Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Hammer time

Directed by Robert Young, with a screenplay by Judson Kinberg and a story by George Baxt and Wilbur  Stark, Vampire Circus is pretty great. Young hadn’t made a movie with the studio so he was surprised that when he tried to get an extra week of filming, they just took the movie to be edited.

What they got it one of the most adult and interesting films the studio would ever make.,

Somewhere in Serbia, schoolmaster Albert Müller (Laurence Payne) watches his wife Anna (Domini Blythe) take a little girl into the castle of Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman). She’s become his mistress, helping him to get children and drain them of their blood.

That night, Müller, the girl’s father (John Bown) and a lot of the men of the town attack the castle with nearly all of them dying. Müller puts a stake through the vampire’s heart but not before he curses the village, claiming that all of their children will die to bring him back to life. Anna runs through the village and takes the Count to his crypt just as the castle is blown up. She seeks Emil (Anthony Higgins) and his Circus of the Night.

Years later, the entire town has been quarantined due to a plague. They believe that they are living under the curse of Count Mitterhaus. The Circus of Night shows up, somehow able to get past the blockade of soldiers outside the town. The gypsy woman that leads the group (Adrienne Corri) and Michael the dwarf (Skip Martin) get the tents up and the townspeople excited while Emil and twin acrobats Heinrich (Robin Sachs) and Helga (Lala Ward) find the Count’s body and state his curse.

Dr. Kersh (Richard Owens) goes for help while his son Anton (John Moulder-Brown) distracts the soldiers. The circus also begins, taking in the daughter of one of the villagers who stopped the Count — Rosa (Christina Paul) — while Emil turns into a black panther and kills several others. Anton’s sister Dora (Lynne Frederick) finds several bodies but by now, it’s too late to stop the death from destroying their little town.

The gypsy woman? Well, that’s the mother of Anton and Dora and she wants to use the blood of her children to bring the Count back. Can they save anyone?

Vampire Circus is so great. It’s filled with so many wild sights, it has a full circus with a pre-Darth Vader David Prowse as the strongman, fully painted female dancers and sets that were also used on Twins of Evil.

The end teases that there could there could have been a sequel and man, I wish there had been. The later Hammer movies fascinate me.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Slashers

Directed by Richard Gabai, who followed his role in Demon Wind and first directed movie Assault of the Party Nerds with this, and written by co-director Robert Strauss and Dave Eisenstark, this movie starts with Roy (Todd McCammon) being killed by jewel thieves — Mona (Karen Russell) and Felipe (Jamie Jones) — and brought back by the undead serial killer Blade (Richard Rifkin). This upsets his mother (Catherine McGuinness), as she was planning on getting the money from his life insurance policy.

Meanwhile, exotic dancer and psychic Wanda Dance (Linnea Quigley) learns that Blade is alive again, so she heads to Los Angeles to see him as he takes over Roy’s body, which has been impaled on a pole and is struggling to understand what’s happening. Also: Roy has killed his girlfriend Sylvia (Shannon Absher) and Wanda reveals that Blade once forced her to dine on the balls of a dead rival.

Gabai appears as Roy’s sister’s (Allison Barron) boyfriend Danny (Gabai) and also has songs by his band The Checks on the soundtrack. Troy Donahue plays an insurance man and there’s a resurrection that happens when a plane blows up and rains down on a graveyard. This is a movie that is just as much about how families fight as it is about being possessed by a zombie.

For some reason, this movie has never been released in America. It has come out in Canada, Mexico, Japan and Brazil.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Haunted house

After Castle of Blood‘s disappointing box office, Antonio Margheriti felt he could remake the film in color and have it be more successful.

Edgar Allan Poe (Klaus Kinski) is our narrator and Kinski shows up for the beginning and the ending of the movie. He’s interviewed by Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa), who challenges him as to the truth of his stories. This leads to a bed with Lord Blackwood (Enrico Osterman) about spending a night in his castle, a place where he soon meets Elisabeth (Michèle Mercier, Black Sabbath) and quickly falls into love — and bed — with her before she announces that she’s no longer alive.

There’s also Julia (Karin Field), William Perkins (Silvano Tranquilli) and Elisabeth’s husband,Dr. Carmus (Peter Carsten). The ghosts need his blood to come back to life, but Elisabeth helps him to escape, only for him to impale himself on the gate, dying just as Poe gets there.

I adore that the tagline of this is “Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s Night of the Living Dead.” He did write a poem “Spirits of the Dead” and the 1932 movie The Living Dead was based on Poe’s “The Black Cat” and “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” as well as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Suicide Club. But no, he has nothing to do with Romero’s movie.

I really like the soundtrack by Riz Ortolani but this can’t compare to the black and white — and yes, Barbara Steele appearance — in the original. That said, Kinski is awesome in every second he’s on screen, looking like a complete madman.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Folk horror

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s novel The Family of the Vourdalak inspired part of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath and this film follows the same story.

Directed by Giorgio Ferroni (Mill of the Stone Women) and written by Eduardo Manzanos, Romano Migliorini and Gianbattista Mussetto, this starts with Nikola (Gianni Garko) being found frozen and near-death. When the gorgeous Sdenka (Agostina Belli) visits him, he screams until he’s forced into a straight jacket.

We then learn how he came to be in this place. He was driving through the snow and narrowly hit a girl with his car. Then, he watches as Gorca Ciuvelak (William Vanders) and his son Jovan (Roberto Maldera) bury a family member. They invite him to stay the night as his car is damaged as he had driven off the road. There, he meets the dead brother’s widow Elena (Teresa Gimpera), her children (one is Cinzia De Carolis) and the other family members, all of whom fear leaving the house after sunset. Then, Gorca decides to get revenge and kill a witch. The family decides if he doesn’t return by morning or has any change in him, they will kill him.

What follows is a workout for effects master Carlo Rambaldi, because while Bava did his movie with color and camerawork, this goes berserk with torn out hearts, exploding heads and maggots. Oh yeah — also full frontal female nudity, showing how far Italian genre morals had descended — no complaints — in the past decade.

Despite Ferroni needing a hearing aid, he wasn’t some doddering old man. There’s an influence of Night of the Living Dead in this as well as a ferocious energy here. The ending is brutal and goes for it. Maybe there is room for two wildly different takes on this story.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1970s

Oh Luigi Batzella, the movies you have brought us. The Beast In Heat, Kaput Lager – Gli ultimi giorni delle SS (Achtung! The Desert Tigers) and Strategia per una missione di more and The Devil’s Wedding Night with Joe D’Amato. Thank you for these movies and for this one.

Batzella had seen Rita Calderoni in Black Magic Rites and cast her in this film as Susan, the injured survivor of a car accident. She’s found by Dr. Benson and showing what kind of doctor he is, he leaves her in the car while he walks through the woods. He soon finds a castle and that Susan is there, but has now become Evelyn and that he also has a double named Peter, who greets Susan when she finally comes back to life and finds the castle as well.

Stelio Candelli is also in this and is menaced by a gigantic spider. But you know, when the named of the movie is Nude for Satan, you know what you’re getting into. This feels like a Renato Polselli movie — and not just because Rita is in it — in that it’s probably more interested in nudity and sapphic moments as it is with being a horror movie.

There’s also a Dutch version with hardcore inserts and if you’re wondering, did I watch that, I mean I totally watched that. It didn’t add anything to the movie, but there’s something funny about seeing erect penises and girl on girl full on moments in the middle of a movie filled with distorted audio, thunder, spiders and oh so much fog.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Werewolf

Paul Naschy* played a werewolf in so many movies, including the child film Good Night, Mr. Monster; the monster-filled comedy It Smells Like Death Here (Well, It Wasn’t Me) and the Waldemar Daninsky series of movies: The Mark of the Wolfman, Las Noches del Hombre Lobo, The Fury of the Wolfman, The Fury of the Wolfman, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman, Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf, The Return of Walpurgis, Curse of the Beast, Return of the Wolf Man, The Beast and the Magic Sword, Licantropo: the Full Moon Killer and Tomb of the Werewolf. This is his last time playing a lycanthrope.

Directed by Ivan Cardosa, this is about a group of teenagers who go into the jungle with a guide named JP (Evandro Mesquita). None of them know that Dr. Moreau (Naschy) is trying to make animal human hybrids. He already failed with a group of Amazons and yet he’s kept working. Maybe even on himself, as we learn when the moon gets full at night.

Most of the women get nude and as you can imagine, quite a few sleep with Naschy’s character, despite him being 71 when this was made, so he gives me hope. There’s also a musical number when an Incan spirit appears and starts singing. I loved that.

*You can read more about his werewolf films in this article.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Tony Todd

Directed by Jonathan English and written by Nick Green and Stephen McDool, Minotaur starts in the time of  King Deucalion (Tony Todd). Each year, eight young adults are taken from the village and dropped into an underground labyrinth to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Theo (Tom Hardy) is still angry that his beloved Fion was sacrificed. When he learns that she’s still alive, he begs his father, the village chief Cyman (Rutger Hauer), to let him be part of the sacrifices along with Danu (Jonathan Readwin), Morna (Maimie McCoy), Tyro (Lex Shrapnel), Didi (Lucy Brown), Vena (Fiona Maclaine), Ziko (James Bradshaw) and Nan (Claire Murphy).

As they are being killed by the beast in the maze, Deucalion’s sister and lover, Queen Raphaella (Michelle Van Der Water) saves them. She also reveals how the monster came to this world. Her mother committed bestiality to create a living god. As the minotaur became stronger, it started killing, starting with Raphaella and Deucalion’s brother. This murder was based on the village that Theo comes from, which is why they have to send sacrifices every year. She sent word that his lover was still alive so that he would come, as she believed that he was the only one who could kill her monstrous half-brother.

And now, the battle has begun.

Beyond Tony Todd, I watched this because Ingrid Pitt is in it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Hail Satan

Co-directed by Antonio Margheriti and Sergio Corbucci (yes, the same man who made Super Fuzz), this was originally going to be directed by Sergio’s brother Bruno. Due to a scheduling conflict, Margheriti came in and Sergio did one scene to keep things moving.

Producer Giovanni Addessi had commissioned Sergio to create a film that would reuse the medieval sets from The Monk of Monza. Meanwhile, even though she had done Fellini’s 8 1/2 and wanted to not be seen as strictly a horror actress, assistant director Ruggero Deodato talked Barbara Steele into being in this film.

After he meets Edgar Allan Poe, reporter Alan Foster (Georges Rivière) says that all of the author’s books came not from reality but instead his imagination. ord Thomas Blackwood (Umberto Raho) asks if he’d like to see the supernatural and invites him to spend the night in his castle. Moments after he arrives, he learns that Elisabeth (Steele) gets one night a year to spend with someone. Tonight is that night. They make love and as he lies his head on her chest, she says, “My heart doesn’t beat – it hasn’t for ten years. I’m dead.”

They aren’t alone. Her sister Julia (Margarete Robsahm) is also there and seems angry that Alan and Elisabeth have fallen in love. The past is revealed to Foster that Elisabeth was once married and fell in love with a stable boy before being killed. And Julia’s jealousy is not for Alan, but the fact that she’s been in love with Elisabeth all this time. Oh yes — if Alan doesn’t escape, his blood will be used in a dark occult ritual to bring every ghost back from the dead and into our world.

This was released in Italy as Danse Macabre and even has a French version where Steele’s character appears nude. It’s not her, but instead actress Sylvia Sorrente.

Margheriti decided to remake this seven years later as Web of the Spider with Klaus Kinski as Poe, Michèle Mercier as Elisabeth and Anthony Franciosa as Alan. He would later say that he was “stupid to remake it” and that “the color cinematography destroyed everything: the atmosphere, the tension.”

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: A movie with a Goblin soundtrack

From 1976 to 1984, Tomas Milan starred in eleven movies in the Squadra antiscippo series. Starting with The Cop in Blue Jeans, these films include Hit Squad, Squadra antitruffa, Little Italy, Assassino sul Tevere, Delitto a Porta Romana, Crime at the Chinese Restaurant, Delitto sull’autostrada, Crime in Formula One, Cop in Drag and this movie.

In each of these movies, Milan plays Nico “Il Pirata” Giraldi, progressively goes from a tough Italian movie cop to a cop with a Chiense twin, one that becomes a race car driver and finally investigating Rome’s gay community to investigate a murder.

Producewr Galliano Juso got the idea when he and director Bruno Corbucci were filming Il trafficone. Juso had his purse stolen by thieves on Kawasaki motorcycles, which make him wondered what would happen if the cops had an anti-snatch and grab team.

The fifth film in the series, The Gang Who Sold America has Giraldi now an Interpol agent in America. He meets the mob family from the last movie — Little Italy — including Salvatore (Enzo Cannavale) with his family and Giarra (Margherita Fumero, whose character is so close to Edith Prickley in both voice and dress that i wonder what came first; SCTV started airing in 1976, so it could go both ways), who is in love with him. Eli Walach, who played Don Girolamo Giarra, did not come back for this.

Giraldi puts two mob bosses against each other but this movie is mostly about broad comedy and action scenes, including air boats and plenty of fistfights. The beginning may be the best part, as Milan is dressed in a military jacket with a straw hat and a scarf, carrying a boombox and dancing to disco down 42nd Street. There’s also a great scene where Indian singer Asha Puthli sings “The Whip” and fights criminals with Milan. Her name is Fiona Strike in this movie which is such a perfect Italian movie name.

Salvatore Baccaro, who is always an ogre in films. But the real reason I watched this?

The Goblin soundtrack. It’s great, embracing full disco. Boomkat said, “The film is set in the United States, and the soundtrack sounds very American, starting from the first two songs, interpreted by the warm voice of Asha Puthli, an Indian singer who is also an actress in this movie, “The Whip” and “The Sound of Money” seem to belong to one of the many Stax productions of those years, only that they’re played by… Goblin! The Roman band, whose line-up consisted of Claudio Simonetti (keyboards), Agostino Marangolo (drums), Fabio Pignatelli (bass) and Carlo Pennisi (guitar) was in those years nothing less than hyper-productive, but this did not prevent them from producing high-quality works. In fact, the album songs go through various genres (disco music, country, funky, soul, samba) with little concessions to some typical “Goblinian” moments.”

You can get it from Mondo.