Author Archive: Retro

Kurt Menliff is a ruthless and sadistic 19th Century nobleman who returns to his seafront castle home after years of wondering. He finds himself immediately at odds with his invalid father, a Count, as well as Kurt’s spineless younger brother Christian, whom is married to Kurt’s cousin and former lover Nevenka. When Kurt is found in his room on the next night, murdered, suspicion falls on everyone which gets more complicated when Nevenka begins seeing his ghost (real or imaginary?) haunting the castle supposedly wanting revenge against his killers.

This is probably the best (or at least unique) of Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s film. What sets this film apart is that the first third of the film, dealing with reincarnation, is genuinely interesting, with fairly good dialog, acting and a genuine sense of atmospheric strangeness. The dream sequences are unique for their time and are quite effective. Sadly, once the film moves to Africa, the film grinds to a halt. Only the downbeat ending lives up to the promise of the first part of the film, but this film shows that Wood did have his moments. Probably the best part of the film is its unique score by Les Baxter. The music combines Baxter’s trademark exotica with a genuine vein of unhealthy, yet bittersweet, romanticism that is truly singular and very effective. It might be interesting to some to know that Baxter used two cues from this film in his landmark exotica album PORTS [...]

When corpses drained of blood begin to show up in a European village, vampirism is suspected to be responsible.

Spoiled heiress Jerrie (McCalla) gets shipwrecked with two explorers on a volcanic island. Sharing the island is a Nazi scientist who extracts a substance from beautiful women which he thinks will restore the beauty of his disfigured wife. Unfortunately, the experiment’s subjects are turned into horrible mutants. Dir. Richard E. Cunha

An antique mirror reflects the image of a long ago murder committed before its gaze.

A photographer on an expedition in the jungle runs afoul of a voodoo cult.

Following a bank robbery in which a guard is shot, the police track the shooter to a circus, where suspicion falls on several of the performers. English dubbed. Dir. Werner Jacobs, John Llewellyn Moxey

In this plodding spectacle, an adaptation of Tolstoy’s 19th-century-set novel, a courageous mountain warrior leads his band in a battle against the Czar.

J. Carrol Naish, Shepperd Strudwick, Lynne Roberts