With a title like that, you might be forgiven if you expect The Devil Within Her or The Devil In Ms. Jones style antics here. Instead, this is a slightly erotic gothic romance.
In his book Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1970-1979, Roger Curti spoke to the cast and they really can’t get any of their facts straight. Rosalba Neri (Lady Frankenstein herself!) claimed that director Paolo Lombardo “couldn’t stay awake for more than two hours” and “looked as if he was near his end, from the way he walked and moved around. I think he must have been very ill…” That said, Lombardo was only 31 at the time that he made this movie.
To top that, Robert Woods (Kill the Poker Player) — who plays Helmuth in this film — claims that he was hired to finish the film and received no credit. While assistant director Marco Masi was adamant that Woods didn’t direct any of the film, he can’t remember anything about making it.
Edmund Purdom (Pieces) is also in here — as Satan — so if you’re trying to fill out your Edmund Purdom Letterboxd list like I am, you’re in luck.
Rosalba Neri’s is Helga, who takes her two girlfriends to visit a remote European castle that is supposedly owned by Satan himself. After she sees a painting that resembles her, she starts having visions of maniacs living in caves, vampires, the inquisition and a hooded swordsman who can vanish at will.
You’d think an Italian erotic horror film with Satan, zombies and Ms. Neri wouldn’t induce slumber. But man, how wrong you would be.
Private investigator Abel Walker along with his cameraman, Jim, are on the hunt for a missing woman. As they unravel the mystery of her disappearance, they become caught in a sick and violent game that will end in murder.
Bloodhound comes from writer/director Jason R.Miller, who produced 2010’s Frozen — not the cartoon, the one on a ski lift — as well as Hatchet II and Chillerama. As part of Skull Tree FX, he also did visual effects for Hatchet III, Beyond the Gates and Sequence Break.
It stars Ed Ackerman (Frozen, 17 Again), David Foy (Hatchet II), Miles Dougal (Director’s Cut, Detroit Rock City), Jess Allen (Broken Glass) and Silvia Moore (Lords of Salem, Chillerama).
Much of the film is shot found footage style, which will either add or distract to your enjoyment of the movie.
Blood Hound is now available on demand and on DVD from High Octane Pictures.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR company.
Episode 4 of Ghouls Across North America has arrived! In this episode, Joe and Alex travel to Cleveland, Ohio to visit A Christmas Story House and bask in all of its awesomeness before heading to Pennsylvania to hang out with their long time pal Bill Van Ryn, creator of Drive-In Asylum and Groovy Doom. Bill plays tour guide at the Monroeville Mall, the setting and filming location for George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead!
The original Demons is an all-star film of Italian horror, combining talents of director Lamberto Bava, writer Dardano Sacchetti and producer Dario Argento to create an anarchic blast of heavy metal, cocaine inside Coca-Cola cans, samurai swords, motorcycles, falling helicopters, steel masked killers and demons popping out of peoples’ backs. It was so successful that it outgrossed Cat’s Eye, Silver Bullet and A Nightmare on Elm Street in its native Italy.
However, over the next ten years, there would be so many sequels — like multiple third installments — that it makes it difficult to know what’s going on. This is my attempt at telling you about these films and clearing up their connections or lack thereof.
Demons: The original film, directed by Lamberto Bava with an assist by Michele Soavi, produced by Dario Argento, with a script by Bava, Argento, Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti, takes place in a movie theater that slowly transforms into a tomb as the undead begin to take over the Earth.
This film is packed with not just music from genre favorite Claudio Simonetti, but also Billy Idol, Accept, Motley Crue, Saxon and, perhaps more surprisingly, Rick Springfield and Go West. It feels like a punch in the face, as if it’s saying, “Are you upset about how gory horror films have gotten? You haven’t seen anything yet!”
Geretta Geretta’s turn as Rosemary pretty much cemented her as an Italian horror star. Plus, Bobby Rhodes makes one hell of a pimp, Paola Cozzo from A Cat in the Brain and Demonia shows up and Nicoletta Elmi from Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, Baron Blood, A Bay of Blood and Who Saw Her Die? plays Ingrid the usherette.
Demons 2: This sequel, from pretty much the same team and with most of the same actors, takes place in a high rise. It was released seven months later and really toned down the amount of violence that the original shoved in your face.
The demons from the original, this time to invade the real world through a television broadcast, transforming the inhabitants of an apartment building into bloodthirsty monsters. It’s also the debut film of Asia Argento.
The music in this one moves away from the heavy metal of its predecessor, with Simon Boswell creating the soundtrack and populating it with bands like The Smiths, Gene Loves Jezebel, The Cult, Fields of the Nephilim, Art of Noise, Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets and Dead Can Dance.
Demons 3: The Ogre: A 1989 made-for-TV horror film directed by Bava and written by Dardano Sacchetti as part of a four-movie series called Brivido Giallo (Yellow Thrill), the story for this movie is incredibly similar to another Sacchetti script, The House by the Cemetery. To be fair, Fulci did alter that script and Bava was originally considered to direct it. The writer would explain that the story was “part of [his] poetics regarding home and children: a recurring theme which I have explored several times with different shades, but also with assonances.”
To make things even more confounding, this movie was also released as Ghosthouse II, with the original Ghosthouse known in Italy as La Casa 3. Man, who knew I’d end up explaining how Evil Dead and House are tied in to the Demons universe. What magical copyright laws Italian filmmakers enjoy.
What the hell — here’s a quick break down on the La Casa films:
La Casa 6: House II: The Second Story (which is unrelated to the original, so if you’re confused, you’re not the only one!)
La Casa 7: The Horror Show (which was sold as House II in some markets and House III and The Horror Show in the U.S.!)
So wait…what is House called in Italy? Chi è Sepolto in Quella Casa, which means Who Is Buried In That House?House IV, the only movie in that American series that is tied to the original, is known as House IV – Presenze Impalpabili in Italy, which means impalpable presences.
Demons 3 (AKA Black Demons): Umberto Lenzi made this move that has no connection whatsoever to the Demons storyline. That didn’t stop nearly every other film on this list, though.
Co-written by written by Lenzi and his wife Olga Pehar, this film would find the director clash with actor Keith Van Hoven and considering his female star, Sonia Curtis, as too plain for the part, leading to him treating her badly for the entire filming.
There was, however, another movie that was going to be called Demoni 3…
The Church: Although it was originally conceived as the third installment in the Demoni series, director Michele Soavi wanted this movie to be a more sophisticated movie. Referring to the other films in this series as “pizza schlock,” this movie would be the end of Soavi’s professional relationship with Argento (however, they somehow still worked together on 1991’s The Sect).
At one point, this movie was going to be called Ritorno alla Casa Dei Demoni (Return to the House of the Demons), to be written by Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti. The story would be about an airplane has to make an emergency landing on an island that would be a weird hell, with Sacchetti comparing the film to Alien.
However, Argento would later state that The Church “was never Demons 3. Nobody but Lamberto ever wanted to make Demons 3; I didn’t want it, the studio didn’t want it, nobody wanted it.”
Soavi, who was shocked that Bava had left the project after so much work, came back to it after he finished Stage Fright. The director made some changes to the script, including a new opening scene that was inspired by Conan the Barbarian.
The score for this one comes from Keith Emerson, Philip Glass and Fabio Pignatelli, who is credited as Goblin.
Demons 4 (AKA La Secta / The Sect / The Devil’s Daughter): Produced and co-written by Dario Argento, this Michele Soavi-directed movie was Jamie Lee Curtis’s sister Kelly, Herbert Lom and a rabbit that has somehow learned how to use a remote control. It’s also a bafflingly insane and awesome flick about a cult that has been chasing Curtis’s character for decades and determined to use her to create the Antichrist.
Again — it has nothing at all to do with any of the other Demons films.
Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil (AKA The Mask of the Demon / Mask of Satan): Lamberto finally decides to remake or make a homage to his father’s Black Sunday with skiers. Go figure — Soavi shows up in a cameo here as a doomed winter sports enthusiast. If you like witches who have had masks nailed to their faces with the legs of a chicken — literally, with claws — then allow me to introduce you to this — you guessed it — Demoni movie that has nothing at all to do with the other films in this series.
This is probably the sexiest of the series if by sexy I mean that you enjoy a witch getting naked and making her young breasts suddenly age while the hero watches in fear. It has some great effects in it, however, and it’s the only snowbound movie amongst all of these films.
Demons 6 De Profundis/Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat: Not only does this movie have those titles, it was nearly called De Profundis (From The Deep) and is also sometimes referred to as Demons 6: Armageddon and Dead Eyes.
Even stranger, this Luigi Cozzi movie is a spiritual sequel to Suspiria and Inferno, while taking place in a world where Suspiria is just a movie. There’s also lots of puke, gore, Caroline Munro and a battle between a witch and the film’s heroine that has lasers, because we all know how much Cozzi loves his lasers.
So wait — where does the Black Cat come in? Well, after 21st Century acquired the distribution rights, CEO Menahem Golan — you know, the dude from Cannon — asked Cozzi to add new footage of black cats. That’s because Golan — the creator of The Apple — had already pre-sold the film as one of his many Poe adaptions.
I love everything about this ridiculous movie.
Demons ’95 (AKA Dellamorte Dellamore / Cemetery Man): Michele Soavi to the director’s chair again, this time for a movie that has nothing to do with any of the Demons film universe, other than perhaps the fact that its director was the man in the steel mask in the original.
Soavi’s film portends a new golden age for Italian horror, yet it was made at the very end of its power. It’s sad — it seems like the director has left behind so many frightening and fantastic things that need to be said. However, I’m happy to report that after nursing a sick son and working in television, he has returned to movie directing, most recently with The Legend of Christmas Witch.
There you go. The whole tale of the Demoni films. Just remember — if you get offered a trip to a voodoo plantation or a job offer in a cemetery or tickets to a movie from a man in a steel mask, just say no.
UPDATE: I learned of a few more Demons sequels.
Lucio Fulci’s Demonia was available in Japan as New Demons.
Beyond telling us those two, reader barrancebeaney told us that the jackets for the biker gang the Demons in Nightmare Beach — which has the same music director as Demons, Claudio Simonetti — also has the Demons logo on their jackets.
If you’re a TL: DR kind of person, just watch Joe Bob Briggs explain it all.
The first horror movie produced in the Soviet Union, Viy is based on a novella by Nikolai Gogol. You may recognize the story, as Mario Bava previously adapted it as one of the yarns in Black Sunday. Some of the witch scenes and end appearance of Viy were toned down due to worries of censorship, but the film was able to avoid most restrictions as it was seen as a folk tale.
Seminary student Khoma stays in a farmhouse on his way home for vacation and is nearly seduced by an old woman who puts him under a spell and rides him like a horse. She then gets him to fly and he demands that they land, at which point he beats her into oblivion. In fact, he does the exact opposite of hitting her with the ugly stick. When his attack is finished, she’s now a young woman, but on the broke of death.
After she expires, her rich father demands that Khorma — he has no idea that the young priest killed her — pray for her soul for the next three nights. Soon, he learns that he’s not the only man that she’s bewitched.
That night, when Khorma enters the church, the girl rises from her coffin and tries to find him. He protects himself with a circle of chalk, but must spend the entire night vigilant that she doesn’t attack him.
The second night, the girl’s coffin flies all over the church as birds appear all over the room. Khorma attempts to leave but the father tells him that he will get 1,000 lashes if he fails and 1,000 pieces of gold if he succeeds. He runs, as the witch has already tried to rob him of his sight and has turned his hair white.
The final night a drunk Khorma contends with the girl one more time, but her demons cannot get past the chalk. They can’t, that is, until the monstrous spirit of Viy is conjured. The demons attack him, leaving him motionless in the middle of the chapel as the woman’s corpse crashes through her coffin, revealing her as an old woman once more.
While this movie is more than fifty years old, it still looks and feels amazing, as if it came from an alien world and somehow found ours.
You can watch Viy on Tubi. For the best possible version, turn to Severin. Their blu ray comes with an interview with Richard Stanley on the film, a documentary on the history of Russian fantasy films and three short films, Satan Exultant, The Queen of Spades, and The Portrait.
Eric Newman, a shy corporate professional who is nearing thirty, gets laid off out of the blue. He meets up with a long-lost friend named Raj who is dreaming of creating a start-up. However, nothing is ever that simple in life and they soon discover that they may be giving up way too much of their lives before they make it.
Appiness was directed by filmmaker Eli Batalion, who also made the web series YidLife Crisis. So much of it hits way too close to home, because I am in the midst of a career shift and as a result, I spend my evenings staring at the TV, worried that my life is about to fall apart.
So yeah. I get it.
You can learn more at the official site. Appiness is available to rent or own on streaming services (including Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Google Play and Vudu) and Cable VOD (including Comcast, Verizon, DirecTV, and Dish).
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR team.
I first encountered this movie halfway through a showing in the middle of the night and had no idea what it was. That’s something that people that stream movies miss out on — the total confusion and need to know that arises when you discover a completely deranged movie in the middle of its running time in the small hours of the night.
William O. Brown only made one other movie, One Way Wahine. That’s a shame because I totally love what he had happening here in The Witchmaker. It’s just plain strange in the very best of ways.
Somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana, young women are being killed and drained of their plasma by Luther the Berserk, who is part of a coven of witches that has drawn Dr. Hayes (Alvy Moore, Hank Kimball from Green Acres) and his group of psychic investigators.
The coven’s leader Jessie — who appears in young and old forms — wants a member of Dr. Hayes’ group named Anastasia (Thordis Brandt, who played an Amazon in In Like Flint), who has supernatural ancestors, to join them.
There’s an interesting and probably unintended theme running through this movie, where the straight-laced older male scientists want to save the buxom blonde Anastasia and the witches and warlock just want to free her (and you know, make her a wanton woman. Can the patriarchy win out?
Six years later, this movie was re-released under the title Naked Witch with footage that earns it that title.
Directed by Charles R. Rondeau and produced by Hugh Hooker, an actor and stuntman. The two teamed up before in 1958 to make The Littlest Hobo. Hooker would do stunts for years while Rondeau would work mainly in TV after this.
Writer Stanley Clements played one of the East Side Kids, Stash, and when Leo Gorcey left the Bowery Boys in 1955, Clements took over as their leader. Starting with 1965’s Fighting Trouble, he played Duke Coveleskie until the series ended its run in 1958 with In the Money.
We open with Pete the hunchback who lives in a shack in Furnace Flats. While this sounds like the start of a filthy limerick, Pete obliterates your senses by killing a goat and making a hexagon on the floor with its blood.
Pete’s gone and replaced by Nick Richards. They’re both played by Ed Nelson from Peyton Place, so some Satanic silliness is going on. He’s fond of using animals to attack people, like having dogs maul their owner’s faces and cows sacrifice themselves to cause car crashes. He wanted revenge and he’s gonna get it — in a way that has nothing to do with the poster for this movie.
Look for Edgar Buchanan (Uncle Joe Carson from Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies) and Richard Crane (Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe‘s sidekick Dick Preston).
This movie film gathered dust until it was acquired by Roger and Gene Corman and paired with Creature from the Haunted Sea.
Sarah Walker (Alexandra Essoe, who played Wendy Torrance in Dr. Sleep) is an aspiring actress who just can’t seem to break through. Perhaps Satan can help. That’s the central story in this 2014 film that I’ve always believed is way more true than fiction.
It’s directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, who went on to create the remade Pet Sematary.
Sarah works at Big Taters in between auditions and dealing with her unsupportive friends, like Erin (Fabianne Therese, John Dies At the End) who steals roles from her, her roommate Tracy and director Danny (Noah Segan, who has worked with Rian Johnson on many projects).
After another failed try-out for Astraeus Pictures’ new movie The Silver Scream, Sarah goes to the bathroom and begins tearing her hair out, which actually inspires the casting director. The follow-up, where she is encouraged to strip and transform herself in front of a strobe light, was inspired by a story someone told Widmyer and Kölsch aauditioning for David Lynch. She goes into a trance state and experiences extreme euphoria, but refuses to sleep with the producer at the third audition.
At a pool party celebrating Danny’s next movie — Sarah was promised the lead — our protagonist is surprised to see him kissing Erin, who is going after her part again. She returns to the producer’s house and goes down on him, which begins to change into something new. That change into something new involves throwing up maggots and having her nails and hair fall out, but beauty is never pretty.
Sarah is told she must either embrace the new her or die. She accepts it, kills all of her friends and is reborn a star.
This movie is pretty great, made in a world where modern horror feels soulless. It has a 70’s feel without devoting itself to that decade or coming off as a period film.
Alfredo B. Crevenna made two movies about El Latigo (The Whip) — The Whip and The Whip vs. Satan, which is the movie we’re about to discuss. He also made 1973’s Santo vs. Black Magic Woman and 1979’s Fury of the Karate Killers, where Santo and El Tieneblas battles karate men.
There’s also another Whip movie called The Whip vs. the Killer Mummies directed by Angel Rodriguez Vazquez. You better believe I already have it.
The Whip (Juan Miranda) is pretty much Zorro with a whip. The difference is that he’s always battling much stranger things. This time, it’s cultists, b-roll rootage of a volcano and Satan himself, who has amazing delay on his voice.
Yes, in addition to being able to use a bullwhip, our hero is the master of the occult. I mean, what kind of man battles someone who he thinks is Old Scratch — armed with a flamethrower — and brings just a rope made out of cowhide? The Whip. That’s who, muchacho.
You know what? Just watch the whole movie right here.
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