There’s something sad, strange, and sensually dreamlike about Lemora—a film that drifts through the haunted backroads of American morality like a gothic lullaby laced with absinthe and rot. And at the center of this moody nightmare is Rainbeaux Smith, casting a delicate, ethereal glow like a candle flickering in a crypt. Rainbeaux Smith: The Virgin, … Read More “Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)” »
High school is hell—Horror High just makes it literal. Or at least it tries to. Somewhere between Jekyll and Hyde and a low-rent episode of Scooby-Doo, this blood-streaked, brain-fried, teen-angst mess manages to mangle every genre it borrows from without delivering much of anything except boredom and a few sulfuric acid burns. Meet Vernon Potts: … Read More “Horror High (1973)” »
Sometimes a film doesn’t need to be a masterpiece—it just needs to drip enough fog, flaunt enough velvet capes, and dig up enough corpses to keep us watching. La orgía de los muertos, or by its many other aliases (The Hanging Woman, Beyond the Living Dead, Bracula… yes, Bracula), is the cinematic equivalent of a … Read More “La orgía de los muertos (aka The Hanging Woman, 1973)” »
Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls is one of those 1970s horror oddities that seems to have clawed its way out of a magician’s top hat during a séance gone wrong. It’s loopy, lo-fi, and frequently illogical — but weirdly, all of that works in its favor. The film is less a horror story than a … Read More “Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls (1973)” »
In George A. Romero’s The Crazies, the horror isn’t shambling toward you in rotting flesh — it’s marching down your street in government-issue fatigues, hypodermics in hand, and full authority to end your life for “public safety.” Here, paranoia isn’t a subplot — it’s the genre. A companion piece to Night of the Living Dead, … Read More “The Crazies (1973)” »
There’s something uniquely tragic about a movie that has the gall to take itself seriously while dressing up like The Brady Bunch Goes Lycanthropic. The Boy Who Cried Werewolf is a horror film in the same way a school play about fire safety is an action thriller — earnest, amateurish, and full of people trying … Read More “The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973)” »
Let’s be honest — if Michael’s calling, you’re better off letting it go to voicemail. This made-for-television thriller, which aired as part of ABC’s Movie of the Week series, stars Elizabeth Ashley as Helen Connelly, a woman who begins receiving disturbing phone calls from her long-dead nephew. The only real mystery here is how a … Read More “When Michael Calls (1972)” »
Chuck Vincent’s Voices of Desire bills itself as horror, but it feels more like a therapy session filmed in the back room of a lava lamp factory — one where everyone forgot to bring a script. Sandra Peabody (credited as Lydia Cassell, and possibly trying to flee this credit with a pseudonym) plays Anna Reed, … Read More “Voices of Desire (1972)” »
Some movies are so campy they become charming. The Twilight People isn’t one of them. It’s a dusty, dehydrated knockoff of The Island of Dr. Moreau, stuffed with enough papier-mâché facial prosthetics to make a Halloween Spirit Store look like Weta Workshop. This 1972 Filipino-American genre slog is brought to you by Eddie Romero and … Read More “The Twilight People (1972)” »
Romano Scavolini’s Spirits of Death (also marketed under the wildly misleading French title Exorcisme Tragique) wants you to think it’s a sultry, surreal Italian fever dream dipped in trauma, wine, and blood. What it actually is, however, is 98 minutes of dramatic stalling in a drafty castle, occasionally interrupted by stabbing and the slowest descent … Read More “Spirits of Death (1972)” »