “everything but the kitchen sink” thrills, The Deathmaster is a perfect drive-in movie, displaying all the characteristics of what made these AIP films so appealing. Quarry is great as usual, and the film works as a nice companion to the Yorga flicks.” George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

“Counterculture hippies and vampires? Some of y’all might be rolling your eyes at the thought — especially those who didn’t grow up during that time — but it certainly works better here than say, hippies and Star Trek. (Yea, brother!) Positing the Master Vampire as a sort of Charles Manson-like guru figure is an interesting twist, one blending a literary horror of the 19th Century (Count Dracula) with an all-too literal horror of the 20th (the Tate-LaBianca Murders and the madness at Spahn Ranch).” Brian Lindsey, Eccentric Cinema

“I counted seven chases down the same length of subterranean cavern. It is not a very long length but what they do is photograph a guy running down it one way, and then cut to the other end of the same passage and have him run back. That way, it looks twice as long as it is, which is how the movie feels. Everybody gets turned into a vampire except the hero, who is stuck with his crummy lifetime of petty passions.” Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

“Expect plenty of vocal participation from the stalls.” Screen International, 1972

Buy Deathmaster on DVD from Amazon.com

IMDb | Images: Taliesin Meets the Vampires | Zombo’s Closet

Web is a science fiction/horror novel written by the English author John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids; The Kraken Wakes; The Midwich Cuckoos) The novel was published by the estate of John Wyndham in April 1979, ten years after his death.

Plot summary:

The events depicted in Web are written from the viewpoint of Arnold Delgrange, a man whose wife and daughter were recently killed in a motor collision. They revolve around a failed attempt to establish a utopian colony on the fictional island Tanakuatua in the Pacific Ocean, remote from civilisation. Tanakuatua is now uninhabited by humans, as its native inhabitants were evacuated from the island due to British nuclear testing and were relocated. However a small group of natives defy the evacuation order and placed a curse on any people who returned to the island. When Delgrange and his fellow pioneers reach the island they soon discover it has been overrun by spiders that hunt in packs.

Buy Web by John Wyndham from Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia

Tom Chantrell (born Thomas William Chantrell in Manchester on December 20, 1916 – July 15, 2001) was a British illustrator and film poster artist.

The son of a trapeze artist, Chantrell was the youngest of nine children. He left Manchester Art College and went into advertising, eventually starting in 1933 at Allardyce Palmer who had accounts with Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. In 1938 he designed his first film poster The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse. He eventually designed over 7,000 film posters.

Chantrell did not see the films he drew for; he would receive a plot line and a handful of stills and use friends and family for poses. Examples of this were taking photographs of himself trying to look like a vampire for Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Chantrell’s posters were often produced prior to the film being made in order to raise money from investors.

Chantrell designed many posters for Hammer Films and the Carry On films. In the 1960s Chantrell was often drawing artwork for 5 different films or double bills at one time. With the move away from illustrated artwork for movies in the 1980s, Chantrell designed covers for videos.

Among the more famous films he designed the artwork for were The King and I, Von Ryan’s Express, One Million Years B.C., The Anniversary and Star Wars.

Wikipedia | Official site | The Guardian obituary

All images are copyright Tom Chantrell and are reproduced here in the spirit of publicity for his Official site