THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961)

 While Hammer studios' HORROR OF DRACULA and THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN were great and kicked off the resurgence in monster movies in the late 50s my personal favorite is this Oliver Reed-starring wolfman saga. The reinvention of the whole werewolf mythos(based on a 1930s novel) is pretty refreshing and Reed does a great job with imbuing the suffering monster with some expected pathos. While the transformation scenes are nothing amazing and were done better in the 30s the monster itself is pretty impressive-looking.  The whole film also has a great fairy-tale-feeling to it and with the always amazing setpieces that Hammer used really stands out as a special classic horror film. While I wouldn't put this above the Chaney WOLFMAN it's a pretty close second and one of my favorites form Hammer studios line of monster films.



                                                          French poster!:

Italian poster!(except for the U.S. it looks like they tried to hide what the monster looked like):

                                 On a double-bill with a Hammer film I've never seen:

                                            Inspiration for some great artwork!:

THE BROOD (1979)

 THE BROOD, directed by the great David Cronenberg, was never my favorite film of his because it dwelled so much in the land of drama. There are long psychological bits when characters cry about their past, the main couple Samantha Eggar and Art Hindle try to work out their marriage dilemma and this sort of thing. Luckily Cronenberg fills out the rest of the film with some truly unique bizarre elements including murderous dwarves/children/little deformed monsters, psychoplasmically-induced body-modifications and Eggar munching down on her newborn's fresh afterbirth that just popped out of a distended external-uterus growing out of her. Also you get the legendary Oliver Reed in a somewhat subdued state as the psychologist who sets all this strangeness into motion. I was lucky enough to view this on the big screen from a 35mm print last night and would say it's totally worth a watch or a re-watch for lovers of weirdness.
 When I was a teen I had a poster from Fangoria magazine depicting the little girl here, Cindy Hinds, getting grabbed through the wall by the little murdering munchkins and although I had not seen the movie itself at that point that was enough to freak me out. Not all that many horror flicks can weird you out from just one still image.

Weird European title:

BURNT OFFERINGS (1976)

 Dan Curtis, who did that 60's DARK SHADOWS show and made a bunch of TV stuff, here directs a big haunted house feature. It's probably the best cast ever in a ghost movie with Karen Black and Oliver Reed as the couple who along with their aunt, played by Bette Davis, are slowly pulled into madness. The great Burgess Meredith also appears in a smaller role so everything is done really well. I do have a natural predilection to dislike ghostly movies since they never make much sense but if you're into that sort of thing this is a pretty good entry in the genre and it comes complete with a nice downbeat 70's ending. There's also a few elements, as the family begins to unwind, that sorta reminded me of THE SHINING which is a good thing.

VENOM (1981)

 Without the great German madman Klaus Kinski(AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD) and the alcohol-infused Englishman Oliver Reed(THE DEVILS) having main parts in this film and having lots of great exchanges between each other this would probably not be very memorable. But thanks to these two and the lovely Susan George from STRAW DOGS who we get to ogle in her underpants this movie is at least mildly amusing to lovers of campy throwaway thriller fluff.
 The main story here concerns two kidnappers(Kinski and Reed) who plan on holding a little namby-pamby wuss of an asthmatic rich kid hostage. Thrown into this simple tale is a super venomous black mamba snake who is loose and enjoys biting people right in the face and killing them. It's a little weird how I just recently viewed THE SADIST and in that film a bunch of snakes are the heroes and in this film we also get a snake who basically gets the role of the heroic action star of the film in his spare time when he's not playing the menacing monster. So basically what you get here is a tense hostage standoff flick with an animal on the loose monster flick shoved in there for added thrills.
 While the movie is a little too slick-looking for me and the acting is pretty awful(with the exception of our two bad guys) this might be worth a look if you dig crazy old European actors. Also there are some crazy stories behind the scenes which may or may not be true about how Reed would get extremely drunk and challenge Kinski to brawl. This caused original director Tobe Hooper to flee his job and go work on POLTERGEIST instead which may have been a wise decision.  If only someone had a camera to record that action we might have had a truly classic film here.

 

THE DEVILS (1971)

 THE DEVILS is the point where the art-flick meets nunsploitation.  It's also a sort-of bigger budgeted version of MARK OF THE DEVIL and uses it's larger scale to great effect.  The story itself deals with the ideas of religious insanity and more so with the inevitability of those in power to abuse their authority for whatever purposes benefit them.  I'm sure this film was quite shocking to anyone lucky enough to view it back when it was released, though because it was censored so heavily by the powers that be at the time I'm not sure too many people got the chance to view the version director Ken Russell intended.  This is a shame because this film does a beautiful job of depicting the evil insanity of organized mob-mentality i.e. church-mind.  The most censored scene contains a group of nuns accused of demonic possession raping a statue of Jesus and if there ever was a more fitting depiction of the absurdity of religion put on film I'm not sure what it would be.  You also get some more typical inquisition-style torture and naughty nun orgies.  Probably the best made movie in this blasphemous sub-genre and really deserves a nice Criterion release at some point.