Bunny Beginnings Roberta Vasquez was born on February 13, 1963, in Los Angeles, California, into a family of Latin American (Mexican/Spanish) descent. She came up out of southern California sunburned and restless, chasing the shine. While the other kids were sweating algebra, Roberta was already looking past the campus walls, past Santa Monica College, toward … Read More “Roberta Vasquez: From Playboy Playmate to Action Movie Star” »
A Scream Queen in the Shadows Picture a dimly lit dungeon on a Hammer Films set: an ingenue with blood on her lips lets out a chilling scream as Baron Meinster’s vampire brides close in. In another scene across the ocean, a woman named Buff slaps sense into a wayward nurse in a sordid small-town … Read More “The Blood-Spattered Bride: The Cult Career of Marie Devereux” »
If Amicus ever had a fever dream about outclassing Hammer Studios, I, Monster was it: Christopher Lee in a Jekyll-and-Hyde riff, Peter Cushing lurking with polite suspicion, and a whole lot of smoke machines working overtime. The result? A movie that bombed at the box office but still feels like a velvet-gloved punch of gothic … Read More “I, Monster (1971) – Freud Meets the Fog Machine” »
Jean Rollin didn’t make vampire films so much as he made vampire hallucinations. Le frisson des vampires (aka The Shiver of the Vampires) is less a narrative than it is a series of fevered snapshots strung together with eyeliner, cemetery fog, and breasts that deserve their own screen credit. And honestly? That’s the fun of … Read More “Le frisson des vampires (1971) – A Fever Dream of Coffins, Cousins, and Clock-Dwelling Vampires” »
If Hammer horror was gothic high tea, The Devil’s Nightmare is a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet in a castle dining room lit by neon crosses. And honestly? That’s exactly what makes it delicious. Plot: The Seven Deadly Sins Go to a Hostel from Hell The setup is classic Euro-horror nonsense: a group of tourists get stranded, … Read More “The Devil’s Nightmare (1971) – A Sinfully Fun Slice of Satanic Cheese” »
Every so often, a film struts into the horror canon wearing a feather boa and a cloud of cigarette smoke, demanding to be called “art.” Daughters of Darkness is one of those films—and like an aging lounge singer trying to belt out Shirley Bassey after three martinis too many, it thinks it’s glamorous when it’s … Read More “Daughters of Darkness (1971) – Daughters of Dullness” »
If you ever wanted to see a movie that asks, “What if Satanists ran a retirement community?”—then congratulations, The Brotherhood of Satan is your flavorless communion wafer of a film. Directed by Bernard McEveety and starring Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, and a whole lot of poor decision-making, this supernatural slog takes witchcraft, devil dolls, and … Read More “The Brotherhood of Satan (1971) – Plays Like a PTA Meeting in Hell” »
Hammer Films, by the 1970s, was limping around like one of its own stitched-together monsters—creaky, broke, and desperate for new blood. And then along comes Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, a film that proves two things: Bram Stoker could write a story about dusty corpses without vampires, and Valerie Leon’s cleavage could carry an entire … Read More “Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971) – Valerie Leon, Cleavage, and Cursed Bandages” »
Every so often a film comes along that doesn’t just blur the line between dream and nightmare—it grinds it into powder, rolls it into a cigarette, and smokes it under a blood-red moon. Jaromil Jireš’ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is one of those films. A surrealist gothic fairy tale from Czechoslovakia, it plays … Read More “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) – “Puberty, Vampires, and Pearls, Oh My”” »
Ah, yes—Scream of the Demon Lover. Or Il castello dalle porte di fuoco. Or Le Monstre du château. Or El Castillo di Frankenstein. When a movie has this many titles, it’s usually because nobody involved could figure out what the hell it was actually about—or because the producers knew one title wasn’t enough to trick … Read More “Scream of the Demon Lover (1970) – “Beauty and the Beast, But Make It Awkward and Horny”” »
