Author Archives: Jon Kitley

Movie Review: Dellamorte Dellamore

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Dellamorte Dellamore (1994)
Directed by Michele Soavi
Starring Rupert Everett, Francois Hadji-Lazaro, Anna Falchi, Mickey Knox, Fabiana Formica, Clive Riche, Barbara Cupisti, Anton Alexander

Dellamorte Dellamore Japanese LD coverThe first time I watched this film, it was from a bootleg VHS tape, several generations down from the original source, in Italian with no sub-titles. I was very familiar with the director, being a huge fan of his first three films, and was very excited to see his latest, even if it meant watching it under these particular circumstances. And it didn’t matter. Soavi’s use of the camera, the look and feel of the film, and giving us something like we hadn’t seen before, even though I might not have understood exactly what was going on, I still loved it. Soon, I would upgrade my copy to another crappy looking tape, but this time in English. Then a great looking one, but back to Italian. Then finally splurging the money and acquiring the actual Japanese laserdisc, which has one of the best covers to date, which you can see to the right.

Not sure why, but when this film was released over here in the states, some moron decided that the original titles would confuse people, so they changed it to Cemetery Man. Nice job, dumbass.

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Book Review: Rungs on a Ladder

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Rungs on a LadderRungs on a Ladder: Hammer Films Seen Through a Soft Gauze
 By Christopher Neame
Published by The Scarecrow Press, 2003. 131 pages.

If there is a book published about Hammer Films, more than likely, at some point in time, I will be adding it to my library. I mean, when you have an official Hammer section with over two dozen titles in said library already, it’s kind of a must have. So when I came across this title on Amazon, I added it to my wish list. The problem I had right away was that it was priced from $30 to $50, and it was for a book that was just over a hundred pages. That’s a tough sell, even for a diehard collector like myself. Okay, sure, I bought it eventually anyway, but just saying.

Now, let’s not get this Neame confused with the actor of the same name that appeared in a couple of Hammer titles, Dracula A.D. 1972 & Lust for a Vampire. The author Neame started at the bottom of the business and worked his way up. It was only a matter of time for him, since the film business really was in his blood. His father was Ronald Neame, a director and cinematographer, and his grandfather Elwin, was a director who worked in silent films.

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Horror History: George Bau

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georgebauGeorge Bau
Born Dec. 22nd, 1905, Died in March of 1974

Bau is another name in the movie industry that is pretty much an unknown, which is a damn shame, since if it wasn’t for people like him, we might not have had some of the incredible fantastic cinema that we have today. Back in the late ’30s, Bau was developing and creating new types of make ups, such as foam latex, that would be still used to this day. The stuff that he was inventing at the time was used by Perc Westmore on the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), allowing them to do wonders with Charles Laughton’s makeup. Bau also developed the first plastic bald cap, a method to preserve plaster molds so they could be used more than once, the pressure injection method of inserting foam latex into large size molds, and many more. I’m not trying to take anything away from modern day makeup artists, but these guys back in the beginning of cinematic makeup effects had to create their own methods and ways of making these effects work.

He worked on films such as Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), House of Wax (1953), and even Frankenstein 1970 (1958) to name a few. But without his discoveries and the inventions that he created, the world of monsters might not have looked as good as they did then, or do now. And for that reason alone, he needs to be remembered, and respected.

Full Moon History Lesson!

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IT CAME FROM THE VIDEO AISLE

Back in 2013, Dave Jay and Torsten Dewi, along with Nathan Shumate, wrote Empire of the B’s: The Mad Movie World of Charles Band, which was published by Hemlock Books. This covered the early days of Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, which gave us a plethora of titles, many of them still considered classics today. But that changed before the ’80s were done and Band created a new empire…Full Moon Entertainment Studio. Now, Jay and Dewi, along with William S. Wilson this time, tackle the mighty task of diving in to the history of this low budget studio that made their mark with the straight-to-video market filling the shelves at the video stores with titles like the ongoing series Subspecies, Dollman, Puppet Master, the Trancers sequels, and a ton of other titles. All of this and more will be within the pages of It Came from the Video Aisle!

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Movie Review: Death Machine

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Death Machine (1994)
Directed by Steven Norrington
Starring Brad Dourif, Ely Pouget, William Hootkins, John Sharian, Martin McDougall, Andreas Wisniewski, Richard Brake

Okay folks, here’s one title that the Sci-Fi vs Horror people can fight over. You have some people trapped in a huge corporate office building that are basically being stalked by a demented weapons designer and his latest toy. This toy, called the WarBeast, is a huge mechanical killing machine, with long razor sharp claws, a mouth with huge metal teeth, and can track its target by their fear! Is it Sci-Fi or horror? You decide. But no matter which path you go, director Norrington gives us a nice view of both worlds, nicely intertwined together making one hell of a movie!

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Mystery Photo 4-24

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Welcome to our last Monday of April. Time is just flying by, huh? But that just means that Halloween will be around the corner before we know it, and that’s always a good thing! Okay, before we get to this week’s photo, let us recap a little. Our little mystery pic from last week was from the 1957 little gem The Unearthly, starring John Carradine, Allison Hayes, Myron Healey, and Tor Johnson, who actually had a speaking role in this one! Once again, Carradine is playing a mad scientist which is something he did so well. Congrats to the following for sending in the correct answer: Hoby Abernathy, Michael Shields, & Alan Tromp.

So this week’s is going to be a little obscure, but maybe not to those that live on the outskirts of what’s popular. Give a peak and see what you can think of. Good luck!

As always, please remember not to post your answers here, but send them in an email to jon@kitleyskrypt.com, that way everyone can have a chance.

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Slashed Dreams Part 2!

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Slashed Dreams 2Back in 2015, Ronnie Angel published his first book, Slashed Dreams, which is so much more than just a film guide. There are reviews, but also interviews, tons of different lists, and just a lot of fun. Sure, you might not agree with some of his opinions, but that’s one of the fun things about being a horror fan. For a book to be over 500 pages and still only retail for $25, that is just amazing. Same more publishers can’t make some of their titles as affordable as this one!

But now, he has volume 2 coming out. This one will be a little different though, which will be more focused on interviews and behind the scenes stories. It will have over 40 new reviews, including some  obscure titles missed in the first book, but mainly will concentrate on the interviews, which Angel talked to over 50 actors and directors from a variety of different slasher films over the years. You’ll hear from the likes of actors like Linnea Quigley, Kane Hodder, Dean Cameron,  Jordan Ladd, Kelli Maroney, Russell Todd, PJ Soles, and directors like Jack Sholder, Tom DeSimone, Adam Marcus, Tommy Lee Wallace, and quite a few more.

These are the people working in the trenches that have so many great, unusual, and entertaining stories about being in the business and working on these classic slasher films.

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Yvonne Monlaur – Rest in Peace

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Yvonne Monlaur - RIPHammer fans have lost another one of the lovely ladies from their childhood. Yvonne Monlaur passed away last week on the 18th, at the age of 77. Of course, she is probably best known to us horror fans as the young French school teacher that comes across a vampire, only to be saved by Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing, in the 1960 film The Brides of Dracula. Monlaur is just stunning here and actually gives a strong performance, making this a very memorable film. She had appeared in Circus of Horrors the year earlier, and would appear in Hammer’s Terror of the Tongs, playing alongside another Hammer icon, Christopher Lee.

The one sad thing about these Hammer films is that since they were made many decades ago, we are slowly losing all of these great performers and craftsman that worked on them. But we know that because these films continue to draw in new fans, that these names and faces will always be remembered, and that they will continue to entertain fans, both old and new.

Our thoughts go out to Monlaur’s friends and family during this sad time.

Book Review: Mondo Macabro

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mondomacabreMondo Macabro: Weird & Wonderful Cinema Around the World
By Pete Tombs
Published St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.  192 pages.

Any fan of horror or just strange cinema has heard of the DVD/Blu-ray label Mondo Macbro and most likely has a few of their titles in their own collection. Well, this is where it all started from.

In 1995, Pete Tombs and Cathal Tohill wrote the book Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984. It talked about different European styles of cinema, like from German, French, Spanish, and Italian. They also covered directors like Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Jose Larrez, and a few others. Well, four years later, Tomb follows it up with this title, Mondo Macabro, which goes even farther in his quest for bizarre cinema.

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Horror History: Roy Ward Baker

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Roy Ward BakerRoy Ward Baker
Born Dec. 19th, 1916 – Died Oct. 5th, 2010

Fans of British horror films of the ’70s will probably know this man, since between working with Hammer and Amicus, he was cranking out some entertaining films in a very short time. Starting his career at the bottom and working his way up, even as an assistant director on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938), he eventually became a director. He hit some critical fame with A Night to Remember (1958), a film about the Titanic, which is still regarded as one of the best films on that subject. His first film for Hammer was the 3rd of their Quatermass series, Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Then in 1970, he made a huge hit with horror fans with The Vampire Lovers (1970), starring the lovely Ingrid Pitt. After that, he continued working with both Hammer and Amicus turning out great films, like Scars of Dracula (1970), Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971), Asylum (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), And Now the Screaming Starts (1973), and even The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974).

Baker’s films were simple. They had all the elements to make a great movie, which is what he continually turned out. He has quite a few films in his filmography that some critics might consider cheesy or even bad, but I think horror fans might just call classics, or at the very least, pretty damn entertaining. And after all, isn’t that what it’s all about?