22. A Horror Film That Can Be Found on a 50-Movie DVD Collection

I’ve worked in advertising for thirty years. So this is more of a horror movie for me than for nearly anyone else.

Based on The Agency by Paul Gottlieb, directed by George Kaczender and written by Noel Hynd, this film follows a burned-out creative director, Philip Morgan (played by Lee Majors), who uncovers a sinister use of subliminal advertising at his ad agency. The agency owner, Ted Queen (played by Robert Mitchum), is the mastermind behind this electoral manipulation. Valerie Perrine plays Brenda Wilcox, the love interest of Philip, and Saul Rubinek is the copywriter, Sam Goldstein.

This follows The Norseman, Steel and Killer Fish in attempts at Majors becoming a movie star; he would soon be back on the small screen, making TV movies and starring in The Fall Guy. He doesn’t look like any ad guy I’ve ever seen, even though he wore a long, fashionable coat at one point. He does seem burned out, and hey, I can relate.

Goldstein thinks that the new Chocolate Planet drink powder ad campaign is all about taking over the hearts and minds of America’s youth, even if this was shot in Canada. Yes, it’s going to make kids make America great forty years early.

But hey — Lee Majors not playing a stuntman or a cyborg, just an ad guy who sleeps with normal women like Valerie Perrine. Plus, the ad for No Sweat deodorant is excellent, like a hellspawn musical dance that would make me buy the product.

Mitchum vs. Majors in Montreal. It happened. I watched it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

21. A Horror Film About Evil Parents

Directed by Bob Balaban (yes, the guy from Christopher Guest comedies) and written by Christopher Hawthorne. Parents finds the Laemle family — Nick (Randy Quaid), Lily (Mary Beth Hurt) and Michael (Bryan Madorsky) moving into the California suburbs. Between seeing his parents making love and watching his father do an autopsy, Michael is a bit screwed up. His dreams are horrible and he believes his parents are cannibals. But what if he’s right?

But what can you do when your parents want to feed you the meat of your guidance counselor, Millie Dew (Sandy Dennis)?

Siskel and Ebert disagreed on this; a big surprise was that Gene loved it and Roger didn’t. However, Ken Russell compared it to Blue Velvet and claimed that it was better than Lynch’s movie.

I’ve always wanted to see this ever since I saw the Vestron box at my mom and pop video store. It took a long time, but I enjoyed it. Time has made Randy Quaid in strange roles not, “He’s so good,” but instead. “Yes, Randy Quaid is legitimately weird.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

20. A Horror Film Shot by Jack Cardiff

The fishermen of a village have found the bodies of a man and woman in their nets, as archaeologist Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender) looks to the camera to tell us their story.

Pandora Reynolds (Ava Gardner) is the kind of femme fatale that can watch a man off himself in front of her and then comment on how boring he was. She tests the men of the village, like making them give up something they love just to be with her. For example, race car driver Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick) must drive his beloved vehicle into the sea.

But sea caption Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason) may be the man who breaks her. Perhaps he’s not even a man, as Geoffrey thinks that he’s the Flying Dutchman, a 16th-century ship captain who murdered his unfaithful wife and spoke against God at his trial before being given an escape on a new ship. There, the Dutchman learned that his wife was innocent and to atone for his crime, he gets six months every seven years to find a woman who will die for him. Otherwise, he is cursed to sail forever.

Pandora does fall in love with him, but Hendrik refuses to let her die. Another of the many rivals for her affection, Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré) murders him, only for Hendrik to return in the audience of Juan’s bullfight. Shocked, he doesn’t see the bull coming and it gores him to death.

Despite agreeing to marry Stephen, Pandora loves the boat captain. She swims out to his ship and learns the truth: He is the Dutchman and she looks exacly like his dead wife. She asks how long they have together if she is to die. He replies that the perfectness of their love places them outside of time just as a storm destroys the ship.

Only Geoffrey knows the truth, saying, “May the consummation of your love endure as long as the punishment that made you worthy of it!”

Directed and written by Albert Lewin (The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Living Idol), this film had sets designed by Man Ray. He also painted the painting of Pandora in the movie.

Man, doomed romance, gorgeous art and Ava Gardner, all in one movie. I loved it!

19. A Horror Film That Takes Place on a Non-American Holiday

Director and writer Benjamin Christensen did a study of Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century German guide for inquisitors also known as Hammer of Witches. He believed that the burning of witches was more about mental health and mass hysteria than witchcraft. While initially this ran into censorship issues in the U.S. due to its torture, nudity and sex, it was re-released in 1968 as Witchcraft Through the Ages with a new English-language narration by William S. Burroughs.

By the end, we’ve seen Satan lure women away from their husbands’ beds, murdering women by choking them and attacking monks and a woman claiming to give birth to children fathered by Satan, then being smeared with witch ointment, desecrating a cross, having dinner with demons and kissing Satan’s buttocks.

Actress Maren Pedersen told the director, “The devil is real. I have seen him sitting by my bedside.” Yet there’s no square-up reel here. Instead, if anything, sexual repression is the cause of many of the possessed moments.

A contemporary review said that Haxan had a “…satanic, perverted cruelty that blazes out of it, the cruelty we all know has stalked the ages like an evil shaggy beast, the chimera of mankind. But when it is captured, let it be locked up in a cell, either in a prison or a madhouse. Do not let it be presented with music by Wagner or Chopin to young men and women, who have entered the enchanted world of a movie theatre.”

Haxan has been used to show demons or the supernatural in many movies since it was made and it’s still powerful a century later.

18. A Supernatural Shark Movie

When your movie starts with a nun sacrificing someone and asking for Satan to send her an avenger, you know I’m going to like it. And when the devil sends a shark, you know I’ll love it. And the nun is named Linda Blair? Man, Donald Farmer, you want me to marry your movie.

Ally, Lauren and Emily go on vacation in Paris Landing, TN. There, shark bites end up possessing them, even though all they want to do is join a sorority. When you get possessed by a shark, in case you didn’t know, you get shark teeth.

This ends with 11 minutes of credits and 5 minutes of a woman looking at stuffed sharks in a gift shop, which seems very ASMR and chill after the hour of nudity and shark attacks we’ve lived through.

The idea for this seems so good; the open and close with the nun are great, and everything in between is painful. Alas — shark movies need more Satan.

You can watch this on Tubi.

16. A Tokusatsu Horror Film

Latitude Zero is a futuristic utopia that lies hidden fifteen miles below sea level at the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line. There, people from all over the world — many of whom were reported missing at sea and have now aged — have lived since the 19th century, assisting humanity in their development. Their lead vehicle, Alpha, is commanded by Captain Craig McKenzie (Joseph Cotten). He rescues three scientists, Dr. Ken Tashiro (Akira Takarada), Dr. Jules Masson (Masumi Okada) and journalist Perry Lawton (Richard Jaeckel) from a bathysphere accident, narrowly avoiding the henchmen of Latitude Zero’s enemy, Dr. Malic (Cesar Romero).

Alright, I already love this movie two minutes in.

Malic has kidnapped Dr. Okada (Tetsu Nakamura) and his daughter Tsuruko (Mari Nakamura), using them to create new monsters to attack his enemies. One of these is a lion with condor wings, into which he has placed the brain of the disgraced henchman Kuroiga (Hikaru Kuroki). Or human bats and kaiju rats.

Along with Latitude Zero scientist Dr. Anne Barton (Linda Haynes), the crew attacks the evil base of Blood Rock as this movie goes from giant monsters to Eurospy. By the end, everyone has joined the crew, except Lawton, who soon finds that any memories he has of this adventure are fading away. At the last moment, he charts a course back to Latitude Zero.

Based on the NBC radio serial Latitude Zero, which only had seventeen episodes, this was directed by Ishirô Honda and filmed in English. It was a co-production between Toho and the American television production company Four Star Productions. After having flown out the American cast to Japan, Four Star’s owner, Don Sharp, declared bankruptcy and pulled out of the contract. Toho made the movie anyway and ensured that everyone was paid.

I wish they made ten of these. Seriously, what a wild, strange and wonderful movie.

15. A Horror Film in Which Language is the Weapon

Why did it take so long for me to watch this? A zombie — kinda — movie set inside one room, radio talk show host Grant Mazzy’s (Stephen McHattie) studio — Pontypool is filled with imagination and utter strangeness, as a virus uses language against people and can only be defeated by wordplay.

I love the interplay between Grant and Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly), his producer, as well as the oddness of Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak), the expert who is trying to discover why people are suddenly losing their minds and how words can transmit the virus.

Bruce McDonald (Kids In the Hall), who directed this, explains the disease like this: “There are three stages to this virus. The first stage is when you might begin to repeat a word. Something gets stuck. And usually it’s words that are terms of endearment, like sweetheart or honey. The second stage is when your language becomes scrambled, and you can’t express yourself properly. The third stage, you become so distraught at your condition that the only way out of the situation you feel, as an infected person, is to try and chew your way through the mouth of another person.”

This uses its budget effectively, often relying more on sound than visuals to tell the story. And I love the ending, which pushes this universe into surrealism, as Grant and Lisa take on the identities of Johnny Deadeyes and Lisa the Killer, a concept eventually followed up in the movie Dreamland.

This is the kind of film that gets in my head and frightens me long after, because it feels just strange enough that it could happen.

14. A Croatian Horror Film

Here’s how Deaf Crocodile sold this: “Imagine if Troma Films had been hired to make a Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning kids’ show, and if you have some idea of the unspeakable strangeness of Visitors from the Arcana Galaxy, a truly gonzo Croatian sci-fi/fantasy about a struggling writer, Robert (Zarko Potocnjak), who dreams up a story of gold-skinned alien androids named Andra, Targo and Ulu from a distant planet.”

But is it a horror movie? Let’s allow Deaf Crocodile again to describe the Mumu Monster, which was created for the film by legendary Czech animator Jan Svankmajer: “A rubber-suited, multi-tentacled creation that destroys a wedding party, ripping off heads and spouting plumes of toxic green smoke while a blind accordion player blithely plays his squeezebox.”

Director Dusan Vukotic, while born in Yugoslavia, was one of the founding members of Zagreb Film, a Croatian film studio that often worked in animation. What emerges here is pure fantastic filmmaking — a movie where Robert has his head in the clouds, dreaming of being a science fiction writer. This is a goal that his girlfriend Biba (Lucié Žulova) and friend Tino (Ljubiša Samardžić) think is silly.

Somehow, that same imagination is able to bring robotic Andra (Ksenija Prohaska) and space children Targo (Rene Bitorajac) and Ulu (Jasminka Alic) to Earth. That’s because Robert has tellurgia, which allows him to think of things long enough for them to become real. For example, when he was hungry as a child, his father grew breasts to feed him.

A series of wild adventures emerges, including Robert falling in love with Andra, Andra leaving a Mumu monster in her purse that sprays her roommates with its deadly blood, and time travel that solves almost any mistake.

As Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia no longer exist, I guess this is a Croatian film. Whatever it is, it’s terrific —sheer lunacy caught on film —a movie that shows how a foreign culture would create a space adventure that has nothing to match what we expect.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy it from Deaf Crocodile or MVD. Extras on the physical release include a new scan with restoration by Craig Rogers for Deaf Crocodile, a new commentary track by film historian Samm Deighan, a new essay by film historian and professor Jennifer Lynde Barker and five rare short films by director Dusan Vukotic.

13. A Horror Film That Features a Swamp Creature

Larry Buchanan made a number of low-budget 16mm color remakes of American International Pictures movies for television. Despite the limited budget, he was able to create some truly wild films, including this one, which was inspired by Voodoo Woman.

Dr. Simond Trent (Jeff Alexander) has set up shop deep in the Texas swamps — these are a real thing — and has taken the natives — this is not a thing — for experiments, trying to reverse their evolution.

MOASASOURI – A MONSTER FROM ANOTHER AGE…with terrifying, destructive powers…his victims fight for their lives in a silent, eerie underwater battleground!

Sure, whatever you say!

Every time Trent creates a new creature in his glass fog machine, yelling “Live! Breath!” it never makes it. So then he carries it to his swimming pool full of stock footage and feeds it to the gators, as if Porky Wallace did mad science instead of running a redneck bar.

Frenchy (Roger Ready) and Brenda Simmons (Shirley McLine) join oilman Driscoll West’s (Bill Thurman) expedition in the hopes of making some money for doing nothing. She tries to seduce him, but he turns her down, and one of their thugs, Ritchie (Cal Duggan), kills the rich man. So when geologist Barry Rogers (John Agar) arrives to start the exploring, she explains that she’s Driscoll’s wife, and he’s none the wiser.

Thanks to their guide, Rabbit Simms (Charles McLine), they all end up at the suburban house/mad scientist lab of Trent, whose wife, Pat (Francine York), wants to leave, and the men all treat her like they’re John Ashley in a Blood Island movie. Then, Brenda’s plans go awry, and she is transformed into something else. A green creature that doesn’t look real at all, and therefore makes this movie so much better as a result. She instantly launches Trent into his own gators, then dives in herself, escaping a life as a monster instead of, well, being a monster.

I watched this in the middle of the night, and maybe I wasn’t sober at all, which was the ideal way to watch it. You should feel on the verge of passing out and in another state of consciousness before it starts, then let it wash over you. More monster movies should have body paint instead of latex suits or complicated CGI.

Buchanan would take Invasion of the Saucer Men and make The Eye Creatures; Day the World Ended  as In the Year 2889; It Conquered the World as Zontar The Thing from Venus and The She-Creature as Creature of Destruction. Of this movie, he said, “Never make a swamp picture. Your film comes back and it’s all…strange”.

You can watch this on Tubi.