PURE TERROR MONTH: Night of the Blood Beast (1958)
It’s hard to believe this forgotten—and to be honest, not very good—62-minute Roger Corman quickie shot in 1958 for a mere $68,000 over the course of seven days wound up in WGA arbitration, but it did: Writer Martin Varno disputed the writing credit given to Roger’s brother, Gene. Even harder to believe: Harold Jacob Smith, […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: Scared To Death (1947)
“Roots of horror” fans that enjoy digging beneath the Italian and Spanish Giallo graves of the late ’60s and ‘70s will enjoy seeing Bela Lugosi in Scared to Death (directed by Christy Cabanne of the first Kharis-the-mummy flick, The Mummy’s Hand; he uses that film’s George Zucco, here) as it is the only opportunity to […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: Anatomy of a Psycho (1961)
The only thing this movie has in common with Psycho is the title, but that seemed like reason enough to try and drag people into the theater. It does have Ronnie Burns, the son of George and Gracie, as the lead, which is something, right? And Pamela Lincoln from The Tingler! After his brother is sentenced to […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: Enter the Devil (1972)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bill Van Ryn is the man behind the website Groovy Doom and the zine Drive-In Asylum. You should grab an issue after reading this. Independent regional production Enter the Devil was shot in Texas by producer/director Frank Q. Dobbs, who made four regional theatrical releases (one of them a hardcore porn flick titled The California […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)
Are you in the mood for a hammy n’ macabre horror flick of the worst Ed Woodian proportions, rife with bad puns and pratfalls (“Mort the Mortician” takes a Three Stooges-inspired tumble on skateboard) punctuated by trombone “Wah-Wah-waaaahhhhhhs” that would give Benny Hill or Paul Hogan pause? Do you have a hankering for a hokey […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: Green Eyes (1934)
Oh PURE TERROR, you box set of my dreams. Sometimes, you reward me with Italian cyborgs. Or then a movie about jungle cannibals. Or this — whatever Green Eyes is, a Chesterfield Pictures movie made before the Hayes Code. Who at Mill Creek decides what goes into these box sets? During a masquarade ball, Stephen Kester […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: Malenka (1969)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bill Van Ryn is the man behind the website Groovy Doom and the zine Drive-In Asylum. You should grab an issue after reading this. Spanish filmmaker Amando de Ossorio will most likely be forever remembered as the creator of the Blind Dead series, but his first horror-themed film was 1969’s Malenka, which was eventually released […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: One Minute Before Death (1972)
Leading lady Wanda Hendrix, a contract player in the ‘40s and ‘50s with Warner Bros. and Paramount, is best known to film historians for her marriage to WWII war hero-turned-actor Audie Murphy. The storybook marriage—on which the ‘50s gossip sheets thrived—was over in seven months; the controversy surrounding the marriage—Audie’s wartime PDST issues caused outbreaks […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: Terror In the Jungle (1968)
I kind of wish that I was alive in 1968 just so I could have been part of this movie. Seriously, I’ve never seen a film that so quicky changes its tone and central theme so quickly, abandoning characters that its taken time to set up for an entirely new situation. And then we get […]
PURE TERROR MONTH: Monstroid (1979)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bill Van Ryn is the man behind the website Groovy Doom and the zine Drive-In Asylum. He’s the inspiration for me to write more about movies. It must have been the mid-80s when the price of movies on VHS started to come down — when the format was new, it wasn’t unusual for a new […]
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