Much like From the Old Earth, which is also on the All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2 box set from Severin, Gwaed Ar Y Sêr (Blood on the Stars) was produced by Bwrdd Ffilmiau Cymraeg, the Welsh Film Board. One of the first horror films in Welsh, this was another movie that was presented to children under ten years old in grade school.

Director Wil Aaron said of this effort, “The problem with Welsh films at that time was that everyone assumed they were the kind of thing that was shown in Sunday School. Did anyone consider that there might not be a little bit of sex and a little bit of fear in them?”

In a small village of Gruglon, there’s an annual concert that is always the talk of the town. This year, its been decided that celebrities like folk singer Dafydd Iwan, radio DJ Hywel Gwynfryn and rugby kicker Barry John are all set to appear. Or, well, they were until choirmaster Shadrach (Grey Evans) and his small child choir start to kill them all, one by one, their names crossed off a handwritten poster as each dies.

These kids just want to sing their holiday songs that they’ve worked on for so long and if they have to mine a football field and blow someone up real good, they’re going to do it. Look at these little angels! Listen to how they play and sing!

Without this set, I have no idea how I would have seen this. Also there’s one scene where someone is frying sausage and I am beyond hungry now.

Blood On the Stars is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an introduction by musician Gruff Rhys and a cast reunion.

You can order this set from Severin.

Known in its native Philippines as Itim (Black), The Rites of May is the first movie by director Mike de Leon. It begins during a seance, as the medium tells Teresa (Charo Santos) that her sister Rosa (Susan Valdez), a Catholic nun, is dead. Teresa asks if she may speak to the dead, but the medium says that she must wait until Good Friday.

Meanwhile, Jun (Tommy Abuel) has come back home to visit his infirm and mute father Dr. Torres (Mario Montenegro). While there, he is doing photography work for a magazine, shooting the celebrations of Lent in Manila, an extremely religious city. As he takes photos, he meets Teresa, which is supernaturally predestined to happen. She keeps going in and out of fugue states. As Jun takes photos of her, he will see her sister Rosa as well as her connection to his father.

The director told the Cannes Film Festival, “I got interested in doing a film that used a camera to tell a story with one character, no dialogue and just sound effects. One thing I liked about Blow-up was the idea of existential alienation. Monologo was a ghost story. The character takes photos and he does not realize that he has photographed a ghost or a presence in his own house. I mean, his camera saw it but he did not. That kinda blew my mind.”

Despite failing in cinemas, this movie won  Best Picture, and Charo Santos was recognized as Best Actress, at the 1978 Asian Film Festival. Since then, it’s been recognized as a classic. It’s heart in the unknown feels authentic, as spiritist Becky Gutierrez wrote the seance scenes, which she based on actual ritual. It also uses the ghost in its story to symbolize the past of the Philippines, a country that seems as if it can move past a history filled with violence yet will forever remain haunted by it. de Leon started this as a simple ghost story but it grew into this epic with deep themes.

This was shot in shot in de Leon’s grandparents’ house in San Vicente, San Miguel, Bulacan. I have an affinity for films that get into the supernatural and the religious filmed in family homes, like Martin. Can you think of any others?

The Rites of May is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including audio commentary by Filipino film historian Andrew Leavold, the documentary Itim: An Exploration In Cinema and Filipino film scholar Anne Frances N. Sangil discussing this film.

You can order this set from Severin.

Also known as Horror Hotel, this movie was the first film that John Llewellyn Moxey directed. It was also made in the UK but set in the U.S., so everyone is doing their best American accent.

Back in In 1692 in Whitewood, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel) and Jethrow Keane (Valentine Dyall) sold their souls to the Devil for eternal life and revenge on everyone if they just sacrifice one virgin during Candlemas Eve and another during the Witches’ Sabbath. That said, Elizabeth is soon tried for being a witch and burned alive.

History professor Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee) tells Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) that if she wants to learn about Whitewood, she should go there. She visits the town, staying at the Raven’s Inn, which is owned by Mrs. Newless and soon meets the only normal person in town — so she thinks — Patricia Russel (Betta St. John), who gives her a book on witchcraft. She learns that it’s Candlemas Eve just in time to be sacrificed on an altar.

Bill Maitland (Tom Naylor), her fiancee, brings her brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) to town, along with Patricia, who wonders where her friend has gone. You can imagine what happens next, but this is still fun.

This was written by George Baxt as a pilot for a television series that would have starred Boris Karloff. Producer Milton Subotsky rewrote it to be longer, including a romantic subplot about the boyfriend who goes looking for Nan. Produced by Vulcan Productions, it was made by Subotsky and Max Rosenberg, making this the first Amicus movie.

The big difference between City of the Living Dead and the American Horror Hotel cut? Elizabeth Selwyn, before being burned at the stake, says the following before she’s burned alive: “I have made my pact with thee O Lucifer! Hear me, hear me! I will do thy bidding for all eternity. For all eternity shall I practice the ritual of Black Mass. For all eternity shall I sacrifice unto thee. I give thee my soul, take me into thy service.” Jethro Keane adds, “O Lucifer, listen to thy servant, grant her this pact for all eternity and I with her, and if we fail thee but once, you may do with our souls what you will.” Elizabeth Selwyn: “Make this city an example of thy vengeance. Curse it, curse it for all eternity! Let me be the instrument of thy curse. Hear me O Lucifer, hear me!”

In 2011, Evil Calls: The Raven came out with a very similar plot and even lifted footage directly from this movie. But I didn’t complain when Iron Maiden’s “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter” and King Diamond’s “Sleepless Nights” videos did. This movie played enough UHF TV that The Misfits even wrote a song about it.

The City of the Dead is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an introduction by Kay Lynch, director of the Salem Horror Fest; four different commentaries, one with Kim Newman And Barry Forshaw, another with Jonathan Rigby, a third with Christopher Lee and a fourth with John Llewellyn Moxey; a remembrance of the film by Sir Christopher Lee; archival interviews with John Llewellyn Moxey and Venetia Stevenson; the video essay Burn Witch, Burn! A Tribute To John Llewellyn Moxey by Amanda Reyes and Chris O’Neill and a trailer.

You can order this set from Severin.

Directed by Wil Aaron and written by Gwyn Thomas, this film was played in primary schools thanks to Bwrdd Ffilmiau Cymraeg, the Welsh Film Board, who produced it. While it seems odd and a bit scary to us as adults, imagine watching this if you were under ten years old and a captive grade school audience. One of the extras for this film, in the Severin All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2 set, has Aaron discussing how the movie was made and how he learned years later, through Facebook, how many Welsh children were absolutely destroyed by his movie.

In its native tongue, this is called O’r Ddaear Hen. A man named William Jones (Charles Williams) is toiling in his garden when he discovers a stone head. It’s so frightening to his wife that it causes her nightmares and she forces him to give the head to a female archaeologist at a local university. An expert on the Celts, she brings it back to her own home, where it starts to infect her family with fear, including a monstrous animal that keeps showing up. It all leads to a car wreck that seems beyond the budget of this feature.

O’r Ddaear Hen has led to childhood traumas, such as this quote I found from Mari Williams, who watched it when she was a student: “Whose opinion was that this was a film for children? It has created hours of lost sleep, years and trauma, and close to an accident a few times – you turn around to see if there is a man with horns in the back of the car, while driving – not to be advised.”

It’s films like this that are the reason why this box set exists. It’s just such a singular and strange film, one that created a stir in a country you may never get to and soon, you learn so much that you never expected to know.

From the Old Earth is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an introduction by musician Gruff Rhys, an interview with director Wil Aaron and featurettes on Welsh folklore and Welsh Film scholar Dr. Kate Woodward on the Welsh Film Board. There are also two shorts, Blood On the Stars, that has an introduction by Gruff Rhys and a cast reunion, and The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barra.

You can order this set from Severin.

Garazi (Sílvia Munt) is the granddaughter of a woman burned as a witch who finds herself battling the Catholic Church just like her ancestor. The name of this film means “witches’ sabbath” in English and this goes into the witch trials against women of San Juan de Araiz, which is part of Navarre in northern Spain.

This trial found 27 people arrested, with 11 women and two men accused of witchcraft. They were executed in the name of Catholicism with the rest later dying from their mistreatment. This Inquisition came from a church that was more about men and their desires than serving the Lord. That doesn’t sound like that history is repeating at all, does it?

Director Pedro Olea said of the actor who portrayed Acevedo, the lead Inquisitor, “What better inquisitor than López Vázquez? He accepted the role and turned it into another character that was amazing: a religious sadist, cruel and libidinous. Simply, his way of brushing Silvia Munt’s chest with his fingers when removing a medal, of directing another torture session with her naked and then flagellating himself in his cell, demonstrates a perfect interpretive treatment of the repression suffered by the sinister friar.”

This was filmed on location, using the caves of Zugarramurdi, which are known as the “Cathedral of the Devil.” This same area figures into the plot of La brujas de Zugarramurdi (Witching and Bitching).

Akelarre is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including interviews with director Pedro Olea and actors and Iñaki Miramón, as well as a featurette, Invoking The Akelarre, which has Dr. Antonio Lázaro-Reboll, author of Spanish Horror Film discussing the Basque Witch Trials.

You can order this set from Severin.