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Sure, there are plenty of new and classic horror movies on streaming this year. But there’s nothing that beats the sensation of sliding a disc into a Blu-ray player. It harkens back to the thrill of going to your local video store, picking out a scary movie and taking it home.

We thought we’d celebrate that sensation by picking out our very favorite new home video releases for this Halloween, a mixture of obscure favorites, outright classics, near-hits from some of our favorite modern filmmakers and a new movies that gets a terrific home video treatment. Grab some candy, your comfiest pajamas and settle in for the night with these gems.

Janus “Demon Pond”

One of the season’s must-have titles is “Demon Pond,” a bizarro, late-‘70s nightmare from Masahiro Shinoda, whose “Pale Flower” and “Double Suicide” are already a part of the Criterion Collection. Shinoda updates...

Things are getting spooky over at the Criterion collection, and it's not just because Beetlejuice's Winona Ryder recently stopped by the closet. For the next 24 hours, the famed purveyors of physical media will be offering a 50% off flash sale, including new releases like Gummo, Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse Trilogy,...

The horror films produced by Val Lewton for Rko Studios throughout the 1940s all share DNA, though the third and fourth films in the cycle, Jacques Tournier’s I Walked with a Zombie and Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim, seem to be especially connected. Both were released in 1943 and concern protagonists who enter hidden worlds beyond their understanding, worlds that allude to rot existing in conventional society should one care to acknowledge it. The protagonists’ growing awareness parallels our own, though in each case the viewer is left with little hope for reform or closure. They have glimpsed nightmare realms and are humbled by what they discover about their societies as well as themselves.

Notions of reform are particularly relevant to I Walked with a Zombie, which offers an unusually nuanced portrait of the legacy of colonialism. Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), a nurse from snowy Ottawa, is hired to...

Directed by horror master George A. Romero, the box office smash, Night of the Living Dead, arrives on 4K Uhd on 7th October. Shot on a shoestring budget the movie is a great story of independent cinema and became one of the most influential films of all time.

Following on 14th October comes I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim on 4K Uhd and Blu-ray™ . Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

To celebrate this release we have a chance for 2 lucky winers to win a copy of all 3 movies.

Criterion Collection Halloween Giveaway

Night of the Living Dead

New 4K Restoration

Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark,...

When you’re putting together a list of the biggest taboos in Western culture, death itself might not make the cut. But it should: North Americans and Europeans are chronically averse to facing death. Too many of us quietly believe if we follow the right workout regimen, eat enough kale, and take the right expensive supplements we may just live forever. It’s a predictable belief for our youth-obsessed culture. So the intrigue of zombie movies is that this genre forces us to confront death face-to-face. Or rather, death confronts us, looking to scoop out our brains and have us join its ranks.

Sometimes, zombies can bear larger metaphors on their disintegrating shoulders — for our increasingly wired yet increasingly isolated post-internet world, say, as in “Shaun of the Dead.” But sometimes zombies are just zombies: walking corpses who shuffle around and remind us that, even if we’re never somehow reanimated,...

This October, Spirit Entertainment, in collaboration with The Criterion Collection, is set to delight horror fans with the release of two seminal films, Night of the Living Dead and a double feature of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. These releases promise to offer a fresh perspective on classic horror with pristine 4K restorations and an array of special features that delve into the making and legacy of these groundbreaking films.

Night of the Living Dead: A Landmark in Independent Cinema

Directed by the legendary George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead will be available in a new 4K Uhd restoration on 7th October. Shot on a modest budget just outside Pittsburgh, this 1968 masterpiece became a midnight hit and a box-office sensation, fundamentally altering the horror genre. The film’s simple yet gripping plot follows a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse as they fend...

A pair of moody horror milestones from producer Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim are being paired up for a new release from The Criterion Collection.

The double feature is getting a 4K Uhd + Blu-ray combo edition as well as a Blu-ray edition and a DVD edition, with the release date for all three versions set for October 8, 2024.

Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

As head of Rko’s B-horror-movie unit during the 1940s, Lewton, working with directors such as Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson, brought a new sophistication to the genre by wringing chills not from conventional movie monsters but from brooding atmosphere, suggestion, and psychosexual unease.

Suffused with ritual, mysticism,...

Likely that Gummo‘s most often been seen on a DVD passed among friends like cinematic contraband. Though I doubt that legacy will ever quite die (maybe now it’s Mkv files), that history makes all the more notable a 4K upgrade put into circulation by Criterion. They’ll be releasing Harmony Korine’s totemic feature debut in October alongside a Val Lewton double of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim and Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond. Per the traditional October viewing, one could say that all four are, in their own ways, horror.

Meanwhile, G. W. Pabst’s immortal Pandora’s Box, featuring the never-bested Louise Brooks, gets a Blu-ray upgrade.

See cover art below and more at Criterion:

The post The Criterion Collection’s October Lineup Includes Val Lewton and Harmony Korine on 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s been almost 70 years since the first of four film adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers was released and in that time we’ve yet to meet a single one of these so-called “snatchers.” I suppose that’s the point, since if they have to snatch a body, they don’t have bodies. This plays directly into the way the story, in its various adaptations, serves as a metaphorical horse to be hitched to any topical cart, the non-corporeal snatchers (presumably extra-terrestrial) view us as all-purpose vehicles for their…what? Bodies, minds, or souls? Don Siegel’s 1956 film, still considered to be the quintessential version of the story (though Philip Kaufman and Abel Ferrara’s remakes aren’t exactly chopped liver), actually conceals the answer behind budget compromises and plot holes: They are us, or we could be, if we don’t watch out.

Through the...

Admit it – there’s at least one horror movie out there with a “gotcha” moment that made your heart slam against the inside of your ribcage. A sudden out-of-nowhere reveal, often accompanied by a loud noise on the soundtrack. Scenes like this have been making audiences soil their seats since the era of classic monster movies, and it’s not hard to see why. The response is hardwired into our brains; an instinctive fight-or-flight reflex when our natural defense mechanisms are rudely interrupted. The term “jump scare” wasn’t commonly used to label this effect until the 21st century, and it only really became part of popular culture after the birth of YouTube – which practically weaponized the technique with viral “screamer” videos and clip compilations.

Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock once famously criticized this kind of scare tactic, claiming suspense far is more effective than a sudden shock… but he’s...

From the Italian godfather of gore, Lucio Fulci, comes City of the Living Dead, a notoriously nauseating, compellingly corporeal masterpiece of apocalyptic zombie horror.

Arrow Video has restored the Italian horror classic for a brand new 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray Limited Edition, and Bloody Disgusting is debuting the restoration’s trailer today.

Ahead of the release on March 25, watch the brand new 4K trailer below!

Arrow previews, “Stridently going beyond the classical stylings of his horror hit Zombie Flesh Eaters, City of the Living Dead sees Fulci eschew conventional narrative logic in favour of a delirious, oneiric mode of storytelling which stresses visuals, surrealism and atmosphere. Presented here in a 4K restoration with a wealth of extras, Fulci’s gore-drenched classic can now be devoured as never before!”

4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Limited Edition Contents:

• Restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera negative by Cauldron Films

• 4K (2160p...

We’re now just a few days away from the widest release of Martin Scorsese’s career as Killers of the Flower Moon is set to open in around 3,500 theaters in the United States from Paramount and Apple. With the SAG strike underway, the legendary director himself has led the promotional campaign, which means the publishing of several stellar interviews digging deeper into the process.

One of the most interesting bits to arrive about the production of his David Grann adaptation is that Scorsese drew inspiration from Ari Aster when it comes to the project. “I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid,” he told The Irish Times. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie.” While Scorsese’s admiration for Aster is well-documented,...

Based on David Grann’s best-selling crime thriller, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon tells the real-life mystery of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s, who became wealthy after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off, and the ensuing spiral of conspiracy, greed and murder got so bad that the FBI had to step in. It’s a sprawling story with a nearly three-and-a-half-hour runtime, and Martin Scorsese looked to the films of Ari Aster for influence on its pacing.

“I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid,” Martin Scorsese told The Irish Times. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie. Just going a little slower.

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have been quite open in interviews when discussing the massive “Killers of the Flower Moon” script overhaul that took place during the film’s development. In a new interview with The Irish Times, the director revealed that he and co-writer Eric Roth had been working on the “Flower Moon” script for two whole years when DiCaprio took issue with the approach.

“Myself and [my co-screenwriter] Eric Roth talked about telling the story from the point of view of the bureau agents coming in to investigate,” Scorsese said. “After two years of working on the script, Leo came to me and asked, ‘Where is the heart of this story?’ I had had meetings and dinners with the Osage, and I thought, ‘Well, there’s the story.’ The real story, we felt, was not necessarily coming from the outside, with the bureau, but rather from the inside, from Oklahoma.

Martin Scorsese is crediting Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” for inspiring the pacing and running time of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Scorsese told The Irish Times that the 206-minute length of “Killers of the Flower Moon” is in line with horror films ranging from auteurs like Aster or Val Lewton. “Killers of the Flower Moon” borrows from a blend of genres like Westerns and horror.

“I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’ or ‘Beau Is Afraid,'” Scorsese said. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s ‘Cat People’ or ‘I Walked With a Zombie.’ Just going a little slower, a little quieter.”

Scorsese continued, “I was very concerned about allowing scenes that were not narrative into the story, scenes to do with the Osage culture — leaving in those scenes of custom,...

This article contains mild spoilers for "The Exorcist: Believer."

In William Friedkin's 1973 adaptation of William Peter Blatty's "The Exorcist," the film opens not on the possession of 12-year-old Regan MacNeil, but on Catholic priest and archaeologist Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), who is on a dig in Northern Iraq. He comes across a medallion of Saint Joseph, as well as an idol representing the demon Pazuzu. Fans of the film "The Exorcist II: The Heretic" will know that this is representative of the demon that will later possess Regan. According to Babylonian and Assyrian myth, Pazuzu is a wind demon, and his presence in the opening indicates that Merrin has dealt with Pazuzu before.

But with this desert setting, this scene also implies that there's something foreign — other, about this statue and medallion. Almost as if the intrusion of artifacts from the Middle East is truly responsible for...

Guillermo del Toro doesn’t hold back about his love for his favorite movies. If you’ve spent any time on his Twitter feed over the years, you’ve likely seen him praise Stanley Donen’s use of the color red throughout the late director’s body of work, and hail everything from William Wellman’s 1931 film “Other Men’s Women” to David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” from 2022. The man has wide-ranging taste, and a deep awareness of cinematic history that’s informed his own films.

Now he follows Turner Classic Movies advisors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson in giving his own picks from TCM’s lineup, all titles that will be airing in October. Watch the video, exclusive to IndieWire, above.

First up, he picks one of the most sorely underrated titles from Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, 1941’s “Suspicion,” airing on TCM at 2:00am...

Graveyards: those eerie expanses where the departed find their eternal rest, and where filmmakers unearth some of the most spine-tingling tales ever told. At Nightmare on Film Street, we’ve got a bone to pick with anyone who doesn’t appreciate the macabre magic of a good cemetery-set scare.

So, dust off your tombstone trivia and join us on a moonlit stroll through 13 graveyard horror movies that promise to leave you delightfully disturbed.

ABC 13. The Midnight Hour (1985)

Halloween night, a cursed scroll, and the dead rising from their graves. This TV movie is a nostalgic trip back to the ’80s, where a group of teens must confront the supernatural to save their town. With its graveyard setting playing a pivotal role, it’s a hauntingly fun start to our list.

Rko Radio Pictures 12. I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

A nurse is brought to the Caribbean to care for a woman in a mysterious catatonic state.

One of the unique aspects of the horror films produced by Val Lewton at Rko in the 1940s is the seriousness with which they discuss matters of mental illness. Even today, mental health issues are often tiptoed around, but in the forties, they were practically taboo. As discussed in previous entries in this column, Cat People (1942) is largely about repression and The Body Snatcher (1945) deals with guilt, paranoia, and psychopathy. The Seventh Victim (1943), one of the lesser-seen entries in the Lewton cycle, is about loneliness, the depression that stems from it, and suicidal ideation. It externalizes the inner struggles between the light and darkness that use the mind as a battlefield and demand a choice between life and death. Because of the unflinching way The Seventh Victim approaches the subject of suicide, this should be a considered a content warning for the discussion to come later. But first, some background on the film itself.

Ever since the inception of horror filmmaking, zombies have wandered the Earth. We all know George A. Romero as the Godfather of the Dead, but historians track the first zombies on screen back to 1932’s “White Zombie” starring Bela Lugosi. Before “The Walking Dead” made flesh-munching a source of mainstream cable entertainment, voodoo curses turned the living into dead-eyed shufflers like in Jacques Tourneur’s “I Walked With a Zombie.” Then came the brain feasts, the often debated runners, the contemporary remakes, and Negan’s trusty Lucille.

Film historians can connect the dots between zombie benchmarks that travel at different speeds over decades of releases. Lucky for you, we’re here to rank the 25 best zombie movies to set the record straight. Our list, our rules for inclusion. Let’s slash through the endless horde of zombie titles and see which are left standing as the undefeatables.

This episode of Wtf Really Happened to This Horror Movie was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Mike Conway, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

“Don’t let them bury me, I’m not dead!”

When we think of zombies, it’s only natural to first go right into everyone’s favorite flesh-eating ghouls that were popularized by George Romero in his genre classic Night of the Living Dead. But the idea of zombies has been around much longer and is actually steeped in fact. Haitian voodoo has claimed to create zombies for hundreds of years and in film, these were represented in some of our earliest horror movies. White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie are two of the more famous ones, but the entire sub-genre has some fascinating watches. Horror legend Wes Craven brought a return to Voodoo...

Cat People Cat People, 9.05pm,BBC4 Thursday, June 2, and then iPlayer

This 1942 film about a woman (Simone Simon) who fears that so much as kissing her husband (Kent Smith) will awaken an ancient curse that will turn her into a man-eating cat, is worth watching for its beautifully constructed visuals alone. More noir than horror in nature - especially for a modern audience - cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca's use of shadows to evoke fear and ambiguity is masterfully done. A scene in a swimming pool, which relies on sound design and the eerie reflections of the water upon the world to generate atmosphere, is particularly worthy of note. Beyond the look, Jacques Torneur's exploration of the immigrant experience in America, though embedded within the film's genre trappings, is also subtly moving. Don't miss I Walked With A Zombie, which screens immediately after it.

The Darjeeling Limited, 9pm, Great Movies, Friday,...

It starts with a ‘bang’. An enigmatic, metallic sound wakes up the protagonist of “Memoria”, Jessica Holland (Tilda Swinton), a Jacques Tourneur-inspired character, about whom we don’t know much. Aside from visiting her sister, growing orchids, and seemingly being in mourning after her deceased husband, she seems like a mystery we’ve just witnessed through a sudden awakening. The sensation sets her in motion. She starts to look for its roots, questioning one’s sanity, like a detective who’s about to lose their senses. Slowly drifting between the worlds of liminal boundaries – between material and imagined, visual and sonic, past and present – Jessica becomes involved in a mystery that will push her closer to the memory of the Colombian past. As it happens with Apichatpong’s narratives, the audience is plunged into a journey, too; we’re invited to participate and to cherish all of that – memories,...

By Hank Reineke

A March 1945 notice in the Los Angeles Times reported that following his return to Hollywood from a Uso camp tour, Boris Karloff was to begin work on a Rko Radio production titled Chamber of Horrors. The film was to be produced by Val Lewton, the producer who had already brought to the screen such psychological-horrors as Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and Curse of the Cat People (1944). Karloff had already appeared in a pair of Lewton’s horror-melodramas for Rko, The Body Snatcher (1945) and Isle of the Dead (1945). The actor had been enjoying his freelance status of late. Recent castings in a series of mad scientist films (1940-1942) for Columbia solidified Karloff’s reputation as cinema’s preeminent boogeyman - even in roles sans grotesque makeup appliances. So the engagement of the actor for Chamber of Horrors was properly trumpeted in a 1945 Variety notice as...

Something almost beyond comprehension is happening on October 31st… and two men want to do a couple of podcast episodes about it. This is the Halloween Parade… volume 1.

Please help support the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Click here, and be sure to indicate The Movies That Made Me in the note section so Josh can finally achieve his dream of showing Mandy to his wife!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Exorcist (1973) – Oren Peli’s trailer commentary

Wait Until Dark (1967) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The House On Skull Mountain (1974)

King In The Wilderness (2018)

Sugar Hill (1974)

World War Z (2013)

I Walked With A Zombie (1943)

White Zombie (1932) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

Night of the Living Dead (1968) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Pumpkinhead (1988)

Blacula (1972)

Blackenstein (1973)

The Flesh And The Fiends (1960) – Charlie Largent’s two reviews

Road Rebels (1964)

Dear Evan Hansen (2021)

Perks Of Being A...

Hello, everyone! Now that September is nearly upon us (which means we’re getting closer and closer to our favorite season), we have one last round of home entertainment releases ahead of us before we can finally bid August a fond farewell - and there are a lot of different titles making their way home tomorrow. Arrow Video is keeping busy this week with their 4K release of Dune as well as the special edition release of The Brotherhood of Satan, and Kino Lorber is resurrecting several classics on Blu-ray this Tuesday, including The Raven, The Last Man on Earth, and The Comedy of Terrors.

If you have younger genre fans at home, you’ll definitely want to pick up the new editions of Coraline and The Boxtrolls from Scream Factory, and for you cult film fans, Vinegar Syndrome has you covered with their new Blu-rays for Killer’s Delight, The Lamp...

Swamp Dogs: House of Crows is a 5-issue comic book miniseries from a team that lives and breathes horror and we're very excited to have an exclusive preview just for Daily Dead readers! Below, we have an exclusive look at a variant cover from Chuma Hill, along with an exclusive preview of the first issue.

We were also fortunate to have an exclusive quote from J.M. Brandt, who talked about his horror movie influences:

"Swamp Dogs: House of Crows will be a 5-issue miniseries that kicks off the Swamp Dogs world of stories. It plays out just like a classic horror movie in terms of its beats and some of its tropes. Of course, we play with expectations a fair bit... but Theo and I find beauty, comfort, and a surprising amount of creative freedom in the horror movie formula. Theo has an actual university degree in cult films,...

When Roky Erickson’s 1981 cult classic album The Evil One was rereleased in 1987, it opened with the skronky “Two-Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer),” a song loosely inspired by the believe-it-or-not head-transplant experiments conducted by a Soviet surgeon in the Fifties. Over a snaking electric guitar lead, Erickson howled about “working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog.”

Margo Price and her band put their own spin on the song for an upcoming tribute album to Erickson. While she flip-flops the title to “Red Temple Prayer (Two-Headed Dog),” the Nashville singer-songwriter...

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Although it might seem difficult to believe, there was a time – not very long ago, in fact – when zombies weren’t the mainstream icons they are today. Horror fans have always loved the undead, of course, but it wasn’t until the back-to-back release of “28 Days Later” and “Resident Evil” in 2002, followed by Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake in 2004 and “The Walking Dead” TV series in 2010, that zombies truly crossed over to become ubiquitous pop culture favorites. And with Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” arriving in Netflix on May 21, their popularity is only likely to increase

Today, zombies are much more than just a beloved category of movie...

Isle of the Dead

Blu ray

Warner Archive

1945 / 1.33:1 / 72 min.

Starring Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Katherine Emery

Cinematography by Jack MacKenzie

Directed by Mark Robson

The Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin produced several versions of Isle of the Dead in the late 1800’s—none of them suggested a typical tourist attraction but more than a few artists used that gloomy seascape as a port of inspiration; Rachmaninov composed a symphony, Dalí produced a surrealist tribute, and Strindberg sketched the fragments of a play, Toten-Insel. There’s even a hint of the painting’s portentous cliffs in Welles’ Xanadu. In 1945, Val Lewton, Mr. Dark Shadows himself, conceived an entire film built around Böcklin’s haunted island.

Directed by Mark Robson, Isle of the Dead is thematically rich, even for a Lewton project; set in Greece at the end of the Balkan wars, a plague joins forces with the supernatural to wreak havoc...

With April lurking right around the corner once again, that means we're close to the halfway point to another All Hallows' Eve, and Shudder is celebrating in style with their largest slate of programming to date, including the return of Samuel Zimmerman's “Halfway to Halloween” Hotline, the season 2 premiere of Creepshow, the 2021 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula, In Search of Darkness: Part II, and a bunch of other new additions!

Below, you can check out the full list of titles coming to Shudder this April, and be sure to visit Shudder's website to learn more about the streaming service and their scary good lineup!

Press Release: New York – March 4, 2021 – April showers bring a packed lineup of new horror films and series to Shudder, AMC Networks’ premium streaming service for horror, thriller and the supernatural, for its annual ‘Halfway to Halloween Month.’ With April marking the halfway point to Halloween,...

Horror cinema, by nature, is most often concerned with the uncanny. The fantastic. The grotesque. Despite the genre’s largely fictional preoccupations, however, the macabre has always been a viable outlet for political and social commentary. In fact, the American horror film provides an often reliable indicator as to which forms of societal unrest plague the nation at any given time. Perhaps more than any other filmic genre, horror has provided an outlet for filmmakers to document government fallacy and real- life atrocity through the filter of fantastic, often supernatural, narratives. By hyperbolizing societal conflicts like war, civil unrest, poverty, and corruption, a good political horror film seeks not only to draw attention to such issues, but also to make them seem manageable by comparison. Take, for example, the premise of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). While Americans needn’t worry themselves over hordes of zombies rising from...

The Ape

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1940 / 62 min. / 1:33:1

Starring Boris Karloff, Maris Wrixon

Cinematography by Harry Neumann

Directed by William Nigh

William Nigh directed over 40 silent films before he signed on for The Ape, which might account for this 1940 film looking far older than its release date—the staging is rudimentary and the dialog so simple that intertitles would convey the action with all its meaning intact. Curt Siodmak’s storyline could have been plucked from a different era too—in particular 1931’s City Lights in which a flower girl regains her sight thanks to Chaplin’s perennial outcast, the little tramp. In The Ape the misfit is Boris Karloff as a scientist who helps a lame girl to walk—and though this low budget melodrama can’t compete with Chaplin’s sentimental masterpiece, like many silent era films, it has its own unvarnished appeal.

Karloff plays Dr. Adrian,...

I’m a sucker for a good scary song. Just throw in some eerie wind effects, a creature howling, a zombie or two gibbering, and you’ve got my attention. Halloween is to me what Christmas is to Mariah Carey fans: an excuse to listen to thematic songs all month long. (Oh, and to hoard pumpkins like a squirrel preparing for winter.)

Not all of these songs are outright spooky — we’ve all heard “Thriller” one too many times. Instead, they’re a collection of creepy character studies, atmospheric tunes,...

French filmmaker Jacques Tourneur is, certainly, an important part of the history of horror cinema, because he was one of the directors in Val Lewton’s low-budget horror unit at Rko Pictures. In the forties, Tourneur directed the Lewton-produced classics Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man, notable for being able to build suspense and scare the audiences without being explicit. Several years later, in 1957, Tourneur also directed Night of the Demon, a masterpiece about the supernatural and those who vainly deny its existence. But Tourneur was much more than those horror efforts, he made a wide variety of movies once he left his country for Hollywood. The recent Tourneur retrospective that the Ficunam put together as part of its 10th...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

From retrospective screening series celebrating everything from Hammer films to the movies of Jean Rollin and Mario Bava, New York's Quad Cinema has always featured an eclectic lineup of classic horror films, and this month is certainly no exception. To celebrate the January 24th opening night screening of Bertrand Bonello's Zombi Child, Quad Cinema is featuring a bunch of 35mm screenings of movies that inspired Bonello's latest film, including Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow, Brian De Palma's Carrie, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and more.

You can view the full lineup of Quad Cinema's "Bertrand Bonello’s Footnotes to Zombi Child" screenings below, and to learn more, visit their official website.

"Origin Stories:

Bertrand Bonello’s Footnotes to Zombi Child

Starts Fri January 17

French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello selects films that inspired and informed his upcoming Zombi Child, opening January 24

Titles include 35mm prints of Carrie, I Walked with a Zombie,...

It’s the formidable Bette Davis once again, in yet another superior William Wyler picture. The Somerset Maugham play is a classy vehicle for a star performance — the nagging legal ‘difficulty’ of plantation wife Leslie Crosbie is intertwined with colonial politics but remains entirely personal. Leslie isn’t exactly a poster girl for the feminist movement. Is she the victim of social pressures or just a petty, selfish monster? Screenwriter Howard Koch had to invent a twisted new ‘yellow peril’ finish to appease the Production Code … you know, the Code that some people say made Hollywood movies better.

The Letter

Blu-ray

The Warner Archive Collection

1940 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date September 24, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard.

Cinematography: Tony Gaudio

Art Direction: Carl Jules Weyl

Film Editor: George Amy, Warren Low

Original Music: Max Steiner

Written by Howard...

You can tell that the Halloween season is getting closer, between various retailers already donning their shelves with tons of decorations, the days are getting shorter, and Turner Classic Movies has debuted their October schedule online, which features an abundance of genre awesomeness that will be hitting airwaves this fall. Without a doubt, TCM is one of the best resources for classic film, so for those of you looking to broaden your horizons this Halloween, definitely check out their calendar and set those DVRs.

Also, TCM has designated Godzilla as their “Monster of the Month” for October, so look for a bunch of classic films featuring the “King of the Monsters” and other beloved Kaiju throughout October as well.

**All Listings are in Est.**

Friday, September 27th

3:15pm – The Mummy’s Shroud

6:30pm – The Mummy (1959)

Saturday, September 28th

2:00am – Belladonna of Sadness

3:30am – House (1977)

Sunday, September...

The mystery and wonder of Pedro Costa’s filmmaking defies any specific category other than his own unique blend. The Portuguese director conjures dark, dreamlike visions of post-colonial neglect and yearning that hover somewhere between fantasy and neorealism, horror and melodrama, spirituality and desperation. “Vitalina Varela,” Costa’s fifth journey into the shantytown Fontainhas outside of Lisbon, once again showcases Costa’s masterful ability to mine cinematic poetry from a unique environment and the mournful figures who wander through its murky depths.

The Costa Expanded Universe stems back to 2006’s “Colossal Youth,” when Costa first began exploring the Cape Verdean residents of Fontainhas by casting members of the immigrant community as themselves. Costa’s ravishing blend of light and shadow captures the characters as they wander the claustrophobic interiors of their ramshackle homes and muse about their wandering lives. Costa’s dour, humorless aesthetic takes time to settle in and...

There are any number of horror films about “voodoo” magic and its colonialist underpinnings — Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 “I Walked with a Zombie” remaining the most formative example — but only Bertrand Bonello’s take on the subject includes an oral presentation on the life and times of Rihanna. It would be foolish to expect anything else from the firebrand director behind “House of Pleasures” and “Nocturama,” whose films see history as less of a forward march than an uneasy churn; his work obfuscates clearly delineated temporalities in order to emphasize that while everyone may live in the present the past is never really dead.

As its title suggests, “Zombi Child” finds Bonello taking that idea to its logical and most literal conclusion. Not only does this time-hopping curio riff on the true-ish story of Clairvius Narcisse, a Haitian man who was said to have been turned into the walking dead, it...

One of the best directors working today, Bertrand Bonello continually pushes boundaries in thrilling ways. Following his provocative terrorist thriller Nocturama, he’ll be paying homage to Jacques Tourneur with his next film, Zombi Child, premiering in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight tomorrow. Starting in 1962 in Haiti, it finds a man brought back to the dead, then 55 years later in Paris, we center on a boarding school, with a Haitian girl confesses dark, strange family secrets.

In preparation for shooting, Bonello says he didn’t immerse himself in zombie films, “but Roméro’s films were very much with me. Nevertheless, I did rewatch Jacques Tourneur’s superb I Walked with a Zombie, whose title is the film’s opening dialogue. I found inspiration in photography books, in novels, or anthropological publications, starting with one by a Swiss author, Alfred Métraux, Voodoo in Haiti, written in the 1950s, in which he gives a...

One can suppose it was inevitable for Hammer to take on a lesser celebrated (at the time) yet influential sub-genre such as zombies; the ’30s and ’40s were certainly a heyday, with such films as White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943) setting a template of voodoo curses and unwilling (and undead) subjects. By the ’50s, they were already used for comic effect, until Hammer took their chance with The Plague of the Zombies (1966), an atmospheric yet rousing period piece that would help set up another template for zombiedom’s biggest sea change two years later.

Part of a four picture co-op with Seven Arts Productions, Plague was released stateside by Twentieth Century Fox in late January to better than average reviews; mind you, Hammer usually found an appreciative press, if even for set design and production values alone. But critics at the time liked the fact that they...

He is the Master of Mood. Once you’ve seen a few films by Jacques Tourneur, you see how meticulously this extraordinary filmmaker could create a sense of atmosphere, no matter the setting. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is now set to host the largest New York retrospective of the French-born genre director’s work in decades. The exhaustive program, titled “Jacques Tourneur, Fearmaker,” runs from December 14 to January 3 and includes nearly every film he ever made.

The lineup includes his extraordinary horror films for Rko produced by Val Lewton, to the creepy Gothic mystery “Experiment Perilous” and the all-time noir classic “Out of the Past” to later work such as the twisty British frightfest “Curse of the Demon” (sometimes titled “Night of the Demon”) and the unique crime thriller “Nightfall” which answers the question every cinephile didn’t even know they need to ask: What happens when you...

Exactly 40 years after John Carpenter’s “Halloween” was released in 1978, David Gordon Green released his modern-day sequel to an estimated $75 million opening weekend. It has the benefit of strong reviews, original star Jamie Lee Curtis’ return to the lead role, and its placement as this year’s holiday horror film release — but it was never just a horror film. This ultra low-budget slasher flick was one of the most important movies to be released in the 1970s.

Among the top-grossing films released in 1978, “Halloween” was no. 10. However, those that did better — “Grease,” “Superman,” “Animal House,” “Every Which Way You Can,” “Heaven Can Wait,” “Hooper,” “Jaws 2,” “Revenge of the Pink Panther,” and “The Deer Hunter” — may be unfamiliar to anyone 40 or younger. Even last weekend, which would be week 2,036 of release, “Halloween” remains vital in the public consciousness: It grossed $9,553 last weekend.

Adjusted to 2018 prices, the 1978 independent film made $184 million...

Westerns are all about values: good and bad, law and lawlessness, etc. Joel McCrea and Frances Dee’s ‘bad man’ saga isn’t faith based, exactly, but it’s great for humanitarian values, the simple notion that the good in people should be encouraged. And one important detail may make it unique. Hint: John Milius might be strongly prejudiced against this picture.

Four Faces West

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 89 min. / Street Date December 19, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Charles Bickford, Joseph Calleia, William Conrad.

Cinematography: Russell Harlan

Film Editor: Edward Mann

Original Music: Paul Sawtell

Written by C. Graham Baker, Teddi Sherman, William & Milarde Brent from the novel Pasó por aquí by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

Produced by Vernon E. Clark, Harry Sherman

Directed by Alfred E. Green

Faith-based westerns exist, but much more numerous are lightly inspirational sagebrush pictures that deal...

Next to Universal, few studios have had such a big impact on horror than Rko Radio Pictures. Started in 1927, Rko was the first studio founded to make exclusively sound films, a then-brand-new invention that served as a major draw for the studio. Rko’s life was relatively short (it was killed just 30 years after forming), but during their time, they put out a seriously impressive number of classics, including Top Hat, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Informer, and most notably, Citizen Kane.

Of course, Rko didn’t shy away from horror. While their output wasn’t nearly as prolific as, say, Universal’s, it was still quite impressive, boasting some of the most formative and important horror films of old Hollywood. Rko saw the release of a few all-time classics, including I Walked With a Zombie, The Thing From Another World, King Kong, and the topic of today’s Crypt,...

Is it a classic? Well, not exactly, but it’s also not a typical disappointing ’40s Z-picture. Screenwriter Leigh Brackett pens a nice twist on the Dracula motif, and actor John Abbott is genuinely impressive as what is surely the most low-key vampire on the books. Plus a sexy dance from Adele Mara!

The Vampire’s Ghost

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 59 min. / Street Date October 31, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: John Abbott, Charles Gordon, Peggy Stewart, Grant Withers, Emmett Vogan, Adele Mara, Roy Barcroft, Martin Wilkins, Zack Williams.

Cinematography: Robert Pittack, Ellis Thackery

Special Effects: Howard and Theodore Lydecker

Written by John K. Butler, Leigh Brackett, story by Brackett

Associate Producer: Rudolph E. Abel

Directed by Lesley Selander

When Republic dabbled in genre work away from their serials and westerns, the result was often embarrassing. One horror title due for an upward bump in...

He's known by millions of fans as the lead guitarist for the heavy metal band Metallica, but Kirk Hammett also has a deep passion for horror and sci-fi, which is reflected in his massive collection of posters for classic and cult films from both genres. Currently on display at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, Hammett's impressive collection is also featured in a new hardcover book called It's Alive that's out now from Skira Rizzoli, and we have a look at some of the eye-popping posters included within the pages of the treasured collection.

Press Release: Uttered in several Frankenstein films since 1931, and titling Larry Cohen’s 1974 horror classic, “It’s alive!” is one of those kitschy, catchy phrases that become part of the vernacular.

It’S Alive: Classic Horror And Sci-fi Movie Posters From The Kirk Hammett Collection—in both exhibition and book form—offers an unconventional look...

(Aotn) Turner Classic Movies is bringing the horror next month. Starting on October 1st the channel will be bringing back movies such as the original Cat People and Dracula. Fan’s of classic movies will surely not want to miss this.

If you have ever wanted to know where the band White Zombie got there name be sure to tune in on Halloween morning at 8:30 Am. The Universal Monster’s are sprinkled throughout this marathon and will hopefully delight old school horror fans.

Complete Schedule Below:

Sunday October 1, 2017

8:00 Pm Dracula (1931) 9:30 Pm Dracula’s Daughter (1936) 11:00 Pm Son Of Dracula (1943)

Monday October 2, 2017

12:30 Am Nosferatu (1922)

Tuesday October 3, 2017

8:00 Pm Frankenstein (1931) 9:30 Pm Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) 11:00 Pm The Mummy (1932)

Wednesday October 4, 2017

12:30 Am The Wolf Man (1941) 2:00 Am Island Of Lost Souls (1933) 3:30 Am The Black Cat (1934) 4:45 Am The Invisible Man (1933)

Sunday October 8, 2017

2:00 Am Night...

It’s a given that their Main Slate — the fresh, the recently buzzed-about, the mysterious, the anticipated — will be the New York Film Festival’s primary point of attraction for both media coverage and ticket sales. But while a rather fine lineup is, to these eyes, deserving of such treatment, the festival’s latest Revivals section — i.e. “important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners,” per their press release — is in a whole other class, one titanic name after another granted a representation that these particular works have so long lacked.

The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...