Author Archive: Retro

Obscure chiller about a masked killer named “The Phantom” who escapes from prison to terrorize the populace. It’s up to an intrepid reporter and the DA’s daughter to get to the bottom of things. Written by Alvin J. Neitz (Alan James). Dir. Alvin J. Nietz

One of Dir. Francis Ford Coppola’s first films, which he also wrote. In this gothic horror story, a crazy Irish family are murdered in various ways in order for someone to collect a large inheritance.

Voodoo lady joins forces with a disgruntled turpentine factory employee to seek revenge on the man that did them wrong. Dir. Marshall Neilan.

TV series hosted by Boris Karloff

Mad scientist tries to improve the average soldier with injections of wolf’s blood, which of course results in a hairy, toothy monster. Dir. Sam Newfield

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