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Welcome to the Hammer Factory. This month we dissect Demons of the Mind (1972).

While Hammer Studios has been in business since 1934, it was between 1955 and 1979 that it towered as one of the premier sources of edgy, gothic horror. On top of ushering the famous monsters of Universal’s horror heyday back into the public eye, resurrecting the likes of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Mummy in vivid color, the studio invited performers like Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt and so many more to step into the genre limelight. Spanning a library housing over 300 films, Hammer Studios is a key part of horror history that until recently has been far too difficult to track down.

In late 2018, Shout Factory’s Scream Factory line began to focus on bringing Hammer’s titles to disc in the US, finally making many of the studio’s underseen gems available in packages that offered great...

Hey everyone! Before we bid adieu to the year 2021, we have one last batch of home media releases on the horizon this week, including two great Sundance films—Mayday and Knocking—and one of my favorite movie discoveries of the last few years, Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes, which is getting a Blu-ray from Twilight Time. Other Blu-ray and DVD releases for December 28th include Venom (1971) aka The Legend of the Spider Forest, The Cropsey Incident, Bigfoot Creek, and Red Snow.

Bigfoot Creek

The world has moved on, but he's still out there. Since the 1970s he has roamed the countryside, watching...and waiting. He has been sighted several times over the last few decades and this all-new docudrama chronicles these true events that occurred throughout the Midwest. Featuring interviews and locations from the real encounters.

The Cropsey Incident

The Urban Legend Is Real!! A group of online social...

With Christmas officially just right around the corner, we have one last big push for home media before the big day, just in case you have any last-minute shopping to do. This week’s horror and sci-fi releases make for a pretty great final batch of titles for 2019, too, with Scream Factory at the forefront. Not only have they put together a Collector’s Edition for Silver Bullet (which is probably my most anticipated release of theirs for the entire year), but they’ve also put together a new volume of Universal Horror films and are showing some love to Murders in the Rue Morgue and To The Devil… A Daughter as well.

Ad Astra is also hitting various formats this Tuesday, and if you missed it during its release in October, Patrick Lussier’s Trick comes home on both Blu-ray and DVD this week, too.

Other releases for December 17th include Gags the Clown,...

The seventies were rough on Hammer Films; horror tastes were passing them by, as audiences became enamored with grittier gutter grue and moved away from ripped bodices and cobwebbed halls. With the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973), it only made sense for the company to grasp for the popular straw in an effort to compete in the marketplace. To The Devil…A Daughter (1976) saw that straw burst into flames to the point that it became Hammer’s last horror film before initially shuttering the place in ’79. But my god, is it a spectacular pyre to behold.

Released in March in the UK and other parts of Europe before hitting North America in July, To The Devil did poor business to match its mostly abysmal reviews. This is understandable when one considers some of the lurid behavior on display; there are images conjured here that are closer to Fulci than Fisher.

New York's Quad Cinema got this summer off to a bloody good start with part 1 of their "Hammer's House of Horror" movie retrospective series featuring 32 films from the Hammer vault. On July 20th, the Quad Cinema team will continue the frights and fun with part 2 of their special Hammer horror screenings, and we've been provided with exclusive details on the second half of their retrospective series that's aptly titled "The Decadent Years."

From July 20th–August 2nd, Quad Cinema will screen a wide range of Hammer horror films from "The Decadent Years," including Dracula A.D. 1972, Countess Dracula, Twins of Evil, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, and many more! There will be 25 total titles shown (all of them from 1967–1976), with 20 of the films screened in glorious 35mm.

Below, we have the full list of titles screening as part of Hammer's House of Horror Part II, and to learn more about screening dates and times,...

The Horror Channel has announced the return of the Hammer double features.

The season, which runs on Saturday nights from February 1 to 22 at 9pm, promises "vampire vixens, creepy castles, mouldy mummies, satanic sadists and Lee & Cushing on top show".

Hammer recently unveiled the trailer for The Quiet Ones, the studio's follow-up to its successful critical and commercial return with The Woman in Black.

The full schedule is below, complete with synopses from the Horror Channel (Sat 319 / Virgin 149 / Freesat 138).

February 1 9pm - Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)

This sequel to the 1958 The Horror of Dracula sees the supposedly dead Count Dracula back in bloody business once his trusty servant Klove entices the English Kents - Charles (Francis Matthews), brother Alan (Charles Tingwell) and their wives Diana (Suzan Farmer) and Helen (Barbara Shelley) - inside his welcoming castle. Directed by Terence Fisher, this is seen as the "quintessential Hammer horror".

February 1 10.45pm -...

The Horror Channel has announced the return of the Hammer double features.

The season, which runs on Saturday nights from February 1 to 22 at 9pm, promises "vampire vixens, creepy castles, mouldy mummies, satanic sadists and Lee & Cushing on top show".

Hammer recently unveiled the trailer for The Quiet Ones, the studio's follow-up to its successful critical and commercial return with The Woman in Black.

The full schedule is below, complete with synopses from the Horror Channel (Sat 319 / Virgin 149 / Freesat 138).

February 1 9pm - Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)

This sequel to the 1958 The Horror of Dracula sees the supposedly dead Count Dracula back in bloody business once his trusty servant Klove entices the English Kents - Charles (Francis Matthews), brother Alan (Charles Tingwell) and their wives Diana (Suzan Farmer) and Helen (Barbara Shelley) - inside his welcoming castle. Directed by Terence Fisher, this is seen as the "quintessential Hammer horror".

February 1 10.45pm -...

The sick and twisted minds behind the Melbourne Underground Film Festival have launched a brand new horror and sci-fi themed fest: Bloodfest Fantastique! Australia gets a lot more blood-soaked on June 10-18, nine nights of some of the most gruesome, terrifying and far-out films, past and present, from around the world.

While Muff has never been shy about screening genre films, Richard Wolstencroft — founder and director of both fests — is planning for his newest endeavor to simply be a celebration of his two favorite genres of filmmaking, without all the politicking hooha-ery that surrounds Muff.

So, there’s still a very underground-esque flavor to Bloodfest. The newer flicks in the festival have a scrappy, inventive, degenerate quality, from slice and dice em’s like Chris Sun’s Come and Get Me, Chad Ferrin’s Someone’s Knocking at the Door and Geoff Klein Bikini Girls on Ice; to monster flicks...

Netflix has revolutionized the home movie experience for fans of film with its instant streaming technology. Netflix Nuggets is my way of spreading the word about independent, classic and foreign films made available by Netflix for instant streaming.

This Week’s New Instant Releases…

Promised Lands (1974)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Documentary

Director: Susan Sontag

Synopsis: Set in Israel during the final days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this powerful documentary — initially barred by Israel authorities — from writer-director Susan Sontag examines divergent perceptions of the enduring Arab-Israeli clash. Weighing in on matters related to socialism, anti-Semitism, nation sovereignty and American materialism are The Last Jew writer Yoram Kaniuk and military physicist Yuval Ne’eman.

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2009)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Heino Ferch, Hannah Herzsprung, Gerald Alexander Held, Lena Stolze, Sunnyi Melles

Synopsis: Directed by longtime star of independent German cinema Margarethe von Trotta, this reverent...

Andy Milligan, the Staten Island-based filmmaker best known for a string of micro-budget horror and sexploitation films made in the 1960’s and 70’s, was certainly one of the oddest characters in the New York ‘Grindhouse’ movie industry. Infamous for his sadistic nature towards his actors and the sadistic kink in his gay lifestyle, Milligan is legendary for the inept, technically primitive movies he made. Michael Weldon once wrote in his Psychotronic magazine that “If you’re an Andy Milligan fan, there’s no hope for you” and Tim Lucas wrote in Video Watchdog that “To reach an appreciation of (Milligan’s) work, it may first be necessary to develop a loathing toward traditional forms of cinema”. It’s true that Milligan’s films are unbelievably atrocious on so many levels yet they’re not without their threadbare charms and interesting scripts. Milligan was a one-man film crew who wrote, directed,...