Dario Argento‘s Dracula 3D makes its Blu-ray debut in Italy on March 27th from Sony. 2D, 3D and English language versions are included. Extras include backstage footage, interviews and a Claudio Simonetti promo.

The banshee is a female spirit in Irish mythology, usually seen as an omen of death and a messenger from the Otherworld.

In legend, a banshee is a fairy woman who begins to wail if someone is about to die. In Scottish Gaelic mythology she is known as the bean sìth or bean-nighe and is seen washing the blood-stained clothes or armour of those who are about to die. Alleged sightings of banshees have been reported as recently as 1948. Similar beings are also found in Welsh, Norse and American folklore.

The story of the banshee began as a fairy woman keening at the death of important personages. In later stories, the appearance of the banshee could foretell death. Banshees were said to appear for particular Irish families, though which families made it onto this list varied depending on who was telling the story. Stories of banshees were also prevalent in the West Highlands of Scotland.

The banshee can appear in a variety of guises. Most often she appears as an ugly, frightening hag, but she can also appear as a stunningly beautiful woman of any age that suits her. In some tales, the figure who first appears to be a “banshee” is later revealed to be the Irish battle goddess, the Morrígan.

Although not always seen, her mourning call is heard, usually at night when someone is about to die and usually around woods. In 1437, King James I of Scotland was approached by an Irish seer who was later identified as a banshee who foretold his murder at the instigation of the Earl of Atholl. There are records of several prophets believed to be incarnate banshees attending the great houses of Ireland and the courts of local Irish kings. Banshees are usually seen by a person who is about to die in a violent way such as murder.

In some parts of Leinster, she is referred to as the bean chaointe (keening woman) whose wail can be so piercing that it shatters glass. In Kerry in the southwest of Ireland, her keen is experienced as a “low, pleasant singing”; in Tyrone in the north, as “the sound of two boards being struck together”; and on Rathlin Island as “a thin, screeching sound somewhere between the wail of a woman and the moan of an owl“.

The banshee may also appear in a variety of other forms, such as that of a hooded crow, stoat, hare and weasel - animals associated in Ireland with witchcraft.

The banshee has appeared in just a few films such as Cry of the Banshee (1970) and Banshee!!! (2008). Punk/gothic/pop band Siouxsie and the Banshees took their name from the aforementioned 1970 film.

Wikipedia

Gossamer is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. The character is a hairy, red monster. His rectangular body is perched on two giant tennis shoes, and his heart-shaped face is composed of only two oval eyes and a wide mouth, with two hulking arms ending in dirty, clawed fingers. The monster’s main trait, however, is bright uncombed red hair. In fact, a gag in the 1980 short Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century lampoons this by revealing that Gossamer is, in fact, composed entirely of hair. He was originally voiced by Mel Blanc and has been voiced by Joe Alaskey, Jim Cummings, and Dee Bradley Baker.

The word “gossamer” means any sort of thin, fragile, transparent material — in particular, it can refer to a kind of delicate, sheer gauze or a light cobweb. The name is meant to be ironic, since the character is large, menacing, and destructive.

Animator Chuck Jones introduced the monster character in the 1946 cartoon Hair-Raising Hare. In it, Bugs Bunny is lured to the lair of a mad scientist as food for Gossamer. The monster (unnamed here) serves as the scientist’s henchman. Part of this plot was repeated in the 1952 Jones cartoon Water, Water Every Hare, in which the monster’s character was referred to as “Rudolph”. The mad scientist in need of a live-brain for his giant robot, released Rudolph from his chamber for a mission to capture Bugs Bunny in order to obtain a living brain, to which Rudolph showed a sudden burst of joyousness and quickly set out when the mad scientist promised the reward of “spider goulash” for capturing the rabbit.

Gossamer has also appeared in a cameo role in a number of recent Warner Bros productions. He appeared in 1990s episodes of  Tiny Toon Adventures, including a prominent role in a Frankenstein parody segment in the Tiny Toons Night Ghoulery special. He appears briefly in the 1996 movie Space Jam (in a car before the big game and after Bugs gets crushed by one of the Monstars). Gossamer appeared in the Aaahh!!! Real Monsters episode “Monsters are Real” where he was shown as one of the best monsters to scare people and animals. He appears in the Videogame Looney Tunes Collector Alert as a boss in the Count’s Castle.

Most recently, Gossamer was one of the Warner Bros characters reinvented for the 21st century in the 2011 The Looney Tunes Show.

Wikipedia

“Sometimes I make movies which don’t interest me too much and after, with the money, I make the movies I want to make.”
Joe D’Amato

Italy’s king of trash sinema, Joe D’Amato spent most of his career locked into exploitation filmmaking. Some of his 70s films are very forthright and he would eventually find financial success during the late 90′s as the director of hardcore costume epics, only for his life to be cut short in 1999, when he died of a heart attack.

D’Amato – real name Aristide Massacessi – first entered the film industry in 1952, working as a stills photographer, and graduated to become a respected director of photography in the expanding Italian film world of the 60′s and early 70′s. Given the low opinion many critics have of his work, it’s significant to note that he was a well-respected DP. He worked on a variety of Italian productions in the late Sixties and early Seventies, ranging from the softcore More Filthy Canterbury Tales (in 1972) to the superior horror film The Antichrist, directed by Alberto De Martino in 1974. In subsequent years, these two genres would come to dominate his work.

The early Seventies also saw D’Amato directing his first films, although it would take a while for this to be publicly acknowledged. Spaghetti western Bounty Hunter for Trinity and female gladiator actioner The Arena were largely helmed by D’Amato, although he wasn’t credited as director. In the case of the latter  film, US director Steve Carver had begun the movie, and was still credited with it, but D’Amato had, in fact, handled most of the direction himself. Such an anonymous graduation from cameraman to director are not unknown in Italian cinema – Mario Bava did much the same – but D’Amato could have been forgiven for wondering if he would ever be credited for his work.

Significantly, the first film to be officially directed by D’Amato was a warped horror movie. Death Smiles at Murder is an efficient, if unremarkable, Klaus Kinski vehicle that showed definite promise, and certainly helped set him on the road which he would travel for the next two decades. Right up to the point that the market for low budget exploitation cinema collapsed in Italy, he would alternate between gory horror and softcore sex movies – often blurring the line between the two.

He’s still best known for his Black Emanuelle series, although he wasn’t involved in the first two films. It was this series which gave him his real break. Hired to takeover from Adalberti Albertini (director of the first two films), he suddenly found himself in control of a series of movies which had a guaranteed international market (Death Smiles on a Murderer had failed to secure distribution outside Italy). Under his guidance, the series would become increasingly outlandish and bizarre. The series also introduced him to Laura Gemser, who would become a regular performer in his films.

Laura Gemser

D’Amato would prove to have a certain flair for softcore, and these  films would be his most successful. In fact, they dominated his work in the Seventies – he would often shoot several Emanuelle films in a year. He also tried his had at a typically ribald Italian sex comedy (Ladies Doctor) around this time, but humour didn’t seem to be his forté. D’Amato was much more at home with brutal violence, and this began to evidence itself within the Emanuelle series. Emanuelle in America combined the usual softcore (and brief hardcore) love-making with genuinely shocking ‘snuff’ movie scenes. These remain the most realistic images of ‘snuff’ movies ever shot, and it’s unsurprising that  several people have believed them to be real (the fact that for years they were only available on nth generation bootlegs probably helped too!). This wouldn’t be the last time that D’Amato was accused of filming real murder…

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (aka Trap Them and Kill Them) was his final entry in the series and was a significant pointer to where his career would head next. As much a horror movie as an erotic one – arguably moreso, in fact – the film was extremely gory, and the first in a series of movies which capitalised on the success of Ruggero Deodato’s Last Cannibal World in 1976.

Beyond the Darkness

The end of the 1970′s and early 80′s saw D’Amato establish himself a director to watch for in the horror genre. Whilst Porno Shop on 7th Avenuemay sound like a sex romp, it is in fact a brutal, sleazy crime film with more than a few nods to the likes of The Last House on the Left and Italian imitators such as Night Train Murders and House on the Edge of the Park. Papaya was another jungle shocker, with the emphasis this time on voodoo, and Beyond the Darkness (aka Buried Alive/Blue Holocaust) was a remarkably sleazy study of murder and necrophilia. This film once again saw D’Amato attacked for allegedly crossing the line, this time by supposedly using a real corpse during an autopsy scene – well, it’s cheaper than special effects!

Anthropophagous

Like the work of many Italian directors of the period, D’Amato’s horror movies reached new heights (or plumed new depths, depending on your viewpoint) in gore. His two most notorious films of the time were Anthropophagous (aka The Grim Reaper) and its sequel Absurd. Both these blood-drenched shockers would branded  ‘video nasties’ and banned in Britain, and years later, Anthropophagous made newspaper headlines and prime-time TV news shows when British police claimed that it showed real baby murders! Absurd indeed…

D’Amato also continued with his Last Cannibals experiment of combining erotica with splatter during this period. The title of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead says it all, and the combination reached its natural conclusion in Porno Holocaust, which mixed hardcore sex and hardgore violence in ways which would be unimaginable now. At the time, fans were probably more surprised to see D’Amato shooting hardcore, but in fact, he’d been quietly making porn films for the domestic Italian market since 1980. Few of these films were seen outside Italy, and none were particularly great – D’Amato having shot them simply for money.

With the market for both softcore and horror drying up, D’Amato surprised many people by showing an affinity for sword and sorcery films. His two sci-fi movies of 1983 (2020: Texas Gladiators and Endgame) had failed to impress anyone, but Ator the Fighting Eagle was a surprise international hit – one of the last Italian exploitation films to have a major impact in the US market. It would spawn two sequels during the brief period that the genre was popular, and stands head-and-shoulders above every other Italian barbarian romp of the time.

The remainder of the 1980′s were spent shooting glossy softcore titles. The market for such films had been given a shot in the arm with the success and notoriety of 9 1/2 Weeks, and D’Amato struck box-office gold again with his blatant imitation, Eleven Days, Eleven Nights in 1985. In fact, D’Amato’s film was far superior to its overblown Hollywood inspiration, and proved once again that he was a genuine talent in the genre. The film was so popular in fact, that foreign distributors would change the titles of other D’Amato films shot at this time to create instant sequels – Top Model became Eleven Days Eleven Nights 2 simply because it shared the same director and star (Jessica Moore).

D’Amato had more success with Dirty Love (again inspiring sequels, both real and false), The Pleasure, Lust, Blue Angel Cafe and The Alcove. Less popular were his few horror films of the late Eighties. Killing Birds and Frankenstein 2000 failed to secure international distribution even on video. D’Amato did have success in the genre as a producer, giving Michele Soavi his first break when he produced the young director’s first (and best) film Stagefright. But the global market was changing, and Euro horror was proving increasingly hard to sell to the all-important US market. Worse still, his softcore films were no longer making money either.

Stagefright

Ever the pragmatist, D’Amato simply moved into an area he knew offered the chance to make money, and which he had a natural affinity for. He began to make a series of hardcore epics, often based on famous figures from literature and history. Often working in collaboration with porno fairytale king Luca Damiano, D’Amato built a sizeable reputation with these 35mm costume dramas, and although he didn’t take the adult film business too seriously, the acclaim heaped upon him must have been satisfying for a man more used to being described by critics as “the worst director in the world”. The films were international hits, and soon D’Amato was shooting one feature a month. Like much Italian porn, his films were films – he never shot on video. This relentless schedule from a director who was no slouch in the 1970′s and 1980′s has made him one of the most prolific film-makers of all time.

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

It was probably, in fact,  this frenetic workload that contributed to his untimely death from a heart attack, aged 60. He was working on the post-production of no less than five features when he died.

It was notably that the cult movie world genuinely mourned the loss of Joe D’Amato. Critics may have sneered at his work, but the fans knew better. D’Amato made some of the weirdest films ever, never took himself too seriously, and had a genuine love for the genres he worked in. He remains a much-missed figure on the scene.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

Bollywood Evil Dead (original title: Bach ke Zara) is a 2008 Indian horror film written and directed by Salim Raza. It is an unofficial remake of The Evil Dead (1982) .

Bach ke Zara looks like it could have come out only a couple of years after Sam Raimi’s original film. The only giveaway to its production year is the costuming and a horrific, and amazingly out of place, dance number featuring a mud smeared sexy lady and muscle men.

The plot of Bach ke Zara will obviously be familiar to fans of Evil Dead. It’s near identical, but features a handful of hilarious changes. Sunny and Raja – two cool guys – and some scantily-clad girl pals – Sweety, Nicole and Sheena (who is sometimes referred to as Tina) – take a trip to the country. Unlike Raimi’s version, they camp next to a lake rather than heading straight to the cabin. The characters take turns flirting and body-kissing each other while the rest watch.

Their bliss is interrupted by a spooky woman who entrances Sweety with a spooky song and leads her to a spooky cabin. Sweety breaks free from her trance and warns the others, who, rather cruelly, laugh at her repetitively. Then a crazy guy shows up, cackling like a maniac and warning the campers to leave. Instead, the idiots decide to investigate and discover the uninviting cabin.

Despite Sweety’s understandable protests, they begin to explore the cabin. Despite discovering a dead body, they stay and even play a few dodgy pranks along the way. The film then follows Evil Dead down to a tee with minor alterations – Sweety is “entwined” by trees rather than raped by trees, Nicole is stabbed in the foot or ankle (it’s offscreen) with a fork instead of a pencil (Evil Dead‘s most painful moment, in my opinion), and Sweety becomes possessed and is locked in a cupboard (I think) rather than a cellar. Sunny assumes the role of Ash towards the end of the film. Both Sunny and Raja cry a lot.

Bach ke Zara, as you’d expect, is like watching a dumber and cleaner version of Evil Dead. Still, it is rather entertaining watching Bollywood’s take on classic scenes. I’d imagine, despite being made thirty years apart, the budgets of Bach ke Zara and Evil Dead would be similar. While Bach ke Zara doesn’t quite stretch a limited budget like Raimi did, there are some surprisingly decent effects and make up on display. The possessed are gooey and gross, and a liberal use of fog machine is employed. There’s even a decapitation that’s only partly offscreen.

The real reason to watch this though is the laughs, and, while not the most sidesplitting Bollywood effort going around, laughs are abundant. Sunny’s gag-worthy flirting, the bug-eyed acting, music that violently halts when you least expect it – it’s all good stuff. There’s also an amazing use of English dialogue. I love it when characters in Bollywood films whip out occasional lines in English, and in Bach ke Zara entire conversations often devolve into nonsensical silliness. The hilarity peaks when Raja shouts at a possessed Sweety, “Shut up, you rascal!”

Bach ke Zara scores huge points for being far shorter than your usual Bollywood flick running at a respectable ninety minutes, and, with all its body-kissing and near-nudity, it’s sleazier than expected too. Better still, there’s hardly any musical numbers! (Although I must confess, I did miss the lack of shit songs after a while.) Bach ke Zara is not the only Bollywood film to rip off Evil Dead – there’s also Bhayaanak Mahal (1988), which takes an interesting approach to the infamous tree-rape scene – but it’s probably the most shameless.

Dave Jackson, Mondo Exploito

Frankenstein (also known as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) is a 1994 American horror film directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Robert De Niro and Branagh himself. It also stars Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, Ian Holm, John Cleese (Monty Python), Aidan Quinn and Richard Briers. The film was produced on a budget of $45 million and is considered the most faithful film adaptation of Mary Shelley‘s novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The film opens with a few words by Mary Shelley:

“I busied myself to think of a story which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror; one to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.”

The story begins in the year 1794. Captain Walton is leading a daring expedition to reach the North Pole. While their ship is trapped in the ice of the Arctic Sea, Walton and his crew discover a man traveling across the Arctic on his own. In the distance, a loud moaning can be heard. When the man sees how obsessed Walton is with reaching the North Pole, he asks, “Do you share my madness?” The man then reveals that his name is Victor Frankenstein and begins his tale…

“The monster has always been the true subject of the Frankenstein story, and Kenneth Branagh’s new retelling understands that. “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” has all of the usual props of the Frankenstein films, brought to a fever pitch: The dark and stormy nights, the lightning bolts, the charnel houses of spare body parts, the laboratory where Victor Frankenstein stirs his steaming cauldron of life. But the center of the film, quieter and more thoughtful, contains the real story…” Roger Ebert, full review here

Buy on Blu-ray | DVD | Instant Video from Amazon.com or DVD from Amazon.co.uk

“…Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a work of lavish dedication and skill, yet as soon as the creature is let loose the film becomes rather listless. Branagh, for all his craftsmanship, hasn’t succeeded in tapping the morbid core of the material, the feeling that Victor Frankenstein’s experiment in creating ”life” is really a mask for his obsession with death (indeed, he can no longer tell the difference). The key problem, I dare say, is the director’s performance. He plays Frankenstein with all the spirit he can muster, yet he’s too conventionally engaging — his Victor is a kind of fervid yuppie workaholic who never seems truly possessed of a dark side…” Owen Gleiberman, here

“Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a worthy attempt to give the story a big-budget makeover but ultimately it collapsed under the weight of its own pretentiousness, and it was further hampered by a lack of frights.” Bruce G Hallenbeck, The Hammer Frankenstein (Hemlock Film Books, 2013)

Buy The Hammer Frankenstein (includes other Frankenstein films) from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s Monster on Horrorpedia: Assignment Terror (Dracula vs. Frankenstein | Aurora Model Kits | Blackenstein | Bride of Frankenstein | Drak Pack | Flesh for Frankenstein | Frankenstein 1970 | Frankenstein’s Army | Frankenstein’s Daughter | Frankenstein’s Monster (Marvel Comics) | Frankie Stein | Howl of the Devil | I Was a Teenage Frankenstein | Jack P. Pierce (makeup artist) | Mad Monster Party? | Mego Mad Monsters | Monster Cereals | Monster Brawl | Shock Theatre Hammer Horror Trading Cards | Peter Tremayne (author) | The Spirit of the Beehive | Young Frankenstein

Wikipedia | IMDb

Nightmare City (aka City of the Walking Dead, Italian title: Incubo Sulla Cittá Contaminata) is a 1980 Italian-Spanish zombie film directed by Umberto Lenzi. The film stars Hugo Stiglitz, Laura Trotter, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Francisco Rabal, Sonia Viviani, Eduardo Fajardo and Mel Ferrer. Director Lenzi felt the film was not as much as zombie film but a “radiation sickness movie” with hints of an anti-nuclear and anti-military message.

American TV news reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) waits at an unnamed European airport for the arrival of a scientist that he is about to interview regarding a recent nuclear accident. An unmarked military plane makes an emergency landing. The plane doors open and dozens of zombies burst out and begin stabbing and shooting the military personnel outside. Miller tries to let the people know of this event, but General Murchison of Civil Defense (Mel Ferrer) will not allow it. Miller tries to find his wife Anna who works at a hospital as the zombies begin to overrun the city.

Miller and his wife escape to an abandoned amusement park that is also overrun with zombies. The two climb to the top of a roller coaster and are about to be rescued by a military helicopter. Miller then wakes up revealing the whole situation to be a dream. Miller also learns that today he is about to meet a scientist at the airport. When he arrives a military plane makes an emergency landing.

“Nightmare City might be the very first “running zombie” film, long before 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead made this the new standard. The film is extremely violent, has quite a bit of gore, and some unintended humor. In other words it’s a cheesy “B” grade horror film, that horror collector’s should have in their collections.’” Eddie Scarito, This is Infamous

” … a wild and bloody exercise in excess. The movie has its fans as well as its fair share of detractors. I think it’s an odd amalgamation of themes and ideas given a much larger scope than normally afforded these movies. It’s neither Lenzi’s best and far from his worst. It’s a favorite of mine and sports a great deal of ultra violent entertainment value for shock seekers and gore mongers alike.” Cool Ass Cinema

“Nightmare City also accomplishes what it set out to do with respect to nudity and gore. The zombies have a amusingly shameless compulsion to rip open the shirts of women before they kill them as well as a weird breast-stabbing (and on one occasion, breast-lopping off) fetish.” John Shelton, Bloody Good Horror

“It’s probably fair to say that Nightmare City will always be known for its particular tics (its militaristic, running weapon-wielding zombies), but Lenzi fully exploits them. His movie might be dumb, but it’s rarely boring, and there’s something to be said for any movie that can transcend its tone-deafness as well as this one. It’s probably the only film that considers the plight of aerobic dancers during a zombie apocalypse.” Oh, the Horror!

“You’ll probably forget the entire movie within a month of watching it, but it’s fun and you’ll get a lot of laughs out of it: terrible acting; zombies standing directly in front of the camera posing; a random dog literally playing with the zombies; the stupidity of the two main characters; the horrible makeup; multiple times people standing still then suddenly jumping into action; woman’s head exploding then in the next shot she’s dead with just a little bloody spot on her forehead; the TV that for no reason explodes into a huge fireball; the completely random harpoon gun and much more.” Dymon Enlow, Happyotter

Raro Video Blu-ray Special Features:

An interview with Umberto Lenzi

Original English trailer

Original Italian trailer

A fully illustrated booklet on the genesis and production of the film

New HD Transfer – Digitally restored

New and improved English subtitle translation

Buy Nightmare City on Raro Video Blu-ray | DVD from Amazon.com

Buy Nightmare City + Hell of the Living Dead bargain zombie double-bill on DVD from Amazon.com

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to Cool Ass Cinema for a couple of the images above.

WH

Curse of the Stone Hand is a 1964 (released April 1965) composite horror film consisting of new footage shot by opportunistic U.S. producer/director Jerry Warren (Teenage Zombies) that features John Carradine (as “The Old Drunk”) and Katherine Victor, plus heavily edited sections of two 1940s Chilean movies, both directed by exiled Argentine directors.

The segment known as “House of Gloom” is derived from La casa está vacía (“The House is Empty”), which was directed by Carlos Schlieper, whilst the other segment, “The Suicide Club”, is drawn from La dama de la muerte, (“Woman of Death”) helmed by Carlos Hugo Christensen, and loosely based on a short story by Scottish 19th century author Robert Louis Stephenson (Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Body Snatcher).

American Film Institute synopsis: “Hands sculpted in stone, hidden in the niches of an ancient house, are regarded as sources of a curse by the present inhabitant, a country gentleman addicted to gambling; and indeed he does go to an early grave after experiencing bankruptcy. The house then passes to another family, one of whose sons becomes obsessed with the hands. This son develops sadistic tendencies and, acquiring hypnotic powers, finds himself exercising a mystical control over a brother’s fiancée. She repels him, however, and in doing so breaks the spell. The hypnotist, turning to the stone hands, is killed.”

“The most interesting thing about Curse of the Stone Hand is what it reveals about Warren. It turns out he was capable of editing his material carefully and thoughtfully, when the mood struck him. It’s just that his storytelling instincts were all wrong. His repeated insistence that he had no other aim than to make a quick buck may or may not have been the whole truth; but in this particular case, he would have been better off doing his usual hatchet job. At least a laughably bad film would have left us wondering if he was a talentless hack or a misunderstood genius, the way many still wonder about Ed Wood. Curse of the Stone Hand seems to prove pretty clearly which category Warren belonged in.” Braineater.com

We are also grateful to Wrong Side of the Art for one of the images above and Braineater.com for providing the true nature of this “feature” as most sources incorrectly cite it being an amalgam of footage from Mexican and Chilean films, plus Warren’s own additional material.

Avengers Assemble is a 2013 American animated television series, based on the fictional Marvel Comics superhero team the Avengers, which has been designed to capitalize on the success of the 2012 film adaptation. Falcon (the newest member of The Avengers) is the main eyes and ears of the viewer as he fights evil and saves the world with his teammates (consisting of Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thor). Dracula appears, voiced by Corey Burton.

Super villain Red Skull brings together his team of power giants called the Cabal where his invitational transmissions are shown to have been received by Attuma, Doctor Doom, and Dracula.

Plot:

Dracula was an uneasy ally of Captain America back in World War II when HYDRA invaded Transylvania. In the episode “The Avengers Protocol” Pt. 2, the King of Vampires is seen receiving a holographic message from Red Skull to join his Cabal.

In the episode “Blood Feud,” Dracula has converted Black Widow into a part-vampire and sends her with a group of vampires to infiltrate Stark Tower where they attack the Avengers. After the vampires are hit by the UV lights and Captain America unmasks the disguised Black Widow, Dracula offers her life in exchange for Captain America’s life. Captain America suggests that the Avengers should go to Transylvania to find the vampire that transformed her.

In Transylvania, Dracula unleashes his vampire minions as he makes off with Black Widow. Captain America leads Hawkeye and Falcon into infiltrating Dracula’s castle. When Falcon and Hawkeye find Black Widow knocked out by Dracula, Captain America surrenders. Dracula states that he can get the Super Soldier serum from Captain America’s blood and gain enough power to destroy HYDRA. Before Dracula can suck Captain America’s blood, the Avengers attack and he ends up sucking Hulk’s blood instead. Hulk becomes a vampire version of himself!

Soon, the Hulk’s blood proves too much for Dracula since gamma radiation is similar to sunlight. Dracula escapes away as his castle collapses while Iron Man uses a synthesized version of Hulk’s blood to restore Black Widow to normal. A recuperating Dracula ponders Red Skull’s offer to get revenge on the Avengers…

Wikipedia | We are grateful to The Daily Marvelite for the image of Dracula and Flickering Myth for the image of the vampiric Hulk

Lokis Rękopis profesora Wittembacha (often called simply Lokis) is a 1970 Polish horror film directed by Janusz Majewski. It stars Józef Duriasz, Edmund Fetting, Gustaw Lutkiewicz, Małgorzata Braunek, Zofia Mrozowska and Hanna Stankówna.

Majewski won ‘Best Director’ for Lokis at the Sitges International Film Festival in 1971 (an honour perhaps ever-so-slightly diluted by being shared with Miguel Madrid for his endearingly dreadful Necrophagus aka Graveyard of Horror).

An emotionally withdrawn cleric, Professor Wittembach (Edmund Fetting), studying arcane eccesiastical texts at a remote Lithuanian country house, comes to believe local superstition about his aristocratic young host, the oddly intense Count Michael Szemiot (Józef Duriasz). Rumour has it that the Count, whose mother (Zofia Mrozowska) was mauled by a wild bear during pregnancy, was born only half-human, a possibility that seems more and more compelling as a number of strange events occur in the weeks before the Count’s wedding…

Based on a novella by the French author Prosper Mérimée, this is a carefully crafted piece of work, sombre and brooding, which downplays the more lurid possibilities of its subject and concentrates on character and setting. Thanks to the opulent mansion location and lush surrounding countryside it’s consistently beautiful to watch, and director Janusz Majewski creates a number of striking sequences making full use of the locale, through autumn into winter. The script is devoutly serious and the acting measured and restrained, drawing a handful of hard-to-like but nevertheless interesting characters: Professor Wittembach, whose politeness masks an air of superiority; the misanthropic Doctor Froeber (Gustaw Lutkiewicz), a physician staying at the mansion to care for the Count’s ailing mother; and the Count himself, whose haggard yet piercing eyes brood beneath a permanent frown. Last but not least there’s the Count’s mother, an hysteric locked away in an isolated tower-room, whose screams express a truth pointedly ignored by the urbanity downstairs.

Lokis (the title is a misspelling of the Lithuanian ‘lokys’, meaning “bear”) has much to recommend it to anyone who enjoys the more sober and stately aspects of the Gothic tradition. Gorgeous visuals and sophisticated characterisation aside, however, if Majewski had embraced the genre a little more vigorously the film would be much improved. There is a point in horror cinema at which subtlety shades into diffidence, and Lokis strays beyond it, unwilling to go for the jugular even as the story reaches its climax. At times it feels like the Polish equivalent of a Merchant-Ivory production, with too much time spent observing ladies dancing timorous two-steps, and a wealth of unnecessary chit-chat amid soft furnishings and antique furniture.

This is a shame, because Mérimée’s folk-tale is basically a progenitor for the werewolf sub-genre and a little more wildness would not go amiss. Lurking beneath the elegant surface is a rough-hewn allegory concerning the bestial nature of man versus the sobering force of civilisation. Tension is left to simmer until the very moment when civilisation concedes ‘right of way’ to animal urges – the wedding night. The Count’s inner beastliness is thus unleashed upon his pretty young bride (Malgorzata Braunek, star of Andrzej Zulawski’s The Third Part of the Night), lending the tale a Catholic dimension: such is the woeful power of sexuality that even the sanctified conjugal bed is too weak a vessel to contain it. Of course one may also feel that repression has so distorted the Count’s natural energy that the expression of it leads to destruction and madness. Sex is very much repressed: Doctor Froeber, for instance, shows Wittembach a series of drawings depicting the day the Count’s mother was ‘dragged away’ by a bear, though neither physician nor priest comment on the fact that the drawings have a distinctly erotic dimension, with the bear standing over a supplicant woman whose dress is ripped, exposing her breasts. If only the film had dramatised the encounter!

The erotic subtext is buried so far beneath the genteel surface of Lokis that one longs for an eruption of visual extravagance to match the rage of the were-bear. Instead, on the fateful occasion of the Count’s wedding night, the camera enters the bedchamber only after the damage has been done. Unlike another Polish film on a similar theme, Walerian Borowczyk’s The Beast (1975), the problem with Lokis is that the very repressiveness explored by the story is allowed to afflict the telling of the tale.

Mérimée’s novella, published in the Revue des deux Mondes in September 1869, has much in common with, yet predates, the celebrated antiquarian ghost stories of M. R. James. Mérimée also wrote “Carmen” (1845), used by Bizet as the basis of his celebrated opera. His story “La Vénus d’Ille” (1837) was made into an elegant TV movie by Italian horror maestro Mario Bava in 1979.

Lokis is available on DVD as part of a ‘Horrory’ 3-disc box-set including two more Polish horror films: Wilczyca ['She-Wolf'] (1982) and Widzaidło ['Apparition'] (1983).

More information about the film, including translations of contemporary Polish reviews and numerous pictures, can be found at Repozytorium Cyfrowe Filmoteki Narodowej (Digital Repository of the National Film Archive) – go to http://www.repozytorium.fn.org.pl/?q=en/node/8134  Filmoteka Narodowa

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Der Struwwelpeter (1845) (or Shockheaded Peter) is a German children’s book by Heinrich Hoffmann. It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about children. Each has a clear moral that demonstrates the disastrous consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way. The title of the first story provides the title of the whole book.

Hoffmann was primarily known as a psychiatrist and spent much of his career attempting to revamp the German asylums, trying harder than many of his predecessors to understand the troubles of the patients held within and working to reintegrate them into society. Having written poetry and satirical work for his own pleasure, he was convinced by friends to get some of his work published, the title in question being the snappily named Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder mit 15 schön kolorierten Tafeln für Kinder von 3–6 Jahren (Funny Stories and Whimsical Pictures with 15 Beautifully Coloured Panels for Children Aged 3 to 6) eventually titled ‘Der Struwwelpeter (or Shockheaded Peter) by its third printing in 1858, an illustrated collection of fiendish stories he had created for a Christmas present for his son one year. Though the success of the book convinced Hoffmann to continue writing books, only this work remained popular, even in Germany, a turn of events largely attributed to his scathing skepticism.

Each of the short stories within the tome offer the soon-to-be traumatised child the opportunity to glimpse various scenarios in which the consequences of making the wrong choice can lead to horrific results. The stories are as follows:

1. “Struwwelpeter” describes a boy who does not groom himself properly and is consequently unpopular.

In “Die Geschichte vom bösen Friederich” (The Story of Bad Frederick), a violent boy kicks kittens down stairs, pulls wings off flies, kills birds and then starts on humans and his pet dog. Eventually he is bitten by the dog, who goes on to eat the boy’s sausage while he is bedridden.

In “Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug” (The Dreadful Story of the Matches), a girl plays with matches, despite repeated warnings. Inevitably, it all goes horribly wrong and the girl sets herself on fire and begins to burn in surprisingly graphic detail, until all that remains are her ashes.

“Die Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben” (The Story of the Black Boys), Saint Nicholas catches three boys teasing a dark-skinned boy. To teach them a lesson, he dips the three boys in black ink to make them even darker-skinned than the boy they teased. A surprisingly forward-thinking tale, though the taunting of the boy as ‘inky blakc’, scarcely seems worse than the story’s description of him as a ‘woolly-headed Black-a-moor’.

“Die Geschichte von dem wilden Jäger” (The Story of the Wild Huntsman) is the only story not primarily focused on children. In it, a hare steals a hunter’s musket and eye-glasses and begins to hunt the hunter. In the ensuing chaos, the hare’s child is burned by scalding coffee and the hunter falls down a well, presumably to his death.

Perhaps the most famous tale, “Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher” (The Story of the Thumb-Sucker), a mother warns her son not to suck his thumbs. However, when she goes out of the house he resumes his thumb sucking, until a roving tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors.

“Die Geschichte vom Suppen-Kaspar” (The Story of the Soup-Kaspar, re-named Augustus in some English language versions) begins as Kaspar, a healthy, strong boy, proclaims that he will no longer eat his soup. Over the next five days he wastes away and dies, a harsh tale about broth consumption.

In “Die Geschichte vom Zappel-Philipp” (The Story of the Fidgety Philip), a boy who won’t sit still at dinner accidentally knocks all of the food onto the floor, to his parents’ great displeasure.

“Die Geschichte von Hans Guck-in-die-Luft” (The Story of Johnny Head-in-Air) concerns a boy who habitually fails to watch where he’s walking. One day he walks into a river; he is soon rescued, but his writing-book drifts away.

“Die Geschichte vom fliegenden Robert” (The Story of the Flying Robert), a boy goes outside during a storm. The wind catches his umbrella and sends him to places unknown, and presumably to his doom. ‘Bob was never seen again’, intones the final line.

Hoffman’s book forms the basis of a 1998 stage musical called Shockheaded Peter is a 1998 musical, created by Julian Bleach, Anthony Cairns, Julian Crouch, Graeme Gilmour, Tamzin Griffin, Jo Pocock, Phelim McDermott, Michael Morris and TheTiger Lillies (Martyn Jacques, Adrian Huge and Adrian Stout) the production combines elements of pantomime and puppetry with musical versions of the poems with the songs generally following the text but with a somewhat darker tone. Whereas the children in the poems only sometimes die, in the musical they all do. Commissioned by the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds and the Lyric Hammersmith in West London, the show debuted in 1998 in Leeds before moving to London and subsequently to world tours.

Daz Lawrence

Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby is a 1976 TV movie directed by Sam O’Steen, and a sequel to the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby (which O’Steen edited). It has little connection to the novel by Ira Levin, on which the first film was based. It stars Stephen McHattie, Patty Duke Austin, George Maharis, Broderick Crawford, Ruth Gordon, Ray Milland and Tina Louise.

A coven are preparing for a ritual, only to discover that Adrian (Rosemary’s baby), who is now eight years old, is missing from his room. Knowing Rosemary must be responsible for this, the coven members use her personal possessions to enable the forces of evil to locate her. Rosemary and Adrian are hiding in a synagogue for shelter. While hiding there, supernatural events begin to affect the rabbis. However, as they are seeking sanctuary in a house of God, the coven is unable to affect them.

The next morning, Guy (George Maharis), who is now a famous movie star, gets a call from Roman Castevet. Roman informs Guy that both Rosemary and Adrian are missing and that Rosemary may attempt to contact him. Later that night, Rosemary and Adrian are sheltering in a bus stop. Rosemary makes a phone call to Guy, while Adrian plays with his toy car nearby. As soon as Guy answers the phone, Rosemary immediately issues instructions on how to send her money. Outside, some local children start teasing Adrian and bullying him by stealing his toy car. Suddenly, in a fit of rage, Adrian knocks the children unconscious to the ground. Attempting to flee, the pair are accosted by Marjean, a prostitute who was witness to the incident. Marjean offers them to hide the pair in her trailer…

“Everything involving Duke and her young child on the run from evil Satanists is cheaply done but automatically fun. Flash-forwarding the “action” years into the future is a mistake that the film should never have attempted in the first place. Lizard-faced Stephen McHattie is well cast as the adult demon seed Andrew/Adrien, but has little to do but act confused. Ray Milland is a great pick to take over for the deceased Sidney Blackmer as cult leader Roman Castevet, but it doesn’t make up for the sinful waste of a downgraded returning Ruth Gordon as wife Minnie, who rarely does more than echo her husband.” Kindertrauma

“Suffering from such maladies as a psychotic script, some stilted acting, and sub-par special effects (whenever such things are attempted) you may correctly assume that this sequel to Roman Polanski’s 1968 suspense film does not live up to its heritage. What a pleasant surprise, then, to find that this ultra-obscure sequel to a horror classic is a wacky 70s Doom film full of hallucinogenic images and a constantly downbeat tone.” Groovy Doom

“The acting, directing, writing, pacing, and climax where all horrendously bad. There is not one redeeming thing going for the film (and for a laugh, it tries to recreate the famous rape scene from the first film). It’s just sad to watch. Stick with the original, and count your blessings if you haven’t seen this.” Karmic Cop

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to VHS Collector for the video sleeve image

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a song that originally appeared on The Black Album’ (1980) by British punk/psychedelic/gothic rock band The Damned. A somewhat sombre song that revealed the band’s growing musical diversity and interest in gothic horror (as was the epic track ‘Curtain Call’), it was released a single in Europe and the USA (on IRS).

I’m normal outside, he’s evil inside
I’m Dr. Jekyll and he’s Mr Hyde
I try to be true, he tries to be cruel
I’ll hold you gently but he’ll smother you

My clothes will impress you
And my claws will undress you
I’m normal outside, he’s evil inside
I’m Dr. Jekyll and he’s Mr Hyde

I want what’s right
He walks in the night
Searching for sin in his
Decadent life

My charms will beguile you
And my arms will defile you
Me, I’m on the side of the angels
But the Devil is my best friend

Sin is a way of life
Saints are for suckers
Welcome to the underworld
I start where nightmares end

Two for the price of one
Two, for the price of one
I’m normal outside, he’s evil inside
I’m Dr. Jekyll and he’s Mr Hyde

I try to be true, he tries to be cruel
I’ll hold you gently but he’ll smother you
My clothes will impress you
And my claws will undress you

Buried Alive (aka Edgar Allan Poe’s Buried Alive) is a 1990 film, directed by former porn specialist Gerard Kikoine [Gérard Kikoïne] (Edge of Sanity) from a screenplay by Jake Chesi and Stuart Lee, based very, very loosely on the work of Edgar Allan Poe (scenes such as young naked women taking a communal shower being an example of the non-Poe content). It stars Robert Vaughn, Donald Pleasence and John Carradine in his final performance. Other cast members are Karen Witter, ex-adult movie star Ginger Lynn Allen, Nia Long, William Butler (director of Madhouse (2004), Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver) and Arnold Vosloo. It was produced by Harry Alan Towers, Avi Lerner and John Stodel. Not to be confused with Frank Darabont’s 1990 TV movie.

A young woman goes to teach at the Ravenscroft Institute, a girls’ school overrun by ants and staffed by various ex-mental patients. Spurred on by a series of horrific hallucinations, she begins to investigate the mysterious disappearances of several students…

“Higher on gore than nudity (there is a requisite school shower scene as well as a couple topless flashes during the basement party), the R-rated violence seemed to play out intact on one of the recent viewings I caught of the film on revenue-sharing digital channel THIS-TV (the full feature is also on Hulu courtesy of MGM). Ultimately, Buried Alive is less interesting as a film than as a point of intersection of exploitation film history for Harry Alan Towers, Kikoine (who edited a number of Jess Franco films not produced by Towers), Cannon Films and executive producer Avi Lerner (who also produced the dreadful South African supernatural slasher The Stay Awake).” Eric Cotenas, DVD Drive-In

“Director Gérard Kikoïne helmed the 1989 thriller Edge of Sanity, a take on the Jekyll and Hyde story starring Anthony Perkins. Here, he attempts to bring the mood of Poe’s stories to this melodramatic thriller, but black cats and spooky shadows are basically the extent of this connection. Before each murder comes a new horror for Janet: images of hands dragging her underground, ants covering the floor and a suffocating live burial. Unfortunately, the real kills are few and far between the endless scenes of exposition. Tension is non-existent. The movie never gives viewers a chance to realize a character is in danger, and is instead content to kill them at random. The kills aren’t jump-scene scary either; they just come out of nowhere. For example, in the film’s opening scene, the killer calmly walks up to his victim and performs one of the least convincing beatings ever captured on film. The only bright spot is an out-of-nowhere death by electric mixer that is both sadistic and gory.” William Harrison, DVD Talk

Wikipedia | IMDb

in lurid production-still colour…

and glorious black-and-white…

The creatures commonly referred to as ‘the Brains of Morphoton’ appeared in “The Velvet Web”, episode two of the 1964 Doctor Who story The Keys of Marinus starring William Hartnell as the Doctor. Unnamed in the story, they were featured only once in the classic series and have so far not been invited back in the revived version. The story was written by Terry Nation, who had recently penned the first ever Dalek story, and for the devious cerebellums of Morphoton he drew imagery from such classic horror films as Donovan’s Brain (1953) and Fiend Without a Face (1958).

In episode one, the TARDIS materialises on a small rocky island surrounded by a sea of acid on the planet Marinus. The Doctor and his grand-daughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford), accompanied by schoolteachers Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), enter an imposing black tower on the island where they meet an unscrupulous lawmaker, Arbitan (George Colouris). He prevails upon them to seek the five keys of the Conscience of Marinus, a giant supercomputer which, when working properly, governs the minds of the populace and prevents evil thoughts. The keys are scattered in hidden locations across Marinus and the TARDIS occupants must find them, a quest which leads them first to the city of Morphoton. In episode two (“The Velvet Web”), the time travellers are greeted by a race of men and women who seem to live a life of idle luxury. The food is abundant, the fruit juice flows freely, and the Doctor and his companions are assured that their every wish can be granted. It all seems too good to be true…

And of course, it is. During the night, the time travellers are placed even deeper under the influence of a mind-altering device that was activated on their arrival, clouding their minds to the truth of Morphoton. Barbara however, escapes hypnosis when the device placed on her forehead slips off. What follows the next morning is a well-directed and quite chilling scene in which Barbara wakes to find that the luxurious chamber of the night before is just a filthy ruin, the fine goblets merely chipped mugs. The sequence is filmed with a subjective camera for Barbara’s point of view, with the camera swapping back and forth between her perception and the Greco-Roman fantasy of the others.

Barbara runs away from her brainwashed friends and discovers that Morphoton is in fact governed by four monstrous disembodied brains with eyes protruding on elongated stalks. The creatures live inside huge bell jars and communicate through an electronic speaker system. “We are the Masters of this place. Our brains outgrew our bodies; it is our intelligence that has created this whole city but we need the help of the human body to feed us and to carry out our orders,” they explain. As you may have guessed from the shameless nominative determinism of Nation’s scripts, it turns out that the residents of Morphoton have been enslaved in their, er, sleep by a mesmeric device called a Mesmeron, which subjugates the will of the humanoids enabling the brain creatures to exploit them for their labour. “The human body is the most flexible instrument in the world, no mechanical device could reproduce its mobility and dexterity,” one declares, with a lipsmacking relish impressive for a creature with no lips. This paean to human bodily excellence is slightly undercut, however, as Barbara attacks the four jars with a spanner but succeeds in shattering just one; luckily the other brains scream, their eyestalks wilt, and all four of them die, so presumably they are a gestalt organism; kill one and you kill them all. (Either that, or Jacqueline Hill was asked not to shatter the bell jars in order to save money.)

The brains and their apparatus were designed by the BBC’s Raymond Cusick and made by Shawcraft Models, a company whom the BBC Props Department habitually hired to handle construction (Shawcraft built the first Daleks, along with other early monsters like the Zarbi).

Transmitted on 18 April 1964, “The Velvet Web” scored a huge audience of 9.4 million viewers, almost three million more than watched Stephen Moffat’s highly regarded David Tennant Doctor Who episode “Blink” (2007). It’s a little known fact that this makes the Brains of Morphoton officially more popular than the Weeping Angels.

The Brains of Morphoton may not have enjoyed a second appearance in Doctor Who – yet - but perhaps they are the same creatures encountered by Captain James T. Kirk in the 1968 Star Trek episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion”?

Other cousins of the Morphoton brains appear in The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) and The Curious Dr. Humpp (1968).

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Monsturd is a 2003 American comedy horror film co-written and co-directed by Rick Popko and Dan West. It stars Paul Weiner, Beth West, Dan Burr, Brad Dosland, Dan West, Rick Popko and Hannah Stangel.

Plot:

Butte County: Jack Schmidt, a serial killer, escapes from a maximum security prison. Meanwhile, Dr. Stern of chemical company Dutech is conducting ‘evil experiments’ and covering up his mistakes when colleagues are fatally contaminated. The FBI corner escaped convict Schmidt and gun him down in a sewer tunnel, where he falls into a pool of toxic chemicals dumped by Dr. Stern. The apparently lethal combination of faeces and the dumped chemicals actually transforms him into a half human, half faeces creature, a monsturd, who goes on a killing rampage. Meanwhile, the town’s annual Chilli Cook-Off is impending and a serious blow out is expected…

Reviews:

‘Films like Jack Frost (killer snowman), Killer Tongue (sinful oral appendage), and Killer Condom (‘nuff said) have pushed the envelope of terror ticklishness into the patently absurd, but Monsturd sets a brand new skidmark in fright flick tomfoolery. Showing a sense of style, a commitment to clever cinema and a brand of humour far more developed than your normal labor-of-love videodrome, this is one of the best, more entertainingly satirical monster movie massacres ever created. Like Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker and some of Troma’s more “toxic” titles, Monsturd gets it all correct: atmosphere, references, and wickedly witty execution. It can occasionally lapse into retarded toilet humour, but what do you expect from a movie with an evil entity of excrement as its lead character?’ Bill Gibron, PopMatters

‘Yes, the plot is dumb. Yes, some of the acting is amateur-ish. Yes, it’s a movie about poop… but there is something really fun about this. It’s a total gross out flick with a ton of legitimately funny, well done dick/fart/poop humor. Reminds me a lot of a Troma flick. Only gripe I have is how similar it is in plot to Jack Frost… you know… but… with POOP.’ Camp Movie Camp

‘You may be shocked to hear this, but despite a concept tailor made for some major league gross-out film Monsturd is not loaded with wall-to-wall gross-out gags or an endless stream of poop jokes. While it definitely has more than its fair share of those, the grossest being the world’s longest vomiting scene, most of the humour is a bit more subtle – and dare I say smarter… ‘ Jon Condit, Dread Central

Buy Monsturd on DVD | Instant Video from Amazon.com

Choice dialogue:

‘How about you sit on my face and make me look like a glazed doughnut?’

‘What on earth would you need a million flies for?’

‘I’d like to get to the bottom of this little mystery…’

‘A giant No.2 killed my daddy!’

‘How do you kill a Shit Man?’

IMDb