UPCOMING HORROR DVD TITLES FOR HALLOWEEN 07!!

Picture this; I am seven or eight years old. My babysitter has, without my parent’s permission, invited some friends over and they are watching the ABC Movie of the Week. It is past my bedtime and I am watching a pale woman in a old dress emerge from a lake extending her arm as if to caress a woman on the shore. Everything is happening in slow motion but only in my mind. In real life the film, upon review, is running at normal speed. When the pale skinned woman suddenly lunges at the woman at the shore something beaks inside me, my breath is gone, I am replaying the moment in mind. Later a man hangs backwards off of a fertilizing machine. In my mind he is covered with bites, but actually there is only one. Later a woman drifts across the lake unsure of what is real and what is not as she is watched from the shore by hostile eyes. me. I had nightmares for years- literally.

Set in the early seventies Jessica tells the story of a young woman who comes to the country with her husband and a friend after a stay in a mental hospital. As they work to rehab the small apple orchard on their property they discover Emily a young woman, a drifter, living in the house and a legend about a vampiric ghost. Soon Jessica isn’t sure whether she’s really recovered from her emotional disturbance or stumbled into a living nightmare.

And the films slow descent into nightmare, along with Zhora Lampert’s subtle and sympathetic performance as Jessica, is what makes it so powerful. We encounter the threat gradually. Quick cuts of a girl in a graveyard, townspeople hostile to the counterculture, the strange hold Emily has on the people around her and Jessica’s painful uncertainty builds to one of the strangest and most unpleasant climaxes of seventies horror film.

September 5 sees the release of The Other by Fox. Based on Thomas Tryon’s highly regarded novel it tells the story of a pair of twins, one good and one evil, spending an apocalyptic last summer together and it’s strength lies in it’s sense of deep pastoral horror. Other movies that use children as their antagonists like The Bad Seed pale in comparison. This is a landmark film from the director of To Kill A Mockingbird and Up The Down Staircase.

Universal is as expected, expanding their roster of classic horror with several new releases. Newly packaged versions of Dracula and Frankenstein hit on October 10 but I’m not aware that they contain any significant improvements over the two disc legacy versions released a couple of years ago. The packaging is gorgeous. If I’m wrong someone correct me in the comments.

And Boris Karloff is getting the same treatment that Bela Lugosi got last year with a September 19 release of an ultra cheap multi-disc set titled The Boris Karloff Collection. The three-disc set will contain 5 films. Of those The Climax- a well mounted 1944 redux of Phantom of the Opera, The Night Key- a B Programmer featuring Karloff as an elderly inventor hassled by criminals, are of mostly historical interest to dedicated Karloff fans. But the others are a treat for anyone. Karloff’s portrayal of Mord in 1939’s Tower of London ranks as offers of his most scenery-chewing villains. The film also features a young Vincent Price, and other genre stalwarts like Basil Rathbone, and Leo G. Carroll. 1952’s The Black Castle has everything you could want in a B programmer. Lon Chaney Jr. as a mute hunchbacked servant, a sadistic villain complete with eye patch, Karloff as a scheming Doctor, a panther hunt across the foggy moors, a hidden moat full of alligators and the always remarkable John Hoyt as a ruthless henchman. It also features swordfights, torture, disfigurement, and a drug that renders the hero and heroine deathlike so they can be revived later. This is one of the most entertaining B movies Universal ever released.

Lastly The Strange Door is a movie I’ve heard of but never had the pleasure of seeing. I’m excited to it’s being made available. It seems to be even more of a potboiler than The Black Castle and features Charles Laughton as the fiendish Alain de Maletroit a noble Lord and madman bent on revenge. The Plot is somewhat similar to the black castle in the way that most Robin Hood movies are similar to one another. I can’t wait to see it.

And lastly for Universal is a multi disc set containing all the original Inner Sanctum movies, also to be released on September 19. Often left out of the discussion about Universal Horror of the forties are these marvelously atmospheric B programmers starring Lon Chaney Jr, which explore hypnotism, past life regression and a variety of other supernatural and psychological horror themes. Included are Calling Dr. Death (1943), Weird Woman (1944), Dead Man's Eyes (1944), The Frozen Ghost (1945), Strange Confession (1945) and Pillow of Death (1945)

On October 10 Warner Brothers is releasing the Hollywood's Legends of Horror Collection a multidisc set containing such long awaited classics as Doctor X / The Return of Doctor X / Mad Love / The Devil Doll / Mark of the Vampire / The Mask of Fu Manchu. If anything this is the set to buy for lovers of truly classics horror films containing as it does Mad Love which is simply one of the great horror films of the thirties starring the always underused Peter Lorre as a man obsessed and with and finally driven to horrific revenge over, love.

But the other films in this set are all gems. Return of Doctor X features Humphrey Bogart in his only horror role, Mark of The Vampire launched Carroll Borland as the iconic image of the female vampire and featured Lugosi in one of his least seen vampire roles. And The Devil Doll offers a dark fantasy that truly haunts even as it ends on a heartwarming note. Lionel Barrymore plays a man driven to use his ability to shrink humans to awful ends. This is a film of fairy tale nuance offering horror and wonder in almost equal parts as well as a great bow out for Todd Browning whose work on Dracula and Freaks and with Lon Chaney Sr. have cemented his place in film history while these lesser films only confirm it. Lastly The Mask of Fu Manchu offers Boris Karloff as the mad Mongolian bent on world domination. It’s a film that is considered racist today because of it’s portrayal of Asian Americans.