The Werewolf is a low-budget American 1956 science fiction horror film, produced by Sam Katzman, and directed and narrated by Fred F. Sears (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The Giant Claw) from a screenplay by Robert E. Kent (Diary of a Madman, Twice-Told Tales). The film’s score was by noted Russian composer Mischa Bakaleinikoff.

Like the following year’s The Vampire, this film offers a science fiction view of a traditionally supernatural creature, but the films were produced by different companies.

Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch), a mild-mannered man, finds himself lost in a remote village called Mountaincrest. His mind is clouded, but he learns later that Emory Forrest (S. John Launer) and Morgan Chambers (George Lynn), two scientists, injected him with a special serum containing irradiated wolf’s blood when he was suffering from amnesia after being in a car accident. The wolf’s blood, for unknown reasons, changed the previously gentlemanly Duncan into a vicious, bloodthirsty werewolf…

Wikipedia | IMDb | Crackle.com (free to watch online)

‘Here, in the mid-1950’s, the heyday of rubber monsters and atomic bugs, lies buried what may be the very first revisionist werewolf movie. Indeed, at several points as I watched The Werewolf, I was struck by the extent to which the slightly later I Was a Teenage Werewolf seems to have borrowed from it, and I was impressed throughout with the filmmakers’ willingness to disregard the usual werewolf-movie plot conventions.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

‘Campy at times, the originality of the production is commendable while the lead (his first movie) is successful at imbuing the wolf man with a certain degree of pathos. The scene where he runs frantically through the snow country bare footed shows Rich to have been a real trooper. This lycanthrope is truly a walking essay in tragedy.’ Cool Ass Cinema

‘The werewolf makeup by Clay Campbell (The Return of the Vampire, 1944) is effective, with fangs and nice drool effects, but the transformation sequences are rushed and the dissolves do not properly overlay (the de-transformation looks better). Still, this is one of the better-looking werewolves in film history. In a sequence similar to The Wolf Man (1941) we even see the title monster caught in a spring trap.’ Monster-Minions

Posted by Adrian J. Smith using information via Wikipedia which is freely and legally available to share and remix under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. All review quotes are attributed and links are provided to relevant sites or sources. Horrorpedia supports the sharing of information and opinions with the wider horror community.

• Steven Ritch as Duncan Marsh
• Don Megowan as Sheriff Jack Haines
• Joyce Holden as Amy Standish
• Eleanore Tanin as Helen Marsh
• Kim Charney as Chris Marsh
• Harry Lauter as Deputy Ben Clovey
• Larry J. Blake as Hank Durgis
• Ken Christy as Dr. Jonas Gilchrist
• James Gavin as Mack Fanning
• S. John Launer as Dr. Emery Forrest
• George Lynn as Dr. Morgan Chambers
• George Cisar as Hoxie

Mike Hill is a Los Angeles-based sculptor, originally from Warrington, Cheshire in England, who specialises in ultra-realistic models of monsters from classic horror films. His work includes small figures for model kits to busts to life-size representations of monsters in well-known poses. His work has also featured in Madame Tussaud’s waxworks and in films such as Joe Johnstone’s 2010 remake of The Wolfman.

As a boy he could be found digging up clay from the local riverbank and moulding figures from King Kong but his obsession with horror movies extended into post-school life and became a full-time career. Using tools such as dental scalpels and with an attention to detail that includes the creation of replica jewellery and inserting each hair in his subject’s body individually by hand, his reverence for the subject has also lead to him making sculptors of the likes of legendary Universal make-up man Jack Pierce and the rather more recent Rick Baker. Reproductions of the models utilise silicone and fibreglass, whilst the colours are built up in layers so as the replicate real human flesh (dead or alive!).

Hill has also adopted some of the techniques of his heroes, such as ageing the scroll of Aredth Bey by soaking the parchment in tea; he also takes personal commissions for work, with clients including Hugh Hefner. There are currently rumours of him working with Gillermo del Toro, as well as being involved in the new raft of Star Wars films. Hill is also working on his own film, Stickmen, which will feature another classic monster, Bigfoot.

Daz Lawrence

Mike’s stunning work can be viewed here http://www.mikehillart.com/index.html

Son of Dracula is a 1973 British rock ‘n’ roll musical horror comedy film starring Harry Nilsson and ex-Beatles drummer Ringo Starr as Merlin the Magician, directed by Freddie Francis and produced by Starr for Apple Films. It is also the title of a Harry Nilsson album released in conjunction with the movie.

Starr had recently played drums on Nilsson’s album Son of Schmilsson, which had spoofed horror movie motifs. A few months after those sessions, in August 1972, Starr decided to make a rock and roll Dracula movie (originally titled Count Downe), and invited Nilsson to come on board. Keith Moon of The Who and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin both appear in the film, alternating as drummer in Count Downe’s band. Other band members include Klaus Voormann, Peter Frampton, Leon Russell, and the regular Rolling Stones horn section of Bobby Keys and Jim Price.

Soon after filming was completed in November 1972, Starr called in Monty Python‘s Graham Chapman, who was writing with Douglas Adams at the time and had been working on a proposed Ringo Starr TV special. They, along with Chapman’s other regular collaborator, Bernard McKenna, were asked to write a whole new script to be dubbed over the film’s lacklustre dialogue, and they recorded an alternative, Pythonesque soundtrack, but the whole idea was then shelved. Later, attempts were made to market the movie, but as Ringo Starr later said, “No one would take it.”  It was eventually released in the USA in April 1974 by Jerry Gross’ (I Drink Your Blood) Cinemation Industries distribution company.

After the killing of his father (Count Dracula, the Lord of the Underworld), by a mysterious assassin, a hundred years later Count Downe (Nilsson) is summoned from his travels abroad by family advisor Merlin (Starr) in order to prepare him to take over the throne. Baron Frankenstein (Freddie Jones, also in The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Vampira) is also on hand to help in any way he can. Problem is, Downe wants no part of this responsibility, and instead wishes to become human and mortal − especially after meeting a girl named Amber (Suzanna Leigh, also in The Deadly Bees and Lust for a Vampire), with whom he falls in love. He approaches old family nemesis Dr Van Helsing (Dennis Price, also in Twins of Evil and Horror Hospital), who agrees to enable the Count’s transformation, much to the dismay of the residents of the Underworld.

Despite the best efforts of a host of monsters, as well as one traitorous figure who is dealt with by the trusted Merlin, Van Helsing performs the operation and removes Downe’s fangs. He then informs the Count that he can now live out his days in the sunlight, with Amber at his side…

Wikipedia | IMDb

“It vacillates between unamusing comedy and what Starr considers ‘outre’. All the standard cliches are here, plus figures from the rock world, and while there is an obvious love for horror movies underlying the project, results are wishy washy.” John Stanley, Creature Features

Bubba the Redneck Werewolf is a 2013 American horror comedy film adapted from Mitch Hyman’s comic book of the same name. The film is being directed by Stephen Biro and produced by Unearthed Films, And You Films and Two Rubbing Nickels Ltd.

Plot synposis: “In the town of Broken Taint, a vicious evil is unleashed, offering the dreams of humanity if you just sign on the dotted line. One lovesick dog catcher makes a deal with the Devil and not only is his life turned upside down, but so is Broken Taint. Bubba The Redneck Werewolf is born and the town goes to Hell while his local bar is filled with the Damned, Bubba figures out how to beat the Devil—but first, he needs another beer and maybe some hot wings.”

Official Facebook Page

From the second half of the 1950s to the mid 1970s, Hammer Films ruled supreme as Britain’s masters of horror. But the company was not unrivalled, as several other producers sought to cash in on the horror boom. Some, like Planet Productions, came and went quickly; others, like Tigon, dabbled with horror as a part of their wider production slate. But one company stayed the course, building a reputation that might not have rivalled Hammer’s, but which ensured them a cult following that survives to this day. That company was Amicus.

Amicus was formed by American producer Milton Subotsky, who moved to the UK in 1959 after distributing films to US television for ten years. His US based partner, Max J. Rosenberg, was the man who would find the money, while Subotsky was in charge of the ‘artistic’ side – getting the films made.

The pair first dabbled in horror in the mid-Fifties, and could claim to have kick-started the Hammer cycle, as they submitted an idea for a new Frankenstein film to Associated Artists Productions, who in turn passed it on to Hammer. While the Subotsky/Rosenberg screenplay, entitled Frankenstein and the Monster, was considered too short and too derivative to be filmed, the pair were paid off and the experience – not to mention the huge success that Hammer subsequently had with The Curse of Frankenstein – set them on the road to fifteen years of horror and fantasy production.

The first Amicus film actually predates the company. The City of the Dead, better known as Horror Hotel, was made before Subotsky settled on the Amicus (meaning “friendly”) name and the film is credited to Vulcan Films. Made just prior to Psycho, this occult thriller is notable for killing off the heroine midway through the story – much as Hitchcock would do later the same year with Janet Leigh.

An effective shocker, City of the Dead holds up surprisingly well today (and thanks to its public domain status, is pretty easy to see). The crisp black and white photography and the almost Wicker Man approach to the subject matter make it stand out as a quality film. It also sees a early non-Hammer British horror appearance from Christopher Lee. Lee, along with Peter Cushing, would become as much regulars for Amicus as they were for Hammer during the 1960s and early 70s.

The next four Amicus films were of a very different strain – It’s Trad, Dad (aka Ring-A-Ding Rhythm – Subotsky’s favourite of his films!), Just for Fun, Girl of the Night and Lad: A Dog (a ‘touching’ tale of a disabled boy and his pet) were mostly forgettable youth and family films. There was little to suggest that City of the Dead had been anything more than a one-off.

Subotsky was a vocal advocate of ‘family entertainment’ throughout his career – something that would have an increasing effect on his approach to horror and fantasy as time went on – and he seemed an unlikely person to create a studio that would rival Hammer, who had eagerly embraced the ‘X’ certificate and were willing to push it as far as they could. But Subotsky was first and foremost a businessman, and he knew that horror would sell.

In 1964, Amicus returned to the genre with a film that set the scene for a decade of horror. Dr Terror’s House of Horrors took its title from an obscure 1940s film and its format from the classic Dead of Night (1945). Consisting of a series of short stories, linked together by Peter Cushing as a sinister tarot card reading doctor who predicts death for all his travelling companions during a train journey. The film set the tone for much of the subsequent Amicus output – over the ensuing years, Subotsky made the portmanteau film his trademark. While Hammer concentrated on the gothic, Subotsky mostly kept his films firmly set in the modern day, and had a particular affinity for the anthology (he was once quoted as saying he liked the format because it didn’t give the audience time to get bored!). It also allowed him to boast surprisingly starry casts, as it was cheap and easy to hire big name actors for a few days work on a short story.

Dr Terror is, in fact, a rather mixed bag – some stories (such as the vampire tale with Donald Sutherland) work well; others just drag or seem silly. But the film was a box office success and set Amicus on the fantastique road. In fact, they rarely made anything outside the genre from that point on. The company never reached the production levels of Hammer (who were making several films a year, across a variety of genres, at their peak) and for the most part stuck with what they knew would sell.

In 1965, for instance, apart from the compilation film The World of Abbott and Costello, all four Amicus productions were horror or science fiction. Best remembered of the films is Dr Who and the Daleks, a popular reinterpretation of the BBC series with Peter Cushing in the title role. The film deviated considerably from the TV series format, but was successful enough to spawn a sequel the next year, Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD. This film was less successful (possibly because the audiences flocking to the first film were rather disappointed with the changes made) and plans for a third film were shelved. Interestingly, for contractual reasons, both films were credited to ‘Aaru Films’.

The other 1965 films were the obscure thriller The Psychopath, The Deadly Bees (which is as dull as every other bee film) and The Skull, an ambitious but plodding adaptation of Robert Bloch’s short story The Skull of the Marquis de Sade. Poor as the film was, it did mark the beginning of a long relationship between Bloch and Amicus. This was consolidated in 1966 when he supplied the source material for the second Amicus anthology, Torture Garden.

Torture Garden

Not to be confused with Octave Mirbeau’s erotic classic of the same name (the title is, in fact, nonsensical and has nothing to do with the film), this turned out to be another uneven collection, despite having some excellent short stories as inspiration. Directed by Freddie Francis (who would become a regular for Amicus), only the story The Man Who Collected Poe, with a twitchy Jack Palance, came close to matching the original Bloch story.

Also in 1966 came two science fiction films. The Terrornauts, directed by Montgomery Tully, was a pretty awful children’s film, while Freddie Francis made the slightly better They Came from Beyond Space, a paranoid tale of invading aliens and mind control. Science fiction, it seemed, was not something Amicus excelled at, lacking the budget and the ideas to make it work. However, it did fit with Subotsky’s wish to make family films.

A couple of lean years followed. 1967′s sole Amicus film was forgotten thriller Danger Route while 1968 saw Thank You Very Much, a kitchen sink drama, and an attempt to move upmarket with an adaptation of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. None of these films made much impact. 1969 saw the intellectual science fiction drama The Mind of Mr Soames and, more significantly, Scream and Scream Again.

It perhaps shows how out of touch Subotsky had become by this time with audience – and genre fan – tastes that he had a dislike of the film. Interviewed by Cinefantastique in 1973, he commented “strangely enough, Scream and Scream Again made a lot of money and that was different from any film we’ve ever done. I don’t know why, it wasn’t all that good. It might have been because we used three top horror stars and it had a very good title.”

Or perhaps it’s because it spoke to modern audiences in a way that the increasingly old-fashioned Amicus horror films that followed didn’t. One imagines a company like AIP would have noted the success of the film and reacted accordingly. Amicus, unfortunately, blithely ignored it and went back to their safe formula.

The House That Dripped Blood

1970 saw The House That Dripped Blood, a decent anthology film again based on Bloch stories. It was more successful than Torture Garden, and even the token comedy story (The Cloak, starring Jon Pertwee and Ingrid Pitt) worked. Less successful was I, Monster, directed by Stephen Weeks – a young filmmaker with a unique vision that often made his films hard work. Putting an pseudo-arthouse director in charge of an adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for a commercial filmmaker like Subotsky was always going to be problematic. Shooting it in a new, experimental form of 3D was utter madness.

I, Monster

Opinions differ on what exactly went wrong. Subotsky cheerfully blamed it on Weeks’ ‘inexperience’; Weeks says it was non-starter from day one. It was certainly Subotsky who insisted on the 3D format (which turned out to not work) – he had something of a fixation with the format, announcing several 3D movies in the 1970s, none of which were made. Even if the 3D had been successful, it’s hard to see how it would have saved this stilted, talky film.

1971 saw the acclaimed and very un-Amicus psycho thriller What Became of Jack and Jill, an unpleasant tale of granny killing that fits well with other British twisted tales of the era (Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, Goodbye Gemini, Straight On Till Morning), as well as the more traditional Amicus anthology Tales from the Crypt.

Tales from the Crypt

Taken from the EDC comic books, this compendium proved to be the biggest Amicus horror hit and might be the best of the series. More or less all the stories work, and while the film doesn’t have the gleeful black humour of the original stories, it is nevertheless ghoulish fun. A sequel was inevitable, and The Vault of Horror, unfortunately not nearly as good, appeared a year later.

The Vault of Horror

Also in 1972 came Asylum, again based on Robert Bloch stories. Two anthologies in one year? I’m afraid so, and Asylum suffered from weak material – presumably, the best (or at least most movie-friendly) Bloch stories had been used up, and this was very uneven.

Asylum

In 1973, Amicus strayed into hammer territory with the period piece And Now the Screaming Starts. It wasn’t the best timing – Hammer themselves were struggling to sell their gothic horrors by this point, and this rather plodding Amicus imitation didn’t do well. The same year saw the final anthology, From Beyond the Grave. Hailed by some as the best of the series, it benefited from above average stories by R. Chetwynd Hayes, a witty linking performance from Peter Cushing and fresh direction by Kevin Connor.

The final Amicus horror film was the eccentric The Beast Must Die in 1974. You have the credit Subotsky for taking a chance on this inadvertently hilarious film, which has Calvin Lockhart as a latex suit-wearing big game hunter who invites a group of people to his country estate, believing one of them to be a werewolf. A mix of murder mystery, horror and The Most Dangerous Game, the film includes the infamous Werewolf Break, where audiences were supposed to shout out who they think the werewolf is. There are no records to show what audiences ACTUALLY shouted…

The Beast Must Die

Curiously, Amicus had their biggest hit at a time when the British film industry in general seemed on its last legs. In 1975, they made the prehistoric romp The Land That Time Forgot, which was a huge box office success. Horror was suddenly out – not only were giant monster films making more money, but they also fitted in with Subotsky’s own wish to make wholesome films for kids to enjoy. It was followed in 1976 with another Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation, At the Earth’s Core, which proved to be another popular success.

Unfortunately, the relationship between Subotsky and partner Rosenberg was becoming increasingly strained, and in 1977 the business was dissolved. Although The People That Time Forgot was in development at the time, it would eventually be credited to AIP. Rosenberg, never high profile to begin with, continued in distribution and production, often uncredited (among his executive producer credits are The Incredible Melting Man, Bloody Birthday, Cat People and Perdita Durango). Subotsky, not a great money man, was left floundering. He finally teamed up with Andrew Donally to form Sword and Sorcery Productions.

In the mid-Seventies, Subotsky had toyed with the idea of filming Robert E Howard’s Conan stories, but finding them too violent, instead went for Lin carter’s Conan knock-off Thongor. Subotsky planned a major action epic, family friendly of course, with little dialogue, lots of stop motion effects and Dave Prowse in the title role. Harley Cockliss was brought in as director and the search for financing began. AIP showed interest but wanted to make changes. Subotsky declined, fearing that they wanted to turn it into an R-rated movie. Eventually, United Artists agreed to back the film and gave S&S development money. Storyboards and monsters were designed and Thongor in the Valley of the Demons was scheduled for production in 1980. Six weeks after announcing the film, UA dropped the project, possibly because all their money was being gobbled up by Heaven’s Gate.

The Uncanny

Other films that failed to get off the ground included comic book adaptations The Incredible Hulk, Creepy and Eerie and science fiction epic The Micronauts. Then Sword and Sorcery finally did get a film into production, it was a return to what Subotsky knew best – a three story anthology about killer cats called The Uncanny. This was followed by lacklustre psychological thriller Dominique, like its predecessor a Canadian-UK co-production. Neither film was a success.

By 1980, Subotsky was in something of a quandary. Having poured most of his time and money into the now defunct Thongor, he’d also spent his remaining financial resources buying the rights to six of Stephen King’s short stories. He needed to make a film, and soon.

Now, you might wonder why, having bought the rights at a time when the author was at his cinematic hottest (with The Shining and hit mini series Salem’s Lot), Subotsky didn’t make a King movie. Instead, he dusted off an old screenplay and set about making his grandest folly, The Monster Club.

Like From Beyond the Grave, the film was based on short stories by R. Chetwynd Hayes. But unlike that film, The Monster Club became a textbook example of How Not To Make a Horror Film. Again, part of the problem was Subotsky’s fixation on family entertainment. As far back as The House That Dripped Blood, he’d wanted to make a film that kids could see (in Britain; in America, these films were routinely rated PG anyway). He’d complained bitterly that the BBFC had rated that film ‘A’, only to change it to ‘X’ on the insistence of the distributor. Condemning sex scenes as ‘boring’ and expressing a dislike of ‘gratuitous’ violence, he was now determined to make a horror film for all the family. The only problem was that this was 1980. A Fangoria generation was fixated on Dawn of the Dead, Phantasm and Friday the 13th and were just gaining access to those films – and stronger – through home video. Kids didn’t want to see a horror film aimed at them. And if the kids weren’t interested, adults definitely weren’t.

Worse still, the film was incredibly dated and pitifully under-budgeted. I remember sitting in my local cinema watching this film as the audience hooted, howled and yelled abuse at the awful monster masks, the tired direction by Roy Ward Baker and the terrible rock bands that Subotsky though would add youth appeal (B.A. Robertson? The Pretty Things?). In the year that audiences were flocking to violent slasher films, Subotsky was still thinking that Vincent Price and joke shop level werewolf masks were the way to go. Rarely has a film been so spectacularly out of step with reality. The film bombed, failing to even secure US distribution, and plans for a sequel (Monsters and Meanies, would you believe!) were quickly abandoned.

Subotsky’s career was pretty much over. He did co-produce the TV mini series The Martian Chronicles, and in later years had credits on Cat’s Eye and The Lawnmower Man – that shrew investment in Stephen King stories at least paid off to that level. He died in 1991. Rosenberg died in 2004.

Amicus never achieved the popularity or reputation of Hammer, and truth be told, their films rarely equalled those of their great rival. But the company did produce a handful of entertaining, sometimes excellent, sometimes terrible movies and they deserves to be remembered with a mix of affection and frustration.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

It says a lot about the effectiveness of Tyburn Films’ publicity machine – at least within the horror scene – that in the 1970s, the newly formed British studio was being hailed as the next Hammer, despite emerging at a time that the old Hammer was breathing its last – and despite having only made a few films, all of which were financial failures. Even now, people often mention Tyburn in the same breath as Hammer and Amicus, placing them above the more prolific and successful Tigon. In reality, Tyburn were no more significant that short-lived production companies like Planet.

Tyburn was formed by Kevin Francis, son of acclaimed cinematographer and somewhat less acclaimed director Freddie Francis. Kevin had a career that led him from slaughterhouse employee to film company tea boy to Hammer staffer (he provided the story that eventually evolved into Taste the Blood of Dracula), and was now working as a freelance production manager. His ambition, however, was to be the new Hammer. There was only one problem – by 1973, the market for traditional Hammer Horror had rapidly dwindled, a victim of changing tastes in a world where Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead and even the works of Peter Walker were bringing a new realism to the genre. Producing gothic horror was probably not the brightest idea at this stage.

The first horror film to emerge from Francis didn’t have the Tyburn name attached. Tales That Witness Madness (1973) was an imitation of the Amicus portmanteau films, made under the World Film Services banner. Directed by Freddie Francis (as would be the later Tyburn horrors), it had its moments, but suffered from weak, derivative and sometimes laughable stories, one of which features a man falling in love with a tree!

The first ‘official’ Tyburn production was Persecution (aka The Terror of Sheba), a psychological horror story starring Lana Turner (who apparently hated the film) as a matriarchal monster in the grand tradition of the female villains played by other aging Hollywood legends in the 1960s (cf: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, The Nanny, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte). Here, her obsessive possessiveness pushes son Ralph Bates over the edge of sanity in a film that feels similar to the Hammer psycho thrillers (Crescendo, Fear in the Night and Straight on Till Morning). With a hint of the supernatural thanks to a creepy cat and fairly solid support from Trevor Howard and Olga Georges-Picot, it proved to be an effective, if minor thriller.

But this was not the sort of film Francis saw his new company producing. A fan of horror  – and Hammer in particular – he wanted to carry on where his idols had left off. And this would mean appropriating the cast and crew of old Hammer.

The Ghoul was the first ‘proper’ Tyburn horror. Directed by Freddie Francis, written by Hammer stalwart John Elder (in reality Anthony Hinds, who had overseen production for Hammer in the 1960s) and starring Peter Cushing, this did seem like it could be a return to the glory days of the past. And on paper, it has a lot going for it – the supporting cast includes ex-Hammer starlet Veronica Carlson, John Hurt, Ian McCullough (making an early horror appearance before battling Zombie Flesh Eaters at the end of the decade) and Alexandra Bastedo, star of TV series The Champions and The Blood Spattered Bride. The film was set, interestingly, in the 1920s jazz age (taking advantage of sets built for The Great Gatsby), with McCullough, Bastedo and Carlson playing rich kids who challenge each other to a race to Land’s End, only to become lost on the moors (which moors isn’t made clear). They are attacked by red herring Hurt and offered shelter by Cushing, who has a sinister Indian servant, a private chapel and mutters a lot about corrupt Eastern religious cults – so clearly nothing good will come of this.

It doesn’t take long to realise that The Ghoul is essentially Hinds recycling his (rather better) screenplay for The Reptile, where an English man’s family is also corrupted by an evil Indian sect (revenge for British colonialism?). It’s an unfortunate comparison, because The Reptile is one of the best hammer films of the 1960s and The Ghoul can never compete. In fact, it turns out to be a somewhat tedious film. Devoid of shocks or any sense of style, it features listless performances, bored direction from Francis (who clearly didn’t feel the need to up his game just because his son was paying the bills) and seems incredibly dated for the time. Very little happens, and when it does, it’s handled with an overly genteel style. Kevin Francis had expressed disdain for the new trends towards sex in horror films – interviewed in Little Shoppe of Horrors, he commented that “there is a difference between using sex and showing tits”. True, perhaps – but Tyburn did neither and together with an equally coy approach to gore, it made the film seem very staid.

Now, you might argue that, despite a gratuitous (but nudity-free) bathing scene from Veronica Carlson, there was no need for sex to intrude on The Ghoul. But in the case of the next Tyburn film, sex was a significant plot point. The equally tame approach to Legend of the Werewolf suggests a fear of eroticism that borders on prudishness.

Originally announced as Plague of the Werewolves (a rather misleading title, given the singular nature of the beast in the film), the Hammer connection this time is even stronger. The film is based on a John Elder screenplay that Hammer had rejected in the 1960s after Curse of the Werewolf had failed to be a financial success. And if The Ghoul was a disappointment, then Legend… is even worse, failing on almost every level.

Looking at stills from the film, you’d be forgiven for expecting an atmospheric, well crafted chiller. And if you only watch the closing moments, taking place in the Parisian sewers, you’d probably think you were right. These scenes, with Peter Cushing facing off against the werewolf are creepy and poignant – they outdo Curse of the Werewolf in terms of pathos. But the rest of the film is terrible. The werewolf make-up, a clear but ineffective knock-off of that used in Curse… is poor, Freddie Francis’ direction dreadful and the acting shocking. It’s a rare bad performance from Cushing, who seems woefully miscast, while Ron Moody mugs furiously, as if sending up his Fagin character from Oliver!. David Rintoul, making his screen debut as the hapless young man who falls in love with a prostitute, bringing out the beast in him is terribly wooden and as for the appearance from Roy Castle… it makes his appearance in Dr Terror’s House of Horrors look like Olivier in comparison.

Legend of the Werewolf followed The Ghoul into box office oblivion – neither film even gained a US release for years. Things suddenly ground to a halt for Tyburn. Plans for future films with titles like Dracula’s Feast of Blood and By the Devil Possessed were rapidly abandoned, as was a proposed film based on Dennis Wheatley’s The Satanist. Plans for soundtrack albums for The Ghoul and Legend… were also quickly dropped, though both films were novelised – Legend… by Robert Black and The Ghoul, ironically, by the ultra lurid Guy N. Smith. Both books are considerably better than the films, Smith’s book adding in the sex and violence needed to make the story lively.

A Tyburn TV series concept also fizzled out and it seemed that we’d heard the last of this ambitious but misguided company. But it didn’t quite die. Tyburn remained in existence, with Francis working as a film buyer and seller for TV. And a decade after its last productions, Tyburn returned.

It was, admittedly, a rather more low key revival than the company’s launch. The Masks of Death appeared as a TV premiere on Channel 4 in the UK in 1984. But in many ways, it was as if nothing had changed. Cushing starred again in a screenplay by Hinds, although this one was directed by Roy Ward Baker – another Hammer veteran.

The film sees a return by Cushing, aged 70, to the role of Sherlock Holmes. Francis had initially wanted to make a new version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (which Cushing had starred in for Hammer in 1959 and again for the BBC in 1968!) but when funding fell through, decided to go with an original story that would explain Holmes’ advanced age. Here, he is tempted out of retirement on the eve of the First World War. Together with trusty sidekick Watson (John Mills), he investigates the discovery of three corpses that seem to have grave implications for national security.

The Masks of Death is rather better than the previous Tyburn/Cushing/Hinds collaborations, but nevertheless it feels old, tired and out of step. It seemed that Tyburn had a bloody-minded determination to stick with an increasingly old-fashioned style, no mater what.

Yet there is one other, remarkably obscure Tyburn feature – Murder Elite is a contemporary mystery thriller that has seems unreleased – it was scheduled for video in the mid-1990s on the ‘Taste of Fear’ label but doesn’t seem to have emerged. Currently, no Tyburn films are available on DVD.

Tyburn’s best film isn’t a feature but a TV documentary. 1989 saw Channel 4 broadcast One Way Ticket to Hollywood, a biography of / tribute to Cushing. Whatever else you might say about Kevin Francis and his films, he was clearly someone who held Cushing in great esteem, and this loving documentary is a fine tribute to the man. But this love of the golden age of Hammer horror was also the downfall of Tyburn, who were woefully out of step with public tastes in the 1970s. Because of this, rather than becoming a byword for terror, the company is little more than a minor postscript in the history of British horror.

Written by DF

Peter Stumpp (died 1589) (whose name is also spelled as Peter Stube, Pe(e)ter Stubbe, Peter Stübbe or Peter Stumpf) was a Rhenish farmer, accused of being a serial killer and a cannibal, also known as the “Werewolf of Bedburg”. There is much confusion around his real name as ‘Stumpp’ quite possibly refers to the fact that he only had one hand. This being the case, it’s quite possible his name was actually Griswold.

Understandably, primary sources from the 16th Century are scarce but a 16 page pamphlet exists, written in English having being translated from the original German; no copy of the latter is know to exist. Essentially an early, lurid tabloid, the document recounts how Stumpp, a wealthy farmer born in the village of Epprath near Cologne, who was accused of murdering and eating countless victims over a period of 25 years, as well as having an incestuous relationship with his daughter, another distant relative and a succubus sent by the Devil.

Most sensationally, he was accused of being a werewolf, something he was happy to attest to, claiming he had been given a magic belt by the Devil which allowed him to metamorphose into “the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws.” Whilst in this form, he is said to have gorged on the flesh of goats, lambs, and sheep, as well as men, women, and children. Being threatened with torture he confessed to killing and eating fourteen children, two pregnant women, whose fetuses he ripped from their wombs and “ate their hearts panting hot and raw,” which he later described as “dainty morsels.” One of the fourteen children was his own son, whose brain he was reported to have devoured. Upon removing the belt, he returned to his human form.

It perhaps goes without saying that Stumpp was made to pay heavily for his outrageous crimes, as was his daughter. His execution, fittingly on October 31st 1589, is one of the most brutal on record: He was put to the wheel, where flesh was torn from his body with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with a hammer to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter Sybil (Beell) and his mistress Katharina Trump (!) had already been strangled and were burned along with Stumpp’s body.

After the executions, a real wolf’s body was hung in public, his head replaced with Stubbe’s head as a warning to anyone else contemplating lycanthropy. It is unknown how many, if any crimes Stumpp had actually committed, though there is suspcion he was simply framed by local, jealous villagers.

Daz Lawrence

Rampage is a 1986 arcade game by Bally Midway. Players take control of gigantic monsters trying to survive against onslaughts of military forces. Each round is completed when a particular city is completely reduced to rubble. Over the years it has been released on a variety of consoles, the main difference between the original arcade version being that it was possible to actually complete the game whereas you could spend forever feeding 50 pence pieces into the machine, only to repeat levels endlessly.

Playing with up to two other friends or alone, Rampage sees you take control of one of three characters familiar to all horror fans; a gigantic King Kong-like ape (George), a green Godzilla-like dinosaur (Lizzie) or a similarly-sized werewolf (Ralph), all of whom are mutated humans, escaping from an establishment called Scumlabs (George a middle-aged man, Lizzie a young woman, Ralph an elderly man). George was mutated after swallowing mega-vitamins, Lizzie was mutated after bathing in a radioactive lake and Ralph was mutated after eating infected sausages. Faced with a metropolis of skyscrapers, civilians, helicopters and various other likely city fare, the aim is for your chosen monster to raze everything in sight to the ground, moving onto the next screen which contains even more metal, concrete and flesh to destroy.

The monsters can climb the buildings, punching them to pieces on the way down which will eventually reduce them to rubble. The various people can also be punched or grabbed and food items can be eaten. The player’s monster receives damage from enemy bullets, sticks of dynamite, shells, punches from other monsters and falls. Damage is recovered by eating the various food items such as fruit, roast chicken, or even the soldiers. If a monster takes too much damage, it reverts into a naked human and starts walking off the screen sideways, covering its modesty with its hands (and in this state, can be eaten by another monster).

Smashing open windows generally reveals an item or person of interest, which may be helpful or harmful. Helpful items include food or money, whilst dangerous ones include bombs, electrical appliances, and cigarettes. Some items can be both; for example, a toaster is dangerous until the toast pops up, and a photographer must be eaten quickly before he dazzles the player’s monster with his flash, causing it to fall. When a civilian is present waving their hands at a window signaling for help, a player’s points rapidly increase when the person is grabbed. Each monster can hold only one type of person: George can hold women, Lizzy can hold men, and Ralph can hold businessmen.

Rampage is set over the course of 128 days in cities across North America. The game starts in Peoria, Illinois and ends in Plano, Illinois. In  After this, the cycle of cities repeats five times. After 768 days, the game resets back to Day 1. Some of the home console versions of the game start in San Jose, California and end in Los Angeles, California after going all around North America. The rampage travels through two Canadian provinces and forty-three U.S. states. Only Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont are spared.

Rampage was ported to most home computers and video game consoles of its time, including the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, Atari 8-bit,Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS/IBM PC, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, NES, and Sega Master System. The Atari Lynx version adds a special fourth character named Larry, a giant rat. The NES version excludes Ralph, reducing the number of monsters to two. In July 2000, Midway licensed Rampage, along with other Williams Electronics games, to Shockwave for use in an online applet to demonstrate the power of the shockwave web content platform, entitled Shockwave Arcade Collection. The conversion was created by Digital Eclipse. Rampage was also ported to iOS as part of the Midway arcade app.

About a decade later, a sequel was released entitled Rampage World Tour, later followed by console-exclusive games including Rampage 2: Universal Tour, Rampage Through Time, and Rampage Puzzle Attack. The latest game in the series is Rampage: Total Destruction.

The game has enjoyed such lasting success that a film version is planned by New Line with John Rickard (A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) and Final Destination 5) set to produce.

Daz Lawrence

Los Monstruos del Terror, also known as Assignment Terror and Dracula vs. Frankenstein is a 1969 (released 1970) Spanish-German-Italian horror film directed by Tulio Demicheli, Hugo Fregonese and Eberhard Meichsner. The last two were uncredited in the film’s original print.

It is the third in a series of movies featuring the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy, who also provided the screenplay. It was apparently originally slated to be titled The Man Who Came From Ummo, referring to the alien character played by Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still). The film remains very obscure, being — to our knowledge — without an official English language DVD release and only available online in poor quality versions.

Aliens, running a traveling circus as a cover, revive a vampire, a werewolf, a mummy and Frankenstein’s monster (also Paul Naschy) with a plan to use them to take over the world. They want to discover the reason that these monsters are so frightening to Earthlings. They then plan to create an army of such monsters using their findings.

The werewolf they revive (Waldemar Daninsky) saves the world by destroying the other monsters in hand-to-hand combat and ultimately blowing up the aliens’ underground base, although he is shot to death in the process by a woman (Karin Dor) who loves him enough to end his torment.

Assignment Terror is weak on every level. A bored-looking Michael Rennie goes through the motions as a supreme being alien but this excuse to revive all the classic movie monsters is a wasted opportunity. There seems to be a sexist sub-text about men holding power over women but the film is so ineffectual it hardly matters. Plodding is the best description for this incompetently presented production and not even Naschy’s presence can save it.

Adrian J. Smith

“Despite its charming idea, alien invaders led by Rennie set about terrorizing mankind by reviving the monsters of the popular imagination, Dracula, the Werewolf, the Mummy, the Reptile and Frankenstein’s Monster, this is a mediocre film. Even the witty idea of having the aliens in monster form succumb to the emotions of their bodies’ previous owners falls flat.” The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction

Buy Paul Naschy: Memoirs of a Wolfman from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | IMDb | Download from Internet Archive

We are grateful to Destination Nightmare and Vampyres Online for some of the images above. Please visit these sites via Horrorpedia. Thank you.

I Was a Teenage Werewolf is a 1957 horror film starring Michael Landon as a troubled teenager and Whit Bissell as the primary adult and Yvonne Lime as his girlfriend, Arlene. It was co-written and produced by cult film producer Herman Cohen, directed by Gene Fowler Jr and was one of the most successful films released by American International Pictures (AIP). It was originally released as a double feature with Invasion of the Saucer Men.

Poor Tony Rivers (a rare film role for Michael Landon, best remembered for never-ending TV series like Bonanza, Highway to Heaven and the execrable Little House on the Prairie); it seems the whole world is against him – classmates, his dad, the cops – such is the life of a small town teenager in 50′s America. Kindly, if starchy, Detective Donovan suggests a chat with local shrink, Dr Brandon (Whit Bissell, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Soylent Green) to help tame his anger issues. A thoroughly unconvincing Halloween party at a ‘haunted house’ sees him attacking one of his friends, perfectly understandable given the rendition of his new ‘crazy record’, “Eeny Meany-Miney-Moe” that he has just ‘treated’ his friends to.

Realising himself that he is genuinely out of control, he visits Dr Brandon, who is full of patience and advice but decides hypnotherapy is exactly what will do the trick and if that’s not enough, a serum he has happened upon which will revert Tony to his primal state, stripping away the layers of conditioned control and urban sensibilities. Inevitably, an attack is reported upon one of Tony’s group of friends and the police swoop in to investigate, taking care to take note of the local janitor, Pepe (rent-a-Russian Vladimir Sokoloff, from The Magnificent Seven and countless other films), who rattles on about fanged beasts, wolves and the Devil’s own brood, having originally come from the Carpathian Mountains. Further visits to the doc are similarly unhelpful, indeed Rivers is revealed to be a baseball jacket-wearing werewolf, attacking and killing a teacher in the gym and a police dog. Tony seeks the doc’s help in desperation, though ditching the distinctive jacket might have been a better idea, whilst the police and his daffy girlfriend, Arlene do their best to protect the local citizens whilst saving the tragic jock.

There are few horror titles which are as evocative as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, immediately a klaxon announcing bad make-up, bad acting, drippy 50′s pop culture trappings and throw-away chaff. In actual fact, it is a well-made, well-shot drama which, though having the worst song and accompanying dance routine in the history of cinema, is a more successful commentary on teenage life than many alien invasion/nuclear bug films were at decrying The Bomb. Landon, almost squeaky in his youth (he was actually 21 years-old) plays the role of every-man perfectly well, whilst his generic group of friends and sundry adults prove to be a more believable agitate than a parade of well-known names.

The name of Samuel Z. Arkoff at the beginning of a film should always make your heart swell with excitement and that is indeed the case here, despite the resistance he met bringing to the screen a middle class teenager who was actually a monster, a shocking notion at the time. American International Pictures used the film as a launch pad for several ‘teenage beast’ flicks, including I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and How to Make a Monster but it was Werewolf which made upwards of $2 million from an initial outlay of approximately $82,000.

Whilst the werewolf make-up looks somewhat hokey on stills, it is perfectly serviceable in the film, Landon’s incredibly wide-eyed, twitching alter-ego a real treat and quite sensibly avoids any transformation sequences. The make-up came courtesy of Phillip Scheer. whose work can also be seen in Attack of the Puppet People and Black Zoo.  The surprisingly jazzy title theme is by Paul Dunlap who wrote for scores of 1950′s and 60′s no-budget genre films but always under the veil of being a true ‘artiste’.

The 1950′s attire, lexicon (“This party’s really percolating”!) and more especially the title have ensured that it lives on vicariously through The Cramps song of the same title, copycat ‘I Was a Teenage’ (Mummy/Serial Killer/Zombie ad infinitum) titles and television comedy sketches, often lampooning the absurdity but rather missing the fact it’s a pretty good film.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

You were warned…

Image gallery:

WolfCop is an upcoming Canadian horror film from writer/director Lowell Dean. The film is set to be released in Cineplex theatres nation wide in 2014. It is the first film chosen for production from the CineCoup Film Accelerator. It stars Jesse Moss, Amy Matysio, Jonathan Cherry, Sarah Lind, Aidan Devine, Corrine Conley and Leo Fafard.

Filming began in October 2013 in Regina, Saskatchewan and surrounding area. It is Dean’s second feature having previously shot 13 Eerie in the same location. The film is set to rely on “retro-style” practical effects instead of computer-generated imagery.

The plot revolves around an alcoholic small town cop who transforms into a werewolf after being cursed when he interrupts a ceremony in the woods.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official site | Facebook

Sphere horror paperbacks were published in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s. They were hugely popular and many – such as Lust for a Vampire, Blind Terror, The Ghoul, Squirm and Dawn of the Dead – were movie tie-ins and novelisations. The initial novels chosen for publication focused on the occult. Sphere published pulp fiction novels by famous authors, such as Richard Matheson, Ray Russell, Colin Wilson, Graham Masterson, Clive Barker and Robert Bloch whilst also providing a vehicle for British career writers such as Guy N. Smith and Peter Tremayne, plus many lesser known writers whose work received a boost by being part of the Sphere publishing machine. Occasionally, they also published compilations of short stories and “non-fiction” titles such as What Witches Do. In the early years, like many other opportunistic publishers, they reprinted the vintage work of writers – such as Sheridan Le Fanu – with lurid cover art.

The listing below provides a celebration of the photography and artwork used to sell horror books by one particular British publishing company. For more information about each book visit the excellent Sordid Spheres web blog.

1970

John Blackburn – Bury Him Darkly

Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury – Fever Dream

Robert Bloch – The Living Demons

Robert Bloch – Tales in a Jugular Vein

Angus Hall – Madhouse

Sheridan Le Fanu – The Best Horror Stories

Michel Parry - Countess Dracula
Sarban – The Sound of his Horn

Ray Russell – The Case Against Satan
William Seabrook – Witchcraft (non-fiction)
Kurt Singer (ed.) – The Oblong Box

Kurt Singer (ed.) – Plague of the Living Dead

Kurt Singer – (ed.) The House in the Valley
Robert Somerlott – The Inquisitor’s House

1971

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 1
Peter Haining (ed.) – The Wild Night Company
Angus Hall – The Scars of Dracula

Angus Hall – To Play the Devil – Buy on Amazon.co.uk
William Hughes – Blind Terror (Blind Terror film on Horrorpedia)

William Hughes – Lust for a Vampire (Lust for a Vampire film on Horrorpedia)
Ray Russell – Unholy Trinity
E. Spencer Shew – Hands Of The Ripper

Kurt Singer (ed) – The Day of the Dragon

David Sutton (ed.) – New Writings in the Horror and Supernatural 1

Alan Scott – Project Dracula

1972

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 2

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Clans of Darkness

Laurence Moody – What Became Of Jack And Jill?
Ronald Pearsall – The Exorcism

David Sutton (ed.) – New Writings in the Horror and Supernatural 2
Richard Tate – The Dead Travel Fast

Sam Moskowitz (ed.) – A Man Called Poe

1973

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 3
Stewart Farrar – What Witches Do: The Modern Coven Revealed (Non-Fiction)

Brian J. Frost (ed.) – Book of the Werewolf

Melissa Napier – The Haunted Woman
Daniel Farson – Jack The Ripper [non-fiction]
Raymond Rurdoff – The Dracula Archives

1974

Theodore Sturgeon – Caviar

1976

C L Moore – Shambleau
Guy N. Smith – The Ghoul

Robert Black – Legend of the Werewolf

Richard Curtis – Squirm

Ron Goulart – Vampirella 1:Bloodstalk

1977

August Derleth (ed.) – When Evil Wakes
Ron Goulart – Vampirella 2: On Alien Wings

Ron Goulart – Vampirella 3: Deadwalk

Vampirella on Horrorpedia

Ken Johnson – Blue Sunshine

Fritz Leiber - Night’s Black Agents
Robert J Myers – The Slave of Frankenstein

Robert J Myers – The Cross of Frankenstein
Jack Ramsey – The Rage

Ray Russell – Incubus
Andrew Sinclair – Cat

Colin Wilson – Black Room

1978

Ethel Blackledge – The Fire
John Christopher – The Possessors
John Christopher – The Little People
Basil Copper – Here Be Daemons

Basil Copper – The Great White Space
Giles Gordon (ed.) – A Book of Contemporary Nightmares

Peter Haining – Terror! A History Of Horror Illustrations From The Pulp Magazines

Peter Haining (ed) – Weird Tales

Peter Haining (ed) – More Weird Tales
Peter Haining (ed) – Ancient Mysteries Reader 1
Peter Haining (ed) – Ancient Mysteries Reader 2
Richard Matheson – Shock!

Richard Matheson – Shock 2

Richard Matheson – Shock 3

Stephen Marlowe – Translation
Michael Robson – Holocaust 2000
Peter Tremayne – The Ants

Peter Tremayne – The Vengeance Of She

1979

John Clark and Robin Evans – The Experiment
William Hope Hodgson – The Night Land
Robert R. McCammon – Baal

Kirby McCauley – Frights

Kirby McCauley – Frights 2
Jack Finney – Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Graham Masterton – Charnel House

Graham Masterton – Devils of D-Day
Susan Sparrow – Dawn of the Dead

Gerald Suster – The Devil’s Maze
Peter Tremayne – The Curse of Loch Ness

1980

Les Daniels – The Black Castle
Gerald Suster – The Elect
Jere Cunningham – The Legacy
William Hope Hodgson – The House On The Borderland
Robin Squire – A Portrait Of Barbara

John Cameron – The Astrologer
Robert McCammon – Bethany’s Sin
William H. Hallahan – Keeper Of The Children

Ray Russell – The Devil’s Mirror

Roy Russell – Prince Of Darkness

1981

Basil Copper – Necropolis

M. Jay Livingstone – The Prodigy
Andrew Coburn – The Babysitter
Peter Tremayne – Zombie!

Graham Masterton – The Heirloom
Owen West [Dean R. Koontz] – The Funhouse
William Hope Hodgson – The Ghost Pirates

Graham Masterton - The Wells Of Hell
Graham Masterton – Famine
Marc Alexander – The Devil Hunter [non-fiction]
Guy Lyon Playfair – This House Is Haunted [non-fiction]
Robert R. McCammon – They Thirst

1982

Ronald Patrick – Beyond The Threshold

Peter Tremayne – The Morgow Rises

William Hope Hodgson – The Boats Of The Glen Carrig

Stephen Gallagher – Chimera
Marc Alexander – Haunted Houses You May Visit [non-fiction]
Michelle Smith & Lawrence Pazder – Michelle Remembers [non-fiction]
Dillibe Onyearma – Night Demon
Robert R. McCammon – The Night Boat

Ray Russell – Incubus

1983

James Darke – The Witches 1. The Prisoner

James Darke – The Witches 2. The Trial
James Darke – The Witches 3. The Torture

Basil Copper – Into The Silence
Les Daniels – The Silver Skull

1984

Peter Tremayne – Kiss Of The Cobra

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 1
Clive Barker - Books Of Blood 2

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 3
Graham Masterton – Tengu

George R. R. Martin – Fevre Dream
James Darke – Witches 4. The Escape

1985

Peter Tremayne – Swamp!

Peter Tremayne – Angelus!
Stephen Laws – The Ghost Train

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 4
Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 5
Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 6
Rosalind Ashe – Dark Runner
James Darke – Witches 5. The Meeting
James Darke – Witches 6. The Killing

1986

Christopher Fowler - City Jitters

James Darke – Witches 7. The Feud
James Darke – Witches 8. The Plague

Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
Graham Masterton – Night Warriors
Lisa Tuttle – A Nest Of Nightmares

1987

Peter Tremayne – Nicor!
Peter Tremayne – Trollnight

Lisa Tuttle – Gabriel

1988

Alan Ryan (ed.) – Halloween Horrors

Guy N. Smith – Fiend

Stephen Laws – Spectre
Graham Masterton – Mirror
Eric Sauter – Predators
Robert McCammon – Swan Song

1989

Stephen Laws – Wyrm
Guy N. Smith – The Camp
Guy N. Smith – Mania

Graham Masterton – The Walkers
Graham Masterton – Ritual
Bernard King – Witch Beast

The listing above and many of the cover images are reproduced from the Sordid Spheres web blog. Bar the odd addition and amendment, the list first appeared in Paperback Fanatic 3 (August 2007). For more information about each title, its author and links to reviews, visit Sordid Spheres

Horrorpedia is a non-profit website. Please help us cover our web-hosting costs by buying from our affiliate links. Thank you.

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Emanuele Taglietti (born in Ferrara, January 6, 1943) is an Italian designer, illustrator and painter.

Born to an artistic father, Emanuele Taglietti graduated from his local art institute, then moved to Rome where he studied set design at the Experimental Center of Cinematography. He worked on the art direction and set decoration for various films, including Federico Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits. 

In 1973, he returned to live in his home town and came into contact with Renzo Barbieri of Edifumetto, for whom he worked as a cover artist of erotic, crime, fantasy and horror-themed fumetti (Italian comic books). Having been inspired by artists such as Frank Frazetta and Averardo Ciriello, he created artwork for fumetti such as Zora the vampire, Belzeba, Cimiteria, Sukia, Stregoneria (“Witchcraft”), Gli Spettri (“The Spectres”), Il Sanguinari (“The Blood”), Lo Schelectro (“The Skeleton”), Ulula (“Howls”), Vampirissimo and Wallestein.

Occasionally, Taglietti reworked images and artwork from horror films such as Creature from the Black Lagoon, Night of the Demon (1957) and The Plague of the Zombies, and seems to have had a fixation on actress Ornella Muti (whom he based the image of Sukia on). Featuring the signature nudity of fumetti, his work was sometimes censored when the comic books were publish in other countries, like Spain.

During this busy period, which continued until 1988, Taglietti also restored old paintings and occasionally collaborated as an illustrator for magazine publishers such as Mondadori and Rizzoli. He retired in 2000, broadened the scope of his artistic interests, devoting himself to mural decoration and furniture.

We are very grateful to the Emanuele Taglietti Fan Club blog for the images above.Visit their blog to see lots more of Taglietti’s artwork…

El Retorno del Hombre Lobo (Return of the Wolfman) is a 1981 Spanish horror film that is the ninth in a long series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy. It was briefly released theatrically in the US in 1985 by The Film Concept Group as The Craving, and more recently on DVD and Blu-ray as Night of the Werewolf.

In an outdoor trial in the 16th Century, Elizabeth Bathory and a number of witches are being sentenced – Bathory to spend her remaining days entombed, most of her followers beheaded or hanged. The brawn of her operation, Waldemar Daninsky, the celebrated nobleman-lycanthrope, is sentenced to be left in a state of living death, with a silver dagger through his heart and an iron mask (the mask of shame, no less) to keep him from biting. Centuries later, the dagger is removed by grave-robbers and Daninsky returns to activity, fighting against a revived Elizabeth Bathory and her demonic manservant, courtesy of some attractive modern-day witchery.

Outside of Italian gialli, there is little more confusing a purchase than a Naschy film – it is an essential rite of passage as a serious fan of horror films that at some point you may mistakenly end up with two copies of this under differing titles in error. Fortunately, it’s a cracker, not only the crystalisation of everything Naschy had attempted up to this point but also one of the peaks of Spanish horror. Paul Naschy had been successful enough by this stage that he was afforded a budget that matched his ambition – wobbly sets were replaced by actual castle ruins and sumptuous gothic decoration, the scope of the film covering vampires, werewolves and that old Spanish stand-by, the skeletal Knights Templar.

The cast sees Naschy regular Julia Saly (Panic Beats, Night of the Seagulls) as Bathory, pale-faced and clearly relishing the role, without ever attempting to overshadow Naschy. Naschy seems positively weepy, surrounded as he is in fog, thrilling coloured lighting and decked out in ancient finery. The other three main female characters, played by Pilar Alcón, Silvia Aguilar and Azucena Hernández had varied careers in Spanish genre cinema, all of them supplementing their incomes with ‘daring’ magazine photo-shoots – although nudity is scarce in the film, the three of them continually seem on the cusp of disrobing.

The pace is particularly brisk for a Naschy film, perhaps aided by him taking the director’s chair himself, instead of his usual muse, León Klimovsky. That said, the film makes little sense in the chronology of Daninsky werewolf films (this being the ninth of twelve), neither does the lenient sentence given to Bathory at the beginning of the film, nor her loyal servant suddenly being Hell-bent on revenge. No matter, the characters are interesting and straight-faced enough to carry what is lower rank Hammer fodder in theory.

Alas, 1981 was not the right time to suddenly nail your Gothic fetishes – horror cinema had long abandoned candle-lit castles and fangy nymphs and the box office was most unforgiving, leaving Naschy to film several films in Japan to try to rebuild not only his reputation but his finances. Time still doesn’t really seem to have caught up with Naschy, his films still polarising opinion amongst genre fans and almost completely ignored by the mainstream both in terms of interest and influence.

The soundtrack, though perfectly suited, is an outrageous plagiarism of both Ennio Morricone (the wailing harmonica of Once Upon a Time in the West) and Stelvio Cipriani (What Have They Done to Your Daughters? – in fairness, regularly reused by himself on the likes of Tentacles). The stunning cinematography is courtesy of Alejandro Ulloa, who also shot the likes of Horror Express, Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion and The House by the Edge of the Lake. The special effects largely stay away from the time-lapse transformation from human to beast and the film doesn’t suffer in the slightest – Naschy’s writhing at the sight of the moon being entertaining enough. Naschy remained proud of the film up to his death in 2009 and rightly so.

Daz Lawrence

La momia nacional (which translates as “The National Mummy”) is a 1981 Spanish horror sex comedy directed by José Ramón Larraz (Vampyres, Scream – and Die!, Rest in Pieces, Edge of the Axe) from a screenplay by Juan José Alonso Millán. It stars Francisco Algora, Quique Camoiras, Azucena Hernández, Carlos Lucena, José Jaime Espinosa, Lili Muráti, Trini Alonso, Paloma Hurtado, Mabel Escaño, Pilar Alcón. 

This film was a domestic release that does not seem to have been sold outside of Spain except perhaps in some Latin American countries.

The IMDb‘s plot keywords include: werewolf, female nudity, brothel, prostitute, vampire, governess, erotica, political comedy, mummy, severed arm, sex and insane asylum, which all sounds like good/bad fun to us… although the song that plays over the opening credits is appalling, so perhaps this is one comedy horror that deserves to remain in Spain?

IMDb | We are most grateful to No, hija, no for some of the images above.

Moonstalker (aka Predator: The Quietus) is a 1986 British horror film directed by Leslie McCarthy from a screenplay by himself and Cliff Twemlow (as Mike Sullivan). Twemlow also stars along with Cordelia Roche, Darryl Marchant, Mark Gover, Paddy Ward, Arthur Willman, Maxton G. Beesley, Abigail Zealey, Mark Heath, Sarah Fallon, Brian Sterling, John Simpson, Michelle Norfolk.

Review:

The late, great Cliff Twemlow was a true working class renaissance man who – until his death in 1993 – tried his hand at everything from stints as a nightclub bouncer, library music composer and horror paperback writer (The Pike, 1982), finally settling on a dual career as an actor and DIY filmmaker. Twemlow’s best known film G.B.H. (1983), the violent story of a Mancunian nightclub bouncer – autobiographically played by Cliff himself – was a fondly remembered good time rental from the early days of British video. Its ballsy claim to be “more brutal than The Long Good Friday”, non-stop action and one-liners worthy of Gene Hunt himself, easily winning audiences over, despite G.B.H.’s humble, shot on videotape origins. 

Stories about the so-called “Beast of Exmoor” proved to be the inspiration behind this 1986 effort which adds horror elements to Twemlow’s tried and tested G.B.H. formula. “The Beast” was all over the papers in the 1980s thanks to constant tabloid speculation that a high amount of sheep deaths were the result of a giant, panther like cat being loose in the countryside. Clearly not even this angle was sensationalist enough for Twemlow, nor Moonstalker director Leslie McCarthy, who instead use the film to posit the theory that the beast was in fact a werewolf!!! 

Given such a spin on the story like that it’s no surprise that a New York newspaper dispatches ace reporter Kelly O’Neil (Cordelia Roche) to a little village in England to investigate the apparent werewolf attacks. The paper also hires big game hunter Daniel Kane (Twemlow) in order to provide the back-up brawn to her brains. Clearly taking no chances, Kane arrives in the UK carrying with him machine guns and “an image that’s as wholesome as sewerage”. The fact that you are not really allowed to run around the English countryside tooled up like Rambo is cheekily dismissed by a line claiming that Kane has been granted a special permit to bear arms by the Freemasons!! “Charles Bronson eat your heart out” wisecracks one character. 

Kelly’s initial scepticism starts to crumble when Mr Rooney and Mr Clancy, a pair of old Irish drunkards, start feeding her stories about the werewolf’s exploits. The drunken duo’s merry demeanour and habit of injecting exclamations of “bejesus” and “Mary, Mother of God” into their conversations quickly endearing them to Kelly. “That’s real Irish charm” an easily impressed Kelly tells Kane. Kelly inadvertently gives Rooney and Clancy a flash of inspiration about how they can settle their bar tab when she mentions the cash reward on offer for the werewolf’s capture. Setting into motion several attempts to find the werewolf by the ‘Oirish’ double act, whose well pissed antics provide the film’s idea of comic relief. 

The werewolf itself occasionally surfaces to polish off livestock and a few minor characters as well as scare a pair of randy teenagers off having a quickie in a field. Just to add to the village’s problem of having a lycanthrope on their doorstep, a local biker gang have started throwing their weight around – as well as the odd Molotov cocktail – too. Sporting names like Weasel and Badger, and looking like they’ve escaped from the set of Death Wish 3, the motley bike gang are naturally destined for a run in with a certain big game hunter. After Kane beats up all of Badger’s gang, their leader sneers “not bad with boys are you old man, how do you make out with men”, only for Kane to shoot back at him the film’s funniest line “I don’t, my scene is with women, but I respect the preferences of others”.

As if the film didn’t have enough support characters to be going on with, we also get to meet the delightfully named Wilbur Sledge (Darryl Marchant), a strange young man who appears to know more about the werewolf than he is letting on. Wilbur serves as a mouthpiece for a surprisingly poetic and philosophical side to Twemlow’s screenwriting, and his script offers Wilbur plenty of opportunity to wander about the countryside delivering eccentric soliloquies about trees (“You are such a statuesque tree, proud and mighty, why did you anger the lord of lightning?”), passing rabbits, and even the werewolf itself (“The beast is lonely… it needs my friendship”). An utterly unique presence in the film played an equally unique looking actor – imagine a Gary Numan lookalike and a Roddy McDowall sound alike, dressed as a farmer and delivering dialogue that suggests Twemlow trying to channel the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, and you have Mr Wilbur Sledge. Such a character would make for an incongruous presence in pretty much any film, and stands out even further here thanks to having being dropped in amidst such quintessential 1980s action film stables as a gun totting mercenary and a bike gang. The fact that Darryl Marchant looks to have never been troubled by the acting world before or since, and as far as I can tell remains a one film wonder, only adds to his and the his character’s mystic. Every moment Marchant is onscreen you are completely captivated by him and left wondering “what the fuck was his story?” and “where on earth did Twemlow find this guy?”

Initially built up as a likely werewolf suspect, Wilbur instead ends up taking on a friend/spiritual adviser role to Kane. After Kane gets injured by the werewolf, Wilbur even volunteers to stitch him back up with a needle and thread, a scene that acts as Moonstalker’s only real stab at gore. It probably would have been advisable for Kane to have just gone to hospital, but as it turns out Kane is impervious to pain anyway having mastered “jungle law”, so that’s alright then! An impressive werewolf finally takes centre stage in the expected Kane vs. Werewolf climax. Even if it is all slightly bungled by post brawl revelations that first suggest a Scooby-Doo type explanation for the werewolf, only to then take it all back and opt for a genuine ‘monster on the loose’ explanation instead. Presumably sparing Twemlow and Co the wraith of any believers in the real life Beast of Exmoor in the process. 

Moonstalker gives the impression of having a greater amount of money and ambition behind it than the average Cliff Twemlow vehicle, with shooting on film instead of the usual videotape. The film makes a decent attempt at bamboozling the audience into thinking its opening scenes were filmed in New York. Thanks to some NYC stock footage and shots of actors pretending to be junkies and roaming what in reality were the mean streets of the North West of England rather than the East Coast of America. Yet for all of the upgrade to film and illusory ‘overseas location’ work, Moonstaker still retains all the recognizable hallmarks of Twemlow’s small scale, but enthusiastic film work. His eye for action scenes and ear for brilliant, tough guy movie dialogue are on fine form. Little known areas of Twemlow’s beloved North West are predominantly what are offered up as background scenery, Moonstalker being partly filmed in the sleepy village of Chipping and an off-season scout camp in Worsley. The cast includes such Twemlow regulars as Maxton G. Beesley and Brian Sterling-Vete, adding to the strong sense of a close-knit filmmaking troupe at work. 

Peek in at any stage of Cliff Twemlow’s life and career and what immediately strikes you is that here was a man who gave his all to whatever offbeat path life was pointing him in the direction of. His career as a nightclub bouncer, documented in his autobiography ‘The Tuxedo Warrior’, saw him pay multiple visits to the hospital over the years, his stint as a library music composer resulted in ‘two thousand’ pieces of music, and his 1970s fitness regime drove him to attempt 400 push-ups, 100 sit-ups daily, and three mile jogging sessions (with lead weights tied to his legs – according to local legend). This drive and determination was clearly the central force behind his film career, and the fact that he even had one and was able to carve out a mini-film industry for himself in 1980s Britain, was perhaps his most remarkable achievement in life. While even seasoned low-budget filmmakers like Norman J. Warren and Lindsay Shonteff struggled to get film projects off the ground during this decade, Twemlow was highly prolific in comparison, and seemingly doing what he did purely out of a love of making movies rather than for fame or money, since neither came his way on account of his film work. In fact, G.B.H. aside, his films were so invisible to the general public while he was making them, that it is really only now, years after the fact that we’re discovering later films like Moonstalker exist at all. By rights Twemlow should be an inspiration to all low-budget filmmakers out there.

Behind the scenes stories about Moonstalker further add to the idea of Twemlow as the sort who’d jump through rings of fire in order to see a film get completed, and at times threaten to rival the onscreen incidents in terms of entertainment value. According to one cast member the production was plagued by weird, supernatural occurrences and an actual ghost can briefly be seen in the film itself (although if this is true I’ve failed miserably to spot it every time I’ve watched the film). Given such hair-raising production troubles, a quick title change at the last minute (the original title Predator: the Quietus being unusable when it emerged that Hollywood was about to unleash a Predator of its own) must have been a comparatively minor problem for Twemlow.

Another moment of low-budget ingenuity saw the auteur talk a local Fiat car dealer into providing transport for the production in return for some obvious product placement. A handshake that resulted in poor Kane having to search for a werewolf in a Fiat Panda, a less than macho mode of transport that characters unconvincingly insist is a Jeep. In the event the miscast vehicle fits in conveniently well with Twemlow’s penchant for giving his characters quirky traits that go against audience expectations, generating intentional laughs in the process.

In G.B.H., Twemlow had shown his hard as nails bouncer character sharing a bed with a giant teddy bear, and in Moonstalker he makes Kane a strict teetotaller. Resulting in a priceless onscreen moment when Twemlow- a man built like a brick shithouse- goes to a restaurant and asks for “a glass of orange juice, please”. Scenes that illustrate Twemlow’s ability to gamely take the piss out of himself in a way that the egos of far bigger Hollywood action heroes would never have allowed. In spite of Twemlow taking on roles as the film’s male lead, writer, co-producer and fight arranger, there is an egolessness on display here, with the majority of his co-stars given a respectable amount of screen time and moments to shine too, a generosity that also extends to non-acting performers, witness the routine of a nightclub singer (“Jade at the Meridiana restaurant courtesy of Mr John Leyton” according to the end credits) being crowbarred into the film. 

Twemlow quickly followed Moonstalker with 1987’s The Eye of Satan, a similar hybrid of gung-ho action and horror that once again saw him playing a mercenary who answers to the name of Kane. Quite whether The Eye of Satan was conceived as a direct sequel is a moot point though, since Kane sports rather different characteristics in his second outing. Namely an allegiance to the devil and glowing green eyes! 

Perhaps this was just as well, since while The Eye of Satan was afforded an obscure video release and a few satellite TV airings on the HVC channel, a dispute with a film developing lab initially resulted in Moonstalker being left on the shelf. In the early 1990s the rights to the film were acquired by Hemdale Film Corporation, a company that had been set up by the actor David Hemmings. When Hemdale went bankrupt in 1995, the Hemdale library ended up the property of the Hollywood giant MGM. The sensible money would have been on MGM regarding the film as a low-priority and burying it, however to everyone’s great surprise they have in fact recently chosen to re-master it in high definition, subsequently broadcasting a HD version on American television in 2010 and making it available on Netflix. Quite an achievement for a previously unreleased film starring nobody anyone in America will have ever heard off, and featuring locations and accents that are equally obscure to a US audience. An unlikely happy ending to the previously sorry saga of Moonstalker, and one which offers hope that all the other lost, forgotten or barely released horror films currently out there gathering dust may one day emerge from the vaults and have their day too. 

Back in the UK, Moonstalker had its belated British premiere – nearly 25 years after it was made – as part of the 2010 Salford Film Festival. In true Cliff Twemlow fashion the première was held above a pub located just outside of Manchester City Centre. If the true litmus paper test of a film’s entertainment value is how it plays before a live audience then the film passed with flying colours. Proving a real crowd pleaser, the audience laughed along with its knowingly implausible storyline, cheered when Cliff’s face first appeared onscreen, while even the slightest hint of an upcoming action scene was greeted by wrestling match like shouts of “Go on Cliff!!”. Methinks Mr Twemlow would have approved.

Gavin Whitaker – Gav Crimson

IMDb

Autumn Moon is a 2014 American horror film directed by Randy Fabert from a screenplay by Michael Spivey and Randy Fabert.

The project is currently raising funds via Kickstarter

Cast:  Bill Oberst Jr.(Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, Children of Sorrow), Lynn Lowry (I Drink Your Blood, Shivers, Cat People) ), Camden Toy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2), Timothy Waldrip (Kiss of the Vampire), Joe Kidd,  Michael Peake, Nathaniel Grauwelman (Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies), Iabou Windimere (Psychic Killer), Jocelyn Tanis, Larry Combs,  Gerri Sutyak (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Sonny Burnette (Zombies R Friends), Richard Aughpin, and Randy Fabert (Psychic Killer).

Fabert says: “We have invested our time and money to shoot the opening scene to our kick ass old school Werewolf film “Autumn Moon”.  We need your help to finish it! Kickstarter funds will be used to hire the remaining cast and crew to finish the film. Our F/X budget will go towards finishing the WOLF costumes, mass body parts for mass graves, and LOTS OF BLOOD. This movie will be one of the bloodiest films ever made!”

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/323811890/autumn-moon/widget/video.html

Werewolves on Horrorpedia

Witches’ Tales - not to be confused with the 1950s comics of the same name – was a black-and-white horror-anthology comics magazines published by Eerie Publications, a New York-based company run by comic-book artist and 1970s magazine entrepreneur Myron Fass, between July 1969 and February 1975. New material was mixed with reprints from 1950s pre-Comics Code horror comics. Writer and artist credits seldom appeared, but included Marvel Comics penciler/inkers Dick Ayers and Chic Stone, as well as Fass himself, with brother Irving Fass and Ezra Jackson serving as art directors.

As with other Eerie Publications, such as Weird, Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Tales from the Tomb and Tales of Voodoo, Witches’ Tales featured grisly, lurid colour covers.

Buy The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read! book from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Buy Witches’ Tales Volume 1 book from Amazon.com

We are eternally indebted to Monster Brains for posting these ghoulish cover images.

What We Do in the Shadows is a 2014 New Zealand horror comedy film about a group of vampires who live together in Wellington, New Zealand. It was directed and written by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, who also star in the film. The remainder of the cast are: Jonathan Brugh, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stu Rutherford, Jackie Van Beek, Ben Fransham.

What We Do in the Shadows is based on a 2006 short film of the same name by Waititi and Clement. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2014.

Official synopsis:

Follow the lives of Viago (Taika Waititi), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), and Vladislav (Jemaine Clement) – three flatmates who are just trying to get by and overcome life’s obstacles-like being immortal vampires who must feast on human blood. Hundreds of years old, the vampires are finding that beyond sunlight catastrophes, hitting the main artery, and not being able to get a sense of their wardrobe without a reflection-modern society has them struggling with the mundane like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, trying to get into nightclubs, and overcoming flatmate conflicts…

Reviews:

“takes pleasure in poking fun at various aspects of vampire lore, but not surprisingly (given the filmmakers), What We Do in the Shadows is more deadpan, clever, and silly than it is simple, “schticky,” or mean-spirited. And while Shadows is most assuredly a full-fledged comedy in horror clothing, fans of the darker genre will certainly enjoy how colorfully gory the movie gets during some of the best visual gags.” Scott Weinberg, FEARnet

“Some genre fans who prefer the silly to the satiric may bite, but the anemic pic isn’t remotely weird or witty enough for cult immortality. Feeling eternal at 87 minutes, the film introduces a rival gang of G-rated werewolves (“We’re werewolves, not swearwolves!”) and drags its way to the Unholy Masquerade Ball, populated by hard-partying vampires as well as zombies — the movie’s final act of desperation.” Rob Nelson, Variety

“It’s also as silly as it is smart, unloading plenty of easy gross-out gags involving gushing blood and projectile vomiting plus some token childish moments — a character audibly masturbating from inside his coffin, for example — and some the movie gets away with by having its characters act immaturely in spite of their ages ranging in the hundreds to thousands of years … There’s always a smart bit within seconds of something stupid.” Christopher Campbell, Film School Rejects

“If there is any justice, What We Do in the Shadows, will break out into the light of day as a crossover hit. This film is absolutely hysterical, came as a complete surprise to me, and even breathes life back into the withering corpse of the doc-comedy style of The Office.” Ed Travis, Cinapse

Wikipedia | IMDb

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