Inside the Whore – movie about the making of Hora 2. Some crewmembers of Hora have gathered in order to make the sequel, and they must do so on a shoestring. The goal is to shock everyone even more than with part one and to become the most extreme movie ever. The director takes everyone to various locations, but the crew gets food only sparsely and they don’t get to sleep in a hotel or anything. The complaints rise by the day, but it’s all part of the plan according to the director. While shooting, this director gets madder and madder, and it all ends in a climax of violence. An atypical film, with some funny stuff, but for me it didn’t deliver. It held some promise, since it had something to do with Hora and the artwork and the synopsis looked fine, but looking back I get the impression that the filmmaker simply wanted to cash in on the same idea twice.

Watched Sleep Tight - aka Mientras Duermes and Isolation after reading your review on it. Didnt like Isolation that much but Mientras Duermes was a fun watch!

Nice that people still read this stuff

Death Tunnel - I had read bad reviews on this one, but when I could get it for €1 I gave it a shot anyway. Maybe I shouldn't have. This really is a bad film. Not only is it badly made, but it also spoils a great opportunity for a good horrorfilm with a nice story. The story is about the Waverly Hills sanatorium, where allegedly 63,000 people had died when the white plague was ravaging the county. In reality, there did people die, but at most there were 8,000 deaths in ~25 years. But: reality aside, the building (they used the real one) is very spooky and a good and scary film could be made for sure. Unfortunately, the cast can't act, and when shooting was done, almost everything that comes after, was done wrong. Music is weird, and often out of place. Editing is horrible, the material was turned into an erratic 93 minute ride, which resulted in something which resembles a very long musicvideo instead of a movie. Biggest drawback is that everything was made unscary. Even the ghosts don't come off as anything scary, and when ghosts in a film are not scary, they become ridiculous very fast. Because of these aspects, this film fails on all fronts except one: the ,location. But since nothing was actually done with it, this movie is not worth watching at all.

Parts of the Family - Belgian film of which there are two versions, the original one and the Tromatized one. I watched the original one, directed by Leon Paul de Bruyn, who also made Maniac Nurse in Ecstasy. The story is about a hostage situation which turns into something unexpected. Well, unexpected: I had seen this storyline before (can't remember in which film, though), and although it is an OK watch, the acting, the image, the effects, are all below par. Best part of the film is the script, which has a lot more potential than most Troma films I have seen. The cover says there are guest appearances by Debbie Rochon and Ron Jeremy, but I guess those are in the Troma version of the film, because I didn't see them. OK film for a Troma.

Forgot to post yesterday, so this is for two days:

Doll Graveyard – another shorty from Charles Band and in this one the default dolls are coming again. For those who have seen a few Band films, this will be nothing new. The samurai, the German soldier and the African warrior, they are all there once more. The storyline is quite shallow, with some sort of a flashback about Sophia, a girl having only the dolls as friends and when her father punishes her by letting her bury them in the backyard, she dies and the dolls get cursed. A century later the dolls are found by a geek guy who gets picked on by older boys and then they are gonna help him. Or are they actually helping Sophia? Some mindless fun fora n hour, no groundbreaking work. More a rerun of other Bandfilms with the dolls. The worst film in the box with Decadent Evil and The Gingerdead Man.

Zombie Cop – my third JR Bookwalter film in a short while. Although bad moviefans can enjoy a Bookwalter film any time, I sincerely recommend to not watch too many in a short period of time, because you have to take care of your (mental) health. Unlike Band, Bookwalter makes his films usually with teh saem cast. There are some minor differences, but the core of each cast consists of the same people over and over again. This can get boring easily ”Ah, there is that guy again”. The storyline is simple: a cop gets killed y a voodoo guy and returns as a zombie (although he looks more like a mummy). Now he starts hunting down the voodoo guy who has died too and also came back as a zombie. Mindnumbing celluloid, fortunately it lasted only for one hour.

Primal – ancient cavepaintings haven’t been looked at for over one hundred years, so an ambitious soon to be anthropologist goes out into the distant jungle with some of his friends to go find them. When one of his friends Melanie takes a bath in a pool nearby their camp, she gets cursed and slowly but steadily turns into a monstrous animal with razorsharp teeth and instinctive behaviour. Now the group must decide what to do: capture or kill her. Her boyfriend Chad is against the killing so they go for plan A. Soon however they find out it might not be enough. Quite cool film, with Chad being he utmost annoying character. I realy, really wanted him to die as hew was so stupid, selfish and unreasonable. The main character Anja howeverhad my sympathy from the start. Maybe that says something about the acting, I don’t know. The ending was cool, a tad too much catharsis imo, but still OK.

It’s my party and I’ll die if I want to – one hell of a great title of course, and therefore a big chance of utter failure and disappointment. Not in this case! Made on a tight budget of an estimated 30,000 dollars, this kind of lowbudget film exceeded all my expectations! Sara has her 18th birthday but it seems like nothing’s going to happen. She eats her dinner with her mum with a long face, but then her mum tells her about the party her friends have been organising for her in the supposedly haunted mansion called Burkitt Manor. When she arrives, the door is locked so she goes in by the basement and finds her friends. But they aren’t alone in the house and soon people start to die. I really loved this film! It was made with great pleasure and enjoyment, the fund rips off your screen while watching. The sfx were cool, and because the crew went to the Tom Savini sfx school he offered to do a cameo in their film. The stopryline is OK-ish, but the acting was above average fors ure, by a totally unknown cast. In the film there are some cuts where the image contains (a piece of) a comicbook page to tell some parts of the story, which was not really original but were cool anyway. Recommended, for a lowbudget film this is as good as it can get, imo.

I never write here much. I am not a 'review monster' like Slayer. But may I direct you attention to 'Haunter'? I liked it. Hey, when did I last time write that I like a film? For me it was a fresh and interesting idea. Don't expect any gore. Just an interesting storey.

Hehe, "review monster" Thanks for the tip, wargand, I'll check out Haunter.

My Pure Joy - a DVDr with "Screener My Pure Joy" was in the sleeve of Theatre of the Deranged. I read that it was an independent slasher, so I gave it a spin yesterday. It's about Adam, a teenager who turns into a crazy killer over time, caused by both the death of his father and other factors in his life which influenced him a lot. It is an ambiguous film: on one hand, the film had boring scenes which were drawn out way too long, with uninteresting dialogue between the main character and his friends. I suppose it was part of the "character build up", but it was really boring. On the other hand, it has shocking stuff

Spoiler:

like the knife put in the vagina of Cindy, the girl loved by Adam

and a cool and gory climax

Spoiler:

in which Adam succeeds in diverting the attention of the police to his brother so he walks free while he kills off the reaming members of his family

although this was quite a bit unbelievable, I mean

Spoiler:

no policeman would let walk away the lone survivor of a massacre where the "culprit" had one eye stabbed out but was wearing clean mask at the same time

So, I enjoyed this low budget slasher, but with the boring parts shortened by 80% it would have been better still. Keep an eye on James Cullen Bressack though, he might come up with a classic one day.

Des Filles pour un Vampire – aka L'ultima preda del vampiro aka The Playgirls and the Vampire. This 1960 Piero Regnoli film is a black and white early example of Italian Gothic cinema. Unfortunately, the copy I bought only had a French soundtrack with a few scenes in English, so I sat listening to muffled French trying to follow the storyline as well as I could for 80 minutes. Since it was rather simple, I actually could follow it for most of the time, although funny dialogue was totally missing out for me. A shame, since it had some for sure (I read a review with some good cheesy lines). Imagery is very nice and it has a Bava-esque atmosphere at times. Acting is so so and the girls are nice, but you have to have a taste for early 60s beauty to enjoy it. The ending was OK and since the final explaining scene was in English, I was glad I could get some sort of a resume on the plot. I’d love to see this with English subs one day, or with an English dub.

Death Force – aka Fighting Mad aka Vengeance is Mine. When I read the synopsis, I thought it would be a film about revenge mostly: Doug Russell is a Vietnam vet heading home with his two buddies Morelli and McGee. When these two guys slice Russell’s throat because they don’t want him to share in their future wealth dealing drugs, they don’t know that he actually survives and is taught the way of the samurai in order to get revenge when he finally comes home. In fact, this film is only about the revenge the last 30 minutes. The 80 minutes before that are the build up: Russell’s washing ashore on a remote island, where two Japanese soldiers still think World War II is going on; Morelli and McGee living it up in their new acquired wealth; Russell’s wife trying to cope with what she thinks is her husband’s death and taking care of her son at the same time; etc. Effects are rather cheesy, costumes don’t match (the Jap soldiers wear US Vietnam uniforms with some odd badges) and the action is meagerly choreographed. There are plenty oneliners which can go down in the book of cheesy dialogue. I really loved the atmosphere in the film, although it was a bit too long form y taste. But if you like bad movies, especially Filippino cinema, then you can’t miss this flick.

The Shunned House – Italian made haunted house film. I really like Italian cinema, with all it’s flaws and charms, but this one may be Italian, I didn’t like it. It is badly made: the Italian cast tries to speak English, but they are struggling to pronounce the words in an understandable way. There are some nice gory scenes, but their purpose or meaning is often unclear. When a story (several stories are combined in this film) seems to start developing, weird editing makes the effect go away, leaving you wondering. Acting is a rarity in this one, Federica Quaglieri for example obviously was casted only for her large breasts. The film never gets scary, the music is sometimes a tad atmospheric but often enough boring, and except for the few gory scenes which were quite cool, this one is totally forgettable. Bad moviefans might have some fun with the Italo-English and some other oddities, but mostly this film isn’t worth it.

Spontaneous Combustion – a Tobe Hooper film, and while most of his work is quite cool (TCM, Poltergeist, Eaten Alive, etc) this is a total failure imo. Brad Dourif plays Sam, a guy who finds out that his parents died in the 1950s during an experiment conducted by the military and involving nuclear energy. Those experiments cause Sam to have fiery incidents: when he gets angry, fire bursts out of his arms and chest, setting the surroundings (and sometimes nearby people) on fire. This makes the government hunt him down to continue the experiments. Although the story itself is already a bit wonky, it could have been turned into a nice film, but if Dourif has to act like fire comes from his arms with such lousy effects, then the director has a problem. I think this is easily Hooper’s worst film I have ever seen. Like The Shunned House, this film succeeded in drawing my attention away from the screen to other things in the room. Never a good sign. Stick to other Hooper films, but skip this one.

The Tripper – directorial debut of David Arquette. At a hippie festival, a serial killer with a Ronald Reagan adoration slashes his way through some tree loving hippiebodies. A nice cast, with Jaime King, Lukas Haas, Paz de la Huerta, Jason Mewes, a short part for Arquette himself and a cameo of Coutney Cox. The storyline is simple, the characters are very stereotypical, but man, I had fun watching this slasher! Many things are wrong, like the hippies which appear in huge numbers in the 2000s (instead of the 60s/70s), the drugs scenes are childish and unneeded, but I simply loved the guy with the Reagan mask hacking away with his axe in the forest. The film never gets scary and guessing who the killer is, is way too easy

Spoiler:

maybe something about the mental hospital was edited out, because it gets explained that the boy was released while you never see him being locked up

The comical part isn’t top notch either, but for some reason, I enjoyed watching this a lot. I actually was surprised this was a directorial debut. If Arquette gets better at presenting the storyline and leaving out more cheesy jokes, then he might become a real good director one day. This was the coolest slasher in a long time for me. Recommended, maybe even highly.

The Swamp of the Ravens – 70s Spanish/Ecuadorian zombieflick with a mad scientist. This Dr Frosta is experimenting with life and death like a modern day Frankenstein, using poor people who wouldn’t be missed much. When the person eventually dies, he dumps the body in the swamp surrounding his cabin. Frosta’s girlfriend feels neglected because he is so busy all the time so she heads off with her former boyfriend, an artist. When Frosta intercepts, the boyfriend goes to the police, who already had started an investigation. This brings them closer and closer to the doctor. Atmosphere is cool, a real 70s southern flick! Very cheesy, with loads of bad looking effects, some wooden acting and hilarious dubbing. A recommendation for all bad moviefans out there!

A Living Hell – aka Iki-jigoku. Japanese film which was called “The Japanese TCM” in a review. It’s not much like TCM, but I can see why they wrote that. The story is about Yasu, a guy in a wheelchair. His family (one more brother, one sister and father – mum had disappeared) gets permanent guests: an old lady and a young girl, the same age as Yasu. This appears on screen after you watched the police evacuating the same old lady from a house where the entire family was murdered and she was the only survivor. Soon it turns out that she wasn’t just the last survivor, a she and her granddaughter start picking on Yasu. At first they just tease him, but over time it gets worse and it turns into first mental and then physical torture. When Yasu tries to get help from his sister and brother, they don’t believe his stories. In the meantime, a reporter of a gossip magazine investigates the murdered family and finds out about the old lady. Soon all paths will cross each other. This film had to grow on me. At first I was getting a bit impatient because it took quite long before something gruesome appeared on screen. But, looking back, I see that it simply a slow build up, one you can witness in several Japanese movies, and this one was done quite well. When the climax comes, i twill explode with more force because of the slow build up. Well done! Although the ending and the plot twist were pretty easy to guess, I still enjoyed how the story evolved until the final explosion of violence. Highly recommended.

The Fly 2 – this story starts with the birth of Seth Brundle’s son. In some sort of a cocoon he is born and at birth, his mother dies. The baby gets released from the cocoon (that was a bit silly) and then he starts growing. And he grows really fast. At five years old he looks like a guy of student’s age. He gets a job at the facility where he grew up and where he was being watched all day long for his entire life. Now he gets an apartment where he can be himself, as the leader of the project promises him. He sort of gets a romantic interest in one of the female workers, but then he starts mutating. It becomes clear that he really is the son of Brundle now, and with help of the woman he tries to save himself by using the pods his father had built. While this story was really predictable too, I disagree with the very bad reviews this one got. Yes, there are plenty of goofs, yes, it wasn’t as good as part one (I mean: by far not as good as part one) but it had something to do with the storyline of The Fly, it was a true sequel at that. Acting wasn’t so bad either and the gore was cool at times. So if you like bad monsterflicks with a lot of gore, then give this one a spin. Bad moviefans shouldn’t be disappointed either. If you however expect a film equally well made as The Fly by Cronenberg, then you need to adjust your expectations or skip this one entirely.

The Innocents – black and white classic from 1961. Deborah Kerr plays a governess who gets a job at Bly house. There she has to care for two children, whose uncle is their only relative still alive, but he doesn’t have time for them. The children enchant the governess, but soon she finds out that there is more to caring for these children than she bargained for: weird sounds, appearances and the children’s odd behaviour lead her to the conclusion that something supernatural is going on. Atmospheric and at times pretty scary film. I was surprised that a classic like this could give me goosebumps several times! Acting is superb, also by the children. Effects are good, especially when considering the age of the film. Best horror film I have seen from the 60s, barring only NOTLD. Highly recommended!

Altered – alien film by the maker of The Blair Witch Project. A gang of rednecks catch an alien in the woods and they are gonna get some revenge for the abduction they experienced several years ago. Soon, however, they find out that the alien is sending out signals and more aliens are on their way to free their comrade. A very simple and straightforward story, with some predictable plottwists and some missed opportunities

Spoiler:

(it would have been cool if the sheriff was in fact an alien disguised as the sheriff, sent to slow them down or hinder them enough to give the other aliens the chance to arrive in time

Gore was good, ending a tad cliche but also cool enough to enjoy. The best film by Eduardo Sanchez I have seen so far.

Frostbite – aka Frostbiten. I was wondering if I was watching the correct movie for a while, as I saw nazis in Ukraine 1944 in the opening scene and this wasn’t supposed tob e a warmovie at all. It was the correct movie, and this was only the intro to a story which was both refreshing and a bit “been there, done that”. Annika and her daughter Saga move into a Laplandian town where nothing happens. In the long winternight, Saga gets to know people at a party where the boys and girls take a mysterious drug while Annika starts working in the local hospital. The two storylines come together quite nicely and the effects are good, the acting is good enough and there are some pretty nice jokes. I had a great time watching this. You might think it is a rip-off of 30 Days of Night, but this one is funnier. Recommended.

Woman in Black, had low hopes for this one but it turned out to be pretty decent. Or at least decent enough to spend my time on. Was suspecting to see Harry Potter all the time but even that wasn't the case for me.

@pure: did you see the original? It scared the hell out of me!

Vicious – aka To Make a Killing aka Wild Boys. 80s Ozploitation where Damon is on holidays in a small town where a gang of guys breaks and enters for fun. He accidentally sort of joins the gang, but when they target the house of his new love Sondra, he tries to warn that family, with deadly results. Now Damon sets out to get revenge. The cover said “First there was Straw Dogs, now there is Vicious!” which is a bit ridiculous, as Straw Dogs is a much better film, way more choking atmosphere in that one. In a way, Vicious does have some similarities with Straw Dogs, though, and also with films like The Last House on the Left, but it is both made later (and thus might be a copycat) and less impressive. The problem with the plot is that the quite violent climax is in the middle, and after that

Spoiler:

Damon gets away from it all, only to meet Terry once more and then kill him

This means that the second part of the film is not as exciting as the first anymore and slowly your attention fades. The first half in itself could have been an interesting movie, though.

Unspeakable – this Troma film being part of the “Garden of the Dead zombie collection”, I expected a zombiefilm of course. Alas, this wasn’t a zombiefilm at all, it was about a psycho serial killer who once was a loving father, but after a car accident, his daughter dies and his nagging wife turned into a shitting plant-like human in a wheelchair. The title is a good one, as there are several unspeakable acts to be witnessed in this film, like

Spoiler:

a priest molesting young boys during confession and the male nurse of the killer’s wife having a fetish for shitsex and thus having a go at her everytime he comes around to nurse her

The killer kills women who remind him of his daughter, and there are a lot of them (in fact, every woman he meets changes into his daughter in his mind). While watching the film, you discover some stuff about the father-daughter relationship which is also quite unspeakable. The climax was quite cool, and this Troma was bad, but not as dumb as some others. The farting sounds were gross instead of corny, because of their context. This film is original in the subjects it covers, the unspeakable stuff. That part is quite well done, but it is very low budget and it shows. OK for bad moviefans and people with a strong stomach.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman – sequel to Jack Frost. Some stuff is “logical” in this sequel, like the policeman with a trauma about what happened in part one, but other stuff doesn’t make sense at all, like people who were disfigured in part one and now only have to wer an eye patch “after hundreds of operations”. This movie plays on a tropical island, and although the temperatures are, well, tropical, the snowman manages to come down to the island, not melt, and kill people in the process with his icicles and killer snowballs. Humour is sometimes lame and sometimes funny (I liked the archery scene where an arrow lands in the surf), the filmmakers don’t take themselves too seriously at least. This was the funniest film I saw today, but man, did I see a load of crap in one night. This is worth a recommendation for bad moviefans, but all others should stick to part one, if even that.

Slayer,
so many movies, so i think, how's your sexual life? sorry, if i offended you..just thought

Hahahaha, don't worry, it's all good! But good to see you're alive too, still

War Games – Italian cinema is my favourite, mostly 70s films. In more recent times, there have been a few films which remind one of the glorydays of the Italo horror, but this is not one of them. The crew is mostly Italian, the cast is not. The storyline is about a group of friends going paintballing in the woods. In this deserted area however, there is a small gang of ex-soldiers who hunt dogs for fun. But., like one of them says “It’s no fun with dogs anymore”. Soon the group of friends finds itself in a struggle of life and death. Acting is so so, with a few good moments, but the script was a bit of a mess. What the characters do is sometimes unbelievable and sometimes so stupid that you ask yourself how such a person could survive even the first few hours in the woods. At other times, the situations are quite realistic, such as

Spoiler:

people ditching their friends because they would endanger themselves trying to save them – harsh, but true for 98% of the population

Sounds are odd at best and terrible at the worst, but the final act was cool enough to redeem a tiny bit of the film. All-in all this wasn’t enough. Better next time, director.

The Naked Witch – this is one of two films on a Something Weird DVD and I always love what they bring to you, as it is almost always true to it’s name. This one is, too. The film (it only lasts for one hour) starts with a very long intro on witchcraft, it sounds a bit like a class/course. After that, a long and boring scene is shown about the main character, a student who arrives in a German immigrant community where all people of course speak German, sing German songs, drink beer and wear German folklore clothing, like the dirndl skirts. The student investigates witchcraft, and while visiting the graveyard he accidentally opens the grave of a witch and takes out the stake with which she was killed ages ago. What follows is some lame 60s horror sfx, and then there is a beautiful woman bent on revenge: she starts killing all the offspring of those who had her killed way back when. Again, this part is a bit boring, but because it is all so weird, you keep watching anyway. There is even some romantic development between the witch and the student! Luckily it stops after 59 minutes, because too much of this nonsensical weirdness can make you go numb, I guess. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Buttcrack – another Troma film being part of the “Garden of the Dead zombie collection”, which holds three films in total. The first being a bit of a disappointment because of the fact that it wasn't a zombiefilm, this one was a bit of a disappointment because the zombie thing was very minor in the film. The story is about Brian, whose roommate Wade is a very, very irritating character who has his buttcrack always showing because of wearing no belt. This puts off Brian's girlfriend so much, that Brian is enraged one day and sort of accidentally kills Wade. Then Wade's sister comes over and puts a curse on Brian and makes a zombie out of Wade, with only one mission: to annoy Brian the rest of his life. Sadly, the viewer gets annoyed in the process. Brian call in a preacher and together they try and get Wade back into hell. I must say, Wade is being played by someone who really knows how to play a very, very irritating character. But besides that, there is nothing to this film to really enjoy. And because the "best" role is for a super annoying person, you won't get many positive vibes from this film. I'd say skip it and let's hope the third film on this disc actually is a bit enjoyable.

Beetlejuice - when Adam and Barbara Maitland die, they come back as ghosts just to see their house being sold to a New York jetset couple with a Gothic daughter. The Maitlands want their house back, so they try to scare the new inhabitants away. Unfortunately for them, the couple isn't scared at all, they even want to make money out if their presence. The daughter is their only ally among the living, but among the dead they have several. One of them is the infamous Betelgeuse, a ghost who guarantees to chase off any unwanted living souls. Hiring him is not without any danger however, if the Maitlands have to believe the other dead people. Funny film, only thing I didn't really understand is why the main character (Betel geuse aka Beetle Juice) doesn't get that much screentime. I laughed a few times and Burton's universe is omnipresent in this film, especially in the maquette world. Nice job, I really liked the joke with the medicine man at the end of the film (the changing of the numbers for the waiting line). Not really a horrorfilm, but more a horror-ish adventure/fantasy film, like so many other Tim Burton films. Good movie, this one. Recommended.

The Thrill of a Kill – low budget indie Norwegian slasher in which you get to see two storylines intertwining after some time: the first one is in the present and it is about a girl who runs into the forest after yet another fight with her mum where she gets knocked down by a serial killer. The other one is in the 60s, where a young boy lives a hellish life without a father and with an alcoholic and abusive mother who brings home different lovers almost every day. There is plenty of violence and gore, some of the violence is on the edge, I cringed a few times. This film isn’t for the squeamish, that’s for sure. Nice to have a lengthy explanation of things in a film, but a bit of a shame is that the limited budget makes the director use a very particular face in the cast just a few times too many:

Spoiler:

he is tall and bald with a beard and glasses, and he plays both a few passers by with good intentions as the serial killer in the present

In the final scenes there is some character behaviour which is typical for slashers, the ending is still OK enough. Nice watch, except for the actor thing I mentioned in the spoiler tags there isn’t much which points at a low budget production, except maybe for a few actors not acting too well. Still, I recommend this, not only for bad moviefans.

The Night of the Chupacabras – A Noite Do Chupacabras. Brazilian film about two feuding families who become victims of a gang of monsters, the so called chupacabras (literally goat-eaters). At first, they accuse each other of the killing of cattle, and later of even worse things. The situation escalates, and they kidnap and kill at will, only to find out that not the other family, but the chupacabras are the cause of their misery. Nice and straightforward film with monsters and gore, some subplots are a bit hit and miss, but overall this was quite a nice film. The director should get a bit more focus though, so he could tell stories a bit more to the point, because now there are scenes which take way too long and get a bit boring, and the already mentioned subplots take away attention from the main theme. But, promising at least, so I’m looking forward to see more of this Rodrigo Aragão.

Eye of the Devil – 1966 classic black and white film with a stellar cast: Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Donald Pleasence, Sharon Tate (god, she was gorgeous) and David Hemmings make great performances in this creepy thriller about the occult. When Marquis de Montfaucon is being called back to his castle in the French countryside, he leaves his wife and children in the city. Soon, the wife decides to follow him. She doesn’t feel very welcome in the castle, because the people there are treating her as an outsider who isn’t allowed to know everything which is going on in the castle. The children are happy with the magic they see from Odile de Caray and her brother Christian, but their mother is growing more and more suspicious about the events taking place within the walls of the castle. When she sees some sort of a ritual with hooded men she is really alarmed and wants to leave with husband and kids. Little does she know that the husband is in over his head. Really nice classic, the build up is really slow, but steady and enough interesting hings happen to keep you watching. The atmosphere is perfect: it makes you feel like a holiday, but at the same time you know something must be wrong. Compliments to both the cast and the crew, they made a fantastic chiller with an ending you don’t see every day. Highly recommended.

Garden of the Dead – the only real zombiefilm in the “Garden of the Dead zombie collection”, and it is the best film too. Made in 1972, this early zombiefilm plays out in a remote work camp for prisoners, where the inmates are inhaling formaldehyde to get away from it all. When a group decides to break out, they get into a firefight with the guards and they are all shot dead. The next day the guards don’t believe their eyes: the killed prisoners are walking down the road towards the gate of the camp! Now both the guards and the remaining prisoners have to fight for their lives against the zombies, who wield tools like pick axes and can drive cars. Nice to see such an early effort in the zombie genre, before it became really big. Atmosphere is just right, exactly how I like a 70s film to be. I had great fun watching this, so I recommend it, even though it isn’t Oscar material of course.