Delusion (Also known as The House Where Death Lives) is a 1980 American horror film directed and co-produced by Alan Beattie, and starring Patricia Pearcy (Squirm), Joseph Cotten (The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Baron Blood, Isle of the Fishmen), David Hayward and John Dukakis. It was released in March 1980 in the US, and again in May 1981, under the title The House Where Death Lives, by New American Films, New World Pictures, and The International Picture Show Company

A nurse (Patricia Pearcy) moves into a mansion to care for an elderly invalid Ivar Langrock (Joseph Cotten). Not long after, Langrock’s grandson Gabriel (John Dukakis) comes to stay after the accidental death of his parents. Soon, an unseen killer begins to murder the mansions’ staff with a table leg.

‘When you get down to it, what The House Where Death Lives really needs is an identity to call its own. It’s too busy aping the classics to do its own thing, and it just feels like a copy/paste job. The final act features the inevitable wander through the dark house, with Meredith anxiously peering around every corner. Yet, what is supposed to be the final nail in the coffin lid is just routine and uninspired, in the very literal sense.’ HorrorNews.net

“Delusion is a subdued slasher that relies more on the skills of a veteran cast, a deliberate pace, and a twist ending” and it is”worth seeking out for fans of slashers with a heavy dose of whodunit mystery.” Retro Slashers

Wikipedia | IMDb | Thanks to Temple of Schlock for ad mats

Night Train to Terror is a 1985 independent American horror film directed by John Carr, Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan, Jay Schlossberg-Cohen, Gregg C. Tallas, and written by Phillip Yordan and has since become an infamous cult classic of grade-Z movie fare. It stars Cameron Mitchell, Richard Moll, Marc Lawrence and John Phillip Law.

God and Satan are on board a train and discuss the fate of three individuals. In the first story, “The Case of Harry Billings”, a man is kidnapped and taken to an insane asylum where he is put under hypnosis and lures victims to be tortured and murdered as part of an organ-harvesting operation. The second story, “The Case of Gretta Connors”, entails two young lovers who become involved in a sinister cult of people fascinated with death. The final story “The Case of Claire Hansen” involves an apprentice to the Devil who is out to destroy mankind and a group of immortals who are out to stop him.

Night Train to Terror is actually pieced together from three other films:

Cataclysm (1980)

Death Wish Club (1983)

Scream Your Head Off (unfinished)

Footage from this film was also later edited into Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars (1992). In the end credits, Satan is credited as being played by “Lu Sifer” and God by “Himself”.

Buy Night Train to Terror on Blu-ray + DVD combo from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

“Bad karate that can only be stopped by a bearded guy with a net. Flubutu’s amazing electrocution. Boobies. Richard Moll fondling boobies. Decapiation. Giant wasp makes guy’s head explode. Head’s in jars. Closet full of body parts. Giant demons. Crazy spider monster. Breakdancers. Bad eighties fashion. Repetitive music. God and Satan looking out a window and enjoying story time together. All of this sounds completely random and unrelated, and it is, this really just a series of bizarre set pieces strung together but damn it, it’s a lot of fun.” Rock! Shock! Pop!

“Night Train to Terror is a delectably wild, out of control piece of obscure horror cinema…a piece-meal juggernaut of a loco-motive, barreling recklessly down the tracks, with seemingly no one in the driver’s seat. For that reason, this clearly one of those films which you’re gonna indisputably despise, or you’re gonna absolutely relish with maniacal glee.” Cinema Head Cheese

Horror films involving trains: Creep | Death Line (Raw Meat) | Horror Express | The Midnight Meat Train | Night Train Murders | Terror Train | Train

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories – and the ongoing industry spun off from them – have a curious connection to the horror genre. The image of the master detective, stalking the fog-bound streets of London, seem to be as much a part of the Victorian horror world as Dracula and Jack the Ripper, and it is no surprise that enterprising filmmakers and writers have chosen to pit Holmes against these infamous monsters.

But the original Holmes stories only occasionally flirted with the supernatural, and even then, a rational explanation for events would be uncovered by Holmes in the end – like Scooby-Doo, Sherlock Holmes always found an altogether human cause for seemingly demonic forces.

The most famous of the Holmes stories is one such horror tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Originally serialised in The Strand magazine between 1901 and 1902, it is one of only four novel-length adventures for Holmes that Conan Doyle wrote. It remains the most popular and widely adapted of the Holmes stories, even though for a large part of the novel, Holmes is absent, leaving his companion and assistant Dr Watson to carry the story. This tale of greed and murder sees Holmes and Watson investigating the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, apparently at the hands (or paws) of a gigantic supernatural hound, part of a family curse. It is down to Holmes to protect Sir Henry, the Baskerville heir, while unmasking the killer from a collection of suspects and red herrings.

This is the most widely adapted of the Holmes novels, the story for some time being the ‘go to’ Holmes adventure for filmmakers. With the current trend to bastardise the Holmes character and use original (or barely recognisable) stories, the frequency of film and television adaptations has slowed, but with Sherlock Holmes being as popular as ever (albeit in modernised and unrecognisable forms), it can’t be long before another film or TV version of the tale appears.

The first Hound… film appeared from Germany in 1914. Conan Doyle’s creation was hugely popular with German readers, and this first film was a four part silent movie based on both the novel and Der Hund von Baskerville: Schauspiel in vier Aufzugen aus dem Schottischen Hochland. Frei nach motiven aus Poes und Doyles Novellen (“The Hound of the Baskervilles: a play in four acts set in the Scottish Highlands. Freely adapted from the stories of Poe and Doyle”), a 1907 stage play. As you might expect, it played fast and loose with the original story. Three further German adaptation appeared in 1920, and Richard Oswald, who had shot the third and fourth parts of the 1914 version, had another go in 1929.

The first British film based on the story was made in 1921 by Maurice Elvey, and it would be subsequently filmed again in 1932 in what would be the first ‘talkie’ version of the story. Edgar Wallace worked on the screenplay.

1937 saw another German version of the story, and in 1939 the first American version was shot. This version, made by Sidney Lanfield, is still regarded as one of the best adaptations of the book, and was the first of fourteen Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It’s a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel, but – bizarrely – due to copyright reasons, it is absent from the DVD box sets of the Rathbone Holmes movies.

After this flurry of Hound activity, it would be a decade and a half before the next version of the story, another German adaptation. But in 1959, Hammer films added The Hound of the Baskervilles to their series of gothic horror movies that had begun in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein. Starring Peter Cushing as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Sir Henry, the film was a rather loose adaptation of the story – there is more drama and the horror elements are (unsurprisingly) emphasised. Yet thanks to Cushing’s performance (many consider him the definitive Holmes) and the sheer quality of Terence Fisher’s film, this remains a much loved version of the story.

A decade later, Cushing would reprise the role of Holmes in a BBC TV series, taking over from Douglas Wilmer. The Hound of the Baskervilles was adapted as a two part story in 1968. This was more faithful than the Hammer version, but the tight schedule and reduced budgets of TV showed in the production values. Nevertheless, for fans of Holmes and Cushing, it remains well worth seeking out.

Proving the global popularity of the story, the next version appeared in 1971 from the Soviet Union. Another Russian version appeared a decade later, as part of a TV series based on Holmes. This 147 minute adaptation adds some ill-fitting humour to the story and while handsomely mounted has some eccentric performances (Vasily Livanov’s Holmes is rather too laid back while other characters chew the scenery).

1972 saw a US TV movie version of the story, with Stewart Granger making for an unconvincing Holmes in a fairly lacklustre movie that co-starred William Shatner! But the worst was yet to come.

In 1978, Paul Morrissey made a disastrous attempt to make a British comedy version of the story, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore starring alongside a host of well known British names — Denholm Elliot, Joan Greenwood, Hugh Griffith, Irene Handl, Terry-Thomas, Max Wall and Kenneth Williams — none of whom could save the film. Crass, bad taste humour that was mishandled and sheer self-indulgence all round – it feels essentially like a vanity project for Cook and Moore – made this one of the worst comedy films you could imagine, devoid of laughs or any sort of coherent story. It even includes a parody of The Exorcist…

1982 saw a four part British TV adaptation, with a rather miscast Tom Baker as Holmes, and a year later another British TV film adapted the novel.

This was the first of what was planned as a series of Holmes TV movies to be co-produced with US producer Sy Weintraub. Unfortunately for him, the Holmes stories slipped out of copyright and Granada TV announced their own series with Jeremy Brett. Only this and The Sign of Four were eventually shot. With Ian Richardson as Holmes, it’s a solid though unremarkable effort from director Douglas Hickox (who was going for the visual feel of Dario Argento’s films) and suffers from Martin Shaw’s Sir Henry being obviously and unconvincingly re-dubbed by another actor.

The Granada TV series that had scuppered the planned film series eventually adapted 42 of the 60 Holmes stories, and finally got around to The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1988. While critics praised Brett’s nervy performance, the series was often overly stagey and perhaps a little too faithful to the stories to always work as drama.

Also in 1983, Peter O’Toole voiced the character in the animated version Sherlock Holmes and the Baskerville Curse, and this would be the last version for some time. Holmes and the Hound eventually clashed again in 2000, in one of four Canadian TV films with Matt Frewer, who was hopelessly unsuited to the role.

Equally unsatisfactory was a dull BBC version from 2002, with Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This version again made changes to the original story, but was ultimately rather flat and lifeless.

The most recent – and possibly most annoying – version of the story appeared in the second series of the BBC’s overly smug Sherlock. Titled ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’, it throws out Conan Doyle almost entirely, to tell a story of secret military research into mind-altering drugs. While Mark Gatiss’ screenplay retained the horror elements, it made the worst mistake possible when changing a familiar story – namely, that if what you come up with isn’t better than what existed to begin with, why bother? The end result of this is a version that is just as much a slap in the face as Paul Morrissey’s ‘comedy’ adaptation.

It’s to be hoped that someone will make a more faithful, full blooded horror version of The Hound of the Baskervilles soon. While the story might seem to have been done to death, there are always new generations unfamiliar with the story. And after so many ineffectual – or downright insulting – versions, we deserve a new version to match the Rathbone and Hammer versions. Meanwhile, the story still inspires writers, artists and others in a series of novels, comic books, video games and even music… as you can see in the rather unusual version of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid below!

Article by David Flint, Horrorpedia

Pulgasari (also known as Bulgasari) is a 1985 North Korean film directed by Shin Sang-ok and Chong Gon Jo. The film, a giant-monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla series, was produced by the South Korean Shin, who had been kidnapped in 1978 by North Korean intelligence on the orders of Kim Jong-il, son of the then-ruling Kim Il-sung.

Kim was a lifelong admirer of the director and Kaiju-like films, and kidnapped the former and his wife, famous actress Choi Eun-hee, with the specific purpose of making fantasy/propaganda films for the North Korean government. Kim Jong-il also produced Pulgasari and all the films that Sang-ok made before he and Choi fled the country. Pulgasari has gained some popularity over the years because of the shocking story of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee’s kidnapping and strange captivity as the director and leading actress – the latter one excluding this film – of a total of seven films, for which the couple was simultaneously commissioned and forced to do by North Korea’s government. Jonathan Ross stated that the film is intended to be a propaganda metaphor for the effects of unchecked capitalism and the power of the collective.

Teruyoshi Nakano and the staff from Japan’s Toho studios, the creators of Godzilla, participated in creating the film’s special effects.Kenpachiro Satsuma – the stunt performer who played Godzilla from 1984 to 1995 – portrayed Pulgasari, and when the Godzilla remake was released in Japan in 1998, he was quoted as saying he preferred Pulgasari to the American Godzilla.

In feudal Korea, during the Goryeo Dynasty, a King controls the land with an iron fist, subjecting the peasantry to misery and starvation. An old blacksmith who was sent to prison creates a tiny figurine of a monster by making a doll of rice. When it comes into contact with the blood of the blacksmith’s daughter, the creature springs to life, becoming a giant metal-eating monster named Pulgasari.

The evil King becomes aware that there is a rebellion being planned in the country, which he intends to crush, but he runs into Pulgasari, who fights with the peasant army to overthrow the corrupt monarchy.

“The Godzilla connection is clear (Toho studios was even involved in the special effects), and the end result is a surprisingly entertaining monster movie. It’s grandiose in that soap operatic way that you’d expect, and even though it feels like it’s from the 1950s, there’s a lot to love about it — particularly the design and execution of the Pulgasari effects and the action.” Scott Beggs, Film School Rejects

“The monster suit (inside which is Kenpachiro Satsuma, the same man who plays Godzilla in the Heisei series) is at least as good as the one from Godzilla 1985, and the miniature work is also very skillfully handled. What doesn’t work too well are the matte shots; they’re not quite as bad as the ones in Yongary, Monster from the Deep, but neither do they indicate that the state of that particular art in Korea had advanced all that much in the intervening twenty years. In the end, Pulgasari is more a curiosity than anything else, and all but the truly obsessed can safely miss it.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“It’s amazing that after fifty years of monster movies, the technology has not changed. There are a total of three sound effects for the entire production, the monster still looks like a stuntman in a rubber suit, and rear screen projection is replaced by people actually running in front of a drive-in movie screen. Who would have even thought there was a drive-in in North Korea?” Dennis Przywara, Film Threat

“On one hand, Pulgasari is a cautionary tale about what happens when the people leave their fate in the hands of the monster, a capitalist by dint of his insatiable consumption of iron. But it is also tempting to read the monster as a metaphor for Kim Il-sung, hijacking the ‘people’s revolution’ to ultimately serve his purposes. When the movie was delivered to Kim, he saw it as a great victory. Trucks pulled up to Shin Films to unload pheasants, deer and wild geese for the movie crew to feast on.” John Gorenfeld, The Guardian

Wikipedia | IMDb

Trick or Treat is a 1986 horror film directed by Charles Martin Smith (The Beast, 1996) and produced by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG), starring Marc Price (Killer Tomatoes Eat France), Tony Fields, and Lisa Orgolini, with special cameo appearances by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne.

High school outcast Eddie Weinbauer is writing a letter to his hero, heavy metal musician Sammi Curr. He puts the letter in an envelope and starts doing his chores. He watches the news at the same time when he hears the worst words to ever reach his mind: Sammi Curr has died in a mysterious hotel fire. He is completely devastated. He goes to his friend “Nuke” (Gene Simmons), a radio DJ who knew Sammi Curr personally. To take Eddie’s mind off the death of his idol, Nuke gives Eddie the only copy of Curr’s last and only unreleased album, “Songs in the Key of Death”, on an acetate disc. Nuke plans to play the album in its entirety on-air at midnight on Halloween as tribute, since according to Nuke, that was always Sammi’s plan for the album’s debut.

Once back home, Eddie falls asleep while listening to the record and has a strange dream about the fire that killed Sammi Curr. When he wakes up he finds that the record is skipping and after listening to it for a few seconds he comes to realize that there is something not right about the words the record is stuck on. Having previous experience with hidden lyrics, Eddie plays the record backwards but receives more than he imagined: Sammi Curr speaking to him from beyond the grave…

‘The film has that great, over-the-top 80s hair metal vibe running throughout that makes it a bit of fun, but there’s just something missing. Despite the presence of Kevin Yagher as the FX man, there really isn’t a lot of blood or gore in the film. There was one halfway decent melted ear effect, though. The deaths are all pretty plain (and its in territory that Shocker would cover better a couple of years down the road). Though it is interesting to note that it predates both Shocker and The Horror Show as far as the whole “killer traveling through electricity” sub-genre is concerned. Despite the hard rock attitude, the film’s content feels pretty tame. It is low on scares and desperately low on gore. You have to wonder what audience the filmmakers were targeting.’ Oh, the Horror!

‘Trick or Treat is a great 80′s metal horror movie. The music ain’t worth a shit, but that’s what makes it so great. Also you got fucking “Skippy” from “Family Ties” completely miscast as the main character and he’s surprisingly good! I recently saw it at at the theater and it had a lot of little moments that the crowd loved. Nearly as good as Black Roses and better than Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare. If you like cheesy 80′s horror then it’s worth checking out.’ Dymon Enlow, Happyotter

‘Sammy Curr is about the most uninteresting horror movie villain there is: he looks like a less-masculine version of Dead or Alive’s Peter Burns and is about as imposing as Peter Criss. I guess you can’t expect much when you hire a former Solid Gold dancer (Tony Fields) to play the role of your antagonist. His music isn’t even that cool. It’s pretty watered-down even for the metal that dominatedHeadbanger’s Ball back in 1986. And if there were ever a hero that was harder to rally behind, it’s Marc Price. He’ll never escape the guise of Skippy, no matter how hard he tries.’ For the Retarded

‘Trick or Treat starts off quite cleverly which would have made its descent into genre conventions almost forgivable or at the very least entertaining. The films decent into complete incompetence nearly squanders all the good will it has earned. It changes tone and style so abruptly and in an unconvincing fashion it almost feels like it was made by a completely different crew and nearly sinks the entire project. It never manages to be scary, suspenseful, gory, or menacing and everything plays out exactly how you think it would.’ I Can’t Get Laid in This Town

Wikipedia | IMDb

We are grateful to Wrong Side of the Art!, Basement of Ghoulish Decadence and Happyotter for some images

Mike Vraney was the founder of Something Weird Video, an American film distributor company based in Seattle, Washington. On January 2, 2014, he died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was fifty-six years old. His sterling efforts to dig out and release masses of horror and exploitation films have undoubtedly been a major boon to the world of cult cinema, especially as his iconic label — which started out as basically a fan operation — had moved into legitimacy long ago via officially sanctioned DVD releases in conjunction with Image Entertainment and had recently been releasing Blu-rays and their own documentaries. Mike’s passion for trash cinema will be sorely missed.

Something Weird Video specialise in exploitation films, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis. The company is named after Lewis’ 1967 film Something Weird, and the logo is taken from that film’s original poster art. Something Weird has distributed well over 2,500 films to date. Even when the movies themselves were pretty awful, Vraney ensured fans got their money’s worth by making up themed triple-bills and loading DVDs with masses of ultra-obscure and head-shaking extras.

Vraney was inspired by his teenage job as a theater projectionist. His love for the obscure films that never made it to video prompted him to transfer hundreds of ancient reels of film to VHS and DVD. On the company website, he explained the label’s genesis:

‘In my mind, the last great genre to be scavenged were the exploitation/sexploitation films of the ’30s through the ’70s. After looking into this further, I realized that there were nearly 2,000 movies out there yet to be discovered. So with this for inspiration, my quest began and wouldn’t you know, just out of the blue I fell into a large collection of 16mm girlie arcade loops (which became the first compilation videos we put together). Around the same time I received an unexpected phone call that suddenly made all this real: my future and hands-down the king of sexploitation Dave Friedman was on the other end of the line. This would be the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship for both of us. Dave’s films became the building blocks for our film collection and he has taught and guided me through the wonderful world of sexploitation, introducing me to his colleagues (Dan Sonney, Harry Novak, H. G. Lewis, Bob Cresse and all the other colourful characters who were involved during his heyday) and they’ve been eager to dive into the business again.’

Adrian J Smith

Eerie Publications was a publisher of black-and-white horror-anthology comics magazines. Less well-known and more downscale than the field’s leader, Warren Publishing (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella), the New York City-based company was one of several related publishing ventures run by comic-book artist and 1970s magazine entrepreneur Myron Fass.

Titles published during their fifteen years of operation included Weird, Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Tales from the Tomb, Tales of Voodoo, and Witches’ Tales. All of these magazines featured grisly, lurid colour covers. 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.

• Horror Tales (27 issues, June 1969 – Feb. 1979)
• Strange Galaxy (4 issues, Feb. 1971 – Aug 1971)
• Tales from the Crypt (1 issue, July 1968)
• Tales from the Tomb (33 issues, July 1969 – Feb. 1975)
• Tales of Voodoo (36 issues, Nov. 1968 – Nov. 1974)
• Terror Tales (46 issues, March 1969 – Jan. 1979)
• Terrors of Dracula (9 issues, May 1979 – Sept. 1981)
• Weird (69 issues, Jan. 1966 – Nov. 1981)
• Weird Worlds (5 issues, Dec. 1970 – Aug. 1971)
• Witches’ Tales (34 issues, July 1969 – Feb. 1975)

Wikipedia | We are grateful to Comic Vine for the images above

Electric Frankenstein is an American rock band from Whippany, Clifton, and other areas of New Jersey, founded by Sal Canzonieri. Their music is generally considered punk rock, but includes elements of hard rock and heavy metal as well. Because of this, they have sometimes been referred to as AC/DC meets The Dead Boys.

The band was first formed in 1989 out of the ashes of New York City space punk band The Thing, by brothers Sal and Dan Canzonieri (a.k.a., Danny Frankenstein). With Sal on guitar and Dan on bass, their first line-up was with Frankie Orlandoni on vocals, Jim Foster on lead guitar and John Caton on drums. Within one year, Steve Miller took over as singer/vocalist and eventually also played lead guitar. Miller took time off while recording a side project, and Scott Wilkins of Verbal Abuse & Condemned to Death took over vocals for two years, after which Steve Miller returned on vocals and lead guitar. John Steele and Rob Sefcik took over alternately playing drums during the last 15 years.

The band developed a strong following in New York and by 1995, they toured nationally and internationally. After releasing singles on a handful of independent labels, they released their first vinyl EP, The Time Is Now, in 1995 that was released on CD with tracks from 7″ singles as their first full-length album. Since then, they have released over 10 albums, influencing such bands as The Hellacopters, Gluecifer, Turbonegro, and others.

The band’s music and/or legendarily iconographic art has been featured in video games, such as Tony Hawk’s Underground, TV shows such as Viva La Bam, The X-Files, Nitro Circus, Fantasy Factory, Dawson’s Creek, and movies such as Signs, Jackass, and American Psycho 2.

Electric Frankenstein is also the first and only band so far to have a whole art book published of their record covers and concert posters, which were designed by artists such as Coop, Kozik, Johnny Ace, Art Chantry, Dirty Donny, Peter Bagge, and many more. The book, “Electric Frankenstein – High Energy Punk Rock & Roll Poster Art” and was published by Dark Horse Comics (2004).

Discography:

• The Time Is Now (1995)
• Conquers The World (1996)
• Sick Songs (US) / Action High (UK) (1997)
• Spare Parts (1998)
• Rock and Roll Monster (1999)
• How to Make a Monster (1999)
• Annie’s Grave (US) / Don’t Touch Me, I’m Electric (UK) (2000)
• The Buzz of 1,000 Volts (2001) – USA
• Listen Up, Baby! (2003)
• Burn Bright, Burn Fast! (2005)

The band’s somewhat congratulatory Wikipedia entry suggests that they may have had a hand in compiling it. Nonetheless, their horror-themed name, imagery and songs mean they should definitely be featured on Horrorpedia.

Official site

Slime was a toy product manufactured by Mattel, sold in a plastic rubbish bin and introduced in the winter of 1976 consisting of a non-toxic viscous, oozing green material made primarily from guar gum. Different variations of Slime were released over the years, including Slime of differing hues containing rubber insects, eyeballs, and worms and Masters of the Universe Slime for Hordak’s Slime Pit playset in the 1980s.

The late 1970s also introduced a Slime Monster board game; the object of the game was to avoid having your game piece ‘slimed’ on by a foot-tall plastic monster that had slime oozing from its mouth. Other toy companies have produced their own slime such as the “Ecto-Plazm [sic]” sold with select figures in Kenner’s Real Ghostbusters toyline. Playmates’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figure line also had Retro-Mutagen slime sold in containers and included with playsets.

In scientific terms, slime is classified as a non-Newtonian fluid. These are thick liquids that have a variable viscosity, the measurement of the resistance to flow when a shearing force is applied. Newtonian fluids have a constant viscosity depending on their composition. For example, water is always a thin liquid with a low viscosity. Molasses is thick and has a high viscosity. Non-Newtonian fluids, like slime, have a different viscosity based on the amount of force put on them. If a small amount of force is applied, such as stirring them slowly with your fingers, they feel thin and water-like. If a high force is applied, like throwing it against a wall, the resistance is very strong. They are called non-Newtonian fluids because they do not behave as predicted by Newton’s laws. Other materials that also behave like this include ketchup, gelatin, glue, and quicksand. Slime as a toy dates back to the 1920′s, when chemist Hermann Staudinger was researching polymers.

In non-scientific terms, slime was one of the must-haves for any 70′s or 80′s youth. The shocking uranium imbued colours and endless possibilities were simply too much to resist. Alas, as with many of these fantastically marketed toys, the sad truth was soon realised – there really wasn’t anything you could do with it. After five minutes of sneeze-related gags your hands were soon both cold and neon and the clean-up operation had to begin in earnest. Perhaps more than any other substance created, it was doomed to find itself troubling inanimate objects, in my case the family roll-top bureau, the only piece of furniture we had which we were specifically told to be careful around. To compound the issue, the particular strain of slime I had was the day-glo pink with rubber worm trim.

The main components are the polysaccharide guar gum and sodium tetraborate. Instead of the polysaccharide, other alcohol-group containing polymers may be used, such as polyvinyl alcohol, however polymers formed in this way are more often called flubber. It is possible to make slime in the comfort of your own dwelling.

Ingredients

• 1 cup hot water
• 1.5 tsp. Borax (non-toxic/available by laundry detergents)
• 2 cups clear glue
• 2 cups warm water
• 1 tsp. liquid watercolor

What to do:

1. Mix 1 cup hot water and 1.5 tsp. of Borax until dissolved. Set aside.
2. Mix 2 cups of clear glue and 2 cups of warm water together in a plastic bowl.
3. Using a metal spoon, slowly pour Borax mixture into the glue mixture while stirring quickly. Stir until the mixture leaves the side of the bowl. Slime will be sticky. Knead the mixture until it is no longer sticky. The more you work with it the easier it will become.

I have not attempted this and accept no responsibility for mishaps, fatal or otherwise.

Realising that slime alone was quickly being rumbled as even more useless than silly putty, Mattel put the wheels in motion to give the substance more of a purpose. Their big hitter was their Slime Monster board game, a typically baffling affair that consisted of a pleasingly large marauding plastic monster who you had to stop destroying a town. Via a spinner, you worked your way across town in a big too plant a landmine (!) to destroy him. If you were unlucky, the monster would spew slime over the plastic character representing you, ruining the carpet and anything else in its path.

Following later were Slime It’s Alive!, the same sticky goo but with eyeballs and other treats hidden within, the aforementioned pink slime with rubber worms, and Ooze It, an oddly pathetic-looking green monster who when filled with red slime would expel it from various orifices.By 1986, it was a no-holds barred affair, Dissect an Alien was a toy from 1986 where an alien could be cut open, its organs removed, with a bucket of “slime” to serve as blood.

Daz Lawrence

Thanks to stretcharmstrongworld and plaidstallions.com for some of the pics.

Slither is a horror novel by British author John Halkin, first published in 1980 by Hamlyn Paperbacks. It is not connected to the 2006 film of the same title.

The book is very much in the tradition of the ‘nature gone wild’ horror novels that were particularly popular with British pulp fiction authors throughout the 1970s and into the early part of the next decade. Inspired by the success of James Herbert’s The Rats and Guy N. Smith‘s Night of the Crabs, all manner of creature – often species that were never seen as overly threatening before – were mutated, enraged or otherwise provoked into bloodthirsty action.

While the cover of Slither shows a woman being attacked by what look like newts, the novel refers to the creatures as ‘worms’ throughout. These initially small monsters grow in size throughout the story, which becomes more apocalyptic as it goes along.

From the back cover:
“From his first terrifying, bloody encounter with them Matt Parker knew they were lethal to the human race. Out of the murky sewers they suddenly attacked – snapping, biting, ripping at his flesh. After the first sensationalism had died down, the newspapers lost interest… the experts dismissed them as no more dangerous than ferrets… people started to forget. But Matt knew different. All the time they were growing in size and numbers – and they preyed on living flesh! For when they returned – slithering out of village ponds, swimming pools, even bath pipes – the fate of the British population was sealed. And there was no more horrifying way to die…”

John Halkin also wrote horror novels such as Blood Worm, Slime and Squelch.

DF

We are grateful to Too Much Horror Fiction for some of these images.

Clownhouse is a 1989 American horror film written and directed by Victor Salva. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic category at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival. Clownhouse was the film debut of actor Sam Rockwell.

Just before Halloween, three young brothers alone in a big house are menaced by three escaped mental patients who have murdered some traveling circus clowns and taken their identities.

Salva was charged with the sexual abuse of Nathan Forrest Winters, the lead actor who played Casey, during the making of this film. Salva served 15 months of a 3-year-prison term, and was released on parole. Winters came forward in 1996, when Salva’s film Powder was released.

Salva became noticeable again in the film industry in 2001 with the release of his sleeper hit Jeepers Creepers, followed by its 2003 sequel Jeepers Creepers II.

Buy Clownhouse from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

“Despite the dodgy history surrounding the film, it holds up well enough. If you are looking for something atmospheric to get you in a jumpy mood, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Clownhouse. Once your expectations are in check for gore and massive production value, you should have a good time with this. If you happen to be freakish about clowns… well, maybe best to stay away.” Rewind Your Damn Videotapes

“Am I recommending Clownhouse? In and of itself, divorced from the reality behind it, it’s a serviceable thriller with some truly odd touches (the boys’ mother and a fortune-teller they encounter at the carny both seem like chubby drag queens). Viewed in its real-life context, it becomes exponentially distasteful and squalid, moreso than any 42nd-street European zombie dreck that depicts the slaughter of actual animals.” EFilm Critics

Creepy clowns: It | Blood Harvest | Killer Klowns From Outer Space | Stitches

Victor Salva

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Demons (Italian: Dèmoni) is a 1985 Italian horror film directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento, starring Urbano Barberini and Natasha Hovey. The screenplay was written by Bava, Argento, Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti, from a story by Sacchetti. Filming took place in Berlin and Rome.

A group of people are trapped in a large movie theater in West Berlin that is infected by ravenous demons who proceed to kill and posses the humans one-by-one, thereby multiplying their numbers…

Dario Argento had an important influence on Dèmoni. In addition to co-writing the script, he also produced the film. Argento’s daughter, Fiore, plays the character of Hannah. Michele Soavi, a devotee of Argento’s work and his assistant director on several films, also served as an assistant director on Dèmoni and has two starring roles, as the man wearing the silver mask and as Jerry, one of the characters in the film playing at the Metropol. Nicoletta Elmi, who plays the usherette, appeared in Argento’s 1975 classic giallo Deep Red, and she also had a small role in the 1971 horror film Twitch of the Death Nerve (directed by Mario Bava, the father of Dèmoni director Lamberto Bava).

Most of the interior cinema scenes were shot in an actual closed down movie theatre. The building still exists but is now a bank. At the same time, the building used for the exterior shots of the movie theatre still exists; it’s a club called “Goya”, whose appearance in the film has brought it fame and now regularly hosts horror conventions today. Filming took place in Germany and Italy, and as a reference to these countries’ cinema, posters for Werner Herzog‘s Nosferatu,The Vampyre and Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet can be seen hanging in the Metropol’s lobby. The music chosen for the film features several Heavy metal classics, and there is also an AC/DC poster in one scene

Buy Demons on Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

“What makes Demons so much fun? Well, how about: a total lack of logic, bad acting, horrendous dubbing, total predictability, extremely excessive blood and guts, hilarious plot and character development (when either is even present), bad 80s music and styles, sporadically intentional black humor and a wonderfully futureless ending all served up at a relatively breakneck speed with some occasional visual verve.” A Wasted Life

“Once the clever premise is neutered, Demons is really just another low-budget European bloodbath. It lacks the gleeful artistry of Dario Argento’s films, and it doesn’t come close to George Romero’s mythic transcendence of the genre. After all, when you get right down to it, the story of Demons makes it simply a zombie film, but with faster monsters that use claws as well as teeth. In zombie movies, the suspense comes from wondering when the characters will make fatal mistakes, but here death simply seems inevitable for most of them.” DVD Verdict

IMDb | Wikipedia

WH

Riziero “Riz” Ortolani was an Italian film composer. Born on 25 March 1926, he recently died in Rome, aged 87 years-old. In the early 1950s Ortolani began his musical career as a founder and member of a well-known Italian jazz band. His score for Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti‘s ‘shockcumentary’ Mondo Cane, whose main title-song was More earned him a Grammy and was also nominated for an Oscar as Best Song.

Director Quentin Tarantino featured Ortolani’s work in more recent productions such as Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) and Django Unchained (2012).

Ortolani scored all or parts of over 200 films, including horror, gialli, spaghetti westerns, Eurospy films, exploitation films and mondo films. Notable horror films and giallo thrillers scored by Ortolani include:

Horror Castle/The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963)

Castle of Blood (1964)

One on Top of the Other (Lucio Fulci, 1969)

So Sweet, So Perverse (1969)

Web of the Spider (1970)

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972)

Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)

The Dead Are Alive (1972)

Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes (1973)

Death Steps in the Dark (1976)

I Am Afraid (Io ho paura,1977)

Red Rings of Fear (1978)

Brutes and Savages (1978)

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

Zeder aka Revenge of the Dead (1983)

Killer Crocodile (1989)

Killer Crocodile 2 (1990)

Wikipedia | Thanks to Wrong Side of the Art! for some of the poster images above.

Chewits is the brand name of a British chewy, cuboid-shaped, soft taffy sweet manufactured by Cloetta since 1965. Chewits have been available in a variety of increasingly exotic flavours since their inception.

Chewits were first advertised on television in 1976. The original ads featured the ‘Monster Muncher’, a Godzilla-resembling mascot on the hunt for something chewy to eat. The first ad featuring the Muncher threatening New York was made by French Gold Abbott and created by John Clive and Ian Whapshot.

From then on the ‘Monster Muncher’ chomped and trampled  local and well-known international landmarks such as Barrow-in-Furness Bus Depot, a London block of flats, London Bridge, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Empire State Building. The ‘Monster Muncher’ could only be quelled by a pack of Chewits. The original adverts used claymation special effects, similar in style to those made famous in the movies of Ray Harryhausen. They also included a voiceover style reminiscent of a 1950s radio serial.

A subsequent advertisement, originally aired in 1995, plays on the over-the-top advertising style of the post-war era. To the tune of bright 1950s era orchestration, a salesy narrator exhorts viewers to try a variety of chewy consumer items in the essential guide to a chewier chew. The ad shows the ‘Monster Muncher’ sampling items such as Wellington boots, a rubber boat and a rubber plant in order to be ready for the chewiest of chews – Chewits.

In the late 1990s, Chewits experimented with ads showing multiple news casting dinosaur puppets. The catchphrase advice at the close of each ‘broadcast’ was to “do it before you chew it”.

With a change of ad agencies, the puppets were replaced by colourful 2D animations. The ‘Monster Muncher’ was re-introduced as ‘Chewie’ in two popular adverts from this time. In the first, which aired in 2000, Chewie roller skates on two buses through a busy city scene. The second shows Chewie waterskiing at a popular seaside resort.

In 2003, a new ad was aired showing a wide range of animals auditioning to be the new face of Chewits. The ad announced the return of the iconic dinosaur Chewie mascot, now dubbed ‘Chewie the Chewitsaurus’.

In 2009, the new Chewie the Chewitsaurus look, showing a contemporary, computer-game-style slick design, was introduced. It seems fair to observe that the Monster Muncher’s metamorphosis from the 1970s to the 21st century has not been a positive one.

A spin-off computer game, The Muncher, was released for the ZX Spectrum in 1988.

Wikipedia

Richard Lewis was a novelist who emerged during the British horror fiction boom of the late 1970s, then vanished once that boom turned to bust. Over a few short years, he churned out several pulp in the popular ‘eco-horror’ genre popularised by Gun N.Smith and James Herbert. His real name was Alan Radnor, and he sometimes used that name as a writer, mostly outside the genre.

His first – and probably best known – horror novel was Spiders, a tale of a new strain of flesh eating arachnids rampaging across Britain, which was published in 1978. The spiders here range in size from tiny to giant, and at one point it seems that the authorities will have to take the nuclear option to destroy them!

The book was popular enough to spawn a sequel, The Web, taking place six years after the original horror and featuring more of the same.

Spiders aside, Lewis seemed to struggle to find creatures that would instill terror in the potential reader. The Devil’s Coach-horse (aka The Black Horde) attempts to make mutated bugs that burrow into human flesh seem terrifying, though the cheery looking bug on the original cover didn’t help in that respect. Still, it featured plenty of action:
“Pete Thompson should never have stopped. For from the railings above, a mound of beetles which had been feeding on a dead steer tumbled onto his hair and down over his eyes and began quickly decimating what was left of his face. Screaming, practically blind and his mind almost snapping, he ran into the yard, the blood pouring down his neck.”

He wrote about another sort of bug in 1983 with Night Killers, which sees mutated cockroaches on the rampage. To quote the blurb:

For 300 million years they have existed unchanged – furtive insects scuttling through the shadows. Till modern man began to destroy his environment …

They came the fatal night when a vicious murderer died before he could burn his latest victim.

Ravenous cockroaches devour the corpse, and develop a new craving – for human flesh. Mutating into savagely efficient killers, they prey on the young, the old, the drunk, the injured. Undetected. Unstoppable.

Eventually two scientists guess the truth, but no one will believe them – until a chilling disaster strikes!

And even then the nightkillers have an unsuspected weapon …

His 1981 novel Parasite is a rather grimmer affair about a deadly infection carried by water-borne insects. But the book is also about the breakdown of society s the infection spreads, with the setting up of death camps and the population turning on doctors. It’s surprisingly nihilistic stuff.

He moved away from killer bug and creepy crawlies entirely for his 1983 book Possessed, which appears to be his final novel. This is a story about strange things happening to the people working on a new super computer, the 5000 RX. Weird hallucinations, psychotic behaviour and mind control are at the centre of the tale. The book was originally published under his real name, and this might explain why it is so different in tone and style from his other books. Notably, his only other horror novel as Radnor is The Force, published in 1979 and also dealing with technology, the supernatural and mind control.

Lewis also wrote a novelisation of David Cronenberg’s Rabid, which sticks pretty much to the story of the film without adding much in terms of character or action. Outside the horror field (and again, under his own name, he also authored several other books, fiction and non-fiction, ranging from the sexploitation spy story Red Light Red, through tie-ins for TV shows Whodunit, Dick Barton and Masterspy to a book about the paranormal and a biography of Elton John.

In 1986, he produced the obscure British TV series World’s Beyond, which was an anthology show based around real life cases from the Society for Psychical Research.

He should not be confused with American ‘young adult’ horror author Richard Lewis.

David Flint

Cannibal Corpse is an American death metal band from Buffalo, New York. Formed in 1988, the band has released twelve studio albums, two box sets, four video albums and one live album. The band has had little radio or television exposure throughout its career, although a cult following began to build behind the release of their 1991 album Butchered at Birth, and 1992 album Tomb of the Mutilated. Both albums achieved worldwide sales of one million copies by 2003.

The members of Cannibal Corpse were originally inspired by thrash metal bands like Slayer and Kreator, as well as other death metal bands such as Morbid Angel, Autopsy and Death. The band’s album art (most often by Vincent Locke) and lyrics, drawing heavily on horror fiction and horror films, haven proven to be controversial. At different times, several countries have banned Cannibal Corpse from performing within their borders, or have banned the sale and display of original Cannibal Corpse album covers.

In May 1995, then-US Senator Bob Dole accused Cannibal Corpse—along with hip hop acts including the Geto Boys and 2 Live Crew—of undermining the national character of the United States. A year later, the band came under fire again, this time as part of a campaign by conservative activist William Bennett, Senator Joe Lieberman, then-Senator Sam Nunn, and National Congress of Black Women chair C. Delores Tucker to get major record labels—including Time Warner, Sony, Thorn-EMI, PolyGram and Bertelsmann—to “dump 20 recording groups…responsible for the most offensive lyrics.” Clearly these reactionary vote-desperate people had no sense of dark humour or no awareness of lyrics that are deliberately outrageous or provocative to the point of being nihilistic…

Cannibal Corpse pride themselves on overtly violent-themed songs and album artwork, which they sees as nothing more than an extreme form of over-the-top entertainment. In the film Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, George Fisher said death metal is best viewed “as art”, and claimed that far more violent art can be found at the Vatican. Some of Cannibal Corpse’s most controversial song titles include “Meat Hook Sodomy”, “Entrails Ripped from a Virgin’s Cunt”, “Necropedophile” and “Fucked with a Knife”. Of their music, George Fisher once said in an interview: “We don’t sing about politics. We don’t sing about religion…All our songs are short stories that, if anyone would so choose they could convert it into a horror movie. Really, that’s all it is. We like gruesome, scary movies, and we want the lyrics to be like that. Yeah, it’s about killing people, but it’s not promoting it at all. Basically these are fictional stories, and that’s it. And anyone who gets upset about it is ridiculous.”

In response to accusations that his band’s lyrics desensitize people to violence, Alex Webster argued death metal fans enjoy the music only because they know the violence depicted in its lyrics is not real:

“I think people probably aren’t that desensitized to it, you know including myself, like you know, we sing about all this stuff and you watch a movie where you know it’s not real and it’s no big deal, but if you really saw someone get their brains bashed in right in front of you, I think it would have a pretty dramatic impact on any human being you know what I mean? Or some terrible, gross act of violence or whatever done right in front of you, I mean you’d react to it, no matter how many movies you’ve watched or how much gore metal you’ve listened to or whatever, I’m sure it’s a completely different thing when it’s right in front of you. Even though we’ve got crazy entertainment now, our social realities are actually a bit more civilized than they were back then, I mean we’re not hanging people or whipping them in the street and I think that’s positive improvement for any society in my opinion.”

He also believes the violent lyrics can have positive values: “It’s good to have anger music as a release.” George Fisher said of their songs “There’s nothing ever serious. We’re not thinking of anybody in particular that we’re trying to kill, or harm or anything.”

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Some animals are guaranteed to inspire feelings of disgust and fear in cinema audiences, and not more so than the humble rat. While many people keep rats as pets, even they will see a difference between their domesticated companions and the sewer-dwelling, disease carrying vermin that we are continually told that none of us are ever more than six feet from (an urban myth perhaps, but with a certain basis in facts – there are a LOT of rats in the world). Collective memories of the black death, horror stories about rats climbing out of toilet bowls or being found in babies cribs and the mere possibility of waking up to find a rat siting on your bed, possibly eating your face (and yes, it’s happened!) ensure that rats will never be seen as cuddly by the majority. And with news stories about oversized ‘super rats’ or claims that they are becoming resistant to poisons, it’s not hard to see why rats make many people shudder. There is nothing we can do to stop their rise, it seems, and if filmmakers are to be believed, even a nuclear holocaust won’t slow them down.

Rats have long been used by filmmakers as shorthand for disgust, decay and dirt. Think of how many times you’d seen someone exploring an old building, a gothic castle or a disused warehouse in a horror film where the sense of creepiness is emphasised by scuttling rodents. Rats have also been the food for mutated throwbacks and subhuman monsters, to show how depraved they are – having your character snatch up a rat and start munching on it is sure to repulse the audience.

In George Orwell’s futuristic fear of a totalitarian state novel 1984, protagonist Winston Smith is driven to breaking point when confronted with his worst fear – rats – in Room 101. This was memorably shown in the controversial BBC TV version of the story broadcast live in 1954, with a pre-Hammer Films star Peter Cushing suitably terrified as a ‘rat helmet’ is placed on his head. Viewers of early British TV were thrilled and appalled in equal measure. This showed the power that rats had to terrify not only Smith, but viewers in general. Yet, oddly, it wasn’t until the 1970s that rats became the central figures in horror movies.

The most famous and successful rat movie was Willard, made in 1971. The film follows social misfit Willard (Ben Davison), who develops a strange relationship with the rats that surround the old, dilapidated house he lives in with his mother. After the old woman dies, this odd relationship increases, as a large number of rats begin living in the house and he develops a close bond with two unusually smart one – Socrates (who is, rather impossibly, white) and Ben. He soon starts using the rats to take revenge on those who have made his life a misery, namely his exploitative boss Mr Martin (Martin Borgnine). But when Martin is torn apart by the rats in revenge for him killing Socrates, Willard is snapped back into reality and decides he must get rid of the rats – but by this time, it’s too late.

An intriguing and effective psychological horror film, Willard was a surprise box office hit and would inspire imitators like Stanley (where snakes took the place of rats) as well as spawning a sequel, Ben.

Ben, made in 1972, sees the titular character – who is considerably smarter than the average rat – leading an army of rodents after escaping the purge on the household after the events of Willard. While the scenes of rat attacks and vast colonies of the creatures in sewers ramp up the horror of the first film, the movie hedges its bets by also introducing a maudlin story where Ben is adopted by a sickly child. This rather schizophrenic storyline ensured that the film would be less successful than Willard, and allowed for the inclusion of the teeth-grindingly sentimental title song, performed by Michael Jackson (who would trouble the horror genre again many years later, with Thriller)  – possibly the only love song to a rat that has ever entered the pop charts.

The popularity of Willard didn’t see a massive explosion of rat cinema – most imitators copied the story but used other animals – but the ever opportunist and eccentric Andy Milligan tried to ride the wave with The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! in 1972. This film had started life in 1969 as one of Milligan’s London-lensed low budget period horror films, this time about a family of werewolves, but had sat on the shelf of infamous producer William Mishkin until 1972, when the director was instructed to add around 20 minutes of rat footage to the film in order to cash in on Willard and Ben. The resulting film is as weird as you might expect. Milligan has seen a degree of critical reassessment over the last few years, and it’s true that much of his work is less ‘bad’ as it is bizarre. The unique Milligan style is on full display in this film.

Also possibly showing some influence from Willard at this time was The Pied Piper, a British version of the famous fairy story made in 1972 by French director Jacques Demy. This is a darker tale than you might expect. Set at the time of the Black Death and with English folkie Donovan as the Piper, it mixes in corruption, revenge, anti-semitism in a film that is often an uneasy mix of children’s fantasy and adult drama. Towards the conclusion of this offbeat production, the piper takes his revenge on the corrupt townsfolk by unleashing the rats he has promised to rid them of, resulting in amazing and unsettling scenes of rodent rampage – at one point they even burst out of a wedding cake! It’s a curious, unique film that is sadly rarely seen today, possibly because of the strange mix of styles it contains.

If regular sized rats are scary, then imagine how much worse giants rats would be! That, I assume, was the thinking of legendary B-movie maestro Bert I. Gordon, when he embarked on a ‘loose’ (to put it kindly) adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods in 1976. Mr BIG had long had a fixation on oversized creatures – his earlier films include The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast, Earth vs. The Spider and Village of the Giants, and he would follow this film with Empire of the Ants. In The Food of the Gods, a couple discover a mysterious and miraculous food stuff, resembling porridge, bubbling out the ground and start to feed it to their chickens, as you do. This causes massive growth in the birds. But unfortunately, the local rats, wasps and worms have also developed a taste for the stuff, and soon a small band of survivors are being terrorised by the giant rodents (the wasps and worms only play a minor role in the proceedings).

This is a surprisingly slow moving and unsurprisingly inept effort, with Bert’s trademark shoddy special effects, yet it proved to be an unexpected box office hit. In 1989, an overly belated direct-to-video sequel was made – Food of the Gods 2 (aka Gnaw: Food of the Gods II) that had no connection to the earlier film, this time telling the unlikely story of a misguided scientist who grows giant rats whilst trying to find a cure for baldness! These oversized rodents are released by animal rights activists and cause the expected amount of chaos in a film that is notable only for making the original Food of the Gods look like art.

The same year, Yugoslavian satire The Rat Saviour sees a writer discover that rats are learning how to imitate and ultimate replace humans. Much like Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, the film is a comment on the loss of humanity and a biting criticism of the socialist state.

Also in 1976, British TV series The New Avengers took a rare step into the fantasy world with the episode ‘Gnaws’ by Dennis Spooner. While the 1960s series The Avengers was often fantastical, this 1970s spin-off tended to be more ‘realistic’ and concerned itself with espionage rather  than science fiction on the whole. But there were exceptions, and Gnaws was the most obvious, with Steed, Purdy and Gambit chasing a giant rat through the London sewers!

Showing alongside The New Avengers on TV in 1976 was Beasts, a horror anthology by Nigel Kneale, which included the episode During Barty’s Party. In this two hander, a middle aged couple find themselves besieged by ‘super rats’ (the titular radio show fills in what is happening in the outside world). We never see the rats in this story, the horror being effectively conveyed by sound effects and the growing panic of the couple.

The 1922 Nosferatu had featured scenes of rat filled coffins that added to the general creepiness of the film (and similarly, 1931′s Dracula added rats to the creatures infesting the Count’s castle), but Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake emphasised the rat infestation much more, showing Dracula as, quite literally, the plague – the rats he brings with him spread disease just as much as the vampire does.

In 1974, James Herbert’s novel The Rats had become a massive success in the UK, spawning a whole ‘animal attack’ pulp fiction sub genre and eventually leading to several sequels. This graphic and lurid novel about giant rats seemed ripe for filming, and in 1982, it was finally shot by Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse for Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest. Relocating the action to Canada (doubtless for the tax breaks that encouraged many productions during this period), the resulting movie was decidedly less outrageous than Herbert’s novel, and proved to be a pretty ineffectual and slow moving affair. Things were not helped by the low budget, which didn’t allow for decent rat effects – notoriously, the giant rats were played by dachshunds in rat suits, which fooled nobody. In Britain, the film was released on video as The Rats, but elsewhere – where Herbert’s novel was less well known – it went out as Deadly Eyes, which probably just confused potential viewers more.

Curiously, it wasn’t the only Canadian rat film at the time, as 1983′s Of Unknown Origin also features rampaging rodents, though this time on a more domestic scale, as Peter Weller (future Robocop) find himself becoming increasingly obsessed with catching a huge rat that is in his house, even if it means destroying the property in the process. As much an allegorical tale as anything (Weller’s character is literally caught in a rat race and his desperation to the marauding beast represents his ineffectuality in face of his desire to ‘own’ his own space), the film is well worth seeking out. For a more comedic version of the same story, check out the 1997 film Mouse Hunt.

Director Bruno Mattei had featured a scene involving a zombie rat in his entertainingly trashy Zombie Creeping Flesh in 1981, and he later expanded on the idea in Rats: Night of Terror, a post-apocalyptic tale where survivors of the nuclear holocaust stumble upon a village full of food and water. Unfortunately, it’s also full of mutant rats… deliriously trashy and gory, it’s no surprise that the film has built up quite a cult following over the years.

In 1987, the spectacularly tasteless Ratman emerged from Italy, courtesy of director ‘Anthony Ascot’ [aka Giuliano Carnimeo]. Starring dwarf Nelson de la Rosa, this was the story of a homicidal rat/monkey hybrid creating by a mad scientist in the Caribbean, for reasons that are never made clear. Italian exploitation veterans David Warbeck and Janet Agren turn up in this bizarre effort.

Stephen King’s short story Graveyard Shift was filmed in 1990. The film takes place during the night shift clean up of an abandoned mill that has just reopened, where the workers find themselves attacked by rats… and something much worse. The film invariably pads King’s original story out with ‘personality conflicts’ that add little to the story – you would be better served sticking to the prose.

1991′s The Demon Rat is set in the near future, when environmental pollution has reached new levels and toxic chemicals have created mutant animals, including a giant man-rat! This Spanish film mixes science fiction and satire in a fairly effective manner.

In 1995, Bram Stoker’s short story Burial of the Rats was adapted – if that is the word – by producer Roger Corman. As the plot involves a young Bram Stoker being captured by scantily clad female warriors who use hungry rats to punish evil men, it should go without saying that any connection to the original short story begins and ends with the title. It should not be confused with the 2007 Japanese film of the same name, which has no connection to Stoker or rodent rampages.

Altered Species, made in 2001, sees rats attacking partygoers after the scientist host pours his new formula down the sink. For some reason, one of the rats has mutated into a giant.

2002′s The Rats has no connection to James Herbert, but instead has a department store infested by mutant rats – clearly, regular rats were no longer cutting it as horror creatures by this time. A year later saw the release of the similarly titled Rats, which takes place in a multi-purpose institution that houses both rich drug addicts and the criminally insane. It also turns out to be home to an army of super-intelligent giant rats, the result of past medical experiments of Dr Winslow (Ron Perlman).

2001 German movie Ratten: Sie Werden Dich Kriege (also known as Revenge of the Rats) sees an army of rats brought out onto the streets during a garbage collectors strike. To make things worse, these rats are carrying a deadly virus! Jörg Lühdorff’s film was popular enough to spawn a 2004 sequel, Ratten 2 – Sie Kommen Wieder!

2002′s Nezulla is a Japanese film in which a half rat, half human monster that has been created by American scientists goes on the rampage in Tokyo. Inevitably, the film is let down by its shot-on-video visuals, but might appeal to fans of Eighties monster movies.

Willard was remade in 2003, with Crispin Glover in the title role. Directed by Glen Morgan, the film sticks pretty much to the story of the original film, and is quite effective in its own right, but failed to connect with audiences.

2006 film Mulberry Street sees an infection turning people into mutant rat creatures. Closer to the zombie genre than usual rat movies (the film was retitled Zombie Virus on Mulberry Street for UK release), this is one of the better recent films in that overdone genre.

Most recently, 2011′s Rat Scratch Fever sees giant mutant space rats, who have stowed away on a spacehip and are now terrorising Los Angeles. Cheap, trashy and unashamed, the film is likely to appeal to anyone who enjoys watching low rent giant monster movies on SyFy.

The days of the serious rat horror film would seem to be over for now, which is a pity – there is still a lot of potential in the genre I would think. Perhaps one day, an enterprising filmmaker will once again remember that rats are both omnipresent and terrifying for many, and exploit that to its full potential…

Article by David Flint

The Woman in Black is a 1989 British TV movie, and is the first adaptation of the Susan Hill novel that is better known as the source for the hugely successful 2012 Hammer film. Interestingly, the screenplay is by Nigel Kneale, who of course had a long history with Hammer Films through the 1950s and 60s.

The story follows young solicitor Arthur Kidd (Adrian Rawlins), who is sent to a small English market town to attend the funeral of client Mrs Drablow, and deal with her estate at the remote Eel Marsh House, readying the property for sale. It becomes clear that the old woman had no local friends, and only Kidd and Mr Pepperall (John Cater), a local solicitor attend the funeral – though Kidd sees a mysterious third mourner, a woman. However, mention of her sees to unnerve Pepperall.

Upon visiting the house – cut off by high tides for all but a few hours a day – Kidd soon begins to understand why the locals were so frightened, as the mysterious Woman in Black (Pauline Moran) seen at the funeral is seen again, and clearly seems to be a ghostly figure. Investigation of Mrs Drablow’s papers and wax cylinder recordings suggest a family tragedy, and he hears the ghostly sounds of a horse and buggy, along with its passengers, vanishing into the marshes.

Through Sam Toovey (Bernard Hepton), a local landowner he met on the train up from London, Kidd hears of the curse of The Woman in Black – Mrs Drablow’s sister, Jennet Goss, had given birth to a son but was unable to raise him. The Drablows adopted the boy, but refused to allow his mother to ever reveal her true relationship to the child. Eventually, the desperate woman kidnapped the child, but was caught in the rising tides as she fled. Her ghost now haunts the house, and whenever she is seen, a local child will die soon afterwards…

The Woman in Black was first broadcast by ITV in the UK on Christmas Eve 1989. It was a popular and critical success, but has only been re-run once (in 1994, by Channel 4) and although released on VHS video has never been made available on DVD in the UK – a US DVD did appear but is long deleted. Oddly, no one seems to have thought to re-release it to cash in on the success of the more recent version.

Unlike the 2012 film, this version of the story stays fairly true to the original novel, save for a few curious changes – the dog Spider has been changed from female to male, the lead character’s name is changed from Kipp to Kidd, there is no phonograph in the novel (this change was presumably to help dramatise scenes of Kidd reading through paperwork) and there are several other small changes and one or two dramatic alterations towards the ending of the film. It is, however, much more of a faithful version of the story than the Hammer film, which makes a number of variations and goes for more cinematic shocks. As a result, this is a rather more low key affair than the better known recent version, aiming for a gradual creepiness than outright horror. There is only one, rather ineffective moment where the Woman in Black becomes a malevolent and upfront figure of horror rather than a haunting presence, a scene that director Herbert Wise unfortunately fluffs by allowing it to be too brightly lit and too long.

As such, the story is more realistic but perhaps less effective as a horror film for audiences raised on high-octane shockers. It is deliberately subtle and aims to be creepy rather than terrifying and explicit. As such, it fits well with Nigel Kneale’s other horror works. Although best known for his science fiction dramas such as the Quatermass series, Kneale had written several supernatural stories such as The Stone Tape in 1972 and the mid-Seventies TV anthology Beasts. The Woman in Black differs from these by being a period piece, but there is certainly a sense of connection between the works – the idea of ghosts being ‘recordings’ of the past that was explored in The Stone Tape seems to be again at play with the constantly replayed ‘recording’ on the tragedy on the marshes that is central here.

While this version of The Woman in Black seems destined to remain the most obscure adaptation, lost behind the 2012 film, the stage play and the original novel and currently unavailable from legal sources, it is nevertheless an interesting variant on the story that anyone who enjoyed the newer film – or admires the novel – would certainly find worth their while.

David Flint

The Prey is a 1980 American horror film directed by Edwin Scott Brown from a script he wrote with his spouse Summer Brown (the latter also produced). It was apparently released to cinemas briefly in 1984 by New World Pictures.

The film stars Debbie Thureson, Steve Bond (Massacre at Central High, To Die For), Lori Lethin (Return to Horror High, Werewolf TV series), Robert Wald, Gayle Gannes (Human Experiments), Philip Wenckus, Jackson Bostwick (The Psychopath, What Waits Below, The Outing), Jackie Coogan (Halloween with the New Addams Family), Connie Hunter (Something Evil) and Garry Goodrow (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978, Eating Raoul, Once Bitten). Future adult movie star John Leslie has an uncredited role as a gypsy.

Don Peake (The Hills Have Eyes, 1977) provided the score except for the opening credits which are accompanied by Modest Mussorgsky’s classical piece ‘Night on Bald Mountain‘.

Review:

The deep, dark forest has always been an ideal setting for slasher flicks, hasn’t it? From Don’t Go In The Woods to The Forest to I Spit On Your Grave to, of course, summer-camp fare like Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, The Burning, etc. the formula is a simple,  yet effective,  one — throw a bunch of city folks out in the sticks and bad things happen to them. They’re out of their element, while the killer is most certainly in his, so there’s never any question about who’s got the upper hand and who’s gotta fight to (temporarily, in most cases) survive. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it works. Why mess with a good thing?

In 1980, former (and future) porn director Edwin Brown figured he might as well throw his hat into the horror ring and show he could make a backwoods slasher, as well, since everybody else seemed to be doing it — and making a tidy little profit in the process. With a little bit of money (under $50,000 from what little info I’ve been able to gather) to go out to the wilds of Utah to see what he could come up with. The end result is The Prey, one of the slowest, most hopelessly padded, most agonizingly repetetive entries in the entire “country killer stalks the city slickers” canon, yet  also a  remarkably interesting one — albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Here’s the deal: in 1948 in a remote area of the Keen Wild known as the North Point Woods, there was a forest fire. Some unnamed dude evidently got burned up pretty bad in it, and now, in 1980, seemingly out of nowhere, he’s out for blood. Fortunately for him, a half-dozen semi-virile late-teens/early-20s types (none of whom are played by anyone I recognize) show up, so he can start his killing spree good and proper. There ain’t much blood, there ain’t much by way of even partial nudity, and there definitely ain’t anything fitting any standard definition of the word “riveting” going on.

And that’s about it as far as the plot goes. Here’s where things get (forgive me for abusing the term) intriguing, though — Brown (along with — I think, at any rate — his wife, Summer, who co-wrote the screenplay) had so much time to kill that to even hit the 80-minute mark  he resorts to some truly mind-blowing shit in order to stretch the proceedings out.

How mind-blowing, you rightly ask? How about tons and tons of stock footage of various critters in the wild that looks like it’s culled from literally dozens of different National Geographic specials? Seriously, there’s spiders,  lizards, frogs, snakes —  even fucking caterpillars and centipedes — shown for countless minutes on end doing pretty much nothing. And if that’s not enough for ya, the single-longest scene in the flick involves one of the two forest rangers we meet telling a joke about a frog with an unusually wide mouth — to a deer! Yes. Really.

If you’re still in the mood for even more blatant stuffing of the run-time’s ballot box, though, fear not — there are also a bunch of pointless scenes of go-nowhere conversation around campfires, and, in a truly bizarre instance, a lengthy discussion about the culinary merits of cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches. It all becomes so staggeringly mundane that it almost borders on the exotic.

I believe the word we’re looking for here, friends, is surreal. And speaking of surreal, this movie’s Addams Family connections are just that. The forest ranger mentioned a minute ago who can’t get enough cuke sandwiches? He’s played by Jackie Coogan, better known as Uncle Fester from the TV series, and our “hideously” malformed killer (made up by a very-early-in-his-career John Carl Buechler) — who, curiously enough for a film with absolutely nothing going on doesn’t even show up on screen until about the final ten minutes or so — is portrayed by Carel Struycken, who would go on to play Lurch in Barry Sonnenfeld’s two Addams Family movies. How weird is that?

Still, probably weirdest of all is the fact that there apparently exists an even longer, 95-minute cut of this film out there someplace. Don’t ask me what sort of extra filler that might be weighed down with, since by the time Thorn/EMI released this on VHS about a year after its almost-certainly-brief theatrical run (I’ve never met anybody who’s seen this thing on the big screen, have you? Nor could I find a single image of its poster anywhere online —  but New World did, for a fact, put this out theatrically — somewhere) it had been mercifully pared down to the still-way-longer-than-it-has-any-business-being version most of us remember (to the extent that any of us remember it at all). It’s never been released on DVD, so I’ll leave you with a link to the VHS cut that some enterprising horror fan has slapped up for posterity on YouTube. Be prepared for the longest hour and twenty minutes of your life. But not, curiously enough, the dullest.

Ryan, C. – review courtesy of Trash Film Guru

Wikipedia | IMDb

The film world in Britain during the early 80s was grim. Most of the grand cinema palaces of yesteryear were, if not already transformed into Bingo halls, falling apart, offering a less-than-enticing combination of bad projection, uncomfortable, dirty seats and programmes which required the audience to sit through endless amounts of commercials and unwatchable travelogues before finally being allowed to see the main feature. With unemployment at an all-time high, people were more inclined to stay home and save their money, watching any of the three TV channels available until closedown before midnight.

Yet, as the decade began, an alternative appeared that would chance viewing habits forever. The video recorder. Although they’d been on the market for a few years, it was in 1980 that the VCR first began to be more than just a rich man’s toy. Although still relatively costly to buy, many electrical stores offered reasonable monthly rental schemes for VCR’s. Seemingly overnight, every household in the country had a video recorder next to the TV and an expensive family night out at the pictures suddenly seemed less attractive when you could choose from a multitude of feature films for the same price and watch in the comfort of your own home, as the number of films available to buy or rent exploded.

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Most major distributors looked upon home video with suspicion, and were reluctant to release their biggest titles onto this new format when there was still money to be made from theatrical reissues, and so the rental shops which began to spring up on the high street were, for the most part, filled with low budget, independent films from a multitude of small distributors who appeared to cash in on the video boom. And it quickly became clear that there was a substantial audience for the material which the British Board of Film Censors had long fought to protect us from.

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The more lurid the cover art, the more sex and violence promised by the blurb, the more the public wanted it. Labels like Go Video, Astra, Intervision and Vipco emerged to release films from all over the world, with horror being the most reliable genre. Big hits were made out of films which had barely ever seen the light of a movie screen in the UK and directors such as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci became as bankable in the VHS world as Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorcese. The video rental top ten was regularly packed with movies like I Spit On Your Grave, The Driller Killer and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

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Some of these were films which the BBFC had banned outright, heavily cut or which stood little chance of being passed if submitted for approval. But there was no compulsory censorship of video, so images that were forbidden in the cinema could be enjoyed in their full gory glory at home. Fledgling video labels were buying up whatever salacious sounding titles that they could find and releasing them without even considering submitting them to the BBFC. And the British public could not get enough of it. Every street corner, it seemed, had a video shop. Even off-licenses, newsagents and petrol stations got in on the action.

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Unfortunately, this frivolous phase of viewing freedom would not last.

It wasn’t long before rumours started spreading about the open availability of films showing extreme, explicit violence, torture and mutilation. Films too extreme even for an ‘X’ certificate were openly available to anyone, even children. The public could use the slow motion and pause buttons to get maximum perverse pleasure from their video sadism. Worse still, it seemed that Cannibal Holocaust and SS Experiment Camp had replaced balloon benders and clowns as a staple of children’s parties. Not innocent mind was safe from the onslaught of the Video Nasties, a term first used in the trade that would be a household word by 1982.

Once the press had their teeth into the story, there was no stopping them. “Ban the Sadist Videos!” screamed The Daily Mail, outlining the dangers that the uncensored world of home entertainment presented to the country’s moral fabric. Various politicians and pressure groups (not least Mary Whitehouse’s National Viewers and Listeners Association) were quick to take up the cause. Teachers groups expressed concern about the effect on impressionable children, and church groups were quick to complain too. Faced with such pressure, the Director of Public Prosecutions agreed to the first obscenity charges to be brought against horror videos, and soon police forces up and down the country were carrying out random raids on shops, clearing the shelves of potentially obscene material.

As the whole concept of horror movies being obscene was so new, worried video shop owners had no idea which films they would be prosecuted for, so in an effort to clarify the situation the Department of Public Prosecutions issued a list of  “nasties”, based on titles which had been successfully prosecuted or which were awaiting trial. The list would vary in length over the next few years, before settling on 39 movies. In addition to the official Nasties list various local councils had their own selection of condemned videos to muddy the situation a little more. Shops found stocking the forbidden films during police raids – and police raids were a weekly occurrence – faced prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act.

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When their day in court came most video shop owners pleaded no contest to the charges of issuing obscene material for gain in order to avoid a lengthy prison sentence – this meant that many movies were condemned as “obscene” without ever going before a jury, or even being watched by magistrates. Some distributors stopped distributing their horror titles in order to avoid the wrath of the DPP. One distributor was sent to jail for marketing Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, despite the fact that it was not the uncut version he was distributing (as much as the retailers, the distributors often had no idea of which version of a film they’d released and, of course, had no way to know that horror films would suddenly fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act). London based Palace Pictures pointed out the absurdity of travelling up and down the country to defend The Evil Dead – which was released on video in the BBFC X-rated cut version – against various local charges of obscenity, so had the case centralised to a court in the East end of London — where the film was found not guilty. This, however, did not prevent other police forces from continuing to seize the film. An acquittal under the OPA did not necessarily set a national precedent, and local sensibilities would continue to come into play (though notably, a single conviction DID seem to set some sort of precedent, conveniently).

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The British Board of Film Censors, who had seen their income drop to rock bottom during the video boom, were quick to back up the dangers of an unregulated system of distribution. The BBFC were soon appointed by parliament to govern the classification of all films to be released on video in the UK. The 1984 Video Recordings Act ensured that Britain would never again fall prey to the immoral whims of smut peddling distributors hungry to make a quick buck. Over the course of the next few years, all unclassified videos would be removed from the shelves of British video stores. By 1988, it was illegal to sell or rent an unclassified VHS tape.

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Of course, it was not only horror and sex films that were released without BBFC certificates but films from all genres, including even children’s films. Many smaller, well established shops had to remove the majority of their stock, forcing a large number out of business. Many distributors could not afford the high price of BBFC classification for their films — particularly if the censors then demanded cuts, as was often the case. By this time, the major Hollywood producers had woken up to the money to be made from video, and the public increasingly had the chance to take home a recent blockbuster instead of an obscure 1970′s horror film. Most small labels simply vanished. The VRA ensured that it was no longer the little guy making the money from the video industry.

Amazingly, as the hysteria died down, BBFC head James Ferman still felt compelled to overprotect the public from the dangers of violent imagery. Even though they were never on any Video Nasties lists he refused to grant BBFC certificates to numerous films, including The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Straw Dogs. He had various forbidden images such as nunchakus (chain sticks) and blood on breasts, which he considered to be a trigger image for rapists. Although the Video Recordings Act was brought in to combat violent video, he was even stricter on sexual images – female genitalia was forbidden, as was any sex act involving more than two people. “Instructional” drug use and criminal activity would be cut, to prevent ‘copycat’ crime. And of course, most horror films had to be cut. As a result a strong black market grew throughout the UK for pirate videos of uncut horror or sex videos, and a huge underground fan base emerged, with fanzines, books and film festivals keeping the Nasties alive.

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Strangely, the British public didn’t seem to mind the nanny mentality, happy to believe that censorship of material freely available in the rest of Europe was for their own good. This belief was encouraged by the tabloids, who were only too keen to stoke up public hysteria by linking headline-grabbing crimes to video violence, be it the Hungerford massacre and Rambo, or the Jamie Bulger case and Child’s Play 3.

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However, times change, even in Britain, and with a new millennium came a new maturity. The public no longer seemed overly worried by horror videos – possibly because new bête noires like the internet and video games have taken their place. Once Ferman resigned from the BBFC at the end of 1998, UK film censorship turned over a new leaf.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Straw Dogs, The Exorcist and The Story of O – all considered threats to public safety by Ferman – quickly received uncut certificates. When challenged at appeal over their refusal to pass The Last House on the Left uncut, the BBFC were publicly forced to admit that there was no legal reason for them to arbitrarily cut films that were once banned as Video Nasties – something they had always claimed was a legal requirement they had no control over – and subsequently a lot of the Nasties have now been passed uncut… some with a 15 certificate! With one or two exceptions, Ferman’s immediate successor Robin Duval managed to erase the strict censorship regime which emanated from the Nasties scare and now it is relatively rare for a horror movie to be cut or banned to protect the impressionable minds of the British public.

There are, of course, still exceptions – most recently The Bunny Game has been banned outright, while The Human Centipede 2 was initially banned before finally being released with extensive cuts. But by and large, it is now acknowledged that horror films are not a threat to civilisation. We perhaps shouldn’t be too complacent, given British history and the current moral panic that is once again gripping the country (this time aimed at internet porn, but always likely to mutate as the moralists look to assert control), but it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see a return to the dark days of the 1980s again.

David Flint