In the lacklustre Milton Subotsky production The Uncanny, Peter Cushing plays a man desperate to expose a sinister cat conspiracy against the human race: ‘They prowl by night… lusting for human flesh!’ Seemingly laughable… but an idea that possibly strikes home more than a similar theory about, say, dogs? For cats have always had a singularly spooky quality to them that has seen them both revered and reviled throughout history.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats as gods: to kill one was punishable by death and if yours was killed then the owner would shave their eyebrows in honour! On the other hand, in the middle ages, cats were often seen as demons or devils. Thought to be the familiars of witches (by virtue of often being the only companion of the poor old wretches who would be accused of witchcraft), many unfortunate moggies were hung, burned and stoned to death.

Undeniably, cats are odd creatures, at least by domestic standards. Independent and aloof, they often seem to stare at their owners’ inscrutably, almost contemptuously, before disappearing into the night. Their amazing athletic abilities and disturbing nocturnal cries only add to their aura of mystery. And there remains something strangely sexual about the image of the cat. Many films have used the word “cat” to conjure up images of the exotic and the mysterious, whether it be the sexy and seductive Catwoman, arch nemesis of Batman, or the outer space cuties of Catwomen of the Moon. It’s no surprise then that horror filmmakers have found them to be a rich source of inspiration.

The earliest “cat” chillers didn’t, in fact, feature a cat at all. 1919 saw the German film Unheimliche Geschicten, an omnibus collection directed by Richard Oswald that included a story based on several Edgar Allan Poe tales, including The Black Cat. The first of many films to use either the title or the plot (rarely, oddly enough, both together) of Poe’s tale, it was remade by Oswald as a comedy using the same title (renamed The Living Dead for English speaking audiences) in 1932.

The Cat and the Canary – first filmed in 1927, and remade in 1939 and 1978 – was an archetypal “Old Dark House” film, where an escaped lunatic (known as The Cat) may or may not be responsible for a series of murders. It was 1934’s legendary sideshow shocker Maniac that first brought genuine feline fright frolic to the screen. Again “inspired by” The Black Cat, this ‘ghastly-beyond-belief’ cheapie from Dwain Esper threw in every shock image it could think of, including a scene where a cat’s eye is seemingly gouged out.

The same year saw a rather more intellectual adaptation of Poe’s story. Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat saw the first teaming of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in a whacked-out, Bauhaus-infused, expressionist nightmare that, brilliant as it was, had no connection with the original story (at one point, a black cat runs across a room and is killed by Lugosi, presumably as a token gesture justification of the title).

Poe was even less present in the next version of the story, made in 1941 by Albert S. Rogell. A passable attempt to cash-in on the success of Bob Hope’s comedy chillers (started, ironically, in 1939 with The Cat and the Canary), it also featured Lugosi, alongside Basil Rathbone and Gale Sondergaard. The Case of the Black Cat, made in 1936 had even less connection to the story, being a Perry Mason mystery.

For a while, it seemed that cats were only good for movie titles. Then, in 1942, Val Lewton’s Cat People appeared. Here at last was a movie that fully exploited the sensual and supernatural aspects of felines. Making use of chilling atmospherics and suggestion, Cat People is ambiguous in its approach: we never see the heroine/monster transformation, and the film never explains if she really could become a cat, or if in fact it was all a mental delusion. The film was popular enough to spawn a sequel, Curse of the Cat People (1944), which despite its lurid title was a gentle fantasy with little connection to the original film.

Most cat-themed horror films were rather less subtle than Lewton’s poetic tales, though. The Catman of Paris (1946) was a Lewton-inspired twist on the popular werewolf theme, and is more murder mystery than supernatural horror film, while Erle C. Kenton – who had brought us the humanimal Panther Girl in his 1932 version of The Island of Dr Moreau, Island of Lost Souls, made The Cat Creeps in 1946 (unrelated to the 1930 film of the same name, which was another Cat and the Canary remake), from the same year had a cat possessed by a dead girl… a theme that would crop up in more than one future pussycat production. Indeed, the strongest theme of cat movies is the idea of the feline avenger, persecuting and punishing those responsible for its owner’s death.

A variation on this possession theme – mixed in with a claw-back of Cat People - cropped up in the entertaining British shocker Cat Girl (1957), in which Barbara Shelley, resplendent in a black shiny mac, was cursed with a psychic link to a leopard, causing her to have sporadic attacks of possession when aroused!

Barbara Shelley obviously enjoyed feline thrills, and returned in 1961’s The Shadow of the Cat, an effective John Gilling chiller in which the cat of a wealthy murder victim causes no end of trouble for the killers. Gilling keeps things relatively ambiguous: it’s never clear if the cat is actually taking vengeance, or if its presence simply adds to the guilt of the murderers and drives them to madness and death.

1966 saw another version of The Black Cat, once again showing only few connections to the Poe story. Rather, this was a gore shocker, featuring axes in heads and violence, ala H.G. Lewis, albeit in black and white.

Roger Corman also tackled the story in his Poe anthology Tales of Terror (1962), playing the story as black comedy, with Peter Lorre as the cat’s persecutor/victim. Cats also featured in another Poe-inspired Corman project, The Tomb of Legeia (1964), in which Vincent Price’s dead wife returns as a cat.

1969’s Eye of the Cat was a textbook “vengeful cat” movie, directed by David Lowell Rich and scripted by Psycho writer Joseph Stefano. Michael Sarrazin and Gayle Hunnicutt play a scheming couple who do away with a wealthy aunt, only to fall victim to her hordes of cats. The implausible plot is given a slight twist by making Sarrazin a cat phobic.

Cats have played a role in Japanese horror cinema, most notably in 1968’s classic Kuroneko, in which the ghosts of two women brutally murdered return to take vengeance, assuming the form of a cat at times.

Also from Japan, bizarre Hausu (1977) features supernatural cats amongst its series of strange events and genuinely surreal visuals.

Cats made their way into the Italian giallo thrillers in the 1970s. While Dario Argento’s The Cat O’Nine Tails and Antonio Bido’s The Cat’s Victims might not have actually featured feline killers, 1972’s The Crimes of the Black Cat had the novel idea of featuring a cat as a murder weapon: a mad old woman has poisoned the claws of her pet with curare and induced it to cause mayhem and mischief when irritated by dousing yellow scarves – sent as gifts – with an irritant!

Human beings became unwilling cat food in Ted V. Mikels’ The Corpse Grinders (1971), in which unscrupulous pet food manufacturers add corpses to their cat food mix! Before long, cats are attacking people on the street and in their homes… Although the original has some macabre merit, Mikels went on to make a forgettable and entirely unnecessary belated shot-on-video sequel in 2000.

Cats with a taste for human flesh cropped up in Rene Cardona’s Mexican schlocker Night of a Thousand Cats (1972), where a mad killer women feeds his victims to his half-starved pets; inevitably, the tables are turned in the grisly end.

The Cat Creature (1973) was a slightly above-average TV film, directed by Curtis Harrington (Night Tide) and written by Robert Bloch (Psycho screenplay). Despite the stifling restrictions of American TV at the time, the film is a fairly solid story of the reincarnation of an Egyptian cat goddess.

Sergio Martino’s Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, aka Excite Me (1972), was another retread of The Black Cat, staying slightly closer to the original tale than most others, and starring Edwige Fenech as the eye-gouging, walling up villainess.

Another Italian production, directed by horror veteran Antonio Margheriti, was Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes, a bizarre late entry in the gothic-style tales of the 1960s involving a Scottish castle, a family curse and a gorilla! As the title suggests, whenever a murder is in the offing, the omnipresent cat is in attendance. The film’s eccentricities make up for its defects (chiefly its languid pace, a trait from the Sixties) and there are some memorably absurd images.

In Britain, Ralph Bates fell off the deep end through a combination of sinister feline activity and a domineering mother (Lana Turner) in Persecution aka The Terror of Sheba (1974). It was the first production from Hammer wannabes Tyburn, and the only one that was actually worth watching.

Más negro que la noche (“Blacker than the Night”) was a 1975 Mexican gothic horror about four women that move to a creepy house, inherited by one of them from an old aunt; as a condition, they must take care of the aunt’s pet, a black cat.

Once the pet is mysteriously found dead, a series of bizarre murders begins…

The Uncanny (originally titled Brrr during shooting!) was produced by Milton Subotsky in 1977, shortly after the demise of Amicus and using the same tax shelter deals that made many Canadian productions possible. It was another compendium film, obviously designed to follow in the footsteps of previous Subotsky winners like Tales from the Crypt. However, thanks to the dull direction of Denis Heroux, and a change in public tastes, the film was a total disaster. Each story dealt with spooky cats taking revenge on generally bad eggs, something that didn’t quite gel with the linking theme of cats wanting to take over the world. Subotsky had also featured an evil cat in his earlier Amicus anthology Torture Garden in 1967.

A white cat was up to mischief in the low budget British film The Legacy (1979), which tried to emulate The Omen with a series of bizarre deaths (including The Who’s Roger Daltrey choking to death on a chicken bone!), but failed to ignite the box office – although the paperback tie-in was a surprise best seller. Also in 1979, an unlikely space traveller was Jones the cat in Alien (and briefly Aliens) but he was a feline friend not intergalactic foe.

Lucio Fulci, on a cinematic roll with gore-drenched surreal horrors such as The Beyond and House By the Cemetery, made his version of The Black Cat in 1981. Shot in the UK, this take on Poe’s tale stars Patrick Magee and David Warbeck, and, although generally considered to be a minor addition to the director’s canon, is actually one of his best films, with the emphasis on supernatural atmosphere rather than gore for once.

The film also managed to incorporate a few elements of the original Poe tale into its plot, including the walling up of cat and victim (interestingly, Fulci had also used a similar idea in his 1975 thriller Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes).

Director Paul Schrader updated Cat People with a glossy 1982 remake, but despite lashings of blood and eroticism, and the screen presence of Natjassia Kinski and Malcolm McDowall, the film doesn’t work as well as it should, coming across as little more than an expensive retread of the popular werewolf shapeshifter films of the previous year.

Far better, and considerable more honest in their treatment of the erotic aspects of cat mythology, were The Cat Woman (1988) and Curse of the Cat Woman (1991), two hardcore porn films from actor turned director John Leslie. While Cat Woman is merely above average, Curse… is quite startling, with unsettling but potent sex scenes as it delves deeply into the world of the cat people.

Somewhat less classy than Leslie’s film was Luigi Cozzi’s incredibly clumsy version of The Black Cat (1990), which attempts to bring Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy to a close. Filmed as a tribute to Argento (the plot concerns a film-makers attempts to make a sequel to Suspiria!), the film has nothing of Poe, and little of Dario Argento either. Argento himself, oddly, was also filming The Black Cat around the same time, as his contribution to the Poe film Two Evil Eyes. It was far from vintage Argento, despite a suitably deranged performance from Harvey Keitel, but it did follow the original story fairly closely, and benefited from being paired with George A. Romero’s truly awful The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.

Romero also produced Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, a feature film based on the lacklustre TV series. Nevertheless, this three story anthology was better than it should have been, and includes a tale about a Cat from Hell that leaves a trail of victims in its wake.

Evil Cat arrived from Hong Kong in 1986, the tale of a cat demon that possesses human bodies and has to be killed every fifty years by a member of the same family. Cheerfully trashy, it’s a fun horror romp. More deranged is 1992’s The Cat, directed by Ngai Kai lam, which features a cat from space and features – as far as I’m aware – the only dog-cat kung fu battle ever captured on film!

Greydon Clark’s amusing Uninvited (1987) features a mutant cat on the loose aboard a cruise ship, where it terrorises horny teenagers and gangsters, to no great effect. 1991 TV movie Strays tries to make a house full of killer cats seem scary, but fails miserably, and has human characters so dull that you are actually rooting for the cats by the end.

Stephen King has been attached to a handful of cat related horrors. As well as the underrated 1985 film Cat’s Eye – a trilogy of stories linked by a heroic cat, and directed with style and fidelity to the original stories by Lewis Teague (Alligator), there was the 1989 Pet Semetary, which sees a zombie cat brought back to life after being buried on cursed ground, and 1992 saw Sleepwalkers, a gory and sexy retread of the Cat People theme based on a somewhat incoherent King screenplay. Mick Garris’ film tells the story of demonic cat people (who fear real cats!) and is ludicrous enough to be throwaway fun.

A hand-drawn Ghanian poster for Sleepwalkers!

More recently, in 2011, Korean film The Cat featured a feline that was the only witness to a murder, a ghostly child and possible demonic possession, as bad things start to happen to the woman who is looking after the titular cat.

The aforementioned 1975 Mexican movie Más Negro Que La Noche (“Blacker Than the Night”) has just been remade in 2014, in 3D, as a full-blown gothic Spanish production with a focus, like the original, on murders that occur once a cat has been killed.

It seems certain that cats will continue to provide a steady flow of ideas for film-makers looking for sinister ciphers. Only Alien and Cat’s Eye has shown cats in a particularly positive light within the context of the horror film. Other than this, the best they could hope for was to be witches familiars in the likes of Bell, Book and Candle or I Married a Witch. This might seem like an outrageous slander against this innocent animal. But, even if the feline population were made aware of their sly image in the cinema, one imagines that they would simply stare at you for a while, yawn disinterestedly, and then walk away. Cats have better things to worry about…

David Flint, Horrorpedia

The Addams Family is a group of fictional characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. The Addams Family characters include Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday, Pugsley, Pubert Addams, Cousin Itt and Thing.

The Addamses are a satirical inversion of the ideal American family; an eccentric, wealthy clan who delight in the macabre and are unaware, or do not care, that other people find them bizarre or frightening. They originally appeared as an unrelated group of 150 single panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in The New Yorker between their debut in 1938 and Addams’s 1988 death.

Addams’s original cartoons were one-panel gags. The characters were undeveloped and unnamed until the television series production.

Gomez and Pugsley are enthusiastic. Morticia is even in disposition, muted, witty, sometimes deadly. Grandma Frump is foolishly good-natured. Wednesday is her mother’s daughter. A closely knit family, the real head being Morticia—although each of the others is a definite character—except for Grandma, who is easily led. Many of the troubles they have as a family are due to Grandma’s fumbling, weak character. The house is a wreck, of course, but this is a house-proud family just the same and every trap door is in good repair. Money is no problem. — Charles Addams

The family appears to be a single surviving branch of the Addams clan. Many other “Addams families” exist all over the world. Charles Addams was first inspired by his home town of Westfield, New Jersey, an area full of ornate Victorian mansions and archaic graveyards.

Although most of the humour derives from the fact that they share macabre interests, the Addamses are a close-knit extended family. Morticia is an exemplary mother, and she and Gomez remain passionate towards each other.

The parents are supportive of their children. The family is friendly and hospitable to visitors, in some cases willing to donate large sums of money to causes, despite the visitors’ horror at the Addams’s peculiar lifestyle.

Characters:

Gomez – master of the Addams household and the Addams patriarch, married to Morticia and the father of Wednesday and Pugsley. In the original cartoons in The New Yorker, he appeared tubby, snub-nosed and with a receding chin.

In the 1960s television series, Gomez was portrayed as a naive, handsome, and successful man, although with a childlike, eccentric enthusiasm for everything he did. Though a peaceful man, he was known to be well-versed in many types of combat; he and Morticia fenced sometimes.

Gomez professed endless love for his wife, Morticia. He had studied to be a lawyer, but rarely practiced, one of the running jokes being that he took great pride in losing his cases. Gomez was depicted as extremely wealthy, through inheritance and extensive investments, but he seemed to have little regard for money.

Morticia Addams – matriarch of the Addams Family, a slim woman with pale skin, clad in a skin-tight black hobble gown with octopus-like tendrils at the hem. Her visual aspect suggested that of some kind of vampire. She adores her husband, Gomez, as deeply as he does her.

Gomez and Morticia had two children, a son called Pugsley and a daughter called Wednesday. In the television show she was a sweet-natured, innocent, happy child, largely concerned with her fearsome pet spiders.

The movies gave Wednesday a much more serious and mature personality with a deadpan wit and a morbid fascination with trying to physically harm, or possibly murder, her brother (she was seen strapping him into an electric chair, for example, and preparing to pull the switch); she was apparently often successful, but Pugsley never died. Like most members of the family, he seemed to be inhumanly resilient.

For his part, Pugsley was largely oblivious to the harm his sister tried to inflict on him, or an enthusiastic supporter of it, viewing all attempts as fun and games. In his first incarnation in The New Yorker cartoons, Pugsley was depicted as a diabolical, malevolent boy-next-door. In the television series, he was a devoted older brother and an inventive and mechanical genius. In the movies he lost his intelligence and independence, and became Wednesday’s sidekick and younger brother, cheerfully helping her in her evil deeds.

Fester is a bald, barrel-shaped man with dark, sunken eyes and a devilish grin. He seemed to carry an electrical charge, as he could illuminate a light bulb by sticking it in his mouth. In the original television series, Fester was Morticia’s uncle. In all subsequent animated and film media, Fester was Gomez’s older brother, save for The New Addams Family where Fester is portrayed as Gomez’ younger brother.

Grandmama is a witch who deals in potions, spells, hexes, and even fortune-telling. Her trademarks were her shawl and grey, frizzy hair. Charles Addams originally named the character Grandma/Granny Frump in his notes for the adaptation of the cartoons to television in 1965, thereby making her Morticia’s mother.

“Thing” as created by Charles Addams, was a shy creature mostly seen in the background of Addams’s drawings; however, the television series suggested it was a disembodied hand named “Thing“, and was Gomez’s friend since childhood. He (it is implied in the original television series that the character is male) often performed common, everyday tasks such as retrieving the mail, writing a letter, or just giving a friendly pat on the shoulder, appearing out of ubiquitous boxes or other convenient containers throughout the house. He communicated with the Addamses with a Morse-like alphabet, sign language, writing, and knocking on wood.

Lurch served as a shambling gravelly-voiced butler, unscarred yet reminiscent of Frankenstein’s Monster, and a funereal but obedient “jack of all trades”. He tried to help around the house, although occasionally he botched tasks due to his great size and strength, but is otherwise considered quite a catch by the Addamses for his skill at more personal tasks, such as waxing Uncle Fester’s head and amusing the children (to whom he was deeply devoted).

Surprisingly, Lurch was often seen playing the harpsichord or organ with great skill and uncharacteristic passion.

Cousin Itt, as so named by the television series producer, who frequently visited the family, was short-statured and had long hair that covered his entire body from scalp to floor. Although in the series he was shown wearing opera gloves, it is unclear what, if anything, is beneath the hair.

Buy The Complete 1960s TV series from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Addams family’s mansion had many different incarnations over the years. In one of Charles Addams’s cartoons. The house was depicted as being a dilapidated mansion that had been condemned (and was seemingly haunted, due to the strange creatures at the top of the staircase). Since then, it had become almost a character itself, and served as the main setting for the rest of the cartoons featuring the Addams family.

In the 1960s television series, the house was given an address: 0001 Cemetery Lane. Instead of being a dilapidated house, it was now practically a museum, filled with odd statues, trophies, and other interesting knick-knacks. The house also sported a playroom with medieval racks, nailbeds, iron maidens, pillories and stocks, used for family relaxation.

The house once again became a condemned mansion in the New Scooby-Doo Movies television show, in which the Addamses made a guest appearance. In the subsequent Addams Family 1970s cartoon, the mansion was mounted on a trailer and dragged all over the world with the globetrotting Addams clan.

The two Addams Family movies in 1991 and 1993, along with the second animated television series in 1992, resurrected the mansion’s original exterior design from the Charles Addams cartoons. The movie Addams Family Values had the mansion appearing exactly as it did in Charles Addams’s drawing of the family, about to dump boiling oil on a group of carollers from the roof (a gag that was acted out in the opening sequence of the previous film). The first film reveals the mansion to have a cavernous, pillared, vaulted-ceilinged canal system deep underneath it, traversable by gondola boat to reach the family vault, itself a cluttered room filled with childhood mementos, home movies, and a bar which revolves around to reveal vast halls filled with countless gold doubloons and other treasure.

Unlike The Munsters, which explicitly stated its characters’ supernatural origins, the exact nature of the Addamses is never established. They all seemed to share a bond with the occult and supernatural. Uncle Fester was often portrayed as something of a mad scientist, and Grandmama as a potion maker, and Morticia states that her study is spells and hexes in the 1991 movie The Addams Family but, these activities don’t really explain the Addams’s seemingly immortal state. Much of the food they live on is inedible or outright deadly to normal humans, and they take an interest in painful activities like walking across minefields or having a sharp pendulum cut them in half.

Television series, episodes, and films

In 1964, the ABC-TV network created The Addams Family television series based on Addams’s cartoon characters. The series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 half-hour episodes.

The very wealthy, endlessly enthusiastic Gomez Addams (John Astin) is madly in love with his refined wife, Morticia (née Frump) (Carolyn Jones). Along with their daughter Wednesday (Lisa Loring), their son Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax – whom it was reported died of a heart attack the day after we posted this overview), Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan), and Grandmama (Blossom Rock), they reside at 0001 Cemetery Lane in an ornate, gloomy, Second Empire-style mansion, attended by their servants: Lurch (Ted Cassidy), the towering butler, and Thing (billed as “itself”, but portrayed by Cassidy and occasionally by Jack Voglin), a disembodied hand that usually appears out of a small wooden box. Occasionally episodes would feature other relatives such as Cousin Itt (Felix Silla), Morticia’s older sister Ophelia (also portrayed by Carolyn Jones), or Grandma Frump, Morticia’s mother (Margaret Hamilton).

Much of the humour derives from their culture clash with the rest of the world. They invariably treat normal visitors with great warmth and courtesy, even though their guests often have evil intentions. They are puzzled by the horrified reactions to their own good-natured and normal behavior, since the family is under the impression that their tastes are shared by most of society. Accordingly, they view “conventional” tastes with generally tolerant suspicion. For example, Fester once cites a neighboring family’s meticulously maintained petunia patches as evidence that they are “nothing but riffraff”. A recurring theme in the epilogue of many episodes was the Addamses getting an update on the most-recent visitor to their home, either via mail, something in the newspaper, or a phone call. Invariably, as a result of their visit to the Addamses, the visitor would be institutionalized, change professions, move out of the country, or suffer some other negative life-changing event. The Addamses would always misinterpret the update and see it as good news for their most-recent visitor.

The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin who was a close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode, and rewrote every script. As a result, Gomez, with his sardonic remarks, backwards logic, and ever-present cigar (pulled from his breast pocket already lit), is sometimes compared to Groucho Marx.

The television series featured a memorable theme song, written and arranged by longtime Hollywood composer Vic Mizzy (who also wrote the score for William Castle’s The Night Walker). The song’s arrangement was dominated by a harpsichord, and featured finger-snaps as percussive accompaniment. Actor Ted Cassidy, in his “Lurch” voice, punctuated the lyrics with words like “neat”, “sweet”, and “petite”. Mizzy’s theme was popular enough to enjoy a release as a 45rpm single, though it failed to make the national charts.

Buy The Addams Family theme on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk

The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972)

The Addams Family’s first animated appearance was on the third episode of Hanna-Barbera’s The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which first aired on CBS Saturday morning September 23, 1972. Four of the original cast (John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, and Ted Cassidy) returned for the special.

The Addams Family characters were drawn to the specifications of the original Charles Addams cartoons. After the episode aired, fans wanted more animated adventures featuring the Addamses, and Hanna-Barbera obliged.

The Addams Family Fun-House (1972)

Meanwhile, in late 1972, ABC produced a pilot for a live-action musical variety show titled The Addams Family Fun-House. The cast included Jack Riley and Liz Torres as Gomez and Morticia, Stubby Kaye as Uncle Fester, Pat McCormick as Lurch and Butch Patrick (who had played Eddie Munster in The Munsters) as Pugsley. The pilot aired in 1973, but was not picked up for a series. Judging by the image below, we can see why!

The Addams Family  (1973–1975)

The first animated series ran on Saturday mornings from 1973–1975 on NBC. In a departure from the original series, this series took the Addamses on the road in a Victorian-style RV. This series also marked the point where the relations between characters were changed so that Fester was now Gomez’s brother, and Grandmama was now Morticia’s mother.

Although Coogan and Cassidy reprised their roles, Astin and Jones did not, their parts being recast with Hanna-Barbera voice talents Lennie Weinrib as Gomez and Janet Waldo as Morticia, while a ten-year-old Jodie Foster provided the voice of Pugsley. One season was produced, and the second season consisted of reruns. The show’s theme music was completely different and had no lyrics and no finger snaps.

Buy The Addams Family animated TV series from Amazon.com

A complementary comic book series was produced in connection with the show, but it lasted only three issues.

Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977)

A television reunion movie, Halloween with the New Addams Family, aired on NBC Sunday, October 30, 1977.

The Addams Family: The Animated Series (1992–1993)

The New Addams Family (1998–1999)

The New Addams Family was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, and ran for 65 episodes (one more than the original TV series) during the 1998–1999 season on the then newly launched Fox Family Channel. Many storylines from the original series were reworked for this new series, incorporating more modern elements and jokes. John Astin returned to the franchise in some episodes of this series, albeit as “Grandpapa” Addams.

The cast included Glenn Taranto as Gomez Addams, Ellie Harvie as Morticia, Michael Roberds as Fester, Brody Smith as Pugsley, Nicole Fugere (the only cast member from Addams Family Reunion to return) as Wednesday, John DeSantis as Lurch, Betty Phillips as Grandmama and Steven Fox as Thing.

Theatrical feature films

The Addams Family (1991)

In the 1990s, Orion Pictures (which by then had inherited the rights to the series) developed a film version, The Addams Family (released on November 22, 1991). Due to the studio’s financial troubles at the time, Orion sold the US rights to the film to Paramount Pictures. It took $191,502,246 at the box office.

Buy The Addams Family (1991) on Blu-ray from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Addams Family Values (1993)

Upon the last film’s success, a sequel followed: Addams Family Values. Loosened content restrictions allowed the films to use far more grotesque humour that strove to keep the original spirit of the Addams cartoons (in fact, several gags were lifted straight from the single panel cartoons). The two movies used the same cast, except for Grandmama, played by Judith Malina in the first film and Carol Kane in the second. A script for a third film was prepared in 1994, but was abandoned after the sudden death of actor Raúl Juliá.

Buy Addams Family Values on DVD from Amazon.com

Addams Family Reunion (1998)

Released direct-to-video on September 22, 1998, this time by Warner Bros. through its video division. It has no relation to the Paramount movies, being in fact a full-length pilot for a second live-action television version, The New Addams Family. The third movie’s Gomez, played by Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show; It), follows the style of Raúl Juliá.

Cancelled film

In 2010, it was announced that Illumination Entertainment, in partnership with Universal Pictures, had acquired the underlying rights to the Addams Family drawings. The film was planned to be a stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams’s original drawings. Tim Burton was set to co-write and co-produce the film, with a possibility to direct but it was eventually cancelled.

Reboot

On October 31, 2013 it was announced in Variety that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will be rebooting The Addams Family as an animated film with Pamela Pettler writing the screenplay, however this has not come to fruition, so far…

Adult features

Inevitably, as with The Munsters, there are adult-entertainment takes on the family’s exploits, namely The Maddams Family – with Ron Jeremy as Uncle Fester – and The Addams Family XXX. According to online reviews, the latter seems to be the better of the two…

Video games

Five video games released from 1989 to 1994 were based on The Addams Family.

• Fester’s Quest (1989) was a top down adventure game that featured Uncle Fester.

• In 1992, two versions of The Addams Family were released by Ocean Software based on the 1991 movie; an 8-bit version for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, as well as a 16-bit version released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Amiga, Atari ST and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. ICOM Simulations published The Addams Family video game for the TurboGrafx-CD in 1991.

• The games’ sequel, The Addams Family: Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt (1993), also by Ocean Software, was based on the ABC animated series and was released for NES, SNES, and Game Boy (although the latter two were just 8-bit remakes of the first SNES game, swapping Pugsley and Gomez’s roles).

• Addams Family Values (1994) by Ocean was based on the movie’s sequel and returned to the style of gameplay seen in Fester’s Quest.

• A Game Boy Color game was released in the 1990s for promotion of The New Addams Family. The game was simply titled The New Addams Family Series. In this game, the Addams mansion had been bought by a fictional company called “Funnyday” that wanted to tear down the house and surrounding grounds to make room for an amusement park.

Pinball

Books

The Addams Family

This first novelization of the television series, written by Jack Sharkey, was released near the end of the show’s second season by Pyramid Books in 1965. The book details the family’s arrival in their new home, and explains how it got its bizarre décor. The arrival and origins of Thing are explained. Each chapter reads as a self-contained story, like episodes of the television show. The novel concludes with the Addams family discovering that their lives will be the basis for a new television series.

The Addams Family Strikes Back

“The Addams Family Strikes Back” by W.F. Miksch tells how Gomez plans to rehabilitate the image of Benedict Arnold by running for the local school board. The tone and characterizations in this book resemble the TV characters much more closely than in the first novel. Cousin Itt appears as a minor character in this story, but as a tiny, three-legged creature rather than the hairy, derby-hatted character seen on television and in the movies. The novel was published in paperback form by Pyramid Books in 1965.

The Addams Family: An Evilution

Merchandising: Games and Toys

The success of the 1960s TV series spawned a vast array of merchandising including a board game and target game, both from Ideal.

The success of the 1990s feature films led to further merchandising of all kinds, plus arcade games.

Advertising

In 1994, the actors cast as the Addamses in the first two films (sans the recently deceased Raúl Juliá) were in several Japanese television spots for the Honda Odyssey.The Addamses—most prominently Gomez (for whom a voice actor was used to impersonate Juliá while footage from Addams Family Values was seen) and Morticia—are seen speaking Japanese.

In 2007 and 2008, the Addams Family appeared as M&Ms in an advertising campaign for M&Ms Dark Chocolate.

Musicals

The Addams Family (2010 onwards)

More Addams Family merchandise…

Fancy dress costumes

Buy Addams Family Psychobilly t-shirt from Amazon.co.uk

Buy The Addams Family Barbie Doll Giftset from Amazon.com

Wikipedia | Related: The Munsters

Gorgar is a 1979 pinball machine designed by Barry Oursler and released by Williams Electronics.

Gorgar was the first ‘talking’ pinball machine. With a vocabulary of seven words (Gorgar, Speaks, Beat, You, Me, Hurt, Got) The words could be combined together for different phrases, such as “Gorgar speaks” and “Me got you.” The pinball machine also has a heart beat sound effect that increases in frequency during longer game play.

German power metal group Helloween‘s album Walls of Jericho contains a song titled Gorgar. It was also covered by another German power metal group Iron Savior on their album Unification.

Gorgar is available as a licensed table of The Pinball Arcade for several platforms. The table is also included in the Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection.

Wikipedia

‘Satan is coming!’

The Devil’s Wedding Night is a 1973 Italian horror film originally known as Il Plenilunio delle Vergini (“Full Moon of the Virgins”). It was directed by Luigi Batzella (Nude for Satan; The Beast in Heat) and stars Rosalba Neri and Mark Damon.

In the USA, The Devil’s Wedding Night was released by Dimension Pictures (Kingdom of the Spiders; Werewolf Woman; Night Creature) with a typically lurid advertising campaign. After a number of pan-and-scan VHS releases, the film was finally released widescreen on DVD by Shout Factory in September 2006 with optional comments by Elvira although the print used has obvious wear.

Plot teaser:

The 1800s: scholarly Karl Schiller believes he’s found the ring of the Nibelungen, which holds great power. It’s at Castle Dracula. His twin, Franz, a gambler, asks if vampires frighten Karl; Karl shows him an Egyptian amulet, which may protect him. Franz takes the amulet and sets out ahead of his brother, arriving at the castle first. There he finds a countess who invites him to dine.

Later that night, Karl arrives. Coincidently, it’s the Night of the Virgin Moon, a night that falls every fifty years and draws five virgins from the surrounding village to the castle not be heard from again. Can Karl protect his brother, find the ring, and rescue the virgins?

Reviews:

” … a by the numbers vampire film with some serious T&A tossed into things to spice it up a bit. It’s formulaic, to be sure, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable particularly when it’s shot as well as it is here thanks to some slick cinematography from the late, great Joe D’Amato. The castle makes for a great and macabre set, the women are all lit quite seductively and while there isn’t as much atmosphere as, say, Castle of Blood or Black Sunday there are still some very memorable visuals and sets.” Ian Jane, DVD Talk

“Stealing the show as usual is the supremely sexy Rosalba Neri of Amuck! and Lady Frankenstein. Her over-the-top performance combined with her propensity for nude scenes make Neri’s presence a boon for this flick. There’s also Lara, the Contessa’s servant (and lesbian lover), who is played to perfection with a dichotomously somnambulistic and bug-eyed craziness by Brazilian actress Esmeralda Barros. The most pitiful roles are given to Xiro Papas (Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks) as the monstrous vampire thug and Gengher Gatti (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) as the mysterious butler/coach driver.” Doomed Moviethon

“It’s no overlooked masterpiece of gothic horror; with its fits of pure silliness, but Damon doesn’t look down at the material, Neri is gorgeous (especially nude), and Joe D’Amato’s atmospheric cinematography is often stunning.” Basement of Ghoulish Decadence

“Rosalba Neri doesn’t get to have as much fun as she does in Lady Frankenstein but she still turns in a watchable performance. Mark Damon, who plays twins Karl and Franz, does so with equal commitment on both sides and in doing so pays tribute to Barbara Steele who played duo roles in Black Sunday, in which he also stars. They really do seem like two different people even though still playing with the good twin / bad twin cliché.” Sinful Celluloid

“It’s well-staged, beautifully shot and loaded with naked, lesbian vampires and curvy villager babes. Unlike films of this type made for today’s video market, it also takes its horror elements rather seriously and manages to have some fun along the way. It’s hard to dislike any movie in which one of the male leads seduces a peasant girl out of her knickers by slyly reminding her that Count Dracula is only interested in the blood of virgins. Though hardly a classic, it’s not bad, and it certainly delivers on the promises of its lurid U.S. ad campaign.” Bloody Disgusting

“… Batzella’s occasionally arresting imagery, as well as Neri’s sexy but commanding premise, make the film worth a look. While he’s certainly not cut from the same cloth as Mario Bava, Batzella manages to create an eerily erotic gothic atmosphere, highlighted by a fog-bound scene of undead women gathering for a blood orgy, and — especially — scenes of Rosalba Neri bathed in blood and rising naked from her crypt.” Tomb of the Headless Werewolf

Italian trailer:

Wikipedia | IMDb

Baron Blood (original title: Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga “The Horror of Castle Nuremberg”) is a 1972 Italian/German horror film directed by Mario Bava from a screenplay by Vincent Fotre. It stars Joseph Cotten (Lady Frankenstein), Elke Sommer (Lisa and the Devil), Massimo Girotti, Rada Rassimov and Antonio Cantafora.

The Italian version was scored by Stelvio Cipriani (A Bay of Blood; Night Hair Child; Tentacles) whereas the US release by AIP was re-scored by Les Baxter (as were Bava’s earlier films Black Sunday and Black Sabbath).

Plot teaser:

American Peter Kleist travels to visit the castle of his Austrian ancestor Baron Otto Von Kleist who had a reputation that earned him the nickname “Baron Blood” and who was cursed by a witch, Elisabeth Holle, for his evil deeds against the villagers before he burned her at the stake.

Peter is shown a parchment with a spell reputed to have the power to bring Baron Blood back to life. As a lark with Eva, a female architect renovating the castle for a hotel project, he reads the invocation out loud in the castle. Frightened by an unseen presence, they read the spell to send him back. They later read the invocation again, only this time the parchment is burned before they can read the dismissal.

The revived corpse-like Baron goes into town and murders a doctor, starting a reign of terror against the villagers. With each murder victim he becomes more human yet can revert to his hideous appearance…

Arrow Video Blu-ray + DVD release:

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of three versions of the film: Bava’s original version Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga with Italian audio, The European Export Version of Baron Blood with English audio, and, on home video for the first time, the re-edited and re-dubbed AIP Version of Baron Blood with alternate score by Les Baxter
• Three audio versions: Optional Italian, European English and AIP English re-dub and re-score
• English SDH subtitles and a new English subtitle translation of the Italian audio
• Audio Commentary with Bava biographer and expert Tim Lucas
• Introduction to Baron Blood by author and critic Alan Jones
• Delirium Italian-style: Ruggero Deodato on Mario Bava and the golden age of Italian genre films
• Mario Bava at work – a photo gallery of Bava behind the scenes on his films
• Trailers for Baron Blood
• Baron Blood Radio Spots
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic James Oliver, illustrated with original archive stills and posters

Buy Baron Blood on Arrow Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“Baron Blood’s beautiful, atmospheric visuals render it, at the very least, an entertaining instalment in his later filmmaking period. A chase sequence in the fog-filled alley, the Baron’s resurrection, and the corpses around the castle all make for very fine set pieces. All the ingredients are present, and even though they don’t completely add up, a mediocre Bava film still plays better than even the best of most horror directors.” Samm Deighan, Diabolique

“Fortunately, the movie is buoyed a little by fun performances like Cotten, Sommer (who makes an excellent old-school horror actress—dumb, with screaming abilities that are practically operatic) and Rada Rassimov as a kooky witch who can channel the spirits of the dead. Despite its numerous issues, which include being not in the least scary, Baron Blood is kind of fun to watch. It’s cheesy, creepy enough to give you a fun shiver or two, and has a villain that at least looks scary, even if his acts aren’t.” Abby, No More Popcorn

“From a production stand point there are not that many areas in which this film does not hold really well. The visuals are first rate, pacing is never an issue as things move briskly from one revelation to the next and once again Mario Bava excels, when it comes to the murder set pieces. Outside of the deliriously over the top performance from Joseph Cotton (Citizen Kane, The Third Man) in not one, but two roles. None of this film’s other performance leave that strong of an impression and they tend to come off as to mechanical in their delivery.” Michael Den Boer, 10k Bullets

Buy Baron Blood on Kino Classics Blu-ray from Amazon.com

Cast:

• Joseph Cotten: Baron Otto von Kleist/Alfred Becker
• Elke Sommer: Eva Arnold
• Massimo Girotti: Dr. Karl Hummel
• Rada Rassimov: Christina Hoffmann
• Antonio Cantafora: Peter Kleist
• Umberto Raho: Inspector (as Humi Raho)
• Luciano Pigozzi: Fritz
• Nicoletta Elmi: Gretchen Hummel

Filming locations:

Burg Kreuzenstein, Austria

Wikipedia | IMDb | Image credits: Zontar of Venus

Blood Voyage – also known as Nightmare Voyage – is a 1976 US horror thriller movie directed by veteran actor Frank Mitchell from a screenplay by William Tate and Jim Patton.

Although Blood Voyage was his only directorial credit, veteran actor Frank Mitchell had a huge number of minor roles in films from 1920 onwards, mostly in westerns but also in genre titles The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942) and Ghost Catchers (1944).

The film stars Jonathan Goldsmith [as Jonathan Lippe], Laurie Rose, Midori, Mara Modair, John Hart, Gene Tyburn, Pete Kellett, Doug Hume, Fred Stromsoe, Jim Patton, Warren Farlow.

Despite being released in British cinemas in 1979 unscathed by censorship, the 1988 UK Atlas Video version was savagely cut 4 mins 30 secs by the BBFC to remove footage of a heroin injection and to shorten a scene of a woman being strangled on a bed.

Plot teaser:

A small group of people are sailing on yacht to Hawaii for a wedding. Among them is a murderer. With sexual intrigue and drug-fuelled tensions mounting, passengers and the crew turn on each other in a desperate attempt to identify the killer…

Reviews:

” … plays like a particularly languid TV movie (complete with some painfully flat performances) – albeit one with added boobs and flashes of splatter violence. It’s of mild interest as a proto-slasher, complete with touches that would become standard in the coming years, such as a character saying “What you doing here?” to someone offscreen, before being offed by an unseen assailant. It’s topped off with a typically cynical 70s ending, which unfortunately falls kind of flat.” Justin Kerswell, Hysteria Lives!

“It doesn’t really have a lot going for it and unless you enjoy boring films with an easy to figure out mystery and a killer that runs around giggling like the Joker (which gets annoying very, very fast) then this is one cruise you can skip.” Todd Martin, HorrorNews.net

Good Against Evil is a 1977 American ABC TV movie directed by Paul Wendkos (The Mephisto Waltz) from a screenplay by Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster (Dracula; Paranoiac; Fear in the Night). The film was a pilot for a TV series that was not subsequently commissioned.

Cast: 

Dack Rambo (Nightmare Honeymoon), Elyssa Davalos, Richard Lynch (The Premonition; Puppetmaster III; Halloween (2007)), Dan O’Herlihy (Halloween III), John Harkins (Amityville 3-D), Jenny O’Hara (Wishmaster; The Sacred), Lelia Goldoni (Hysteria; Blood Fiend; Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Peggy McCay (Amityville: The Evil Escapes; An Irish Vampire in Hollywood), Peter Brandon (Altered States), Kim Cattrall (Modern Vampires; Peter Benchley’s Creature), Natasha Ryan (Kingdom of the Spiders; The Amityville Horror; The Entity), Richard Sanders (Lover’s Lane), Lillian Adams (Tormented), Erica Yohn, Richard Stahl (Beware! The Blob).

Plot teaser:

A travel writer, Andy Stuart (Dack Rambo), teams up with an exorcist, Father Kemschler Dan (O’Herlihy), to battle Satan, and a group of Devil worshipers led by Mr. Rimmin (Richard Lynch)…

Buy Good Against Evil + The Severed Arm on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

” … the film’s opening sequence is rather tense, with director Paul Wendkos in full command. The remainder of the movie fluctuates between romantic drama and horror, with the horror used to retain the tension of the beginning. There are some attempts to use cats as a horror element, and these work okay, although the cats are far from cooperative.

The exorcism sequence is done as well as can be expected, although hardcore horror fans will find it lackluster.” Examiner.com

“The thing you’re likely to remember the most about this movie is how relentlessly unoriginal it can be. The opening sequence suddenly turns into the ending of Rosemary’s Baby. Later, a long sequence exhaustively copies the style and content of the exorcism sequence from The Exorcist. Perhaps if a series followed this movie pilot, it would’ve been rip-off of the week.” Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension

Buy Good Against Evil on DVD from Amazon.com

“A cat attack, halfway through, is the camp highlight. For quality, you at least get the presence of the underrated Richard Lynch (The Premonition), some decent music and some cute San Francisco locations. The pacing is fairly brisk, especially in the first third.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers

Buy Claws & Saucers book from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Choice dialogue:

“All men are demanding. All men are self-serving. All men are insensitive.”

Amusingly inappropriate Devil Doll DVD artwork for this 1977 TV movie!

IMDb | Image credits: The Dwayger Dungeon

The Bedevilled – original title: Xin mo – is a 1974 Hong Kong horror film written and directed by Lo Wei for Golden Harvest. The film stars O Chun Hung, Reiko Ike, James Tien, Wong Lan and Dean Shek. It was released 1st January 1975.

Plot teaser:

In a small town, the only son of the local dominant family is found dead, naked in the bed of wine shop proprietress Cheng Niang. The young man’s father, Lin Chi-Hsing, insists it is a murder committed by Cheng Niang’s husband Tseng Chai-Chu, who claims he is innocent.

Soon after Cheng Niang mysteriously disappears, Old Lin successfully bribes the Magistrate Tang to sentence Tseng to death for the crime. In her disappearance Cheng Niang quickly learns about her husband’s death and hangs herself. The magistrate Tang thereafter is riddled with guilt and begins seeing the ghosts of Tseng and Cheng Niang every night…

Wikipedia | IMDb

The Dark is a 1979 US science fiction horror film directed by John “Bud” Cardos from a screenplay by Stanford Whitmore (The Eyes of Charles Sand; Night Gallery) for Film Ventures International. Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; Death Trap) was the original the director but was fired by the producers. Roger Kellaway’s score apes Jerry Goldsmith’s musical motifs for The Omen.

The film stars William Devane (Hollow Man; Leprechaun’s Revenge), Cathy Lee Crosby, Richard Jaeckel (The Green Slime; Blood Song), Keenan Wynn (Piranha; Laserblast; The Clonus Horror), Warren J. Kemmerling, Biff Elliot (Blood Bath; The Navy vs. the Night Monsters), Jacquelyn Hyde (House of Terror; Superstition), Casey Kasem (Shaggy’s voice in Scooby-Doo), Vivian Blaine (Parasite), John Bloom (Dracula vs. Frankenstein; The Have Eyes Part II), Bill Derringer, Jay Lawrence (Kingdom of the Spiders), Russ Marin (Chiller; Deadly Friend), Vernon Washington. Diminutive veteran actor Angelo Rossitto has an uncredited role as a newspaper vendor.

Plot teaser:

In Santa Monica, an alien “mangler” stalks and kills human prey during the night, beheading them in the process…

Buy The Dark + The Being + Creatures from the Abyss from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“Amidst the chaos, there are actually some well done scenes in this movie. The stalking bits are moody and creepy and each one shows the monster getting stronger. Whether hurling his victims through fences, crashing through walls, moving vehicles like they were cardboard, or firing off ocular blasts of laser beams, the beast is big, but never looks like he came from the stars. If anything, it resembles a less hairy werewolf.” Cool Ass Cinema

“This is without a doubt the dumbest, most inept, most maddeningly unsatisfactory thriller of the last five years. It’s really bad: so bad, indeed, that it provides some sort of measuring tool against which to measure other bad thrillers.” Roger Ebert

“When it’s in motion The Dark is lovably bonkers in a similar vein to The Manitou or The Visitor but when it’s stagnant, it’s dishwater dull. It actually looks pretty amazing in all of its Panavision glory on DVD but there’s no escaping the frustrating, unfocused, half-hearted pace.” Kindertrauma

“Much of this film reaches Ed Wood levels of inanity. The opening crawl is hilarious (only Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark betters it in terms of absurdity). It talks about species of animals on earth that can kill with electric shocks and poisons (and this is related to a laser-eyed alien in trucker clothes, how?). It talks about millions of planets in the universe capable of supporting life (do the writers know something we don’t?).” Bill Gordon, Horror Fan Zine

“since the movie’s special effects are mediocre — and since the acting is so lifeless it feels like the performers were handed their lines just before they walked on camera –the film’s only redeeming value is atmospheric widescreen cinematography that lives up to the title. Using a mixture of deep shadows and epic lens flares straight out of the John Carpenter playbook, John Arthur Morrill’s tasty images almost make The Dark worth watching. Almost.” Peter Hanson, Every 70s Movie

Buy The Dark on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

IMDb | Image credits: Cool Ass Cinema

Brian May (28 July 1934 – 25 April 1997) was an Australian film composer. His best known scores are those for Mad Max and Mad Max 2, though he composed for many genres, including several horror films. No doubt his name led to many instances of mistaken identity; for the record, there is no connection between the Australian composer and the guitarist for rock band, Queen.

May was born in Adelaide on 28 July 1934. He trained at the Adelaide Elder Conservatorium as a pianist, violinist and conductor. He joined the ABC Adelaide in 1957 and was asked to form and conduct the ABC Adelaide Big Band, a full-blown ensemble that was rated as the best of the ABC state-based bands. He moved to Melbourne when he was 35 to arrange and conduct the ABC’s Melbourne Show band. The Show Band made its radio debut on the First Network on 13 March 1969. Background music for Australian television had previously been taken from records and music library collections, the lack of investment in the Australian film industry demanding cut-backs wherever possible… May changed this by writing and arranging the themes for television programmes, including Bellbird, Return to Eden, The Last Frontier, A Dangerous Life and Darling of the Gods.

A breakthrough came with the drama series Rush (1974 – 1976), set on the 19th-century Victorian goldfields. The theme was composed by Australian George Dreyfus, but May’s arrangement of the theme was recorded by the Show Band and quickly reached the top of the Aussie charts, selling more than 100,000 copies. This type of success was usually reserved for pop groups such as Sherbert and Skyhooks. May also composed the Countdown theme and the Melbourne Show Band launched the highly successful Countdown television series. He left the ABC in 1984 and turned his interests solely to film scores.

Without any heritage of film composition in Australia to speak of, to some extent, May’s work was influenced by the Australian landscape; broadly sweeping strings and tight orchestrations which he insisted on arranging himself; a slightly impolite comparison might be to suggest he was similar to Riz Ortolani but on a much tighter budget, though some, fancifully, declared him the Southern Hemisphere’s Bernard Herrmann. Like Herrmann, May could also use string sections in a more angular manner for scenes requiring an injection of tension. A meeting with the director Richard Franklin in 1975, with whom he worked with on the score to sex comedy, The True Story of Eskimo Nell, lead to May’s first notable work for film, the score to Franklin’s Patrick (1978).

The most arresting aspect of May’s score to Patrick is the lack of a brass section; instead, various shades of violin work are married with chiming harps, lending a feeling of fragility and sadness. Drums are avoided where possible with vibraphones preferred to add to the textures of the melodies. As Patrick becomes angrier and more frustrated in the film, the strings become discordant and more frenzied – hardly a new technique but it’s skilfully done.

May followed up with his most widely-recognised work, the score to Mad Max, heavy on kettle drums, brass and strings but avoiding the trappings of synths, often used in post-apocalyptic fare. This was followed-up with less box-office-troubling work on Snapshot (retitled Day After Halloween in the US) and Thirst, the latter score being more successful, some strangled, spidery strings, blaring brass and a spot of chanting – it still comes across as a bit TV movie-ish but it’s fun enough.

May scored two Robert Powell-starring films – 1980’s Harlequin and the following year’s The Survivor. Harlequin relies on a great many short cues but throws in some disconcerting, warping synth patterns and staccato strings which show some understanding for the creation of tension and mystery. The Survivor has more of May’s favoured slushy strings, with some intervention of an oboe and a flute, as well as synthesisers, both of which give the score a sympathetic slant on the characters’ situation whilst also lending an atonality that suggested much without resorting to too many clichés.

When Franklin was given the job of directing Psycho II, a thankless task for many but one relished by a former associate of Hitchcock, it seemed natural that May would be given his major Hollywood debut but the injection of cash into the project by Universal meant broader scope in all fields, not least the scoring of the film, which was instead given to Jerry Goldsmith. This was not the first rejection of May’s talents – Patrick’s Italian distributors deemed it necessary to give the film a completely different score, much as Dawn of the Dead did. In common with the latter film, rock band Goblin injected their tried and tested prog sensibilities into the film, effective but losing the softness of the original and giving the film a more galloping, exploitative edge to what is essentially a very human story. Ironically, the sound of the film suffered yet further in an American cut that re-dubbed the Australian accents with more familiar tones.

Some of the most enjoyable of May’s music can be heard on the soundtrack to 1982’s Turkey Shoot, a surprisingly synth-centric affair (only 1990’s Bloodmoon uses a similar amount), interspersed with slave ship-like drums, not unlike the scores of Italian exploitation films, from which this film borrowed heavily. Work on films such as Road Games, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacey Keach kept May in with a chance of a Hollywood breakthrough but, though he scored the first two Mad Max films in the franchise, once again, when a major film seemed destined to land in his lap, it was snatched away; the score duties to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome going to Maurice Jarre.

Buy Mad Max 2 soundtrack CD from Amazon.co.uk

Even when American opportunities eventually appeared they were for lesser works or for long-in-the-tooth franchises; Dr. Giggles and Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, both of which, as it turned out, displayed May’s skill but also the Hollywood system’s knack of sucking the vitality and uniqueness out of original ideas.

Mad Max won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Original Score. May won many other awards, including the Golden Award from the Australian Performing Rights Association. He spent many years in America working on film scores and was regarded as the finest of Australia’s screen composers. He died in Melbourne on 25 April 1997 at the age of 62 as a result of a heart attack.

Daz Lawrence

Filmography

• Patrick (1978)
• Mad Max (1979) – Won Best Original Music Score award by AFI.
• Snapshot (1979)
• Thirst (1979)
• Twenty Good Years ABCTV (1979)
• Harlequin (1980)
• Nightmares (1980)
• Gallipoli (1981) (additional music)
• Mad Max 2 (1981) – Nominated for Best Original Music Score by AFI.
• Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981)
• Road Games (1981) – Nominated for Best Original Music Score by AFI.
• The Survivor (1981)
• Breakfast in Paris (1982)
• Kitty and the Bagman (1982)
• Turkey Shoot (1982)
• A Slice of Life (1983)
• Cloak & Dagger (1984)
• Innocent Prey (1984)
• Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)
• Frog Dreaming (1986) – Nominated for Best Original Music Score by AFI.
• Sky Pirates (1986)
• Death Before Dishonor (1987)
• Steel Dawn (1987)
• Bloodmoon (1990)
• Dead Sleep (1990)
• Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
• Dr. Giggles (1992)
• Hurricane Smith (1992)
• Blind Side (1993)

Buy Turkey Shoot soundtrack on CD from Amazon.co.uk

The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire is a 1971 US adult comedy horror film written and directed by Ray Dennis Steckler (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies; Blood Shack; The Sexorcist) using the pseudonym Sven Christian. It stars Jim Parker and Carolyn Brandt (Steckler’s real-life wife).

It stars Jim Parker, a TV horror host who, as “The Vegas Vampire,” hosted the Saturday night Creature Features on KVVU Channel 5 from the mid-60s to the mid-70s.

Plot teaser:

Count Dracula emerges from his coffin and urges his long-fanged vampire babes to get it on with each other (“Bend over, forward, and backward, all of you and your entire parts!”) as his Dwight Frye-faced servant plays with himself. The Count then sends his female slaves out to get blood: “Fill this vial with blood. Vile Blood. Not liver bile, but vile blood.”

Meanwhile, Von Helsing visits Bill and his blonde girlfriend, Janet. Bill’s sister is one of Dracula’s women and attacks Janet while she’s on the toilet. Finding the vampire’s lair, Von Helsing chases Dracula into the sunlight where he melts, leaving only his cape for the sobbing servant to blow his nose on.

Buy on Vinegar Syndrome DVD from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“Dracula mugs relentlessly at the camera and says weird stuff (to kick off the orgy, he commands: “Do what is known as ‘your thing!’”) while Elaina provides commentary like “Dracula is groovy!”

The sequence where the vampire brides go out to seduce men for their blood takes up a full half of the film’s running time, and you could be forgiven for forgetting they’re supposed to be vampires by the time they finally take bites for blood (from somewhere a bit more… private than the neck).” Jason Coffman, Daily Grindhouse

IMDb | Image credits: Daily Grindhouse

‘Trip… into a nightmare of evil!’

Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? is a 1970 PG-rated US comedy horror movie written, produced and directed by Lawrence Merrick (The Demons; Manson). In 1969, more obscure X-rated edits of the film, with an emphasis on male gay sex, were released as Does Dracula Really Suck? and Dracula and the Boys. In Italy, it was released as L’orgia del vampiro with promotional artwork that erroneously listed Al Adamson as the director.

The film stars Des Roberts, Claudia Siefried, John Landon, Robert Branche, Frank Donato, Yvonne Gaudry, Gene Stowell, Denny Lester,John King III, Jeff Cady, Angela Carnon. It was mostly filmed at the famous Magic Castle in Hollywood.

Plot teaser:

In order to escape communists in Romania, Dracula transforms himself into a swinger named “Count Adrian” and runs a theme restaurant in Los Angeles with his sidekicks.

Meanwhile, the real villain is his new love’s ex-boyfriend, an egotistical TV actor…

Buy with Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) on DVD from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“This isn’t the absolute worst thing you’ll ever see, but I do have to wonder what kind of audience they had in mind when they made this. On the plus side, it’s surprisingly stylishly lit, very colorful and not horribly photographed. On the down side, the acting’s not very good, it doesn’t bring much new to the table storywise and there are lots of glaring continuity issues.” The Bloody Pit of Horror

“But, the funniest parts of the movie have to be Count Adrian’s facial expressions. His attempts to be vampire-y end up looking like a strange combination of surprised and concerned. His attempts to merge his eyebrows with his hairline almost succeed, however. Aside from the ridiculous story, stupid dialogue and questionable acting, also be ready to have your ears raped by grating organ music. Count Adrian’s club plays annoyingly half-hearted circus music, as well. The editing is jumpy and sometimes cuts off lines…” Bad Movie Nite

“It’s way too slow and lacking in wit, but it sure has enjoyable moments including a dream sequence and some hypnotism montages. The makeup is inspired so its no surprise that Ric Sagliani went onto better things…”David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers

Ad in the Village Voice of December 4, 1969, for the New York opening (complete with bowdlerised title)

Thanks to Doctor Kiss on the 70s Horror and Sci-Fi forum for the Does Dracula Really…? ad mat

Famous Monsters of Filmland is a horror genre-specific film magazine started in 1958 by publisher James Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman.

Famous Monsters of Filmland inspired the creation of many other horror-themed publications, including Castle of Frankenstein, Fangoria and The Monster Times.

Famous Monsters of Filmland was originally conceived as a one-shot publication by Warren and Ackerman, published in the wake of the widespread success of the package of old horror movies syndicated to American television in 1957. But the first issue, published in February 1958, was so successful that it required a second printing to fulfil public demand. The success prompted spinoff Warren magazines such as Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.

Famous Monsters offered brief articles, well-illustrated with publicity stills and graphic artwork, on horror movies from the silent era to the current date of publication, their stars and filmmakers. Warren and Ackerman decided to aim the text at late pre-adolescents and young teenagers. Unfortunately, in doing so, he also elected to add supposedly amusing juvenile captions to the images and thereby denigrated the horror genre for fans and its detractors.

Forrest J Ackerman promoted the memory of Lon Chaney, Sr., whose silent works were mostly beyond the accessibility of fans for most of the magazine’s life, but were a great influence on his own childhood. He also introduced film fans to science fiction fandom through direct references, first-person experiences, and adoption of fandom terms and customs. The magazine regularly published photos from King Kong (1933), including one from the film’s infamous “spider pit sequence”, featured in Issue #108 (1974) that, until Ackerman discovered a photo of a spider in the cavern setting, had never been proven definitively to have actually been filmed.

FM‘s peak years were from its first issues through the late 1960s, when the disappearance of the older films from television and the decline of talent in the imaginative film industry left it with a dearth of subject matter acceptable to both editor and fan.

Bizarrely, Warren and Ackerman created a jump in issue numbering from issue 69, which was printed in September 1970, to issue 80 in October 1970. They did this (according to their editorial in issue 80) because it brought them closer to issue 100, justifying the numerical jump because of the publishing of ten issues of the short-lived companion magazine Monster World as issues that “would have been” Famous Monsters issues. Lazily, during the 1970s, the magazine came to rely heavily on reprints of articles from the 1960s.

In November 1974 and November 1975, New York City was host to the “Famous Monsters Convention,” a fan convention centered on FM, which featured such guests as Forrest J Ackerman, Verne Langdon, James Warren, Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt, Barbara Leigh, Catherine Lorre, Cal Floyd, and Sam Sherman.

In the early 1980s, the magazine folded after Warren became ill and unable to carry on as publisher, and Ackerman resigned as editor in the face of the increasing disorganisation within the Warren Publishing Company. The magazine stopped publication in 1983 after a run of 191 issues.

Famous Monsters of Filmland was resurrected in 1993 by New Jersey portrait photographer and monster movie fan Ray Ferry. After finding that the Famous Monsters of Filmland title had not been “maintained” under law, Ferry filed for “intent to use” for the magazine’s trademark, unbeknownst to Ackerman or the trademark’s owner and creator, Jim Warren. Ferry, poised to restart publication of FM on a quarterly basis, offered Ackerman the position of editor-in-chief for a fee of $2,500 per issue, which he accepted. Starting at issue #200, the new Famous Monsters acquired subscribers and over-the-counter buyers who believed they would be reunited with Ackerman in print. While Ferry tried to maintain Ackerman’s style in his own writings, he apparently heavily edited and rejected contributions from the man himself.

In an effort to help Ferry finance his full-time efforts, Ackerman agreed to a reduced editor’s fee of $1,500 per issue. With four consecutive unpaid issues and a continued rejection of his work, Ackerman resigned from his position. Aside from removing Ackerman’s name from the masthead, Ferry did not inform FM readers that they were no longer reading material by, or authorised by, Ackerman. Instead, Ferry infused his writing with Ackerman’s trademark puns, and mimicked his writing style, which led to legal action brought forth by Ackerman.

In 1997, Ackerman filed a civil lawsuit against Ferry for libel, breach of contract, and misrepresentation; Ferry had publicly claimed that Ackerman’s only connection with the new FM was as a hired hand and that Ferry “had to let Forry go” because he was no longer writing or editing for the magazine. Ferry also claimed rights to pen names and other personal properties of Ackerman. On May 11, 2000, the Los Angeles Superior Court jury decided in Ackerman’s favour and awarded him $382,500 in compensatory damages and $342,000 in punitive damages.

As of mid-2007, Ferry had been allowed to continue to publish issues of FM due to lack of efforts on the part of bankruptcy trustees and Ackerman’s lawyers to force the sale of the trademark or personal assets attached to his income. Ferry had also failed to pay any of the $720,000-plus cash judgment against him.

In late 2007, Philip Kim, an entrepreneur and a private equity investor, purchased the rights to the logo and title, entering into an agreement with Ackerman to use his trademarks to retain the magazine’s original look and feel. The new Famous Monsters of Filmland website was launched in May 2008 and on December 7, 2009, Kim announced the magazine’s return to print.

Ackerman died just before midnight on Thursday, December 4, 2008.

The revival of the classic horror magazine came in July 2010, with the publication of Famous Monsters of Filmland #251 at the Famous Monster Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. The success of the print magazine at the Famous Monster Convention and Comic-Con International in San Diego yielded the announcement of the magazine’s expansion in distribution and circulation into major bookstore chains and independent retailers throughout North America and select markets in the US, Canada, and UK. Publisher Movieland Classics, LLC announced concurrently that the magazine would be entering into a bi-monthly publication schedule to meet the significant increase in requests from captivated readers beginning with Issue 253.

Writer and filmmaker Jason V Brock created The Ackermonster Chronicles!, a 2012 documentary about Ackerman. The movie is billed as the definitive film about Ackerman’s life and cultural influence, and features in-depth interviews with Ackerman, Ray Bradbury, John Landis, Greg Bear, Richard Matheson, Dan O’Bannon, Ray Harryhausen, David J. Skal, and others…

Wikipedia | Image thanks: CoverBrowser.com

Nagin (English translation: “Female Snake”) is a 1976 Indian Hindi horror fantasy film produced and directed by Rajkumar Kohli. It features a huge ensemble cast including Sunil Dutt, Reena Roy, Jeetendra, Feroz Khan, Sanjay Khan, Vinod Mehra, Kabir Bedi, Rekha, Yogeeta Bali and Mumtaz.

It was inspired by François Truffaut’s film The Bride Wore Black, based on Cornell Woolrich‘s novel of the same name. The film was later remade in Telugu as Devathalara Deevinchandi (1977) with Jayamalini in the Nagin role. It was also remade in Tamil with Sripriya playing the Nagin role in the film Neeya.

Rajkumar Kohli re-made the film in 2002 with his son in the cast, as Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, which fared poorly and generated negative reviews; critics blamed the poor screenplay and direction as the result of the failure.

Plot teaser:

According to a myth, when snakes are of certain age, they can assume human form. Thus, the film begins with a male and a female in their human forms, singing and dancing amorously with each other. When the male turns back into a snake, he is shot by a member of a hunting party, who thought the snake was going to attack the woman. The rest of the story deals with the female taking revenge on the group of friends responsible for her lover’s death…

Cast:

• Reena Roy as Nagin (Female Serpent)
• Sunil Dutt as Prof. Vijay
• Feroz Khan as Raj
• Sanjay Khan as Suraj
• Jeetendra as Nag (Male Serpent)
• Vinod Mehra as Rajesh
• Kabir Bedi as Uday
• Anil Dhawan as Kiran
• Ranjeet as Good Samaritan
• Rekha as Sunita
• Mumtaz as Rajkumari
• Yogita Bali as Rita
• Prema Narayan as Woman In Forest
• Neelam Mehra as Sheela
• Sulochana Latkar as Rajesh’s Mother
• Premnath as Sapera
• Jagdeep as Hukka Bhopali Sapera Jr.
• Aruna Irani as Dancer
• Heena Kausar as Meena
• Roopesh Kumar as Meena’s Husband
• Tun Tun as Maid
• Master Bittoo as Anu

Wikipedia | IMDb

Night of the Seagulls (original title: La Noche de las gaviotas) is a 1975 Spanish horror film written and directed by Amando de Ossorio. It stars Maria Kosti, Victor Petit, Sandra Mozarosky, Julie James and Julia Saly.

The film is the fourth and final in Ossorio’s Blind Dead series and has also been released as Don’t Go Out at Night; Night of the Blood Cult; Night of the Death Cult; Terror Beach and The Blind Dead 4.

This film inspired a song by the New York City Oi band The Templars, and a song by UK doom metal band Cathedral.

Plot teaser:

The film starts in medieval times, when a young couple is attacked by templar knights. The man is instantly killed, the woman is carried away to the templar’s castle where she is ritually sacrificed.

In the 20th century, a doctor and his wife move to a very primitive coast town, where they are met with distrust and hatred from the locals. It does not take long before the couple discover the town harbours an ancient evil: Every seven years undead templars will ride from the sea for seven consecutive nights to demand the sacrifice of a young maiden. The doctor and his wife then try to save one of the maidens, Lucy from her horrible fate, aided by the local village idiot…

Reviews:

“Familiar stock footage from the first film is once again introduced and once more there is copious amounts of creepy smoke and haze. There is a bit more blood in this one than in The Ghost Galleon, but much less than Return of the Evil Dead and for the first and only time coming from the Templars themselves. The movie does pick up at the end and gives the viewer a good climax and some great imagery, but the trek there is a slightly tedious one.” Brett H., Oh, the Horror!

“The film’s strong point is its assortment of arresting visuals: the sight of the white-robed knights stealthily emerging from the darkness in the opening flashback, the various shots of the women’s bodies as they lay in a deserted cove surrounded by crabs and the creepy image of the deformed prowler’s face at the window as Joan unpacks her luggage are a few select highlights. The dark processions of black-robed villagers along the beach are staggeringly ominous, and of course, the sight of the skeletal and hooded knights riding in slow motion along the eerily deserted beach proves unflinchingly commanding. A weird dreamlike atmosphere presides over everything and Ossorio yet again reuses footage of the skeletal knights emerging from their tombs to ominous effect.” James Gracey, Behind the Couch

“Though slow at times with less than convincing dubbing and a very old fashioned feel, Night of the Seagulls manages to be interesting. The mysterious sleepy village has an authentic feel of sorrow and pain, and its isolation has resulted in something unnatural and horrible to take place that has remained unnoticed by the rest of the world. This almost feels a bit like something out of a Lovecraft tale, in fact Night of the Seagulls is considered to be the Lovecraftian of the Blind Dead tetralogy, which makes sense if one considers the ghoulish sea god statue as well as the presence of flying seagulls at night being the damned spirits of the sacrificed girls…” At the Mansion of Madness

Wikipedia | IMDb

The Boy Who Cried Werewolf is a 1973 American horror film. It was released as the bottom half of a double bill with SSSSSSS – notably the last double bill released in the United States by Universal Pictures. It’s been strangely neglected since – although once a television staple, it has never had a DVD or Blu-ray release, and remains moistly unseen outside America – it never played theatrically in the UK and has never been shown on TV, or had a home video release.

This is a pity, as it’s a fascinating example of the PG-era of horror films in America, being somewhere between a straight horror movie and a children’s film. Perhaps this is the reason why it is currently in limbo – just who do you market the film to?

The film wastes no time introducing the werewolf – we see him in the opening credits, looking like a dog with swept back hair, possibly more cute than terrifying. The werewolf attacks father and son Robert and Ritchie Bridgestone (Kerwin Mathews and Scott Sealey), finally ending up impaled on a wooden fence, transforming back into a human at the point of death. While Ritchie knows that their attacker was a werewolf, his father refuses to believe him, claiming that it was too dark to see who their attacker was. Likewise, the police, his mother and his psychiatrist all assume that Ritchie’s story is a result of the trauma of seeing his father kill their attacker.

In an attempt to prove that there is nothing to fear, Bridgestone takes the boy back up to their cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, he was bitten during the struggle with the werewolf, and we all know what that means. Before long, he has transformed into a werewolf himself and is roaming the woods attacking drivers and stealing their heads, which he buries in the shed beside the cabin! Will anyone believe Ritchie before his transformed father kills him?

Despite its inherent ludicrousness (the polo-neck clad werewolf, the nonsense with the severed heads), The Boy Who Cried Werewolf tells its story with a straight face. It’s efficiently, unflashily shot and while a little slow moving, is surprisingly good fun. It keeps the gore off-screen for the most part, and tells the story through the eyes of the child hero, making this a good entry-level horror film for kids. It is, of course, very much of its time, which ironically makes it a fascinating historical time capsule, featuring as it does a band of ‘Jesus Freaks’ – a religiously driven variant of the hippy cult / commune, which had a brief spurt of popularity in the early 1970s. The film also works as an allegory – Ritchie’s parents are going through a difficult separation (because his mother wants to have a career!) and the film can easily be seen as being about childhood fears of the family unit being torn apart.

The film marks the last teaming of Mathews with director Nathan Juran, after the pair had made The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jack the Giant Killer, and of course is rather less ambitious than either of those films. Juran died shortly after making this, while Mathews would retire soon afterwards, his only further credit being a cameo in 1978 film Nightmare in Blood.

It has no connection to the 2010 TV movie of the same name.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

Watch the full film online:

Skywald Publications was a 1970s American publisher of black-and-white comic magazines, primarily the horror anthologies Nightmare, Psycho, and Scream.

Skywald’s first publication was Nightmare #1 (Dec. 1970). The company lasted until early 1975, with Psycho #24 (March 1975) being its final publication. Nightmare published 23 issues and Scream put out 11 issues.

The company name is a combination of those of its founders, former Marvel Comics production manager Sol Brodsky (“Sky”) and low-budget entrepreneur Israel Waldman (“wald”), whose I. W. Publications (also known as Super Comics) in the late 1950s and early 1960s published comic book reprints for sale through grocery and discount stores. Skywald was based in New York City.

Brodsky, who also served as editor, brought in Al Hewetson — briefly an assistant to Marvel chief Stan Lee and a freelancer for the Warren Publishing horror magazines and others — as a freelance writer. “Archaic Al”, as he later jokingly called himself in print, quickly became the associate editor, and when Brodsky returned to Marvel after a few months, Hewetson succeeded him as editor. Hewetson, aiming at a more literary bent than the work of industry leader Warren Publishing, developed what he called “the Horror-Mood” and sought to evoke the feel of such writers as Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and Kafka.

Comics professionals who produced work for the Skywald magazines include writers T. Casey Brennan, Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart, Gardner Fox, Doug Moench, Dave Sim, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman, and artists Rich Buckler, Gene Day Vince Colletta, Bill Everett, Bruce Jones, Pablo Marcos, Syd Shores, Chic Stone, and Tom Sutton. Many who also contributed to rival Warren employed pseudonyms. Future industry star John Byrne published his first professional story, a two-pager written by editor Hewetson, in Skywald’s Nightmare #20 (Aug. 1974).

Editor Al Hewetson, in an interview given shortly before his death of a heart attack on Jan. 6, 2004, asserted the demise of Skywald was caused by:

“…Marvel’s distributor. Our issues were selling well, and some sold out. Such returns as we received were shipped overseas, mainly to England, where they sold out completely… When Marvel entered the game with countless [black-and-white horror] titles gutting [sic] the newsstand, their distributor was so powerful they denied Skywald access to all but the very largest newsstands, so our presence was minimal and fans and readers simply couldn’t find us…”

Buy Skywald: The Complete Illustrated History of the Horror-Mood from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | Image credits: Comic Vine | Pinterest

“The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula” was a double-episode of The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries American TV series which aired for three seasons on the ABC network from January 1977 to January 1979.

The series starred Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy as amateur sleuth brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, respectively, plus Pamela Sue Martin (later Janet Louise Johnson) as detective Nancy Drew. Many of the episodes, such as “The Mystery of the Haunted House“,”The Mystery of Witches’ Hollow“,”A Haunting We Will Go“,”The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom“,”The House on Possessed Hill“, and “Voodoo Doll” featured mild horror themes.

The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were both successful book publishing franchises, owned by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a publishing group which owned many popular children’s book lines.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries was unusual in that it often dealt with the characters individually, in an almost anthological style. That is, some episodes featured only the Hardy Boys and others only Nancy Drew. “The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula” marked the first time that the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew met and worked together…

Buy The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Season Two on DVD from:

Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Plot teaser:

International investigator Fenton Hardy (Ed Gilbert) has gone missing whilst looking into art thefts and so his sons attempt to track him down, which leads them to Paris and then Munich. The Hardy boys hook up with a three piece rock band named The Circus, led by a chirpy English leader, who happen to be playing at a music festival in Castle Dracula hosted by a rock star named Allison Troy. Meanwhile, the boys encounter amateur sleuth Nancy Drew, who is also attempting to track down Hardy Senior.

All roads lead to Transylvania and soon local town dignitaries are being bitten by a vampire. Or so it seems…

Review:

It’s probably not worth waving up a big ‘spoiler’ once guest star Lorne Greene turns up playing a slightly-dour and mysterious Romanian Inspector. He’s clearly the villain-to-be and aforementioned “rock star” Allison Troy is obviously a red herring. Indeed, the playful plot positively encourages this development.

Somewhat arrogant Troy is amusingly played by diminutive composer/crooner Paul Williams (also in Brian De Palma’s 1974 movie Phantom of the Paradise), and is seen to be hosting a world-televised music fest to about twenty-five fans dressed as monsters such as Frankenstein’s creation and a werewolf! Alas, Bernie Taupin, lyricist for many of Elton John’s songs and one-time Alice Cooper collaborator, joins Williams’ on stage for some cringe-inducing soft rock that is only slightly eclipsed when Shaun Cassidy takes his star turn for insipid saccharine songs such as ‘Teen Dream’.

Soon, the Hardy Boys are creeping around Castle Dracula, being mildly troubled by the requisite bats and rats in the caverns, whilst an angry mob (“I say we burn the castle!”) are demanding justice for the mysterious near-deaths in the neighbourhood. All along, Nancy Drew is given less to do, but there is one great female empowerment moment when she floors a bewildered Frank Hardy with a swift move. Elsewhere, there’s some mild humour to be had with two former comedy Nazis being mocked as downtrodden employees at a hotel in Munich.

It all ends with the inevitable revealing of Lorne Greene’s character as the baddie hankering for power, yet there’s at least a coy suggestion that something supernatural was indeed going on. This being a double-trouble TV-episode, the amateur sleuths’ antics are somewhat protracted but, like old episodes of Scooby-Doo, its all done with ’70s-style campy fun and amiable enough to pass nearly a couple of hours if you’re in a pretty charitable mood and willing to endure the soft rock interludes.

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

Choice dialogue:

“Why don’t we just come back in the morning? You can almost feel death!”

Wikipedia | IMDb

Noted British screenwriter and producer Brian Clemens has died, aged 83.

Clemens is best known for his TV work, often in fantasy-based action series. His most famous creation is TV series The Avengers, which ran from 1961 to 1969, and was relaunched as The New Avengers in 1976.

He also produced action series The Professionals between 1977 and 1983 (with The New Professionals appearing in 1999) and Bugs between 1995 and 1999. As a writer, he contributed to the likes of popular TV productions Adam Adamant Lives, The Baron, The Champions, The Persuaders, Remington Steele and many more.

Yet, running throughout his career, was an involvement in the horror genre. In 1960, he wrote his first horror film, The Tell Tale Heart, based (very) loosely on the Poe story, and in 1965 he co-wrote Lindsay Shonteff’s Curse of the Voodoo.

In the early Seventies, he took a break from TV to concentrate on screenplay writing. His impressively low-key psycho thriller And Soon the Darkness (remade in 2010) was directed by Avengers alumni Robert Fuest, and he followed it with another psycho movie, Blind Terror, a year later.

These two films would ultimately form the template for his hit TV series Thriller, which ran from 1973 to 1976 and tended to specialise in ‘woman in peril’ stories, often treading the fine line between psychological thriller and horror, and occasionally crossing the line into outright supernatural stories.

For Hammer, he wrote Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, a film that belied its gimmicky title and somewhat subverted the Hammer gothic style, mixing Stevenson’s story with Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper in a genre mash-up that was decades ahead of its time.

He followed this with Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter in 1972, which would be his only directorial credit. The film attempted to breathe new life into Hammer’s vampire cycle – by now flogged to death – by combining it with swashbuckling action courtesy of superhero-like Kronos. The movie blended humour, horror and action, and aside from a rather stiff central performance by Horst Jansen, proved to be tremendous fun.

It could’ve been a fresh start for Hammer, but they had no idea what to do with it and considered the film too weird. It was eventually slipped out as the bottom half of a double bill with last-gasp Frankenstein film Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. Plans for further Kronos adventures were dropped, though the character did briefly live on, appropriately enough, as a comic strip in early issues of House of Hammer.

Between the Hammer films, Clemens wrote the Ray Harryhausen fantasy The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and in 1980 he was the screenwriter for Disney’s family-oriented horror / science fiction crossover The Watcher in the Woods, which mixed haunted house spookiness with alien invasion. John Hough’s film was badly edited (with a new ending) in initial release, but has since built a strong reputation.

In the 1980s, Clemens once again concentrated on TV, writing one episode of horror anthology The Dark Room (1981) and two instalments of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984).

He wrote science fiction TV movie Timestalkers in 1987 and three episodes of supernatural anthology Worlds Beyond and one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents around the same time. His final cinematic writing credit was for the story for Highlander II: The Quickening in 1991.

IMDb

DF

Dee Wallace (born Deanna Bowers; December 14, 1949), also known as Dee Wallace Stone, is an American actress and scream queen. She is perhaps best known for her roles in several popular films, mainly in the horror genre. Her most widely-seen role is a starring role as Elliott’s mother, Mary, in the Steven Spielberg film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). She also played key roles in popular cult films The Hills Have Eyes (1977), The Howling (1981) and Cujo (1983), as well as more recent efforts including The Lords of Salem (2012) and The House of the Devil (2009). In total, she has appeared in over 90 television shows and 100 films.

Wallace was born in Kansas City, Kansas. She attended Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, before attending the University of Kansas and graduating with an education degree. She briefly taught high school drama at Washington High School in Kansas City, in the early 1970s. She married fellow actor Christopher Stone in 1980, with whom she had one daughter, Gabrielle Stone, who has since forged a career in acting and film-making herself. She acted alongside Christopher in both The Howling and Cujo, as well as TV series such as CHiPs (on the set of which they first met) and The New Lassie. He sadly died in 1995 from a heart attack. Wallace has since married television producer Skip Belyea.

Wallace’s first film acting role of note was in 1975’s The Stepford Wives, in which she played Nettie the maid, a minor, one-line part but one which clearly caught the attention of casting directors. It was two years later, in Wes Craven’s seminal The Hills Have Eyes that, after enduring the usual audition process, she was cast as Lynne Wood, the mother of the family attempting to traverse the desert, with unfortunate cannibalistic interruptions. It’s an incredibly assured performance and, rather like a slightly more mainstream film she was shortly to star in, was an early indication that she was a go-to for the role of the reliable mother-figure in a film.

Though it was indeed to be 1982’s E.T. which would bring her the most widely-known of her roles, it was her appearance in Joe Dante’s The Howling, from the previous year which would cement her in the hearts and minds of horror fans, her starring role as Karen White becoming something of a benchmark for female characters in horror films, thoughtful and engaging, without the almost essential industry-standard lapse into running-away-from-a-killer-in-the-woods-and-falling-over. Contrary to popular belief, she is not beneath layers of makeup at the film’s Yorkshire Terrier lyncanthrope finale; this is an animatronic. Her sympathetic approach to the genre led her to being one of the most in-demand actresses for horror film, alongside Adrienne Barbeau.
It’s somewhat poignant therefore that even after her role in the blockbuster, E.T. that she soon returned to horror, this time in John Carpenter’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Cujo (1983). The car-confined conditions of much of the film’s shooting, as well as acting alongside five St Bernard dogs have left Dee to since comment that making Cujo was one of her most challenging projects; it is however a role for which she has won particular praise, not least from King himself who suggested she should have been considered for an Academy Award.

After an appearance in the revitalised Twilight Zone TV series, she next appeared, genre-wise, in 1986’s Critters, her only appearance in the franchise. Whether by accident or design, her periodical appearances in horror ensured she remained in horror fans minds without becoming an unbearable omnipresence. When the 1990’s reached a crossroads, unable to decide fully what direction horror should take, Wallace was happy to star in cheaper, schlockier fare, self-reverential without pouring scorn on an art-form which had treated her so kindly. Though her turn in 1991’s Popcorn is fondly remembered by some fans, Alligator 2: The Mutation (1991) and 1995’s Temptress did little to change the world but ensured she was never out of work and never pigeon-holed herself.

More significant work came in Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners (1995), though it was at this time she lost her husband. 1997’s Skeletons saw her working alongside Christopher Plummer and James Coburn, though this promised slightly more than it delivered. Though far from fallow, the remainder of the decade saw an increase in TV fare, the start of the 2000’s seeing a more concerted return to more familiar ground; 2001’s Killer Instinct, 2004’s Dead End Road, Headspace in 2005, Boo from the same year and Abominable (2006) all preceded her introduction to a new horror audience in Rob Zombie’s interpretation of Halloween (2007).

Wallace’s relationship with Zombie has proved to be not only productive but enriching, with Wallace hailing the director as one of the best she has worked with. They reunited again in 2012 for The Lords of Salem. Wallace’s acting career shows no signs of stopping, despite her other life as a life coach, public speaker and author of self-help books; in 2015 she is scheduled to appear in Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard and Death House, alongside a slew of similarly determined campaigners including Robert Englund, Michael Berryman, Barbara Crampton and Gunnar Hansen.

Daz Lawrence

Selected Filmography

1975 – The Stepford Wives

1977 – The Hills Have Eyes

1979 – 10

1981 – The Howling

1982 – E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial

1983 – Cujo

1986 – Critters

1991 – Popcorn

1991 – Alligator 2: The Mutation

1995 – The Temptress

1996 – The Frighteners

1997 – Skeletons

1999 – Deadly Delusions

2001 – Killer Instinct

2004 – Dead End Road

2005 – Scar

2005 – Boo

2005 – Headspace

2006 – Abominable

2006 – Voodoo Moon

2006 – The Plague

2007 – Halloween

2008 – Little Red Devil

2009 – The House of the Devil

2009 – The Haunted World of Superbeasto

2010 – Raven

2011 – Exit Humanity

2012 – The Lords of Salem

2014 – Haunting of Cellblock 11

2015 – Zombie Killers: Elephant'[s Graveyard

2015 – Death House