As the fortunes of Hammer Films began to dwindle in the early 1970s, they struggled to maintain relevance in the face of the shifting interests of their audiences. Their vampire movies were at the center of this struggle. While the existing Dracula series moved its setting to modern London with mixed results, another, more innovative approach emerged.  These non-Dracula vampire movies emphasized new stories and characters while tweaking the standard vampire mythos. Robert Young's Vampire Circus (1972) is one of the films, one that remains a rich, complex horror film, although it suffers a few stumbles that stem from problems in production.
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It's amazing what movies slip through the cracks. Citizen Kane took years to be recognized for its achievements, Office Space was widely ignored until it was released on home video, and Antonia Byrd's Ravenous continues to be a dark comic gem seen and beloved by far fewer than it rightly deserves. While hardly as important to film history as Citizen Kane, this part Western, part horror film deftly weaves varying genres with a thread of black humor, tying together a package that is delicious to sink your teeth into.(read more...)

This is the hardest type of movie to write about: one that has no particularly good or bad aspects.  The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake is simply there.  The only bad thing about it is it doesn't do what it aims at particularly well.  The only good thing about it is it has some elements that may have been frightening when the film was first released but that are not anymore.  If you're on a mission to see every horror film there is, watch it.  If you aim to watch only good movies and ones that are enjoyable awful, skip it.  It treads the middle path of monotony.
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There is a morbid curiosity that lingers over I Spit on Your Grave, a film that in the thirty-years since its original theatrical run¹ has gained cult status for its depravity. I admit to being someone with such a curiosity, which began when I read that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel had called it the worst film they had ever seen and launched a successful campaign to have the film pulled from the United Artist Theater in Chicago². Something in me had to know if the film reviled so much could be that bad, if the controversy surrounding its depictions of violence and rape against women was appropriate or misconstrued, and whether or not the film needed to be discussed further.(read more...)