This is a trippy French vampire flick, it has a groovy psychedelic soundtrack, a lot of the movie is shot at a castle and around the graveyard, has lots of nudity and almost no dialogue. The vampires are also quite amuzing, and they have cheesy-looking fangs. We had a good laugh with this movie and enjoyed it.

This movie is extremely bad. We were really disappointed because it didn’t quite correspond to its’ description on the cover. It is shot with a home camera and most of the action happens in one room. The movie was supposed to show “the dark side of the new age”, but we only saw the dark side of german low-budget cinematography.

Now this is a true classic. Haxan is a Danish/Swedish silent film depicting witches and the European witch hunt throughout the ages. Many of the classic medieval images of Satan, demons and the Black Mass are shown in this brilliant film. Parts of this film were used in a video from Danish satanic metaller King Diamond, “Sleepless Nights”.

This is a rather disappointing Asian horror flick. It’s not scary at all, in fact, it’s quite slow and lacks the spooky atmosphere of other Asian films, such as Ringu and Ju-On.

This is a Hammer House film about a young student, who is haunted by the visions of her dead mother. I would say that this movie is more suspense than horror, unlike the other, more famous Hammer House films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

I liked this movie a lot. It is a rather original vampire movie about a vampire grandpa and a mysterious golden scarab, built by a medieval alchemist. The scarab grants immortality but with a deadly price. The plot unfolds at a steady pace, keeping the viewers interested throughout the entire film, and the visuals are really good as well.

This movie is a bit cheesy, but i still like the character design. If this film was remade nowadays, it could be quite a good movie.

This is an early 70’s Italian horror flick, starring the brilliant Christopher Lee. It’s a great film, similar to the Witchfinder General, but much better in my opinion. The director Jess Franco is famous for injecting quite a bit of erotica into his horror films, and this movie is no exception.

Another good Jess Franco film about a perverted priest, who witnesses hippies engaging in a mock Satanic rituals / orgies, and decides to exorcise the participants through sadistic torture. Jess Franco himself plays the priest.

This is a film by the director of Tetsuo, the Iron Man – the Japanese sci-fi cult classic. Although not nearly as good as Tetsuo, Hiruko is still a strange and interesting film, filled with gory cyber images. Hiruko is the goblin sent to earth, who has to behead many girls and assemble their heads onto spider bodies.

This is a cool 80s vampire horror/comedy, starring the unusual pop-singer Grace Jones. She is wonderful as the main vampiress in a gloomy strip club, located in a bad part of town, mostly inhabited by ghouls and vampires.

This is not a horror film at all, but an adult psychological thriller. basically, the movie is about a bunch of British kids, who go play in the forest and come across a creepy stranger who psychologically tortures them. Although this is a pretty low budget production, it is quite an interesting and original film

We saw this movie at a Spooky Movie Film festival in Virginia. This is a very low budget film, but quite enjoyable, with a dark comedic touch. The story is told from the point of view of a goth teenage girl, who hates her cheerleading sister and decides to put a voodoo curse on her. This film is very unpredictable, and surprisingly original, considering that it’s basically a vampire flick.

This is one of my favorite directors, who has proven himself again with his latest apocalyptic picture. This is, perhaps, his most shocking film to date. The basic storyline is that a mysterious plague has infected the USA, where people suddenly stop what they’re doing and immediately kill themselves. There is something of an environmental statement made in this film.

A neat Danish ghost story film, that is similar to some of the modern scary Asian horror movies. It’s really well done, good plot, good cinematography, good acting and the creepy soundtrack. There’s a good deal of violence in the movie, which seemed unrealistic to me, because I can’t picture nice Danish people being violent.

This is a Finnish movie starring the guys from the shock rock band, Lordi. It’s a haunted hospital flick, which also seems to be inspired by Asian horror films. It’s actually quite good and has a scary atmosphere, great CG, however it would have been a lot more scary if Lordi guys were not in the movie, except for the girl, because they created a great CG image for her, while the dudes in their costumes just made it look more comical.

This is a horror movie with 3 short stories, all starring the same actress, Karen Black. The first story is a bit boring and forgettable, the second one is interesting, but not scary, and the third one is awesome. The 3rd story talks about a little african witchcraft doll, which apparently comes to life, once it’s little chain is removed.

This is another cool Italian horror movie, about a village being terrorized by a ghost of a dead little girl. Inspector Kruger goes to investigate the case and gets into deep sh*t. The little girl is the best part of the movie, and the title “Kill Baby Kill ” has nothing to do with the actual story.

H.G. Lewis was famous for making several ridiculously gory and cheesy films in the 60s and early 70s. This one is , obviously, a very gory movie. We had fun watching it, because most of the characters are pretty ludicrous, as well as most of the gore scenes. Yet the film still has its’ charm.

This is the classic in the Film Noir genre, with great use of shadows and light. If you like kittycats, watch this movie.

This is the sequel to the previous film. We didn’t like it because there’s no cat action except for a one little black kitty on a tree in the beginning of the movie.

This is another classic film about a naughty little girl, who does mean things but nobody notices except for her poor mother. It’s a good movie, but not as shocking today as it must have been in the 50s.

This is the movie starring the terrific Crispin Glover, who plays a psychotic guy who commands rats to do his bidding. I thought the movie was fun, and i liked the big gloomy rat named Ben.

This is another movie from the Ghosthouse Underground collection, which is also quite good. I can definitely recommend renting movies from this company. This one is also Danish, and it’s about a very evil teacher, who has a special mission. I won’t give out the details, because it will be a spoiler.

This is not one of Dario Argento’s best movies. The colors and cinematography of the film are cool as always, but the story is lame and confusing. However, the film score by Keith Emerson from the British prog rock band, Emerson, Lake and Palmer is quite groovy.

These are two classic black and white werewolf movies. First one is about a scientist who gets bitten by a Tibetan werewolf, and has to use the special moon flower to prevent his lycanthropic attacks. The second one is about a woman who’s afraid of having inherited the family’s werewolf curse, and thinks that she goes out at night killing little children. First movie was much better.

We don’t remember much of the movie, but we remember that we liked it and that it had a cool gothic atmosphere.

This is another Hammer House movie, following the classic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This one stars Christopher Lee, who plays the secret lover of Dr.Jekyll’s wife.

This is yet another Mario Bava movie, but has little to do with horror, and more with suspensefull Hitchcockian film noir. It’s more of a detective story, which has an interesting plot, and an awesome song by Italian pop singer and actor Adriano Celentano .

We were rather disappointed after watching this classic film for the first time. Even though it is a stylistically great movie, the birds only come out in the end! We thought there would be several bird attacks throughout the movie and that it would actually be creepy, like Psycho. But it was not.

Do not rent this movie, unless you want to have the god-awful Alice Cooper song looping in your head for the next 2 weeks. The terrible song i’m referring to is frightfully catchy and absolutely dumb. The movie itself is not total crap, but it’s not very good either. I think that Alice Cooper was not taking anything at that time, and that is why he agreed to do this terrible film. I wanted to see this movie, because i actually like Alice Cooper, but i felt bad after renting it.

We like the films by Lucio Fulci very much. This is a cool zombie movie with terrific gore and a sinister atmosphere. We highly recommend other films by Lucio Fulci, such as Zombie and The Beyond

Who wouldn’t watch Halloween on Halloween? This is the movie that started the whole subgenre of horror films, known as Slasher movies. This is a stylish and timeless film.

Thus concludes this year’s Shocktober film fest!

Since the beginning of October, we have watched quite a handful of movies. I thought it would be fun to make a list of the ones we’ve watched so far, so here you go (in more or less chronological order):

We started out with -

I’ve seen this movie before but not all of it. I always liked Evil Dead 1 and 2, and this one is also very entertaining and funny, I enjoyed it a lot, but there’s nothing scary about it whatsoever, it’s more of a fantasy than a horror movie.

This is a Portuguese exorcism/cursed house movie. The atmosphere of the movie is good, you get to see the grim places in Portugal, but the story unfolds a bit slow, and the “grand finale” is too short and a little confusing.

This is one of the first movies of George Romero, it’s about a suburban housewife who gets interested in witchcraft and slowly goes crazy. It’s more of a suspense movie than a horror. It has a great 70’s atmosphere, so it is quite interesting to watch, not so much for getting scared though. In the 70s this movie was probably considered scary, but today it wouldn’t, because our minds are too accustomed to horrific and truly scary images and stories.

They did a good job but I liked the original, Gin gwai, much more. The American versions of The Ring and The Grudge are far superior to this movie.

This Brazilian movie is pretty awesome and very entertaining. Coffin Joe plays an evil gravedigger who doesn’t believe in any supernatural powers, pisses people off and kills them if they get in his way.

Total crap. A movie about a bunch of friends who share a trauma from the past, being brought up in an asylum where they were experimented on. They come back to the place and die one after another. The storyline is pretty dull, not much going on throughout the movie, not so many good effects, and the movie leaves you with a thought – what the hell did i just watch and why did i choose this movie?

These are 3 short movies based on Edgar Allan Poe’s stories: “Metzengerstein”, “Toby Dammit” and “William Wilson”. It’s a must-see classic.

A very interesting Asian ghost movie, really good storyline and great effects. It’s both horror and sci-fi, which makes it more original than many Asian ghost story movies.

This remake of the 1970’s movie is pretty confusing and hard to follow. After watching it, we were trying to figure out what exactly was going on in the movie, but eventually gave up. It’s always good to have some mystery in a movie, but this one has too much of it. Although i haven’t seen it, i am sure that the original movie by Herschell Gordon Lewis is much better.

The Holy Mountain is one of the most artistic and awesome movies I have ever seen. This was the first movie of Alejandro Jodorowsky i’ve seen, and i am planning to watch more now. Every single set in the movie is a perfect work of art. The movie has lots of symbolism and occult connotations. A must-see for everyone (although it’s not a horror movie).

Really weird movie by Coffin Joe, has strange sex and drug-taking scenes.

It was not bad, but i like Dario Argento’s old movies more. Some parts of the movie were pretty funny. Also, the soundtrack in the end is pretty ridiculous. One of the best things about the old Argento movies is that the soundtracks were written and performed by the spooky Italian progressive rock band, Goblin, thus making the movies very special.

This movie is an unusual vampire flick, set in an obscure town in Alaska ( actually filmed in New Zealand ). It has a really spooky atmosphere, great cinematography, pretty decent film score and lots of good gore. The vampires in the film are not the elegant sophisticated types, but rather savage and vicious killers who speak some weird unknown language.

This movie has 3 different short stories: “The Telephone” – more of a suspense story, “The Wurdalak” – a vampire story featuring Boris Karloff and “A Drop of Water” – a creepy ghost story with a scary looking dead granny- the best one in my opinion. This is the movie, which the band Black Sabbath took their name from. It was pretty amusing to imagine Ozzy shivering with fear on the chair in the movie theater, pleading to go home and Tony Iommi trying to calm him down.

To be continued….

Here are some photos i took:

A character from Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

Me and Tony Todd – Candyman .

Now i am not afraid to say “candyman” 5 times in a row.

Some nice freaky dolls:

The werewolf dude:

I loved the Dracula doll! (Creations of Terry Cruikshank)

Regan MacNeil and more puppets (Creations of Terry Cruikshank):

Some more stuff:

Army of Darkness book:

Now here’s a weirdness to be proud of.

Here are the videos in 2 parts, with English subtitles.

Part 1

Part 2

Klaus Nomi died in 1983, he was one of the first artists who died of AIDS. Sadly, when he was dying in the hospital, no one came to say good bye to him, because they were afraid of this disease.
Had he be around today, he would probably be performing gothic music with an operetic flavour.

Here are 2 videos of Klaus Nomi:

The Nomi Song

The Cold Song – from Purcell’s “King Arthur”

In 2004, a documentary “The Nomi Song” came out, produced by Andrew Horn, about the life of Klaus Nomi. (I own this documentary of course).

I hope that this art will not be forgotten.

Official website of the movie
Official site of the artist

Powered by ScribeFire.

It’s been known for a while now, Rome, another superb HBO show has been cancelled and will end after only 2 seasons. Main reasons: lack of viewers and too expensive.

Granted, Rome was originally intended as a mere miniseries but spawned into a full series after the network saw the quality of the scripts. Unfortunately for HBO and any other network, viewer numbers are everything, esp. when the cost for the entire first season is around 100 million U$. We cannot really blame HBO when the viewers rather prefer crap over intelligent, quality TV series. If more people would have watched shows like Rome, Deadwood, Firefly, Invasion they would not have been cancelled, easy as that. Networks need to make profit and have to provide what the majority wants to see and if the majority wants to see crap then they have to give them crap. Besides, what network are you looking for when you want to watch quality shows? HBO, right?

Rome ended on March 25th 2007.

Not only that these series are very well done from the cinematographic point of view, but also, with the overall decrease of reading in our society, i think, that this show was very useful. Since less and less people read nowadays, at least shows like that can still bring some knowledge of the history, and this is very important, in my opinion. These kind of shows should be valued much more than the “running around with guns” and similar stuff. It’s very sad that Rome had lack of viewers…

Anyway, there are still sites which try to create a petition to save Rome, so, whoever comes to my blog, i encourage you to visit the sites and add your voice.
http://www.saverome.com/
http://www.petitiononline.com/rome_hbo/petition.html

See the short video of Rome season 1 on my reviews page