In the sacred halls of Soviet cinema—somewhere between grim-faced war epics and three-hour tractor parades—there emerged Viy, a deliciously weird, darkly magical folk horror tale that proudly answers the question: What if your worst acid trip starred a drunken seminarian and an undead sorceress who used to be your Uber? Based on Nikolai Gogol’s short … Read More ““Viy” (1967): Gothic Folk Horror That Rides You Like a Horse, Then Kicks You in the Soul” »
If you’ve ever wanted to watch Dracula reimagined as a Florida man slowly becoming a vampire through imported booze, Taste of Blood is here to disappoint you—slowly, clumsily, and with all the gothic menace of a DMV line in Hialeah. Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis (who proudly called it his masterpiece, in what we can … Read More ““Taste of Blood” (1967): A Dry Swig of Dracula With a Hangover Aftertaste” »
If you’ve ever wanted to see Boris Karloff trade in his Universal Monster days for a telepathic timeshare with a horny old woman and a dazed youth in a leather jacket, The Sorcerers might be the offbeat British horror gem for you. That is, if your idea of horror involves a lot of fur-coat theft, … Read More ““The Sorcerers” (1967): Mind Control, Mid-Life Crisis, and Murderous Elderly Hypno-Freaks” »
You know you’re in for something special when a film begins in a greasy spoon and ends with a legless woman hissing in a tank. She Freak, Byron Mabe’s low-budget love letter to Tod Browning’s Freaks, is a cautionary tale about ambition, adultery, and underestimating little people with big grudges. It’s not a good film … Read More ““She Freak” (1967): Fried Greed Served with a Side of Snake Woman” »
If Little Shop of Horrors was lobotomized, drank too much sangria, and wandered onto a West German–Spanish co-production set, you’d get Maneater of Hydra—a film so undercooked, it might as well have been photosynthesized. Also known by its more honest titles—Island of the Doomed or The Blood Suckers—this movie tries to pass off foliage as … Read More ““Maneater of Hydra” (1967): The Root of All Stupid” »
If you ever wondered what would happen if someone tried to make Creepshow with a box of Goodwill costumes, borrowed fog machines, and John Carradine’s last ounce of patience—Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors is your answer. Directed by David L. Hewitt with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for community theater productions of The Crucible, … Read More ““Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors” (1967): Tales from the Scrap Bin of Sanity” »
Before Twilight made monster romance insufferable, before Underworld turned lycanthropy into a leather fetish, La Loba—a.k.a. The She-Wolf—asked the age-old question: What if your therapist was also a werewolf and you both just decided to maul your problems away together? Mexican horror never looked so fuzzy, feral, and strangely romantic. Berserk! is a horror-thriller only … Read More ““Berserk!” (1967): The Circus Is in Town—and So Is a Serial Killer and Joan Crawford’s Career Autopsy” »
Terror Beneath the Sea is the sort of movie that happens when you throw a torpedo at logic, strap glitter to a scuba diver, and call it science fiction. Directed by Hajime Satō, this 1966 Japanese-American collaboration feels like an underwater fever dream scribbled on a napkin during a very disappointing sushi dinner. It stars … Read More ““Terror Beneath the Sea” (1966): The Little Mermaid Meets War Crimes” »
Terror Beneath the Sea is the sort of movie that happens when you throw a torpedo at logic, strap glitter to a scuba diver, and call it science fiction. Directed by Hajime Satō, this 1966 Japanese-American collaboration feels like an underwater fever dream scribbled on a napkin during a very disappointing sushi dinner. It stars … Read More ““Terror Beneath the Sea” (1966): The Little Mermaid Meets War Crimes” »
Before Alien made space horror chic, Queen of Blood tried to sink its teeth into the genre—and ended up breaking a fang on its own recycled Soviet footage. Directed by Curtis Harrington and frankensteined together from two Russian films and a vague nightmare about hemophiliac alien queens, Queen of Blood is what happens when you … Read More ““Queen of Blood”: Space Vampires and Budget Cuts Collide in an Intergalactic Dumpster Fire” »