Death (Fredric March) wants to understand humans and their reaction to him so decides to take on human form and spend three days on the estate of Duke Lambert (Sir Guy Standing) in the guise of Prince Sirki. Death makes one rule: the Duke cannot tell any of the others in attendance who he really
Pacific Rim (2013)
Giant monsters—kaiju—have risen up through a dimensional portal on the ocean’s floor, and caused massive death and destruction. Eventually, humans got the advantage by building giant robots they call jaegers. The robots require two closely aligned pilots whose brains are connected to the machines and to each other. Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) was such a
Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)
A volcanic eruption serves the dual purpose of calling Gamera and waking Gyaos, an ancient flying lizard-bat that shoots sonic beams. Nearby, a greedy firm is trying to build an expressway through a village of equally greedy people. The prepubescent grandson of the village elder is obsessed by Gamera and makes friends with him. It
Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)
Two arrogant British couples find themselves, through excessively unlikely circumstances, in Dracula’s castle ten years after the vampire’s destruction. A previously unknown servant drains one of the men over a tub, reconstituting Dracula (Christopher Lee). For no good reason, the resurrected Count ignores the other couple and they escape, teaming up with a Van-Helsing-ish abbot
The Catman of Paris (1946)
Charles Regnier (Carl Esmond) return to Paris to great acclaim for his soon to be published novel, meeting with his patron, Henry Borchard (Douglass Dumbrille), who advises him that he need not fear the government, which is upset that his story approaches the truth of a corrupt trial. But Charles is bothered by more than
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
Distraught physician Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) writes his mentor, Sir James Forbes (André Morell) a rambling letter about deaths with no natural explanation in a rural village. Forbes’s daughter (Diane Clare), interested in seeing her friend Alice (Jacqueline Pearce) who happens to be Tompson’s wife, convinces her father to take train and coach to visit
The Phantasm Series
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.
It (2017)
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
A cruel Marquis tortures and imprisons a beggar. Many years later a beautiful servant is tossed in with the beggar who rapes her. She later kills the Marquis and escapes, and is taken in by Don Alfredo Carrido (Clifford Evans), where she gives birth and dies. The child is cursed, an evil spirit entering him
Before Dawn (1933)
Joe Valerie dies at Dr. Paul Cornelius’s (Warner Oland) clinic, trading knowledge of where he hid a million dollars in stolen loot for euthanasia. Soon after, Joe’s wife (Jane Darwell) falls to her death after seeing Joe’s ghost. The police, picking up fraudulent spiritualists, get one who’s real, Patricia Merrick (Dorothy Wilson). So on a
The Clairvoyant (1935)
Maximus (Claude Rains) performs a mind-reading act with the assistance of his wife, Rene (Fay Wray). They travel with an aging partner (Ben Field) and Maximus’s mother (Mary Clare). When a performance falls apart, he receives an actual prophecy. Predicting the future casts him into the limelight, which brings money but starts to pull his
Song at Midnight (1937)
An acting troop, including young lead Sun Xiaoou (Chau-Shui Yee) and his girlfriend Liu Die (Xu Manli), arrives at a dilapidated theater, and are greeted by only Zheng (Wang Weilyi), the guardian of the theater and a hunchback with a monstrous appearance, that no one ever mentions. They set to work on a new opera,