Haunted Newsreel

"Would you let me interview you about She-Wolf of London?" I asked the always charming and ebullient June Lockhart.

"Yes!" she answered immediately.

"And, in preparation for the interview, can I get you to watch the movie?"

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi. Five Mississippi.

"...Yyyyes..." came the 21st-century-to-date's most hesitant acquiescence.

Well, who can blame her? Universal's monster movie makers weren’t exactly covering themselves with glory at the end of the studio's legendary 1931-46 cycle of fright flicks, and this tale of "werewolf attacks" in a turn-of-the-century London park is related with minimum novelty or quality. Twenty-year-old Lockhart stars as Phyllis Allenby, the last descendant of an aristocratic family that was once cursed by wolves, and begins to suspect that in her sleep, under the spell of the curse, she rises as a werewolf and terrorizes the foggy park.(read more...)

Twas the day before Christmas, and all through this site
Not a staffer was stirring, which just wasn't right.
The hiatus hung over like a mordid death pall,
Until our fearless editor said, "Have a list, ya'll!"

The readers all gaped because the site should be still,
Weren't these people on break? Did they know how to chill?
But old Nate figured that just one post couldn't hurt,
So he opened the WYSIWYG and got down to work.

He threw together a list of Yuletide frights and terrors,
And hoped that commenters would call him on errors.
Six films he chose, with their own peculiar cheer.
Listed chronologically, how else would they appear?

(read more...)

The following is our contribution to Frankensteinia's Boris Karloff Blogathon.

Starting with The Man They Could Not Hang, Columbia released four mad scientist films starring Boris Karloff in an eighteen-month period between 1939 and 1941. The other films in the series were The Man with Nine Lives, Before I Hang, and The Devil Commands. As a tribute, I created a short video to illustrate the general shared tone of the films and their similarities in structure, casting, theme, and direction.

(read more...)

As we announced back in September, Classic-Horror.com will be going on hiatus for six months, with only sporadic posts until our return in May. During this time, we'll be tinkering with the format of the site a little bit, mostly in relation to the Newsreel, which will morph into the Classic-Horror blog, complete with regular columns and musings on horror.

Believe me when I say that this hiatus is necessary. We've been going for over ten years now with very few breaks and it's starting to catch up to me. I have some outside projects that I'd like to work on, the most important of which is getting married to site photographer Erin Dow in December. I've also begun work on a book about horror which I'm hoping to have in shape to submit to publishers by May. (read more...)