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Get ready for a spooky season of horror films and shows with streaming services like Max and networks like TCM, AMC, and Shudder. TCM starts the scare early with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho on September 10, followed by a lineup of horror classics throughout October. MeTV and Svengoolie will also be celebrating Halloween with double features and scary episodes from their classic TV portfolio all month long.

"Everyone's entitled to one good scare." As summer slips away, autumn takes hold. And for horror fans, this is a favorite time of the year. Yes, spooky season is near, which means the scary television and movie marathons will soon follow. Streaming services like Max have already taken the initiative by dropping the first eight installments of the Friday the 13th franchise to enjoy anytime. But part of the fun of Halloween is being inundated with all the macabre-inspired content. And Turner Classic Movies (TCM), AMC,...

CineSavant reaches back to a U.K. disc released in 2014, because the subject is (what else) a semi-obscure science fiction effort. Favorite John Neville stars as a scientist opposite newcomer Gabriella Licudi, a beauty who may be an invader from outer space. This is the one with the teardrops that burn; not having seen it since 1966 or so, evaluating a ‘new’ Blu was an imperative. The main takeaway is that it’s awfully small-scale and the fantastic content is almost entirely confined to dialogue. But the performances are exemplary and actress Jean Marsh is terrific.

Unearthly Stranger

Region B Blu-ray

Network-bfi

1963 / B&w / 1:66 / 80 min. / Street Date November 3, 2014 / Available from Amazon / 14.99

Starring: John Neville, Philip Stone, Gabriella Licudi, Patrick Newell, Jean Marsh, Warren Mitchell.

Cinematography: Reg Wyer

Art Director: Harry Pottle

Film Editor: Tom Priestley

Original Music: Edward Williams

Written by Rex Carlton based on an idea by Jeffrey Stone...

Writer, director, producer, editor, cinematographer, and actor Larry Fessenden chats with hosts Joe Dante & Josh Olson about some of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Habit (1995)

Jakob’s Wife (2021)

Phantom Thread (2017)

The Last Winter (2006)

Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)

The Crawling Eye (1958)

The Reptile (1966)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Casablanca (1942)

Jaws (1975)

Man Of A Thousand Faces (1957)

Scarlet Street (1945)

Suspicion (1941)

Rope (1948)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

Frankenstein (1931)

The Wolf Man (1941)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Dracula (1931)

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Mean Streets (1973)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Playtime (1973)

The Thing (1982)

The Howling (1981)

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

An American Werewolf In Paris (1997)

I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957)

Ginger Snaps (2001)

The Terminator (1984)

The Wolfman (2010)

Van Helsing (2004)

The Mummy (2017)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Invisible Man (2020)

Amazon Women On The Moon (1987)

Wendigo (2001)

Fargo (1996)

Raising Arizona (1987)

Seven (1995)

Man Bites Dog...

One could be forgiven for not suspecting that Hammer Films, known for their comparatively lurid and bloody, sometimes pointedly lusty, and otherwise vividly imagined (and reimagined) catalogue of horror classics, would be the first place to look if one were in the market for a low-key yet spirited take on a holiday classic to turn to once the perennial screenings of It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Die Hard and countless other popular titles have begun to wear out their welcome. Yet the studio delivered just that in Cash on Demand (1962), a dandy and delicious suspense thriller directed by Quentin Lawrence, from a script by David T. Chantler and Lewis Griefer, itself based on a play by Jacques Gillies, which echoes of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the book and the countless movie and TV iterations which came before, to fresh and potent purpose.

Lawrence, a British TV veteran...

Welcome my friends, to the stories that always end…usually in a tidy 15 or 20 minutes to be precise. Yes, we’re back in anthology land with a title that became Amicus’ modus operandi (and money makers) for the next decade, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965). While this isn’t my favorite Amicus omnibus (it’s still good!), it is their first and credit shall be paid.

Released Stateside in late February by Paramount, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors did very well with audiences, giving Amicus a reliable hook for their future releases; while they didn’t focus solely on portmanteaus (they released The Skull the same year), those did become what they were known for.

And rightly so; Dr. Terror sets up a formula that works: well known horror actors in short bursts of terror and humor, easy to digest. This one starts us off on a British passenger train...

This October, Shout! Factory TV and Scream Factory proudly present 31 Nights of Horror. Fans can tune in each evening throughout the entire month for a double feature that's sure to satisfy cravings for all things creepy.

Each night of the stream will feature a genre favorite such as Chopping Mall, Witchboard, The Exorcist III, the original Willard, and many more. And since no skeleton is complete without a funny bone, each movie will be followed by a distinctively eerie episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, including episodes MST3K: Night of the Blood Beast, MST3K: The Slime People and MST3K: The Crawling Eye.

31 Nights of Horror also presents the devilish debut of several new films to Shout! Factory TV, including The Undead, The Horror of Party Beach and The Haunted Strangler, with Boris Karloff. These and all films featured in 31 Nights of Horror will also be available for...

Horror changes with each generation. In the ‘50s, societal fear of the Atomic bomb was projected back at us through the use of metaphorical figures such as giant lizards, oversized sea-creatures, and warped representations of nature too often taken for granted. And then there’s fun fare like The Crawling Eye (1958), which posits that visitors from space don’t always come in peace, nor are they willing to go quietly. I guess films don’t always have to reflect society.

This British independent production was released at home under its original title The Trollenberg Terror (also the name of the 1956 BBC serial it is based on) in October with a stateside rollout at the end of the year; unloved by critics (and mocked by Mystery Science Theater 3000), the film satiated the drive-in circuit looking for cheap thrills and cheaper monsters. But The Crawling Eye offers up more - atmosphere,...

It creeps and leaps and slides and glides along the wall… and then it eats your face, dude. Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda’s ultimate monster mastication epic now looks sensationally gory, thanks to a full restoration. Arrow’s disc has pretty much everything, including two transfers and two audio commentaries. And Savant has a guilty admission to make — it was the tripe, the whole tripe, and nothing but the tripe.

Caltiki, The Immortal Monster

Blu-ray + DVD

Arrow Video USA

1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 76 min. / Caltiki, il mostro immortale / Street Date April 11, 2017 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95

Starring: John Merivale, Didi Sullivan (Perego), Gérard Haerter, Daniela Rocca, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Daniele Vargas, Arturo Dominici, Gay Pearl

Cinematography: John Foam (Mario Bava)

Special Effects: Mario Bava

Film Editor: Mario Serandrei

Original Music: Roberto Nicolosi

Written by Filippo Sanjust

Produced by Bruno Vailati

Directed by Robert Hamton (Riccardo Freda) & Mario Bava

Who says that Blu-ray is dying?...

Gavin Jasper Nov 24, 2019

Despite having over 200 episodes, MST3K has rarely been very story-driven. Then again, there are some that feel extra important...

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an amazing show. There’s a reason the Kickstarter to bring it back from the abyss was such a success. Lasting for ten seasons, there are countless killer jokes, memorable movies, and harebrained characters. As wonderful as it all is, it’s also not the easiest show to really binge-watch.

Recently, Jim Vorel at Paste did a massive article where he rewatched every episode and ranked them from worst to best. It took well over a year to complete. I have a knack for latching onto massive projects like that (ie. ranking every single King of Fighters character because why not), but even I wouldn’t mess with something this crazy. Without commercials, each episode is ninety minutes long and magically marathoning...

I’m guessing that you, just like most of us, have always had seasonal favorites when it comes to movies that attempt to address and evoke the spirit of Christmas. Like most from my generation, when I was a kid I learned the pleasures of perennial anticipation of Christmastime as interpreted by TV through a series of holiday specials, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and even musical variety hours where the likes of Bing Crosby and Andy Williams and Dean Martin et al would sit around sets elaborately designed to represent the ideal Christmas-decorated living room, drinking “wassail” (I’m sure that’s what was in those cups) and crooning classics of the season alongside a dazzling array of guests. (We knew we were moving into a new world of holiday cheer when David Bowie joined Bing Crosby for...

Humankind’s collision with otherworldly life forms can make for unforgettable cinema.

This article will highlight the best of live-action human vs. alien films. The creatures may be from other planets or may be non-demonic entities from other dimensions.

Excluded from consideration were giant monster films as the diakaiju genre would make a great subject for separate articles.

Readers looking for “friendly alien” films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), It Came from Outer Space (1953) and the comically overrated Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) are advised to keep watching the skies because they won’t find them here.

Film writing being the game of knowledge filtered through personal taste that it is, some readers’ subgenre favorites might not have made the list such as War of the Worlds (1953) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).

Now let’s take a chronological look at the cinema’s best battles between Us and Them.

The '80s and '90s brought us some of the best cartoons ever made, but one thing that made '90s cartoons so special is how irreverent and pop-culture oriented they were. Suddenly we were inundated with shockingly adult innuendos and obscure movie references that flew over the heads of most children watching these cartoons. Horror films were no exception - these show-runners loved to drop references to everything from horror classics to '80s slashers. Here are ten of my favorites:     The Critic - "Miserable" (1994)   The Critic was short-lived but beloved by fans for its hilarious movie parodies that lampooned everything from Orson Welles to Ace Ventura. The most memorable horror spoof was entitled "Miserable" wherein titular critic Jay Sherman gets kidnapped by his biggest fan in an obvious parody of Misery (1990). Even the gruesome woodblock/sledgehammer scene makes an appearance.     Bobby's World - "Adventures in Bobby Sitting...

Greener Grass

The two leading recipes for success are

building a better mousetrap and finding a bigger loophole.

Edgar A. Shoaff

For the first few decades of broadcast television, the then three major networks held a near-monopoly on the national audience. More often than not, on any given night it was likely nine out of every ten people watching TV were watching one or another of ABC, CBS, NBC.

But even then, in that small sliver of the audience not watching the nets, there was evidence of a viewer appetite for an alternative to the often formula-dominated programming of the big broadcasters. Statistically, they didn’t amount to more than what would, years later, come to be referred to as a “niche” audience, and you’d be making a hell of an assumption saying they were looking elsewhere for their TV entertainment because they wanted something better. But it was...

We know the greats; movies like Metropolis (1927), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Wars (1977).

And there are those films which maybe didn’t achieve cinematic greatness, but through their inexhaustible watchability became genre touchstones, lesser classics but classics nonetheless, like The War of the Worlds (1953), Godzilla (1954), Them! (1954), The Time Machine (1960).

In the realm of science fiction cinema, those are the cream (and below that, maybe the half and half). But sci fi is one of those genres which has often too readily leant itself to – not to torture an analogy — producing nonfat dairy substitute.

During the first, great wave of sci fi movies in the 1950s, the target audience was kids and teens. There wasn’t a lot in the way of “serious” sci fi. Most of it was churned out quick and cheap; drive-in fodder, grist for the Saturday matinee mill.

By the early 1960s,...

Invasion Earth: The Aliens Are Here

Stars: Janice Fabian, Christian Lee, Larry Bagby, Dana Young | Written by Miller Drake | Directed by Robert Skotak

Aliens invade a small town invading the towns cinema where the patrons are watching a sci-fi marathon. Taking over the projection room, the aliens splice together footage of old sci-fi films from the 50s to try an “bore” the audience into losing their minds so that they can take them over. A couple of teenagers in the audience realise that the alien threat is real and set out to put an end to the aliens plans before it’s too late.

Only really notable for being the one and only directorial effort from Robert Skotak, a visual effects whiz who has worked on such films as Tremors, Darkman, Terminator 2 and more recently Joe Dante’s The Hole, Invasion Earth: The Aliens Are Here isn’t really a movie,...

Screenwriter behind Hammer films such as Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein

In 1957, Hammer Films revived gothic horror – in abeyance in a decade that offered nuclear or cosmic horrors which made the classic monsters seem tame – with The Curse of Frankenstein, directed by Terence Fisher and starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. To hear him tell it, Jimmy Sangster, who has died aged 83, wrote the script because no one else would, and simply typed it out and turned it in.

Yet Sangster came up with a new story – owing as little to Mary Shelley's novel as to James Whale's earlier film – and a radical depiction of Frankenstein as a determined, charming yet corrupt dandy who could still chill in an era of nuclear proliferation. Sexually amoral (he uses his monster to murder the maid he has impregnated), rigidly dividing his life (making a bloody hash in the laboratory...

British screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster, a key creative force behind so many of the great Hammer Horror Films, has died. Sangster penned the scripts for Hammer’s two seminal entries in their monster series Horror Of Dracula and Curse Of Frankenstein. His other scripts for Hammer include X: The Unknown, The Mummy, and Revenge Of Frankenstein. Blood Of The Vampire and The Crawling Eye were scripts he wrote for competing studios. He worked on American television shows in the ’70s including Night Stalker, Ghost Story, Wonder Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man. In 1997 Sangster wrote his autobiography Do You Want it Good or Tuesday? Sangster was 83.

An excellent, comprehensive article about Sangster can be found on Cinema Retro’s website Here...

Get prepped for the second week of TCM’s series of Monster Movie double-features, with Joe Dante!

Our favorite TV channel is back with the second date in its month-long string of Thursday double-features, running some of the very best in monsterous sci-fi and horror films. Here’s what’s up this Thursday:

Thursday, June 9:

Them! – The template for the atomic mutant monster genre, another surprise hit despite studio jitters. Joe Dante covers it here:

Nine years after Hiroshima the atomic chicken has come home to roost in the shape of giant ants, soon to be followed by jumbo mutant radioactive lizards, locusts, scorpions, etc. The near-biblical template for the dozens of nuclear monster movies that followed it, this is one of the most influential movies ever.

The Cosmic Monsters – While in England making The Crawling Eye, Forrest Tucker starred inwhat would become its Us co-feature, shot under the...

“How come you only show us clips from movies none of us ever heard of?”

She was 30, a single mom who’d admirably gone back to school for a business degree to better things for her and her family. She’d taken my film appreciation class as an elective, a break from the grind of her business classes, expecting it would be – her word – “fun.”

But, due to the aforementioned “movies none of us ever heard of,” she was not having the anticipated fun.

I explained, “Because most movies were made before you were born.”

Simple and obvious, it still didn’t satisfy her, and the unasked next question in her eyes I guessed to be, “But why do we have to see them?”

Most of my class – not all, but most – I knew felt similarly. They didn’t say it but I could tell: rolled eyes, glazed eyes, eyes...

Alberta - Spring is here and truth shall be in the air around Durham, North Carolina as the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival blossoms from April 8 - 11. This is a four day feast of prime cinema featuring real people with real lives and real issues that weren’t shaped by the beancounters in marketing. Last year’s festival featured Oscar winner The Cove and nominees Burma VJ and Food Inc. Looking through this year’s line up, there’s plenty reasons to make the trip to the Bull City if you need to escape from the unmitigated hype of Tiger Woods at the Masters.

And Everything is Going Fine is Steven Soderbergh’s biography of Spalding Gray. The monologist was the one man story machine in Swimming in Cambodia and Monster in a Box. Soderbergh directed Gray’s Gray’s Anatomy. He killed himself after seeing Tim Burton’s Big Fish.

Despite being off the air for over a decade, Mystery Science Theater 3000 retains a rabid cult following. It is these fans that love this collection the most, but anyone with a sense of humor worth a damn can find something to laugh at as Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo, and either Joel Robinson or Mike Nelson sarcastically rip on otherwise non-entertaining movies.

Seeing as how this is the 17th Volume of the show to make it to DVD, you might think that this collection would be mostly made up of B-grade material, but you’d be wrong. The four cinematic masterpieces run through the wringer in this set are: The Crawling Eye, The Beatniks, The Final Sacrifice, and Blood Waters of Dr. Z. More after the jump:

The Crawling Eye is, unsurprisingly, about gigantic mutant eyes that crawl, thus making it the most literal title in the collection. I have to say,...

The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Fred Weekend Shopping Guide - your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

(Please support Fred by using the links below to make any impulse purchases - it helps to keep us going…)

I admit - besides just being a fan of the show and being delighted that another volume has arrived - I’m even more delighted by the release of the Mystery Science Theater Collection: Volume Xvii (Shout Factory, Not Rated, DVD-$59.97 Srp) than usual because of the bonus features. Which feature, in particular? The “Crow vs. Crow” panel I put together and hosted at last year’s DragonCon,...

Another terrific movie from Pedro Almodóvar, two very different animated releases, and one of last year's best movies that you most likely didn't see, all new on DVD this week.

If the movie-within-the-movie of Broken Embraces looks familiar, it's just because director Pedro Almodóvar is restaging scenes from his classic screwball farce Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. But Embraces is no comedy, instead dealing with the doomed love affair between a filmmaker (Lluís Homar) and his leading lady (Penélope Cruz, in the role for which she should have gotten her Oscar nod this year), who happens to be the mistress of the billionaire funding the movie they're making.

While it's not at the level of such immortal Almodóvar movies as All About My Mother or Law of Desire, Broken Embraces is nonetheless a gorgeous piece of work, loaded with great performances and homages to the auteur's favorite movies.

It's not a huge list of home video releases this week, but some pretty huge films are on it, including The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which is getting a midnight release this Saturday morning, March 20th. But we know that's not what you're here for -- more than likely you'll be picking up flicks like The Fourth Kind, Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy, and/or (our pick of the week) Ninja Assassin.

The most offbeat entry is definitely Blurred Realities, another trilogy, but this time only one is true horror: American Zombie, a documentary about high-functioning zombies living in Los Angeles and their struggles to gain acceptance in human society. The other two parts of the trio are The Hole Story and American Shopper, both of which are also pseudo-docs about a "black hole" that opens up on the surface of North Long Lake in Minnesota and one man's passionate and...

Most commonly known amongst the public for his role as Billy in the legendary Gremlins movies, actor Zach Galligan has led an exciting and varied career both within and outside of our genre. On the eve of the premiere of his newest film, psycho horror/thriller Cut, Zach spoke with our own Gareth Jones about the film, its gimmick, and what he’ll be up to next.

DC: Can you give us an overview of the plot of Cut and your character’s involvement?

Zach : It’s basically about five people who are spending a weekend in a country estate and they simply come under attack by forces they don’t understand, for reasons they can’t comprehend; and...it’s just basically a "five people in a house in the middle of nowhere" scary horror thriller. I mean, we’ve seen this film before, but I don’t...

One of our main duties here at Dread Central has always been to keep you in the loop concerning new and badass stuff that you simply need to know about and have. Get out the credit cards, kids! We're about to point you in the direction of some really ghoulish things for that special someone on your list!

Below you'll find a couple of images of some really cool horror themed jewelry. It's all handmade and covers some really classic flicks like The Crawling Eye and Night of the Living Dead. Even better? Each piece is crafted by none other than Notld's very own little zombie scamp Karen Cooper, Kyra Schon! How's that for collectible? It just doesn't get much better and original than this!

Dig on the samples below and head on over to Stone House Arts for the whole enchilada as well as ordering info. Dig it!

-...

British film producer Robert S. Baker teamed with Monte Berman to produce, and occasionally direct, a handful of Gothic horror and science fiction films in the late 1950s. The duo produced the classic 1958 terror tale Blood of the Vampire (1958) starring Sir Donald Wolfit, and the cult sci-fi thriller The Crawling Eye (aka The Trollenberg Terror) (1958) starring Forrest Tucker. They produced and directed the 1959 gruesome recounting of Jack the Ripper (1959), and told the tale of the bodysnatching team of Burke and Hare in 1960’s The Flesh and the Fiends (aka Mania, The Fiendish Ghouls) starring Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence. They also produced the period thriller The Hellfire Club (1961) and the horror comedy No Place Like Homicide! (aka What a Carve Up!) (1961).

Baker was born in London on October 27, 1916. He served in the Royal Artillery in North Africa during World War II, before being transferred to the Army Film and Photographic Unit.