Author Archive: Retro

God and Satan are on a train discussing the fate of three individuals. The stories of the people in question are told in a trio of very strange vignettes. One involves an insane asylums with some very interesting treatment plans. Another involves a ‘death club’. The final story shows us the adventures of a server of Satan. This is a strange movie.

Spooks and a cannibalistic killer terrorize a group of campers.

Documentary about the history of witchcraft, told in a variety of styles. Bizarre, visually arresting, even 80 years later.
In one scene we see witches concocting potions using the body parts of corpses from the gallows. One witch walks in carrying a bundle of sticks, and undoes the bundle revealing a decomposed human hand hidden inside.

Director Benjamin Christensen appears as a leering, tongue-wagging Satan, with very realistic makeup. The witches are shown with the Devil and his minions performing various acts of sacrilege and perversion that must have been extremely shocking at the time the movie originally appeared, and would be offensive to many people still. The film was banned for many years because of the depiction of these acts (not to mention the occasional nudity), as well as sacrileges performed by nuns and monks. There are some stop-motion animation sequences (pre-Harryhousen, no less) that are very good, especially for the time.

An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.

In Medieval France a warlock is be-headed and his wife tortured and executed. Hundreds of years later an isolated group of people discover his head buried on their property. Soon it comes back to life, possessing people and using them to commit sacrifices and to search for the rest of his body. Hearts ripped out, disemboweling, decapitation you name it.

Egyptologist insists on being buried with a rare jewel that has resurrection powers. If it’s not in his crypt, he promises he’ll seek revenge. Dir. T. Hayes Hunter

There is panic throughout the nation as the dead suddenly come back to life. The film follows a group of characters who barricade themselves in an old farmhouse in an attempt to remain safe from these flesh eating monsters.

Savage’s starring debut as a misunderstood mama’s boy with a homicidal bent.

England 1795: the young Catherine just married Charles Fengriffen and moves into his castle. She becomes victim of an old curse that lays on the family. On her wedding night she’s raped by a ghost and gets pregnant.