EDITOR’S NOTE: The Murder Clinic was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 26, 1979 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, July 16, 1983 at 2:00 a.m.

The Murder Clinic predates the Argento era of giallo, coming around the same time as the Bava instigation with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and the krimi films. Known in its native Italy as La lama nel corpo (The Knife in the Body), it was written by Luciano Martino (brother of Sergio and writer of Delirium and The Whip and the Body) and Ernesto Gastaldi (The Sweet Body of Deborah, All the Colors of the Dark, The Case of the Bloody Iris and so many more) with direction coming from Elio Scardamaglia (this is the only film he’d direct as he usually produced movies) and Lionello De Felice. It’s based on the book The Knife In The Body by Robert Williams, a former Tuskegee Airman who became an actor. He also wrote Turkey Shoot, which really means that his work was produced all over the world.

The story takes place in 1870s England, so this movie can also be considered a gothic horror film. Dr. Vance, the director of a mental hospital (Wiliam Berger) is restoring his sister’s face using patients as raw material, all while a masked killer uses the giallo weapon of choice, a strait razor, to kill other people within the hospital.

This story would replay itself across many films—Slaughter Hotel, Faceless, Mansion of the Doomed (well, that owes a debt to Eyes Without a Face)—while the first scene, with a young woman being chased by a killer in the woods at night, and a scene where the killer stalks his prey in a room full of hanging sheets, feel like they inspired Suspiria.

The Murder Clinic itself feels indebted to Bava, really taking to heart the color strategies of Blood and Black Lace.

This is a movie with a fascinating release history. After Berger spent some time in an Italian prison—he had been wrongly accused of possessing hashish and cocaine—it was re-released with a line on the poster that said, “William Berger, guilty or innocent?”

In the U.S., Revenge of the Living Dead was renamed to cash in on Romero’s zombie film. It played triple features with Curse of the Living Dead (Kill, Baby, Kill!) and Fangs of the Living Dead (Malenka) in the 70s as the Orgy of the Living Dead.

With a great location—the Villa Parisi, home of Blood for Dracula and Patrick Still Lives—and appearances by Françoise Prévost (The Return of the Exorcist), Mary Young (who only appeared in this movie and Secret Agent 777), and Barbara Wilson (her only film, and she really should have done more), The Murder Clinic is an early giallo worthy of being enshrined in your collection.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Circus of Horror was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 1, 1965 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, July 2, 1966 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, March 4, 1967 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, March 30, 1967 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, April 12, 1969 at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, June 16, 1979 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, September 13, 1980 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, April 24, 1982 at 1:00 a.m.

Released in the U.S. by American-International Pictures as a double feature with The Angry Red Planet and A Bucket of Blood, Circus of Horror was inspired by the success of another Anglo-Amalgamated film, Horrors of the Black Museum

Dr. Bernard Schüler (Anton Diffring) is really Dr. Rossiter, a man who ran from England with his two assistants, Martin (Kenneth Griffith) and Angela (Jane Hylton) and makes his way to France, where he starts to practice. He meets a girl scarred in the war, Nicole Vanet (Carla Challoner when she is young, Yvonne Monlaur when she’s an adult), and fixes her wounds, making a deal with her father (Donald Pleasence) that he will buy into his circus and use it to further hide from his past.

As he celebrates the sale, the circus owner begins to dance with a bear — yes, this really happens — and this leads to him mauling him. He yells for Schüler to save him, but the doctor watches him die and takes over the circus, working with his assistants to take criminals, heal their scars and add them to his circus.

One of those performers is Elissa Caro (Erika Remberg), a gorgeous sex worker whose face is marred with a scar through her eye. He promises to fix her if she joins his circus, which becomes a success over the next ten years. When anyone tries to escape, they die accidentally, like star Magda von Meck (Vanda Hudson), who dies in a knife throwing act, allowing Elissa to be the main act again.

However, things start to fall apart when Melina (Yvonne Romain) shows up, her face destroyed by a lover who threw acid at her. The doctor and circus owner fixes her face and falls in love with her.

Elissa decides to stay ahead of her competition and learns who the doctor really is, thanks to overhearing the adult Nicole explain her surgery to Inspector Arthur Ames (Conrad Phillips). Schüler tries to warn her off with a snake, but she keeps blackmailing him, so he makes sure that she dies during her act.

A gorilla goes wild and scars the doctor, who must go through his own surgery, appearing bandaged as the circus is visited by Evelyn Morley Finsbury (Colette Wilde), the very woman who Schüler scarred for life and was nearly ruined by. That night, a lion kills Melina — man, this circus! — as the doctor’s assistants try to run. He stabs Angela as Martin escapes, joining Evelyn in telling everything to the police. Schüler tries to run, but Evelyn returns to run him over with her car.

Director Sidney Hayers also made Burn, Witch, Burn with this movie’s screenwriter George Baxt. The circus was owned by Billy Smart and was also used for the Joan Crawford movie Berserk.

I love the idea of this movie where a plastic surgeon ends up running a circus of criminals and animals that can’t stop attacking human beings.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Curse of Dracula was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 7, 1963 at 3:00 p.m., Saturday, January 9, 1965 at 1:00 a.m. and  Saturday, August 21, 1965 at 1:00 a.m.

Dracula (Francis Lederer) escapes a band of vampire hunters led by John Meierman (John Wengraf) and gets on a train, where he kills artist Bellac Gordal and makes his way to California, where he moves in with Gordal’s cousin Cora (Greta Granstedt) and her children Mickey (Jimmy Baird) and Rachel (Norma Eberhardt, who was in Live Fast Die Young the same year).

Rachel has been reading the letters that Bellac sent to Cora and is struck by his struggle as an artist. Yet when Dracula moves in, he won’t leave his room and, as you can imagine, does things like sleep all day and scream when he’s near mirrors. He also drinks the blood of Mickey’s cat and throws it down the mineshaft where he’s really sleeping.

While Rachel wants to be a clothes designer, she knows that she’ll probably be a nurse and never get out of Yorba Linda, the home of Richard Nixon. She also takes care of sick people at a parish house, including Jennie Blake (Virginia Vincent), a blind girl who tells her that she knows death is coming for her. After Rachel reads to her, Dracula appears and promises to help her see again. He bites her, which ends her life, but she comes back the next evening, now fully alive. But not before she dies in front of Rachel and her boyfriend Tim (Ray Stricklyn).

A detective comes to town, hunting for Dracula, but is soon killed by a white wolf. That night, as Rachel puts on the crucifix that Jennie left behind. In her dreams, Dracula promises her eternal life if she takes it off, basically telling her to turn her back on God, a wild idea for a 1958 black and white horror movie. He tells her that they will survive this dying world together, yet the vampire hunters arrive and stake Jennie through the heart — there’s a three second burst of blood here, the only color in the film — which breaks the spell that the monster has on Rachel. Tim holds the crucifix, which sends Dracula down the mineshaft and where a piece of wood goes right through him, leaving behind a skeleton.

Gerald Fried did the score for this film and used “Dies Irae,” which he more famously used in The Shining.

Director Paul Landres mostly worked in TV, but he also directed The Vampire. This was written by Pat Fielder, who also scripted the TV miniseries Goliath Awaits, tons of TV and the movie that this played double features with, The Flame Barrier.

In theaters, this was titled The Return of Dracula and it was also titled The Fantastic Disappearing Man in the UK.

As for Francis Lederer, he would play Dracula again in the Night Gallery episode “The Devil Is Not Mocked.”

I loved this movie. It has a shocking air of dark energy, as well as an antireligious air about its villain. It’s also quite interesting that he’s never called Dracula.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

This is based on the game Fiendish Thieves, which is described as Home Alone meets Frankenstein. They say it’s “filled with lots of laughs and slapstick humor. You choose the actions of the bungling burglars who search an abandoned warehouse for a rare vintage pocket watch, and the obsessed film fan munching on snacks watching the events unfold.”

From what I can see from this video that was posted on Steam, the game is pretty much the same as the movie.

It’s directed and written by Nick Box, who also has Amityville Tea Bag, Amityville Elevator and Amityville Job Interview coming out next year. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this pact with a demon to watch every Amityville movie, because this one is as painful as they get. It may also be the tenth Amityville movie where Shawn C. Phillips sits on a couch in front of his DVD collection and just yells about nothing while watching a Frankenstein movie that mainly consists of the monster getting shocked for what seems like five minutes non-stop to the point that I thought that my internet was screwed up.

Until I can escape this curse, check out my list of Amityville movies and Letterboxd list.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Spider was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 3, 1964 at 1:00 a.m.

Chatrand the Great (Edmund Loew) asks his fans on a radio show — how do you do magic on a radio show? — that he is looking for the true identity of his assistant Alexander (Howard Phillips), who lost his memory two years ago after an accident. Beverly Lane (Lois Moran) believes that he’s her brother and answers this question. But then there’s a murder — of Alexander’s abusive uncle John Carrington (Earl Foxe) — during their act and Chatrand has to get him out of trouble.

The sets and the magic are pretty great, as they were created by William Cameron Menzies, who co-directed with Kenneth MacKenna. This has mesmerism, mind reading and a seance and hey — it’s only 59 minutes. If it all feels like it’s happening in real time, this was based on a stage play.

It was remade in 1945 as a very different movie yet still based on the same play.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cyborg 2087 was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 1, 1975 at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, October 18, 1975 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, January 14, 1978 at 11:30 p.m.

2087: Free thought is illegal. The population is docile. Only a secret group of free thinkers exist and they are able to send Garth A7 (Michael Rennie) back in time to either stop Professor Sigmund Marx (Eduard Franz) from showing his new invention to the government or, if that fails, to murder him. Yes, what Marx makes today will create the mind control of the future. As Garth A7 escapes back in time, he is followed by two other cyborgs called Tracers (Dale Van Sickel and Troy Melton).

To succeed in his mission, he takes over the mind of Marx’s assistant Dr. Sharon Mason (Karen Steele), using her to find Dr. Zeller (Warren Stevens), who removes the tracking device that allows the Tracers to find him.

A member of the Marines in World War II, director Franklin Aderon got into Hollywood as a technical advisor on the serial The Fighting Marines. He wrote screenplays and produced at Republic Pictures before directing his own movies, including Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders and Dimension 5. He also directed several Western TV shows.

This was written by Arthur C. Pierce, who went from being in the Navy during the war to shooting industrial films and creating special effects. He eventually became a writer, making Beyond the Time Barrier and The Cosmic Man. He also directed The Astral Factor, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, Women of the Prehistoric Planet, Las Vegas Hillbillies, Mutiny In Outer Space and The Human Duplicators.

For as similar as some of Pierce’s stories are to other films — Beyond the Time Barrier cashed in on The Time Machine and The Cosmic Man is like The Day the Earth Stood Still — this film predates Terminator 2 with the idea of a machine coming back in time to murder the inventor that led to its creation.

Speaking of The Day the Earth Stood Still, this film has its star, Michael Rennie, who is playing a very similar role to Klaatu. He would do the same in a three episode story in the TV series The Invaders, in which he played one of the alien leaders, Alquist.

The strangest part of this is that Dr. Mason falls in love with Garth A7, even when he tells her that he had to get her to do things against her will. It doesn’t matter, as she has found something much like love with him. She asks him to bring her back to his future and he tells her that when he goes back, if he was successful, he will no longer exist. He is willing to cease being to make tomorrow free; she forgets him as he walks back into time and by the end, is making a date with another man instead of looking at this cyborg with a blinking metal chest as a project to fix, a blank slate to project her love upon.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.

Amityville Ripper starts with a news segment of people hating Amityville movies, the original house being burned down, an auction of items that were in the house, multiple UFO abductions, the Spider podcast, a commercial for Alien Mingle and another for Steve Martin’s (not that one) Video Store. At some point, I was wondering if this was using Pond 5 footage like every other Amityville movie and just trying to pad a runtime with all of this footage, but then as the movie went on, surprise, this actually gets why I watch these movies.

Not just because a demon cursed me to watch all of them and would ruin our web traffic if I stopped.

This takes place in 2000 — the Y2K bug is a thing — and Marianne (Kelsey Ann Baker) and her brother — or step-brother — Nichols (Hunter Redfern) wake up to their parents going away on vacation for New Year’s Eve. Marianne — known as M — had something big planned with her best friend Annie (Angel Nichole Bradford). And no, not lesbian stuff, as her brother and his wheelchair bound friend Chapman (Ryan Martel). Instead, she has had the knife of Jack the Ripper sent to her from that auction. And her friend Tony, who is now in Hollywood, said it’s real because “he lived that Ripper lifestyle.”

What is a Ripper lifestyle?

Also, Marianne has dreams of slow jams playing over stock footage of a jet ski, which makes her even more endearing to me and not just because she’s a goth girl with shaved sides of her hair and looks a lot like Rainbow Harvest. She also mentions that she really wanted the clock from the house, but an architect — Jacob Sterling, right? — got it first.

While everyone — including way too nice cheerleader Liz (Anna Clary) — is partying and playing Sugar Ray, Marianne and Annie go up to her room and have a seance with a Ouija board, some tarot cards, Jack the Ripper’s knife and plenty of candles. Also: If M is so goth, why is she wearing an N’Sync shirt when the rest of her room is full of Universal Monsters pillows, a black metal poster and a Killer Klowns poster? At least her closest is all full of black shirts.

Director and writer Bobby Canipe Jr. has obliterated the fourth wall in this movie, as the characters even find the script, not that it keeps all of them alive. Just look at the dialogue:

Annie: Everything that happened in the Amityville house was true. And can you just imagine if this knife of Jack the Ripper’s became imbued with the power of the Amityville house? It’d be like we had some sort of Amityville ripper on our hands.

Marianne: True, but I think that’s kind of the point. I’m pretty sure that the name of this movie is Amityville Ripper.

Then The Ripper (Josh Allman) comes to life, wearing a Dracula costume, and also aliens.

There’s a line that sums up this entire movie, as well as all Amityville sequels.

“Brother, it’s an Amityville sequel. Shit’s different here.”

Not all the humor hits perfectly, but who cares? This is way better than nearly any other Amityville sequel, which isn’t saying much, but it does try. Which is, again, way more than almost every other sequel not made in Canada or by an Italian director.

You can watch this on Tubi.