If The Strange World of Coffin Joe is a journey into the depths of the human psyche, then consider it a one-way ticket to a carnival outhouse on fire, with Zé do Caixão himself chuckling behind a smog machine and flipping you off in Portuguese. Billed as an anthology horror film, this fever dream from … Read More “The Strange World of Coffin Joe – A Trash-Fire of Fetishes, Filicide, and Philosophical Flatulence” »
If you’ve ever wanted to experience a two-hour pregnancy-induced anxiety attack sponsored by your local coven, Rosemary’s Baby is the movie for you. Roman Polanski’s 1968 psychological horror classic is less “edge-of-your-seat” and more “I-hope-this-seat-has-a-trapdoor.” It’s a slow-burn descent into prenatal paranoia, gentrified Satanism, and the kind of passive-aggressive gaslighting that makes you long for … Read More ““Rosemary’s Baby” — Satan’s Prenatal Pamphlet for the Suburban Set” »
Carlos Enrique Taboada’s Hasta el viento tiene miedo (Even the Wind is Afraid) is hailed as a cult classic of Mexican gothic horror, credited with revitalizing a sagging genre. What no one mentions is that if the wind itself had sat through all 90 minutes of this boarding school ghost story, it too would have … Read More “Hasta el viento tiene miedo (1968) – When Even the Wind is Bored” »
There are bad movies, and then there are movies so catastrophically misguided they feel like a practical joke stretched over 84 minutes. Genocide (a.k.a. The Great Insect War) belongs squarely in the latter category—a paranoid cocktail of Cold War panic, atomic doom, and more bug close-ups than an Orkin training video. If you’ve ever wanted … Read More “Genocide (1968) – The Great Insect War, or How to Ruin Your Afternoon With Ants and Existentialism” »
There’s an old saying: if you can’t get it right the first thirteen times, why not make a fourteenth? That, apparently, was Daiei Film’s logic when they greenlit The Bride From Hades, yet another adaptation of the well-worn Japanese ghost tale Botan Dōrō. By 1968, the story of a lonely man falling in love with … Read More “The Bride From Hades (1968) – Death Do Us Part, and Then Some” »
Every horror fan has their gateway drug. For some it’s Psycho. For others it’s The Exorcist. And then there’s Spider Baby: or, The Maddest Story Ever Told, a 1967 black-and-white freak show that feels less like a movie and more like a home video of your eccentric uncle’s very bad weekend. Written and directed by … Read More “Spider Baby (1967) – Middle of the Road Mayhem in the House of Merrye” »
There are bad movies, there are terrible movies, and then there’s Night Fright (1967), a Texas-born disaster that proves once and for all that no good film has ever started with the words “shot near Dallas.” Directed by James A. Sullivan, starring the perpetually weary John Agar, and featuring what might be the least terrifying … Read More “Night Fright (1967) – The Sheriff, the Mutant Gator, and the Death of Cinema in Satan’s Hollow” »
Sometimes you stumble onto a movie so strange, so desperate, and so unintentionally hilarious that you wonder if the filmmakers made it on a dare. It! (1967), also known as Anger of the Golem or Curse of the Golem depending on how charitable the distributor felt that week, is one such film. Directed, written, and … Read More “It! (1967) – When Roddy McDowall Met the Golem and Everyone Else Lost the Plot” »
There are vanity projects, and then there’s Doctor Faustus—the kind of film that makes you wonder if Richard Burton didn’t just sell his soul to Lucifer, but to Columbia Pictures’ accounting department as well. Billed as the first theatrical adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s 1588 play, this 1967 curiosity is less an adaptation and more a … Read More “Doctor Faustus (1967) – Richard Burton Sells His Soul, Audience Pays the Price” »
There’s a special place in horror history for The Witches (or, in the States, The Devil’s Own—because apparently distributors thought “witches” wasn’t spicy enough). This 1966 Hammer production, adapted from Norah Lofts’ novel The Devil’s Own, isn’t the sort of Hammer film you expect. There are no gothic castles draped in cobwebs, no Christopher Lee … Read More “The Witches (1966) – Hammer Horror’s Quietly Bonkers Brew of Joan Fontaine, African Totems, and English Tea” »