The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[Mr Sausage]

Do you know if this The House of Seven Gables has anything in common with the one Price was previously involved with? It's always surprised me that that was the story they chose to adapt.

I'm afraid I don't. I imagine it's more faithful, tho'. I don't believe the 'new-bride' gothic trope was used in the original novel.

[knives]

No it wasn't. It mainly followed the old spinster with all of the action being kept to the back end of the book. I'm surprised you haven't read it.

[Mr Sausage]

No it wasn't. It mainly followed the old spinster with all of the action being kept to the back end of the book. I'm surprised you haven't read it.

It's in my massive 'to-read' pile along with a million other things you'd be surprised I haven't read.

[knives]

I suppose I shouldn't be talking. I borrowed Forbidden Colors from my sister nearly a decade ago and still haven't read it just to give one of hundreds of examples.

[swo17]

I just remembered that, since music videos are eligible, basically that entire DVD devoted to the work of Chris Cunningham should fit the bill for this project quite nicely. In a similar vein, Chris Morris' series Jam is presumably ineligible, but still very much recommended for anyone who might ever need their horror barometers recalibrated. Example.

[mfunk9786]

I guess I've inadvertently tasked myself with taking any and all hardcore horror suggestions that are being thrown out there!

August Underground trilogy, go!

Actually I highly dis-recommend these films, though I only got through the first film, and halfway through the second before I quit out of boredom. If these films had any positive impact, it was that they effectively killed my interest in this brand of extreme horror one-upmanship to try and make the most "disturbing" film possible. That was years back though, so I don't mean to discourage anyone who's got positive arguments for these films, as I never really finished the trilogy to find out if there was a point to it all in the end.

All you have to do is watch S&Man, and you've got all those flicks covered

[colinr0380]

Definitely agree with swo on Chris Cunningham, here is the previous discussion thread on him. While a lot of the earlier 'developing style' music video links still work a lot of the links to the more celebrated videos are dead so I'll add some new ones here:

The obvious one for the horror list project would be Aphex Twin's Come To Daddy, though the video for their Windowlicker twists rap video cliches into hideously disturbing forms (either that or it is the most sexual version of a Gene Kelly musical number that there could be!)

My favourites would be the unfortunate zombie in the video for Africa Shox, the melancholy creepiness of Only You and the brain swap antics of Come On My Selector. The DVD also has this same excerpt of the installation piece flex.

A couple that have been made since the Director Series DVD are another for Aphex Twin, the nightmarish Rubber Johnny and the Samantha Morton starring Lovecraftian video for The Horrors' Sheena Is A Parasite.

[domino harvey]

Let's hope the new year brings better film experiences than these two films! (Spoilers included for Inside)

Nomads (John McTiernan 1986) A very eighties conservative film that explains away those troublesome punk kids by revealing that they are, in fact, ancient Eskimo spirits who wander the earth in the titular fashion. Of course. French anthropologist Pierce Brosnan stumbles upon the local LA faction and stalks them with his camera before they start stalking him with something more intimidating. As if all this wasn't bad enough, the film chops everything up into memories that Brosnan transfers to Leslie-Anne Down's doc on duty. Poor Down relives everything Brosnan saw in his last few days, sometimes from his POV, sometimes from his wife's, sometimes from an unseen spectator, sometimes from the villainous Sex Pistol wannabees-- boldness of premise may be the film's sole virtue, but consistency in vision sure ain't.

À l'intérieur (Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury 2007) Well, I can't say I wasn't warned… It's hard to even know where to begin on a film like this. I can't offer it token praise from any aesthetic vantage, as it's not particularly well shot, edited, or staged, and the acting is all from The Actor 101 school ("Show the audience you're really pregnant by alternating between rubbing your stomach and cradling your aching back!"). So let's just skip ahead to the only take-away a film like this has to offer. I'm of course talking about its interminable slog through a 100 meter slash of needlessly graphic and indulgent gore.

There is nothing more dull than someone trying to shock an audience and my immediate visceral reaction to all the viscera was the same thing I'd feel if stuck on a Greyhound bus: Is this over yet? I have nothing against gore being employed in a film, but the unending parade of increasingly unlikely and unpleasant wounds is so desperate to jilt and shake the increasingly jaded filmgoer that the only thing more prevalent than blood in this film was the flop sweat. "Look how out of bounds we are!" What's worse, the cumulative effect is one of a sick joke with no punchline, but the film is so humorless that it merely presents these disgusting occurrences at face value, which makes many of them particularly unpalatable.

Allow me to illustrate. Our heroine has grabbed a hairpin and attacked blindly what she thinks is her villainous assailant. Nope, it's her mom, who then proceeds to stagger through the hallway shooting blood out of her artery like a Super-Soaker. This goes on seemingly forever. The scene is so offensive to me not because it's gory or unexpected or like so deep, but because the film comes up with an effective shock tactic and then lets it lay there, so pleased with itself. But I've seen this sort of thing before and can recognize it for what it is, but the film isn't willing to take it the extra mile. A very similar sequence occurs in Deep Rising, and the audience is given permission to laugh at a similarly horrific event because that film has a deft comedic touch to put a gloss on the underlying tragic irony. This film knows its scene is just as much a joke, but it wants to play it straight and therefore all it inspires is bad feelings. And that's all this film seems to do, make the audience feel bad. It makes no effort to engage intellectually, philosophically, or even stylistically, and so all that's left is visceral shock, a non-stop barrage of horrible horrible mutilations underwritten by a "Fuck off" "twist" ending that applies a fine coat of moralistic paint to everything-- as though it wasn't unpleasant enough. I saw someone describe this film as "fun" in the dedicated thread. Yikes.

[mfunk9786]

I think you might be asking for the wrong things from a movie like À l'intérieur. I don't know that it'd be nearly as good of a film (as I feel it is) were it not so humorless - the film isn't trying to shock so much as it's trying to make the viewer feel frightened, woeful, and hopeless. I realize that might not be the noblest of pursuits, but it's hard to fault a film that doesn't have any intention of doing anything beyond being effective and grisly horror for being mean spirited towards its characters, and towards the audience. It's like accusing a chile pepper extract of being too spicy.

[jiraffejustin]

I am particularly blind to slasher genre, is there anybody here that can enlighten me?

[Mr Sausage]

I am particularly blind to slasher genre, is there anybody here that can enlighten me?

I would personally recommend as being solid or interesting slashers:

Halloween
Stagefright
Black Christmas
Alice, Sweet Alice
April Fool's Day
Child's Play

If you want to dive a bit more into the genre, here are some less solid but not unwatchable entries:

My Bloody Valentine
Sleepaway Camp (and its sequels)
The Burning
The House on Sorority Row
Child's Play 2

[colinr0380]

I've often wondered exactly what Jenny Agutter was doing in Child's Play 2 as one of the barely characterised, easily-dispatched foster parents. Paying the bills presumably, though this was also the period in which she popped up for a cameo as Liam Neeson's burn doctor in Darkman!

I think The House on Sorority Row is getting a two DVD reissue at the end of the month through Scorpion, so it might be worth waiting to pick that one up.

[knives]

I'd definitely list Hellraiser as one of the cream of the crop slashers, unless the supernatural element somehow precludes it from the genre.

[colinr0380]

Absolutely, especially since it is Clare Higgins' Julia who is doing most of the killing, rather than the Cenobites! (This is one of those films where the more I rewatch it, the more I am disappointed that the supernatural action climax aspect intrudes, since for a good portion it is working as an unorthodox but intimate drama of adultery and betrayal in its own right!) Although I have my issues with the end of the film since:

Spoiler

the Cenobites renege on their deal with Kirsty and try to take her to Hell after she has helped them to retrieve Frank. Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart is much better in this regard, with the Cenobites playing fair on their deal. I think this was changed in the film just to give Kirsty a bigger final battle, but it is a little disappointing for the internal logic of the piece.

You also have to overlook the ridiculously ineffectual boyfriend (though I love the way that he tries to help in the final battle and Kirsty just angrily pushes him out of the way!) and the strange dubbing of some, but not all, of the characters to make the film seem like it has an American setting, while it still remains obvious that it has been made in England!

I also like the continuation of the characters in Hellbound: Hellraiser II (as much as I like Ashley Laurence in the lead role, Clare Higgins really steals the show in these two as the bad guy, and she has good support in the sequel from the 'respected' actor Kenneth Cranham, who chews the scenery wonderfully once he gets Cenobitten!), though the sequel has similar problems of Anglo-American dubbing (for example watch out for Oliver Parker, future director of the Rupert Everett versions of An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest and St Trinians; Dorian Gray and the Laurence Fishburne starring version of Othello, playing an American-accented removal man in the (frankly stupid) coda of the film!)

Spoiler

Plus Kirsty does have to act stupidly in the sequel, running after her father thinking he is trapped in Hell when it should be obvious to everyone that it was just Frank playing a trick on her!

Edit: By the way if you are interested in seeing some of the genesis of the ideas used in Hellraiser, Redemption put out a couple of Barker's black and white silent short films made in Liverpool in the 1970s, Salome and The Forbidden which feature a lot of the best imagery used later on (solving an arcane puzzle, the negative images, the shadows of pins in a board, flayed figures standing in landscapes, along with a full body flaying sequence).

[Mr Sausage]

I always considered Hellraiser more a 'monster in the attic' type movie. It doesn't really have any of the tropes of the slasher genre, so I didn't bother to recommend it for someone wanting to learn more about them.

Actually, if I'm going to recommend a somewhat-but-not-quite slasher film, I'd choose The Stepfather. I like it more than the Hellraiser movies (which are narratively weak, but filled with grostesque and operatic visuals and set pieces, especially the sequel), if only for Terry O'Quinn's riveting performance.

[domino harvey]

Have you seen the sequel? It's not as good a film as the first, but O'Quinn's performance is off-the-rails manic and arguably better than in the original.

If we're praising Clive Barker adaptations, though, it's gotta be Lord of Illusions, a lock for my list if there ever was one. Famke Janssen slithering around, Kruger from Seinfeld as a demonic cult leader, and Scott Bakula as a surprisingly effective neo-noir hero all working within a rather cruel story that handily expands to best Barker's own source material

[Mr Sausage]

Have you seen the sequel? It's not as good a film as the first, but O'Quinn's performance is off-the-rails manic and arguably better than in the original.

If we're praising Clive Barker adaptations, though, it's gotta be Lord of Illusions, a lock for my list if there ever was one. Famke Janssen slithering around, Kruger from Seinfeld as a demonic cult leader, and Scott Bakula as a surprisingly effective neo-noir hero all working within a rather cruel story that handily expands to best Barker's own source material

Stepfather II is on my (gigantic) rental list. I hope to get to it at some point for this list.

I thought Lord of Illusions to be a perfectly alright film, but not much more. It's a very nineties horror movie that has that peculiar feeling of being cosmic in its implications without ever seeming to involve more than a dozen or so people. For a movie that seemed to be trying to upend the stability of what its naive characters believe to be reality, very little happened that would destabilized anything (except some obscure references to people being lumps of shit at base, which itself seemed rather naive). In the end I had no idea what the Lord himself was actually up to. Michele Soavi's earlier The Sect was doing a lot of similar things, and while it's a complete mess (among other problems), it's a much stranger and more interesting movie, I think.

[Murdoch]

re: Stepfather 2

Spoiler

While it is weaker compared to its predecessor, the awkward suburban wife meeting where O'Quinn sits by bemused when the women interrupt his "wholesome" discussion with intimate details about their sex lives is my favorite moment of the films. I would put the film on the same level as the first one if it weren't for O'Quinn becoming a near-invincible superman in the final scene as he's shot and stabbed yet still manages to give his family a good fight

[knives]

That about sums up my feelings on Lord of Illusions too. perfectly alright '90s horror that plays out a bit too close to Angel Heart for it's own good. Speaking of Barker though that recent adaptation of Midnight Meat Train is surprisingly and really good. It's not Kitamura's most stylish film, but comes pretty close and for a collection of who's who bland actors the performances are really good and add a dimension that the script lacks.

[Mr Sausage]

Hammer: non-series films.

This is all of the stand-alone horror features Hammer made. Between those listed here and in the other guides I've posted, that should give a total run-down of all of Hammer's horror output (I'm not counting the cavemen films or stuff like She and Vengeance of She because they're really not horror despite the fantastical elements). Edit: I've put the recommended titles in red now.

The Abominable Snowman (Val Guest, 1957): An early b&w Hammer horror released a few months after Curse of Frankenstein, so it more resembles the Quatermass films than the gothics. Like those Quatermass films, it's adapted from a Nigel Kneale television mini-series and directed by Val Guest; unlike them, it's a very simply plotted movie full of cultural (and other) stereotypes. The plot concerns an expedition's search for the titular beast in the Himalayas, and manages to be decently entertaining, at least until it descends into the tedious moralizing that bogs down the climax. I don't think I've ever seen this movie except the once, but I still got the feeling while watching it that I'd seen everything before. And I probably have, just in other films.

The Snorkel (Guy Green, 1958): B&W suspense film about a man who murders his wife and makes it look like suicide (if you've ever seen The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, you'll recognize his methods). His stepdaughter believes he was responsible, but of course no one believes her. What could've been a tense game of cat-and-mouse between the two of them becomes instead a million variations on the "oh why won't you all believe me?! Please believe me!" plot device, with everyone finding ever more extravagant ways to treat a clearly reasonable girl as if she just has a fanciful imagination. The movie is light on tension and suspense. A missed opportunity. It was also well on its way towards having the ballsiest ending of any pre-seventies Hammer movie, a real EC comics-style comeuppance, but makes a last minute about-face. Hammer's later The Nanny did this material much better.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Terence Fisher, 1959): This is the Hammer version of the Conan Doyle story, and as you would expect, it's been significantly altered to have a more gothic horror flavour. This came only two years after Curse of Frankenstein, so everyone involved was at the height of their craft. The swift plotting, moody atmosphere, and irritable, fussy performance from Cushing as Holmes makes this one of the better Holmes adaptations and an excellent film from Hammer.

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (Terence Fisher, 1959): A talky mad scientist picture about a man who can, well, you know. The movie's origin as a play is obvious and works against director Fisher's aptitude for energetic and action-oriented story-telling. Contrasting it with the Frankenstein films of the same period highlights how static and lifeless it is. Where something is almost constantly happening in the Frankenstein movies, almost nothing happens in this one except discussions about things that might perhaps happen, maybe. It doesn't help that the dialogue isn't clever or interesting, just to the point, a choice which would make perfect sense for an action-oriented Hammer film, but not here. Anton Diffring as the titular man overacts. One of Hammer’s less impressive films from the period.

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (Terence Fisher, 1960): The first ten minutes are so stolid and boring that it might have you reconsidering your decision to watch the movie. And just as you start to think you'll find something else to do, the movie suddenly, out of nowhere, turns the whole story on its head with a series of novel twists and ironies. It's Jekyll and Hyde by way of Dorian Grey, and of the three big adaptations made during the period (including Amicus' faithfully rendered I, Monster, and Hammer's own Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde) it's the most unpredictable, the best written (the dialogue is a scream, and who knew Christopher Lee could be such a weasily but charming wastrel--and he's not even playing Hyde!), and all around the finest. Well worth tracking down. It'll make my list.

Curse of the Werewolf (Terence Fisher, 1961): One of the things I usually like about Hammer films is their practise of keeping their movies to 90 minutes or less. With Curse, the opposite is true: it could've used an extra twenty minutes. The problem is the source material: the movie takes so long to tell the source novel's elaborate set-up that you've lost near an hour before you get to the main story. That leaves you with so little time to spend with the Oliver Reed character that it's difficult feel the involvement necessary for this kind of tragic story to work. The second and third acts feel rushed and under-developed. Could've been one of the great werewolf films, and there is still much to recommend it; but in the end, I was disappointed.

Stop Me Before I Kill (Val Guest, 1961): Elegantly shot B&W suspense film about a man who suffers brain damage in a car accident and becomes consumed by a desire to murder his wife. It's a more low-key psychological drama than the mini-Hitchcocks, which tended to have a level of stylization and artifice that this one trades up for beautifully composed wide-screen shots and smooth, understated camera movements. This is a film to appreciate for its slick, elegant style (its plot, tho' expertly done, is predictable melodrama).

Shadow of the Cat (John Gilling, 1961): Greedy husband and house staff off the mistress of the house and are terrorized by her prized black cat for their troubles. Beautifully moody black-and-white thriller that's leagues apart from the gaudy gothic films Hammer is most known for. The director, however, does not follow his title and keep the vengeful feline to the shadows, making it apparent how ridiculous the premise really is when you're watching a little house-cat run around causing mayhem. Would've made more sense to turn it into a less literal avenging angel, unless of course the director intended to subvert the material. A finely crafted film anyway, worth tracking down.

Captain Clegg aka The Night Creatures (Peter Graham Scott, 1962): More of an adventure film about smuggling operations in a coastal British town circa 1792, but it has a minor gothic horror element that was likely included just because audiences expected that kind of thing from Hammer. It's a pretty rousing movie, with the smugglers trying ever more inventive tactics to evade the King's men and the ignorant local authorities. No real surprises, just good fun executed with the solid craftsmanship Hammer put into just about all of their products. Peter Cushing, Oliver Reed, the luscious Yvonne Romain, Michael Ripper in a welcome larger role, and a host of authentic supporting actors help carry this one off.

The Phantom of the Opera (Terence Fisher, 1962): Despite the high level of talent behind this one, it's a disappointment. The main problem is that the Phantom isn't a threatening enough presence. As far as I can tell, the worst thing he does is slash a few drums and steal the conductors play-book. All of the real mayhem is caused by his hunchbacked assistant who, apparently, was working mostly on his own (the Phantom disclaims credit for any of the murders at any rate). Where this movie really shines is in the small moments it allows its bit-players, each of whom lend the movie a sense of authenticity. Patrick Troughton's cockny rat-catcher is especially delightful, as are the opera-house's bedraggled cleaning ladies, who rifle through the lost-and-found looking for valuables.

Kiss of the Vampire (Don Sharp, 1963): Mid-tier vampire movie from Hammer. Young couple's car breaks down (naturally) near a desolate Bavarian village, and they fall prey to a society of vampires that live in a hill-top castle. Lacks the narrative energy Terence Fisher always brought to his movies. Nothing in this one stands out particularly (except the awful bat-effects that ruin the climax).

The Old Dark House (William Castle, 1963): A co-production between Hammer and Columbia, tho' it's really a William Castle movie. A bunch of overactors give us their impersonation of British eccentricity while Tom Poston mugs and pulls lame prat-falls. A terribly dull comedy film. I'll use the rest of this capsule to recommend instead the 1932 James Whale version, a wonderful horror film, atmospheric, clearly in love with the cliches it gently ribs, populated with rivetting actors (Karloff, Laughton, Thesiger), and towards the end, disturbing and unbearably tense. Meaning, it's all the things the Castle version is not.

The Gorgon (Terence Fisher, 1964): Underrated Hammer film from their golden period. People in a country village are being turned to stone and for some reason the local government is covering it up. That latter bit wrings some mystery out of what seems at first like a clear-cut plot. Terence Fisher brings his usual sense of pacing and action, and tho' Christopher Lee doesn't show up until half-way through the film, he steals the whole thing. Especially good is the scene where he brow-beats the local constable with some pretty cutting dialogue. As usual with Hammer, the special effects are subpar. As Lee once put it in an interview, "the only thing wrong with The Gorgon was the gorgon!" Highly recommended nonetheless.

Plague of the Zombies (John Gilling, 1966): Rightfully considered one of the high points in the history of the company. Doctor learns that his brother has died under mysterious circumstances in a Cornish village, so he travels there with his wife to find out what happened. Meanwhile, villagers continue to die of a mysterious disease while the local mine, recently reopened, resounds with the beat of voodoo drums. This film has by far some of the scariest moments in any Hammer film, including one genuinely startling shock zoom. List worthy.

Rasputin the Mad Monk: (Don Sharp, 1966): This one owes more to Svengali than to history. It's really all about Christopher Lee's magnetic performance. He charges through the movie with gusto, commanding attention with his basso-profundo voice and sheer physical presence. Within the first five minutes Rasputin's been in a bar brawl, tried to bed a tavern-wench in a barn loft, and cut off the hand of a villager before jumping out a window. In the very next scene he proclaims himself the greatest Christian ever to the head of his order. Good fun.

The Reptile (John Gilling, 1966): Filmed back-to-back with, and using the same sets as, Plague of the Zombies, this one feels like an inferior retread of The Gorgon. There's no faulting the atmosphere, something Hammer almost always got right; but the film suffers from a lack of explanation. What you get is so perfunctory and leaves so many unanswered questions that it’s hard not to feel unsatisfied. The ending is a letdown as well. Not a bad movie by any means, but everything it does was done much better by the other two films mentioned in this capsule summary.

The Witches (Cyril Frankel, 1966): Middle-aged woman takes teaching position in a small British town that she believes may hide a dark secret. I hope I'm not letting the cat out of the bag by saying it's witchcraft--because it's witchcraft. If you want to see the cheapest, silliest black mass ever put on film, you ought to check out the final twenty or so minutes of this one. It's a dozen dirty people rolling on the floor in a cave. At one point I think they eat mud. At least I hope it was mud. Joan Fontaine is in it, but she doesn't roll in the mud.

The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968): Christopher Lee visits an old friend and finds him involved with a really nasty band of Satanists. Unexpectedly, this one works because it treats its premise with real seriousness. Lee in particular brings such an intense conviction to his role that even the sillier elements are imbued with a real gravity. The dodgy special effects take away from the impact of the final scenes, but this is a superior horror movie nonetheless and one of Hammer's very best. List worthy.

Countess Dracula (Peter Sasdy, 1971): Not an actual vampire movie, but a version of the Lady Bathory story. It stars the ever-lovely Ingrid Pitt as an aging countess who discovers that bathing in virgin's blood works slightly better than her Dove moisturiser. A staid and uninvolving film whose narrative feels rushed.

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (Roy Ward Baker, 1971): Despite its silly title, this is a solid entry from Hammer. As you can probably guess from the title, Dr. Jekyll's formula turns him into a woman. The movie has a real ghoulish sense of humour, a deliciously fog-bound London atmosphere, and also manages to fit in elements of Jack the Ripper and Burke and Hare. My only problems with it are that it doesn't take its gender-bending premise far enough, and that there's nothing Sister Hyde does that is any worse than what Dr. Jekyll commits in trying to concoct his formula in the first place, leaving no reason for Jekyll to hate his alter-ego like he does. The movie deserves credit for taking its premise to a perfectly logical conclusion, tho'. Fun film.

Hands of the Ripper (Peter Sasdy, 1971): Schlocky title aside, this is a restrained, expertly made period film about madness and obsession. An emotionally distant doctor takes in a disturbed young woman whom he knows full well has homicidal tendencies, and does so because he thinks he can use her to prove that psychoanalysis works. The danger she presents to his unwitting family is, he thinks, an acceptable risk. The premise could easily have made for a silly movie, but instead it plays to all of Hammer's strengths: the first class acting from the cast of character actors (Eric Porter is especially good as the cold and driven doctor), and the authentic period atmosphere. This is a classy little movie. The finale, which has a tragic beauty to it, makes excellent use of location shooting at St. Paul's Cathedral. Definitely one of the highlights of 70's Hammer.

Demons of the Mind (Peter Sykes, 1972): One of those films where an old family's generations-long corruption from vice seems to spill out into the surrounding environs before coming to a violent crisis. In this one an old baron is convinced that his children have inherited the madness that he feels in himself, so he locks them up. Meanwhile, village women are disappearing. Strange movie, not overly satisfying.

Vampire Circus (Robert Young, 1972): Excellent late vampire movie from Hammer. Done in the style of the Karnstein trilogy (even down to the similar opening credits), it's about a town ravaged by the plague and quarantined from the rest of the country. In the midst of this, a circus troupe comprised of gypsies, exotic animals, dwarves, and strong men arrives in the city. Soon after, children begin to disappear. Once again, Hammer nails the period atmosphere: the village really resembles a poor, dirty, isolated rural village, and the circus looks like exactly the kind of rickety, low-rent operation that would travel between small villages. Amid this realism the movie injects disturbing elements that vary from the darkly fantastical to the lurid and gritty. The bestial eroticism of the circus performances finds a stark, realistic counter-part in the equally bestial victimization of the young that occurs throughout the movie. Not a new theme, the sins of the parents being visited on the children, but this movie treats that theme with an unexpected frankness that is very effective. This movie helps sell the notion that Hammer's 70's period is very underrated.

Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (Brian Clemens, 1974): Originally planned to lead into a television series starring the title character, the film flopped at the box office and the series was scrapped. Too bad, because it's great. Captain Kronos is a former soldier who, along with his hunchbacked assistant, now spends his time hunting vampires. It's a fun, tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler complimented by its excellent sword-fights and wry tone.

To the Devil a Daughter (Peter Sykes, 1976): Hammer's final horror film before the company closed down. It starts out reasonably strong, with occult expert Richard Widmark hiding a runaway nun from Christopher Lee's sinister coven, but it becomes aimless half-way through before petering out into one of the worst anti-climaxes I can think of. It also becomes truly tasteless at times, making the then-16-year-old Natassja Kinski strip nude for no reason, and including a pointless and baffling scene of Kinski trying to shove a bloody demon-fetus into her birth canal. Not a good movie at all.

[Forrest Taft]

Your posts made me finally take the plunge on The Ultimate Hammer Collection, which is still ridiculously cheap on amazon (£20.83 after VAT removal, plus free shipping = less that £1 per disc!).

[knives]

Everyone participating in this list should buy that set. It doesn't overlap with any of the other Hammer sets and has a few of the best films made in the genre (plus One Million Years B.C.) not just Hammer.

[SamLowry]

Point of clarification: Are Riget I & II considered two separate films since they were released theatrically in the US in separate years? One film because they're usually boxed together? or ineligible because they were released as a continuing series in Denmark?

[domino harvey]

One eligible film

[Cold Bishop]

Per page 2.

While were at, I should have to mention that anyone here can double-down on their listmaking, as one of my 1940s spotlights is Horror list eligible. Once again, as not everyone here is both Blu-capable AND French-fluent, I offer my private consultation in tracking down a subbed copy of the film.