By the late ‘40s, the Universal film studio was experiencing severe financial problems. Worse, two of their most reliable cash cows, the Abbott and Costello comedies and their assorted monster pictures, were running dry. Earlier, the public’s flagging interest in their horror movies had been revived by adding more and more monsters per film. In a similar fashion, it was decided to toss A & C in with some of Universal’s famous fiends and wring a few more bucks out of them in the process. So Bud and Lou meet not only the Frankenstein Monster, but Dracula (the second and last time Bela Lugosi was to play the Count on film) and Larry Talbot, the Wolf Man. Larry had supposedly been cured in the earlier House of Dracula - guess it didn't take. The Boys are baggage handlers who deliver crates containing Dracula and The Monster to a local House of Horrors. Needless to say, the fiends are soon on the loose. Larry Talbot pops up, looking to destroy Dracula in between his usual bouts of lycanthropy. Meanwhile, Drac wants the Monster as a slave, and so plans to give him a docile, easily controlled brain. Guess whose brain he picks. This is a great flick. Watch for the classic ‘moving candle’ bit, stolen from the earlier Abbott & Costello flick Hold that Ghost, but still hilarious here. Notably, the monsters aren't played for laughs, one reason why this is still probably the best comedy/horror film ever. Watch for the great Dracula-into-bat transformation scenes, which are terrific. However, they do show Dracula casting a mirror reflection and crossing running water, two big vampire no-nos. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was the last gasp for Dracula, the Monster, and Larry Talbot in Universal films. Still, the film’s success resulted in a whole series of Abbott & Costello Meet... monster flicks (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, etc.). This remains the best. Watch, or rather listen, for a cameo by Vincent Price.

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THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES - (1971; UK)

No one does wry, campy horror like the Brits, as this mordantly humorous film shows. Doctors all over England are being killed in bizarre fashion - death by vampire bats, bees, hail, etc. The only link between the victims is that they were all on a team (with a nurse) that performed surgery on a Mrs. Phibes, wife of a world famous organist and scholar. The wife died on the operating table, and the husband was killed in a fiery auto accident while racing to the hospital. Of course, Phibes isn't really dead, though he was horribly burned during the accident. The ashen body found in the wreck belonged to his chauffeur. The not so good Doctor blames the surgery team for his wife's death. But instead of suing them for malpractice, he decides to murder them using the Old Testament plagues visited upon Egypt as a framework. Docs and nurses pop off left and right, despite the police's best efforts. Can they save anyone? Particularly anyone who’s a fan of the old Avengers TV show with Diana Rigg (who appeared with Price in the similarly themed and equally marvelous Theater of Blood) will love this film. Anton Phibes is deliciously played by the outrageously hammy Vincent Price, and remains perhaps his greatest role (along with Egghead on the old Batman series). Price reprised the role in Dr. Phibes Rises Again. If you have kind of a sick sense of humor, you could hardly do better than this.

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ALIEN - (1979; USA)

Many science fiction movies are really horror films in high tech disguise, and this monster-on-a-space-ship epic is a prime example. Pitched to the studio as "Jaws in outer space", it actually more strongly resembles an obscure 1958 flick, It! The Terror from Beyond Space. In what was to become the hallmark of director Ridley Scott's style, Alien is a beautifully visualized and atmospheric film, but one where plotting and characterization are rather sketchy. Few people, however, seem to find this much of a flaw in horror films. The brilliant visuals and monster designs were taken from the work of Swedish surrealist H. R. Giger, and were quickly and poorly copied in the many inferior rip-offs to come. Great cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Ian Holm, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright and John Hurt (who, in the film's most famous scene, disagrees with something that eats him). And, of course, Sigourney Weaver is Ripley, the role that made her a star (the part was originally written for a male). A lot of people, myself included, have a problem believing that Ripley would risk her life to save the ship's cat. Given her character in the film, though, I think her even less likely to send Stanton to search for the cat by himself, even if he was the one to let it escape. This film is gorgeous, and really should be seen on a big screen to get the full impact. (Since such opportunities are rare, though, the DVD version is probably the closest possible alternative.) Even the film’s title sequence is visually impressive. The film's famous tag line: ‘IN SPACE, NO ON CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM’. Weaver returned as Ripley in James Cameron's sequel, Aliens, which is perhaps a better film, but is really too much of a pure action film to qualify as a good Halloween flick. The third film, Alien³, I thought quite unfairly maligned because it went in a different direction then Cameron’s popular sequel. It does have a good Gothic feel to it though and shouldn’t be ruled out without a look. In particular, I think that the first three films together paint a convincing picture of an essentially dark universe. The fourth film, meanwhile, is kind of hit or miss. All the films are available widescreen on DVD, with Aliens probably being the best presentation. For real fans there is a boxed set available.

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ALONE IN THE DARK - (1982; USA)

This flick has one of the greatest B-Movie casts of the ‘80s, with Donald Pleasence, Jack Palance and Martin Landau in one gloriously cheesy film. Dwight Schultz (who played the crazy pilot Murdoch on TV's The A-Team) is a psychiatrist newly hired at a high-security asylum for the criminally insane run by New Age shrink Pleasence. Pleasence's theories for treating his charges are bizarre, to say the least, and he prefers that the murderous inmates be referred to as "voyagers". Lead psycho Palance is a paranoid vet who believes that Schultz has murdered his predecessor, a doctor quite popular with the patients, so as to take his job. The inevitable power failure occurs, and then death, death, death. Better than it sounds, Alone in the Dark is a funny, quirky film that suggests that the inmates are hardly nuttier than anyone else (including us). Pretty much everybody in this film is at least a little off, and of course having Schultz, best known for playing a lunatic on TV, as the sanest person in the film only reinforces this. There is one unfortunately cliche teenagers-have-sex-and-get-slaughtered sequence, but at least the girl is a real babe. Fine opening scene is slightly diminished due to similar stuff in movies that followed. The band The Sic F*cks appear as themselves.

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AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON - (1981; USA)

David ("I'm a Pepper") Naughton and pal Griffin Dunne are hiking through rural England when attacked by a werewolf. Dunne is killed and while Naughton survives, he has been bitten and is now a werewolf himself. Many, many people die in extremely gory fashion until Naughton is finally offed. The post-Halloween late ‘70s and early ‘80s marked an explosion of gratuitous gore such as had not been seen before or since. While horror films on average are certainly more graphic today than before Halloween came out, the novelty of hyper-graphic violence for its own sake has more or less run its course. The film's grim humor works best, with Dunne’s ever more rotting apparition appearing at intervals to try and convince Naughton to kill himself. It turns out that Naughton’s victims are trapped in an afterlife limbo, and can only be set free by his death. Notable are the eye-popping visual effects, with Naughton's initial transformation a show-stopper. Rob Bottlin deservedly won an Oscar for the f/x work. The movie's old-time rock 'n roll sound track is highlighted with ‘moon’ songs: "Blue Moon", "Bad Moon A 'Rising", etc. Cat Stevens, however, refused to grant the rights to his song "Moon Shadow", saying the movie was too "frivolous". Stevens, author of the hippie anthem "Peace Train", has since become a devout Muslim. Not only did he give up his name and material possessions, however, but he publicly called for Salmon Rushdie's death as a heretic during The Satanic Verses affair. "Here comes the Peace Train", indeed. John Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, is a filmmaker whose trademark is going over the top. His films, including The Blues Brothers, Animal House, and Trading Places, are more concerned with manic spectacle and weird plot devices than any sense of subtly or scale, fostering a sense of out of control craziness. Unfortunately, Landis was to apparently let his philosophy of movies overlap into real life, leading to the death of actor Vic Morrow and two children in a horrible helicopter accident during the filming of Landis' segment of Twilight Zone - The Movie. Documentation convincingly paints a director more concerned with getting more and bigger explosions in the scene than with safety, ignoring the warnings of members of his crew about the dangerous proximity of the helicopter, the actors, and the special effect explosions. The explosions did indeed knock down the 'copter, whose rotor blade decapitated Morrow and the child he was carrying, and crushed the second child as it crashed. Landis was indicted and tried for manslaughter, but acquitted. According to interviews with jury members, this was not because they necessarily believed he was innocent, but rather because the prosecution screwed up the case and didn't establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The mishandling of the prosecution is detailed in two books covering the accident and trial, Special Effects and Outrageous Misconduct. At one point during the proceedings, a bitter prosecutor who had been earlier dismissed from the case testified at the trial for the defense! Landis' sense of decorum was revealed when he invited all the members of the jury that acquitted him to a private showing of his next flick, Coming To America.

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ANACONDA - (1997; USA)

Apparently, the 1990s will be remembered by fans as a decade that provided a somewhat steady supply of decent if uninspired horror movies that tweak the genre’s conventions without really challenging them. There have been few classics (John Carpenter’s In The Mouth Of Madness is my only real nomination, although Scream was certainly the decade’s most influential horror film), and no Great Monsters of the Michael Myers, Alien(s) or Freddy Krueger variety. Instead, we’re being fed a diet of unambitious but intelligent (sometimes) and knowing fare. A solid example is Anaconda, a combo of (of course) Jaws and The Creature From The Black Lagoon. An expedition is heading down the Amazon on a barge, looking to shoot a documentary on a primitive tribe, the "People of the Mist". This includes such obligatory characters as the heroic anthropologist, his filmmaking girlfriend, the tough black guy, the young lovers and the pompous ‘star’ of the documentary. However, the script actually plays off our stock expectations for these characters in pleasing, if not brilliant, fashion. For instance, the anthropologist, who seems to be the putative hero, instead gets wounded early on and spends much of the rest of the flick in a coma, allowing his girlfriend to become the primary protagonist. The expedition gets into trouble when they pick up a stranded river ‘hitchhiker’, played in enjoyably hammy fashion by Jon Voight. As a general rule, I would advise against traveling down a spooky river with any former star of Deliverance. Voight, of course, is nuts, intending to procure a specimen of the river’s breed of forty-foot Anacondas, whatever the cost to those around him. After that, of course, it’s only a question of who will get killed by either a big snake or Voight, and who won’t. Still, the movie goes in enough unexpected directions to keep the savvy fan happy. The snakes, a combination of mechanical and computer effects, come off pretty well. They never seem obviously phony, although I suspect that the CGI (Computer Generated Images) snakes move quite a bit faster than any real snake of that size would. The only thing that didn’t seem quite right to me is that the snake would keep going after people directly after getting someone else. Wouldn’t it go off and digest it’s meal before looking for another? Other than that, the only annoying note was the constantly tilting camera angles, apparently the director’s effort to inform the audience that, hey, I’ve been to film school. A little of that goes a long way. Still, an entirely enjoyable outing that well deserved its modest success, helping to ensure more such movies down the line. Keep ‘em coming.

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ARMY OF DARKNESS - (1993; USA)

Army Of Darkness was held up from being released for the better part of a year. Amazingly, it was being used as a bargaining chip in a legal battle between Universal Studios and Dino De Laurentiis over the rights to make a sequel to Silence of the Lambs (!). Almost ten years down the line and counting, that sequel hasn’t even begun to be made yet (although the extremely non-prolific author Thomas Harris finally in 1999 completed Hannibal, the next book in the series). When Army Of Darkness finally hit theaters in February 1993, the third in Sam Raimi's ‘Evil Dead’ series turned out to be a much more mainstream, if still satisfyingly wonky, continuation of the age-old battle between the living and the living dead. Army Of Darkness was purposely released without the Evil Dead III tag. The first two Evil Dead flicks remain cult favorites, but had never done that well financially, and it was decided to more or less downplay the connection between the movies. The producers figured that the hardcore DEADheads would know it was a sequel and flock to see it anyway, and that it would be easier to sell the film to a wider audience by not loading it down with the baggage of being the third of an obscure series (this also allows the old fans the peculiarly nerdy pleasure of being "in" on the previous films while others remain ignorant). Also, while the first two movies were gory enough to get "X" ratings (this being before the NC-17 rating was created), Army Of Darkness was filmed so as to get a soft "R" rating, again broadening the potential audience. None of this really paid off. The film did mediocre business at the box office, although it seems to have done well on video. Army Of Darkness more or less picks up where Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn left off. (Since Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn was pretty much a remake of the first movie, Army Of Darkness is really the first sequel of the three flicks). A prologue covers the events of the previous film with some minor detail changes. The second movie had ended with Ash (Bruce Campbell), the series' main character, being sucked into a time warp and landing in medieval Europe, along with the chainsaw he wears in place of his hand (memorably dismembered in Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn), a shotgun and his Oldsmobile. Army Of Darkness follows that lead, with some minor changes. The biggest difference is the tone of the film; Evil Dead was a straight horror movie, Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn fluctuated between horror and humor, Army Of Darkness is purely a slapstick comedy. The dropping of "Evil Dead" from Army Of Darkness’ title makes sense in this context, because while the spirits were both evil and truly menacing in the first two films, in this film they're played for laughs, cracking funny lines and wreaking much havoc on the all-but-indestructible Ash. Ash is great at fighting demons, but pretty much a moron otherwise; give him a menace to fight or run away from and he's great, give him something to do that requires a bit of thought and watch out. Luckily, he can absorb about as much punishment as Moe, Larry and Curly combined. Ash's quest in Army Of Darkness is to find the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. The Necronomicon is the source of all the mayhem throughout the series, but it also contains the spell that will return Ash to the present. Unfortunately, when Ash comes across the Book he forgets the magic incantation that allows it to be safely removed (though his attempt to fake it is pretty amusing), and causes an Army of Darkness to arise to reclaim it. Ash then must decide whether to return home or aid those endangered by his actions (guess). The film ends with a fairly epic battle between the Living and the Dead, whose forces are led by Ash's evil undead duplicate. All ends well (a definite break with the previous films), though Ash ends up bringing the Evil Dead back into the future with him. This sets up further adventures, but the epilogue leaves one wondering if Ash purposely (though perhaps subconsciously) brought the Dead back with him so that he wouldn't be just the hardware manager at the local S-Mart store. (By the way, while using S-Mart as a parody of K-Mart seems pretty lame, the advertising slogan Ash spouts off, Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart! is certainly banal enough to have a frighteningly real-life quality about it.) Army of Darkness is now available in both a bare bones DVD version as well as a deluxe two-disc set containing the theatrical version as well as the Director’s Cut. Also included are Commentary Tracks and the film’s alternate ending. This ending is much more bleak, and while more in line with the previous films, was wisely dropped in favor of the finished film’s more amusing finale. (Raimi himself disowned the grim ending.) Here’s hoping that Raimi and Ash will be back for another visit.

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ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 - (1976; USA)

John Carpenter's first professional film (Dark Star is an expanded student film) was this gritty, hyper-violent flick, which still holds up as one of his best. An evil, albeit surprisingly multi-racial, street gang is after a man who killed one of their members. The man, nearly comatose, makes it to a police precinct house in the midst of being closed down, manned by a skeleton crew and commanded by a freshly minted officer. The gang members, having cut off outside communications, swear a blood feud, and the isolated cops and prisoners inside have to fight to stay alive. A lot of blood, no gore, and a ton of violence are ladeled out by this exciting flick. The zombie-like gang members swarming at the precinct add enough of an element of horror to make this a decent Halloween Flick, thought it functions as a tough action film as well. The film also boasts another good score from Carpenter, who writes the music for most of his films. Assault on Precinct 13 is Carpenter's homage to the Howard Hawks/John Wayne classic Rio Bravo, whose central characters are also trapped in a jailhouse. Carpenter used the name of Wayne's character, John T. Chance, in the credits as screenwriter, the type of inside joke often found in Carpenter's flicks. Warning: a scene that concludes at a ice cream truck is probably going to strike you as either exceedingly offensive, or very funny, depending on your sensitivities. Watch at your own risk. The film is available letterboxed on both video and DVD.

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ASYLUM - (1972; UK)

This pretty good English anthology flick kicked off a whole series of similar films (The House That Dripped Blood, Tales that Witnessed Madness, Tales from the Crypt, etc.). Sort of a mix of the all-time classic anthology horror film Dead of Night and the American EC comics from the ‘50s, the best of these were made by Amicus Films, and written by terror grandmaster Robert "Psycho" Bloch. These multi-storied films are the precursors of such '80s TV shows as Monsters, Tales from the Darkside, and HBO's Tales from the Crypt. Most of them were built around the framework of some sinister building; a house with a grim history, a store selling haunted curios, or in this case an insane asylum. Generally, past evil events would be relayed in four or five tales, and then something bad would happen to the person the stories were being told to for a ‘twist’ ending. In this one, a new Doctor arrives at the titled asylum and hears bizarre tales detailing the inhabitants' histories. Unsurprisingly, murder and the supernatural play prominent parts, and like those EC comics of old (of which Tales from the Crypt was one), mostly deal with some evil person receiving a grotesque comeuppance for their crimes. The Brits seem to have a better handle on the anthology movie format (check out flawed American examples like Creepshow I & II, and Tales from the Darkside & Twilight Zone - The Movie), and their films generally boasted more familiar faces. This one includes horror faves Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee and Britt Ekland, for example. For a good ‘asylum’ double bill, you could match this with Alone in the Dark.

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BAD TASTE - (1988; NEW ZEALAND)

This film lives up to its title better than any other film in this book. New Zealand helmer Peter Jackson (who later made The Frighteners and is currently directing the three part Lord of the Rings adaptation) combines the sensibilities of Sam ‘Evil Dead’ Raimi with the off-kilter, wacky humor often seen in Australian movies. This entire film is as funny, and as horrendously gory, as the ‘Fight with the Black Knight’ sequence from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Even people who are completely revolted by the film's unapologetic grossness will probably laugh in spite of themselves. The film follows a government group of four guys who protect New Zealand from Alien Incursions (1st Guy: "We're authorized to use deadly force to protect the Earth." 2nd Guy: "And the Moon." 1st Guy "Yeah, and the Moon."). In fact, it is in a way a precursor to the much slicker Men in Black. They are investigating a small town whose residents have disappeared. They eventually, after many gory adventures, learn that aliens have (literally) butchered the entire populace, planning to make humans the featured item in a chain of interstellar fast food places. The rest of the movie is spent watching the heroes as they grotesquely, and hilariously, slaughter the invaders. To give you an idea of the film's sense of humor, one of the good guys splits his skull open, and has to periodically stuff his leaking brains back in. Before the movie's over, .44 magnums, machine guns, chainsaws and a rocket launcher (in one of the funniest bits I've ever seen in my life) are utilized to repel both the aliens and the audience. Definitely not for everyone, but if you give it a chance, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

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BASKET CASE - (1982; USA)

Classic ‘Midnight Movie’ circuit fave. Ex Siamese-twins head to New York City to hunt down and gorily dispatch the quacks that separated them as children. Duane, the normal looking brother, carries his mutant sibling Balial around in a basket. Balial is a stunted but super strong freak (a head with arms, basically) who tears his victims apart with claws and teeth. Complications occur when Duane begins thinking of the normal life he wants to lead when their quest is complete. Balial becomes increasingly desperate and jealous, aware that Duane will ultimately leave him for a life with normal people that he can never have. Then Duane meets a girl, and the real trouble begins. The film quality is pretty raw and the special effects erratic, but the movie is entertainingly ladled with extra large doses of cartoonish violence. As well, the relationship of the brothers is strangely charming, much more affecting than you would think. And the squalid atmosphere of the flop house where Duane and Balial stay particularly stands out. Listen for Duane's line after Balial attacks his girlfriend, indicating that Duane too has left normalcy far behind. The brothers returned for the obligatory (and bigger budgeted) Basket Case II and III. Both feature a whole household of freaks, and contain some extremely grisly and disturbing sequences. Director Frank Henenlotter takes a partisan view of the brothers' misdeeds (and more so of the freak community’s depravations in the later films). While he doesn't pull any punches in depicting the brutality of their actions, you can tell he that he basically sides with the mutants in their ‘disputes’ with usually despicable normals.

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THE BIRDS - (1963; USA)

Alfred Hitchcock is perhaps the most revered and examined film director in motion picture history. Although known as the ‘Master of Suspense,’ Hitchcock, in his over five decades as a filmmaker, directed only two films that can rightly be defined as ‘horror’ (although Frenzy comes close). It is a testament to Hitchcock's abilities that these two films, Psycho and The Birds, were to become two of the most ripped-off films in cinema history. In spite of their vast differences in scale and theme, the legacy of both films is remarkably similar. Each became the model (actually, ‘template’ would be the more accurate term) for numerous ‘homages’: Homicidal and The Other for Psycho, Frogs and Kingdom of the Spiders for The Birds are some representative examples. Each would continuously ‘inspire’ new films for the next thirty plus years. Each contains one of probably the ten most familiar sequences in film history: in Psycho, of course, the shower attack; in The Birds, the silent gathering of crows on playground equipment behind the unsuspecting heroine. Most significantly, both would ‘father’ a brilliant film in the next decade, the ‘70s, that would launch a new explosion of similar, if lousy, films: Psycho begetting John Carpenter's Halloween, The Birds siring Stephen Spielberg's Jaws. Thus two of the most well represented Horror sub-genres in the last three decades, slasher flicks and animal-attack films, trace their parentage back to Hitchcock. This doesn't even take into account genre directors like Brian DePalma who have forged entire careers by ripping off the Master. Although it hasn't aged as well as Psycho, The Birds still much going for it, despite wooden acting from leads Rod ‘Stiff’ Taylor and Tippi ‘Stiffer’ Hedren. Indeed, Hedren’s chief contribution to film was to give birth to actress Melanie Griffith. Tippi plays a jaded, spoiled rich chick. To get back at total stranger Taylor for playing a practical joke on her, she follows him from San Francisco to his coastal hometown of Bodega Bay (John Carpenter later appropriated the town's name as the setting for The Fog). Soon after she arrives, strange incidents involving birds begin to occur, finally escalating into full fledged attacks on the town citizenry. The attacks are never explained, which adds to the suspense (most of the rip-offs to follow blamed pollution, particularly in that most ‘Green’ of decades, the 1970s). The film is mostly a series of ever more elaborately scaled set pieces: attacks at a girl's birthday party, at the town school, on the town itself, and finally the siege at Taylor's house, which obviously influenced George Romero's The Night of the Living Dead. The film's famously ambiguous ending clearly broke the ‘rules’ at the time, and Hitchcock was probably the only director who could have gotten away with it in a major studio release. Other than the acting, never a priority with Hitchcock, the film's major problem is the erratic special effects. The worst aspect is the back and side projection work, which by today's standards are pathetically bad. The strongest point is the sound effects used during the attacks: they're still quite disconcerting. Not a personal favorite, but there’s no denying its status as a classic.

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THE BLACK CAT - (1934; USA)

Boris and Bela’s first movie together, directed by minor cult director Edgar G. Ulmar, and it's terrific! Weird piece has Lugosi as an Austrian who has been a POW in a horrid camp since the end of WW I. He returns to Austria to hunt down former comrade Karloff, who betrayed Lugosi and his fellow soldiers, resulting in thousands of deaths. Karloff has built a bizzaro house on the sight of the battlefield where the dastardly deed was done. Bela calls it "the greatest graveyard in the world." He wants revenge for Karloff's betrayal, and knowledge of what happened to his wife and daughter while he was a prisoner. It turns out devil cult leader Karloff married the wife, and when she died, married the daughter! A young honeymooning couple is caught in the feud, and Lugosi and Karloff play a game of chess to see if they live or die. This is the kind of movie where, when the phone doesn't work, someone says "Even the phone is dead." Great, perverse stuff by director Ulmar, and a rare chance to see Lugosi as a good guy. Anyone who believes that Bela couldn’t act, by the way, should pay particular attention to the scene where he finds the corpse of his beloved wife preserved in a glass trophy case. It’s a great, restrained little moment. The title refers to Bela's pathological fear of cats. Another example of a title, and little else, taken from the work of Edgar Allen Poe. Highly recommended, it can be found on video with another fun Karloff/Lugosi flick, The Raven, or in newer additions by itself.

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BLACK SUNDAY - (1961; ITALY)

Obscure but very well regarded flick directed by Italian Horror Master Mario Bava and starring the Queen of Scream, Barbara Steele, the only woman to ever become a Horror Star. Steele is a witch/vampire in Europe who centuries ago had a spiked mask pounded into her face and was then encrypted by an angry populace. 200 years later, on Black Sunday, the day demons walk the earth, she and her servant are revived by a couple of nosey travelling physicians (talk about malpractice!). The undead twosome proceed to terrorize the locals, while plotting revenge on the witch's descendants, one of whom is also played by Steele. This was the first horror effort for both Bava and Steele, and probably either's best film, wonderfully stylish and atmospheric (just check out the scene were the witch escapes from her coffin). The film circulates on video with two different soundtracks, one the American release version and the other the British one, which has the original Italian score. As with most European horror, this film is more explicit than most American stuff of its time, but it shouldn't bother anybody these days. BONUS: Because it's foreign, you can watch it as a horror movie and still act elitist!

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BLOOD FEAST - (1963; USA)

The first Gore Film! Splatter pioneer Herschell Gordon Lewis started it all with this tale of Ramses, a worshipper of an Egyptian goddess (a mannequin) and a caterer on the side. He goes around collecting various parts of young woman. He intends to construct a body in this manner, in an attempt to bring his goddess to life. Any true gorehound should rush to rent this (or buy it, it's part of Drive-In Critic Joe Bob Briggs' Sleaziest Films Ever collection). Don't be fooled by this flicks' age, it's pretty darn sick, though the special effects of this ‘60s shoestring production of course don't quite match up with those of today's major studio gorefests. Lewis, though, shows a loving attention to his gore and mutilation that put later assembly-line efforts to shame (in a warped way, of course). On top of the gross effects, this is said to be ineptly funny in bad-movie fashion. Star Connie Mason (then a recent Playboy Playmate) went on to "act" in Lewis' masterwork, 2000 Maniacs.

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BLOODSTONE: SUBSPECIESES II - (1992; Romania)

An entertaining follow up to the stylish Subspecies, continuing the adventures of the monstrous vampire Radu. Beginning with a twist that is sure to shock fans of the first film, the film follows the resurrected Radu as he hunts down the now vampirized Michele to gain possession of the powerful Bloodstone. Michele's sister, Rebecca, shows up, and together they oppose not only Radu, but his sorcerous mother, mentioned but unseen in the first film. There isn't anything terribly original in these films, but they are really quite well made and should provide entertainment for even the jaded monster movie fan. The series' strongest point is Radu, a gross, Nosferatu-esque, but increasingly intriguing creation. As in the first film, the location shooting in Romania is a definite plus, though this film is shot more in the country's urban centers than in its countryside. The only problem I have with this is in the casting of the woman who now plays Michele. I realize that sometimes you can't get the original actors for the follow-up (and the important thing is that Anders Hove returns as Radu), but the actress now playing Michele neither looks or acts or even dresses anything like the character as shown in the first film. Plus, the new portrayer has ‘big’ curly hair, where in the first film Michele sported straight hair cut very short. Since the film starts apparently within a few hours of the last film's finale, this is particularly grating. The really weird thing, though, is that the actress who plays Rebecca, Michele's sister, looks and acts a lot more like the first film’s Michele, and you just wonder why they didn't cast her to play the part. Still, this is a fairly minor complaint, and so far these films are really quite fun. The next chapter is Bloodlust: Subspecies III.

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BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA - (1992; USA)

This is a prime example of a movie victimized by BTDS: Big Time Director Syndrome. This occurs when a major league director decides to slum and make a horror flick. They always think, Hey, they think those punk kids, Carpenter, Romero, made a horror movie?! I'll show 'em a horror movie! It's like asking a famous French Chef to make you a cheeseburger - he agrees to, but attempts to impress you by making the ultimate cheeseburger (I'll show 'em a cheeseburger!). By the time you get it, you find it's not really what you had in mind when you ordered it. Horror films, like cheeseburgers, are very basic. They're mechanisms designed to evoke elemental emotions and physical reactions: fear, tension, goose pimples, etc. Even the most inept filmmakers can make their audience nervous by tightening the field of vision in a shot, indicating to the viewer that there is something waiting just beyond what we can see. Also note that since the collapse of the Studio System, during which films tended to have a consistent ‘house’ style (such as the Universal monster movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s), the ‘great’ horror films, the ones that have survived the test of time and continue to be watched over and over, have almost invariably been made by young, ambitious filmmakers early in their careers: Night Of The Living Dead by George Romero (his first film), Halloween by John Carpenter (his second movie, not counting the expanded student film Dark Star), Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper (his first film), Jaws by Steven Spielberg (his second theatrical film), Alien by Ridley Scott (his second), The Evil Dead by Sam Raimi (his first movie), the list goes on. One of the few exceptions is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and it's instructive to note that even though Hitchcock was a major director, no studio wanted to fund the film. So Hitchcock largely funded the film himself and consequently it was shot very simply; in black and white and using the film crew from his TV show. In contrast, Hitchcock's only other horror film, The Birds, was much more elaborate and expensive, but doesn't stand up nearly as well as Psycho. Psycho started the snowballing blockbuster level box office for horror and science fiction films. Now a majority of blockbusters are fantasy films of one type or another, so when a ‘mainstream’ big name director attaches himself to a horror project, the studios are apt to fall over themselves throwing money at them. However, no one has ever made a great horror film with a gigantic budget (compare the new The Haunting with the Robert Wise original). Meanwhile big time directors tend to get so showy and ‘artistic’ that the audience tends to get distanced from the movie, watching to see what the director will do next rather than what will happen to the film's characters. Since horror films are supposed to get under your skin, to work on your conscious and, hopefully, your unconscious fears, distance is the last thing you want to elicit from the audience. Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Godfather auteur Francis Ford Coppola, now stands as the prime example of this syndrome. It's not that Bram Stoker's Dracula is a bad film, it's that it's not a very good film, and when you blow thirty million bucks on a film (quite a bit at the time) with a name cast and director, you expect a good movie. Instead, Coppola's film is a hollow, overwrought exercise in shallowness, all sizzle and no stake. And Coppola’s not the only problem. The neo-Brat Pack cast never manages to evoke Victorian England. Like Young Guns, which featured a cast of horribly out-of-their-depth ‘actors’ running around playing with horses and guns (I mean, we're talking about a bunch of guys who got blown off the screen by Patrick Wayne, for Pete's sake!), the Bram Stoker's Dracula cast is a bunch of young Thespians running around in period clothes and haircuts. This cast is generally more talented than Young Guns, but Coppola's screwy Hey, look-at-this! film technique buries whichever performances are capable of evoking the film's time period. Also, some of the actors, Keanu Reeves in particular, and Winona Ryder, at least here, are incapable of seeming to be from anything but a modern time period. The cast's one ‘old-timer’, Anthony Hopkins, is particularly a victim of Coppola's ignore-the-actors-there's-a-cool-special-effect-happening storytelling. Gary Oldman has the one standout performance as Dracula, but I found the film's take on the character so misconceived that even his performance doesn't quite work. Aside from obscuring whatever acting might accidentally occur, Coppola's image-driven technique makes the story difficult to follow. A good portion of the time you can't tell what's going on, and Coppola’s penchant for ‘neat’ images keeps drawing your attention from the movie as a whole. Not only can't you often tell what's going on, there are even separate images that you can't figure out. Rather than lending a ‘dreamlike’ quality to the film, it's merely confusing. For instance, Dracula appears in a number of different ‘transformation’ modes, but seldom with much logic. Why when he ravages Lucy does he appear in the form of a Wolf Man type? Who knows, but doesn't it look cool? Also adding to the strong smell of egotism wafting off the film was the attempt of Coppola and Screenwriter Jim Hart to pretend that this is the first authentic telling of the source novel (hence the title, Bram Stoker's Dracula). The movie is truer to the general structure of the Stoker's book, and also features characters usually cut from other film versions (though with good reason, as it turns out. There's so many people running around in this movie that not one of the secondary characters really has anything to do). However, Hart's script completely screws up Stoker's tale at its very essence. The Dracula of the novel was an evil demon, a veiled representation of unrepressed sexuality as a corruptive force threatening Victorian society. Of course, the more hip, modern reading posits the Count as a force of sexual freedom, liberating Lucy and Mina from the constraints imposed upon them by the patriarchal Victorian mores. This film simply presents Victorian England as already corrupt (Dr. Seward shoots morphine, Lucy is a slut, Mina reads pornography, Van Helsing is just basically a weirdo, etc.), so that by comparison Dracula emerges as a quasi-heroic figure. Instead of forcing Mina to drink his blood (to make her a vampire) by threatening to kill her fiancée, Dracula is reluctant to transform her; Mina is the one who insists. Also, the film trots out one of the hoariest possible clichés: Mina, it's revealed, is the reincarnation of Dracula's wife. Back when he was a mortal, she had killed herself upon hearing (falsely) of his death, this being the event that precipitated Dracula becoming a vampire. I literally groaned aloud when I recognized that Dracula's wife was played by Ryder and realized they were doing the reincarnation thing again. To reinforce the Dracula as hero thing, Van Helsing eventually declares that they (the vampire hunters) are "God's madmen", and Mina calls Van Helsing a bastard for ‘killing’ the Undead Lucy, implying that they are at best no better than Dracula himself. It's not just that this Politically Correct view of Dracula is so annoying, it’s Coppola and Hart's conceit that this is somehow innovative (while at the same time ‘true’ to Stoker’s novel, obviously a contradiction in terms). In fact, all of these ‘angles’ are somewhat tired and overused. Most obviously, the 1973 television film Dracula, starring Jack Palance, pushed both the Dracula/Vlad the Impaler (the historical figure Stoker partially based Dracula on) tie-in and the reincarnation theme supposedly new to this version. You also have to go back to the Christopher Lee/Hammer Films Dracula to find a flat-out evil Dracula (which was Stoker's conception). Since then, as society in a broad sense and the ‘artistic’ community in particular have become more secular, both Dracula himself and vampires in general have increasingly become divorced from the concept of the Undead as embodiments of spiritual corruption, seducing people into trading their souls in exchange for immortality. However, by removing the religious consequences of becoming a vampire, they become nothing more than a kind of superhero. Sure they kill people, but they never grow old, they have super strength, can change shape, are irresistible to the opposite sex (or the same sex, as the case may be), etc. In other words, once you take the idea of damnation out of it, being a vampire is cool, just one more sophomoric power fantasy. Not to mention the now cliché idea that getting bitten by a vampire causes the ‘victim’ to experience a super-orgasm, showing vampires to be the greatest lovers around. Sure enough, Bram Stoker's Dracula displays a relentless ‘eroticism’ that is ultimately rather tiresome. Is it any wonder that the best vampire flick of recent decades, Fright Night, is one of the few to still portray vampires in a traditional manner? Anyway, Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't a completely worthless film or anything, but it is pompous and stodgy. When all's said and done, it’ll become as forgotten as the Frank Langella Dracula, and Lugosi and Lee's versions will continue to rein as the archetypal screen Draculas.

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THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN - (1935; USA)

One of the only sequels (to 1931's Frankenstein) in film history to prove better than the original, The Bride of Frankenstein is also generally considered to be the greatest horror film ever made. Director James Wales' bizarre sense of humor is much in evidence here, matched perfectly with his expressionistic art design. Star Boris Karloff thought it is a mistake to have the Monster speak (as he did in the book), for fear of making him less unearthly. Still, Karloff gives his greatest screen performance here, the second of the three times he played the Monster. The Monster's small vocabulary was derived from a survey of words known by six-year olds in the studio's child care facility. Watch for a cameo appearance by John Carradine as one of the hunters who ‘saves’ the blind hermit from the Monster. Ernest Thesiger is the archetypal Mad Scientist, Dr. Praetorious, making the most of one of the great roles in horror film history. Elsa Lancaster plays both the Bride and Mary Shelly, and sports the famous, much parodied hairdo. As the greatest of the Universal classics, this film should top any Halloween film list. Watching the original Frankenstein first is helpful, but not necessary. A good double bill would be this and Young Frankenstein. Available on DVD, including a neat documentary feature on the film.

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BRIDES OF DRACULA - (1960; UK)

Terrific follow-up to Hammer's Horror of Dracula. Unfortunately, Christopher Lee refused to don the cape again, for fear of becoming typecast (he later resumed playing the Count in Dracula - Prince of Darkness). In spite of his noticeable absence, this is easily Hammer's second best vampire film, following only Horror of Dracula itself. Actually, the title is kind of a rip-off, because Dracula himself isn't in this film. Instead, Peter Cushing stars, returning to the role of Dr. Van Helsing, vampire hunter. Hammer's Frankenstein pictures, unlike the old Universal ones, centered on Dr. Frankenstein (also played by Cushing) as the recurring character, rather than focusing on one ‘Monster’. One assumes that if Lee had continued his moratorium on playing Dracula, the rest of the series would, like this film, have followed the adventures of Van Helsing as he traveled around hunting down the ‘Cult of the Undead’. If this film is any indication, it could very well have been a great series of flicks. (Hammer again tried out such a concept in 1972 with Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. While quite entertaining, it failed to make enough money to initiate the intended sequels.) The film opens with a beautiful young teacher traveling through that mythical time period all these movies take place in. She is lured to the sinister castle of the aged Baroness Meinster. There she learns that the Baroness' maniac son, the Baron Meinster, is being kept chained up, a prisoner. (Although it’s never referred to, his shiny ‘leg iron’ is obviously made of silver, a nice touch explaining how a shapechanging vampire was kept chained up, for those of us anal enough to wonder about such stuff.) The teacher, having obviously read way too many gothic romance novels, sneaks down to meet the Baron and decides after a few minutes of conversation that he should be freed. She steals the Baroness' key and unchains him. By this time you're shouting "Hey, you stupid bimbo, he's a vampire!" If you're ever in a horror movie, make sure to stay away from nosey, blundering characters like this. They usually end up getting a lot of people killed and then walk out themselves unscathed. People start dropping like flies after she releases the Baron, and she still doesn't figure it out. In fact, she later agrees to marry him! And when she arrives at the girl's academy she's to teach at, you look at all the young women and think "Uh, oh. Vampire buffet". This woman's a regular Typhoid Mary. In the previous film, Horror of Dracula, vampires couldn't turn into bats. Here Van Helsing (who had a whole scene in Horror of Dracula explaining that they couldn't) lamely notes "some vampires can change shapes." What, and Dracula couldn’t? Or maybe he was just too cool to want to turn into a bat of the glowing-eyes, flying-on-strings variety shown here. Brides of Dracula is slow in parts, but the ending is extremely exciting. The best part deals with the Baron biting and infecting Van Helsing, and how Van Helsing escapes becoming a vampire himself. Van Helsing in this and the earlier film is very much a physical vampire hunter, and when he's not warding off vampires with crosses he's most likely grappling with them. It's too bad Cushing didn't play the part again while in his prime; by the time he portrayed Van Helsing again, reuniting with Lee's Dracula in the abysmal Dracula A.D. 1972, they were both were a little too long in the tooth (no pun intended) to be convincingly athletic, and Cushing become more of a retiring, intellectual Van Helsing in the Edward Van Sloan tradition.

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BURN WITCH BURN - (1962; UK)

A University Professor's professional life is blossoming, but he learns that his new bride believes that his success is due to her - she's a witch who's been helping him magically. Of course, being a learned individual, he doesn’t believe her, becoming increasingly angry at her assertions. Finally, to prove her wrong, he destroys the totems she created to help him - and his life goes right in the crapper. It turns out that her magic was not only helping him, but actually providing protection from another more malevolent witch out to destroy him. The film has a great, exiting conclusion. As in the even better Curse of the Demon, we learn that those who dabble in Black Magic are playing for high stakes indeed, and can ill afford to lose. Two other adaptations of the source novel, Conjure Wife, have been filmed: Weird Woman, filmed in 1944, was the campiest and most fun of the generally dreary Universal ‘Inner Sanctum’ film series starring Lon Chaney, Jr.; and there was a reportedly lame '80s comedy version starring Teri Garr. Don't sweat missing that one.

CANDYMAN - (1992; USA)

Decent but coulda-been-better picture plagued by that most common disease of the modern horror film: the ‘shock’ ending that rides roughshod over the entire movie. Helen (Virginia Madsen), a University of Chicago student married to a professor, is researching a paper on "urban myths" with her friend Rebecca. She starts hearing stories about the Candyman, a mystical Black man with a hook in place of his right hand. His legend contends that he horribly slays those who invoke him by staring into a mirror and calling his name five times. The stories eventually lead the rather foolhardy Helen, dragging Rebecca along with her, to the Chicago housing project Cabrini Green, the real-life, ultra-violent urban hellhole. Helen is the kind of arrogant and foolish person who always ends up getting people killed in these kind of things. The women find that the residents fear Candyman even more than the gangs, and the blame for many of the violent deaths that occurs at Cabrini is laid at his feet. It turns out that in life, Candyman was Daniel Robitaille, the educated and artistic son of a rich ex-slave in the 1890's. Robitaille was hired to paint the portrait of a prominent white man's daughter, Caroline. They fell in love, and she was impregnated. The wrathful father hired some thugs, who cut off Robitaille's hand. They then smeared him with honey and threw him into some bee hives on the future site of Cabrini Green, where he was horribly stung to death. When Helen starts convincing some people that Candyman is only a myth, he appears to her. It seems that he derives his existence from the belief of the residents, and is threatened by her actions. He seeks to have Helen die by his hand (or rather hook), as a warning to unbelievers. However, he also wants Helen to join him in his immortal half-life (there's a hint that Helen is the reincarnation of his white lover, a concept so horribly cliche that the film makers were apparently too embarrassed to pursue it very far [and rightly so!]). Since he needs Helen's compliance to do this, he frames her for murder and kidnaps a baby to force her to surrender to his demands. Betrayed by her husband, who’s been sleeping around behind her back, Helen submits herself to Candyman, providing he return the baby to its mother unharmed. When Candyman betrays this promise, Helen fights back. At this point a truly lyrical ending is achieved; Helen has transcended her earlier selfishness and replaced Candyman as a legend figure at Cabrini Green, but one of life rather than death. However, modern filmmakers just can't leave well enough alone, and Helen instead becomes the new Candyman, dealing death to her slime-ball husband in the ‘surprise’ ending. It's obvious that the husband's death was included to please the audience, who resent him for betraying Helen. Yet it's depressing to believe that within the confines of the story Helen would choose (as, given the set-up of the film, she would have too) to become a figure of death like Candyman in order to punish her erring mate. Frankly, Helen had advanced beyond the point where she would trade off her soul for the opportunity to wreak revenge. The film's Chicago locales added a lot for this local boy, and the opening sequence of a huge swarm of bees engulfing the city, while unconnected with the main film, sets a suitably chilling tone. Also, the urban setting and largely black cast are rather unusual for such a fairly large budget horror flick. Candyman himself is the first major Black horror character since William Marshall's Blacula. Credit belongs to the terrific performance by Tony Todd as the Candyman, lending the character a strange dignity in spite of his gruesome acts. Adapted from a story by horror god Clive Barker (who also produced), this is probably the best movie Barker's been involved in so far. This would make a good double feature with Wes Craven's People Under the Stairs, which also features a black cast and urban sensibilities, or for an interesting contrast, try the rural mountain horror flick Pumpkinhead.

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CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH - (1995; USA)

The sequel to the popular Candyman concerns itself with the travails of Annie Tarrant's wealthy New Orleans family: her father is dead (killed after invoking Candyman, the former Daniel Robitaille), her brother is arrested for murder, and her mother is an alcoholic in denial. Annie, who teaches to a class of poor black children, makes things rather worse when, to disprove her students' belief in the Candyman legend, she speaks his name into a mirror five times, with obvious and disastrous results. Candyman appears to her, but rather than killing her wants Annie to join him in his limbo existence, similar to his plans for Helen in the first film. He attempts to break down her resistance by murdering those around her, including her loving husband. Annie's efforts to defend herself eventually expose a dark connection between the Tarrant family and the Candyman. The movie makes some modifications to the Candyman mythos as explained in the first film, but generally to good effect, adding depth to Candyman's background story. Robitaille's death has been relocated to New Orleans, rather than Chicago, and the events of the first film are mentioned in passing only as an example of how the Candyman ‘myth’ has popped up in various other locales at different times. Though not followed up on in the film, it would fit the general Candyman backstory to believe that emigrating Blacks from New Orleans could have brought the legend with them to their new homes. Setting up shop in Chicago, for instance, they relay the story of the Candyman, which mutates over the years as legends do. Ultimately, this version ends up with Robitaille’s death occurring in Chicago, at the very site of the Cabrini Green housing development, a foreboding of all the misery that its current residents face. This then results in the group belief in the Candyman that allows his appearances. Still, we are positing here, in the second film, that Robitaille actually lived and died in New Orleans. His murder is actually shown here, in a way that very nicely sets up many of the particulars of the Candyman myth. Smeared with honey, Robitaille is cruelly named "Candyman" by a child accompanying the mob who slays him, a cry taken up by the crowd, who chant it at him five times. His hand sawed off, the honey encrusted Robitaille is then horribly attacked by a swarm of bee. At the moments of death, stripped of his humanity by the actions of the mob, who have dealt out this terrible punishment only because he's fallen in love, Robitaille casts his soul into his lover's hand mirror, calling out "Candyman". This establishes why mirrors act as Candyman's doorways into our world, and plays off the ancient belief of there being another world on the other side of the glass. On the downside, that exact mirror is then set up as a weapon that can be used to destroy Candyman. This could, should further sequels ensue (in fact, a third film was eventually produced as a Direct to Video title, which I haven’t seen), send the Candyman movies down the same road that ended up ruining the Freddy Krueger films. There, by establishing a new way to ‘finally’ destroy Krueger in each film, and then bringing him back anyway the next time, the films kept rewriting Krueger’s background story until it was totally senseless and the character's integrity was nearly ruined. This film already rewrites much of Candyman's history, and future films can ill afford to be rejiggering it much further. The strongest point, however, of the Candyman’s reconceptualized origin is the clarification of what I consider to be the series’ main philosophical tenet: the primacy of Free Will, of personal choice. The film portrays Robitaille clearly choosing to become the Candyman. First, we actually see him purposely consigning his soul into the mirror, calling out, "Candyman." Also, in this version the bee swarm ominously appears out of nowhere, rather than the first movie's assertion that Robitaille was intentionally cast into beehives by the people who killed him. Here the bees' appearance surprises and frightens the mob, and the implication is that Robitaille himself is somehow responsible for their appearance, strengthening the idea that he has chosen his fate, rather than passing over peacefully into natural death. Choice is the thread that runs through the entire Candyman concept: When wanting Helen or Annie to join him in his world, Candyman requires their consent, even if he's willing to manipulate them by killing those close to them. An even stronger indication that Free Will is the keystone of Candyman's ‘rules’ is that he only appears (and kills) those who invoke him. This then requires at least the tacit consent of his victims, though they may call him only out of arrogance or ignorance, never really believing he exists. This allows Robitaille to justify, at least to himself, his actions as Candyman - he doesn't decide who dies, those who call him do. Unfortunately, the format of both films muddies the philosophical waters greatly. Because Robitaille wants the heroine in each film to share his quasi-existence with him, he kills those around them in order to break down their resistance. This despite the fact that it was Helen and Annie themselves who called upon him. Thus, people die who didn't call on the Candyman, purely through their association with the two women. On the other hand, this may be why both women are able to ‘destroy’ him, or at least the manifestations of him that they encounter. Candyman's ability to murder those around them gives him power over them, but conversely, his skirting of the ‘rules’ may in fact provide them with a level of power over Candyman in return. Candyman's choice to take those who never invoked him may well be what makes him vulnerable to first Helen, and then Annie; although ultimately, it is their choice to defy him, even in Helen's case where it costs her her life, that gives them victory. Though I must say that unlike Helen, Annie never shows any spiritual progression. In fact, Annie shows practically no remorse at all over those who die in her stead, not even breaking much of sweat over seeing her husband torn apart before her eyes. Kudos again to actor Tony Todd, who provides real pathos for Candyman. Here's one series I'd actually like to see more of (assuming that they don’t ruin it).

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CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON -(1954; USA)

The last great monster from Universal Studios, the Gill Man's premiere marked the beginning of the end of the 25+ year reign of Universal (beginning in 1931 with Dracula) as King of the Monster Movies. Scientists find fossil remains of what looks to be a missing link between man and marine life. They go on an expedition down the Amazon to find additional evidence, and unfortunately for them, they do. The Creature ends up getting gunned down, but like King Kong, we feel sympathy for him, and wish he'd just been left alone. The scene where the Creature swims longingly underneath the surface, trailing the swimming Julie Adams, is one of the classic moments of horror films. Stuntman Ricoh Brown did the Gill Man's underwater scenes, holding his breath for long periods of time as the monster suit was too tight to allow any scuba gear. The Creature is such a perfectly conceived creation that no one since has been able to do a half man/half fish monster without ripping him off to some extent. Watch how the opening narration (seemingly mandatory in ‘50s sci-fi films) quotes the Bible, hoping to assuage then contemporary audience members who might have been annoyed by its ‘evolution’ theme. There were two sequels, Revenge Of The Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us, while the film’s screenwriter later directed the laughable remake/rip-off Octaman. Creature Of The Black Lagoon was originally released in 3-D.

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THE CURSE OF THE DEMON - (1956; UK)

Fairly obscure, but a really great flick. Skeptical scientist Dana Andrews threatens a Satanist with a "scientific investigation", and almost ends up biting off more than he can chew. Magical forces are nicely handled here, as even those who practice the Black Arts have trouble controlling the forces they've unleashed. Magic is portrayed as a formidable source of power, but one dangerous and difficult to control, quite different from the Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie school of effortless magic. In one scene, the villain whips up a wind storm to give the hero a taste of his power. The storm soon rages in intensity, and ultimately the sorcerer apologizes; he hadn’t meant it to get that big. In particular, the film’s characters are very well drawn. The villain is a guy who's mom lives with him, and who performs yearly (ersatz) magic acts for the town children. He only goes after the scientists because he knows what will happen to himself if things get out of his control. The hero, on the other hand, is arrogant, insulting and stubborn, a real stuffed shirt. Only when a horrible death is staring him in the face does he admit that there might be something to this magic stuff after all. The Demon monster used in the film is really great, but was inserted by the studio after the film's completion (to make it more commercial), without bothering to consult director Jacques Tourneur. Tourneur, of the ‘what you imagine is scarier than what you see’ school of horror, was incensed, feeling that the blatant inclusion of the Demon destroyed the sense of mystery he had worked so hard to create. So there's an ongoing debate about whether the monster improves or destroys the movie. Only because the Demon's so cool is there even a question, because seeing the creature mangle its victim onscreen and then having Andrews say "I'll guess we'll never know" does definitely crimp the ending. Still, a four star flick all the way.

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DAWN OF THE DEAD - (1979; USA)

Gore Galore as horror master George Romero directs the first of two sequels to his seminal classic The Night of the Living Dead. Ironically, after that film broke new ground in explicit violence and gore, many of the horror movies that followed made it seem almost quaint. As if responding to a challenge, Romero really upped the gore quotient here, as well as shooting in living, or more accurately, dying color. We open in Pittsburgh, during the Zombie crisis established in the first film. Things are getting quickly out of hand. We are treated to a supremely gross opening sequence, featuring National Guardsmen mowing down dozens of the Dead (Living, not Grateful). Two of the Guardsmen, realizing the futility of their efforts, flee the city in a TV news helicopter, along with the station’s pilot and his girlfriend. Once they land and set up base in a gigantic shopping mall, the movie really kicks into high gear. After the dangerous work of clearing out the mall's zombie population is completed, the protagonists' materialistic urges go berserk. They romp through the mall, kings of all they survey. The Zombies' behavior in the mall provides further satirical meat. They are shown stumbling through the mall in their zombiesque fashion, not really acting much different than they did when ‘alive’. However, paradise never lasts. Soon marauding bikers break into the mall, letting the Dead back in as well. The bikers are such bastards you almost feel sorry for the zombies they pick off for sport. As in the first movie though, while the zombies are pretty slow and stupid, once they get on you, forget it. The bikers learn this in extremely severe fashion when they get distracted by the original group, who fight to regain the mall. Recommended for those who can stomach the gore, which is easier to take on the small screen. As in the original the most heroic character is black, and he and the woman are the only human survivors. Viewers of a progressive stripe might well find the scene where the three ‘heroes’ sit around discussing whether the pregnant girlfriend should abort her unborn child, without ever asking her opinion on the matter, to be more frightening then anything else in the film. Romero followed this with The Day of the Dead.

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DEAD ALIVE - (1993; NEW ZEALAND)

For those who found such previous gore-fests as Evil Dead II or even Bad Taste a bit tame, Bad Taste helmer Peter Jackson returns with the ultimate motion picture gross-out. In fact, Dead Alive is like Bad Taste times ten, which I would have thought pretty unlikely, had I not witnessed it myself (on the big screen, yet). Dead Alive stands as the King of the Hill as far as splatstick comedy goes, really taking this sub-genre about as far as it can go. For those interested, splatstick is really just slapstick, only taken further. For instance, Moe tearing off Curly's arm, with an accompanying geyser of blood, and beating him with it, or Wiley E. Coyote being gorily impaled on sharp rocks whenever he falls off one of those cliffs. Those interested in further study of the field should check out the following research materials: Evil Dead I & II, the Basket Case flicks, the two Re-Animator movies, and definitely Bad Taste. Also, the "Itchy and Scratchy" cartoons featured on The Simpsons would qualify. This film is funny, but only if you can take it, which is probably an iffy proposition. For instance, about half an hour into the flick, I had to control myself from vomiting, though I was pretty much OK after that. Then again, you might be made of sterner stuff than I am. Dead Alive opens with a pretty funny take-off on Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's 1957, and an animal collector is attempting to get away with a specimen of the rare, and extremely vicious, Sumatran Rat Monkey for the Wellington Zoo. The ugly beasts are supposedly the result of giant shipwrecked rats having raped the local tree monkeys. After the beast's arrival in New Zealand, we meet sweet young Paquita. Her ancient grandmother, a gypsy type, reads her future in tarot cards. The future portends life-long romance, but also oppression, death and destruction. A ‘sign’ leads Paquita to pursue Lionel, a lonely young man domineered by his Joan Crawfordesque mother. Aside from the usual maternal bonds, Lionel stays with his mum out of guilt. We learn that when he was a boy, he almost drowned at the beach. His father saved him, but died in the attempt. Since Lionel is ‘responsible’ for his Dad's death, he is extremely pliable to his mother's wishes. Anyway, Mom soon gets bit by the monkey (and teaches it a lesson in mean), and becomes a zombie, wreaking havoc that eventually results in dozens and dozens of other people being infected. Ultimately, Lionel must confront his transformed mother (with a family secret ala Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?) and be literally (and grossly) reborn before the situation is dealt with. The undead here are practicably indestructible; easy to damage, almost impossible to destroy. This is, for instance, the first movie I've seen where not only dismembered arms keep coming after you, but disemboweled intestines as well. Personally, the gore did at times get a little tiresome, though Jackson's constant and rather sick imagination keeps things entertaining for a lot longer than I would have thought likely. My favorite scenes involved characters fighting off the zombies in ultra-psycho fashion, like Ash in Evil Dead II, though they don't end up surviving the encounters. Lionel's the hero of the film, and fate dictates (according to the tarot cards) that only he can end the madness. Jackson had originally titled the film Brain Dead (which like his earlier Bad Taste contains a double meaning), but as that title was already registered, the film's distributor changed it to Dead Alive, a title which Jackson loathed and which he predicted would result in diminished box office receipts. For my money the tamer but still gross Bad Taste is the better film, but for those who want brag about going all the way, Dead Alive is the way to go.

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DEMON KNIGHT (TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS) - (1995; USA)

1995 kicked off to a great start with Demon Knight, the first of three projected movies to be presented by the Crypt Keeper from HBO's Tales From the Crypt television show. (The financial failure of the second one, Bordello of Blood, kept the third from materializing.) The Keeper's intro features a humorous take-off of the show's rather lurid boobs'n'gore formula (HBO has always felt that the whole point of doing a cable TV series was that you could throw in a topless chick or two every episode: see The Hitchhiker, Dream On, etc.). The Demon Knight story then kicks off, sagely retaining the show's dark humor quotient and occasional gore, but mostly dumping the nudity angle. The story concerns seven people besieged in a hotel (which used to be a church, needless to say) by a head demon and his army of grotty zombies/demons. It seems that one of the occupants has in his possession a ‘Key’, the last of seven needed to open an interdimensional doorway and allow the classic Dark Forces reentry to the world (hats off to H.P. Lovecraft). The possessor of the Key is a "Runner", one of a series of people since the crucifixion to be keeping it out of evil clutches. Handily, it originally contained the blood of Christ Himself, refilled occasionally by the blood of martyred Runners before they hand it down to the next designated carrier. The contents prove to be effective demon repellent and can also be used to seal off entrances from the demonic types. While this could have easily turned into a knock-off of such isolated people vs. monsters flicks as The Night of the Living Dead or Aliens (and, in fact, the movie's one rather obvious rip-off scene is taken from Aliens), Demon Knight possesses enough smarts, wry humor and style to stand on its own. The violence quotient is high, most of it cartoony, but some of it designed to be quick and savage enough to genuinely startle. Bonus points for the most effective use of genre pro Dick Miller is quite some time, here playing Uncle Willie, a kindly old drunk. One of the film's best scenes is when the head demon (Titanic bad guy Billy Zane) tempts Willie with nothing more than a generic bar with a lot of topless bimbos in it. The film is too smart to pretend that an alcoholic would be anything but easy to seduce, and Willie’s selling of his soul for a mere drink rings entirely too true. Top notch stuff, although the sequel Bordello of Blood would sadly fail to live up to it’s predecessor’s example.

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DRACULA - (1931; USA)

The first, and unfortunately the lamest, of the Universal Studios horror classics. Still, this is the film that made Bela Lugosi a star, and also gave us one of Cinema’s most enduring figures. Lugosi, the actor who to this day most embodies the Count in the public mind, stars here in the first English language movie based on Bram Stoker's famous novel. Bela was 49 when he shot this film, but had already played the part on the stage thousands of times. Though directed with bursts of flair by Tod Browning, the film was adapted from the play and remains rather stagy. It comes alive only in those scenes set in Dracula's castle (dig those armadillos, though) and in the ruins of Carfax Alley in England, the most ‘foreign’ sets in the film. The rest of the film, mostly a drawing room type of deal like the play, can be rather a snooze. However, while not up to the level of any of the other "First in the Series" pics from Universal (Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man), this is the film that made Universal to horror films what Warner Brothers was to gangster movies and MGM was to musicals. And it does have some things going for it. One, naturally, is Lugosi's hammy performance, still a pop culture touchstone today when later, more ‘realistic’ actors in the part are all but forgotten. Another is the series of great lines the script provides, aided by Bela's strange phrasing (his English wasn't that good) and thick Hungarian accent: "I never drink - vine", Lugosi purrs. The film opens with real estate agent Renfield (Dwight Frye, in a classic performance) traveling in Transylvania. To the horror of the locals, his destination proves to be Castle Dracula. It turns out that the owner has bought some property, the ruins of Carfax Abbey, in London. This part of the picture, in the village and later at the Castle, is actually quite atmospheric, easily the best stuff in the film. Classic elements include the stagecoach ‘driven’ by a bat, the gigantic spider web that the Count passes through, leaving it completely intact, Dracula’s reaction to Renfield’s cut finger, the rise of Dracula’s wives from their coffins, and more. Unfortunately, once the Count arrives in England, the film quickly acquires a stage bound flavor. At one point, Dracula turns into a wolf to make his escape from the home of his intended victim, Mina. Instead of showing us this, or even a shot of a wolf running through the grounds, we get stiff leading man David Manners exclaiming about there being a wolf out on the lawn. Hel-looo! This is a movie, not a radio play. Show us the wolf! Edward Van Sloan appears in the first of his three Universal Horror ‘Wise Old Man’ parts (the latter two were in Frankenstein and The Mummy), here playing the Count’s traditional nemesis Dr. Van Helsing. Though Lugosi eventually essayed the Count on the stage over 10,000 times, he was to play the part on film but twice, here and in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. His status as King of the Horror Movies, furthermore, was to prove short lived. Spurred by the success of Dracula, Universal proceeded with its adaptation of Frankenstein, scheduled to come out later that same year. Lugosi, who was more than a tad conceited, refused the offered part of the Monster. He was too proud of his face to cover it with all that makeup, and too proud of his voice to play a role with no dialogue. So an obscure English actor, Boris Karloff, was cast. Karloff was a better actor than Lugosi, and his versatility (Lugosi's range of parts being limited by his accent as well as his natural hamminess) soon helped push him ahead of Bela in horror pictures. The bitter Lugosi never got out of Karloff's shadow, and soon was eating the dust of other actors as well, like Lon Chaney, Jr. Also, Lugosi spent money like there was no tomorrow, and this caused him to accept any part offered him. After having starred in innumerable cheesy skid row flicks, the majors were no longer willing to offer him many good parts, or to pay him much when they did. Aside from a few bright spots, Lugosi's career was in a constant downhill slide, accelerated by his drug and alcohol additions. Still, while Karloff was incontrovertibly the better actor, Bela always brought a real power and a potent, if hokey, charisma to every part he played. He gave every role his all, even in his cheapest, most poorly mounted efforts. And Lugosi could, in fact, act. Anyone seeing him in Dracula, The Black Cat and The Son of Frankenstein (as Ygor, perhaps his best acting on film) can attest as much. Bela died in 1956, and per his request was buried in his Dracula cape.

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DRACULA A.D. 1972 - (1972; UK)

Unsurprisingly, there are people who are anal enough about these things to foster arguments like: Which of the two major ‘Horror’ Studios produced the ‘better’ run of films - Universal (Karloff, Lugosi, etc.; the old black and white flicks from the 1930s and '40s) or Hammer (Chris Lee, Peter Cushing, etc.; the color movies that introduced what was then a substantial amount of blood and sex to the horror film)? As much as I love some of the Hammer flicks, as well as preferring Lee's Dracula to Lugosi's (Sorry Bela!), I have to side with the majority: Universal rules. But my argument doesn’t just focus on Universal having made more great films than Hammer (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Black Cat, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, etc., to Hammer's Horror of Dracula, Brides of Dracula, Return of Frankenstein and what else?). There's also the fact that Universal's junky sequels are better than Hammer's junky sequels. Actually, the sillier Universals are often the ones we look back at with such nostalgia. Is it Karloff's sly, agile, tragic Monster we think of, or the stiff, lumbering version walking with arms outstretched, played in uninspired fashion by Lon Chaney, Jr. and Glenn Strange. Certainly when we think of the Mummy we think of the robotic, bandaged Kharis, not Karloff's ancient malevolent Im-Ho-Tep. However, Hammer's lesser films are seldom as much fun, perhaps because they were more ‘realistic’ and thus could come off as more mean and sadistic. In any case, Hammer's series of Dracula pictures had been going downhill fast since Dracula Has Risen From The Grave, and Hammer responded to dwindling profits (undoubtedly caused by increasingly uninspired movies) by coming up with an unfortunate gimmick: bringing Lee's Dracula and Cushing's Van Helsing into modern times and contrasting them with ‘mod’ contemporary London. The film opens in 1872 with Van Helsing and Dracula battling on a runaway coach. As both actors were approaching sixty, needless to say the fight is rather docile. The coach crashes, Dracula is impaled by the shattered spokes of a wheel, and the fatally wounded Van Helsing finishes him off. However, an occultist appears and collects some of The Count’s ashes and his Dracula crest ring. Then we cut to 1972, introduced in an interminable scene of mod, with-it young turks invading the staid party of some stereotypically stolid Brits. This goes on for six and a half straight minutes (I timed it!) in a film that lasts less than an hour and a half, with the hippie types cavorting as the ‘establishment’ types glower at them, doing nothing. Six plus minutes is a looong time to be doing anything in a movie, and this scene alone, right in the beginning of the film, is almost enough to kill it. By the way, I didn't time this, but I'm willing to bet that at six and and half minutes the party scene is on screen quite a bit more than Lee's Dracula. Anyway, the leading hipster, Johnny Alucard (get it?), looks just like the occultist who took off with Drac's remains. He proves to be his descendant, waiting 100 years to bring back Dracula from the dead (though why his great grandfather didn't just add blood to Dracula's ashes and bring him back immediately, ala Dracula - Prince of Darkness, I'm not sure). One of his group is the young and, er, well endowed Jessica Van Helsing. She lives with her grandfather (Cushing), who is the spitting image of his father (and even the exact same age - go figure!), killed in the beginning of the movie (this universe must have very strong genes). If you're wondering why I mentioned that Jessica is well endowed, be assured that the filmmakers make certain that everyone watching is well aware of the fact. Alucard proposes performing black mass at a desecrated church to the jaded youngsters. This ceremony, of course, resurrects the Count, who then plans revenge on the Van Helsings. About the Alucard thing; it was kind of fun in the first film to use it (1943's Son of Dracula), but I mean, come on, what a dopey alias! Does Godzilla travel under the name of Allizdog? Larry Talbot as Mr. Namflow? Adding insult to injury, they assume we're morons. Therefore, they include a scene with Cushing writing ‘Alucard’ and ‘Dracula’ on a piece of paper, with lines drawn between the corresponding letters to make sure we get it. To be fair, whenever the hippie types are offscreen the movie picks up considerably, but they always come back. Also, even in the scenes where they're absent, the music is very blaxploitation-bad-seventies-cop show stuff. This is especially disconcerting when the aging Lee and Cushing have it out at the end, with the soundtrack blaring what sounds like rejected music cues from Starsky & Hutch. At least they had the sense to keep Lee at the gothic church set. Meanwhile, poor Cushing is constantly dealing with his granddaughter and her with-it peers, and one gets the idea that Cushing was as bewildered by them as his Van Helsing appears to be. Lee, Cushing, and the 1970s all returned in the next, slightly less obnoxious sequel, The Satanic Rites of Dracula.

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DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE - (1968; UK)

The third Hammer Dracula flick (I’m skipping the Dracula-less Brides of Dracula) continues the steady downward trajectory of the series. Even so, I've got to say that I always thought that it had one of the best titles of any horror flick. I mean, ‘Dracula has Risen from the Grave!’ Very atmospheric, wouldn't you say? As well, Lee's Dracula has regained his voice, absent from the prior Dracula Prince of Darkness, though as usual he doesn't have much to say. In fact, a soap opera-ish love story occupies far more screentime than the Count himself. It's a year after the destruction of Count Dracula, drowned in the icy waters surrounding his Castle in Dracula Prince of Darkness. The local Monsignor, traveling to the nearby town, finds that the locals no longer worship at the town's church, which had been desecrated by Dracula. The citizens believe that Dracula's Castle is still possessed of great evil, and its shadow lays across the church in the morning. Worse yet, the town's Priest has become a useless alcoholic following these events. The Monsignor heads to the Castle with the Priest in tow, and performs an exorcism, sealing the door with an economy sized cross. However the priest, who had earlier tuckered out and was left behind, falls on the ice of the mountain stream, dripping blood onto the ice-entombed body of Dracula and reviving him. Therefore, this movie continues the idea of strict continuity between the end of one Hammer flick and the beginning of the next. Director Freddie Francis had no feel for vampire lore, and wanting to be different from other vampire flicks, invented new ‘rules’. This results not only in the minor quibble of having Dracula cast a reflection in the water of the stream, but in a shocking (which Francis intended) but ultimately stupid (which he didn't) scene where the male lead shoves a gigantic stake into Dracula's chest. Out of nowhere the Priest (whose lost his faith and is more or less Dracula's slave) tells the guy that, unless he prays, Dracula won't die. Well, the whole soap opera aspect revolves around the fact that the guy is an atheist, while his girlfriend is the niece of the Monsignor, causing the expected problems there. Meanwhile, Dracula seeks to vampirize the Monsignor's niece in retaliation for his sealing off the Count's Castle with that giant cross, which leads the atheist boyfriend into conflict with Dracula. Got that? Anyway, so the boyfriend can't pray, and we get to watch Dracula, in spite of the blood streaming out of his chest, pull the stake out and chuck it back at the boyfriend. Then, at the film's climax, when Dracula is impaled on the giant cross that had previously barred his Castle (don't ask, other than noting that Dracula is obviously Lord of the Clumsy Undead), he dances around with it sticking out of his back until the dying Priest reclaims his faith and says the needed prayer. Please! I mean, Dracula gets burned when touched by a cross, right? And here he is, with this giganto four foot job shoved all the way through him, and he's not going to kick off unless somebody prays? C'mon! Besides, watching Lee waltz around ‘impaled’ by a huge, spray painted Styrofoam cross prop (that works about as well as one of those arrow-through-the-head deals you buy at your local novelty shop) is a little embarrassing. The fact that we have to wait around for the prayer to be said means that we have plenty of time to notice just how bad that prop is. Also silly are a couple of scenes where they speed up the film while Dracula is whipping the horses of his carriage; you assume the intended effect was to lend a frenzied speed to the action. However, sped up film inevitably recalls Benny Hill or the Keystone Kops, and by the second time they use it you start waiting for a pie fight. This is also the first movie (already) where the strict continuity started making Dracula look pretty wimpy. In Horror of Dracula, Dracula was stated to have been terrorizing folks for centuries, so that his destruction at Van Helsing's hand seemed somewhat epic. There’s an inherent weakness in starting each movie by detailing Dracula’s resurrection from his destruction in the previous film. You generally end up with the Count running around for a few weeks, menacing a small cast and maybe knocking off one or two people, and then getting bumped off again. In the Horror of Dracula it took the stalwart Dr. Van Helsing, dynamic Scientist/Cleric, to bring about Dracula's destruction. In Dracula Prince of Darkness the Count was brought down by Andrew Keir's tough, authoritative priest. By this film, with Dracula laid low by a rather callow collage student, you started to get the idea that maybe he wasn't so tough after all. As the movies went on (the next being Taste the Blood of Dracula), you more and more got the sense that anybody who lucked out could get the upper hand over Dracula. Anyway, I don't mean to imply that Dracula Has Risen from the Grave's got nothing going for it. Lee, as ever, cuts a truly commanding figure and naturally dominates every scene he appears in (few though they are). Particularly nice is the bit where he finds his Castle sealed off with the cross. In a furious tone he demands to know "Who has done this thing?!", regarding the exorcism of his Castle to be as much of an act of sacrilege as his earlier desecration of the church was to the audience. So there's some good stuff here, although a firm finger on the fast-forward button of your VCR might help keep your interest up. Also, did I mention that I love that title?

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DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS - (1965; UK)

I'd always heard that Christopher Lee didn't want to get typecast as the Count after the success of Hammer Studio's classic Horror of Dracula. Supposedly, that was why it was seven years before he donned the cape in a movie again. However, in a 1992 interview, Lee maintained that he hadn't been offered a part in Brides of Dracula, the earlier sequel to Horror of Dracula that lacked Dracula himself. That film instead featured David Peel’s vampire battling Peter Cushing as the Count's arch-foe Dr. Van Helsing. If true, Hammer was probably looking to save money by not paying for both Lee and Cushing. This theory is reinforced by the fact that this film features Lee, but not Cushing. By the time Lee and Cushing were re-teamed in the Hammer Dracula series (Dracula A.D. 1972), they were both past their prime, and undoubtedly not as expensive. Dracula Prince of Darkness does, however, provide the best Van Helsing substitute, Andrew Keir as the tough, crusty priest Father Sandor. As with most movie series, each of the Hammer Dracula films was lamer than the one before. Still, as Dracula Prince of Darkness is the first sequel to Horror of Dracula (at least featuring Dracula himself), it's still pretty good. Wisely deciding not to cheat by just starting with a resurrected Dracula, we open with a replay of the exciting finish from Horror of Dracula, featuring Dracula turning to dust after being exposed to sunlight. The method used to resurrect Dracula is pretty cool, but the film takes so long to set this up that the movie is fully half over before Dracula even makes an appearance! In fact, the Count never tended to get much screentime in any of the Hammer flicks (thereby having to hire the expensive Lee for less time). In this case he doesn't even have any dialogue, supposedly because the lines were so awful that Lee refused to say them. While this lends Dracula more of a feral, inhuman quality, the loss of that great, booming voice makes it seem an unwise decision. The film concerns four English travelers, brothers and their wives, who eventually end up at Castle Dracula. There the Count's servant Klove guts one of them and spatters his blood over Dracula ashes, reviving him (this again takes up the entire first half of the picture). There's a lot of droll dialogue with Klove before this happens: he informs the guests that his dead master's "hospitality is renowned" (no doubt!), and when asked if anyone assumed his title (of Count), replies "My Master didn't leave any issue - of the accepted kind". The younger couple (Charles and Diana!) escape being vamped, and head to Father Sandor's church for protection. Dracula and his new bride Helen (wife of the man sacrificed to revive him) follow, Dracula having already claimed Diana in his mind. The featured sexual content of the Hammer films is on ready display here, with the uptight, puritanical Helen becoming rather vixenish after being vamped. The scene where she writhes while Father Sandor prepares to stake her is Freudian to an almost comical degree. The film features another exciting climax, with Dracula drowning in the running waters surrounding his Castle after Father Sandor blows holes in the ice with his hunting rifle. While future sequels have some neat individual sequences, this is the last really decent Hammer Dracula flick.