Surrealistic or just nonsensical, the low-budget to low-low-budget Phantasm films (four with a fifth past-due for release) have a reputation for being original fright-fests. That’s unfortunate as that raises the wrong expectations. Far from attempting for originality, the series is a conglomeration of what came before. Scenes and even lines are taken from previous films.
A physicist (Kristen Wiig), a ghost hunter (Melissa McCarthy), an engineer (Kate McKinnon), and a mass-transit ticket-taker (Leslie Jones) join forces to form the Ghostbusters. A disgruntled janitor is summoning ghosts in order to carry out a larger scheme that will wipe out humanity and our team must use their high tech gadgets to defeat
In 1944, a young Professor Broom accompanies a military unit on a mission to stop Rasputin (Karel Roden) and The Third Reich from carrying out a magical ritual that will end the world. They succeed—though Rasputin’s loving assistant, Ilsa Haupstein (Biddy Hodson) and the freakish assassin Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (Ladislav Beran) escape—and find a horned,
The crew of a colony ship is awakened by an accident—except for their synthetic, Walter (Michael Fassbender), who was awake—and while making repairs, picks up a signal. The new, uncertain captain, who needs the approval both of the crew and of God, decides to follow the signal to its Earth-like world which might be a
Four years earlier, Ayana Hirasaka’s parents were crushed by Gamera in his fight against the gyoas. Now she lives with her uncaring aunt and uncle in a miserable little town filled with terrible teens. Within a temple, she finds, and binds with, a strange creature that is related to Gamera and the gyoas. It grows,
He-man Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Dwayne Jonson)—for some reason using the name Davis Okoye, but he’s just The Rock—pretends to be a special forces trained killing machine, who loves animals. He’s also a primatologist, which in this film does not require any scholarly training; it just means you hang out with apes and joke around,
Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre), perhaps the greatest surgeon in France, is obsessed with goth actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake). Her husband (Colin Clive), a concert pianist, has his hands mangled in a train wreck and although Yvonne is frightened by Gogol, goes to him to try and save her husband’s hands. That’s impossible, so Gogol transplants the
In a Middle Eastern town, perhaps named Bad City or perhaps not, Arash (Arash Marandi) lives with his junkie father (Marshall Manesh) and works as a handyman, and perhaps middleman drug dealer. The main dealer and pimp (Dominic Rains) is coming down hard on him for his father’s debts, and takes the one thing that
The Baskerville family has been cursed for centuries by a hound from Hell due to the foul behavior of an ancestor. Recently, Sir Charles Baskerville had died of fright out on the moor. Dr Mortimer (Lionel Atwill), a believer in the supernatural, requests the aid of Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce)
Black widow Ruth Rogen (Vivienne Osbourne) is executed for her three murders, with her final thoughts ones of revenge on conman Paul Bavian (Allan Dinehart) who betrayed her. Around the same time wealthy Roma Courtney (Carole Lombard) is in deep mourning from the death of her brother. Bavian, thinking he can cheat Roma out of
Within a sideshow, the Freaks live, carrying out romances, arguments, friendships, and betrayals. Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), the beautiful acrobat of the circus, plots to marry the midget Hans (Harry Earles) for his secret fortune, and then kill him, with the aid of her lover, the strongman Hercules (Henry Victor). Frieda (Daisy Earles), Hans’s ex-fiancée, knows