Classic-Horror.com | Reviewing the History of Horror Movies

Our editor-in-chief Nate Yapp is proud to have contributed to the new book Hidden Horror: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks, edited by Aaron Christensen. Another contributors include Anthony Timpone, B.J. Colangelo, Dave Alexander, Classic-Horror.com's own Robert C. Ring and John W. Bowen. Pick up a copy today from Amazon.com!

Review: Nightmare Castle (1965)

Submitted by Kevin Nickelson on Fri, 2009-10-23 02:22

When you look at the history of horror cinema, there are few actors whose name is synonymous with an entire sub-genre. There's perhaps Boris Karloff and the mad scientist film or Christopher Lee in the Dracula/vampire realm. There's one actor who doesn't often get mentioned amongst the elite group of horror icons, and that's Barbara Steele. With her exotic, striking beauty and graceful physicality, she could move from playing icy villainess to strong but vulnerable heroine with incredible ease. Steele's popularity reached its peak in the 1960s with gothic chillers like Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Horrible Dr. Hichcock. One of Steele's lesser films is 1965's Nightmare Castle, a visually sumptuous entry that manages to hold interest despite a wildly silly plot.(read more...)

Review: Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)

Submitted by Timothy J. Rush on Thu, 2009-10-22 12:06

Some sequels are so intrinsically linked to their predecessors that they are nearly impossible to analyze on their own merits. For instance, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, released a mere fourteen months after The Abominable Dr. Phibes, relies heavily on the momentum of the earlier film. Because of the inevitable comparisons that arise in a situation like this, we can't help but see the cracks and flaws in Dr. Phibes Rises Again; this sequel does not "rise again" to the greatness of its forebear. Yet, despite this disappointment, the film still entertains and thrills. (read more...)

Review: Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

Submitted by Simon Powell on Wed, 2009-10-21 02:54

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors was the first in a series of anthology films from the Amicus studio, and the one that launched them for a time to the same dizzying heights, at least at the box office, as their arch rival Hammer. But it is a film that prove Hitchcock's maxim about a film needing three things: a good script, a good script and a good script, as the poor quality of the writing is the factor that stops this from becoming a masterpiece.

Six strangers share a train carriage on a journey out of London. To pass the time, one gets out a deck of tarot cards and starts to tell the fortunes of his fellow passengers; however, all the stories end with the same card - Death...(read more...)

Three Horror Classics Screening at Landmark Loew's Jersey City This Weekend

Submitted by Nate Yapp on Tue, 2009-10-20 16:58

Landmark Loew's Jersey theater in Jersey City, NJ has some exciting screenings lined up for this coming weekend, starting October 23rd at 8:00PM with a 35mm print of Brian DePalma's Carrie and continuing October 24th with a showing of George Waggner's The Wolf Man at 4:00PM and then Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby at 7:30PM. Tickets are $6 per screening ($4 for seniors age 65 and older), but combo packages are available for those who want to take in multiple films. More details can be found at the Landmark Loew's Jersey webpage.

Review: The Old Dark House (1932)

Submitted by Robert Ring on Tue, 2009-10-20 10:38

In the horror genre, when a house stands out as a primary component, it is often going to be haunted. In The Old Dark House, however, director James Whale uses a house in a different, more rewarding way: as a metaphor for the psyche. Things like seldom-visited rooms, locked closets, and at-odds inhabitants provide rich ground for such use. The fact that these elements succeed in achieving a level creepiness on par with that of your average haunted house film says something rather unsettling about the way our heads work. The Old Dark House is a house-as-head movie that examines repression, fear, and the role of the new, constructed with the adeptness one would expect from the great James Whale.(read more...)

Review: Corridors of Blood (1958)

Submitted by Chris Justice on Mon, 2009-10-19 02:20

Robert Day's Corridors of Blood is a provocative, taut early installment of the medical thriller made popular by contemporary authors such as Robin Cook and Michael Crichton. It's 1840 in London, and Boris Karloff is Dr. Thomas Bolton, a well-meaning surgeon who moonlights once a week as a general practitioner for the poor. Since he performs amputations, his research focuses on developing anesthetics to make surgery painless. Supported by his son and niece, Bolton publicly displays his latest development, a primitive form of gaseous anesthesia, but his demonstration fails miserably when his patient awakens while Bolton is cutting his arm. Chaos ensues, and Bolton is suspended from practicing medicine. Nevertheless, he continues his research, and becomes addicted to the anesthetic gases.(read more...)

Review: The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

Submitted by Tom Fallows on Fri, 2009-10-16 02:58

By the time of The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires in 1974 Hammer Studios was dying. Thanks to the vérité horrors of films like Night of the Living Dead (1968), their unique brand of Gothic chills seemed archaic - as dusty as one of Dracula's cobwebbed tombs. Indeed, Golden Vampires would mark the last appearance of their erstwhile Count and Hammer would soon after stagger into the graveyard of television and, finally, oblivion. Golden Vampires is filled with the kind of desperation akin to someone in their death throes and the assimilation of Kung Fu (then all the rage) reeks of a company all out of ideas. But despite this Golden Vampires actually has a lot to offer. In fact, it is one of Hammer's best films of the 1970s and remains a fitting send off for one of the giants of British Cinema.(read more...)

Review: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Submitted by Robert Ring on Thu, 2009-10-15 02:00

You know those guys that make videos and fake movie trailers out of bits and pieces of other movies? I wish someone would do that with the films Ray Harryhausen has worked on. Here is a guy so good at visual effects that most of the directors he worked for counted on him alone to carry the team to victory. If you took the best parts of the movies he worked on and spliced them together in some sort of coherent way, you would get a really cool video. If we're going to sit our butts down for a film-length runtime, though (even one as short as those of the 1950s), there has to be more to it than special effects, no matter how good the monster looks. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms yet again proves that there are limits even to what a visual effects master like Harryhausen can do for a movie.(read more...)

Tom Atkins ("Night of the Creeps") Interview

Submitted by Tom Fallows on Wed, 2009-10-14 12:06

In the 1980s, while muscle bound lunkheads like Stallone and Schwarzenegger were battling the forces of darkness with lame quips and a minor armory at their disposal, one man was doing it with nothing more a carton of cigarettes and a six-pack of beer. With his blue collar charm and everyman exterior, Tom Atkins became something of a minor league hero in some of the decade's favorite cult movies. He took on ghostly pirates in John Carpenter's The Fog (1980), an occult madman in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) and a zombified lawman in Maniac Cop (1988).(read more...)

Review: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Submitted by Eric Miller on Wed, 2009-10-14 01:00

The central, perhaps deliberate, irony in James Whale's masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein is that Frankenstein's creation is called the Monster. The Monster, unforgettably played again by the great Boris Karloff, is one of the least monstrous characters in the film. He is surrounded by people more sinister, or at least more misguided, than he, yet everyone in the film fears and loathes him, even his prospective bride. In addition to offering chills, humor, and satire, The Bride of Frankenstein also provides a searing indictment of man's inhumanity to man. This is just one the factors that help it become, in this author's opinion, the best horror film of the 1930s.(read more...)