Series: Film / TV

The Beyond directed by Lucio Fulci

In the 1977 film The Sentinel, a character played by Cristina Raines moves into a Brooklyn Heights apartment building that, as it turns out, sits above the gateway to Hell. But as Italian director Lucio Fulci shows us in the third picture of his so-called Zombie Quartet, 1981’s The Beyond (which picture followed 1979’s Zombie and 1980’s City of the Living Dead and preceded that same year’s House By the Cemetery), there are actually SEVEN gateways on Earth that lead down to the infernal nether regions!

Tokyo Gore Police directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura

Those viewers who thought the pyrotechnic gore FX of Yoshihiro Nishimura in the 2001 cult item Suicide Club to be a bit too over the top may want to hold on to their seats and wrap themselves in a full-length rubber coverall as Tokyo Gore Police begins to unspool. Living up to its title in spades, this 2008 offering does indeed give us a look at the cops in Japan’s capital city in the near future, and ladles out more of the red stuff than The Wild Bunch,

Inferno directed by Dario Argento

In Dario Argento’s 1977 masterpiece, Suspiria, the viewer learns that the ballet school known as the Tanz Akademie, in Freiburg, Germany, was the home to a coven of witches led by a being later revealed to be the Mater Suspiriorum, Latin for “Mother of Sighs.” And three years later, in Argento’s semisequel, Inferno, the viewer learns something even more disturbing. The Mother of Sighs, the oldest, was apparently only one of three sister entities; living somewhere in Rome, there exists the Mater Lacrimarum (Mother of Tears),

The Bloodstained Shadow directed by Antonio Bido

A practically goreless giallo coming fairly late in that genre’s cycle, The Bloodstained Shadow (1978) yet manages to provide all the requisite thrills that Eurohorror fans might reasonably expect. This was the second picture from director Antonio Bido, whose initial giallo entry, The Cat With Jade Eyes (aka Watch Me When I Kill), released the year before, seems almost forgotten today. Drawing liberally from 15 years’ worth of giallo tropes and conventions preceding it (Bido, on this Anchor Bay DVD,

Crimson, the Color of Blood directed by Juan Fortuny

Fans of actor/screenwriter/director Paul Naschy who rent out the 1973 film Crimson, the Color of Blood hoping to get a good solid dose of “the Boris Karloff of Spain” may be a tad disappointed at how things turn out. By necessity, Naschy’s role in this picture is severely limited, he doesn’t make much of an appearance until the film is 2/3 done, and even in the final 1/3, his thesping abilities are only minimally utilized.

In this French/Spanish coproduction, Naschy plays a jewel thief named Surnett,

Exorcismo directed by Juan Bosch

The notion has often struck me that one of the hallmarks of truly great screen stars is their ability to render even the most egregiously shlocky films highly watchable and interesting by dint of their very presence. This idea occurred to me again several months back, as I caught the 1957 film Voodoo Island for the first time; a picture that might be close to unwatchable, had it not starred the always fascinating Boris Karloff. And this thought struck me again the other night as I sat before the 1975 Spanish horror outing Exorcismo,

The Hunchback of the Morgue directed by Javier Aguirre

From the jaunty circus music that plays during its opening credits to the closing shot of a steaming, bubbling pit of sulfuric acid, The Hunchback of the Morgue, a Spanish offering from 1973, literally busts a gut to please the jaded horror fan. Co-written and starring “The Boris Karloff of Spain,” Paul Naschy, the film is a wildly over-the-top, cheesy affair that yet succeeds in its primary intentions: to stun and entertain the viewer.

In The Hunchback of the Morgue,

Vengeance of the Zombies directed by Leon Klimovsky

Psychotronic-film buffs who watch the Paul Naschy films Crimson (1973) and The Hanging Woman (also 1973) may come away feeling a bit shortchanged regarding the amount of screen time allotted to the so-called “Boris Karloff of Spain.” In the first, Naschy plays a jewel thief who has been shot in the head following a botched robbery, and thus lays in a near coma for the film’s first hour, while awaiting a brain transplant; in the second, he plays a necrophilic grave digger whose screen time is brief in the extreme.