And what a life it was! Maureen O’Hara, the most beautiful actress to ever grace the Silver Screen (in my opinion), passed away today at age 95. Star of such Hollywood classics as THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, and of course THE QUIET MAN, Maureen was featured in this rare 1957 edition of TV’s THIS IS YOUR LIFE. I’ll be taking a break from my ‘Halloween Havoc’ series to polish up my post on THE QUIET MAN, which I was going to save for St. Patrick’s Day. Until then, enjoy Maureen and some surprise guests with Ralph Edwards on THIS IS YOUR LIFE:

In 2010, a group of amateur paranormal investigators went to the scene of Richard Speck’s notorious killing spree in an ill-advised attempt to capture footage of his ghost, which purportedly haunts to the place. They never made it out. Now, the victims’  families have finally consented to release the video footage of their loved ones’ final hours to the public.

If this sounds to you like yet another of the cheap-as-shit “found footage” horror movies cobbled together in a few days (and at the cost of a very few dollars) by the shoestring operators of The Asylum, pat yourself on the back for a job well done, because that’s exactly what 2012’s 100 Ghost Street : The Return Of Richard Speck is. And yes, it’s as lousy as any and/or all of the others — and I’m sure you had that much figured out already, as well.

To be perfectly…

Next up on our little field trip trough the wilds of Netflix’s current horror offerings we come to 2014’s Preservation, a movie that I’d heard decidedly mixed things about,  but that I decided to take a flier on anyway simply because I figured “hey, it played the Tribeca film festival, so how bad can it be, right?”

Cue the one answer to that question you can see coming from a mile off : “pretty goddamn bad, as it turns out.”

Filmed just outside Los Angeles on a budget reported to be “low,” writer/director Christopher Denham’s thoroughly predictable “city slickers can’t cut it in the wilderness” non-thriller serves up three immediately unlikable characters in the form of secretly pregnant anesthesiologist Wit (played by Wrenn Schmidt), her workaholic, high-finance hot-shot husband, Mike (Aaron Stanton), and his PTSD-afflicted Afghan war vet older brother, Sean (Pablo Schreiber), who are headed out for a…

Speaking of werewolves (as I did in yesterday’s Werewolves On Wheels, let’s not forget about Paul Naschy. The Spanish horror star played lycanthrophy victim Waldemar Daninsky (aka El Hombe Lobo) in 11 freaky films (there was a 12th that is apparently lost forever). Naschy has a lot of fans, including your humble correspondent! So without further ado, here’s the 1970 FURY OF THE WOLFMAN:

I love horror movies. I love biker flicks, too. Co-writers David Kauffman and Michel Levesque (who also directed) put the two together and came up with WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS, an exploitation mash-up that’s hard to resist. I’m surprised it took so long for someone to combine the two genres. Filmmakers like Roger Corman and Al Adamson must’ve kicked themselves for not thinking of it first!

What starts off like a typical biker movie, with a hard-partying gang called The Devil’s Advocates delivering a brutal beatdown to some rednecks who ran one of them off the road, veers into terror territory when the club stumble upon an old church out  in the desert. Only this church has a Satanic symbol in place of a steeple. Bad mojo ahead, guys!  Monks in hooded robes surround them and offer bread and wine (“Free wine, man!”) The cult leader, named One (as in The One) plucks a hair from the leader’s chick Helen’s head. Soon the bikers…

“You just can’t keep a good man down” states the  poster’s tagline for 1968’s DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, and how right they were! This fourth entry in Hammer’s Dracula series (and third with Christopher Lee as the Count…1960’s BRIDES OF DRACULA had Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing battling a different bloodsucker) takes up where DRACULA- PRINCE OF DARKNESS left off. Dracula’s still buried under the ice, but the villagers are still fearful of living in “the shadow of evil” cast by Castle Dracula. Monsignor Muller (Rupert Davies) rides into town, berating the citizens for not attending church, and their priest (Ewan Hooper) for letting them. The Monsignor and the reluctant priest trek up to Castle Dracula to perform an exorcism of the evil, but the cowardly priest won’t go all the way up. While Monsignor performs the Latin rites, bolting the castle door with a golden cross, the priest (who remains nameless…

Christopher Lee returns to the role of the undead Count in this direct sequel to Horror of Dracula. The movie even begins with that film’s climactic battle between Dracula and his arch-nemesis Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, who also played Hammer’s Dr. Frankenstein). DRACULA- PRINCE OF DARKNESS takes place ten years later, and while not as good as the original, it does have some scary moments.

Four English tourists are traveling through the Carpathian Mountains, heading to Carlsbad. Father Sandor (Andrew Keir) warns then to steer clear of “the castle”. Their coach driver refuses to take them any further when darkness begins to fall, leaving them stranded. A riderless horse and carriage appears out of nowhere, and they commandeer it to travel the rest of the way. But the horses instead take them straight to the forbidden castle. The door has been left open, and they find a table…

SAVAGE INTRUDER (aka HOLLYWOOD HORROR HOUSE) is the psychotronic slasher version of SUNSET BOULEVARD, with a dash of PSYCHO thrown in for good measure. Glamorous 30s star Miriam Hopkins plays Katherine Packard, an alcoholic has-been, but this is no WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE. It’s demented, sleazy, unsavory, and a good time!

We start with some stock footage of Hollywood’s Golden Era, then the credits roll over shots of the decrepit Hollywood sign). (If you think you recognize the film premiere of THE DANCING CAVALIER, you’re right! It’s lifted from the film-within-a-film in SINGIN IN THE RAIN). The next scene shows us a young man following a middle-aged woman from a bar. He breaks into her home, conks her on the noggin, and starts sawing off her hand with an electric carving knife! When she wakes up screaming, he pulls out his hatchet and chops her to bits. He’s a serial killer who’s…

I’m not a big fan of snakes. The slithering serpents have given me the creeps since I was a kid. Needless to say, any movie about the crawling creatures (or with specific snake scenes) never fail to send shivers down my spine. Movies like ANACONDA, VENOM, and SSSSS just make me squeamish. (No, I did not see SNAKES ON A PLANE. Too chickenshit!) I can now add RATTLERS to the list of reptilian terrors. Though the film isn’t all that good, it did what it was supposed to do: scare the beejeezus out of me!

A series of snake attacks befall a California desert town and Sheriff Gates (Tony Ballen) calls in LA herpetologist Dr. Tom Parkinson (Sam Chew). The marauding rattlesnakes are striking unprovoked, and have already caused three deaths. Tom is given an assistant to take photos in the desert. She’s Ann Bradley (Elizabeth Chauvet), a Women’s Libber. Tom, of course, is…

UFOs have been spotted across the globe. Dr. Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife Carol (Joan Taylor) are on their way to the secret headquarters of Operation Skyhook when they’re strafed by a saucer! They tell Carol’s dad, General Hanley (Morris Ankrum) what occurred. The General in turn reports all the satellities they’ve sent up have been destroyed by mysterious forces. When Marvin and his crew send up the next one, the base is attacked by saucers, and the rocket launch incapacitated. Soon General Hanley is captured by the aliens, and Marvin learns to communicate with them. The alien’s intent: destroy Planet Earth! Our weapons are useless against their superior technology! CAN EARTH BE SAVED FROM THE FLYING SAUCER INVASION?!?!

PhotoELF Edits:
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2009:12:07 — Batch Resized

If you’re a fan of 50s sci-fi…